The Affliction

by Beth Gutcheon

  “She was last seen at the coffee shop at her usual time,” said Phillips, who had done the legwork.

  Maggie knew that. Presumably she’d left the house at her usual time, with phone and laptop and all her usual stuff, since those things were now gone.

  “So, between about seven-forty and eight a.m., she disappeared, car and all. Suppose Hugo meets her in the village that morning with some story. He needs a ride somewhere. His car has a flat tire, he has something to show her, I don’t know. She’s a kind soul, and she’s got a half hour to spare. He gets in the car with her. Neither she nor her car is seen again until Thursday morning.”

  “Okay, wait. Where is his car?”

  Maggie said, “For instance—Hugo and his wife stayed over in the village Tuesday night. Went to dinner with their daughter; something like that. In the morning he drops his wife at the station and she goes back to New York. He puts his car someplace where it won’t attract attention and waits for Florence in the village. Once he’s in the car with her, I can only guess, but I’d like very much to know whether her car can be traced heading north up the Hudson Valley. Can you check? Are there cameras at the toll stations? E-ZPass records?”

  Bark and Phillips were making notes, tapping texts.

  “I don’t know what the autopsy showed about time of death,” Maggie went on. “It could be that he killed her immediately, it could be that he hadn’t really worked out what would happen once he had her. Maybe he started out thinking he would threaten her or bribe her. But the more time that passed without his getting what he wanted, the more desperate or angry he would have gotten.

  “Let’s say he takes her to Hatfield. He wants to work something out with her, make her an offer she can’t refuse, but she is frantic. It’s evaluation day, she’s been preparing for weeks, she has to get back to school. He can’t calm her down or make her listen, and it all goes wrong. He strangles her. On purpose or by mistake. Why doesn’t he bury the body or dump it somewhere nearby? My guess would be that it’s not that easy to get rid of a body, and if he screwed up and it was found, the location could cause people to wonder who in the area had a connection to her.”

  “But why bring her back to the school?”

  “To throw suspicion on someone else in the school community. Ray, leading the pack.”

  “Why the pool?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think that points to Ray too. You should talk to Greta and Honey, the swimming coach and her partner. Ray and Lyndon McCartney have been trying to buy their property. Pretty aggressively.”

  “McCartney. That guy keeps showing up in this story.”

  “I saw Hugo and McCartney together having an intense powwow shortly after the body was found,” Maggie said, “probably about McCartney’s outing with Ray the night the body was dumped. If my theory is right, the news that Ray was out of town Thursday night would have come as a bad surprise to Hugo. I also saw Ray arguing with Honey Marcus the first day I was on campus. Honey and Greta weren’t selling and they’re afraid of something; you should see the locks on their doors. If I’ve got it right so far, a body in the pool would be threatening as hell to them, if they thought Ray put it there.”

  “You know we found Florence’s handbag,” said Bark.

  Maggie had not known that.

  “It was on the route Ray would have driven back to the casino, if he’d been the one to dump the body. A key to the pool house was in the bag.”

  “But it could just as well have been Hugo who dumped the purse. Again, to point toward Ray.”

  “How would Hollister get into the pool building, if it was him?” Phillips asked.

  “I think you should talk again to Marcus and Scheinerlein.”

  Bark and Phillips were looking at each other.

  “Okay, wait,” said Bark. “You’re suggesting that Hollister took Florence, or her body, to his country house and had her there for two days without anybody finding out. Was he alone up there? No one works for him on the place? Does he have any neighbors? Didn’t anybody at least see Florence’s car?”

  “I’m hoping you can find out. What I can add to the pot goes to moral compass.”

  “Make your case,” said Bark.

  “Hugo Hollister is a private art dealer,” Maggie began.

  “What does that mean, exactly?” Phillips asked.

  “He presents himself as a gentleman consultant, only available to people he knows socially. In theory he helps out of friendship and passion for the subject. Say you’re a collector who wants elite access to special works, things not on the market yet, or at all, things in private hands that no one knows about. Hugo comes along and offers you that, plus the benefit of his big brain, his very expensive education, and his social graces. You think you’re getting an insider’s deal; he takes his cut without you ever noticing.”

  “How?”

  “He persuades you to buy a piece for a certain price. He buys it on your behalf but for less than what you’ve promised to pay, sometimes a lot less. You never feel the fee leaving your pocket; for all you know, he did it as a favor. He can pose as a gifted dilettante, proud to have had a hand in shaping your collection. You feel smart for having bypassed all those expensive commissions that go with buying and selling art at auction, or through a regular dealer.”

  “Is it illegal?”

  “Not at all, if the piece is really what he says it is and you’re content with the price you paid for it. You may have overpaid, but you may not know or care if you don’t mean to sell. If you find out he misled you, you won’t be happy, but you know it means you should have done your homework better and you’ll probably be embarrassed to talk about it. It isn’t what I’d call ethical, but he’s far from the first to play the game.”

  “Huh,” said Bark.

  Phillips said, “Doesn’t sound like a prince of a guy, but it’s a long way from rooking the One Percent to murdering schoolteachers.”

  “Does he really have the fancy education or is that a con?” Bark asked.

  “He has it,” said Maggie. “His relatives are who they say they are and he really did graduate from Harvard, magna and Phi Beta Kappa. The things that are hard to accomplish, he really accomplished. It’s the things he chooses to fake that interested me. He lies for the thrill of it. He enjoys fooling people. It makes him feel omnipotent and confirms that the rest of us are fools and deserve to be conned.”

  Phillips looked at Bark. Bark was giving Maggie the thousand-yard stare, both listening and thinking, and chewing the inside corner of his lip. He began imperceptibly to nod his head.

  “I’ve seen it before,” he said.

  “So have I,” said Maggie. “Hugo Hollister has a very rich wife who appears to love him. He has brains and backing; he could easily be an honest dealer. Being legit doesn’t interest him. People like him need the danger, they need the rush of getting away with things. But the rush doesn’t last, and soon he needs to do it again, whatever it is. Cheat the customers, cheat on the wife, and it’s never enough. He doesn’t believe honest people resist lying and stealing out of principle; he believes we’re just scared. He’s simply braver than we are, and that’s what makes him so much better than the rest of us. And that’s why I don’t have much trouble imagining him moving on to murder. Because he really doesn’t feel anything for anybody else, he has to keep escalating his game in order to feel anything at all.”

  Phillips said to Bark, “What do you think?”

  After a pause he said, “I’m thinking of Florence, sitting in her car with her cappuccino in her hand, seeing that face at the car window, smiling. The handsome rich guy from the city, just wanting an easy favor.”

  Phillips said, “Two days is a long time to hide a body. Let alone drive it around the countryside. Why didn’t anyone see anything?”

  “I’m hoping someone did see something but didn’t know what it meant. There are a lot of ways it could have worked. And I understand that though it could have worked doesn’t mean that it did.
But look at this.”

  She swiped through to another picture, this one of Lily Hollister in a bikini, with her arm draped over a little blue car.

  “Wow,” said Bark, taking the tablet so he and Phillips could see it better.

  “What is this?” Phillips asked.

  “Looks like a vintage Maserati.”

  “No, what is this picture? What kind of building is that? When was it taken?”

  “Saturday. At the Hollisters’ country house. This is Hugo’s studio. One of the girls posted it on Instagram and my housemate took a screenshot.”

  “Your housemate?”

  “Yes, she’s seventeen. She’s my tech consultant.”

  After a silence, Bark said, “Well. We’ve got some work to do. We’ll check the E-ZPass thing, and take a drive up to Hatfield and ask some questions. That garage would certainly be a nice private place to do your dirty work.”

  “If it happened that way, there will be traces. Fibers, dna, something. Not to mention that some people like to take little keepsakes,” Phillips said.

  Bark looked at her. “Trophies.”

  Phillips nodded.

  After they had gone, Maggie tried calling Hope, but it just went to voice mail.

  Chapter 21

  Wednesday, May 13

  Hope was a moving target because, after a packed visit to Boston, she had hurried back to New York, summoned in stereo by her Realtor, who had an appointment to show her a two-bedroom on a high floor in the Gehry building she liked, and by Angus, with whom she was now on a mission.

  “We’re catching her between board meetings,” Angus said to Hope as they waited for the maid to open Caroline Hollister’s door on Wednesday afternoon. “Good afternoon, Marie.”

  “Afternoon, Mr. Westphall,” said the young woman. “Mrs. Hollister is just changing. Would you like some tea?”

  Angus looked at his watch as Marie led them to the den, a small room dominated by a large flat-screen TV on the wall opposite the windows, with their slatted view of a leafy Carnegie Hill side street. The room was lined floor to ceiling with books, but many were behind horse and dog paintings that hung by nearly invisible wires from hidden hooks in the ceiling. The room was very manly, very English country gentleman.

  “Tea, or something stronger, Hope?”

  “Tea, please.”

  “Tea and a bucket of ice, Marie,” said Angus. He opened a door that was cunningly concealed behind what looked like a wall of books to reveal a wet bar lined with fox-hunting prints. He rustled around in the cabinet below the counter and found a bottle of gin and some tonic. He adjusted his glasses and peered at the “best by” date on the tonic label. “Caroline’s not much of a drinker,” said Angus. “Usually this stuff is from the last ice age.” He twisted the cap and was rewarded with a satisfying hiss of carbonated pressure. “Sure you won’t change your mind?”

  Hope said, “Tea will be fine.” Marie reappeared with his ice bucket and tea things for one on a tray.

  Angus poured his drink, and raised it to salute her. She waited for him to say “Sun’s over the yardarm somewhere.”

  He said, “Sun’s over the yardarm somewhere,” and took his first happy swallow.

  Caroline came in, dressed in a simple shift and dangerous-looking heels, still putting on her second earring.

  “Hope! Angus didn’t tell me you were coming!” She gave her a kiss on the cheek, then air-kissed her brother.

  “Have a drink?” he asked.

  “Too early for me,” she said, sitting down beside Hope.

  “You’re dressy for a board meeting,” Hope said.

  “The executive committee is going on to dinner. Somewhere rather grand, I think. How are you? This is such a nice surprise.”

  You won’t think so in a minute, Hope thought, but said only, “I’m very well. And you look blooming.”

  “Thank you,” said Caroline. She wasn’t a beauty and never had been, but she did have the attractive polish of a healthy human enjoying her day.

  Then there was a silence, in which Caroline’s good cheer lost some of its buoyancy. She said to her brother, “What was it you wanted to talk about?”

  “Where’s Hugo?” Angus asked.

  “In the country.” Her tone was now wary. It was always wary when her brother wanted to talk about Hugo. “He has something big cooking and needs to be at command central, but I think he’ll be back tomorrow. Did you want him to be here?”

  “No. Very much not.”

  Caroline stopped trying to pretend this was a pleasant social occasion. She became very still, and waited.

  “I heard a very disturbing story a couple of days ago. I’ve discussed it with Hope, who loves you as much as I do, and she agrees with me that you have to hear it.”

  “Oh, does she,” said Caroline flatly, not looking away from Angus.

  Hope had the feeling she was looking at two oft-tested combatants, strapping on their armor, maneuvering their chargers into the lists. Visors down, lances up.

  “I didn’t go looking for this, Caroline. Someone very discreet and very knowledgeable thought the family needed to know.”

  “That horrible dealer friend of yours? Who’s always telling you awful things about Hugo?”

  “It is not Dick Trimble. And why do you think people like that have awful things to say about Hugo in the first place?”

  The emotional temperature in the room was rising quickly, and Hope could see this turning into a bout of nursery hair pulling. She said, “It’s someone without a mean bone in her body. This is not a time to shoot the messenger, Caddy.”

  Caroline turned and gave Hope a look that said, Et tu, Brute?

  “I want to know who,” she said stubbornly.

  Hope and Angus looked at each other. Angus said to his sister, “Avis Metcalf.”

  Caroline was taken aback. Some moments passed, feeling much longer to all three than they probably were. Eventually Caroline said, “Okay, tell me what you came to say. I doubt you’ve got the whole story, but, go to town.”

  Angus gave her Avis’s account, which he’d already told to Hope. When he had finished, Caroline just stared at him. Hope, beside her on the sofa, reached a hand to her, and Caroline pulled away from her touch as if she’d been burned.

  “You’ve always had it in for him, Angus. You never liked him. You never think there can be two sides where Hugo’s concerned.”

  Before Angus could speak, Hope said, “Well, I liked him. I found him absolutely charming. I see exactly why you would think him so, and I know how loyal and loving you are, Caroline. I do.”

  “I don’t want to hear any more of this,” Caroline said. “You’re ganging up on me. There are things you don’t know, there are—”

  “Caddy, there are always things in a marriage that nobody knows,” said Angus. “I know that better than anyone. The point is, nobody’s bad childhood, or hurt feelings, or whatever it is you love about him, excuses slimy behavior. This is not the first event of this kind that you know about. It’s not a one-time misstep, although this time he may be in further over his head than usual. You can operate the way Hugo does for a while, but over time you run out of luck. You run out of rope. The art world’s too small.”

  “You only know one side of it.”

  “What other side can there be?”

  “I don’t know,” she said angrily. “But you’re talking about my husband. I want to hear it from him, and then it’s our business. Thank you for telling me, I’m sure you think you were doing the right thing. You can go now.”

  She stood up. Angus did not, so Hope did not.

  “Just tell me one thing,” he said. “Tell me that Hugo hasn’t asked to borrow money, or mortgaged the country house, or this apartment. Tell me you know that for sure.”

  “He can’t mortgage anything. It’s all in my name,” said Caroline. She seemed pleased to have trumped him, then not so pleased as she realized what she’d revealed.

  Angus looked at her. He
took a sip of his drink. So Caroline had somewhere along the line gotten some legal advice, and taken precautions.

  “Are you missing any jewelry?”

  “Stop it, Angus.”

  “Just asking. I hope Mummy’s diamonds are at the bank.”

  “Look, I’ll give you the goddamn diamonds right now if that’s what this is about. The older two can buy their own diamonds, and Lily won’t want them anyway.”

  “You know that isn’t what this is about.”

  And she did. Which was not to say, there was not a bone of contention there. Angus had daughters who would have loved the diamonds and Angus was sentimental about their mother.

  “How about asking you for a loan? Can you tell me he hasn’t done that in the last little while?”

  Hope, closer to Caroline than her brother was, could see tears start in her eyes. No, she apparently could not tell him that. Hope wondered if Caroline hadn’t been feeling uncomfortably alone with this information, knowing as she did that it had happened before. Maybe more than once or twice. What did Hugo do, Hope wondered, to keep Caroline so loyal? What excuses could he give, what appeals did he make?

  Angus let the silence stretch even longer this time. Finally he said, “Caroline, why do you put up with this? With all you have to offer?”

  Hope knew it was a misstep. The thick-skinned older brother telling his not-pretty-enough little sister that she had a great personality. The fact that he didn’t mean it that way didn’t change the way she would hear it.

  Caroline marched to the door and opened it. Then she closed it again and turned to face them. She was deeply upset, and it was turning into anger at both of them.

  “You don’t know,” she said.

  “We know we don’t,” Hope said. “Tell us.”

  “You don’t know how he feels inside. What it’s like for him. He feels like a bankrupt. He—”

  “Caroline, he is bankrupt!” said Angus. Hope wished he would shut up.

  “I meant emotionally! He feels empty inside, if it weren’t for me and Lily, he’d . . .” She didn’t want to say this to her brother but she did want to say it to Hope, so she turned to her. “He’d kill himself,” she finished simply. “He’d kill himself. I know him. You don’t. It would be like leaving him in an empty room with a gun and a box of bullets. How could I live with that? What would it do to Lily?”