My windows on the modern world of television, movies, and contemporary music were in the forms of Jill and Jen Skye, the twin daughters of Professor John Skye and his wife, Mattie. The twins would be going back to college in the fall, but now had summer work on the island and were living with their parents on the family farm. So after Jake Spitz left me with directions on how to find Evangeline the next day, I phoned the farm to discover as much as I could about Evangeline.
Mattie answered and from her I learned that John, having finally finished his magnum opus, a new and definitive translation of Gawain and the Green Knight, was now researching his next project: a world history of swords-manship. John had been a three-weapon man in college, and his old foil, épée, and saber were triangulated below his mask, high on the wall of his Vineyard library.
I also learned that Jen was working an evening shift at an Edgartown restaurant, but that Jill was home. When she came to the phone and I asked her if she could keep a confidence, she assured me that she could, speaking in very grown-up, university tones.
When I told her about my driving job, and asked her to tell me about Evangeline, Jill’s college-woman persona instantly vanished. “Evangeline? Evangeline! Is she here? Really? Wow!”
“Zee also said wow,” I said.
For the next several minutes I listened to Jill extol the obviously, to her, immortal significance and fame of Evangeline. Evangeline was a comet in the firmament of pop music heaven, a force to be reckoned with since her early teens when she’d first appeared on the music scene. She was totally wild and independent, infuriatingly talented as both a singer and an actress, indifferent to public opinion about both her art and her private life, once poor but now incredibly rich, the owner and inhabitant of her own Scottish castle, the winner of countless awards, the subject of scandalous rumors, and the face on a thousand magazines. At thirty she was twice married and divorced, was the mother of a child by yet another (unidentified) man, and was reportedly now sharing her bed with a movie star whose gender was a matter of great discussion. Was her lover a man or a woman? Evangeline was, in short, the most important singer in the whole world and a star of the first magnitude.
“Are you sure about all that?” I asked Jill.
“Of course! How can you even ask such a thing? You’re a hopeless case, J.W.! Evangeline isn’t just a star, you know. She has a very spiritual side, too. And she has a tragic past. Some man she can’t forget, they say. Isn’t that romantic? She can be very deep. I bet you’d like her music if you heard it.”
“I think I’ll stick to country and western and classical,” I said, and switched gears. “Does she have any enemies that you know of?”
“Of course she has enemies! Everyone in the business envies her! And she probably has crazy fans. You know, the kind that shoot you if you’re famous! It’s dangerous to be famous, you know.”
I did know that. “Sad but true,” I agreed.
Jill’s enthusiasm reemerged. “But you’re really going to be her driver? Starting tomorrow? Really?! Can Jen and I see her? Can we be someplace beside the road when you drive by?”
“I don’t know where we’ll be driving or when. If you want to see her, I think you’ll have to buy a ticket to the big show.”
She groaned. “Do you know how much those tickets cost? I’d have to spend every cent I’ve saved all summer!”
“So what? You don’t need to go back to college this fall. You can get a job someplace and work all winter instead. There are too many coeds in college already. It’s dangerous. Like the guy said, giving an education to a woman is like giving a knife to a baby. You know what I mean?”
“Ha, ha! Very funny. Not!” Then her tone became artificially sweet. “Oh, J.W., do you think that you, my favorite person in the whole world, might be able to get a couple of tickets for us? If Evangeline likes you, maybe she’ll get some for you, and you can give them to my sister and me. That would be very sweet of you, dear J.W.”
“Are you fluttering your lashes?”
“Absolutely. And I have an adoring look on my face.”
“I’m trying to imagine it.”
“I can’t believe she’s here and you’re going to meet her!”
“Try not to spread the news. I’m told that Evangeline likes her privacy. If you talk to everybody about her being here, she’ll have reporters and photographers following her wherever she goes.”
“I don’t know if can keep it to myself! I just have to tell Jen, and I have to tell Mom and Dad!”
I thought of the old saw that two can keep a secret if one of them is dead, and was sure that knowledge of Evangeline’s presence was already being whispered like wind through dry grass. Maybe I’d made a mistake in phoning the Skyes.
“Well,” said Zee when I finished the call. “Do you now know everything you need to know about your charge?”
“I know enough to get started, at least. According to Jill, she’s the empress of ice cream.”
“I never did understand that poem.”
“Me, too. And it’s not the only one. Anyway, I’ll know more tomorrow than I know now. I’ll give you a full report.”
“She’ll probably want to spirit you away to her Scottish castle when the big show is over. She likes men, they say.”
“Maybe women, too, according to Jill. But if she tries it I’ll just tell her that I’ve already been spirited away by you, and one spiritization in a lifetime is quite enough, thank you.” I leered at her.
“Is ‘spiritization’ a real word?”
“If it isn’t, it should be. May I spirit you to our boudoir?”
She smiled at me and rose from her chair. “You may, but I think that the term, properly used, refers to a lady’s private bedroom, not one shared by a man.”
“You’re very language-sensitive tonight. Have you been reading the dictionary again?”
“It’s a good book even though it’s short on plot.”
In bed, I ran a hand over her hip and down her sleek thigh.
She made a humming sound and put her arms around me. “How long do you think this will take?” she asked, biting my neck lightly.
“No longer than all night,” I said. “I have to pick up Evangeline in the morning.”
Evangeline, according to Spitz and his map, was staying in a large house on the shore of the Edgartown Great Pond, not too far east from the house where Joe and Myra Callahan had lived during their presidential summer vacations, and not much farther from the Peter Fredericks estate, where the Celebration for Humanity was to be held.
Peter Fredericks was the most notorious castle builder on Martha’s Vineyard, where castle building had become a sport among the purchasers of island real estate. The normal pattern of building began with the purchase of some already outsize and highly priced house. The house was then torn down and replaced by one that was even bigger and more ornate. Peter Fredericks had lifted the already high bar by purchasing eighty acres of pond-front land and building a fifteen-thousand-square-foot house on it, plus a five-car garage and various outbuildings.
Even his wealthy neighbors had objected to such a project taking place within sight of their own massive houses, claiming piously that his mansion was inappropriate to its location, since it altered the precious island ambiance in some vital way that theirs did not. Fredericks did not personally stoop to public argument but allowed his lawyers to speak, and prevail, on his behalf.
And now on a onetime sheep pasture beside his three-mile-long driveway, a massive temporary stage was being erected upon which the Celebration for Humanity stars would perform in front of the thousands of fans fortunate enough to have tickets.
The Fredericks estate was actually an excellent choice for the gala since the Great Pond provided protection from the south and east and the driveway was the only road leading to the sheep pasture. Once the woods and the beaches were filled with public and private security agents, as they surely would be soon, if they were not already, ticketless fans and other intruders would have little chance of joining the celebs and paying customers.
Getting to Evangeline’s house proved almost as difficult. The next morning I turned into the road leading to her house and was immediately stopped by a young Edgartown cop who had been sitting in the shade of a tent off to the right. He clearly had the duty of preventing undesirables from intruding upon Evangeline’s privacy. He looked serious but happy, and I suspected he was a fan who was glad to make some extra pay guarding his idol.
“Sorry, J.W.,” he said, “but this road is closed except to homeowners.”
“No, it’s okay, Marty,” said Spitz, coming out of the tent. “J.W.’s going to be the Lady Evangeline’s driver while she’s on the island. You’re early, J.W.”
“I can go home again and come back later. Is Evangeline a late sleeper?”
“Evangeline now has a code name,” said Spitz. “She’s Ethel Price. You can call her Mrs. Price.”
“Price is okay,” I said, “but Ethel? Nobody’s named Ethel anymore. I think Ethel Barrymore was the last Ethel in America. Anybody who hears me call her Ethel will know right away that it’s a fake name.”
Spitz looked away, then looked back. “It was her mother’s name. She picked it herself, so get used to it.”
“Hey, if she wants a name that sounds like a maiden great-aunt, it’s all right with me.”
“Do you want this job or not?”
“The money’s too good to miss. All right, she’s Mrs. Ethel Price for the duration.”
“Good.” He gave me a cell phone and an ID card with my picture on it. I seemed to have become a government agent of some kind.
“Where’d you get my photo and signature?”
“Your tax dollars at work. Wave that at anybody who gives you trouble or call that number at the bottom if you need help for any reason.”
I wondered why I might need help.
“Okay,” he said, “now follow the signs to the Carberg house and exchange this trusty, rusty old Land Cruiser for the Explorer with tinted windows that you’ll find there. Introduce yourself to the lady. She knows you’re coming and has a photograph of you.”
I rattled down the long sandy road until I came to the Carberg house. Sure enough, there was a new white Ford Explorer in front of the garage. I parked beside it.
The Carberg house was rambling and comfortable-looking. It was shingled in graying cedar and sported at least three fireplaces. By Fredericks standards it was not an impressive structure, but by mine it was a five-star hotel.
Through the open breezeway linking the garage to the house I could see a dock leading out into the Edgartown Great Pond. Tied to it were a small open boat with an outboard motor, and a Laser sailboat. A canoe was pulled up on the beach. They were modest vessels, but ample enough for fun on the Great Pond, where people did not care for large, noisy motorboats.
Clearly the Carbergs were Pond People, one of the Vineyard’s cultural subgroups. The Pond People lived on the edges of the island’s several great ponds along the south shore and, like other more or less self-contained social groups such as the Campground People in Oak Bluffs, kept to themselves and were generally unknown to the thousands of summer tourists who filled the ferries sailing to and from the island.
Peter Fredericks now had a home on a pond, but he had a ways to go to become a Pond Person. He would have to overcome the size of his new house and the resentment of his Pond People neighbors before he qualified. It would probably take years, if not a lifetime.
I opened the door of the white Explorer and saw that the keys were in the ignition. Tsk-tsk. I put them in my pocket and went to the front door. It was opened by a tough-looking man wearing sandals and a loose shirt over his summer shorts. There was a bulge under the shirt on his right side, about belt level. I showed him the ID card that Spitz had given me.
He looked at it, then at me, then at it, then at me. Then he nodded and showed me his teeth in what was meant to pass as a smile.
“Hi,” he said. “Glad to know you, Mr. Jackson. I’m Hale Drummand. Come in. Mrs. Price is on the back porch.”
He put out a hand, which I took. His was hard. We had a short gripping contest before calling it a draw and separating.
I followed him along a hall and out into the bright morning sun. To the south, across the Great Pond, was the barrier beach, beyond which the glittering Atlantic rolled away to the horizon.
A woman wearing summer clothes was sitting on the veranda drinking coffee and looking at the water. She turned at the sound of our footsteps and stood up.
My heart jumped. Her eyes were hidden behind dark glasses, but she was the first woman I’d ever seen who was as beautiful as Zee. She smiled and the world brightened still more.
“You’re Mr. Jackson. Hello.”
She put out her hand and I took it. Some sort of energy passed between us.
“My friends call me J.W.,” I said. “And you’re Mrs. Price.”
“My friends call me Ethel. Please sit down. Hale, will you find another cup for Mr. Jackson, please?”
He left, frowning slightly. While he was gone, she and I studied each other silently. Both of us were almost smiling.
Drummand came back and put a cup down in front of me.
“Thank you, Hale,” said the woman.
He made a small bow. I had the impression that his teeth were pressed tightly together. He went into the house.
Evangeline poured coffee into her cup and mine. Even while doing such a simple thing she radiated a glamour I’d rarely experienced. I saw that it would be easy to become a knight-at-arms, alone and palely loitering. Perhaps Hale Drummand already was.
She removed her glasses. Her eyes were a hypnotic pale gray, slanted slightly upward at the corners.
“Agent Spitz has told me about you,” she said in her contralto voice.
“I’ve been told something about you as well,” I said.
“He said you know this island well, and that you’re married to a woman you love and that you have children.”
“That’s true.”
“He said something else that’s even more important. You can be trusted.”
I said nothing.
“I want to see your island but I also want to find a man who’s living here,” she said. “I need someone who can find him and say nothing about it afterward. Someone who can be discreet.”
“I can probably manage that.”
She sipped her coffee. “You don’t make too many extravagant claims about your virtue, do you? Should I have you take an oath?”
“I don’t have much faith in oaths. It’s the honor of the person that guarantees the power of the oath, not the other way around.”
She smiled and nodded. “Very good. Another question, then. Do you have a pistol?”
“Jake Spitz suggested I carry one, but he was pretty vague as to why.”
“Because now I can leave Hale at home with my daughter when we go for our rides. He can protect her and you can protect me.”
“From what?”
“Rich people and famous people always need protection,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “And I’m both of those. Let me find a wig and a sweater and we’ll be on our way. Finish your coffee. I’ll be right back.”
It was good coffee. It was true that rich and famous people often needed protection, but I wondered if there might be more to her situation than that.
She was back in a very few minutes sporting a reddish wig that, combined with her huge dark glasses, made her look like a day-trip tourist if you didn’t look twice. If you did look twice you could see that she was nothing at all like a day-tripper or any other kind of tourist, but that she was a woman unlike any you’d ever seen before.
“Very Vineyardish, Mrs. Price,” I said, getting up. “Where would you like to go first?”
“Call me Ethel, J.W. How about the grand two-dollar tour?”
Hale Drummand did not look happy when Evangeline informed him that he’d be staying at home with little Jane.
I got a map out of my truck, unfolded it, and gave Evangeline a brief geography lesson before handing the map to her. Armed and dangerous, I then drove us to Edgartown and through its lovely, narrow streets, past the flower-filled yards and great captain’s houses. I pointed across the harbor.
“That’s Chappaquiddick over there. You can get there by that little three-car ferry, the On Time. One story is that it’s called the On Time because it doesn’t have a schedule and is therefore always on time.”
“Is Chappaquiddick worth a visit?”
“It is to fishermen, and the Dyke Bridge is still the most famous tourist spot on the Vineyard. We can go over there later, if you like. Out on the far beaches there’s good fishing. Are you a fisherperson?”
“I have a salmon stream on my property in Scotland. I lease some of it to an angling club. Are you a fisherman?”
“I am.”
I showed her the twenty-two-million-dollar house out on Starbuck Neck, and she said it was very nice but she didn’t comment on the price as most people do. Why should she, when she owned a Scottish castle?
I drove her through the Oak Bluffs Campground and then around East Chop and West Chop, giving her a running commentary as we went. She asked intelligent questions and was interested in little things such as the four-color paint jobs on the campground’s gingerbread houses.
Then we went up-island to Menemsha, where I got the island’s best fried clams and calamari from The Bite and we ate them in the car. When the fries were gone, we drove on to Aquinnah, where, to my surprise, I actually found a parking space at the cliffs.
“Do you want to get out and take a look?” I asked. “Or would you rather not?”
She adjusted her wig and glasses. “Let’s get out.”
We walked up between the souvenir shops and the fast food shops until we got to the top. It was a good day for looking, and I pointed out the Elizabeth Islands to the north, Point Judith, Rhode Island on the far western horizon, and Nomans Land to the south. The blue sea was alive with boats.
Tourists, mostly silver-haired or bald, were all around us, but not one seemed to notice that Evangeline was among them.
“This is as far west as we can go,” I said to her. “Now we’ll head back toward home.”
“Can you take me to Indian Hill Road?”
The request surprised me. “Sure. There’s a terrific stone wall being built there. My favorite one on the whole island.”
“Let’s go there.”
“Shall we sightsee on the way?”
“All right. You live on a beautiful island.”
I drove back through Chilmark and down to West Tisbury, where I stopped and we walked among the dancing statues in the field across from the general store.
“Can I buy some of these? They’re completely charming! I know just where to put them on my grounds!”
“I’m sure you can,” I said. Everything is for sale if the price is right.
“You can bring me back here another day, and I’ll do it.” Her smile was brilliant. She took my arm in hers. “I love them all!”
When she became aware of her arm in mine and stepped away, I felt a sense of loss.
“Is it far to Indian Hill Road?”
“No part of the island is far from any other part. Do you want to go there now?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll show you on the map.”
I did that, then drove through North Tisbury toward Vineyard Haven and took a couple of lefts. “This is it,” I said.
She seemed both uneasy and excited, and looked this way and that as we drove. I pointed out the long, lovely stone wall that had been under construction for years, and told her how stone wall builders were now in such popular demand on the island that stones had to be imported from New Hampshire to keep them all busy. But she wasn’t interested in stone walls, she was interested in driveways.
But she didn’t see or didn’t recognize the one she wanted. When we came to the end of the paved road, I turned the car around.
“Are you looking for someone or some place in particular?”
“Yes. Alain Duval. I thought he had a place on this road, but I don’t see his name anywhere.” She touched her teeth to her bottom lip and for a fleeting instant looked like a young girl.
The name was a familiar one. I was sure Duval was the person she had mentioned that morning. “I can probably find him for you,” I said.
She gave me a look of gratitude that would have made a slave of Caesar. “It’s important to me that I see him.” Then she added, “But I don’t want anyone to know. It’s…a private matter.”
“I’ll see what I can manage.”
She had a sense of distance and space, and she could read a map. By the time we got back to her house that afternoon, she seemed to know where she was and where she’d been.
And I hadn’t had to shoot a single person.
“See you tomorrow, same time,” she said as I was going toward my truck.
A small girl came running from the house and Evangeline stooped to catch her and swung her up in her arms. In the doorway Hale Drummand watched and then turned back out of sight.
Zee was already home when I got there. I kissed her, then did it again, to make sure.
“Well, well,” she said, smiling up at me. “That was very nice.”
“I agree. Do you happen to know how to find Alain Duval?” I asked. “My client wants to visit him.”
Zee raised her brows in recognition. “The Guru of the Stars? Isn’t his summer shrine up-island someplace? His Temple of Light is out in Hollywood, I know. I read once that it’s made mostly of glass. He may have an ad in the local papers. Try looking there. Or maybe he’s in the phone book. Even holy men have cell phones these days.”
Duval wasn’t listed in the phone book and I didn’t find any ads for his shrine in that week’s papers, but I figured I could find him anyway. After all, thousands of other people had managed it over the years. Of course their quests had been spiritual and mine wasn’t, but so what?