A Deadly Vineyard Holiday (6 page)

The phone buzzed in my ear. I looked at it, trying to see Lonergan's face, then hung up. Lonergan knew something I didn't know, and I wondered what it was. Especially since it frightened her, and she didn't seem to be the type who frightened easily, even though she got emotionally involved in her work, as did Ted, and, like Ted, saw dangers everywhere. If Ted and Joan were edgy and suspicious, I figured there had to be a reason.

“What did he say?” asked Zee.

“Not he, she. Pomerlieu was out, so I talked to Joan Lonergan. The guy in the car wasn't one of their guys. She's calling Karen.”

“Karen has a radio with her? Of course she does. In her bag. Let's try the CB. Maybe the girls have their receiver on.”

I went out to the Land Cruiser and flipped on the CB radio. There wasn't much chance that Jill and Jen had the CB turned on in John's Wagoneer, but it was worth a try.

But they didn't answer my calls, so I went back into the house. Zee was wandering around, uncharacteristically distracted.

“You'd better get ready for work.”

She glanced at her watch. “Oh, my gosh!” She started for the bedroom, then stopped. “I'm worried.”

“Don't be,” I said, worried myself. “Everything's going to be okay.”

She went to get showered and into her uniform. Not much later, looking crisp and cool, but still with a slight frown, she kissed me and drove up the driveway, on her way to the hospital in Oak Bluffs.

About ten minutes later the phone rang. It was Zee. “That car's back there again! Right where it was before! I'll bet he came back as soon as he saw us go down our driveway! I think you should call the police!”

I wondered what the police would say to the driver.
Hey, buddy, what are you doing here? The neighbors are complaining.

I got my lock picks, then went out to the Land Cruiser and got my binoculars, then walked up the driveway until I was pretty close to the pavement. There I took a right and cut through the woods, paralleling the highway, for a couple of hundred yards. When I figured I'd gone far enough, I made a left turn and walked out to the road. Sure enough, I was behind the dark-windowed car, which was again parked beside the bike path, facing toward Edgar town.

Using the binoculars, I had no trouble reading the license plate.

Apparently, the driver wasn't looking in his rearview mirror much. I crossed to the bike path and walked down to the car. The bike path was typically busy with walkers, bikers, and Rollerbladers, so I was just another such, and no cause for alarm.

When I got to the car, I suddenly knelt, dropping out of sight of anyone who might have been watching me
from inside. Nothing happened. I glanced up and down the bike path. No one was close. I got out my key ring, pushed a key against the valve, and slowly let the air out of the right rear tire. Then I got up, put a smile on my face, and leaned over and tapped on the passenger-side window.

The driver looked at me. I widened my smile and tapped again.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“You know you have a flat tire?”

There was a pause. “Flat tire?”

“You've got a flat tire,” I said, raising my voice and gesturing toward the back of his car. “You must have run over a bottle or something.”

There was another pause. Then the driver-side door opened and a slightly overweight middle-aged man got out. He had thinning hair with a bit of gray in it and looked rumpled. He closed his door so it wouldn't get taken off by passing traffic and walked around the back of the car. He looked at the tire.

“What the hell? Will you look at that! Gawd damn!”

“Flatter than a punctured state zoologist,” I agreed.

“Gawd damn!” He scratched his head. “Now what am I supposed to do?”

“Change it,” I said. “Put on the spare.”

He looked at me and frowned slightly, as if trying to place me. Then he seemed to recognize me, and stepped back. “You ever changed a tire? I haven't. I don't even know if I've got one. Gawd damn!” He took another step back and eyed me warily.

I looked at the flat tire. It stayed flat.

I gestured toward my driveway. “My house is down there. You could call a garage.”

He looked at the driveway. “Naw, I don't want to go
down there.” He looked up the road toward Vineyard Haven and saw the driveway, fronted by a stone-carved sign, for the wildlife sanctuary.

“What's that place?”

“That's the Felix Neck wildlife sanctuary.”

“They'll have a phone. I'll try there.” He looked at the tire. “Gawd damn!”

“Well, good luck,” I said, and walked toward my own drive. I turned and waved and saw him lock his car. He waved disconsolately back and started off the other way. When he disappeared into the driveway to Felix Neck, I threw a U and went back.

I am a poor picker of locks, but the driveway into the Felix Neck sanctuary is a long one, so I knew I had plenty of time. I needed it, too, what with interruptions from passing cars and cyclists, but finally I got the passenger-side door open. Inside, I shut the door and had a look at things.

According to the registration in the glove compartment, where it lived amid a collection of unused film, the owner of the car was Burt Phillips. Burt's car contained photographic gear along with empty styrofoam coffee cups, pizza packaging, sandwich wrappings, and a half-empty pint bottle of bourbon. There was also a rumpled copy of the
National Planet,
an incredibly popular paper that specializes in outlandish stories, doctored photographs, and inflamed headlines. In it I found a tale of a deceased celebrity who had returned as a ghost and fathered the child of a woman who now hoped to get a portion of the celebrity's estate. The byline was Burt's.

Burt didn't seem to have a cellular phone, which indicated that he wasn't quite up-to-date as far as modern technology goes, but his camera was tucked down
under the front seat. There were some pictures of me and of Zee's Jeep and maybe of John Skye's Wagoneer, too, on that film, and I had no intention of photos of me or mine appearing in the
National Planet,
so I rewound the film and took it out, then reloaded the camera from Burt's glove compartment supply. Then I got out of the car, locked the door, and went home. Maybe between the missing film and the flat tire, Burt would decide snooping on me wasn't worth it.

At the house, I called Zee and told her about Burt Phillips so she wouldn't worry. Then I made another phone call to Walt Pomerlieu. Walt was still not available, according to the voice on the far end of the line. I left a message telling what I'd learned about the car and driver.

It wasn't good news, but it could have been worse. It could have been a killer out there, instead of a stringer for a popular rag.

Some better news arrived a bit later in the form of John Skye's Wagoneer and its four occupants.

The three younger ones were happy and salty. Karen Lea pretended to be, but was not, so I knew Lonergan had gotten through to her.

Debby and the twins were considering plans for the evening, apparently. The idea leading the race seemed to be pizza at Giordano's, followed by a funky film at the theater across the street.

Debby suddenly remembered she was my cousin as well as my guest, and looked at me and Karen, then back at the twins.

“I'll call you guys later. Okay? Maybe cousin Jeff has some other plans.”

“J.W., you should let her come with us,” said Jill or Jen. “You really should.”

“You don't even know if you have wheels tonight,” I
said. “Go home and find out if John will loan you his car again before you decide what you're going to do. We'll have Debby call you after she washes off some of the sand and salt she's collected.”

“Rats,” said one twin to her sister. “I never thought of not having the car tonight. Daddy said we could go to the beach, but he never said anything about tonight.”

“We'll have to butter him up,” said the other twin.

“We can probably butter up Dad,” said the first twin, “but Mom might not want us driving at night, and it's a lot harder to butter her.”

They looked at Debby and Karen. “We have to work on our parents. You work on J.W. We'll talk later. Today was fun!”

They drove away.

I showed Debby and Karen where the outdoor shower was, and Debby and her towel went in. Karen and I walked off a few yards.

“Joan Lonergan called me,” she said. “She doesn't like this car business, and neither do I. The car is back, by the way. I saw it when we came in, although I didn't see the driver. I don't like this situation at all.”

I told her about my adventures with the car and driver. “It could be worse,” I said. “Burt Phillips isn't a hired gun or some wacko; he's a two-bit stringer for a scandal sheet.”

“Yeah? Well, what's he doing out there, watching who comes and goes here?”

I gave her the theories I'd given Zee earlier.

She stared around the yard and looked into the trees. The sound of the shower could be heard clearly.

“Save some hot water for the rest of us,” I yelled.

“I will!” came Debby's shout.

“And what makes you so damned sure that this Phillips
guy is what he seems to be?” asked Karen. “What makes you think it's not just a cover, in case he gets questioned by the cops? It would be a pretty good one, wouldn't it? Old Burt Phillips isn't a hit man. Oh, no. He's just a seedy, middle-aged stringer trying to make a buck by breaking a story for the
National Planet.
Car full of crap, including, conveniently, a paper that IDs him as just what he wants you to think he is. You don't think you got suckered, do you? Is that just slightly possible?”

It did seem just slightly possible, now that she mentioned it.

Debby appeared, wrapped in her towel.

“I love your shower,” she said, grinning as she trotted into the house.

“Everybody loves my shower,” I called after her. I turned to Karen. “Your turn. You'll love it, too.”

She looked around again, as if trying to see right through the surrounding forest, as if wishing it were glass, so nothing would be hidden from her. Then, a frown on her face, she walked to the shower.

I went into the house and started supper: The bluefish that either Debby or I had hauled in on Monday would now be transformed into stuffed bluefish, always delish. I got the fish fillets out of the fridge and mixed up some store-bought stuffing laced with some extra peppers and hot sauce. I put the stuffing between the two fillets, put the whole thing in a roasting pan, and slapped it into the oven. An army marches on its stomach, they say, and the Secret Service apparently believed we were in a war. I wasn't quite so sure, but in case we were, I wanted us to be able to move if need be.

The phone rang just about then. The masculine voice on the other end had a familiar foreign ring to it. It was an angry voice.

“What the hell was my wife doing at your house this afternoon, eh? What business did she have with you? Why did you call her to you? You tell me right now!”

“Big Mike? Is that you?”

“Yes! What are you doing, calling my wife to your house? You tell me!”

“She was just here on business, Mike.”

But Mike's voice only got hotter. “Business, eh? What business is there between you and her, you seducer of women!”

Seducer of women? “Calm down, Mike. Ask Dora, if you don't believe me.”

“She will tell me nothing! If not for Helen, I would never have learned of this . . . this seduction!”

Helen. So that's who had first taken my call at the salon. Dora might be tight-lipped, but Helen obviously wasn't.

“Nobody seduced anybody, Mike. My wife was here all the time.”

“Don't call me Mike! And don't tell me about your wife! And don't see my wife again!”

He slammed his phone down and I looked at mine. Good grief, just what I needed: a mad Mike Qasim. And until Monday, which was five days away, neither I nor Dora could tell him why she had really been here, because Mike couldn't keep a secret in a bushel basket.

Mad Mike and his Persian dagger.

What next, O Lord?

Debby J. wiped her lips and looked appreciatively at the scant remains of supper left on her plate. “Good,” she said. Then she looked less appreciatively at Karen Lea. “I don't see why I shouldn't be able to go to the movies with Jill and Jen. I want to go.”

She seemed a little petulant.

“Because,” said Karen patiently, “there's a man out there watching this place and we don't know who he is.”

“Mr. Jackson says he's a writer for the
National Planet.
Besides, he couldn't have seen me in the car when we went out because I was sitting on the far side, and there wasn't even anybody in his car when we came back.”

Karen ate the last of her bluefish. “The point is that we don't know who he is. He might be some guy just pretending to be a writer.”

“He's not even out there anymore,” said Debby, with just a touch of the little whine that teenagers get in their voices when they feel unduly constrained. “So there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to go. No one will recognize me. I was with the twins all afternoon, and even when I took my glasses off to go swimming, they didn't know who I was. You saw that yourself.”

Karen finished her glass of wine. “You've already had supper, so you won't be having pizza, in any case. Besides, we don't even know if the twins' parents will let them have the car. As a matter of fact, I'm sure that if
they'd gotten it, they would have called by now. They're still probably trying to talk their parents into it.”

“We don't need their car,” said Debby. “We can use your car, Karen. Nobody was watching when we drove it in, so even if that guy is out there again, he won't know who's in the car if we keep the windows up. We can drive over and pick up the twins and all go to the movies together. Come on, Karen, say we can go!”