Dead in Vineyard Sand (6 page)

Glen and I had both disturbed the trap's surface, but it had been pretty torn up before we'd arrived, presumably because the burier or buriers had ignored the convention of raking a sand trap smooth as you left it. Nongolfers, perhaps, or just in a hurry?

Smart manager George Hawkins, thinking ahead, had loaded shovels and a wheelbarrow in the back of his golf cart, and as I studied the trap, cops began carefully excavating the body. It took a long time because, as any beachgoer knows, sand tends to run back down into the holes you're trying to dig; but they kept at it steadily, taking turns at the shovels and wheelbarrow, and finally uncovered the corpse. It wasn't buried too deep.

It belonged to Henry Highsmith.

He was wearing his usual Captain Spandex uniform: skintight biking pants, an aerodynamic helmet, and a bright yellow biking shirt stained by what was surely blood. His lean face looked almost alive, a sign that he'd not been buried too long. A medic crawled into the hole and briefly examined him, then crawled out again.

“Looks like a single gunshot in the chest,” he said, looking at Dom. “But the medical examiner will say for sure.”

“Bring him out and go through his clothes,” said Dom. “Not that there's much to go through. Do pants like those even have pockets?”

A young cop found a thin wallet and handed it to Dom, who peeked into it. “Driver's license, credit card, medical insurance card, and about forty bucks. Dr. Highsmith traveled light.”

“Are we done here?” asked a young cop who was holding a shovel. He sounded hopeful.

“No,” said Dom. “Keep digging deeper and wider, in case there's something else down there.”

“Like what?” asked the disappointed cop.

“How about a bicycle?” said Dom. “Or maybe another body. We won't know until we look.”

“We should get a backhoe,” said the cop. “Tell you what: my brother-in law has one. He can dig this whole trap up in no time.”

Dom surprised me by nodding. “Good thought. Get him down here. Tell him it's a police emergency.”

The cop exchanged his shovel for a cell phone and was as happy as Hawkins was unhappy.

“I know this is a possible crime scene,” said the manager, “but I'd hate to have this sand trap wrecked.”

“We'll do our best to keep that from happening,” said Dom, “but we do have to do some more digging, and then we'll be searching the area in case the killer was careless and left something behind.”

Hawkins was a realist, and nodded unenthusiastically. I wandered over to where Gabe and Jasper were standing with Glen.

“How are you doing?” I asked Glen.

“Better. I never saw a corpse before. I was spooked for a minute.”

“Anybody would be,” I said.

“You weren't,” said Glen, “and neither was Gabe.”

“I used to be a cop,” I said. “But I was shaken up too.”

“I felt spooked too,” said Gabe. “We all just show it differently.”

I didn't believe him for a second. A bit later, as I shifted my position to create the impression that I wanted a better view of the hole in the sand trap, I managed to peek into Gabe's golf bag and believed him even less. For there, tucked among his clubs, was what looked very much like a short-barreled rifle.

Our foursome was unanimous in deciding to forgo the rest of our round, and when Dom let us go, with the promise that we'd show up at his office later to make official statements, Glen took me home.

“Where'd you meet Jasper and Gabe?” I asked him.

“Jasper and I have known each other for years, and Gabe came on as his right-hand man quite a while back. Nice fellas, both of them.”

“Not everybody thinks so. I know Jasper's the push behind the Pin Oaks proposal, and according to some of the letters I read in the papers, that makes him the enemy of the people.”

Glen frowned. “I've read those letters. Those blasted save-the-Vineyard-before-it's-too-late people all want to be the last ones to come here; the world keeps turning but they don't want any changes; they want things to be like they used to be, before there were cars and everybody rode horses or bicycles. Not an honest-to-God golfer in the bunch!” He suggested that such people should all perform an anatomically impossible procedure, and concluded by asserting that the Pin Oaks Golf and Country Club was exactly what the island needed if it was to remain economically viable.

Economic viability was a real issue on the coastal islands, because the tidal wave of money that was washing over them had sent property values skyrocketing so high that working people were finding it difficult to pay
taxes on the property they already owned and almost impossible to afford new housing. Already the early morning ferries from the mainland were loaded with workers who commuted every day, and the time seemed not too far away when middle-income people such as cops, nurses, teachers, social workers, and small business owners would be joining them.

I was so ignorant of economics that I had no idea what the future would bring; whether or not we needed another golf course, whether or not the mansionizing of the island was the beginning of its end, or whether or not we should limit the number of automobiles and all become members of the late Captain Spandex's Bicycle Squadron.

I knew I was lucky to own a house. I needed money, but I didn't need much, and I worked a half dozen jobs to get it: house-sitting, fishing and shellfishing, and taking the occasional odd bit of work that somebody always needs done: a little carpentry, a window repair, cleaning a yard and hauling the waste to the dump.

Of course no one is self-sufficient. We all need other people, such as the producers of gasoline and electricity, and I needed the writers of books and the guys who made Sam Adams beer, wine, and the makings for martinis. And I needed Zee most of all.

“What kind of a guy is Jasper when he's not playing golf?” I asked.

Glen shrugged. “Nobody who's made it up the ladder got there without stepping on some fingers. Jasper's no exception. He can be pretty tough, I guess. Personally, I never came up against him. We see eye to eye on Pin Oaks and we have a good time out on the course. He knows how to have fun, and I like that in a man.”

So did I. Glen's good humor was what made him attractive to me. I don't hang around with sour people. Life is too short.

“Gabe seems the quiet type.”

“Yeah, he is. I met him in Florida a couple winters ago. He and Jasper seem joined at the hip. Knows how to hit the ball when he has to, that's for sure.”

“What's his job with the firm?”

Glen shook his head. “Don't know exactly. We never talk business when we're playing. Gabe's got a cool head on him. Hell, he wasn't flapped this morning when old Jasper and I were freaking out. You like to have a man like that in your company.”

“He's steady, all right.” I remembered Gabe's wandering eyes and the way he never seemed to get far from Jasper. And I thought about the rifle in the golf bag, and wondered if it was unusual for a business tycoon to need a bodyguard everywhere he went, even when he played golf.

Then I thought of President Joe Callahan's vacations on the island when he'd been in office; everywhere he went, bodyguards and medics had traveled with him; and I thought of how celebrities needed guards to protect them from both fans and killers and how gangsters never walked alone, and I thought that the rich and powerful have probably always needed protection from their enemies.

If fame, wealth, and power created the need, I could safely spend my bodyguard budget on something else. Beer seemed a good alternative.

Zee and the children were getting ready for lunch when Glen dropped me off at my house.

“Well, well,” said Zee, giving me a kiss. “That must have been a pretty brisk round.” She sniffed my shirt. “You didn't even break a sweat. What a manly chap you
are.” She gave me a squeeze. “You're allowed at the table without showering first.”

As we were all eating smoked bluefish salad sandwiches, Joshua said, “Pa, me and Diana have an idea.”

“Diana and I have an idea.”

“Diana and I have an idea.”

“What is it?”

Diana said, “Now that we're out of school, we have lots of time for the idea.”

“Yes, you have lots more time now. What's the idea?”

Joshua said, “We think it would be neat to have a vine bridge like Tarzan and Jane and Boy have in
Tarzan and the Leopard Woman.
We think it could go between the tree house and the balcony.”

Zee almost frowned. “The balcony is just for big people. You know the rule.”

Diana nodded. “We need a place for the vine bridge to go, and the balcony's the only place we can think of.”

While their mother chewed and swallowed her bite of sandwich, Joshua looked at me. “You got a lot of rope out there in the shed, Pa. We could use that for vines. It's strong rope that would do the job.”

“I take it that this idea came from the movie,” said Zee. She looked from one of us to the other. The children looked at me.

“We watched it the first day of vacation,” I said. “You missed it because you were working. There's this great scene where the leopard men are trying to capture Jane and Boy, and there's a lot of fighting up in the tree house and on the vine bridge. We have a tree house and a rope to swing down to the ground, but we don't have a bridge.” I looked at the children. “That's the idea, isn't it?”

They nodded. “That's it, Pa. Only we don't have vines, so we think rope would be good.”

“Joshua and me could help make it,” said Diana. “We don't have to go to school, so we could work all day.”

“Joshua and I,” said Zee. She looked at me. “I think I'd better see this movie.”

Her children thought that was an excellent idea. “You'll like it, Ma! It's good!”

“A classic,” I concurred. “No one should grow up without seeing
Tarzan and the Leopard Woman.
”

“Then we can all make the bridge!” said happy Diana.

“Now, just hold your horses,” said Zee. “We're going to have to talk about it before we decide anything. We've gotten by without a rope bridge so far, and I'm not sure we need one now.”

“Aw, Ma . . .”

“I didn't say no, but I haven't said yes, either,” said firm Zee. “We'll talk about it later, after I see the movie.” She put her great, dark eyes on me and said, “And after your father and I have talked about it.”

I took her hand. “It's always a pleasure to have an intimate chat with you, my sweet.”

She gave me a huge faux grin, teeth pressed firmly together, and said, “I love being kept up to date on things my husband and children are doing. It makes me feel like I'm important to them.”

I held on to her hand and widened my smile. “Mothers are always the center of happy families, and there's nothing better than a happy family!”

Zee surveyed hers and sighed. “Break out your video again, Jefferson. We can have a movie matinee.”

The children were delighted. “We can all watch it together!”

The family that watches
Tarzan and the Leopard Woman
together is a healthy family. After I'd washed the dishes and stacked them in the drainer, I got the video from its shelf.

“You'll love it,” I said to Zee as I closed the living room curtains and she put the video into the VCR. “Johnny Weissmuller, Brenda Joyce, and Johnny Sheffield. What could be better? And did you know that somebody recommended Cheetah for an Oscar?”

“No, I didn't,” said Zee, taking her place on the couch beside me.

The drama unfolded as before, and justice triumphed again, although not without difficulty. If Cheetah hadn't untied Tarzan just in time, heaven only knows what might have happened.

“Well,” I said to Zee, when the movie was over. “What do you think? Great, eh?”

“Well,” she said, “I have to admit that the tree house looked pretty good. All the dirt on the floor would just fall right down to the ground. Jane wouldn't have to do much sweeping.”

“Nice bamboo shower too. Clever of Tarzan to build it.”

“I like our outdoor shower just as well.”

“Did you like the vine bridge, Ma?”

“I liked it a lot, Joshua, but we're going to have to think about it before we decide whether we're going to build one. Tarzan lives in a jungle, but we don't, so we don't have as many big trees for vine bridges.”

“We could fasten it to the balcony.”

But that idea was dead in the water. “No,” said Zee. “We're not going to fasten it to the balcony. The balcony is for big people. If we have a bridge, it'll have to go somewhere else.”

Progress was being made, however.

Family life was the life for me.

That afternoon, while the kids played in the tree house—where else?—Zee and I exchanged thoughts about the bridge and told each other about our mornings. Mine was the more unusual tale.

“How awful,” said Zee, when I concluded my narration. “Poor Abigail Highsmith. First she gets run off the road, and now her husband is murdered. Someone must really hate the Highsmiths! But why bury him in a sand trap? That seems weird.”

“The cops are on the case.”

She nodded, then frowned up at me. “I don't want you getting involved in this, Jeff.”

I raised both hands. “Don't worry. I'm not in the game. It has nothing to do with me, and I want nothing to do with it. I have other things to do. Like building a rope bridge, for instance.”

“Good. You need to be home with the kids when I'm working.”

“No problem.”

But a problem was not long in appearing. It came when I went to the state police barracks in Oak Bluffs to give my official statement about finding the body of Henry Highsmith.

When I'd finished my statement, Dom Agganis leaned back in his chair and said, “Am I the only one who thinks it's kind of funny that you and Highsmith duke it out one day and a few days later you happen to find his body?”