Vineyard Shadows (20 page)

“Anybody else in the car?”

“A couple of people, maybe, but our man only saw Graham. He was in the suicide seat.”

“When was all this?”

“About three hours ago.”

Three hours. I told Agganis of my latest trip to the farm and of my conversation with Rimini and Grace Shepard. “If Graham knew where they were staying,” I said, “he'd have been there when I got there, but he wasn't.”

“Maybe he didn't want to be there yet,” said Agganis. “Maybe he's waiting for reinforcements.”

“Maybe he is.”

“Your family may be the target,” said Agganis.

“Thanks.”

“Be careful.”

“Yes.”

I dialed the farm, let the phone ring four times, hung up and called again. Rimini answered and I told him what I'd heard.

“Graham?” His voice seemed to go away and then come back. “What's Graham doing here?”

“Maybe he's just on vacation.”

The voice firmed. “I deserved that.”

“Did you ever see him with anyone else?”

“No . . . no, he was always alone.”

“So you don't know who else might be in that car?”

“No. I can't imagine . . .”

Was I so focused on past lies that I heard them whenever he spoke? I reminded myself that even liars tell the truth most of the time.

“Well, he's got somebody with him, so be careful.”

“Thank you. We will.”

Hanging up the phone, I noticed for the first time that Zee had driven two spikes into the wall above the rear door and had hung John Skye's shotgun there.

Cannons at both entrances to the house. Fort Jackson. I went and found Zee and helped her get supper on the table.

Much later, I woke up in the dark. Zee lay curled against me, sweet and soft, one knee bent behind mine, the other thigh and calf hooked over my hip, one arm wrapped around my belly, her breath warm against my
back. I listened for the sound that must have wakened me, but all I heard was the purr of a cat, Oliver Underfoot for certain, coming from the foot of the bed. Velcro, being made of sterner stuff, slept alone.

I realized instantly that it hadn't been a sound but a thought that had intruded upon my dreams: Willard Graham was not linked to Zee and me at all; he probably had never heard of us. My family wasn't threatened by him; he was on the island for some other purpose.

I didn't need the pistol I had secreted under my mattress when we went to bed; not, at least, as far as Graham and his companions were concerned.

I shut my eyes but could not shut down my thoughts. If not me, then who interested Graham? Rimini, of course. And if for no other reason than that she was there, Grace Shepard, too, fell under his sights.

But what was his intent? And who were those who accompanied him? Did they work for him, or he for them?

Was he on his own? Or did he and those with him work for or with someone? If so, who?

Sonny Whelen, perhaps?

But if he worked for Sonny, why didn't he tell Rimini that he did? But he hadn't told him. Instead, he'd told Rimini that he was a cop interested in nailing Sonny on charges of illegal gambling. But that was a lie. Graham wasn't a cop, and when he had been he'd been with the DEA, not vice. On the other hand, if he lied about being a cop, he might have been lying about everything else. Maybe he
was
working for Sonny all along, and Sonny had reasons for misleading Rimini.

Lots of ifs and maybes.

Maybe Graham worked for Pete McBride. Pete wanted Sonny's crown, and maybe Graham was sucking Rimini
dry for Pete in hopes of getting some kind of an edge on Sonny. Maybe, for instance, he was going to turn everything Rimini knew over to the real cops so they'd nail Sonny and save Pete the trouble.

My maybes and ifs added up to zero.

Maybe Graham was on his own. Ex–DEA cop squeezing schoolteacher in gambling trouble. Tell me everything you know and hear, or else.

Why? I couldn't guess.

And what about Tom and Grace? They were up to something they didn't want to talk about. What?

A tangled web, indeed. Scott knew whereof he spoke; there was enough practiced deception here to go around. I had a sense of foreboding.

I slept badly and woke foggy-brained and discontented. Coffee and juice helped but did not cure my malaise. Bagels with cream cheese, lox, and red onions helped some, however, and by the time I cleaned my plate I felt almost up to par. New Yorkers are wrong about a lot of things but not about that particular meal, which is a yummer.

“You look more human than when you woke up,” said Zee, gathering up her shoulder bag and giving me a kiss. “See you later.”

I held her face between my hands and looked down at her. Her split lip was mending and the bruises around her eyes were fading. She looked more like her old self every day.

I kissed her and let her go, and she went off to work.

She didn't ordinarily carry that shoulder bag, and I thought I knew why she had it now. I was sure when I went to the gun cabinet and saw that her little Beretta 84F was missing. Mrs. Jackson was packing iron.

Good old Zee. The lioness was not about to let her
family go unprotected, in spite of her fears that she was no longer the person she had once been. I thought of the impossibility of stepping in the same river twice, and how each of us is like that river: ever-changing, swirling atoms in endless new configurations, never quite the same persons that we were or will be, held together only by our odd sense of identity.

I washed up the breakfast dishes, stacked them in the drier beside the sink, and collected Joshua and Diana.

“Come on, kids; we're going for a drive.”

“Can I steer?”

“No. You're too little.”

“I'm bigger than Diana.”

“But you're still not big enough. Besides, you don't have a driver's license. If a policeman caught you driving, he'd put you in jail.”

“What's jail, Pa?”

“It's a room with bars on the doors and windows and no toys. They put bad people there. You wouldn't like it.”

We drove up to Chilmark and I found the town clerk's office. Chilmark is the prettiest township on the Vineyard. If I didn't live in Edgartown I'd live in Chilmark if I could afford it. It's got lovely winding roads, water on three sides, the island's only official nude beach, and rolling wooded topography including the highest point on the Vineyard, a whole three-hundred-plus feet above sea level. The Quitsa end of Menemsha Pond is the prettiest site on the whole island, and at the opposite end of the pond the village of Menemsha looks like Walt Disney's idea of what a fishing village should be. All in all, it's a beautiful town with only a single flaw: no liquor store. Chilmarkers have to go to Oak Bluffs or Edgartown to get their booze.

The town clerk, like town clerks of most small towns,
knew where everybody lived. There was no land registered to Willard Graham, but Howard Trucker's place was on the north side of South Road, not far from the town cemetery where faithful pilgrims still come to leave flowers, roaches, and empty beer bottles on the gravestone of John Belushi. Whether John is actually under there is widely debated, but his stone is the second most popular tourist site on the island, topped in attendance only by the Dyke Bridge on Chappaquiddick, which, decades after the accident that made it famous, still attracts the curious and the perverse. Tourists are often rather odd, but the island lives off them, so they and their money are always welcome to the Vineyard.

I paused by the entrance to Trucker's driveway. There were two mailboxes there, one with a number and the other with a name I didn't know. The clerk's directions had been explicit, so I knew I was in the right spot. I turned in. If anybody was home, I'd use the lost traveler ploy. Two kids in the car would make me more believable.

The driveway was winding and narrow and after a bit split in two. Keeping the clerk's directions in mind, I took a right. The drive climbed a rise and ended in an empty yard of uncut grass in front of a modest house with a brick chimney and a roofed front porch that extended the length of the building.

“Stay here,” I said to Joshua and Diana. They nodded.

I got out and looked around. The house had that empty feeling about it that unoccupied buildings often have. I went up onto the porch and knocked on the door. While I waited, I turned and admired Howie's view. I could see Noman's Land off to the southwest and the Gay Head lighthouse up in Aquinnah. Not bad. I guessed that Howie had bought the place quite a while back, before the price of Chilmark land went through the
roof. Or maybe enforcers made lots more money than I thought.

No one came to the door, so I knocked again and waited. Still nobody. I tried the door handle. Locked. If I'd brought my picks and left my children at home so they couldn't see their father breaking and entering, I could be in the house pretty quickly, but I'd brought the children and left the picks, so I was stuck outside. I peered in windows and saw that the house was as normal inside as out. I walked around to the back and tried that door. Locked. I peeked in more windows. It seemed to be an ordinary three-bedroom house. It was neat and clean. Howie might have been a strong-arm thug, but Mrs. Howie apparently was more the middle-class domestic type.

I went back to the car. Graham and his friends weren't here and never had been. They were someplace else. I hadn't narrowed the search down much. Martha's Vineyard is twenty miles long and seven miles wide, and I had eliminated exactly one house from contention. The only thing I'd learned was that Graham probably wasn't representing Howie Trucker's interests on the island. That left several million other possibilities.

“Who lives here, Pa?”

“A family named Trucker. Nobody's home.”

“Why not?”

“I think their vacation's over.”

I drove home, thinking.

When I passed the driveway to John Skye's farm I almost turned in, but didn't. I'd been there too often already. If I could manage it, I wouldn't go back until Rimini and the woman pulled out. Two days. I'd go back that last morning and make sure they got on their way.

At home, I called Gordon R. Sullivan, who was at his desk for a change.

“What can I do for you, J.W.?”

“You can tell me whether the minions of the law would consider putting Tom Rimini and his family in a witness protection program in exchange for testimony about Sonny Whelen's gambling operation.”

“I imagine that depends on how much Mr. Rimini has to tell. The feds and the state usually protect witnesses, but if Rimini comes in and talks, we might be able to help him out.”

“I get the impression that maybe I should be talking with the state guys or maybe even the feds.”

I could almost see his shrug. “One thing's for sure: they both have more money than the city does. Do you think Rimini knows anything that could nail Sonny? My impression was that he's just a little fish.”

“Little tadpoles into giant oaks do grow. I don't know how much he knows, but I'd hate to see his family suffer if he talks. I think they might do just fine out in South Dakota or somewhere. They must need teachers in South Dakota.”

“I wouldn't know. Tell you what I'll do. I'll ask the lieutenant so he can ask the captain so he can ask whoever it is captains ask, and when the answer gets back down to me I'll give you a call. Meanwhile, you might contact the feds and the state and see if they're interested. You'll have a better chance if Rimini actually knows something important. Does he?”

“Like I said, I don't know.”

“You don't know, I don't know. I doubt if Rimini knows. I did hear one thing that might interest you.”

“What's that?”

“A state cop I know says another cop told him he
thinks he saw Sonny Whelen down on Cape Cod, driving toward Woods Hole.”

I felt a little chill.

“When was that?”

“About three hours ago.”

When I hung up I noticed that my hand was shaking just a bit. I checked the ferry schedule. It was possible that Sonny was on the island right now. If not, he could be on the noon boat. I called Dom Agganis.