Read Online Vineyard Blues by Philip R. Craig - Free Book Online Page A

the new wing ready on schedule. That being the case, it seemed a good time to take a break and do something else.
    Maybe take a ride over to the place where Corrie was staying and catch up on the news.
    I put away my tools and went around the house to tell Zee my plans. No Zee. I went inside. She was in the kitchen holding Diana on her hip and stirring a pot of what smelled like cream of refrigerator soup, one of my favorites. Joshua was playing some sort of game with the cats, Oliver Underfoot and Velcro, which the three of them perfectly understood.
    â€œWe’ll all go,” Zee said, turning off the burner and shoving the pot to the back of the stove. She looked up at me. “I’m curious, too. What a pair we are.”
    I gave her a kiss. I liked her as much as I loved her. I got hold of Joshua and we all climbed into the Land Cruiser.
    The house where Corrie was staying looked worse in the daylight than in darkness, and worse this morning than usual, since the lawn and porch were littered with the remains of last night’s party: beer cans, empty bottles, crumpled potato chip bags, and other debris, including a T-shirt and what looked a lot like a pair of women’s under-pants. The place smelled of stale beer, sweat, and, faintly, marijuana. A beer keg lay beside the stairs to the porch.
    Off to one side of the house, Corrie Appleyard was squatting beside a battered moped, adjusting something. He glanced up, rose, and came toward us. He looked as though he hadn’t slept too well. Apparently a life of late-night gigs had not immunized him to chaos or allowed him to ignore loud music and drunks and to snooze soundly through a Vineyard college party such as had happened here last night.
    â€œSleep well?” I asked.
    He shrugged. “I’ve done better.” He gestured toward the moped. “Had me a motorcycle once. That machine there belongs to my host, Adam. Should start a little easier now, but it still needs work.”
    Mopeds are one of the island’s principal summer hazards, primarily because the people who rent them don’t know how to ride them safely and are constantly crashing and being taken to the hospital in an ongoing drama known to the police as Moped Mop Up. Some of the more experienced police officers prefer night duty to day duty during the summer precisely because Moped Mop Up takes place for the most part during daylight hours, and they’d rather leave the scraping up and the hospital runs to the summer cops.
    I looked at the rubble on the lawn. “If you slept at all last night, you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.”
    He nodded. “You work some places I’ve worked, you could sleep through hell afterwards.” He seemed in a good mood.
    Zee apparently noted this. “Adam get back?”
    He nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Late. After you all left.”
    So far, so good. “He ever catch up with the girl?” I asked.
    Corrie smiled. “I heard him come home with a girl. I guess it was Millie, but I didn’t see her.” He nodded toward the house behind him. “They’re all still sawing wood. Young folks these days ain’t much on rising early.”
    Were they ever? I was glad that Millicent Dowling was okay and said so.
    â€œMe, too,” said Corrie, losing his smile. “Place where she lived was empty when it burned, but for a while people were afraid she was in it.”
    â€œWhere was she?”
    â€œNobody has told me that yet.”
    Zee touched my sleeve. “Let’s go have a look at the place. Maybe the fire marshal will be there and we can find out what started it.”
    Ben Krane owned a lot of property. Too much, in the opinion of a lot of people. I looked at Corrie. “Where was the fire?”
    He thought, then waved a hand in a gesture that took in most of the island. “Over there in what they call Arbutus Park. Or so they tell me. I never been there,