Joanne Homlish, the woman who had supposedly seen me force Abigail Highsmith off the road, lived just off Tiah’s Cove Road in a farmhouse that had been there since before the Revolution. It was not far from the home of Nancy Luce, the lonely, sickly “hen lady” poet whose body now lies in the West Tisbury graveyard, her stone and grave adorned with chicken statues placed there by her devotees. Nancy’s poetry and other writings, her love of her cows and chickens, and her long, eccentric life had made her locally famous before her death in 1890, and now, more than one hundred years later, many a Vineyard living room wall sports a reproduction of a famous photo of Nancy seated in a chair, with her long, haunted face peering at the camera while her strong, gentle hands hold two of her beloved bantams.
It pleased me to think that not only Nancy, who had never traveled farther than Edgartown, was still remembered with affection, but that the same was true of her adored chickens—Beauty Linna, Bebbee Pinky, Tweedle Deedle, and the rest. What other chickens, aside from Chanticleer, have been immortalized by poetry? Maybe Nancy and Geoffrey were even now sitting together in some poet’s heaven, discussing rhyme and open verse. I thought they’d probably have much to talk about.
Joanne Homlish’s house was bigger than Nancy’s had been, and in spite of its years was well maintained in a neat yard behind which was an equally well kept old barn that now served as a garage, so evidenced by the middle-aged Ford Explorer that was parked inside its open door. Like everything else at Joanne’s place, the Explorer looked to be in good shape. Only the sometimes-yellow and sometimes-blue trim on lower windows of the house was unusual, since gray or white trim was the Vineyard norm.
“Are we there yet?” asked Diana, who with her brother was along for the ride because I, unlike most fictional sleuths, was a married man without a babysitter.
“I think we are,” I said, stopping in front of the house. I cast a final look into my rearview mirror and still saw no following car.
“Can we get out of the truck?”
“Let’s wait and see if there are dogs. Sometimes dogs don’t like visitors, and I don’t want you to get bitten.”
We waited, but no dogs showed up. Maybe Joanne, like me, was a cat person.
“Stay here for the time being,” I said.
I got out of the truck and knocked on the front door. A sharp-faced elderly woman opened it and looked at me and the truck. A pair of reading glasses hung on a cord around her neck.
“Mrs. Homlish? My name’s Jackson.”
She nodded. “What can I do for you, Mr. Jackson?”
“I want to talk to you about the bike accident you saw the other day.”
“You an insurance agent? I already told the police what I saw. I can’t tell you anything they don’t already know.”
“I’m not an insurance agent, but I have an interest in the accident and I’d like to know just what you saw.”
“Well, all right.” She peered over my shoulder. “Those your children? They look about the age of my grandchildren. Let them get out and run around. No use making them sit there while we talk. They can’t get hurt or do any damage.”
When she smiled, her face became softer. I went to the truck and opened a door and the kids climbed out and looked around.
“Wander around all you want,” Mrs. Homlish said to them, waving an arm that took in her whole property. “Just be careful.” She looked at me. “Kids these days are kept on too short a leash, if you ask me. When I was a girl we didn’t have seatbelts or crash helmets or any of that stuff, and we survived just fine. A kid has to get some scratches and bruises now and then, if you ask me.”
“I like your style,” I said, and told her about the tree house and the rope bridge.
She nodded approvingly. “My dad was no good with tools,” she said, “so I never had a tree house. Wanted one, though. Instead, my brothers and I used to build forts in the barn made out of baled hay. We’d set up other bales on end and pretend they were attacking our castle and we’d shoot them with our bows and arrows and stab them with our bayonets. We had a couple of old World War One bayonets around the place and they made good swords. Nowadays kids can’t even carry pocketknives to school. I think things have gone downhill. You want to stay out here so you can keep an eye on your kids, or do you want to talk inside?”
My children were already moving toward the barn, and I wondered what they’d do if they found bales of hay impaled with arrows and bayonets. I poked a thumb at the Land Cruiser and said, “I know this is an odd question, but have you ever seen this truck before?”
She looked at the truck with her bright old eyes. “Seen some that look like that, more or less.” Then her voice became angry. “Saw one the other day, in fact. Drove that Mrs. Highsmith right off the road, then just kept right on going! I’d have followed him and turned him in, but I stopped to help her. Say, that wasn’t you, was it? You aren’t up here to try to talk me out of what I saw, are you? You’re wasting your time if you are!”
I held up a hand to stop the fire in her eyes from burning mine. “It wasn’t me, but the description you gave the police and the picture of the truck you identified made them think it might have been me. I came here to find out if they got the story straight.”
Her voice was hard as cast iron. “They got it straight, all right. It was a rusty old SUV just the shape and color of your machine right there. I doubt if there are many of them still on the road.”
“This is the only one that I know of on the island. How long did you follow it before the accident?”
She knew exactly. “From the time I came out of Old County Road onto North Road. I had to stop so the truck could go by, headed for Vineyard Haven. I followed it until it ran Mrs. Highsmith off the road.”
“So you got a good look at it.”
“Yes, I did!”
“Good. You saw the front of the vehicle as it approached the intersection with Old County Road, and the side as it passed in front of you, then the back as you followed it toward Vineyard Haven. Is that right?”
She nodded, her eyes watchful now. “Yes, it is.”
“Did you notice the driver as the SUV approached you and then passed the intersection in front of you?”
For the first time, she hesitated. Then she said, “No, I didn’t, and I’m sorry I wasn’t paying attention because then I’d know him when I see him again.”
“The driver was a man, not a woman?”
She frowned. “Well, now that you mention it, I’m not really sure. But that was my impression, for some reason. I didn’t pay much attention to the driver or to the SUV either, until just before the accident.”
“Why then?”
“Because I could see Mrs. Highsmith on the bicycle up ahead of us and instead of slowing down—you know how twisty and narrow that road is—he speeded up. Damn fool! I thought, and I looked hard at the truck because I thought the driver should have his license taken away from him for reckless driving! And I was right too, because just as he was passing her, he swerved toward her and drove her off the road! She could have been killed!” She shook her head. “And now her husband’s been murdered, they say. What more can happen to that family? And what about the rest of us, with a killer walking loose?”
It was pretty clear that she hadn’t heard about Abigail Highsmith being shot, and I thought she should know. First, though, I said, “Will you walk out behind my truck and take a good look at it and tell me if it’s like the one you saw?”
I glanced to my right and saw my children coming out of the barn, bearing neither arrows nor bayonets.
Joanne Homlish and I walked out and stood twenty feet behind the Land Cruiser. She studied the truck and nodded her head. “Yes. Same shape, same rust, same color. No doubt about it. Either this is the truck or it’s got a twin.”
I walked with her back to the house. “Do you remember the make of the SUV, or the license plate number?”
She shook her head. “I saw your license plate clear enough just now, but like I told the police, the license plate on the truck I followed looked as though it was splashed with mud, like the truck had gone through a mud puddle or something. And as far as the make of the truck goes, I have to admit I don’t know one make from another these days. When I was growing up, I knew which ones were which because they all looked different; but nowadays they all look the same.”
“I have the same problem.” Joshua and Diana were walking toward us, so I lowered my voice and said, “The day before yesterday someone shot Abigail Highsmith. She’s in a hospital in Boston. I haven’t heard any reports about her condition today.”
“Good heavens! I haven’t been off the place for a couple of days so I hadn’t heard. Do they know who did it?” She suddenly had a thought and looked hard at me.
“It wasn’t me,” I said, reading her mind. “The kids and I were building the rope bridge when it happened. But I thought you should know because whoever did it might be the person who drove Mrs. Highsmith into the ditch, and there’s a chance he might find out that you saw the accident.”
She paled slightly, then pulled herself together. “You mean he might try to intimidate me . . . or worse?”
“I doubt it, but it’s possible. You should be a little more careful than usual.”
“Than today, for instance?” Her smile was small and hard.
I hadn’t thought of that. “Yes,” I said. “Than today.”
“My husband will be coming in from the east field for lunch. I’ll give him the news. Meanwhile, I’ll get his duck gun out of the closet.”
“Do you know how to use a gun?”
“What do you think?”
She reminded me of one of those pioneer women crossing the plains in a covered wagon. “I just wanted to be sure,” I said.
“Pa.”
I turned and looked down. “What, Diana?”
“Look. I found this in a nest and brought it here to the lady.” She held up her little hand and showed us a brown egg.
“Why, thank you, honey,” said Mrs. Homlish, taking the egg. “Did you see any others?”
“No, but we saw some hens and a rooster behind the barn.”
“And we saw the pig in his pen,” added Joshua.
Ham and eggs, I thought, but didn’t say.
Joanne Homlish glanced at the sun. “Before you leave, maybe we should all have some cookies and cold milk. How does that sound?”
It sounded fine to Joshua and Diana, so we went in, and I saw that the house was as neat inside as out. Joanne Homlish liked things Bristol fashion. We sat around the table in her white kitchen and she gave us homemade chocolate chip cookies and cold glasses of milk. Delish.
After we had thanked her and said good-bye, and were driving away, Joshua said, “She’s a nice lady, Pa. I didn’t know she was a friend of ours.”
“Pa.”
“What, Diana?”
“Can we get some chickens?”
“I don’t think so.”
“How about a pig?”
“No. Definitely not a pig.”
“Why not?”
“Because we don’t live on a farm. You can have pigs and chickens if you live on a farm, but we don’t.”
“Let’s buy one!”
“I don’t have enough money to buy a farm.”
“Can we have a dog? You don’t have to live on a farm to have a dog.”
I should have seen that coming, but I hadn’t. “No. No dogs. You have a computer and we have cats. I don’t want any dog.”
“Because they’re slaves and you don’t approve of slaves?”
Joshua had clearly remembered my anti-dog argument, voiced whenever the subject of a dog had come up in the past.
“That’s right.”
“And because their owners are slaves too?”
It was the other half of my argument.
“Right again. Now that’s the end of the dog talk.”
“Pa.”
“What?”
“Can we go to the beach?”
“Yes, we can, but I have to make one stop first.”
The stop was at the West Tisbury police station, where I learned that Deputy Victoria Trumbull was not in, but was probably at home, gardening. I drove to her house, and there she was. Victoria, at ninety-two, was the oldest police deputy I had ever heard of. She was also sharp as a tack and seemed to remember everything she’d ever seen or heard during her long Vineyard life; certainly she knew more about the island than I would ever know. I asked her whether Joanne Homlish was an honest woman.
Victoria looked up at me with her ancient eyes, and a small smile lifted the corners of her mouth.
“You looking for a dishonest one, J.W.?”
“I might have done that when I was a lot younger, but not now.”
“I’m glad to hear it. To answer your question, Joanne is straight as a gun barrel.”
I thanked her, and the kids and I went home, changed into our swimming suits, and headed for the beach. On the way I wondered why honest Joanne was sticking to her story that the SUV that had driven Abigail Highsmith into the ditch looked just like mine, when I knew I’d never seen another such ancient Land Cruiser anywhere in my island travels.
Everywhere I drove I watched for following cars but saw only the normal kind.