The Bee Balm Murders (3 page)

“Nope. Got back in his fancy car and drove off.”

“Was he alone?” Orion asked again.

“Couldn’t tell. Tinted windows. But he got in the passenger side.”

“I don’t suppose he said what he wanted of me?” Orion wiped his palm across his forehead.

“Nope.”

A gust of wind flattened Orion’s hood against the side of his face and sent a trickle of chilly water down his sweaty back. He shivered.

“Exactly what did the guy say?” Orion asked.

“You seem real curious about him,” said Dan’l.

“Yeah. Well…” said Orion.

“Came by right after you left, eight-fifteen, eight-thirty.” Dan’l wiped his face with his wet red bandanna. “Wasn’t real dark yet. He asked if the boss was around. I said I’m the boss here. He said, the big boss, Orion Nanopoulos.” Dan’l stretched his arms out to his side, then raised them over his head. “So, you’re the big boss?” He straightened his legs, bent down, and touched his toes. “This is shit work.”

“Yeah,” said Orion. “Then what?”

“I told him he just missed you. He wanted to know where you went. You probably went to get supper at the Ocean View, I said. I asked if he knew where it’s at.” Dan’l shrugged. “The guy said, ‘I can find it.’”

“That was it?”

“Yup.” Dan’l, eyes half-shut, a sort of smile on his face, looked at Orion.

“Okay,” said the lead cop. “This should do it. One … two … three … lift!”

They trudged through the last hundred feet of mud to the parking area, where Toby, the undertaker, waited in the hearse, warm and dry, engine running, listening to the generic rock on WMVY radio. The lead cop opened the back doors of the hearse and they slid in the stretcher. Toby, in the driver’s seat, watched them in the rearview mirror. He lifted a hand from the wheel in acknowledgment.

“Guess that’s supposed to be a thank you,” said the lead cop. The two got back into their cruiser and took off, a rooster tail of muddy water settling in their wake.

Orion’s back ached. He eased into the driver’s seat of his twenty-year-old Chevy wagon and leaned back. Should have known better than to lift one quarter of Angelo Vulpone one-handed, he told himself. Damned fool. He reached carefully into the glove compartment, found the aspirin bottle, chewed up and swallowed three without water, and leaned back again, eyes closed, waiting for the aspirin to take effect.

A knock on his window. He opened his eyes. The guy from the Two Braves Construction pickup truck. He rolled down his window.

“Can I help you?”

“You the boss?”

“I’m the fiber-optic boss,” Orion said.

“The town guy said you’re the one I should talk to.” The man at Orion’s window was wearing the ubiquitous yellow oilskins. Raindrops trickled down his mahogany face.

“Want to get out of the rain?” Orion indicated the side door, not wanting to bend that far unless he had to.

“What’dya say we get a cup of coffee at Humphrey’s, and dry out.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Orion. “I’ll meet you there. What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t.” He pointed a wet finger at his wet chest. “You’re looking at Donald Minnowfish, antiquities officer for the tribe.”

“Nice to meet you.” Orion rolled up the window and started the car. The inside of the windshield had fogged up during his conversation with Minnowfish, so he turned on the heater, the air conditioner, and the fan and waited until he could see out.

Humphrey’s was less than a mile from the ball field. The Two Braves truck was already there as Orion pulled up.

Minnowfish was seated at a small table by the window when Orion entered, a fat briefcase next to his chair. “You buying?” he asked.

“Why not,” said Orion. “How do you take it?”

“Double cream, double sugar. And, say,” he said as Orion turned to go to the counter, “get me a jelly donut, will you?”

“Right,” said Orion over his shoulder.

They went through the ritual of small talk, a necessary prelude to whatever Minnowfish really intended to say. The body at the bottom of the trench, of course. The weather. The mud. They stirred their respective coffees and discussed where Orion was from, what Two Braves Construction did. Minnowfish started in on the Red Sox and how they were going to demolish the Yankees this season. Orion assumed his pleasant look and stirred his coffee some more. Minnowfish took a couple of bites of his donut and then they got down to business.

Minnowfish wiped powdered sugar from his mouth and reached down for the briefcase. He had intense gray-green eyes and close-cropped, light brown, tightly curled hair. “You know, don’t you, that you need permits from the tribe before excavating?”

“I’m not excavating,” said Orion. “The town is. I’m simply laying cable in their trench.”

“Still, you need a permit.” He opened the briefcase and took out a thick sheaf of forms.

“What for?” said Orion, who’d researched every possible requirement for permits. He’d applied for them all, even ones he didn’t think were needed. He’d done that even though he had no intention of excavating anything.

“Wampanoag antiquities,” said Minnowfish. “Artifacts. Fire rings. Campsites.”

“But the ball field is new land,” said Orion. “They filled in a marsh to create it in the 1970s, before the Wetlands Act. There couldn’t have been campsites.”

Minnowfish shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. You need a permit from the land manager, according to the 1906 Antiquities Act.” He pointed to his chest with his thumb. “That’s me.”

“It’s town land, isn’t it? Not tribal land.”

“You excavate that field without a permit and you’ll find out whose land it is.” Minnowfish’s dark face had become a shade darker.

Orion could see this talk turning into a confrontation, and he’d lose if that happened. “Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t you send a tribal rep to work alongside us and watch out for artifacts. We’ll give you GPS coordinates, documenting exactly where the artifact shows up, and your rep can turn everything we find over to the tribe along with where we found it. Would that work for you? That way, we don’t have to go through all that paperwork nonsense.” He realized immediately that he shouldn’t have used the word “nonsense.”

Minnowfish finished his donut, wiped his fingers on a paper napkin, wadded up the napkin, took another, wiped his mouth, wadded that one up, tossed it onto the table.

Orion waited. He hadn’t touched his donut.

“You said you’re not digging?”

“That’s right. Whatever the guy from the town said, they’re doing the excavating, not us.”

Minnowfish stood. “I’ll have someone from the tribe bird-dog you.”

“Good plan,” said Orion. “Want my donut?”

“Might as well. Thanks.”

*   *   *

The aspirin wasn’t helping much. Orion knew from experience that he’d better keep moving, not lie down, which is what he wanted desperately to do. He needed to think, to talk to someone. When he first arrived on the Island, he’d leased the second floor of a building a block off Main Street. He didn’t look forward to returning to his empty office where there was no one to talk to. So he headed up Island on State Road and found himself looking forward to getting home to Victoria Trumbull.

Victoria was typing her column for the newspaper with great rapidity using the forefingers of both hands and her right thumb on the space bar. She looked up with a smile, which faded when she saw his face.

“You’re hurting.” She pushed the typewriter aside.

“Just my back. It’ll pass.” At her sympathetic voice he already felt marginally better.

“Was the death an accident?”

Orion sat down carefully next to her, keeping his back straight. “He was shot.”

“A local man?”

Orion sighed. “You said something about your being a police deputy.”

“I’ve helped our local police chief on a few occasions,” said Victoria. “She appointed me her deputy.”

“She?” asked Orion.

“Casey, our chief of police. Mary Kathleen O’Neill.”

“Ah.”

“How did you hurt your back?” Victoria asked.

“I lifted something I shouldn’t have.”

Victoria eased herself out of her chair and went into the kitchen. “Green tea?” she asked.

“Please, Mrs. Trumbull. I’ll get it.” He started to get up, but realized he’d better not.

“Sit,” she commanded. “By the way, Casey calls me by my first name. You’re welcome to, if you’d like.”

She brought him a mug of his favorite tea with a plate of graham crackers, and sat again at the head of the table with her own mug. “I know you drink it black, but I’ve dosed it with honey from Sean’s bees. A restorative.”

Now that he was inside and warm, the rain was no longer a threat. In fact, when the rain was kept outside where it belonged, it made a pleasing susurration against the silvery-gray shingles of Victoria’s house.

He sipped the sweet tea, debating with himself whether or not to tell her about Angelo Vulpone. Victoria sat quietly, drinking her own tea. Suddenly, he said, “Mrs. Trumbull, I knew the man in the trench.”

Victoria said nothing.

“Angelo Vulpone. I didn’t tell the officers at the scene that I knew him. He was about to become a major investor in my company.”

“About to become?”

“He had money, he understood the importance of fiber optics, and he claimed he wanted to invest. Eight million dollars.” Orion held his mug in both hands because of the comforting feeling it gave him. He was six years old again, wrapping his hands around a mug of cambric tea at his grandmother’s on a rainy afternoon.

“Were you close to him?”

Orion set down his mug. “Not really. I didn’t trust him entirely.” He helped himself to a graham cracker, snapped it down its perforations, and dipped a quarter piece into his tea. “I’m sure he didn’t trust me, either.”

“What was he doing here, checking on you?”

“I wish I knew, Mrs. Trum … Victoria.”

C
HAPTER
4

“Rumors fly from one end of this Island to the other faster than your optical fibers will ever carry them.” Victoria stood and held the back of her chair. “You’ve got to go to Casey and explain what you just told me.”

Orion shook his head. “I’m distancing myself from any possible connection with Angelo Vulpone and the police.”

“I can assure you rumors are already on their way announcing that Orion Nanopoulos knows the identity of the body found on the ball field, and speculation on why you didn’t identify the victim.” Victoria leaned on her chair. “Why didn’t you, by the way?”

Orion ran his hands over his head, smoothing his hair back to the elastic that held his ponytail in place.

Victoria waited.

“I’m sure Vulpone was connected to the mob,” Orion said. “Shot in the back of his head, a mob-type execution. I don’t want to be identified with this killing. I’ve got a job to do and a deadline. Do you understand, Victoria?”

“Certainly,” said Victoria. “But here are the facts.” She moved the chair around and sat again. “Angelo Vulpone will be identified eventually. By dental records, missing persons reports, fingerprints, DNA. And when he is, every contact he’s ever had will be unearthed and investigated.” She rested her elbows on the table. “When it’s learned that you expected him to invest in the project, didn’t like him, failed to identify his body, and caused a delay in that identification that cost authorities time and money…”

Orion sighed. “I’ve heard enough.”

“Do you happen to be involved with the mob?”

“Good heavens, no.”

“Then your delay in identifying Angelo Vulpone will cause someone in the mob to wonder why. You’ll have both the mob and the police annoyed with you.”

“Is the police station open on Sunday?”

“Casey will be there.”

“You win.” Orion rose and offered her his hand. “Will you accompany me to the police station, Deputy Trumbull?”

*   *   *

Victoria shrugged into her frayed trench coat, tied a scarf over her head, retrieved her lilac-wood stick from behind the door, and waited in the entry out of the rain for Orion to fetch his car.

When he came around to the passenger side to open the door for her, his entirely pleasant expression had returned along with what looked like a smile.

*   *   *

Orion pulled up in the parking area in front of the tiny West Tisbury police station and held the passenger door for Victoria. The ducks that usually flocked around new arrivals made a few desultory quacks from their shelter under the rosebush. The rain had slackened a bit. Victoria and Orion hurried up the station house steps before the threatening clouds let go again.

When they entered, Casey was on the telephone. She beckoned for them to sit. Victoria took her usual seat, the wooden armchair in front of Casey’s desk, and Orion wheeled over the chair from the desk next to the chief’s. A nameplate on the tidy desk read
SERGEANT JUNIOR NORTON
.

Casey hung up the phone. “I have a feeling that call had to do with something you already know, Victoria. Are you here because of the unidentified body…?”

“Yes.” Victoria gave Orion a significant look. “This is Orion Nanopoulos.”

Casey and Orion nodded to one another. “Aren’t you the fiber-optics guy?”

“That’s right,” said Orion.

“You’re installing cable in the trench where the body was found this morning, aren’t you?”

Orion nodded.

“Then you know more about the circumstances than I do.” Casey picked up her beach-stone paperweight and rubbed its smooth surface absently. “How can I help you?”

Orion leaned forward. “I failed to tell the responding officers at the scene that I knew the victim.” He straightened his back amd nodded toward Victoria. “Mrs. Trumbull urged me to talk to you.”

Casey flipped the stone from one hand to the other. “Not the state police, Victoria?”

“I’m going through channels,” Victoria said primly.

Casey smiled and turned back to Orion. “After I’ve heard what you have to say I’ll call Sergeant Smalley at the state police barracks.” She set the stone back on her papers and pulled a yellow legal pad toward her.

“His name is Angelo Vulpone,” said Orion. “He owned a construction company in Brooklyn.”