My Sister, Myself

by Alice Sharpe

  And he thought of Tess. Where was she?

  Would he ever see her again?

  IRENE’S STORE WAS CALLED Broadway Art. Smaller letters below the gold leaf proclaimed: Sales, Acquisition, Custom Framing. The front window housed a display of landscapes.

  The sign on the door said the store was closed, but Tess tried the handle and knocked gently on the glass. The door opened, and she let herself in.

  The store itself was larger than it appeared from the street and filled with art. Statues perched on pedestals, paintings hung on fiber-coated walls, hand-blown glass and other objets d’art each with its own spotlight and enough space around it to show it at maximum advantage. Tess saw a few price tags and almost choked.

  Irene peeked out of a room in the back. “Come on back. I plugged in the coffeemaker.”

  She disappeared as Tess made her way through the gallery to the back room. On the walk over from the hospital, she’d tried to decide how best to tell both women the truth about her identity. Part of her wished she’d worn the glasses and the crutches and delayed this moment.

  After all, it wasn’t as though she lived in New Harbor. She’d come here for Katie, but once Katie recovered, she might like to move to San Francisco. Tess had an extra room and a little money put away. She could give it to Katie to go to school, to start over somewhere new, somewhere different, somewhere a long way away from Ryan Hill.

  And yet it went against her nature to keep this kind of secret. When Nelson Lingford went to trial, some of this would come out, and it would be better if the two older women heard the truth from her.

  The back room was obviously the heart of Irene’s business. Framing equipment, rolls of canvas and tools covered several workbenches. The boxes of Madeline’s photographs occupied a corner of the closest worktable.

  There were two doors on the back wall, a large freight door and a smaller door that currently stood open. A light-gray van was parked directly outside right next to Irene’s black sedan.

  Tess had counted fifteen vans on her walk to the store. They were everywhere. How could a legally blind man tell the difference between light gray or white or silver or probably pale yellow or light blue. It had been raining. Vans were a dime a dozen.

  Irene closed and locked the small door. “Tabitha wasn’t well enough to spend much time with me this morning, so I came into work and sent Georges home,” she said. “You just missed Madeline. She was in a hurry. I told her you and I would make a window display to honor the collection.” She looked at Tess more closely and added, “Good heavens! Where are your crutches and cast?”

  “I’m better,” Tess said as the first few notes of “Für Elise” announced a call.

  “And your glasses?” Irene said, eyebrows raised. “Your eyesight is better, too?”

  “Yes,” Tess said simply, checking the display on Katie’s cell phone.

  Ryan. A rush of excitement was followed by doubt. Was it wise to give him false hope? What could she say, what should she say? She turned the phone off and set it on the workbench.

  “Problem?” Irene said.

  “No. Just my…cousin.”

  “He’s very devoted.”

  “I just can’t talk to him right now,” Tess said.

  Irene leaned against the worktable, linking her arms across her chest and said, “That man isn’t you cousin. I’m not so old I don’t remember how it is when a man looks at you the way this man does. Did you have a fight?”

  “Not all love stories end in a perfect marriage,” Tess said softly.

  Irene flashed her a quick, appraising look. “I never said I had a perfect marriage,” she said.

  Tess picked up one of the photos of the lost art and mumbled, “I’m sorry. I guess I assumed.”

  “Ian was a professional musician so he traveled a great deal. He also played in a small local ensemble, in fact, you’re not going to believe this, but he played in the same little group that the cop accused of starting Madeline’s house fire played in. Years ago, of course. Ian played the violin.”

  Tess already knew this. “He sounds great,” she mumbled as she opened the box of photos and took out a stack. She paused over a Monet, a painting of a child on a bench. She’d seen the photo before. That’s right, she’d seen it at Madeline’s house.

  As it so happened, the photo of the painting depict ing a dog running through the poppies, the painting Madeline had claimed her favorite, sat right next to the Monet. The difference in the quality was so stunning it was no wonder Irene found Madeline’s lack of sophistication when it came to art humorous.

  “But Ian, bless his heart, wasn’t the true love of my life,” Irene said.

  Tess glanced up. Irene had lifted the stack of photos Ryan had printed out. “Doesn’t Tabitha look happy in this picture?” she said, handing the photo of her daughter over to Tess. “Caroline, may I borrow your phone?”

  Tess glanced at the phone sitting on the workbench.

  Irene said, “I need a cell phone for this call and mine is in my car.”

  Tess handed over Katie’s phone. Something intangible in the atmosphere of the workroom had changed. Something was wrong. Tess cast about wildly for an explanation as Irene text-messaged on Katie’s phone.

  “Actually,” Irene said as she finished her task and clicked off the phone, “I was madly in love with Theo Lingford.”

  Tess blinked a couple of times.

  “Are you shocked? Do you think your generation is the first to have affairs?”

  “No,” Tess said. What shocked her was Irene telling her about it. What was the point? Anxious to avoid Irene’s probing stare and bizarre confession, she glanced down at Tabitha’s photo again.

  And this time she finally saw what she should have seen from the beginning. She all but did a double take. Her breath caught short of a gasp.

  Behind Tabitha Woodall’s shoulder was a painting, more visible now because of the enlargement. Tess finally recognized it: the child on a bench, a Monet, small and perfect.

  What was a painting supposedly destroyed in a fire months before doing in a picture taken only days ago? Had Katie grasped the significance right away? Had she tried to reach Ryan to tell him about this and not the trophy in Nelson Lingford’s office?

  She could picture it. The innocent photo of Tabitha, pretty much ignored until Katie arrived at Nelson’s office. Scrolling through the photos to show him the image she’d just taken of his silly trophy, spying that tiny little painting behind Tabitha, sudden comprehension, leaving abruptly to call Ryan in private…

  Irene said, “Madeline is wrong, you know. The little Renoir wasn’t Theo’s favorite. Monet’s painting of the child on the bench was his favorite. We bought it on a trip to Paris. He said it reminded him of his daughter, or of what she could have been if she hadn’t been born…different.”

  Tess’s gaze flew to Irene as flickers of understanding fought against denial. “Theo Lingford was Tabitha’s father?”

  Irene nodded.

  “Does Madeline know?”

  “Madeline isn’t the brightest bulb in the pack,” Irene said. “I don’t believe she ever cottoned on to what was going on right under her nose. She didn’t even realize I orchestrated her sudden flight from town today, that it was I who suggested she come here, that she call you. Silly, silly, woman.”

  When did Katie’s trouble start? After the party. After Katie took Tabitha’s picture. The witness of the hit-and-run stated the driver of the van approached Katie as she lay on the sidewalk. Looking to help or looking for an object, a cell phone, perhaps? Scared away, had the driver come back to search Katie’s apartment? The phone would have been in police custody by then. Then Tess showed up looking and acting like Katie, still snooping, still wielding the phone, oblivious to the importance of Tabitha’s photo on that phone. The pictures had been erased—she’d assumed by Ryan, maybe Nelson—but actually by Irene. Then she’d brought a hard-print photo right to Irene’s store and shoved it under her nose.
r />   Tess wondered what had Nelson been accused of that Irene couldn’t have done: she’d already admitted she knew Tess’s father, probably heard rumors from her husband about his gambling problems, so there was that connection; she knew about the alarm system in the house; knowing Madeline for years undoubtedly meant she also knew Madeline’s driver, the late Jim Kinsey, so there was another connection. She gave out Kinsey’s name, and then before anyone could talk to him, he was strangled by someone he trusted enough to have a drink with, someone clever enough to plant Nelson’s muddy shoes in his own garage, swipe glasses with his fingerprints from his den, steal a few of his sleeping tablets. Someone intimate with the family.

  All to cover up the theft of one painting?

  Tess met Irene’s gaze again, and she knew her suppositions were right on the money. Trouble was, she could tell Irene knew she knew.

  “Let’s drop the charade,” Irene said. “It wasn’t until you came to Tabitha’s party that I was sure you were Matt’s daughter, pretending to be someone else, prying, asking questions. And then Tabitha had one of her tantrums. In the confusion, the drapery over the Monet got pushed aside. While I was in the kitchen preparing her medication, you took matters into your own hands and quieted Tabitha with the promise of a photo of her wearing her new kitty necklace. As soon as I came back in the room and saw that curtain thrust aside, I suspected what else you might have caught on that stupid phone.”

  “You didn’t know for sure? You ran…me…down but you didn’t know?”

  “I couldn’t take the chance. I should have vaulted that painting like the others, but it was Theo’s favorite. It was my link to him. Anyway, I had to stop you before you realized what you’d done.”

  “So you tried to shoot me last night—”

  “Shoot you? Why would I shoot you until I made sure you hadn’t told anyone what you suspected?”

  There was a glint of determination in Irene’s eyes. Taking a step toward the storeroom door, Tess said, “My cousin knows—”

  “Your cousin, detective Ryan Hill, is on his way,” Irene said. “He’s who I text messaged. He should be here any moment. There’ll be a lover’s quarrel. Perhaps it will revolve around your father’s fifty grand, the money Kinsey was trying to get you to hand over before I killed him, the greedy bastard. Maybe you want it for yourself and Ryan refuses to give it to you. You’ll grab my gun and shoot Ryan Hill, he’ll grab his and shoot you, the ruckus will start a fire—look at the solvents on my shelves, turpentine is so volatile!—my shop will be destroyed. I’ll barely escape.”

  Tess shook her head but her heart was beating like the wings of a hummingbird. “He won’t come,” she said.

  Irene raised her hand. She was holding a revolver, pointing it straight at Tess’s forehead, a gun way too big for the woman’s slender hand. It looked to Tess’s inexperienced eye like Kinsey’s gun. Eventually she and Ryan would be linked back to Kinsey and his death and then to her father and then the Lingford fire. Eventually Katie would wake up to a new nightmare.

  Her long-lost sister, dead. Claimed to be a criminal.

  Ryan dead.

  No! Not Ryan.

  She had to do something.

  RYAN TRIED THE HANDLE on the front door and was surprised when it turned in his hand. Not as surprised as when he’d received Tess’s message asking him to meet her here, but surprised.

  Drawing his gun, he closed the door behind him and moved through the darkened store. “Honey? Where are you? Answer me.”

  He heard a noise in the workroom and entered the space to find Tess standing next to Irene Woodall. After a cursory look at Tess, who was as white and stiff as a newly stretched canvas, he focused on Irene Woodall. After all, she was the one with the gun; she was undoubtedly the one who had summoned him.

  “Looks like a standoff,” he said.

  “It depends on how much you think of this girl,” Irene said.

  “I think the world of her.” He could hear a faint noise at the door in the back of the room. The trick was to get Tess out of harm’s way. His eyes darting to Tess’s face, he added, “In fact, I love her.”

  There was a millisecond where Tess’s gaze met his, and despite their predicament he felt a flicker of hope. Was it possible she loved him, too?

  “It’s a shame she has to kill you,” Irene said, and without further warning, fired. Tess had used the moment of inattention to pull on Irene’s arm, and the shot went wild. The two women crashed to the floor as Sanchez broke down the back door. Ryan ran to help Tess. Another shot. He pulled Tess away and kicked the gun out of Irene’s hand. Sanchez subdued the older woman as Ryan turned back to Tess.

  A bloody stain spread across her white sweater.

  She began to fall in slow motion, her gaze connected to his. He grabbed her, cradling her as she sank to the floor. “Call an ambulance!” he yelled, his insides choking, his heart crying, No, no!

  Someone handed him a clean square of cloth and he held it against Tess’s chest. “Stay with me,” he said, looking down at her face. “Tess, stay with me, my love.”

  “Stay with you,” she repeated, her voice faint, fading away…gone.

  GROGGY AND CONFUSED, Tess peered at her surroundings, trying to make sense of what she saw.

  A hospital room. Katie’s room? No Katie, though.

  A warm hand grasped hers and she turned her head.

  “Ryan,” she croaked.

  He looked down at her with his gray eyes, a look of concern gradually giving way to relief. “I’m here,” he said. “Better, you’re here.”

  “How long—”

  “It’s been almost a week. You were hurt so badly. There was an emergency operation, then you had a fever. I began to worry you might never come back to me, Tess Mays.”

  Tears glittered in his eyes.

  “I love you,” she said. “I need you. I shouldn’t have tried not to need you. It was stupid.”

  “Shh,” he said, leaning over and kissing her forehead. “I love you, too,” he whispered against her skin. “I need you, too. Needing each other is a good thing. You’ll marry me, of course.”

  “Of course,” she mumbled. “Of course.”

  A few moments later, when she awoke again, he told her about Irene. Offered a deal that would spare her life, she’d been singing like a canary. Tess already knew most of what Ryan told her. What she didn’t know was that soon after Theo Lingford died, Irene began stealing paintings and replacing them with fakes she’d procured halfway around the world. “Fabulous fakes,” she called them, “brilliant reproductions.” One at a time she walked off with a dozen of the smaller canvases. No one noticed. Madeline peered at them every single day and never noticed a thing. It wasn’t until Madeline insisted on donating the collection that Irene panicked. Donation meant authentication and that meant discovery, exposure, shame, prosecution. She delayed with the photo ploy and when Georges caught on to what she’d done and tried his hand at a little blackmailing, she killed him.

  “Georges! Dead?”

  “That’s why he was never around. We found his body in her chest freezer, upstairs from the gallery. He’s been dead for weeks. Anyway, she decided she would have to destroy the forged paintings. She hired your father who subsequently hired Kinsey. Your father had a change of heart when he realized Madeline Lingford hadn’t left the house. He tried to stop Kinsey, who punched him out and left him to burn to death. The subsequent blaze destroyed most of the collection, not just the forgeries. It was this Irene was most upset about. Not your dad’s death or Georges’ and Kinsey’s murders or the trouble she’d caused Madeline and Nelson Lingford. Just the art.”

  “After Katie took the photo of Tabitha, Irene realized she had to act fast,” Tess said, breathing shallowly as the pain in her chest increased. “She had to get the phone and erase that photo before Katie realized what else was in the picture.”

  “That’s right. She didn’t know Katie had seen an article in the newspaper and almost at once recogniz
ed what she had. Irene ran over Katie then searched her apartment the first time. Then she told Kinsey who Caroline Mays really was and hired him to kill Katie—you—but Kinsey got greedy. He wanted the money before he did the killing. Irene realized he needed to go, too. Might as well take out two birds with one stone and set the blame firmly on Nelson. She baited Nelson to go to the neighborhood, and framed him for Kinsey’s murder. She was the woman dressed up like a man, using Nelson’s overcoat and scarf. I realized it about two minutes before Irene used your cell phone to send for me. She was the only possibility.”

  “How did you know it wasn’t me?”

  He smiled. “I knew you were too stubborn to call me first. You wouldn’t even answer my call. That’s why I asked Sanchez for backup.”

  “But the paintings,” Tess said, feeling slightly more alert. The price of better awareness, she was discovering, was pain. Her chest throbbed. “What could she do with the paintings?” she asked, her voice catching. “They’d be impossible to sell, wouldn’t they?”

  “She sold them to a place overseas that vaults them for twenty years. Of course, she got only a fraction of their true value, but her needs weren’t huge and she took only the best of the best. She just wanted enough to keep her daughter comfortable. She knew Tabitha and she would most likely be dead within twenty years, and it wouldn’t matter when the paintings started showing up again. The FBI and Interpol have been notified. In the end, hopefully some or most will be recovered.”

  “Tabitha Woodall is Theo Lingford’s daughter,” Tess whispered, pain prowling through her body like a panther on the loose.

  “She hasn’t told anyone else that piece of information,” Ryan said, smoothing her hair away from her face, his hand warm and soothing. She vaguely recalled him holding her as the ambulance wailed in the distance. The feeling of safety, of refuge…of home.

  “Irene told me Tabitha’s father had provided for her. Not her husband. Tabitha’s father. She must have meant Theo Lingford.”