Murder at a Vineyard Mansion

by Philip R. Craig

  It had taken him about a dozen years to manage that. I thought for a while and then went into the town clerk’s office. The woman in the room smiled at me. “Can I help you?”

  I gave her a small smile in return. Nothing too big, because I was on a serious mission. “My name is Jackson. I’m one of the investigators of the Chappaquiddick killings. I wonder if you can tell me where Helga Mattes is working.”

  The woman immediately became somber. “The funeral was this morning. I imagine you’ll find her and the kids at home. I’m sure she’s not working today.”

  I nodded. “Probably not. I’ll need to speak with her sooner or later, but I don’t want to intrude on her and the children right now. Meanwhile, though, I’d like to talk to her fellow workers. She may have told one of them something about her husband that would help our investigation.”

  “You’re right to delay speaking to her today,” she said, “but she’s a friend of mine, so I’ll be going by the house when I leave here.” She leaned toward me and lowered her voice. “She works at the post office here in town, and she needs the job. Ollie hadn’t been doing well lately.”

  I nodded again. “So I understand. Too bad about what happened.”

  Her eyes brightened. “Yes. Murder, they say.”

  “Homicide, at least.”

  “It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

  It isn’t, but I didn’t think there was any point in explaining the difference. I put sympathy into my voice. “How are she and the children handling the situation?”

  She became confidential. “Just between you and me, I think they’ll be fine. Ollie wasn’t the best husband and father, if you know what I mean. Now, Helga will just have to support three people instead of four.”

  I didn’t think I was the only person to whom she’d given that assessment.

  “Sometimes a death is best for the survivors,” I said. “I guess we should hope that’s the case this time.”

  It was the woman’s turn to nod. “I think it will be,” she said. “I’m sure that Helga and the kids will be fine in the long run.”

  “Ollie Mattes apparently wasn’t the easiest guy to get along with,” I said, “but he didn’t deserve to be killed. We’re talking with a lot of people who knew him, trying to get a lead on who might have done it.”

  Her confidential voice returned. “Yes. The Oak Bluffs police have been in here already. This place is a central station for town gossip and they wanted to know what we might have heard about people who were mad at Ollie. We passed on the stories we’d heard but of course we didn’t really know if any of them were true.”

  “I doubt if you enjoyed naming names,” I lied, suspecting that she actually enjoyed it very much. “It’s not pleasant to suggest that people you know might be murderers.”

  “No indeed,” she agreed, “but it is a murder investigation, after all, and we have to be of all possible help to the police.”

  “I appreciate your attitude,” I said. “Duty isn’t always enjoyable, but we have to do it.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I’m working out of Edgartown and I haven’t seen the Oak Bluffs report on what you folks told them. I’ll head over to the station now and read it. Anything you think I should pay special attention to?”

  She looked around the room as though there were someone there besides the two of us, then nodded. “You’ll read about it anyway, so I can tell you that just before Ollie Mattes got killed, he got his nose punched by John Lupien. Then he hit John with a shovel. Then John had Ollie on the ground and was choking him before Helga broke up the fight, and I guess John threatened to finish the job if Ollie didn’t mend his ways.”

  “What started it?”

  She smiled and arched a brow. “You can probably figure it out. John works at the PO with Helga. He’s single and she was in a bad marriage.” She waggled her fingers as if the gesture explained all that needed to be explained.

  “What ways did he want Ollie to mend?”

  “Lately Ollie was getting rough with Helga and the children. He pushed them around, and when he slapped Helga and John saw the mark on her cheek, John went right after Ollie.”

  Another knight in shining armor defending another fair maiden from another dragon. Romance was not dead on Martha’s Vineyard.

  “Where’d you get the story?” I asked.

  “The grapevine. I think John told somebody who told somebody.”

  “Ah,” I said, nodding.

  She nodded back.

  I thought that if our conversation lasted much longer we were in danger of nodding our heads right off our necks, so I thanked her and left.

  The Oak Bluffs Post Office is located between Circuit Avenue and Kennebec Avenue. I went there and was told by a man behind the counter that John Lupien had taken the day off so he could attend a funeral.

  “I’m investigating the Chappaquiddick deaths,” I said. “I understand that John and Ollie Mattes mixed it up a few days before Ollie was killed.”

  “You have a badge?”

  “Sure.” I put a hand on my back pocket then said, “Damn! It’s in my jacket and my jacket’s in the car.”

  “When you find it, maybe we’ll talk.” He gave me an unfriendly look and gestured to a man standing behind me. “Next.”

  Sometimes a fake works and sometimes it doesn’t. I left and went down the street to the Fireside. The place wasn’t crowded and I found a booth. Bonzo spotted me and came right over, a smile on his innocent face. Once Bonzo had been a promising young man, but bad acid had made him a child again. Now he pushed a broom at the Fireside and took orders for beer.

  “J.W., how ya doin’? You haven’t been in for a while. I know why, too. It’s because you’re married to Zee and have a family of your own, just like my mom.”

  His mother had taught school on the island forever, and Bonzo was and always would be her baby boy.

  “You’re right, Bonzo. How about bringing me a Sam Adams. And one for yourself, too, if that’s okay with your boss.”

  His angel face immediately became sober. “Oh, no, J.W., I can’t drink while I’m on the job. Sometimes I have one after work, but not on my shift. It wouldn’t be professional.”

  “I guess you’re right, Bonzo. My mistake.”

  He was happy again and brought me my beer. I sipped it. Just right.

  Bonzo’s ears are still good and bars are full of talk, so I said, “What’s the latest news, Bonzo?”

  Bonzo’s dim eyes lit up as much as they could. “I guess you didn’t hear, J.W. Last night some people were having a big party over on East Chop and all of a sudden the sound system just stopped working. The guy who’s renting the house came in today and, boy, was he mad when he told us about it. He says his whole system has been cooked. He says the Silencer must have did it. He says he’ll shoot him if he catches him. He says that sound system cost him thousands of dollars. I bet it might have, too, J.W. I looked in a catalog once and those speakers and everything cost a lot of money!”

  “Exciting times, Bonzo. The Silencer strikes again.”

  “Say, J.W., you’re pretty smart, who do you think that Silencer is, anyway? And how does he cook those sound systems? I mean, they say he cooks’em in cars and in houses all the same. You play loud music and all of a sudden he’ll cook your speakers. How does he do that? And how come he does it? He must not like music or something, don’t you think? Or do you think maybe it’s just the loudness he hates?”

  “The smart money is on the loudness,” I said, “but I don’t know the answers to any of those things, Bonzo. It’s a real mystery.”

  Bonzo nodded. “A mystery. Yeah, that’s what it is, all right. Say, J.W.”

  “What?”

  “There’s bluefish around. You want to go fishing?”

  Bonzo had neither boat nor car, so when he went fishing he usually went with somebody else and the somebody was sometimes me. He was a dedicated and tireless fisherman who would cast all day and never be disco
uraged if he never caught anything or even got a hit. If he did catch something, he was filled with happiness and would take his fish home, where his mother would cook it and they would both enjoy a feast.

  “That’s a good idea, Bonzo. Say, why don’t you come with me? I’d like that. When’s your day off?”

  “I got Sunday off. I can go with you right after church. That’d be good, J.W.”

  “I’ll pick you up at your place after lunch. We’ll have fun.”

  He beamed. “Yeah, we’ll have a very good time. Catching fish is always a lot of fun. We’ll see birds, too, I bet.”

  Birds and birdsong were his other passions.

  “We probably will.”

  “Well, I got to get back to work.”

  “Don’t forget Sunday.”

  “Oh, no. I won’t forget that!”

  He went away and I drank my beer and thought about the Silencer. I wanted to know who killed Ollie Mattes and Harold Hobbes, but I didn’t care who was killing the sound systems that too often filled the island air with head-pounding noise which was so bad that even Bach sounded wonderful by comparison.

  Thoughts of the Silencer took me to thoughts of Mickey Gomes and the leaky jail in Edgartown and of Duane Miller, the gourmet jailbird. As usual in the law-and-order game, comedy and tragedy walked hand in hand down the mean streets.

  And then I was thinking about my promise to the kids to get a computer. I looked at my watch and decided I had just enough time to begin trying to find out something about them. I finished my beer, went out to the truck, and drove to the computer store at the airport. They should be able to give me some advice. I hoped it wouldn’t consist solely of recommending that I buy a machine from them.

  11

  The problem with talking to the guy at the computer store wasn’t that he tried to sell me one of their computers or that he didn’t know his business, it was that I had a hard time with the language he initially used to describe their wares.

  He caught on to this pretty fast and changed to regular English. Apparently he was used to talking with computer-ignorant customers. “Maybe you should tell us what you want to do with your computer,” he said. “Then we can put one together that will do that.”

  “All I know about computers is this,” I said, ticking off my wisdom on the fingers of one hand. “You can use them as typewriters, you can use them to send and get e-mail, you can play games on them, you can look things up, like in an encyclopedia or in the library, and you can simulate flying an airplane. I don’t know how to do any of those things but I know people who do.”

  “Computers will do a lot more than that,” said the guy. “What do you plan to do with yours?”

  “How about all but the games and the airplane? Or, wait a minute, can you play chess on a computer?”

  “You can play chess or bridge or a hundred other games. You can play pinball.”

  “Really? You mean like a regular pinball machine? You flick the flickers and you can keep the ball in play?”

  “Absolutely. You see the pinball machine on your screen and you flick the flickers by touching keys on your keyboard.”

  Nifty. But I didn’t say that. Instead, I said, “My wife uses a computer at work and my kids use them at school. I’d need to get one that they can use.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t I give you some written material about computers? You can take it home and read it and talk about it with your family.”

  “That seems like a good idea.”

  “Two things you should consider are the speed of the computer—most people, including me, think faster is better—and the amount of information your machine can handle. Again, most people, including me, think the more the better, up to a point. You don’t need to be able to store all the information the Pentagon stores, for instance.”

  “Probably not.”

  “One other thing you should know is that as soon as you’ve got your new computer it’ll be out-of-date. A better one will be available the next day or maybe even later that same day.” He smiled and shrugged. “It’s a fast-moving technology.”

  “The newer the computer, the faster it is and the more information it can handle?”

  “Yeah, that’s usually the case.”

  “People already say I’m living in the past. You talk like I’m doomed to stay there because even though I have a computer it’ll be out-of-date.”

  He grinned. “It’s not as bad as that and we’re all in the same boat. We get caught up when we buy new machines.”

  “How often does that happen?”

  “Every three years or so, maybe. Something like that. Not everybody does that, of course. There’s no reason to get a new one if your old one is still doing all the things you want it to. I know people who have computers that are ten years old or more.”

  I had a truck that was three times that old and I saw no need to get a newer one.

  “Let me look at the written material,” I said. “I want to see if I can understand the jargon.”

  He gave me some papers. “Maybe you should go down to the library and check out one of their Computers for Idiots books. They’re meant for people like you who know nothing about the subject.”

  I looked through the pages he’d given me and saw words that meant nothing to me. “I think I’ll take your advice,” I said. I thanked him and drove to the Edgartown library.

  The Edgartown library is on North Water Street, Edgartown’s most prestigious thoroughfare, where summer parking is scarcer than chicken teeth. I found a spot up near the Harborview Hotel and walked back, passing the flower gardens and the great captains’ houses.

  To my left boats were moored in Edgartown’s outer harbor, which lay between Chappaquiddick and the village. Sailboats were leaning into a southwestern wind as they came in for the night and momentarily shared the narrows with the On Time ferry. Tourists were on the sidewalk and in the street, ogling and photographing the sights. The walkers in the street reluctantly got out of the way of automobiles, because for tourists, it seems, Edgartown is such a make-believe place that they presume the cars are make-believe too and that the streets are really pedestrian walkways.

  I went into the library and was greeted by Thelma Riggins in that friendly way all librarians seem to greet all arrivals. “Hello, J.W. What brings you into town in June? I thought you usually stayed up there in the woods until after Labor Day.”

  “I need a book on computers. One for complete ignoramuses who know nothing about them.” I placed a hand upon my chest. “Like me.”

  “Heavens to Betsy, J.W., don’t tell me you’re thinking about getting a computer?”

  “Shocking but true. I haven’t decided yet, mind you.”

  She studied me. “Let me guess. The kids are both in school and they’re on your back about this and Zee is on their side.”

  “It’s worse than that. They’ve been after me for years to get a dog, but I won’t have one in the house so now they’ve switched to a computer. I may have used up all my moral authority during my antidog campaign.”

  “Not that you ever had too much of that.” She stood up. “I think I know just what you need. Stay right there.” She went away and came back and laid a book on the counter. “There you are. It’s written in regular English and will tell you almost everything you need to know except what machine to buy, even though the new computers have bells and whistles that didn’t exist when this book was written last year. You’ll need some up-to-date writing to tell you about all that, but this will give you the basics.”

  “The book was written last year and it’s already out-of-date?”

  “Just like you and me, J.W.” She laughed.

  I was at the house reading the book when the kids came home from their last day of school. I expected many celebratory shouts, but they faded when Joshua looked over my shoulder. “Whatcha reading, Pa? Hey, look, Diana, it’s a book about computers!”

  Diana was so impressed that her mind was t
emporarily taken off both summer vacation and food. She, like her mother, could eat a horse and never get any bigger around the middle.

  “Gee, Pa, are we really going to get a computer? That would be excellent!”

  “I’m reading about them so I will have some idea of what we need.”

  Joshua was already ahead of me. “Can we each have one of our own, Pa? Can we?”

  Good grief. “Right now we’ll have just one. You can both take turns using it for your schoolwork. Your mother and I will talk and then we’ll all get together and decide what we need and what we can afford.”

  Diana thought fast. “Can we keep it in my room, Pa?”

  Joshua frowned but before he could argue the point I said, “No. We’ll keep it in the guest room. That will be the computer room, too. Now put your books away and get yourselves something to eat. I have a lot of reading to do.”

  “Okay, Pa. Pa?”

  “What?”

  “Can we get it today?”

  “No. I have to study the subject and talk with your mother. She knows more about computers than I do. So do you, for that matter. I have to try to catch up. Now put your books away and get yourselves a snack.”

  “Okay, Pa. Pa?”

  “What?”

  “You’re a good pa.” Diana put her arms around me.

  “Thanks, Diana. Now go put your books away.”

  When Zee came home I was deep into my book and fairly sure that there is truth to the notion that we learn faster when we’re younger. She changed into shorts and one of my old shirts and made two martinis. Then she took me away from my reading up to the balcony, where we sat and looked out over our gardens, over Sengekontacket Pond and the barrier beach, now almost emptied of the cars that parked beside the highway there all day long, to Nantucket Sound, where the white hulls of boats were headed toward harbor.