Dead in Vineyard Sand (12 page)

Henry Highsmith had been on the faculty at Yale and Abigail was at Brown. Both were tenured, both had produced notable scholarly works, his in sociology and hers in political science, and both held positions of high esteem within the halls of ivy. Neither seemed particularly controversial, but I recalled reading somewhere that academic politics could be ferocious precisely because the conflicts were so inconsequential, so maybe Henry or Abigail had intellectual enemies furious enough to commit murder. If so, Dom Agganis should be able to learn whether any of their angrier colleagues had been on the island when the Highsmiths were attacked.

Henry's grandfather, Webster Highsmith, had boxed
at Harvard as an undergraduate and had been a member of the Olympic pentathlon team before going on to prosper in dry goods. Henry, like his male ancestors, had also studied at Harvard, where he took all three of his degrees and where he had met Abigail Hatter, descendant of a famous (to other people, not to me) line of scholars, who was doing the same. Before that, he had attended St. James Manor. Like his athletic grandfather he had excelled in sports, although, unlike Webster, not in the combative ones.

The Highsmiths lived in New Haven, with her commuting to Brown. They had two children, attended the Episcopal church, and were members of various academic, social, and liberal political organizations. They enjoyed tennis, skiing, sailing, and, of course, cycling.

Their photographs showed handsome, smiling faces.

I read the entries again and learned nothing more. I thought about what I knew and didn't know, got up and went to where Joshua and Diana were reading books, asked if they'd be okay if I left to talk with somebody for a little while, received assurances that they certainly would be, and walked to the offices of the
Vineyard Gazette
to find Susan Bancroft.

The
Gazette
is a justly famous newspaper that only prints stories pertinent to the island. There is general agreement that it wouldn't mention World War III except to report the enlistment of islanders and their subsequent return from abroad. It also makes little pretense of separating its editorial opinion from its news reporting. If you read a story about mopeds or proposals for golf courses or wind farms, you have no trouble knowing where the
Gazette
stands on the issue.

Susan Bancroft was the reporter who had written the story of Heather Willet's drowning. She was one of
several Bancrofts who live on the Vineyard and a woman with whom, before I met Zee, I'd spent some quality time. In those days, she'd had another last name, but now she was a married woman. We were still on good terms in spite of our parting of ways.

I found her at her desk, pawing through a pile of papers, her specs balanced on the end of her nose.

“You look very reportorial,” I said. “Like the beautiful lady correspondents in those old black-and-white movies about the newspaper biz.”

“I start fussing around like this, trying to look busy, whenever somebody comes by,” said Susan. “Just in case it's one of my bosses or a tattletale who wants my job. You don't want it, do you?”

“Not in a million years,” I said. “Do you keep a bottle in your desk to celebrate scoops and breaking big stories?”

She peeked into a drawer and shook her head. “I guess not. Besides, scoops are pretty rare around here and the only big stories we handle don't break. They ooze on for months or years, so if I had one of those bottles it would last a lifetime. What brings you to this mecca of journalism?”

“You wrote the first story about the Willet girl who drowned up at Great Rock. You quoted a member of the beach party named Tiffany Brown. I don't know how to find her, but I'd like to talk with her.”

She arched a brow. “What about?”

I hesitated between telling and not telling. “There may be nothing to it.”

Her reporter's ears went up. “Is there a story here?”

“Not yet. Probably never.”

If she'd been a dog, her nose would have been twitching. She waved at a chair piled with papers. “Put that stuff on the floor and sit down. Tell me what's going on.”

I sat down. “Susan, I just want to talk with the girl.”

“And so you shall. But I know you, J.W. You've got some reason to want to see her. What is it?” She snapped her fingers. “Say, this doesn't have anything to do with your finding Henry Highsmith's body, does it?”

“Why do you ask that?”

She counted the reasons on her fingers: “Because Henry Highsmith is dead, because his wife has been shot, and because their kids were both at the beach party when Heather Willet drowned. That last's the tie-in, isn't it?”

“You didn't mention the Highsmith children in your story,” I said.

She made a dismissive gesture. “They weren't significant at the time.” Then she leaned forward. “But maybe they are now that both of their parents have been shot. Why do you want to talk with Tiffany Brown?”

“I was going to ask her if the Highsmith kids were at the beach that night.”

“I just told you that they were. So what if they were? What difference does that make?”

I made up my mind and I told her about Nathan Shelkrott going to the hospital and what Wilma had said to Zee. Susan listened without interruption. When I was through, we looked at each other. She had been a pretty girl when I'd dated her and was now a prettier woman. Her marriage had been as good for her as mine to Zee had been for me. She seemed more confident now, more certain of her thoughts and feelings.

“That's not a lot to go on,” she said.

“No.”

“It was a pretty casual statement, the way you tell it.”

“Yes, but it impressed Zee enough for her to remember it.”

“And it brought you here. Do you still want to talk with Tiffany Brown, or is it enough for me to tell you that Gregory and Belinda Highsmith were at the party?”

“I still want to talk with Tiffany. Something happened there that contributed to Nathan Shelkrott's tension and I'd like to know what it was. Maybe Tiffany can tell me.”

“Why are you so interested?”

“Because some people believe I may have had something to do with what's happened to the Highsmiths, and I don't like it.”

Susan studied me with wiser eyes than she'd had when we were an item, and said, “That's not the only reason, is it?”

“No.” I told her about the incident with the car.

“Ah.” She took off her glasses and tapped them lightly on her desk before she spoke. “It could be that Tiffany might not want to talk with a stranger,” she said. “But she knows me. Suppose I make an appointment to see her and take you with me. You can be my assistant or something. I'll tell her that I'm working on a follow-up story and that I'm interviewing everyone who was there—the kids, the cops, everybody.”

I thought about it for about ten seconds before I decided it was a good idea. “But I'm a little old to be your assistant,” I said.

“Who, then?”

Inspiration struck. “Make me a writer who's interested in doing a book about the tragedy. That should loosen her tongue a bit.”

Susan put on her glasses and studied me, then shook her head doubtfully. “You don't look like a writer.”

I was hurt. “What does a writer look like?”

“Well, for one thing, they don't wear shorts and
T-shirts they get from the thrift shop. Well, maybe some of them do, but not many. Anyway, what we need isn't what writers actually look like, but what people think they look like. What Tiffany and probably her parents think they look like. You don't look like that.”

“I have a polo shirt with a little animal over the pocket and I have some khaki pants. Will those duds do? I could be a writer down for the summer to write this book before I go back home to—where? Boston? New York? Fargo? Wherever writers live.” Actually, I knew where a lot of them lived: they lived on Martha's Vineyard. Martha's Vineyard has more writers than Washington, D.C., has toadies.

“All right,” said Susan. “I'll see if I can get us an appointment.”

She dug a phone book out of a desk drawer, found the number, and called. She was a very smooth talker. When she hung up, she smiled and said, “I'll pick you up tomorrow morning. We'll take my car. I've seen yours.”

That evening I made a kid-sitting deal with our neighbors the Nelsons, whose children and ours were friends, and left Joshua and Diana with them the next morning, with the understanding that I'd take their kids for the afternoon at our place. I wasn't home very long after delivering my children when Susan Bancroft's car came down our long sandy driveway. Susan and I had spent a few nights in the house during times past. It seemed long ago. She got out and looked around.

“You've spruced the place up a bit,” she said.

“The civilizing influence of a good woman,” I replied.

She smiled. “Are you implying that I wasn't a good woman?”

“You were good enough for me.”

“Has the inside been spiffed up too?”

“The bedroom's neater.”

Her smile became a grin. “I think we'd better let this dog lie right where it is. Come on. I'll take you to Chilmark.”

“A good plan.”

“When we get over the Chilmark line, keep your eye out for a driveway on the right,” said Susan, as we pulled out of the yard. “One of the mailboxes is green.”

We drove to West Tisbury and then took a right to the big oak and followed North Road toward Menemsha.
On the way Susan asked me what I knew about the Browns.

“Only that Tiffany was a classmate of Heather Willet at St. James Manor. And I only know that because you said so in your article about the drowning. The Highsmith kids were St. James students too, and their father went there.”

“What do you know about St. James?”

“Only that it's one of those premium prep schools that I can't afford, even if I wanted my kids to go there.”

“They have scholarships, J.W. Your kids could probably qualify.”

“I'm not deeply into prep schools, I'm afraid.”

“Reverse snobbery is no better than the regular kind, J.W.”

I ignored that remark and she went on to tell me that Tiffany's father was in stocks and bonds and her mother was in charitable activities, raising money from the wealthy for the poor. Their children, of whom Tiffany was the eldest, all attended St. James Manor and were on the Vineyard for the summer with their mother while their father, like many such in his economic class, joined the family for island weekends. During the off season, the Browns lived in West Haven, Connecticut, not far from where Dad kept the sloop he brought to the island every summer.

“I take it that Tiffany and her mother had no reservations about talking with you,” I said.

A brief frown crossed her face, but she said, “I was nice to them the night of the drowning and I was nice to them on the phone, so they agreed to see me again. I didn't tell them I was bringing a photographer. That's you.” She jabbed a thumb at a camera bag in the backseat. “There's an old SLR in there. I can show you how to use it.”

“I can use a camera, but I thought I was going to be a writer.”

She shook her head. “You don't look like a writer.”

“I don't look like a photographer, either.”

“Nobody looks like a photographer; not even photographers look like photographers, so it'll be okay. Just stand around and listen and take a lot of pictures. That's what photographers do: they take hundreds of pictures so they can get one good one.”

“I want to find out why Nathan Shelkrott got so stressed by the drowning at the beach.”

“Leave the questions to me. You just take pictures and keep your ears open.”

There was something odd in her tone, and I turned in my seat and looked at her. “What's the problem, Susan? Something's bothering you about the interview. What is it?”

“Am I so transparent?”

“We knew each other pretty well a long time ago.”

She nodded. “I remember. All right; the problem is that Tiffany isn't the sweetest kid I've ever met, and the same goes for some of the others who were there that night.”

“They sounded innocent as lambs in your article.”

“Do you actually know any innocent teenagers?”

“I know a few.” Not too many, actually. I hadn't been a squeaky-clean teen myself, for that matter. I'd done things I still wouldn't tell my father if he were alive.

“You can judge Tiffany for yourself.”

We crossed the town line into Chilmark, came to the green mailbox, and turned onto a narrow, bumpy dirt road. There are such roads all over Martha's Vineyard, leading off paved roads and winding through second-or third-growth forests and over hills that were bare of trees a hundred years earlier, when the island was covered
with sheep and cattle pastures instead of summer houses. The roads are often kept bumpy to discourage unnecessary traffic and usually split up into even narrower branches leading first to this house and then the next and finally to the last of them, which nowadays, increasingly often, is a new palace with a view.

The Browns, according to a small, arrow-shaped sign, lived on the second branch of the main road. We went that way and came to the house, a big, rambling farmhouse with outbuildings in back, all of which were sided with weathered cedar shingles and sported gray-painted trim. It was classic Vineyard architecture. The lawns were cut and there was none of the clutter that so often spells poverty. Everything was almost too neat, like the pictures you see in magazines about fine living. To the south there was a distant view of the Atlantic, and to the west you could see Menemsha Pond, where, perhaps, Mr. Brown moored his boat during the summer. There was a flower garden on the sunny side of the house, with a white metal umbrella table and chairs in its center.