First Light

by Philip R. Craig

  If you want to put a car in some inconspicuous place, you put it in a long-term parking lot.

  After Labor Day, there are more parking spots available than there are in the summer, and the cops are much more lax about enforcing parking limits. Still, there aren’t too many places where cars can be parked for several days without being noticed and ticketed. Most towns have a few such places, and the local police probably didn’t pay too much attention to them.

  I took a look at Oak Bluffs twenty-four-hour parking areas and found nothing. I drove back to Edgar-town and tried there. Nothing again. I started for Vineyard Haven but then realized I didn’t have time for that, since Zee would be coming home at any minute. I felt impatient and frustrated, as though an unjust fate was keeping me from almost certain success, although I knew that was nonsense. I drove home, where I woke up the kids and had just enough time to put the martini glasses in the freezer and get supper going when the phone rang.

  It was Zee. Her voice was filled with anger and fear. “Jeff, something’s happened! Come up here right away. I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Please come.”

  I piled the kids into the car and was at the hospital parking lot in ten minutes.

  Zee was standing beside her Jeep, holding a piece of paper in her hand. I went right to her.

  “What is it?” I said. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, but look at that.” She pointed. A tire had been slashed. “And this was under the windshield wiper.” She thrust the paper at me.

  It was crudely lettered, but plain enough. “Tell your husband to keep his nose out of places it doesn’t belong.”

  I felt a red fury rise inside me. “Somebody must have seen this happen.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve asked. Nobody saw anything. What does that note mean? Who did this?”

  The red anger flamed. “I don’t know,” I said, though I thought I might. “You take the kids home in the truck. I’ll change the tire and be right behind you.”

  “All right. But we should tell the police.”

  “Good idea. Stop at the OBPD on your way and give them the note and a report.” That way I’d probably be home about the same time she and the kids were. I didn’t want them there alone.

  I hurried with the tire and was home waiting for them when they drove in. By then my anger was the cold kind.

  Zee looked tired. “The police are going to talk with people and try to find a witness. They wanted to know what you were doing that might make somebody mad. I couldn’t tell them. They want to talk with you.”

  “All right, I’ll get in touch with them.” I put my hands on her shoulders. “The note wasn’t addressed to anyone, so there’s a chance the guy mixed your car up with somebody else’s. Maybe it’s just another example of OB politics. It’s not the first slashed tire in that town.”

  “Maybe.” She looked doubtful, although everyone on Martha’s Vineyard knows that everything in Oak Bluffs is political and passions run high.

  While she changed out of her uniform I took the chilled glasses from the freezer, sloshed a bit of dry vermouth in each of them, tossed it out, then got the Luksusowa out of the freezer and filled each glass. Two black olives went into Zee’s and two green ones stuffed with hot peppers in mine.

  Perfect martinis. Different but equally delish.

  When Zee came out of the bedroom, I handed hers to her and we went up to the balcony. “Leftover St. Jacques for supper,” I said.

  “Fine. I don’t know how to think about my tire, so I’m not going to talk about it anymore. I’m more interested in Molly. I know they haven’t found her, because you’d have told me that right away. What are they doing?”

  I was also glad not to talk about the tire, although I’d been thinking about it pretty hard. So I told her about my conversations with the Chief and Edna Paul and about my fruitless hunt for Molly’s car. “I’ve got a very slim chance of finding it, but the police are looking for it, too, so between us we may locate it. And if we do, maybe we can learn something.”

  “It’s totally unlike her to go off and not tell anyone. I know something’s happened to her.”

  “The cops are hunting for her both here and on the mainland. If they can find the car, that could help.”

  She brushed back a strand of black hair that had strayed over her forehead. “I did want her to meet Brady. He needs a good woman as much as she needs a good man. I’m very worried.”

  “Come down and have some supper. Afterward I’ll call the station and see if they’ve learned anything. If there isn’t any news, we can drive up to Vineyard Haven and look around. We probably won’t find the car, but at least we’ll be doing something. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  Reheated Coquilles St. Jacques is, like most casseroles, even better-tasting the second time around, but worry kept Zee and me from enjoying the flavor of the meal. The children, not sharing their parents’ anxieties, gobbled theirs right up.

  We washed and stacked the dishes in the drainer, and then the four of us piled into the Land Cruiser and drove to Vineyard Haven, where there are several places you can park a car if, say, you need to go over to America for a couple of days. I started on Causeway Road. We found no red Honda Civic parked there under the trees.

  “This is hopeless,” said Zee.

  “Do you want to go home?”

  “No. Let’s keep looking.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Sisyphus,” I said.

  Diana laughed. “That’s funny, Pa. Say that again!”

  I said it again.

  More laughter. “That’s hard to say, Pa.” Joshua and Diana had a fine time saying it over and over.

  At the fourth place we looked for the car, we found it. It was right there in plain sight at the rear of a church parking lot off Franklin Avenue.

  Zee was out of the Land Cruiser in a flash. I barely had time to say, “Don’t touch anything,” before she was beside the red Honda peering in through the windows.

  “Stay here,” I said to the kids. I went over and made my own visual examination of the car. I saw nothing amiss. No signs of violence, nothing unusual. I was turning away when something on the floor in front caught my eye. It was a glove, and there was something slightly unusual about it. I pointed it out to Zee, who put her nose near the glass and studied it.

  “It’s a golfer’s glove,” she said. She looked up at me. “I don’t think Molly even plays golf.”

  “I’ll stay here and make sure nobody disturbs anything. You go tell the police that we’ve found the car.”

  She ran to the Land Cruiser and drove away.

  I peeked again at the glove on the floor. It looked like a very nice, expensive glove. Too big for a woman. A clue, maybe, though many of the people who visited the Vineyard played golf. If this was a clue, it didn’t narrow down the field very much. The Isle of Dreams crowd came to mind. I didn’t know any of those people, but Brady did. Brady and I were scheduled to fish tonight. Maybe he’d have a name or two for me.

  I felt like a hound on the scent.

  Chapter Twelve

  Brady

  Patrick looked like he was about to burst into tears.

  “What about your grandmother,” I said. “What’s happened?”

  “She’s in the hospital,” he said.

  “Oh, shit.” I turned, got back into the Range Rover, and started up the engine.

  Patrick ran down the steps and climbed in beside me. “I’ll go with you.”

  On the way to the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital in Oak Bluffs, Patrick told me that when he’d gone in to check on Sarah sometime in the middle of the morning, he’d found her lying on the floor. He’d taken a quick check of her vital signs, and—

  “You know how to check vital signs?”

  “I’m an EMT down in Hilton Head,” he said.

  “I didn’t know that,” I said. “I thought all you did was play tennis and golf.”

&n
bsp; “Very funny,” he said. “You’re thinking of my mother. Sometimes I play tennis and golf, and sometimes I save people’s lives.”

  “Sorry. Go ahead.”

  When Patrick knelt beside her, he said, he saw that Sarah was conscious but unable to speak. She appeared not to recognize him or to understand him when he spoke to her. She tried to sit up, but couldn’t.

  “She fell and hit her head,” I said.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But she fell because she had a stroke.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “At her age,” he said, “it’s always bad. She’s in the ICU. I don’t know if they’ll let you see her.”

  I talked my way into Sarah’s stark little cubicle in the Intensive Care Unit. The nurses gave me five minutes.

  She appeared to be asleep. An oxygen tube was pinched onto her nostrils, and a machine was tracking her blood pressure, pulse rate, and blood oxygen. Another tube snaked down to her wrist from three or four clear plastic bags hanging on what looked like an aluminum hat rack.

  I pulled a folding chair beside her bed, held her hand, and talked to her about the Red Sox. When I squeezed her hand, she gave me a weak squeeze in return. I wanted to think that she recognized me, had heard and understood what I’d said to her, and wanted to reassure me that she was okay. But I realized that her hand squeeze was probably just a reflex.

  Afterward, I found a doctor who told me that they didn’t yet know how seriously Sarah had been impaired, but that she undoubtedly had been impaired, and that, given her age and health, it most certainly was irreversible. The blood flow to part of her brain had been cut off. She might’ve lost her speech or the use of some limbs. Her personality could be changed, and she would very likely experience memory loss. “Multi-infarct dementia” was the term the doctor used.

  Patrick’s quick action, he said, had probably saved her life.

  They were giving her anticoagulants. Surgery wasn’t out of the question, although in her frail condition, and considering the advanced progression of her cancer, the doctor seemed to think it a poor risk.

  He didn’t say it, but what he meant was that surgery would be a waste of time. Sarah was a terminal case either way.

  She would not die, the doctor said. Not tonight, at least. Not from her stroke. That was the good news.

  She would, of course, soon die from her cancer.

  When we got back to the house, I told Patrick to go find Eliza and Nate and bring them to me, and I went out onto the patio to have a smoke. The sun had just set over America, and from where I sat behind the Fairchild house looking westerly, I had a good view of the sunset’s pink reflection on Vineyard Sound. The afternoon wind had died, and the water’s surface looked as flat and glossy as a pane of glass. It wasn’t hard to imagine schools of stripers and bluefish and bonito swirling and splashing out there, chasing bait-fish, just waiting to eat the fly that I might cast in their path. Some dark cigar-shaped clouds hung low and motionless over the horizon. They looked like blimps hovering there. Their backs glowed gold, and their bellies were the same pink as the sea.

  I’d just stubbed out my cigarette when Eliza came out. She was wearing a yellow bikini top and a wide-brimmed straw hat and sunglasses and a flowered silk sarong. It rode low on her hips, showing off her flat stomach and girlish belly button. She was, naturally, carrying a glass.

  She flopped onto the chaise beside me, crossed her legs, and took a sip. “You heard, huh?”

  “About Sarah? Yes. Patrick and I just got back from the hospital.”

  “She was very upset about the nurse,” said Eliza. “She really hated that old battle-ax who came yesterday.”

  “You think that’s why she had a stroke?”

  She shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “Patrick might’ve saved her life,” I said.

  Eliza shrugged. “He’s very devoted to her.” She held up her glass. “G ’n’ T,” she said. “Want one?”

  I shook my head.

  She took another sip. “So now what?”

  “We’re waiting for Nate and Patrick. I want to talk to the three of you at the same time.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Sounds heavy. Give me a hint.”

  “Nope.”

  “So how’d the meeting with the nature freaks go?”

  “Eliza—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She held up both hands and smiled. “Sorry.”

  A few minutes later Patrick came out onto the patio. “Uncle Nate’s on his way,” he said. “Pissing and moaning, but he’s coming.”

  Eliza put a hand on Patrick’s arm. “You saved your grandmother’s life,” she said. “I’m proud of you, dear.”

  “It’s about time,” he said. He looked up. “Here he is.”

  Nate had come from around the side of the house. He was still wearing his overalls and work boots, but he’d abandoned the cap with two bills and his shotgun. He was holding a beer bottle. His big hand went all the way around it.

  I nodded to him. “Sit down, Nate. I need to talk to the three of you.”

  Surprisingly, he simply nodded and sat.

  I leaned forward and looked at each of them. “I wanted to say what I’ve got to say to you all at the same time, so we could all be sure you don’t have different stories or different understandings. Okay?”

  They nodded.

  “As you know, Sarah has had a stroke,” I continued. “The doctors believe she’ll be impaired, though they can’t yet say how badly or in what way. She may lose some of her memory. She may not regain her speech. She could lose the use of her limbs. She might not be able to process what one of us might say to her.”

  Eliza started to speak. I held up my hand. “I realize you understand these things. I’m only telling you so that what I have to say next will make some sense.” I paused. “It’s possible that Sarah will be incapable of making an informed decision about the disposition of her property. As you know, I’m down here specifically to arrange for its sale, which is what she wants. I have her durable power of attorney. Therefore—”

  “Wait,” said Nate. “You saying you can sell our place without my mother’s okay?”

  “I can do that, yes,” I said. “That’s what a durable power of attorney means.”

  “But,” said Eliza, “you really wouldn’t—”

  “Yes,” I said. “I can and I would. Sarah has made her desires very clear to me, and it’s my job to carry them out. At this point, both the Isle of Dreams Development Corporation and the Marshall Lea Foundation have made serious offers. If Sarah is … impaired … it’s my job to consider their offers, complete the negotiations, and finalize the sale. I called you here to tell you that that’s what I intend to do.”

  “Just a goddamed minute,” said Nate. “You tryin’ to tell us that you’re gonna sell our property and we got nothing to say about it?”

  “It’s not your property. It’s your mother’s.”

  “But we’re her family,” he said. “You’re just a fucking lawyer.”

  “I’m not just any fucking lawyer,” I said. “I’m Sarah’s fucking lawyer. That makes all the difference.” I glanced at Eliza, who was peering intently at me through her sunglasses, and at Patrick, who had his arms folded and was studying his lap.

  “Look,” I said. “I’m very sad this has happened to Sarah, and believe me, I didn’t ask for this responsibility. But I’ve got it, and it’s my job to exercise it, and I just wanted to explain it to you.”

  “So you can sell all this”—Eliza waved her hand around—“without Mother’s approval, then?”

  “I can do whatever I believe she would approve of,” I said. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be doing my job. I intend to get it done as quickly as possible, because …”

  “Because she might die, you’re saying,” said Nate.

  “Yes.”

  Patrick cleared his throat. I nodded at him.

  “What happens if she—she does die?” he said.

  “Before we settle the prope
rty matter, you mean?”

  He nodded.

  I shrugged. “Sarah has a will.”

  “And we’re her heirs, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “The three of you, equally.”

  “How would you fit in, then?” he said.

  “If Sarah dies,” I said, “I’m the executor of her estate.”

  “Meaning … ?”

  “Meaning, I will see that her will is executed.”

  “And you can’t sell the property.”

  “No,” I said. “Not after she dies. Her will specifies that her estate be divided equally among you. Then whatever you agree to is what’ll happen.”

  “We’ve never agreed on anything yet,” said Patrick.

  I shrugged. “Well, maybe you should think about giving it another shot.”

  After Eliza and Patrick and Nate went their separate ways, I went into the house, called J.W., and told him what had happened.

  “I suppose you don’t want to go fishing tonight, then,” he said.

  “I don’t see why not,” I said. “There’s nothing I can do for Sarah.”

  “I’ve been thinking of begging off myself,” said J.W.

  “Why?”

  He told me how he’d spent the day talking with people about Molly Wood and looking for her car, and how he’d finally found it in a long-term parking lot in Vineyard Haven.

  “You found it?” I said.

  “Yup.”

  “Were the police looking for it?”

  “Yup.”

  “But they didn’t find it.”

  “Nope.”

  “You did.”

  “Yup.”

  “So what makes you so smart?”

  “Clean living, I guess.”

  “But no sign of Molly, huh?”

  “Nope. She might’ve hopped on the ferry. The cops’re checking on that. Zee’s pretty upset. She doesn’t think Molly would just go away without telling anybody. She’s convinced something’s happened to her.”

  “What about you?” I said. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know Molly any better than you do, but I guess I’m inclined to agree with Zee. She’s got good instincts.” He hesitated. “Something else, too.”