Dark Light

19

I’d misjudged the woman’s age, possibly because of the tricky lighting on the second floor, with its Tiffany lamps dimmed and candle shadows flickering in the wind that had drifted through the open balcony doors.

The doors were open now.

Chestra Engle was younger by a decade. Or more. Soft light is supposed to be kind. Instead, it had contributed to yesterday’s misimpression—my first impression, which is why the snapshot had imprinted so convincingly: wrinkled face on the shrinking scaffolding of Mildred Chestra Engle.

Tomlinson had been surprised when I called her an old woman. I now understood why, sitting in the same room, with the same candles and lamps, but seeing her clearly for the first time. The woman had wrinkles—smile furrows; a sagging area beneath the chin—but her skin wasn’t a tragedy of lines, and she wasn’t old.

No. My amended guess: she was a few years beyond what some call middle age; a mature woman who, when the light was right, was still attractive. Handsome is a word commonly used to describe women her age. Lean, fit—some curves evident beneath the gold lamé gown she wore tonight. You didn’t need an imagination to know that she’d once been extraordinarily beautiful.

Chessie’s facial bones had the classic structure: cheeks that created shadow, large eyes staring out, a jawline that curved into hairline on a delicate stem of a neck…

I was thinking about that—facial subtleties, the structural dimensions of beauty—when I heard Chestra ask me, “When you disappear from the room, Dr. Ford, is someone special with you? Or are you all alone?”

“Sorry, Chess. What did you say?”

She repeated herself, laughing as she added, “Please be a dear and tell me I’m not boring you. I won’t be offended if it’s true. Why, at times I find myself a dreadful bore—”

“Not at all. I apologize.” I realized I’d been staring at her face, something that was impolite in her world. No…it was an indelicacy. Her word. I reached for my glass of soda water, lime twist. “I was thinking about tomorrow’s dive, wondering if I’d forgotten something.”

She looked at me for a moment, enjoying my dishonesty, before saying, “Really.” Said it with the familiar flat tone. Sat facing me, eyes searching mine, a woman who’d been stared at by men all her life, I realized, in exactly the same way I’d been staring, so knew when men were lying.

She seemed oddly pleased by my discomfort but didn’t press. The polite thing to do was change the subject. She did the polite thing.

Conversation is no longer considered a skill, but it is. Chestra was expert. Talking with her was effortless. She had the knack of asking questions that probed, but that also made me feel important. My opinion was valuable to her—she listened. I was interesting; the topics fascinating: sharks, water pollution, the dynamics of storms and open sea.

She didn’t insult me by playing the role of the hopelessly ditzy female to reassure my male insecurities. She wasn’t cutesy, she didn’t chatter, she didn’t flirt, she didn’t ramble, and didn’t use double entendres to test what she, at least, considered tasteful boundaries. When I asked her a personal question, she was sometimes so shockingly frank that I felt it was safe to be honest in return. An example: “Men are pack animals, like wolves. That’s why I’ve learned never to show fear, and how to use a gun!”

She had a wiseguy cynical side that I liked, especially when discussing relationships and marriage:

“I think the reason most women marry, Doc, is they fear being alone more than they fear having a keeper.

“I married once, never again. I don’t have the patience it takes to fall in love with a man I’m marrying for money…”

When I told her no, I’d never been married, she said, “Good for you. You’re smart. Too many women treat husbands like horses. They use love like a bridle to steer and control—or to punish them when they misbehave.”

She was funny, too. Didn’t mind being the butt of her own jokes. One of her gambits was to ask some cliché rhetorical question—“What is life?”—but flip the emphasis so that she hinted at her own goofball mistakes. “What is life?” Use the profound cliché to illustrate life’s silliness. Endearing.

Good conversation was as important to her as being a hostess who made good drinks, real drinks, and who served excellent hors d’oeuvres, such as the shrimp, black bread, and Feta cheese now on the table before us. Conversation was ceremonial, something that shouldn’t be rushed by business.

So I didn’t press. She led, I followed. The woman was insightful, and entertaining.

Even so, I still had to get home and plan what could be a difficult dive, and it was already ten-thirty…

“Doc? Can you at least have a glass of wine? I have a very nice Riesling…or a Syrah from South Africa. I want to walk you around the houses, and show you why I want to be involved with salvaging that wreck.”

“Show me?”

“Photographs. They’ll make it easier for me to explain.”

The woman’s instincts were excellent.

C hestra believed that her great-aunt was aboard the vessel that Jeth had discovered, the night it went down in a storm.

“She was from the Dorn branch of the family. Marlissa Dorn.” The woman searched my face briefly—had I heard the name?—before she continued. “The story’s become part of our family legend. I grew up hearing it, and now I want to know the truth. What happened that night? Was Marlissa the only one aboard who drowned? Those questions have never been answered. I’ve wondered about it for years. Fantasized, in fact, the story’s so romantic—I’m a sap for stuff like that.”

The woman gave me a look that was, at once, tolerant and scolding. “I didn’t lie to you last night. I will get fabulous stories from this. But I don’t expect you to find anything valuable. If you do, we’ll split the profit, whatever way you think is fair. But I’d want to keep a memento or two, that’s all. Some small thing to remind me of Marlissa.”

We were upstairs, standing at a wall that was a museum of photos. Nearly all black-and-whites. They documented the vacation activities of the three family branches—Dorn, Engle, and Brusthoff—who shared this beach house, Southwind.

“Marlissa was my godmother,” Chestra said. “I was an infant when she died, but she’s remained an important figure in my life. Why shouldn’t I get involved now? I can afford it. I’m not the kind of gal who sits back and expects the world to come to me. At this stage of life?” She left that out there, but didn’t seem to be fishing for compliments.

I said, “There’re a lot of wrecks in the Gulf of Mexico. What makes you think this is the one? Why would you associate your godmother with Nazi artifacts—”

“I’m not certain, of course. I don’t know…it’s a feeling I have. Legends invite all sorts of theories, from the silly to the possible. I’ll show you one possible explanation.” She had a scarf in her hand, and motioned for me to follow. We crossed before the open balcony to another section of wall, where she pointed to a photo of two men. One was dark-haired, with a pointed, ferret face. Beside him was a younger man, tall and blond, with a prominent jaw and nose.

Chestra touched her finger to a second photo: the same dark-haired man was there; the blond man behind him, a drink tray in one hand, a towel draped over his arm. The dark-haired man was sitting next to a good-looking guy wearing jodhpurs and a leather flight jacket.

Surprised, I said, “That’s Charles Lindbergh,” having already realized who the dark-haired man was.

Chestra said, “That’s right, and Henry Ford’s beside him. I live in Manhattan, so it isn’t snobbery when I say I don’t consider this area to be, well…metropolitan. In those years, though—these photos are from the 1930s and ’40s, I think—Sanibel, Naples, Sarasota were all small towns. Everyone knew each other. The famous and the not-so-famous. Saw each other in stores; went to the same dances.”

I almost asked, but stopped myself. She interpreted my uneasiness correctly, though, and answered. “No, I’m not telling you this stuff from memory. Kiddo, I’m well aware I’m not a girl anymore, but I’m not so blasted old that I was attending dances in nineteen forty.”

She touched her hand to my chest, silencing my apology. “I inherited Marlissa’s diaries. She was a marvelous writer, and I’ve read them all many times.

“That’s how I know that the handsome young blond gentleman in the photo worked as a jack-of-all-trades in the area, including some part-time jobs for the Ford estate. You’ve seen Henry Ford’s house, of course, next to Edison’s estate, on the river in Fort Myers.”

This was like listening to Arlis, but without the irritating jabber.

“The blond gentleman was German. From Munich, I think. His name was Frederick Roth.”

“I see.”

“He was also my aunt Marlissa’s lover—not something she revealed anywhere but in her diary. This was during an era, of course, when it wasn’t proper for young ladies to have lovers.

“Marlissa and Frederick met coincidentally aboard the ocean liner Normandie. They were both making the transatlantic crossing to America to start new lives. He worked in the ship’s kitchen; Marlissa was in a first-class cabin.

“The crossing took several nights in those days, if the weather was bad. And the weather was bad.” Chestra’s expression was dreamy and distant. “Have you seen photographs of the Normandie? She was the most luxurious ship of her time. Marble floors and rare wood; formal dances in halls with orchestras and ice sculptures. My godmother had a sly way of writing. Certain letters meant certain words. It took me years to figure out her…code, would you call it?” The woman smiled. “I gather that Frederick was a very good dancer…and a wonderful lover.”

She added, “The night my aunt was killed, when her boat sank off Sanibel, Frederick was aboard with her. That’s how the story goes, anyway. Marlissa’s body washed up on the beach. His body was never found.”

The woman looked toward the open balcony, hearing storm waves rumble ashore. Her smile became bittersweet: See? Isn’t it romantic?

I still didn’t know why she felt there was some connection with the artifacts. I also wanted to hear why her godmother and lover were twelve miles offshore at night, during a storm. It was a nice story, but it didn’t make sense.

“You’re saying that the Nazi medals we found belonged to Frederick Roth?” I found it improbable. Diamonds weren’t the sort of thing awarded even for combat heroics, and the man in the photograph was too young to earn medals for anything else.

“No. I’m not saying that at all. Frederick and Marlissa came to America a couple of years before the war started.”

“Then I don’t see the connection. He didn’t return to Germany?”

“They both remained in America. He worked, sometimes at the Ford estate, and Marlissa wintered on Sanibel. Sometimes spent the entire year. Here, in this house. They wanted to be married.

“According to Marlissa’s diary, Freddy—that’s the way she referred to him sometimes, ‘Freddy’—he was determined to make a fortune so her family would accept him.” Chestra’s tone became sardonic. “Money is the great unifier, is it not? It’s the only religion that offers heaven on earth.”

Roth believed that Florida real estate was the fastest way to get rich, she told me. During those years, fishing and farming were the main sources of income in the area, supplemented by tourism. Farmland was valuable, bay frontage less so, but it was still much preferred to beachfront.

Because I knew it was true, I nodded as she said, “Apparently, locals thought beach frontage was worthless. It was sandy, hot, buggy. A garden won’t grow near a beach, and you can’t dock a boat because of the waves.”

Tourists liked beaches, though, which is why Roth began to buy up inexpensive beachfront anywhere in Florida he could find it.

“In her diary, Marlissa wrote that Freddy owned ‘miles and miles of the stuff.’ He bought waterfront for as little as ten dollars an acre, and seldom more than fifty dollars an acre. Marlissa kept very accurate records.”

I said, “I don’t understand.”

“Marlissa wanted Frederick to become rich so they could marry. So she loaned him the money. That’s why she kept records. She had an inheritance, and our families have always been…comfortable. Fifty dollars for an acre of beach may not sound like much now, but Frederick was hired help. He made a buck a day.

“I see. He was a hardworking guy in love with an heiress. I still don’t understand, though, why you think there’s a link between the artifacts we found and your godmother’s lover?”

The woman shrugged, and swept her scarf through the air, frustrated. “Oh…I don’t know. Wistful thinking, I guess. Silly hopes? They are from the same era.” She looked toward the balcony again where wind moved the curtains, bare trees visible out there in the darkness.

Theatrical? Once again, I got that impression. The woman could be frank at times, but she also maintained a distance. Drama was an effective shield.

Chestra wasn’t telling me everything. Why? She seemed to lead me close to the truth in the hope I’d provide my own answers. Or that I would discover information that she possessed but didn’t want to share.

I provided her with a possible explanation now. “The fact that Frederick Roth lived in Florida during the war doesn’t mean he wasn’t a Nazi. He could have been a sympathizer. Or an operative sent to gather intelligence for the German regime.” I was referring to the brotherhood I know so well.

I looked at the photo again: an athletic young man serving drinks to two of the most powerful men in America. Add to the mix the famous names Arlis had mentioned: John L. Lewis, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Edna St. Vincent Millay—all of them living or vacationing on the same rural coastline, in the relaxed atmosphere of palms and surf.

Why hadn’t I thought of it before? During that era, Sanibel was an ideal location to drop an intelligence officer. Infiltrate the local social structure, find the sort of job that allowed him to eavesdrop on conversations. Rifle personal papers and appointment calendars while his powerful employers swam or fished. Perfect. A smart operative could blend in for years, generating a quality of intelligence worthy of a diamond pin. How the German military got the medal into the agent’s hand was problematic. But not impossible.

Chestra was silent for a moment, her expression troubled—her godmother’s lover was a Nazi?

“I’ve always thought it was extremely unlikely that Frederick worked for the Germans. Quite the opposite, in fact, from what Marlissa wrote about him. Which is why I never gave it serious consideration until…now. Until Tommy told me what you’d found. Medals and diamonds and coins, all from that time period. It’s too coincidental.”

I asked, “What did you read in your godmother’s diary that made you believe he wasn’t a Nazi sympathizer?”

Chestra gave me a sadder version of her I told you, it’s romantic look. “Because Marlissa was doing something else that wasn’t considered proper during the time. Particularly for a wealthy young woman of her class. Frederick Roth was a Jew. He didn’t advertise it—working for Henry Ford? But it’s there in her writings.”