Murder at a Vineyard Mansion by Philip R. Craig

reasons why he might not have.”
    â€œSo he did have a cell phone.”
    â€œAny ideas about why he didn’t use it?”
    â€œNone that you haven’t already thought about. Do you know anything about Ethan Bradford?”
    â€œYou said you had just one question. Isn’t Ethan that guy up in West Tisbury who lives in a tent or something? The one who used to work for Raytheon or some such outfit before he decided that he’d rather be a hermit?”
    â€œThat sounds like the guy.”
    â€œWhat about him?”
    â€œHe’s Cheryl Bradford’s brother. You ever see him around Edgartown?”
    The Chief studied me. “Everybody comes to Edgartown at one time or another. If you sit in front of the town hall long enough you’ll see the Queen of England go by. What’s so interesting about Ethan Bradford aside from the fact that you saw his sister on Chappaquiddick?”
    â€œYou said that all the old island families know one another. What I’ve heard about Ethan is that he’d prefer it if we were still in an earlier century instead of this one, which makes me think he might not be happy about our current boom in castle building.”
    â€œAnd you think that might make him more likely than most to cosh other people.”
    â€œThose are your words, not mine, Chief. While we’re discussing old island families, though, what can you tell me about George Pease? Cheryl Bradford was married to him.”
    The Chief cocked his head slightly to one side. “George got his head kicked in by a horse. It’s what you get by marrying into one of those equestrian families like the Bradfords. Happened in the family barn, as I recall. I think that eliminates him as a suspect in this case, if you were giving him consideration.”
    â€œI guess I’ll scratch him off my list. How did the widow take the loss?”
    â€œI don’t keep track of the lives and times of the island’s elite. You’ll have to ask somebody else about Cheryl’s emotional crises, if she has any.”
    â€œDid she remarry?”
    He shrugged. “Not that I know of. Maybe those people who write the Chilmark columns in the Gazette or the Times can tell you. Now go away. I’ve got work to do.”
    I said good-bye and left.
    I think of myself as being as gossipy as most people, but in this case as in others I was forced to admit that I apparently hadn’t kept track of the doings of the island’s important people. Maybe it was my clothes that kept me out of their social circles. Didn’t any of them wear stuff from the thrift shop?
    I went home and found the last edition of the Vineyard Gazette, a properly famous newspaper that deals only with island issues. If World War III ever breaks out, it won’t be mentioned in the Gazette unless some Vineyarder is involved.
    I sought and found the paper’s social columns and noted the names of the people who wrote them. Then I drove to Daggett Street and got in line for the little three-car On Time ferry, because Norton’s Point Beach was closed.
    During many weeks of the summer tourist season, the ferry is the only link to Chappaquiddick because the Wildlife and Fisheries people close Norton’s Point Beach, the only other way to get there, to SUV travel, in their continuing failing effort to thus safeguard plover chicks until they can fledge. Few do, since plover eggs and baby plovers are favored meals for natural predators, but the Fish and Wildlife people can’t close the beach to the gulls and skunks, so they close it to SUVs instead. Our tax dollars at work. No wonder Ethan Bradford lived in the woods and tried to ignore the last century.
    It was still pretty early in the morning, so the ferry line wasn’t too long, consisting as it did of fishermen hoping to nail bluefish along East Beach and workmen going over to construct houses such as Ron Pierson’s castle-in-progress.
    I was