Vineyard Deceit (25 page)

“Hi, J.W.! Say, that was some fish I caught. That was maybe the best fish I ever did catch.” He smiled his foolish smile at Helga. “A bonito,” he said. “A nice one.”

I introduced them to each other. Bonzo took her hand. “Any friend of J.W.'s is a friend of mine,” he said. Then he turned conspiratorial and leaned closer to me. “Those guitar people aren't here. They ain't been here all night.”

“That's okay,” I said. “We'll wait. If they show up, let me know.”

“Good,” said Bonzo, relieved that he had not disappointed us. “If they come, I'll be sure to tell you.” A glass went onto the floor somewhere, and the sound of its breaking alerted Bonzo to his duty. His dim eyes sought out the accident. “I got to go to work,” he said. “These people, they break glasses and spill things all the time, you know? My gosh, how they break so much is beyond me.”

He went off. Helga smiled after him. I told her the bad acid story I had heard and how he'd gotten his name from his fondness for Ronald Reagan's movie
Bedtime for Bonzo.

“He's nice,” said Helga.

I was on my second beer when the jukebox began to fill the beery air of the Fireside with the deafening noise of a particularly awful band. I frowned at Helga. She was smiling and tapping her finger on the bar. She leaned toward me and shouted, “The Gits! Terrific!”

The Gits howled and throbbed at me from loudspeakers all around the bar. There was no escaping them. I looked into the mirror behind the bar and saw a girl
standing at the jukebox, punching in more coins. As I watched, she bobbed her head in rhythm with the music and turned away. I watched her walk back and sit down in a booth. Then Bonzo was in the mirror beside my own image. “Hey,” he yelled. “There's those guitar people!”

I put a finger to my lips, and he immediately put one to his own. A look of dull cunning appeared on his face. He glanced quickly toward the booth and then, using his other hand to shield the gesture, jabbed a finger toward it. His mouth moved silently. I realized he was mouthing “Guitar. Guitar.” I smiled at him and nodded. I put my mouth close to his ear and shouted.

“Got it, Bonzo! Thanks!”

He looked conspiratorially at Helga, again touched his finger to his lips, smiled and nodded, and went off.

The Gits bombarded my ears with screams and electronic howls and booms. No one besides Helga seemed to notice them. Helga was happy. She yelled in my ear. “Great stuff! You don't get to hear the Gits too much! Too new, I guess! The sign of a with-it bar!”

Terrific. The men's room was beyond the booth holding the Gits girl and her companions. I walked back past the booth and glanced at its occupants as I passed. I did the same coming back. Three young people. Two women and a man. Two with olive skins and dark hair, the other woman Caucasian in her coloring, but with those fine, sculptured facial bones I had seen in pictures of people from Iran and Pakistan. The man had a beer, and the women were sipping wine. The Gits woman was bobbing to the beat of the music, and all three were smiling. They apparently felt safe in the bosom of the Fireside. The Gits drowned out any words they might have been speaking.

I went back to the bar and, a bit later, got us a booth where we'd be easier to overlook. I couldn't see the back door, but I could see the front one. About midnight the
three young people got up and went out the front door. I put some bills on the table, and Helga and I went out after them.

“You get the car,” said Helga. “I'll keep track of them.”

They went right toward Giordano's, and I went left up the street to the LandCruiser. I was barely inside when Helga came hurrying up the street and climbed into the passenger's seat.

“They're in a Chevy two-door. They should be coming by any minute.”

The parking slots on Circuit Avenue are the diagonal kind. I waited until an average-looking Chevy two-door went by and then I tried to back out. But another two cars were not interested in my problems and passed before I could get out of my slot. The Chevy was now three cars ahead, and I was behind a guy who liked fifteen miles an hour as a maximum speed. I watched the lights of the Chevy disappear ahead of me along Circuit Avenue. Christ! The fifteen-miles-an-hour guy flashed his brake lights. There is a universal principle of some kind that says that the slowest drivers use their brakes most often. Scholars argue whether they are slower because they use their brakes so much or whether they use their brakes so much because they're the slowest drivers. Happily for me, in this case, the fifteen-miles-an-hour guy turned left by the Brass Bass. Now there was only one guy between me and the Chevy.

I goosed the LandCruiser and rattled on after the disappeared taillights of the Chevy. The guy between us was also hurrying along, and on Wing Road I caught up with both him and the Chevy's taillights. Both turned west along County Road and a bit farther along the Chevy's brake lights brightened. The Chevy turned right, and the car between us went on. I slowed, found the dirt road the Chevy had taken, and turned off my lights. I got my flashlight out of the glove compartment and found
the name of the street. Ocean View Lane. I put the flashlight back into the glove compartment. On Martha's Vineyard, if you can catch even the slightest distant glimpse of the ocean in the dead of winter when there are no leaves on the trees, developers and home owners call their places names like Sea View, Ocean Vista, and Water View.

The moon was a week or more past full, but I could still see by its light. I drove slowly after the Chevy's tail-lights until they brightened again and the car took a left. I drove to the turnoff and saw the Chevy stopped at a house set at the end of a driveway. I went past, found another driveway, turned around, drove back past the Chevy's drive, and parked.

I got my flashlight from the glove compartment again, and Helga and I got out.

“What do you have in mind?” she asked.

“I just want to see the number on the house.”

“Yeah. Everybody's up and around right now. Better to hit them early in the morning when everybody's half-asleep.”

“You got it, kid, but I'm going to do a little scouting right now.”

“I'm right behind you, then. I just hope they don't have any dogs.”

“Zee never mentioned a dog. If there's one here, we've got the wrong house.”

There wasn't a dog. There was a floodlight in front of the house, but I came in from the trees and slipped along close to the house itself, ducking under a couple of windows en route, until I got to the porch. Number thirteen. I could see the license plate on the Chevy from there, so I noted that too. To make things complete, I crept around back and located the rear door. Then I slipped away and found Helga waiting. We went back down the driveway, got into the LandCruiser, and drove away.

“When?” she asked.

“Five-thirty?”

“That's good. Nobody's awake at five-thirty.”

“You off-islanders are all alike. You sleep away your lives. Here on the Vineyard we've done a half a day's work by five-thirty.”

We got back to my house. It was almost one in the morning. Helga yawned and stretched.

“Find your clothes and I'll take you home,” I said.

“The ferry's not running.”

“We'll go along the beach.”

“That's a long way for you to drive.”

“No problem.”

She ran her hand through her hair. “You have an extra toothbrush?”

“Yes.”

“Any objection to my staying here? I want to be in on it when you hit the house in the morning, and by the time you take me home, it'll be time to leave again.”

I thought about it. I needed somebody to watch the back door of the house when I went in the front.

“All right.”

There was a tingle of sexual energy in the air. Helga's tongue touched her upper lip. She was a lovely woman. She took one step forward, then stopped.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I'm thinking that my husband probably wouldn't approve of me right now.”

Husband. Suddenly I was amused. “You can sleep in the room where you changed clothes,” I said. “There's an alarm clock in there. Let's not plan on being at the house until six. That way you can get a whole extra half hour of sleep. I want you wide awake in the morning.”

“Well, shucks,” she said.

“It's not that you lack womanly charms, it's just that I need to get some rest and I don't think I'd get much with you in my bed.”

“You're right about that.” She grinned. I thought there was actually a note of relief in her voice. “Well,
see you in the morning.” She went past me into the spare bedroom. I stood there for a moment then went to my own room and set the alarm for five. It took me a while to get to sleep.

22

I was awake before my alarm went off, so I turned it off and got up. There was a good deal of light outside already. I could hear Helga stirring. Had her alarm awakened me? I pulled on some clothes and phoned Zee. Being a nurse, Zee had developed the talent of being instantly awake when her phone rang. Phone calls at odd hours meant trouble for someone in need of her services, and she woke up with her brain already in gear. Besides, she had to go to work at eight and was probably about to get up anyway. I reminded her of that as soon as I heard her voice.

“Thanks a lot, Jefferson. I could have slept another hour!”

“Women of your caliber scoff at the idea of extra sleep. You work from dawn to setting sun with smiles on your faces and songs in your hearts. I think I've found the house you were kept in. I'm going to knock on the door at six. Do you want to be there?”

“You're damned right!”

“Meet me on County Road at the corner of Ocean View Lane. That's one of those dirt roads with a fancy name that they're punching out through the oak brush.”

“I'll be there.”

“Leave your shotgun at home.”

“You leave your shotgun at home! I've got to get dressed. Goodbye.”

I made instant coffee, toast, and scrambled eggs seasoned with just a bit of Szechuan sauce. By the time Helga emerged from the bathroom, the food was on the table.

“Eat up. We've got to hit the road.”

At twenty to six we were on our way. Zee's little Jeep was parked at the corner of Ocean View Lane. Zee was wearing her white uniform. She and Helga exchanged looks. Zee looked again at the jeans and shirt Helga was wearing. Then she looked at me.

“You're right,” I said to Zee. “They're your clothes. Mrs. Madieras, Mrs. Johanson. Mrs. Johanson, Mrs. Madieras. Zee, Helga. Helga, Zee.”

They shook hands. They were like night and day, the moon and the sun. Dark-haired Zee, golden-haired Helga. There was a poem there somewhere, probably, but I suspected I should not try to write it.

“I'm going to work in two hours,” said Zee, a bit testily. “I don't imagine that it'll take longer than that to decide whether this is the place or not.”

“We may not manage it at all, but on the other hand, we might. Shock value may help. A knock on the door at six in the morning, a man with a badge, a woman with a badge at the back door, you standing there behind me. We'll see. Any questions? No? Let's go, then.”

Zee followed us in her Jeep. We drove to the house and parked in the driveway. The place was absolutely quiet. No lights, no movement. “I have a pistol,” I said to Helga. “Do you want it?”

“No. Sam Spade didn't carry one and neither do I.”

“Aha! So that's how you managed to wear that slinky blue gown at the big Damon blast. No gat!”

“Oh dear, my secret is out.”

“It's safe with me. Let's go. You know how to look official?”

“Trust me.”

I did. We compared watch times, and she went around the side of the house and disappeared. Zee came up. At
six o'clock I walked up onto the porch and banged on the door. “Open up!” I yelled. “Police! Open up this door right now! Police! Police!”