Death on a Vineyard Beach (16 page)

The next morning the first thing I did after breakfast was put aluminum sulfate on my new hydrangea bush. Two ounces mixed with a couple of gallons of water every couple of weeks was going to turn its flowers into the deep blue color that I prefer hydrangeas to be. Or so the aluminum sulfate package said.

Zee had gone off to work, leaving her pistol at home. She had met my objections to this idea by explaining, one, that she didn't like the lump it made in the waistband of her uniform; two, that she wasn't going to wear sloppier uniforms just so her hardware didn't show; and three, that just because it seemed that she was a natural pistoleer who could pop targets with either hand, she still had no intention of shooting any human beings, not even hooded hoods from Boston.

I was putting away my watering can when the phone rang. For not the first time I wondered if I might not be smart to get one of those portable phones you can take out to the garden with you. I made the run to the house. It was Toni Begay.

“Hi,” she said. “You wanted to meet my mom. Well, today's the day, if you're free. We're going for a walk together after lunch. My uncle Bill will be there, too. As a matter of fact, why don't you come up before noon, and we'll have lunch together?”

“I'll bring the beer. Eleven-thirty or so?”

“See you then.”

I wondered if I should take my old police revolver with me. The idea made me feel silly, but if I really thought Zee should carry, maybe I should do it myself. I ended up putting the gun into a paper bag, and putting the bag under the seat of the Land Cruiser. While I drove to Al's Package Store for a couple of sixes of Molson, then went on up to Gay Head, I thought about the Marcus case.

There is an operating principle in criminal affairs: Often the person you think is the most likely suspect actually did it. Not always, but often enough. Thus, experience has taught cops to always look first at friends and family when somebody gets beat up or robbed or raped or killed. They know that the most dangerous people in our lives are not strangers or muggers or hired killers or professional criminals; they're the people we live with or hang around with. The people we most trust.

Once they know that kin and comrades aren't the bad guys, cops look at the next most obvious suspects: avowed enemies of the victim. If someone says he's going to kill you, and then you end up dead, the cops are going to want to talk to the guy who threatened to do the job.

Thus, it was logical for me to talk with Linda Vanderbeck, who was apparently open in her hostility to Marcus. And even if it turned out that Linda had nothing to do with the shooting, it was a pretty sure thing that she had allies who might be even madder than she was, and who actually might have done the deed. Through her, I might find the actual shootist.

Probably not.

But maybe.

Before meeting her, though, I'd stop at the Marcus estate, and ask the inheritance question.

Turning into Marcus's driveway, I was impressed once again by how innocuous an entrance it was to so palatial an estate. No one who didn't know where the driveway eventually led could guess the truth from the narrow lane and battered Gubatose mailbox. Nifty.

Many of the island's largest houses lay at the ends of such nondescript roads, and their owners, who like Luciano Marcus placed high value on privacy, made sure that their
driveways were never improved enough to catch the eyes of tour bus drivers or vacationers curious about the lives of the rich and famous. On Martha's Vineyard, the rich and famous preferred to be unseen, except by each other.

I drove up to the house past a groundskeeper who this time looked at me without a frown before taking his transmitter from his pocket and notifying the house of my impending arrival.

Thomas Decker met me at the door and took me up to the veranda, where Luciano Marcus put aside his book and rose to meet me.

“You have news, Mr. Jackson?”

“Not much, but it's interesting.” I told him about the shotgun having been stolen from John Dings, and of my visit with his wife.

He listened, expressionless, then said: “So the gun was an island gun. What do you make of that?”

“It makes it more likely that there's an island connection. It also makes it more important that you get a professional investigator to work here on the Vineyard.”

“You may be right,” he agreed. “If I decide to do that, I'll let you know. Meanwhile, what can I do for you?”

I thought he knew what he could do for me. “May I be frank?”

“I prefer it.”

“All right.” I went over the theory that family, friends, and announced enemies are usually the causes of our troubles, and that family came first, because even if you didn't have any friends, you almost always had family. “And what I really want to know,” I concluded, “is who profits if something happens to you. Who benefits.”

He gave a small smile. “Yeah. That cherchez la loot bit. Thomas told me about that. That's cute. I never heard that one before.”

“The old money trail theory,” I said.

He nodded. “And you want to know who'd get rich if I get dead.”

“Yes.”

“Like Thomas here.”

I looked at Decker. “Maybe. I don't know. Is Thomas
going to inherit enough to make him want you dead? But I'll tell you: I might make an exception for Thomas. I saw how he acted in Boston. I don't think he would have tried to get between you and the shooter if he'd been the one who hired him for the job.”

A thin smile flickered across Decker's face. “Thanks. I think.”

I kept looking at him. “Of course, you might have just been pretending to get in front of the shotgun. Maybe you were going to wait until the kid took out Luciano and then you were going to take out the kid so he couldn't finger you as the mastermind.”

Decker's little smile got smaller. “What a clever guy I am to have thought of that. Who would have suspected me?”

“Afterward, probably nobody. Since the shootist messed up, I'll bet that it crossed your boss's mind. I know it crossed mine.”

“A rather Byzantine theory, Mr. Jackson.” Decker didn't look at Marcus.

“Too Byzantine for me,” I said. “My experience with crime is that it's usually pretty straightforward. Somebody wants you hurt, they hurt you right then and there with whatever's available for the job. If he thinks far enough ahead to hire somebody to do the job for him, he stays well away precisely because he doesn't want anybody to know he's involved. As far as I'm concerned, Thomas, you're pretty low on my suspects list. And I don't even know if you're in the will.”

“I'm greatly relieved,” said Decker, his eyes hard.

“While you're feeling relieved, you should feel relieved that the guy with the gun was an amateur. A pro would have dropped you first, then dropped Luciano after there was nobody around who could shoot back.”

I turned back to Luciano Marcus. “What about the other people who work here? Do you trust them all? Do any of them have a reason to want revenge? Disgruntled employees have been doing a lot of killing lately. Have you fired anybody recently, for example? Have there been any disputes over work or wages or anything like that? What about
Vinnie, for instance? Could he have been in on this business in Boston?”

Marcus raised his hands. “Come over and sit down, and we'll have some coffee. Thomas and I have gone over all this. We'll tell you whatever we can.” He gave Decker a quick look. “Come on, Thomas. Sit down. I think J. W. here was only, like he said, being frank.”

“Yeah,” said Decker, and I saw that the ice was still in his eyes. I decided that I would not like to go up against him. He was too cool, too professional, not quite as human as I prefer people to be.

Priscilla brought coffee, and Marcus and Decker discussed the staff person by person. Priscilla, her husband, Jonas, Decker, and two of the groundskeepers had been with Marcus for years. The other groundskeepers were islanders who had been employed when the estate was first built, and who went back to their houses when their daily duties were ended. Marcus paid well, and there were no known hostile feelings among the staff.

When they were finished with the staff, they both paused. I pushed on: “What about family? I've seen the file on your businesses. Somebody's going to inherit a lot of money when you die, Luciano.”

Luciano tried a joke: “You can talk this way to me and Thomas about family, but don't you try it with Angela! She won't stand for people to think bad things about the family! She'll hit you with a cabbage!” He put a smile on his face.

“Maybe we could start with Vinnie,” I said. “He's staff, too, as well as family.”

The smile left the old man's face as he spoke of Vinnie. Vinnie was Luciano's oldest grandson, his daughter's eldest, a personable, good-looking lad who loved and was brilliant with cars, was fond of girls and spending money, but, frankly speaking, probably not destined for work requiring lofty intellectual accomplishment.

“Not a bad boy,” said Marcus. He paused and looked at Decker. “Wouldn't you agree, Thomas?”

Decker looked back at him and then at me. “Luciano has influence with UMass Boston, and got Vinnie admitted there. Vinnie was a party guy, and flunked out after one
semester. Then he met people outside of college, and began to make his mother unhappy, so Luciano brought him down here. To separate him from those, ah, companions, you understand. He's not what you call happier here, but he's out of trouble and he has fun when the college girls come home for the summer.”

“What sort of things did he do that made his mother unhappy?” I asked.

Decker made a small gesture. “The sort of things young guys do when they have time on their hands. Misdemeanors. Nothing serious.” He paused and I waited. He looked at Luciano and shrugged. “Vinnie always needs more money than he has, so he began to run numbers that semester he was at college. Nothing big, you know, but big enough to get him into a little trouble with some people when he couldn't come up with money he owed them. Luciano bailed him out.

“Then Vinnie and a couple of his friends stole a car and got caught. Maybe it wasn't the first car they stole. It was very embarrassing to the family. Luciano arranged for the owners of the car to drop charges, and brought Vinnie down here to the island.”

“Who were the two friends?”

“Just a couple of kids. A guy named Benny White and a kid they called Roger the Dodger. Benny was another UMass drop-out.”

“Were charges dropped for the other two lads as well?”

“As far as I know.”

“And now Vinnie's nose is clean.”

“Yeah.”

“And he's grateful to his grandfather.”

Decker looked at me. “What do you mean?”

“I don't know what I mean. But when I first came up here, Vinnie called his grandmother Grandma, and he called his grandfather boss. I wondered why.”

Luciano leaned forward. The corner of his mouth was turned up. “I think I can tell you why. Angela slips him money, and I give him work to do. Vinnie likes her money more than my work. She spoils him, no matter what I say. Vinnie still has some growing up to do.”

“And he's doing it?”

He chopped air with his hand. “He's not a bad boy. He's just lazy and young for his age.”

“What about the rest of the family?”

Luciano clearly felt on solider ground with the rest of the family. I was assured that all other members of the family, the sons and the daughter in particular, were stable people, and all were profiting from his business interests, which, in fact, the boys were taking over, with Luciano's blessing. It was inconceivable to Luciano that any of them would hire someone to kill him.

Luciano seemed tired. He looked at Decker. “They don't have to do any of the stuff I did when I was young like them. They're all on the up and up, isn't that right, Thomas? No rough stuff at all.”

“That's right,” said Decker. His eyes flicked from Luciano to me. “I think that's enough family talk for now. You have any other questions, you come back and talk to me later.”

It had probably been inconceivable to Abel that Cain would do him in, but I didn't offer that thought to Luciano and Decker. Instead, I asked for the addresses and telephone numbers of Thornberry Security, up in Boston, and Aristotle Socarides, over on the cape. When I got them, I said I'd stay in touch, and drove to Joe and Toni Begay's house.

I arrived at eleven-thirty, on the dot, and the two Begays were waiting in the yard.

“Get back in,” said Toni Begay, as I stepped out of the Land Cruiser. “We'll go with you. We're going to eat at Uncle Bill's house.”

Her husband put a picnic hamper in the backseat, and he and she climbed in beside me.

“No need to take two cars,” said Begay. He popped three bottles and gave a Molson to each of us. “Warm day.”

“They call Uncle Bill a shaman,” said Toni Begay. “But to me he's just Uncle Bill. He just got back to the island after being away a long time. Out West somewhere. I don't know just where.” She looked up at her husband.
“Hey, maybe he was out there in your country, on the reservation. Did you ever run into Uncle Bill out there?”

“If I'd run into Bill Vanderbeck, I'd have remembered,” said Begay. “I haven't been out there too much of the time in the past few years myself, so he could have been there and I wouldn't have met him.”

I wondered where Begay had been, if he hadn't been on the reservation.

“You'll like Uncle Bill,” said Toni Begay to me. “I'm taking him a dream catcher.” She showed me a small circle made of bent willow. There was a woven net inside it, and it was decorated with feathers, leather thongs, and tiny shells. “These catch the bad dreams before they get to the sleeper,” she said. “They're really part of Oneida mythology, but since I'm making them, they're also genuine Wampanoag craftsmanship, and I'm going to sell them at the shop. I think a shaman might like a dream catcher.”