Vineyard Deceit (24 page)

I got up. “Of course.”

“But of course you will tell your superiors.”

“Of course.”

Downstairs, Helga Johanson looked at me. “Well, that was enlightening. A kidnapping, eh? I hadn't heard of that. I'll telephone the police and give them Nagy's story. Maybe they can find that revolver. If they can, it will lend credence to the Colonel's tale. And there's this matter of the little bird whispering in your ear. I want to know everything. It might all tie together.”

“So you're not going to leave this enigmatic stuff to us manly men, eh? Okay. I'll give you the details tonight while you're squandering your boss's money on me. I'll pick you up at seven.”

I drove to Amelia Muleto's house. It was mid afternoon, and the sun was hot. No one answered my knock, so I went around the side of the house and found her out back weeding her vegetable garden.

“Just in time,” she smiled, sitting back on her heels. “I'm ready for a cup of tea.” She put out a hand, and I pulled her up. “Thanks. I don't suppose I could interest you in some tomatoes or zucchini . . . ? No, I thought not. Come in, dear.”

Over tea we discussed Zee's adventure. “Spooky,” said Amelia. “I can't imagine what it was all about. Thank goodness she wasn't hurt. I'm so grateful for that.”

“Me too. Was Willard Blunt here on Sunday night about eight o'clock?”

“Yes. Poor Willard. He didn't look at all well. And just a few hours later he was dead. Quite shocking.”

“The autopsy revealed that he had cancer throughout his body. Did you know about that?”

She nodded. “Ah. Yes, I did. He confided in me, but asked me to keep it to myself. He didn't want sympathy, you know. Said that he'd had a long and good life and had no complaints. He was in considerable pain, however, and that bothered me. He was on some sort of medication. That last night he seemed quite frail, I thought.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Talk about?” She picked at a thread on her shirt. “Nothing, really. Looking back, I understand that he was making his last visit with me, but I didn't realize it then. He kissed me when he left . . .” She seemed uneasy at her recollections. “We talked of friends and—well, nothing notable. Small talk. You know . . .”

“Did he mention the theft of the necklace?”

“The theft? Well, yes . . . Of course we talked about it. Not that there was anything new to discuss . . .”

“Did he say he had stolen it?”

Tea sloshed from her cup. She looked at me with wild eyes. “What?!”

I told her what Nagy had told me. Amelia gazed at me as I spoke, and gradually the color which had fled her face returned.

“Are you sure about this, J.W.? Is that Nagy person to be trusted?”

“Willard never said any such thing to you, then?”

“Heavens no! What a remarkable notion!”

“Did Willard mention a girl named Periezade?”

She frowned at her teacup for a moment, then shook her head. “This Colonel Nagy gave you some very interesting information.”

“Have you ever heard the name?”

“I . . . perhaps I have. It's a name I think I would have remembered had I heard it often. Who is it?”

“I don't know. It reminds me of Scheherazade. Do you have the telephone number of the professor who wrote
Free People?
You know, the book about Sarofim.”

“Free People.
Of course. Hamdi Safwat. He teaches at Weststock College. No, I don't have his number. I'm sorry. I still have his address . . .”

“That's okay. I can get his number. Maybe he can tell me if Periezade is a Sarofimian name. So Willard Blunt came by, you think now, just to say goodbye. You had no idea that he was considering suicide?”

Amelia had almost recovered her composure. “No, I did not. And he certainly did not confess to stealing the necklace. What an extraordinary notion that is!”

“He seems to have been an unusual man.”

She looked thoughtful, then pushed back a strand of hair with her hand. “Yes. It seems that he was. Dear Willard . . .”

21

I showered, shaved, and dressed up in my most splendid Vineyard clothes: blue blazer, blue tie with little whales on it, Vineyard-red slacks held up by a belt decorated with sailing boats, and, to suggest that perhaps I just came off of one of the yachts anchored in the harbor, boat shoes with no socks. I admired myself in the mirror, got into the LandCruiser, and drove to the ferry. The ferryman was impressed for the second time in one week.

“You're becoming a very dashing fellow,” he said. “First a tux and now this. What will the guys at Wasque think?”

“You working-class people will never understand,” I said.

Helga Johanson was waiting at the door. She looked quite smashing, with her golden hair done up and a golden necklace at her throat above a black summer dress. I told her so.

“Thank you.” She climbed into the LandCruiser without a single sarcastic remark, and we rattled back to the ferry.

The ferryman looked at Helga and bowed his head. “I didn't think it was possible, J.W., but I may have underestimated you all these years.”

“She's my sister,” I said.

Helga laughed.

We ate at the Shiretown, where I have never had a bad meal, and afterwards went to the Harborside for Cognac. The Harborside has the best view in town, looking out, as it does, over Edgartown Harbor. We sat and looked at the lights on the boats and in the windows of the houses down harbor. There were lights on the second floor of the Damon house, and I wondered if Colonel Nagy was still in his room sipping wine and looking at us as we were looking at him. I told Helga everything I'd been told so far, which wasn't much but seemed to be adding up.

“Of course people may be lying,” she said when I was through. “The Colonel is probably right to suspect that. You suspect it too, don't you?”

“Maybe that's one of the reasons I got out of the cop business. I don't like spending my life not believing people.”

“I thought you got out of the business because you got shot and have a bullet still in you.”

“That too. And then my wife left me because she'd been a cop's wife for years and she'd been worried all the time about something like that happening and as soon as she knew that I'd not be crippled, she knew she'd had enough. She wanted a marriage where she could expect her husband
to come home every night and where she wouldn't be afraid to start a family. After she left I thought she was probably right, so I left too. Or something like that.”

“I read somewhere that for years in New York City no cop had ever been killed by a handgun at a distance of more than twenty feet. I think that may be true. Most of the cops who get it, get it at close range. You got yours at a distance, I hear.”

“Your agency is full of snoops.”

“It's one of the things we do for a living. I got your file from the old man himself. I guess he did a checkup on you when you left the force. Wanted to hire you, I think. How did you happen to get shot?”

“It was night. An alarm had gone off, and my partner and I happened to be right there. My partner took the front, and I ran around back. Somebody came out of a door and started running down the alley. I yelled stop and police and all that, but naturally the person just kept running, so I ran too. It was dark and both of us kept running into things. Boxes and trash barrels. Then the person I was chasing ran into a sort of dead-end alley. The other end was closed off by a metal fence a construction crew had put up while they were building a building on the other side. I was feeling pretty lucky, but then the woman turned around and shot me. It was the damnedest thing. I fell over, and she came running back by me, still shooting, trying to get away, I guess. As she went past I shot her till my gun went dry. I didn't know it was a woman until later, not that it would have made any difference.”

Helga nodded and then looked out at the lights in the harbor. “My dad is a cop. He's never pulled his gun once in thirty years.”

“Most don't. It was just one of those things. I don't think about it much anymore.”

“The woman died?”

“Oh yes.”

We sat silent for a while, then Helga nodded again. “Thanks for telling me. Now let's think about possible liars in this case.”

Good. “Anyone could be lying. Blunt might have been lying to Nagy, Nagy might have been lying to us, Zee might have been lying about the kidnapping, Bonzo might have . . . No, I don't think Bonzo remembers how to lie. Who else is there? The Chief? Spitz? You? Me?”

“Bonzo's the kid up at the bar in Oak Bluffs, right? The one who tipped you off about the people in the guitar.”

“Right. I'll tell you who I believe. I believe Bonzo and I believe Zee and I believe the investigators on the case. I don't necessarily believe that Spitz, or you, or the Chief, for that matter, have told me everything you think or know, but I don't think you've lied to me. I don't know about Blunt or Nagy.”

“How about you? Have you lied to us?”

“That's for you to decide. I'm no problem to me, I'm only a problem for everybody else.”

“I don't know why you'd be lying to me.”

“I don't either.”

“I want to go with you to the bar in Oak Bluffs. You are going up there later tonight, aren't you?”

“Yes, but it's got nothing to do with your work. It has to do with Zee's kidnapping if it has anything to do with anything at all.”

“Nagy was right when he said it was an awful lot of coincidence that your friend got snatched just long enough for the necklace to get stolen and Blunt to get shot. Do you think Blunt was lying when he told Nagy that he stole the necklace?”

“Do you think Nagy was lying when he told us that story?”

“I don't know.”

“I don't know either. I'd like to talk to Spitz again and find out what he and Blunt and Nagy talked about that Sunday night.”

“I want to go with you tonight.”

“I don't think so.”

“If I don't go with you, I'll go alone. Then there'll be you watching for the guitar people and me watching you. We can have a parade.”

“You're a tough customer, Johanson.”

“Call me Helga.”

I gave up. “Well, we can't go dressed like this. We'd stick out like sore thumbs. We need some Fireside clothes.” I eyed her. She and Zee were about the same size. “I've got some clothes you can wear, at my place. We can change there.”

“Gosh, this is getting exciting. I get to wear your girlfriend's clothes! Is this kinky, or what?”

“Kinky, shminky. We just won't tell Zee. Get out your wallet.”

She waved for the waitress, paid up, and got a receipt for her expense account. “Lead the way,” she said.

She liked my house. Everybody likes my house. I found a shirt and jeans belonging to Zee and gave them to Helga. Zee's clamming sneakers were a half-size too small, so Helga would have to wear her own low heels. We changed in separate rooms. I felt a lot better in sandals, shorts, and a tee shirt than in my yachtsman-ashore duds. Helga took her hair down and let it fall straight to her shoulders. She now looked about twenty-one.

“Make sure you take your ID,” I said, “or it may be a dry night.”

We drove to Oak Bluffs. I parked down by the Reliable Market, and we went into the Fireside. It was a Thursday night and the crowd wasn't quite what it would be on a weekend, but the blast of sound from the jukebox and the smells of drink and smoke were about the same. We found a couple of stools at the bar, and the bartender never batted an eye when Helga ordered a Cognac. I got a Sam Adams, America's best bottled beer. I looked around for Bonzo, but didn't see him.

After a while Bonzo came out of the men's room and saw me. In the Fireside, the men's room is identified by a stencil of a little boy trying to button his pants. The ladies' room is identified by a stencil of a little girl pulling up her panties. The Fireside is nothing if not chic. Bonzo came right over.