A Shoot on Martha's Vineyard (31 page)

“Wonder Woman! How can I win you from Wonder Woman? I eat fish after they've been cooked. Does that count?”

“It counts, but not enough. Love me, love my live blue-fish.”

“You're making this very difficult for me.”

“I'm just your ordinary manly man,” I said, “with
manly standards about fish and women. Zee thinks I'm a hopeless case, so you probably shouldn't try to change me. Maybe you could learn to love golf.”

She laughed, but shook her head. “No, I don't think so. Can we stop along here somewhere? I have my bathing suit on under my clothes, and I'd like to swim and then get some sun.”

I pulled out of the track and parked. There was no one else in sight. Overhead the September sun was bright, and in front of us Nantucket Sound was blue and cool. I could see Muskeget off to the southeast. Kate put two towels side by side on the warm sand, then peeled off her shirt and shorts, revealing a bathing suit that apparently had been designed for a fairy's child.

“Your husband is an idiot to let you out of his sight,” I said, looking her up and down.

Her hair was long, her foot was light, and her eyes were wild.

“Come on,” she said. “Let's swim.” I took a breath. “You swim. I didn't bring my bathing suit.”

She looked both ways along the beach. “You don't need one. Come to think of it, neither do I.”

A moment later, she was naked. My pulse jumped. “Come on.” She put out her hand. “I'm your driver,” I said. “Not your knight-at-arms.” “I don't know what you mean. Come on. It'll be fun.” “Take your swim. I'll wait here.”

She walked to me and put her hands on my shoulders and looked at me with her siren's eyes. My will began to fade. “You don't find me attractive?” She took my right hand and placed it on her left breast. Her nipple was hard. As I touched her, she took a short, sharp breath.

I put Zee between us, and moved my hands to her waist. “You are a great beauty,” I said, holding her away from me. “In fact, you're the second most beautiful woman
I know. Now, go take your swim before some fisherman comes driving by and asks you for your autograph.”

She stepped away and looked at me wide-eyed. “The second most beautiful? No man ever told me that before! My God, Wonder Woman's not even here, but you'd think I was a potted plant! There must be something wrong with you, or else I've totally lost my touch!”

I held up my left hand and touched the ring on my finger. “You haven't lost your touch,” I said, “but this means I'm married. You're tempting but I'm taken.”

She shook her head and studied me for a long minute, then smiled an ironic smile. “I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I didn't know there were any really married men left. Just my luck to run into one. You sure you don't want to take a swim?”

“I'll pass this time.”

Her smile turned into a crooked grin. “Well, since I'm naked anyway, I guess I'll just go in like this. That way I won't have to wear a wet bathing suit for the rest of the day.”

She turned and walked into the small surf. I tried not to watch her, and to think about Lawrence Ingalls instead. I didn't do too good a job of it, but I did remember one thing that I'd been forgetting.

When Kate came out of the sea, it was the birth of Venus, and I almost forgot what I'd remembered. As she dried herself with her towel, she looked at me.

“That was good,” she said. “It cooled me off. I have two more weeks here. I'm not through with you yet.”

“You might be,” I said. “I'm taking tomorrow off.” I told her why.

She shook her head. “Drew said you were a hard case, and he was right. But if you're trying to get fired, it won't work. I want you around where I can get my hands on you.”

“Figuratively, of course.”

“No, not figuratively.”

I gestured toward Wasque Point. “There's a Jeep coming along toward us. Maybe you'll want to climb into some clothes.”

“Damn,” she said. She glanced down the beach, and reached for her teeny-weeny bathing suit.

When the Jeep came by, she was sunning herself on the dry towel. The fishermen in the Jeep waved and looked at me enviously. I didn't blame them.

Early the next day, Edgartown's finest closed off Main Street from the Old Whaling Church to the Dock Street parking lot and redirected traffic through the village's other narrow streets. The lucky locals who'd gotten jobs as extras were given directions about how to stroll along Main and look like summer tourists. The Skye twins and Mattie were among them. Cameras were set up, power cables were strung, Kevin Turner's trailer and a couple of lesser trailers were parked in the lot by the town hall, and when the sun was where Jack Slade wanted it to be, action began.

Joshua and I watched from inside the Bickerton & Ripley bookstore, where we had as good a view as most people.

A whistle blew and the extras moved along the side-walks. Some cars came down the street. The chief played a traffic cop at the four corners, and a couple of the selectmen sat on the bench in front of the town hall, pretending to be old-timers watching the passing crowd. After a while, another whistle blew and everybody went back to where they'd started and, at the sound of the starting whistle, strolled along the street once again. They strolled four or five times before Slade was satisfied.

“You two should be out there,” I said to the owners of Bick & Rip, who were also looking out of their window since there was no business to be done while the street was closed. “You could provide local color.”

“We just want to get our shop and our sign in the scene,” said Dana. “Be good publicity.”

“Especially if the movie's any good,” said Marilyn. “But even if it's a loser, well, they say that any publicity at all is better than no publicity.”

“I can see it now,” I said. “You'll have so many customers that your store will be famous and you'll be able to sell it and live off the interests of your investments. It'll be great.”

“Hey, there's your better half,” said Dana. And sure enough, there was Zee, looking spectacular in a light summer dress I'd never seen before. Something from Wardrobe, no doubt.

“And there's the star himself,” said Marilyn, as Kevin Turner appeared, smiling and waving to those extras who could not restrain themselves from oohing and aahing and pointing.

While various assistants got the crowd to act more professionally, Kevin and Zee and the director and some others talked and gestured. Then the whistle blew once again and the extras and the cars once more moved along the streets. This time, though, Kevin was part of the crowd, looking thoughtful and walking down the sidewalk just as Zee, peering casually into storefront windows as she went by them, came walking the other way. As she and Kevin passed each other, she glanced at him and gave him a smile. Their eyes met for a fleeting moment. He froze but she walked on. He stared after her, then raised a hand as if to call her back. But after one faltering step after her, he stopped, frowned, and put his other hand to his fore-head. The whistle blew.

They did it again.

Then they set up cameras in the street right at the spot where Zee and Kevin met and shot the scene again, only this time without the cars or most of the extras.

Then they put cameras on the sidewalk so that they faced Zee as she came toward Kevin and shot the scene again. And again. Then they replaced those cameras with others at different angles, and shot it again. And again.

I was glad I'd chosen another line of work, but Zee and Kevin and the extras patiently repeated and modified their actions until at last the director was satisfied.

A half hour later, Main Street was again open to the public, and Cassiopeia Films had moved on, to South Beach this time, where Kate and Kevin would be shot walking the sands side by side before realizing that their blood was running too hot for them to resist it any longer, and they fell to earth in a passionate embrace. Maybe Kate had just been practicing yesterday. As for me, I preferred to make love where I didn't get sand in my crotch.

“Well, what do you think?” I asked Dana as the street got back to normal. “Is there a place for me on the silver screen?”

“Joshua might make it big,” she said.

Another diplomat. I walked out and found myself face-to-face with the chief, who had abandoned his traffic duties once the cameras were turned off.

“How's show biz?” I asked.

“I hear the academy already has me up for best supporting actor. They know talent when they see it.”

He hoisted up his belt. It, like the belts of all cops these days, was loaded down with pistol, ammo, radio, cuffs, and all that other stuff that forces their owners to walk that instantly recognizable cop walk with their arms arched away from their bodies.

“You should wear suspenders with that belt,” I said. “Some day it'll fall down and take your pants with it. With your luck it'll happen just as somebody robs the bank, and there you'll be, right in the middle of the street with your pants and your gunbelt down around your ankles.”

He dug his pipe out of a pocket and blew through the stem. “Zee tell you we got a missing person out on Moon-beam? They found his pickup up there in Vineyard Haven, but nobody's seen Moonbeam.”

“Maybe he went over to America.”

“Nobody saw him on the boat, and Moonbeam's hard
to miss. Connie thinks he's gone for good this time, but she wants us to find him if we can.” “She seem upset?”

“What did he ever do for her besides give her all those kids? She did say she wished he'd finished covering up that sewer line out back of their place before he took off, but that she'd figured out how to use the backhoe and is doing it herself. If she doesn't need him to run the back-hoe, she probably doesn't need him at all, but she may be like a lot of married folks: they get used to having somebody around, and they want 'em there even if they're not much good. You see a lot of that. You remember the Bickersons on the radio? Nah, you're too young.”

“I remember the Bickersons,” I said. “My dad had some tapes of them. Old-time radio show.”

“Yeah, that's them. There are a lot of couples like that: bicker and pick on each other all the time, but can't live away from each other. The really mean ones fight, but when one of them calls the cops and the cop comes and tries to straighten things out, they both jump on him. Maybe Connie and Moonbeam are like that.”

“I didn't know Connie could run the backhoe,” I said.

“Neither did I,” said the chief. “But Moonbeam is no genius. If he can run one, probably anybody can. Hell, maybe even you could do it.”

As a matter of fact, I could. I'd run one the summer before I'd lied about my age and joined the army, digging trenches for foundations and water lines for a nonunion construction outfit in Somerville. I figured I still could run one if I had to.

“Aside from Moonbeam being among the missing, how's the murder investigation coming along?” I asked. “Anything new?”

He filled the bowl of his pipe from a plastic tobacco bag. I inhaled the scent of the tobacco.

“The state is running the investigation,” he said, “and they don't always tell us dumb, small-town cops what
they're doing. What I'm still doing is trying to find out if anybody saw Moonbeam or anything or anybody on the beach that day. So far, no luck.”

But a little light had been flickering in the back of my brain, and with his words another one suddenly joined it. Then other little lights joined them and made one bigger light. And in that light I saw a shadowy form, and wondered, not for the first time, just how dull I could be.

“Are you busy right now?” I asked.

The chief heard something in my tone, and tilted his head a little to one side. “Nothing that can't wait. Why?”

“I want you to take a ride with me.”

“Where?”

“South Beach. There's a guy there named Drew Mondry. He has a videotape I want you to see.” “A video of what?”

“Martha's Vineyard. It was taken the day Lawrence Ingalls was killed. It's just possible that the guy who shot the tape got a picture of the murderer.”

The chief's cruiser was parked in front of the court-house. We got into it and drove to Katama. It was Joshua's first ride in a police car. As the chief drove, I told him about the helicopter and the videotape.

The film crew was setting up at the Herring Creek end of the beach, but had taken a break for lunch. Drew Mondry was eating out of a box at an aluminum table under an umbrella. He said he had the tape at the hotel where he and Emily were staying. He tossed the remains of his lunch into a garbage barrel, and the four of us drove to the hotel, where he found the tape and put it into his VCR.

“Do you want to see anything in particular?” he asked.

“The beginning,” I said. “The part I didn't see before. The shots the cameraman in the helicopter took when he was flying over Chappy and along Norton's Point Beach.”

Drew rewound the tape to the beginning and turned on the TV.

There was a sweeping shot of the Vineyard as the helicopter came over the sound from the mainland. Then the camera was looking down at Cape Pogue and the light-house, and then was panning south along East Beach. There were fishermen at the jetties, and two of them waved as the helicopter passed over them.

The plane flew south along the beach, recording the new Dyke Bridge, the towels and umbrellas of the swimmers and sunbathers who had crossed it to reach the beach, and the occasional 4x4 parked or moving along the edge of the sound toward new fishing grounds.

Wasque Point came into view, and there below the helicopter were the Skyes and me. The helicopter made a circle over us and we all waved, then the plane went west over Norton's Point Beach. It flew over Lawrence Ingalls's pickup and looked down upon his body, but didn't hesitate because, probably, another body lying on the beach was just another body lying on the beach, and the cameraman had no way of knowing that this one was dead. Then the plane flew over a car going west toward Katama, and I said: “Stop. Rewind.”