Vineyard Prey (20 page)

I didn't know much about the gigantic U.S. intelligence community, but I was willing to bet that it was small in spite of its size; that events and personalities were widely known, and that letters and opinions pertaining to them were produced with the same passion as was found in Vineyard newspapers.

The difference was that the IC exchanges were often hidden from public view on grounds of national security, that catchall term that all too often actually serves less to guard the country than to cover government asses.

The need for national security notwithstanding, the IC didn't exist in isolation, and IC people were not that different from other people. Their jobs might involve high security, but there was more to them than their jobs. They had families, mortgages, triumphs, and problems like everyone else.

Samuel Arbuckle had a family; Kate MacLeod had a very active social life; Joe Begay spent most of his time with his wife and children on Martha's Vineyard. None of these activities and interests had anything to do with their work.

Except, perhaps, for Kate's private life. It involved other IC people sometimes, at least, and both the FBI and the DIA were probably already investigating those connections.

Everyone seemed to know everyone else. Arbuckle knew Stephen Harkness, who slept with Kate, who also slept with Edo, Francis, and others I didn't know of.

I wished I knew more about all those people. Who hated whom; who was married to whom; who
knew what. Who killed Arbuckle and Susan and placed the needles in Kate's flat. Where the Easter Bunny was, and where the killer who wasn't the Bunny was.

Kate seemed to be at the center of things. Where was she? The last time I'd seen her she'd been half joking about going to a bar to pick up a man for the night. Had she gone?

What little I knew about the IC I'd learned from my Internet search. Maybe there was a site that would tell me what I needed to know about the people on my list.

I wondered how I could find it.

I wondered where Kate was.

I thought about Stuart Oakland and his father. Little gears were trying to turn in my brain but were failing to get the machine running. My mind was like an old car on a cold day: slow to turn over; reluctant to start.

Back at Joe's house the burned-out car was only a bad-smelling hulk and most of the volunteer firemen had gone back to their regular jobs. Stuart Oakland had also departed. A fire marshal was going to have the job of figuring out what had happened. My advice to Joe, as he brought out his circular saw, hammer, and nails and we went to work cutting the plywood and nailing pieces of it over the broken windows, was to admit nothing about his part in the blast.

Joe allowed as how he'd already thought of that. “I've been using Uncle Bill Vanderbeck's Ford lately,” he said, “so I still have all the wheels I need.”

“How long has Kate been gone?” I asked.

He frowned. “She didn't come home last night, but she called from some bar and told me that might happen and not to worry. I haven't seen her today. Jesus, it's like she's fifteen years old and I'm her father.”

“She'll probably show up. She's a big girl and she knows what she's doing. She can handle herself if she needs to.”

I nodded toward the burned-out car. “Well, at least we know that Bunny is still around. What did you think of Stuart Oakland being Johnny-on-the-spot?”

“I wish the snow hadn't covered up those first tire tracks. I'd liked to have compared them to the ones his Mercedes makes.”

“You think he wired that bomb?”

“Everybody's a suspect. The only reason you're off the list is that you were with me when whoever did it, did it.”

“How do you know it wasn't done earlier?”

“Because I come down here every day and start the car from out in the woods. It never blew up until today.”

“It's nice to be innocent,” I said, driving in a final nail. “Did Kate mention what bar she was in?”

“No, but it was noisy.” He looked at the remains of the car. “Whoever set this blast knows more than most people.”

“Ex-military?”

He nodded. “Could be. But maybe he learned how to do it from the Internet. You can learn how to build atomic bombs on the Internet.”

“What now?”

“Now you go home and I stay here and try to find out a little more about how this job was done.”

“I don't need this anymore,” I said, and handed him the little Kahr P40 he'd loaned me. “You want me to hang around and give you a ride back to the house?”

“No, thanks. I'll walk.”

So I left him there and drove to Oak Bluffs.

  22 

There are only two towns on Martha's Vineyard where you can buy liquor: Oak Bluffs and Edgar-town. The other five towns are, wisely, some say, dry. If you want to get drunk or have wine with your dinner in them, you have to bring your own bottle. As might be guessed, most of the island's fights are between drunks overindulging in Oak Bluffs and Edgartown. Maybe that's why the county jail is in Edgartown: it's convenient to the action.

Since Edgartown prides itself on being wealthy and proper, the police work hard at keeping the bars relatively quiet. Oak Bluffs, on the other hand, is openly noisy, especially along Circuit Avenue, the main drag, which sports several bars and restaurants. Young people prefer to hang out in Oak Bluffs, rather than in the other towns, because of its sound and activity, and the town makes a lot of money off them. So as long as things don't get too tempestuous, the Oak Bluffs cops just smile and stay alert.

I figured that if Kate had called from a noisy bar, it had probably been one in Oak Bluffs. All of the island's bars are filled with strangers during tourist season, but since it was now December, I thought there was a possibility that a bartender or a waitress might remember a gorgeous Anglo-Asian woman such as Kate.

I started looking for her at Offshore Ale, the island's only brew pub. Its home-brewed beers and ales are excellent and it also offers its patrons decent pub food, a dartboard, and a lot of music.

“Haven't seen you lately, J.W.,” said Elvira when I came in. “What'll it be?”

“I'm looking for a woman,” I said.

“You already have a woman,” said Elvira, “but if Zee isn't enough for you, how about adding me? I'll stick Henry with the kids and you and I can go to Hawaii or some other warm place. What do you say?”

“I'm too old to run off with you,” I said. “You'd ruin me within a week and then Zee would be mad at me and Christmas would be spoiled for my kids.”

“Just trying to help out,” said Elvira.

“You can help out by telling me if the woman I'm looking for was in here last night.” I described Kate.

Elvira shook her head. “Sounds like she'd be hard to miss. Nobody like that was here last night.”

“I'll keep hunting,” I said, heading for the door. “Maybe Henry will take you to Hawaii.”

“Ha! He's bought one of those gigantic TVs and he won't leave home until the NFL play-offs are over and the Super Bowl's been played!”

I went down to the foot of Circuit Avenue and started back up the street, hitting the bars in succession. In the first two nobody could remember having seen anyone who looked like Kate. Then I came to the Fireside and my luck changed.

The Fireside is not the classiest bar on the island, but before I got married and settled down, it had been one of my favorites. It is the haunt of some of the seedier locals and smells of beer and cigarettes and, more faintly, of marijuana, although smoking either tobacco or weed is officially illegal in public places.

Opposite the bar, along the wall, is a row of booths with knife-marked tables. The farthest of these booths is known to regulars as the Confessional because some peculiar quirk of construction allows people in the next booth to hear everything that's said within it. Newcomers, especially young lovers, are steered there by jesters in need of entertainment with their beer.

My friend Bonzo worked at the Fireside, sweeping floors, bringing beer up from the cellar, serving drinks, wiping tables, cleaning up spills, and otherwise performing those simple but necessary tasks required in any bar. Their simplicity was exactly challenging enough to keep him attentive, for Bonzo had long ago fried some essential part of his brain with bad acid and had been transformed from a promising lad into an eternal child, sweet and gentle, the sad apple of his mother's eye.

Now, in midafternoon, the place was almost empty. I waved at Bonzo, who was pushing his broom, sat down at the bar, and ordered a Sam Adams.

“Long time no see,” said the bartender. “A lot of married guys keep right on coming in after they get hitched, but not you.”

“Home is the place for me,” I said. “I've spent
enough time in bars to last me the rest of my life. You on duty last night?”

“Nope, I was home in front of my fireplace. Nicki was tending bar.”

“I'm looking for a woman,” I said. “She might have been here last night.”

He gestured. “Bonzo was here. Maybe he can help you.”

“Okay with you if I buy him a beer?”

“Why not?”

I beckoned to Bonzo and he came over, a smile on his innocent face.

“Hey, J.W., how you doing?”

“Good. I'm buying you a beer. Your boss, here, said it was okay.”

Bonzo looked doubtful. “You sure? I got work to do, you know. I can't be drinking on the job.”

“It's a special occasion,” said the bartender, putting a Sam in front of him. “A sort of Christmas present from the management.”

“Gee, thanks.” Bonzo climbed onto the stool beside mine. “I like beer, you know, but I can't drink much of it. It makes my head go around.”

I touched his glass with mine. “Cheers.”

“Cheers to you, too, J.W.”

We drank and I told him whom I was looking for and how she looked, and said, “She may have been in here last night. You see anybody like that?”

He beamed. “You know something, J.W.? I sure did see her. She's not very big but she sure is a pretty girl. I liked looking at her and—you know what?—she smiled at me!”

“What time was she here, Bonzo? Do you remember?” He thought about the question but then shook his head. “It wasn't too late, but I don't know exactly when it was. I know she and the man were gone before we closed up because I kept looking at her, you know, and one time I looked and she was gone. Sorry, J.W. I should have looked at my watch, maybe.” He showed me his watch. It, like mine, was the under-ten-dollars kind.

“That's okay, Bonzo. Tell me about the man. Did you know him?”

“Oh no. I never seen him before. He was a stranger, just like her. These days, you know, we have strangers around almost all year. It's not like it used to be when off-island people only mostly came in the summer. Now they come down earlier every year and stay later.” He looked into my face. “It's what they call the shoulder seasons, you know. Like the shoulders on a man. They're getting wider all the time, so we have strangers here all the way to New Year's these days. He was one of them, and so was she.”

“Did you happen to hear his name?”

He thought some more, then shook his head.

“No, I never did. And I guess I never heard her name either because if I'd heard it, I'd remember it.

I sure wouldn't forget the name of a girl as pretty as she is.”

“If it's the same woman, her name is Kate. If she comes back, maybe you should ask her.”

He blushed. “Oh, I don't know if I could just go
up to her and do that. I don't think I could just go up and ask her if she's named Kate. Gee, no, I don't think so.”

“What did the man look like?”

His brow furrowed as he thought back. “Well,” he said finally, “he looked like he was glad to see Kate.”

“You mean they didn't come in together?”

“Oh no. She came in first and then he came in and pretty soon they were sitting together over in that booth there, laughing and talking like they was old friends. I could tell that some of the other guys were getting ready to go talk with her themselves, but then the man came in and he talked with her first and after that, nobody else talked with her. Just the man.”