A Vineyard Killing Read Online Free PDF

Besides, Dodie may be projecting her own emotion onto Maria.”
    True.
    â€œAt least,” said Zee, “we can be pretty sure that Dodie didn’t take that shot at Donald Fox. She was home when Maria phoned her about Paul.” I said nothing, and after a few seconds Zee said, “Hmmmm. Maybe we don’t know that. Dodie had plenty of time to drive home before the medics got Paul to the hospital.”
    â€œShe’s not one of the usual suspects,” I said, “but you shouldn’t take her off the long list.”
    â€œSome day someone else may take a shot at Donald Fox,” said Zee. “He’s made a lot of enemies here and he probably had a lot before he came. I don’t think I’d like to have so many people hating me. I think I’d stop doing the rotten things he does.”
    â€œPeople who do rotten things don’t think of them as rotten. I read somewhere that when Hitler was in his bunker and the end was near, he still thought that he was right to kill the Jews and that some day people would understand that and would thank him for it.”
    â€œThat’s sick.”
    â€œMaybe, but I don’t think Donald Fox or his kind feel very guilty about what they do.”
    â€œWhat about Paul Fox? Is he the same way?”
    â€œI don’t know. He seems to be different.”
    â€œI know some people I don’t like much, but none of them are evil like Donald Fox.”
    â€œI guess I don’t think of Paul Fox as being evil.”
    It was a meaningless statement, since I rarely thought of anyone as being evil. Whenever I considered the nature of evil and good, I used the pine tree test: if a pine tree observed an act that men considered evil, would the pine tree consider it evil? I doubted that it would. I was pretty sure that no act had meaning except for the significance that human beings gave it. After my death, religious people seemed sure, I would discover I was wrong about that. But I wasn’t dead yet.
    Which was not the case with Albert Kirkland, as I learned the next day while reading the Boston Globe .
    Kirkland had been found stabbed to death in the parking lot in back of the Fireside, one of Oak Bluffs’ seediest but most popular bars. Kirkland was the Saberfox agent who had arrived at our door with an offer to buy our land for chicken feed and had left with a threat to get it for nothing.
    People associated with Saberfox were taking some real hits lately. First Paul Fox and now Albert Kirkland. Another good reason to be glad I’d turned down Donald Fox’s job offer.
    A car came down our long, sandy driveway, and I went to the door to see who it might be. The car was a State Police cruiser and the driver was Dom Agganis.
    He looked around, taking in the gardens and the view beyond them of Sengekontacket Pond, the far barrier beach, and the sound beyond.
    â€œSo this is your place. Not bad.”
    â€œWe like it. Come and have some coffee. What brings you here?”
    He followed me inside and sat down at the table. “Make the coffee black. I’m here on business. You know a guy named Albert Kirkland?”
    â€œI know who he was. He worked for Saberfox. He was here a while back trying to buy this place cheap. We told him no sale. I was just reading that he got himself kacked last night.”
    â€œYeah. Stabbed with a long-bladed knife. Looks like the stabber was sitting in the passenger seat. You got a long-bladed knife?”
    I nodded toward the magnetic rack on the kitchen wall. “There’s the long-bladed-knife collection. And we’ve got fish knives in the shed and tackle boxes.”
    â€œI’m talking with people who might have been mad at Kirkland,” he said. “You’re one of them. Where were you last night about eight?”

5
    â€œI was right here.”
    â€œI suppose Zee and the kids were here with you.”
    â€œActually, the kids were off-island, so they