Death in Vineyard Waters (8 page)

“I take it that you think he should have stayed in the Renaissance business. Just what is it that he's doing instead that you disapprove of?”

She looked irritable. “Every profession has its idiot fringe. The idiot fringe of the study of early American history is
occupied by a group of people who are convinced that waves of European, African, and Asian explorers and colonists have been coming to America for the past three thousand years—Libyans, Phoenicians, Celts of various types, and apparently every other civilization that ever owned a boat. These people, including Tris Cooper, I'm sorry to say, believe they've found ancient monuments in the style of European standing stones, altars, temples, and whatnot that show transatlantic contacts from God knows when. They also think they've found epigraphical evidence that supports their theories. Ancient writings on rocks, mostly. Nonsense, mostly, if you ask me. But Tris always was a bit off the wall, even at Weststock.” She gave me a sudden roguish grin, as she recalled those long-ago days. “No wonder the ladies love him. Who can resist a handsome, brilliant rogue whose glands occasionally get the best of his brain?”

“Modesty prevents me from pointing out that that's almost a perfect description of me. Am I safe in your presence?”

She laughed. “Tristan Cooper wasn't! I caused his second divorce! Then he left me for a graduate student. It was fair but painful. Later I chased him down here, if you want to know the truth. But when I had to choose between living with Tris here and going back to the Renaissance chair at Weststock, I chose Weststock.”

“And survived whatever regrets you might have had.”

“Yes. And Tristan no doubt found himself other adoring women. At least he's straightforward about sex, which is more than you can say about those pious pimps who run Sanctuary. I told Tris I was going to do an exposé on them and sell it to the scandal mags to help support myself in my retirement. Your friend Zeolinda is Tris's favorite type, by the way. He likes strong women with dark hair, though he never limited himself to them. Mine was black when I was young, I might add.”

“I think Zee has someone else on her mind right now,” I said.

“Ah. Well, Ian is a ladies' man in his own right, so you have two rivals on your hands, I'm afraid.” Suddenly she was ironic. “From the gleam in her eye, I suspect that you might find momentary comfort with that vacuum, Helen Barstone. I dare say her blood circulates fast enough below her neck. It just doesn't get any higher.”

“I got the impression that she and Hooperman were close.”

“Hooperman!” She laughed. “What a dolt! She keeps Hooperman on the string because he's safe, like that wimp of a husband of hers, but I saw how she looked at you when you kept her boyfriend from misbehaving.”

“She must drive Hooperman wild. First McGregor, now me.”

“Oh, you know about her and Ian, eh? Well, I'd hardly say that Ian was her first, and as far as I know you're just the current prospect. Hooperman may feel wild, but he won't ever do anything rash unless it's to someone weaker, like me. Don't worry about Hooperman, the twit. Thanks for interfering the other day, by the way. Bill was quite in his cups.”

“I hear that Ian McGregor is a bit more physical than Hooperman.”

“Ah, yes. You do have big ears, Mr. Jackson. I take it you refer to the young Sanctuary lad and the lass with the copper hair. The girl and Ian met up island when he and I were visiting Tristan, and naturally she succumbed to his charms. They were an item for a couple of weeks till he got bored. The morning after he shed her, the boy showed up feeling Irish and manly. It was an interesting vignette, since I've rarely had the opportunity to personally observe the masculine rites of supremacy. I was just going for my morning swim, but I stayed to watch. I think the boy had been drinking. Possibly all night. At any rate, they exchanged
words rather loudly, the boy saying he would not allow the girl to be so sorely used and Ian responding that she was only a whore anyway. Then the boy went at him and Ian knocked him down. He got up and Ian knocked him down again. Then the boy went to his car and drove away and Ian apologized to me for the scene. Actually, I thought he enjoyed it.” She tilted her head. “That was a couple of days before we all met on the clam flats. I fancy Ian might have more trouble with you. I wouldn't mind having a front-row seat for that one.”

“I don't like trouble,” I said. Then I felt a smile on my face. “You are a tiger.” She grinned, and I got into the Landcrusier and went to town to sell my fish.

During the next couple of days I motored my dinghy across to the Cape Pogue gut and fished there with some luck. Taking the dinghy from Collins Beach in Edgartown saved me the long drive out to Cape Pogue and then back down the elbow to the gut—twenty minutes by boat versus an hour by Landcruiser.

Then, for two days, I went up island, a place I rarely go, and fished Squibnocket and Lobsterville. I don't like to go to Gay Head, the island's westernmost town, because I dislike their politics and their tourist practices: pay toilets, overpriced parking lots, and not only No Parking signs but No Pausing signs on their roads. When I'm king of the world, I'm going to ban pay toilets on religious grounds as an abomination in the eyes of God. Until then, I avoid Gay Head except to fish. I do roam Gay Head's fishing grounds when I can find a place to park, since there are few better places to cast a line, especially for bass.

And when I wasn't fishing up island, during late mornings or afternoons I worked the shellfishing grounds in Edgartown, digging clams or raking for quahogs at the south end of Katama Bay. I had a market for littlenecks and sold most of what I got, but my clamming was done mostly for me; I love them steamed, fried, chowdered, any way at all
except raw. Why not raw? I wondered. After all, I ate raw littlenecks and raw oysters and raw scallops; why not raw soft-shell clams? Because they looked yucky?

And I worked in my garden, weeding it more than I'd ever weeded it before, more than it needed to be weeded.

And I cooked complicated things that required much chopping and sorting and different stages of preparation; and I ate many-coursed meals with more than one wine. Alone.

And finally the weather changed. A west wind blew in a steady all-night rain from New York and I slept soundly and decided I was getting better.

The evening of the following day I opened the
Vineyard Gazette,
which was now coming out in its twice-a-week summer editions, and saw that Marjorie Summerharp's body had been brought up in the nets of a trawler fishing off South Beach south of Katama Bay. Three or four of them had been working off the beach most of the summer, their spreaders making them look like great water birds opening their wings as they swam. When the
Mary Pachico
had hauled in her catch at noon the previous day, Marjorie Summerharp, clad in her old-fashioned black bathing suit and white bathing cap, was there among the fish, quite dead.

I had a sudden sense of guilt, remembering the last time I'd seen her, thinking of the warnings I'd suggested be given to her but that I'd not given myself when we'd spoken that last morning, remembering the sight of her out in the blue waves, swimming effortlessly, her wiry arms rising and falling in a steady rhythm, remembering the wink she'd once given me and the dry, ironic voice and the tough, wrinkled face and cool eyes and her surprising laughter and frankness and how I'd liked her for no reason I could name.

What had happened to her? I read the article through. According to Ian McGregor, she had left the farm to take her morning swim just as he was starting his morning run, so he'd ridden with her to South Beach and run home from there. She had not come back at her usual time, but he had
been working and had not thought much about it. Toward midmorning, when she still hadn't returned, he had phoned a friend, Mrs. Zeolinda Madieras, expressing concern, and the two of them had driven to South Beach and found Dr. Summerharp's car at the end of the Katama Road, still parked where it had been when he'd left her that morning. The lifeguard had seen nothing of the missing woman since coming on duty. McGregor had then contacted the police, who in turn contacted the coast guard. A couple of hours later, the
Mary Pachico
had hauled in the body from a point a mile straight offshore from where the victim's car was parked. There was sea water in her lungs, and every indication was that she had drowned.

I had been fishing up at Lobsterville that morning and so had missed the action: police cars, coast guard helicopters, the works. John Skye would have phoned me the news, but John and Mattie and the girls had left for Colorado earlier in the week and probably didn't know anything about it themselves, yet. Zee hadn't called either; but why should she?

I got a Molson from the fridge and took it and the paper outside and up onto the balcony, where I could look out on the Sound and watch the sailboats inch toward their night anchorages through the light evening winds. Cars drove silently along the road on the other side of Anthier's Pond, going to and from Edgartown and Oak Bluffs. Bicyclists moved along the bike path beside the road, and beyond them the bright sails of windsurfers still glided back and forth along the beach; some of the June people were taking advantage of the fine weather and were stretching their beach time as far as they could. They neither knew nor cared that Marjorie Summerharp had just drowned not five miles from where they swam so safely.

I drank my beer and read the article again. It still contained the same information; I hadn't missed a thing. I thought it was probably just as well that the people on the
boats and beaches knew nothing of the fate of Marjorie Summerharp or of the other dark events of Vineyard life. For them, after all, the Vineyard was a place in the sun, a gold-rimmed green gem set in an azure sea, where they could forget for a time the realities that would confront them soon enough when their vacations ended. They were pleased to live for a time in their summer dreams, and I was not about to deny them that pleasure. Time enough for hard times; no need to seek them out. Time enough to read of the deaths of kings and the ruin of lives.

I finished my beer and drove down to the new drugstore at the triangle, where the Vineyard Haven and Oak Bluffs roads split coming out of Edgartown. There are a lot of newly built stores there, and I like them because I can reach them without having to drive through the A & P traffic jam. I bought a copy of the
Boston Globe
and read its version of the story. Marjorie Summerharp was a well-known figure in higher education circles, and the
Globe
writers had gotten considerable comment from her colleagues, all of which was tactful and complimentary and expressed regret in the proper tones, but some of which suggested that she had been ill and more than a little depressed over her health and impending retirement.

A hint of suicide, I took it, although no one actually said that. Marjorie Summerharp in death received mostly rave reviews. I wondered if she would have been amused or irritated by them.

The next edition of the
Gazette
referred to the official coroner's report: death by accidental drowning. A trace of alcohol and sleeping pills was found, but insufficient to cause coma. Another tiny hint of suicide? The
Gazette
does not emphasize the unpleasant side of local stories when it can help it.

Marjorie Summerharp had been elderly and not in good health. She had gone swimming at six in the morning as was her custom and apparently simply swam out too far and
drowned before she could get back to shore. That was all. Relatives had taken the body to Maine for burial. Dr. Ian McGregor, greatly upset by the death of his colleague, had concluded his work on the paper he and Dr. Summerharp had been working on and intended to publish it as scheduled in both of their names. The paper would be dedicated to her memory.

Touching. Annoyed that the word had come into my mind, I examined the photo of him that accompanied the story. Broad shoulders slumped, Apollonian face drawn in sorrow, the picture of formal grief. Behind him, a bit out of focus, stood Zee and the chief of the Edgartown police, both solemn.

Marjorie Summerharp had been dead for almost a week when I saw the photo, and I had spoken to no one about the matter. I had, however, been reading the
Globe
every day, looking for a detail I never found. And now I read the
Gazette
from end to end and didn't find it there either. I thought about it as I watched the day dim into evening and the distant beach-goers gather their umbrellas and pull in their kites and reluctantly depart for their vacation homes. It occurred to me that I was probably making something out of nothing, that others would have asked the question in my mind, and having asked it, must have gotten a satisfactory answer in reply.

I climbed down off the balcony and made myself a refrigerator soup: all of the leftover vegetables and meats in the fridge mixed together, simmered in a bit of bouillon and wine, and served with homemade white bread. Delicious! I had seconds and then drank two Cognacs while I listened to the news and heard about a lot of things, but didn't hear anything of the detail I hadn't found in the papers.

Later, reading in bed, I somehow got to thinking about ice cubes, about how, when I saw that the ice cube container in the freezer was getting low, I would break the ice cube trays into it until it was full, so I wouldn't have to do it
again for a while, but that Zee would only put in as many cubes as she needed right then.

The next morning, I was up at three and at Wasque at four and back home again by seven and downtown by nine, looking for the chief of police.

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