A Vineyard Killing by Philip R. Craig Page A

worked briefly with him on a job. He was about sixty years old and had been on the island for a while, supporting himself by working as a carpenter either alone or on various construction crews. He always rode a moped with his toolbox lashed behind the seat.
    He was a lean man of medium height who worked with great economy of energy, never seeming to exert himself or hurry, yet always getting the job done in that graceful, aesthetic way of all people who are good at their jobs. He had sharp eyes and walked easily and smoothly in spite of his accumulating years.
    He favored camouflage clothing, wearing green tints in the summer and brown and white in the winter. Why, I could not guess, but sartorial sensitivity is not one of my strengths, as my thrift shop duds clearly indicate.
    If he had friends, I didn’t know who they were, but I didn’t think it would be hard to find them or anything else about John that Maria might want to know. John had been on the island for some time, after all, and nobody lives anywhere that long without becoming known to at least some people. It was just a matter of finding them.
    But it was too wet and cold to go out hunting them right then. Instead, I went back to the phone book. I realized as I did that I enjoyed nosing around in other people’s business, and the realization made me a little uneasy. But not uneasy enough to stop snooping. I opened the book.

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    I talked with people in the town halls of all of the Vineyard’s six villages. It took quite a while, and when I was through I knew that John Reilley paid no local taxes on the island and was not registered to vote.
    I tried the registry of motor vehicles. John didn’t own a car. No surprise there; you don’t need a license to drive a moped.
    I tried the post offices in the various towns and finally learned something. John had a box in the Vineyard Haven PO. That was helpful because in order to get a PO box you have to have an address that the post office people can verify. The problem was that the PO won’t give you the address of one of its customers unless you have a legit reason to get it, such as a warrant or a summons. I had neither, of course, but I had something even better: a PO employee for whom I’d once done an invaluable favor. I had taken her fishing and she’d nailed a thirty-pound bass. She owed me a lot, and paid me with the address.
    I didn’t have high expectations of benefiting from this information because, according to my source, John had gotten his box years before. But sometimes things work out, so I got into a heavy sweater and my foul-weather gear and drove to Vineyard Haven. I needed the sweater because the heater in my old Land Cruiser doesn’t work too well.
    The address John had given the PO was an upstairs apartment just off State Road in one of the village’s less attractive neighborhoods. I climbed the outside staircase, ducking against the rain, and knocked at the door.
    After a while, a woman peeked at me through the window and decided I was trusty-looking enough to risk opening the door. She looked tired, and behind her I could hear a baby crying. I told her I was looking for John Reilley. She said she had never heard of him. I asked her how long she’d lived there and she said since last fall. I asked her if it was a winter rental and she said yes and that she and her family had to get out by June. When she said that, her voice was sad and angry but resigned.
    It was a familiar situation on the island. You can get a winter rental fairly cheaply, but you have to leave in late spring so the landlord can rent the place for a fortune during the summer, when people will pay anything to stay on Martha’s Vineyard. This place looked like the kind that college kids would rent while they worked and played between semesters. Three or four of them would officially rent the apartment, then another dozen would move in and share the expenses. They would all find