“Shorts, well…”
“Slacks and a jacket, then.”
Tomlinson was silent for a moment. He had been staring at the tray of sodium hydroxide for a while. The liquid’s surface convexity magnified the objects slightly. “The cigarette lighter,” he said, “it’s not in great shape.”
“No. It may be silver coated, but it’s cheap ferrous metal beneath.”
“Someone cared enough about it to have it engraved. Any guess what the first initial is?”
I said, “Too early to tell. Speaking of initials, you didn’t tell me her name. Your lady friend.”
Tomlinson replied, “Mildred. I love that name—old, for an old soul. Mildred Engle. But she goes by her middle name, Chestra. Chessie, if she likes you.”
11
At 8:40 P.M., I turned down the drive to Mildred Engle’s home, the lights of my old pickup sweeping across a mailbox, a nameplate—SOUTHWIND—then trees, patches of cactus, a gazebo, and, to my left, what looked to be a rock garden.
Rock gardens are not common on Sanibel, an island composed of sand. Particularly gardens of symmetrical, knee-high stones.
I was early. I left the truck running, and got out to have a look.
Through stripped trees, I could see the shape of the house silhouetted against a spacious darkness that I knew marked the Gulf of Mexico. There would be a rind of white beach between, the Yucatán beyond.
Stars, too. They were immobile above clouds that sailed a twenty-knot wind toward Cuba.
Weather was deteriorating.
I placed my hand on the first stone I came to. Gray marble, but not a solitary stone. It was a slab of marble that had been fitted atop a marble box. I explored with my fingers. There was an inscription.
This wasn’t a rock garden. It was a small cemetery—not unusual on the islands. The bridge to the mainland hadn’t been built until the early ’60s and bodies don’t store well in the subtropics.
I knelt and removed my glasses, attempting to read the inscription in the peripheral light from my truck.
“The name on the grave is ‘Nellie Kay Dorn,’ Dr. Ford,” said a woman’s voice from behind me. “She was born in eighteen…eighteen fifty-eight? She died in the early nineteen thirties. Am I right? My memory has gotten so spotty. I hope the dead will forgive me.”
My headlights shot a golden tunnel through the trees. Moths orbited through incandescent patterns of dust. A black figure stood at the tunnel’s edge.
“It’s a family cemetery. Dorn and Engle, some Brusthoffs, too. Fourteen of us in all. I doubt if the local government will ever let it become fifteen. Modern times. That’s what they tell me, anyway.”
Her tone was ironic; her voice a note lower than most women, with a hint of accent—Scandinavian?
I stood. “Ms. Engle?”
“Chestra.” The figure dipped—a slight curtsy that somehow mocked its own formality. “I hope I didn’t scare you, Dr. Ford. I’m a sucker when it comes to long walks at night. Please…come inside. Ladies shouldn’t introduce themselves to men in bars…or in graveyards, I suppose. And I at least try to be a lady. Now I’ve gone and made a mess of things.”
The figure turned. For an instant, I saw a face in profile—a nose…section of cheek…an eye—the face whiter than the new moon visible through the trees.
“Not at all,” I said. “I prefer women to ladies.”
Laughter.
“Come to the house, then, while I change. The door’s open.”
The figure moved away.
C hestra Engle wasn’t wearing sequins, as when I’d watched her from the beach. She was wearing a black chemise, ankle-length, with a pearl appliqué on the bodice that, at first, I thought was a brooch, the lighting was so poor. I had followed her through a hall, up a stairway, into this room of antique furniture where Tiffany lamps were soft, and candles flamed on the fireplace mantel.
Seen from behind, she was a lean-hipped woman with silver hair, in a dress that clung. Nice.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I keep the lights dim this time of year. It’s because of turtles nesting. From May to October, they bury their eggs on the beach, and if the baby turtles see lights they crawl away from the ocean and die—” She stopped, catching herself. I heard her alto laughter once again. “Listen to me—telling a marine biologist his business. It would be like telling Charles LaBuff, someone who’s studied turtles forever.”
“Not quite the same. I’m a fish guy, mostly.” I was looking around the room, seeing the kitchen to my left, photos on walls and mantelpiece, a grand piano in the next room, its lid a glossy black ramp beneath the crystal chandelier. On a nearby desk, a single framed photo was visible, black-and-white. A woman.
I said, “You didn’t get much storm damage. You’re lucky.”
“Lucky, and good. This house, anyway. It was built by one of my relatives, Victor Dorn, in the late eighteen hundreds. How many hurricanes do you think it’s weathered in a century? I hope I’m as solid as this old dame when I’m a hundred.” She bent to dim a lamp, then stood, and turned.
For the first time, I got a clear look at her face. Tomlinson had described her as extraordinarily beautiful. She undoubtedly had been—two or more decades ago. Skin looses elasticity as we age, desiccated wrinkles multiply, and it hangs from our bones as we shrink.
The disappointment I felt was immediately replaced by guilt. Dismissing a person because of age? I’m not so shallow that I don’t recognize my own shallowness.
If Chestra Engle noticed, she was amused, not hurt. “Don’t you look dapper tonight. Here—let me turn the light brighter, so I can get a better look.”
She did. I stood there in my khaki slacks and black sport coat, face bandaged, and watched the woman age another five years.
“May I get you something to drink, Dr. Ford?”
“Please, Ms. Engle, just Ford. Or Marion.”
“Our friend Tomlinson always refers to you as Doc.”
I nodded. Fine.
“In that case, I’m Chess, or Chessie, short for Chestra. It’s an old family name that has something to do with music in one of those silly Norse languages no one understands anymore. As in orchestra?”
I smiled at her self-deprecating manner. “All right, Chess, I’d like a beer, if you have it.”
“A beer? Just a beer?” Her disappointment was sincere. “I so rarely get a chance to make a drink for a man. A real drink. May I? Scotch on the rocks? A highball?”
I hadn’t heard the term in years; didn’t know what it was, so I said, “A highball. That sounds good.” It seemed like the right thing to do: Please this nice lady who was eager to do what she’d done for men when she was younger.
S he had a dated, jazzy way of talking: “this old dame”…“guys and gals”…“we had a ball”…“this takes the cake!” Mostly, it was in her intonation—“That’s enchanting”—and sentence patterns that shifted abruptly from formal to Hollywood wiseguy—“A delightful man, but I told him, ‘Hey, kiddo, shake a leg.’”
Irony and amusement were there, too, a consistent subtext from a person who paid attention, had seen some places…her sharp eyes still saying, Show me. Prove it. A young woman, drop-dead gorgeous, was still alive inside Chestra Engle, looking out.
For the first ten minutes, it was a struggle not to check my watch. There were more interesting things to do than spend an evening with a woman her age. The highball helped. Turned out to be whiskey and ginger ale. I don’t drink either one, but I drank this. Gradually, her speech patterns began to sound stylish. The accent was Austrian, she told me, and she had a fun, straightforward view of the world that was charming.