Last Day

by Luanne Rice

  Sam’s mouth twisted, and her chin wobbled. She looked back at the TV screen.

  “I’m in charge of investigating what happened. I’m going to do my best to find out who did this to her.”

  “It doesn’t matter who did it,” Sam said.

  “I think it matters a lot,” he said. He sat down in the brown leather chair opposite her, leaning forward with arms folded on his knees, looking directly into her eyes.

  “She’s gone,” Sam said. Tears pooled but didn’t spill over.

  “I know,” he said, letting the silence last. Then, “How are you?”

  She shrugged.

  “Have you seen your dad yet?”

  “No,” she said. “He wanted to, but . . .”

  Kate watched her close her eyes tight, pull herself together. She also noticed Conor hanging on her words.

  “Who is that?” Sam asked instead of completing her answer, pointing at the screen.

  “That’s Officer Peggy McCabe. She’s with the Black Hall Police Department, and she and her partner were first on the scene. Your aunt called the police when your mother didn’t answer the door.”

  “You found Mom?” Sam asked, head snapping to look at Kate.

  “Yes,” Kate said.

  “You didn’t tell me,” Sam said.

  Kate touched her shoulder lightly. As much as she loved her niece, she felt confused and hesitant, not knowing just what to say or when. She hadn’t wanted to volunteer anything without having a sense of what Sam was ready to hear.

  “You mentioned that Popcorn is friendly with everyone,” he said.

  “Yes, as you can tell.”

  “Does that mean he doesn’t bark when a stranger comes to the door?”

  “Sometimes he does,” she said. “But more in a curious way. He’s not exactly a watchdog.”

  “Your aunt has a very good security system,” he said.

  “I know,” Sam said, glancing at Kate. “Fancier than the one at the gallery. We tease her.”

  “What about the one you have at home? Does your family always use it or sometimes leave it off?”

  “Depends on who’s coming and going. We usually have it on.”

  “Usually but not always?”

  Sam gave him a long look. “Always at night. And Mom would have had it set the whole time since she was there alone.”

  Kate sat at the end of the sofa next to Sam.

  “But it wasn’t on,” Kate said. “We broke in through the sliding door, and the alarm didn’t go off.”

  “Would she have let a stranger into the house?” Conor asked.

  “Never,” Kate and Sam said at the same time.

  “She was nervous,” Sam said. “Because of what happened when she was a kid. At the gallery.”

  “Did she talk about that?” he asked.

  “Not a lot,” Sam said. “But she taught me to be careful. It sucked big-time, the worst nightmare, what happened to her and Aunt Kate and their mother. Also, the art collection—it’s valuable. She didn’t even want to keep the paintings in the house.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Well, because robbers would want them. She thought they would be safer in the gallery—and that we would be safer, too, because the art wouldn’t be a magnet for criminals,” Sam said.

  “So why were they in your house? If she didn’t think they should be there?”

  “My brother-in-law overruled her,” Kate said, remembering how she’d tried to get Beth to stand up for herself, insist on what she wanted.

  “One of the paintings was cut out of its frame,” Conor said. “In the bedroom.”

  “Really? Which one?” Kate asked.

  “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “I didn’t notice anything in that room,” she said. “Except Beth.”

  “Of course,” Conor said.

  “Obviously Mom was right, then,” Sam said, her mouth twisting. “About the paintings being safer at the gallery.”

  “Because one was cut from the frame?” Conor asked.

  “Not just this time. What I meant was, a painting almost got stolen last year.” She paused. “Exactly a year ago—around the time I went to camp last summer.”

  Kate felt stunned. Beth hadn’t said a word about it. How could she have kept something so critical from her?

  “Your mom never told me,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

  “You were probably flying. She had Mrs. Waterston for things like that,” Sam said.

  “Things like what?” Kate asked, unable to believe what she was hearing.

  “I don’t know,” Sam said. “The stuff that happens at home. You’re an important pilot. Mom and Mrs. Waterston had lots of time on the beach to talk about problems. Besides, the painting thing wound up being a lot of worry for nothing.”

  Kate was reeling and couldn’t speak.

  “Sam, I didn’t see any police reports about a painting stolen from your house last year,” the detective said.

  “Because we didn’t report it,” she said.

  “Why?” Kate asked.

  Sam frowned and shrugged. “It just wasn’t a big deal.”

  “Sam! It absolutely was—is—a big deal. Tell me . . .”

  “I said almost stolen,” Sam said, her voice rising and face reddening. “It was really bizarre. It turned out the robbers left it behind—they must have gotten spooked or something. We just didn’t find it for a while. Mom found it shoved into the hall closet, behind the rain boots and umbrellas. She hung it right back up in their bedroom.”

  Kate felt pins and needles in her face and hands. It couldn’t be.

  “Which wall?” Conor asked.

  “The one near the window, next to the bookshelves.”

  “Who was the artist?” he asked.

  “Ben Morrison,” Sam said.

  “And the name of the painting?”

  Kate closed her eyes. Her entire body felt ice cold.

  Of all the Black Hall Impressionists, Kate and Beth loved most the work of Ben Morrison. His love of nature flowed from his brush, and she believed his romantic and tragic vision of love was based on the heartbreak and betrayal he’d suffered. His most famous painting hung in the Wadsworth Atheneum. It showed a young woman on the moonlit lawn of a stone house, dancing alone in a moment of private abandon.

  Kate’s family owned a similar painting by Morrison—it depicted the exact same scene, smaller by half, and somehow infused with even greater longing, a sense of the woman’s unmistakable desire. Many art historians considered the canvas superior to the one at the Atheneum. It had already been stolen once, by Joshua and Sally Anderson the night Kate and Beth’s mother had died. It had been returned to the family after the couple’s arrest. And since Beth’s marriage to Pete, it had hung alone, illuminated by a spotlight, on the east wall of their bedroom.

  “The name of the painting?” the detective asked again.

  Kate’s heart seized. She knew even before Sam said it.

  “Moonlight,” Sam said.

  It was happening again, Kate thought. Someone else she loved had been killed over that same painting.

  8

  After Sam got tired, Reid didn’t want to push her for more answers. He thanked her for her help, and Kate walked him to the door. She checked her phone, not for the first time since he’d arrived, as if impatient for a call. Popcorn shimmied against Kate’s side, and she grabbed his red leash and clipped it to his collar.

  “I’ll walk you out,” she said.

  He watched her go through the routine of disarming and rearming the alarm. At the top of the stairs, she spoke quietly into a microphone, and the only words he heard clearly were autumn garage.

  “What did you just say?” he asked, keeping up as she and Popcorn ran downstairs.

  “It’s a quote from Franny and Zooey,” she said. At the front door, she turned to see if he knew what she was talking about.

  “No idea what that is,” he said.
/>   “A book by J. D. Salinger,” she said. “Beth’s favorite. And mine. Sibling love.”

  From her tone, he realized he’d failed some test. It was also clear that as much as he thought he knew about her, Kate’s inner life was a mystery. They walked outside. The temperature had dropped, and fog was creeping in, ghostly in the streetlights. Salt air blew off the harbor, smelling of Long Island Sound, the river, diesel fuel, and beer from the bar next door. Kate cut down a deserted alley that led toward the empty wharf.

  “What a paradox,” he said.

  She gave him a quizzical glance.

  “For someone who has the most sophisticated private security setup I’ve ever seen, you like to live dangerously,” he said. “This is a pretty crime-ridden stretch.”

  “I’ve got some moves,” she said, giving a slight smile. “No one’s going to bother me. And I’ve got Popcorn.”

  “Right,” he said. “The great watchdog.”

  “Don’t insult my buddy,” she said as Popcorn lifted his leg to pee on a pile of trash.

  They slipped through a break in an anchor fence to get closer to the river. The black water rippled yellow-orange from garish lights on the other side. General Dynamics—better known as Electric Boat or “EB” to locals—manufactured submarines for the navy and was lit up like a small city. The dark conning towers of two subs rose high above their docks and the river’s surface.

  “My brother and I used to think this exact spot would be the best place for Russian spies,” he said.

  “Beth and I thought that too,” she said. “Our parents would bring us and our friends to New London for Sail Fest, and we’d walk along the pier eating clam chowder and lobster rolls, looking over at EB and imagining how many of the tourists supposedly taking pictures of the tall ships were actually spies snapping shots of the nuclear subs.” Then, “You have a brother?”

  “Yes, Tom,” Reid said, glad for the chance to tell her.

  “Older or younger?”

  “He’s older,” Reid said.

  “Like me,” Kate said. “Are you close?”

  “We are,” he said, meeting her eyes. “Were you and Beth?”

  “Our whole lives. We thought we had such a happy childhood till . . .” She trailed off.

  “You lost both your parents,” he said.

  “In different ways,” she said. “Our mother died, yes. Beth stayed in touch with my father after he went to prison. I never saw him again. Or took his calls.”

  “You know, my brother found the paintings,” he said.

  She stopped to face him.

  He nodded. “Tom was on the Coast Guard ship that boarded Rembrandt. The Andersons had their running lights off—trying to slip offshore without being seen. Tom was on deck and spotted them. And when he went aboard, he found the artwork stashed in a hidden compartment. The first painting he pulled out was Moonlight.”

  “Please thank him for me,” she said, her voice catching. “Now it’s gone again. And so is my sister.”

  They walked in silence while Popcorn explored the oily pilings of a ruined dock. A tugboat chuffed past. The sound of I-95 traffic crossing the Gold Star Memorial Bridge, although half a mile away, was unending white noise, but Reid and Kate were close enough for him to hear her phone buzz. She reached into her pocket, looked at the screen, and put it back.

  “Waiting for a call?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “A close friend. I want to be the one to tell her about Beth.”

  “That wasn’t the friend?”

  She shook her head. “People I haven’t talked to in ages are coming out of the woodwork. They’ve heard; they’re leaving messages. I don’t want to speak to them.”

  “No,” he said. “I get it.”

  “I hope I can help Sam,” Kate said, “half as well as my grandmother helped me.”

  “Will she live with you?” he asked.

  Kate glanced up, surprise on her face. “No, with Pete, of course.”

  “Oh, right,” Reid said.

  “Why wouldn’t she?” Kate asked, stopping.

  Reid didn’t answer. He stared into her green eyes, trying to read them. And he felt her trying to read him back. He had made up his mind about Pete right away and was doing his best to fight his bias. Was Kate’s reaction a sign that she trusted Pete enough to want Sam to stay with him?

  “You think he did it?” she asked.

  “What did you mean, early today, when you said you could have stopped it from happening?” he asked, avoiding her question.

  “Now I’m a suspect?” she asked. “Me and Pete together? You’re an idiot.” She started to walk away.

  Reid took a deep breath and knew he had to be careful with what he said. He didn’t want to lead her. “Tell me what you mean,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t go to the corner with Pete. The only reason I even speak to him is for Beth and Sam’s sake.”

  “Earlier you said you hate him. Can you explain why?”

  “You’re the detective. Haven’t you uncovered all the dirt?”

  “The investigation is just beginning,” he said.

  “Well then, start with Nicola Corliss,” Kate said.

  “Okay,” Reid said, keeping his voice calm. He didn’t want to let on how much he already knew, had known all along, and he needed to listen as dispassionately as possible to everything she had to say.

  “She is—or was, till Beth fired her—a gallery employee. An assistant curator. Beth and I hired her straight out of grad school at Bard. She wrote her master’s thesis on Childe Hassam’s flag paintings, but her great artist love is, you guessed it, Benjamin Morrison. Those are the reasons we chose her from among the other applicants.”

  “Why did Beth fire her?”

  “Because even more than Morrison, she loved Pete. And he loved—or loves—her right back. My sister is so smart and wonderful, but she re-created just about every mistake my mom made. She married a guy just like my dad, who cheated with a grad student, broke her heart.”

  “How long had Pete been having the affair?”

  “He kept ending it. It was over; then it wasn’t; then it was. Beth tried to believe him for as long as she could. But she was over it—done.”

  “How did Nicola react to Pete’s stopping and starting back up?” he asked.

  “Why?” Kate said, stopping dead, turning to face him. “You’re not saying she could have done it?”

  “No. I’m just trying to get the full picture,” Reid said, envisioning the murder scene, staged to look like a rape. Kate had seen it too. She seemed mostly focused on the lies Pete had been telling Beth, but could she imagine Nicola doing it? “But tell me how she reacted to Pete saying he planned to stay with Beth.”

  “I’m sure she wasn’t happy,” Kate said. “But we weren’t exactly confidants.”

  Reid nodded. “You say Beth was done. She was going to leave him?”

  She did not answer the question. She just stared into the swirling black water. “Look, even though he broke Beth’s heart, he didn’t kill her.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “He was out in the Atlantic Ocean with five other guys. Besides, you heard what Sam said about Moonlight. Whoever took it last year probably came back to steal it right this time.” She looked at him. “Only this time, he took everything Beth had. You saw what he did to her, the lace around her neck, right? Was she raped?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “Well, even my dad didn’t arrange for the Andersons to sexually assault my mother. To do that to her, to us. But considering what my father did, I do realize that supposed loved ones can do terrible things. But I can’t imagine Pete, regardless of what a creep he is, hiring someone to do that to Beth.”

  They were silent for a moment, Reid wondering exactly how to put it—whether to tell her he thought Pete had killed her himself before he left. He had caught some attitude from Tom earlier that day after the helicopter had landed. When Pete had refused to be i
nterviewed, saying he needed to see his daughter before he did anything else, Reid and Tom had stood by the helipad, watching him walk away.

  Reid had looked at Tom and opened his mouth to speak. He’d been about to say, Guilty as hell, but Tom had shaken his head.

  “Don’t go there yet,” Tom said. “Let it play out.”

  “Tom, I know this guy.”

  “No, you don’t. And you don’t even know the sisters—you just think you do.”

  “He’s a liar and a cheater, and if you saw Beth . . .”

  “You want to be taken off the case before you even get started? Keep your head down and do your job,” Tom said sharply, being an asshole older brother.

  Now Sam had confirmed she and Pete hadn’t seen each other yet. So much for the concerned father. Walking along the waterfront, Reid glanced at Kate.

  “I don’t believe he had it done,” Reid said slowly.

  “Oh, because you think I did it?”

  “No,” Reid said. “Not at all.”

  A ferry slid by, lights rippling on the black water.

  “Remember, outside Beth’s house, I mentioned I let something bad happen to her before?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Reid said.

  “It was about Nicola.”

  “What happened?” Reid asked.

  “Beth was determined to confront her and Pete—she called to tell me, when I was about to fly a family to Paris. I told her to wait till I got home, and I’d go with her. Beth couldn’t find any of Nicola’s contact info at the gallery—Pete had gotten rid of any trace of her. But Beth called the gallery’s accountant and told him to look at Nicola’s tax form. It had her address on it—my grandmother’s house.”

  “You didn’t know where Nicola was staying?” Reid asked carefully, because he did know. Once he had realized Pete had a girlfriend, he had started watching him more often and had followed him to Cloudlands.

  “I had no idea at the time—neither did Beth. She and I own the property. We sometimes rent it out to the Black Hall Art Academy—in the past they’ve used it for their acting president, or sometimes an important visiting professor. Pete handles a lot of Beth’s business matters. She put him in charge of renting the house.”

  “She trusted him?” he asked skeptically.

  “In that regard, yes,” Kate said. “The house seemed a safe job to give him—if it was leased at all, it was to someone in the art world. He made it seem the Academy had taken it again, but instead he put Nicola in there—he paid the rent from a bank account Beth didn’t know he had.”