A Deadly Vineyard Holiday (9 page)

“I do,” said Debby, putting down the bagel she was preparing to smear with cream cheese, but doing so with a still-hungry look on her face.

“I'm leaving in about ten minutes,” said Zee.

Karen opened her mouth to register disapproval. I might have done the same in her place, but I wasn't in her place, so before she could speak I said to Zee, “Maybe we'll come down later, after Deb and Karen finish breakfast. You'll be there for a while, so there's no hurry.”

I looked at Karen. “The world keeps right on turning,
whether we stay home or go out. Personally, I don't like to live in a cage, even though some people think they're safer inside of one. I think it's better to step outside and join the dance.”

“You'd better abandon your plans to become a poet,” said Zee. “Your metaphors are out of control.”

I lifted my chin and lowered my eyelids. “I had the cosmic dance in mind.”

“Oh,” she said, “that dance.”

“Dig in,” I said to Debby. “When you've eaten, we'll go down to the club and you can watch my wife blow holes in targets. It's noisy but it can be fun.”

“Great. This is good food!” Debby repossessed her bagel.

Karen said, “I don't think Debby should be anyplace where there's going to be shooting. It's too dangerous.”

“I'm going to phone your boss right now,” I said. “You can talk to him about it when I'm through.”

“While you talk, I'm on my way,” said Zee. “See you down there, I hope.” She gave me a kiss and left, and I went into the house to make my call.

Walt Pomerlieu was there, and I told him that Karen and Debby were home again, safe and sound. He said that was good. Then I told him I wanted to know what was really going on. He said he knew how I felt, but that it was one of those need-to-know situations and that I didn't need to know.

“The high priest syndrome,” I said. “Only the initiated can be trusted with the secrets of the faith. I'm always leery when people tell me I don't need to know something.”

“That probably explains the lock picks,” he said. “You don't like locked doors.”

Good grief. Now my lock picks had symbolic psychological
significance. But Pomerlieu was right. I don't like locked doors, and almost never lock any of my own, with the exception of the one on my gun case. And even there, the key is lying on top of the case so I won't lose it.

“Well,” I said, “if you won't tell me what I want to know, let me tell you what I think.” I gave him the same theories I'd given to Karen the night before.

He listened, and when I was through, he said, “Ah.”

“That's it? Just
ah?”

“That's it.”

“Do you still have people in the woods north of us?”

“Yes. And they'll stay there. There are others south of you and somebody watching your driveway. Cricket doesn't need to know that, of course. We want her to feel as free as she can. Do you know her plans for the day?”

“Part of them, at least. She's going down to the Rod and Gun Club to watch my wife take a pistol-shooting lesson this morning, and this afternoon we're going clamming. Karen isn't happy about the target-shooting part and wants to talk with you about it.”

He thought for a moment. “Are all of you going down to the range?”

“I'm not sure. I have a call to make, and I should mow the lawn in case the president actually decides to come for clams.”

Again a pause. Then, “I'll want somebody at the pistol range in addition to Karen.”

“I'd like to know who your agent is, so I don't have to wonder about any strangers.”

He allowed himself a grim-sounding chuckle. “I'll send somebody you know.”

I went out onto the porch, and Karen went into the house. Debby was scarfing down the last of the bagels
and their accompaniments. The sound of gunshots came from the direction of the club.

“Excellent food,” Debby said. “I can hear the shooting. Is that Zee?”

“Yes. The louder shots are Manny's and the others are Zee's. He's probably shooting a forty-five, and she's shooting her three-eighty.”

“I can tell the difference.” She nodded toward the living room and lowered her voice. “Am I going to get to go? I can tell that Karen doesn't like the idea.”

“I think so,” I said. “She's in there talking it over with Walt Pomerlieu. It's her job to worry about you, you know, and you should be glad she's so good at it.”

“I know. Say, do you think I can shoot, too?”

“We'll let Manny Fonseca decide that, but he loves shooting, so I imagine it'll be fine with him. He may even give you a lesson.”

“All right!”

Karen came out, and we both looked at her. She put on a small, reluctant smile. “We'll go,” she said.

“Excellent!” Debby wiped her lips, got up, and gave her a hug.

“I have to make another call,” I said, and went inside. If Walt Pomerlieu wouldn't tell me anything, maybe there was another way. I phoned Jake Spitz and told him what I wanted.

“It's a security matter,” said Spitz. “Eyes only and all that. Sorry.” He paused while I uttered a few popular words that are theoretically unacceptable in proper society, then said, “What's Joe Begay up to these days?”

It was my turn to pause. “You know Joe Begay?”

“I know a lot of people.”

“And I should talk with Joe?”

“I just asked what he was up to these days. I gotta go.”

He hung up, and I looked at the phone.

Joe Begay had been my sergeant in Vietnam on the unfortunate day when a Vietcong mortar crew got our patrol in its sights and unloaded on us. He had taken a hit in the head that had temporarily blinded him, and I had instantly become a seventeen-year-old kid with a lot of metal in his legs. But with me providing the eyes and Joe providing the legs, we'd gotten our surviving people out of there, and had called in an air strike that finally silenced the mortar. I hadn't been over there long enough to know what was going on when my million-dollar wounds brought me home again.

And now, twenty-some years later, Joe Begay was living in Gay Head, married to Toni, of the Gay Head Vanderbeck clan. They'd met out in Santa Fe, where she'd gone to buy Indian arts and crafts for her Gay Head shop, and he had shown her the Navajo and Hopi worlds of his parents, then had come east to meet her Wampanoag family.

Joe now owned a conch boat and fished out of Menemsha, but for the two decades after he'd recovered his sight and gotten out of the hospital, he had done jobs for many organizations. His gift for languages and his powerful body and mind had taken him into many unadvertised situations and put him in contact with a remarkable variety of people during those years. He'd made a lot of money, had a lot of contacts, but now was not inclined to discuss his past.

But Toni had never liked knowing so little about him, and over time bits and pieces of his history had come into view until it was finally clear that Joe Begay had been more than just a sort of middleman or rep for international corporations, as he had first suggested to Toni. Nor was it certain that he was as retired as he claimed, for from
time to time he still went off on “business trips” to Washington and elsewhere that sometimes kept him from his conch boat for days at a time. He claimed, possibly quite honestly, that he needed to do some consultant work outside in order to support his fishing habit, which often provided thin earnings, particularly since he paid his crewman, Jimmy Souza, very well indeed.

Jimmy Souza was a guy trying to stay off the booze that had cost him his own boat. Jimmy knew more about conch fishing than most, and it was his knowledge that kept Joe Begay's boat in business. Jimmy struggled to stay sober, and his reward for this and for his wisdom and hard work was a salary above and beyond that of most crewmen, one which kept Joe's own income from the boat on the shallow side. Thus, Joe's occasional business trips. Or so he said. I never asked for any other explanation.

There was a joke between Joe and me that each had saved the other's life. That the joke was rooted somewhat in truth was one reason, perhaps, that we'd become friends, another being the friendship between Toni and Zee, which had blossomed from the moment they'd met.

I had never asked Joe about his off-island business or contacts, but if Jake Spitz thought I should talk with Joe about what was going on with regard to Debby, I was surely going to take his advice.

Twenty minutes after Debby finished her breakfast, a car came down our driveway and parked. Ted got out, looking no better-humored than usual.

“I don't like this,” he said. “So let's get it over with.” He looked at me. “Are you coming along?”

Lawn mowing no longer seemed to be a priority.

“Sure,” I said.

We all got into the Land Cruiser and drove to the club.

The Martha's Vineyard Rod and Gun Club is located on a point of land sticking out into Sengekontacket Pond. There's a locked gate, the combination of which is available to club members, a clubhouse, a skeet range, and a pistol range. In the waters around the edge of the point, there are good quahogs to be found, and more than once I've been out there when the skeet shooters were at work, and have had shot fall into the water all about me, like metallic rain. When that happens I tend to abandon shellfishing for the day.

Today, the gate was open, and we drove right through and parked beside Manny Fonseca's truck and Zee's little Jeep.

Manny and Zee were down at the table by the twenty-five-yard mark, shooting at paper targets that were placed in front of the tall earth embankment that was the backstop for the bullets. You had to be pretty wild to miss that backstop, but occasionally it probably happened. Neither Zee nor Manny had that problem.

I opened the glove compartment and got out earplugs for all. Ted, who was quickly out of the car and looking all around, declined his. He wanted to hear as well as possible. When he finished his survey, we walked down to the pistol range. Manny waved, and Zee, seeing his wave, turned and waved as well.

“We're working up to doing some combat shooting,” said Manny, after introductions were made all around. He was wearing the black belt that held his holster, extra clips, and various pouches containing bullets and God knew what else. Behind him, on the table, was his nylon weapons bag. Several guns and boxes of bullets lay there, and I knew that before the day's shooting was”
over, Manny would use every weapon he had with him. He dearly loved to shoot and was incredibly good at it.

“So these girls are your cousins, eh?” said Manny. “I didn't know you had any kinfolk beside your sister out there in New Mexico.”

“They're just up for a few days to breathe some Yankee air,” I said. “Then we'll ship them back to Virginia.”

“And this young fella? He kin, too?”

“Nope. Ted's just down vacationing for a week or so. Wanted to see the club, so we brought him along today.”

Grim Ted curled up the sides of his mouth and created his best effort at a smile. Manny's eyes flicked over him, and did not miss the slight bulge of Ted's pistol holstered beneath his summer shirt.

“You do any shooting yourself, Ted?” asked Manny, completing the reloading of his clip, and slapping the clip back into his .45.

Ted thought a moment, then said, “Oh, a little now and then.”

I instantly realized that Manny and Ted had reached some sort of unspoken understanding. Manny knew that Ted was a shooter, and Ted knew that Manny knew. And Manny knew that Ted didn't just happen to be there, and Ted knew that he knew it. And knowing that Ted didn't just happen to be there, Manny also knew that Karen and Debby were not ordinary, run-of-the-mill cousins of mine, but something more, because Ted was there because of them. What Manny didn't know was how much more.

“Well,” said Manny to Zee. “Let's get at it. I'll go first. Two shots right-handed in each of those three targets, left to right. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Zee, fitting her hearing protectors over her ears.

Shooting with his right hand, Manny put two shots into each of the bull's-eyes of the three targets. Zee did the same. Then they did it with their left hands, then with both hands.

Then they changed weapons, using those on the table, and with these Manny still shot bull's-eyes, but Zee was less precise.

“Just practice,” said Manny. “That's all. You know that three-eighty real well, but you haven't used these others much yet. When you get used to them, you'll do just as good.”

“The grip on that forty-five is too big for me,” said Zee. “That forty-caliber, too. My hands aren't as big as yours.”

Manny nodded. “Yeah, you're right. There's guns those calibers that'll fit a small hand, but unless you really like a slug that size, it's probably better for you to use something smaller, like that three-eighty of yours or one of these nine-millimeters. Let's move up now, and see how you do from fifteen yards.”

They did that, and the paper targets were blown into tatters.

When they were done, Manny looked at me. “Want to take a few shots?”

“Not now. But how about letting Debby here pop a few caps?”

He looked at the president's daughter, then at Ted, then back at the girl. “Why not? You ever shoot before? No? Well, then, we'll start you out with a twenty-two. Come on.”

Debby followed him to the table, where he gave her his opening lecture on gun safety. He then took a small revolver from the table, emptied it, and showed her how it worked. He had her dry-fire it, using the two-handed grip, then had her help him put up new targets.
Then he showed her how to load the gun and put her at the fifteen-yard mark.

“Okay,” he said. “Now, slow and easy, single action like I showed you. Cock the hammer.” She thumbed it back. “Line up the sights on the bull's-eye and squeeze it off.”