Murder at a Vineyard Mansion

by Philip R. Craig

  “I’ll be just as tired later, so ask them. They won’t make any difference anyhow.” Her voice was small and dull.

  “All right. Was your second husband related to Alice Hobbes?”

  A small nod. “Ben was her brother.”

  “Were you all friends before you married Ben? You and Ben and Alice?”

  She nodded again. “Oh, yes. There were several of us who did things together. Riding, tennis, golf, bridge, sailing, softball. Parties. We palled around a lot.”

  “You must have been newly divorced about that time.”

  Her smile was crooked and fleeting. “Free and making the most of it. My first husband was a bore.”

  “Were the Bradfords and Piersons part of the crowd?”

  “Miles Bradford and Sarah Pierson were part of the crowd until they got married and started having children. After that, Sarah dropped out of the circle.”

  “But not Miles?”

  “No,” she said, “not Miles. Miles liked to party and he was good at it.”

  “He had a bad heart.”

  “It didn’t slow him down.”

  “It killed him.”

  Her voice changed tone, losing something of its listlessness. “Yes.”

  “In Alice Hobbes’s bed, I’m told. That must have had an effect on the social swirl.”

  Her tired eyes studied me. “It ended it. Alice married Pete Mattes. Pete had been after her for years, but he wasn’t one of us, and she fended him off until Miles died and she found out she was pregnant. Then she married Pete in a hurry. It was a smart move. They were happy and Pete treated her baby like his own.”

  I had finally arrived at my true interest. “And you married Ben Hobbes.”

  She sipped her tea. “Yes.”

  “And Harold was born a few months later. Less than nine, I think.”

  “I see that you’ve been looking at the marriage and birth records.”

  “No, I thought I should talk to you first.”

  The wrinkled hand that held her teacup was steady as stone. “Go on, then. Talk. Nothing makes any difference now.”

  “It might,” I said. “I think that Ben was already wooing you when you discovered that you, like Alice Hobbes, was carrying one of Miles Bradford’s children. You accepted Ben’s latest proposal, got married, and gave a legal name to Harold.”

  She drank more tea. “That’s about it. Harold had a name and I had another husband I didn’t want. I lived with him, though, until he finally drank himself to death. He was a weakling like a lot of men.”

  “Did he know Harold wasn’t his son?”

  “He should have suspected. Every woman in our crowd must have known, but men can be blind. Sarah Bradford hasn’t spoken to me since, but Ben never mentioned the possibility. When he died I told Harold the truth. I didn’t want him thinking that his father was nothing but a sentimental drunk.”

  I had been seeing through a glass darkly, but now I knew in part. “How did he take the news?” I asked.

  “He grew up to be a drunk and a weakling himself. When I married again he began to hurt me with his tongue. When we got divorced, it got worse. What put you onto this ancient history?”

  “I saw an old photo of Miles Bradford. It reminded me of someone but it took a while for me to realize that Harold was that person. They were both tall, good-looking men.”

  She put the cup in its saucer on the low table between us. “And both of them could be charming and both were womanizers. Like father, like son. But what difference does it make now? My son is dead.”

  “It might have something to do with his murder and with Ollie Mattes’s death. It’s another link between the two men. They were half brothers. Did Ollie know that?”

  “I’ve never told anyone but Harold who his real father was.”

  “Maybe Harold told Ollie.”

  “I doubt it. Ollie Mattes was a leech. He’d have come to me looking for money if he’d known he was related to my son.”

  “I think you’re probably right,” I said, remembering what Helga Mattes had told me: that Ollie didn’t know Harold and that he had prevailed upon his wife, Helga, to use her cousin’s influence to get him the job as watchman at the Pierson house.

  She saw something in my face. “Do you think that’s significant?”

  “I’m not sure.” I put my cup beside hers and stood. “I don’t think it’s good for you to be staying here in the house by yourself. Why don’t you get outside? I imagine your garden needs weeding and your animals will need some attention.”

  She rose. “I’m not suicidal.”

  “I’m not opposed to rational suicide,” I said, “but I don’t like to see a useful life end. You own a farm that needs tending and you’re not tending it.”

  She sniffed. “Ten-cent psychology, J.W.”

  “It’s the only brand I handle. For you it’s free.” I went toward the door. “I’ll let you know if I learn anything useful.”

  She followed me out onto the porch. It was a pleasantly warm day with thin white clouds moving slowly across a pale blue sky.

  “It’s a good day for gardening,” I said, and walked to the Land Cruiser.

  She said nothing.

  As I pulled away she was still standing in front of the door.

  I drove down to the east end of Norton’s Point Beach. There was a chain across the entrance to the ORV track we took when the beach was open. A sign advised me that piping plovers were fledging and that vehicles were prohibited.

  Not all vehicles, apparently, for down the beach I could see one that probably belonged to the plover police.

  During the year before the beach was first closed, a single plover chick had been found run over by an ORV driven, it was guessed but never proved, by some plover-indifferent fisherman. This was enough evidence for the Fish and Wildlife people to close the beach on the grounds that ORVs were dangerous to plovers. The first year it was closed, another plover chick had been run over by an ORV, this time one definitely driven by a plover protector. The beach stayed closed. The net benefit for plovers: zero.

  The plover police vehicle was coming toward me so I waited until it arrived. The driver was a young woman with sun-bleached hair and a good tan. I wondered but didn’t ask if she’d squished any plover chicks lately. Instead I smiled my imitation Burt Lancaster smile, told her I was investigating the Chappy murders, and asked if she had noticed any of several vehicles using the beach just before it had closed. I described the vehicles.

  “Well, I know that blue Cherokee that Harold Hobbes drove,” she said, “but I don’t remember the others. A lot of SUVs use this beach.”

  “Not for most of the summer these days,” I said. “Did Harold go back and forth often?”

  “Almost every day just before we closed the beach. It was terrible when he got killed. Do they know who did it?”

  “Not yet. If you’d noticed these other ORVs it might have narrowed things down a little.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m a biologist, not a police officer. What have those vehicles got to do with anything?”

  “The killer either lives on Chappy or got over there somehow, which means he either drove there on this beach or took the On Time. My guess is that he used the beach so no one would know he came and went. I’d hoped you might have seen his SUV.”

  She was in a devil’s advocate mood. “Maybe he had his own boat.”

  “He could have gotten to Ron Pierson’s house by boat, but he’d have had a long walk to get to Maud Mayhew’s farm and back again.”

  “Maybe there were two killers.”

  “Are you left-handed?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because that rules you out as a suspect. Whoever killed Ollie Mattes and Harold Hobbes was a southpaw about your height. The odds are long that there weren’t two killers with that same description.”

  “Why’d he do it? Does anybody know?”

  “The killer does.”

  It was a warm day, but the
young woman shivered. Just to be ornery I lost my smile and studied her and said, “Are you sure you’re not left-handed?”

  She was very sure.

  21

  Crime never takes a holiday on Martha’s Vineyard or anywhere else, and one case is never the only case for the cops. The big cases like the Chappy murders get most of the attention but there are always others, many of which never get into the papers.

  I found out about one of these from Gabe Winters at the Newes From America, one of Edgartown’s finer pubs, where I’d stopped for a late lunch of amber ale and calamari after talking with Maud Mayhew. Gabe was a cousin of Kit Goulart’s and therefore the recipient of all the better crime gossip.

  “You’re a friend of John Skye’s,” said Gabe, pausing at my table on his way out. “You hear about the Jaguar in his west pasture?”

  “No. The animal or the car?”

  “The car. You know those big houses in those new developments south of the West Tisbury road, down toward the Great Ponds?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, it seems that a guy and his wife who live in one of those castles got into an argument that went on until the guy decided to get out of the house and get himself a cup of coffee while things cooled down. So he gets into their Land Rover and starts for Edgartown. But the wife decides she hasn’t had enough of him yet so she runs down and gets into their Jaguar and goes after him.

  “The cops figure, from the marks on the highway, that she was going about a hundred miles an hour when she comes to that little curve in the road opposite John Skye’s pasture. She goes off the road, over-corrects coming back, crosses the road again, goes through John’s fence, and rolls the Jag about a dozen times in his pasture, totally demolishing it. The car is upside down and the woman is trapped inside.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Last week.”

  “I never heard about it.”

  “I’m coming to that. The husband sees what happened in his rearview mirror, turns around, and races back. When the cops get there they find him jumping up and down on top of the wrecked car screaming, ‘Look what that bitch did to my Jaguar! The bitch ruined my car! Oh, what a bitch!’

  “The wife is still trapped in the car, but the cops get her out finally and she’s not even hurt bad. The reason you never heard about it is that the next day hubby and wifey are all lovey again and say they never had an argument, that she was only going fifty, not a hundred, that the accident happened because she tried to avoid hitting a dog, that they’re paying for a new fence for John Skye, and that it’s not worth a news story at all. So it never made the local papers.”

  “Wild. I imagine the Jag was pretty well insured.”

  “Probably. You want to know the really funny thing? The car had one of those little computer screens on the dashboard that tells you when something needs attention. You know: ‘Your left brake light is out; fix it.’ ‘Check your oil.’ ‘Your windshield wiper fluid is low.’ Like that. Well, when they get the woman out of this totally destroyed car, that little screen is the only part of it still working, only now it’s saying, ‘Your engine block is smashed, your axles are broken, your drive shaft is in pieces, and your tires are all flat.’ Funny, huh?” Gabe was still laughing when he went out the door.

  Another reason to be glad I’d given up being a cop. There were lots of them. Someday, I thought, feeling a smile cross my face, Kit Goulart really should write her book about being a cop on Martha’s Vineyard. A book like that could probably be written about every small-town police force in America.

  In fact, Kit could probably write a book about just this month on the Vineyard, what with a double murder, the Silencer zapping sound systems, the adventures of Mickey Gomes, and this accident, all happening pretty much at once. No wonder the Chief’s hair was gray. He was lucky to have any at all.

  I took my time finishing my ale and thought about what Maud Mayhew and others had told me during the last few days. When the tall glass was empty, it was time for a second meeting with Ethan Bradford. I could do that and still be home before Joshua and Diana got off the school bus.

  Being a parent definitely intruded on my detecting. No wonder Superman was single. Even though he was faster than a speeding bullet, having a wife and kids would have made it hard for him to find time to fight crime and hold down a steady job at the Daily Planet too.

  As I drove to West Tisbury I didn’t envy Superman’s bachelor state, but I wouldn’t have minded being bulletproof because I vividly remembered Ethan Bradford’s shotgun. If he had murdered Ollie Mattes and/or Harold Hobbes, he probably wouldn’t be as reluctant as most people would be to put me in the ground.

  I wondered if I should have stopped at the house and picked up the old .38 Police Special I’d carried when I’d been a cop in Boston. The problem with having a gun with you is that you might be stressed into using it when you actually didn’t have to. The problem with not having one is that you might actually need it. Why hadn’t God made a less ambiguous world?

  In West Tisbury I turned right onto Old County Road. When I found the side road leading to Ethan’s house, I had a last chance to change my mind about seeing him but didn’t take it. Instead, I drove to his house. His old Jeep was parked in the yard. I parked beside it and got out.

  In the passenger seat of the Jeep was what looked like a box of junk but that might have been some sort of modernistic work of art or an arcane machine. Was Ethan Bradford some sort of sculptor? A guy who manufactured mobiles and static statements out of wires and tubes and other odds and ends from the dump? I’d seen photos of worse-looking stuff in the art pages of the Globe.

  The door of the house opened before I got halfway there and Bradford stepped out. He held the familiar shotgun in his hand. From the house behind him came the sound of a Vivaldi concerto. I didn’t know which one it was, but you can always tell when it’s Vivaldi.

  “I thought I told you not to come back here,” he said in his thin voice. He stepped toward me, but I kept walking. He brought his other hand to the shotgun and swung the weapon across his body, but I didn’t stop until I came close to him.

  His eyes were the color of his sister’s but his face, unlike hers, was tight-skinned and hard. He gripped the shotgun.

  “If you’re set on shooting,” I said, “you’d best get at it. Otherwise put that gun down and stop pretending. I don’t have much time to spend here.”

  I was surprised at how fearless I sounded, but my tone affected him. “What do you want?” he asked.

  He still held the shotgun with both hands. I looked at it and said nothing and after a moment he released one hand from it and dropped the muzzle toward the ground.

  “Your sister and Harold Hobbes used to come here while they were romancing,” I said. “You used to take off while they were here.”

  “Who told you that crock?”

  “Your sister. She said you weren’t happy about the relationship. Were you?”

  “None of your business.”

  “The police might think it’s theirs. If they find out you didn’t like Hobbes but that your sister was in thrall, they might decide that you drove over to his place and smashed his head in. Noble brother to the rescue, like in the old melodramas.”

  His eyes widened. “Jesus! The last time you were here you thought I killed Ollie Mattes. Now you think I killed Harold Hobbes. You’re bound and determined that I killed somebody. Everybody knows that Hobbes was a womanizing bastard, but I didn’t kill him.”

  “Your sister says he’d changed. She says that they were going away together to start a new life.”

  “My sister is a foolish woman and Hobbes was a con artist. But she loved him, and she’d never forgive me if I hurt him. I’d have broken them apart if I could have, but I couldn’t because of her. I didn’t cry a tear when I heard he was dead, but I didn’t kill him. I’ve never killed anybody in my life!”

  I nodded at the shotgun. “You threatened me with that.”

&nbs
p; He clutched the shotgun. “I never did. You may have thought I did, but I didn’t.” He broke the gun open. “Look. It’s not loaded. It wasn’t loaded then, either.”

  I gestured at the sagging house and barn. “You live like a wild man, like one of those militia types out in Idaho. It’s easy to think you’d kill somebody without too much thought. Hobbes was a natural target for you.”

  “Yeah? Well, I didn’t kill him. I can prove it. I was someplace else that night.”

  “Where?”

  He became careful. “None of your business.”

  “You have witnesses?”

  “I can prove where I was.” The care in his voice was colored with confidence. I changed tack.

  “Who hated Harold Hobbes enough to kill him?”

  “How about half the women on this island?”

  “Your sister says it was getting hard for you to keep her secret. Who’d you tell?”

  “Nobody. I told nobody.”

  But a quaver in his voice said differently.

  “You’re a poor liar,” I said. “When the cops get you in an interrogation room, they’ll get the truth out of you fast enough. Save yourself some pain.”

  Vivaldi’s violins danced over us as he tried to decide what to do. Finally he leaned forward and said, “I didn’t tell anybody but my mother. I wanted to break them up but I didn’t want to be the one to do it. I knew my mom could. She’s done it before. She hates men and I knew she’d take Cheryl away from him.”

  I had no sympathy for him. “I understand you’re one of the men she doesn’t like. Does she like you better now?”

  His voice was so forlorn that my feelings unexpectedly reversed themselves and I felt compassion for him. “I wanted her to, but I don’t know. I hope she does. She had a hard time with my father. She thinks all men are like him. But they’re not. I’m not like him. I wish she knew that.”

  I couldn’t grant him that wish and the school bus would soon be stopping at the end of our driveway, so I left him there with Vivaldi and drove home, feeling almost light-headed as I thought about what I knew.