The Bee Balm Murders Read Online Free PDF Page A

Orion.
    “You’re installing cable in the trench where the body was found this morning, aren’t you?”
    Orion nodded.
    “Then you know more about the circumstances than I do.” Casey picked up her beach-stone paperweight and rubbed its smooth surface absently. “How can I help you?”
    Orion leaned forward. “I failed to tell the responding officers at the scene that I knew the victim.” He straightened his back amd nodded toward Victoria. “Mrs. Trumbull urged me to talk to you.”
    Casey flipped the stone from one hand to the other. “Not the state police, Victoria?”
    “I’m going through channels,” Victoria said primly.
    Casey smiled and turned back to Orion. “After I’ve heard what you have to say I’ll call Sergeant Smalley at the state police barracks.” She set the stone back on her papers and pulled a yellow legal pad toward her.
    “His name is Angelo Vulpone,” said Orion. “He owned a construction company in Brooklyn.”
    “We’ll need to notify his family.”
    “All I know about him is that he has two grown sons in business with him. I don’t know their names.”
    Casey looked up. “How did you meet him?”
    “One of my partners, Casper Martin, approached Vulpone about investing in the project, and Vulpone agreed to put in eight million.”
    Casey whistled softly. “A lot of money. Had he turned any of it over to you?”
    “Not yet. We had some negotiating to do first.”
    “I suppose that’s why he was here on the Island?”
    “I have no idea,” said Orion.
    Casey reached for the phone. “I’ll let Smalley know we have an ID. You’ll need to go to the barracks tomorrow to answer questions, then the funeral home to make an ID.”
    *   *   *
    The rain started up again while they were meeting with Casey and now it was coming down in torrents. Victoria and Orion hurried to the car.
    “Well, Victoria,” said Orion, easing his back against the driver’s seat, “you were right. If we could figure out how the Island grapevine works, we wouldn’t need a fiber-optics system.”
    *   *   *
    Later that afternoon, Orion stopped at his office in Vineyard Haven and called Casper Martin, his partner in New York. The rain poured down steadily.
    “Casper, it’s Orion.”
    “What’s up?”
    “Bad news, I’m afraid.”
    “Let’s have it.”
    “Vulpone’s dead.”
    “What?”
    “Vulpone. He’s dead.” Orion spent the silence that followed looking down onto the driveway of the house next door. An ordinary two-story frame house, shingled. Tufts of uncut grass ran down the center of the unpaved drive. Puddles in the ruts were pockmarked with rain.
    Casper breathed heavily at the other end of the line. “Jee-sus,” he said at last. “What the hell? Damn!”
    A maroon SUV splashed up the drive and stopped at the side door of the house.
    After a long pause Martin said, “What happened?”
    As he replied, Orion watched a man get out of the SUV and go into the house, the Sunday paper protecting his head. Orion had never paid much attention to the house next door. Looking from his second-floor aerie, he started to lift his feet onto his desk. His back twinged, and he set his feet down. From the way the man below walked, he was young. Thirties, maybe. That was about all Orion could tell, looking down on him.
    As he told Martin about recognizing Angelo, carrying the body on the wheeled stretcher through the mud, and his encounter with Donald Minnowfish, he thought about Angelo Vulpone’s sons. Did Vulpone have daughters? A wife? Orion knew as much about the man next door as he knew about Vulpone, namely, nothing. He told Martin that his ancient landlady had forced him to go to the police.
    “She’s right, you know.”
    “Yeah, Casper. I know.”
    Martin wondered why Vulpone was on the Island, puzzled over who killed him, then added, “There goes a third of our funding,” which was what had concerned them both from the moment they knew Angelo Vulpone was dead.
    “You