Last Day

by Luanne Rice

  “Because he’d be telling the truth,” Miano said. “But when he was directly asked if he killed Beth . . .”

  “His research would have taught him how to control his breathing. He might not have been able to keep it up through the whole slate of questions, but for one, he nailed it.”

  Reid’s heart was pumping with elation at the breakthrough.

  “We’ve got to get his computers,” Miano said. “House and gallery.”

  “And Nicola’s,” Reid said. “But I still think we won’t find anything on any of those. We’ve got to look at libraries, public places he could have gone to look it up.”

  “Books too,” Miano said. “Check his credit cards for book orders.”

  Reid was beaming when he said goodbye and he and Miano went to their separate work stations to start working on the warrants. Two hours later, Miano told him he could leave early, that she’d finish the applications. She had a leave of absence coming up—she needed knee surgery for an old college soccer injury—and she knew he’d be carrying the caseload while she was gone. He thanked her and took off.

  On the way home, he took a detour through the center of Black Hall.

  He parked in the driveway of the Lathrop Gallery, stared at the historic building. The blinds on the tall windows were closed. The flowers in the stone planters on the front porch hadn’t been watered, and the geraniums had turned brown. Without Beth to take care of the gallery, it looked abandoned. He wondered if Kate would take over.

  He circled around back, tracing the steps he had taken twenty-three years ago. The rhododendrons were as thick around the hatchway door as they had been back then. He remembered what it had been like to hear Kate thumping her feet, the sound that had made him break down the door. He leaned his shoulder against the door now, remembering the force it had taken to break the lock.

  If he counted the days and minutes since that day, he knew there would be very few when the Woodward sisters had not been on his mind. He stared at the windows, wondering what secrets the computers inside held. He doubted very much that Pete had left any trail on a hard drive that could be traced to him, but he had hope that they were on the right track.

  A message from Kate popped up on his phone.

  Can we meet? I have something to show you.

  He texted back:

  Where?

  Kate replied:

  My place.

  When he got to Bank Street, he saw her sitting on the top step in front of her building. Her tan legs were streaked with salt or silt, silvery in the light, as if she’d been wading in the river. Popcorn lay on the sidewalk behind her and jumped up when Reid got out of his car.

  “Let’s talk out here,” she said. “Sam’s upstairs.”

  “Okay,” he said, sitting beside her.

  “Conor,” she said. “I hate to say this, but you might be wrong about Pete.”

  “Why?”

  “Have you talked to Jed Hilliard yet?”

  “Yes,” Reid said.

  “Well, so have I,” Kate said. “I think you’d better look at him more closely.”

  “We did, of course,” Reid said. “But he has an alibi.”

  “So does Pete. He was on a sailboat, two hundred miles away.”

  “Jed was giving private art lessons to some kids on Fishers Island,” Reid said.

  “The Stewarts?” Kate asked. “I know them. I fly the family. David’s the one who first mentioned Jed to me. But they’re so sweet—he could fool them; he could have snuck off . . .”

  “He spent the nights before Beth’s death in their guest room, and he didn’t return to the mainland until the day after. We have statements from David and Lainie, the ferry operators, and the driver who took Jed to the boat and back to Black Hall.”

  Kate paused, looked out at the harbor. She watched the Cape Henlopen—one of the big ferries that went out to Orient Point—back out of the dock, turn, and head south down the Thames.

  “Well, I have something to show you,” she said. She reached into her pocket and handed him a small, square sonogram in black and white.

  “Okay . . . ,” he said, waiting for her to explain.

  “I took it from Jed Hilliard’s tent,” she said.

  Reid stared at the picture.

  “Look on the back,” Kate said.

  Reid turned it over, saw that someone had scrawled Love, B.

  “B for Beth,” Kate said.

  “So you think . . . ,” Reid began.

  “Yes. Jed was the father of her baby,” Kate said.

  39

  Sam sat on the glider, salt-rusted chains creaking as she pushed back and forth with one toe on the weathered wood floor. Isabel was braiding her hair, and Sam was savoring the closeness when a scratching sound came from under the table beside them. She nearly jumped. Julie crawled out, glanced at them, then disappeared under the faded tablecloth again.

  “I see you,” Sam said.

  Julie giggled.

  “We get it,” Isabel said to her sister. “You’re so adorable. You’re the most precious. But guess what? Watching people and eavesdropping isn’t nice.”

  “I do it, though,” Julie said.

  “No fucking kidding.”

  “It’s okay, Julie,” Sam said. “Come out and hang with us.”

  “I don’t think so,” Isabel said. Sam watched her glare at the rustling tablecloth.

  “What’s wrong?” Sam asked. “You okay?”

  “I’ll be honest,” Isabel said. “Having you coddle Julie, when I just want to be supportive and understanding of you, makes my stomach hurt.”

  “I love you both; is that okay?” Sam asked.

  “Thinking about the time,” Julie said, her voice muffled by the tablecloth.

  “What time?” Sam asked.

  “Before the dying, before your mother went to heaven.”

  “Julie!” Isabel said.

  “Yeah. I think about it too,” Sam said.

  Julie poked her head out. She actually met Sam’s gaze and nodded.

  Eye contact was really rare. Julie’s face, always pale, was scrunched up with worry and looked translucent, almost bluish. She was obviously really upset, giving Sam a serious needle in her heart. Julie’s so-called friends bullied her. They weren’t patient, and they teased her.

  Once when Sam and Isabel were at the beach with Julie, they overheard Cammie Alquist bullying her.

  You don’t look different, but you ARE different, hahaha, Cammie had said, and Isabel had grabbed Cammie by the back of her neck and said, Different is better than shitty like you. Seeing Isabel defend Julie had made Sam wish she had a sister—someone who had her back, while Sam had hers, just like her mother and Aunt Kate.

  “Bad dream,” Julie said.

  “You had one?” Sam asked.

  “She has nightmares,” Isabel said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Sam wanted to stay and hear more of what Julie was talking about, but she could tell that Isabel had lost her patience and seemed ready to explode.

  “Foley’s?” Sam asked.

  “Yeah.”

  They took the long way around, the road that looped along the marsh. They were beach girls and walked barefoot, the tar warm and soft beneath their feet.

  “What’s bothering Julie?” Sam asked.

  “I can’t tell, exactly. She’s very upset about your mother, obviously,” Isabel said, glancing at Sam. “But I think it has more to do with your father.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Well, he came over to pick up my dad the day they left, and we all talked to him. Julie hears everything, and she knows he’s a suspect.” Again Isabel looked at Sam. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry; I’m aware of it,” Sam said, knowing she sounded stiff. Every time she thought of her father killing her mother, she wanted to die. It wasn’t possible. He wasn’t the greatest dad sometimes, but he would never do that. She dug her nails into the palms of her hands.

  “Julie’s just
scared. That cop came to talk to me about the dumb book. Why my mother had to mention it to him I have no idea. It was just a thriller my mother picked up at the library book sale. I read it, and then my dad did, and I guess he gave it to your dad.”

  “What book?” Sam asked.

  “Meat Locker. This restaurant owner kills his business partner and hides the body in a refrigeration unit to slow the decomposition of the body. I mean, there’s more to the story than that, but that’s the part the cop wanted to know about.”

  “I don’t remember seeing it around our house,” Sam said. “And you never mentioned it before.”

  “Well, I forgot about it,” Isabel said. “Mom’s the one who called the detective to tell him about it.”

  “Your mom?” Sam asked, shocked that Mrs. Waterston would get involved, would say anything that might implicate her dad. “How could she do that?”

  “Well, she’s worried about you, Sam.”

  “I’ve lost my mom, and now she wants to help them take my dad away too?” Sam asked.

  “No! She just wants . . . to do what’s right. For everyone. For your mother. And you too, of course. I mean, if your dad did it, it could be dangerous. Sam, don’t be mad!”

  Sam started walking faster, and they didn’t talk the rest of the way. Foley’s was a general store, set in the midst of Hubbard’s Point. Only locals went, or even knew about it. It stocked basic food and supplies along with beach toys, and in the back, it had a snack bar with the best lemonade and grilled-cheese sandwiches in the world. Isabel and Sam sat at one of the old scarred oak tables. Generations of kids had carved their initials into the wood, and it was not only allowed but encouraged.

  “Ha, look,” Isabel said, pointing at her parents’ initials: SB & NW. “Hello, hypocrites. Is this that different from graffiti?”

  “Well, it’s allowed here,” Sam said.

  “Where are your parents’ initials?” Isabel asked. “You’ve never shown me.”

  “They didn’t grow up in Hubbard’s Point,” she said. “So they’re not here.”

  “Maybe you should carve them. To commemorate . . .”

  Everything Isabel had said on the way here reverberated through Sam like seismic waves. People thought her dad had killed her mom. Did Sam think that? She told herself no. But right now, despair bubbled up and boiled over.

  “To commemorate the fact that my father basically lives with someone else? And has a kid with her? I think my mother had a boyfriend too.”

  “Really?” Isabel asked. Sam could see it came as a shock—everyone thought her mother was pretty much a saint.

  “I’m almost positive. He’s this guy we knew from New London. I didn’t think about it before she died, but now, looking back, she was happy when she was around him.”

  “That must suck, thinking that,” Isabel said.

  “It doesn’t,” Sam said. “It should, right? As Julie would say, ‘It’s weird; it’s strange,’ but for some reason, it doesn’t suck. I’m just glad my mother was happy.”

  “You have to quote my sister?” Isabel asked.

  “Come on. You know I love Julie. She’s the only one who tells it straight. Everyone else is so polite and walking on eggshells around me. Not wanting to upset me. I know they talk about it when I’m not there.”

  “Are you grouping me in with the polite people?” Isabel asked.

  “No,” Sam said. “You’re my best friend. But to be honest, it fucked me up to hear about the book just now, and you talking to the detective. I mean, I know he’s interviewing everyone, but I still hate it.”

  “How do you think I felt?” Isabel asked. “Having to talk about how my best friend’s dad might have killed her mom?”

  And then, because she just couldn’t take it anymore, Sam ran out of Foley’s and left Isabel sitting there.

  40

  Sam returned to school just before Labor Day, and Kate took a leave of absence from Intrepid Aviation. Nearly two months after Beth’s death, she began spending days at the gallery. It was just a quarter mile from Black Hall High, so she and Sam could drive together from New London.

  Being at the gallery made Kate feel closer to Beth. She sat at her sister’s desk, Popcorn lying at her feet. Time was passing, and still Beth’s killer hadn’t been caught. Conor seemed sure Jed hadn’t done it. Her thoughts veered wildly between still believing it was Pete and starting to wonder if it really had been an art theft. And a sexual assault. She thought of the horribly torn underwear beside Beth’s bed—and what it had been used to do to her.

  It was all unthinkable. She tried to get the picture of Beth lying on her bed out of her mind, the marks around her neck, her blankly staring eyes. Her fingers trembled as she paged through a thick black ledger Beth kept of all the paintings that came through the gallery. It calmed and soothed her to think of the things Beth had always loved, had been good at. After a few minutes, she lost herself in Beth’s notes.

  Kate had always been informed about the most important acquisitions and sales. A few key paintings stood out; Beth had written about them, filled paragraphs with question marks and red arrows, words that were circled or boldly underlined. She’d been searching for clues, more information than the previous owners had been able—or willing—to supply. Works of art were a mystery—their meaning, provenance, and authenticity—and to study them, one had to become a detective and an academic.

  Kate examined the small oil on a display easel beside Beth’s desk. Beth had determined that the landscape, unsigned, was by Ben Morrison, the same artist who’d painted Moonlight. Could there be any significance to Beth’s having had it right next to her desk?

  It had been found with over fifty other paintings in the attic of a saltbox on Sill Lane. Edith Peck, a ninety-five-year-old recluse who had never married, had collected works of the American Impressionists who had painted in the Black Hall Art Colony. Morrison had lived there from 1898 to 1905. After Peck’s death last December, it had come to light that she had two great-nephews in Bangor and a great-niece in Rochester, none of whom had any interest in owning the paintings.

  Miss Peck’s family wanted the Lathrop Gallery to sell the paintings on consignment, but Beth had asked Kate to agree that the family purchase them outright.

  Beth worked out a price, and Kate concurred. Edith Peck’s family had felt it was fair, and the deal was made. Pete objected. He thought they were paying too much.

  “They’re not Metcalf caliber,” he’d said. “We’re talking about a couple of LeBlancs, a Potter, a Giddings, and a few unsigned that might be Morrison? What you’ve got is a bunch of barely-knowns.”

  Pete was correct about the fact that the works Miss Peck had collected—other than the possible Morrisons—were by artists not terribly sought after, but the passion of collectors had always escaped him: the thrill of discovering a new artist; the love of beauty; the deep satisfaction of owning a picture done over a hundred years ago, outdoors on local hills or riverbanks, of scenes that still existed today.

  He would never comprehend the role the gallery played in creating reputations. Artists represented by the Harkness-Woodward—now Lathrop—Gallery became sought after. Once they secured the gallery’s imprimatur, the value of their work went up substantially. Many artists who showed here later had work acquired by museums from the Farnsworth to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Pete might have done well in another field; he would never understand that soul was more necessary to the art business than a calculator.

  Kate examined the painting at hand, the one Beth had attributed to Morrison. The canvas was 8 by 12 inches. It depicted a brook in spring. The water’s strong zigzag and diminishing diagonal drew the eye back and forth from the foreground into the distance. Light glinted on the surface and through pine needles, a wash of gold-green and clear pale blue. Claude Monet had said, “Nature does not stand still.”

  Kate was thinking of those words when she suddenly recognized the brook: it was on the island, running down the hill from w
here Jed had pitched his tent. She recognized the rock contours and the serpentine of water flowing toward the distant blue river. She had observed that exact scene the day she’d found the sonogram.

  Was that the reason Beth had the painting propped up where she could see it at all times? Because it reminded her of Jed and the island? The painting was undeniably lovely, idealistic, and romantic. Could that pine grove by the brook be where she had conceived Matthew?

  Lost in thought, Kate heard the discreet bell that rang only upstairs in the office, announcing that someone had entered the front door. She heard footfalls on the bare wood floor, and Popcorn loped downstairs to investigate. Kate’s fists clenched—an involuntary reaction to the sound of footsteps in the gallery. After all these years, that sound reminded her of the day the intruders had come. The bell had rung upon their entrance as well.

  “Hello,” came a familiar voice.

  She walked downstairs to see Conor bending down to pet Popcorn. He wore what she’d come to realize was his uniform: gray slacks, a white broadcloth shirt, a striped tie, and a rumpled blue blazer. He pushed his dark hair out of his eyes, sparkling with warmth.

  “I drove by and spotted your car,” he said. Then, “I’m surprised you’re here.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I thought you’d be flying.”

  “I’m taking time off,” she said. “I thought I’d spend some time at the gallery. It’s been neglected since Beth died.”

  “How does it feel to be back?”

  “It’s complicated—not all one thing.” She paused. “It’s practically my home. I’ve been coming here as long as I remember. A lot of memories. And some ghosts.” She thought of the Morrison painting.

  “Your mother.”

  “And Beth,” Kate said. My sister with her lover, she thought. Had Beth chosen that spot by the brook to be with Jed because of the Morrison painting? Had she let art guide her?

  There was another ghost too: the girl Kate used to be. Her gaze went to the basement door. She had walked down those stairs one person, and when she’d come back up twenty-two hours later, she’d been someone else entirely.