Vineyard Deceit Read Online Free PDF

time.”
    â€œMeanwhile, I’ll just ogle you,” I said. “After Saturday night you’ll be too sophisticated to mix with us hois and pollois.”
    â€œI’ll be kind,” said Zee. “Sometimes I’ll think of you while I’m on my yacht. I’ll have the prince bring the boat into Edgartown now and then.”
    â€œOf course you’ll be anchoring in the outer harbor because it’ll be too big to bring inside.”
    â€œOf course. But I’ll send crewmen ashore with the launch and insist that they buy our fresh bluefish from only you. And now that you’re a special policeman with a badge and everything, I’ll insist on having you be part of the security that protects us from the common people.”
    â€œThe autograph hunters and all . . .”
    â€œThat’s right. And if we meet by accident in one of the finer shops downtown, I’ll be sure to speak to you.”
    â€œYou’ll remember my name?”
    â€œOf course. What was it again?”

4
    Amelia Muleto owned a small truck farm off the West Tisbury road. When her husband had been alive the two of them had worked it and sold their vegetables at a farm stand, getting by in the good years, scrambling in the bad ones. My father had bought his vegetables there when I was a boy, and Amelia had delighted me with small, surprising gifts such as a seemingly normal apple that broke in two in my hands to reveal an apricot instead of a core, and within the apricot, where the pit had been, a strawberry. Her humor was the witty kind that had delighted both me and my father.
    My father had liked the Muletos and had made a practice of taking fish by their house when he’d had luck with the blues or bass. Ray Muleto, like every Azorian I’ve ever known, and there are a lot of them and their childrenon the Vineyard, loved fish. His farm kept him too busy to catch them himself, so he was particularly happy to get them when they came his way. In exchange, he would give my father wine that he’d made. It was strong, red stuff. “Vigorous,” my father had called it. The first alcohol I ever drank was Ray Muleto’s vigorous wine. I sneaked it straight from the bottle and almost choked to death. After my father died, I took fish to Ray and Amelia and got red wine in return. Now that Ray was gone, I still took fish, but there was no more of that rich, dark wine.
    Amelia now leased her farm to another truck gardener and worked at his stand part time. When not at the stand, she was at her small, neat, gray-shingled house, where she grew wonderful flowers and entertained her grandchildren whenever she could pry them away from their parents, Amelia’s son and his wife, who had abandoned the island to live in America, across the Sound, way out west in Worcester, in fact, where, in the modern style, they both worked to support their family.
    â€œThe grandchildren have gone home,” said Zee, as we drove up. “Pre-school shopping and all that. Their mom must take them to the malls, and there are no malls on Martha’s Vineyard.”
    Amelia Muleto was a tall, slender, Yankee-looking woman whose silver hair was cut short and touched with blue. She was in her gardening clothes when we arrived: jeans, a loose shirt that had no doubt belonged to her late husband, and sandals. She came walking from her front rose bed as we pulled into her driveway. She and I had aged together. Long ago when, as a boy, I’d first come to her house with my father, when I’d been five, she’d been in her mid thirties and I’d thought of her as old. Now she was in her mid sixties and seemed pretty young to me.
    She kissed Zee and gave me her hand and we went into the house. Amelia sat us down on her couch. On the coffee table in front of it there were scrapbooks and photo albums.
    â€œThere you have it,” said Amelia. “There’s a Stonehouse family genealogy too, but I