Time In A Bottle

It was a beautiful morning. I was walking down the beach enjoying the feel of the sun on my face. The warm waves washed over my feet, carrying the sand up on the beach and then back out again. It made it easier to find unbroken sand dollars and shells. I liked to collect driftwood too. My garden was cluttered with it.

I was absorbed in watching for shells when I stubbed my toe on something. I bent over to get a closer look. It looked like a piece of glass. Curious, I started digging around it, and it started taking shape. I finally pried it all the way loose and held it up to inspect it.
It was a bottle. I looked closer and saw there was something inside. It was corked, and it was shoved down in there pretty good, so I couldn’t pull it out with my fingers.

I carried it back up to the cabin on the beach that I was renting for the summer. I went in and rummaged through my kitchen drawer, until I found my corkscrew. The cork was wedged in there so tight that it took me some effort to get it out.

I peered down in the bottle and realized the content was paper. How cliché, I thought. I tipped the bottle and shook it so the paper would fall down to the opening. Then stuck two of my fingers down inside as far as I could reach trying to tighten the curl in the paper where it had been rolled up, so I could pull it out.

Finally I got it out without tearing it. I had to admit I was kind of excited. After all it isn’t every day you find a message in a bottle. I thought that only happened in stories.

I took it over to the kitchen table and spread it out and started reading...

My name is Carolyn Bradford. By the time you read this I might be dead. You see. My husband is trying to murder me. He is poisoning me little by little. I am not sure how he is doing it. I have tried not eating or drinking anything he gives me but he watches me every minute. He stands over me and makes me eat. He acts like he is doting on me. He keeps me isolated and away from everyone, telling them I am too ill to have company. And when he does go out, he has me watched by a nurse. He has her and everyone else, even my family and friends, believing I am mentally ill and making up stories, so no one will believe me.
  Today I convinced the nurse to roll me out to the pier to sit in the sun by the water. I have gotten so weak and sick I am confined to a wheel chair. I get too dizzy when I stand up so I can’t get away. I can’t make it very far.
  The nurse is up on the deck reading so this is the only chance I have to contact anyone for help. I don’t even know if anyone will find this in time, but I hope to God they will. I swear I am not crazy. I have a large insurance policy that my husband will get in case of my death. It’s worth two and a half million dollars. He has been having an affair for a long time now. He doesn’t think I know. He can’t leave me or he won’t get all the money. I live in the big house on Lighthouse Point. Please take this to the police. Please help me. Just knowing that this bottle is free and floating away where someone may find it, gives me hope. Otherwise all is lost.

                                            Yours in need,
                                                                Carolyn

It was dated two weeks ago.

I just sat there astounded for a few minutes staring at the paper. Was this for real or was it just some joke to make me look like a fool? “Well not me, I said to myself. I wadded it up and threw it in the waste basket, then went about my day.

That night I dreamed of a woman. She was lying on a big fancy bed, with a silk comforter. I walked around the bed and looked down at her. She was all pale, white, and still. I put my fingers on her neck to see if I could feel a pulse, but couldn’t find one. Before I could yank my hand back, she all of a sudden opened her eyes and grabbed my wrist. Her eyes were glazed over as if in death. “You didn’t help me, she rasped. You could have helped me.” I screamed and tried to pull my hand away, but her grip was like a vice.

I woke up heaving and sweating. I sat up in bed. I knew it was just a nightmare, but it seemed so real. I looked over at the clock on the nightstand and it read 4:00 am. It was just finding the letter, I told myself. I knew I wouldn’t be getting any more sleep, so I got up and made a cup of coffee. I walked over to the waste basket and dug the letter out, and smoothed it out on the table. I read it again and again. Trying to imagine what Carolyn was like. She had to have money. The house she had described was one of the richest in town. Why didn’t she just leave the bastard when she found out he was having the affair? I sat there pondering several different scenarios, when I realized that the sun had come up and was shining in the kitchen window.

"Okay, I decided, “I’m going to take this to the police. What could it hurt, right?” I’ll take it right after work. But my day ended up being hectic. I had to stop after work for business meeting and drinks, so I didn’t get done until late that evening.

I got in my car and finally made it to the police station. I asked the officer behind the counter if I could talk to the detective on duty. He asked me what it pertained to, and I told him I thought someone was going to be murdered. “And how do you know this?” When I told him of the letter, he just laughed. This just made me mad.

“Look, you can laugh all you want, but I’m not leaving here till I can talk to a detective“.

“Okay, lady, let me see if I can find you one.” “What’s your name?” I told him and he said to sit and wait.

I was tired and getting cranky, asking myself what I was doing there in the first place, and feeling kind of foolish, especially after the reaction of the officer. After twenty minutes, I was just about to stand up to leave when a tall good looking man walked up and verified my name, then asked me to follow him back to his office. I did and he motioned for me to sit down. He introduced himself as Detective Clifford Warren of Homicide.

“Now what is this all about?”

I got the letter out of my purse and slid it across the desk in front of him. I told him how it had come to be in my possession. He was quiet for a moment reading the letter. Then he looked up at me and said, “You’re telling me you found this in a bottle?”

“Yes, I know it sounds ridiculous, but I’m not lying.” I found it yesterday on the beach. I explained that I had even thrown it away thinking it might be a joke. I didn’t say anything about the dream. I just said that in the end, I just couldn’t put it in the dumpster. So here I was. I told him that I meant to drop it off before work but I was running late, and then had a business meeting after.

“I think you need to go there and investigate it, just to make sure.” I said.

He looked at me and said, “Bradford is on the City Council and is well known and liked”. “I just can’t go to his house and ask him if he murdered or is planning on murdering his wife.”

“But you have proof and probable cause lying right in front of you.” “Isn’t there a way to get a copy of her handwriting and compare it to the letter?” Then you can get a search warrant.”

“Your not going to let up on me until I do this, are you?”

“No, I said, and I can go to the paper.”

“Just wait here and I’ll have someone go through the records.” “We should have her handwriting on file somewhere". “She used to work with foster kids and help them when they got into trouble.” Then he looked back at me and quipped, “And if you’re so worried, why didn’t you bring this in yesterday?” “Probably because I’m a selfish, bitch, who is only worried about how she would look, and didn’t want to cut into my only day off, I thought to myself.

I sat there waiting AGAIN, till he came back in with a couple of files and laid them on his desk beside the letter. He opened the file and shuffled through it looking back and forth between it and the letter. He picked up the phone and asked someone to come in, which ended up being a woman. He told her he wanted the files and the letter taken down to the Forensics, crime lab. He asked me if I wouldn’t mind waiting outside.

“Why not, I said, that’s all I have been doing since I got here.”

I sat and peered through the shades and watched while Detective Warren made several phone calls. He came out of the office afterwards and hesitated for a few seconds, then said, “I shouldn’t really be telling you this, but I think under the circumstances you deserve to know. I just had a handwriting analysis expert, compare the handwriting and signatures on the files and the letter, and he is sure that it is the same person who wrote them.” I also called around to all the Life Insurance Companies in town, and one of them told us that they carried an insurance policy for a Mrs. Carolyn Bradford in the amount of two and a half million dollars.” I am calling the judge and getting a search warrant and then we are going over to the house,” the detective said.

“There is nothing more for you to do, so just go home and try to get it out of your head. "You have done your part. And thank you.”

I went home and fixed some dinner, glad the whole ordeal was over. The woman was probably safe now. I was exhausted so I went on to bed.

The next morning, I fixed breakfast and made coffee, then put on my robe and went outside to get the paper, sat down and started to eat then took a drink of coffee, and almost chocked because right there on the front page was a picture of Carolyn Bradford. It said that she had been found dead in her bed yesterday evening.

It’ quoted Detective Clifton Warren as saying that they had gotten an anonymous tip about a letter that had been written by Mrs. Bradford and it wasn’t a suicide letter. He also said that they had tracked down the nurse who admitted that she had found her dead when she went in to check on her and bring her breakfast yesterday morning. She said she was frightened to come forward because she was in the country illegally”. He said that Mr. Bradford was no where to be found and that he had cleaned out all the bank accounts” “He said that the coroner was still doing the autopsy to see what the cause of death was and to see if there was any poisons and toxins in her body.”

“The coroner said that the time of death was 4:00 am yesterday morning.”

“Too bad that letter didn’t surface earlier, the journalist wrote.