First Light

by Philip R. Craig

  I showed Fredrickson a toadeater’s face. “I should tell you,” I added, “that I don’t know the significance of the questions Jo-Jo has asked me to ask you, and that, frankly, they make no sense to me, although they may to you. Whatever your answers, however, I will transmit them to Jo-Jo. May I go on?”

  “Ask your questions,” said Fredrickson cautiously.

  “Thank you. The first is: Do you represent the interests of the Mallet Corporation?”

  Fredrickson and I both considered his options. If he didn’t represent Mallet, there seemed no reason not to say so. If he did, but denied it, there could be complications. Jo-Jo Jones, an apparently powerful supporter of the Isle of Dreams project, might be offended and withdraw his favor. Besides, Jo-Jo probably already had evidence of Mallet’s involvement, or he wouldn’t be asking for verification.

  “Yes,” said Fredrickson after a moment. “I work for Mallet, but I’m also a consultant for Isle of Dreams.”

  “Excellent. Jo-Jo has spoken favorably of the Mallet Corporation and the courses and clubs it has built. I’m sure he’ll be pleased when I convey your response to him.”

  Fredrickson beamed.

  I first smiled, then put a slightly confused look on my face. “I really don’t understand this one, Mr. Fredrickson, but have you recently lost a golf glove?”

  “What? A golf glove?”

  I shrugged and shook my head. “Yes, sir. That was Jo-Jo’s second question.”

  Fredrickson’s brow wrinkled. “No. As far as I know, I haven’t lost a golf glove.”

  “In that case, Jo-Jo wants to know if you know anyone who has.”

  “Why would anyone ask a question like that?”

  I shrugged. “Perhaps a golf glove has been found in some compromising location such as a married lady’s bedroom, and one of those people who oppose your project wants to embarrass Isle of Dreams by some revelation to the press. I’m only guessing, of course, but perhaps Jo-Jo or the governor is trying to preempt that sort of attack on the project.”

  “Ah, I see. Well, I have all my golf gloves. Tell that to Mr. Jones and anyone else who wants to know.” Then he frowned. “At least I had all of them on Saturday. That was the last time I played. I suppose I could have dropped a glove someplace. I could call Farm Neck and see if anyone has found it. Are you saying that someone found one?”

  I stayed behind my sycophant face. “I’m sure I don’t know, Mr. Fredrickson. I was only told to ask and to report your answer. I have only a few more questions. Again, I don’t know their significance. First, do you know a woman named Molly Wood?”

  He frowned. “I believe she’s a visiting nurse I’ve seen at the home of Mrs. Sarah Fairchild.”

  “Fine. Now, pardon me for seeming to intrude upon your private life, but have you ever socialized with her?”

  He grew wary. “I don’t think that’s anyone’s business but mine and hers.”

  “I daresay you’re right. I’ll convey that answer to Jo-Jo, along with your others. Please forgive me for asking these questions, but I’m only doing it at the governor’s—that is, Jo-Jo’s—request.” I stood. “Thank you for meeting with me, sir. I assure you that it has not been an unimportant conversation.”

  I put out my hand, but he didn’t take it. “Wait. Yes, I’ve gone out with Molly Wood. I had supper with her and we went dancing, but that was almost a month ago.”

  “You only dated her that one time?”

  “Yes. Actually, I asked her out again, but she was busy.” He looked at his watch. “I really have to get back.”

  “I assure you, you’ve been most helpful. Only two things more. Last summer here on the island, or at any other time or place, did you meet a woman named Katherine Bannerman?”

  He shook his head. “I wasn’t on the Vineyard last summer, and I don’t know any woman by that name.”

  “You’ve been more than generous with your time, sir,” I said. “Here’s my final question. Did Luis Martinez date Mrs. Wood?”

  Fredrickson seemed relieved to have attention turned to his partner. “Yes, I believe he did. It was just before I went out with her, in fact.”

  I thanked him profusely. Our hands finally met, squeezed, and parted, and we smiled and went our separate ways. I got into the Land Cruiser and drove home.

  The Mallet Corporation had a big interest in the Isle of Dreams proposal. But was it big enough to countenance kidnapping or worse?

  Kidnapping or worse. I was no longer thinking there was a simple, nonviolent explanation for the disappearance of Molly Wood, and I didn’t like it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Brady

  From the hospital I headed to Edgartown. I was remembering how Nate had accosted me and my intrepid band of Marshall Lea Foundation members with a shotgun, and how, when I told him I intended to speak to Sarah about the matter of bringing potential buyers onto the property, he’d sneered and said, “I doubt that.”

  Nathan’s response to his mother’s stroke was I doubt that.

  Now she was in the ICU, semicomatose, asking for him.

  Bastard.

  I still had a couple of hours before cocktails on the Jacksons’ balcony, so I followed J.W.’s directions and finally found Summer Street and, near the top of the hill, Edna Paul’s house. It was a pretty white clapboard bungalow surrounded by a chest-high stockade fence to separate its yard from its neighbors’. Most of the other dwellings on Summer Street were larger than Edna Paul’s, but hers was as trim and tidy as any of them.

  I parked on the side of the road in front, got out, and went through the gate. An oldish Volvo wagon was parked beside the house, and potted geraniums hung on the porch that spanned the front. The geraniums had grown a bit leggy but were still bravely producing some late blooms.

  I walked around the side of the house and peeked into the backyard, where a clothesline was stretched between a couple of beech trees. A skimpy two-piece bathing suit hung on it. It was neon pink.

  J.W. had told me that Edna Paul was a retired grammar-school teacher. I wondered if she wore pink bikinis.

  I returned to the front of the house, climbed the three steps onto the porch, and rang the bell.

  A moment later, the inside door opened, and an angular woman with steely hair and rimless glasses peered at me through the screen. Definitely not the bikini type. “What is it?” she said.

  “Mrs. Paul?”

  “It’s Miss Paul, young man.”

  I smiled. “My name is Brady Coyne. May I talk with you?”

  “About what?”

  “Your boarder. Molly Wood.”

  She pursed her lips, then pushed her glasses up on her nose as if to get a better look at me. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Coyne. Brady Coyne.” I took out my wallet and found one of my business cards. I held it up for her. “I’m a lawyer.”

  She pushed open the screen door, took the card, and let the door snap shut between us. She squinted at my card, then looked at me. “I know who you are,” she said. “My friends Millie and Roberta told me all about you. How you stood up to that awful Nathan Fairchild. You’re with the Marshall Lea Foundation.” She smiled and pushed open the door. “Please. Come in, come in.”

  I went in. “I’m not actually with the Marshall Lea Foundation,” I said. “I represent Sarah Fairchild.”

  “Yes,” she said, “that’s what I meant.” She took my arm and steered me into her living room. It smelled vaguely of Lysol. “You’re arranging the sale of the Fairchild property to the foundation. How wonderful! That is a beautiful property, and the Marshall Lea Foundation is my favorite cause. I’m delighted to meet you. What about some iced tea?”

  “That sounds lovely.”

  Edna Paul disappeared into the kitchen, leaving me standing in her living room. It was small and cramped with overstuffed furniture. One entire wall was covered with framed black-and-white photographs. They appeared to be class pictures. Each one depicted a couple dozen children lined up
in three rows with a woman standing in the middle of the back row, towering over the kids. The woman was Edna Paul. She had been an angular, no-nonsense young woman, and as the photos progressed through the years, she grew into an angular, no-nonsense school marm. She was smiling in none of the pictures.

  There were no other photographs—family or otherwise—in the room.

  She came back with two tall glasses of iced tea. “My children,” she said, jerking her chin at the wall of photos that I was looking at. “Forty-two years’ worth of children. Nowadays I walk down the streets of Edgar-town and I run into bald men with potbellies and gray-haired women with lined faces. They stop me and say, ‘Good morning, Miss Paul.’ I’d like to say I recognize all of them, but of course I don’t. I say, ‘My, how you’ve grown.’ And they always tell me I still look the same. I retired three years ago. I wish I hadn’t.” She stared at the photographs for a minute, then shrugged and handed me a glass. “Please sit down, Mr. Coyne.”

  I sat on a pillowy armchair with dark floral upholstery. Edna Paul took a wingback chair beside me.

  “Miss Paul—”

  “Why don’t you call me Edna?”

  I smiled. “Fine. Edna. I guess you know that your boarder Molly Wood seems to have disappeared.”

  “Well, that awful Mr. Jackson tried to ask me about her, and then a policeman came by asking questions. They didn’t get anything out of me, I’ll tell you. I’m not a gossip.”

  I smiled and took a sip of iced tea. “Umm, delicious,” I said. I put the glass on a cardboard coaster on the table beside me. “Gossip?” I said.

  She shook her head. “Oh, I could tell you stories, believe me. But as I always told my children, if you can’t say something nice about a person, don’t say anything at all.”

  “Is Mrs. Wood a good tenant?”

  Edna tightened her lips. “I would’ve expected a recent widow to live a quieter life, I don’t mind telling you. Oh, she is neat and polite and all, and I suppose she’s responsible at her job. She’s a visiting nurse, you know.”

  I nodded.

  “I figured, a widow lady, a nurse. Ideal tenant.” She shook her head. “I don’t brook any hanky-panky, Mr. Coyne. Not in this house.”

  “Does Mrs. Wood indulge in hanky-panky?”

  “Like I said, not in this house. She knows better.” Edna leaned toward me. “She attracts men, Mr. Coyne.”

  “She’s an attractive woman,” I said.

  She frowned.

  “Who are these men, do you know?”

  “Oh, I try to keep my nose out of where it doesn’t belong, don’t you know. And they never come into the house. That’s against my rules. Don’t even come to the door to call on her, the way a proper young man ought to. They pull up in front, toot their horn, and she flounces out of here in her little short skirts, all perfumey and … well, you catch my meaning. Sometimes, she goes off to meet them by herself in her own car. Imagine!” She clicked her tongue against her dentures.

  “Are they different men?”

  “Oh, my, yes. Many different men.”

  “But you’ve never met any of them.”

  She shook her head.

  “Could you describe any of them?”

  “Lord, no. I never pay any attention.”

  I wondered how she knew they were different men, then. But I let it pass. “What about their cars? Those who come to pick her up, have you noticed what kind of cars they drive?”

  “No. I wouldn’t know one car from another anyway.”

  “Has Molly ever talked about any of these men?”

  “Heavens, no. I’ve made it perfectly clear that I have no interest whatsoever in her, um, private life.”

  “Does she ever talk about anything that’s bothering her or worrying her? Does she strike you as nervous or fearful?”

  Edna removed her glasses, polished them on a handkerchief, then fitted them back on her ears. “We don’t have those sorts of conversations, Mr. Coyne. The truth is, we don’t have many conversations at all. She works all day and carouses all night, and it seems that she only comes home to change her clothes. She expresses no interest whatsoever in my affairs, and I assure you, I have no interest in hers.” She frowned. “Why are you so interested in Mrs. Wood? Are you one of her young men?”

  “Me?” I shook my head. “Oh no. Not me. Sarah Fairchild is my client, as you know. Molly Wood is her nurse. Sarah is quite fond of her, and she’s very upset that Molly no longer takes care of her. Sarah’s concerned about Molly, so …”

  “So you’re playing detective, eh?”

  “Detective?” I smiled. “Hardly. I’m just trying to get some answers for Sarah. This business with Molly is distracting her from some important matters she needs to think about. The sooner I can put Sarah’s mind to rest about Molly, the sooner we can take care of those other matters.” Matters such as the sale of the Fairchild property to the Marshall Lea Foundation, I was hoping to suggest.

  Edna Paul seemed to get my suggestion, because she sat back in her chair and nodded. “I do hope you get your answers, then. You don’t think something’s happened to Mrs. Wood, do you?”

  “I don’t know. What do you think?”

  “I surely don’t know, either. But I haven’t seen hide or hair of her for three days and three nights now.”

  “Has she ever done that before?”

  “What, not showed up for three days?”

  I nodded.

  “No. Never before.” She shrugged. “But it’s her life. I’m not her keeper.”

  “It’s odd,” I said slowly, “but I have a rather different impression of Molly. She seems like a very nice person. Not wild at all. Sad, actually. I think she misses her husband.”

  Edna Paul blinked a couple of times.

  “Is she really that wild?” I said.

  “I didn’t say she was wild.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess I misunderstood.”

  Edna looked past my shoulder to the wall of old photos. “I get lonely sometimes,” she said softly. “Sometimes I have unrealistic expectations.”

  “You hoped Molly would be your friend?”

  Her eyes came back to me. “A companion, perhaps. Mrs. Wood—Molly—she’s a good tenant and, yes, she is a nice person. I suppose she spends many more nights alone up in her room than she does going out.

  Sometimes I think I hear her crying up there. And I sit down here wishing she’d come down and talk to me about it. Share with me. And then when she goes out, I feel—I don’t know. Betrayed. Angry.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “I do hope she’s all right,” said Edna. “I truly do.”

  “Edna,” I said. “I wonder if I might take a peek at Molly’s room.”

  She looked at me and frowned. “That Mr. Jackson, he tried to talk me into letting him into her room, and I told him that he had no business in there whatsoever. Then a policeman came around asking a lot of questions. He wanted to look in her room, too. I asked him if he had a search warrant, and he did not but insisted he could get one. I let him go in and look around, but I told him in no uncertain terms that without a warrant he could take nothing away with him. I don’t think he liked that very much, but I know the law, Mr. Coyne. So I suppose I could let you in there. But I can’t let you take anything, you understand.”

  “I understand perfectly,” I said.

  She led me up a narrow flight of stairs. The second floor consisted of two small bedrooms separated by a bathroom. One of the bedrooms, Edna told me, she used for storage. She herself slept in the back bedroom on the first floor. The room that Molly was renting was small, square, and quite pleasant. A large window looked out on to the street where I had parked, giving her a good lookout for young men arriving in automobiles. A twin-sized bed was pushed against one wall, and a chest of drawers stood against the opposite one. There was a closet with a full-length mirror on the door. Another door opened into the adjacent bathroom.

  I went into t
he room. Edna remained in the doorway, vigilant lest I try to steal something.

  A bottle of perfume, a comb and brush, a plastic pin-on plaque that read AMELIA WOOD, RN, and a little jewelry box sat on top of the bureau. I resisted the temptation to look inside the jewelry box or to open the drawers and paw through Molly’s underwear. I figured Edna would peg me as a pervert.

  I did open the closet door. It was a small closet full of cheerfully colored blouses, skirts, jerseys, shorts, sweaters, dresses, and pants, along with a couple of white tennis outfits, all neatly aligned on hangers. A pair of matching suitcases sat on the shelf, and several pairs of shoes and sneakers and sandals, along with two tennis rackets, were on the floor. No golf clubs.

  I peeked into the bathroom. A toothbrush and tube of Pepsodent lay on the back of the sink, and a black cosmetics bag sat on the shelf under the mirror.

  I saw nothing that hinted at what might’ve happened to Molly.

  I wandered back into the bedroom. A tattered copy of Sense and Sensibility sat on the table beside the bed. Jane Austen. Sure. Women love Jane Austen. I guess plenty of men do, too, but I’m not one of them.

  I picked up the book and flipped it open. It had been inscribed: “For Molly, who has more sense and sensibility than any woman alive, with love from Ethan.” He had dated it “Christmas 1995.”

  Ethan, I guessed, was her dead husband, and I felt a pang of sadness at the image of Molly lying in this lonely little room on this island at night, separated by ocean and time and life itself from her husband, reading a book given to her by her beloved Ethan, the memories of Christmases past it must have sparked for her, the fact that Ethan had chosen this book for her, that he had known her intimately enough to know she’d cherish it, that he had written in it, and that he had died in a bed beside her.

  As I flipped idly through the book, it fell open to a folded piece of notepaper that might have been serving as her bookmark. I turned my back on Edna Paul, who remained in the doorway watching me, and pretended to gaze out the window as I unfolded the note.

  It read: “It is not, nor it cannot come to good. But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.”