Dead in Vineyard Sand (20 page)

“We don't have any proof of anything,” said Brundy. “We can't even send in a missing persons report because they left voluntarily.”

Gregory nodded. “We can't imagine that they killed our dad. If they did, of course we want them caught.”

His sister's shoulder leaned against his arm. “Yes,” she said softly and sadly. “We want to help find the evil people who shot poor Mom and Dad.”

“We certainly do,” said Gregory, putting his hand on his sister's arm. “Is there anything else we can tell you that might help?”

“No, but you should tell the police about the Shelkrotts. If I think of anything more, I'll give you a call.”

“Please do,” Belinda said.

But their uncle was less willing to see me again. “You've intruded on us quite enough. I want you to stay away and leave these poor mourning children alone!”

“I'm pretty set on finding out who killed their father,” I said to him. “I know more now than when I came. It's not enough but it may lead somewhere. If I learn something significant, I'll take it to the police.”

I went to my old Toyota. Behind the wheel I gave a last glance toward the house.

Brundy was frowning, Gregory's perfect face was bland, and Belinda's face reminded me of Leonardo's drawing of Saint Anne. I drove away, filled with odd feelings and impressions.

It is said that every crime involves two stories: that of the victim and that of the killer, and that if you know enough about one story, you can discover the other. Since it's common for victims to be murdered by people they know, the two stories are often interwoven before the climactic scene when they come together for the last time and the crime occurs. If there is a detective, then
there's also a third story. When his or her story meets that of the killer in a final scene, justice may be done.

I was already scanning the stories of possible killers, including the Willets, the Shelkrotts, Gabe Fuller, and Jasper Jernigan, but I still knew too little about the Highsmiths' story. I wanted to know it better, because somewhere along the line, their story and that of the killer or killers may have crossed.

I thought about what I'd just seen and heard and tried to sort out my impressions of the young Highsmiths and their uncle. Brundy, like the Shelkrotts, the only adults I'd met at the house, was totally different from the children. All three adults were angry and secretive, whereas the brother and sister seemed to share a powerful strength that shielded them from the shock of their parents' fates and let them be open and calm.

Or were they as open and free from shock as they appeared? Like many teenagers, they had something of a theatrical air, as though they were playing parts they knew well and acted out when in the presence of adults. It was a very human thing to do: play a particular role for a particular audience. Who among us shows the same face to the cop who gives him a ticket as he shows later when telling the tale to friends? Who plays the same part at work as he plays in a sweetheart's bed?

And what of Brundy and the Shelkrotts? They too had doubtless been wearing masks when they talked to me. And what of me? I had worn a few different masks myself during the past few days.

Where were the Shelkrotts, and why had they suddenly gone away?

It was not yet noon, but I felt like I'd put in a full day. I drove to Oak Bluffs, actually found a parking place on Circuit Avenue, and went to the Fireside for a burger and a Sam Adams.

The Fireside is a bit on the grungy side. It smells of illegal cigarettes and even more illegal grass, but its beer is good and it serves excellent pub grub, so it draws a good crowd from the college and young working set. I got there just before the noon rush and was finishing my lunch while the main crowd was still filing in. I wondered if any of the guys in the car to whom Olive had spoken were among today's customers. If so, they avoided giving me any angry glances.

My friend Bonzo, who sweeps and cleans and otherwise makes himself handy at the Fireside, wasn't in sight, so he couldn't ID the cycle and golfing hotheads who had duked it out the previous weekend, if any were there, and I didn't get any of the latest OB gossip. Bonzo is short on heavy thinking, thanks to a youthful experience with bad acid, but he has big ears and sharp eyes to go along with his heart of gold, and he often knows what's going on or at least what customers think is going on. I was hoping to get the latest rumors about the Highsmith shootings, but such was not to be, so I paid up and drove to John Skye's farm.

John Skye's place was off the Edgartown–West Tisbury road. He and his wife, Mattie, and their twin daughters summered there when they weren't summering in southwest Colorado, on his old family ranch near Durango. I closed down their island farm in the fall, looked after it during the winter, and opened it up again in the spring, making whatever minor repairs were needed, turning on the water, raking the lawns, airing the place out, and laying in basic supplies. Over the years, Zee and I had gotten quite close to John and Mattie.

John taught at Weststock College, north of Boston, during the winter. His current literary project was the writing of a definitive book on swordsmanship and fencing, a subject that had taken his fancy far back in his undergraduate days when he'd been a three-weapon man. His battered collegiate saber, foil, and épée were now triangulated behind his rusty mask on a wall of his library, my favorite room in his old farmhouse.

As I drove into John's yard I could see the twins, Jill and Jen, riding past the barn and corrals, headed for the bridle path in the woods beyond their far fence. They were now college women, but had been horse lovers since childhood. There has been a lot written about the love of girls for horses, but the love is a lot more certain than the arguments explaining it. Equine power, beauty, size, and speed, combined with female sexuality,
are elements in most of the theories, and I was not about to argue. What I knew for certain was that an amazing percentage of women and girls loved horses. My own Diana was already showing signs of such affection, in fact. If there was a
Tarzan and the Horse Woman
movie, she'd probably want to watch it every day.

The twins recognized the old Land Cruiser and waved but didn't stop. Why should they? They could see me anytime.

I parked in front of the house and checked things out. All seemed well and as I walked to the door, Mattie came around the corner of the house, pulling off gardening gloves. She smiled, glanced at the truck, and gave me a kiss.

“Where's Zee?”

“At home with the kids. Is John in? I'd like to talk with him.”

“I keep telling him that on a day like this he should be outside getting some exercise, but instead he's in the library staring at his computer, doing research for that book of his.” She became conspiratorial. “Do me a favor and take him for a walk while you talk. Can you do that?”

“I can try.”

John, in fact, was ready for a walk. “You could spend forever on the damned Internet! Ruin your eyes! I can use a break. Let me get my stick.”

He found a floppy hat and the crooked walking stick he favored when he strolled the island's many trails, and we set out, walking in the direction his daughters had taken earlier.

“They used to call a walk like this a constitutional,” he said. “Maybe they still do. Good for what ails you, whatever it's called.”

“How's the book coming?”

“The research is fun. I'm still trying to outline the book itself. People have been using swords for war and sport for a long time, so there's a lot of information and I need to organize it in a way that makes it easy to get at. I hate these damned tomes that have information that you can't find without a research assistant.”

“I thought the first requirement of scholarship was the love of drudgery.”

He threw me a smile. “Well, there's something to that. Digging around in dusty old boxes and books has a certain appeal. But I don't see any point in writing a definitive work that's hard to read if I can write one that's easy.”

“So it's still going to be the definitive work, eh?”

“Absolutely.”

John had actually already written one definitive work: a new annotated translation of
Gawain and the Green Knight
. It hadn't earned him much money, but it had been well received in the learned journals. What he really wanted, he said, was for people to read the wonderful poem, but it was looking increasingly doubtful that even his fine translation was going to lead thousands of new readers into the delights of Arthurian romance.

So things go in the academic writing game.

We passed through the gate that divided his land from the bridle path that led through the forest beyond. Above us, thin white clouds were floating east across a pale blue sky and at our feet were the tracks of the twins' horses.

“Fine day,” said John. “What brings you here when you could just as easily be fishing? Come to think of it, why am I here when I could just as easily be fishing?”

“Mattie might suggest that you could as easily be doing a little weeding in the garden.”

“She's probably right, but one of the advantages of being an official intellectual is that we get credit for just thinking about things; we don't actually have to do them. I've offered that argument to Mattie a number of times over the years when she points out that there's work to be done.”

“And how does she take it?”

“Not well at all, I must admit. But you're not here to discuss escaping from chores.”

“No. A while back you said something about Henry Highsmith being married to a Hatter, and that the Hatters were famous for being wacky. I'd like to hear more about that.”

“Are you involved in that case? I thought you promised Zee to stay out of trouble.”

“I'm not in trouble.”

“I know you had that little wrestling match with Henry just days before he was killed, and that you were one of the people who found the body. And now you're nosing around trying to find out who killed him. If you're not in trouble, it sounds like you're trying to be.”

“Some people think I did him in. I didn't, but I'd like to prove it.”

“Do you really care what people think?”

“Not as much as some people, but I think that ‘decent respect for the opinions of mankind' idea is a pretty good one. Besides, I have a wife and kids who might catch grief because of what people think about me. If I was a hermit, things might be different.”

He grunted assent. “Donne was right about none of us being islands. So you want to know something about the Highsmiths that might point you to whoever killed him and shot her, eh? Why don't you tell me what you know, so I don't cover the same ground all over again.”

So I did that, telling him again what had happened
in the fish market and then what had happened on the golf course, and what I'd done since: where I'd gone and whom I'd seen and what I'd heard and read. As I spoke, I tried to listen to what I was saying as if the words were coming from someone I didn't know and concerned a subject about which I knew little or nothing. I tried to detect false notes, errant reasoning, confusions between facts and guesswork, between truth and desire, between conviction and suspicion.

John kept silent and when I was done he said, “You told me that you went online and looked up the Highsmiths. My impression is that you paid more attention to Henry than to Abigail. Is that right?”

I thought back. “Yes. I was looking for anything that might suggest that he was a controversial character who could have enemies. Academic ones, maybe, or some ongoing feud with some person or group. But I didn't find anything. When I looked at Abigail's entry, I didn't see anything there, either. But you say she was a Hatter. What are you getting at?”

He waved his crooked walking stick. “The Highsmiths are both well known in the academic world. Henry wasn't the first of his people to go to Harvard, but his grandfather and father were businessmen, not scholars. Henry was the first of his family to make his name in university circles. Henry has—had—the reputation of being a brilliant guy who lived a very conservative and traditional private life, who taught tough, very traditional classes, but who supported liberal causes.”

“Like opposing another golf course on the Vineyard, and advocating bicycles instead of SUVs.”

“Like that. A personal and professional conservative but a public liberal. His critics might have said he should make up his mind, but he didn't need to. His
father and grandfather were the same way. It was in the blood. In any case, there was nothing that I know about Henry Highsmith that made him a logical target for murder.” John batted a small rock off the bridle path, using his stick as a golf club.

“I figure that a golf zealot might have done it.”

He nodded. “Zealot is the key word there. Fanatics don't need logical reasons to do what they do. Maybe a golf fanatic did shoot him then bury him in the place he'd have most hated being buried. It's crazy, but it's possible. Did you ever meet Abigail Highsmith?”

“No.”

“I've seen her at a convention or two. An astonishingly beautiful woman. One of those people who seems to walk on air, with her feet not quite touching the ground. A woman you might be afraid to touch for fear that she was made of mist and your hand would go right through.” He glanced at me. “She looks like a faery's child.”

I said nothing, but found myself again seeing Belinda Highsmith, holding tight to her brother's arm and gazing at me with those haunting eyes and that Saint Anne smile.

“Of course,” said John, “Abigail is actually anything but ethereal. She's a very strong, very physically fit woman, very bright, very ambitious, very driven. She's personable and can be charming, but she runs a tight ship.”

“As her husband did.”