Last Day

by Luanne Rice

  McCabe wondered what the missing painting might have to do with Beth’s murder. Seeing the torn lingerie made her feel sick; what had the killer put Beth through? “God, it’s freezing in here.” She shivered in the blast of icy air.

  “Time to turn that thing off,” Hawley said, heading toward the air conditioner. The compressor cycled, pumping hard; it sounded ready to give out.

  “No, leave it till the Staties get here.”

  McCabe had two years more than Hawley on a force so small the selectmen were considering merging it with the department in the next town. She lived in Norwich now, a tougher place to work, and she felt lucky to have gotten a job in sleepy Black Hall. It was a postcard-beautiful village on Long Island Sound, a beach resort in summer, a place that had attracted artists since the late 1800s, and a bedroom town for executives of Electric Boat and professors at Yale, Connecticut College, and the Coast Guard Academy. Until today, her worst calls had been domestics and bad car accidents.

  She leaned closer to Beth, looked at her injuries. The edge of the panties had left a pattern of lace in the deep-purple bruised circle around her neck. She cringed at the sight but couldn’t look away. It was at least as brutal as the cracked skull, even more disturbing with its hints of sexual violence.

  “The husband is always the killer,” Hawley said. “But not this time. What did the sister say? He’s on a boat out in the Atlantic somewhere. Besides, I can’t imagine a husband doing this.”

  McCabe didn’t answer. She’d learned early, from a case very close to home, that even nice-seeming people could do terrible things.

  “We’ve got to notify him,” Hawley said. “That’s going to suck for him, off on a nice sailing trip, getting news like this. If we can even get through. There’s probably no cell reception. I go fishing in the canyons behind Block Island; there’s a major dead zone out there.”

  “There’ll be a radio.”

  “Yeah, forget that. A bunch of guys on vacation aren’t going to be listening to the marine band.”

  “It’s Major Crime’s problem,” McCabe said. Kate had said Pete took the sailing trip every summer, with the same bunch of guys, and that this voyage would be the last before his new baby was born.

  That thought made McCabe stare down at Beth’s belly.

  The baby was dead too.

  2

  Detective Conor Reid parked in front of 45 Church Street, the Major Crime Squad van not far behind. He’d been investigating a credit union robbery in Pawcatuck until late last night, and he still had on the same blue blazer and gray slacks. He’d changed his white shirt, though, and put on a striped tie. His brown hair, a little too long for the Connecticut State Police, was salty from an hour spent fishing. Instead of going straight home after leaving the scene at dawn, he’d hit the Charlestown Breachway to go surf casting. It was the second week of July, and stripers were just starting to run. He had a heavy caseload, and there never seemed to be enough time for fishing or haircuts or much of anything but work.

  The dispatch call had pulled him away from the fish. Hearing the Black Hall address was a bullet to his heart. He had sat in front of the house often enough, wondering about the woman inside. The fact a crime had occurred to this family hit him with a bolt from the past. The news was all he needed to throw his rod and tackle box into the trunk of his car. Speeding south toward Black Hall on I-95, he knew this case had to be his.

  After getting out of his car, he took in the scene—a large white sea captain’s house, typical of this affluent part of Black Hall. A boxwood hedge surrounded the property. Mature oak and beech trees shaded the lawn, and blue hydrangeas bloomed along an old lichen-covered stone wall. He noticed pink gardening gloves, clippers, and a flat basket full of wilted cut flowers at the foot of the wall. A white canvas sun hat lay on the ground. A green hose was draped over the wall, water trickling from the spray nozzle, sending a thin stream down the hill toward a wild meadow. Someone had been interrupted while gardening.

  He walked over to the hat, crouched on his heels, and saw that the fabric glistened with morning dew, as if it had been left on the grass overnight or longer. The crime techs had arrived, and he gestured at the hat and gardening equipment, letting them know to photograph and process them as part of the crime scene.

  Black Hall police officers had been the first to arrive. He spotted two uniforms next to a cruiser and headed toward them. A dark-haired woman, clearly distressed, stood between them. The sight of Kate stiffened his spine. He stared at her, thinking how she had changed yet somehow looked the same.

  The female officer caught his eye and broke away from the others.

  “Hello,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m Conor Reid.”

  “I’m Peggy McCabe, and that’s my partner, Jim Hawley. Beth Lathrop is the victim here,” McCabe said. She nodded toward the woman standing with Hawley. “That’s Kate Woodward, her sister.”

  Reid stared at Kate, wondering if she would recognize him. He tried to control his breathing.

  “Who called you here?” he asked McCabe.

  “Kate. Before I tell you anything else, we did break the door to get in. We went upstairs and discovered the body. We debated getting a search warrant.”

  “Okay,” Reid said. He shoved his emotions aside, thinking down the road to some defense lawyer using it against them.

  “Kate had been trying to reach Beth for three days. She was pretty frantic. The sisters were close. They spoke every day—sometimes many times a day. Beth was pregnant, and apparently the pregnancy wasn’t easy. Kate felt nervous after the second missed call, but at first she assumed Beth was working at the family business.”

  “The art gallery,” Reid said.

  “Yes,” McCabe said. “Or out on the beach with the dog, in the garden, whatever. She wasn’t a big cell phone user. She often left it at home.”

  “But there were missed calls?”

  “Oh, lots. The sister was out of town, calling and calling. Other numbers in the call log too, including from the husband. Kate couldn’t get here to check until this morning. She cut her trip short, flew home first thing to get here.”

  “What kind of trip?” He felt dishonest asking questions to which he already knew the answers.

  McCabe looked blank, then reddened. “Sorry, I didn’t ask.”

  “Don’t worry,” Reid said. He looked past her toward Kate Woodward. He couldn’t keep his eyes away.

  “Anyway, the husband is sailing—a yearly thing with the guys, several days offshore. And sorry, I didn’t ask where.”

  “We’ll find out,” Reid said. He nodded with what he hoped was reassurance at McCabe. He had started out as a police officer in New London, then had spent two years as a trooper for the state police before becoming a detective with the Major Crime Squad. It wasn’t the local cops’ job to investigate a crime. It was his, and in the byzantine world of his relationship with the Woodward sisters, he knew more than he would ever tell this officer.

  “She was hit here,” McCabe said, tapping her own head just behind her left ear. “And she was strangled.”

  Reid nodded, trying to keep his composure.

  “What else did you notice?” he asked.

  “Marble owl statue, covered with blood, under the bed—obviously the weapon he hit her with.” She paused. “And a weird thing—an empty frame on the bedroom wall. Some threads stuck to the wood as if maybe a painting was cut out.”

  “A painting?” he asked, electricity zapping his bones. But it couldn’t be the same one, he thought.

  “Looks that way to me.”

  “Okay,” Reid said. “Thanks.”

  He walked toward Kate Woodward. He wanted to go into the house, to sit with Beth Lathrop. He always thought of his first encounter with a homicide victim as two people meeting. An encounter every bit as important in death as it would have been in life, as revelatory as a conversation—in some ways more so. But this would be different from any crime victim he’d ever met: he kn
ew Beth and had rescued her after what, until today, had been the most traumatic event in her life.

  He said hello to Officer Hawley, who was savvy enough to peel off and leave him alone with Beth’s sister. He took a deep breath, looked into Kate’s eyes. She stared at him, unrecognizing. He wanted to hold her hand, as he had that day in the art gallery twenty-three years ago. She had been sixteen, Beth a year younger. His heart beat so hard he figured she’d see the vein throbbing in his neck.

  “Miss Woodward, I’m Detective Conor Reid. I’m very sorry about your sister.”

  “I knew, I knew,” Kate said, digging the heels of her hands into her eyes. “I should have come home the minute she didn’t answer—I felt it.”

  “What did you feel?”

  “That something was wrong.”

  “She always answered her phone? Every time you called?” Reid asked, remembering what McCabe had told him.

  “Not always, not before this—but both Pete—her husband—and I were away this week, and Beth was having a rocky time, and I made her promise she’d carry her phone and answer when I called. Even so, when she didn’t pick up, I tried telling myself it was just her old habits.”

  “What kind of rocky time had she been having?”

  “Well, she had wicked morning sickness the first three months, and then her blood sugar spiked. She had gestational diabetes with Sam—their daughter—and it went away after Sam was born. Her doctor said there was no guarantee she wouldn’t have it again with this pregnancy.”

  “They have other children?” he asked.

  “No, just Sam. And, almost, Matthew.”

  “Matthew?” he asked.

  “That’s what they were going to name him,” Kate said, her voice cracking. “The baby. Did he, is he . . . did he die too? He did, right? He’s dead?”

  “The medical examiner will tell us,” Reid said, although according to the officers’ report, he knew the answer was yes. He knew many details about her sister’s life, but not specifically why there were so many years between the children.

  “And Pete’s off sailing,” Kate said, the anguish in her eyes giving way to anger. “Who would leave his wife for a week, knowing she wasn’t completely okay? Especially because I was gone too?”

  “Where did you go?” Reid asked.

  “I had a charter from Groton to LA.”

  Reid waited for her to explain. He had to be careful here and pretend he didn’t know about her career.

  “I’m a pilot for Intrepid Aviation,” she said. “Private jets.”

  “And you flew back this morning?”

  “Yes. It was supposed to be a deadhead, but then the clients decided they wanted to come back. He’s a studio executive, and they have a summer place in Watch Hill. So I’d thought I would be home a day and a half ago, but I had to wait for them. I should have left them in LA—my first officer could have taken over for me. I could have booked a commercial flight home.”

  “Where is Pete sailing?”

  Her brow furrowed. Her eyes shut tight for a moment, as if in a private moment, lost in recriminations over her own delay in returning. Then, “I’m not sure. They meet the boat in Nantucket and sail from there. Every year in July, Pete and a bunch of his friends charter a Beneteau and take off for a week.”

  “A Beneteau?”

  “It’s a sailboat. Fifty feet or so long. It’s fancy. Well, expensive.”

  “Okay,” Reid said. His brother, Tom, would know all about it. Tom was a commander in the Coast Guard, and he knew all things nautical. He was Reid’s secret weapon when it came to certain local investigations, especially the last one involving the Woodward sisters. I couldn’t do it without him was an overused phrase, but when it came to Tom, that’s how Reid felt.

  Kate was silent, her lips tight. Reid had the feeling she wanted to say something more about Pete. Why hadn’t she suggested they call him?

  “What does your brother-in-law do?” Reid asked.

  “He’s president of the Lathrop Gallery,” she said, clear derision in her voice.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “As if he does anything at all.”

  “I know the gallery well,” he said carefully. “And that it originally belonged to your grandmother.”

  Her expression didn’t change. She didn’t seem surprised that he knew that. Then again, the gallery was well known in the art world, a mainstay in art-centric Black Hall. But did she remember him?

  “It’s been in my family for generations. It eventually came to me and Beth.”

  After their mother’s death and their father’s conviction. He stared at Kate, debating how much to tell her about his role the day she was rescued. Could she be assuming Beth’s murder might be connected to what her father had done? He began to formulate an idea about who might have been inspired by that crime.

  “You changed the gallery’s name,” Reid said. “Is your brother-in-law an owner?”

  Kate shook her head. “No. Beth and I are. I let my sister make most decisions regarding the gallery, and she gave him the title. President.”

  “Is it just a title?”

  “Pretty much,” Kate said. “He just sits back and thinks about . . . himself. Whatever he wants to do next.”

  That’s what people had said about her father years ago.

  “Why did she give it to him?”

  “He’s an arrogant jerk with an inferiority complex. He acts as if he’s better than everyone—even Beth. But his feelings get hurt if you look at him sideways. Beth decided it was easier to let him have what he wanted. She isn’t someone who likes to fight.”

  “But he is?” Reid asked.

  “He likes getting his own way,” she said quietly. Again, Reid thought of the girls’ father. There were such parallels with Beth and Pete, two generations of secret lives. Kate and Beth’s mother had had the money and the gallery; she had given her husband a title and the power to run it the way he’d wanted, just like Beth and Pete.

  How much did Kate really know about her sister’s marriage? The sisters had been traumatized by their time in the basement. He didn’t need a psychology degree to understand they would be deeply affected for the rest of their lives. For some time now, he had believed Beth’s earlier experience made her vulnerable to a predator—the man she had married.

  Some nights, unable to sleep, Reid felt Kate’s small cold hand in his. He heard Beth’s high, thin animal wail. Twenty-three years ago, the Woodward sisters and their mother had been forced into the gallery’s basement, bound to each other with ropes and duct tape, while upstairs thieves had stolen priceless nineteenth-century landscapes. Reid had been the resident trooper and first on the scene.

  Helen, the girls’ mother, had choked on the gag and died. Kate and Beth had been thrashing, screaming into the cotton wadded into their mouths behind the duct tape. Reid had cut them loose. He exhaled slowly now, remembering how Beth had thrown herself at her mother’s body, holding her and sobbing. Kate had gone silent. She had stood stiff and numb, in total shock, backing away from her mother and sister, eyes like a zombie’s. That’s when Reid had taken her hand, tried to get her to look at him, to focus on him instead of the horror right in front of her.

  He stared at her now, her right hand clenched. He had to hold himself back from reaching for it. He felt dishonest, not being straight with her about his involvement—and not just with the previous case. The day he had pulled the Woodward girls from the basement, he had vowed to protect and keep track of them. He believed the old rule, that if you rescued someone, you were responsible for them forever. He had kept an eye on them as much as possible, and it was killing him right now to know that Beth was dead inside the house, to realize how badly he had failed.

  After a few moments, Kate seemed to compose herself. She sighed, gave her shoulders a small shake, as if bringing herself out of a trance. Reid was wound tight, forcing himself to breathe, to be right here with Kate and hear what she had to tell him.

  �
��Pete called me, looking for her too,” Kate said.

  She hadn’t mentioned that before. Reid had a million questions, but he kept quiet and listened.

  “Twice,” Kate said. “Once while I was in the air, and I didn’t get the message till after I landed in Van Nuys. That time he just asked if I knew whether Beth had plans. It seemed strange, but I didn’t think much of it. I didn’t even call him back before he rang again. He said he’d been trying her, not getting through. He knew she was tired, thought she might have been catching up on extra sleep. I told him that was definitely possible, but then I started getting nervous. And I couldn’t get her either.”

  “Did you call anyone to go check on her?”

  “Our friend Scotty Waterston,” Kate said. “She had been over very early, gardening with Beth. Then she came back, with muffins or something—they were going to have coffee—and saw that Beth had left a note on the front door for the UPS driver. It said she’d gone out for the morning, that he should leave packages without a signature.”

  “Where’s the note now?” he asked.

  “It’s still there. Scotty left it.” Kate pointed at the yellow paper taped to the doorframe.

  “Is it Beth’s handwriting?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Were there boxes?” he asked.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Left by the UPS driver,” he said.

  “No,” she said and frowned. “But the note made Scotty feel okay—as if Beth had just stepped out and would be home soon. Her husband is on the trip with Pete.”

  Reid stared at the note. The paper looked rumpled, and he figured it was an all-purpose note, one Beth had written at some point to reuse whenever she went out. Plenty of people did that in towns like Black Hall, where they thought they could trust their neighbors. But anyone could have stuck it to the door—not necessarily Beth. The killer could have put it there.