Vineyard Shadows (24 page)

“I've been thinking about that possibility,” said Zee. “I wish there wasn't any story, but since there is, you can have it.”

“There,” I said to Quinn. “Now aren't you glad you came down?”

“Damned right. While you're digging your pond, Zee can take me fishing, and while we're hauling them in on Wasque she can tell me her tale. And I'll use my expense account to buy the champagne we'll share on the beach.”

I joined the laugh, but even as I did, some part of me was listening for sirens headed toward John Skye's farm and wondering if nearer neighbors had heard the sound of gunfire there. Gangsters have changed their plans before, after all. The vision in my brain was not a pretty one.

Zee wasn't working the next day, so after breakfast, while she stayed with the cubs, I drove to John Skye's farm with Quinn beside me and my old .38 under the seat, a cold comfort at best.

“You're not going to leave me here,” Quinn had said. “If you don't take me with you, I'll call a taxi.”

So we went together and drove into John's yard with me not knowing what I'd find.

We found an empty yard, an empty barn, and an empty house in need of cleaning. Grace had never struck me as the housekeeper type, and Tom Rimini, Graham, and the others who'd been there clearly were not. Everything belonging to them was gone, but there was litter scattered in every room: overflowing ashtrays, pizza cartons, empty beer cans, crumpled newspapers, and other clutter. The lights were all on, and every bed was unmade, with sheets and blankets awry. Dirty glasses, plates, and silverware were everywhere except in the dishwasher. Someone had even started to read a book in John's library and had left it on the side table beside his favorite chair. I put the book back on its shelf and kicked at a wrinkled rug.

“Look on the bright side,” said Quinn. “There's no blood anywhere and not a body in sight. You can have this place shipshape in half a day.”

“While you and Zee are off fishing, of course.”

“Of course. I'm a reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper. I don't clean houses.”

We walked around the corrals and through the sheds and then through the barn again. The loft door was shut tight and the pad that had been on the floor was gone. There was no evidence of the rifleman who had lain in wait there yesterday.

“I have to clean this place up,” I said when we got back to the house. “You take the truck. There's a fifty-fifty chance that these characters are in the standby line in Vineyard Haven, trying to get off. There's even a chance that Sonny and his crew are there, too, although I'm willing to bet that he was smart enough to get reservations off island either late last night or early this morning. You might try to get a photo or even an interview or two.” His newsman's eyes brightened and I gave him a description of the four cars involved. I tossed him the keys and he headed for the Land Cruiser.

I went inside and phoned Zee and told her what I'd found and what I'd be doing for a few hours.

“So it's over,” she said.

“This part of it, at least.”

“I'll pick you up at noon.”

I loaded up the dishwasher and the washing machine and got to work with a scrub brush, sponge, mop, and, finally, a vacuum cleaner. By the time Zee came by, the clotheslines were hung with sheets, pillow-cases, and other once-soiled linens, the last of the dishes and silverware were back where they belonged, and there was no sign that the house had recently housed a pack of assassins.

As we drove home, the kids were in the rear compartment of Zee's little Jeep, goofing around and laughing
about something. It was a good time to talk with their mother and not really be heard.

“I don't think I'll give John and Mattie all the details of Rimini's stay here,” I said. “It might make them nervous, and I don't want that. People come to Martha's Vineyard to relax, not to fret about killers in their houses.”

“The killers are gone,” said Zee.

“But my guilty feelings aren't. I hate it when I do stupid things, and one of my stupidest was misreading Tom Rimini. I thought I was doing a favor for a pretty normal guy with a gambling habit, but what I was really doing was helping a would-be gangster and his killer girlfriend set up an assassination attempt.”

“How could you know? I think the assassination idea only came to him after you put him in John's house. I think he and that woman saw their chance to set a trap and decided to take it, knowing that Whelen was rash enough to walk into it. Everything just happened to fall into place. You couldn't have known because they didn't know, either, until after you'd hidden him there.”

“I agree, but I still hate having been dumb enough to have set it up.”

She glanced at me with those dark, dark eyes. “I don't think it was stupidity,” she said. “I think it was love.”

I felt a tighter breathing, and zero at the bone. “It's you I love,” I said, but my voice sounded like stone.

She cocked her head to one side. “I know. But you still love her, too. Maybe not the way you love me, but it's still love. I don't think I feel quite the same way about Paul, but I'm still concerned about him. I want good things to happen to him. I know you want them to happen to Carla.”

Zee had no evil in her. I was different. “Your ex is a
jerk. He left you for another woman. You owe him nothing.”

“And Carla left you for another man, and she was a fool, and you owe her nothing. But you still care for her, and that's why you tried to save Tom: so she'd have a chance to be happy. You're a good man, although you probably doubt it. It's one of the reasons I love you.”

I stared out the windshield, then looked at her. Her face was almost free of the bruises Logan had inflicted, and her split lip was nearly healed, although I thought its scar would never quite leave. She was Woman, wiser than I in many ways, as strong or stronger than I was, more loving than I could be. I was astonished that of all the men in all the world she had chosen me.

“When Quinn gets back, we should go fishing,” I said. “The tide will be right about two, and they're getting a lot of blues at Wasque and along East Beach.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” said Zee. I put a hand on her thigh and she gave me a cosmic smile.

Quinn never caught up with Rimini or McBride in Vineyard Haven, but he spoke to Dom Agganis, the Chief, and other island cops, and his nonstory of the mobsters' gatherings on the Vineyard made the front page of
The Globe
, and sparked exactly the kind of speculation he'd hoped for: What were they doing there? Why had they apparently abandoned their plans? Because they found themselves under surveillance by the sharp eyes of Vineyard police from the time they reached the island, or for some other mysterious reason?

The Gangsters in Paradise tale even made it to the national TV news, as did his interview, complete with photos, with Mrs. Zeolinda Jackson, wife, mother, nurse, and crack pistol shot. The latter was the ideal story, satisfying both the political left and right. The NRA head-lined
the pistol-owner-housewife-defends-house-and-home theme, and the radical women's groups rejoiced in the power of women to fend for themselves without depending on men to protect them. The fact that Zee was beautiful, as Quinn's photos revealed, and that she was totally uninterested in publicity, made it even better.

“You're a heroine,” I said, turning off the TV at the end of the newscast. “Does that make me a hero?”

“You've always been a hero to me, sweets.”

Tears-tained Diana came in. “Pa, Ma, I can't find Mulder! Joshua says maybe Oliver Underfoot or Velcro ate him!”

Mulder was her goldfish. We went outside, and studied the fishpond.

“There he is,” said Zee, pointing, as Mulder swam out from under a rock and joined Scully and the fellow fish. “Oliver Underfoot and Velcro wouldn't eat Mulder.”

Atop the mound of dirt behind the fishpond and above the little waterfall that tumbled down into the pool was the white Greek temple we'd fashioned from scraps in the woodpile, and though most people would probably have found it pretty crude, it was our temple and we liked it. The fishpond and waterfall weren't bad either, for that matter. Maybe I had a future as a landscaper. If you planned to live on Martha's Vineyard, you couldn't have too many moneymaking skills, especially if, like me, you didn't want a regular job.

About a week later I got a call from Norman Aylward. “I've got some good news,” he said. “Tomorrow the D.A. will call a press conference and announce that no charges will be brought against Mrs. Jackson. The killing of Pat Logan and the shooting of Howard Trucker were justifiable self-defense. I think his decision is legally correct and it is certainly politically correct.”

“Thanks for the bulletin. Now maybe we can put this all behind us.”

“Not quite. Sometime in the future they'll be putting Howie Trucker on trial for assault with a deadly weapon and whatever else the D.A. thinks they can stick him with. Zee will have to testify unless he pleads guilty or makes a plea bargain of some kind.”

“I don't think Sonny Whelen would like to have Howie talking about family business, and I don't think Howie wants Sonny mad at him, so I doubt if there'll be any plea bargain, or at least not one involving ratting on Sonny.”

“You may be right. We'll see. The important thing is that your wife is free and clear.”

I wondered what the D.A. would have decided if the political winds had blown in a different direction, if, somehow, Zee had been portrayed in the press as less than a heroine. I wondered, too, how Logan's and Trucker's wives felt. Were they bitter? Angry? Relieved? I wondered what would become of them and their children. I wondered what Trucker, once a strong-arm man but now a guy with one bad arm and one bad leg, would do when he got out of jail. Roads diverge in a yellow wood. Acts always have consequences that can't be anticipated.

I kept my eyes and ears open for news of Sonny Whelen and Pete McBride and any of the other actors in the little Vineyard melodrama in which I'd played a part, but it wasn't until late August that a small story appeared in
The Globe
: two bodies had been found in a car in Lynn. The police suspected foul play, which was not unknown in Lynn. I tried to remember the old verse:

Lynn, Lynn, city of sin;

You won't come out the way you went in.

By the next day, the story had gotten bigger. The dead men had been identified as Peter McBride and Albert “Bruno” Viti, both of whom were, as they say, “known to the police.” A spokesman for the Lynn PD surmised that the killings were a manifestation of internecine conflict within the criminal community.

I thought the spokesman was right and was impressed by his language. When I'd been a Boston policeman, I'd never known anybody who used words like “ manifestation of internecine conflict.” Lynn was apparently getting a better-educated variety of cop these days.

I called Quinn and asked him if he'd heard anything about Graham. He said he'd heard that Graham had left town.

I called Carla, but her phone had been disconnected.

Hmmmmm.

About the same time, I bumped into Manny Fonseca down at the Dock Street Coffee Shop.

“Say,” said Manny, “how's Zee doing?”

“Just fine. Getting her gear ready for the fishing derby.”

“You think she might be willing to go back to shooting? There's a competition coming up that I'd like her to enter.”

“I don't know, Manny. I haven't talked with her about it. Right after that business happened, though, she wanted no more to do with guns.”

Manny nodded. “Yeah. I know how she felt. But maybe she's changed her mind.”

“You can ask her.”

“She's got the touch. It's a waste of talent if she gives up competition. She could be better than me, even.”

High praise. “Ask her,” I said. “She'll either say yes or no.”

“Yeah, that's right. Okay, J.W., if it's okay with you, I'll do it. I'll ask her.”

I didn't try to tell him that it didn't matter whether or not it was okay with me, because I wasn't Zee's manager or boss but only her husband. Instead, I said, “Do it, and good luck.”

He came by the next evening and the two of them went up onto the balcony to talk while I got supper going. After a while, Manny came down alone.

“Zee says to go up and join her for a drink. I gotta go home. See ya.” He waved a hand and went out. He looked happy.