First Light

by Philip R. Craig

  The words had been printed in masculine block letters with a black felt-tip pen. The note was undated and unsigned. Not even an initial.

  “Break, my heart.” A jilted lover?

  “I must hold my tongue.” A jilted secret lover?

  “It cannot come to good.” A jilted, secret, unsuitable lover?

  The words seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place them. A quote from somewhere.

  I thought of slipping the note into my pocket and turning it over to the Edgartown Police. But it occurred to me that this note could turn out to be evidence, and if it did, my filching it could render it inadmissible in court.

  So I memorized the words, slipped it back between the pages of Molly’s book, and returned the book to the table.

  I turned and smiled at Edna. “It’s a nice room.”

  She nodded. “Thank you.”

  I spread my hands out. “I didn’t take anything.”

  “I didn’t think you would.”

  I followed her back down the stairs, thanked her for the iced tea, and started for the front door. Then I stopped and said, “Oh, by the way, I noticed a bathing suit on your clothesline. Is that Molly’s?”

  She pressed her lips together and frowned for an instant. Then, surprisingly, she smiled. “It certainly isn’t mine.”

  I sat in the front seat of Sarah’s Range Rover for a few minutes, smoking a cigarette and gazing up at Molly Wood’s bedroom window. Aside from the interesting note in her book, I had noticed nothing that might suggest what had happened to her.

  I figured one thing that had not happened was that she had decided to take an unannounced vacation. There were two suitcases and no empty hangers in the closet. Her treasured copy of Sense and Sensibility, her jewelry box, her cosmetics, and her hairbrush had all been left behind. I figured even on the spur of the moment, no woman would go away for three days without bringing at least some of those items along.

  Something else was gnawing at me, too, and I’d pulled out of Summer Street and onto Pease’s Point Way before I realized what it was. Molly’s black nursing bag, the bag I’d seen her carrying the first time I met her at Sarah’s, the bag I assumed went everywhere with her, had not been in her room.

  Okay, she probably kept it in her car. Or for all I knew, visiting nurses left their bags at the VNS headquarters when they weren’t out making house calls.

  I glanced at my watch. It was a little before five. I had an hour before cocktails on the Jacksons’ balcony.

  I found a phone booth beside a gas station, and directory assistance gave me the number for the Visiting Nurse Service. I called it, was told that somebody would be there for another hour, and got directions.

  It was in Oak Bluffs right across the street from the high school. It took me fifteen minutes to find the shingled two-story building that housed the Martha’s Vineyard Community Services, which included the Visiting Nurse office. Here on the island, I noticed, they called it the Visiting Nurse Service, not Association as they did everywhere else.

  When I told the receptionist I was a lawyer representing one of the Visiting Nurse patients, she stared at me for a moment, then buzzed somebody on her intercom.

  A moment later, a middle-aged woman wearing a long yellow skirt and a white blouse bustled out from around a corner. She introduced herself as Mrs. Sadler, the intake supervisor.

  I told her that I was a lawyer, Sarah Fairchild was my client, and Amelia Wood was Sarah’s nurse. Mrs. Sadler nodded. She didn’t seem at all worried that I might sue her. She steered me into an empty office, closed the door behind us, and said, “So how can I help you, Mr. Coyne? Does Mrs. Fairchild have a complaint about her care?”

  “No. Not at all. She’s very fond of Mrs. Wood.”

  Mrs. Sadler frowned. “You know—”

  “Mrs. Wood has gone missing,” I said. “I know. I wondered if you had any thoughts about that.”

  She smiled quickly. “The police asked the same thing. I told them I had no thoughts about it whatsoever, aside from being very concerned, of course. Molly has been with us for only a few months, but she’s always been absolutely reliable. I can’t understand it. She’s a lovely person. It’s very worrisome.”

  “When did you first realize something might be wrong?”

  “Monday morning at eight o’clock,” she said. “That’s when she was supposed to check in and get her calendar.”

  “But she didn’t check in.”

  “No. I called her pager at about eight-fifteen, and when another fifteen minutes passed and she didn’t call in, I tried her home. There was no answer. I waited awhile, figuring maybe she’d had car trouble or something and had left her beeper somewhere. Finally, I reassigned some nurses to her schedule.”

  “And you never did hear from her?”

  Mrs. Sadler shook her head. “I kept trying her all morning. Home, her beeper. I even called her patients’ homes, just to be sure that for some reason she hadn’t done her rounds without checking in.”

  “Did you check with all of them?”

  She nodded. “She missed them all. I was reluctant to try her emergency number. I didn’t want to upset anybody.”

  “Did you finally try it?”

  She shook her head. “I intended to. But when I looked in her file, I saw that she’d left the space for an emergency contact blank. That slipped by us, I’m afraid. Someone should’ve noticed that. Look,” she said, “is Mrs. Fairchild unhappy with the new nurse we’ve assigned?”

  “Actually,” I said, “Mrs. Fairchild is in the ICU at the hospital.”

  Mrs. Sadler nodded. “That’s right. I remember hearing that. How is she?”

  “She’s unconscious. She had a stroke.”

  She tsk-tsked and shook her head.

  “I’m worried about Molly Wood,” I said. “I, um, well, I had a date with her, and she didn’t show up.”

  “She’s a very attractive woman.”

  “Yes, I agree. And it’s not that I’ve never been stood up by an attractive woman, but it does seem that something’s happened to Molly.”

  “How can I help?”

  “I don’t know.” I fished out one of my business cards, scratched the Fairchild phone number on the back of it, and gave it to her. “That’s where I’m staying. If you think of something or hear anything, I’d appreciate it if you’d call me.”

  She took my card, glanced at both sides of it, and tucked it into her skirt pocket. “The police asked me to do the same thing,” she said.

  “Sure,” I said. “They’re the important ones.” I gave her my best, saddest smile. “Me, I’m just somebody who cares.”

  Mrs. Sandler reached over, touched my hand, and nodded sympathetically. I’d hit a soft spot. “Anything I hear, I’ll call you, I promise,” she said.

  I thanked her for her time, and she walked me back out into the reception area. When she held out her hand to me, I took it and said, “By the way. Where do your nurses keep their bags?”

  “You mean when they’re not on duty?”

  I nodded.

  She shrugged. “At home, or perhaps locked in their vehicles. They’re supposed to keep their bags secure. They carry expensive medical equipment in them.”

  “What about drugs? Do they carry drugs in those bags?”

  “No, no meds. Our nurses routinely administer medication, give shots, and so forth. But the patients have their prescriptions with them.”

  “What about syringes?”

  She nodded. “The nurses carry a supply in their bags.”

  “They don’t leave their bags here, then?”

  “Here? In the office?” She shook her head. “No. The nurses are responsible for their bags.”

  It was nearly six o’clock when I climbed into the Range Rover. I pointed it back to Edgartown and decided it was time to start thinking about fishing.

  Well, first I’d try to give some thought to putting my feet up on J.W.’s balcony railing and sipping one of his martinis and
gazing out over the treetops toward the sea.

  But all the way over there Molly Wood’s smile kept flashing in my mind, and I could almost hear the tinkle of her laugh in my ear and feel the warmth of her hand and the soft promise of her lips.

  * * *

  Diana and Joshua greeted me in the driveway when I got to J.W.’s place. They probably figured I’d become a permanent suppertime fixture at their house, and whatever shyness they’d shown me earlier had been replaced with aggressive friendliness. Each of them grabbed one of my hands and dragged me out back to show me all the progress they’d made on their tree house.

  I was standing there admiring it when J.W. came around the corner. He held his martini glass aloft. “Started without you.”

  “Diana and Josh are pretty good carpenters,” I said.

  “Pa helped a little,” said Diana.

  “Brady’s going to come up to the balcony now,” said J.W. “We have adult things to discuss.”

  I followed J.W. up the stairs to the balcony. Zee was slouched in a chair with her feet up on the railing and a martini glass resting on her belly. Her eyes were closed.

  When I took the chair beside her, she looked at me, smiled, and said, “Gonna be some weather tonight.”

  “Weather,” in the parlance of those who live on the edge of the sea, means “bad weather.”

  “I’ve always admired you native types,” I said. “Living close to the land and sea, intimately attuned to nature and her mysterious ways. I suppose you wet your finger and stick it up in the air, take a deep breath, sniff the air, check out the aches in your joints, and make your predictions.”

  “No,” she said, “I watch the news on television. Hurricane Elinore is heading for the Carolina coast. South Beach could be hot.” She glanced at her watch. “High tide’s around ten. I’d like to be there about an hour before that, fish the whole tide.”

  “Low tide around four,” said J.W. “All-nighter, huh?”

  “Weather’s coming,” said Zee.

  He shrugged and nodded, as if that explained it all.

  Zee pushed herself up and went down to the kitchen. J.W. plopped himself into her chair. “Molly,” he said. “Looks grim.”

  He told me about his conversations with the police and the various other people he’d queried, and I told him about my visit with Edna Paul and the note I’d found in Molly’s copy of Sense and Sensibility. I shut my eyes for a minute, then quoted it for him: “‘It is not, nor it cannot come to good. But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.’”

  J.W. gazed up at the sky. The stars were beginning to wink on. “I’ve heard that somewhere.”

  “I think I have, too,” I said. “But damned if I can place it. From a poem? The lyrics to some song? It’s got that ba-bump-ba -bump beat to it. You could dance to it, you know? What the hell is that? Iambic pentameter?”

  J.W. lifted both hands and shrugged. “I should’ve paid better attention in Mrs. Warbuck’s English class.” He stared off toward the salt pond, where darkness was gathering. “That note was probably written by some admirer, huh?”

  “I dunno. Maybe it was from Ethan. Her husband, I’m guessing, who gave her the book.”

  He shook his head. “‘It cannot come to good’? Doesn’t sound like something a loving husband would write.” He frowned for a minute, then suddenly he slapped the arm of his chair and stood up. “Wait here.”

  J.W. disappeared down the stairs, and a few minutes later he came back lugging a book about the size of an unabridged dictionary. He sat down and opened it. I craned my neck and read the title. The Complete Works of Shakespeare.

  “I figured you were more the Captain Marvel type,” I said.

  “Wile E. Coyote is my favorite,” he muttered. “Now shut up.”

  I lit a cigarette and shut up, and a few minutes later J.W. snapped his fingers. “Got it. ‘It is not, nor it cannot come to good. But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.’” He poked my arm. “That’s what you said, right?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Hamlet, act one, scene two,” said J.W. “The poor prince is all upset because his father the king just died and his mother the queen is screwing his uncle. He’s really pissed at both of them. He thinks it’s incestuous, and he thinks his mother is amoral and his uncle is just using her. This quote comes at the end of a soliloquy. Sort of a foreshadowing of all the bad things that will happen in the rest of the play.”

  “So what do you make of it?” I said.

  “We figure out who wrote it, we can ask him.” He shut the book and put it on the table. Then he picked up the martini pitcher and topped off both our glasses. “So did you notice anything else?”

  “Something I didn’t notice,” I said. “Molly’s bag.”

  “What bag?”

  “Her nurse’s bag. She had it the first time I met her at Sarah’s. It wasn’t anywhere in her room at Edna’s, and it wasn’t at the VNS headquarters. Was it in her car, did you notice?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t see it. The cops didn’t mention finding anything but that golf glove. It might’ve been in the trunk, I guess. Cops can’t be counted on to tell you everything.”

  “Can you check on it?”

  “I guess so. You think it’s relevant?”

  “Could be. The woman at the Visiting Nurse place said they keep syringes in those bags.”

  “Yeah? What about drugs?”

  “No, the patients have their own drugs. But the nurses sometimes do the injections.”

  “So you’re thinking … ?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know what I’m thinking. Just, if the bag’s missing, where the hell is it?”

  “A motive to hurt her?” said J.W. “Someone thinks she’s got drugs in it, whacks her to steal it?”

  “Or maybe just for the syringes,” I said.

  “Hmm,” said J.W. “I can see mugging her, maybe. Giving her a shove, grabbing the bag, running away. But Molly’s been missing for three days.”

  “Guy sees her getting into her car. Or out of it. Sees the bag, tries to snatch it, she resists, he panics, hits her or … or stabs her or something …”

  “Some random guy,” said J.W. “Hurts her worse than he meant to.”

  “Could be, right? You got any cokeheads on the island?”

  He laughed. “You kidding?”

  “Guys willing to hurt people to get hold of some narcotics?”

  “Guys and gals as well,” he said.

  “Pardon my political incorrectness.”

  “Most offensive,” he said with a grin. “Shocking, in fact.”

  After dinner, I helped J.W. clean up the kitchen while Zee read stories to the kids. I washed and he dried and put things away, and while we worked he told me about all the people he’d been interviewing. The golf glove they’d found in Molly’s car had led him to Eliza Fairchild’s two lapdogs, Luis Martinez and Philip Fredrickson, both of whom worked for the company that manufactured the glove, which also happened to be a major backer of the Isle of Dreams Corporation, which wanted to buy Sarah’s property.

  “So what’s the connection?” I said. “I mean, it could be some jealous-lover thing, but Molly didn’t even play golf, so I don’t see how it could connect to the business end.”

  J.W. shook his head. “I don’t know. Those two were all over Eliza, you said.”

  I nodded. “You’re thinking Martinez and Fredrickson had ulterior motives? You’re thinking they were pawing Eliza because they were looking for information?”

  “Most likely they were pawing Eliza because Eliza is eminently pawable. Still …”

  “But it could be all about money,” I said, “and they were using Eliza. And you’re thinking they could’ve also been using Molly.”

  J.W. shrugged. “Suppose Sarah confided something to Molly. You said the two of them were very close.”

  “Humph,” I said. “Sarah didn’t confide anything worth killing about to me.”

  He looked sideways at me
. “You sure?”

  I shrugged. “Good question, I guess. So you think whatever happened to Molly has something to do with the Fairchild property?”

  He shrugged. “All I think is that I don’t know what to think, and I’m trying to keep an open and creative mind about it.”

  “If that is what happened,” I said, “then whoever did whatever they did to Molly would most likely also go after somebody else they figured Sarah might confide in, huh?”

  He nodded. “If that’s what this is all about.”

  “Someone like Sarah’s lawyer.”

  He shrugged.

  “You suggesting that I ought to pretend I know something, set myself up as some kind of decoy, try to smoke out the bad guys?” I said.

  “What, and endanger yourself?” J.W. held up both hands. “I am offended. I am your friend. I would never suggest that you endanger yourself.”

  “You already did,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “I think you did that all by yourself.”

  “Well,” I said, “if I did that and nothing happened, it would probably mean that what happened to Molly was a jealous-lover thing rather than a money thing or a golf thing. That would narrow it down.”

  “It would indeed,” said J.W.

  “On the other hand,” I said, “if something did happen …”

  “Right,” he said. “You gotta think about that.”

  By the time Zee and I got to South Beach, a cloud bank had blown in. It obscured the stars and the moon, and the night was so black and moist that even a landlubber such as I could smell the storm in the air.

  We cast blindly through the thick air into the dark water that I knew was in front of me only by the sound of the surf out there somewhere and the soft lapping of the waves at my feet. Nothing happened for a long time, but Zee and I kept casting. She stood so close beside me that we could talk conversationally, and I could hear the whirr of line spinning off her reel and the little clank when she engaged the bail on her reel. But the darkness was so enveloping that I couldn’t see her. She kept reminding me that the ocean is always changing, that wind and tide keep the water in constant motion, and that bluefish and stripers never stop moving in their insatiable quest for food. The next cast could always be the one that intercepted a Derby winner.