Death in Vineyard Waters by Philip Craig Page A

That’s what she’d have had to do in order to get gathered into the Mary Pachico’s nets.”
    He got out his pipe, and I enviously watched him stuff tobacco into it. Except for an occasional cigar, I have given up smoking but will never, never stop missing my pipe. Knowing this, the chief lit up anyway, but gave me a look not totally devoid of sympathy.
    â€œSo how did she get out there?”
    â€œShe could have gotten there if she went into the water several miles to the west. The tides could have carried herthere in six hours. I don’t know how far a body would drift in six hours, but the coast guard can probably figure it out.”
    â€œMaybe I’ll ask them to do that.”
    â€œAnother possibility is that she went into the water earlier than six o’clock and washed first west, then east. I figure that’s what could have happened if, say, she went into the water about midnight. She’d have washed west fornix hours, then east for six hours, and ended up about where the Mary Pachico picked her up.”
    â€œBut she didn’t go into the water at midnight. She went in at six o’clock, as she usually did.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œIt was no secret. She always went swimming then. Everybody who knew her testified to it.”
    â€œIf she wanted to commit suicide, maybe she went in at midnight instead so nobody would stop her.”
    He nodded, puffing. “That makes sense, but it didn’t happen. Ian McGregor was with her at the beach at six A.M. So she was alive then, which means that whatever happened to her happened afterward.”
    â€œMaybe.”
    â€œUnless somebody’s wrong about something,” said the chief.
    â€œOr lying,” I said.
    â€œOr that,” said the chief, nodding and puffing. I inhaled the lovely fumes and wondered why a pipe made a man look more intelligent. I could really use one on those grounds alone.
    â€œMaybe some fisherman saw her down there that morning. Maybe somebody saw her driving there. I’ll ask around. If I don’t come up with anything, we can put out a request for information over the radio station and through the papers. We might come up with a witness—the roads aren’t busy that early in the morning, but there are people around. Somebody might have seen something.”
    â€œYou’ll talk again with the crewmen on the Mary Pachico? ”
    He nodded. “Or the coast guard will.”
    â€œAnd Ian McGregor?”
    The chief blew a smoke ring and looked at me. “I thought I saw him in town a couple of times with Zee Madieras.”
    â€œCould be.” Even I could hear the sourness in my voice.
    â€œI’ll talk to him again about when he saw Marjorie Summerharp that morning. I can’t see him changing his story at this late date, but I suppose he might. Anybody else you can think of? Any other advice to us dumb cops?”
    â€œYou think you’re smart just because you’ve got a pipe and I don’t. No, unless there’s somebody that we don’t know about, the crew of the Mary Pachico and McGregor are the only ones who gave information about when the woman went swimming and when and where her body was found. Theirs are the only stories we have to check.”
    â€œâ€Šâ€˜We’?”
    â€œYou.”
    â€œThat’s right,” said the chief. “Me, not you.”
    I inhaled a last lungful of his pipe smoke and left.
    I was smoking bluefish a couple of days later when I heard the car coming down my driveway. I’d caught the fish the day before, soaked them in a brine and sugar solution overnight, rinsed them and air dried them this morning, and now was smoking them over hickory chips out behind my shed in the smoker I made out of a refrigerator and some electric stove parts I’d salvaged from the Big D. I have an illegal sales agreement with a certain elegant island eating establishment for my smoked