A Vineyard Summer

by Jean Stone

  She then sensed a woodsy scent of warm embers drifting up toward the cottage; her gaze moved down toward the beach, where a fire pit glowed. Hoping for a better view, she raised her chin back toward the sky and carefully tiptoed around toward the corner. That’s when she tripped. Over something large. And unmoving.

  Having lived in the cottage as long as she had, Annie knew there were no rocks on the lawn—only snowdrifts in winter and verdant green grass in summer. This wasn’t winter. And whatever she’d tripped over wasn’t grass. It was something . . . solid.

  Grabbing her phone, she hit the flashlight app and beamed it at the ground.

  That’s when she saw a body at her feet. A woman. Dressed in a strapless lavender gown.And clutching a bouquet of lavender and white hydrangea blossoms.

  Annie sucked in a breath. A bridesmaid, she thought. Dear God.

  Chapter 4

  Though it felt like it took several minutes, Annie composed herself faster than that. She shined the phone onto a youthful face. The skin was pale, the eyes were closed, and something that looked like water trickled from the nose and the mouth. She moved a strand of pearls and touched the slender throat. There was a faint pulse—the bridesmaid was alive.

  Annie knew that a pulse—even a slight one—meant she shouldn’t do CPR.

  After all, given the festivities going on, the girl might only be drunk. But the weak pulse, combined with the discharge from her nose and mouth, were . . . weird. The bridesmaid might be in real trouble.

  With trembling fingers, Annie searched the phone for her “Contacts.” She remembered that the Chappy emergency number would bring faster results than if she called 911.

  “I think there’s a pulse,” Annie cried to the voice that picked up. “But you’d better hurry.” Not knowing if the system could ping her location, she quickly spewed out her address. Then she rang off and stared at the bridesmaid—she hadn’t moved; the water from her nose had dribbled down to her chin.

  Cover her, a distant voice—Murphy’s voice—whispered in Annie’s ear. Though Murphy had died nearly a year ago, she still found a way to offer sound advice on occasion.

  Annie plucked the bouquet from the bridesmaid’s clutches, then propped the phone up against it. With light shining on the lavender dress, she was assured that the EMTs would see the girl, and no one else would trip over her. Then Annie raced into the cottage and scooped up the nearest blanket—her mother’s quilt.

  Back outside, she draped the quilt over the bridesmaid. Next, she needed to tell someone at the wedding reception. “Someone,” of course, should be Roger Flanagan. Father of the bride. Annie’s short-lived landlord.

  Without thinking or caring that she was barefoot and clad only in a robe, she dashed down the lawn toward the tent and the laughter, her footsteps accompanied by a round of red, white, and blue sparks splayed out overhead.When she reached a corner where the tent was anchored into the ground, she stopped, hoping someone would notice her, a statue in white, with hair that must look as if, like the sky, she, too, had been electrified. But no one was strolling among the linen-covered tables that were adorned with blue and lavender hydrangea centerpieces; no one sat on the chairs that were clothed in matching table linens; no one was removing the empty champagne flutes or the fine bone china plates that sported cake crumbles. Even the bandstand had been evacuated except for a drum set, a saxophone, a piano, and two electric guitars—all blissfully idle. The laughter and chatter now rose from the opposite side of the tent, where the guests had congregated, no doubt for a better view of the fireworks.

  Annie wanted to scream.

  Instead, she squinted, trying to pick out Roger in the crowd. It didn’t seem right to disrupt the whole group, including the bride and groom, especially since help was on the way. Even in the dim light, from Annie’s vantage point she could see the tops of a number of fashionable hairdos: ladies’ milkmaid braids and waterfall twists; undercuts and Mohawk fades on the young men. If Roger had worn his Tilley hat, he would be easy to spot, though it hardly would have suited a white tuxedo.

  Suddenly, a figure stepped from the shadows right next to her. “May I help you?” The tone was cool and testy.

  Annie turned and looked into light-colored eyes whose far corners tipped up toward the temples. She did not know the woman, did not recognize the impeccably tinted blond hair, or the cheekbones that seemed too high and too chiseled for someone whose décolletage revealed tiny ripples of aging.

  “Roger,” Annie said. “I need Roger Flanagan. Fast.”

  A single finely arched eyebrow raised. “I am sorry, but this is a private party.” Despite the gorgeous blue satin sheath the woman had on, she reminded Annie of a character she’d once created—a bitchy one.

  “I’m well aware of that. But I still need to speak to Roger. It’s an emergency.”

  The woman pursed her full lips that might also have been “done.” “I am Roger’s wife, Nicole Flanagan. I don’t believe that we’ve met?”

  So. This was Nicole. She did not seem drunk, merely rude. Not even falsely sweet, as Earl had described her. And had she not heard the word emergency?

  “I’m Annie Sutton. I rent the cottage. Roger needs to know that what looks to be one of your daughter’s bridesmaids is unconscious on my lawn. I’ve notified the EMTs.” Without waiting for a response, she tightened her robe belt again, turned on a bare heel, and walked briskly back toward the unresponsive, drooling girl.

  * * *

  Because it would be hard to hear the wail of a siren over the pops and pow-pows of the fireworks, Annie kept her ears perked. She waited next to the bridesmaid, who remained motionless, a mannequin bathed in a circle of high-tech, cell-phone light. Though the night remained warm, Annie shivered. Other than in the case of her adoptive parents, she’d never seen a dead body, or even one that was still alive but unresponsive. Brian’s brother-in-law had identified Brian after the accident; he’d assured Annie that she should remember Brian the way he had looked, his bright smile, his gentle eyes. Brian had wanted to be cremated, so she’d never even seen him dressed up in death.

  “Annie?”

  The sharp voice pierced the darkness like an angry bat. Her body jerked.

  Then a man stepped into the light. His hair was white, his shirt was white, his pants and shoes were white. Despite the brusque voice, he could have been an angel who’d come to collect the girl in the lavender silk and organza. But it was Roger, minus his Tilley and Tevas.

  “What’s this?” he demanded. Not “who’s this,” but “what.” He stared down at the bridesmaid.

  “My guess is she’s one of yours,” Annie replied. She was appalled that she, too, could sound haughty when it seemed necessary.

  He crouched the way Annie had moments earlier. He pressed two fingers against the girl’s throat. Then he reached for her wrist as if he had witnessed Annie’s earlier actions and now mimicked them. “She’s still alive,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then, we can’t do CPR.”

  “Right.” Annie had known that, thanks to the training she’d had when she’d been a teacher. She looked back toward the street. “I called the ambulance.”

  Roger leaped up. “You did what?”

  “I called the ambulance,” she repeated. “The EMTs.”

  He raked a hand across the arch of his forehead, then through his thinning hair. “But it will be on the scanners. Broadcast all over the island. Oh. This is unfortunate.”

  Annie didn’t know what to say. She’d forgotten that some people in the world actually cared what “the neighbors” thought; people who prized perception over compassion, people like Brian’s sister, who, years earlier, hadn’t allowed the public to be told that Brian was killed by a drunk driver, as if it would somehow stain the family name.

  Roger sighed. “I should alert Colin.”

  “Colin?” Annie asked, her eyes dropping back to the bridesmaid so she could avoid looking at him.

  “Colin Li
ttlefield. This girl is Fiona. Colin’s younger sister.”

  Annie knew that the waterfront property next to the Flanagans’ belonged to the Littlefield family. But the original owners had died a few years ago, and the place had since fallen into disrepair. Earl had told her that the heirs were arguing about what to do with it; meanwhile, the place was wasting away like a seagull with a broken wing. Fiona must be one of the heirs; Colin, another.

  She was about to tell Roger that alerting Colin was a good idea when she realized it didn’t matter because Roger had disappeared into the darkness as quickly as he had emerged. She also realized that the music was blaring again; the fireworks had ceased.

  As Annie stood, trying to decide if there was enough time to hurry into the cottage and throw on some real clothes, headlights bobbed down the clamshell driveway; a pickup truck slammed to a stop by Annie’s front porch. A cab door flew open; the driver jumped out, a black bag in hand, long auburn hair spilling down her back. It was Taylor, Chappy’s nosy neighbor, Annie’s near nemesis, and, apparently, one of the island’s emergency personnel.

  Great, Annie thought with an edge of sarcasm. She and Taylor had not gotten off to a terrific start when Annie had first moved to the Vineyard. She’d done her best to keep her distance since then.

  “The ambulance is coming from a hospital run, so it might take a few minutes,” Taylor said as she brushed past Annie and dropped to her knees by Fiona. “Fill me in.”

  Annie wondered if Taylor was one of “the neighbors” that Roger had feared would find out.

  Then, craning her neck up to Annie, Taylor said, “FYI, I’m one of three EMTs on Chappy. The ambulance comes from Edgartown, so one of us shows up ’til they get here. You wanna tell me what happened?”

  Annie cleared her throat. “I have no idea. I’d just taken a shower. I started to make tea when I saw the fireworks. I stepped outside for a better view, and I found her.”

  “Fiona Littlefield.”

  Of course Taylor would know who the bridesmaid was. Few people crossed the channel onto Chappaquiddick that she didn’t know, or at least know where they were headed and why.

  “Well, she’s still breathing.” Taylor opened the black bag and took out what looked like a blood pressure cuff. It was impossible to tell if she was pleased or annoyed at having been rousted from God only knew what for someone who did not need CPR or who wasn’t dead.

  Then Taylor yanked a phone from her denim shirt pocket and hastily relayed Fiona’s vital statistics to someone on the other end—perhaps someone in the ambulance or at the hospital.

  “Roger Flanagan has gone to find Colin,” Annie said.

  Taylor shook her head and turned away from the cell. “He won’t find him. Colin’s Porsche rolled off the On Time leaving Chappy when I was on my way back from the movies.”

  It was hard for Annie to believe that she hadn’t heard Colin’s car when he’d left the party: She was all too familiar with the low rumble of the Porsche engine. Husband number two, her ex, Mark, had had one. Like so many of his toys, she’d wound up paying for it, though the car had vanished when he had. But Annie wasn’t shocked that Taylor knew the kind of car Colin Littlefield drove; what was surprising was that she had gone to the movies. It seemed like such a normal thing to do, and Taylor was anything but that.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Taylor said, setting the phone down but, Annie noticed, keeping the line open. “But the best time to go is when folks are whooping it up at their own Fourth of July parties. Nobody bothers with the movies then, so it’s quiet. I like watching Jaws on the big screen. It brings back memories.”

  Many islanders had been used as extras when the movie was filmed, but Annie doubted that Taylor had been old enough to make her debut. She made a mental note to ask her at some other time, like when there wasn’t an unconscious bridesmaid on the lawn.

  Then Taylor sighed and glanced at her watch. “They’ll be here any second. The On Time is on alert, waiting. All other traffic and passengers have to wait. They’re our number-one cutter.”

  Probably because Annie looked baffled, Taylor added, “We call them cutters because they get to cut into the ferry line. Like the mail truck, FedEx—you know. The vehicles that have first dibs. Cops and ambulance are at the top of the list.”

  Annie said, “Right now, Edgartown seems far away.”

  “It’s only five hundred and twenty-seven feet. You’ll be stunned at how fast they get here. Way faster than in a city. Emergencies always happen in slow motion, though; it’s been less than three minutes since you called.” She gestured toward her phone. “And we’re in constant touch.”

  Less than three minutes? Was that possible? Then, as Annie was about to ask if it would be okay for her to duck inside and change out of her robe, the distinct sound of a siren wobbled through the air. And Fiona Littlefield went into a convulsion.

  Chapter 5

  The Edgartown Police SUV pulled in first and parked behind Taylor’s pickup. John Lyons jumped out; the ambulance came next. John swept the beam of his flashlight across the lawn, directing the vehicle onto the grass. Then two men thundered out and raced toward the women: One carried a large LED lantern; the other, a black case. With practiced precision, they squatted on either side of Fiona. One man tore open the case while firing razor-sharp medical terms at the other, who repeated them into a phone.

  “Water was dribbling from her nose and her mouth,” Annie reported. “But it looks like it’s gone now.”

  The EMTs examined Fiona’s mouth. While they worked, John motioned for Annie to join him by the porch.

  “What happened?” he barked. He held a small notebook; a pen was poised above it.

  Annie stared at the page. As if their relationship wasn’t tenuous enough, now he was going to interrogate her. She clenched one hand; her fingernails scored the flesh on her palm. Then she told him the story, starting with when she’d stumbled over the bridesmaid and ending when Taylor arrived. “I didn’t know she was an EMT,” she added.

  “Did you hear anything or anyone?” he asked, ignoring her comment about Taylor.

  “No. Only the fireworks.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “No. But I wasn’t looking. Before I went outside, I was in the shower. I have no idea how long Fiona was lying here.”

  When he was done writing, John closed his notebook. “I tried to call you. When the call came in. I heard the address; I thought something had happened to you.”

  Under other circumstances, she might have found his comment endearing. Right then, she wasn’t sure. “There are two hundred people at the main house. Chances are, it would not have been me.”

  “The dispatcher said ‘the guest cottage.’”

  “Oh,” she said. Then she remembered he had no way of knowing that she was upset. After all, he didn’t yet know that she knew he was heading off island to Plymouth. He didn’t yet know that she knew he’d be seeing his ex, or that Annie had no idea how to handle that, what questions would be okay for her to ask, and which ones might be off-limits. Even at her age, she did not know the boundaries, only that life had changed since she and Brian dated in the eighties, and since she and Mark had, in the nineties. Morals, values, expectations—the rules had all changed. If any, in fact, still existed.

  She resisted the urge to check her phone to see if John had really called. “You must have called when I’d gone to find Roger.”

  Looking into her eyes, John cocked his sweet half smile, the one that made her feel like a schoolgirl. “You went to the Flanagans’ dressed like that?”

  She laughed. “I did.”

  He chuckled as if in approval, then capped his pen and moved back to the others. Annie followed.

  “Any other Littlefields around?” he asked Taylor. “Like maybe Colin?”

  Then the EMT with the lantern and the phone looked at his partner and said, “We need to transport.”

  Not waiting for an answer, John sprinted toward the ambula
nce with Taylor on his heels. Apparently, they, too, had done this more than once.

  “He isn’t here.”

  The voice startled Annie. It was Roger, who somehow had sneaked back to the scene and now stood beside her. She wondered how—or if—he’d explained the “unfortunate” commotion to the wedding guests, none of whom had accompanied him. “Colin,” Roger added. “He’s gone and so is his car.” He stared down at Fiona, whose convulsion had abated though she remained unconscious.

  “I know,” Annie said. “Taylor saw him drive off the On Time into Edgartown.” She scolded herself for her smug satisfaction in knowing something that Roger didn’t.

  “Well, I can’t tell Sheila,” Roger added, “because she didn’t show up for the wedding.”

  Annie reached down and plucked her phone from the ground.

  Then John and Taylor jogged back from the ambulance toting a stretcher. They set it down next to Fiona; Taylor removed the quilt and handed it to Annie. “Good idea that you covered her up,” she said.

  Annie gave her a wry smile.

  The Edgartown EMTs lifted the patient and carefully laid her on the stretcher, the organza dragging on the grass. In an amazingly caring gesture, Taylor picked up the fabric and spread it neatly, modestly, across the bridesmaid’s legs.Then the EMTs strapped down Fiona’s feet and drew another strap under her arms and over her chest. Annie noticed they had tossed the bouquet of hydrangeas aside.

  “Who’s Sheila?” she asked Roger as the EMTs worked.

  “The sister. The eldest Littlefield kid. She’s an oddball.”

  “Did you expect her?” Annie didn’t know why she’d asked. The instinct of a mystery writer, she supposed. Always scouting for details to help fill in the blanks.

  “No. Etiquette was never her strong suit.”

  “Is she one of the heirs who wants to sell the house?”

  Roger hesitated. “I try to stay out of their business. I only know that Sheila’s not been fond of my daughter since Dana and Colin split up.”