The First Wife

by Diana Diamond

  Andrews fell asleep right away, but Jane found herself tossing. Despite his reassurances and the pleasure she found in his company, she was beginning to doubt that she truly loved him. She had felt love in the strength of his embrace and in the moments when they were handling their boat with skill and vigor. But there was no abiding love that she could count on to see her through the difficult moments. How could there be when she couldn’t trust him? It seemed that the most she could hope for was to be his occasional wife. As he had said of Kay Parker, he wasn’t going to give anyone even a temporary advantage over him.

  She decided to confront him. A straight question! Are you offering Roscoe a promotion to stop his inquiries about Selina Royce? Or perhaps more direct. Who is this woman, and why are you paying her a fortune every month? Or even, Exactly how did your first wife die?

  He would be startled and defensive, but the issue would be on the table without any ambiguity. He would have to decide to tell her and take her into his confidence, or lie and shut her out forever. And then, maybe, with the truth as a backdrop, they could begin building a real, full-time marriage.

  But in the morning, her courage deserted her. He seemed eager to please her and enthused over their next port, called The Baths, a crystal-clear pool surrounded by gigantic boulders on the island of Virgin Gorda. The gloomy introspection she had noticed the day before seemed to be gone. And, in truth, she was afraid. Afraid that her questions would widen the chasm that had cracked open between them, or even bring on the kind of power play she had heard him use as a threat to Roscoe. She could be a team player and reap the bountiful rewards. Or she could be obstinate and find herself out in the cold. Or maybe even dead, like William Andrews’s first wife. That thought made the boat seem isolated and dangerous.

  He took another phone call. Or maybe he had placed the call. Jane couldn’t know for sure. He swam back from the beach supposedly to start their dinner, leaving her to explore the pools that were formed under the boulders. He was going to return in the dinghy to pick her up, but Jane decided to swim back. When she reached the ladder, she heard him talking inside the cabin. He hung up as soon as she climbed into the cockpit.

  “Another emergency?” she asked sarcastically.

  He seemed annoyed that she had caught him. “It was just something I thought of. A question that I wanted to get settled. I picked a time when you wouldn’t be bothered by it.”

  “What was the question?” She wondered how much further he would carry his lie.

  “A technical issue. Nothing interesting.” He wasn’t going to explain himself. Instead, he began preparations for getting under way.

  “I thought we were going to eat here,” Jane reminded him.

  “I know another spot just a bit up the coast,” he said. “I think you’ll like it better.”

  They set sail, this time with the wind coming from the starboard quarter. They were heeling only a bit and making good time over calm seas. He had fallen quiet, despite her attempts to make conversation. She could tell he was distracted, deep in thoughts that he had no intention of sharing. Jane went below and fixed them each a drink, rum painkillers, sweet but potent. They sipped while the sun made another fiery exit.

  The wind picked up, driving them even faster. The flat sea came alive with rollers that picked up the stern of the boat and pushed it like a surfboard. “This is exciting,” Jane said, not sure whether she was just excited or maybe a bit apprehensive. “We’re making good time,” he answered, but still didn’t open up to conversation.

  Jane stood to go below into the cabin, thinking that finger snacks would help her cope with the drink. At that instant the boat jolted to leeward, sending her staggering into the lifeline. She turned just as the boom jibed and came flying toward her head. She put up her arms, protecting her head as the boom drove into her. She felt the lifeline sliding down her back. Then she was falling over backwards into the white wake that was rushing by. She plunged into the cold darkness.

  She was fully alert when she came to the surface. There was still enough light in the sky for her to make out the boat racing away from her. She could hear Bill screaming at her, but she couldn’t understand what he was saying. He threw something—the life ring that was fixed to the rear of the cockpit. She saw it land halfway between her and the boat. But it disappeared behind the swells that had been pushing them. She gulped in air and began swimming in the direction of where the ring had hit the water. But she was afraid that each new swell was pushing it farther away from her. Maybe it was better to save her energy so she could keep herself afloat.

  The boat was still moving away, turning across the wind as if coming back to her. Bill seemed to be standing at the foot of the mast, working on the lines. But Jane was bobbing up and down in the waves and lost sight of the boat each time she was down. It was rapidly growing dark. In another few minutes she wouldn’t be able to see the boat at all.

  She was down between swells, alone and suddenly frightened. When she rose up, she caught sight of the boat, its sails lowered, pitching broadside over the waves. The sea and the wind were pushing it farther away. It seemed powerless to turn back to her. She couldn’t see the life ring. It had to be within twenty yards of her, probably just on the far side of the next sea swell. But then she was falling down behind a wave, dropping into a trough where there was just water and sky.

  30

  Jane fought against panic. How could she drown when she was within twenty yards of a life ring? When the boat was no more than a hundred yards away? But when she came up on the next peak, the boat was still rocking broadside. The life ring was nowhere in sight. Could it have broken when it hit the water? Had it already sunk? She caught a glimpse of the shoreline, now dark and vacant. How far away was it? They had been sailing only a few hundred yards off the island’s volcanic edges, a distance she should be able to swim. But the sea would be in her face.

  Fear began to take over. Was Bill coming back for her? Had he swung the wheel, causing the boat to turn and the sail to jibe? Jesus, had he planned to put her overboard? She thought of his telephone call and the gloomy, nonresponsive mood it had caused. What had he learned? Why wasn’t he coming back for her?

  There were running lights on the boat, red and green at the wa-terline and white high up on the mast. Was the boat coming at her, or had it turned away? It seemed no nearer, and the light on the mast was still swinging widely. The boat hadn’t steadied in any direction. The life ring was no longer an issue. It could be floating just a few yards from her and she would never find it in the darkness. The boat disappeared as she slipped behind another wave.

  How long could she stay afloat? And hour? Maybe two? Sometime during the night her strength would falter, her breathing would become less rhythmical. There would be no chance of rescue until daylight. Her best chance was to strike out for the shore.

  When she rode up the next crest, the boat came into view, now closer and steadier in the water. It was on its way back to her, kicking up a gray bow wake on the black surface. She screamed with all the air she could muster and waved frantically until she dropped down into the next trough. Could he see her? Probably not. She took another breath and screamed again.

  There was a bright light on the boat when she saw it next. Bill was panning a searchlight over the waves, trying to locate the voice. Jane waved frantically, but the beam of light was well short of her. She heard the boat’s engine, a low rumble from the small diesel. Then she heard the sound of the bow slicing through the water. “Over here!” she called. The light swung to her and hit her face with a blinding glare.

  Bill’s voice came. “I’ve got you! I’m coming to you!” The engine noise lowered and then went silent.

  The boat went past her. She could see Bill at the helm, turning the boat behind her so that it was between her and the open sea. He was out of the cockpit and back on the swim ladder, reaching down to her. She caught his hand and swung her feet to the ladder. He lifted her aboard.

  His arm
s were around her. He kissed the top of her head and hugged her as if he were trying to wring the seawater out of her clothes. “Thank God, thank God,” he said over and over. Then Jane began to cry hysterically.

  She went below to get into dry clothes and heard the engine start while she was changing. She was still sobbing and gasping for breath when she went back up to the cockpit and sat across the wheel from her husband. “I don’t know what happened,” Andrews said. “I was worried about jibing and turned even farther toward the wind. One of the waves must have caught us square. All of a sudden we were swinging and before I could stop it, the boom came over.”

  Jane nodded, not sure of what he was telling her. “I got my arms up just in time,” she remembered.

  Bill was lost in his own recollection. “I threw the ring, but the light never came on. There’s a lamp that’s supposed to turn on when the ring hits the water. I threw the damn thing at you, but then I couldn’t find it.”

  “I saw it hit the water …” Jane started.

  “I got the sails down pretty fast. I turned into the wind and freed the halyards. But then the engine wouldn’t start. It must have taken thirty seconds for it to catch….”

  “More like thirty minutes,” Jane said. “I thought you weren’t going to make it back.”

  “I would have come back in the dinghy,” Bill assured her. And then he was back to the beginning. “I can’t believe that I let the mainsail jibe! It must have been a wave!”

  They motored into the bight on the northern end of the island and saw several boats bobbing in a protected cove. He wanted Jane to stay in the cockpit, but she insisted on going forward to catch their mooring. He shut off the engine and welcomed her into his arms. They sat quietly out in the open until Jane fell asleep.

  They left the boat in Soper’s Hole and climbed aboard the single-engine floatplane that he had chartered. The plane took off to the east and then turned back over the sprawling harbor with its flotilla of yachts so they could have one last look at their honeymoon vessel. As soon as they boarded the jet on St. Thomas, Andrews picked up the telephone and got back to work.

  She watched aghast at how easily he made the transition. He talked with Gordon Frier, evaluating the worth of a cable company in the Canadian Maritimes. “I know it has coverage,” he said as if he had been studying it for the past week, “but nobody lives up there! We’d have to run it as a social service. I mean, who in hell wants to advertise to a bunch of fishermen?” He hung up and then instantly dialed Henry Davis, who had the week’s financial consolidation waiting for him. “Will we make our numbers?” he growled. After listening for a minute, he cut in with “C’mon, Henry, it’s a simple question. Will we make them or not?” He didn’t seem pleased with the answer. And then it was John Applebaum, who headed up the newspapers and was Roscoe’s immediate boss. “How about that promotion for Taylor?” he asked. “Good,” he said when he heard the answer.

  He spared Jane a moment. “Roscoe has accepted the promotion,” he told her with a smile. She had to wonder whether the smile was congratulating her on her friend’s good fortune or was a cynical announcement that her most important ally had sold out.

  When he started another call, Jane snatched the phone from his hand. “Is there a window around here that I can open?”

  He shook his head. “Not unless you want to kill us all.” He reached for the phone, and she surrendered it without a struggle.

  “Technically, we’re still on our honeymoon until we land,” she reminded him.

  He studied her, nodded, and turned off the phone.

  She wasn’t overjoyed when they returned to their apartment. She had expected her renovations to be finished, but the master bedroom was still raw plaster, and nothing had been done to the children’s rooms. Cassie and Craig were still at home and had little to say by way of greeting. “We’re being picked up tomorrow,” Craig said, referring to the limo service that would return him and his sister to their schools. Cassie had her earphones on and couldn’t be disturbed.

  Then Andrews disappeared into his office and closed the door behind him. He had a full week’s work to catch up on and no time to console his new wife. “Could you make me a sandwich,” he wondered, “and maybe fix a pot of coffee?” Her dreams of belonging came crashing down. She pretended to be asleep when Bill looked in and decided not to disturb her.

  But she wasn’t even drowsy. Her mind was whirling through the events of her courtship and marriage, looking for a pattern and at the same time hoping not to find one. In her entire life, there had been only a few moments of danger, but since she had gotten close to William Andrews, threatening “accidents” were coming fast and furious. Was the runaway horse a sinister scheme or just a childish prank? Had someone pushed the button to close the dance floor on top of her, or was it an unexplained mechanical failure? Did she really pass out from a few sips of champagne, or had she been drugged into unconsciousness? Had she been knocked overboard by a sudden wave, or had her husband intentionally turned into a dangerous jibe? She could easily link all these events to attempts to keep her from marrying William Andrews and to end her snooping into the death of Kay Parker. But just as logically, she could argue them all away as odd coincidences.

  Any number of people were legitimate suspects, even the man she had married. True, he had twice rescued her in life-and-death situations. But on the boat, her accident had come after a mood-altering phone call. Wasn’t it possible that he decided to kill her and then, when she was drowning in front of him, couldn’t go through with it? Jane was determined to find some answers.

  In the morning she led the swimming pool engineer up to the roof. “Now take me through this step-by-step. I want to know all the ways that this thing can be made to open and close.” They went to the toggle switch that was behind the band shell. It was a simple snap switch with one position marked OPEN and the other CLOSED. Logic argued that she would have seen anyone who came out on the roof to throw the switch.

  “Another way,” the engineer told her, “is to use the circuit breaker. You could turn the power off on this line and then set the switch to whichever position you wanted. Then, when you turned the power back on, the floor would move to whatever the switch was set on.”

  “You can kill the power to just this line?” Jane asked.

  “Sure. It’s a single circuit with its own breaker. All you have to do is open and close the breaker.”

  “Where’s the breaker?”

  “Downstairs in the line-entry box. That’s where the breakers are for every circuit in the house.”

  “Where downstairs?” she asked suspiciously.

  “In the foyer, right outside the service door.”

  So that’s how they did it, she thought. That’s how they were able to close the dance floor on top of me without coming up to the roof. She felt an instant of triumph until she realized that “they” could have been anyone. One of the kids, certainly. Or Bob Leavitt, who was visiting the apartment that night. Or any of the corporation’s executives. They all had keys to the private elevator and were in and out of the apartment for their constant meetings with Andrews. Even Bill himself, if he was of a mind to put an end to her snooping, a possibility reinforced by her accident on the sailboat. Learning about the circuit breaker didn’t do much to narrow her list of suspects.

  Still, knowing how it was done was important. It put to rest the notion that the pool cover just happened to malfunction. It warned her again that whoever had decided she was an intolerable danger had no qualms about keeping her out of the family.

  Bob Leavitt called to tell her that her husband would be leaving for Chicago within the hour. He expected to be back by the next afternoon.

  “Is he there?” she asked.

  “Yes, but on a conference call.”

  “Would you tell him I’d like to speak with him!” She didn’t care if she sounded bitchy. That was the way she suddenly felt. She waited the full hour until his scheduled departure for Chicago. Wh
en he hadn’t called, she packed an overnight case and headed downtown to the station, where she got on a train for Connecticut.

  There was a light in the window of her apartment, which would have disturbed her except that Art’s car was parked in her space. She paid the taxi, went up the stairs, and let herself in. He was sitting at her computer, her research into Selina Royce up on the screen. He shut down as soon as he realized she was standing behind him.

  “What are you doing here?” Jane demanded.

  “You mean here, in your apartment? I just came over to do some work on my play. It’s noisy at my brother’s house.”

  “That wasn’t your play. That was my research,” she charged.

  “Oh, that. Yeah, I just happened to come across it. What’s so important about that girl? What’s she got to do with William Andrews?”

  Jane wouldn’t let herself be distracted. “You let yourself into my apartment and were going through my things. Do you know I could call the police?”

  He sneered. “Get off it! I was working on my play and I happened to see what you were looking into. I was curious—”

  “You didn’t happen to see anything. You brought up my files and were reading them.” Her voice was getting louder.

  “Big deal. It’s all public record stuff. It’s not as if you’re working for the CIA.” Art grabbed his jacket and stormed out of the apartment.

  “Don’t forget your play,” Jane called after him, reminding her former husband that he hadn’t brought the play he said he was working on.

  31

  Twenty minutes later she was knocking on the door of Roscoe Taylor’s town house. He was smiling when he opened it but was suddenly concerned when he saw who was there. “Jane … my goodness, Jane … come in, come in.” He backed away and followed her into the living room, where a baseball game was on television. “Damn Red Sox,” he said as he snapped it off.