The Shadow Box

by Luanne Rice

  Gargoyles?

  I frowned, trying to make any sense at all about what the words might mean. I grabbed a sheet of paper and had just started copying the note, writing the first three lines to look at later, when the house phone rang. My heart skittered as I answered.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Hello,” the voice said. “May I speak to Anne?”

  “This is Anne.”

  “This is Fenwick388,” she said. “What did you want to tell me?”

  “Actually, I was hoping you could tell me what you know about Claire’s case. I saw the photos on your page, and I read what you said about Griffin Chase. I was wondering what made you call him a sociopath . . .”

  The line was silent for a moment.

  “Are you a reporter?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “What’s your interest in the case?”

  “I’m local,” I said. “I know Claire’s artwork. And I read about her husband in the paper.”

  Again, silence.

  “Please tell me why you called him that,” I said, pressing. “And why you have so many personal pictures of Claire. Like the ones of her entering the gallery last week. In the Facebook group you mention the courthouse. Do you know Griffin from there?”

  “There and other places,” she said.

  I concentrated on her voice. Did it sound familiar? Had I met this woman? Were we friends?

  “Why do you think there’s a link between what happened to Claire and what happened to Sallie Benson?” I asked.

  “I’m in the process of putting that together.”

  “Are you a cop?” I asked.

  She laughed. “Far from it. Look, it’s been nice talking to you, but I’ve got to go.”

  I knew I had to tell her something to grab her attention and keep her talking, so I could find out exactly how she was connected to my husband and to what had happened to me.

  “He does hate women,” I said. “You’re right.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Griffin Chase. You’re right about him.”

  “Yes, I am,” she said slowly. “But how do you know that?”

  “By the way he treats his wife when he thinks no one can see.” I swallowed hard. “And because of something he did a long time ago. To a young woman.”

  She didn’t say anything for so long that I thought she had hung up.

  “You’re talking about Ellen, aren’t you?” she asked finally.

  “Yes,” I said, shocked to hear her name. “Did you know her?”

  “Only briefly but I know why he killed her. It’s because of something he did in Cancún. To my best friend. And Ellen saw. He couldn’t let her tell.”

  “Oh my God,” I whispered.

  “Meet me,” she said. “Or I’ll come to you, right now. Just tell me where you are.”

  “Do you know Hubbard’s Point?” I asked. And then I told her about the path at the end of the beach.

  39

  JACKIE

  Jackie had planned to get to work early to do some bookkeeping and send out invoices for pieces bought from Claire’s nearly sold-out show. On her way to the gallery, she stopped at the high school track and ran three miles. Her work clothes were in the station wagon or so she thought. When she finished her last lap, sweating and out of breath, looking forward to getting to the gallery and taking a shower in the upstairs apartment, and got to the car, she glanced into the back seat and didn’t see her duffel bag.

  “Oh, great,” she said out loud. She’d left the bag containing her black pants, white button-down shirt, and loafers at home—she could picture it on the stone wall just outside the kitchen door, where she had placed it while she’d run back inside to make sure she’d turned off the coffee.

  She had—of course. But she’d forgotten the bag.

  She turned left out of the high school parking lot and drove back through town—past the gallery, the Congregational Church, and the two narrow rivers and wide salt marshes on her way home.

  Jackie had never suffered from depression—she was naturally upbeat, basically hopeful and steady. Even when her first husband had done his acting out and she’d left him, even when the girls had sailed off on an adventure and made her worry, she had hung in there, tough and determined that things would turn out right. The girls were expert sailors, and she had had complete confidence that they would find safe harbor—and they had.

  But with Claire missing, and all that blood in her garage, Jackie was in a constant state of anxiety. It was the not knowing that drove her most crazy. She couldn’t stop thinking about where Claire might be, what she could be going through. Was someone holding her hostage? Was it one of those horrific scenarios where a woman was held captive in a basement or an isolated house or a warehouse? She lay awake at night, her racing thoughts as bad as any nightmare she had ever had.

  The papers were full of articles and commentary; although the police had not released every detail, there were leaks and rumors, including the possibility—posited by a retired forensics expert—that Claire had lost too much blood to have survived the attack. Had she been murdered, her body taken away by the killer and thrown into a swamp or a forest or a deep ocean canyon, where she might never be found? And Jackie would never know what happened to her.

  As she drove under the train trestle that marked the entrance to Hubbard’s Point, Jackie’s heart ached even more. She and Claire had spent their entire childhoods here, and every inch of the place reminded her of her friend. She parked in the road in front of her house and ran up the hill. There was her duffel bag. She grabbed it and heard banging.

  The sound was coming from the side of the cottage, and when she went to investigate, she saw the cellar door swinging open and shut in the June breeze. That was odd—the family always closed it tight. When she glanced inside, she saw a glint of light at the edge of the kitchen hatchway—the hatch hadn’t been properly shut either.

  No one ever entered this way—the hatch dated back to the thirties, when the house had been built, a way into the cellar in case a hurricane or bad nor’easter made it unsafe to go outside or to stay upstairs with the danger of high winds sending the big trees crashing down.

  She climbed the ladder, entered the kitchen, and looked around. The kitchen looked normal, just as she had left it earlier that morning. It flashed through her mind that an intruder might be in the house, but she sensed that she was alone. Had Claire known someone was in the garage waiting to hurt her? The thought terrified her.

  Maybe she should call the police, say the hatch was open and someone might have broken in. She could ring Hunter—or Conor. She had left her cell phone in the car, so she hurried into the family room and closed the door behind her.

  She lifted the landline’s receiver and was about to dial when she spotted a paper on the desk. It was an exact copy of the note she had made for herself—the phrases about the Benson case and the strange echoes of Clear/Claire and the shadow lady/shadow box. Her heart was beating so fast she had to sit down.

  Her elbow bumped the mousepad, and it woke up the computer. She stared at the screen, at an unfamiliar Facebook profile. Someone named Anne Crawford had logged in on her computer. Anne’s profile picture was of Jackie and Claire; Tom had taken it from behind, when they were staring at the sun setting over the golden sea, when they hadn’t known he was there.

  Jackie stared at Anne’s last name. She thought back to when she and Claire were children and Claire’s father would take them hiking through the narrow hidden trails in the nature preserve at the end of the beach. She remembered how he would fall silent when they reached the crest of a rocky hill, the site of a burial ground, a tribe of Pequots whose leader was Tantummaheag. And the white settlers had changed his name to “Crawford”—the same name as that of a local sea captain.

  Jackie saw that Anne had two friends: Kylie M and Fenwick388. She noticed a messenger notification and read everything that Anne and Fenwick388 had written to each other. The whole exch
ange had to do with Claire.

  It can’t be her, Jackie thought. Can it? Seeing the name Crawford seemed like such a sign. It was a link to Hubbard’s Point, the woods at the end of the beach, and Tantummaheag. It killed Jackie to think that Claire might be out there, communicating with strangers on Facebook, and not letting Jackie know where she was.

  Jackie sent herself a friend request from Anne. Then she opened her own Facebook page and accepted. Now Anne had three friends: Kylie M, Fenwick388, and Jackie R. Jackie sat back in the desk chair, closed her eyes, and thought about her new Facebook friend.

  Jackie stared at the paper that Anne had left behind. She lifted the note to examine it more closely, and tears filled her eyes. Anne’s handwriting was Claire’s. Claire was alive, still on this earth. Jackie sat very still for a long time.

  Then she knew where she had to go.

  40

  CLAIRE

  Maybe I had just made the biggest mistake of my life—agreeing to meet a woman from the internet claiming to have information that seemed almost impossible to believe. But I knew I couldn’t stay in my cabin forever, and if I wanted to save myself, I had to hear her story.

  A few more people had arrived at the beach, set up their chairs and umbrellas, but I’d borrowed one of Tom’s USCG caps and a big towel from Jackie’s cupboard, and I walked along the seawall at the top of the sand with my head down and the towel draped around my shoulders. I made it to the path without being noticed.

  There were so many better places to meet a stranger, but without a car, my choices were limited. I didn’t want to lead Fenwick388 toward my cabin, so I’d directed her to veer right toward the granite bench at the edge of the marsh, instead of into the woods.

  I waited in a pine glade so thick and shadowed that the morning sun couldn’t pierce the boughs. I was invisible, yet I had a perfect view of the bench overlooking the salt pond and narrow creeks winding through the wide green marsh. This was the site of many joyful crabbing expeditions—from my own childhood and that of most Hubbard’s Point kids. We’d tie a fish head to a string and pull out buckets of blue shells.

  Birders also loved this spot. It was a great place to view shorebirds. During fall and spring migration, warblers passed through in great numbers, and it was common to see people with spotting scopes on tripods dotted throughout the reeds. Right now, the coast was clear.

  I remembered one spring with Nate. I had always loved the work of Roger Tory Peterson, the great artist and ornithologist who had lived just a few miles north. When Nate and I were first married, he gave me a pair of vintage Zeiss 7 × 42s—the same binoculars Peterson had used. They weighed a ton compared to more modern optics, but they were razor sharp, bright, with a wide field of view.

  We had settled in right here, among the pines, watching a pair of common loons. Brilliant black-and-white birds with red eyes and the ability to dive and stay under for long stretches, they lived up to twenty-five years.

  “They mate for life, you know,” Nate said.

  “People say that about all avian species,” I said. “Swans, cardinals, egrets . . .”

  “Because it’s true,” he said, letting his binoculars hang from the strap around his neck, pulling me close.

  “You just want it to be,” I said. “Because you’re such a romantic.”

  “You’re not?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer, and he kissed me, eased me down onto the blanket of pine needles. The trees were so thick we knew no one would see us, so we undressed each other and made love, and as I was holding him tight, I closed my eyes and knew I wanted more than anything to believe that love lasted forever.

  Sometimes I asked myself why I’d left Nate. He was so good, so kind, and so right for me, and I think that was the problem. Losing my parents had set me adrift in ways my mind couldn’t comprehend; I had stopped believing things, especially those that mattered most, could endure.

  Now, waiting for Fenwick388, whatever that stood for, I was on high alert. Ever since the attack, I had felt as if I’d been turned inside out, as if all my nerve endings were on the outside. I watched the beach—the direction from which she would come—and saw it was filling up with people. It was a bright, warm June day, and a lot of kids were already out of school. Their whoops and cries of happiness as they ran in and out of the water made a type of background music.

  When I looked back, toward the path, I saw a woman hurrying along in my direction. She had shoulder-length blonde hair and killer cheekbones, and she wore wide-legged pants reminiscent of a ’40s movie star. I didn’t recognize her—but given the timing, I knew she had to be Fenwick388. As she got closer, I felt my body tense and shrank deeper into the pine shadows. This was it, make or break: once she saw me, someone would know my secret—that I was alive, that I was right here.

  She arrived at the stone bench, just fifteen yards away from me. She turned in a full circle, alert and obviously looking for someone. I could see that we were about the same age. My heart was beating so fast that I felt the pulse pounding in my neck as if I had sprinted a mile. My mouth was dry.

  “Anne?” she called. Then louder: “Anne!”

  I almost didn’t move. What made me think I could trust this stranger from Facebook more than I could Jackie or Conor? Even now, thinking it could be a trap, I stepped out of the pines, into the bright sunlight.

  “Fenwick388?” I asked.

  Her mouth dropped open, and she took two slow steps toward me.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Claire.”

  41

  CONOR

  Wade Lockwood had called Conor to say that he wanted to meet—not at his Catamount Bluff home but at his office in Easterly. When Conor had asked what it was about, Lockwood had said only “Claire,” preferring to save the rest until their meeting.

  Conor was early, so he went through the Dunkin’ drive-through and drove along the Easterly semirugged waterfront. He passed brick buildings dating to the 1800s. The ground floors of some housed bars and cafés, with apartments on the second and third floors. Others were abandoned. The sign on a long-shuttered stereo store was faded from sun and salt air. An old vaudeville theater with ornate columns and cornices had been boarded up as long as Conor could remember.

  When he got to Lockwood’s Harborfront, he parked along the seawall and drank his black coffee. In contrast with the quiet downtown area, this property—newly donated to become a park—was bustling. Wade had developed large tracts of the Easterly waterfront, and this had been one of his last untouched parcels. Until recently, a dilapidated mill, factory, and three rickety piers had filled the space. The land had been in the Lockwood family for two centuries, and it told the story of decline of manufacturing in coastal Connecticut. The Lockwoods had not just survived but thrived on investments and by buying and selling waterfront property.

  Bulldozers and backhoes had graded the earth and dug holes for large root balls of already tall trees. An architectural firm had built an ornate Victorian-looking boathouse-restaurant where, eventually, people could have meals and rent sea kayaks. Landscapers were busy laying down turf, planting the expensively enormous trees, creating flower beds, and positioning benches.

  At the far end of the park was an area enclosed by a tall anchor fence. Conor knew that some construction sites had temporary enclosures where they parked the heavy equipment at night, but he saw no vehicles. The ground was bare; no turf had been planted. He wondered what it was for.

  A Friends of Lockwood’s Harborfront nonprofit had been established, but Conor knew that Wade and Leonora Lockwood were paying for most of this. He checked his watch, finished his coffee, and drove around the park’s perimeter, taking a long look at the fenced-in dirt as he passed. The area was about as big as the infield of a ballpark. Maybe that’s what was planned—a playing field. He drove into the lot behind a renovated brick building and parked his car.

  The lobby was sleek, with marble floors and tall windows overlooking the harbor, as if it belonged in a
glass tower in Boston instead of here in gritty Easterly. Conor went to the directory and saw that the office of Edward Hawke, attorney at law, was on the third floor and Lockwood Ltd. was on the fourth—the top floor.

  Conor took the elevator and stepped into a wide-open modern space. Lockwood Ltd. was etched in glass behind a desk, where a young woman with long blonde hair sat at a computer terminal. Conor glanced around. In the waiting area were pale-beige leather armless sofas and chairs that tilted back in a way that didn’t look comfortable. The decor was far from old-world Catamount Bluff, not what Conor would have expected.

  “You must be Detective Reid,” the woman said, smiling. Her hair was down to her elbows. She looked about college age.

  “Yes,” Conor said. “I’m here to see Wade Lockwood.”

  “He’s expecting you,” she said, leading him down a long corridor lined on both sides with closed doors. At the end was an office at least as large as the reception area, done in the same spare, contemporary style. The room had one wall of glass and a view across Easterly and out to Fishers Island. Lockwood sat at a desk facing the door, with his back to the window, and he stood when Conor entered.

  “Detective,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”

  “Well, I’m interested in what you have to tell me,” Conor said.

  “Yes, of course. Can Priscilla get you some coffee? Tea?”

  Conor shook his head. “Thanks anyway,” he said.

  Lockwood gave a nod, dismissing the young woman. He was tall but stooped, with snow-white hair and still bright-blue eyes. The office might’ve been cutting edge, but his blue blazer, red-and-blue-striped tie, and pressed gray flannels were pure old-boy network. He gestured for Conor to take a seat in one of the leather chairs opposite the desk.

  The sun, behind Lockwood, was in Conor’s eyes, making it hard to read Lockwood’s expression. The furniture placement was obviously designed to put visitors at a disadvantage.

  “So, Mr. Lockwood, what did you want to tell me?” Conor asked.

  “A man who gets right down to business!” Lockwood said. “No small talk, no ‘what a great view.’ I like that.”