A Case of Vineyard Poison Read Online Free PDF

her stomach, whatever it was,” said the medic. He looked at the body on the canvas. ‘Jesus, she was a pretty girl. What a way to go.” Helooked at me. “Looks to me like she drove down here trying to get help. Too bad nobody was home. Or were you?”
    He was a big guy and he looked tired and angry.
    â€œI’m sorry I wasn’t,” I said.
    â€œWhy’d she come looking for you?” he asked. “Why did she think you’d be the one to help her?”
    â€œI think it was just the first driveway she came to,” I said, carefully. I realized that my right hand had become a fist, and I opened it into a hand again.
    Miles turned to Tony D’Agostine. “We found this stuff in her pockets.” He handed Tony a driver’s license, a college ID, and some mail. “Name’s Katherine Ellis. Lived in New Jersey. College kid. NYU.” He gave me a last look, then bent to the stretcher. “Okay, let’s go.” He and the other medics picked Katherine Ellis up and put her in the ambulance and drove away.
    â€œMiles is not a bad guy,” said Tony D’Agostine. “It’s just that he’s got a daughter not much older, and she’s hanging around with a guy he doesn’t like. I think he just transferred all that to you.”
    Transferred. Everybody’s a psychologist. “It’s okay,” I said.
    Tony leafed through Katherine’s mail. “Looks like she just came from the post office. Letter, postcard. Now I’ve got to find out where she’s been living, then contact her folks and give them the news. People think cops chase bad guys all the time, but this is what we really do. I hate this part of it. Enough to make you hang up the tin.”
    â€œI’m surprised you’re on duty. I thought you old pros were careful not to work the day shift.”
    â€œI’m herding our summer people till they get the hang of things.” He looked around one more time. “Well, I’d better get going. I have to make some phone calls.”
    We walked down to my house. “I’ll have that moped picked up,” he said, and he drove away.
    Across Sengekontacket Pond there were still a few cars parked beside the road. Their owners were salvaging the last of the evening sun, unaware that a half mile away a young woman had died miserably beside my driveway.
    I felt invaded, somehow. Young women didn’t die beside my driveway. I knew they died somewhere, but they did it someplace else. They fell off their mopeds on the highways or drove their cars into faraway trees or lost themselves in the city. But they didn’t die two hundred feet from my house.
    I went inside and fixed myself a vodka on the rocks. I put my tape of Carreras, Domingo, and Pavarotti into my machine and listened to Carreras sing “Federico’s Lament.” I don’t understand Italian, but the lament sounded like what I was feeling. Then the other voices sang and after a while my self-pity was carried away and buried in that place where music sets us free.
    That evening I phoned Zee and told her about Katherine Ellis. A half hour later her little Jeep pulled into my yard, and she stepped out, carrying an overnight case. It felt good to see her.
    The next day, after Zee went to work, a pickup came down my driveway. It stopped in my yard where it could turn around. I was weeding in the garden. I went out to meet it. There was a young couple in the cab. The woman looked about Katherine Ellis’s age and was red-eyed. The man was a year or two older. His face was strained, and he seemed ill at ease, as people often are in the aftermath of death.
    â€œYou must be Mr. Jackson,” said the woman, rollingdown her window. “The police told me your name. I’m Beth Goodwin. I’m . . . was Kathy’s roommate. This is Peter Dennison. He’s . . . a friend.”
    â€œKathy’s friend, too,”