Dead in Vineyard Sand (24 page)

Peeks through several upstairs windows revealed no one in sight; still, when I left the house and drove away, I could feel eyes on my back. Did I feel guilty about being a housebreaker? I was reminded of Byron's rueful comment that his religious upbringing didn't prevent him from sinning but did prevent him from enjoying it as much as he might have.

The view from the Willet place was of green hills, a green pasture on the other side of North Road, and the blue Atlantic in the distance. There were red cattle grazing near a blue pond in the pasture, and a white farmhouse on the far side of it. Arching over all of this was a pale blue sky holding a sun too bright to look at. No wonder people wanted to live on Martha's Vineyard.

Blue water, blue sky, red cattle, a white farmhouse, green trees and grass. Color everywhere. I remembered the reading I'd done as preparation for helping Joshua write his paper on the color wheel, and then remembered the yellow and blue window trim at Joanne Homlish's house, and immediately wondered why I hadn't linked those things before.

One of the most annoying and unanswerable questions in the world must be “Why didn't you think of
that before?” Who can possibly know why he didn't think of something that afterward seems so obvious? But the fact is that it happens all the time; we think of some things but not others. Maddening.

I drove to West Tisbury and followed Tiah's Cove Road to Joanne Homlish's house. A large white-haired man was in front of the barn with an ax in his hand. He gave me a benign look as I approached him. I told him my name and asked if he was Marty Homlish.

“That's me,” he said, shaking hands. “I don't think we've met.”

“We haven't, but I was here a few days ago and had a talk with your wife.”

“Joanne's gone to the store. Should be back soon.”

“I may not have to see her. Tell me, who painted the trim around those lower windows? Did your wife do it?”

He followed my gaze and laughed. “You guessed it. I did the second-floor trim, using the ladder, and Joanne did the lower trim. Just last year. But you can see how hers turned out. Some blue and some yellow. I should repaint it this year.”

“I noticed it the last time I was here,” I said, “but it didn't sink in. She's color blind, isn't she?”

“Yep. Blue-yellow. Pretty rare condition. Most color-blind people can't tell the difference between green and red, but Joanne mixes up blue and yellow. I've talked with her about it, but I still don't know what, exactly, she sees when she's looking at those colors. Some kind of gray, I think. I don't know how she decides what the real color is, but she didn't do a very good job of it on that trim.” He laughed again.

“Why didn't she just read the color off the cans?”

“I asked her the same thing. Turns out she used old cans where the paint had slopped over the side and
covered the words. My doing, of course. When I paint I get more on my clothes than on what I'm supposed to be painting. Drives Joanne wild, because she never spills a drop. I tell her that at least I know blue from yellow, but that doesn't mollify her a bit.”

“My truck there is blue,” I said. “Are you saying that if it was yellow, she couldn't tell the difference?”

He nodded. “You got it. You want to talk with her about it, she should be home in a half hour or so. “

“No,” I said. “I don't need to see her. Just tell her I came by to say hello.”

“I'll do that,” said Marty. He lifted his ax. “You aren't interested in splitting a little wood, are you?”

“Not right now.”

“I didn't think so. I try to do a little at a time so next winter I'll have all I need. I'm getting too old to swing an ax all day like I used to do.”

“I know what you mean,” I said, “You must have heard the joke about the guy who was complaining about his sex life.”

“I know the one,” said Marty. “Said it took him all night long to do what he used to do all night long. That the one?”

“That's the one.”

“The problem is, it ain't no joke,” said Marty, with a grin.

I drove back home, thinking that things were falling into place.

At the head of our driveway I stopped at the mailbox and found junk mail, including a medium-size pile of catalogs selling everything imaginable. I claim that Zee is the catalog queen of Martha's Vineyard, but men I know say that she's no match for their wives. I've wondered from time to time how much money has been spent on mailing catalogs. Less than has been brought
in by them, apparently, since there seem to be more of them every day.

I was halfway down our driveway when I saw ahead of me, parked in front of our house, an old yellow SUV. I felt a chill in spite of the warm summer sun.

Our driveway is narrow and sandy, and there are trees and oak brush on both sides of it, but there are places to turn off if you know where they are and you don't mind a few more scratches on your car. My old Land Cruiser was beyond caring about more cosmetic damage, so I pulled off the drive and parked under a big oak tree.

I got out and circled toward the house, moving slowly and trying to look everywhere at once. When the house came into view, I slowed still more, then stopped to study both it and the yellow SUV parked in front of it, looking for movement.

There was no doubt about it; the SUV was the rusty Mitsubishi Pajero I'd seen in the Willets' barn. But where was the driver? Who was the driver? I could see no one.

I curved deeper into the woods then circled back behind the shack at the rear of the house. The shack has a woodstove, and I clean scallops there in the fall and winter when it's too cold to clean them outside. I also kept tools in there, but, alas, none was a firearm. Maybe I should stick one of my father's old shotguns out there, just in case. Too late now.

I peered around the corner of the shack and studied the back of the house. Bedroom windows and the kitchen door stared back silently. Was someone inside studying me as I studied the house?

I waited, saw nothing, and then trotted to the kitchen door. I tried the screened door. It opened without a squeak. Good old WD-40. I stood straight and peeked through the small window in the inner door. I could see the kitchen and through the far door leading to the living room. Beyond that I saw the front door swinging shut as someone went out onto the screened porch in front of the house and shut the door behind him (her?).

I opened the door and went into the kitchen, holding my breath and walking softly in case some other intruder had stayed behind. Our master bedroom was immediately on my left and the door was open. I sneaked a quick look inside, saw nothing, and stepped in.

No one. I breathed again, and then listened. Nothing.

I went back into the kitchen, listening hard and avoiding the squeaky board in front of the stove as I went to the door to the living room.

Outside, a motor started, and when I glanced across the room I saw through a window that the yellow Mitsubishi was moving toward the driveway.

I couldn't see the driver. Should I plunge across the room and hope to get a glimpse of him or her at the risk of making myself an unmissable target if the driver had an accomplice still inside the house?

Caution or cowardliness prevailed. While the sound of the SUV's motor grew fainter, I swept the living room with my eyes and saw no one. Only two bedrooms and the bathroom to go. I crept into them one by one and found no one.

I went to the gun case, snagged the key from its top, unlocked it, and got out the old .38 police revolver I'd used when I was a Boston cop, before the days when the police began carrying Glocks and Berettas in hopes of matching the bad guys in firepower. I filled the cylinder and shoved the gun under my belt.

I went through the house again just to be sure, looking as I did so for signs the intruder might have left behind. I found only an empty Sam Adams bottle on the floor beside a living room chair. My guest had gotten thirsty while waiting for me. At least he or she had good taste in beer. I sat in the chair and found myself looking directly at the front door. I pointed my forefinger and said, “Bang.”

I walked outside and looked up at the tree house. What the hell? I climbed up and verified that it was empty. My visitor obviously had never seen
Tarzan and the Leopard Woman
or he or she would have gone up there to admire my construction and then stayed there because of the good view he or she had of anyone coming into the yard. Although I'd never noticed it before, the tree house was an excellent shooting station.

But maybe the driver wasn't a shooter. Maybe he or she wanted to see me for some other reason. I had no basis to think otherwise.

But I did think otherwise.

I swung down to the ground on the rope hung for that purpose and walked up the driveway to my truck. Had my visitor noticed it off there under the oak? If so, what had he or she thought?

It was annoying to constantly use the phrase “he or she.” Why couldn't English have a good gender-free singular pronoun for a human? The plural pronouns were all that way, why not the singular ones?

I backed carefully to the driveway and then drove down to the house. I was worried. What if Zee and the children had been home when the driver of the Mitsubishi had arrived? Would they have been in danger? The thought angered and frightened me. I added up all that I had seen and heard having to do with the Highsmith business, added it again, then went into
the house and called Dom Agganis. I got Olive Otero.

“You again,” she said. “What is it this time?”

I told her what had passed since last we'd talked, and said, “I think we should go up to Chilmark and find out who's been driving that yellow Mitsubishi.”

“You think Willet may have sneaked back here when we thought he was in Michigan?”

“What I know about him is that he has a twenty-two target pistol, he has a gripe against the Highsmiths, and he owns a truck that might have run Abigail Highsmith off the road.”

“I'm going to make a couple of calls,” said Olive. “I don't want you going up there alone. Come here instead.”

“I should probably stay here in case that driver comes back.”

Her voice was firm. “No. I want to know where you are and what you're doing, so come here. I'll try to get search warrants for the Willet place and the Highsmith place, and I'll get Dom and the Chilmark police here for a strategy meeting. You can tell them what you know and we'll decide what to do. No solo heroics, J.W. You'll just get in our way.”

“All right,” I said. “I'll be right up.”

It took a while for the interested parties to gather and for Olive to find a judge who would issue search warrants, but midafternoon the meeting got started. One of the Chilmark cops was the young officer who'd directed me to the Highsmith house the other day. He looked at me with interest.

“You first,” said Dom, pointing a sausage-size finger at me. “Start from the beginning and stick to the facts.”

I did that, going from my scuffle with Henry Highsmith to my near encounter with the driver of the yellow Mitsubishi at my house. When I was through, Dom asked, “What else do we have?”

What else they had were their interviews with everyone involved in the case and a couple of other bits: the Shelkrotts' car had not left the island, and, something of interest to me in particular, the Willets actually were still in Michigan.

That took most but not all of the steam out of the theory that Willet was the murderer.

“Maybe Willet hired somebody to do his work,” said the young Chilmark cop. “Gave him the keys and the pistol and turned him loose.”

“Is Willet that dumb?” objected an older Chilmark officer. “I don't think you hire somebody to use your car and your gun to kill somebody. It's not something I'd do.”

“People do strange things,” said Olive, “and we have some odd birds in this case.”

“Willet might have been working with a loose screw after his daughter died. Maybe he wasn't thinking straight.”

“If the Shelkrotts' car didn't leave the island, where is it? And where are they?”

“Car could be anywhere. Maybe they put it in the park-and-ride lot and went to America on foot.”

“Why would they do that?”

A shrug. “Why did they take off in the first place?”

“What we'll do,” said Dom, after listening to as much of such speculation as he could stand, “is go up there with our warrants and see what we can find. I want the Mitsubishi taken as evidence, which means you'll wear gloves when you touch it and that we'll need a truck and trailer to take it away. Olive . . .”

“I've already called the garage,” said Olive. “They'll be ready for us when we're ready for them.”

“We want the gun,” said Dom, “so keep your eyes open.” He described his plan, then looked around. “Any questions?”

There are always questions, the best one this time being, “Should we wear vests?”

“I always wear a vest,” said Dom. “Yes, you should wear a vest. This is a murder investigation and we don't know what we're going to find up there.”

“How about me?” I asked. “Do I get a vest?”

Dom frowned. “I don't think you'll need one since you're not going with us.”

“I might be handy,” I said. “I know where the key to the Willets' barn is, for instance.”

“Bolt cutters will do the job just as well.”

“I'd like to be in on the end of this business.”

“This may not be the end of it.”

“I'm a citizen and I can go where I please.”

“I don't know if it pleases you to go to jail, but that's where I can put you right now.”

“What's the charge?”

“Interfering with police officers doing their job.”

I held both palms up in front of me. “Interfere? Not me. I promise not to even get close to Chilmark.” I looked at the other officers. “You can witness that I promise not to interfere in any way. Dom, you can't arrest me for something I haven't done and won't do.”