Dead in Vineyard Sand (15 page)

“Is your husband home?” I asked. “I want to talk with him too.”

She seemed to want to wring her hands, but didn't. “I believe he's in the garage. I'll call him.”

I shook my head and held my smile. “Before you do that, perhaps I can have a few words with you, if you don't mind.”

Her eyes were unhappy. “I can't imagine how I can help you. All I can tell you is what I told the other officers who were here.”

I tried to seem comforting. “Sometimes when we go over information again we get a detail that we overlooked before.” I pulled a ballpoint pen and small notebook from my pocket, and flipped through a few pages. “Now, just to review the facts, how long have you and your husband been working for the Highsmiths and what duties have you performed for them?”

Wilma Shelkrott had answered that one before, and had no trouble repeating herself. They had come to work for the two Doctors Highsmith shortly after Mrs. Highsmith had given birth to Gregory, sixteen years before, and the young parents had realized that they would need help if they were both to progress in their academic careers, particularly since Abigail Highsmith had a long commute from New Haven to Providence, where she aspired to promotion at Brown.

Wilma attended to housework and child care, and Nathan cared for the house and grounds and the automobiles, and opened and closed the summer house before and after the season. She and her husband had, she said, always had excellent relations with the parents. What happened to the Highsmiths was terrible, simply terrible!

“How are the children doing?” I asked.

The furrows in her forehead deepened. “Their uncle Tom Brundy is with them here while his wife—that's Mrs. Highsmith's sister—is up in Boston with Mrs. Highsmith.”

“How is Mrs. Highsmith?”

“We haven't heard since last night. There were no changes. Mrs. Brundy calls every evening to give us the latest developments.”

“It must be hard on everyone.”

“Yes.”

I flipped a few pages, and looked at a new one. “I understand that your husband was recently hospitalized overnight. We're told you thought he might be having a heart attack but that his symptoms turned out to have been caused by stress. You've said that you and your husband had excellent relations with the Highsmiths; can you tell me what caused him so much anxiety?”

Her eyes held mine. “I'm afraid I really don't know.”

I looked back at her. “I think you may know more than you're telling me. At the hospital you mentioned the swimming accident at the beach. Why would your husband have been so disturbed about that? The Highsmith children were safe, after all.”

She shook her head. “I don't know what I meant. The accident had just happened and everyone was disturbed and shocked.”

“You knew the girl who drowned?”

She hesitated. “Why do you ask that?”

“She lived next door. She was about the same age as Belinda Highsmith. The children surely knew one another as summer neighbors.”

“Yes, I knew who she was. When they were younger, she used to come over to play with Gregory and Belinda once in a while.” She paused and rubbed her chin. Her eyes seemed to focus elsewhere. “Not so much the last couple of years.”

“They were at the beach party together. The Willet girl had gone off with Belinda and Gregory and another boy when she drowned.”

“Yes, I heard about that. I can't tell you anything about it. I know they weren't close friends anymore.”

“Tell me about Gregory and Belinda.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean what kind of kids are they? Do you get along with them? What are they like?”

She lifted her chin. “I took care of them from the time they were babies, but now they don't ask for my advice. I'm no psychologist, so don't ask me to analyze them. They're very close, I can tell you that.”

“They sneaked out of this house to attend the beach party.”

She stared. “Where did you hear that?”

“From one of their friends. Is it true?”

She took a deep breath. “Yes. Their parents were at a party and Nathan and I were in the house. Gregory and Belinda got out of a back window. We never knew they were gone until the police brought them home.”

“Could that have caused your husband to have an anxiety attack? Were the two of you afraid that the Highsmiths would hold you responsible for their children having escaped from your care?”

“No. No, they didn't blame us. They knew how their children could be.”

“How was that? How could they be?”

“You know: rebellious, wild, holding nothing sacred. Like teenagers are these days. Not like when I was their age.”

It was a complaint that had probably been voiced by older generations since caveman days.

I stared at her. “But you said at the hospital that your husband's condition might have been triggered by the beach party. If he wasn't stressed by fear of being reprimanded, what was it that caused his chest pains?”

She rubbed that furrowed brow. “It was just the kids. You know, just the kids doing God knows what down on the beach and the Willet girl dying because they were crazy and didn't care what happened as long as it
happened to somebody else. Nathan couldn't stand it.”

I studied her. “And now,” I said, “someone has murdered Henry Highsmith and has tried to murder Abigail Highsmith. How does Nathan feel about that? How do you feel?”

She had the look of a dead woman. “I feel like the world is ending, and so does Nathan.”

I hardened my voice. “Do you know anyone who hates the Highsmiths enough to murder them?”

Her voice came out of her mouth like a wind from a cold cave. “There's evil in the world. It's everywhere. No one is safe. No one can explain it. No one knows where it will come from next. Nothing makes any sense. I don't understand anything anymore.”

She turned away and walked out of the room.

I watched her until she was out of sight, then went outside and to the garage. I thought I heard my children's voices off to the west. They seemed to be agreeing that they'd found a trail. I hoped they wouldn't follow it.

There was a doorway beside the three closed garage doors. I entered and found myself at the foot of a stairway leading up to what I took to be an apartment. To my left was a door leading into the garages. I went through it and found myself in a woodworking area. A man was standing at a bench, painting fence pickets. He turned as I came in.

“Mr. Shelkrott?”

“Yes.”

“I'm investigating the Highsmith shootings. I've just talked with your wife and now I'd like to talk with you.”

A curtain seemed to fall over his face.

Nathan Shelkrott was a solid-looking man whom I judged to be in his sixties. He was balding and round-shouldered and was wearing a paint-spattered apron over a neat khaki shirt and trousers. His initial smile had been replaced by an expressionless mask.

“I know other investigators have been here already,” I said, trying to sound friendly, “but it's routine for people like me to come around again just in case we missed something the first time. I hope you won't mind telling me some of the things you've probably said before.”

He shook his head and put down his paintbrush. “I don't mind.”

I thought that he probably did. “Fine,” I said. “First, do you have any idea about who might want to harm the Highsmiths? It's rare to have two members of a family attacked at different times and in different places.”

He ran his tongue over his lips. “Like I told the other policemen, I don't know anybody like that. The Highsmiths didn't have any enemies.”

His eyes looked a bit too intently into mine.

“What can you tell me about Mr. and Mrs. Brundy? Was there any tension between them and the Highsmiths?”

“No! What a question! Mrs. Brundy is Mrs. Highsmith's sister! Mr. Brundy is out walking with young
Gregory and Belinda right now, and Mrs. Brundy is in Boston with Mrs. Highsmith.”

“Do you know the Brundys well?”

His gestured with an open hand. “Not really well, maybe, but for many years. The Brundys often join us for holidays. They're on the best of terms with Henry and Abigail.” He added with what seemed real anger, “I resent these questions. Why do you ask them?”

“Murder is often committed by the victim's associates, family, or friends,” I said. “Are you sure there was no bad blood between the Highsmiths and the Brundys?”

“I'm absolutely sure!” He fumbled a blue-checked kerchief out of a back pocket and wiped his forehead.

The gesture inspired me to say, “People like you and your wife, who've worked for a long time for a family, know a lot about what goes on in the household. I think you may know more than perhaps you realize you know.”

“You're not being clever,” snapped Shelkrott. “I know the saying that no man is a hero to his valet. That's what you're implying, isn't it? That the Highsmiths must have done something to bring about these shootings, and that I know what it is. Well, I don't! They didn't deserve this; they didn't!”

I pushed harder. “After the Willet girl drowned, your wife thought you might be having a heart attack and took you to the hospital. What disturbed you so much?”

He looked away, then back at me. “It was a terrible night. A young girl was dead.”

“And Gregory and Belinda had sneaked out of the house while you were supposed to be watching them, and they were at the beach when it happened.”

“Yes. And it was my fault. I'd let them trick me. I was terribly stressed.”

“Were you angry?”

“Of course I was angry.”

“At Gregory and Belinda?”

“Yes, yes, of course! But more at myself for letting them sneak out like that!”

“Do they make a habit of breaking rules?”

He became careful. “They're teenagers. All teenagers break rules.”

“Were you afraid you might lose your job?”

He was suddenly more at ease. “Of course not. Henry and Abigail knew how clever and willful their children could be. They didn't blame Wilma and me for what happened. It could have happened if they'd been home themselves. They'd already decided to send Belinda to school in Geneva this fall because they thought it would be good for both children if they were apart for a year and learned more self-discipline.”

I changed tack. “Did you ever hear anything about the Highsmiths having problems with someone where they worked?”

He shook his head. “The Highsmiths were involved very deeply in their work at their universities, and they took it seriously; but they usually laughed about the academic feuds and arguments.”

“Is it possible that some other professor might not have been so amused, but might have been really angry instead?”

He shook his head. “If so, I never heard about it. Besides, Brown and Yale are a long way from Martha's Vineyard.”

True. A murderous professor would have had to come to the island, kill Henry and bury him, then hang around several days to shoot Abigail, all without drawing attention to himself. Such a scenario seemed unlikely, but I imagined that Agganis was checking it
out. I rarely thought of possibilities that Dom hadn't considered.

I changed course again. “Tell me about the Willets. Did they socialize with the Highsmiths? They live next door and their daughter palled around with the Highsmith kids.”

The mask that had hidden his face when I'd first come in hid it again. “The Willets haven't been back since their daughter's funeral in Connecticut.”

“Yes. I'm told they're still away. Before that, though, they'd been neighbors of the Highsmiths for years, hadn't they?”

“Yes.”

“Were they and the Highsmiths friends?”

“I suppose.”

I felt a frown on my face. “You seem doubtful.”

He took a breath. “Not at all. Yes, they were friends. Their children were about the same ages and they shared the problems of young parents.”

“And the joys?”

“Yes,” he said, “I suppose so.” Then he added, “I don't know too much about children. My wife and I have none of our own.”

“But the young couples were friendly?”

“Yes, for some time. Mrs. Willet and the child would come down for the summer and Mr. Willet would join them on weekends. They had cocktails with the Highsmiths almost every week.”

“What do you mean, ‘for some time'?”

He made a slight gesture with one hand, as if pushing something invisible away from him. “The children played together, and when they got a little older, Ed Willet used to take them for rides around that meadow above his barn in that old Mitsubishi of his, teaching them how to drive in a place where they couldn't hurt
themselves or anybody or anything else. That sort of thing. The families were friendly. Then something came between them and they grew apart. The Willets suddenly didn't seem to want their daughter playing with the Highsmith children anymore, and that drove a wedge between the parents.”

“What was the problem?”

“Like I told you, I'm not an expert on children.” He frowned. “I've lost hope of ever understanding why they do what they do.”

“You must have some idea.”

“I really don't.” His hands curled into loose fists.

I studied him, then said, “The night of the beach party the Willet girl went off with the Highsmith children and a boy named Biff Collins. When they found the drowned girl, she was naked. Did the end of the friendship between the Willets and the Highsmiths have to do with sex? Did it happen about the time the children reached puberty?”

His voice was reluctant. “I guess it did.”

“Before the estrangement, did the children spend a lot of time together during the summers?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. When they were little, Heather Willet would come here and play with Gregory and Belinda. There was a path between the houses so she didn't need to get near the road; it was very safe.”