Death In Vineyard Waters, page 23
part #2 of Martha's Vineyard Series
One of the things I liked about our marriage was that it was stuck together without any coercion of any kind. There was no “We have to stay together because we said we would” or “You owe me” or “You promised me you’d love me” stuff nor any “Think of the children” stuff, either, even though we had said we’d stick together, and we did owe each other more than we could say, and we did love each other and, now, we did have Joshua to think about.
Basically Zee and I were married because we wanted to be married, and for no other reason.
I wondered why I was thinking such thoughts, and suspected that it was because of two things: the first was a sort of restlessness that had come over Zee since Joshua had made his appearance. Her usual confidence and independence were occasionally less pronounced, occasionally more; her normal fearlessness was sometimes replaced by an uneasiness that I’d not seen in her before, and at other times she became almost fierce.
A postpartum transformation of some kind? I didn’t know. Maybe she saw the same things in me, and all that either of us was seeing was the fretting of new parents who didn’t really know how to do their job and were worried that they were doing it wrong.
The second thing bothering me was more easily identified. It was Drew Mondry.
Him, Tarzan; Zee, Jane. They even looked like Tarzan and Jane. Both were suntanned and spectacularly made, with his blond hair and brilliant blue eyes contrasting well indeed with her dark eyes and long, blue-black hair. Golden Tarz; bronze Jane.
And there was that little charged current that had run between them this morning.
May I call you Zee? I’ll phone you later.
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In A Fatal Vineyard Season,the arrival of Julia Crandel and Ivy Holiday, two actresses staying on the Vineyard for the summer, has incurred the wrath of local gangsters. Worse still, a deadly stalker from one of the ladies’ pasts has found out where they are hiding, and it looks like it’s up to J.W. Jackson to follow his conscience and protect two frightened, helpless off-islanders& and put himself in danger as well. ” ” “ The two young women exchanged looks, then put smiles on their faces. “Yes,” said Julia. “You’re right. We’ll just be vacationers like everybody else.”
“We’d love to have you up for drinks before we go,” said Julia later as they got into their car.
“Tomorrow I’m off with the kids to see my mama over in America,” said Zee. “I’m afraid I won’t be around for a while.”
“Too bad,” said Ivy. She looked at me. “Maybe you’ll come by, J.W.” “I’ve been known to have a cocktail,” I said.
The car drove away. “She has great come-hither eyes, doesn’t she?” said Zee.
“Who?”
“You know who.” “Oh, her.”
Martha’s Vineyard is a magic place that can isolate you from the real world for a while and cleanse your soul, and I hoped that it would do that for Ivy Holiday and Julia Crandel. But as the old Indian medicine singer said when his spell failed, sometimes the best magic doesn’t work. Two nights later, someone kicked in the front door of the Crandel house, took a knife from the kitchen, and went upstairs after Ivy and Julia.
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A surprise visit from a dear old friend only adds to the joy of good weather, great fishing, and loving family for J.W. Jackson this idyllic island summer. But his elation turns to dread when a rundown summer shack burns to the ground, and an unidentified corpse is discovered in the ashes. Fearing it may be that of his friend, J.W. dives into an ugly mass of arson, extortion, and secretsand in Vineyard Blues,the ex-Boston cop may just be headed down a road toward murder. ” ” “ That night, sometime after Zee came home, climbed into bed beside me, and we both snuggled to sleep, I was awakened by the fire whistle in Edgartown calling to the volunteers. Then I heard sirens and more sirens, and I was disturbed by the direction they seemed to be headed. I listened, then eased out of bed and went into the living room and turned on the scanner. Voices and static crackled from the speaker. I heard the name of the street where Corrie had been staying, and had an almost irresistible urge to go there. But I knew that the last thing the firemen needed was another citizen getting in their way, so I remained where I was.
In time I heard someone say that the place seemed to be empty, and I felt a surge of relief. Apparently, everybody had gone to a party at another house, said the voice.
That would be the party the twin had mentioned, where the college kids would combine fun with charity as they tried to help those who’d gotten burned out earlier, and where Corrie had been asked to do some singing for the good cause.
Another bad fire, but at least no one had gotten hurt, in spite of the arsonist who I now believed was pretty clearly at work. The fire marshal could handle it. I turned off the scanner and went back to bed. It wasn’t until the next morning, as I made breakfast and listened to the radio news, that I learned I was wrong about no one being hurt. A body, as yet unidentified, had been found in the ruined remains of the house.
” ” ” ” ” ” “
J.W. Jackson abandoned Boston, hoping to leave the violence of the big city behind. But in Vineyard Shadows,when the past comes looking for him in the guise of two brutal thugs, the former cop knows it’s time to put down his fishing pole and start opening doors he’d hoped were closed forever. ” ” “ I got the details by talking with the survivors, since I wasn’t at the house when it happened. Instead, I was on the clam-flats in Katama with my son Joshua. When we came home, there was a cop at the head of our driveway, and an ambulance was pulling out and heading toward the hospital in Oak Bluffs. I turned into something made of ice.
The cop recognized my old Land Cruiser and waved us in. I drove fast down our long, sandy driveway. The yard was full of police cars and uniforms. Sergeant Tony D’Agostine met me as I stepped out of the truck.
I was full of fear. “Stay here,” I said to Joshua, and shut the truck’s door behind me. “There’s been some trouble,” said Tony. “Where’s Zee? Where’s Diana?!”
“Take it easy,” said Tony, “it’s all over.” “Where are they?!” I pushed him aside, and went toward the house. He followed me, saying something I wasn’t hearing. I saw what looked like blood on the grass. Jesus! Cops stood aside as I came through them. That was the beginning of it for me.
” ” ” ” ” ” “
With the arrival of warm weather and good fishing, everything should be just fine for J.W. Jackson and Zee. But something’s wrong. A mysterious man named Mahsimba, who is on the Vineyard searching for two priceless soapstone eagles missing from his African homeland, has embroiled him in problems both personal and professional. And in Vineyard Enigma,J.W. couldn’t have known that helping Mahsimba would pit him against powerful figures in the Vineyard’s art world, including some who would stop at nothingeven murderto add forbidden objects to their collection. ” ” “ Here Mahsimba allowed himself a wry smile. “It is an interesting footnote to African history and politics that as recently as the 1970s it was illegal in Rhodesia for any official document to advance the thesis that Great Zimbabwe had been built by black Africans. Egyptians were a more acceptable explanation, or a lost tribe of Israel.”
I thought of how the Nazis’ refusal to use what they called “Jewish science” may have cause them the loss of a war they perhaps could have won. Racism is an odd and often self-destructive vice.
“In any case,” continued Mahsimba, “with the discovery of the ruins came European treasure hunters and so-called experts on ancient cultures. One of the treasure hunters was a man named Willi Posselt. In 1889 he discovered four eagles carved from soapstone and traded for what he considered the best of them. Over the years, a total of ten eagles were found in Great Zimbabwe and shipped elsewhere, to museums and private collections. The whereabouts of eight of them are known, and my country is working very hard to have them returned to their homeland. I’m here on your island in search of the two missing ones. I think they may be here, and Stanley Crandel thinks that you may be able to help me find them.”
PHILIP R. CRAIG grew up on a small cattle ranch near Durango, Colorado, before going off to college at Boston University. He earned his M.F.A. at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. A recently retired professor of English at Wheelock College in Boston, he and his wife Shirley now live year-round on Martha’s Vineyard. There are currently fourteen books in his Vineyard series.
Philip R. Craig, Death In Vineyard Waters
