A Case of Vineyard Poison Read online

  A CASE OF VINEYARD POISON

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  For my son-in-law, Steve Harmon, who loves both the mountains and the sea; and for Alva Rex, with whom I shared many an adventure and many a book long ago when the two of us were young.

  You think that you are . . . the pursuer . . . that it is your part . . . to prevail, to overcome. Fool: it is you who are the pursued, the marked-down quarry, the destined prey.

  —G. B. Shaw

  Man and Superman

  — 1 —

  It all started with a bluefish blitz at Metcalf’s Hole on South Beach. It was early summer and the bluefish were everywhere. After hitting the yard sales, Zee and I had taken a lunch out to Pocha Pond, on a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning. I had unfolded the old bedspread I use for a beach blanket, and while Zee lay on it in the lee of the tall rushes that grow there and read, I waded out for some chowder quahogs. For some reason, Pocha Pond doesn’t seem to have any small quahogs, only big ones. How they make the jump from teeny seed to chowder size with no intervening steps is a mystery to me, although the Great Quahog God probably understands it perfectly. After I had my small basket full, I waded back to shore, and ogled Zee, who looked splendid in her wee bikini.

  “Nice bod,” I said.

  Zee lifted her eyes. “By next month, you’ll be a married man, so you’re going to have to learn to stop drooling over single women.”

  “Next month is July. This is still June, and you’re still single, so don’t rush me.”

  “Come here,” she said. “I want to explain something to you.”

  I went to her.

  “Lean down.”

  I leaned down. She tossed her book, and pulled me down on top of her.

  “Help, help,” I whispered. “I’m being assaulted.”

  I was wet and cool, and she was warm and dry. Pretty soon we were both warm and wet.

  “There,” said Zee. “Let that be a lesson to you.”

  “I have short-term memory loss,” I said, as we untangled and put our bathing suits back in place. “What was that we just did? Can we do it again?”

  “I can do it again,” said Zee, “but I think you’ll need a few minutes before giving it another go. Meanwhile, let’s eat.”

  We did that, washing lunch down with cold Sam Adams beer, and afterward we napped in the hot Martha’s Vineyard sun, improving both our tans and our energies at the same time.

  In mid-afternoon, Zee stretched and smiled. She looked like a long, lean cat. Her blue-black hair framed her tanned face, and her dark eyes were lazy and sensual. She leaned over me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m saving myself for my marriage. I don’t drool over single women anymore. I’m afraid I must ask you to be on your way.”

  She looked beyond me and sighed. “I’m afraid I must do just that. Here comes a caravan of Jeeps. Our haven is no longer ours alone.”

  I rolled over and looked. Sure enough, here came three trucks down from the Dike Bridge, headed for Wasque. Fishermen or picnickers coming back from Cape Pogue Pond, no doubt. I looked at my watch. Three o’clock. By the time we got home, it would be martini time. I gave Zee a chaste kiss, and we packed up.

  But as we came off the Wasque reservation, what should we see but a line of ORV’s at Metcalf’s Hole.

  “Hey,” said Zee. “They’re catching fish! Let’s get over there!”

  We did that, and found a gap where we could park my old Land Cruiser. Fishermen were shoulder to shoulder, and there were fish under every truck. We got our rods off the roof rack, and walked right down to the surf.

  “There’s at least two schools out there,” said George Martin, hauling in a nice fish. “One outside and one in close. A lot of cut lines.”

  Zee made her cast and was instantly on. “Hot damn!” She set the hook and began working the fish. I made my cast and got a hit after about a half dozen turns on the reel. There were mega-fish out there.

  “Blast and drat!” Zee’s line was limp. “Cut off!” she said, reeling in as fast as she could.

  I landed my fish just as she finished rerigging and headed back to the surf. She landed two fish before she was cut off again. She uttered a very unladylike word and headed back up to the truck.

  I brought in my fifth fish as she was digging through her tackle box, looking for another leader. She found it and tied it on. “Don’t say a thing,” said Zee, looking up at me from under lowered brows. She ran down to the beach.

  Five minutes later, she was back at the truck again, looking for yet another rig.

  “I’ve told you to use a longer leader,” I said helpfully, while I unhooked a nice eight-pounder right beside her. “Look at me. A thirty-inch leader, and I haven’t been cut off once. But you and those eighteen-inchers. Why do you use those things? How many rigs have you lost this morning?”

  “Shut up,” explained Zee.

  I cut my fish’s throat and tossed it into the shade of the rusty Land Cruiser beside the others. Zee, rigged up once more, headed down to the surf to make her cast.

  According to George Martin, the fish had come in just after noon and had been there ever since. They were taking anything you could throw out there, so all of us were using junk lures, and one thing worked as well as the next. It was terrific fishing, but a lot of gear was being lost to crossed lines and the fins and teeth of the voracious blues.

  I probably have as much gear on the bottom of the ocean as anyone else does, but today I’d been lucky. Not a single lost lure. It was too good an opportunity to pass up, so I didn’t. I went down again and stood beside Zee and made my cast. She was already on, her rod bent and singing, and was bringing the fish in. There wasn’t much tide, so she didn’t have to walk down the beach. Instead, she was cranking him straight in.

  “Now listen to old J.W.,” I said, as I saw a swirl and felt a fish take my lure. I set the hook and my rod bent. “The secret of successful fishing is to keep the fish attached to the lure, and the lure attached to the leader, and the leader attached to the line, and the line attached to the reel, and the reel attached to the rod, and . . .”

  “Shut up, Jefferson!” Her fish was giving her a lovely fight.

  “Be patient,” I said, “there’s more. . . . And the rod attached to you, the fisherperson. That’s all there is to it. Now you’ve got all of it right except the leader attached to the line part, so that’s the part you have to work on. You should start by getting rid of all those eighteen-inch leaders and make yourself some good long ones like I use.” I gave her my best smile.

  “One more word, Jefferson, and the wedding’s off!”

  She landed her fish, gritted her teeth at me, and carried the fish up to the Land Cruiser. She was wearing shorts and a tee shirt over her bathing suit, and had her long, black hair tied up with a blue kerchief. She, like me, had Tevas on her feet. On her left ring finger she wore the small diamond that had been my grandmother’s engagement ring. In four weeks, on July 13, we planned to add a wedding ring to that finger.

  I landed my fish. Another eight- or nine-pounder, which was today’s size. Schools of blues often are about the same weight, for reasons probably known to Neptune, but not to me. I carried it up to the truck.

  Zee was counting fish. Hers were by the hind wheel and mine were by the front wheel.

  “I’ve got my limit,” she said.

  There is a ten-fish daily limit for sport
fishermen. I have a commercial license, so I can ignore it.

  “You can catch some for me,” I said.

  “And have to listen to more of that long-leader stuff? Fat chance! Besides,” she said, “I have to go to town and do some chores.” She put her rod on the roof rack. “You can stay. I imagine that George will give me a ride home. Won’t you, George?” She gave him her dazzling smile.

  “Sure,” said George, who was old enough to be her father, but was not blind.

  “Never mind,” I said. “I brought you out here, and since I’m a manly man with a code of ethics that requires self-sacrifice when women and children and dogs are in trouble, I’ll take you home even though the fishing may never be this good again.”

  “Thanks anyhow, George,” smiled Zee.

  We drove west along the beach until we came to the pavement. There, where two-wheel-drive cars could park, the beach was still filled with the June People, getting their vacation money’s worth as they squeezed the last advantage from the warm rays of the late afternoon sun. We turned right, crossed the Herring Creek, and went past the condominiums toward Edgartown. The bike path beside the road was full of bikers and walkers.

  “What chores?” I asked.

  “Well, for one thing, I have to get some more gear. I got cut off four times today, and I need some plugs and some new leaders. Don’t say one word, Jefferson! But first I have to get some money because I don’t have any.”

  “The banks are closed.”

  “Ah, but I have an ATM card and the Vineyard Haven National Bank has a machine right in Edgartown, so I am in business.”

  I did not have an Automatic Teller Machine card. Because my checkbook was never in balance anyway, I figured it would only get worse if I got an ATM card, since then I could get money without even having a check stub amount to improperly subtract from my current imbalance.

  The traffic was pretty heavy, but then the Vineyard summer season was getting longer every year. At one time, the islanders had made almost all of their tourist money between July 4 and Labor Day, but nowadays the season stretched from May till October and even longer. A sure sign that summer had actually started was the number of mopeds on the road. Mopeds were a constant hazard to their drivers, many of whom knew nothing at all about how to stay on top of the little machines. The veteran island police officers preferred night duty to day duty simply because the moped accidents almost all took place in the daylight. So the younger the officer, the more likely it was that he or she would have the day shift, otherwise known as Moped Mop-up. Similarly, the hospital emergency room, where Zee often worked, was busy all summer repairing damaged moped riders or shipping the worst injured of them off to mainland hospitals on Cape Cod or up in Boston.

  Mopeds held up traffic when they weren’t doing worse things, and we followed a half dozen into town. As I loafed behind them down Pease Point Way, I suggested to Zee that maybe there should be an official moped season, with bounties available on a per-head basis. It was not an original idea.

  “You don’t have to knock off the mopeds,” said Zee. “They self-destruct faster than Mr. Phelps’s tapes.”

  True.

  We turned up Main Street and drove into the A & P-Al’s Package Store afternoon traffic jam. The citizens of Edgartown seem intent upon having as many traffic jams as they can manage, and from time to time rearrange the traffic patterns on the lovely, narrow streets of their village so as to maximize driving difficulties. They are very good at it, and have made it very difficult indeed to drive efficiently or park anywhere, but their crowning achievement is the traffic jam in front of the A & P and Al’s Package Store. From time to time each day, all summer long, traffic is backed up a half mile or so in either direction, making Edgartown the undisputed winner of Worst-Traffic-Jam-on-the-Island championship trophy.

  Of course, as I often explained to Zee and anyone else who would (and some who wouldn’t) listen, this jam, and most others, was caused by people making left turns. My plan was to put concrete barriers down the middle of the road in front of the A & P and Al’s so no one could make any left turns.

  “No left turns, no traffic jams. Put a traffic circle around Cannonball Park and another one around the Square Rigger, so people can reverse direction, and everything will be fine. But does anyone listen to me? No.”

  Zee rolled her eyes. “Yes, dear.”

  “Dear,” I said. “I like that. It sounds like we’re already married.”

  The Vineyard Haven National Bank’s ATM booth was at the triangle, near the post office. I pulled into a parking place and Zee jumped out. While Zee dodged cars on her way to the ATM booth, I eyed the parking plan of the plaza, convinced once again that whoever had designed it had psychological problems. Cars were obliged to park or drive every which way, and everyone I’d ever talked to agreed that it was not only the worst parking design they’d ever seen, but that, since nobody could look in all the directions people were parking, walking, and driving, it was only a matter of time before somebody got run over trying to get to the P.O.

  Zee made it to her ATM booth safely. I watched her enter with her magic card and punch buttons inside. She collected her money and looked at her receipt, then looked at it again. Then she looked at it some more. Then she put her card back into the machine and got another receipt. She looked at it. Then she put her money into her purse and came out of the booth.

  “Guess what?” she said, climbing into the Land Cruiser.

  “What?”

  “You’re looking at a wealthy woman.” She smiled and waved her two receipts.

  Nurses don’t normally get wealthy so fast. “I want you to know,” I said, “that it’s your dear, sweet heart that has drawn me to you, and that your millions mean nothing to me.”

  “In that case,” said Zee, “I’ll just keep the hundred thousand to myself.”

  “A hundred thousand? Dollars?”

  “Look,” said Zee, handing me the receipts. “I have about fifteen hundred in my checking account, but look at these.”

  I looked. Each receipt said that Zee had a hundred thousand more than that in her account.

  “I got two receipts, just to make sure,” said Zee. “Both times it said the same thing. Maybe I should go right to the tackle shop and get myself a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of leaders and lures. What do you think?”

  “I think Rio might be a better plan, because I have a feeling that banks, being banks, probably have laws that protect them when this happens and put people like you in jail if you run off with the hundred thousand.”

  “Rio it is, then. They’ll never catch us.”

  “We have to get rid of these fish before we go. And now that I think of it, I don’t have a passport. You’ll have to go alone, I’m afraid.”

  “Rats. Well, in that case, let’s go get me some tackle instead.”

  “Remember. Long leaders this time. No more of those eighteen-inchers.”

  “I really hate it when people just can’t let something go. You know what I mean?”

  I did. We nosed into the traffic jam and stayed in it until we got to Chase Road, then cut up to Coop’s, where Zee got herself two Roberts, two Missiles, and enough forty-five-pound test leader makings to keep her in business for a while.

  “Tell you what,” she said, as we left. “I’m going to give your friend Hazel Fine a call on Monday, and see what she says about this mistake in my account.”

  Hazel Fine worked at the Vineyard Haven National Bank. I had met her the year before. She was the only banker I knew very well, for I had lived a sheltered life.

  “Good idea,” I said. “Maybe we’ll find out it isn’t a mistake. Maybe we’ll find out that you have a secret admirer who has decided to slip a hundred thou into your account every now and then in a vain hope of winning you away from me.”

  Zee grasped my arm and fluttered her lashes at me. “If you get his name, pass it on to me, and I’ll make sure you get your grandma’s ring back before the guy and I head
for Cannes.”

  Zee’s hundred thou was the first unusual thing that happened that week. It wasn’t the last.

  — 2 —

  On Sunday morning Zee got a receipt from yet another ATM and still had her hundred thou. But by Monday morning it was gone. The Vineyard Haven National Bank informed her that she had just her fifteen hundred in her checking account.

  “Sic transit gloria mundi.” She sighed, as she told me this over the phone. She was at work in the emergency room and had just called the bank and gotten the bad news.

  “Did they give you any explanation?”

  “They said they’d been having trouble with some of their machines.”

  “I told you you should have withdrawn the money while you had a chance.”

  “You did not. Oh well. No French Riviera again this year.”

  “Riviera schmiviera. You’re already on the blessed isle of Martha’s Vineyard. The Riviera holds no comparable charms. Besides, I’m here, not there. Think about that.”

  There was a silence at the far end of the line. I hummed into my phone. “I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” she said, laughing. Then, “Oops, there’s some business coming through the door. It has the appearance of the first moped spill of the day. Gotta run.”

  She hung up.

  Another fortune slipped through our fingers. Oh well.

  It was a lazy day, warm and sunny. I was wearing shorts and Tevas, my usual at-home garb during the summer. I put on my shades and went out to the garden and weeded and watered flowers and veggies for an hour. The lawn needed mowing, so I put in some more time doing that. By then it was time for the day’s first beer, so I got a Sam Adams from the fridge and had that on my balcony, while I looked out toward the beach on the far side of Sengekontacket Pond, where the cars belonging to the June People were already lining the highway between Edgartown and Oak Bluffs.

  The beach beyond the highway is a favorite one for young families, because the parking is free, the prevailing offshore wind and gently sloping shore create safe waters for small children, and the water is only a hundred feet or so from the road, making it easy for Mom and Dad to tote their armloads of gear and children from car to seashore.