Dead in Vineyard Sand (10 page)

Dom frowned. “A rope bridge?”

“Like in
Tarzan and the Leopard Woman,
” I said.

“Hey,” exclaimed Olive, surprising me for the second time in five minutes, “I saw that movie when I was a kid!
Tarzan and the Leopard Woman.
Great! Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan.” She looked at Dom. “When I was a little girl I wanted to be Sheena. You remember Sheena? The female Tarzan? That looked like a good life to me, living there in a tree with Bob, wearing nothing but a leopard-skin bikini. Terrific!”

Dom studied us. “I've heard about Tarzan and I used to read about Sheena in the comic books, but I've never seen a movie about either one of them. Did I live a culturally deprived childhood?”

Olive and I found ourselves looking at each other and nodding. It was the first thing we'd agreed about in as long as I could remember.

“Yes, you did,” I said.

“Yes, you did,” echoed Olive.

I left the two of them to continue their discussion of crime and culture and went out to the Land Cruiser, where my children were playing Crazy Eights. Crazy Eights and Hearts are two great kid games: they last a long time and all you need is a deck of cards.

“Pa, are we going to work some more on the bridge now?”

“Yes, we are.”

“Are you through talking with the police?”

“Yes, I am.”

When we came out of the parking lot, I turned left, then left again onto Eastville Avenue, then right onto County Road. Somewhere near the old Tradewinds Airport I became aware of a car close behind me. I'm not the island's fastest driver, so having a car behind me wasn't unusual. This car, however, was too close, so I pulled to the right and slowed down so it could pass. But it didn't pass, and I speeded up again. So did the car.

I was very conscious of having my children with me. I tried using my rearview mirror but could see nothing of who was driving or how many people might be in the car. I speeded up even more and so did the car. I slowed down and so did the car.

Just before the intersection with the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven road is an entrance to the Jardin Mahoney garden center, which is always busy during the summer. I braked hard and turned in, hearing the angry squeal of brakes behind me before the car followed me. I slipped into a parking place between two cars where ladies with happy faces were loading plants into their trunks, jumped out, and watched the car slow and then drive on. Through an open window I saw an angry face and a clenched fist that became the bird, and heard a furious voice say, “Killer! We'll find you again!” And then the car was gone.

Although I was glad to spend the rest of the day working on the rope bridge, I had a hard time getting that face and fist out of my mind. It wasn't easy. I finally managed it by trying to imagine Olive Otero as Sheena. That wasn't easy either.

By the time Zee got home from work, we had finished building most of the platform in the oak tree. It was about six-by-eight and was supported partially by limbs and partially by struts attached to the trunk of the
tree, and it had a space cut for the trapdoor that would lead down to the short rope walkway that led to the ground.

It was a good day's work, and the kids and I celebrated honest weariness with lemonade and oatmeal cookies.

Zee was impressed when Joshua and Diana led her out to show her the progress we had made, and we all basked in her praise. Indoors again, I poured big-people drinks and put nibblies on a plate and Zee and I went up to the balcony. Joshua and Diana, not to be outdone, climbed into the tree house with their food and drink.

I thought about the car that had followed me and was in no mood to make a complicated supper. Maybe pizza. It was too late to make my own, but I could order a couple and bring them home. My dry mouth moistened. Pizza, made right, is food for the gods. You could probably live a long, healthy life eating nothing but pizza.

I proposed my plan to Zee, who predictably thought it was a fine idea.

“You three did good work today,” she said.

“A few more days and we should be done.” I told her about Olive Otero being a Tarzan and Sheena fan.

“Well, well,” said Zee. “Maybe the two of you can now stop scratching at each other's eyes and become pals, united by fantasies about Hollywood jungles. That would be nice. I'm sure that Dom would be greatly relieved.”

I tried to imagine Olive and me as pals. Stranger things have probably happened, but I couldn't think of one.

“Speaking of Olive,” said Zee, “guess who came into the ER today. Nathan Shelkrott, Wilma's husband.”

“Who's Nathan Shelkrott and what's he got to do with Olive?”

Zee gave me a patient look. “He doesn't have anything to do with Olive, but Olive is a police officer and the police are investigating these Highsmith shootings, so when you mentioned Olive it reminded me of Nathan coming in, because Nathan and Wilma both work for the Highsmiths. She's the housekeeper and he does all of the outdoor work. I've known Wilma for years. I'm sure I've mentioned her name to you.”

I remembered that Dom had mentioned a housekeeper. “What was Nathan doing in the ER?”

“He had chest pains, so Wilma drove him to the hospital. He's had a little heart trouble in the past and they were both worried. The tests didn't show anything, but they're keeping him for the night. They think he's just stressed out, which would be understandable. First Henry Highsmith and now his wife. What next? It's as though the whole Highsmith household is part of a Greek tragedy.”

“How's your friend Wilma holding up?”

“She's worried.” Zee sipped her drink. “But then, Wilma has looked worried for a long time. She has one of those troubled faces, but usually if you ask her what's the matter she always says it's nothing. This time, though, she didn't say that. She said it was getting to be too much for Nathan. First the Willet girl and now these shootings. I asked her what she meant, but she just shook her head and walked away.”

I said, “Who's the Willet girl?”

“You remember,” said Zee. “She's the girl who drowned at Great Rock.”

“Ah, yes. Your friend Wilma didn't explain what she meant?”

“No.”

“I have some odd news,” I said, and I told her about the incident with the car.

“Maybe it was just road rage,” I added. “There are a lot of crazy people around these days.”

Zee didn't like that theory. “Do you think that's what it was?”

“Maybe.”

“I think you should tell the police. Did you see the license plate?”

“No, I missed it.”

“I don't think a road-rage person would have said what he said. I want you to call the police right now.”

It was the advice I'd have given in her place. “Maybe you're right,” I said, and I went down to the phone and talked to Dom Agganis.

“That's not much for us to go on,” said Dom. “You be careful for the next few days. My guess is that somebody's decided that you're in the middle of this Highsmith business whether you think you are or not.”

“I'll be careful,” I said, and went back up to the balcony.

I sipped my drink and looked out over our garden. Beyond the barrier beach on the far side of the pond, white boats were moving over Nantucket Sound, heading for anchorages through the slanting light of late afternoon. I watched them cutting through the same sea that had drowned the Willet girl and thought of the ancient faith wherein beauty and death are part of the same cosmic dance.

Joanne Homlish, the woman who had supposedly seen me force Abigail Highsmith off the road, lived just off Tiah's Cove Road in a farmhouse that had been there since before the Revolution. It was not far from the home of Nancy Luce, the lonely, sickly “hen lady” poet whose body now lies in the West Tisbury graveyard, her stone and grave adorned with chicken statues placed there by her devotees. Nancy's poetry and other writings, her love of her cows and chickens, and her long, eccentric life had made her locally famous before her death in 1890, and now, more than one hundred years later, many a Vineyard living room wall sports a reproduction of a famous photo of Nancy seated in a chair, with her long, haunted face peering at the camera while her strong, gentle hands hold two of her beloved bantams.

It pleased me to think that not only Nancy, who had never traveled farther than Edgartown, was still remembered with affection, but that the same was true of her adored chickens—Beauty Linna, Bebbee Pinky, Tweedle Deedle, and the rest. What other chickens, aside from Chanticleer, have been immortalized by poetry? Maybe Nancy and Geoffrey were even now sitting together in some poet's heaven, discussing rhyme and open verse. I thought they'd probably have much to talk about.

Joanne Homlish's house was bigger than Nancy's
had been, and in spite of its years was well maintained in a neat yard behind which was an equally well kept old barn that now served as a garage, so evidenced by the middle-aged Ford Explorer that was parked inside its open door. Like everything else at Joanne's place, the Explorer looked to be in good shape. Only the sometimes-yellow and sometimes-blue trim on lower windows of the house was unusual, since gray or white trim was the Vineyard norm.

“Are we there yet?” asked Diana, who with her brother was along for the ride because I, unlike most fictional sleuths, was a married man without a babysitter.

“I think we are,” I said, stopping in front of the house. I cast a final look into my rearview mirror and still saw no following car.

“Can we get out of the truck?”

“Let's wait and see if there are dogs. Sometimes dogs don't like visitors, and I don't want you to get bitten.”

We waited, but no dogs showed up. Maybe Joanne, like me, was a cat person.

“Stay here for the time being,” I said.

I got out of the truck and knocked on the front door. A sharp-faced elderly woman opened it and looked at me and the truck. A pair of reading glasses hung on a cord around her neck.

“Mrs. Homlish? My name's Jackson.”

She nodded. “What can I do for you, Mr. Jackson?”

“I want to talk to you about the bike accident you saw the other day.”

“You an insurance agent? I already told the police what I saw. I can't tell you anything they don't already know.”

“I'm not an insurance agent, but I have an interest in the accident and I'd like to know just what you saw.”

“Well, all right.” She peered over my shoulder.
“Those your children? They look about the age of my grandchildren. Let them get out and run around. No use making them sit there while we talk. They can't get hurt or do any damage.”

When she smiled, her face became softer. I went to the truck and opened a door and the kids climbed out and looked around.

“Wander around all you want,” Mrs. Homlish said to them, waving an arm that took in her whole property. “Just be careful.” She looked at me. “Kids these days are kept on too short a leash, if you ask me. When I was a girl we didn't have seatbelts or crash helmets or any of that stuff, and we survived just fine. A kid has to get some scratches and bruises now and then, if you ask me.”

“I like your style,” I said, and told her about the tree house and the rope bridge.

She nodded approvingly. “My dad was no good with tools,” she said, “so I never had a tree house. Wanted one, though. Instead, my brothers and I used to build forts in the barn made out of baled hay. We'd set up other bales on end and pretend they were attacking our castle and we'd shoot them with our bows and arrows and stab them with our bayonets. We had a couple of old World War One bayonets around the place and they made good swords. Nowadays kids can't even carry pocketknives to school. I think things have gone downhill. You want to stay out here so you can keep an eye on your kids, or do you want to talk inside?”

My children were already moving toward the barn, and I wondered what they'd do if they found bales of hay impaled with arrows and bayonets. I poked a thumb at the Land Cruiser and said, “I know this is an odd question, but have you ever seen this truck before?”

She looked at the truck with her bright old eyes.
“Seen some that look like that, more or less.” Then her voice became angry. “Saw one the other day, in fact. Drove that Mrs. Highsmith right off the road, then just kept right on going! I'd have followed him and turned him in, but I stopped to help her. Say, that wasn't you, was it? You aren't up here to try to talk me out of what I saw, are you? You're wasting your time if you are!”

I held up a hand to stop the fire in her eyes from burning mine. “It wasn't me, but the description you gave the police and the picture of the truck you identified made them think it might have been me. I came here to find out if they got the story straight.”

Her voice was hard as cast iron. “They got it straight, all right. It was a rusty old SUV just the shape and color of your machine right there. I doubt if there are many of them still on the road.”

“This is the only one that I know of on the island. How long did you follow it before the accident?”

She knew exactly. “From the time I came out of Old County Road onto North Road. I had to stop so the truck could go by, headed for Vineyard Haven. I followed it until it ran Mrs. Highsmith off the road.”

“So you got a good look at it.”

“Yes, I did!”

“Good. You saw the front of the vehicle as it approached the intersection with Old County Road, and the side as it passed in front of you, then the back as you followed it toward Vineyard Haven. Is that right?”

She nodded, her eyes watchful now. “Yes, it is.”

“Did you notice the driver as the SUV approached you and then passed the intersection in front of you?”

For the first time, she hesitated. Then she said, “No, I didn't, and I'm sorry I wasn't paying attention because then I'd know him when I see him again.”