A Deadly Vineyard Holiday (29 page)

“My wife knows nothing about any of this, and I don't plan on telling her. Zee is a sweetheart, but women can't keep their mouths shut about such things. If we can work this deal out, she'll never know about it.”

He finished his beer and set the mug down on the
table. “Where are the negatives, then? What if she finds them? Or are they somewhere where she won't find them?”

I finished my own beer. Delish, as always. “Don't worry. I'm the only one who knows where they are, so you're perfectly safe. Well, I suppose that it's possible somebody might find them here someday, but even if they did they wouldn't know what they were looking at, would they?”

His ears almost physically perked up. “Here? Are they here somewhere?”

I felt a little rush of emotion. “Somewhere, maybe. But I'd be a fool to tell you where, and you'd never be able to find them by yourself.”

He looked at me thoughtfully. And then he brought his left hand out of his pocket, and there was a small pistol in it.

“You're a fool anyway, Mr. Jackson,” he said. “I don't need to find them. All I need to do is burn down these buildings of yours, and I'll burn the negatives, too. Don't you agree?”

My throat felt like the Gobi Desert, and my voice was a croak. “Is that gun loaded?”

“Very loaded, Mr. Jackson. I know that when they find you in the rubble, they'll discover that you were shot. But they won't know who did it, because nobody knows I'm here.”

“Now, be careful,” I said, in a voice that sounded like tin. “Don't shoot. If you shoot, it'll be murder. Look, I'll give you the negatives. Is that what you want? I'll give them to you and I'll never say anything to anybody. Okay? Just point that gun someplace else.”

“You and Burt Phillips are just the same,” said Pomerlieu. “You're both full of threats. He was going to
write a story about me, and you want my money. He was willing to ruin my family's name, and so are you.”

“No. I'd never do anything like that. Look, you take the negatives. Just don't shoot.” My tinny voice had become a whine. I could feel sweat on my forehead.

“Where are they?”

“Out in my shed. I'll get them. Just don't shoot.”

“Go get them.”

We went through the house and out the back door. He walked behind me. We got to the shed.

“They're inside,” I said, “in a bundle of old tax forms in a box.”

“Get them.”

“Don't shoot.” I stood to one side of the door and opened it.

Jake Spitz stood there, using a two-handed grip on a .45 automatic that was pointed at Pomerlieu.

“Put down the gun, Walt,” he said.

Pomerlieu's gun was pointed at me. He hesitated.

“Put it down, Mr. Pomerlieu,” said Zee, stepping out from behind the shed, well off to Pomerlieu's right. She held her Beretta 380, and she, too, was using the two-handed grip.

Ted and Joan drifted into view from the trees to his left, pistols in hand. “Put down the gun, Walt,” said Ted.

Still, he hesitated.

“We have agents all around us, and they're closing in right now,” said Spitz in the gentle voice I'd heard earlier in the Fireside. “You can't get away. And even if you managed it, we've got everything on tape. You're not the only one who can plant a bug, you know. Now put the gun down.”

Instead, Pomerlieu raised it and put the muzzle in his mouth.

“Don't,” said my voice. “Think of Maggie.”

He looked at me.

My voice went on. It sounded something like Spitz's. “Do you want Maggie to see you after you pull that trigger? Do you? Don't you love her? And another thing: You're innocent until they prove you guilty in court. So far, all they have is a taped talk and guesswork. They don't have any proof. Maybe they'll never have it. Think of that. Think of Maggie. Think of your boys.”

He stared at me. Then, keeping his eyes on me, he took the pistol out of his mouth and dropped it on the ground.

“I imagine that a suicide in the backyard would have put the kibosh on the big clambake,” said Joe Begay. “The ambiance of the setting wouldn't make for happy times.”

“I guess not,” said Toni, opening a last littleneck and placing it in its half shell on the platter with the others. She dropped the other half of the shell into the bucket at her feet.

The bucket was half filled with half shells, and there were now three platters of littlenecks awaiting the arrival of the afternoon guests. I got up and put the platter in the fridge along with the other two, and we turned our attention to preparing clams Casino. Earlier that morning I'd taken all of the shellfish out of the freezer, and now they were beginning to thaw, which made them easy to open. They would also taste just as good as if they were fresh from the pond.

It was Sunday, and we were sitting on the back steps, outside the kitchen door. It was about noon, and Joe and I had bottles of Rolling Rock beside us. Pregnant Toni was having iced tea. The August sky was pale and blue, and the wind was hushing through the trees. I let my eyes survey the yard. I'd mowed the lawn that morning, and things looked pretty good.

Zee stuck her head out of the door behind us. “Let's get it on, here. The garlic butter is ready to go and the bacon's been cut. I need clams.”

So we opened cherrystones on the half shell and put them on cookie sheets. Zee topped each clam with a bit of garlic butter, a little square of bacon, and just enough seasoned bread crumbs to sop up any stray juice, and put the cookie sheets into the fridge, which was getting pretty crowded. Besides the littlenecks and the Casinos, there were trays of stuffed clams and bags of mussels and steamers. To get all the shellfish in, I'd had to take a lot of other stuff out. Principally bread and veggies, which were now spread out on the kitchen table. I had plenty of food, and later I'd put beer, wine, and soft drinks into coolers of ice.

“You guys should join us,” I said to Toni. “John and Mattie Skye and the girls will be here, and a kid named Allen Freeman from over on Chappy, and I think Acey Doucette might be coming.”

“Acey Doucette? I didn't know you and Acey were close.”

“I left that invitation up to Karen Lea. If she wants to invite him, I told her he'd be welcome.”

“I hear you might be buying his Land Rover.”

“That's what Acey thinks, and if I had more money, maybe I would. But I don't have more money, so I'm keeping the old Land Cruiser for a few more years. I invited the chief, too, but I don't think he'll come. He says he sees all the VIPs he needs to, and after a while one looks a lot like the next one. Besides, I think he's already met Joe Callahan. In the line of duty, as they say.”

“Well, I haven't,” said Toni, “and I'd like to.”

“Join the party, then.”

She looked at Joe. “Okay?”

“I'm not your boss,” he said, “I'm your husband. If you want to do it, we'll do it.”

“Don't you want to?”

“Why not?” asked Joe. “I've met a couple presidents. It won't hurt to meet one more.”

She raised a brow. “When did you meet a couple presidents? I don't think you ever mentioned that before.”

“I'll tell you all about it later,” he said.

She got up. “Well, like I say, I haven't met any presidents, and I'm not going to meet this one all soaked with clam juice. I'm going to go home and change. You can tell me about your presidents on the way.”

“Informality is the dress code,” I said. “Personally, I only plan on changing into clean shorts and another T-shirt.”

They got into their car and drove up the driveway. They hadn't been gone long when two Secret Service cars came down the sandy lane. Ted and Joan and two other agents got out of the first one.

“Where are your cousins?” asked Joan immediately.

“Over on Chappy with the Skye twins and various male companions,” I said. “Having a last Vineyard fling before they have to go home.”

“I don't like it,” said Ted, frowning.

“You're not the liking type,” I said. “Stop worrying. They're fine. Ben Miller is in custody overseas, and Walt Pomerlieu is in the Dukes County jail, where you wanted to put me the first time we met, so the cousins are in no danger from anybody.”

“There are always scumbags and crazies out there,” said Ted, as the second car disgorged other agents.

“Nobody knows where the kids are, and they're coming back in a couple of hours,” I said. “Why didn't you tell me it was Joan who came down to my house through the woods? Why shouldn't I know she was checking things out to make sure the bad guys weren't there?”

“Why should I tell you anything?” asked ever-friendly Ted.

Joan stood in front of the other agents and made a broad gesture that took in most of western civilization. “All right, let's secure the place. Check everything out.”

The agents began to move.

“Give me the guest list,” said Ted. He took it and frowned some more. “You know these people?” When I said yes, he didn't seem to believe me. Once again I was glad I wasn't a Secret Service agent. What suspicious lives they led.

“Before the girls get back and use up all the hot water,” said Zee, “I am taking a shower and washing my hair.”

I decided not to repeat my sage maxim that the reason women don't run the world is because they don't have time to do that and wash their hair, too.

Later, when John Skye's Wagoneer came down the drive, whichever twin was driving was wide-eyed.

“Cricket told us who she was while we were out there on the beach! You'd think we would have guessed, but . . . And now there's a couple of Secret Service guys and an Edgartown cop up there at the end of your driveway! They stopped us and checked our names on a list before we could come on down! Wow!”

“It's like those security checks on airplanes,” I said. “They may be inconvenient, but we should be glad they're there.”

“I guess!”

“And are your twin noses out of joint because we've all been fibbing about my cousins?”

“No! We think it's great! Wait till we tell our friends! Besides, Cricket's still our friend, anyway, even if she isn't Debby anymore!”

To verify this, there were hugs inside the Wagoneer.
Then Karen and Debby climbed out and there were good-byes and see-you-laters before the Wagoneer headed for home so the twins could change into their clambake clothes.

“How were things at the beach?” I asked my sandy-haired, salty-skinned cousins.

They'd been great.

And was Acey Doucette coming to the afternoon shindig?

He was. Karen might have someone back in Washington, but a beau in the hand was . . . etc.

Well, I thought, maybe being in the presidential presence would infuse Acey with greater literary energies; enough, perhaps, so that he might even finish a chapter and start another. Who knew what good might come of this encounter?

While Karen and Debby took turns in the shower, Zee was in our bedroom, busy doing whatever it is that women do with themselves to make themselves feel presentable. Some women, I was sure, probably had to do a lot of that, but I couldn't see that Zee needed to. Whenever I mentioned this, however, she would smile patiently, pat me on the cheek, and say I just didn't understand, but that it wasn't my fault, because it was a testosterone thing, a kind of blindness caused by hormones.

The tables and chairs in the yard and up on the balcony would seat everybody who was coming, so I didn't have to tend to that. Out by the beech tree I set up the table I use to hold food and utensils when we have clambakes, and put the gas grill nearby with its big cooking pot. I put some water in the bottom of the pot and emptied the bags of steamer clams on top of it, so they'd have time to thaw a bit more before cooking time. Then I went in and got to work peeling potatoes, carrots, and
onions. When they were ready, I put them to boil on the stove, and cut kielbasa and linguiça into short lengths, to go along with the hot dogs I'd also be cooking. When that was done, I fixed garlic bread and wrapped it in tinfoil for future warming, then melted enough additional butter to go along with the steamers and mussels, and set that pot at the back of the stove. Then I got ice out of the freezer and put it in my big cooler, along with a case of Sam Adams, soft drinks, and three bottles of sauvignon blanc, the house white.

I put the cooler in the shade out by the food table and set a garbage can for rubbish beside the entrance to the outdoor shower, and I'd done as much preparing as I could do for the moment. Later, just before people were scheduled to show up, I'd put out the paper napkins, plastic glasses, heavy paper plates, and the plastic knives and forks. Plastic and paper. Two more of the handy materials of modern times. Tacky, maybe, but very utile.

Not unlike myself, perhaps.

I was showered, shaved, and togged in clean shorts and a T-shirt that said
YOU CAN'T KILL A DEAD DOG
when the first cars began coming down the drive. By the time the presidential caravan arrived, late, as the Great Man had a habit of being, or so I'd been told, everybody else was already there, including Jake Spitz, who, when Walt Pomerlieu's name came up, refrained from gloating over the fact that Pomerlieu was Secret Service, not FBI.

The presidential caravan was shorter than usual, consisting of only three cars: the armored Suburban that conveyed the Callahans; one car full of casually dressed agents, who immediately made themselves as inconspicuous as possible; and a third, which contained, among other people, photographers who seemed intent upon recording everything for posterity.

President Joe Callahan turned out to be a tall man with a thick head of hair and a pair of sharp eyes. He and his wife were cordiality itself, greeting Zee and me with apparently unaffected pleasure, kissing their shining daughter, shaking the hands of deferential Karen and the other guests, and, in general, making everyone feel at ease. They were born politicians, I thought, as the cameras clicked.