The Night Mark(17)

“Friend got me the job. But you’re not a local, either,” Faye said.

“What gave it away?” he asked.

She smiled. “I’m from New Hampshire. You’re not my first M*.”

Pat laughed loudly, a good rich laugh.

“Guilty. I was a pastor here in the midsixties. My first church. Fell in love with the islands back then. Always planned to come back, and here I am.”

“Midsixties? You must have been a baby.”

“I was. Big twenty-seven-year-old baby. God help that dumb do-gooder kid. I was not ready for the South during desegregation. Let me tell you this—anyone nostalgic for the past never lived there.”

“Says the man who is painting a two-hundred-year-old plantation house. Thought you were painting the marshes.”

“Marshlands. That’s the name of the house. The owner wasn’t a planter. He was a doctor. The doctor who discovered a treatment for yellow fever. You discover something that can save lives during an epidemic and you get a free pass to own a nice house.”

“Fair enough,” she said. “It is a gorgeous house.” Faye pulled out her camera and examined it through the viewfinder.

“Light’s not very good today,” he said. “Too overcast. I doubt you’ll get a decent shot. At least in painting I can pretend the sun’s there.”

“I’ll come back tomorrow if the sun’s out. I got some beautiful shots of the Bride Island lighthouse yesterday. A friend took me out on his boat.”

“Yes. It’s very nice.” He didn’t sound as enthusiastic as she’d expect from someone who had painted the lighthouse so lovingly. Very nice? That’s all?

“What can you tell me about the lighthouse?”

“Not much. Only what Ms. Shelby told me. She said it was built to protect ships from the sandbar. Third-order Fresnel lens. Seven-second night mark. Solid white day mark. Decommissioned in, oh, ’45, ’46? It’s been rotting there ever since. That’s about it.”

“Ms. Shelby? You know her?”

“I do. Met her at a party, and she and I had a nice talk. I asked if I could paint it, and she said I could go out there anytime I want as long I stayed out of the lighthouse. It’s not structurally sound anymore. That whole corner of the island is very dangerous.”

“What else is out there?”

“Ms. Shelby prefers to keep the land as pristine as possible. There’s not much out there.” He flicked a fly off his canvas. “Trees. A few houses, but those are on the south side of the island. A barn. Handful of horses and horse trails. A few ruins. A few graves. And then there’s the lighthouse and what’s left of the keeper’s cottage, which isn’t anything but the stone foundation.”

“How did a lighthouse get on private property?”

“The government leased the land from the old owners. Four acres, which is a postage stamp on that island. That was back in the 1800s, when lighthouses were popping up along the coast. After they decommissioned the light in the forties, they left it up. Cheaper to let the elements have it than tear it down. Can I ask what your interest is in the lighthouse?”

Before Faye could answer, a small gray tour bus rattled up the driveway to the Marshlands and stopped. Pat gave a dramatic sigh as it unloaded a batch of tourists onto the lawn.

“Now, before we go into the house,” the pretty young tour guide said, shouting over the murmur of elderly tourists, “let’s walk over to the telescope and take a look at the sound.”

“Every single damn day...” Pat sighed. “I should have found a different mansion to paint.”

“Through the telescope,” the tour guide went on, oblivious to Pat’s annoyance, “you can see the sound side of Seaport Island, or what we locals call Bride Island. It’s an unusual island rich with history. If you look up you’ll see the top of a beautiful white lighthouse peeking through the tree line,” the woman said in her sweet-as-pecan-pie accent. “Pretty as it may be, the lighthouse is closed to the public. The water is notoriously choppy at the north seaside of the island, and more than three dozen people have lost their lives in those waters in the past hundred years—”

“Including the Lady of the Light,” Pat recited along with the tour guide, word for word, not missing a single beat. “Faith Morgan, the lighthouse keeper’s beautiful teenaged daughter...”

“You’ve heard this all before?” Faye asked.

“It’s enough to make a man toss a tour guide into the swamp. That’s her in the painting, by the way.”

“The tour guide?”

“No,” he said. “Faith Morgan.”

“The girl on the pier with the bird? That’s her?”

Pat nodded as he capped a paint tube and dropped it into his gear bag.

“Why did you paint her?” Faye asked. “Why not the Bride of Bride Island? Didn’t she drown, too?”

“The subject picks the artist, not the other way around.”

“That’s not very helpful.”

Pat glanced at her before turning his attention back to his painting.

“I didn’t realize you needed my help,” he said.

Faye sensed she was asking Pat questions he didn’t particularly want to answer.