Dead in Vineyard Sand (11 page)

“The driver was a man, not a woman?”

She frowned. “Well, now that you mention it, I'm not really sure. But that was my impression, for some reason. I didn't pay much attention to the driver or to the SUV either, until just before the accident.”

“Why then?”

“Because I could see Mrs. Highsmith on the bicycle up ahead of us and instead of slowing down—you know how twisty and narrow that road is—he speeded up. Damn fool! I thought, and I looked hard at the truck because I thought the driver should have his license taken away from him for reckless driving! And I was right too, because just as he was passing her, he swerved toward her and drove her off the road! She could have been killed!” She shook her head. “And now her husband's been murdered, they say. What more can happen to that family? And what about the rest of us, with a killer walking loose?”

It was pretty clear that she hadn't heard about Abigail Highsmith being shot, and I thought she should know. First, though, I said, “Will you walk out behind my truck and take a good look at it and tell me if it's like the one you saw?”

I glanced to my right and saw my children coming out of the barn, bearing neither arrows nor bayonets.

Joanne Homlish and I walked out and stood twenty feet behind the Land Cruiser. She studied the truck and nodded her head. “Yes. Same shape, same rust, same color. No doubt about it. Either this is the truck or it's got a twin.”

I walked with her back to the house. “Do you remember the make of the SUV, or the license plate number?”

She shook her head. “I saw your license plate clear enough just now, but like I told the police, the license
plate on the truck I followed looked as though it was splashed with mud, like the truck had gone through a mud puddle or something. And as far as the make of the truck goes, I have to admit I don't know one make from another these days. When I was growing up, I knew which ones were which because they all looked different; but nowadays they all look the same.”

“I have the same problem.” Joshua and Diana were walking toward us, so I lowered my voice and said, “The day before yesterday someone shot Abigail Highsmith. She's in a hospital in Boston. I haven't heard any reports about her condition today.”

“Good heavens! I haven't been off the place for a couple of days so I hadn't heard. Do they know who did it?” She suddenly had a thought and looked hard at me.

“It wasn't me,” I said, reading her mind. “The kids and I were building the rope bridge when it happened. But I thought you should know because whoever did it might be the person who drove Mrs. Highsmith into the ditch, and there's a chance he might find out that you saw the accident.”

She paled slightly, then pulled herself together. “You mean he might try to intimidate me . . . or worse?”

“I doubt it, but it's possible. You should be a little more careful than usual.”

“Than today, for instance?” Her smile was small and hard.

I hadn't thought of that. “Yes,” I said. “Than today.”

“My husband will be coming in from the east field for lunch. I'll give him the news. Meanwhile, I'll get his duck gun out of the closet.”

“Do you know how to use a gun?”

“What do you think?”

She reminded me of one of those pioneer women
crossing the plains in a covered wagon. “I just wanted to be sure,” I said.

“Pa.”

I turned and looked down. “What, Diana?”

“Look. I found this in a nest and brought it here to the lady.” She held up her little hand and showed us a brown egg.

“Why, thank you, honey,” said Mrs. Homlish, taking the egg. “Did you see any others?”

“No, but we saw some hens and a rooster behind the barn.”

“And we saw the pig in his pen,” added Joshua.

Ham and eggs, I thought, but didn't say.

Joanne Homlish glanced at the sun. “Before you leave, maybe we should all have some cookies and cold milk. How does that sound?”

It sounded fine to Joshua and Diana, so we went in, and I saw that the house was as neat inside as out. Joanne Homlish liked things Bristol fashion. We sat around the table in her white kitchen and she gave us homemade chocolate chip cookies and cold glasses of milk. Delish.

After we had thanked her and said good-bye, and were driving away, Joshua said, “She's a nice lady, Pa. I didn't know she was a friend of ours.”

“Pa.”

“What, Diana?”

“Can we get some chickens?”

“I don't think so.”

“How about a pig?”

“No. Definitely not a pig.”

“Why not?”

“Because we don't live on a farm. You can have pigs and chickens if you live on a farm, but we don't.”

“Let's buy one!”

“I don't have enough money to buy a farm.”

“Can we have a dog? You don't have to live on a farm to have a dog.”

I should have seen that coming, but I hadn't. “No. No dogs. You have a computer and we have cats. I don't want any dog.”

“Because they're slaves and you don't approve of slaves?”

Joshua had clearly remembered my anti-dog argument, voiced whenever the subject of a dog had come up in the past.

“That's right.”

“And because their owners are slaves too?”

It was the other half of my argument.

“Right again. Now that's the end of the dog talk.”

“Pa.”

“What?”

“Can we go to the beach?”

“Yes, we can, but I have to make one stop first.”

The stop was at the West Tisbury police station, where I learned that Deputy Victoria Trumbull was not in, but was probably at home, gardening. I drove to her house, and there she was. Victoria, at ninety-two, was the oldest police deputy I had ever heard of. She was also sharp as a tack and seemed to remember everything she'd ever seen or heard during her long Vineyard life; certainly she knew more about the island than I would ever know. I asked her whether Joanne Homlish was an honest woman.

Victoria looked up at me with her ancient eyes, and a small smile lifted the corners of her mouth.

“You looking for a dishonest one, J.W.?”

“I might have done that when I was a lot younger, but not now.”

“I'm glad to hear it. To answer your question, Joanne is straight as a gun barrel.”

I thanked her, and the kids and I went home, changed into our swimming suits, and headed for the beach. On the way I wondered why honest Joanne was sticking to her story that the SUV that had driven Abigail Highsmith into the ditch looked just like mine, when I knew I'd never seen another such ancient Land Cruiser anywhere in my island travels.

Everywhere I drove I watched for following cars but saw only the normal kind.

I had been thinking about the Highsmiths' employees, Nathan and Wilma Shelkrott, and their visit to the hospital, so after we got home from the beach and had showered and changed into dry clothes, I drove with the kids back downtown to the library on North Water Street. It's a brick Carnegie library that has been expanded over the years.

It pleased me to know that in an age of computers the library still needed more space, and it pleased me still more to know that my children, in spite of the usefulness and pleasures of our computer at home, had, like me, a love of books that made a visit to a library a joy and a comfort. For there are few better feelings than to sit surrounded by books, knowing that you can never read them all no matter how hard you try. Ten thousand computer screens could never provide so warm a feeling.

And, of course, librarians are also book people who, unlike many public employees, actually like helping customers. In this case, the first one we met smiled at us and said, “Three Jacksons in a clump! To what do we owe this pleasure?”

“These two will want to have a look at the kids' books,” I said, “and I want to look at some of your
Gazette
s and
Times
. The ones carrying the stories about the teenage girl who drowned up at Great Rock.”

She looked at Joshua and Diana. “You know where to go.”

They did and went there.

“You find a seat, J.W., and I'll find the papers.”

I did and she did.

Vineyard papers don't like to dwell on the darker episodes of island life, preferring to emphasize stories that won't drive summer people away. Drownings, like moped and bicycle fatalities, are usually one-issue stories accompanied by warnings about riptides or untrained riders. Such was the case of the Willet drowning. I'd read the stories when they'd come out, but hadn't given them much attention, having only the feelings of sadness and repressed anger that usually attend the needless death of a young person who perishes because of carelessness or rashness. Now, though, I read the stories carefully.

Heather Willet had been fifteen years old and, being a prep school girl, had started her summer holiday on the island with her mother while public school students were still at their studies. A dozen prep school friends had been partying at the beach, and Heather and some others had gone for a swim as darkness fell. After a time her friends noticed that she was missing and had begun looking for her. The police had been called and about midnight her body had been found just off the rocky shore to the east, where the rising tide had carried it. The body had shown evidence of trauma consistent with contact with the rough shore, but death was due to drowning.

Her father, who worked in New Haven and normally joined his family only on weekends, had expressed outrage and grief and the hope that other young people would learn a lesson from the tragedy and never let friends swim alone or unattended. Her friends at the beach party, many of whom were fellow students at St. James Manor, were filled with sorrow. A girl named Tiffany Brown was quoted: Heather had
been carefree and full of life, a pretty and popular figure at St. James, a friend who would be greatly missed and never forgotten. It was a view voiced by all others at the party.

The police were circumspect but the reporters wrote of evidence of drinking and possibly drugs at the party site. The investigation of the accident would continue.

It was the sort of story that appeared regularly in newspapers: an early-summer party gone bad. Had Heather Willet not gone for that swim, or had a friend been with her, there would have been no story. The party participants would have gone home, sobered up, and started planning the next good time.

I went through the stories again. The party hotline was normally busy from June to Labor Day. Cell phones made private parties into public ones and small parties into giant ones. Loud music, alcohol, and chemical additives were usual entertainments, and sensual pleasures were so common that a popular island joke held that prostitutes couldn't make a living on the Vineyard because there was so much free sex available, especially during the summer.

But the beach party where Heather Willit had drowned had been both small and private, perhaps because it took place fairly early in the season, before a lot of young people came to the island for sun, sand, sex, and, perhaps, jobs.

I reread the lines suggesting the possible presence of alcohol and drugs. Nothing specific was said, but the inference was clear. No shock there, though, since only the students and their parents might feign surprise at such news.

There was no inference of sexual activity at the party. Maybe the lovers, if there were any there, shared my own view that a sandy crotch did little to encourage passion,
the famous beach scene in
From Here to Eternity
notwithstanding.

On the other hand, youthful hormones being what they are, and beach blanket romance being a grand tradition, I wondered whether the evening swimmers had really all gone off to swim. There was no way to know from the articles.

Armed with the information in the stories, I thought about Nathan and Wilma Shelkrott. The stress that had sent Nathan Shelkrott to the hospital with heart problems was understandable considering the violence that had overtaken his employers, but Wilma Shelkrott had also tied Nathan's stress to the drowning of the Willet girl. Why?

I left my chair and found an island phone book. There were dozens of Browns. Too many for me to handle right now, but I could narrow the list later.

I went to the stacks and found the latest
Who's Who
. Just out of curiosity, I looked for my name. I was not there, as usual. But Jasper Jernigan was. I went back to my chair and read about him. The entry, like most, was brief, so, screwing my courage to the sticking point, I went to the library's computer, got on the Internet, and boldly punched in Jasper's name. Lo! a longer biography appeared. Joshua and Diana would be proud of their father!

There was no explanation about why Jasper's parents had given him such a name, but there was a good deal of information about Jasper himself. He had been born to a father who had done well in Florida real estate, and he had from childhood been enamored with golf. Since he could afford to play often, he did. After college he had begun building golf courses and had made a lot of money. Golf was his obsession and he was famous for his ambition to build bigger and better courses around the
world. He was a member of private clubs on five continents and on the board of many corporations. He had married Helen Collins and was stepfather to her two children, who attended the prestigious Tuttle School, of which their mother was a graduate. The Jernigans' principal residency was in Naples, Florida, but he also had homes in Aspen, New York, Monterey, and on Nantucket. His hobby was golf.

The biography understandably contained no reference to Jasper's enemies or to Gabe Fuller, and when I looked for Gabe elsewhere on the Internet he, like me, was not listed. I looked for the two Highsmiths and they were there.

I wondered if Jasper and Henry Highsmith had ever clashed other than in letters to the editors. Had they ever wrestled in the fish market, for instance? Did either of them even know what the other looked like? Had some hired hand of Jasper's killed Henry to weaken opposition to the boss's Pin Oaks proposal? What had Dom Agganis learned when he interviewed Jasper and Gabe?