Vineyard Enigma

by Philip R. Craig

  How many other pistol packers were there among the aesthetically elite? Had one of them put the bullets into Matthew Duarte’s brain and the Headless Horseman’s heart?

  I thought about Georgie Hall and wondered if she had cause to wax Matthew. She didn’t seem the type, but maybe her husband was. You usually don’t make the big bucks and keep them by being a wimp. Brent Hall hadn’t gotten to the top of the ladder without being willing to step on at least a few fingers or faces. Had Brent found Georgie and Matthew in a relationship closer than art dealer and client, and decided to end it the old-fashioned way? Where had Brent been when Matthew had bought it? Did that make any difference, since Brent was rich enough to hire someone else to do his dirty work?

  Maybe, because for most amateurs and even for most professional criminals, it’s not easy to find a hired killer when you need one. You have to ask people to identify one for you, and hope they won’t tell anyone else that you inquired, and you have to keep asking until you finally find somebody who claims to actually know such a killer, then you have to meet the supposed killer and make the financial arrangements, then you have to hope that everything goes right and that nobody will brag or get drunk and talk to the wrong listener, and that your supposed killer for hire isn’t really a cop wearing a wire, etc., etc.

  It might be easier and safer just to do the job yourself.

  That would probably be as true for Brent Hall as for anyone else.

  I considered Sam Hopewell. Did he and Matt have a falling-out over some business matter or over Matthew’s impending divorce from Connie? Or was it possible that Sam was going to benefit from Matthew’s death? Matthew’s widow would probably inherit her husband’s business, and what if Sam and Connie were hot and heavy and planned to hitch their wagons to a common star after a respectable period of grieving for the deceased?

  I realized that I had hooked Matthew up to almost every woman I’d met in the past week except to his own wife. Extramarital relationships were much on my mind.

  The classic motives for violent crime are sex, money, power, and fear, usually in some mixture. I doubted if Matthew’s death was anything more esoteric.

  I looked behind me. There, a hundred yards away, Zee and Mahsimba were side by side on their knees, digging for clams. I thought I could see laughter on their faces. They looked like Adam and Eve. Joshua and Diana were digging small holes near them. You’re never too young to learn how to clam.

  I felt my rake strike what was surely a quahog and pressed my fingers down on the handle to get the teeth under the clam as I pulled the rake toward me. As I pulled, I felt another hit, then another. Clam city at last. When I brought the rake up, there were four littlenecks in it. I rinsed off the mud and sand and dropped them into my basket.

  I raked a new circle and brought up various sized quahogs on almost every pull: littlenecks, cherry-stones, and growlers for chowder. I raked the circle clean and walked out farther. Another circle full of clams. I felt the sun grow hotter on my shoulders as I filled my basket. When it was well rounded, I walked back toward shore, passing happy diggers and coming finally to my family and Mahsimba.

  The kids came running.

  “Wow, Pa. You got a lot of quahogs!”

  “Enough for today. How are you guys doing?”

  “We got some steamers. Come and see!”

  I went and saw. There were a dozen steamers in the kids’ basket and a lot more in the one beside Zee and Mahsimba, who sat back on their heels as I came up. Their legs and gloved hands were muddy. They looked happy.

  “What do you think?” asked Zee. “Do we have enough for a clambake? I’ve been telling Mahsimba about classic New England clambakes and that we should have one before he has to go home.”

  I looked at Mahsimba. “Do you have to go home?”

  He nodded. “When my work here is done, I may go to California before returning to my country, but certainly I will be going.”

  “How do you like clamming?”

  He glanced at his muddy rubber gloves, then at Zee, and then looked up at me. “I’ve had a good instructor. It is always interesting to learn what people will eat.”

  “There’s a lot of speculation about the first person who ever ate an oyster,” I said, “and I once read about warriors in Mongolia who lived by opening veins in the necks of their horses and drinking the warm blood. Not enough to harm the horses, but enough to sustain the riders.”

  “Perhaps if you visit Zimbabwe I can show Zee and you how to find and prepare some of the insects and rodents that my people believe are fine foods indeed.”

  “I’d love to see Africa,” said Zee.

  “It is the most varied and beautiful continent on earth,” said Mahsimba. “Only a fool would not love Africa.”

  “Before eating these clams,” I said, “we’ll put them in a bucket of salt water overnight so they can spit out the sand in their systems. By tomorrow night they’ll be ready. Come to a clambake at our house and you can take the memory home with you. I’ll invite John and Mattie and the twins, too. Between your steamers and my quahogs, we’ll have plenty to eat.”

  His golden eyes left mine and joined Zee’s. “If it is not an imposition, I would be pleased to accept.”

  “It’s not an imposition,” I said before Zee could reply, and I walked on toward the beach, where John and Mattie were stretched out absorbing the beneficial rays of the sun.

  “Nice catch,” said Mattie, opening an eye and closing it again.

  “You two and the girls are invited to a Jackson clambake tomorrow night,” I said.

  “We accept,” said John. “I’ll do the dishes afterward.”

  “We’ll be using paper plates.”

  “That’s why I volunteered.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  I put the rake on the roof rack, the clam basket in the shade of the car, and stretched out on the old bedspread that served us as a beach blanket.

  I adjusted a rolled towel under my head for a pillow, tipped the bill of my cap over my eyes, and let the sun improve my early-summer belly tan while it burned the poisons from my psyche. In time it sealed the bottle holding the genie of jealousy and I was able to think about Periera Food Service.

  26

  We came home from the beach in midafternoon, where, after filling a couple of five-gallon buckets with salt water and depositing our clams therein, I showered then checked the phone book for the address of Periera Food Service, which, I discovered, was the same as Miguel’s home address. I’d known the business was located up in Vineyard Haven someplace, but I had never been there. There are a lot of places on Martha’s Vineyard that I’ve never seen and probably never will.

  While Zee and the kids were climbing into clean clothes, I put my pistol in my belt and pulled my shirt down over the butt. I announced that I’d be back in an hour or so, and drove to Vineyard Haven. I figured that Miguel would either be resting at home or working in the office, so either way I had a good chance of finding him.

  Unless he devoted the Sabbath to meditation and prayer in church, which I doubted, since even in his maturity he was not known for his spirituality. No, he was the same sensual, emotional person he’d always been, although he now had those inclinations under control. Few of us change our fundamental character; we can only change its form.

  Rose Abrams had managed that. From being the pretty, passionate, intuitive, sometimes intellectually unsure girl I had dated long ago, she had become a handsome woman who had trained her mind to be as powerful as her feelings. That combination of intellect, intuition, and emotion had allowed her to overcome the limitations of her upbringing and to become a member of the Vineyard art world.

  That she and Miguel had become a couple was not surprising since both were onetime social misfits who had climbed out of their unpromising pasts and into a present that was filled with ambition. Both were doing well in their professional lives; both were handsome and full of life, and seemed set upon a path of success.

/>   But few lives are as idyllic as they may seem to others, and where emotions run deep, dangers are double. Our feelings can carry us away like the tornado carried Dorothy to Oz, and we can find ourselves in a world of passions we thought existed only in the imaginations of poets.

  The office of Periera Food Service was in a separate building next to Miguel and Rose’s house. The house was classic Vineyard: a medium-sized Cape sheathed in weathered cedar shingles and gray-painted window and door frames. The yard behind the white picket fence was neatly kept, with a closely mowed lawn and flower beds, and there was a two car garage on the side of the house opposite the office. All in all, the place had the look of prosperous middle-class owners, which was probably just what Miguel, and perhaps Rose, aspired to be.

  I parked in front of the office and went to the door. It was locked, but beside a buzzer there was a sign informing me that if no one was in the office, a ring of the bell between the hours of eight to five would bring someone from the house.

  I put my finger to the buzzer and a minute later Rose Abrams came out of the house. I hadn’t seen her since I’d first gone to Mauch’s house. She looked gaunt, but there was a forced smile on her face until she saw who was waiting for her. Then the smile faded a bit.

  “J.W., is that you?”

  “I’m not a customer, I just want to talk. How are you feeling?”

  She had a key that she put in the door lock. “I’m fine, thank you. The other day, I was…It was just such a shock to hear about Matthew.” She opened the door. “Please, come in. What is it you want to talk about?”

  “Business must be booming for you.”

  She nodded. “Miguel is doing very well.”

  “I had no idea a business like this could be so profitable.”

  “He works hard.”

  “I saw him up-island last week. He was delivering one order to Mrs. Hall and picking up another one at the same time.”

  Again the dull nod. “Yes, he often takes orders while making deliveries. A lot of our customers take deliveries every week.”

  “I know you work most of the week, but do you ever go off-island with Miguel? It seems like it would be a nice break for you.”

  She rubbed her forehead. “Oh, once in a while. Not often. Sometimes Miguel’s schedule is just too hectic for me to go along. I’d just be in the way. I do go off with him. Not often, but sometimes.”

  “Did you ever do extra work for Charles Mauch or Matthew Duarte?”

  She stared at me. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you worked for them but did you ever put in extra time? Long days, evenings, that sort of thing.”

  She looked away, then back. “Sometimes when things get busy they’ve needed some extra help. And I could always use the money.”

  She seemed emotionally frail, I thought, so I leaned forward and used a firm voice. “Were you and Matthew Duarte lovers?”

  She paled. “Of course not. How cruel of you. Think of poor Connie.”

  She was right about the cruelty, but I kept using it. “Connie Duarte might have been shocked about Matthew’s death, but she wouldn’t be shocked about you and him. Matthew told Sam Hopewell he was leaving her for you, and the word got at least as far as Barbara Butters, who told me. Unless Connie was a complete fool, she knew what was going on.”

  “Stop it! You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  But she didn’t leap to her feet or slap my face or otherwise manifest outraged innocence. She sat there with tears welling in her eyes.

  “You worked with him. He was handsome and rich and he liked women. I saw how the news of his death affected you. You two were lovers and he was going to leave Connie and marry you, isn’t that right?”

  “Please, don’t shout at me.”

  I hadn’t been shouting. I studied her. “That was the plan, wasn’t it?”

  Tears poured from her eyes and words from her mouth. “Yes. Yes! Why are you doing this to me? What difference does it make now? Matt’s dead. My God, why can’t you just leave me alone? You don’t know how I feel! You never loved anybody. You’re cold and cruel. Go away! Leave me alone!”

  But I didn’t go away. I watched her weep, then got up and walked behind her chair and put my hands on her shoulders and began to knead the tight muscles there. After a time, the shaking of her body began to ease.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I had to be absolutely sure.”

  She said nothing.

  “Did Miguel know about you and Matthew Duarte?”

  She nodded and rubbed at her eyes. “He knew. He and I have been slipping apart. When we started together we were alike, but for the past year we’ve been growing in different directions. Neither of us wanted it to be that way, but that’s the way it is. Miguel wants us to be like we were. He thinks we can be, but people change.”

  Some people do. Others don’t.

  “Is Miguel around?” I asked.

  “He’s in the house.” Her voice was muffled.

  “No, he isn’t,” said a voice from the doorway.

  I turned and Miguel was standing there, his face wearing a vulpine smile. He walked over to the office desk and sat down.

  “Does Rose know about the work you did for Matthew Duarte?” I asked. “Not the food service. The other work.”

  He looked at Rose. “Why don’t you go up to the house, sweetheart?” he said. “Wash your face. You’ll feel better. J.W. and I have to talk.”

  But Rose only stood up. “What other work? What other work are you talking about, Jeff?”

  “I’ll explain it all later,” said Miguel in a soothing voice. “I have to talk with J.W. first.”

  “Miguel and Matthew had a deal,” I said to Rose. “When Miguel took the truck to the mainland, he did more than shop for rich people who were too cheap to pay Vineyard prices. He transported illegal art objects to and from the island, and Matthew paid him good money to do it. That’s why Periera Food Service is doing so well. It’s got an income that has nothing to do with food. It’s also the reason he probably wasn’t eager to take you with him even on your days off from work. Isn’t that right, Miguel?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I found records in the barn for deliveries from FedEx, UPS, and other shippers. They looked legit enough, but Periera Food Service was listed there, too, and that didn’t make sense if food was what you were delivering, since food would have been delivered to the house, not the barn. Ergo, you were delivering or picking up business merchandise, and it was probably illicit stuff because it was safer to have you do it than to have legal outfits handle it. You were an ideal carrier because you had legitimate reasons to come and go all the time. Even in the winter when there weren’t as many rich food-and-drink customers on the island, you could still justify one trip a week to America.”

  “I never asked about what was in the crates,” said Miguel with a shrug. “I don’t know anything about art, one way or another. I just drive a truck. Rose, honey, please leave us alone for a few minutes.”

  “No. How long have you been doing this, Miguel?”

  “It’s just some business you never knew about,” said Miguel. “Go to the house.”

  “I’m not a cop,” I said to him, “so I don’t really care whether or not you and Matthew Duarte were in the art-smuggling racket. I’m only interested in whether you transported a couple of stone birds, and where you transported them.”

  His left hand was on the desk, but the right was out of sight. “I can’t help you,” he said.

  I thought he was lying. I said, “A guy named David Brownington came by looking for them about six months ago.”

  Miguel shook his head. “Never heard of him.”

  But Rose had. “I remember him. He had an English accent. I was just getting ready to leave the office when he came in. He and Matthew were talking when I left.”

  Things were coming together. “Did you see him again?”

  She shook her he
ad. “No. No, only that once. Matthew said later that he thought he’d left the island. Who is he? What are these birds you’re talking about?”

  “Miguel here can probably verify that Brownington never left the island. At least, not all of him. Isn’t that right, Miguel?”

  “You’re spinning this yarn, J.W.”

  I looked at Rose. “Do you remember what else happened just after Brownington was here? They found the Headless Horseman by the bridal path. Right now, even as we speak, up in Boston they’re testing some DNA evidence that may identify the body. My bet is that it’s Brownington.”

  Her face was full of confusion. “I don’t understand.”

  I told her about Brownington and the birds and about Daniel Duarte’s supposed auto accident in California.

  “Then Brownington came here to muscle Matthew,” I said. “For leverage, he probably mentioned the old man’s ‘accident.’ That might normally have been a good idea but in this case, it wasn’t, because Brownington got careless and Matthew, or maybe Miguel here, killed him. How am I doing, Miguel?”

  Miguel’s face was intent. “I had nothing to do with Brownington’s death.”

  “But you had something to do with getting rid of his head and hands, didn’t you? It’s not easy to get rid of a whole body, but the head and hands and clothes can be boxed or bagged up pretty easily and dropped off in some rubbish container in America. And without prints or a face, a naked corpse is hard to identify.”

  Miguel said nothing, but his eyes were bright and thoughtful.

  “I have another theory, too,” I said. “You may not have killed Brownington, but I think you may have killed Matthew Duarte.”

  Hearing those words, Rose made a choking sound that drew my eyes to her as I reached for my revolver. But Miguel was quicker than I expected. When I looked back at him there was already a pistol in his hand. It was pointed at me.

  27

  “Put your hands up in the air,” said Miguel. “That’s right. Just like in the movies. Rose, walk around behind him and see if he has any weapons.”