The Bee Balm Murders (4 page)

“We’ll need to notify his family.”

“All I know about him is that he has two grown sons in business with him. I don’t know their names.”

Casey looked up. “How did you meet him?”

“One of my partners, Casper Martin, approached Vulpone about investing in the project, and Vulpone agreed to put in eight million.”

Casey whistled softly. “A lot of money. Had he turned any of it over to you?”

“Not yet. We had some negotiating to do first.”

“I suppose that’s why he was here on the Island?”

“I have no idea,” said Orion.

Casey reached for the phone. “I’ll let Smalley know we have an ID. You’ll need to go to the barracks tomorrow to answer questions, then the funeral home to make an ID.”

*   *   *

The rain started up again while they were meeting with Casey and now it was coming down in torrents. Victoria and Orion hurried to the car.

“Well, Victoria,” said Orion, easing his back against the driver’s seat, “you were right. If we could figure out how the Island grapevine works, we wouldn’t need a fiber-optics system.”

*   *   *

Later that afternoon, Orion stopped at his office in Vineyard Haven and called Casper Martin, his partner in New York. The rain poured down steadily.

“Casper, it’s Orion.”

“What’s up?”

“Bad news, I’m afraid.”

“Let’s have it.”

“Vulpone’s dead.”

“What?”

“Vulpone. He’s dead.” Orion spent the silence that followed looking down onto the driveway of the house next door. An ordinary two-story frame house, shingled. Tufts of uncut grass ran down the center of the unpaved drive. Puddles in the ruts were pockmarked with rain.

Casper breathed heavily at the other end of the line. “Jee-sus,” he said at last. “What the hell? Damn!”

A maroon SUV splashed up the drive and stopped at the side door of the house.

After a long pause Martin said, “What happened?”

As he replied, Orion watched a man get out of the SUV and go into the house, the Sunday paper protecting his head. Orion had never paid much attention to the house next door. Looking from his second-floor aerie, he started to lift his feet onto his desk. His back twinged, and he set his feet down. From the way the man below walked, he was young. Thirties, maybe. That was about all Orion could tell, looking down on him.

As he told Martin about recognizing Angelo, carrying the body on the wheeled stretcher through the mud, and his encounter with Donald Minnowfish, he thought about Angelo Vulpone’s sons. Did Vulpone have daughters? A wife? Orion knew as much about the man next door as he knew about Vulpone, namely, nothing. He told Martin that his ancient landlady had forced him to go to the police.

“She’s right, you know.”

“Yeah, Casper. I know.”

Martin wondered why Vulpone was on the Island, puzzled over who killed him, then added, “There goes a third of our funding,” which was what had concerned them both from the moment they knew Angelo Vulpone was dead.

“You knew him better than I did,” said Orion. “Know anything about his sons?”

“You mean, will they carry out their old man’s intention to invest?”

“Something like that.”

“Even if they do, it’ll take time,” said Martin. “Funeral, grieving, probate. Might take a couple of years.”

“We don’t have that kind of time,” said Orion. “Do they have money of their own?”

“This isn’t the best time to ask.” Casper Martin stopped talking and Orion said nothing.

Martin broke the silence. “Who killed him, the mob?”

“I haven’t a clue,” said Orion.

The man next door came out of the house holding an umbrella over a Cronig’s grocery bag he was carrying, the kind with paper handles. The bag bulged with something heavy and the handles seemed ready to tear off. He slung the bag into the back seat, closed the umbrella, got into the front seat, and backed out of the drive.

“Vulpone was a stubborn son of a bitch,” said Martin. “He wouldn’t listen to anyone except those two kids of his. Nobody liked the guy, but nobody hated him, either.”

“Someone did. Enough to kill him. How closely was he connected to the mob?”

“Hard to know,” Martin replied. “He probably was since just about everyone in the Jersey–New York construction business has dealings with the mob at some time or other.”

“I assume his killing is mob related,” said Orion.

“If so, we’ll never know. The question I’m asking is why was Vulpone on the Island? Checking up on the project? The company? You?”

“The head of Public Works told me that Vulpone was asking for me by name last night.”

“Probably paying a surprise visit,” said Martin, “check up for himself. That would be like him.”

“Who told him where we were working? The ball field is not a place you’d think to look for someone installing optical cable. Had you mentioned it to him?”

“I haven’t talked to him for a couple of weeks. The ball field operation’s come up since then.”

“We’ve got two years to complete a job that should take eighteen months,” said Orion. “But I’m learning that with six governments in six towns on this Island and not a single engineer among the lot…” He took a breath. “Every meeting I go to has two or three activists in attendance convinced that communicating by fiber optics is going to produce two-headed babies—”

“Okay, okay,” Martin interrupted. “We’re talking about adding an
extra
two years to educate the populace. We don’t have that kind of time.”

Orion sighed. “We can complete the project in two, even with town politics. But only with enough capital. You want to see what you can do about that?”

“Yeah,” said Martin.

“Vulpone didn’t sign anything, did he?”

“Nope. He was too canny.”

Orion said, “It shouldn’t be difficult to find the money, even now. The communications business is pretty much untouched by recession.”

“Yeah,” said Martin.

“My best estimate of the total project cost was twenty-four million,” said Orion. “You found potential backers for about two-thirds. That leaves a shortfall of the eight million Vulpone had promised.”

Looking down from his window, holding the phone against his ear, wishing he could lift his feet up on his desk, Orion imagined what it would be like to lead a normal life. Coming home with the Sunday paper and sharing sections. The kids reading the comics, he and the wife working on the crossword puzzle together …

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Martin. “There’s money out there, only a question of finding it.”

After they’d hung up, Orion thought about the man next door and wondered why he’d brought his Sunday paper home and left almost immediately with that Cronig’s bag.

C
HAPTER
5

That afternoon, contrary to Victoria’s prediction of a three-day rain, the sky cleared and the sun appeared. Victoria went out to the garden with her secateurs to snip bouquets of bee balm to put in the two glass vases on the parlor mantel. The elaborately painted vases had been a wedding present to her mother from a rejected suitor. She wondered, briefly, if something more formal than bee balm might be more appropriate, then decided she liked the carefree look of the gaudy, unkempt flowers.

The bee balm was humming with bees, and she felt mildly selfish taking part of their livelihood away. She was snipping carefully, avoiding the busiest flowers, when Sean McBride’s pickup truck pulled into the pasture.

She hastily filled a watering can from the garden faucet, set the long-stemmed flowers in it, and hustled over to her front-row seat.

He backed his truck a safe distance from the hives and went around to the rear where he kept his beekeeping gear.

“Morning, Mrs. T. You hear about the body in the playing field?” Sean shook out his white suit. The slight breeze billowed out the legs and arms so the suit looked, for a moment, like his shed skin. Ecdysis, Victoria thought. A snake slipping out of his skin. A crab leaving its hard shell. She envisioned, for an instant, Sean as a nightclub stripper, an ecdysiast, and smiled at the thought. He paused, waiting for her response.

“I’m sorry, I was distracted,” said Victoria from her front-row seat.

“They found a body in the playing field this morning.” He leaned against the lowered tailgate of his truck and slipped first one foot, then the other into his new skin.

“Yes, I heard. Orion Nanopoulos got a call early.”

“Staying with you, is he? How’s that working out?” Sean thrust his arms into the sleeves of the white suit and pulled it over his shoulders.

“He seems agreeable. I told him it was to be only a temporary stay.”

“I understand Nanopoulos is laying his cable in the trench where they found the body.”

Victoria nodded.

“Seems like he knew the guy. Didn’t tell the cops.”

Victoria felt a wash of pride at the efficiency of the Island grapevine. “He’s spoken to Casey, and will be talking to the state police tomorrow.”

Victoria shifted on the hard bench. “When you saw him at the Farmer’s Market, was that when you first met him?”

“Never seen him before. Heard about him, though. Someone you don’t want to mess with.” Sean reached into the back of the truck for the next prop.

“He’s a perfect gentleman,” said Victoria. “Courteous, considerate.”

“Figured he would be to you, Mrs. T.” He started up the smoker and pumped the handle a few times. Before slipping his hood over his head he gazed at her, light blue eyes focused, not on her, but through her on some distant horizon. Once his hood was in place, Victoria had trouble understanding what he said next, and wasn’t sure she heard correctly. It sounded like, “Wouldn’t surprise me if he knew more than the identity of the corpse.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

But Sean had turned his attention to the bees and didn’t reply.

*   *   *

Early the next morning, Victoria walked to the police station. Casey was standing at the top of the stairs, scooping out feed for the ducks and geese.

“I don’t know why I feed them. All they do is make a mess and get in the way.” She dropped the scoop back into the galvanized container and snapped the lid into place. “What’s on your mind?”

“The investigation into the murder.” Victoria climbed the steps and she and Casey went inside. Casey sat behind her desk; Victoria took her usual seat.

“State police problem, Victoria.”

“Surely they can use our help.” Victoria crossed her hands over the top of her stick.

“We’ve got our own problems,” said Casey.

“Mrs. Sommerville’s complaint about the rooster?”

“That’s important to her. We’ve got to deal with it.”

“But a man has been shot to death.”

“Not our job,” said Casey.

“We can contribute a great deal.”

Casey stood up. “Victoria, the selectmen asked me to check up on a complaint about kids drinking on the Lambert’s Cove beach. That’s top priority for me right now. Want to come with me?”

Victoria, too, stood. “I don’t think so.”

“If you’re going to freelance this murder, I’d advise against it, Victoria.”

“Thank you for the advice.”

“I’ll give you a ride home, if you’d like.”

“I’d prefer to walk.”

“Come off it, Victoria. You know policing. The state cops are in charge. We stay out of their way. I could use your company, checking out the drinking complaint.”

“All right,” said Victoria, but she yielded grudgingly.

*   *   *

On his way home—Orion realized he was already thinking of his temporary dwelling place at Victoria Trumbull’s as home—he stopped at the pie place on State Road and bought a rhubarb-strawberry pie. He set the cardboard box on a newspaper on the front seat, the pie still hot from the oven. Ruby-red juice oozed out between the interlaced strips of golden brown crust.

Victoria was in the cookroom. She looked up from her typewriter when Orion entered. Orion opened the box and she peered in. “My favorite.” She pushed her typewriter aside and started to get up.

“You sit still, Victoria,” said Orion, feeling very much at home. “I’ll serve us.”

“How’s your back?”

“Much better, as long as I don’t think about it.”

Two or three bites into the warm pie with appropriate comments about flavor and flaky crust, Victoria told him about Casey’s insistence that she stay off the case. “She had no information on what the state police are doing. Have you spoken to Sergeant Smalley?”

Orion nodded. “He understood my situation and drove me to the funeral parlor to ID the body.” He paused. “Why call them parlors? As though it’s a place to entertain.”

“Denial,” said Victoria. “What happened?”

“I attested that I recognized the deceased as Angelo Vulpone of Vulpone Construction, Brooklyn, New York, and Smalley drove me back to the state police barracks.”

“Did he tell you anything about the investigation?”

“Of course not.”

“Identifying the body must have been unpleasant.”

“I’d already seen the body at the ball field and knew who he was. They’d cleaned him up a bit.” Orion leaned back in his chair. “It’s been a full day. Yesterday afternoon, I called my partner, Casper, and we talked about needing another investor now that Vulpone’s dead. The problem is, we don’t have much time.”

“What about Dorothy Roche?”

Orion smiled. “The woman you think is egotistical, self-satisfied, and a social climber?”

Victoria frowned. “Those weren’t my words.”

“She’s agreed to purchase the Ditch Witch directional drill in return for a share in the company.”

“I assume you asked a lawyer other than that fraud on Circuit Avenue to look over the agreement,” said Victoria.

“You mean Parnell Alsop?”

Victoria looked directly at Orion. “Surely you didn’t trust him to draft anything?” At Orion’s expression, she added, “Why didn’t you ask me about him first?”

“I hadn’t met you at the time. Don’t look so stricken, Victoria. I work with legal documents and contracts all the time. The contract he drafted was boilerplate.”

Victoria looked unconvinced.

“More pie?” asked Orion.

*   *   *

Later that evening, Orion returned from supper and found Victoria in the garden as the light faded. She was kneeling on a device that had handles to lift herself up. Orion noticed that the ends of the handles had red glass reflectors, as though Victoria might want to take the kneeler out on the highway some dark evening.