A Fatal Vineyard Season (20 page)

I got another Sam Adams and went up onto the balcony. The flowers in their boxes and hangers and garden spots still looked good, but the vegetable garden was pretty thinned out. Only late-summer and fall stuff was still there. My giant pumpkin, lovingly tended all summer, had never gotten very giant at all. It looked nothing like the picture on the front of the seed package. I wondered how it would be for pies and soups and bread. Not bad, probably. Future experiments would reveal the truth.

Beyond the garden, the waters of Sengekontacket Pond were empty of the surf sailors who practiced there during the summer, and beyond the pond, only a few cars were parked along the barrier beach that was so packed between June and Labor Day. On the blue waters of the sound, beyond the beach, a lone sail, far out, was reaching toward Nantucket. The air was clear and soft, and a gentle wind moved through the trees and pushed against my hair. There was no hint of Elmer, churning northward beyond the curve of the earth, or of such people as the Vegas brothers.

Eden, where God walked in the cool of the day.

Where the serpent lurked.

I thought of all of the policemen who were zeroing in on the Vegas brothers. I figured they would keep Alberto and Alexandro pinned down for a while, but if Alberto and Alexandro were simply patient enough to outwait their watchers, sooner or later the cops would be drawn back to their regular duties, and Enterprise Management would be back in business, with Alberto providing the brains up front
and with Alexandro contributing the tricks that would persuade potential customers to sign up.

In fact, Alberto didn't really have to wait for the cops to go home, since the contracts he was peddling were technically quite legal. Alexandro, being watched night and day, might not be able to burn any more houses down, or to break any more windows or windshields, or to beat anyone else half to death with a tire iron, but maybe he didn't need to. Maybe all Alberto would need to do was to remind potential customers of such past events in order to sign them up.

And the same memories would keep his current clients quiet. Having already been intimidated once, they would stay that way. Eddie Francis and his like were not about to testify against the Vegas boys in court and risk having their businesses go up in flames. Most people are not heroic, and you can't expect them to be.

My beer bottle was long empty. I went downstairs, turned on the radio, and put the bread into the oven.

Elmer had picked up speed and was coming up the coast. There was building surf and a hurricane warning from Florida to the Carolinas, and a watch as far north as New Jersey. Bermuda was battening down. There seemed to be three possible tracks for the storm: curving in toward Cape Fear, curving out to sea between Bermuda and Cape Cod, and coming straight into the south coast of New England. None of the weather forecasters was putting money down on which way the storm would go.

When the loaves were done, I sawed off a thick, steamy slice from the end of one of them, then rubbed butter on their crusts and covered them again with a slightly damp dish towel. I slathered more butter onto my slice of bread and ate it. Deelish! There is nothing better than hot, fresh bread and butter.

The next morning it was still a great combination. After breakfast, I licked my fingers, got into the Land Cruiser, and drove to Oak Bluffs.

Cousin Henry Bayles lived not far from the Martha's Vineyard Hospital, in a small house near Brush Pond, overlooking the Lagoon. The address in the phone book wasn't too specific, but for reasons I could not recall, I had a distant memory of the place. I guessed that my father might once have showed me the house as we passed by on our way to somewhere else, for Cousin Henry was a rather notorious character, whose home may have been noted by the curious.

The Bayleses were, of course, Betsy Crandel's people, Philadelphia folk of whom Cousin Henry was most definitely a black sheep. The socially conscious Bayleses of Philadelphia were not accustomed to having gangsters as kin, and Cousin Henry had not been given extensive coverage by the keepers of the genealogies.

His house was the opposite of the Crandel place, being small, discreet, and half-hidden from view behind trees that grew beside a street few people used. Stanley Crandel didn't mind being seen and admired, but Cousin Henry preferred anonymity. And who could blame him, since there were probably still some mobsters down in Philadelphia who were pretty mad at him.

I drove down the short, sandy driveway that led to his house, got out, and stood there long enough for anyone inside to have a look at me and decide whether I was one of those mad Pennsylvania guys.

The house was built low to the ground and had a porch running along two sides of it, one in the front and one on
the side facing the Lagoon. It was neither notably neat nor notably shabby, but somewhere in between. Chairs and a table were on the porch overlooking the water, and a path led down to the beach. A small combination garage and barn was out beyond the fireplace chimney, on the far side of the house.

Beyond the barn, through some trees and undergrowth, I could see water that I took to be Brush Pond. Cousin Henry's house was on a sort of peninsula, backed on two sides by water. The only automobile entrance was the way I'd come in. I was reminded of maps I'd seen showing how early fortifications were often built inside protective river bends, so as to make it harder for attackers to come at them.

When I thought I'd stood there long enough, I went up onto the front porch and knocked on the door. It opened immediately, and I found myself looking down at a little, mahogany-skinned woman whose age could have been anywhere between forty and a hundred and forty. She had small, black eyes and kinky, gray-black hair done up in a bun. She was wearing what people used to call a housedress. It was blue and the skirt seemed a bit longer than was currently fashionable, although who's to say what's fashionable these days? Certainly not me. She held a large dog on a leash.

“Yes?” Her voice was sharp, like a bell.

“My name is Jackson. I want to speak to Henry Bayles.”

“Mr. Bayles is busy. I'm sorry.” She began to shut the door.

“It's about a relative of his. Julia Crandel. Actually, it's about another relative, too. Buddy Crandel.”

She studied me silently, then said, “Wait here. I'll see if he can be interrupted.” She shut the door.

Seabirds called to one another as they flew above the Lagoon, and on the far side of the drawbridge, the site of the only stoplight on Martha's Vineyard, the
Islander
was heading out of Vineyard Haven toward Woods Hole. Maybe I'd be smart just to get on it and go over to America
for a while, until the Vegas situation was resolved. But if I did that, maybe it wouldn't get resolved.

Vanity, vanity. The graveyards are full of absolutely essential people.

The door opened and Cousin Henry looked up at me with expressionless dark eyes in an expressionless dark face. As with the woman, it was impossible for me to judge his age, although I knew he had to be sixty or better, since he and Stanley Crandel had played together as kids. He looked, in fact, unchanged from when I'd seen him when I was a child. He was a little man, thin, as though made of wire. His hair was short and gray, and his neck was thin. He had narrow shoulders under his white shirt. He didn't look like anyone you should fear, but I knew that he was.

“Yes?” His voice was soft, like fog.

“Your cousin Julia Crandel is having a problem that I'm not sure I can solve. She's here on the island for a holiday with a friend from California. A girl named Ivy Holiday. Another cousin named Buddy Crandel just got here, too. They're all in the movie business, one way or another. The problem is a guy named Alexandro Vegas. I think he broke into the Crandel place out on East Chop, while the women were in there. I think he did this, too.” I lifted my sling. “I also think he beat a young cop nearly to death, and that he's the muscle for his brother Alberto's protection racket.”

I stopped talking.

“Why are you telling me this, Mr. Jackson? What's any of this have to do with me?”

“Nothing, maybe, unless you decide that it does.”

“I care nothing for Buddy Crandel. I didn't like him as a child, and I have no feelings for him at all now that he's grown-up. I also care nothing about the fate of young policemen or about local hoodlums and their criminal activities.”

“That leaves Julia. Maybe you care about her. And for what it's worth, the young cop who's in the hospital got
between Alexandro and her in front of the Crandel place. I think Alexandro caught up with him later because of that.”

“You think a lot of things, Mr. Jackson, but you don't seem to have much proof of anything.”

I looked down at him. “That's right. Sorry to have interrupted your work. Good-bye.”

I turned away and was going down the porch stairs when he said, “Wait.”

I paused and looked back at him. He gestured to the porch chairs that overlooked the Lagoon. “Sit down there. Excuse me for a moment.”

He went inside and I sat down. It was a nice view. An outboard motorboat was tied to a small dock at the foot of the path leading from Cousin Henry's house to the beach. It looked like the sort of boat a man used to go fishing. Far up the Lagoon I could see Alberto Vegas's boathouse and dock.

Cousin Henry came out of the house carrying two glasses of iced tea. He gave one to me and sat in the other chair. “You can begin by telling me about yourself, and how you got involved in this matter. Then tell me the rest.”

I told him about my work for the Crandels and about the faucet and everything that had occurred on the island since Julia and Ivy had arrived.

He didn't say a word until I was through. Then he said, “You're leaving things out. You haven't talked about the killings in California.”

“I don't think they have anything to do with what's happening here. Alexandro Vegas is the local problem.”

“Tell me about the rest of it.”

I did that, telling him everything I knew. When I was through, he said, “Now I know what you know. Tell me what you think.”

“I think that Alexandro is a dangerous sociopath with a special hatred for blacks, although he's got plenty of hate to go around to everybody else. I don't know if he was born bad or whether his childhood and his prison experience
made him that way, but whether it's nature or nurture, Alexandro is as bad as I've seen. I think he's a bomb, and that the only thing that's keeping him from exploding is his brother, Alberto, who's even more dangerous than Alexandro because he's smart. The cops can't do anything about either one of them, because all they've got are suspicions, so if Alexandro does blow up, they won't get him till afterwards, which might be too late for Julia and Ivy.”

“What about the two bodyguards? They're professionals and they're armed.”

I sipped my tea. It was good. “If you wanted to rape and kill Julia Crandel and Ivy Holiday, do you think two professional armed guards could stop you?”

He didn't look at me and he didn't answer.

I said, “Of course there's Buddy Crandel, too. He makes three men, all told.”

“Buddy Crandel was a crybaby as a child. I doubt if he's changed. I imagine he'll run if he gets the chance.”

So much for Buddy Crandel as defender of the weak.

“Where are Stanley and Betsy?” asked Cousin Henry.

“Switzerland, I think. I don't know where, exactly.”

“Stanley has a lot of money and could probably take care of this problem if he was home.”

“Maybe I can find out where he is.”

Cousin Henry emptied his glass and put it on the table between us. “On the other hand, Stanley and Betsy probably shouldn't get involved. Their reputations are important to them, after all. No, I think it's probably best to let them enjoy their travels.” He looked out at the Lagoon. “In fact, Mr. Jackson, I think it might be best if none of us get involved.”

I tried to take that in. Then I said, “I'm afraid some of us are already involved, Mr. Bayles.” I finished my drink, put my glass beside his, and got to my feet. “Well, I'll be going. Thanks for the tea.”

“Thank you for coming by.”

I glanced at him and thought I saw a fleeting, ironic smile before that ebony face again became expressionless.

“These things sometimes resolve themselves,” he said to my back as I walked to the Land Cruiser. “We should never despair.”

He was standing on the porch, a tea glass in each hand, as I drove away.

I turned on the radio and listened to the classical music station over on the Cape. They were playing opera selections, and I recognized Pavarotti's voice. He was singing “Una furtiva lagrima,” and it was enough to break your heart.

As I drove along County Road, the station gave a weather report. Elmer had picked up speed and was churning along at a good clip. Hurricane watches now reached as far north as Massachusetts, and it seemed that the three tracks that Elmer might take had been reduced to two: one that led straight on into the south coast of New England and one that curved out to sea south of Cape Cod. Coastal evacuations were being advised, even though the storm was still at least two days away.

Whichever track the storm took, the Vineyard should prepare for high winds and seas. I was glad that I'd hauled the
Mattie
and the
Shirley J.,
but now I had some more work to do. In light of Elmer's prospective arrival, Alexandro Vegas became a secondary concern. Such is often the case when natural disasters occur: seemingly important problems become unimportant; people who ordinarily won't speak to each other combine forces to help each other out. As has often been observed, nothing unites people like a common enemy. Big Brother was smart to have Oceania fighting constant wars.

I drove home and began to batten things down in expectation of a major league blow. That I was pretty much working one-handed made ordinarily simple tasks more complex. Taking the flower boxes off the fence and putting them on ground was a problem, as was taking the chairs and table off
the balcony and putting them and all of the lawn furniture away in the corral behind the house, where I kept stuff too big to store in my shed. Taking down the hanging flower baskets and bird feeders was easier. I wished it were as easy to put the Vegas brothers out of my life.