Dead in Vineyard Sand by Philip R. Craig Page B

just as well.”
    â€œDid you like the vine bridge, Ma?”
    â€œI liked it a lot, Joshua, but we’re going to have to think about it before we decide whether we’re going to build one. Tarzan lives in a jungle, but we don’t, so we don’t have as many big trees for vine bridges.”
    â€œWe could fasten it to the balcony.”
    But that idea was dead in the water. “No,” said Zee. “We’re not going to fasten it to the balcony. The balcony is for big people. If we have a bridge, it’ll have to go somewhere else.”
    Progress was being made, however.
    Family life was the life for me.
    That afternoon, while the kids played in the tree house—where else?—Zee and I exchanged thoughts about the bridge and told each other about our mornings. Mine was the more unusual tale.
    â€œHow awful,” said Zee, when I concluded my narration. “Poor Abigail Highsmith. First she gets run off the road, and now her husband is murdered. Someone must really hate the Highsmiths! But why bury him in a sand trap? That seems weird.”
    â€œThe cops are on the case.”
    She nodded, then frowned up at me. “I don’t want you getting involved in this, Jeff.”
    I raised both hands. “Don’t worry. I’m not in the game. It has nothing to do with me, and I want nothing to do with it. I have other things to do. Like building a rope bridge, for instance.”
    â€œGood. You need to be home with the kids when I’m working.”
    â€œNo problem.”
    But a problem was not long in appearing. It came when I went to the state police barracks in Oak Bluffs to give my official statement about finding the body of Henry Highsmith.
    When I’d finished my statement, Dom Agganis leaned back in his chair and said, “Am I the only one who thinks it’s kind of funny that you and Highsmith duke it out one day and a few days later you happen to find his body?”
    There was a short silence in the room.
    I felt suddenly careful. “We didn’t exactly duke it out, but I thought it was quite a coincidence myself.”
    His hooded eyes looked into mine. “And it’s just another coincidence that a beat-up old truck like your Land Cruiser ran Abigail Highsmith off the road a couple of days ago?”
    My caution became a chill touched with anger. “I heard about Abigail, but Zee didn’t mention a Land Cruiser. Before I confess, should I point out that there are a lot of old off-road vehicles on this island?Or should I leave that up to my lawyer at the trial?”
    Dom leaned forward and touched his tape recorder. “Maybe you’d better give me your version of what happened between you and Highsmith, and then you can tell me where you were when his wife was run off the road. Or would you rather wait until you get that lawyer you mentioned?”
    â€œYou going to Miranda me first?”
    â€œWhy not?” He turned on the machine and did that.
    Any lawyer will tell you not to talk to cops without legal representation beside you, but I was irked and, like a lot of innocent people, saw no need to keep my mouth shut.
    I began to talk.

8
    The Boston dailies thought enough of the story to make as much of it as they could, emphasizing the murder-in-paradise theme, the bizarre burial, and the background conflict between the conservationists and the golf course promoters.
    The Yale-Brown identities of the Professors Highsmith added spice to the tale, and the photos that showed Henry and their son to be classically handsome and Abigail and their daughter to be beautiful added still more fascination, for no tale is more intriguing to the American public than disaster overtaking the rich, bright, and beautiful.
    The now-fatherless teenage children, privileged youth on summer holiday from New Haven’s prestigious St. James Manor school, provided yet another focus of the tragedy as they bravely rallied around their sorrowing