Death on a Vineyard Beach (24 page)

“Allison,” I said, “I've lost Fred's Boston address. Can you remember what it is?”

“No,” she said. “But I know his telephone number.” She gave it to me.

I thanked her, and while I was there, I got a double scoop black raspberry cone. Lunch. Delish.

When the ice cream was gone, I drove home and called Aristotle Socarides again. Elusive Aristotle was still not answering his phone. I called the Edgartown police station
and asked for the chief. He was out. Downtown. I had apparently used up all my telephone luck with the call to Maggie Vanderbeck.

I drove downtown and spotted the chief in front of the county courthouse.

One of the curiosities of Martha's Vineyard is that Dukes County, of which the Vineyard is the greater part, is not really Dukes County at all, but is officially the County of Dukes County. That is to say, it is Dukes County County, a county whose name is Dukes County. Thus, the courthouse is the County of Dukes County Courthouse, just as the main island airport is the County of Dukes County Airport. This odd nomenclature is due, I'm told, to an ancient error in official writing that, for reasons unknown to me, became the official form. So things go, sometimes.

Naturally, I couldn't find a parking place anywhere near the courthouse, but the chief was still there when I got back, talking with Dom Agganis, the state cop.

“What do you want?” asked the chief.

I handed him Fred Souza's telephone number. “I want the address that goes with that.”

He looked at the paper. “What is this?”

“It's Fred Souza's telephone number.”

“Jimmy's boy? Why don't you just call him and ask him yourself? Why don't you just ask his folks, for that matter?”

“I don't want to worry his folks, and I don't want to scare Freddy away. I want to talk to him before he can run.”

Dom Agganis tilted his head, listening. The chief looked at the paper again. “Why should Fred run away?”

“Because it's possible that he stole John Dings's shotgun. I can't prove it, but I think it's possible.”

“Is that a fact?” said Agganis. “What makes you think so?”

I told them what people had told me, and what I'd seen when I'd walked around the outside of Jimmy Souza's house. I didn't tell them about my explorations inside the house, since it's not a good policy to confess crimes to policemen standing in front of a courthouse.

When I was done, Agganis said: “And that's why you think Freddy Souza stole his uncle's shotgun?” He allowed his lip to curl slightly.

“I didn't say he did it,” I said, irked by the curl, as Dom no doubt knew I'd be. “I only said it's possible that he did it, and I want to talk to him before he has a chance to run away.”

Agganis snorted. “I think the only running Fred has to do is to a lawyer, who'll probably sue your socks off for harassment, if you lay this trip on his client.”

It annoys me when I let somebody annoy me, so I willed my anger away to some far corner of my psyche. I said: “Even you should be able to figure this, Corporal.” I ticked off the points of the argument on my fingers, as though to make sure he would get them. “Jimmy Souza is going down the tubes, and taking his family with him. He's lost his boat, his house is for sale, he's had to sell his shotguns and probably other stuff, and he's nipping vodka all day long. He blames the trawlers for all his troubles. He says the trawlers wrecked his pots and other gear, and did him in. They're the bad guys. And guess who owns the trawlers? Luciano Marcus. They're his latest toy. He's got them coming out of New Bedford, Provincetown, and maybe Gloucester, for all I know.

“Now, while Jimmy goes from bad to worse, and his wife has to take a job selling shirts, their boy Freddy is up at UMass Boston, running out of money for school, along with everything else that's gone bad after Jimmy lost his boat. Maggie Vanderbeck says Freddy's gotten moody, not like he used to be, and even in the old days Freddy had a bit of a short fuse. Anyway, one night last April, he and some friends come down from school and have a party. That same night, his uncle John Dings and his aunt Sandy came over to his folks' place for the evening to play cards. His folks probably told him that, but even if they didn't, he knew it, because the Dingses had offered their place for the party, if the kids wanted to have it there.

“He gets to the party down in Katama and overhears Vinnie Cecilio tell Jean Dings about Luciano Marcus's plan to go up to Boston to go to the opera. Like his daddy, Fred
blames the trawlers for all the family's problems, so he decides to do something about it. While he's on his beer run, he goes to the Dings's house—maybe by car, or maybe he parks his car at the end of his folks' driveway, sneaks down and takes the dinghy across the pond, I don't know which. He knows Uncle John has a shotgun because John and Jimmy Souza used to go hunting together. And he probably knows where the gun is kept, because he's been in the Dings's house lots of times, and, besides, it's no secret where John Dings keeps the gun.

“So he takes the gun, and gets the beer. With a fake ID, Dom, in case you didn't guess that. He gets the beer and goes back to the party. Now he's got a gun and he knows that Luciano Marcus will show up at a certain time and place. He takes the gun to Boston, finds a helper who's got a hooded sweatshirt, and
voilà!
You follow all that, Dom?”

“Why did he go to Boston, then have his helper wait all that time?” asked Agganis. “According to you, the kid's mad and he's got the gun, and Marcus is right here on the island. The killings that I know about, the bad guy, if he's really worked up, doesn't hang around four months to make his hit. He does it right now, with whatever weapon he's got. A rock or a gun or whatever. None of this long-range planning, or rare poison found only up the Amazon, or any of that kind of crap.”

“Maybe Freddy thought of doing that,” I said. “Maybe he went up there to Marcus's place, even. But Marcus lives in a high-security house. He's got guards, and dogs at night. Fred couldn't get in there if he tried. Besides, maybe he has some Italian blood in his veins. Maybe revenge is a dish he prefers to eat cold.”

Agganis nodded, suddenly agreeable. “I can understand that,” he said. “I got one grandmother was Italian. She was like that.” He turned to the chief. “Maybe we should look into this.”

The chief gave me a sour look. “Maybe we should. I'll call Sullivan, up in Boston, and drop this story in his ear. Maybe he can do something with it.” He held up the piece
of paper I'd given him. “That being the case, you probably don't need the address that goes with this, after all. We'll let Sullivan take care of it.” He folded the paper and put it in his pocket.

  
20
  

Angela Marcus stood, hands on hips, and looked at her garden.

“There's no doubt about it,” she said. “Something is eating the leaves of the cucumbers and lettuce.” She looked at her cabbage. “Damage there, too. Maria! I wonder if I should finally give in and buy some chemical pest controls? I hate to do it, because I like to do things organically, if I can. What do you think?”

“Something has to be done,” I said. “Personally, I'm not above using a few bug killers.”

The garden was partially sunken into the side of the slope above and behind the house. There was a low stone wall around it, to cut the winds that blew so steadily across the Gay Head hills. Between the walls, tons of rich earth had been trucked in and spread in a thick layer to replace the original sandy, rocky soil that had been hauled away when the garden had been built. Now flowers grew beside the walls: bright wild flowers mixed with annuals and perennials. Inside the ring of flowers, Angela grew her herbs and vegetables.

It was Angela's garden, and, she had explained to me in the half-hour I'd been there with her, she grew what she wanted to grow in the way she wanted to grow it. None of the men or women who worked on the estate were allowed to say anything about how things were done there, or to offer a single word of advice unless asked to do so, even though Angela knew very well that several of the grounds-keepers were far more knowledgeable about plants than she was. Although she was glad to share its bounty with
Jonas, the cook, Angela was mistress of the garden just as she was mistress of the house itself.

Now, as the wind tugged gently at the old straw hat she wore, and the summer sun shown bright in the arching blue sky above us, she sighed. “Insect problems.” She got down on her knees and peeked under a holey cabbage leaf to see if she could spot the enemy who was eating it. No such luck. She sat back on her heels.

I had come to talk with her about her perceptions of her husband's possible enemies, but had rapidly learned that he had been right about her: She knew nothing that could help, because she could not conceive of anyone wanting to harm Luciano, even though someone clearly had tried to kill him. The only explanation she could think of was, “It was some kind of a mistake. They thought he was somebody else.”

Now, sitting on her heels, she was speaking of things she knew something about. “Sometimes an insect likes one kind of plant, but doesn't like another,” she was saying. “Maybe I can take advantage of that.”

“That's right,” said a voice. “Maybe next year you should plant things in alternating rows to discourage some kinds of bugs. They call it companion planting. There are other options you might try, too, before you start using chemicals.”

I was startled, because I'd thought we were alone. Angela and I turned our heads and looked toward the voice. The shaman stood there, looking so comfortable that it was almost as if he belonged there, as if he were a member of the staff or one of Luciano's guests.

Angela, too, seemed to think he belonged. “I know there are things I can probably do, but I just don't know what they are,” she said, turning back to the cabbage plant and peering through its leaves. “I have enough books, goodness knows. I guess I'll just have to read them more carefully.”

“Reading is always good,” agreed the shaman. “And if you were to ask me, I'd also say that chemicals aren't always bad. On the other hand, why use them if you don't have to?”

Angela nodded. “My thoughts exactly.” She smiled at him and stood up. Together, they looked around the garden.

“Very nice,” said the shaman. He nodded to me. “How are you, J. W.?”

“Fine,” I said.

Angela was looking around. “Insect problems, for sure. But the garden doesn't look too bad.”

“Almost everything you need is already growing here,” said the shaman. “Rosemary, sage, geraniums, garlic…”

“Luciano and I use a lot of garlic,” said Angela. “I think mine is better than anything we can buy in the local stores. And fresh herbs just make all the difference in the world. Jonas—he's the cook. Have you met him? No? Well, Jonas has free rein to take whatever he wants out of here. He's the only one beside me who can do that. He gets a lot of use from it, and Luciano and I eat well, I can tell you. What do you mean, I have almost everything I need?”

“I have my own garden,” said the shaman. “There's nothing better than eating fresh vegetables you've grown with your own hands.”

“Oh, I agree.”

“Let me show you what I mean,” he said, and together they moved slowly about the garden, looking first at this, then at that. I followed, wide-eared. “For example,” he said, “here's your garlic. Aphids hate garlic…”

“Like vampires?” She laughed, and he joined her.

“Just like Vlad Dracul himself,” he agreed. “So if you plant your garlic next to, say, your lettuce, the aphids will stay away. And if you plant your tomatoes next to your asparagus, the asparagus beetles will stay away.”

“What about my cabbages?”

“Here's your rosemary and there's your sage and there's your thyme. Cabbage butterflies don't like those herbs, so if you plant them near your cabbage, the butterflies go off and eat somebody else's cabbage.”