Vineyard Blues (15 page)

We sat around the table on the porch, and Joshua sipped lemonade while the rest of us talked.

“First,” said Millicent Dowling, “I want you to know that Corrie Appleyard is the man they found in the house. He didn't die in the fire, he died before it started. I think it was a heart attack.”

I remembered the look of illness I'd seen in his face and the pills he was taking.

“I thought it was probably him,” I said. “I'm glad he didn't die because of the fire.”

“So am I, I—”

“Start from the beginning,” said her grandfather.

I thought it an interesting interruption.

“All right,” said Millicent. She had clearly been thinking about what she was going to say, because she didn't hesitate. “For me, it started a year ago. The four of us, Adam and I and Perry and Linda, came here to work for the summer. We were in college together, and when we discovered that all of us but Perry had grandparents who had been friends years before, it seemed almost like fate had thrown us together.” She glanced at Cousin Henry, and as she did, I could see a hint of his bone structure in her face, and had the sense that something of his character was in her, too.

She went on. “We came down and rented a house.” Her eyes hardened. “Ben Krane owned it, and he wanted a lot of money, but we figured that the four of us could swing it and probably save some money, too. We got jobs and probably everything would have been fine except Linda and Perry had a fight.” She looked at me. “You know about that.”

“I was told it happened. I wasn't told why.”

“It started out just being a spat about Perry thinking Linda was being too sensitive about being black in lily-white Edgartown, and Linda thinking that Perry wasn't being sensitive enough, but one thing led to another until there was an explosion and Linda wasn't speaking to Perry.

“And just then who should show up, tall, lean, handsome, rich, and white as Moby Dick, but Ben Krane? And who should go off with him, just to teach Perry a lesson, but my friend Linda?”

People do apparently irrational things all the time, but sometimes there's a reason for their doing them, so I asked, “If Linda was sensitive about being black in lily-white Edgartown, why did she go off with Ben Krane?”

Millicent's face looked both angry and embarrassed.

“That's exactly why she did it. Because he was white! She was going to hurt Perry by dating a white guy! Especially a rich, sophisticated white guy who could show her the good time that Perry could never afford. I tried to talk her out of it, but she was too mad to listen, so off she went, and moved in with Ben Krane.”

“And how did Perry take that?”

“He was angry and miserable, because he and Linda had gotten very, very close during the year before, at school. He loved her. I loved her too, and I was just as mad as Perry was.”

“And Perry kept on loving her. Enough to get himself beaten up by Ben Krane.”

She nodded. “Yeah. And enough to stay with her now, down in Atlanta, while she gets herself together.” “How long did she stay with the Kranes?”

“So you know about Peter, too. Well, she was only with them for a couple of weeks, but it was enough. Ben took her places she wouldn't normally go to, restaurants and bars and clubs, and places like that. She thought it was because he was proud of her, but later, when he was through with her, she realized it was only so he could show off his latest conquest, his latest toy. It did something to her, something bad. She'd been a fool.”

“People make mistakes,” I said, remembering what Zee had told me. “We all do foolish things.”

“I don't think you understand.” Millicent Dowling's jaw tightened. “Linda's ancestors, mine too, really were slaves, and she hated the thought of what they'd been forced to do. And now she was allowing herself to be a white man's toy. She hated herself so much that when Ben Krane handed her over to his brother, she felt she deserved it. She did everything Peter Krane told her to do. She became what she hated and feared most of all, and when Peter got tired of her and sent her away, she came back to the house because she didn't have anywhere else to go, but all she did was cry. She couldn't work and we couldn't make her feel better. It was maddening! This beautiful, bright woman reduced to ruin in less than three weeks!”

The story echoed what Zee had told me. But Zee, being older and maybe tougher, had been strong enough to overcome her wounds. Linda had not, probably in part because of her own idealism.

Nothing is more mortifying for young romantics than failing to live up to self-expectations. We can forgive others for falling short, but we can't forgive ourselves. I was once again glad I was no longer twenty.

“And that's when Perry got himself beaten up,” I said.

“Yes. Perry tried to fight Krane, but only got himself hurt. Krane laughed at him.” Her eyes flashed fire.

“And then Perry and Linda left the island.”

“Yes.”

“And they haven't been back.”

“No.”

“But you and Adam stayed.”

“Yes, and —”

“Stop,” said Cousin Henry in a voice that I would have obeyed, had it been directed at me. Millicent Dowling's voice ceased. Cousin Henry beckoned her and she leaned toward him. He put his mouth close to her ear and whispered something, then sat back again.

She looked at him and a small smile appeared on her lips. “Yes,” she said. “You're right.” Then she turned back to me and most of the smile was gone. “A nameless someone has entered my story.”

“I'd prefer a name, but I can live without one.” I looked at Cousin Henry, who wore an enigmatic expression as he looked at his granddaughter.

“No name. But the story is true in all other respects.”

“I'll settle for that.”

Millicent Dowling sat and set her tale in order. “Someone without a name was very angry about what happened to Linda and Perry, and wondered what could be done. The Lord says vengeance is His, but someone didn't want to settle for that. This spring, then, before students started coming to the island for the summer, someone made a quick trip and burned down a house belonging to Ben Krane.”

I held up a hand. “How did someone know how to do that and get away with it?”

Millicent cocked her head to one side. “Obviously you're not an Internet person, Mr. Jackson. You can learn how to do all sorts of violent things on the Information Superhighway. Bombs, booby traps, you name it.”

“Arson tricks, too?”

“They don't have to be complicated. Last spring, someone soaked a sheet in gasoline and put one end of it in the oven of the stove and the other on the floor. Then someone poured gasoline on the floor, turned on the oven, and left. By the time the oven heated enough to ignite the sheet, someone was on a boat for the mainland.”

Smart someone.

“Of course,” said Millicent, “that technique only works if the house is empty and nobody's going to be around for an hour or two.

“Someone thought that one quick trip to the island might not have been noticed, but that if such trips were repeated it was only a matter of time before some sharpeyed arson cop or insurance investigator began to notice that whenever someone came to the island, another one of Ben Krane's houses burned down. So someone came for the summer when a lot of college kids do, and earlier this week went to another of Krane's houses, one that was empty because all of its occupants were at a party somewhere else. This time, someone took out fuses, then shorted some wires, then put pennies behind the fuses and replaced them. The place was on fire before someone got out of the yard.”

“I've heard about that trick with pennies. Is that another Internet tidbit?”

“I, of course, know very little about such things, but I understand that someone might have gotten that information off a computer.” The words came from her mouth, but they could have as easily come from Cousin Henry's. Like grandfather, like granddaughter. Millicent Dowling's looks were as deceiving as his.

“The penny trick was used again the night Corrie died,” I said. “The Dingses, the arson investigators, told me that there were new pennies behind the fuses. Do you know anything about that?”

“You said Corrie played magic tricks with pennies at your house. He did the same at Adam's house, so we all knew he had those new pennies.”

She paused, and for the first time it seemed difficult for her to speak. But then she reached into herself and found strength. “The night of the last fire, Corrie was supposed to have left the island, and everybody else in the house was at a party. Someone went to the house, sure that it was empty, but going from room to room, just in case someone was there. No one was, so someone went into the basement and removed the fuses and then shorted out wires as before.” Another pause, another gathering of strength, then: “But as someone was at the fuse box, she . . . he heard footsteps on the stairs, and there was Corrie. He'd been waiting to catch the shuttle bus to the boat, but had gotten sick and come back to the house to lie down. When he heard someone in the basement, he'd come down and instantly seen what someone was up to.

“There had been enough burnings, he said, and if there were more, someone would surely be caught or hurt. He said enough damage had already been done, and there was no need for more.”

Millicent's face was like stone. “Someone said there was no saving this house, but for Corrie's sake there would be no more. Corrie said in that case, he would fire the place himself, so someone would bear no blame. He got out his new pennies and started for the fuse box, but then he fell down and when someone went to him, he was dead. Someone tried to revive him, but it was no use. Then she . . . he tried to lift him, to carry him out of the house, but he was too heavy. Someone then thought of the Viking funerals and decided that it was as good a way for a hero to die as any other. So someone put Corrie's pennies in the fuse box, then took his guitar out of the house so something of him would be saved. When the fire was going well, someone went away.”

She looked at me with deep eyes I couldn't read.

“You couldn't start the moped, so you walked. Somebody can probably testify to seeing you.”

She shrugged. “Someone got a ride with a guy trying to catch the next boat off island. He's home in New York by now.”

“What about all the stuff that belonged to the people living in those houses? They lost everything.”

Another shrug. “Someone had seen their stuff. It was college junk, mostly. Of no value compared to what happened to Linda.”

I ran things through my mind, as Cousin Henry and his equally tough-minded granddaughter watched me with hooded eyes.

“Why did you decide to tell me this?” I asked.

“A good question,” said Cousin Henry, giving Millicent Dowling a crooked smile.

She lifted her chin. “Some people will think Corrie did it. It's what he wanted them to think, but I wanted you to know what really happened.”

“Why me?”

“Because Corrie told me I could trust you if I ever needed help. He said it there in the cellar just before he died.” She made a small gesture with her hands. “He was afraid for me, I think, and wanted me to know that Grandpa and Grandma weren't the only people I could go to, if I needed to. He said you were a friend.”

I thought of the songs Corrie had sung: the blues, full of sorrow mixed with hope; songs of good and bad times, of loneliness and friendship, of down-and-out men and women, of the refusal of the soul to perish in the face of suffering.

“I hope he was right about you,” said Cousin Henry, “because if he wasn't, my granddaughter has said some very foolish things here at this table.”

“He was right about me,” I said.

Millicent nodded. “I'm glad.”

“This is what I think you should say if anybody comes to talk with you,” I said to her. “Tell them that you borrowed Adam's moped so you could come here to spend the night with your grandparents, but that you rode to the house first to get something that belonged to you—a coat, maybe, something like that; you decide, but keep it simple. Tell them that you couldn't start the moped again, so you hitched a ride here. Don't mention seeing Corrie, and insist that you were here when you heard the sirens.

If you tell that story and stick to it, the chances are good that Corrie will get the rap.”

I stopped and studied her face. It was a pretty, intelligent, almost innocent-looking face, but there was hidden dangerousness behind it.

“I'm going to make a report to Ben Krane,” I said, “and I plan to convince him that Corrie was his arsonist. But before I do that, I want you to tell me that you'll be doing no more torching of buildings here or anywhere else. Corrie was right. There's been enough of that.”

Her lips formed a smile. “You want me to agree to abandon arson? I've never admitted that I've ever engaged in it.”

I smiled a grim smile of my own. “All right. But I think you know someone pretty well, and she seems to have a talent for the work. She can probably earn a good living at it if she makes the right connections, because in any big city there are people who want buildings burned down. I want you to tell me that you'll persuade her to give up that game.”