Free Vineyard Blues by Philip R. Craig

grow up to be a beauty, J.W. You’ll be fighting off the boys in a few years.” He straightened and looked at his Rolex. “Well, I’m going to circumnavigate what’s left of this place, then I have to get back to work.”
    He walked toward the smoking remains of the house.
    â€œI wouldn’t be surprised if he actually did torch it,” said Zee. “It’s probably insured for more than it’s worth and he’s already collected his summer rent. He gets it up front and the kids will have to sue him to get it back.”
    â€œI imagine those thoughts will cross the fire marshal’s mind,” I said, putting the old Toyota in gear. Fires are like killings. They may be accidental or they may be on purpose, but if they’re on purpose, the first suspects are people close to the casualty. Of course, strangers commit crimes, too, but not as often as you might think. We usually get robbed or killed by our friends and families, and a lot of people burn down their own buildings.
    We drove home to get ready for Corrie’s concert in Oak Bluffs. We wanted to look respectable so Corrie wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen with us.
    Zee sniffed at her sleeve and wrinkled her nose. “We all smell like smoke,” she said. “These clothes will have to be washed.”
    I remembered a fire that had made me sick the first year I was a cop in Boston. A guy had been smoking in bed and had burned himself up. The whole apartment had smelled like cooked hot dogs.

—  9  —
    Day-trippers to the Vineyard usually land in Oak Bluffs, so the docks and Circuit Avenue, its main street, are lined with snack-food joints and gift shops offering Taiwan-made Martha’s Vineyard mementos to visitors who have circumnavigated the island in tour buses and are now heading back to the mainland prepared to give authoritative reports about the place.
    Seeing them boarding the boat for their return trip to the mainland, I am reminded of the time when I was lying on the beach in the summer sun, and overheard two college-age girls talking about their plans for the next year. One of them said she was going to Europe. The other replied, “Oh, I’ve seen that place. I was there on spring break.”
    Never having been to Europe, I was aware that I was in no position to criticize the girl who had apparently seen it all in a week. Similarly, since I’ve never taken the tour bus around the Vineyard, I try to withhold judgment of the knowledge of island day-trippers, too.
    Oak Bluffs is also one of the two towns on the Vineyard that allow alcohol to be sold and served, and is the site of a couple of notorious bars, including the Fireside, where I have been known to lift a glass or two. All in all, OB is the funkiest town on the island, and OB people wouldn’t live anywhere else.
    The church where Corrie was performing was already overflowing when Zee and I got there, but the big guy at the door was expecting us and showed us to our reserved seats in the front row, leading us past slightly irked people who had gotten there before us but were obliged to stand if they were going to hear Corrie.
    It was a mostly dark-complected crowd, but there were paler people, too. I recognized some of the folks seated in the pews: John and Mattie Skye; Stanley Crandel, the latest in a long line of Crandels who owned the big Crandel house on East Chop, and who liked to claim John Saunders, the slave turned Methodist preacher, as an ancestor; his wife, Betsy, who waved; their actress niece, Julie Crandel, who was visiting from Hollywood and also waved; and, seated across the hall away from the more respectable Crandels, the small, ageless figures of Cousin Henry Bayles and his wife. Cousin Henry, who reputedly had once run the black mobs in Philadelphia, but was now quietly retired in a cottage down by Lagoon Pond, did not wave.
    Since it was a house of God, the minister led a rousing prayer