“I can see that. Do you have the address of the house where Linda and Peg lived last year?”
“It’s probably written down somewhere, but I don’t have time to find it right now.”
“I’d like to have it. Maybe you can get it from Peg.”
“I’ll ring you tomorrow.”
“Thanks.” He went back to his pots and frying pans, and the kids and I left the hotel.
The lovely Edgartown lighthouse was right in front of us, and since there was nothing else for me to do right then, the three of us walked out to visit it, while admiring the boats already at their moorings and docks, and those coming into the harbor for the night. It was a quiet, lovely scene, far removed from the trouble I was investigating.
Across the outer harbor, where several large power and sail yachts lay at anchor, Chappaquiddick looked peaceful and idyllic in the evening light. The little On Time ferry, so named, some said, because it had no schedule and was therefore always on time, shuttled cars, bikes, and passengers between Edgartown and Chappy. Beyond it, to the west, the June people fished off docks and thronged the streets, ogling the summer sights. Farther still, the masts of other boats were outlined against the hills and houses on the far side of the inner harbor.
It was a lovely sight, but my children were more interested in the shells, stones, and seaweed on the beach. We had a pretty good collection by the time we got back to the truck.
At home, I fixed us a supper of grilled flounder, rice, and pea-pod salad, glad again that Diana and Joshua were, like their parents, pretty omnivorous eaters despite their individual preferences in ice cream. More evidence, perhaps, that I was one of God’s chosen? Or was there some other explanation?
Afterward, they got on either side of me on the couch, and I read to them just as my father had read to me long ago. And as he had done for me, I would pause occasionally and point out letters and short words and sound them out. This had helped me start to read when I was four, and since there’s nothing better or more fun than knowing how to read, I wanted Josh and Diana to learn how to do it as quickly as possible. As with food, they took to it well. Like dad, like daughter and son. With some of mom thrown in, too, of course.
When they got noddy, I put them in bed and had some time to think grown-up thoughts. I had a lot of them, but they were pretty jumbled; still, it was time to consider them, so I popped a Sam Adams and got to it.
Ben and Peter Krane were sexual predators, but apparently weren’t the sort who knocked women around. They were just exploiters and users who liked women as playthings and got bored with them pretty quickly. Linda Carlyle and Perry Jonson were two of their more damaged victims, but there were no doubt others I didn’t know about.
Ben liked to rent to pretty girls who might not be averse to summer flings.
He might not punch out women, but he could and would punch out guys like Perry. And he’d enjoy it. He was a martial arts guy. I didn’t know much about the martial arts, but I knew enough to be careful with such people. Most of them were pretty much the same as other people, but there were a few freaks among them, as there are in any group. Freaky martial arts guys were probably a little more dangerous than most other freaky guys. I wondered if Peter was also a martial arts guy. I could ask, if it got to be important.
Three of Ben’s houses were gone, and the most recent one had a body in it. I didn’t know for sure if there was arson involved or whether the body belonged to Corrie or somebody else, but I thought I knew the answers to both questions. Yes, there was arson involved in at least a couple of the fires, and, yes, it was Corrie Appleyard’s body.
Because it was Corrie, I had a personal interest in finding out who burned that particular building, if not the others. I was getting paid by a man I didn’t care for because I could use the money, but if Ben fired me I’d probably keep hunting on my own, anyway.
Ben claimed he didn’t know anyone mad enough to torch his houses, but he could be wrong or he could be lying.
But why would he lie? I couldn’t imagine, therefore I should presume he was telling the truth. And since he wasn’t stupid, he should know the names of people who had reason to hate him so intensely.
He said he didn’t know of any such people, and that the people who disliked him didn’t dislike him enough to commit arson.
But if Linda Carlyle was as damaged by the Krane boys as Peg Sharp suggested, she and Perry could be a couple of logical suspects.
But according to Peg, neither of them had ever come back to the island.
But, of course, Peg might not know if they’d come back, or she might be lying to protect her fire-starting friends.
But, but, but, but, but. Lots of but’s. Too many.
Maybe I was looking in the wrong places. Maybe I should be poking around somewhere else. But where?
Wouldn’t you know: another but.
I got on the phone and called Quinn at the Globe. He wasn’t at his desk. I left a message on his answering machine, asking him how he was doing tracking down Corrie Appleyard’s family and history. I tried his apartment. Another answering machine. I left the same message. Everybody in the world but me had an answering machine. Quinn had two, for God’s sake. Maybe I should get one. Then my friends and I could have dueling answering machines, and we would never need to talk to one another at all.
I thought about Adam Washington. Where was he staying now? I should try to find out and talk with him. Ditto with Millicent Dowling. She and Adam had had a spat, and I wondered if Millicent could possibly have gotten herself entangled with Ben Krane as a result, the same way Linda Carlyle had done the year before. Ben was always ready for a new woman, after all, and knew how to take advantage of women mad at other men.
Probably not, but it could be.
Had Adam or Millicent been here last summer? Did either of them know Linda Carlyle or Perry Jonson?
I finished my beer and went into the kids’ room. They were asleep. I had gotten past my early parental fears that if they were quiet in their beds, it was because they were dead. I got myself another Sam Adams and went up onto the balcony.
The sun had sunk beyond the western brim of the world, and the darkening sky was beginning to fill with stars. The Milky Way crossed above me, high up there in the deep blackness of space. I saw a moving star and knew it was a satellite catching the rays of the departed sun. I watched it cross and disappear toward the horizon. Were there men in it? Or was it all machine? It was lovely, in any case, and I wondered what it was like up there, far, far above this island earth, with its endless ebb and flow of death and desire, ice and fire, joy and despair.
I stayed up there until Zee came home, then I went to bed with her and held her wrapped in my arms until I finally slept.
— 22 —
“Definitely arson,” said Jack Dings, who was sitting at a table in a room in Oak Bluffs, where he and his wife had been scribbling the first draft of what he identified as their report. “Pretty crude but effective. Old-style fuse box. Guy shut off the electricity, then scraped the insulation off wires leading to a couple of outlets. Then he stuck shiny new pennies under the fuses for those wires and turned on the juice again. Bingo.”
Bingo? “Bingo?” I asked.
Sandy Dings nodded. “Normally when there’s a short, a fuse blows, but the pennies the guy puts in keep the circuits intact, and bingo. You got yourself two very hot spots in no time at all. Old, dry wood for fuel, plenty of oxygen, and lots of heat. Just what you need for a fire. And since there was nobody around to catch it early, the whole place went up.”
“You know yet who the body belonged to?”
She shook her head. “Should know something soon. We’re still trying to get a line on that Appleyard guy you mentioned. Dental records, if we can find them.”
“If I get any information, I’ll pass it along. Is this penny-behind-the-fuse trick an old one?”
Jack Dings looked surprised that I should ask. “Sure, old as fuses and pennies, I imagine. Pe
ople who blow fuses and don’t have extras on hand still do it now and then in their own houses, but it’s dangerous as hell.”
Such ignorance on my part. It amazed me sometimes that I knew so little of what was common knowledge to others.
“This was an old place,” I said. “Maybe Ben Krane’s been using pennies for years. Maybe whoever owned the place before Ben bought it used them. Maybe this fire was just the result of criminal stupidity, not arson.”
Dings shook his head. “Nope. It’s arson, all right.”
“How do you know?”
“The pennies are brand new, for one thing, so whoever put them in there did it recently. And the kids I’ve interviewed have told me Krane hasn’t been inside the place for weeks.”
“You’ve been asking them about Krane?”
He gave me an exasperated look. “Of course. Whenever there’s arson, the owner is a prime suspect.”
“Do you think I’m the only person in the world who didn’t know you could use pennies that way?”
“Hell,” said Sandy Dings, “it’s probably on the Internet, along with a thousand and one other ways to start fires, make bombs, and wreck people’s lives and property. Modern communication technology is a wonderful thing.”
“If Krane hadn’t been inside the house lately, who had?”
Jack Dings smiled a humorless smile. “Well, there’s the person we found in the basement, whoever he was. Or she was. And there was the houseful of kids who lived there. And there were their friends and associates who visited them. And there were all of those people who came to their parties. Not more than several hundred folks, all in all.”
I had a feeling I didn’t like. “Does the lab have what’s left of the satchel you found beside the body?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“You might ask them if they found some new pennies inside.”
“Oh? Why do you say that?”
“Because when Corrie Appleyard came to visit us, he played some magic tricks with my kids. Pulling coins out from behind their ears, that sort of thing. He used very shiny new pennies.”
Both Dingses studied me. “You don’t look very happy,” said Sandy.
“I’m not. I hope I’m wrong about what I’m thinking.”
“And what might that be, aside from the possibility that the body belongs to your friend and the pennies behind the fuses were his, maybe making him the guy who set the fire?”
I don’t like it when my emotions start to color my thinking, so I pushed my feelings aside. They didn’t want to be pushed. I pushed harder and got them to move back a little, but they didn’t leave.
“It’s just that if Corrie did scrape those wires and put those pennies in those fuses, it’s possible that he learned those tricks from my father, thirty years ago. They used to sit around and drink beer and sing and talk about their work. My father knew as much about fires as Corrie did about the blues, and they were both good listeners.”
Jack Dings almost looked sympathetic. “It’s a weird world we live in, kid, but I been in this business so long now that nothing surprises me.”
It had been a while since anyone had called me kid, and I told him so.
“Don’t feel flattered,” he said. “Everybody younger than me is just a kid as far as I’m concerned, and that takes in most of the people in the world.”
They were back at their work before I even got to the door. Out on the street, I sat in the Land Cruiser for a while, untangling my thoughts from my feelings. I didn’t want to find out for sure that Corrie had torched the house and killed himself in the process, and I didn’t like the notion that he’d learned the penny trick from my father. The prospect of driving home to Zee and the kids and working on the bedroom wing I was building was a lot more appealing than asking more people more questions about the fires, especially since I didn’t like Krane and really didn’t care if all of his houses burned down, or up, or both.
Instead, I found a phone and called Sid Silva. He was, as usual, busy. Are chefs in resort hotels ever not busy? “I knew you’d call when I was in the middle of something,” he said, “so I brought the address with me when I came to work.” He gave it to me. It was for a house that hadn’t burned down yet, as far as I knew. I thanked him and told him to go back to his peas and cukes.
Last summer, Peg Sharp, Linda Carlyle, and Perry Jonson had lived in one of Ben Krane’s smaller hovels up in the woods near the state forest. I wondered how Krane managed to even find these dumps, but imagined that he, like other foragers for island properties, probably haunted the courthouse and town hall for just such information. Every trade has its tricks, so maybe if I were in the real estate biz I, too, would be alert and aware of its secrets of success. But as things were, I didn’t know them, and didn’t expect to learn them.
The house was at the end of a pair of worn tracks that wound through oak trees, oak brush, and scrub pine. It no doubt had once been someone’s dream, but now it was just another minor nightmare of disintegrating shingles, sagging porch, and cluttered yard. A battered moped leaned against a wall, and there were a half-dozen pretty good automobiles scattered like cards in the clearing surrounding the house. As Professor John Skye and other university faculty have observed more than once, you can always tell college students from their teachers because the students have the new cars.
The house looked to have only two or three small bedrooms, but clearly was filled with unofficial sleepers who didn’t mind violating Edgartown’s zoning laws and health codes. As long as they didn’t get too loud and annoy their neighbors, the cops would leave them alone, having other, more important matters to attend to. Ben Krane, who already had gotten his gigantic summer rental fee up front, didn’t care either.
It was midmorning, but nobody seemed to be up. I parked and went to look at the moped. It was definitely Adam Washington’s. I climbed onto the creaking porch and knocked on the door.
Nothing.
I knocked again, louder.
I heard muffled groans and some foul language, then the squeak of footsteps coming to the door.
A bleary face blinked at me.
“I want to talk to Adam Washington,” I said.
The face’s mouth moved and a noise came out. It sounded sort of like that of a strangling cat. The face tried again. This time I thought I heard actual words.
“He’s asleep. I’ll tell him you’re here.”
She turned and went off somewhere, yawning rather noisely. The future of the world, which all too soon would be in her hands and those of her peers, seemed imperiled.
I peeked through the half-opened door into a dark, cluttered room with peeling walls and soiled carpet. I waited and heard more muffled sounds and voices, then footsteps coming unsteadily toward the door. The door opened wider and Adam Washington stood there, swaying and red-eyed, in a pair of jeans that hung from his hips like drying sails.
“Wha . . . ?” said Adam, trying to focus those bloodshot eyes.
“I want to talk with you,” I said.
He got his eyes working and saw who I was. He stepped back but I got a foot in front of the door in case he was thinking of shutting it. I stepped close to him. “We can talk out here alone or in there with your friends,” I said, feeling impatient. “I don’t give a damn which.”
His head was still half filled with sleep, and he hesitated.
“Shut up out there,” mumbled a foggy voice. “Go party someplace else, for God’s sake.”
“I’ll come out,” said Adam, and did that, shutting the door behind him and blinking at the daylight. His face had a tired, worn look that aged him beyond his years.
“What do you want?” he asked in a sulky voice.
“You know Peg Sharp?”
“Yeah.”
“You know Linda Carlyle and Perry Jonson?”
He got coy. “Maybe.”
I tried a tough voice. “No maybe about it, Adam. You know both of them.”
He wavered. “So what?”
&n
bsp; “Where are they?”
He thought the noose was loosening and relaxed a bit. “Down south someplace. I haven’t seen them for months.”
“I need an address and phone number.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know either one.”
“But you know where Millicent Dowling is. I want to talk with her, too.”
He flared. “You keep her out of this!”
I pretended to flare back. “Fat chance, Adam. You’re all in this together, one way or another.”
“Millie doesn’t have anything to do with anything.”
“Where is she?”
He shook his head and gave me a complex look that I couldn’t quite decipher. There was anger and fear in it, and maybe some guilt mixed with stubbornness and pride. I picked on the guilt and fear.
“There’s an arson inspector on this case and insurance investigators are on their way if they aren’t here already. There’s a body lying in a lab over on the mainland, and there are some guys in homicide just waiting for the autopsy results. Anybody who knows anything about these fires is going to be grilled by tougher people than me, so if you know anything you’ll be smart to start talking now, before you and your friends end up charged with murder and arson!”
It was a tough-sounding speech and it seemed to work, for to my surprise Adam Washington began to cry.
— 23 —
Washington’s tears rolled from his swollen, red eyes, and he walked past me, out toward the Land Cruiser, sobbing. I went after him.
“I don’t want them to know,” he moaned in a little voice.
“Know what?”
“What happened.”
“What did happen?”
His voice was watery and he was gulping for air. “It was my fault. I don’t want them to know.”
“What do you mean it was your fault?”
“You know, or you wouldn’t be here!”
I thought hard but could only come up with one possibility. “You mean the moped. What about it?”
“You know already. I loaned it to her. If I hadn’t, she couldn’t have done it! If they find out, they’ll blame me, just like you’re doing!”
Vineyard Blues Page 14