Dark Light df-13

by Randy Wayne White

  It had been bothering me on a subconscious level for a while. I now understood why.

  Five hours earlier, when Augie and Oswald had been set adrift, they had been precisely where Dark Light had spent her last minutes afloat. By the time we’d found the two men, half an hour later, they had drifted more than a mile away from Sanibel Island, not toward it. If allowed to drift all night, I’d calculated they would’ve come ashore near Naples—forty miles to the south—or, more likely, they would have been swept out to sea, into the Gulf Stream.

  Currents in the Gulf of Mexico are complex but tend to flow either northward or southward, interrupted by circular eddies that rotate like slow, underwater tornadoes.

  Even driven by dissimilar weather conditions, the body of a dead woman would not have drifted directly east. She would not have come ashore near Sanibel Lighthouse.

  If Marlissa Dorn’s body had washed up on the beach on the morning of 20 October 1944, she’d either gone overboard when the thirty-eight-foot Matthews was only a mile or two off Sanibel—long before it sank—or she’d entered the water from land.

  That presented a very different, and darker, scenario.

  If Marlissa had fallen overboard, would her lover have continued his westward course?

  No. Not if he wanted her to live.

  Do rational people walk the beach, or swim, during a hurricane and risk being swept away?

  No. Not if they value their lives.

  Conclusion: Marlissa Dorn had either been murdered, or she’d died of misadventure that may have been storm-borne and accidental, or may have been invited by her own recklessness—a form of suicide.

  I pictured Chestra energized by storm wind, indifferent to lightning strikes.

  The music was still playing.

  I turned toward the house and followed the path of silver sand.

  C hestra was singing lyrics unfamiliar to me; lyrics that she’d written.

  …the sun is on the sea

  In my mind, waves wash over me

  We’ll never know

  All that we possess

  ’Til the end of time

  We can only guess

  I stood near the piano, listening, the photograph of Marlissa Dorn on the table nearby. Chestra had yet to reply to the first of my pointed questions, but I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt. She had a remarkable alto voice. Her interpretation was soulful, smoky, but understated; her lyrics, articulate. Tomlinson had described her music accurately: The effect was more than auditory, it was chemical.

  Once again, I wondered: How could someone with her talent have slipped through life unknown?

  Down a haunted highway

  Wind in my hair

  And the night is laced

  With moonlight everywhere

  Then I heard you whisper

  Right in my ear

  You have come this far

  You can go from here

  She tried to keep the last chord alive, her foot on the sustain pedal.

  “Do you mind, Doc, if I play just one more? Music—I get carried away. It’s my favorite mode of travel.”

  I said, “For now, let’s stay where we are, okay? I’d like to talk.” As she sighed, registering disappointment, I added, “Later, I’d enjoy hearing you play. It’s still early”—I checked my watch—“not even nine-thirty. I thought you’d want to talk. That you’d be more excited we found your wreck.”

  “I’m thrilled. It seems too good to be true. I guess I’m still in shock.”

  She didn’t act thrilled when I told her. She looked troubled. Something had changed in the last twenty-four hours, that was my impression. Something else: She became flustered when I said I’d heard a rumor about the Dorn family and a German POW.

  “All families have their skeletons.” She’d laughed, making light of it. But she escaped immediately to the piano after adding, “Guilt. It’s the gift that never stops giving. Some legacy, huh, kiddo?”

  When I said, “Then it’s true?”, she began to play, her furtive shrug saying: It’s a long story.

  Obviously, she hadn’t told me everything.

  She’d played a medley of her own work—impressive. But I was determined to get answers. “Chessie, tell me what you know about the night the boat went down. Everything.” I held Marlissa’s photograph up as if it might freshen her memory. “It was so long ago, no one cares anymore. What do you think we’ll find on that wreck? You’re investing thousands of dollars. Why? There’s no need to edit your story.”

  Her fingers were long, and as elegant as her legs. They moved with a surgical certainty on the piano keys, independent of her body. As if reading my mind, she said, “I don’t tell stories, my hands do. Fairy tales. Tragedies. I’m always a little surprised by their confidence.” She lifted her eyes to mine without moving her head. “Does that seem strange?”

  “I don’t know. My hands aren’t skilled.”

  “I’m astonished. Maybe you haven’t found the right instrument yet. The truth”—chords she played transitioned to the melody I thought I knew but couldn’t name—“you say that word like it’s something final. Truth. It’s the same when you ask questions. You’re…so definite. So straightforward.”

  I replied, “The truth often is.”

  “I’m not so certain. I don’t have anything against people who say they’re searching for the truth. It’s the ones who claim they’ve found it, I don’t trust. There are people who go around trying to neaten up a disorderly world. Are you one of those men?”

  “No. I’m one of those men who bumbles less when I know the facts.”

  She dipped her head toward the piano’s music stand, where there was no sheet music. “Just the facts, ma’am. Okay. Musical notes are facts—professional piano tuners adjust each note mathematically, did you know that? You don’t believe facts lie?” She smiled. “Then we haven’t been riding in the same elevators. And you’ve never heard karaoke.”

  It was impossible not to like the woman. It was also impossible to pressure her.

  I said, “The title of the song you’re playing. I’ve asked before, what’s the name—” But she interrupted my question with a lyrical flurry, an introduction. As she sang, I listened attentively, expecting the lyrics to jog my memory.

  They didn’t.

  Morning is breaking in New York

  Silver horns and a golden sky

  I see you, I need you

  Don’t you ever say good-bye

  You’re so tender and you’re mine

  So I’ll draw the dusty blind

  You are mercy

  And holy to me…

  Roof by roof

  Through corridor and street

  Room by room

  The chain of memory

  Make another face

  Another joke

  Another scheme

  ’Til we are gone forever

  And free…

  When she’d finished, I didn’t speak for many seconds. “That’s lovely.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You wrote it?” I was contemplating the lines: “You are mercy/And holy to me.” Pained but adoring. At one time in her life, Chestra had been in love with an extraordinary man.

  She surprised me, replying, “Yes. I wrote that many, many years ago. It’s about my first love—Manhattan.” Her fingers found the keys again, softly. “I enjoy the anonymity of crowds, the sanctuary of strangers. Like a lot of people, I cling to the silly notion I’m having a love affair with that great big wonderful city because I wake up with it most mornings. One of us is a harlot, and that’s all I’m going to tell you.” Laughter.

  “The song was never recorded?”

  “No. I write for myself. And a few others.”

  “I was sure I’d heard it. That I knew the title but couldn’t remember.” I didn’t add that it was more mystifying because the melody didn’t resemble any well-known song.

  “My uncle Clarence Brusthoff—he was the grandson of Victor Dorn, who bui
lt this house—my uncle Clarence liked to quote Thomas Edison about strange things like that. Knowing a person you’ve never met before. Recognizing a tune you’ve never heard.”

  I looked at the wall of photographs as she continued. “Edison and Henry Ford were both closet mystics. They believed the air was full of microscopic bits of knowledge. ‘Entities,’ they called them. Or ‘little people,’ left over from previous lives; other worlds.

  “‘Ideas are in the air,’ Mr. Edison told one of my uncles. Everything already exists; every idea, every event. It’s all available to us if we’re persistent, and allow it to happen. My uncle had asked Mr. Edison how he happened to invent both the phonograph and moving pictures. No human being had even contemplated such marvels.”

  It was a conversation that Tomlinson would enjoy.

  I tried to get her back on the subject. “I don’t know much about the entertainment business, but someone had to offer you contracts. Anyone who’s ever heard you perform has to wonder why your name, your music, aren’t well known.”

  She laughed again, swaying as her fingers pulled her along the keyboard. “I had a few offers, sure. Records, films. I wasn’t a bad-looking gal, and I used my looks like a proper New York woman—which means I never exposed my breasts unintentionally. Recording my music, though, would have been like walking down Broadway naked. Same with Hollywood. No thanks.” She laughed again. “Especially at this stage of life.”

  “Marlissa Dorn would’ve envied you.” My eyes were moving from Dorn’s photograph to Chestra’s face, gauging the size of the earlobes, the nose, the full and swollen lips. “You turned them down. Marlissa never got her chance to accept.”

  The woman was thoughtful for a moment. Her music slowed, then stopped. She stood, closed the keyboard lid, and came around the piano, her hand out. She’d made a highball for me, a chartreuse and soda for herself. I put the drink in her hand.

  “You’re right, Doc.”

  “About Marlissa envying you?”

  “No. About me leveling. There are parts of the story you don’t know. It’s time I came clean.”

  34

  “There are no photos of me on the wall because our families closed this house shortly after the war. Marlissa was involved in a scandal that caused quite a stink at the time. Made it awkward for them to remain in the area, so they boarded up the place, and seldom returned. Never again for a vacation.

  “I have a few memories—the sound of waves, the weight of the air. That’s all. I was a toddler, not old enough to make Southwind’s photo museum.”

  I said, “They closed the house because of the scandal? Or because of your godmother’s death?”

  It seemed odd she didn’t automatically mention the latter.

  “Both,” Chestra said, “of course. It was painful. The family was deeply upset by her death and the incident I’m talking about. That’s why I didn’t come straight out and tell you. My uncle Clarence is the only one still alive who’s old enough to remember, but it’s something even we don’t discuss.”

  Chestra was wearing a black cardigan jacket tonight, pleated pants, and a white blouse with an antique emerald necklace. The bracelet was sterling silver; her watch gold, very thin. She’d closed the balcony doors—too windy—and we were sitting in the candle-dim dining room. On the table, she’d placed a Federal Express envelope and a leather-bound book, its gilded pages darkened with age.

  The FedEx envelope, I noticed, was from a Wisconsin law firm. An attorney named Jason Goddard.

  The book was Marlissa Dorn’s diary.

  I was eager to get a look inside the diary but let Chestra move at her own speed.

  I was right, she said. The incident involved at least one German, maybe two. “I wasn’t aware they were POWs,” she said, “but that solves at least part of the mystery, if it’s true.”

  A local man was also a tragic victim of events, she added.

  She wasn’t aware that Arlis had already told me the man’s name: Peter Jefferson.

  “There’s something else I left out of the story,” she said. “I didn’t think you needed all the details until we were certain that you’d found the boat’s wreckage.” She took a few moments to wipe the condensation from the outside of her glass, staring into my eyes. She took a sip. “You are sure?”

  I told her for the second time: “We found a wooden nameplate, one of the letters broken off—ARK LIGHT, it says. That and some bottles from the same era.” I hadn’t mentioned the flask-sized metallic object that Jeth had found but did now. The woman wanted to be convinced before entrusting me with family secrets. “The cigarette case that Marlissa’s holding in the photograph, the one you told me you’d like to have? It’s the right size. It could be silver, judging from the black patina. But don’t get your hopes up.”

  She did. Her expression was intense for a moment, then became more guarded.

  What was so special about a cigarette case?

  I waited.

  Chestra said, “What I haven’t told you is, there may have been more than two people aboard Dark Light, the night she went down. There was Marlissa, Frederick, plus one or both of the Germans. My family never knew. No one did. Only someone who’s read Marlissa’s diary would suspect.”

  Chestra slid the book in front of me, the expression on her face expectant. I’d asked for the diary, now here it was.

  “May I read it?”

  The woman said, “You’re welcome to try.”

  I opened the book. Leafed through the first few pages before opening to the middle, then skimming pages toward the back.

  It was in German.

  “She wrote wonderfully in English, but German added another layer of privacy. Beautiful women learn how to hide their secrets very early in life.”

  “You sound experienced. And cynical.”

  “I was never in her league. But I’ve walked into rooms of men where I felt like I was the bull’s-eye behind every lie. An example of how men and women are different? My first husband worried that I’d embarrass him in public, or laugh at him. I worried that he’d hire someone to murder me. The dark side of beauty isn’t balanced by the bright—people don’t realize.”

  I was still leafing through the diary. The first entry was January 1939—her new life in America. The last entry was dated 19 October 1944—the last day of her life.

  “Tomlinson speaks some German. And there’s a retired German psychiatrist at the marina, Dieter Rasmussen.” I remembered what JoAnn said about women who avoid a man’s friends. “I can come back in my truck, if you’d like to say hello. You can visit my lab and see the nameplate, and the other stuff we found.”

  “And bring Marlissa’s diary? No. I’ll share it with you but no one else. It’s my godmother’s private life, Doc. Even though the woman is dead.”

  She reached. I handed her the book.

  “I’ll tell you the story as I know it. If you have questions, I can translate passages as I read.”

  O n a night in late September 1944, Marlissa Dorn was walking near Sanibel Lighthouse when she realized she was being followed by two men. She began to walk faster, returning to Southwind, but stopped when one of the men hailed her by name.

  Chestra had the diary open and began to read, sometimes haltingly as she translated Marlissa’s own words. “I nearly fainted when I realized the man was H.G., whom I last saw more than six years ago. I met him at a dinner party hosted by [blank] at the [blank] several months prior to my ocean voyage.

  “H. was infatuated with me. He pestered for weeks before I agreed to a social outing. It was to a film; a private viewing for a group of high-ranking officials, all much older than we. Later, he tried to touch my breasts. When I refused, he ripped my blouse. I think he would have raped me if I hadn’t scratched his face and screamed.

  “It was terrifying to see H. He’s disgusting, and scares me. I hate it that he’s in America and knows where I live.”

  Chestra lifted her eyes from the diary. She’d become emotional a
s she read, but now calmed herself by explaining, “I’m reading the code words as blanks. They would only confuse you. Marlissa has been my hobby for years, but there’re still abbreviations and codes I don’t know.”

  Marlissa met H.G. at a restaurant in Berlin, Chestra said. Her “ocean voyage” was code for sailing on the Normandie.

  “She never identifies the second man, other than to say he was also German. They told her they’d escape the Reich, and needed food and a place to stay for a few nights while they waited on a boat to pick them up. They were on their way to South America to join other Germans who had turned against Hitler and were forming a government in exile. They said they were afraid U.S. authorities would mistake them for spies, so that’s why they were in hiding.”

  “Your godmother believed that?”

  “I doubt it. I wouldn’t have believed it. The story would’ve made sense, though, if the men were escaped POWs. They had to explain themselves somehow.”

  Chestra said that Marlissa was staying at Southwind alone at the time, except for occasional visits from Frederick. She gave the Germans food and supplies but refused to hide them in the house.

  I said, “If they were POWs, how did they find out where your godmother lived? Six years without contact, in a different country, they meet coincidentally? Even if that’s what happened, why would she help a man who tried to rape her?”

  I was getting that feeling again—Chestra wasn’t telling me everything.

  I added, “They were waiting on a boat that was going to take them to South America? If what the diary says is true, the night of the storm, they didn’t go offshore looking for a submarine. They went to meet a submarine. The Germans had to have leverage to get that kind of cooperation from Marlissa and her boyfriend.”

  I was thinking: If Frederick was a Nazi spy, maybe they’d threatened to expose him. I was aware that, during WW II, every foreign spy caught on U.S. soil had faced a firing squad. The sentencing process was not lengthy.