Murder at a Vineyard Mansion (12 page)

I'd barely gotten seated at the breakfast table the next day when my son spoke up.

“Hey, Pa!”

“What, Joshua?”

“There's this kids' summer school, sort of, and it sounds neat. Can we go to it?”

“Yeah, Pa,” Diana chimed in. “Can we? All our friends are going. And we can use our computer to help us study! Please!”

A child's “please” can be an annoying but powerful word. I looked at Zee. “Do you know anything about this?”

She handed me a piece of mail. “This came a couple of days ago.”

I opened the envelope and read. The advertised program seemed mostly to offer nature studies, including guided walks though the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary and to various beaches. A big adventure would be a trip to Woods Hole to see what the scientists were doing there.

“It's only for a couple of weeks,” said Zee. “I told the kids that I'd talk about it with you, but your son, there, jumped the gun.” She looked at my son, who smiled back at her, unashamed of his brashness.

“I see here that it starts tomorrow. That's not much warning.”

“Please, Pa! It'll be lots of fun!”

I looked at Diana, who was wolfing down her breakfast between pleas. It was hard not to want my daughter to have fun.

“We'll learn stuff, too,” said Joshua, arguing the other virtue of education.

I turned to Zee. “We'll have to sign them up today,” I said.

“It'll just take a phone call,” she replied, sipping her coffee. “I already talked with Mr. Timulty and told him we were interested. The bus will pick them up at the end of the driveway and bring them back home again, just like during regular school. If you approve, that is.”

How was I supposed not to approve? Was I getting old and feebleminded? First the computer and now summer school. What would my family talk me into next?

“Fine,” I said. “It sounds like a good thing!”

The kids exchanged big smiles and Zee gave me one just for myself. I felt good. Being a father had its moments.

The next morning after the kids left for their first class and Zee headed to the hospital, I phoned Maud Mayhew. Her voice had no vibrancy in it. I told her I wanted to talk with her, and if she had wanted to say no, she lacked the energy to do so. I got a package of bluefish fillets from the fridge and drove to Chappaquiddick. It was another lovely day, and already the pale June People were headed to the beaches to work on their tans so that when they went back to their jobs, their colleagues would know they'd been someplace where there was sunshine.

When Maud met me at her door I gave her the package. “Here,” I said. “I caught this guy yesterday afternoon. Give it to somebody else if you don't eat bluefish.”

Her tired eyes seemed to brighten slightly. “I do eat bluefish, but I don't get it too often these days. You'd think that I'd catch my own and have it all the time, living close to the beach like I do, but the truth is I don't go fishing much anymore and neither do any of my friends. Come in and sit down while I stick this in the refrigerator.”

I went in and looked around. People in certain financial and social circles don't
buy
furniture, they
have
furniture. If some child or grandchild buys a house, it's furnished with things from another family house, never with new stuff. Maud Mayhew's house was filled with such furniture: tables, Persian rugs, and comfortable old couches and chairs that had surely been purchased by some Mayhew long since turned to dust and forgotten. Everything was worn but so well made that it would last several more generations. None of them, of course, would be the descendants of Harold Hobbes.

Or was that indeed the case?

When Maud came back from the kitchen she was carrying two cups of coffee. She gave me one and we sat down in leather chairs with a low Chinese table between us. It looked to be the kind brought home from the Orient by whaling captains or merchants in the spice trade.

She looked at me with those fatigued eyes and said, “Now, what do you want to talk about, J.W.?”

“I want to ask you some questions about Harold,” I said.

“I've already talked to the police. You should leave this business to them.” She sipped her coffee.

“They won't tell me things I want to know.”

She shrugged shoulders that seemed to have grown thinner in the past few days. “What do you want to know?”

“Was Harold married?”

She raised her head. “They never asked me that. No. He was single. He lived here with me.”

“Had he ever been married?”

“Once. A long time ago. Both of them were very young. It didn't last long. Why do you ask?”

“Because I may need to talk with her. She may know something.”

“When Beth left she never looked back. That was twenty years ago. She's remarried and has been living on the West Coast ever since. You'll be wasting your time talking to Beth.”

“You're probably right, but I may want to talk with her anyway.”

She shook her head, but got to her feet. “Wait here.” She went out of the room and came back with a slip of paper, which she gave to me. On it was Beth Johnson's name and a California address.

“He never married again?”

“No. Once was enough, he said. I was married three times, and he said he was going to break the family tradition. He told me that more than once. Usually when he was drinking. He could be cruel.”

“Did he have children?”

Her thin lips formed a fleeting, humorless smile. “None to speak of.”

It was the punch line of an old joke about a bachelor father of bastards. “Did he have any at all?” I asked.

The smile left as fast as it had come. “No. I would have known. We have money and I'm sure the mother would have come looking for some of it, but no one ever did.”

I hesitated. “I don't want to anger you by asking this, but did he prefer the company of men?”

But she wasn't offended. She shook her head almost bitterly. “No, Harold chased women, not men. If you want the truth, I think he'd have been better off if he'd been homosexual. All those women!” She looked at me and her eyes showed a spark of life. “You don't know how cruel women can be. Worse than any man I've ever known! They have claws like lions and the consciences of crows. Hate can build up in them until they explode.”

“I'd like to talk with some of Harold's women. Maybe one of them can give me some useful information. Do you have some names you can give me?”

“Of Harold's women? Or should I say his sluts? Oh, yes, I can give you some names.” Her voice grew rough and angry. “He bragged about them to me when he was drunk, you know. He waved them at me like red flags, like a torero inciting a bull to charge. He wanted me to attack him so he could hurt me more and do it with a clean conscience, but I wouldn't give him the chance. I'd leave him drunk and raving and go to my room and lock the door.” She held the coffee cup with both hands, squeezing it between her palms, then slowly relaxed. “The next morning, late, he'd be sober and hungover and full of apologies and promises.” She looked at me. “They say that there's truth in wine, but I've always hoped that wasn't so.”

You never know what goes on in families behind closed doors.

“I think it's just an old saw,” I lied. “Do you think he was with one of those women the night Ollie Mattes was killed?”

“No. If he'd been with one of his girlfriends he'd never have hesitated to use her as an alibi. He liked being known as a ladies' man. He liked loving and leaving them. He wouldn't have hesitated to give the police her name.”

“He wouldn't have been reluctant to ruin her reputation?”

She gave me a look of sour amusement. “What century do you live in? These days love affairs don't ruin reputations. Women write books about their love lives. They hire publicists. Men are just as bad.”

Some famous people flouted infidelity, of course, as did mistresses anxious to be famous, but I wasn't so sure most other people did.

I got the names of five women from Maud. Two of them lived on Chappy and the other three elsewhere on the Vineyard. I recognized only two of the names. Maud seemed to repent her earlier characterization of them as sluts. “I know the two who live here,” she said. “They belong to CHOA, in fact. That's where Harold met them. They're just women with too much time on their hands. Some women like that think a fling will cure their boredom, but the cure doesn't last long, especially when the man takes a walk, as Harold always did. The other three are just names he waved at me. There were others, too, but these are the only ones I remember.”

I wondered if Harold had a condom dispenser with notches carved on it. I said, “Harold must have spent a lot of money going back and forth on the ferry. Was he seen on it the day Ollie was killed?”

“I have no idea. But if he was or wasn't it wouldn't mean anything because the beach was still open then and anyone with an SUV could have come and gone that way.”

“That's Harold's blue Cherokee out in the barn?”

“Yes.”

“If Harold wasn't with a woman that night, where was he?”

She put down her coffee cup. “It's maddening. He wouldn't tell me. I've wracked my brain trying to guess, but it's hopeless. It wasn't like Harold to be secretive about his sexual exploits or any of his other bad habits. He liked to tell me about them, in fact, because he knew I didn't like hearing about those parts of his life.” She took a breath and let it out. “My son didn't love me as much as I loved him. I think it started while he watched his father drink himself to death. I suspect that Harold, who was just a boy then, decided that I had killed him, that I somehow was responsible.”

“Maybe one of his women friends will know something,” I said. “A lot of confidences are exchanged in bed.”

“You have to love and trust someone to tell them secrets,” said Maud. “My son wasn't the loving and trusting type. Self-interest was his specialty, I'm afraid.”

“He didn't mind writing letters supporting CHOA's views.”

Her hard, old face got harder. “I think that was to make himself seem more important, not because he really believed any of the things he said.”

“You don't have a very high opinion of your son,” I said.

“I love him and I'll miss him, but I have no illusions about him. He was a selfish, sometimes cruel man.”

“So you don't think he was protecting someone else when he wouldn't say where he'd been?”

“I think he was protecting himself.”

I asked the logical question. “From what? Murder, perhaps?”

“No! He was cruel, but it was a petty cruelty. He didn't have the backbone to commit murder or even to strike someone. He attacked me with words but never raised a hand to me. He was a physical coward. He was tall and handsome, but he had no real courage and he let himself get fat and mean.”

“What was he hiding, then?”

“I don't know. Something too taboo even for him to want known, maybe. But he was so shameless that I can't imagine what that could be.”

“Maybe he wanted to protect someone or something he loved. Even Hitler loved dogs and opera.”

She shook her head. “I never heard him speak about love. Not in his whole life. He didn't even love sex. He lusted after it. Lust isn't love.”

I wondered if lust was as close as Harold got to love or whether, in spite of the evidence to the contrary, he had feelings that not even his mother knew about. Totally loveless people do exist, but they're very rare.

I didn't think I was going to get much more from Maud Mayhew, so I rose and thanked her for her time.

“I'll keep you informed if I learn anything,” I said at the door.

“Harold didn't kill Ollie Mattes. I know he didn't.”

I hedged. “I have no reason to think that he did.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I'm going to talk to the women on that list you gave me. Can you tell me where the two on Chappy live?”

She could and did, but then sniffed and added, “They'll lie if it suits their purpose.”

“Most of us do,” I said, feeling tired by her fatigue and irked by her cynicism.

The two women who lived on Chappaquiddick were Glenda Harper and Anthea Burns. I'd never heard of either one of them, but followed Maud Mayhew's directions and found a mailbox marked
HARPER
on Litchfield Road.

The driveway beside the mailbox led west and ended on a low bluff overlooking Katama Bay just south of the narrows. The house was a middle-aged one, younger than the Mayhew house but older than many others. The view to the west, over the water, was excellent, and a path led down to a private beach with a dock at one end. Tied to the dock were a daysailer about seventeen feet long and a mini-cigarette boat with an outsized outboard.