Murder at a Vineyard Mansion (2 page)

A less important story was that the Silencer had struck again in Oak Bluffs, infuriating the houseful of college kids whose sound system had been melted, but delighting their neighbors.

Two days later a well-maintained old pickup came down the long sandy driveway that led to the old hunting and fishing camp that I'd more or less modernized into a year-round house. I dislike
NO TRESPASSING
signs and thus we don't have any warning to strangers that they're on a private road. The result of this is the occasional lost soul or inquisitive driver who ends up in front of our house and who sometimes, on a sunny day, finds Zee and me taking full-frontal sunbaths in our yard.

On this bright, sunny day I was alone at home, since Zee was at work in the ER of the hospital and our kids were playing with neighbors' kids at their house, but I was not outside improving my all-over tan. I was on our screened front porch working on fishing gear: lubricating reels, sharpening hooks or replacing rusty ones, and making new leaders. Most of the Vineyard bluefish had already gone north, but they'd be back in the fall in time for the fall Bass and Bluefish Derby, and I wanted to be ready for them.

The pickup stopped and a woman got out. I was more than surprised to see that it was the aristocratic Maud Mayhew. To say that Maud and I were usually on the opposite sides of issues would be the under-statement of the year.

I watched her as she stared about, taking in the battered old house, the lawn and gardens between the house and the pond, and the view of Sengekontacket Pond and Nantucket Sound, with the Cape Pogue Light in the far distance. She was wearing farming clothes and a floppy-brimmed hat, classic informal dress for owners of acres of land on Chappaquiddick. She walked to the screen door and knocked.

“Come in,” I said, and she did. I got up as she squinted at me in the relative darkness of the porch.

“That you, J. W. Jackson?”

“It is. Sit down and tell me what brings you out this way.”

She found an old wicker chair that matched mine and lowered herself gingerly into it, the way people do when their joints are getting stiff. I eased back into my own chair as she looked at reels and plugs on the table between us.

“Pays to keep your gear in shape,” she said.

“The water around Chappy is littered with lost lures and leaders, and quite a few of them are mine,” I said. “I'd just as soon not lose more. And there are a lot of fish still swimming with broken hooks in their mouths.”

“Shouldn't fish without proper gear,” said Maud. “There ought to be a law.”

People often think there should be laws to stop others from doing what they themselves don't do. “Maybe CHOA can talk Beacon Hill into establishing a Plug Police Force,” I said. “They can stop everybody going out onto East Beach and toss them in jail if their fishing gear isn't up to snuff.”

“Good idea,” said Maud, who, like Victoria, was often not amused. “If I wasn't so busy I'd volunteer for the job myself.”

“You'd be CHOA's first choice,” I said.

“I didn't come here to talk about fishing,” said Maud. “I came here to hire you to find out who killed Ollie Mattes.”

I put down the plug I was working on before I put a hook through a finger. “Ollie Mattes? I thought Ollie killed himself by falling off the bluff and mashing his head on a rock on the beach.”

“Well, apparently you thought wrong. The Chief told me yesterday afternoon that they think now that Ollie got coshed with a blunt instrument before he went over the edge. They think it's homicide.”

Had I been in a comic strip, a lightbulb would have gone off in my head. “Ah,” I said, “and the suspect list is bound to include the Pierson haters, and you want someone to prove that none of the CHOA people did it.”

“No, I want you to prove that my boy Harold didn't do it.”

I looked at her for about thirty seconds. Harold Hobbes was her son by her second husband. He was about my age and didn't look a bit like his mother, being tall and handsome in an overweight way. He called himself a farmer because he lived on Maud's farm but actually had no profession, and would have been an insignificant Chappy citizen except that he was Maud's son and therefore rich. He had a reputation as a ladies' man and a fondness for writing angry and loftily worded letters to the local papers protesting the invasion of Chappy by people who weren't members of CHOA. He bored me.

“What makes you think Harold needs help?”

She leaned forward. “Because he was the window breaker. He confessed it to me this morning at breakfast when I told him what the Chief told me yesterday. When he heard that Ollie had been murdered, he panicked and admitted that he'd smashed those windows at Pierson's place. He's afraid that the police will think he went back to do more damage and got caught by Ollie, and that Harold killed him. He's afraid he'll get arrested! He says he's going to go away. I told him that would just make him look more guilty.”

The image of Harold going away didn't displease me. “He needs a lawyer,” I said. “I imagine you can afford a good one. My advice is that you listen to him and do what he says.”

Her long face and big teeth and fierce eyes were those of a wild mare defending her colt. “My son is a coward and a sloth and a bragging womanizer, but he's the only son I have, and I know he's no killer. And I have a lawyer. I have a firm of lawyers. And I'm intelligent enough to do what they advise. But they work in Boston, and they'll need information to handle my son's case if he's charged.”

I studied her. “They'll have their favorite private investigators to do that, and the police are trained to solve crimes, so you don't need me for anything. But you know that, so why are you here?”

She gathered herself together, and I could see that being here was terribly hard for her, because, among other reasons, she was an aristocrat and I was without pedigree. I felt a distant touch of sympathy for her. Only a touch. “Because you live here,” she said, “and because you were a policeman once. I want somebody who knows this place, who knows how to investigate, and who I can trust!” She spoke through clenched equine teeth.

I gave what she said a semisecond of consideration. “Trust? You and I don't agree about much of anything, and I think your boy Harold is a waste of time. I'm a strange one for you to trust.”

She had expected that bullet and she bit it. “Everybody thinks Harold is a waste of time and he probably is, but he's not a killer. You and I may be at each other's throat about keeping people off Chappy, but I've never known you to lie or tell tales. I need an honest man to work for me on this, someone who'll find out the truth and report back to me.” She looked around at our battered old house and added, “There'll be money in it. Looks like you could use it.”

Her comment about lies showed that she didn't know my character as well as she thought, but she was right about the money. When you live on Martha's Vineyard and you don't have a steady job, you can always use more money.

I gave her a question instead of an answer. “What makes you so sure Harold didn't do it?”

She lifted her chin. “Because I'm his mother. I know him through and through. He's weak. He doesn't have the metal in him to commit murder.”

Her vanity roused some pettiness in me and I said, “Cowards and cripples have committed murder, children on the honor roll have killed their kith and kin, dorks have done in other dorks. If you read the papers you know that every other killer has a mother who'll swear he didn't do it and who'll hide him in the bathtub when the cops come after him. What makes Harold different? He has metal enough to be a vandal.”

She formed her knobby hands into fists. “He's nokiller. I know it!”

I sat back and studied her. Then I said, “There's something you're not telling me. What is it?”

She glared at me. “I've laid my soul in front of you and you've done nothing but insult me. Go to blazes! I've no more to say to you. I'll find someone else. Damn you!” She opened her hands, placed them on the arms of the chair, and began to push herself erect.

“Where was Harold when Ollie took his fall?” I asked. “He wasn'thome, was he?”

The energy went out of her like air from a deflating balloon and she sank back into the chair. I leaned across the table.

“You were home when Ollie bought it, but he wasn't. If he'd been home, you wouldn't be here because you'd be his alibi. Where was he?”

She took a ragged breath and scrubbed her eyes with her hands. “I don't know! He won't tell me! He got home late. I don't know what to do!”

No tears came from her old eyes, but I felt as though some were sliding down her face like raindrops on windowpanes, and I could sense fear behind them.

I got up and went into the house and came back with two cups of black coffee and a glass of cognac. I put a cup in front of each of us and the cognac beside hers.

“Unless you have something against booze,” I said, “toss that brandy down in one shot. Don't sip it, toss it down.”

She did that and shuddered when the cognac hit her belly, then she dug a handkerchief out of her pocket and dabbed at her lips and eyes. “If we do that during a meal, we call it the Norman Hole,” she said. “If you're filled up before the meat course, you toss back a shot of cognac and then you can eat for another hour. I don't usually do it before lunch, though.”

“Try some coffee,” I said, between sips of my own.

She did that and for a while neither of us spoke. Then I said, “Before you decide that you really want to have some personal private investigator work for you, you should know some possibilities. The first is that he might find out things you don't want to know. He might find evidence that Harold actually is guilty of murder, for instance.”

“His isn't. No one will find anything like that. But he needs protection.”

“Protection from what? The law? Even if he isn't guilty of murder, he must be involved in something else he doesn't want you to know about. Are you sure you want to know what it is?”

She said nothing, but again I felt fear emanating from her. I wondered what was under the rock that she didn't want to turn over.

“You want your investigator to report only to you, but if he finds evidence that throws suspicion on Harold, he'll have an obligation to give it to the police. Can you handle that?”

Maternity replied, “You won't find that evidence.”

“You're talking like I've agreed to work for you. I haven't. I'm telling you what you need to know if you hire any agent worth his salt. Your detective won't know what he'll find until he looks, and he may not legally be able to keep it confidential. You have to accept that.”

She nodded. “I understand. I agree.”

“The time may come when you don't. If that happens, you may want your agent to break off the investigation and keep his mouth shut, but he may not want to.”

She smiled a hard, horsey smile. “I could fire him. People won't work if they don't get paid.”

I shrugged. That was the general rule, but there were exceptions. “Usually not,” I said.

“Do we have a deal, then? Will you work for me?”

“I'll tell you something about detectives,” I said, looking as far as I could into her eyes. “They expect people to lie to them whenever the people think it serves their interests. They expect the criminals and their friends to lie but they also expect their clients to lie. I expect that you're lying to me right now.”

She glared at me. “That's a terribly cynical way to live. I've told you the truth!”

“You haven't told me everything. You haven't told me something I need to know to do this job.”

“I
have
told you everything! I'm afraid they'll accuse Harold of killing Ollie Mattes.”

“I think you're holding back.”

“No! But I need help. I can't protect him myself.” She was angry, but her anger, though directed at me, seemed rooted elsewhere. Perhaps in some fear she'd not speak of.

I was suddenly impatient with her. “You'll have to get the help you need somewhere else,” I said, “because I won't work with anyone who isn't straight with me.”

She had been rich a long time and thought everyone and everything had a price. She swallowed her fury and said, “We don't have to like each other. Work for me for just a week. Money is no problem. All my husbands had money and I had my own before I married them.”

She mentioned an amount and asked if that would cover a week's work. It was considerably more than I'd ever made in any other week, and I wondered if my eyes widened when I heard the figure.

I said, “That's a lot of money, but I'm not interested. I'll give you some advice, though. Whoever works for you will also be working with your lawyers and their investigators and they'll have to cooperate. Your personal investigator will be handicapped if your other people won't talk to him.”

She straightened in her chair. “I'll make sure they cooperate with one another. How much money do you want?”

“You can probably buy me if you offer enough,” I said, “but I don't feel like being bought. I don't want to work with you. Are you sure you don't mind having people know that you're working to protect Harold? He hasn't been charged with anything, and your friends might wonder why your people are asking questions about him.”