Death in Vineyard Waters

by Philip Craig

  His mouth worked. “How would Marjorie ever get an idea like that?”

  “Another person suggested the same thing. She saw something when she was visiting the place. Since then the Van Dams have installed that gate so they won’t get any more surprise callers.”

  “Do I know this other person?”

  “You’ve met. A young woman I know. She seemed pretty sure of herself.”

  “That’s a very serious accusation. Did this young woman give you details?”

  “Some. Since then I’ve learned enough to know her suspicions are justified. Do you think the Van Dams would consider a threatened exposé sufficient motive for murder?”

  He sank into his chair, thought written on his forehead. Then, “No, no, I cannot imagine it. I would guess that they would first brazen it out. Then, if that failed, I rather expect they would fault underlings and promise reform—and if that failed, I imagine they would simply disappear, no doubt to reemerge elsewhere, Palm Springs or Bar Harbor or wherever wealthy clients might be found, with the same sort of organization. Murder is too violent an act for so mellow a folk as the Van Dams.” He looked up at me and smiled. “No, my friend, even if Marjorie’s threat were known to them, I cannot see the Van Dams as motivated to murder. That, of course, is the opinion of a totally amateur criminologist. I see that you have finished your lunch. Would you like me to speak of things I actually know something about?”

  I said that I would and for the next hours listened to a brilliant zealot give an argument, rich in detail, that^ ancient European, African, and Asian people had indeed explored and colonized the New World. He spoke without notes, but occasionally dove into a pile of books or papers to extract a photograph or drawing illustrating a point. He spoke of languages and place names, of epigraphy, symbols and art styles, of artifacts and maps, of animal and plant dispersions, of stone monuments, and of Old World sagas and histories mentioning the New World. Suddenly he stopped.

  “Good lord. Two hours! No one can stand two hours of such lecturing! You’ve had enough!” There had been a sort of cold fever in his face and voice, and now the fever was forced away and replaced by a dry-lipped smile. “Off you go, my lad. But do come again. There’s more for you to see. I believe I have a burial marker that may be Iberian.”

  As we shook hands outside, he put a hard old hand on my shoulder. “It was good to see you, J. W. I’ve not had so attentive an audience in years! I’m a vain old goat and I enjoyed myself today. Do you think your young friend Zeolinda would fancy visiting my ancient monuments? Why don’t the two of you come up together? We can explore the place and have a drink together afterward. I’d like that very much. Nothing an old man likes more than a beautiful young woman listening to him.” He laughed. “Or pretending to.”

  “I’ll ask her. I think she might.”

  “Splendid! The sooner the better!”

  As I drove away, I glanced in the rearview mirror. He stood outlined against the sky like a creature out of time. He lifted a long arm and waved a large brown hand slowly back and forth until I drove out of sight.

  In Edgartown I found the chief, who looked at me with the expression of a man who didn’t need any more problems.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he asked as I came up.

  “Nothing.”

  “Good.”

  “Maybe. Part of the nothing is the nothing that I’ve heard from you. Did your patrolmen see Ian McGregor or Marjorie Summerharp driving around that night? You were going to let me know, remember?”

  “Was I? Well, as a matter of fact, one of the men does remember seeing that little English sports car of McGregor’s out on the road that night.”

  “What time?”

  “He didn’t log it. He thinks it was two or three in the morning. The car had that surfboard on the roof, otherwise he probably wouldn’t have remembered it at all.”

  “McGregor and Zee Madieras were out dancing at the Hot Tin Roof that night. McGregor left Zee at home at about two. Your man could have seen him coming home. Anybody remember seeing that old Nova of Marjorie Summerharp’s?”

  “Nobody remembered seeing the Nova. It wasn’t a very memorable car.”

  “Did you get any response from the ad in the paper?”

  “Nothing useful. Several civic-minded types said they were on the beach that morning at one time or another, but nobody saw Marjorie Summerharp or a boat near the beach or anything else that might help.”

  “Nothing, again.”

  “Nothing may be bad for you, but it’s good for me. I could use a little more nothing happening. It’s the somethings that give me trouble.” His eye roved the street. “I see that you and the beautiful Zeolinda are again keeping company before the youthful professor has even gone back to America.”

  “Your spies tell you true.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “You’ll let me know if anything useful turns up?”

  “Sure.”

  “Sure. Just like last time.”

  “Just like that.”

  I bought fishing line and leader material at the tackle shop and found a parking place at the A & P. While I pushed my carriage around, I wished the dissertations from Northern Indiana University would arrive.

  15

  Zee’s fragrance lingered in the air of my house. Or was it my imagination? What difference? I inhaled deep into my lungs. Was it some perfume she wore? Some sort of musk? Or was it just the way she smelled all by herself? I envied the deer and lions with their fine noses, I envied the sharks and barracuda with their fine noses. I envied Tarzan of the Apes who, according to the books about him that I’d read when a kid, had a nose as good as any animal in the jungle. I remembered wishing then that I had a Tarzan nose and going around sniffing the air trying to make it so. Did Cyrano have a better sense of smell than his dish-faced associates? I, alas, did not. My ordinary nose could only enjoy a normal mortal’s pleasure from the fragrance of Zee.

  In my garden the weeds were gaining on my vegetables and flowers, so I went out and disputed with them for an hour under the late afternoon sun. Just because I struggled with the Summerharp matter, the daily demands of life did not stop. Weeds still grew and fish still swam. Nature went on about her business.

  At dusk I drove down to the new opening and did some serious fishing. McGregor’s meal ticket had run out and I needed some income. There was a little point of sand sticking out on the west side of the opening, and it was already occupied with several fishermen casting into the convergence of the outflowing tidal stream and the incoming surf. Bluefish like to feed at dawn and dusk and they’re smart enough to know that tidal streams such as that now flowing out of Katama Bay often carry smaller fish, eels, and other bait into the sea, so they come to feed when the tides are right.

  I parked the Landcruiser and watched a while to see if anybody was catching anything and if so what lures were being used. Imitation is popular among fishermen. They watch to see what’s working. Sometimes the fish get persnickety and will only bite a certain lure. Other times they’ll take anything you throw out. Tonight they were taking metal, seeming to favor Castmasters. I got out and put one on my leader, found a place between two other fishermen, and went to work.

  It’s not bad fishing shoulder to shoulder as long as everybody knows what he’s doing. If the casts are made straight, the lines don’t get tangled and the fishermen haul their catches in with a nice collective rhythm. If there is a beginner in the crowd, everything can go bad fast. He’ll (or she’ll) cast sideways across lines, tangle gear, cause hooked fish to be lost, and if some fisherman gets furious enough, see his offending line cut off by a fish-knife. Once in a while he will be threatened. Once in a rarer while a fight might almost break out. More often, the real fishermen will simply curse and withdraw in disgust, leaving the beach to the amateur, who has no idea what he’s done.

  This evening I was with the regulars and things went well. There was a school of six- and seven-pounders out there, and
they were hungry for whatever it was they thought Castmasters were. I caught one on my second cast and got him in, got a swirl on the next cast, had one on for two turns of the reel on the third, and got a second fish in a couple of casts later. I stayed there for almost three hours, until it was too dark to see and the tide had flattened out and the fish were getting scarce. Most people had gone home, and those few of us who remained gathered and had coffee and chewed the rag. I asked them if any of them had been down fishing along the beach west of Katama on the morning Marjorie Summerharp had died, but no one had.

  I took the fish by a restaurant and sold all but one that I wanted for myself—a little two-pounder who would make me a nice breakfast. I took him home, filleted him, and threw the bones downwind into the oak brush. As long as the wind blew from the southwest I’d not get the smell. By the time the wind turned, the insects, birds, and varmints would have his bones picked clean.

  The next morning I went down to the Dukes County Historical Society, which sits on the corner of Cooke and School streets in downtown Edgartown. As with libraries, the Historical Society is filled with information and has people around who will help you find it. I paid my fee and sought out information about ancient Vineyard stones. Someone found me the November 1973 copy of The Dukes County Intelligencer and told me to start there. In the Intelligencer I read of the Chilmark Cromlech, of the “Indian Gravestone from Gay Head,” on which is carved the un-Indian name Haiki Cagnehein, and of the Black Rock of Nomans Land, which reportedly lay out on that small island’s western beach. I also read of Captain Kidd’s Rock, also on Nomans Land but on its north shore, upon which were inscribed markings that some took to be secret writing telling where Kidd had buried his treasure, but that others thought were runes written by lost Vikings from Iceland and that still others thought were the work of hoaxers if, indeed, they were human letterings at all. Such arguments were lately thought to be moot, thanks to the U.S. Navy, which uses the island as a target range.

  I read, too, of the runic stone found in North Tisbury on the old Priester place, which has since disappeared but whose inscription was copied first by the farmhand who found it. Noting my subject matter, people not only directed me to other writings but brought forth the famous “Indian Gravestone” itself, which the Society had stored away out of sight while it decided what to do with it. Sure enough, it seemed to bear the rude inscription Haiki Cagnehein, whoever or whatever that might indicate. I read of the stones and chamber near the Christian town chapel, of the “Viking tower” in Newport, and of the efforts of scholars and aficionados to place such artifacts in history and western culture.

  By noon I had absorbed as much such information as I could stand. One thing was clear to me: Tristan Cooper might be living out on the end of a limb, far from the trunk of traditional historical and anthropological thought, but he was not out there alone. He had a lot of company, and there was evidence, however controversial, that somebody or other had gotten to America long before Columbus. The Society folk hoped that I would come back. I told them that I would.

  I thought of how the sun grew round and new each day and the wind blew low and high from the southwest and at night the simple stars were bright in the black sky. Soon the month would turn and the pale July people would come to the island in exchange for the brown June people, who would take their dogs and memories back to the Mainland for another year. I thought of how, on the Fourth of July, Zee and I would watch the Edgartown parade, featuring the queen of something and her attendants waving from an open car, the Boys’ and Girls’ Club band, the scouts, several environmentally oriented floats (which would gradually disintegrate as the parade progressed), veterans, police and firemen marching in straggle step, fire engines blasting sirens, the Camp Jabberwocky marchers and bus, various dignitaries most people wouldn’t seem to know, and the band of pipers skirling and drumming to hearty applause. It would be a first-class small-town parade, and afterward Zee and I would wish that Edgartown still offered fireworks after the parade, as it had in the good old days, but would agree that it had been a glorious Fourth anyway. Such thoughts suggested to me that perhaps I’d done too much sleuthing of late and needed a return to normalcy.

  Such a return was not to be, however, for that day the dissertations arrived from Northern Indiana University.

  I got the news via one of those yellow slips the post office leaves telling you that there’s something you have to pick up at the office downtown. It’s either something too big to fit in your mailbox or it’s a registered letter or something that you may very well not want to get. But in order to find out whether you want the thing the yellow slip signifies, you have to go get it. Then it’s too late not to get it if you don’t want it. In this case, it was the dissertations, mailed in a large, firm container. As I picked it up at the post office, John Skye came in. He was one of the people who preferred to collect his mail in town rather than in an RFD box like mine. He said it made him feel more a part of the town and kept him better informed of current gossip.

  “I hear that you’re keeping company with Zee again.”

  “There are few secrets in small towns,” I said.

  ’Tan looked a little bruised yesterday before he left. He seemed to have a broken front tooth. And it looks to me as if you have a split lip.”

  “You’re keen eyed as always, Holmes. I imagine the twins will recover from their grief at his departure by the time school rolls around again.”

  “I imagine they will. Zee came over to see Mattie and Mattie told me that Zee told her that you and Ian had a disagreement. I’m glad to see you both lived through it.”

  “Some day when we’re both drunk on South Beach waiting for the fish to come, we can exchange old war stories and I’ll give you all the details and then some.”

  “I thought Zee looked good. Mattie says she doesn’t feel as good as she looks. Something to do with you. Don’t tell me you’ve finally revealed the truth about your character. That would shock any woman of sensibility.”

  “No, I told her the truth about you. I imagine she and Mattie at this very moment are packing up the twins and heading back to Mattie’s mother.”

  “What brings you into town? I thought you hung out in the woods and on the beach until after Labor Day.”

  I tapped my package. “In here I have two dissertations on seventeenth-century British drama. I need somebody like you to go over them with me. What do you say?”

  “I say let me pick up my mail and then take me to a bar where you can buy me a beer and explain to me what you’re talking about.”

  We went down to the Wharf and I told him about the theses. I also offered him the theory that Ian McGregor might have lied about taking Marjorie to the beach at six that morning. “There’s something in these papers that interested Marjorie Summerharp a lot. A couple of days after she got her copies, she walked into the sea and drowned. Or so they say. I want to know what interested her so much and whether there’s some link between that and her death.”

  “Are you saying that she committed suicide because of what she found in the dissertations? And that Ian is covering up for her for some reason?”

  “Nope. All I’m saying is that maybe there’s some hint in these papers about why Marjorie’s dead. I also think that Ian is worried about what’s in them. He got mad at me when I got interested in them, and anger is a product of fear. I think he was afraid of what I might find.”

  John sipped his beer. “Interesting. There’s only one little problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I know zilch about the seventeenth century.”

  “Jees, I thought you were a literature professor.”

  “I am. But I only know about medieval stuff. Incunabula is my game.”

  “I thought you guys were supposed to know everything.”

  “Usually we know a little about a lot and supposedly we know a lot about a little. I know a good bit about pre-1500 writings and not much about later stuff. Promise not to te
ll.”

  I drank my beer and ordered another round. It was almost six o’clock and the place was filling up.

  “I need somebody who’ll know what these papers are about. I sure as hell won’t. There might be something right there in front of my face and I’d never recognize it.”

  “Look,” said John, “let’s do this. Let’s look these over together first. I don’t know much about the seventeenth century, but I probably know a little more than you do. Maybe we’ll spot something. If we don’t, then let’s bring in some other people. I’m thinking of Bill Hooperman and Helen Barstone, or better yet, Tristan Cooper, the old master himself.”

  “Marjorie wasn’t too impressed by Hooperman and Barstone.”

  “Marjorie owned a tongue like a knife. She didn’t like very many people. Bill and Helen both know more about the seventeenth century than I do. If we don’t find something, maybe they will. It’ll tickle their vanity to be asked to help, and better yet, it’ll not only give them a chance to feel smart and appreciated, it’ll give them a chance to maybe get something on Marjorie or Ian or both. They’d love that!”

  “You academic types are mean suckers. Your place or mine?”

  “I’ve got a bigger library, in case we have to look something up.”

  “Yours, then. When?”

  He glanced at his watch. “How about right now? We’ll have supper first and then get to work.”

  “Who’s cooking, you or Mattie?”

  “Snobbery! Don’t get snotty about my cooking or I might change my mind about reading these papers with you. The twins are tonight’s cooks, if you must know. Something like hash browns and corned beef, I think. I imagine you can choke it down.

  “I imagine I can.”

  Jill and Jen, it turned out, produced a boiled dinner from a pressure cooker: potatoes, carrots, cabbage, and corned beef, cooked perfectly. For dessert, apple pie with a choice of ice cream or Cheddar. I chose ice cream, much to Mattie’s disgust.