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The late Philip R. Craig was the author of nineteen novels in the Martha's Vineyard Mystery series. A professor emeritus of English at Wheelock College in Boston, he loved the Vineyard and lived there year-round with his wife, Shirley.

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Vineyard Stalker

Scribner

Zee and the kids had gone to America to visit Zee's parents in Fall River, so I was having breakfast in the Dock Street Coffee Shop listening to Chad Martin trying to decide just which of Martha's Vineyard's public institutions was the most maddening. "You could make an argument for the Registry of Motor Vehicles," said Chad between bites of sausage and eggs, "but lately the Registry seems a bit more rational than it was in the old days. Remember when we used to say that in order to work there you had to take an IQ test and fail it?"

"Yep." I nodded and kept eating.

"Well, nowadays you can say the same thing about those saps at the PO and the Steamship Authority."

"Oh, I don't know," I said. "The people I deal with at the counters seem pretty nice."

"Sure," said Chad, "but the bigwigs you never see are either dumb as sticks or they've dedicated their lives to ineptitude."

I gave him an admiring look. "Ineptitude, eh? That's a pretty impressive word for you to be throwing around this early in the morning."

Chad waved his fork. "You take the PO, now. You can start with the parking lot. The parking places are laid out so crazy that you have to park every which way and, when you try to leave, the poor damned pedestrians never know where a car's coming from and have to look every direction at once to keep from being run over. It's a miracle nobody's been killed yet."

"I'm not sure the PO owns the parking lot," I said.

"And because of that rotten drainage system," Chad went on, "whenever we get a good rain, half the lot turns into a pond a foot deep."

Lake Po was the popular name for it. It eliminated half the parking spaces in a lot that was already too small.

"And it's worse inside the building," said Chad, wiping his plate with the last of his toast. "You get other people's mail, they get yours; you get your packages back, sometimes two or three times, because somebody thinks the 'from' addresses are the 'to' addresses; you get yellow slips and after you stand in line for a half hour you find out there's no packages; or there's packages and no yellow slips; you get letters months after they were mailed, and some poor bastards have to pay penalties on overdue bills because they never got their bills at all!"

He looked at his own breakfast bill, dug out his wallet, and put money on the counter. "The lines are so long that people cheer when they don't get a yellow slip in their boxes. The poor bastards in the line talk about bringing somebody in there to sell coffee and doughnuts in the morning and martinis in the afternoon, and how somebody could make good money being a substitute line stander. They say they're going to have a contest about how to improve the service at the Edgartown post office, and the winner will get a PO box in West Tisbury. You want me to go on, J.W.?

"I think that's enough for now."

"Next time we can talk about the Steamship Authority," said Chad. "Now there's a beast without a head. See ya later."

He walked out.

"The trouble is," said the waitress, as she took away his dishes and silverware, "that he's right."

"It's an imperfect world."

I glanced after the departing Chad and saw a woman sitting at the far end of the counter looking at me. She was eating a bagel and an egg. I didn't know her and was surprised to see her pick up her cup and plate and come and sit beside me on what had been Chad's stool. I guessed her to be about fifty, although it's hard for me to tell women's ages these days when mothers sometimes look younger than their daughters. She was wearing a skirt and a summer shirt, and was a good-looking woman.

"You're J.W. Jackson," she said. "I'm Carole Cohen. I'm a friend of Zee's."

She put out her hand and I took it.

"She has a lot of friends," I said.

She got right to the point. "I have to be in the office later this morning, so I went by your house early. Nobody was there, but then I remembered Zee saying you came here for breakfast now and then. The waitress pointed you out and I've been waiting for your friend to leave. I need some help."

I was surprised. "What kind of help?"

"Zee's told me that you were in Vietnam," she said, "so I assume you must have gotten some combat training. She also said you were a policeman before you came to the island. She said that you can be trusted and I asked around and other people agree. I'd like to hire you to go up to my brother's place and keep an eye on things when he's sleeping. He's had some troubles. He needs to sleep sometime, but when he does he can't keep a watch himself."

"Who's your brother?"

"Roland Nunes. Maybe you know him. They call him the Monk."

I didn't know him but I had heard of him. He'd gone off to war full of the stuff that makes heroes but had come back so changed that his friends hardly knew him. He lived somewhere up in West Tisbury, I'd been told, and had gotten religion, although nobody seemed to know just what kind.

"I wasn't in 'Nam very long," I said. "I got hit on my first patrol and never went back."

"My brother was there a lot longer," she said. "Here's my problem: Somebody is coming around his place causing trouble and I'd like to know who it is. Whoever it is is sharp enough to stay out of sight until Roland's asleep. I want Roland to have some extra eyes and I'd like you to provide them. I can pay you a little money and I don't think the job should take too long. Just long enough for me to learn who the guy is. Once I know that I can handle things alone."

"What kind of trouble?" I asked.

"Somebody threw a dead skunk into Roland's water barrel, then sneaked into his garden and pulled up a lot of his vegetables. Then he set fire to Roland's shed. My brother smelled the smoke and put it out, but that was just luck. Whoever's doing all this seems to be getting more serious each time."

"You should call the cops."

"I don't want to involve the police. I don't want to hurt anybody, either. I just want Roland to be left alone."

I felt much the same way about not wanting to hurt anybody, but as for being alone I had had enough of that. I liked living with Zee, Joshua, and Diana and would be glad when they were home again.

"Like you said, I was a cop myself, once," I said. "Most of the cops I know are all right."

She nodded. "Zee told me you were on the Boston PD a few years back, but that you quit and came down here to live. She said it was because you were tired of saving the world. I can understand that. It's why I'd like to have you take this job. I don't want to hire somebody who takes pleasure in roughing people up. I just want a pair of eyes."

Carole Cohen's timing was good. I had a few days to myself and my house seemed too empty to live in, in spite of the two cats, Oliver Underfoot and Velcro, who also missed having Zee and the kids around.

"You have any idea who the guy is or why he's doing what he's doing?" I asked.

"It could be any one of several people," she said. "You know much about the so-called ancient ways here on the island?"

"Not much. I know they're old roads and paths that people used a long time back to get from here to there. And I know a lot of them have been closed off by new people who've bought land and don't want anybody crossing their expensive property."

She nodded. "When I was growing up here as a kid you could get to almost any beach to fish...