A Vineyard Killing by Philip R. Craig Read Free Book Online

with you. You’ll want to write this down because it’s more than one sentence. Are you ready?”
    â€œI doubt if Sergeant Agganis needs to hear anything you have to say.”
    â€œI don’t expect you to understand anything more complicated than tying your shoes, Olive, but I think Dom might. Ready or not, here I come.”
    She opened a drawer and brought out a mini tape recorder. “I’d better use this. Your gibberish will need translation, and I’m sure as hell not up to it.” She punched a button and sat back. “Shoot.”
    I told the machine what I’d learned from Bonzo. When I was through, Olive said, “Is that all?”
    â€œThat’s all.”
    She shut off the machine. “It’s not much,” she said, but she was thinking.
    â€œIf Dom can come up with a photo of Kirkland, he can show it to Bonzo, maybe Bonzo can ID him as the guy in the car.”
    â€œWe don’t need you telling us how to do our jobs. If you don’t have anything else to say, the door is right over there. And stay out of police business!”
    â€œSay thank you, Olive.”
    â€œThank you and good-bye, emphasis on good-bye. ”
    I glanced back as I went out. Olive was rewinding the tape, looking thoughtful.
    In spite of our mutual hostility, I knew she had to be good at her work or else Dom would have long since figured out a way to get rid of her. By the time she finished replaying the tape I was pretty sure that she’d be considering the same possibilities that I was: that if the guy Bonzo had seen had been Kirkland, Kirkland had been in the parking lot twice and both times on purpose rather than by chance.
    Like me, she might also go further and guess that the parking lot had been chosen because somebody knew it would be a pretty quiet spot this time of year and because Kirkland, an off-islander, knew he’d probably not be recognized even if somebody did see him there.
    The questions I couldn’t guess at were why the two people were meeting and whether the driver the first time was later the killer. Could be, since Kirkland may have been a passenger the first time and was definitely the driver when he was killed. Still, it was a start. There weren’t that many green Range Rovers on the island, and most of them belonged to Saberfox. Of course, even if the man Bonzo had seen had indeed been Kirkland, it didn’t necessarily mean anything.
    But it felt like it did.
    I drove home and planted peas. On Martha’s Vineyard you plant your peas in March, so when other early-spring gardeners meet you and say, “Gotcher peas in yet?” you can say, “Yes.” By June, just after you’ve finished eating the last of your asparagus, you can start eating fresh peas and pea pods. And not much later you can be eating your beans. Gardens are terrific. God was being pretty vindictive when he threw Adam and Eve out of theirs. No wonder there are so many people mad at Her.
    I met Joshua and Diana when they came off the ferry not long before Zee came home from work, and all of us had some hot cocoa and cookies to keep us from starving before supper.
    â€œPa?”
    â€œWhat, Josh?”
    â€œWhen’s school going to be out?”
    â€œIn June. That’s about three more months. Why?”
    â€œI’m tired of studying. I want to go to the beach.”
    â€œMe, too, Pa.” Diana the huntress, ever on the prowl for more food, reached for another cookie.
    â€œYou’ll freeze your bippies if you go to the beach these days. It’s cold out there.”
    â€œNo, it’s not.”
    â€œIf you don’t think so, put on your bathing suits and go out and sit in the yard for a while.”
    The children looked at each other with happy, surprised expressions.
    â€œUh-oh,” said Zee. “Now you’ve done it. It’s too cold, kids. You’ll get sick.”
    â€œBeing cold doesn’t make you