A Fatal Vineyard Season Read Free Page A

dialogue, was going to have its premiere, or one of them, at least, on the island. Since Zee was the movie’s most notable local extra, and I was her husband, we had been invited to the opening, at which time we would discover how much of Zee’s face was now on the cutting-room floor.
    Which gave me a thought. “Is Ivy here for the big premiere?” I asked.
    There was a short pause before Betsy answered, “I don’t know if she’ll be down that long. I think she just wanted to get away from L.A. for a while. She and Julia have gotten pretty close over the past few months, so Julia invited her here for a vacation.”
    Julia, I knew, had already been an actress in New York,but had gone west in hopes of making it in the movies. She was certainly pretty enough, as her photographs attested, and if that plus the Crandel brains was what it took to get her onto the screen, she was a shoo-in. However, I had read that brains had little to do with a successful film career, and that looks weren’t everything, either. Apparently it was some sort of special something that made you a star, and beauty and brains played second fiddle to that, whatever it was.
    And whatever it was, some people thought Zee had it. Which was why she had been spotted by the moviemakers on the Vineyard and had been talked into taking her one-line role in Island of Emeralds.
    Life is like that sometimes: them that wants, don’t get, and them that don’t, do.
    â€œHow’s Julia’s career coming along?” I asked.
    â€œI guess she’s gotten some advertising jobs on TV. Her mother says that she was a dancing mop who cleaned a kitchen like magic, or something like that. And that she keeps standing in the meat lines or whatever they call those things where people try out for roles. She’s not the type to give up easily, but she’s pretty tight-lipped about her life out there. I wish I was going to be here when she arrives. I’d sit her down and get all of the dope straight from her. Then I could tell her mother what she’s been up to. Some daughters tell everyone else before they tell their mothers. Julia’s one of them.” Betsy laughed.
    â€œI’ll tell Zee that Ivy’s coming down,” I said. “Maybe the two of them can get together.”
    â€œThat would be nice for both of them. See you in the spring. Have a good winter.”
    Betsy rang off and presumably headed for Switzerland.

— 3 —
    The faucet got to Martha’s Vineyard the same day that Ivy Holiday and Julia Crandel did, so it happened that I was in the little bathroom off the Crandel kitchen when they arrived at the house. I heard a feminine voice from the living room, calling, “Hello? Hello? Is anybody there? Is that you, Mr. Jackson? Hello?”
    There was an odd note in the voice, I thought. It was Julia’s voice, I was sure, because my name had been used, and Betsy Crandel had said she’d tell Julia that I might come by to install the faucet. But what accounted for that note of . . . what? . . . fear? . . . caution at least . . . in her voice, as though she thought someone else besides me might be there?
    â€œI’m in here,” I called. “I’m putting in this faucet.”
    Cautious footsteps came across the wide pine-board floors of the living room toward the kitchen. At the kitchen door, the voice came again: “Hello? Mr. Jackson?”
    I deliberately dropped a wrench on the floor before standing and going to the bathroom door. I looked across the kitchen at the two young women and put a smile on my face. It wasn’t hard. They were real beauties, still dressed in the California mode.
    â€œHi.” I pointed a finger. “You’re Julia. You look like a Crandel.” I reaimed the finger. “And that makes you Ivy. Welcome to the Vineyard. I’m J. W. Jackson.”
    â€œOh,” said Julia, her hand