Dark Light

Doc?”

I said, “Yeah. When someone’s watching me.”

She laughed, sitting at the piano, and continued to play. We were settling into caricatured roles, as new friends do, our differences providing safe avenues of familiarity. I was the intractable realist, she was the urbane dame, expert at the social arts, but also an artist.

“I’m serious. It’s that eerie sort of feeling, like there are eyes floating around behind you in the darkness. I went for a walk on the beach last night and I would’ve sworn someone was watching me from the trees.” She was making light of it but serious. One of the maxims of recognizing danger is that, when instinct tells us something about a person or situation feels wrong, it is.

Maybe something was wrong. The night before, I’d noticed a big BMW sedan pass her drive slowly once, then again. I hadn’t mentioned it.

Now this.

“If you want, I can go out and have a look. Any idea why someone would be watching you?”

“Ten years ago, sure. These days, though…” She shrugged, still having fun with it but troubled.

“I’ll start keeping an eye on your house. Most nights, I go for a run, anyway, or ride the bike. I won’t bother you; no need for me to stop. If it’ll make you feel better, that’s what I’ll do. Oh—and start locking your doors when you go out. As a precaution.”

I was already making nightly visits to the dock where the Viking was moored—Jeth believed someone had snuck aboard, went through ships papers, and possibly stole some things. The boat was nearby, close to the lighthouse. Adding Chestra’s house to the list was no trouble.

The woman said, “Knowing that you’re keeping watch. Yes. Yes, I would feel safer,” not smiling now. “But, Doc? You are welcome to stop. Any night. Or every night.” There was a candelabra on the piano, six flickering candles. Her eyes locked onto mine briefly, gazing through the light with a smoldering focus. It had been happening more often during the last week—an abdominal sexual awareness, even though, intellectually, I knew it was absurd.

It was true the woman looked taut and fit. It was true, as Tomlinson said, she seemed younger as I got to know her. When the light was right, the age difference was more than manageable—she was lovely. But I had done some reading about the aging process. One of the papers was titled “Multi-disciplinary Approach to Perceptions of Beauty and Facial Aging.” It was written by a plastic surgeon, and it presented a mathematical graph model for aging. The shapes and sizes of our faces change, but some facial elements do not. I was confident I could guess Chestra’s age within three or four years.

No. The age difference was not manageable even if she were interested—a signal that, if sent, was too subtle for me to be certain.

Still…there were times the woman exuded sensuality that was as tangible as a low, vibratory tone. Especially when she was at the piano. Years ago, she’d been offered a Spanish villa in exchange for the intimacy of her body? I didn’t doubt it. I knew I had to maintain a distance or risk doing something impulsive that would embarrass us both.

It surprised me that, at times, it took a conscious effort.

D o you mind waiting just a few more minutes? I’ve got one little chord difficulty I’ve got to iron out, then I’ll sing the first verse for you, if you like.”

I was sitting at a desk opposite the balcony, reading while she worked on a new song. From the Sanibel Library, I’d gotten a book on military war medals, and also a couple of books about Nazi Germany, 1944, and the federal bank, or Reichsbank, in Berlin. I told Chestra I had seen something golden in the bowels of the wreck and asked if there was any mention in Marlissa’s diary about valuables carried aboard Dark Light.

There wasn’t, but Chestra offered to help with research. She was also helping with the legalities of salvaging the boat. Her family owned the vessel, according to maritime law, but there were still papers to file and an insurance company to contact. That’s why we’d been spending evenings together—six of the last eight nights. It also gave me a chance to update her on items we’d recovered from the wreck, which she enjoyed.

The electrolytic cleaning process was slow, but it was working. The gun-shaped object I’d found was in terrible condition, but enough remained to identify it as a German Luger.

The initials on the cigarette lighter looked like MC, followed by a letter that would possibly never be readable. Even so, Chestra was visibly moved when I brought the lighter for her to see, carrying it in a Plexiglas container of sodium hydroxide.

She was convinced it had been Marlissa Dorn’s.

Because I didn’t want to risk disappointing her, I hadn’t yet told Chestra that the flask-sized object Jeth found was silver. It appeared to be an ornate cigarette case, similar in size to the one Marlissa held in the photograph. Much of it was still covered by a sulfide patina. However, there was already a design visible on the case, and a portion of an engraved initial, too. I had Tomlinson take a look, and he said the design resembled a medieval cross.

That didn’t sound like something an aspiring actress would carry. But the initial might be an M—I would soon know.

“The lyrics aren’t quite right yet, and it may sound a little rough in parts. Are you sure you don’t mind?”

Glancing up from my book, I told Chestra, “Sure. I’d like to hear anything you’ve written. Take your time.”

She brightened, began to play louder. I continued reading. We had followed the same routine for the last several nights.

Pleasant. A relief, too, because of a growing tension at Dinkin’s Bay, and other marinas in the area.

It had been six days since Javier Castillo’s funeral.

J avier’s funeral had been a miserable day of rain and weighted gray inferences. The sound of a storm wind is not dissimilar to the sound of fatherless children weeping.

The hurricane that had caused thousands to evacuate the area had stalled for days over Cuba, sopping the Pinar del Rio region. It’d waited until most of the evacuees returned home before rolling down the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, sweeping the Sanibel area with heavy winds and more rain.

On the day of the funeral, we learned there was yet another tropical cyclone gathering strength off the Yucatan. The news added a sense of foreboding to an already dismal day. The relentless storms had come to feel like retribution.

They also made it impossible to make our second dive on Dark Light.

At the cemetery, there was a big turnout, close to a hundred people. The rage Mack had mentioned was in attendance, too. Javier had been one of fewer than two dozen full-time fishing guides on the islands, employed by a half-dozen marinas. Unlike some areas of Florida, the guides here are a brotherhood, ready to help when one of their members is in need. The same was true when it came time to bury a colleague.

During the service, the guides gravitated into a tight little group, Jeth and Nels among them, sun-hardened men, their dark faces hollow-eyed in the rain. They were out of work. Out of money; some still homeless. The storm had exposed institutions they’d trusted—insurance agencies, FEMA, banks—as cold-blooded adversaries, indifferent to what was equitable. Now one of their favorite members had been killed trying to claim what was his, a symbol of their trade, a workman’s boat.

Rage was in them. It radiated from a casket epicenter.

The man who’d shot Javier had not been arrested. In fact, he was being congratulated in local letters to the editor. The marina that had stolen Javier’s boat still had his boat, plus a couple hundred others. Law enforcement did nothing. Government did nothing.

Arlis was at the funeral, and I heard him mutter, “Forty years ago, that marina would of burnt to the ground, accidental-like. A man who murdered a fisherman trying to make a living? He’d have burnt up with it. Who’s the law when there ain’t no law? Some damn storm? And we got another hurricane coming!”

Tomlinson and I had exchanged looks. Burn the guilty, sacrifice the unfaithful. It was a subject we’d been discussing. More than a month before, he’d described an epic storm as cleansing. Like celestial light. On recent nights, over beer, we’d debated his claim’s validity or silliness. There was so much conflicting stuff in the news. Some religious groups said the relentless weather was Florida’s punishment for attracting fun-loving sinners.