A Fatal Vineyard Season, page 12
It is a truism that if you can find out what a person values, you can get to that person. I remembered looking into Alberto’s dead eyes and thought the chief was right about him. Alberto didn’t care about anything or anybody. That made him the most dangerous kind of person there is.
I got up. “Well, thanks for the chat, Chief.”
He stayed in his chair. “You stay out of this, J.W. You’ve already got yourself a busted wing for your trouble, and you’re lucky it wasn’t worse. You leave the Vegas boys to the authorities. Sooner or later they’ll make a mistake and we’ll nail them.”
“Wise advice.” And it was. But I didn’t plan on taking it.
I got into the Land Cruiser and drove back to Oak Bluffs. The people in the Crandel house should have been up by now, and I wanted to talk to Cousin Buddy.
— 17 —
Fishermen were on the big bridge and out on the jetties on either side of the channel. All hoping for a big bass, I guessed, and none of them waiting for the Derby to start. A lot of whoppers had been caught there, and a lot more would be, since the bass were making a fine comeback after years of being pretty scarce in island waters.
The downside of this comeback was that as the bass were returning, the bluefish seemed to be getting rarer, giving rise once again to the theory that the fish came and went in alternate cycles. Since I was primarily a bluefish fisherman, this gave cause for pause. Would a time come when I would be obliged to hunt the elusive bass if I wanted to keep on fishing? It seemed possible.
I thought about Alberto Vegas being a fisherman. According to the chief, Alberto took the Invictus down to the Dump south of Noman’s Land for swordfish. Did he fish the shoals and surf-cast for bass and bluefish, too? As a rule, the fisherpeople I knew were pretty friendly folk, but of course there were a few bad apples among them as there are in all groups. It was not too surprising that dead-eyed Alberto liked to wet a line.
Of course his work might interfere with his fishing. He seemed pretty busy with his business activities, spreading his interests out over the island as he was.
I thought of the ifs that had gotten me involved with him and his brother. If not for the ifs, I’d not know that the Vegas boys were even alive, but the ifs had intruded, and as they often do, they had changed everything. I’d now be doing something else if I didn’t work for Stanley Crandel, if the faucet hadn’t needed replacing, if I hadn’t met Ivy and Julia, if there had been no California stalker, if Alexandro hadn’t hated the two women on sight, if he hadn’t showed up on the front lawn the next morning, and if I hadn’t come out of the house at that moment. If, if, if. And there were, of course, earlier ifs: if the Vegas boys had had a decent father, if they hadn’t gone to jail, if this, if that. A million ifs.
And now there would be more ifs, and it would only be much later that anyone would know their significance.
Off to my right, the waters of Nantucket Sound rolled across to the distant shore of Cape Cod, beautiful and indifferent to human cares. When I got to East Chop, the eastern light was flooding the front of the Crandel house, and the car belonging to the two Thornberry agents was in the driveway. I parked at the curb and went to the door and knocked. I could feel an eye at the peephole before the door opened. Jack Harley stepped back and I went in.
“I hear you have a new guest,” I said.
“Word gets around. What the hell happened to you?”
Julia Crandel stuck her head out of the kitchen. “Oh, hi! Come and have some coffee. I want you to meet my cousin Buddy.”
“Just the man I want to see,” I said. She disappeared back into the kitchen.
I told Harley why I had my arm in a sling.
“Jesus,” he said. “Alexandro Vegas?”
“I’m not sure, but he’s on the top of my suspect list. You have any problems?”
“Pretty quiet. You’ve had problems enough for all of us.”
“Yeah. Any news from the Coast?”
“Nobody’s told me anything.”
The closemouthed type. I went into the kitchen.
Ivy, Julia, and a young man were sitting at a table that held the remains of breakfast. The man was sleek and handsome, with coffee-colored skin and short, straight, black hair. He looked as though he spent time under a tanning machine, although that didn’t seem to make much sense considering his heritage and that he lived in California, where he could get all the natural sun he might want.
“Buddy, this is Mr. Jackson,” said Julia. “Mr. Jackson, this is my cousin Buddy Crandel. He just got in from Los Angeles. Goodness, what happened to you?”
“Call me J.W.,” I said to Cousin Buddy, shaking his hand. He had dark, intelligent eyes and the firm grip of a man who did a lot of professional handshaking.
“And I’m just Buddy,” he said, flashing a white smile. “Julia and Ivy have told me what a help you’ve been to them. I appreciate it.”
“What happened to your arm? asked Julia with wide eyes.
“An accident. Nothing serious.” It didn’t seem the moment for true confessions, since I had no sense of Buddy Crandel’s place in the scheme of things.
“Coffee?” asked Ivy, reaching for the pot. She seemed a bit edgy.
“Thanks. Black.” I sat in a fourth chair and smiled at Buddy. “You just got in last night, I hear.”
“Yes. Who told you?”
“It’s a small island.”
He put on a smile. “I guess I should know that. I’ve been coming here since I was a kid. Still . . .”
“My source isn’t a secret. There are a lot of cops in town and they’re keeping an eye on things. One of them told me you’d flown in. I’m glad you did. I tried to call you out there, but all I got was your machine.”
“Well, here I am. When I found out these two were here by themselves and were being hassled, I came right out! It’s maddening that they can’t just be left alone!” His eyes flashed with an odd light.
“How’d you know they were being hassled?”
“I told him,” said Julia, “when I phoned to tell him you wanted to talk with him.”
“I didn’t wait a second. I caught the first plane east.”
I wondered who had appointed him their caretaker. He didn’t look like the type who could stand up to real trouble, but you can never tell.
“Well, since you’re here,” I said, “I’d like to have you tell me what you can about that bad business out on the coast.”
He spread his hands. “I’m afraid I can’t help you. I don’t know anything about it, really, except that it’s scary.”
“Sometimes people know things they don’t know they know.” I looked at the two women. “We can talk somewhere privately, if you’d prefer.”
They exchanged quick glances, and Julia started to get up. But Ivy said, “No. I . . . we . . . want to hear whatever you say.”
Julia opened her mouth, then closed it and sat back down.
I hesitated, then looked back at Buddy. “What I’m trying to find out is whether you know of anybody who might have had a reason to kill Dawn Dawson or might want to harm Ivy.”
Ivy made a small wordless sound, and Buddy frowned. “What do you mean? Mackenzie Reed killed Dawn.”
“But suppose he didn’t? He says he didn’t, and his lawyer says he didn’t.”
Buddy tilted his head. One of his hands held his coffee cup about halfway to his lips. He put the cup down. “The jury found him guilty. There was never any question about it. If anybody was ever guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt, it’s Mackenzie Reed.”
“Somebody is still sending letters to Ivy.”
“I know! Somehow Reed is smuggling them out of prison! I don’t know how, but it has to be him.”
“Maybe. Probably, even. But suppose he isn’t the killer. Suppose he’s telling the truth about going into the apartment and finding Dawn Dawson already dead. If he didn’t do it, it means that somebody else did. You were dating Dawn when it happened, and you dated Ivy before that, and you know a lot of the same people. You work in the movie business out there. Was there anyone you know who might have had it in for Dawn? Or for Ivy? Some of the people I’ve met in that racket can be pretty spiteful.”
“The police asked me that, but I didn’t know anybody who might have had a reason to hate Dawn or Ivy. Gossip runs like a river out there, and I think I’d have heard something if there was anything to hear. Besides, Dawn never mentioned any problems with anybody. She didn’t have any enemies, and the only one Ivy had was that crazy Mackenzie Reed. And he’s the one who did it!”
“How long did you date Ivy before you started dating Dawn Dawson?”
Buddy glanced at Ivy, who looked back at him with great, dark, enigmatic eyes.
He shrugged. “In California people date, then stop, then date other people. Ivy and I dated pretty seriously for a while, then we decided not to do that anymore. When we finally split up, it wasn’t a big deal for either one of us, was it, Ivy?”
It was her turn to shrug. “No. You weren’t the first guy I ever dated, and I wasn’t your first girl.”
“And there were no hard feelings,” said Buddy with a nod. “Well, maybe a few, but nothing serious.” He waved a hand. “Nothing we didn’t get over pretty fast, anyway. And then Ivy started going out with other guys and I started dating Dawn.” He smiled at Ivy. “And pretty soon we were friends again.”
Her mouth smiled back. They were both very smooth, I thought.
“Wasn’t it a little awkward when you started dating Dawn?” I asked, remembering some similar awkward situations I’d gotten myself into in my pre-Zee days. “I mean, she and Ivy were roommates.”
He took his eyes away from Ivy’s and turned them back to me. “Well, sure it was, but not for long. I’d met Dawn because she was Ivy’s roommate, but we’d hit it off from the first. So it wasn’t like I was somebody new on the scene when we started to date. Besides, Ivy was dating other guys by then, so it was like she was my sister more than an old girlfriend.” He paused, as though deciding whether to go on, then said, “The police asked me a lot of questions about Dawn and me. I think they thought I might know something about her death. But of course I didn’t.”
“We usually get killed by people we know,” I said. “Family, lovers, friends, people like that. That’s why the cops were interested in you. If I’d been a cop out there, I would have been, too. But all they did was ask questions?”
“Yeah. Probably because they already had Mackenzie Reed with blood on his hands. Besides, I was up in San Francisco the day it happened, so they knew it couldn’t be me. There was no way I could have slipped back to L.A. and killed her and then gone back north and never have been missed. I didn’t know about it till the next day, when I got back to town.” He shook his head, remembering. “Jesus! I couldn’t believe it. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.”
Some people plan killings and alibis well ahead of the act, but most murders are spur-of-the-moment things that just happen. I thought the cops were probably right to take Buddy off their suspect list, but I left him on mine anyway. For the time being, at least.
“And now you’re here,” I said. “To make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
He made a fist with the hand that wasn’t holding his coffee cup. “Yes! This man Vegas sounds like an animal! I won’t let him hurt Ivy and Julia!”
“They have professional protection,” I said.
“He didn’t know that when he came,” said Julia, putting a hand on his arm. “He thought we were alone.”
Buddy’s fist became a hand. He put it over hers and gave her a wan smile. “I don’t want anything to happen to my favorite cuz or my pal Ivy.”
I left him and his pal and his favorite cuz and drove to the shop where my faxes were supposed to come in. They were there. I took them home and began to read them.
— 18 —
I read the newspaper stories first. They chronicled the sequence of events from the arrest of Mackenzie Reed to his imprisonment, and I learned not a whole lot more than I already knew, except from some sidebar and background stories that gave a bit more detail about the lifestyles of the young and beautiful and ambitious in Hollywood, including the participants in the murder drama. Fast living, casual and always shifting personal relationships, and unending efforts to achieve fame or at least work on the silver screen or television seemed to be the rule, and the associated passions, disappointments, and occasional triumphs were commonplace.
Dawn Dawson, Ivy Holiday, and Julia Crandel were but three more of the hundreds of aspiring actresses, and Ivy was rapidly becoming more than that, having made the most of a few small roles, having gained an award nomination for one of them, and then having achieved instant fame as a result of her strip act at the Academy Award ceremonies.
Buddy Crandel’s aspirations were no less intense, though focused on offscreen work, and he was as much a part of the nightlife scene as were the three young women and their hundreds of fellow wanna-bes.
As I read the stories, I got the impression that if you wanted to survive in Hollywood, you had to be lucky and tough and probably both. Talent seemed to be less important, although it didn’t hurt. Enduring personal ties and loyalties seemed rare. Rather, relationships flowered and faded fast and were readily sacrificed for the dream of stardom, if a choice was required. The person who was your greatest friend when you were down-and-out became a weight around your neck when you moved up, and your best pals up there on top left you if you slipped or fell from favor. Similarly, your eternal lover last month was often someone else’s eternal lover this month.
Not that Hollywood was the only place such stuff happened. I was reminded of when I first took note of the Vineyard’s winter inhabitants’ inclination to marry, produce children, divorce, remarry, and produce more children, until, it seemed, everyone on the island was related to everyone else.
When I finished with the newspaper stories, I read the trial transcripts. Most of what I learned was familiar to me. Mackenzie Reed had been fixated on Ivy for months, had written her letters, followed her, tried to get close to her, phoned her, and otherwise intruded upon her life to such a degree that she had gotten an unlisted phone number, had left her apartment and moved in with Dawn Dawson, and, finally, had gotten a restraining order against him. All three actions were to no avail, since he soon knew both her new number and her address and was once again following her.
The morning of the killing, Ivy had gone to work, leaving by a back door that led to the parking area where she kept her car, and Dawn was home alone. Reed had found the front door unlocked and had gone in. There, with a steak knife taken from the kitchen of the apartment, he had stabbed Dawn Dawson a dozen times. He then had panicked and run out into the street, his hands and clothes bloody, where he was immediately arrested by police officers who were passing by in their cruiser.
The evidence against him was overwhelming: Dawn Dawson’s body was still warm; his prints were on the knife; the blood on his hands and clothes was hers; his letters to Ivy were filled with statements about his frustration when he saw her with other men, and the meaninglessness of his life without her, and with graphic descriptions of the sexual acts they would perform when she finally agreed to love him as much as he loved her.
With nothing to lose by putting his client on the witness stand, the flamboyant William Peterson Calhoun, the best lawyer Reed’s father’s money could buy, had done that, and Mackenzie Reed had told his tale, which was the predictable one that he had found Dawn Dawson dead, had touched the fatal knife, had gotten her blood on his hands and clothes as he had attempted to discover if she was still alive, had panicked when he realized that he would be accused of killing her, and had tried to run away, which he realized now was a foolish mistake that only made things worse for him.
The jury had taken little time to find him guilty, and I guessed that had I been a member of that jury, it wouldn’t have taken me long, either.
Some details were new to me, but nothing surprising. Other fingerprints were at the murder scene, but only the ones you would expect: those of Ivy, who lived there, of Buddy Crandel, who was dating Dawn, and those of the landlord and friends of Ivy’s and Dawn’s. Although the police were confident that they had their killer, they had interviewed everyone whose prints had been found at the scene and had eliminated them all as suspects.
One oddity was that the knife had only Mackenzie Reed’s fingerprints on it, whereas, since it was one of the apartment’s kitchen utensils, presumably the prints of one or both of the girls should also have been on it. Calhoun had made as much of this as he could, suggesting that it clearly showed that the real murderer had wiped the knife clean before fleeing the scene. But the prosecutor had a simpler explanation: Mackenzie Reed himself had wiped the knife clean, but had then inadvertently touched it again before fleeing.
I thought back to the few murder scenes I’d observed while on the Boston PD and realized once again that Dostoyevsky had been right about killers: most of them are pretty ordinary people who are not overly smart, and even the brightest of them often make stupid mistakes. The killers who get away with it usually do so because they’re just lucky or because most police, like most killers, are also pretty ordinary people and not overly smart and make stupid mistakes.
When I finished the transcripts, I discovered that I had copies of some official police reports on the Dawson case, the Freed case, and the Hawkins case. Son of a gun! How had Peter Brown gotten his hands on them? My opinion of Western Security Services went right up.
The reports were not, of course, high-class literature, being written, as they usually are, by cops who never majored in English. Police reports can be funny, in fact, even when they attempt to deal seriously with horrendous crimes. But I wasn’t interested in the literary quality of these reports; I was interested in what the cops had seen and heard.
They had talked to a lot of people and hadn’t found any reason to think that anyone but Mackenzie Reed had killed Dawn Dawson. They had discovered love affairs and hard feelings and drug use and other illegalities, mostly minor, but nothing having anything to do with the murder. I was interested to learn a bit more about the players I knew:
