First Light (18 page)

I ran this by the Chief. When I was through, he tipped his head to one side and raised a brow.

“It's worth a phone call, anyway,” I said. “Did your men find anything in Molly's room?”

“You mean like a note saying, ‘Help, help, I'm being kidnapped by a golfer'? No, sad to say, they didn't. No address book with a list of suspects, no theater tickets for
La Bohème,
nothing useful. Go home, J.W.”

I drove up to Oak Bluffs. First I went to the hospital and found Zee's Jeep. No slashed tires. No suspicious-looking goons hanging around. I was disappointed, and drove back to Circuit Avenue. The Isle of Dreams people had an office over a souvenir shop. A great many second-floor rooms on Circuit Avenue were over souvenir shops, because a great many first-floor rooms on Circuit Avenue are souvenir shops.

I went up the stairs and into the waiting room. A dark-haired man with a black mustache was seated at a desk in front of a computer. He looked up at me and placed a PR smile on his face. “Yes, sir. What may I do
for you?” His voice was smooth and his accent was Southern.

“I'm looking for Luis Martinez or Philip Fredrickson.”

“I'm Luis Martinez. How can I help you, Mr.—?”

“Jackson. J. W. Jackson. I need to talk with Fredrickson, too. Where can I find him?”

“I'm afraid he's not available right now. He's having a business lunch with colleagues at the Harborview. He should be back by four. Can I help you?”

“Perhaps you can. Do you play golf, Mr. Martinez?”

He chuckled. “Sure I play golf. How about you?”

“No, but I have an interest in Isle of Dreams.”

He kept his smile, because even though my clothes might not be what the typical Isle of Dreams customer would wear, nowadays you couldn't be sure that a guy who looked like a tenant farmer wasn't the owner of a computer company. “And what might that interest be, sir?”

“Are you affiliated with the Mallet Corporation?” I said.

He became cautious. “I represent Isle of Dreams.”

“All right. I can find out, but I thought I might save a phone call by asking you. Another question, then. Have you lost a golf glove recently?”

“Lost a glove? What do you mean, sir?”

“Did you?”

His smile went away. “Who are you? These are curious questions, and I see no reason to answer them.”

“If you don't answer them now, you may have to do it later in a police station. Do you know a woman named Molly Wood?”

He stood up behind the desk. “I don't like your tone, Mr. Jackson. I think you'd better leave.”

“Do you know Molly Wood?”

He put his hand on his telephone. His dark eyes were angry. “Get out of here, sir.”

He was lifting the phone to his ear when I walked out. I went down to the truck and drove to the Harborview, feeling annoyed. I had let my anger about the slashed tire run over into my interview with Martinez. Not smart.

I
got back to the Fairchild house after my first-light fishing adventure with J.W. around nine on Wednesday morning and headed straight to bed, and despite all the coffee I'd consumed and the adrenaline that had pumped through my veins and the muscle memory in my shoulders of those tough bluefish pulling on my line and the magic of seeing a new day break over the horizon, I sank instantly into a profound, dreamless sleep.

The next thing I knew, something was prodding and poking at my shoulder. I opened my eyes. It was Eliza.

“Go away,” I said. “I just got to sleep.”

“There's somebody here to see you,” she said.

“Later.”

“It's a police officer.”

“What time is it?”

“Ten after eleven. I brought you coffee.”

“Tell him I'll be down after my coffee,” I said. “You entertain him.”

“It's a she,” she said. “You better get up.”

So I got up, got dressed, and took my coffee downstairs.

The officer was sitting on the sofa in the living room. She was wearing her uniform, complete with revolver and radio and nightstick and badge. She had black hair, hot-fudge eyes, olive skin, no makeup. When I entered the room, she stood up and held out her hand. She looked muscular and fit. She couldn't have been more than a couple of inches over five feet tall.

“Sergeant Santonelli,” she said. “West Tisbury Police.”

I shook her hand. “Brady Coyne. Boston lawyer.”

She nodded. “I know. Sorry to get you out of bed at such an uncivilized hour.”

I smiled. “I went fishing at three-thirty, got back at nine.”

“The Derby?”

I nodded.

“How'd you do?”

“Last I looked, I was at the top of today's board, fly-rod, shore-caught bluefish.”

Sergeant Santonelli shrugged, apparently unimpressed with my angling prowess. Probably not an angler herself. She gestured at a chair. “Let's sit.”

I sat. I was holding my coffee mug in both hands. I took a sip. “Want some coffee?” I said.

She shook her head and fished a notebook from her hip pocket and a ballpoint pen from her shirt. Then she handed me a photograph. It was a head-and-shoulders shot of Molly Wood. She was wearing
a nurse's uniform. The photo appeared to be several years old. Molly's hair was longer.

“Do you recognize this person?” asked Sergeant Santonelli.

“Sure,” I said. I gave the photo back to her. “You know I do.”

She smiled. “And you know she appears to be missing.”

I nodded.

“You had a date with her Monday night and she didn't show up, right?”

“That's right.”

“You met her Sunday?”

“I first met her here,” I said. “She came in to take care of Mrs. Fairchild. She's a visiting nurse. Then I met her again. Mutual friends, um, fixed us up.”

“The Jacksons.”

“Yes. Zee. Mrs. Jackson.”

“Odd coincidence, isn't it?” she said. “Meeting her here and then having a blind date with her that evening?”

I shrugged. “I guess so.”

“And the last time you saw her?”

“Sunday night. Eight o'clock, maybe.”

“At the Jacksons.”

“Yes.”

“And what did you do after that?”

“Me? J.W. and I went fishing.”

“Till when?”

I shrugged. “Midnight. A little after that, probably.”

“Then what?”

“Then I came home and went to bed.”

“Alone?”

I grinned at her. “Unfortunately.”

“I mean,” she said, “did anybody see you come home and go to bed on Sunday night, or early Monday morning?”

“Not that I know of.”

“And when did you arise the next morning?”

“Arise?” I smiled. “I never arise, Sergeant. I stagger and stumble until I've had my coffee. Eliza got me up the next morning. Around eight, as I recall.”

“So between the time Mr. Jackson dropped you off here—a little after midnight—and the next morning around eight o'clock, when Elizabeth Fairchild awakened you, you cannot account for your whereabouts. Is that right?”

“I can definitely account for my whereabouts,” I said. “I was in bed.” I leaned toward Sergeant Santonelli. “Look,” I said, “I didn't kill Molly Wood.”

“Who said anything about killing her?”

“I did. It's what we're all worried about.”

“Who'd want to kill her?”

“Jesus,” I muttered. “That's the question, isn't it? If I knew the answer to that question, I'd tell you, believe me. I really don't know much about her beyond the fact that I met her and found her charming and pretty and was looking forward to seeing her again.”

“But you didn't.”

“See her again?” I shook my head. “No.”

“Well, Mr. Coyne,” she said, “thank you for your
time, and I'm sorry to interrupt your sleep.” She snapped shut the notebook she'd been scribbling in and stood up.

“No problem,” I said. I stood up, too. “I'm glad the police are on top of it.”

“We're circulating her picture, talking with everybody. All her patients, their families, people at the VNS office. The state police are in charge, but all local police forces on the island are cooperating.”

“Any suspects yet?”

Sergeant Santonelli cocked her head at me for an instant before she smiled and shrugged. “I really couldn't tell you.”

After Sergeant Santonelli left, I went back to bed. I tossed and turned for a while before I gave up. I figured I'd just have to be tired and grouchy for the rest of the day, and anybody who encountered me would have no choice but to tread softly.

It was sometime in the middle of the afternoon. I'd just finished my late lunch—a bowl of Cheerios with sliced banana, brown sugar, and no milk—and was sipping coffee and smoking a cigarette out on the patio when Eliza came out. She handed me a cordless telephone. “It's J. W. Jackson,” she said.

I took the phone. Eliza sat in the chair across from me.

“J.W.?” I said.

“Yeah, it's me,” he said.

“Hang on a minute.” I put the phone on the table and looked at Eliza. She was wearing sunglasses and a little white tennis outfit. “Do you mind?” I said to her.

“What?” she said. “You're making secret fishing plans, don't want me to hear? Afraid I'll leak your secrets to Nate?”

“Exactly,” I said.

She shrugged, stood up, came around the table, and gave my shoulder a squeeze on the way by. “Old poop,” she muttered.

I watched until she went into the house. From behind, she could've passed for a teenager in her little short tennis skirt.

I picked up the phone. “Sorry,” I said. “What's up?”

“How's Sarah doing?”

“No change.”

“If she could talk,” he said, “it'd be interesting to know if Molly said anything to her.”

“I thought of that.”

“Of course you did.” He hesitated. “I talked to the cops this morning. It's not encouraging.”

“How so?”

“Well, Molly hasn't turned up, either on the island or back home in Scituate. No one at the Vineyard Haven ferry recalls seeing her. Aside from that golf glove, they didn't find a damn thing in her car. They went over to Edna Paul's and didn't come up with anything there, either.”

“Like she just walked into the sea,” I said.

“Yeah, that happens.”

“So now what?”

“You said you'd talk to Edna Paul.”

“I didn't say that.”

“Sure you did.”

“Me and my boyish charm.”

“Yes. Your charm plus your power to steer two-hundred prime Vineyard acres to the Marshall Lea Foundation. She'll eat out of your hand, you play it right.”

“What about you?” I said.

“Oh, I've got some ideas.”

A half hour later I was sitting on a folding chair beside Sarah Fairchild's bed in the Intensive Care Unit at the Martha's Vineyard Hospital. I was holding her hand and telling her how pretty the ocean had looked at first light and how J.W. and I had gotten into a school of blitzing bluefish.

The ICU nurse had told me it would be good to talk to her, but not to say anything upsetting. She wasn't comatose, exactly, the nurse had explained. More like a very deep sleep. They couldn't yet determine what—if anything—Sarah could understand. But she did respond to sounds. She could hear me, and it would probably be comforting for her to hear a familiar voice.

So I told her about how the sky changed color at first light, and how the birds screamed and dived over the school of bluefish, and how J.W. and I had caught a few of them, and how while we were watching, the sun had suddenly cracked the horizon and filled the world with light, and what a pretty early-autumn day we were having here on the Vineyard … and it might've been my imagination, but I thought I felt her grip tighten slightly on my hand as I talked to her.

After my allotted five minutes, I told her I had to leave, but I'd be back. I stood up, and as I bent over
the railing on her bed to kiss her cheek, I saw her lips move. I put my ear close to her mouth.

“Nathan?” she whispered.

“It's Brady, Sarah.”

“Nathan,” she repeated.

“Nathan loves you,” I said.

I kissed her, gave her hand a final squeeze, turned, and left her cubicle.

Nathan. Her only son. Sarah had always had a prickly relationship with him, and for good reason. He'd given her nothing but trouble throughout his life. He'd been kicked out of several schools. He'd been arrested several times for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct, which the Vineyard newspapers never failed to report with apparent glee. He'd held a few jobs, but had quit or been fired from them all. From what I'd been able to observe, Nathan's only interest in his mother was as a source of handouts to supplement his trust fund.

And there lay Sarah in her ICU bed, asking for her son.

I stopped by the nurses' station. “I was wondering who's visited Mrs. Fairchild since she's been here,” I said.

The nurse looked to be in her mid-thirties. She was immensely overweight. Her forearms were thicker than my thighs. “Well, you, of course,” she said, “and her daughter, and the other young man.”

“Patrick?” I said.

“The grandson, yes. He's been in several times.”

“What about her son?”

She shrugged. “No. Just you three.”

As I walked out of the hospital into the parking lot, I remembered how J.W. had told Nathan that I was an expert in unarmed combat. I wished it were true. Because right then I wanted to beat the shit out of the ungrateful, inconsiderate, self-centered son of a bitch.

T
he Harborview Hotel in Edgartown is one of those huge old wooden hotels that a hundred years ago you could find in every resort community on the East Coast. You see photos of them in books about turn-of-the-century spas and vacation spots where the wealthy and the upper middle class fled the heat of the summer or sought the winter warmth of huge fireplaces and hot buttered rum. By the mid-twentieth century, most of them had burned down or fallen down, but a few remain. One is the Harborview. It's been restored and expanded, and it offers the Vineyard's best view of Edgartown's lighthouse and outer harbor. It also offers fine food and drink and many dining areas where groups can meet in private. Phil Fredrickson was in one of those rooms.