Second Sight

by Philip R. Craig

  I nodded. “Would you say she was depressed?”

  “You know,” said Neddie, “since she’s been gone we’ve tried to understand. Tried desperately. But honestly, she didn’t seem at all depressed. She was pleasant with us. No rebellion, no sulking, nothing like that. She laughed a lot, actually. Helped me cook sometimes. She liked to work in the gardens. Always did her homework. Got excellent grades. Hardly ever got sick, rarely missed a day of school. We were here less than a year when she…she left. We figured she was just making a slow adjustment.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the portrait of a runaway,” I said. “Are you sure you’re remembering it accurately?”

  Neddie smiled. “That’s a fair question, Brady. It’s a question I’ve asked myself a hundred times. What are we overlooking? What have we been repressing? Where were the hints?” She shrugged. “You know Mike. He’s a pretty hard-nosed guy. I’m pretty hard-nosed myself, in my own way. We’re remembering it accurately. Her teachers up here remember her the same way. Good kid. Quiet but pleasant. No trouble.”

  I took one more look around Christa’s bedroom. Then Neddie and I went back down to her office.

  “I’ve got what you wanted,” she said. She handed me a snapshot. “I took this on Christa’s sixteenth birthday. The day before she left. I can hardly stand to look at it.”

  In the photo, Mike and Christa were standing in their backyard with the long vista of Mount Monadnock behind them. They were both smiling directly into the camera. Mike had his arm around her shoulder, and Christa had hers around his waist, and she was leaning her cheek against his shoulder. Mike looked healthy. Christa looked happy.

  She was nearly as tall as Mike, with her mother’s ebony hair and flashing brown eyes. Her hair was cut very short, almost a boy’s haircut. She wore big silver earrings, a tight white T-shirt, and low-cut blue jeans that showed her belly button. She looked grown-up.

  “Here’s that letter,” said Neddie. It was in its envelope, postmarked San Francisco. I decided I’d read it later.

  She gave me a manila envelope. “That detective’s report is in there, and I wrote down the names of all the people Christa might’ve been in touch with that I could think of. I don’t have phone numbers or addresses, but they’re all from Belmont, from before we moved up here. Is that okay?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I put the snapshot and the letter into the manila envelope. “Can you think of anything else that will help me?”

  “Like what?”

  “What kind of job might she take? Does she like to dance, go to concerts, movies, plays? Does she swim, play tennis?”

  Neddie frowned. “It seems like so long ago. I mean, to us she was just our smart daughter. She seemed…normal, you know? She never had any job except babysitting. She always liked to read. She was wonderfully athletic, but sometime about when she turned twelve, she decided she hated competitive sports. She said competition was destructive. She believed in cooperation. She was idealistic. Like Mike.” She smiled. “Christa was a good kid, Brady. Everybody said so.”

  I nodded.

  “I can’t think of anything else to tell you.”

  “Okay. If you do, just give me a call.” I tucked the manila envelope under my arm. “I guess I’d better get started.”

  We went back into the living room. The nurse was sitting in a straight-backed chair beside Mike’s bed reading a magazine. Mike was asleep.

  At the front door, Neddie put her arms around me, pushed her face against my chest, and said, “This is really stupid, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not stupid,” I said.

  She tilted her head back and looked up at me. “Hopeless, I mean. Not a word from her in two years. She could be anywhere. Even if…”

  Even if she’s alive, is what I guessed Neddie was thinking.

  “There’s always hope,” I said. I gave her a squeeze. “Tell Mike good-bye for me. I’ll keep in touch with you.”

  She nodded. “Thank you, Brady.”

  “Understand one thing,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “If I do find Christa and talk to her, I will tell her that Mike’s dying and wants to see her. I’ll do my best to convince her to come home. If she refuses, I can’t force her. It’ll have to be up to her. I may have to promise her that I won’t tell you where she is, and I would never break a promise like that.”

  “I know.” She smiled. “That’s why Mike trusts you.”

  Chapter Three

  J.W.

  My windows on the modern world of television, movies, and contemporary music were in the forms of Jill and Jen Skye, the twin daughters of Professor John Skye and his wife, Mattie. The twins would be going back to college in the fall, but now had summer work on the island and were living with their parents on the family farm. So after Jake Spitz left me with directions on how to find Evangeline the next day, I phoned the farm to discover as much as I could about Evangeline.

  Mattie answered and from her I learned that John, having finally finished his magnum opus, a new and definitive translation of Gawain and the Green Knight, was now researching his next project: a world history of swords-manship. John had been a three-weapon man in college, and his old foil, épée, and saber were triangulated below his mask, high on the wall of his Vineyard library.

  I also learned that Jen was working an evening shift at an Edgartown restaurant, but that Jill was home. When she came to the phone and I asked her if she could keep a confidence, she assured me that she could, speaking in very grown-up, university tones.

  When I told her about my driving job, and asked her to tell me about Evangeline, Jill’s college-woman persona instantly vanished. “Evangeline? Evangeline! Is she here? Really? Wow!”

  “Zee also said wow,” I said.

  For the next several minutes I listened to Jill extol the obviously, to her, immortal significance and fame of Evangeline. Evangeline was a comet in the firmament of pop music heaven, a force to be reckoned with since her early teens when she’d first appeared on the music scene. She was totally wild and independent, infuriatingly talented as both a singer and an actress, indifferent to public opinion about both her art and her private life, once poor but now incredibly rich, the owner and inhabitant of her own Scottish castle, the winner of countless awards, the subject of scandalous rumors, and the face on a thousand magazines. At thirty she was twice married and divorced, was the mother of a child by yet another (unidentified) man, and was reportedly now sharing her bed with a movie star whose gender was a matter of great discussion. Was her lover a man or a woman? Evangeline was, in short, the most important singer in the whole world and a star of the first magnitude.

  “Are you sure about all that?” I asked Jill.

  “Of course! How can you even ask such a thing? You’re a hopeless case, J.W.! Evangeline isn’t just a star, you know. She has a very spiritual side, too. And she has a tragic past. Some man she can’t forget, they say. Isn’t that romantic? She can be very deep. I bet you’d like her music if you heard it.”

  “I think I’ll stick to country and western and classical,” I said, and switched gears. “Does she have any enemies that you know of?”

  “Of course she has enemies! Everyone in the business envies her! And she probably has crazy fans. You know, the kind that shoot you if you’re famous! It’s dangerous to be famous, you know.”

  I did know that. “Sad but true,” I agreed.

  Jill’s enthusiasm reemerged. “But you’re really going to be her driver? Starting tomorrow? Really?! Can Jen and I see her? Can we be someplace beside the road when you drive by?”

  “I don’t know where we’ll be driving or when. If you want to see her, I think you’ll have to buy a ticket to the big show.”

  She groaned. “Do you know how much those tickets cost? I’d have to spend every cent I’ve saved all summer!”

  “So what? You don’t need to go back to college this fall. You can get a job someplace and work all winte
r instead. There are too many coeds in college already. It’s dangerous. Like the guy said, giving an education to a woman is like giving a knife to a baby. You know what I mean?”

  “Ha, ha! Very funny. Not!” Then her tone became artificially sweet. “Oh, J.W., do you think that you, my favorite person in the whole world, might be able to get a couple of tickets for us? If Evangeline likes you, maybe she’ll get some for you, and you can give them to my sister and me. That would be very sweet of you, dear J.W.”

  “Are you fluttering your lashes?”

  “Absolutely. And I have an adoring look on my face.”

  “I’m trying to imagine it.”

  “I can’t believe she’s here and you’re going to meet her!”

  “Try not to spread the news. I’m told that Evangeline likes her privacy. If you talk to everybody about her being here, she’ll have reporters and photographers following her wherever she goes.”

  “I don’t know if can keep it to myself! I just have to tell Jen, and I have to tell Mom and Dad!”

  I thought of the old saw that two can keep a secret if one of them is dead, and was sure that knowledge of Evangeline’s presence was already being whispered like wind through dry grass. Maybe I’d made a mistake in phoning the Skyes.

  “Well,” said Zee when I finished the call. “Do you now know everything you need to know about your charge?”

  “I know enough to get started, at least. According to Jill, she’s the empress of ice cream.”

  “I never did understand that poem.”

  “Me, too. And it’s not the only one. Anyway, I’ll know more tomorrow than I know now. I’ll give you a full report.”

  “She’ll probably want to spirit you away to her Scottish castle when the big show is over. She likes men, they say.”

  “Maybe women, too, according to Jill. But if she tries it I’ll just tell her that I’ve already been spirited away by you, and one spiritization in a lifetime is quite enough, thank you.” I leered at her.

  “Is ‘spiritization’ a real word?”

  “If it isn’t, it should be. May I spirit you to our boudoir?”

  She smiled at me and rose from her chair. “You may, but I think that the term, properly used, refers to a lady’s private bedroom, not one shared by a man.”

  “You’re very language-sensitive tonight. Have you been reading the dictionary again?”

  “It’s a good book even though it’s short on plot.”

  In bed, I ran a hand over her hip and down her sleek thigh.

  She made a humming sound and put her arms around me. “How long do you think this will take?” she asked, biting my neck lightly.

  “No longer than all night,” I said. “I have to pick up Evangeline in the morning.”

  Evangeline, according to Spitz and his map, was staying in a large house on the shore of the Edgartown Great Pond, not too far east from the house where Joe and Myra Callahan had lived during their presidential summer vacations, and not much farther from the Peter Fredericks estate, where the Celebration for Humanity was to be held.

  Peter Fredericks was the most notorious castle builder on Martha’s Vineyard, where castle building had become a sport among the purchasers of island real estate. The normal pattern of building began with the purchase of some already outsize and highly priced house. The house was then torn down and replaced by one that was even bigger and more ornate. Peter Fredericks had lifted the already high bar by purchasing eighty acres of pond-front land and building a fifteen-thousand-square-foot house on it, plus a five-car garage and various outbuildings.

  Even his wealthy neighbors had objected to such a project taking place within sight of their own massive houses, claiming piously that his mansion was inappropriate to its location, since it altered the precious island ambiance in some vital way that theirs did not. Fredericks did not personally stoop to public argument but allowed his lawyers to speak, and prevail, on his behalf.

  And now on a onetime sheep pasture beside his three-mile-long driveway, a massive temporary stage was being erected upon which the Celebration for Humanity stars would perform in front of the thousands of fans fortunate enough to have tickets.

  The Fredericks estate was actually an excellent choice for the gala since the Great Pond provided protection from the south and east and the driveway was the only road leading to the sheep pasture. Once the woods and the beaches were filled with public and private security agents, as they surely would be soon, if they were not already, ticketless fans and other intruders would have little chance of joining the celebs and paying customers.

  Getting to Evangeline’s house proved almost as difficult. The next morning I turned into the road leading to her house and was immediately stopped by a young Edgartown cop who had been sitting in the shade of a tent off to the right. He clearly had the duty of preventing undesirables from intruding upon Evangeline’s privacy. He looked serious but happy, and I suspected he was a fan who was glad to make some extra pay guarding his idol.

  “Sorry, J.W.,” he said, “but this road is closed except to homeowners.”

  “No, it’s okay, Marty,” said Spitz, coming out of the tent. “J.W.’s going to be the Lady Evangeline’s driver while she’s on the island. You’re early, J.W.”

  “I can go home again and come back later. Is Evangeline a late sleeper?”

  “Evangeline now has a code name,” said Spitz. “She’s Ethel Price. You can call her Mrs. Price.”

  “Price is okay,” I said, “but Ethel? Nobody’s named Ethel anymore. I think Ethel Barrymore was the last Ethel in America. Anybody who hears me call her Ethel will know right away that it’s a fake name.”

  Spitz looked away, then looked back. “It was her mother’s name. She picked it herself, so get used to it.”

  “Hey, if she wants a name that sounds like a maiden great-aunt, it’s all right with me.”

  “Do you want this job or not?”

  “The money’s too good to miss. All right, she’s Mrs. Ethel Price for the duration.”

  “Good.” He gave me a cell phone and an ID card with my picture on it. I seemed to have become a government agent of some kind.

  “Where’d you get my photo and signature?”

  “Your tax dollars at work. Wave that at anybody who gives you trouble or call that number at the bottom if you need help for any reason.”

  I wondered why I might need help.

  “Okay,” he said, “now follow the signs to the Carberg house and exchange this trusty, rusty old Land Cruiser for the Explorer with tinted windows that you’ll find there. Introduce yourself to the lady. She knows you’re coming and has a photograph of you.”

  I rattled down the long sandy road until I came to the Carberg house. Sure enough, there was a new white Ford Explorer in front of the garage. I parked beside it.

  The Carberg house was rambling and comfortable-looking. It was shingled in graying cedar and sported at least three fireplaces. By Fredericks standards it was not an impressive structure, but by mine it was a five-star hotel.

  Through the open breezeway linking the garage to the house I could see a dock leading out into the Edgartown Great Pond. Tied to it were a small open boat with an outboard motor, and a Laser sailboat. A canoe was pulled up on the beach. They were modest vessels, but ample enough for fun on the Great Pond, where people did not care for large, noisy motorboats.

  Clearly the Carbergs were Pond People, one of the Vineyard’s cultural subgroups. The Pond People lived on the edges of the island’s several great ponds along the south shore and, like other more or less self-contained social groups such as the Campground People in Oak Bluffs, kept to themselves and were generally unknown to the thousands of summer tourists who filled the ferries sailing to and from the island.

  Peter Fredericks now had a home on a pond, but he had a ways to go to become a Pond Person. He would have to overcome the size of his new house and the resentment of his Pond People neighbors before he qualified. It would probably ta
ke years, if not a lifetime.

  I opened the door of the white Explorer and saw that the keys were in the ignition. Tsk-tsk. I put them in my pocket and went to the front door. It was opened by a tough-looking man wearing sandals and a loose shirt over his summer shorts. There was a bulge under the shirt on his right side, about belt level. I showed him the ID card that Spitz had given me.

  He looked at it, then at me, then at it, then at me. Then he nodded and showed me his teeth in what was meant to pass as a smile.

  “Hi,” he said. “Glad to know you, Mr. Jackson. I’m Hale Drummand. Come in. Mrs. Price is on the back porch.”

  He put out a hand, which I took. His was hard. We had a short gripping contest before calling it a draw and separating.

  I followed him along a hall and out into the bright morning sun. To the south, across the Great Pond, was the barrier beach, beyond which the glittering Atlantic rolled away to the horizon.

  A woman wearing summer clothes was sitting on the veranda drinking coffee and looking at the water. She turned at the sound of our footsteps and stood up.

  My heart jumped. Her eyes were hidden behind dark glasses, but she was the first woman I’d ever seen who was as beautiful as Zee. She smiled and the world brightened still more.

  “You’re Mr. Jackson. Hello.”

  She put out her hand and I took it. Some sort of energy passed between us.

  “My friends call me J.W.,” I said. “And you’re Mrs. Price.”

  “My friends call me Ethel. Please sit down. Hale, will you find another cup for Mr. Jackson, please?”

  He left, frowning slightly. While he was gone, she and I studied each other silently. Both of us were almost smiling.