A Deadly Vineyard Holiday Read Online Free PDF

the house?”
    â€œIndeed I do.” Zee looked at me. “How many firearms do we have in here, Jeff?”
    I ticked them off on my fingers: “One thirty-aught-six rifle, three shotguns, my old thirty-eight S and W revolver, and your Beretta three-eighty. That’s six, all told, if I can still count.”
    â€œYou do a lot of shooting,” said Pomerlieu.
    â€œI don’t like all these guns being here,” said Lonergan.
    â€œYou were a policeman,” said Pomerlieu to me. It wasn’t a question.
    â€œQuite a while back.”
    â€œI understand you were shot and still carry the bullet.”
    â€œYes. They decided it was better to leave it there than to try to get it out. You’re pretty well informed.”
    He nodded and looked at Zee. “And you’re a nurse at the hospital here.”
    â€œI am.”
    â€œYou look around here some more,” he said to Joan Lonergan. “Let me know if you have any other concerns.” He glanced at a man taking a look at my Land Cruiser. “These agents are surveying the area to ascertain the security situation here. We have to know as much as we can about the grounds, possible approaches to the house, and that sort of thing.”
    â€œCome up onto the balcony, then,” said Zee. “You get a good view from there.” She watched Joan go into the kitchen, and frowned slightly. Then she sipped her cooling coffee. I wondered if she was thinking about the breakfast dishes, which were still on the kitchen table.
    We went up to the balcony and looked out over the yard and gardens, over Sengekontacket Pond to the roadway on the far barrier beach, and over that to Nantucket Sound and the distant haze that hid Cape Cod.
    â€œWe eat up here sometimes,” said Zee. “And we have cocktails here, too.” She pointed down toward the pond. “The Rod and Gun Club is just the other side of those trees. That’s where I do my target shooting. People shoot down there off and on all week long. Skeet and targets. I know you’re worried about guns, so you should know that they go with this territory. After you’ve been here awhile, you don’t pay much attention to the gunfire down there.”
    â€œIs there a path between here and there?”
    â€œNo. You can make it through the trees and oak brush, but there’s no trail.”
    â€œHow much land do you have here?”
    â€œAbout fifteen acres,” I said. “But there’s no fence around it, so it’s hard to know where our land stops and the next guy’s starts.”
    â€œWho’s the next guy?”
    â€œFelix Neck is one of them.”
    â€œThe wildlife sanctuary? I’ve heard of it.” He looked around at the trees flowing away from the house. Then he looked carefully at the pond and the far barrier beach. I thought I knew what he was considering.
    â€œIt’s a very long shot, even for a first-class sniper,” I said. “Besides, there are hundreds of people over there on the beach and in the water all day long, and he’d have a hard time not being seen.”
    He glanced at me. “You a sniper when you were in Nam?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWe’ll check opt that area over there, of course, but from here I’d say that we have people who can probably get in there, take their shots, and get out again without ever being seen by anybody. And if we have people like that, somebody else might have them, too.”
    â€œTerrific,” said Zee.
    â€œNot to worry.” Pomerlieu smiled. “I’m paid to have an active imagination. I fret about airplanes, submarines, and all sorts of unlikely possibilities. It goes with the job, but I’m really a family man, myself. You want to see my wife and kids?”
    â€œYou bet,” said Zee, who was of late deeply interested in such pictures.
    Pomerlieu was already pulling out his wallet and displaying a photo of a