Vineyard Deceit (2 page)

He stood back and put a hand on the edge of the cockpit. He watched us with his hooded eyes as the cigarette boat rumbled away down harbor. Rashad turned once and looked back. His eyes seemed to burn with dark fire.

Beside me, Zee shivered in the warm August air. “Take me home,” she said. “I want that shower.”

We walked along North Water Street past the great captains' houses, crossed Main at the Four Corners, and went up South Water Street past the huge pagoda tree that some captain or other had brought over from Asia in a flowerpot a century and a half earlier. We turned down toward The Reading Room, got my ancient, rusty Toyota LandCruiser from where I'd left it, in spite of the
NO PARKING
signs, on Collins Beach, and I took Zee home.

At the time I had no idea that we'd crossed swords with the Padishah of Sarofim or what that would lead to.

2

Behind every great fortune lies a great crime, as someone (Balzac?) observed. Certainly that is true of the Emerald Necklace of Sarofim. The theft of the emeralds had provided the beginning of a great family fortune two centuries earlier, and crime followed them to Martha's Vineyard.
Kidnapping and killings were only two of the evils that arrived with the necklace, and Zee was to be only the first island victim. Even now, chicanery and violence seem inexorably linked to the emeralds. They glitter from the dark shadows of their own history. Where did they really come from? What gem cutter cut them, what goldsmith set them? How many times have they been wrested from someone who had stolen them from someone else? How much blood has been shed for them? How much is still to be shed?

When I first heard of the Sarofim necklace, I had been enjoying clams, beer, and country music in my yard. It was about a week after the incident in Cape Pogue Gut. Standish Caplan had been as good as his word. He had sent me a generous check, and my outboard motor was again purring smoothly. Emeralds were not on my list of things to think about. I was dreaming about Jeremy Fisher's eighteen-foot catboat.

I had been clamming the day before in Eel Pond, where I'd been having some luck lately. Good clamming spots get discovered and clammed out pretty fast on Martha's Vineyard, so when we find one, we keep it to ourselves. My secret still seemed secure, and I'd got my bucketful in short order, brought them home, soaked them all night in salt water so they would spit out their sand, and now had them ready for frying. My mouth watered as the oil heated and I whipped up some tartar sauce.

You can dip your clams in a batter or in flour or in both before frying them. I use a batter. To get it to stick to your clams, you make sure the clams are dry and then chill them in the fridge until just before you dip them in the batter.

To the sound of Hank Williams, Jr., singing of the joys and sorrows of honky-tonk life, I cooked and ate, washing the clams down with Yuengling lager, an excellent beer (from America's oldest brewery). Yum. What could be finer than beer and clams and C-and-W music on a fine
August day on the beautiful island of Martha's Vineyard? I took my portable radio and more clams and beer out into my yard, stripped down, and sat gingerly in Archie Bunker's chair, the wonderful, comfortable but fragile old wooden lawn chair I was going to fix up right someday. Two of the Bad Bunny Bunch, who had evil designs on my garden, hopped reluctantly back into the oak brush and trees as I lay in the warm sun beneath a blue sky. Tan renewal time. I could eat, drink, and do that too.

Beyond my garden and the trees and across Anthier's Pond, the August people could be seen, distantly, sopping up the summer sun on the beach or on their sailboards. Beyond them, out toward Cape Cod, where a line of lazy clouds hung against the sky, the sail and motorboats moved across the Sound. The wind was gentle from the southwest and sighed through the trees around my house.

I was finishing up the last of the clams and thinking about the eighteen-foot fiberglass catboat that Jeremy Fisher, who had decided at eighty-something that he was no longer up to singlehanding around Vineyard Sound, was willing to part with for a very decent price, which I could not afford, when I heard a car coming down my driveway.

My driveway is long and sandy and I don't get a lot of cars coming down it, although I don't mind when one does. I also don't get dressed if I'm perfecting my tan. After all, I'm in my own yard and whoever is coming wasn't invited and must take what he or she finds at the end of the road. On the other hand, one never knows, do one? What if it were the President of the United States? What if it were the Pope? Just because they've never come down yet doesn't mean they won't.

I placed the empty clam plate in a diplomatic position and took a pull on my beer.

The car belonged to the town of Edgartown, had blue lights on top, and was being driven by the chief of police.
He stopped the car, and we eyed one another across the lawn. He shook his head, opened the door, and got out.

“You're too late,” I said. “I spent all of the Brinks money on clams and I just ate the last of them.”

“Decadence,” said the Chief. “Aren't you embarrassed to be lying out in the open like that, in view of low-flying planes?”

“I realize that it's envy of my manly endowment that makes you talk like that,” I said. The Chief had never come to my house before, so something was going on. I got up and pulled on my shorts. “There, now you don't have to feel embarrassed. I didn't mean to show you up, but you've nobody to blame but yourself. You should have called and told me you were coming.”

“You off-islanders don't even know what well hung means,” said the Chief, digging his pipe out of his pocket. “The chamber of commerce sent me to talk to you about this habit of yours of lying around naked. We have a lot of rich female tourists flying in here, you know, and when they look down and see you, they fly right home again, thinking that all the men down here are underdeveloped. It's wrecking the summer economy.”

I finished my beer and picked up the clam plate. “Come up on the porch,” I said. “I'm going to have another beer. You care for one?”

“Nope. On duty.” He stoked up his pipe and followed me up the steps into the screen porch. The sweet smell of his tobacco filled my nostrils, and once again, as always when I smell a pipe, I gave serious thought to smoking my own again. I still had my rack of briars and corncobs even though I hadn't smoked in years. I'd once smoked cigarettes too, but I missed only my pipe. I sometimes suspected that the Chief deliberately lit up to give me grief. Now he puffed and looked out across my garden to the Sound. “Nice view,” he said. “How much land do you own here?”

“About fifteen acres. Just enough to keep people from getting too close to me. My father bought it a long time ago, when land was cheap. I couldn't afford to buy it now.”

“Baird's old hunting camp,” said the Chief. “My old man used to come out here with Baird and some of their pals. They'd bring their guns and a few bottles and a box of grub and spend weekends pretending to hunt while mostly they drank whiskey and played cards and told lies. My old man brought me up once or twice when he thought I was old enough to shoot.” He gestured toward the pond. “There used to be good duck hunting out there, not that we ever actually got around to shooting very many.”

“My father told me once that if you had all the whiskey that had been drunk in this place and if you poured it out, you'd have a river running all the way to the pond,” I said.

The Chief allowed himself a fast smile. “That's about right.” Then the smile passed, and he stopped looking at the Sound and looked at me. “One of my special officers just retired to Florida. I want to replace him and wondered if you, being an ex-big-city cop and all, would take the job. I need all the extra officers I can get for a special detail that's coming up. You might even like it. One night. Good money. Fancy clothes; a tux, probably.”

“I don't own a tux.”

“The customer will pay for it. You interested?”

“If the money's good, every off-duty cop on the island is probably interested. Aren't there enough of them?” Cops everywhere love off-duty special details. They make excellent money and can always use it; usually, too, the special details require very little work; whenever you see a cop standing beside an open manhole or beside a telephone company truck or outside a farmers' market, directing traffic, it's a special detail.

“You must have won the lottery,” said the Chief. “You don't seem too interested in making some money. I've already got every loose cop on this job, but I could use
one more inside the house, and much as I may regret saying this, you're my first choice.”

“It's been a while since I carried a badge.”

“It's a part-time job at best. You interested or not?”

I thought about it. “Enough to talk about it some more. This must be a big deal, if you've used up all of the island's off-duty fuzz. What's it all about?”

“It's not just island law,” said the Chief sourly. “We'll have state cops and some feds too.”

“My breath is bated.”

“You know the Stonehouse sisters . . .”

“No.”

“Yes you do. Amelia Muleto. Old Ray Muleto's widow. She's one of them. Her twin sister is Emily. She married Edward C. Damon. Owns that big place over on Chappaquiddick. You know, down harbor the other side of the narrows. White boat house big enough for the
QE2.
Keeps the
Dog Star
tied there. Sixty-foot yawl. Big cigarette boat, too.”

I did know Amelia Muleto. She is Zee's aunt by marriage, but I'd known her long before I'd met Zee. And I had once met her sister, but I hadn't known they were the Stonehouse sisters and explained that to the Chief.

He puffed on his pipe, undismayed by my ignorance. “In that case, you probably don't know about the emeralds, either.”

“No.”

“Or about Edward C. Damon being appointed ambassador to Sarofim.”

“As a matter of fact, I did hear that. He's one of the fat cats who bankrolled the campaign of the new President of the U.S. of A. and he's getting Sarofim as a reward even though he doesn't speak the language or know anything about the Middle East in general or Sarofim in particular.”

“You're a snide bastard. How much do
you
know about Sarofim?”

“I know it's got more oil than it can pump in a thousand years and a king or sheik or whatever who likes movies and women.”

“I see you read
Newsweek.
Gosh!”

I gave him a wise smile. “Tell me about the emeralds. They sound more interesting.”

“The way I get the story, a couple of hundred years ago one of the Stonehouse ancestors hired himself out as a mercenary to someone who wanted to replace the king or whatever of Sarofim. In the war that followed, Stonehouse got into the palace and away with enough of the royal treasury to establish a family fortune. He sold most of the jewels for cash, made some smart investments in land and the East India trade, and ended up with a peerage that he gave up to come to America and make even more money. But he never sold this emerald necklace. It's been passed down through the generations until now. And now the king of Sarofim wants it back. National treasure.”

“And is he going to get it?”

“He is. The Stonehouse girls—girls! They're in their sixties, at least—are going to hand it over to the king himself. You get the idea: cementing the historical friendship between the two sovereign nations, ending an ancient grievance between the royal family and the Stonehouse family . . .”

“Guaranteeing Edward C. Damon a good start as potential ambassador to Sarofim . . .”

“You got it. The show is scheduled to take place in Damon's house. His Royal Whatsis was on the island a week ago and he'll be back again in a couple of days. In Disneyland right now, I think. Anyway, it will be a very, very grand affair, with Important People from Sarofim, Washington, Boston, you name it, here for the event.”