Dead in Vineyard Sand (9 page)

But Diana was looking up into the trees with narrowed eyes. “I don't get it, Pa.”

“You will when you see the drawings,” I said. “Every job starts with drawings. Remember the ones we made for the tree house? I'll make some for the bridge, and then you'll see what I mean.” I studied my collection of still-usable scraps of wood: pieces of plywood, lengths of two-by-fours and two-by-sixes, and the rest. “I think I'm going to have to buy some more wood for the platform. I'll know more when I finish drawing the plans.”

“We'll help you, Pa!”

“Good.” We went into the house.

By noon I had a sketch of the rope bridge that clarified Diana's thoughts on the subject, and I had a drawing of the platform in the oak tree that informed me I was definitely going to need some more wood for construction and some more bolts and lag bolts and big nails. Both the kids and I considered the morning well spent.

I fixed us lunch and was conscious again of how much more I enjoyed the innocence of my children than the calculated business of adults, how much more important and immediate their rope bridge seemed than the violent events that threatened to entangle me in the death of Henry Highsmith and in his wife's accident.

I felt sorry for the Highsmith children, who in a single week had lost one parent and had nearly lost the other. They were older than Joshua and Diana, but were still only in their teens, and they must be suffering greatly from the calamities that had befallen them and had so transformed their lives. Being beautiful and rich had not kept sorrow and chaos from their door. I didn't know if the innocent suffer more than the guilty—Dostoyevsky would probably have doubted it—but I knew
that I pitied the innocent more, and didn't ever want my own children to hurt more than they had to.

After lunch the kids and I got into the Land Cruiser and drove to Cottle's lumberyard in Edgartown, where I got the supplies we needed. Home again, we carried our boards and nails and bolts out to the oak tree and parked them there. Then the kids watched while I got tools from the shed and my long ladder from the corral, and climbed into the tree to make my first measurements. By the middle of the afternoon, with the children handing me the tape measure, my handsaw, my hammer and nails, and other gear, I had two-by-six weatherproofed boards firmly lag-bolted around the trunk of the tree.

It was a good beginning, and we were all tired, so we put away the tools and went into the house for lemonade. There we rested in that comfortable camaraderie shared at the end of a day by hardworking people in the fields or the factory. I have often thought that I'm a born sloth, but I must admit that my happiness is often greatest when I've been working hard, “work” being something that needs or merits doing whether we like it or not.

Building a rope bridge was something I liked.

Being involved in the Highsmith tragedies was something I didn't like, but it seemed to me that I had only two real choices: I could trust Norman Aylward to tend to my security and the police to discover the real perpetrators in the Highsmith affair—presuming that Henry's death and Abigail's accident were closely related parts of a single scenario; or I could take arms against a sea of troubles.

But was I Hamlet or just an attendant lord, full of high sentence but a bit obtuse?

“Pa.”

“What, Diana?”

“Is the rope bridge going to be done tomorrow?”

“No. First I have to build the platform in the oak tree. This is a big job and it'll take some time.”

“How long, Pa?”

How long, indeed? A long time, maybe, if Dom Agganis decided to arrest me for assault or even murder. I didn't think that would happen, but we live in a world that's not always rational.

I looked at my watch. Time to meet Zee at Norman Aylward's office in Vineyard Haven.

“It'll take several days,” I said. “I can't spend all of my time working on the platform and the bridge. I have other jobs to do too.”

“I hope it's soon, Pa.”

“I hope so too. Meanwhile, you and Joshua and your friends can play in the tree house and you can tell your friends about the bridge. Come on, now, I have to go see our lawyer.” We went out to the Land Cruiser.

“Can we tell our friends about the leopard men too?”

“Sure.”

“Hey,” said Joshua. “I just thought of a good idea! We can put the TV in the tree house and watch
Tarzan and the Leopard Woman
there! That would be even more fun than watching it here!”

In the rearview mirror I saw Diana give her brother an admiring glance for thinking of something that she hadn't thought of first. “That would be really good, Pa! Can we do it?” She looked at me with melting eyes, but I refused to melt.

“I don't think so. We only have that one little television set, and that one old VCR, and they're going to stay right where they are.”

“Aw, Pa . . .”

Had I made a mistake introducing them to the
movie? As I drove I considered this dire thought. Then I decided, no, you're never too young for Tarzan. Especially if you have a big beech tree in your yard and a house up in its branches.

“If you want,” I said, “we'll watch the movie again and you can invite your friends over to see it. What do you think of that idea?”

They brightened. “That'll be good! Then we won't have to explain things to anybody!”

My thought exactly. If everybody's seen the same movie, everybody knows what's going on when you start playing the game.

Thoughts of the Highsmiths were back in my mind when Zee met me and the kids outside Norman Aylward's office and all of us went in. Norman's secretary accepted custody of the children while Zee and I entered Norman's inner office.

“Jeff is involved in the Highsmith case,” said Zee, giving me a sharp look and getting right to the point. “I think he needs to talk with you.”

Norman wore his lawyer's face. “I've heard something about J.W. and the Highsmiths,” he said. “Suppose you tell me everything, J.W.”

So I did that, starting from the incident in the fish market and ending with my latest meeting with Dom Agganis, with Zee filling in details I didn't think important. When we were done, Norman said, “Well, I don't think you're in any real trouble yet, J.W. I think the police are just feeling around. They don't have any evidence that will stand up in court and they know it. Just go home and tend to your usual affairs, and with luck the police will find the real killer fairly soon and they'll forget all about you. Meanwhile, if they want to talk with you again, give me a call and I'll deal with them.”

“There,” said Zee, as we left. “I feel better. Don't you?”

Actually, I did.

Back home, while Zee was changing into shorts, I got the vodka out of the freezer and poured us drinks, put crackers and pâté beside the glasses on a tray, and took everything up to the balcony. As I went up, I heard the phone ringing behind me.

I planned to tell Zee about the progress we'd made on the rope bridge, but when she joined me, she spoke first.

“They brought Abigail Highsmith to the ER while we were at Norman's office. Somebody shot her when she was leaving the funeral home this afternoon after she'd made arrangements to bury her husband. They've flown her to Boston.”

Olive Otero didn't think much of my alibi when I offered it to Dom the next morning.

“Joshua and Diana are right out there in my truck, waiting for me to finish this interview,” I said. “They'll tell you where I was all day. Or you can check out Cottle's lumberyard. I bought supplies there yesterday and I can show you some of them up in that oak tree where I was working during the afternoon.”

Dom looked at me. “Did you come here just to tell me you didn't shoot Abigail Highsmith?'

“And to point out that if I didn't shoot her, I probably also didn't try to run her off the road and probably also didn't bury Henry in that sand trap. How's Abigail doing?”

He shrugged. “She's still alive.”

“How'd it happen?”

“None of your business,” said Olive.

“She and the children were making funeral arrangements for Henry,” said Dom. “The boy and girl had gone ahead to the car when Abigail came out the front door. Shooter seems to have been standing in the bushes across the drive. Used a twenty-two and took just one shot. The funeral director heard a pop and glanced out a window as she went down. He ran out without thinking and must have spooked the gunman away. Probably saved her life. When we talked with him he was still shaking like a leaf. It had never
occurred to him that there was a guy with a gun out there, and he got scared later.”

I didn't blame him. “Rifle or pistol?”

“Pistol, probably. We found one casing. A bigger-caliber gun would probably have killed her.”

“Witnesses?”

“The kids were in the car and didn't see anything and neither did anybody we've talked to so far, but maybe we'll find one of those little old ladies who spends her time looking out her window to keep track of what the neighbors are up to.”

“How are the kids taking it?”

“They seem traumatized. No emotions at all. Like they're in a dream. First their father and now their mother. The only adults left to look after them were the housekeeper and her husband, but now Abigail's sister and her husband have flown in from Providence. The husband is with the kids here on the island and the sister is with Abigail in Boston.”

People get killed all the time and the motive is usually commonplace, but it was unusual for a husband and wife to be targeted by a killer at different times.

“Was the same gun used in both shootings?” I asked.

“We don't know yet, but I wouldn't be surprised.”

If Dom was right, the killer had a lot of confidence. He killed once, then kept the same gun and used it again. It would have been safer to chuck the first gun off a bridge so that no one could find him with it or be able to trace it, and to use another one the second time and then ditch that one too. Another possibility was that our killer was dumb. Criminals, even the smart ones, famously do stupid things.

“Somebody must be pretty mad at the Highsmiths,” I said. “You usually don't get dangerous enemies like that unless you've done something to anger or threaten
them. Henry or Abigail could each have gotten into somebody's sights, but it's unlikely that both of them would have.”

Dom leaned back in his chair. “Maybe passions run high in the groves of academe. Henry had a temper, as you should know. Maybe Abigail was just as bad. Maybe they really pissed off a dean or a student or something. People in Providence and New Haven are checking that out.”

I thought back to the scene in the fish market. “It was my impression that when Henry got pushy with me, he was already mad about something and was just taking it out on me.”

“He got mad because you started a fight with him,” said Olive.

I ignored her. “And didn't Abigail insist that nobody had forced her off the road even though Joanne Homlish vowed that someone did? Doesn't that make you think something strange was going on that each of the Highsmiths knew about but didn't want to discuss?”

“Like what?” asked Dom, lacing his thick fingers behind his thick neck.

I didn't know and said so.

“No surprise there,” said Olive. “Is there anything you do know?”

“Not much as far as this business goes,” I said. “Dom, do you know if Henry Highsmith played golf?”

He arched a heavy brow. “No, but I know that he did a lot of railing against this Pin Oaks proposal and made himself a lot of enemies doing it.”

I said, “Do you think there's something funny about Henry Highsmith being buried in a sand trap and his wife being shot coming out of a funeral parlor?”

“There's nothing funny about murder,” snapped Olive.

I nodded. “You and I may not think so, but I believe your killer thinks it's a good joke to bury a golf hater on a golf course and to kill a woman at a funeral home. It's twisted humor, but it's humor.”

She wasn't biting. “How about the bicycle accident? What's funny about that?”

“Bike enthusiast killed in biking accident. Your killer likes irony. It amuses him.”

“It's childish!”

“A lot of killers are childish, Olive.”

“I've read Kohlberg. I know his theory.” Her voice was sharp but her face had become thoughtful.

I was surprised by her reading tastes but probably shouldn't have been. People are almost always different than you think they are, and Olive was apparently no exception.

“I know you've talked with some people already,” I said. “Did you happen to find out why Henry Highsmith was in the Edgartown fish market when he tangled with me?”

Dom tilted his head. “No, I didn't, but my guess would be that he went there to buy fish.”

“Yeah,” said Olive.

“Yeah, probably,” I said. “But why there?”

Dom's head stayed tilted. “What are you getting at?”

I said, “I mean that the only Henry Highsmith I found in the phone book lives up in Chilmark. The nearest fish market is right there in Menemsha, but Henry rode all the way to Edgartown on his bike to buy fish. Why?”

Dom and Olive looked at each other.

“In a couple of his letters Highsmith made a big deal out of his daily ride from home through the three down-island towns and back again,” said Olive. “He probably wanted fish for supper, so he decided to buy it in Edgartown.”

“Maybe he always buys his fish at that market. We'll see if we can find out,” said Dom. “You have any more questions or bright ideas you'd like to share, J.W.?”

I got up. “No. I've shot my wad, I think. I'll go home and leave the detecting to you two. The kids and I have a rope bridge to build.”