A Fatal Vineyard Season (11 page)

“So, it's a wash. The killing and the hit-and-run are just coincidental.”

“Unless you're James Bond.”

I wasn't James Bond, for sure.

“If you have any reports or files or summaries that you can share with me, I'd like to see them,” I said. “Just in case I forgot to ask you something that's in there.”

“Sure. Some stuff you won't get, of course.”

“Of course. But I want whatever isn't confidential.”

“You'll get that. You find anything useful at your end, let me know.”

“I will. One thing more. Can you find out if Mackenzie Reed ever had any contact with Alberto or Alexandro Vegas? Maybe a mutual prison acquaintance, or someone like that?”

“Mackenzie may be a killer, but he's a yuppie. I don't think he hangs out with real hard cases like the Vegas boys.”

“In the gray-bar hotel you don't always get to choose who you hang out with.”

Brown grunted. “True enough. I'll check it out. At least it'll be something I haven't done once already. When I'm not doing that, I'll be going over everything else one more time, just in case I missed something. The exciting life of a PI. I don't think they're going to make a TV series based on my career.”

“Another fortune slipped through your fingers.” I hung up and found Buddy Crandel's number. As I reached for the phone again, it rang. I picked it up.

“Hello,” I said, thinking it might be Zee.

But it wasn't Zee.

“I'm calling Johnny Appleseed,” said a masculine voice. “Is that you, Johnny?”

I felt a chill run through me. “I'm afraid you have the wrong number.”

“Oh, I don't think so, Johnny. Just wanted to make sure you were home. Be seeing you.”

The phone clicked and buzzed in my ear.

They'd found me through Eddie, of course. Maybe on purpose, maybe by accident. It probably went something like, “Hey, Eddie, how long have you known this Appleseed guy?”

“Who?”

“Appleseed. The guy up in the office this morning.”

“Appleseed? The only guy I saw up there was J. W. Jackson.”

And the Vegas boys would have wondered why Jackson had lied to them, and what he was doing snooping in their office pretending to be somebody else. Especially when a little more digging could well have revealed that J. W. Jackson was also the guy who'd been out at the Crandel house when Alexandro had showed up there.

Like Mother Nature, the Vegas boys wouldn't like being fooled. They would have looked in the phone book, and they would have learned that I lived in Edgartown, off the Vineyard Haven road. And then one of them called, just so I'd know that they knew.

Be seeing you, the caller'd said.

I thought it was probably Alberto, because it hadn't sounded like Alexandro's voice.

My stomach felt a little wishy-washy as I thought about it. My address was no secret, but I was sorry that the Vegas boys had it. I thought of Larry, the cop, who'd come home from work, just as he'd come home a thousand times before, and had been beaten to a pulp in his own garage.
His home had ceased being his castle; it had offered no protection against his enemies.

A lot of violence happens inside homes. More probably than anywhere else, because that's where people live. Husbands beating wives; boyfriends raping girlfriends; children robbing their parents; parents beating or killing their children; friends killing each other over card games. The papers were full of such stories, and every cop knew that calls to break up domestic arguments were among the most dangerous calls the police could get. Better a bank robbery than a domestic, because you never knew what you'd find or who might take a knife to you. Often, it was the victim who turned on you. You never knew.

But I didn't want any violence at my house. Not ever. Especially not when Zee and the babies might get caught up in it.

I looked across the room at my gun cabinet, where my father's 30.06 and his shotguns were locked away, along with the old police .38 that I'd carried when I'd been on the Boston PD and the customized .45 semiauto that Zee shot in competition. A lot of firepower was there, and it could be used against us by anyone who broke into the house when we were gone and then waited for us to come home. For the first time in longer than I could remember, I was acutely conscious of the cabinet and its contents as a danger.

I thought of how Manny Fonseca always went heeled in spite of there being no reason to because, as he was fond of saying, it was better to have his pistol and not need it than to need it and not have it.

This old NRA phrase usually struck me as pretty nonsensical, but as I held the buzzing phone in my hand, it seemed to be a bit of wisdom.

The telephone in my hand seemed to be looking at me, as if to ask if I was through with it or not. I stared back at it, willing my unruly feelings away. Fear gives rise to hate, and
I was close to hating Alberto Vegas, a man I'd never even met, and I didn't like having that happen to me.

I told myself to deal with reality instead of imagined events and dialed the number I'd been given for Julia's cousin Buddy.

I listened to his phone ringing and then to the answering machine. A man's voice told me that I'd reached the number I'd been dialing and that if I left a message, he'd return my call as soon as possible.

I left my name and my phone number and asked him to get back to me.

I had no idea what Buddy Crandel might be able to tell me about Mackenzie Reed's fixation on Ivy or about the violence that had driven her and Julia from California to the Vineyard, but it was possible that he might know something that would give me a line on things.

I rang off and phoned William Peterson Calhoun, also known as Wild Bill.

A woman answered the phone: “Calhoun, Searle, Carlson, Patt, and Smith.”

“This is J. W. Jackson. Is Bill Calhoun there?”

A good secretary is a buffer between the boss and the people who want a hunk of his time. This one said, “Are you one of Mr. Calhoun's client's, Mr. Jackson?”

“No. His name was given to me. I may have some information concerning the Mackenzie Reed case. I'm calling from the East Coast.”

“One moment, please.”

The moment passed, and then a man's voice spoke, “This is Bill Calhoun. What can I do for you, Mr. Jackson?”

“Ivy Holiday and Julia Crandel are vacationing here on Martha's Vineyard. A man has broken into their house and attempted to attack them. There's a chance that the man suspected of the attack is known to your client Mackenzie Reed. I'm calling in hopes that you can confirm or deny that. His name is Alexandro Vegas.”

“You've misrepresented yourself, Mr. Jackson. That information has nothing to do with Mackenzie Reed. I'll give you thirty seconds to tell me something that interests me.”

“Alexandro Vegas is a large, violent man who takes considerable pleasure in hurting people. Among other things, he's suspected of beating a local cop nearly to death. He's also a racist who seems fixated on sex and on insulting and harming women, especially attractive black women such as Ivy Holiday and Julia Crandel. If he was on the West Coast at the time when Dawn Dawson was killed, he'd be on my suspect list. Does that interest you, Mr. Calhoun?”

“Are you a police officer, Mr. Jackson? What's your interest in this matter?”

“I'm just a civilian like yourself, Mr. Calhoun. Do I have your ear?”

“For another thirty seconds, at least. You can begin by telling me if the Vegas person
was
on the West Coast at the time Dawn Dawson was murdered.”

“Information flows both ways, Mr. Calhoun. I'll need some from you before we're through. As to whether Alexandro Vegas was out there or not, I don't know,” I lied. “I thought maybe you or your client might know. If he was, it could be important to you. It could help get your client out of the slammer.”

Wild Bill was silent for a moment, then said, “Why are you interested in my client?”

“I'm not. I'm interested in helping Julia Crandel and Ivy Holiday. They think your client tried to murder Ivy and is still trying, using some pal on the outside to do his work for him. I'm not so sure, but there's some reason to believe somebody is after Ivy and Julia and people around them, and if it's not your client, I'd like to know who it is.”

“If anyone has tried to harm Miss Holiday, I assure you it is not and never has been my client. Mackenzie Reed is an innocent man.”

“She still gets letters from him, even though he's in prison. Do you know how he manages to have them mailed?”

“My client does not write letters to Miss Holiday.”

“He wrote a lot of them before the murder, and she's still getting them. All mailed from L.A.”

“There's a copycat in Los Angeles, in that case, Mr. Jackson. Some of my client's letters were leaked to the local press and printed during the trial. Someone read them and is now sending his own to Miss Holiday. That someone is not my client. Are you a writer, Mr. Jackson? A journalist, perhaps?”

“No. And I don't have a tape recorder on this end, either. I've been told that you're an honest man, Mr. Calhoun. Are you telling me that Mackenzie Reed isn't writing letters to Ivy Holiday? And if you are, how do you know?”

“I am telling you that, Mr. Jackson. And I know because I know Mackenzie Reed. He is very confession prone, as you may know if you followed the trial. He admitted everything about his infatuation with Miss Holiday, and since then he's held nothing back from me. One of the hardest parts of my job, in fact, has been to keep him from telling everything to everyone. The most innocent of people can create a damaging image of himself if he says too much to the wrong listener.”

True enough. The first advice any lawyer gives his client is to say nothing about the case to anyone.

On the other hand, Wild Bill Calhoun wouldn't be the first lawyer to have his client lie to him and get away with it. Lawyers, even sharp ones like Wild Bill, or maybe especially sharp ones like Wild Bill, full of their own vanity, can be conned like anyone else.

I thought I'd gotten about as much from Calhoun as I was going to get, so I said, “Well, thank you, Mr. Calhoun. One thing you might do is ask your client if he knows Alexandro Vegas or his brother, Alberto. If he does, it might give you a lead to follow. If it doesn't, it'll be one you don't have to follow.”

I told him what I knew about the Vegas brothers, and what was suspected about them.

“Mackenzie Reed has never associated with such people,” said Calhoun.

“He's probably associating with them now.”

Calhoun was cool. “He's from a different social class. I'll look into the matter, of course, but I don't think anything will come of it.”

“In that case, I'll have wasted your time, just as you thought I'd be doing. If you do find out something, though, will you let me know?”

“Perhaps.”

“After you check me out?”

“Not before.”

I gave him my address and telephone number, and we rang off. I didn't expect to hear from him again.

A copycat letter writer in L.A., eh? How many million people lived in L.A.? The town was big enough to house its share of crazies, no doubt, and it only took one.

Who? Why?

I phoned the Crandel house. Nobody home.

I phoned Thornberry Security in Boston and actually got through to Jason Thornberry, who'd left the Boston PD about the same time I had, but for different reasons. Thornberry had been a captain who had left to organize his own business, and I had been a foot soldier who left with a bullet against my spine, after a broken marriage.

“Mr. Jackson,” said Thornberry. “Are you ready to go to work for me at last?”

It was a familiar query. “No, I still haven't caught all the fish and shellfish down here. When I do, I'll give you a ring.”

“I notice that Elmer—what an odd name for a hurricane—seems to be bending up your way. You might want to keep an eye on him.”

“I will. Have you been contacted by a woman named Julia Crandel? I suggested that she get in touch.”

“Yes. She asked us to investigate the threats her friend Ivy Holiday's received, and we're providing bodyguards. There was a lot of competition for the last job, as you might imagine. A beautiful woman to be guarded on beautiful Martha's Vineyard sounds like prime duty to some of our people.”

“Two beautiful women, as a matter of fact. Tell whoever you send that this isn't goof-off time. There are a couple of real badasses down here who don't care what they do or who they do it to.”

“Thornberry Security people do not goof off on the job,” said Thornberry coldly. “What's your interest in this matter?”

“I'm a temporary employee. Believe me, I'll be glad to step out of the situation as soon as your people step in.”

“It's usually a wise decision to leave things to professionals,” he replied in that slightly haughty voice I sometimes think he learned watching Basil Rathbone in old Errol Flynn movies. “I'll have my agent get in touch with you, to get your perspective on things.”

“Fine.”

I went outside and looked up at the September sky. It curved, pale blue, down to Nantucket Sound, where it met the dark fall waters. The sun was bright and the air was warm. There was no indication that Elmer, a couple of thousand miles south, might decide to head for New England, but . . .

I had a sudden sense that maybe I should haul the
Shirley J.
and John Skye's
Mattie
out of the water, just in case.

My prophetic intuitions are probably no better than those of most other people: I remember the times they were right but forget the many more times that they were wrong. Still, something directed me to pay attention to this one, so I backed the Land Cruiser to the boat trailer, hitched up, and drove down through beautiful Edgartown to Collins Beach. There, I unchained my dinghy from the bulwarks
and rowed out to the
Shirley J
. I motored her in, dismasted her, and put her in my yard. Then I went back to the beach, got the
Mattie
, and put her in John Skye's barn. It took most of the afternoon, but when it was done, and I had latched the sliding barn doors, I felt better.