Death in Vineyard Waters

by Philip Craig

  “How do you know?”

  “It was no secret. She always went swimming then. Everybody who knew her testified to it.”

  “If she wanted to commit suicide, maybe she went in at midnight instead so nobody would stop her.”

  He nodded, puffing. “That makes sense, but it didn’t happen. Ian McGregor was with her at the beach at six A.M. So she was alive then, which means that whatever happened to her happened afterward.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Unless somebody’s wrong about something,” said the chief.

  “Or lying,” I said.

  “Or that,” said the chief, nodding and puffing. I inhaled the lovely fumes and wondered why a pipe made a man look more intelligent. I could really use one on those grounds alone.

  “Maybe some fisherman saw her down there that morning. Maybe somebody saw her driving there. I’ll ask around. If I don’t come up with anything, we can put out a request for information over the radio station and through the papers. We might come up with a witness—the roads aren’t busy that early in the morning, but there are people around. Somebody might have seen something.”

  “You’ll talk again with the crewmen on the Mary Pachico?”

  He nodded. “Or the coast guard will.”

  “And Ian McGregor?”

  The chief blew a smoke ring and looked at me. “I thought I saw him in town a couple of times with Zee Madieras.”

  “Could be.” Even I could hear the sourness in my voice.

  “I’ll talk to him again about when he saw Marjorie Summerharp that morning. I can’t see him changing his story at this late date, but I suppose he might. Anybody else you can think of? Any other advice to us dumb cops?”

  “You think you’re smart just because you’ve got a pipe and I don’t. No, unless there’s somebody that we don’t know about, the crew of the Mary Pachico and McGregor are the only ones who gave information about when the woman went swimming and when and where her body was found. Theirs are the only stories we have to check.”

  “ ‘We’?”

  “You.”

  “That’s right,” said the chief. “Me, not you.”

  I inhaled a last lungful of his pipe smoke and left.

  I was smoking bluefish a couple of days later when I heard the car coming down my driveway. I’d caught the fish the day before, soaked them in a brine and sugar solution overnight, rinsed them and air dried them this morning, and now was smoking them over hickory chips out behind my shed in the smoker I made out of a refrigerator and some electric stove parts I’d salvaged from the Big D. I have an illegal sales agreement with a certain elegant island eating establishment for my smoked bluefish. I get top dollar in cash and my client gets the Vineyard’s best smoked bluefish. The Health Board, which would stop this free enterprise if it knew of it, on grounds that my fish preparation facilities do not meet government standards, has not been informed. Nor has the IRS.

  Cars rarely come down my driveway, so each one that does is of interest. A few are cars driven by people who just like to know where roads go. I like to do that myself sometimes. I have not put up No Trespassing or Private Property signs, since I don’t like them, so nobody has any reason to think they can’t come down my driveway if they want to. The explorers, seeing that they’ve arrived at a private house, sometimes with a naked man sunbathing on the lawn, beer near at hand, all turn around and leave.

  This car stopped in front of the house and two doors opened and closed. I shook some more hickory chips into the skillet on the hot plate at the base of the smoker and shut the door. I heard a voice hallo and recognized it and went toward the house just as Zee and Ian McGregor came walking around it toward the back yard.

  “Hi,” said McGregor, putting out a hand. I took it. Our grips were firm as ever. He squeezed. I squeezed. He noticed Zee watching and released his grip. “I hope we’re not interrupting,” he said. “I wanted to see you, but didn’t know where you lived, so I prevailed on Zee, here, to show me the way. I phoned a couple times first, but nobody answered.”

  “I was probably out back.” I looked at Zee.

  “Hi,” she said. “My nose tells me you’re smoking fish.”

  “Yes.” She looked wonderful in tan shorts and a greenish shirt tied in a knot at her waist. She wore sandals, and her thick dark hair was pulled back by a bright ribbon. Her skin was smooth and browned by the summer sun, some of that browning having been accomplished right here in this yard. “I’m about to have a beer,” I said. “Would you care to join me?”

  McGregor cast a quick eye at the sky. “Somewhere the sun is over the yardarm,” he said. “Sure. A beer would be good.”

  “You two go out to the front yard,” I said. “I’ll bring out the beer.”

  They did and I did and we sat in the fast-warming sunlight and looked across the garden at the distant sea. The beer felt cool and slick as I drank it down.

  McGregor was in shorts, sandals, and an animal-on-the-pocket knit shirt. He looked very fit. He caught my glance and lifted his beer. “Cheers. Thanks for the beer. You have a terrific view. Zee told me it was great and it is. I like your place, too. It’s just the right size and just the right age and it has a good feel about it.”

  “It’s good enough for me,” I said.

  “Maybe you can show Ian your dad’s decoys before we leave,” said Zee, looking a bit ill at ease. “Ian does some woodcarving himself, and I think he’d like to see your dad’s work.”

  “I do some hunting,” he said, “and I do like hand-carved decoys. Zee says your father carved quite a few and that they’re excellent. That was another reason for asking her to bring me down here.” He put a smile on his face. I looked at him.

  “What was the first reason?”

  He and Zee exchanged looks. Then he took a sip of beer. “Yesterday the chief of the Edgartown police came out to the place and asked me whether I was absolutely sure that I’d been with Marjorie at six A.M. the day she drowned. I said that indeed I was sure because I’d looked at my watch just before starting my run home. I run the bike paths every day about then, because there aren’t many bikers up yet and I don’t have to worry about being run over by some moped.” He paused and we both drank some beer. “I asked him why he wanted to double-check that time and he said it was because Marjorie’s body couldn’t have been picked up where it was netted if she had gone swimming at six. Something about the tides. He mentioned that you had brought the matter to his attention.” He glanced at Zee and smiled, then looked at me again. “I hadn’t the slightest idea what he was talking about when he spoke of the tides, so after he left, I phoned Zee because she goes fishing and I figured she’d know about such things.”

  “So I told him about the east and west tides,” said Zee, looking at me over her beer, “just like you told me when you got me started fishing down at Wasque.”

  I made some sort of noise that was halfway between a sniff and a grunt. I think it was supposed to be a noncommittal sign of recollection.

  “So I started thinking about the situation,” said McGregor, “and the more I thought about it, the more odd it seemed that Marjorie would have been found where the trawler picked her up. It was clear that something unusual must have occurred after she parked her car down there at the end of Katama Road. But I can’t figure out what it would be other than that for some reason she went into the water far to the west of where her car was parked and then drowned and was washed east on the rising tide until her body was netted by the trawler.” He turned the beer bottle in his hands. “But why would that happen? What if somebody, some nut, was there when she parked and made her go with him off to the west along the beach and then . . . I don’t know . . . pushed her in or something. Or maybe she got away and swam out to escape.” He gave me a grim smile. “Crazy, huh? Probably it was nothing like that. Probably she just decided to go for a walk west along the beach, and then went swimming and drowned and washed out to where they found her. I don’t know.”

  �
��What’s this got to do with me?”

  “Zee tells me that you were a cop. That’s one thing. You’re also a guy who knows the tides and knows people around here and knows the area. I’m a stranger. I’m a college professor who can crawl around in books okay, but I’m no real-life detective. I want to find out what happened to Marjorie, and I want to hire you to do it. In a week I’ll be going back to the mainland to tend to the publication of the paper Marjorie and I have been working on. But between now and then I want you to investigate her death. I’ll be glad to pay you for your trouble. Marjorie meant a lot to me, and I would feel even worse about her death if I were to discover later, perhaps, that it wasn’t just a simple accident. I want to know everything that I can, particularly about what happened that last morning.” He clenched the fist with the skinned knuckles and looked me in the eye. “I’m very serious about this. If someone caused her death, I want to know about it.”

  I looked at Zee. She gave a slight nod.

  “I’m not a private detective,” I said. “You can hire a P.I. over on the Cape. Maybe there’s one right here on the island. Did you look in the Yellow Pages?”

  “I have indeed looked in the Yellow Pages and found a listing for private detectives, but I think that you’re a better man for the job because you know the area and the circumstances of Marjorie’s death.” He hesitated. “Besides, Zee thinks you’re the one to do it.”

  I looked at Zee. She looked back and drank some beer.

  “You won’t lose any money by taking the job,” said McGregor. “I know that may not be the most important consideration for you, but it’s a considerable one. I’ll pay you very well, enough to more than cover whatever losses you’ll incur when you take time off from your fishing business. I want this matter investigated thoroughly, and I’m afraid the police may not have the time or the personnel to tend to it. This is important to me.”

  “The chances are,” I said, “that she just went for a walk to the west along the beach. Maybe she did it every day before she swam. That’s probably what happened. Occam’s razor: The simplest explanation that covers the facts is probably the right one. Save your money.”

  “Please,” said Zee.

  I had led her up to Skye’s kitchen door and left her there so she could meet McGregor. I’d hoped that she’d choose me instead of him then, but instead they’d started dating and now she wanted me to help him. “All right,” I said, “I’ll do it.”

  “I’ll give you a retainer right now,” said McGregor. “I really appreciate this more than I can say, Mr. Jackson.”

  “Make it cash,” I said, hearing the coldness in my voice.

  “Anything you want.” He put his checkbook away. It said that he’d either been confident or very hopeful of getting me. “I’ll have to go to the bank. I don’t carry much money around with me.”

  “And I have to finish smoking my fish before I go to work for you, Doctor. When I finish here, I’ll want to come over to the farm and have a look at things there—Marjorie Summerharp’s papers, books, her room, anything that hasn’t already been cleaned up and shipped out.”

  “Most of it’s gone, I’m afraid. Her personal belongings were sent to her people in Maine. I do have the papers associated with the project we were doing. The work’s done, but our working papers are still in John’s library. You’re certainly welcome to see those and, of course, anything else that might interest you.”

  “It’s just a place to begin. Maybe she left something around that would give us a clue about what happened after she left the house that morning.”

  We climbed out of our lawn chairs and Zee collected the beer bottles. She came over and looked up at me. “Thanks, J. W. I’m on the night shift right now, but I’m free afternoons. If I can help, I want to.”

  Zee worked as a nurse at the Martha’s Vineyard hospital. She was very good at her job. She was very good at everything she did.

  “I’ll let you know,” I said. “I’ll show Dr. McGregor the decoys and then throw you both out. I have to think about how I’m going to earn my salary for the next week.” I turned my back to McGregor and dropped my voice. “Don’t let yourself get hurt by this guy.”

  Her warm face cooled. “I’m not a little girl.”

  “I know. But watch yourself.”

  She walked deliberately back to McGregor and took his arm. “Why don’t you show us those decoys?” she asked lightly. McGregor flashed a smile that said victory. His blue eyes glinted in the sun. I led them to the house.

  When they had gone, I considered how I felt about Ian McGregor. He had seemed inclined to play handshake games and had punched out at least one man on the Vineyard. He was a bit overbearing and apparently used women until he tired of them, a common enough practice among handsome men of a certain type. Was he gentle with Zee? He could be charming, obviously, and he professed to be worried about Marjorie Summerharp’s last hours. And he also professed to like my house and my father’s decoys. And he was smart—even Marjorie Summerharp had agreed about that. He had his Ph.D., but said he knew he didn’t know anything about what he thought of as detective work.

  And he had Zee.

  I had plenty of reasons to dislike and distrust him.

  7

  I smoke my fish for about five hours, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on weather conditions—air temperature and moisture affect the time it takes. The test is by eye. When the fillets look just the right color, a sleek golden brown, they’re done. I turn off the smoker, take the fillets out, put them on the porch to cool, then wrap them in plastic wrap. Then it’s off to my secret, illegal buyer. He takes an order every week during the summer, which helps the Jackson budget quite a bit.

  After I’d delivered the smoked fish and collected my illicit payment, I drove to John Skye’s farm. Zee’s Jeep was there, parked beside McGregor’s MG, a reconditioned sportster about twenty years old but looking rakishly brand new. It sported a roof rack upon which was the surfboard John Skye had pointed out at the cocktail party. I parked beside the MG and had a good look at my ancient Landcruiser—lots of rust, many dents, bent bumpers. It looked worse than usual. I gave a wheel a kick and went to the house as the kitchen door opened and Zee and McGregor came out. They both looked smashing, as though they had stepped out of a chamber of commerce ad to entice even more folk to the island: handsome couple, perfectly maintained old New England farmhouse, new Jeep and impeccably reconditioned English sports car parked on the fringe of a green lawn, handsome barn in the background. A perfect image of a perfect island.

  And McGregor did the right thing—he handed me an envelope full of cash. “I’ll show you Marjorie’s room,” he said.

  Marjorie Summerharp’s room had been on the second floor of the farmhouse, at the top of the back stairs. At the foot of the stairs was a back door leading out onto a screened porch overlooking a green swale that bent out of sight behind the barn. There was a white fence across the front of the swale, and I knew it to be a pasture for the twins’ horses. The view from Marjorie Summerharp’s room was a loftier perspective of the same scene, which allowed you to look over the treetops and catch a glimpse of the sea. “Ocean view,” the real estate brochures would say.

  The room was pretty well cleaned out, just as Ian McGregor had said it was.

  “She didn’t bring much down with her,” he said as I opened the door of a narrow closet and looked at a few wooden coat hangers. “She had only a small suitcase and her briefcase. She was pretty sardonic about the amount of stuff I brought. I’m afraid I’m not a guy who travels light unless he has to. Since I was driving down, I brought as much as I could pack into the MG or carry on top of it. She was of the ‘one is enough’ school of packing and used to tell me she could travel to Europe for a month and take everything she needed in a flight bag. Why, she only had that one old bathing suit and cap even though she swam every day. Said she could only wear one at a time and didn’t need any more.” He had a self-deprecating smile on his face. I could s
ee how he could be charming.

  I looked under the bed and opened the drawers of the dresser and the nightstand. The bed had been remade with clean sheets, and there was no sign that Marjorie Summerharp had ever been there. I thought of something my father had sometimes said about hunting and fishing, that it was good to be in the woods and by the shore, but that we should walk so lightly that we’d leave no sign that we’d passed that way.

  Ian McGregor leaned against the door frame, hands in his pockets, and Zee stood beside him, arms folded, as I worked my way around the room, finding nothing.

  “I don’t think there’s anything here,” said Zee. “I helped Ian get her things together after the police said it was okay. We sent everything to Maine. She has kinfolk up there.”

  I lifted up the mattress, saw nothing, and let it drop.

  “I do have her academic papers,” said Ian McGregor. “They’re downstairs in the library.”

  We went down the front stairs and entered John Skye’s library—four walls covered with books, a large desk, an old globe, several leather chairs and a matching couch, reading lamps, two smaller tables, and a couple of straight wooden chairs. A large old Turkish rug covered most of the floor. It was a comfortable place, like the one I’ll have in my house after I win the lottery and can remodel. John Skye had told me once that he’d read all of some of the books and some of almost all of them and that the others were books he intended to read when he had time. The desk and tables were covered with papers and folders.

  McGregor gestured. “This is where we worked. Much of this is photocopied material having to do with Shakespeare and, to a lesser extent, Arthurian writings. We had to play devil’s advocates because we had to be absolutely sure that the document we’d found wasn’t just another forgery. The result was that we spent more time trying to prove that the manuscript is a fake than to promote it. As it turned out, the more we worked to disprove it, the more we became sure that it was genuine.”