The housekeeper nodded and started to shut the door as Grace turned to leave. She had reached the bottom step when she heard the aristocratic voice.
“Let the young woman in, Finola.”
The stench of cat urine was nauseating. As Grace followed Agatha into the darkened deck room, she stifled a gag. Didn’t they smell it? If Grace stayed in this house, she was afraid she was going to vomit all over the worn carpet.
“I’m so sorry, Miss Wagstaff, but I have a cat dander allergy,” Grace fibbed. “Is there any possibility that we could speak outside?”
If once Agatha would have balked, today she didn’t care. “Finola,” she called. “Please bring me my parasol.”
“This was one of Madeleine’s favorite spots,” Agatha murmured as they walked down the fieldstone steps from the veranda into the terraced garden. “She loved to play here as a child. She’d sit on that bench over there and play with her dolls and sing songs by the hour. Madeleine was such a joy to have around. Such a comfort.”
With sympathy, Grace gazed at the older woman. Despite the shade afforded by the faded parasol, the afternoon light was unforgiving. Agatha’s wrinkles were etched deeply in her almost translucent skin. Grace marveled that, in spite of her grief, Agatha had still managed to apply her crimson lipstick.
“Should we sit on Madeleine’s bench?” Agatha asked.
“Yes. That would be nice.”
As they sat side by side, Grace began to recount her story, but found herself editing out the part about Madeleine’s dream. She didn’t want to upset the old lady further by bringing up her sister’s murder.
“Madeleine told me that you had showered her with affection and that she loved you very, very much.”
Agatha reached over and took hold of Grace’s arm. “You don’t know how much it means to me to hear that. I did my best to care for Madeleine, especially after her mother wasn’t here anymore. I came to despise Oliver after Charlotte disappeared and all the talk was that he had killed my sister. But, to his credit, he didn’t keep Madeleine from me. I’m so grateful for that.”
Loosening her grasp on Grace’s arm, Agatha got up from the bench. “I want to show you something.”
On her spindly legs, Agatha stepped gingerly into the brambles at the center of the garden. She pulled back some overgrown brush. “Come look at this, Grace.”
Beneath the weeds, Grace could make out the shape of an iron circle. A thin triangle projected from the face of a clock. A sundial.
“See the inscription? It says ‘Time Flies, Love Stays.’ That’s what I will try to remember, Grace. Love stays.”
“That’s a beautiful sentiment,” Grace whispered.
“I know it is. Madeleine’s mother loved it, as did our mother before her. My father had earrings made for my mother, tiny versions of this sundial. I gave them to Charlotte. After everything happened, I asked Oliver for them back, but he said Charlotte was wearing them the night she disappeared.”
Grace recalled the single earring Charlotte was wearing in Madeleine’s dream. So, this was the design of that earring. What had happened to its mate? she wondered.
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Lifting the heavy iron seagull door knocker, Mickey was relieved to have gotten away from the hotel and the police, but he was not exactly looking forward to his meeting with Elsa Gravell to go over the last-minute details for the Ball Bleu. He thought her obsession with birds bordered on weird. It was one thing to have a hobby, but Elsa had taken her fascination to another level.
Elsa answered the door, wearing a pale green linen dress with a canary pin attached at the shoulder. “Mr. Hager, please come in.”
He followed her into the parlor noticing, as he had the first time he had come here to make plans for the party, the pains to which Elsa had gone to implement her bird theme. The sofas and club chairs were covered with fabrics printed with parrots and cockatoos in vibrant colors. Antique brass cages, with tiny glass birds sitting on wooden perches, were displayed on tables and on the fireplace mantel. Every lamp had some sort of bird included in the motif on its porcelain base. The large round coffee table was stacked with heavy books on birding. Audubon prints of owls, seagulls, hawks, and woodpeckers hung from the walls. The place was bright enough, Mickey thought, taking a seat on top of a parrot-covered cushion, but it creeped him out.
“I have the final head count for you here,” said Elsa, handing Mickey a sheet of paper. “The turnout is gratifying.”
Mickey glanced at the sheet. “Fine. This is just about what we were expecting.”
“I suppose you want the next-to-last payment now,” said Elsa.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Elsa went to the desk, took the checkbook from the drawer, and after writing out the agreed amount, handed the check to him. “I’ll have the rest of it for you Thursday morning, provided, of course, all goes well.”
“Oh, everything will go well, Miss Gravell. You can be assured of that.” Mickey followed Elsa back out to the spacious foyer, sure that she had no memory of him as the young kid waiting tables at the country club all those years ago. Those rich people never gave him the time of day.
Except for Charlotte Sloane. And the attention she gave him wasn’t the kind he wanted. Mickey had been rewriting those deposit slips for over a year, and Oliver Sloane had never caught on, as a club treasurer should have. He had a drink in his hand whenever Mickey saw him, and Oliver had been glad to have Mickey do the grunt work of going to the bank and making the deposits. It was easy for Mickey to steal blank deposit slips from the office, rewrite them, and skim off the excess for himself. Oliver never even glanced at them when the slips came back from the bank.
It could have gone on forever. But Charlotte must have realized that Oliver wasn’t paying attention. She went over the books herself and realized that there should have been more money in the account.
Thank God, Charlotte’s first priority had been protecting her husband’s reputation. She had added her own money to the account to shield Oliver. But she had demanded that Mickey resign. If he didn’t, Charlotte was going to expose him.
For all its size and population, Newport was still, in so many respects, a small town. People knew one another’s business. Mickey had no intention of leaving Newport and no intention of being disgraced.
How ironic, he thought as he heard Elsa close the door behind him. Charlotte had confronted him with her ultimatum, pulling him aside at that first, small Endangered Bird fund-raiser all those years ago. Now he was running one of Newport society’s biggest summer bashes. He’d been a servant then, but a kid with much bigger plans for himself. Plans he wouldn’t alter.
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Zoe was disappointed. She had slipped away from the KEY newsroom and taken the sixty-five-minute ferry ride all the way up to Providence, thinking she was going to get some video of the famous building. The Bethel Church, the oldest black church in Rhode Island, with its reputation as a monument to freedom, had served for many years as a destination on the Underground Railroad for fleeing southern slaves—the place at which Mariah had stopped on her way to Canada.
But the church was gone. There was only a plaque to mark the former site of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the spot now a tree-lined walkway near the Brown University campus.
Zoe shot a minute of tape of the plaque anyway. Hardly exciting video. Hardly worth the effort and time it had taken away from her internship. But she supposed she’d be glad to have the video later as another vignette for her documentary.
She hadn’t given up getting the most important video—of the slave tunnel at Shepherd’s Point. Since Professor Cox wasn’t going to help her, she had another plan. The video that B.J. and Grace had brought back that first day from their trip to Shepherd’s Point sat on the file-tape shelves at the side of the ballroom. Tonight, she could sneak downstairs and dub off the video of the slave tunnel and nobody would be the wiser.
She ret
raced her steps to the trolley stop and boarded the green bus. The trolley dropped her off at the Point Street Landing, where the ferry going south to Newport was waiting.
Watching the steeples of the Newport shoreline come into view, Zoe pictured the beautiful town as it must have been when it was one of the major slave markets in the American colonies. Although the slave trade and plantations were considered southern ways of life, Zoe had learned that they had existed far beyond the South, right through the Revolutionary War.
The summer breeze blowing off the water felt soothing as the ferry pulled into the dock at Perrotti Park. Zoe picked up her knapsack from the bench and waited for the signal to disembark. A man was handing out flyers to the passengers who streamed off the ferry. He looked familiar to Zoe, but she couldn’t quite place the face until she read the paper he handed to her.
Times must be tough, she thought, now recognizing the man who had entertained everyone with his body painting at the clambake. The flyer offered two tattoos for the price of one.
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The satellite truck operator didn’t have too much to say when the police went to question him on Bowen’s Wharf. Scott Huffman had left Sam Watkins to guard his precious trailer while he went to get a few things at the store. When he got back, Sam wasn’t there.
“The kid said he had to take a whiz. I told him there was a bathroom in the gatekeeper’s cottage. That’s the last I spoke to him.”
Tommy James had a hunch he thought was worth pursuing, if only to make sure that the Newport police were not caught with especially messy egg on their faces. Anyone who had ever taken a tour of The Breakers knew about the tunnel beneath the property. Ignoring the slave tunnel at Shepherd’s Point for fourteen years had been a fiasco in the Charlotte Sloane case. Tommy reasoned that, since Sam Watkins had disappeared just outside the Vanderbilt estate, the first place to rule out was the tunnel that ran from the gatekeeper’s cottage up to the mansion.
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Grace bumped into B.J. in the hotel lobby.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said. “Where you been?”
“I had some things to do,” answered Grace, holding back telling him about her trip to Shepherd’s Point to see Agatha, still smarting because B.J. had taken Joss with him on the winery shoot.
“I looked for you this morning after the broadcast to see if you wanted to go out on the shoot with me, Grace.”
You didn’t look very hard, did you? You didn’t beep me, Grace thought.
“No problem,” she lied.
“Well, a bunch of us are going out for drinks and something to eat in a little while. Want to come?”
Why not? What else was she going to do? Sit alone up in her room, watch a movie, and sulk?
“Sure,” she said. “Sounds like fun.”
The hostess told them it would be an hour before they’d be seated in Salas’ dining room, but Joss assured everyone that the wait was worth it. “They have really good lobster, and the Oriental spaghetti is the best. Let’s go down to the bar, and they’ll let us know when our table is ready.”
Grace was struck by the democratic camaraderie of their group. Constance and Harry, the cohosts, were right there along with the interns. B.J., Beth Terry, and Dominick O’Donnell completed the group.
The beers were icy cold, and the first ones were swallowed in short order.
“Here’s to Sam,” said B.J., raising his glass. “Let’s hope he turns up soon.”
“And in one piece,” Beth added.
“This better not be some sort of crazy, attention-getting stunt,” Harry growled.
“I doubt that,” said Grace. “From the little I know about Sam, I’d say he wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize his internship.”
They were on the third round when the hostess came to tell them their table for eight was ready. Grace noticed that Constance and Harry left their untouched bottles on the bar, but the others in the party carried theirs upstairs.
Grace broke off from the group to make a stop in the ladies’ room. Zoe followed. In the cramped space in front of the sinks, they stood and washed their hands.
“I wasn’t there when the police came this afternoon to inquire about Sam. Were you, Grace?”
“No,” said Grace, ripping a paper towel from the wall dispenser.
“Actually, I think I may ring them up tomorrow. I might have something that could help.”
“Really? What?”
“I was running near The Breakers Sunday night, and I saw an auto tear off on the street around the corner from the mansion. It almost ran me down. It might be nothing, but I think I should mention it.”
“What kind of car was it?” asked Grace.
Zoe shrugged. “I don’t know my American auto models and it was dark, so I couldn’t even make out what color it was. But I did see a bit of the license plate. I noticed the first three letters, S-E-A.”
“Zoe, you’ve got to tell the police.”
Somewhere between the garlic bread and the lobster, amid raucous comments and laughter, the subject of tattoos came up.
“I have a tiny butterfly,”
Joss offered. “Where?” asked B.J.
“I’m not telling.” Joss smiled tauntingly.
Grace wanted to wipe the smirk off her competition’s face.
“I don’t have the guts to get one,” said Beth. “It’s so”—she searched for the word—”permanent.”
“You could get the kind that Grace got,” said Joss. “A henna one.” She said it in a tone that Grace felt portrayed her as a sissy.
“Well, if you decide you want one, there’s a special running at Broadway Tattoos,” Zoe piped up. “The bloke was handing out flyers advertising ‘two for one’ today.”
“Really?” asked Joss. “I was thinking of getting another one.”
As if the special price mattered a hill of beans to you, thought Grace.
“Anyone else game?” asked Joss, looking directly at Grace as if daring her.
What the heck? Why shouldn’t she get one? It would be a lifelong reminder of her mother, as well as a memento of her first trip with KEY News. The first of many, she hoped. Grace was determined to get the job and, now, with three beers under her belt, determined to beat out Joss Vickers.
“I will,” she answered, picking up the gauntlet. “Let’s go after dinner.”
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Their group shrank. Constance and Harry begged off, citing the fact they had to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for their on-air performance in the morning. Beth and Dom said they were tired, and Zoe said she had something to care of back at the hotel. So it was only Grace, Joss, and B.J. who actually made it to Broadway Tattoos.
On the sidewalk out in front of the shop, Grace looked at the hot pink neon sign that blazed from the window and considered backing out. The guy who had painted the henna tattoo for her at the clambake had told her it would hurt like the dickens to have a real one engraved on the top of her foot. But she’d made it through childbirth. How bad could this be? Grace threw back her shoulders and led the way into the shop.
The proprietor sat reading a Playboy magazine. He looked up as the threesome entered and stared at the two women.
“You’re the girls from the clambake the other night, aren’t you?”
Grace nodded as Joss ignored the man and walked over to study the tattoo designs tacked along the wall.
“All three of you getting tattoos?” Rusty asked hopefully.
“Just the two ladies,” B.J. answered.
“What’ll it be?” asked Rusty.
“I don’t know,” said Joss, perusing the wall. “I was hoping for something a little different. I don’t see anything here that turns me on.”
Rusty pulled a ringed binder from behind the counter. “I have some other designs here. Some of my personal artwork. Take a look and see if there’s anything you like.”
Joss flipped the celloph
ane-covered pages while Grace stood beside her.
“I’d like an ivy leaf, just like the henna one you did for me at the party,” she said as she watched Joss turn the pages. Toward the middle of the book, Joss stopped to study a particular design.
A circle with numbers around the edges, the face of a clock. “TIME FLIES, LOVE STAYS” engraved at top and bottom. Grace recognized it immediately as the design of the sundial at Shepherd’s Point. How weird that it would appear in Rusty’s “personal” art.
“Where did you get the idea for this one?” Joss asked, knowing full well that it was the design of the earring that had been found with Charlotte Sloane’s body, the earring Tommy had shown her.
Rusty hesitated. “Oh, I don’t know. It just came to me somehow.”
Just then, B.J.’s beeper sounded. Reading the text message, he whistled through his teeth.
“What is it?” Grace asked.
“They’ve found Sam. Let’s go.”
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On the WPRI eleven o’clock news, the recovery of Sam Watkins from the coal tunnel at The Breakers was the lead story. There was no video to broadcast since there hadn’t been enough time to get a reporter and camera crew down to the Vanderbilt estate. Instead, the local news anchor, with a “This just in” graphic over his left shoulder, read from the teleprompter above the camera lens.
“Tonight, Newport police found a KEY News intern who had been missing since Sunday lying unconscious in a tunnel at The Breakers. Twenty-one-year-old Sam Watkins, of Hollis, Oklahoma, and a senior at Northwestern University, was rushed to Newport Hospital, where he is in critical condition. Watkins was doing an internship with Key to America in Newport, where the morning news program is broadcasting this week. The recovery of Watkins in the Vanderbilt tunnel comes on the heels of the discovery last week of the remains of Newport socialite Charlotte Sloane in a tunnel at Shepherd’s Point after she had been missing for fourteen years. Charlotte Sloane’s daughter, Madeleine, died Saturday after a fall down the steps at Newport’s Cliff Walk. Police are investigating whether, or how, the incidents are related.”
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