Dead in Vineyard Sand (26 page)

“Or they might have shot them both. If Abigail lives, it'll
be interesting to learn if she saw the shooter. A lot could depend on that, if this comes to trial.”

“If she'll tell the truth,” said Dom. “If she does that and if we find the pistol, we'll probably have a case. If we don't, we might not.”

I left him there to deal with arriving policemen and walked down to the Willets' place.

The big barn door was open and the old yellow Mitsubishi was already on the trailer. Olive Otero and the two Chilmark policemen were in the house. I went in carefully, so as not to disturb anything. A lot of crime scenes are contaminated by the people investigating them, and I didn't want to be one of them. I didn't see anything different than I'd seen during my earlier, illegal entry, so I went out again and waited in the afternoon sun, feeling weary.

After some time, Olive came out, carrying an evidence bag. In the past, she wouldn't have given me the time of day, but this time she said, “Twenty-two Colt Woodsman and a couple of boxes of shells, one half empty. Smells like it's been fired recently. Looks wiped to me, but the lab will know. May be something on the magazine.”

Could be. More than one not-so-clever shootist has wiped his prints off the murder weapon but has forgotten that he's left prints on the magazine. In any case, things seemed to be falling into place for the police.

Too late for Heather Willet and for Henry Highsmith, of course; too late for all of the Highsmiths, for that matter, and for the Shelkrotts too, if my fears about their fate were confirmed. And too late, too, for Tom Brundy. The world could be a dark place.

But I was wrong about Brundy. He came walking out of the woods while Dom Agganis was talking with the
cops who were accumulating on the scene, and was first curious, then angry, then astonished, then aghast, and then in a state of near collapse, when he heard what Dom had to say.

I was relieved and surprised that he was still alive, but suspected that he wouldn't have survived too much longer if we hadn't showed up. Gregory and Belinda had, I thought, killed so many people already that one more would mean nothing to them.

That was yet to be proved in court, of course. They were very young and very sly and they had a lot of money. Circumstantial evidence might get them into a courtroom, but that evidence might be more impressive to me than to a jury. And even if the evidence was persuasive, there was their youth, especially Belinda's, to be taken into consideration, and there was always an insanity plea, for which they might well be qualified. All in all, I had my doubts that Gregory and Belinda would spend much time in the gray bar hotel. A better bet was that they'd be put into a comfortable hospital from which they stood a good chance of being released at age twenty-one.

The prospect did not please me, because it meant that I'd be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life in case they came calling.

I wondered if the police would now look back farther into their lives and discover other unsolved killings that had occurred near Highsmith territory; the death of a playmate, for example, or of a neighbor's child. Would they learn that Gregory enjoyed pulling the wings off flies, or that Belinda's kitten had been found strangled, hanging from a tree?

Or had the killing begun with Heather Willet and then accelerated from there? And if so, could anyone ever prove it?

Was I right to suspect that Henry and Abigail Highsmith's plan to separate their children, to send Belinda to that special school in Switzerland, had led the kids to wish their parents dead? Was parental disapproval of their incestuous love enough motive for murder? Or did Gregory and Belinda have more powerful urges? What was it that Gregory had said to me only two days earlier: that all it takes is a sudden impulse? Were they merely the latest Mad Hatters? If so, their madness, like most, would be easier to describe than to explain. I foresaw dueling psychologists in any Highsmith trial to come.

One thing only was certain: the Highsmiths had been an unhappy family, and Tolstoy had been right as usual when he wrote that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own fashion.

I was tired of being there, and got a Chilmark cop to give me a ride back to the state police barracks, where my truck was parked. He was talkative all the way, and was eager to be back at the Highsmith place so he could watch when the divers and the crane started work at the stone quarry. It was the most exciting day he'd had since joining the force. As soon as he let me out, he sped away, heading back up-island.

It wouldn't be long before there would be reporters on the scene, so I used the cell phone in the truck to call Susan Bancroft and make sure she'd be among the first. “Just keep your tipster's name to yourself,” I said.

“My lips are sealed,” she replied. “Thanks. I'm on my way!”

I drove home, taking my time. When I got there, I made myself a drink and climbed up to the balcony. I looked across the garden to Sengekontacket Pond and saw three swans swimming in a mini-flotilla. Beyond the pond, sunbathers were still leaving the barrier beach
and heading home. Beyond them, on the blue waters of Nantucket Sound, sails were leaning across the wind.

I switched my gaze to the tree house and the almost completed rope bridge. I could probably finish that in half a day. I sipped my drink and wished my family were with me. No matter, they'd be home soon. When my glass was empty, I went down to the kitchen and began to put supper together. Zee and the kids would have a lot to tell me about their day in the big city, and I wanted to hear it all.

Three days later Olive Otero came by to pick up the video. By then, Joshua and Diana and five or six of their very best friends had spent considerable time scrambling around the tree house and the completed rope bridge to the oak tree, and had pronounced them good. Their next plan was for me to build a collapsible bamboo shower so they could swing on a rope and kick it over onto an attacking leopard man just like Boy did in the movie. All they really lacked was some actual or pretend leopard men to fight. I said I didn't think I was going to build a bamboo shower, and I didn't think that any of them should be leopard men because someone was sure to get hurt.

Olive Otero was also very impressed with the tree house and bridge, and to my slight surprise accepted Diana's invitation to come up and see things firsthand. She sat in the tree house, climbed around in the tree, crossed the rope bridge, and finally swung down to the ground using the rope hung for that purpose.

“Excellent,” she said, puffing slightly. “Give me blond hair and a couple of weeks to get my vine-swinging muscles in shape, and I'll be ready to be Jane.”

“You're welcome any time,” said Zee, handing her the video she'd held while Olive went aloft.

“I'll begin my training at home this afternoon by having a beer and watching this movie,” said Olive, tucking the video into her purse. “I was just a kid when
I saw it on the late, late show, but I remember that it was great and made me want to go live in Africa. Speaking of kids, yours are a pair of lively ones. Nice too.”

“We like them,” said Zee, “so we're going to keep them.”

“What's the latest in the Highsmith business?” I asked. “We've read what the papers have had to say, but that's all we know.”

“I kind of expected you to show up at the station and keep your nose in the case,” said Olive.

“No,” I said. “I'm done with it. But I'm interested in the aftermath.”

“If you're looking for a happy ending, don't hold your breath,” said Olive. “Well, you know that Abigail Highsmith is out of intensive care, and that they found Henry Highsmith's bike in the quarry along with the Shelkrotts inside their car. The ME hasn't made it official yet, but I can tell you they'd both been shot by a small-caliber gun. Our guess is that it's the Colt Woodsman we found in the Willet house and that it's the same gun that killed Highsmith, but the lab people will let us know for sure.”

“Any prints on the gun?”

“Officially, no comment; unofficially, there are some on the magazine.”

“Whose?”

“Willet's and some others.”

“The kids'?”

She shrugged. “I hope so. It would make things simpler.”

“The kids still in jail?”

“Oh, no,” said Olive. “Out on bail. They were only in for assaulting a police officer. That's not enough to keep anybody in jail.”

It is a common complaint among police that the
perps they put in jail are often back on the street before the cops get back to the station. It's one reason that some cops get cynical; the real wonder is that more of them aren't.

“Will they be charged with murder?” I asked.

“Who knows? That's up to the DA. My guess is that they will be, because it's a high-profile case and the DA is ambitious. It'll depend on what the lab tells us, I think, although there may be enough circumstantial evidence to bring charges.”

“Any prints in the Mitsubishi?”

“Plenty, but they don't mean much because the kids learned to drive in it. However,” Olive raised a faux-theatrical forefinger, “there is a development that you haven't read about yet: they found blood residue in the back of the Mitsubishi. You couldn't see it with the naked eye because somebody worked hard to scrub it away, but the lab people used fluorescein and came up with latent bloodstains. Now they're doing a DNA comparison with Henry Highsmith's blood. If there's a match, the DA is probably in business.” Olive looked at her watch. “Well, I gotta go. I'm looking forward to seeing Tarzan again. One of the nice things about this movie, as I recall, is that justice triumphed in the end. I like that.”

She drove away.

“An ugly business,” said Zee.

“We'll see how it turns out,” I said.

We looked at our children climbing through the branches of the big beech tree, testing their balance and their grip on small limbs while we kept our tongues from continually warning them to be careful. I wondered if the Highsmith children had ever been so innocent and then had a moment when I wondered if my own children were as innocent as they looked.

I knew of no Mad Jacksons or of madmen or -women among Zee's Azorean ancestors, but who could say if that made any difference? Would Zee's nurture and mine define Joshua's and Diana's future, or had nature already created their destinies? Would they be tigers or lambs?

I wished, not for the first time, that I believed in a cosmos that had meaning, wherein all things were purposeful even though I might not understand that purpose.

But I didn't. What I had instead was a universe that was beautiful and vast and full of wonder, wherein I could feel awe and hope and love, if not meaning. That would have to be enough, and it usually was.

A couple of days later, Olive Otero drove into the yard and returned
Tarzan and the Leopard Woman.

“Well,” I said, “how was it?”

“Great,” said Olive, “but to tell you the truth, it wasn't quite as great as I remembered it as being.” She smiled. “But then, that's probably true about a lot of memories. Just as well, I imagine.”

“I think you're right. Care for a beer?”

“I don't mind if I do,” said Olive.

In late July, the district attorney, armed with forensic evidence, charged Gregory and Belinda Highsmith with multiple murders, including patricide.

About the same time I got a call from Glen Norton, who by then had gotten over his shakes and was back to hacking his way around Waterwoods.

“You see that damned letter in the
Times
yesterday?” Glen shouted in my ear. “Who the hell is that guy to say that stuff about Pin Oaks? People like that ought to live at the North Pole instead of America if they don't like golf courses! I'll bet the SOB is one of those blasted bike riders too!”

“I saw the letter,” I said, “but I don't know if the guy rides a bike.”

“Say, what I'm calling about is that Jasper and Gabe are coming over this weekend for a game. We need a fourth. You interested?”

Everything changes; nothing changes.

“Sure,” I said. “Why not? Zee's been telling me that I need to get more exercise.”

“I don't know how much exercise you'll get. You'll be riding a cart.”

“I won't tell her that part,” I said.

J.W. and Zee cook these dishes for breakfast, but they're delish any time of day!

LOBSTER, CROISSANTS, AND CHAMPAGNE

The name says it all. J.W. and Zee have this once or twice a year and it's always a success.

One 1
¹
/
₂
-lb. lobster per person

As many croissants as the breakfasters can eat

As much champagne as people want to drink

Boil the lobsters. When done, use shears to cut open the bodies, legs, and claws and serve the lobsters with croissants, champagne, and lots of melted butter, napkins, and paper towels. Lobster bibs are recommended if you're eating in anything but your bathing suit or in nothing at all.

ASPARAGUS PIE

Filling:

1 c. shredded mild cheddar cheese (preferably white)

¹
/
₂
c. good mayonnaise

1 tsp. lemon juice

1
¹
/
₂
c. asparagus (cooked to crisp-tender and cut into bite-size pieces)

Slivered almonds

Crust:

1 c. flour

2 tsps. baking powder

¹
/
₄
tsp. salt

¹
/
₄
c. vegetable shortening (such as Crisco)

¹
/
₂
c. cold milk

Dijon mustard