Dead in Vineyard Sand Read Online Free PDF

scrape-up crashed bicycle riders all summer long, and a good percentage of the accidents are due to skids caused by sand or gravel. Most of the riders survive with abrasions and bruises, but some also suffer broken bones and there are occasional fatalities, usually from encounters with automobiles.
    â€œI seem to remember that Abigail is Henry’s other half,” I said, “and I’d expect a Highsmith to wear a helmet.Wherein lies the mystery? Or are you and your medical colleagues perplexed by the idea that a Highsmith can take a tumble just like anybody else?”
    â€œEven Lance Armstrong can take a tumble,” said Zee. “No, the mystery is that Abigail claims that she fell all by herself, but the Samaritan who brought her in says she was driven off the road by a beat-up old SUV. The Samaritan stopped to help her but the SUV hightailed it on out of sight.”
    Odd, but not impossible to explain. Maybe the offending driver never realized what had happened and had innocently driven on. Maybe Abigail Highsmith had whacked her helmeted head hard enough to be confused about what had happened.
    â€œDid anyone report the accident to the police?”
    â€œWe did,” said Zee, “but I doubt if they can do much more than talk with Abigail and the Samaritan. Abigail’s injuries are minor and she says it was her own fault, so I can’t see the police doing much.”
    â€œSo what’s the problem?”
    Zee frowned. “The problem is that most of us believe the Samaritan and we can’t understand why Abigail insists that the accident was her own fault. If it was me, I’d be mad as hell about being run off the road, and I’d want the driver who did it arrested and hung!”
    Zee was actually an opponent of capital punishment and of violence in general, so I knew she was exaggerating. But I took her point.
    â€œAre you especially perplexed because Abigail’s a Highsmith, and the Highsmiths are death on SUVs?”
    Zee nodded. “You’d think she’d be more than glad to nail that driver as an example of the kind of people who drive SUVs. But she didn’t. It just doesn’t make any sense to me.”
    I gave her my theory about the banged head, but shedidn’t buy it. “There was nothing wrong with her head. She landed on her shoulder.”
    â€œMaybe the Samaritan was imagining things.”
    â€œI don’t think so. She’d been following the SUV for quite a while and saw everything very clearly.”
    â€œMaybe she hates SUVs and made up the whole story.”
    â€œShe drives an SUV herself. What do you think about that?”
    â€œMaybe she’s filled with guilt and self-loathing about driving an SUV and was really trying to purify herself. Did you ask her if she’s been reading Dostoyevsky?”
    â€œSlice that onion and be serious. Don’t you think it’s odd that Abigail Highsmith denies being run off the road?”
    â€œIf that’s what happened. It could be that she hit the sand as the SUV was passing her. She fell and the Samaritan misinterpreted it as the SUV driving her into the ditch.”
    Zee added my sliced onion to her salad bowl and I began to mix up a dressing. “I suppose that’s possible,” she said, “but I don’t think that’s what happened.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    She stopped working and looked up at me. “Because when I listened to Abigail, I knew she was lying, and when I listened to the Samaritan, I knew she was telling the truth. And so did most of the other staff.”
    Cops and doctors and others who deal with people in trouble expect some of them to lie about their problems, and they get pretty good at smelling falsehoods. Freud probably had a theory about such lies and liars, but if he did I never read it.
    When I was a cop, I learned that almost anyone would lie when the truth was to his disadvantage. I also met some who habitually lied