1. Fred

It was Monica the Fish’s fault. If she hadn’t bubbled her last breath, Fred wouldn’t be in this predicament now, and if the family of Monica the Fish had not placed an obituary—complete with photo in the Martha’s Vineyard Times—and if Fred, my dad, my wonderful but eccentric dad, hadn’t lived with me on that peculiar day, none of this would have happened.

But no, I had to leave the newspaper on the dining room table.

The obituary was a full quarter of a page, outlined in bold, with the headline, “She Was a Good Fish!” When my dad saw the photo—that exact moment—the trouble began.

“This Vineyard must be a good place!” he said. “Folks have the inclination to put an obituary in the local paper for a fish! I think I’ll stay for a while!”

Six Months Later

I gripped the pristine white picket fence outside the Edgartown jail. He didn’t do it. No way, not Fred. I rubbed my hands and felt my heart. The steady thump under my palm reassured me.

Mac, not only the jailer but also my neighbor, just shook his head and laughed as he bailed out of the front jail door and across the porch like a giant wad of chewing gum waiting to pop. As always, he gave me a huge bear hug.

“Chuck, no one on this entire force believed your wonderful old man had committed any sort of crime—he just admitted to it, but he didn’t do it.”

I knew he didn’t do it, or I hoped there was no way that crabby old Fred would kill anyone. Again, maybe me, maybe my brother, but not anyone else.

“Officer León told me on the phone that Fred not only did it, but also turned himself in and confessed the whole thing!” I faked a chuckle, hoping Officer Mac would inform me that this whole thing was just a big joke.

“Chuck, there is no way in hell your father did it. I don’t care what he confessed to.” Officer Mac squinted his eyes on his giant baby face. “León should not have said that, and he should have said that Fred is having some ‘mind issues.’ Anyway, that León is a wash-ashore, and those wash-a-shores know nothing. That's what I think.”

Léon had washed ashore on Martha’s Vineyard over fourteen years ago, but that didn’t matter to Mac. If Leon stayed here for fifty years, he would still be a wash-a-shore who knew nothing.

“Fred will be back in a minute. He went with León to the Stop and Shop to get coffee and water. The coupons expire today. That León is so lazy. I bet Fred will carry the water and coffee when they return, and Leon’s hands will be empty.”

Mac unlocked the big wooden door of the old family mansion, now converted to the Edgartown jail. “Come in; I want to show you the picture of the crime scene—brilliant, fucking brilliant.”

“Fred just walked in the front door and said I did it?”

“Sort of. Give me a moment. I will be right back. I want to make sure the chief is not here.” Officer Mac motioned for me to sit on a long wooden bench, Windsor in style and empty—like the jail.

How was this possible? My mind hustled through my entire life with Fred: my childhood, college, mom, marriage, and the Vineyard.

Fred had only called the Vineyard home for less than a year, but my dad, the slim man with a jovial smile and the earnest heart hidden beneath his plaid shirt, the gentle soul, had quickly worked his way into the eccentric essence of the island. People liked Fred. People liked Fred’s smile. Not a huge smile, but a temperate one permanently etched on his pleasant, furrowed face. He went nowhere without it. From morning to noon and on into the evening, Fred smiled. He smiled no matter what happened to him, what he heard, or what he saw. A different Fred lived in our California home; I knew that Fred very well. Too well. I carried that Fred everywhere I went. No matter how far from home, he weighed me down like a suitcase that I could not make myself unpack.

Mac took his time, like the cellular service on the Vineyard. My phone finally proclaimed that my Martha’s Vineyard Savings Bank account had exactly $3019.10 left in my checking. Was that enough for a murder bail? Would I have to put my bed-and-breakfast up as collateral?

I watched Mac poke his head in and out of a few doors, looking for the police chief. He smiled at me as he passed me and moseyed outside to check the parking lot.

Murder? Not possible. Some people didn’t like Fred or called him a goody-two-shoes, but those were few and far between. Nothing he had ever done or said could in any way, shape, or form be considered mean, cruel, or unpleasant. Fred said hello to everybody. Going to the grocery store with him would take hours. Everyone stopped to chat. He spent countless hours loading groceries into cars for people, returning the carts from the parking lot, and marshaling them back to their proper lineup. He wasn’t anal, not at all, just nice. He enjoyed doing nice deeds. The thing about Fred that people found so different was that he didn’t blame or scold the people who left the carts in the middle of the lot. He was glad to do it. If you asked why he did that or the countless other ordinary, thankless tasks, he would continue to smile and count himself lucky that he had the strength and stood in the right place at the right time. Now, if I left a cart in the middle of the parking lot—which I would never do with Fred around—that would ensure the end of my life as I knew it. The consequences, unbearable.

Fred loved making other people happy—not me, my brother, or my mother. He wanted us all to be happy, and he expected our happiness. But everybody needs downtime, and we—the family at home—were his downtime.

A small woman, cuffed-rolled jeans and a flannel shirt, much older than fifty, pried open the large wooden door of the place of detention and took her place beside me on the big empty bench. She eyed me with a faint glint of recollection but remained as silent as a mouse before taking a brown paper bag out of her still-clutched purse and offering me a cookie.

“They’re not as good as Mister Fred’s, but they are good,” she rattled off as she tore the paper down for easy access.

“No, thank you—but have we met before?” Yes, the word was out; Fred had been arrested.

“We haven’t, but I know your dad. He gave me the recipe for these one day while he was dropping off some cookies at the jail. Now it’s my time to bring him some cookies. Arresting Fred was just plain silly.”

Fred, a baker by trade, took great pride in baking his cookies, putting them in little cellophane bags, and passing them out to people who “needed them,” he would often say. The clerk at Shirley’s Hardware, who was never nice to anyone, got cookies; she needed them. Susan and Bruce, the best gardeners on the block—cookies—because the random colorful blooms brightened the neighborhood; they needed them. Mac, the policeman, usually found a pack sitting inside his car on the seat in the morning when he went to work; he needed them.

No matter how hard I tried, I struggled to make his famous chocolate chip cookie recipe to the same degree of perfection that the old man could do in his sleep. No matter how much I “slowed down” or “gently folded,” I could never bake like Fred, not in taste, texture, or achievement. I told him once that I had contemplated writing a cookbook entitled Give Up! You Will Never Be a Baker. Fred did not laugh. He never warmed to my sense of humor.

“Thank you for the cookie; they’re as good as Fred’s,” I lied. Mac rolled his head out of the door and motioned me inside.

Mac gingerly pulled a photo from the folder in his desk drawer, filled with candy wrappers, Fred’s empty cellophane cookie bags, papers, and assorted law enforcement paraphernalia. He took extreme care in holding the photo only by the edges and placed it on a lighted table.

“Chuck, this is the first murder on the Vineyard in fifteen years, and I don’t want to screw this investigation up. I hate to say it, but this is very exciting for all of us.” A Mayberry moment for me on the Vineyard—a policeman showing evidence to the criminal's son.

Mac gestured to the photo. “Martha E. Johnson of Edgartown, Massachusetts. Deceased by gunshot on November fifth.” A proud smile eased across his ample face. “I took that photo myself.”

The photo—a chest shot of a small woman’s breast in a pink Izod shirt, with a bullet hole slightly right of an embroidered alligator. “Whoever did it was surely aiming at her heart or the alligator. God knows if this isn’t the perfect photo for a Vineyard murder. A freaking pink Izod shirt.”

“I don’t think Fred had any idea who Martha was, let alone wanted to kill her,” I mused.

“He would be the only person on this island who would not want to see that woman dead. Everybody hated her, and I can’t say everyone would want to shoot her, but there’s a hell of a lot of people that would love to see her gone.”

“I have never heard of her, and I guess Fred hadn’t either.”

“She doesn’t pay her bills. There is not a single person on this island who would work for her or offer her credit. She has stiffed too many people. Always bragging about what she has, whom she knows, and where she has been. And flashy. She was very flashy with all her money. That’s about as close to a cardinal sin on the Vineyard. That might work on Nantucket, but not here.”

Mac carefully wiped the fingerprints off the edges then slowly replaced the photo in the folder and into the drawer. “Don’t tell anyone you saw that photo. The chief would have my ass. That is not the photo of Martha’s Vineyard he wants floating around the internet.”

Proof!

And photographed in vivid pink color; the whole thing seemed illusory.

No one who had ever met him or anyone who would meet Fred in the future would believe he could murder a fly, much less a person. Except for my brother and me, of course.

And on this bright Vineyard morning in late November, when the flocks of tourists had gone and before the winter chill had set in, Fred—my delightful dad—was jailed for murder—a murder to which he graciously admitted.