She laughed again, swaying as her fingers pulled her along the keyboard. “I had a few offers, sure. Records, films. I wasn’t a bad-looking gal, and I used my looks like a proper New York woman—which means I never exposed my breasts unintentionally. Recording my music, though, would have been like walking down Broadway naked. Same with Hollywood. No thanks.” She laughed again. “Especially at this stage of life.”
“Marlissa Dorn would’ve envied you.” My eyes were moving from Dorn’s photograph to Chestra’s face, gauging the size of the earlobes, the nose, the full and swollen lips. “You turned them down. Marlissa never got her chance to accept.”
The woman was thoughtful for a moment. Her music slowed, then stopped. She stood, closed the keyboard lid, and came around the piano, her hand out. She’d made a highball for me, a chartreuse and soda for herself. I put the drink in her hand.
“You’re right, Doc.”
“About Marlissa envying you?”
“No. About me leveling. There are parts of the story you don’t know. It’s time I came clean.”
34
“There are no photos of me on the wall because our families closed this house shortly after the war. Marlissa was involved in a scandal that caused quite a stink at the time. Made it awkward for them to remain in the area, so they boarded up the place, and seldom returned. Never again for a vacation.
“I have a few memories—the sound of waves, the weight of the air. That’s all. I was a toddler, not old enough to make Southwind’s photo museum.”
I said, “They closed the house because of the scandal? Or because of your godmother’s death?”
It seemed odd she didn’t automatically mention the latter.
“Both,” Chestra said, “of course. It was painful. The family was deeply upset by her death and the incident I’m talking about. That’s why I didn’t come straight out and tell you. My uncle Clarence is the only one still alive who’s old enough to remember, but it’s something even we don’t discuss.”
Chestra was wearing a black cardigan jacket tonight, pleated pants, and a white blouse with an antique emerald necklace. The bracelet was sterling silver; her watch gold, very thin. She’d closed the balcony doors—too windy—and we were sitting in the candle-dim dining room. On the table, she’d placed a Federal Express envelope and a leather-bound book, its gilded pages darkened with age.
The FedEx envelope, I noticed, was from a Wisconsin law firm. An attorney named Jason Goddard.
The book was Marlissa Dorn’s diary.
I was eager to get a look inside the diary but let Chestra move at her own speed.
I was right, she said. The incident involved at least one German, maybe two. “I wasn’t aware they were POWs,” she said, “but that solves at least part of the mystery, if it’s true.”
A local man was also a tragic victim of events, she added.
She wasn’t aware that Arlis had already told me the man’s name: Peter Jefferson.
“There’s something else I left out of the story,” she said. “I didn’t think you needed all the details until we were certain that you’d found the boat’s wreckage.” She took a few moments to wipe the condensation from the outside of her glass, staring into my eyes. She took a sip. “You are sure?”
I told her for the second time: “We found a wooden nameplate, one of the letters broken off—ARK LIGHT, it says. That and some bottles from the same era.” I hadn’t mentioned the flask-sized metallic object that Jeth had found but did now. The woman wanted to be convinced before entrusting me with family secrets. “The cigarette case that Marlissa’s holding in the photograph, the one you told me you’d like to have? It’s the right size. It could be silver, judging from the black patina. But don’t get your hopes up.”
She did. Her expression was intense for a moment, then became more guarded.
What was so special about a cigarette case?
I waited.
Chestra said, “What I haven’t told you is, there may have been more than two people aboard Dark Light, the night she went down. There was Marlissa, Frederick, plus one or both of the Germans. My family never knew. No one did. Only someone who’s read Marlissa’s diary would suspect.”
Chestra slid the book in front of me, the expression on her face expectant. I’d asked for the diary, now here it was.
“May I read it?”
The woman said, “You’re welcome to try.”
I opened the book. Leafed through the first few pages before opening to the middle, then skimming pages toward the back.
It was in German.
“She wrote wonderfully in English, but German added another layer of privacy. Beautiful women learn how to hide their secrets very early in life.”
“You sound experienced. And cynical.”
“I was never in her league. But I’ve walked into rooms of men where I felt like I was the bull’s-eye behind every lie. An example of how men and women are different? My first husband worried that I’d embarrass him in public, or laugh at him. I worried that he’d hire someone to murder me. The dark side of beauty isn’t balanced by the bright—people don’t realize.”
I was still leafing through the diary. The first entry was January 1939—her new life in America. The last entry was dated 19 October 1944—the last day of her life.
“Tomlinson speaks some German. And there’s a retired German psychiatrist at the marina, Dieter Rasmussen.” I remembered what JoAnn said about women who avoid a man’s friends. “I can come back in my truck, if you’d like to say hello. You can visit my lab and see the nameplate, and the other stuff we found.”
“And bring Marlissa’s diary? No. I’ll share it with you but no one else. It’s my godmother’s private life, Doc. Even though the woman is dead.”
She reached. I handed her the book.
“I’ll tell you the story as I know it. If you have questions, I can translate passages as I read.”
O n a night in late September 1944, Marlissa Dorn was walking near Sanibel Lighthouse when she realized she was being followed by two men. She began to walk faster, returning to Southwind, but stopped when one of the men hailed her by name.
Chestra had the diary open and began to read, sometimes haltingly as she translated Marlissa’s own words. “I nearly fainted when I realized the man was H.G., whom I last saw more than six years ago. I met him at a dinner party hosted by [blank] at the [blank] several months prior to my ocean voyage.
“H. was infatuated with me. He pestered for weeks before I agreed to a social outing. It was to a film; a private viewing for a group of high-ranking officials, all much older than we. Later, he tried to touch my breasts. When I refused, he ripped my blouse. I think he would have raped me if I hadn’t scratched his face and screamed.
“It was terrifying to see H. He’s disgusting, and scares me. I hate it that he’s in America and knows where I live.”
Chestra lifted her eyes from the diary. She’d become emotional as she read, but now calmed herself by explaining, “I’m reading the code words as blanks. They would only confuse you. Marlissa has been my hobby for years, but there’re still abbreviations and codes I don’t know.”
Marlissa met H.G. at a restaurant in Berlin, Chestra said. Her “ocean voyage” was code for sailing on the Normandie.
“She never identifies the second man, other than to say he was also German. They told her they’d escape the Reich, and needed food and a place to stay for a few nights while they waited on a boat to pick them up. They were on their way to South America to join other Germans who had turned against Hitler and were forming a government in exile. They said they were afraid U.S. authorities would mistake them for spies, so that’s why they were in hiding.”