A Shoot on Martha's Vineyard (11 page)

She hesitated and I pointed to my right. “And there's that little girl.” I was on my toes. I raised my voice. “Stay away, honey! Don't come any closer!”

Beth looked to her left, trying to see the girl who wasn't there, and I ran at the gun.

I caught her gun arm and brought her wrist down across my rising knee. The pistol flew out of her hand. She screamed like an animal and stabbed at my eyes with her other hand. I pushed her away and we both went for the gun. She was quicker, but as she swept it up, I hit her behind the ear with a hard fist and she went down and out on the pavement. I picked up the pistol.

The woman shopper had finally noticed us, and was staring open-mouthed. Then her face grew furious.

“Beast!” she cried. “Wife beater!” She looked beyond me. “Call the police! I saw it all! I'll testify in court, you misogynist! You won't get away with this!”

Misogynist? I'd always fancied myself a philogynist.

I turned and saw a small crowd at the door of the store. As I looked at them, one of them dashed inside.

Not too much later I heard the sirens coming. I checked Beth. She seemed to be breathing normally. I leaned against the Land Cruiser and waited.

I was sitting in the chief's office with sleepy Joshua on my lap. The pistol lay on his desk in a plastic Baggie.

The chief looked at it, and reached for his pipe and tobacco. “I wouldn't have been surprised if some woman or maybe her husband had taken a shot at you back in your bachelor days, when you were running wild with the ladies. Now that you're a married man and all settled down and like that, I thought that the only woman who might shoot you would be Zee. I didn't think it would be Beth Harper.”

“Ha, ha. Very funny. This crackpot thinks I kacked Lawrence Ingalls. I would appreciate it if you'd sit down and have a talk with her and tell her that I didn't do it. I don't want her trying this again. She might kill me next time!”

“I'll have a talk with her.” “Good.”

“But I won't tell her you didn't do it, because I don't know whether you did it or not.” “Gosh, thanks again.”

He stuffed tobacco into his pipe. “Don't get all huffy. I'll tell her that I'm pretty sure you didn't do it, and that'll be the truth because not even you are dumb enough to kill a guy then call the cops to come and find you there.”

Killers at the scene actually call the cops pretty often, of course, but it's usually after domestic violence or a killing between friends, when the survivor really doesn't know what else to do and hasn't any other place to go. Murders like this
one, way out in the boonies, are usually different. These killers generally like to get away if they can manage it.

“You use your grandfatherly charm,” I said. “And don't give her gun back to her.”

“If she decides to shoot you,” he said, “she'll find another gun. You really have a sweet effect on the people you meet. Five minutes after you're introduced to Ingalls, he dukes it out with you, and now this woman you barely met two days ago pulls a gun.”

“Where'd she get the six-shooter, by the way?”

“Well, now, it seems that it was Ingalls's weapon. He had a permit for it, all legal and everything. She got it out of his house up in Chilmark before she came looking for you. He'd had a place up there for a couple of years. Might explain why he had such strong feelings about enforcing the environmental laws on the island. Hell, the Marshall Lea people practically have him canonized.”

The Marshall Lea people. The No Foundation. Not my favorite conservation group. Naturally, they'd have been big Ingalls fans.

“I'm not much of a believer in saints,” I said. “And I never heard of one who needed a pistol permit.”

“Which may help explain why you have yours,” said the chief. He got up. “Let's go outside so I can stoke this furnace.”

The chief's office had its own outside door, which allowed him to escape his smokeless office and indulge in his tobacco habit when the craving came to him. Although a reformed pipe smoker myself, I envied his briars nevertheless, and often thought of taking up the habit again.

We went out and he lit up with his trusty old Zippo lighter. I took a quick sniff of the fumes (lovely!), then carried Joshua upwind.

“A lot of people shoot on this island,” said the chief. “Maybe Ingalls shot targets.”

I knew many of the island hunters and targeteers. “I never heard of him doing that,” I said. “But I'll ask Manny Fonseca. If Ingalls was a shooter, Manny will know.”

The chief nodded. Manny Fonseca was not only Zee's shooting instructor and Edgartown's most dedicated gun aficionado, but he had personally customized the .45 Zee was shooting. He had a basement shop in his house filled with shooting paraphernalia and literature, he was NRA all the way, he bought and sold weapons as fast as he could get his hands on them, and he knew every other shooter on the island.

“On the other hand,” said the chief, “Ingalls's permit was in his wallet, and it reads that it was for all lawful purposes, so maybe he had some other reason for wanting it.”

In Massachusetts, you have to say why you want your pistol permit. You can say you want it for target shooting, or for protection of person and property, or for other reasons. Wanting it for all lawful purposes is the most comprehensive reason, and allows you to carry just about whenever you want to. My permit and Zee's were for all lawful purposes, even though Zee usually only carried her little Beretta .380 and/or her new .45 to and from target ranges and pistol competitions, and I rarely carried my old police .38 at all.

“Maybe he thought somebody didn't like him,” I said.

“If so, he was right. Somebody didn't,” said the chief. “But when he needed his gat, he didn't have it.”

Such is often the case. Having a weapon to defend yourself, an idea strongly supported by the NRA and guys like Manny Fonseca, usually doesn't do you any good. Typically, you don't have it when you need it, or it gets stolen out of your house, or you get shot with your own gun. Even cops, who are well trained with weapons, are often killed or wounded with their own sidearms. Guns are dangerous things.

I rocked Joshua gently back and forth, and he slept on. “I know a lot of people who didn't like Ingalls,” I said, “but I don't know of any who were mad enough to shoot him.”

“Some people think you were.” The chief puffed his pipe.

“Come on!”

“Or maybe Zack Delwood.” I left that one alone.

“Hey,” said the chief, “look at it from the outside. Who-ever offed him apparently did it on the spur of the moment, taking advantage of a random opportunity. Who could have known that he'd be down there on the beach? And nobody could have known that there wouldn't be any other people around, so nobody could have planned to kill him there. It was just a chance meeting that the killer took advantage of.

“And you fit the bill. One day you and him punch each other up in Gay Head. Two days later he's alone and alive on South Beach when the Skyes go by. At Wasque, you tell John Skye that you saw his truck but not him. Nobody else comes driving by Wasque. You drive back along the beach. You say you found him dead, but maybe you find him alive and the two of you go at it again and you do him in. Probably it's an accident, but maybe not. You panic and put in a call for the cops. No wonder Olive Otero has you in her sights.”

“And the sheriff, too. Don't forget about him.”

“Well, maybe him not so much, although there is an election coming up. But Olive Otero for certain.”

I rocked Joshua. “Yeah. I just happened to have a pistol with me that nobody's ever seen me with, and afterward I toss it out in the ocean. Sure.”

“Maybe it was his pistol and you used it on him. Maybe you were struggling for the gun and it went off.”

“Maybe the moon is green cheese. If I used his pistol and threw it into the ocean, what's it doing lying there on your desk?”

He removed the pipe from his mouth and admired it. “What a keen thinker you are. Look, there's not enough to nail you for this, but there's enough to keep a lot of noses to the ground, sniffing at your heels.”

“Including yours.”

He nodded. “Naturally including mine. This is my town. You and I may be friends, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop doing my job. I'm going to have my detectives looking wherever they have to look.”

“Yeah, well, I can understand that.” I could, too.

“There's another thing . . .”

“What?”

“Since it's an ongoing investigation, I've told my people to keep what they find out to themselves. I'm afraid you're out of the loop. It won't do for a suspect to know everything the police are doing.”

He stuck his pipe in his mouth and looked at me.

A suspect. Of course I was a suspect, but the word made me angry, although I knew it shouldn't. “You won't tell me anything, but you won't mind me spilling my guts to you,” I snapped.

“Won't mind at all,” he said, nodding. “You can talk to us any time you want. Right now, for instance. You have anything you want to say?”

Joshua, perhaps feeling the tension in the air, moaned and got one eye partly open.

“I do have something to say,” I said, keeping my voice low so as to lull Joshua back to sleep. “I won't miss Ingalls, but I didn't kill him. I figure that vehicle I saw off to the west probably belonged to whoever did it, because I came from the east and didn't see anybody that direction. You find the guy in the vehicle, and you'll find the shooter.”

“If there was a vehicle,” said the chief calmly.

“There was a vehicle!”

“That's one of the things we'll be checking out.”

His cool voice was in sharp contrast to my hot one.

“While you're checking, check Ingalls's background,” I said. “Victims have stories, too. Maybe his will tell you who did him in, and why.”

“That's being done.”

“And what have you found?”

“Like I just told you, it's an ongoing investigation. No
news yet to report to the public. When we've got something to say, you'll get it the same time as everybody else. No sooner.”

Joshua's eyes were fluttering and he was making noises. He then produced a familiar fragrance.

Terrific. His diapers were in the Land Cruiser, which was parked in back of the station.

“I gotta go,” I said, turning in that direction.

“Maybe you should get yourself a lawyer,” said the chief as I walked away. “And if you see Moonbeam, tell him I want to see him.”

I paused. “Moonbeam? Why Moonbeam?”

“Because Moonbeam worked for Ingalls, and nobody's seen him since the killing.”

So I wasn't the only suspect, it seemed. “I haven't seen Moonbeam,” I said.

“Well, if you do, tell him I'd appreciate it if he'd come by the station for a chat. Same goes for Zack Delwood.”

“Moonbeam, Zack, and I don't socialize much,” I said, and headed outside.

At the Land Cruiser, I changed Joshua and gave him his plug, and he seemed content as he watched me with his bright eyes.

A lawyer. I didn't know any lawyers. At least I didn't know any lawyers that I wanted to know.

I put Joshua into his car seat and drove home. As I unloaded him into his crib, put his dirty diapers to soak, and washed out his bottles, I was glad that he took up so much time, because it gave me something to do while I thought about my situation. I had never been a murder suspect before, and I didn't like it.

I wondered who would know a good lawyer that I could afford. I wondered if there was such a thing as a good lawyer I could afford. The lawyers I'd read about made more in an hour than I was likely to make in a day or even a week.

I switched gears and thought about Lawrence Ingalls.
Unless the chief was right and he had been killed by a random murderer who just happened to be passing by on South Beach, somebody had deliberately followed him and killed him.

I needed to know more about him. I could start with Beth Harper, who had been so incensed by Ingalls's death that she had hunted me down with malice aforethought. It was a pretty extreme act for someone who had only been his assistant, since assistants don't usually go around avenging their bosses.

Where was she now? In jail, awaiting arraignment for assault or attempted murder or whatever? Out on bail?

I called the jail. Beth Harper was there. I said I'd be right down.

But before I could get Joshua and his gear ready for departure, the phone rang. It was Drew Mondry, who sounded more cheerful than anyone should.

“Hey,” he said. “I'm looking for locations for some interior shots. A big old house of some kind, and a large study or library. One of the leads in the film is a scholar. The brains behind the big treasure hunt. I need a house he's living in and a room that looks like where he does his work. You know: lots of books, a desk piled with papers, maps on the walls, an old Persian rug on the floor. That sort of thing. You know of any place like that?”

He had described John Skye's house so well, he might have been standing in John's library. I thought of the twins and their antics on the beach that morning.

“I do know a place like that,” I said. “There might be a couple of problems for you to solve, but I'll take you there.”

“Great.” He paused. “Say, let me talk to Zee for a minute.” I may have paused, myself. “She isn't here,” I said. “She's working.”

“Oh. Well, it isn't important.” “You want to leave a message?”

“No, no.” He hesitated, then: “Well, I'll see you in the morning.” “I'll be here.”

“Great.” The phone buzzed in my ear. I looked at it, hung it up, gathered Joshua and his traveling gear, and drove down to the county jail.