First Light (30 page)

I heard voices coming from the kitchen and followed them. J.W. and Zee and Diana and Joshua were all sitting around the table sipping hot chocolate. Eliza was leaning back against the counter talking with them. She had changed into a pair of blue jeans and a pink sweatshirt. She'd scrubbed her face and brushed her hair and redone her makeup, and now she was smiling and chatting as if nothing had happened.

Hell, had I imagined it? Was all that another one of those weird morphine dreams?

Then Eliza glanced over and saw me standing in the doorway, and the quick frown that passed across her face told me that what I'd seen had been real.

She arched her eyebrows and held my eyes for a moment, and I knew she was begging me not to say anything.

I nodded at her, then turned to the Jackson family. “Hi, gang,” I said. “What brings you around?”

“We wanted to see how you were doing,” said Zee.

“I'm okay,” I said. I turned to Eliza. “That hot chocolate smells good.”

“Coming right up,” she said.

I sat at the table.

J.W. said, “We gotta talk.”

I nodded.

“Think you could drive me home a little later?”

“Sure,” I said. “I'm fine.”

He glanced at his watch, then turned to Zee. “Why don't you take the kids back, honey? It's getting on to their bedtime, and Brady and I have got some business to do.”

“But, Pa,” said Diana.

Zee stood up. “Come on, gang. You father will be right along.”

“You said you'd sleep in our tree house with us,” said Joshua.

“I don't know about that,” said J.W. “It might rain some more.”

“But you promised …”

J.W. tucked his chin against his chest and gave his two kids a look that clearly said: “That's enough.”

Zee kissed my cheek, then herded the kids toward the front door. J.W. said, “Be right back,” and followed them.

Then I was alone in the kitchen with Eliza.

She put a mug of hot chocolate in front of me and sat down across the table. “Please don't say anything,” she said.

“We need to talk.”

“No,” she said, “what I mean is, don't say anything to me. Just forget it, okay?”

“Eliza—”

She reached across the table and put her hand on top of mine. “Please.”

I shrugged. “Where's Patrick?”

“I don't know. He went out. He's upset.”

“How about you?” I said. “Are you upset?”

“I told you I didn't want to talk about it.”

“Right,” I said. “Sorry. Where's Nate?”

“Probably went fishing. What else does he do?”

“He saves your ass.”

“Brady,” said Eliza, “I mean it. Change the damn subject.”

I shrugged. “Tell me how your mother's doing.”

Eliza looked down at the table. “Worse. They don't know what's going to happen. I—”

At that moment, J.W. came back. He stood in the doorway. “Am I interrupting?”

Eliza stood up. “No. You two guys go ahead, talk your manly talk. The water's hot if you want some more cocoa or something. There's leftover pizza in the fridge. Help yourselves.”

“Thanks,” said J.W.

Eliza ran her fingers across my cheek as she walked past me. “Umm,” she said. “You shaved.”

When she was gone, I looked at J.W. He was grinning.

“It's not what you think,” I said.

“I don't care what it is,” he said. “So how are you really feeling?”

“Not that bad. Like somebody stuffed me into a giant bowling ball and rolled a few games. I was drugged, you know.”

“Yeah? You really were? You were mumbling something about needles, but I figured you'd banged your head. You weren't making much sense.”

“You saved my life,” I said.

“Nate, actually. He saved both of us. So what happened down there?”

I told him, as best as I could recall, how I'd been hit from behind and zapped with a needle and dragged out into the water and left to drown.

“You sure you're not making that up?” he said. “Looked to us like you waded out too far, got your line tangled around your legs, fell and hit your head.”

I smiled. “I admit it all feels pretty hallucinatory. But the doctor said it was morphine, so I guess it happened.”

“Don't suppose you got a look at your assailant?”

I shook my head. “He surprised me, got me from behind. It was dark.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Yeah, seems to me he did. But not until after he hit me with the drug. All I remember is whispering. I'd never recognize his voice.”

“You sure it was a guy?”

“No, I'm not. But he—or she—dragged me out into the water. If it was a woman, she was a strong one.”

“So who'd do something like that?” said J.W.

“That's the question, all right. My first thought would be Nate. He's pretty jealous of his beach.”

“Then he'd turn around and save your life?”

I shrugged. “Maybe he would.”

“Could've been anybody, when you think about it,” said J.W. “Somebody's been hanging around that cottage. You might've surprised them.”

I nodded. “Fishermen poaching on Nate's beach, or maybe teenagers, drinking beer, getting laid.”

“Doubt if teenagers or stray fishermen would bother padlocking the cellar door.” J.W. scratched his chin. “I want to take a look down there. But the reason I came over was I wanted to talk to you about Molly Wood.”

“I thought you wanted to see how I was feeling.”

“Right,” he said. “That, too. But Molly's missing and you're not, so now that I see you're okay, I'm more concerned about her than you.”

“So am I,” I said. “What can you tell me?”

“I found out today that she's been playing tennis with a good-looking blond-haired guy. Kathy Bannerman played tennis with the same guy.”

I laughed sourly. “That narrows it down to what, about five thousand men on the island?” I said. “That's good work.”

He gave me a sarcastic smile. “Thanks. This might not be the bad guy. But if he dated these two women,
he probably can tell us something. The fellow who saw them together thought he might've heard some mention of Hilton Head.”

“That's where the Isle of Dreams Development Corporation, the people who want to buy this land, are located,” I said. “Philip Fredrickson is one of their representatives. He's blond.”

J.W. nodded. “There was a golf glove in Molly's car. It was made by the Mallet Company. The Isle of Dreams is a subsidiary of Mallet.”

“Five thousand blond guys, five million golf gloves,” I said.

J.W. nodded. “This Larry fellow I talked to said he thought he heard the blond guy mention a private beach to Molly. It sounded like they were setting up a rendezvous. Midnight swim or something.”

I stared at J.W. for a minute. “Private beach,” I repeated. “And you're thinking …”

“We were on a private beach last night,” he said.

“How many private beaches are there on the island?”

“Dozens,” he said. “But there's only one where you got drugged and dragged into the water and left to die.” He looked around. “Where's Nate?”

I shrugged. “Eliza thought he went fishing.”

“Probably right back on his beach. You and I cost him a prime tide of fishing this morning. Whatever I might've thought of Nate Fairchild, he was pretty damned heroic. I think I'll mosey along down there, talk to Nate, now that we're on speaking terms. He spends a lot of time on that beach. Maybe he's seen something.”

“I'll come with you,” I said.

J.W. waved his hand. “You sit tight. I don't want to be slowed down by some invalid just out of a sickbed. I can take care of this myself.”

“Christ,” I said. “I'm fine. Let's go.” I shoved myself back from the table and stood up … and a sudden wave of dizziness and nausea forced me to grab the back of the chair for balance. I sat back down.

“Yep,” said J.W. “You're fine, all right.” He stood up. “You take it easy. I won't be long. You can drive me home when I get back, if you're up to it.”

“Give me a few minutes,” I said. “I just need to get something in my stomach.”

“I want to get home in time to read to the kids before bed,” he said. “You just relax. You're looking a little green around the gills.”

The truth was, I felt a little green around the gills. I nodded. “Okay. You go ahead. I should be okay to drive you home. If I'm not, I'm sure Eliza would be happy to.”

He grinned. “You better not leave me alone with that woman.”

I flashed on the scene in my bedroom. “I'd never do that,” I said.

I followed J.W. to the door, and as he was leaving, I said, “Look around the cottage for a hypodermic needle, while you're there.”

He nodded. “You're thinking of Molly's medical bag?”

“Yes. Visiting nurses keep needles in them.”

“Well,” said J.W., “that's the connection, isn't
it? Between what happened to you and Molly's disappearance?”

“Could be,” I said.

After he left, I went back to the kitchen. I looked into the refrigerator, but the thought of warmed-up pizza gave my stomach a jolt, so I settled for the can of Progresso chicken soup that I found in a cabinet.

I heated it in the microwave, and while I sat at the table slurping it off my spoon, I tried to figure out why Molly Wood's abductor—or, for all we knew, her killer—would be hanging around the tumbledown stone cottage on the Fairchilds' beach at five o'clock on a rainy morning, waiting to whack me across the back of my neck and zap me in the shoulder with a syringe full of morphine and drag me into the stormy sea and leave me to drown under the rising tide.

The soup went down easily and seemed to settle comfortably in my stomach. When I finished it, I stood up from the table warily. I was pleased to observe that I felt steady and sturdy and clearheaded.

I didn't come up with any answers about Molly and needles and people who wanted to kill me, though.

I glanced at my watch. J.W. had been gone about half an hour. I decided to walk down to the beach, see what he was doing. I agreed with him. That cottage might hold some answers. Anyway, a stroll in the salty evening air would feel good.

I went upstairs, got a pack of cigarettes and a flashlight, fetched my jacket, and looked around for Eliza. She wasn't up there. When I got back downstairs, I called for her. She didn't answer, so I scribbled a
note and left it on the kitchen table. “Went down to the beach,” it said. “Back soon.”

Then I went outside.

All the family cars were lined up in the turnaround in front—Sarah's Range Rover, which I'd been using, Nate's battered old pickup, Eliza's Saab convertible, Patrick's BMW. Warm orange lights glowed from the windows of the Fairchild family homestead.

It looked homey as hell.

Some home.

A sharp, damp breeze was blowing in off the water, but the rain had stopped and wispy clouds were skidding across the new moon. I paused on the back lawn to light a cigarette, then drew the smoke experimentally into my lungs. Ah, nicotine! I'd been a long time without a hit, and I was delighted to observe that it didn't make me feel dizzy or nauseated.

I smoked half of it, then ground it out under my heel. I didn't need the damn cigarette. I could quit any time.

Ha!

I blinked a few times until my eyes adjusted to the darkness. The sky was bright enough to illuminate the sandy pathway that wandered away from the house to the beach, so I left the flashlight in my pocket.

It was about a fifteen-minute walk to the cottage from the house, mostly downhill, but by the time I had topped the last rise and saw the cottage and the beach below me, I was a little winded.

It was the morphine, of course. Totally unrelated to cigarettes or middle age.

It was about then that I latched on to the fragment of thought that had been niggling at me.

Patrick's car was parked out front. But he wasn't in the house.

So where the hell was he?

And just about the time I asked myself that question, another pellet of insight that had been ricocheting around in my head slowed down enough for me to catch up with it.

What had he said? “‘Frailty, thy name is woman.'”

Hamlet.

The note I'd found in Molly Wood's book. That had been a quote from
Hamlet,
too.

Hamlet thought his mother was amoral.

So did Patrick.

Jesus.

I stood there, catching my breath, and as I did, mingled with the muffled crashing of the waves on the beach and the hiss of the breeze in the scrubby pines, I thought I heard voices. They seemed to be coming from the direction of the cottage, and although I didn't recognize them, I could tell they were men's voices, and they sounded angry.

I hurried down the slope and around to the front of the cottage where it faced the ocean. The voices had been coming from inside. I climbed the steps onto the rickety old porch and pulled out my flashlight. Just as I was about to flick it on, I heard a voice. The tone was calm, the way a parent might try to soothe a child who'd scraped her knee, and it echoed from somewhere deep inside the cottage.

The voice was muffled, but I could make out the words. “It's all over,” he was saying. “Time to give it up.”

It was J.W.

I flicked on the flashlight, and as I stepped inside, I heard a loud clanging noise, as if somebody had smashed a steel pipe against the hood of a car. Then there was a grunt and a thump and a curse and another clang.

I hurried inside, following the sounds through the front room into a center room, and from there I saw a door hanging ajar in the room beyond. It was lit a dim orange color, as if a fire was burning inside.

I went over to the doorway. It opened onto a set of crude wooden steps leading down into a cellar. The sounds of scuffling feet, grunts, and muttered curses came from down there.