Dead in Vineyard Sand by Philip R. Craig

She’s the housekeeper and he does all of the outdoor work. I’ve known Wilma for years. I’m sure I’ve mentioned her name to you.”
    I remembered that Dom had mentioned a housekeeper. “What was Nathan doing in the ER?”
    â€œHe had chest pains, so Wilma drove him to the hospital. He’s had a little heart trouble in the past and they were both worried. The tests didn’t show anything, but they’re keeping him for the night. They think he’s just stressed out, which would be understandable. First Henry Highsmith and now his wife. What next? It’s as though the whole Highsmith household is part of a Greek tragedy.”
    â€œHow’s your friend Wilma holding up?”
    â€œShe’s worried.” Zee sipped her drink. “But then, Wilma has looked worried for a long time. She has one of those troubled faces, but usually if you ask her what’s the matter she always says it’s nothing. This time, though, she didn’t say that. She said it was getting to be too much for Nathan. First the Willet girl and now these shootings. I asked her what she meant, but she just shook her head and walked away.”
    I said, “Who’s the Willet girl?”
    â€œYou remember,” said Zee. “She’s the girl who drowned at Great Rock.”
    â€œAh, yes. Your friend Wilma didn’t explain what she meant?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œI have some odd news,” I said, and I told her about the incident with the car.
    â€œMaybe it was just road rage,” I added. “There are a lot of crazy people around these days.”
    Zee didn’t like that theory. “Do you think that’s what it was?”
    â€œMaybe.”
    â€œI think you should tell the police. Did you see the license plate?”
    â€œNo, I missed it.”
    â€œI don’t think a road-rage person would have said what he said. I want you to call the police right now.”
    It was the advice I’d have given in her place. “Maybe you’re right,” I said, and I went down to the phone and talked to Dom Agganis.
    â€œThat’s not much for us to go on,” said Dom. “You be careful for the next few days. My guess is that somebody’s decided that you’re in the middle of this Highsmith business whether you think you are or not.”
    â€œI’ll be careful,” I said, and went back up to the balcony.
    I sipped my drink and looked out over our garden. Beyond the barrier beach on the far side of the pond, white boats were moving over Nantucket Sound, heading for anchorages through the slanting light of late afternoon. I watched them cutting through the same sea that had drowned the Willet girl and thought of the ancient faith wherein beauty and death are part of the same cosmic dance.

12
    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