First Light

by Philip R. Craig

  “Where’s Eliza?” I said.

  “I don’t know and I don’t care,” he said. “She never came home last night.”

  “Out on a date?”

  “Date?” He laughed sourly. “More like hunting. Or fishing. She sashayed out of here after dinner wearing a little dress that went from here to here.” He held one hand at mid-chest and the other at crotch level. “I know what she did. She went to the Fireside or someplace and hiked herself up onto a bar stool. You can figure out the rest.”

  I shrugged. “I could if I wasn’t so tired. What’s the news on Sarah?”

  Patrick held out his hands, palms up. “No change.”

  “Still unconscious?”

  “She’s not technically in a coma, according to the doctors. But mostly she seems to be sleeping. When she opens her eyes, she doesn’t recognize you. She whispers nonsense things sometimes. They don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  “I’ll visit her this afternoon,” I said. “After I get some sleep.” I patted his shoulder. “You go ahead, finish this room. I’ve got to make a phone call. Then I’m hitting the hay, and I’d appreciate it if you’d guard my sleep for me.”

  “No vacuuming,” he said.

  “And no visitors and no lawn mowers and no slamming car doors.”

  Patrick smiled. “You can count on me.”

  I turned to leave the room.

  “Brady?” said Patrick.

  “What?”

  “What’s happening with your negotiations?”

  “The property, you mean?”

  He nodded.

  “I intend to wind it up in the next few days. Your grandmother’s condition is pushing up my timetable.”

  “You’re really going to sell it, huh?”

  “It’s what she wants.”

  He nodded.

  I went out into the kitchen. I decided not to make myself more coffee. J.W. had given me a mug for the drive home, but I didn’t think it would keep me awake much longer. Another mug might.

  I found the portable phone, slouched into a wooden chair at the kitchen table, and dialed my office.

  Julie answered. “Brady L. Coyne, attorney,” she said.

  “Hey. It’s me.”

  “Brady,” she said. “Do you realize it’s Thursday already, and you’ve been gone almost a week, and you haven’t once checked in?”

  “Mea culpa, kid,” I said. “I figured, anything came up, you’d call me.”

  “Nothing has come up that I couldn’t handle,” she said. “That doesn’t mean—”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry. Has anything come up that, had I been a responsible and mature lawyer, actually present in my office, you would’ve let me handle?”

  She sighed. “No. It’s been quiet. It was a good week for you to disappear.”

  “I didn’t disappear. I am highly visible.”

  “Not to me you’re not. You’ll be back on Monday, I assume?”

  I cleared my throat. “That’s why I called.”

  “I might’ve known.”

  “Some things have happened down here,” I said. I told her about Sarah Fairchild’s stroke and about the disappearance of Molly Wood and about how those two events had conspired to complicate my original mission of arranging for the sale of the Fairchild property.

  “Not to mention, the fishing’s been good, huh?”

  “It’s been okay,” I said.

  “You’re supposed to meet with Attorney McPherson Monday afternoon,” Julie said.

  “What’s that? The Reynolds divorce?”

  “Right.”

  “Give Adele a call and reschedule for later in the week. I might be back Monday, but I might not. I think I’m going to need two or three more business days down here. I’ll plan to be in the office Wednesday. If anything changes, I’ll let you know.”

  “I’ve got one new appointment for you,” said Julie. “I’m going to write it in for Thursday morning at nine.”

  “With whom?”

  “Me.”

  “What about?”

  “My raise.”

  “Sweetheart,” I said, “give yourself whatever raise you think you deserve. If it’s not enough, I’ll change it when I get back.”

  “It couldn’t possibly be enough,” she said.

  “I know. I agree.” I yawned. “I’ve gotta go to bed. I’ll catch you later.”

  “Bed? Brady, it’s—”

  “The middle of the morning. I know. I was up all night. A lawyer’s work is never done.”

  I think I fell asleep halfway up the stairs. I didn’t remember dropping my clothes on the floor, but when I woke up, there they were, in a pile in the middle of the room.

  For a minute I had no idea what time it was or what day it was or, for that matter, where I was. I did have a vague recollection of who I was, however, which I took as a positive sign.

  Then I realized that somebody was knocking on my door.

  “Go away,” I grumbled.

  “Brady,” came Eliza’s voice, “I’m sorry, but somebody’s here to see you.”

  “I’m sleeping.”

  “It’s two-thirty in the afternoon. I’ve got coffee. I think you should wake up.”

  She pushed the door open and came in before I could either invite her or forbid her. She had a big mug of coffee. She put it on the table beside my bed.

  “I told Patrick I did not want to be disturbed,” I said. “I thought I was quite emphatic about it.”

  “So you did,” said Eliza. “And he was as emphatic to me about it as he could be, which isn’t all that emphatic, poor dear. However, there’s a state police officer downstairs, and we have already sent him away once this morning. He left reluctantly then, promising to return, and so he has, and this time he appears to be a man on a mission. I sat him down with some coffee and a newspaper and a promise that I’d fetch you. So why don’t you drink your coffee like a good boy and make yourself presentable.” She sat on the bed. Her butt pushed against my hip. The warmth of her radiated through the blanket. She bent over me and ran her palm along my cheek. “Presentable might include shaving.”

  “I should shave for a cop?”

  She smiled wickedly and planted a soft kiss on my mouth. “No, silly. For me.”

  I hitched myself up into a sitting position, plucked the coffee mug from the bedside table, and held it to my lips with both hands. Eliza, apparently, intended to supervise, because she continued sitting there smiling at me.

  “I think I can drink my coffee and get dressed on my own,” I said.

  She patted my knee through the blanket. “Oh, do let me help.”

  “Patrick said you were out all night.”

  “Patrick’s such a fuddy-duddy.”

  “So were you?”

  She smiled. “You’re a fuddy-duddy, too. What if I was?”

  I shrugged. “Have fun?”

  “I always have fun. It’s what I’m good at. It’s what I do. I have fun. I can imagine no higher purpose for a person’s life than having fun. It will be my epitaph. ‘Here lies Eliza. She had fun.’”

  “Hit the nightspots?”

  “The Vineyard can be quite exciting when the Summer People are around, but I like it even better during Derby time. I rather enjoy fishermen, and they keep such interesting hours.” She patted my cheek. “I like the boys who come in after catching a big fish. They tend to be generous and keyed up and smelly and altogether fascinating.” She stood up. “But enough about me. Sergeant Agganis is waiting for you. I’m afraid if you don’t get yourself downstairs, he’ll come barging up here.” Eliza blew me a kiss, turned, and walked out of the room, leaving a musky scent in her wake.

  I was downstairs ten minutes later. I hadn’t bothered to shave, and when I saw the officer sitting at the kitchen table talking with Eliza, I was glad I hadn’t. It didn’t appear that he’d shaved, either.

  I went to the electric coffeepot, refilled my mug, and sat across from him.


  He looked at me, nodded once, then turned to Eliza. “Thank you, Ms. Fairchild,” he said.

  “Am I dismissed?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  He watched her leave the room, then reached his hand across the table. “Dom Agganis,” he said. “State cops. We got a mutual friend.”

  I shook his meaty hand. “Horowitz?”

  He nodded. “Roger and I go back a ways. He tells me you and him’ve been involved in some stuff. He vouches for you.”

  “Boy,” I said, “that’s a relief.”

  “Yeah, it should be.” It was hard to tell whether Agganis had any sense of humor whatsoever. “We got a situation going down here, and your name came up, and it rang a bell, so I gave Roger a jingle. He said you were above suspicion, which is a pretty unusual thing for Roger to say about anybody, given the fact that he’d just as soon arrest his own wife. I told him that there were some folks down here who might’ve said you were under suspicion, and he said that was plain stupid. Jury’s out as far as I’m concerned, but still, I figure, give the guy the benefit of the doubt even if he is a lawyer.” He patted a manila envelope that I hadn’t noticed sitting on the table beside him. “So I understand you had a thing going with Amelia Wood.”

  “A police officer was around only yesterday, asking me about Molly,” I said. “I told her what I knew.”

  Agganis snorted. “Local cop. Tell me.”

  So I told him how I’d met Molly, that we’d made a date, and that she’d failed to show up.

  “And you been asking questions about her,” he said.

  I shrugged.

  “Her landlady, the place she worked,” he continued. “You been snooping. You and your buddy Jackson.”

  “We haven’t noticed that the police are making much progress,” I said.

  “Yeah, Roger said you could be a smart-ass. So what’ve you found out? You gonna solve this one for us?”

  “Doubt it,” I said. “Her black bag is missing. It might’ve had hypodermic syringes in it. That’s about all I know.”

  Agganis picked up the envelope, reached inside, and withdrew a sheaf of photographs. He slid one across the table.

  I looked at it. “Yes. That’s Molly.”

  He handed me another photo. It was a color eight-by-ten head-and-shoulders shot of a blonde woman, mid- to late thirties. She had blue eyes and a pretty smile. “Who’s this?” I said.

  He didn’t answer. Instead, one by one, he handed me the rest of the photographs. There were five in all, not counting Molly’s, and each of them was a head-and-shoulders shot of a pretty blonde woman. Their ages probably ranged from mid-thirties to mid-forties. By no means did they all look alike. But all were pretty and blonde and of an age.

  “Who are these people?” I said to Agganis.

  “You sure which one is Amelia Wood?”

  “Sure.” I picked up Molly’s photo. “This one.”

  “You could swear to it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Recognize any of the others?”

  I shrugged.

  “Look at ’em again,” he said.

  “Come on, Sergeant. What’s going on?”

  He sighed. “Look on the back of those photos.”

  One of them did look familiar. I picked it up and turned it over. In felt-tip pen someone had printed: “Katherine Elaine Bannerman, 9/22/97.” It was identical to the photo J.W. had shown me.

  “J.W.’s looking for this woman,” I told Agganis.

  He nodded. “What about the others?”

  The other photos also had a woman’s name and a date printed on the back. The earliest date was 1993. All were in September or early October. Each was a different year. One woman per year, with a couple of years missing.

  I looked up at Agganis. “What is this, a gallery of Miss Martha’s Vineyard finalists or something?”

  “They’re all missing,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Like Amelia Wood,” he said. “Off-islanders who disappeared without a trace. All those others, they’ve never turned up. They were all here on the island, and then they just … disappeared.”

  “And you followed up to see if—”

  “Right. They never showed up at home. They never returned to their jobs. They were all single women. Either divorced or never married, and in one case, a woman who was legally separated from her husband. Ms. Wood is a widow.” He arched his eyebrows at me.

  I nodded. “You think someone here on the Vineyard is grabbing single women from off-island who are in their thirties or forties. Blonde, attractive women.”

  “Right.”

  “Some kind of serial killer with a thing for pretty single blondes in their thirties or forties.”

  Agganis shrugged.

  “And you think Molly Wood …”

  “It fits,” he said. “We could crack this. She’s only been missing for a few days. This is the best jump we’ve gotten on one of these cases, thanks to you and Jackson. Mainly him, rattling all the cages in town, pissing people off, the way he does, me included. These other women, we weren’t aware they’d gone missing until weeks had passed.” He reached across the table and grabbed my wrist. Intensity burned in his eyes. “Some sick bastard is grabbing women on this island—on my island, Mr. Coyne—and he’s been doing it for a while, and I want him.”

  I nodded. “What can I do?”

  He let out a big sigh. “Wish I knew,” he said. “All I know is, Horowitz said you were pretty good at snooping and you knew how to cooperate with police officers. Jackson’s a pretty good snooper, too, and he knows everybody down here, though he’s not that good at cooperating. I guess all I wanted to say to you was, go ahead, snoop your asses off, both of you. You come up with any bright ideas—even a dim idea would be okay—you share them with me.” He cocked his head. “Got any?”

  “Any what?”

  “Ideas.”

  I held up my hands, palms up. “Nothing you don’t know. Like I told you, I just met Molly the night before she disappeared.”

  He fished out a business card and put it on the table. “Just call,” he said. “Anytime.”

  I took the card. It had his home and office and cellular phone numbers on it. “Okay,” I said.

  He pushed himself away from the table and stood up. He gathered up the photos and slid them back into the envelope, which he then tucked into his armpit.

  I started to get up, but he waved me down. “Relax,” he said. “I know how to get out of here.”

  It wasn’t until I’d heard his car pull out of the driveway that I remembered the note I’d found in Molly’s book. It’s what happens after a measly four hours of sleep and only one mug of coffee. So I tried Agganis’s cell phone, and when he answered, I told him about the note.

  “Shakespeare, huh?” he said. “Whaddya make of it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but if you guys haven’t gotten a warrant to search her room, maybe you ought to. If an amateur like me can find something as interesting as that note, who knows what a bunch of experienced law enforcement professionals might turn up.”

  “Yeah, interesting,” he mumbled. “Fact is, we got the warrant this morning, and I’m on my way over there as we speak. Not gonna be fun. That Edna Paul is a pisser and a half.”

  “Oh,” I said. “So I didn’t help.”

  “Good try, though,” he said.

  Then I called the hospital and asked to be connected to the ICU, where a garrulous nurse—perhaps the large one I’d met there—filled me in on Sarah’s condition.

  Given the natural tendency for medical people to be upbeat and positive, I hung up gravely worried. Sarah had shown no signs of improvement. The doctors considered her stroke a serious one, and her chances of recovery, given the already ravaged condition of her body and the low level of her resistance after months of chemotherapy, appeared to be slim.

  The nurse didn’t say it, but it sounded like a death-watch, and there wasn’t much anybody co
uld do about it, least of all me.

  All I could do was try to carry out her wish, which was to sell her estate to somebody suitable before it fell into the hands of her heirs—who, she believed, were distinctly unsuitable.

  So I made two phone calls, one to Lawrence McKenney, the lawyer for the Isle of Dreams Corporation, and the other to Gregory Pinto, the banker who was in charge of the Marshall Lea Foundation. Each had secretaries who were protective of their time. Each connected me instantly when I told them who I was and what I wanted.

  I told each of them the same thing: Time was of the essence, negotiations had ended, and I wanted their responses to the conditions I’d specified, their final best offer, plus a good-faith check in my hands by Sunday noon. I would then exercise my power of attorney on Sarah Fairchild’s behalf to accept the most attractive offer or to reject them both. If I rejected them, all bets were off. They would have no opportunity to resubmit until or unless Sarah either recovered or died. If she died, they’d have to deal with Eliza, Nate, and Patrick. I didn’t need to spell that scenario out to either of them. They’d each done their homework.

  Chapter Nineteen

  J.W.

  On the way home for lunch, I stopped at the state police barracks on Temahigan Avenue. The building had been painted bright blue in days gone by but was now cedar-shingled in the best Vineyard tradition. Dom Agganis wasn’t there, but Officer Olive Otero was.

  Olive gave me a sour look. “Well?”

  I showed her a toothy smile. “A message for Dom. Tell him I talked with a woman who works at the Tin Roof who knows Shrink Williams and says that he has a habit of following his ex-dates around after they stop going out with him. Tell him the woman thinks she saw Molly Wood with a guy while Shrink was snooping around within the past two days. Tell him I said to ask Phil Fredrickson exactly when he dated Molly Wood, and to ask Fredrickson and Luis Martinez if they’ve seen her with a man in the past week or so. Maybe he can get a description of the man or a name. You get all of that, Olive, or should I say it over again, only slower this time?”

  Her lip curled as it usually does when she speaks to me. “I don’t think Sergeant Agganis gets paid to do what you think he should be doing, Jackson.”