Death in Vineyard Waters by Philip Craig

some help along literary lines. You have a pained expression on your face. Have you been thinking of something?”
    â€œAs a matter of fact.”
    â€œAnd . . .”
    â€œAnd maybe you know the answer to a question.”
    â€œWe policemen are encyclopedias of information. Why, only this morning I was able to tell a woman from New York that there is no bridge between the Vineyard and the mainland. She seemed shocked.”
    â€œI dare say she was. My question is also well within your scope, I’m sure. If Marjorie Summerharp went swimming at six in the morning, how come her body wasfound six hours later a mile straight out from where she entered the water?”
    The chief thought. “You got me. What’s the answer?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œMaybe because that’s where the Mary Pachico was trawling. If the boat hadn’t been there, it wouldn’t have collected her in its nets.”
    â€œVery sharp. Now I know why they made you chief. The thing is, if Marjorie Summerharp drowned off the end of the Katama Road where they found her car, she shouldn’t have been a mile straight out from that spot six hours later.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œBecause the tide was dead low at six o’clock that morning and ran east for the next six hours. If she went in at six o’clock like the papers said, and if she drowned like the papers said, her body should have washed way off toward Wasque Point by the time the Mary Pachico picked her up. But the Mary Pachico netted her straight out from the end of the road.”
    The chief watched his rent-a-cop stop traffic for a batch of tourists in sunglasses, shorts, and wild shirts who wanted to go from where they were to the other side of the street. Traffic backed up beyond the town hall. Then the rent-a-cop waved the cars ahead and the long line inched forward.
    The chief looked up and down the street. Cops’ eyes are always moving. “Maybe the Mary Pachico netted her down that way but didn’t haul in until she was back off Katama.”
    â€œYeah. Maybe so. I didn’t see anything about it in the papers. Did anybody ask?”
    â€œI imagine somebody did. I didn’t.” He looked at me. “I’ll call the coast guard. It should be in their report.”
    â€œWill you let me know?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œNot even if I kiss your foot right here on Main Street?”
    His eyebrows went up. “Well, maybe if you kiss my ass.” He pushed away from the wall and went to help his rent-a-f-cop,who had gotten herself into a problem she couldn’t solve, a complex jam of cars and pedestrians that had created a kind of gridlock. “I’ll let you know,” he said as the horns began to honk.
    The next morning, as I was going into the station to find out where he was, he arrived in the cruiser and stepped out. He gestured toward his office. “ ‘ “Step into my parlor,” said the spider to the fly.’ ”
    I ogled Kit Goulart as we passed her and she clutched her heart in feigned passion.
    The only soft chair in the chief’s office is his. The rest are hard. I took one.
    â€œAccording to the coast guard, the Mary Pachico was trawling west of Katama. She’d come east along the south shore and hauled just after making her turn to go west again.”
    We looked at each other.
    â€œThere’s no way Marjorie Summerharp’s body should have been out west of Katama,” I said.
    â€œSo, maybe she just swam straight out for a mile. People do things like that. They just swim out so far that they can’t get back. They do it on purpose.”
    â€œYou mean she may have committed suicide?”
    He shrugged. “There was some talk. It could be. She was a good swimmer, they say, and maybe she could have gotten out a mile.”
    â€œSo she swam out a mile, then swam against the tide for six hours until she drowned.