Free Murder at a Vineyard Mansion by Philip R. Craig

Jeep was parked in front of the house and beside it, facing me, a double-barreled shotgun cradled in his arms, stood Ethan Bradford. He still wore his proper funeral clothes but he reminded me of a young William Devil Anse Hatfield eyeing a McCoy.
    I pulled alongside his Jeep and got out. I heard Baroque violin music drifting out of the house behind him, but it didn’t impress me as much as the shotgun.
    He stared at me with narrow eyes. “Who the hell are you?”
    â€œJ. W. Jackson. Are you Ethan Bradford?”
    â€œYou been following me since the graveyard. What the hell you want?”
    â€œYou know how to use a rearview mirror.”
    â€œI know how to use a shotgun, too.”
    I felt a little tingle of fear. “I didn’t come here for trouble,” I said. “I came to talk.”
    He cocked the weapon. “I’m not in a talking mood. Get your ass off of my property.”
    â€œYou don’t need a gun to get rid of me,” I said.
    â€œI may not need it, but I’ve got it. Now git!”
    I was angry as well as frightened. “If you point that thing at me, I can charge you with assault with a deadly weapon.”
    â€œNot if you’re dead.” He sneered but he didn’t point the shotgun.
    â€œWhat do you know about Ollie Mattes’s death?”
    His eyes widened then narrowed again. “Nothing. Ollie fell off a cliff.”
    â€œThe police say he was murdered.”
    â€œThe police don’t know shit.”
    â€œThey know murder when they see it. He didn’t have many friends, but you and your sister were at his funeral. You—”
    I stopped speaking as he lifted the shotgun. It still wasn’t pointed at me, but his finger was on the trigger. His voice was thin and cold like a winter wind.
    â€œHe wasn’t my friend. You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your relatives. Now get the hell off of my land before I have an accident cleaning this gun!”
    I didn’t want to turn my back on him, but I did. I got into the Land Cruiser and turned it around and left. As I did I heard him shout, “And don’t come back!”

8
    I’d willed my hands to stop shaking by the time I got back out to the paved road. There, still feeling ice along my spine and thinking about Ethan Bradford’s words, I turned and drove back to Cheryl Bradford’s driveway in Chilmark. I turned in past the PRIVATE PROPERTY sign that adorned the entrance and followed the lane to the house and outbuildings.
    The site was another old farmstead, but this one, unlike the one I’d just left, was well maintained. The buildings and fences were painted and the house was well roofed and shingled. Beyond the house, to the south, an open field fell away to marsh-land that bordered a pond separated from the sea by a barrier beach. On the far side of the beach the waves of the blue Altantic broke upon the sand. If you sailed straight south you’d see no other land until you fetched the Bahamas.
    Once that field had probably grazed sheep or cattle, but now it held three horses. I remembered that Annie Pease had once taken a fall from a horse and that Uncle Ethan had been with her at the time. There are a lot of horse people on the Vineyard, but I am not one of them. Horses and I do not have a symbiotic relationship. When I ride one it’s an uncomfortable experience for both of us, and we are mutually glad to bid each other good-bye as soon as possible. I wondered if my children, having failed to persuade me to get a dog, would ever make a plea for a horse. If so, they were doomed to further disappointment.
    A horse trailer hooked to a sturdy SUV stood beside a large barn and corral. A tall red stallion was tied to a fence beside the trailer, saddled and ready to go. Cheryl Bradford’s station wagon was parked in front of the house. I parked beside it and got out. I glanced at the horse and saw its head come up and its ears