A Case of Vineyard Poison

by Philip R. Craig

  Quinn gestured with his raised hand. “Dave, the tall one is J.W., your host. The pretty one who, as you can see, is already panting at the thought of my spending a few days here, is Zee, who has the foolish idea that she’s going to marry him instead of me. J.W. and Zee, this is my friend Dave.”

  “Hi,” said Dave.

  “Oh, my God,” whispered Zee, clutching my arm with one hand and waving with the other. “Do you know who that is?”

  “No,” I said. “Should I?” I lifted my free arm. “Hey, Dave. Welcome to the Vineyard.”

  “That’s David Greenstein!” whispered Zee. “David Greenstein, the pianist! Holy smoke!”

  I hadn’t seen her so excited since she’d landed her forty-two-pound bass.

  — 5 —

  David Greenstein didn’t look like the world’s champion pianist! He was about five ten, one fifty, slim and athletic-looking. He had brown eyes and short dark hair. His nails were short and clean, and his hands were pretty ordinary. He could have been an accountant, maybe, or a lawyer, or a schoolteacher. Some kind of white-collar guy. A classical pianist? I wouldn’t have guessed it, but then I have no idea what a classical pianist is supposed to look like. I guess I thought they always had long hair. On the other hand, logic suggested that, like people in other professions, classical pianists probably came in various sizes and shapes.

  But what did I know?

  Zee was first off the balcony. She kissed Quinn and shook David Greenstein’s hand. She was very excited. When I was finished with my own handshaking, we hauled the suitcases into the spare bedroom.

  “It’s very good of you to have us, Mr. Jackson,” said David Greenstein with a smile. For the first time I detected a weariness in him.

  “Call me J.W.,” I said. “Glad you could make it.”

  “Of course you and Dave will bunk here,” said Quinn to me, putting his arm around Zee. “Zee and I will take the other room.”

  Zee smiled up at him. “You’ve been chasing women ever since your pet sheep died. You’ve got to get another one.”

  “You can’t embarrass me,” said Quinn. “Dave knows exactly what kind of guy I am. He and I have known each other since he was knee high.”

  “You mean he knows everything?” asked Zee. She looked at David Greenstein. “It must be hard for you to keep from going to the police.”

  “Nonsense,” said Quinn. “And I’ve told him all about you, too. How you only took up with J.W. because I was so far away. How you write me all those steamy letters. How you can barely keep from tearing off my clothes as soon as I get here. He knows all about you.”

  “You’re a hell of a guy, Quinn,” said Zee. “But look over there. You’re embarrassing Jefferson.”

  Quinn withdrew his arm and made little patting gestures in the air with his hand. “Oh, all right. Yes, I suppose appearances must be maintained. At least for tonight. Okay, I’ll bunk here with Dave. J.W. is so conventional.”

  “Stuffy is as stuffy do,” I said, and we walked back out into the living room. Quinn fell into a chair.

  “Dave and I both need a rest,” he said. “We’ve been working too hard.”

  “Dave may have been working hard,” I said, “but you?”

  “The pursuit and publication of the truth are exhausting,” said Quinn. “Only those of us who are blessed with extraordinary vitality and integrity, to say nothing of literary genius, can maintain the pace demanded of the fourth estate. And even we need to take a bluefishing break now and then.”

  “Well, the fish are in,” said Zee, looking at David Greenstein. “Do you fish, David?”

  “We used to fish for trout up in New Hampshire. But I’ve never fished in the ocean.”

  “Tomorrow you’ll get your chance.”

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “You know where the booze is,” I said to Quinn. “It’s every man for himself. I’m going to get the grill fired up.”

  “Grill?” asked Quinn.

  “Grill as in steamed clams.”

  Quinn got up. “Hot damn! I’ll go get the beer out of the trunk, then I’ll give you a hand.”

  “I’ll show you where we hide the vodka,” said Zee to David Greenstein. “Then you and I can’ go up on the balcony and loaf while these two guys slave for us. I want you to see how well I’ve got Jefferson trained.”

  “I hope you’re not allergic to clams, because you’re getting several versions of them,” I said to Dave an hour later, as I placed the first course—littlenecks on the half shell—on the table out on the lawn. Then I had a sudden thought. “Or maybe you just plain don’t eat shellfish.”

  Dave laughed. “I eat anything. Cast-iron stomach. We never had a kosher house. I’ve had these before.” He put some seafood sauce on his first littleneck and slid it into his mouth. The rest of us followed suit.

  The littlenecks were cold and delicious. We had white wine and beer to help wash them down. When the littlenecks were gone, I broiled the casinos and we ate those while the stuffers baked and the steamers steamed. Then we ate the stuffers. Then I took the potatoes, onions, and chunks of linguiça out of the steamer and put them into bowls, and served them up with the steamed clams.

  By the time we were through, it was dark, and we were all bulging at the seams.

  “Not bad,” said Zee, loosening the top button of her shorts. “I do believe that you have a career as a clam boil chef ahead of you, should you choose to accept the assignment, Mr. Phelps.”

  We dumped the paper plates and shells into a trash barrel and I brought out the coffee and cognac. Above us the Milky Way arced across a starry sky. The lights of some plane headed for Europe moved slowly from west to east among the stars, and the wind sighed softly through the trees. An owl hooted in the distance.

  David Greenstein leaned back in his chair and smiled. “This is the way to live. I can see why you stay down here.” He yawned. “Sorry.”

  “It’s the Island Sleepies,” said Zee. “When people first get to the Vineyard, they get overwhelmed by the Island Sleepies. I don’t know whether it’s the salt air, or what, but you get so sleepy you can’t stay awake. It even happens to me when I’ve been away for a while. The cure is to give in and go to bed. No apologies required.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “It sounds wonderful. I’ll do it.” He got up. “Great meal. Good night, all.”

  He walked into the house. Zee looked after him for a moment.

  “He’s nice,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Quinn. “He’s been working very hard. Too hard.”

  “He won’t have to work here,” I said. “No piano.”

  Quinn looked at me. “Ah, you know who he is.”

  “Zee knew. She’s a fan.”

  “He’s a wonderful player,” said Zee. “And he’s so young.”

  “He’s twenty-eight,” said Quinn. “We both grew up in Evanston. I met him when he was just a kid. We lived next door. I was a sort of big brother. We used to sneak off to White Sox or Cubs games sometimes when he should have been home practicing. His mother did not love me for that, but his dad understood. Later he and his dad and I used to go up-country trout fishing. Dave and I played hoops together at the gym, and went to a movie now and then. Stuff like that. Then we grew up and I got married and then divorced and he got famous and we both moved. I went to Boston and he’s been around the world a dozen times.”

  “Then he won the Tchaikovsky competition,” said Zee. “I have a record of him playing Liszt. Incredible!”

  “He’s got a manager who keeps him on the run. Too much. Dave looks good, but he needs a rest.” Quinn sipped his cognac. “He called me from New York last week. Said he needed to get away. I thought of this place.” He glanced at us. “A few days where nobody knows who he is or what he does.” He grinned his wry Irish grin. “I’ve stolen him away, you might say. He was supposed to play at Symphony Hall tonight and for the next two nights and then go on to St. Louis. But he’s not going to be there, and so ther
e will be a stink raised. Worse yet, even his manager won’t know where he is. It will be quite a story. You should see it in tomorrow’s papers.”

  Zee frowned. “Won’t this get him into trouble? Won’t people sue him for breaking his contracts?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Dave left his manager a note telling him not to worry, but to tell everybody that he was sick, and that the doctors say he’ll be back on the tour in a week. He didn’t say where he was going, or that he was going with me.”

  I looked at him. “Will any of your buddies at the Globe figure it out? They know you like to come down here, and they must know that you two know each other. If I was a reporter and I knew that, and if you and David Greenstein just happened to disappear at the same time, I know where I’d start to look. Too good a story not to.”

  “Yeah, except I told everybody I was going to Chicago to visit my sister and catch some Cubs games.”

  “You have a sister in Chicago?”

  “Yeah, And she’ll lie for me, too. Anybody contacts her and asks if I’m there, she’ll say yes. She’s a good kid. Loves her big brother. Do anything for him. I told her that if anybody asks her if Dave is out there, she’s to hedge, then hint that he is. She said it was no problem as long as Dave gives her two tickets for his next Chicago concert. Her husband is a classical piano freak.”

  I shook my head. “You’re a sweetheart of a guy, Quinn.”

  “You hear that, Zee? I’ve been telling you that for years, and now J.W.’s finally admitting it. You belong with me, kid.”

  “You’re too good for me, I’m afraid,” said Zee, taking my arm. “I like the low-life type.”

  “You guys will keep quiet about Dave?”

  “I don’t know about Zee,” I said, “but I plan on selling the story to the National Tattler as soon as I can find their telephone number.”

  “Tell him not to shave,” said Zee. “A lot of guys do that when they’re down here on vacation. He’ll look like everybody else.”

  “If he hangs around us, he’ll be fine,” I said. “We go places and do things that don’t interest the gossip columnists.”

  “A week of fishing and quahogging is just what he needs.” Quinn nodded. “No piano, no photographs, no audience.”

  “I think we can manage that. It’s a perfect description of the way we live.” I looked at Zee. “We can make him your cousin Dave from New Bedford. What do you think?”

  “Sounds good. He’ll be the first cousin I ever had who won the Tchaikovsky competition.”

  “I guess I wouldn’t mention that part to anyone,” said Quinn. He poured himself a bit more cognac. “Well, now that that’s settled, when do we go after the blues?”

  “If I thought you two would get out of bed, we could leave at four tomorrow morning. But I doubt if Dave will be ready to roll out of the sack by then, so why don’t both of you sleep in, and we’ll get out to Wasque about ten. The fish have been around all day, sometimes, so we may have a shot at them, even though we won’t get there early. I thought maybe I’d bake up a couple tomorrow night.”

  “An excellent plan.”

  “Of course, you have to catch ’em before I can cook ’em.”

  “No problem.” Quinn yawned.

  “I think the Sleepies have got you, too,” said Zee.

  Quinn finished his drink and climbed to his feet. “Right you are. Until the morrow, then.” He looked at the trees. “The night above the dingle starry,” he said, and walked into the house.

  After a while, Zee said, “David Greenstein right here in your house. Imagine that!”

  “I’m here too,” I said.

  “Yes, but you don’t play the piano.”

  “I play the guitar.”

  “You play it with your thumb.”

  “Of course I play it with my thumb. That’s the way you play a guitar. You thumb it.”

  “David Greenstein won the Tchaikovsky competition.”

  “He won the Tchaikovsky piano competition. I won the Tchaikovsky guitar-thumbing competition, but I just never got around to telling you before.”

  “You are the soul of modesty, Jefferson. It’s one of the characteristics that makes you so lovable.”

  “How true, how true.”

  Across the pond we could see the lights of cars moving between Edgartown and Oak Bluffs. Beyond them, off to the right, was the flash of the Cape Pogue lighthouse, and on the far side of Nantucket Sound the lights on Cape Cod glimmered. Arched above them all were the bright stars and the silver Milky Way. It was a warm and starry, starry night.

  “Let’s go to bed,” said Zee, suddenly, taking my hand.

  “Okay.”

  I started to pick things up to take them into the house, but Zee said, “No. Leave everything. We’ll get it in the morning. I want you to come and hug me. And I want to hug you. Come on.”

  I thought that she had been thinking about David Greenstein.

  She took my hand and led me into the house.

  — 6 —

  The only trouble with fishing on Saturday in the summertime is that all the people who work during the week fish on Saturday. The Jeeps start piling up at Wasque before sunrise, and they keep coming until afternoon. Fishermen wander in their four-by-fours from site to site, looking for blues. They cast their lines at all the Chappy fishing spots—Metcalf’s Hole, Wasque, East Beach, the Cedars, Bernie’s Point, the Jetties, under the Cape Pogue cliffs, and down at the Cape Pogue Gut.

  In the more accessible places, Wasque, for example, the amateurs mix with the regulars and sometimes it gets to be a circus, with men and women standing shoulder to shoulder in the surf, crossing each other’s lines and causing a lot of tackle, tempers, and fish to be lost.

  And if it’s a nice day, like this one was, the sunbathers and picnickers also pour out onto the weekend beaches. They park their four-by-fours in clusters, break out the grills, chairs, kites, Frisbees, footballs, and umbrellas, and eat and play until late afternoon. I have, on more than one occasion, seen a swimmer or someone on an inner tube come floating through the Wasque fishing lines, carried by the current of the rising or falling tide. Blissfully unaware or ignoring the fact that they are only inches from a hundred fishhooks, they let the tide carry them through the lines until they finally land far down the beach, having paid no attention to the angry cries of the surf casters.

  There are sometimes so many four-by-fours on the weekend beaches that it seems like downtown Edgartown. Ah, for the golden days of yesteryear, before everybody and his dog owned a four-by-four.

  Because of the cars and the flocks of people, Zee and I usually didn’t fish on weekends except very early in the morning when only the regulars are out. Amateur Hour is not our idea of a good time. But this was not a usual weekend, since we had obligations to our guests, so the next morning, after cleaning up last night’s dishes, I put two extra rods on the roof rack of the Land Cruiser, an extra tackle box in the back, and ice in the fish box. Then Zee and I made sandwiches for four and stuffed them, with chips, half-sour pickles, beer, wine, iced tea, and cookies, into my big cooler. I added two small floating wire baskets and two quahog rakes to our collection of gear. If we couldn’t find a place to get some bluefish, we’d go for some littlenecks or steamers. There is never a time when you can’t fish for something or other on Martha’s Vineyard.

  I got into my dashing spandex bathing suit, and Zee slid into her itsy-bitsy white bikini—larger than three postage stamps, but not by much—and after putting on shorts and shirts over this daring beachwear, we were ready to roll.

  “No more all-over tans for a few days,” I said. “Too much company.”

  “Alas,” said Zee, sliding her feet into her Tevas. They were good-looking feet. Maybe Pushkin had the right idea. On the other hand, Zee’s other body parts were equally stimulating.

  Quinn and David Greenstein did not make an appearance until well after nine. Both had abandoned their city clothes for shorts and shirts and both looked city pale. June
People not yet exposed to the Vineyard sun. We fed them smoked bluefish, red onion, and cream cheese on bagels, washed down with coffee just touched with cinnamon to smooth it out.

  “Okay, you guys,” said Zee, when they were done, “we’ve missed two tides already. Time to hit the beach. You can’t catch any fish from this porch.”

  “Sorry to hold you up.” David Greenstein had a white-toothed smile. “I was starved. And that was the best night’s sleep I’ve had in longer than I can remember.”

  “The Island Sleepies at work,” Zee said almost shyly. “I’m just kidding you. You can sleep as late as you want to. It’s your vacation.”

  “I’ll be up earlier tomorrow.” Again the flash of those white teeth. I wondered if he’d also won the Tchaikovsky international smiling competition. It seemed likely.

  Zee’s smile was just as bright. “If you plan on swimming, which is a good thing to plan, you’d better put on a bathing suit.”

  “I’ve already done that. I was so advised by Mr. Quinn.”

  “You lay out a winning breakfast,” said Quinn, wiping his lips and ogling Zee. “Did I ever tell you that if you just had a lot of money I’d consider using my famous Irish charm to win you away from this guy who claims he’s your fiancé? I’m sure he’ll never appreciate you as much as I do.”

  “I did have a lot of money once,” said Zee, “but I don’t have it anymore. It’s too bad you weren’t here last weekend, when I was rich. You missed your chance.”

  “Bad timing has been a Quinn family curse,” said Quinn, getting up and starting to clear the table. “Tell me everything.”

  David Greenstein got up and started helping.

  “You don’t need to do that,” said Zee. “You’re guests.”

  “Yes they do,” I said. “If we’re going to get down the beach before noon, we’ve got to get started.”

  “I used to do this all the time when I was living in Evanston,” said David Greenstein. “If I had time to cook these days, I’d still do it.” He piled plates on plates, and hooked fingers through the handles of coffee cups, and headed for the kitchen, followed by Quinn.