Vineyard Stalker by Philip R. Craig Page B

worried. “They found a body this morning beside the highway, at the end of the ancient way we took when we went to my brother’s house. It was Melissa Carson. They say she was murdered.”

10
    â€œI think you’d better get a lawyer for your brother,” I said. “The police will be talking to him and he may need one. Did you know that he and Melissa Carson were lovers?”
    â€œWhat are you talking about? My brother’s been celibate for thirty years. He’s like a priest, for heaven’s sake.”
    â€œMaybe he’s a priest, but he hasn’t been celibate recently. Her mother will tell the police about the affair and Roland will automatically become a suspect, especially if they found her body on his land.”
    â€œI don’t really know exactly where they found her, but that’s what I heard. Oh, dear! You’re right. I’ll call a lawyer right now.”
    â€œGood.”
    â€œCan you go up there and find out what happened? Tell the police that you’re working for me. Find Roland and tell him to say nothing until the lawyer’s with him.”
    â€œAll right, but I won’t have any influence. The police will have no reason to tell me anything.”
    â€œThen just tell Roland to say nothing! He’s so honest that he may get himself into trouble without realizing it! Please go now! I’ll be there myself as soon as I can.”
    â€œThis might be a good time to tell the police about the vandalism. That would give them something to think about besides Roland.”
    â€œNo, don’t do that yet. No one should say anything until we talk with a lawyer. Please just go up there and make sure that Roland stays quiet while you find out what actually happened. I’ll see you up there. Hurry!”
    The phone buzzed in my ear.
    I hung up, found Ann Bouchard’s number in the book and called her. Ann was a reporter for the Gazette . In the days before I met Zee, Ann and I had spent some time together. Now both of us were married to other people, but we were still friends. I thought if I tipped her about this killing she might pass me off as an assistant when she went up to cover the story. But Ann was already gone, having been tipped earlier. So much for the latest of my best-laid plans. I got into the Land Cruiser and drove west.
    Carole Cohen had a right to be worried, even if her brother was innocent as a dove. It was possible that the police wouldn’t look back forty years into Roland Nunes’s past, but if they didn’t it was likely that some newspaper reporter would. Ann Bouchard, for instance, would see a story in the fact that a war hero turned reclusive monk was now a principal figure in the murder of a sexually charged woman who had been his lover. If Ann dug very deep both she and the United States Army would discover the truth about Nunes and the military would be sure to prosecute him for desertion.
    Unless, that is, the real killer was discovered quickly enough to cause both the police and the reporters to lose interest in Nunes so that his past remained unexamined.
    Both sides of the paved road were lined almost bumper to bumper with cruisers and civilian cars when I got to the site, but I found a spot where I could park and walked toward the center of activity, where local and state police were holding back curious civilians and trying not to contaminate the crime scene encircled by yellow tape. There was no body, which meant that the ambulance had come and gone, but detectives were still looking for anything that might help clarify things for them. They were being careful trying not to join the ranks of investigators who infamously destroy more evidence than they find.
    Ann Bouchard and another reporter were talking with Sergeant Dom Agganis of the state police while Dom’s underling, Officer Olive Otero, kept an eye on what was going on inside the tape. Olive and I had wasted a lot of time and energy over