I was back on the Vineyard again before noon, full of questions and speculations. My first stop was at the Gazette offices, where I found Susan Bancroft at her computer, energetically typing with two fingers.
“What’s new?” she asked, without stopping her writing.
“Not too much,” I said. “I just came by to find out if you know how Abigail Highsmith is doing.”
Her flying fingers flew on. “This morning’s report is that she’s improving. Are you still on that case? If so, and if you learn anything, you’d damned well better give it to me before you give it to any other reporter. You owe me.”
“I don’t know anything worth printing,” I said.
“Then thank you for nothing and good-bye. If you do learn something I want first dibs.”
“How many old yellow SUVs would you say are on the island?”
“How in blazes should I know? You ask some odd questions, McGee.”
“I’m an odd guy,” I said. “Type well.”
I went out and drove to Dom Agganis’s office, but it was Dom’s turn to be out and Olive Otero’s to be at the desk. Inwardly, I groaned.
But Olive was unexpectedly friendly. “Just the man I want to see. Ever since you mentioned Tarzan and the Leopard Woman I’ve had an itch to watch it again. I loved that movie when I was a kid, but I can’t seem to find a copy of it anywhere. You know where I can get the video?”
Taken by surprise, I said, “I’ve got the only video I know of. I’ll loan it to you.”
Both Olive and I then stared at one another in silence, stunned by our own words.
Olive seemed to recover first. She shuffled some papers on her desk and cleared her throat and said, “That will be fine. Thank you. Now, what brings you here? Something about the Highsmith case, if I know you.”
My voice sounded flat: “You should be able to get these same stories from Jasper Jernigan and his stepson, a boy named Biff Collins, but in case either one of them changes his mind about that, here’s what they told me today.” I told her what I’d been told on Nantucket.
Olive got out a tape recorder and said, “Do you mind repeating that?”
I didn’t mind, and when I was through, Olive put the tape machine back in its drawer.
“I want Dom to get that straight from you instead of filtered through me,” she said. “He’s already planning to interview Jernigan and Gabe Fuller again. I don’t know if what the Collins boy told you has any importance to the case, but it sounds like Dom will want to talk with him again too. Maybe we can put the screws to them all and learn more.” She stared at me. “You got anything else?”
“Yes. I don’t know what to make of it, but maybe it’s important.” I told her about the Shelkrotts’ sudden departure from the Highsmith home.
She made a note and looked down at it. “I think Dom will be interested in this too, although it may mean nothing.” She lifted her eyes. “You have any ideas?”
“Just the obvious ones: they’re on the run from the law or they can’t take the pressure in the household and decided to pull out before the stress kills them.”
“Do you think they’re on the lam?”
I felt myself frowning. “When I talked with them they didn’t seem the kind of people who would just cut and run. They’d been with the family for a long time, through thick and thin.”
“What, then?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s very odd.”
“There are a lot of odd people in the world. In this business we meet more than our share of them. If the Shelkrotts are still on the island, maybe we can find them. If they went back to the mainland, maybe we can find out where. You got anything else to put on my plate?”
“No, but there’s a chance you can help me. How many old yellow SUVs do you think there are on this island?”
“I have no idea. Do you?”
“No, but I know that Heather Willet’s parents own one. It’s parked up in their barn.”
“How do you know what’s in their barn?” Her eyes narrowed a bit.
“Because I saw it there when I went to talk with them.”
“The Willets are in Michigan, as far as I know.”
“I know that now, but I didn’t know it then.”
“Why the question about old yellow SUVs?”
I told her about the yellow SUV that Joshua had seen.
Olive listened politely, then said, “So what? Guy probably just stopped at the wrong mailbox. Didn’t steal anything, so there was no crime. What’s your beef?”
It was a pretty feeble beef, when looked at objectively. “An old SUV ran Abigail Highsmith off the road, according to Joanne Homlish, and Joanne says it looked like mine, but it wasn’t. The one Joshua saw was yellow, but Joshua says it looked like mine otherwise.”
Olive counted on her fingers. “So you have two cases of old SUVs that look like yours but aren’t, and you have another old yellow one up in the Willets’ barn. Is that it? There are dozens of rusty old SUVs on this island, J.W. Go home and get out that video for me. Is it okay if I come by and pick it up?”
“Come any time,” I said, getting up from my chair. “I’ll leave it out for you, in case I’m not there.”
But I didn’t go home; I drove to the Willet place, parked in front of the barn, and peeked through the window. The old yellow SUV was there, but it didn’t seem to be quite in the same place as before.
I backed off and studied the gravel drive. There, faintly, I could see what looked like indentations made by tires that led to the big barn door.
I went to the barn door and looked closely at the padlock. It was a heavy lock snapped onto a hasp that looked strong enough to resist Samson.
I went to the house and knocked on the front door, then circled the house, calling hello to anyone who might be there. No one was. I returned to the barn and circled it, calling some more but finding no one. I looked up at the field on the slope behind the barn, where the trail led to the Highsmith place. No one was in sight.
I got out my lock picks and was inside the barn before you could say rubber baby buggy bumpers.
The barn was an echo chamber, magnifying every sound. It was clean, as barns go, and was being used mostly to store the sort of stuff that you have but rarely if ever use, but don’t want to get rid of just in case you or someone you know might want or need it someday: furniture in need of paint, boxes, tools, outgrown toys and games, and farm implements, including a plow, a harrow, and a riding lawn mower. And the old yellow Mitsubishi Pajero SUV.
I went to the truck and tried the door. Unlocked. I climbed into the cab and found the ignition keys in the glove compartment. The Willets apparently trusted the big padlock on the barn door and presumed that local thieves lacked both lock picks and crowbars.
A lot of Vineyarders are even more trusting, including me. I almost never lock either my car or my house doors, although I do make it a policy not to leave my keys in my car. Those islanders who do leave their keys in the ignition usually believe that since they live on an island, there’s no place to go in a stolen car and therefore no reason to fear car thieves. They get their cars stolen just often enough to make the rest of us feel intelligent, usually by some kid or drunk or by someone who, just for thrills or laughs, drives it into a tree or into some pond.
I got out of the truck and left the barn, locking the big door behind me. I picked the lock on the kitchen door of the house and went into the kitchen, where most people keep keys behind a closet or cabinet door. I found the Willets’ supply in the broom closet and took them back to the barn, where I quickly found the one that opened the padlock. I relocked the padlock, returned the keys to the closet, and took a quick tour of the house. On the second floor, overlooking the front porch, I found what looked like a teenage girl’s bedroom. Heather’s room.
I spent a half hour carefully looking in bureau drawers, under the mattress, under the bed, in the closet, and behind mirrors and framed prints of fatigued-looking young people I presumed were rock stars unknown to me. I found nothing of interest and left, leaving everything as I had found it. If Heather had ever had a photo of Gregory Highsmith, it was no longer in evidence. Neither was a diary detailing her sex life.
Peeks through several upstairs windows revealed no one in sight; still, when I left the house and drove away, I could feel eyes on my back. Did I feel guilty about being a housebreaker? I was reminded of Byron’s rueful comment that his religious upbringing didn’t prevent him from sinning but did prevent him from enjoying it as much as he might have.
The view from the Willet place was of green hills, a green pasture on the other side of North Road, and the blue Atlantic in the distance. There were red cattle grazing near a blue pond in the pasture, and a white farmhouse on the far side of it. Arching over all of this was a pale blue sky holding a sun too bright to look at. No wonder people wanted to live on Martha’s Vineyard.
Blue water, blue sky, red cattle, a white farmhouse, green trees and grass. Color everywhere. I remembered the reading I’d done as preparation for helping Joshua write his paper on the color wheel, and then remembered the yellow and blue window trim at Joanne Homlish’s house, and immediately wondered why I hadn’t linked those things before.
One of the most annoying and unanswerable questions in the world must be “Why didn’t you think of that before?” Who can possibly know why he didn’t think of something that afterward seems so obvious? But the fact is that it happens all the time; we think of some things but not others. Maddening.
I drove to West Tisbury and followed Tiah’s Cove Road to Joanne Homlish’s house. A large white-haired man was in front of the barn with an ax in his hand. He gave me a benign look as I approached him. I told him my name and asked if he was Marty Homlish.
“That’s me,” he said, shaking hands. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
“We haven’t, but I was here a few days ago and had a talk with your wife.”
“Joanne’s gone to the store. Should be back soon.”
“I may not have to see her. Tell me, who painted the trim around those lower windows? Did your wife do it?”
He followed my gaze and laughed. “You guessed it. I did the second-floor trim, using the ladder, and Joanne did the lower trim. Just last year. But you can see how hers turned out. Some blue and some yellow. I should repaint it this year.”
“I noticed it the last time I was here,” I said, “but it didn’t sink in. She’s color blind, isn’t she?”
“Yep. Blue-yellow. Pretty rare condition. Most color-blind people can’t tell the difference between green and red, but Joanne mixes up blue and yellow. I’ve talked with her about it, but I still don’t know what, exactly, she sees when she’s looking at those colors. Some kind of gray, I think. I don’t know how she decides what the real color is, but she didn’t do a very good job of it on that trim.” He laughed again.
“Why didn’t she just read the color off the cans?”
“I asked her the same thing. Turns out she used old cans where the paint had slopped over the side and covered the words. My doing, of course. When I paint I get more on my clothes than on what I’m supposed to be painting. Drives Joanne wild, because she never spills a drop. I tell her that at least I know blue from yellow, but that doesn’t mollify her a bit.”
“My truck there is blue,” I said. “Are you saying that if it was yellow, she couldn’t tell the difference?”
He nodded. “You got it. You want to talk with her about it, she should be home in a half hour or so. “
“No,” I said. “I don’t need to see her. Just tell her I came by to say hello.”
“I’ll do that,” said Marty. He lifted his ax. “You aren’t interested in splitting a little wood, are you?”
“Not right now.”
“I didn’t think so. I try to do a little at a time so next winter I’ll have all I need. I’m getting too old to swing an ax all day like I used to do.”
“I know what you mean,” I said, “You must have heard the joke about the guy who was complaining about his sex life.”
“I know the one,” said Marty. “Said it took him all night long to do what he used to do all night long. That the one?”
“That’s the one.”
“The problem is, it ain’t no joke,” said Marty, with a grin.
I drove back home, thinking that things were falling into place.
At the head of our driveway I stopped at the mailbox and found junk mail, including a medium-size pile of catalogs selling everything imaginable. I claim that Zee is the catalog queen of Martha’s Vineyard, but men I know say that she’s no match for their wives. I’ve wondered from time to time how much money has been spent on mailing catalogs. Less than has been brought in by them, apparently, since there seem to be more of them every day.
I was halfway down our driveway when I saw ahead of me, parked in front of our house, an old yellow SUV. I felt a chill in spite of the warm summer sun.