Last Day

by Luanne Rice

  “Well, we can’t all be perfect like you, Scotty,” Mr. Waterston had said once. Sam had cringed, because she’d seen the hurt cross Mrs. Waterston’s face.

  She really was Sam’s second-favorite mom in the world. Sam glanced around for her—she craved another one of those hugs.

  Isabel was waiting on the front porch. She stood when she saw Sam coming, and they ran together and held each other. Isabel was Sam’s soul sister, and Sam knew instantly that she instantly got it.

  “Oh, Sam,” Isabel whispered. “Nothing, nothing could be worse. I am so sorry.”

  “Thanks, Izz.”

  “My mom’s falling apart over it,” Isabel said.

  Sam drew back and saw the sadness on Isabel’s face.

  “Where is she?” Sam asked.

  “At the beach, and my dad’s at work,” Isabel said. She imitated putting a joint to her lips, and Sam felt her heart ease a little. That was the gift of having someone truly understand and know what would help. Isabel reached into her pocket. Sam flicked her lighter.

  “Don’t do that. It’s bad,” Julie said from under a wicker table.

  “I didn’t know you were there,” Sam said, crouching down, lifting the flowered cloth to see seven-year-old Julie. Blonde and pale, she wore glasses with blue frames that slipped down her freckled nose. She had an audio processing disability that wasn’t immediately obvious, but kids in school picked up on it and bullied her.

  Julie wouldn’t meet Sam’s gaze at first, but then she stole a glance, blinked, and looked away again. It was hard for her, even though Sam had known her since birth. She was severely shy, always hovering just out of sight. When she did talk, it tended to be disjointed and blunt.

  “Your mother died,” Julie said.

  “Yes,” Sam said.

  “You are sad.”

  “Very.”

  Julie nodded, still looking away.

  “Mommy said the bad man hurt her,” Julie said.

  “Yes, someone did.”

  “Weird and bad,” Julie said.

  “Enough, okay, Julie?” Isabel asked.

  “Don’t smoke,” Julie said.

  “You tell, and you’re in trouble,” Isabel said.

  Julie scooted back out of sight. Sam let the edge of the tablecloth drop. Then she stood up and filled her lungs with smoke until they burned, and she knew that Julie, through whatever circuits her mind worked, was right. “Weird and bad,” Sam said out loud as she exhaled the smoke.

  11

  Kate followed Pete up the river road, in no danger of being seen. Once he left Bryer Funeral Home, passed the library, and headed north, she knew exactly where he was going. A dump truck from Pawlik Construction, loaded with trap rock, rumbled between her car and Pete’s, belching black exhaust. The countryside was beautiful—rolling hills overlooking the Connecticut River and Sill Cove—the same landscape painted by the Black Hall Colony artists. But development was rampant—lots clear-cut, three-hundred-year-old trees felled, and acres of wildlife habitat destroyed for ugly six-thousand-square-foot houses.

  Cloudlands, Mathilda’s property, was high on Sachem Hill. The stately white house had been built in 1745 by Judge Thomas Ludlow in the midst of one hundred acres of forest and meadows sloping down to a tidal inlet. Kate watched Pete drive between the tall stone pillars that marked the beginning of the mile-long private road.

  Instead of going in that way, she turned left down an untended dirt trail that belonged to the property and skirted the cove out of sight of the driveway and house. The family used to come here to swim and canoe and have picnics. She parked where the pebble-strewn road dead-ended in a thatch of marsh grass.

  At the sound of an engine, she turned around and saw a black Dodge Charger bouncing over the ruts. It stopped behind her Porsche, and she recognized Conor’s unmarked state police vehicle.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, getting out.

  “I own this place, I told you. My grandmother’s,” she said.

  “I know that, but why are you here now? You’re following Pete?”

  “You’re following me?”

  “No, him. But you got in the middle. I saw you all at the funeral home.”

  “Yes, we were there,” she said.

  “What are these steps?” he asked, pointing at the steep stairs carved into the granite ledge, shaded by tall pines, half overgrown by myrtle and poison ivy, green with moss.

  “They lead to the house,” she said, looking up. “We used to come down here to swim and canoe and have picnics. They’re a shortcut, and if we hurry, we’ll beat Pete.”

  She took the steps two at a time, and although it was a hot day and Conor was wearing a jacket and tie, he kept up without losing his breath. So she went faster. Something drove her to practically run the 473 steps—she and Beth had counted once—to the clearing behind the house.

  They stayed in the shadows of what the family called Mathilda’s Forest. The clay tennis court was sprouting weeds, and the deep stone swimming pool was dry. But Harold Maxwell, the gardener, still came once a week, and the blue hydrangeas were as dazzling as ever. Black-eyed Susans, pink and white phlox, and bee balm grew tall along the stone wall circling the house. Kate had refused to allow the big center chimney to be capped—both Beth and Pete had argued that squirrels could get inside, but Kate had prevailed—and a family of endangered chimney swifts wheeled through the blue sky above the roof.

  “Why are you following him?” Conor asked.

  “Because of what you said last night.”

  “You think you’re going to catch him with evidence?” he asked.

  “I just thought . . . if I could see how he acted when he didn’t know people were watching, I would know.” She looked down at her feet for a few seconds. “Last night, after I talked to you, and this morning, seeing him at the funeral home, I was sure it’s him. But I don’t want it to be. For Sam. No matter how I feel about him, Pete’s her dad.”

  “Look, you have to let me do this,” Conor said. “He’s coming in for questioning later. There’s a whole process, so why don’t you—”

  “Leave?” she asked. “No chance.”

  Conor squinted at her, then looked up at the house. “How are we supposed to see him from here?”

  Without answering, Kate led him behind a tall hedge into a boxwood labyrinth. Once they reached the innermost path, they came to a weathered wooden door. The hinges squeaked, and the door opened into a damp cellar.

  “You’re allowed to do this, right?” Kate asked, glancing over her shoulder. “You won’t get in trouble for not having a warrant?”

  “I’m with the owner,” he said, smiling at her. They took a few steps inside. There was a light switch at the far end of the house, but this part of the basement was pitch dark. She knew every step of this house, could have found her way blindfolded, but Conor swore as he stumbled into her. She grabbed his hand to steady him.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  “A cellar Pete knows nothing about.”

  “Why doesn’t he?”

  “Well, there’s another, one we actually use. It has a wine cellar, a storage room, the furnace, all the water pipes—normal house things. But this was dug during the Revolutionary War, a staging point to fight the British. It was a hiding place, in case of attack.”

  “Cool history,” Conor said as she pulled her hand away.

  “We found cannonballs once.”

  They walked through the darkness. A few times they heard claws scrabbling on the rock walls.

  “Monsters,” she said.

  “Field mice,” he said.

  “You’re right. My grandmother always had a cat, and he brought us little furry gifts nearly every night.”

  At the far end of the passageway, Kate flipped the light switch to illuminate a single bulb, swinging from a cord overhead. She carefully and quietly unlatched a door, wincing when it creaked open. They climbed the narrow spiral staircase.

  As children, she
and Beth had played here, pretending to be spies hiding from the redcoats. The stairs led up three flights to a tiny room, originally built for escape from enemy soldiers, accessible from the main house by a secret door that only Mathilda and the girls knew about. A peephole gave onto the library.

  She and Conor looked down. There was Pete. He’d obviously just walked in and was puttering around, putting his wallet and car keys on the desk. He disappeared, and Kate heard him in the kitchen. It was just past noon. He returned with a sandwich on one of Mathilda’s blue-and-white Canton plates.

  Now he sat in the chair, pointing the remote toward the TV, wolfing down his lunch. This had always been a room for Mathilda’s vast collection of books, including works of fiction, art, Connecticut history, and aviation. Pete gave every impression of being alone. There were no sounds coming from within the house. Not Nicola calling a greeting, not the baby laughing or crying.

  That surprised Kate. Pete had claimed he and Beth had been working it out, but she had never really believed that. He had always been out for himself. He had moved Nicola and Tyler into this house and destroyed his marriage to Beth in the process. Kate had been dreading seeing them here today.

  But it was just Pete, sitting in an ugly brown leather recliner that Mathilda would have thrown down the cliff before allowing in her house. He had obviously brought it here, moved it right in. Kate watched him flipping through television channels. The quiet made Kate all the more aware of Conor squeezed so close beside her, their arms pressed together.

  “Where’s Nicola?” Conor whispered.

  “And the baby?” Kate whispered back.

  12

  After leaving Cloudlands, Reid drove to the boatyard where Huntress had been taken for repairs after sustaining damage on the trip. Nick Waterston had been the friend in charge of the charter, and he was overseeing the work. He had agreed to meet there. Reid wanted to nail down some details of the voyage before he questioned Pete.

  The harbor glittered under a cloudless blue sky. There was a good breeze, and sailboats rocked at their moorings. Reid drove around the large shed filled with boats needing work, past a pile of masts and tangled rigging, and parked facing the wharf. He spotted Waterston on the deck of a sleek sailboat tied to the dock. Reid recognized it as Huntress.

  The afternoon was hot, but Reid pulled on his suit jacket and headed over. Nick unclipped a section of the lifeline encircling the boat’s deck, and Reid stepped aboard. The two men shook hands.

  “It’s so terrible,” Nick said. “We cannot get it through our heads. It’s broken my wife’s heart. She’s devastated.”

  “Your wife is Scotty?” Reid asked.

  Nick nodded. “Yeah. Best friends with Kate and Beth, especially Beth—they were closer in age—since they were kids. Inseparable. I loved Beth too. She was practically family to us.”

  “Was Pete also like family?” Reid asked.

  “Right,” Nick said, barking out a laugh. “By the way, I told Scotty I was meeting you here, and she’s coming by. I know you want to talk to her as well, and we thought it would be easier.”

  “That’s great,” Reid said. “Why did you laugh when I asked if Pete was family?”

  “Because he’s a pompous ass, and no one can stand him.”

  That got Reid’s attention. “But you went on a weeklong sailing trip with him.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s a friend of Lee’s—Lee Ackerley—and he chipped in on the charter. Believe me, if it were up to me . . .”

  “Okay,” Reid said. “Why don’t you tell me about the trip?”

  “Great weather, incredible breeze. The first night, we cruised around Nantucket. Pete was distracted, though. He kept saying he was worried about Beth—her pregnancy hadn’t been easy. I told him Scotty was there, even though Kate and Lulu—their other friend—were away. My wife would do anything for Beth.”

  “How did he act worried?”

  “Calling her constantly. Making a big deal about the fact she wasn’t picking up. Totally distracted.”

  “Distracted in what way?”

  “Yeah. The reason the boat’s here now. Pete took a turn at the wheel, and when he rounded Sankaty Head, he was so busy checking his cell phone he missed the buoy and steered straight over the east end of Davis South Shoal—shallow and dangerous, and every sailor knows it. He dinged the keel, and it’s going to cost a few grand to get fixed.” Nick paused.

  “How did the crew react?”

  “Pissed off, but you couldn’t help be concerned. The guy was definitely off his game. From then on, it was all, ‘You okay, Pete? You doing all right?’ He loved the attention. It’s like he got what he wanted.”

  “You saying you think he was acting worried and distracted on purpose?”

  “I have no idea. With Pete it could be anything. He’s got this intellectual superiority, so he thinks the rules are different for him. He’d probably think it was beneath him to look at a chart. He’s a member of Mensa. You know what that is?”

  “Tell me.”

  “The genius club. For people who have superhigh IQs, to quote Pete. He’ll be very happy to tell you about it.”

  “So, take me through more of the trip,” Reid said.

  “Well, at one point I had the wheel. Up ahead a whale surfaced and spouted, then another—it was a pod of humpback whales swimming by. Just beautiful. But we wanted to get back to port for dinner, and I was making time. Pete told me to bear off.”

  “Bear off? What’s that?”

  “It means fall off the wind. Stop going so fast. Pete was on the rail with his camera out, as he had been practically the whole voyage. He said he wanted to get a picture for Beth, that she’s whale-crazy.”

  “What’s unusual about that?”

  Nick snorted. “Pete never cared about taking a picture for Beth in his life. A photo of whales, fine. But then he wanted us to go in a completely different direction to get a shot of a three-masted schooner. Then a flock of gulls. Then a guy catching stripers. It was like he wanted us to notice how much he wanted to do for Beth.”

  “What did he wear on the trip?”

  “Jeans. Long-sleeved shirt. And it was hotter than fuck.”

  Reid nodded. It was what he’d hoped to hear.

  “Did you ever see him with his shirt off, or a T-shirt—anything like that?” Reid asked.

  “Nope. And to each his own, but all night in the cabin he kept complaining that he needed to sleep next to the fan; he was dying of the heat. Typical Pete—stealing all the oxygen from any situation.”

  “Got any pictures of the trip?”

  “No, and Detective Miano asked that as soon as we docked up in Menemsha. Last thing I want is to have my cell phone out when I’m on vacation.”

  “I get that,” Reid said.

  “You know, I couldn’t blame Beth for not picking up when he called,” Nick said. “Pretty much everyone knew about the gallery assistant. Nicola. You’ve heard about her?”

  “Yes. Was it serious?”

  “Pete never talked to me about it.”

  At the sound of tires crunching on gravel, Reid glanced toward the parking area. A blue Volvo wagon pulled in next to his sedan, and a blonde woman wearing a pink sundress stepped out. She was carrying an old-fashioned picnic basket covered with a checked cloth.

  “Hello, hello,” she called. She wore flip-flops encrusted with blue jewellike crystals, and when she stepped aboard, she handed Nick the basket and kissed him.

  “Detective Reid, this is my wife, Scotty,” Nick said.

  “I am so happy to meet you,” Scotty said, shaking his hand, then holding it with both of hers. Her big eyes instantly dampened with tears. “You have to solve this, tell us who killed our Beth.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Waterston.”

  “Call me Scotty,” she said.

  He nodded. “We were just talking about Nicola,” he said.

  “Lovely Nicola,” she said, grimacing.

  “Do you know her?”

&
nbsp; “We all do. She was the sweet little gallery assistant. Beth hired her! Well, and Kate too. We thought she was just darling, and so smart, and so helpful. Till she helped herself to Pete.”

  “Was Pete intending to leave Beth for her?”

  “At one point, yes,” Scotty said. “Beth was devastated. But after she got pregnant, it seemed that Pete really wanted to fix the marriage, make things better.”

  “And Beth, did she want to fix it too?”

  Scotty paused. A blush spread up from her neck, and her eyes filled again. “She wanted to, but it was hard. She’d been so hurt by what he did. How could she trust him after that? Trust between a couple is everything.” Her eyes darted to her husband, and Reid wondered if there had been adultery in the Waterston marriage too.

  “How did Pete take her reluctance?”

  “He didn’t like it, of course. Pete is the kind of person who thinks he can control everyone. He has this Svengali-like personality. Very controlling, bends you to his will. At first, for years, Beth went along with it. She just wanted to make him happy. But after he got together with Nicola and their son was born—she saw the light. She got much more assertive, and that did not thrill Pete, to put it mildly.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Oh, he got very sarcastic. All passive-aggressive, saying she was turning into her grandmother. Mathilda was extremely independent, did not believe in needing a man for anything.”

  “Was Pete ever violent toward Beth?” Reid asked.

  Scotty narrowed her lips and looked away. She started to speak, then shook her head and sighed. “I don’t know. I have my suspicions, but Beth never said for sure.”

  “What were your suspicions?”

  She shook her head hard, thinned her lips, and looked away. “If only I had stayed with her.”

  “When?” Reid asked.

  “Well, that morning. I popped by very early—she called me. She was upset about something with Pete, and I headed over to just be with her. She was out in the yard. There was a flat of impatiens—she always felt better when she could work in the garden. I helped her do some planting before the sun got up too high. She was affected by the heat.”