Read Vineyard Enigma for Free Online

about that when they ship the body to the mainland. My impression was that he hadn’t been dead very long.”
    “Brrrr. It gives me the creeps to think that we’ve got a murderer walking around the island.”
    I knew what she meant, but both of us also knew that the Vineyard had at least its share of criminals. Anyone who doubted it needed only to hang around the courthouse on Thursdays and listen to the proceedings as lawyers and their clients appeared before the judge. Every week, drug dealers, carousers, thieves, wife beaters, drunk-and-disorderlies, and life’s other losers paraded by His Honor. Most, to the disgust of the police, were released onto the streets again to continue their lives of stupidity and petty crime.
    We knew, too, that it’s sometimes a short step between lesser villainies and larger ones, and that most criminal violence occurs between people who walk on the wild side, so I wasn’t surprised when Zee went on to say, “I wonder what Matthew Duarte did to get himself killed. I thought he was one of those proper people who only dealt with other proper people.”
    “Even art dealers get killed now and then.”
    “Was he robbed? Did you notice any signs that the house had been burgled?”
    “No, but I didn’t see much of the inside. Maybe he got shot by a jealous husband.”
    “Or by his wife or a double-crossed girlfriend. I think I heard that he was a ladies’ man. Maybe one of them didn’t like being replaced.”
    “Did you get that from the famous hospital grapevine? What else have you heard about him?”
    “Nothing,” she said. “We mostly stick to rumors about people doing other people wrong. I was just reading about the Headless Horseman. They don’t know who did him in either. Spooky. Do you suppose the same person killed both of them?”
    I told her my theory about the Horseman maybe being David Brownington.
    “That’s a pretty big ‘maybe,’ Jefferson.”
    “You’re not the only one who thinks so, but I’m not tossing the idea out while it’s still warm.”
    “Well, it would explain some things. But didn’t you say Brownington was last heard of out on the West Coast?”
    “All I know is what people tell me and what I read in the papers.”
    “Are you going to work with this Mr. Mahsimba?”
    “I haven’t really decided, but there’s good money in it. I should probably do something that will bring in some cash.”
    “Money! I make all the money we need. You should do something interesting. We’re getting to be old fogies.”
    Were we? I studied her as she buttoned her blouse. She looked more beautiful than ever, as many women do after bearing their children. Her long blue-black hair was in a braid, her eyes were dark and deep, and she moved lithely and smoothly, like a jungle cat. She didn’t look like a fogie to me.
    Maybe I was the fogie. I thought again that perhaps my lifestyle had begun to bore her. After all, how many women would long remain satisfied with a husband who lacked ambition; who had no steady job; who housed his family in an old hunting camp with a leaky porch; who scrounged from the dump and the thrift shop; who straightened used nails; who drove an ancient, rusty Land Cruiser; who loved fishing, loafing with books, drinking beer, cooking, and sipping cold vodka on the rocks; and who aspired to no higher form of life?
    The more I thought about it, the more possible it seemed that I was the root of her malaise.
    “The job does interest me,” I said. “I’m already learning a lot about things I never knew I didn’t know.”
    “There,” she said. “I’m presentable, so let’s hit the road. It’ll be good to see the Skye bunch again!” She ducked past me, paused, came back and gave me a kiss on the cheek, and went on again.
    We went in her little Jeep, it being the more civilized of our vehicles, and soon were unloading in front of the Skyes’ house. Joshua and Diana immediately spotted a twin with a horse down by the barn and