“What’s that? Janitor?” Sean said.
“No, smart-ass.” He separated out one key. “This opens the cabin on Bob Anderson’s thirty-five-foot Chris-Craft. I’m taking care of it for two weeks. What do you say we take this party onto the water?”
“First of all, no,” said Alexis. “Second of all, Emma was just about to tell us something. So what happened today?”
The three of them looked at her expectantly.
“Um, well, before I left for work, this guy showed up at the house. A lawyer.”
The rest of the story came out in a rush, sounding even more unbelievable as she related it than it had felt as it happened.
Sean let out a low whistle. “Next round is on you,” he said.
“Very funny,” Emma said.
“Have you seen it yet?” Alexis said.
She shook her head. “Maybe tomorrow. I’m curious but…”
“Does Jack know?” said Chris.
“Jack? Why would I tell Jack?”
“I mean, are you going to keep working?”
This conversation was getting absurd. “You guys, the point is there’s no way this is actually happening. And even if it is, there are weird constraints on the whole thing. It’s Penny’s house, not mine. I can’t sell it or anything. It doesn’t really change my financial situation today.”
“But you get to live in a mansion on the water for free,” said Sean.
“Well, yeah. There’s that. I’m totally freaked out.”
“Look at it this way,” said Alexis. “This summer, you’ll get a taste of how the other half lives.”
They raised their glasses.
Bea, wearing her nightgown and a quilted robe, rested on top of the white comforter, staring at the wooden ceiling beams. The great charm of the room was its simplicity. No television, no placards with a Wi-Fi password. The phone next to the bed was a black rotary. The hotel harked back to a better time.
A time when she did not have one of Henry Wyatt’s paintings hidden in the trunk of her car.
Oh, how could it have come to this? After all she had done for his career, after all their years together, she was reduced to smuggling his work out of his house like a common criminal. She couldn’t leave it in the trunk, but she also couldn’t carry it up the stairs by herself. Securing it in the room would have to involve Kyle. His attitude had already turned so sour, she didn’t relish the idea of enlisting him in her questionable endeavor.
And yet, she felt justified in her action. The thought of leaving that painting behind, of letting some stranger do heavens knew what with all of Henry’s precious work, was stomach-turning. If taking one of the paintings helped get her through the night, then so be it. Bea had always done things her own way—even when she made life harder for herself.
She’d moved to New York City in the fall of 1960. Just a year earlier, she’d made the shocking decision not to enroll at Vassar College, and as a result, she left Newport on terrible terms with her parents. It was a choice they saw as rebellious, as a rejection of all they had raised her to value in the world and what they had raised her to do with her life. What they didn’t realize was that the seeds for her life-changing decision had been planted years earlier.
It happened when Bea was twelve, the summer the town hosted the first Newport Jazz Festival. Her parents were among several residents who were appalled by the prospect, certain it would bring an “undesirable” crowd into town. Her mother stopped speaking to her friend Elaine Lorillard, who organized the event, even though just the September before Elaine had wangled the Winsteads an invitation to the social event of the season: the wedding of Jacqueline Bouvier to Jack Kennedy.
After months of hearing whispers about the festival and seeing posters all around town, Bea was obsessed. The Saturday night of the event, after telling her parents she was babysitting for a neighbor, Bea sneaked off to the grounds of the Newport Casino. She took a moment to pray to God that she wouldn’t get caught. Then she looked up and saw the glorious full moon. Decades and decades later, she could remember the feeling she’d had then, the sense that her life was really beginning.
The casino lawn seemed to be filled with a million people. It wasn’t just the vastness of the audience that astounded her; it was the mix of black people and white, sailors and schoolgirls. And the music! Eddie Condon. Dizzy Gillespie. Ella Fitzgerald. Jazz was unlike anything she’d heard before. The songs broke all the rules, and the musicians looked like they were from another planet. But, as she learned that night, they were not from another planet or even another country. They were from New York City.
It was the place Bea wanted to live when she grew up.
She never forgot it, not even when she held the Vassar acceptance letter in her hand. Especially when she held the Vassar acceptance letter in her hand. She saw Robert Frost’s diverging roads ahead of her.
Bea didn’t want to waste four years at Vassar and then return to Newport to make a “good” marriage. She had no interest in that kind of life. And the only escape she could imagine was New York City.
Her parents wouldn’t hear one word about the move, wouldn’t give her a dime, and so she landed in New York City broke and very much on her own. A Village Voice ad led to an apartment share on the Lower East Side with an NYU student who worked a few hours a week at an art collective on the Bowery. The scene captivated Bea.
When she wasn’t hanging around one of the artist-run galleries on East Tenth Street, she was crashing any party where there was a chance that a gallery owner or up-and-coming artist might show up. She needed a job, but no one was handing out positions in galleries. She had to find a way to make a name for herself. This was her all-consuming thought the night she managed to get herself invited to a party at a massive Spring Street loft.
The hostess was a friend of Lois Dodd, one of the founders of the Tanager Gallery on East Tenth Street. Bea wanted an in with Tanager because it was one of the few spaces that seemed open to work beyond abstract expressionism, a movement that was already heavily represented. In order to break out, Bea needed to discover the next big thing.
She worked the party methodically, all business. But that changed the minute she spotted a tall, lanky, dark-haired young man at the center of a conversation near the makeshift bar. His hair was long enough that it would have drawn disapproving stares on the streets of Newport; his clothes were bohemian bordering on homelessness. But with his strong jaw and enviably symmetrical features, he seemed aristocratic. Bea moved closer, and her heart fluttered when she noticed his large hands were those of an artist, with tapered fingers and paint under his nails.
At one point, the handsome stranger fixed his blue eyes on her, and Bea forgot everyone else in the room. She hovered around the edges of that group until she was able to talk to him one-on-one. Later, she wasn’t sure what, exactly, she’d said to him. He might have made some vague mention of his painting, but for the first time since Bea had arrived in New York City fifteen months earlier, art was the last thing on her mind.
She learned his name was Henry Wyatt, that he was from Texas, and that, like herself, he was a recent transplant to New York City.
There was some discussion of his painting, but mostly they drank too much gin and gossiped about everyone in their striving little circle. At some point when night had become morning, she stumbled home with him to his apartment above a deli on Greenwich Avenue that smelled of turpentine. They kissed and clawed at each other with drunken abandon, fumbling to remove their clothes. It was just after the birth control pill arrived on the market. Hugh Hefner’s new Playboy Club had recently opened its doors. And that night, on Henry Wyatt’s bare mattress on the floor, another watershed moment: Bea Winstead lost her virginity.
In the morning, her personal milestone was forgotten the minute she set eyes on a painting propped up in the corner: The image was simple: symmetrical blocks of cobalt blue bisected by white lines. It was a stark and refreshing departure from abstract expressionism.
“Henry, my God. This is good.” She moved from the bed to examine it closer and from different angles. “What’s it called?”
He shrugged. “I don’t name my paintings.”
In her mind she was already calling it Untitled Blue, oil on canvas.
He reached for her, but she pulled away. Sleeping with him had been a moment of weakness. She had not come to New York to find a man. She’d come to find a career, to be independent.
She couldn’t let herself become Henry Wyatt’s lover. They would eventually fight and break up. And no one would take her seriously. No, the only possible direction for their relationship now that she’d seen his work was professional. There was no doubt in her mind she could make him famous and that he in turn would make her a fortune.
And she had been right.
The cozy hotel room suddenly felt small and claustrophobic. Bea pulled her quilted robe tighter around her. She would not lie there ruminating, alternating between feeling like a victim and feeling like a criminal. She put on her Belgian slippers and turned on the lights so she could see her way down the stairs to the lower level.
Kyle snored gently on the couch. She flipped on the end-table lamp and stood over him. She hesitated for a moment, then reached out and shook his shoulder.
“Kyle,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”
He barely stirred.
“Kyle, I need your help.”
He sat up with a start. “Bea? What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry to wake you, but I need help getting something out of the car and into this room.”
“Now?” He checked his phone. “It’s one in the morning.”
“It’s important.”
“What did you leave in the car?”
“One of Henry’s paintings.”
“From the house?”
She nodded.
“Bea, that’s…I think that’s stealing. You’re going to get yourself into a lot of trouble.”
“Let me be the one to worry about that. In the meantime, I can’t leave it in the car overnight.”
Kyle sank back against his pillow. “You’re going to have to. I’m not getting involved in this.”
“You don’t understand!” she said.
“You’re right. I don’t,” he said, his voice gravelly with sleep.
“I felt so rushed to get out of the house today, so blindsided. Taking the painting was just my attempt to have some control over the situation. But all of his other work is there, just waiting to be pillaged by whatever philistine has hijacked his estate. I need to catalog everything that’s there or it could be lost!”
“Okay.” Kyle sat up, rubbing his eyes. When he finally focused on her, she didn’t recognize his expression at first. And then she realized he was looking at her with pity. Pity! “Bea, I feel for you. I do. I know what it’s like to want something and have it taken away from you. It’s not easy to recover from that. So I’ll drive you back tomorrow. You return the painting, and then you can do whatever last-minute stuff you need to do to make yourself feel better. But then, Bea, that’s it. I’m going back to Manhattan with or without you.”
Chapter Eight
Early-morning clouds rolled in, and Bea tried not to take it as a sign. She slammed the trunk of the car closed and strode into Windsong’s side entrance with a sense of resolve. Kyle trailed behind her, carrying the painting.
In the light of day, the words trespassing and theft nagged at her in a way they had not late last night. But the new “owner” of the house was illegitimate—of that she was certain. And so she was doing nothing wrong.
Just a few hours ago, she’d had the surprisingly belated idea to contact her own attorney, Richard Fadden. He knew Victor Bonivent, and he knew Henry—he could connect the dots and fix this problem. She got him on his cell just as the sun was coming up.
“It’s a lengthy and complicated process to contest a will,” he told her. “It will cost you.” She said she’d give him a blank check.
Kyle was clearly in a hurry to get Untitled Blue back on the wall. He nearly tripped over a sculpture in the hallway.
“Be careful!” she said.
He ignored her. “Where does this belong?”
She directed him to the corridor leading to the guest suite. When he had secured it back in place, he said, “Okay. Now let’s go.”
So impatient! “Not yet. I told you I need to catalog the art. If you want to help things go faster, then walk through with me and I’ll call out the titles of the work for you to write down.”
“And then you’ll leave?”
“Yes, then I’ll leave.”
They climbed the stairs to the library. Until this month, it had been years since she’d seen the room, and it had impressed her all over again with its sheer volume of books. Henry was a reader, yes, but there was a collector’s mentality to the accumulation of hundreds and hundreds of novels, biographies, coffee-table books, and works on art history, art theory, and literary criticism. She pulled a few random hardcovers from the shelves but then a framed picture on the wall caught her eye. She replaced the books and walked over to get a better look.
Bea felt certain she knew all of Henry’s work. But there, between two of the bookshelves, was a drawing she’d never seen before. She inched closer to it, her stomach tightening. Sure enough, in the lower right corner was the loopy scrawl of his initials and a date—just eleven months earlier. Had Henry changed artistic direction in the past year or two of his life? What else did she not know about him? But no, she could not let herself think there were pockets of his life, creative or otherwise, to which she was not privy, because to admit that would be to allow a sliver of possibility that he had left his house and his work to a stranger for valid reasons.
“These drawings are new. Write them down as…sketches one, two, and three.”
Kyle peeked out into the hallway.
“Am I boring you?” Bea snapped.
He turned back to her, pressed his forefinger to his lips, then whispered, “I hate to break it to you, but I hear people downstairs.”
It looked more like a sculpture than a house, a monument carved from stone and glass and steel. Emma had the nerve to turn the key in the front door only because of the palpable excitement of her daughter standing next to her.
“It’s exactly how I imagined it!” Penny said once she, Emma, and Angus were inside.
How could her daughter have imagined this?
It was bright and spacious with shining wood floors and floor-to-ceiling windows and sleek furniture. It was a house out of a magazine or a movie. It was a dream house.
This was real. This was happening.
“It’s amazing how much space rich folks think they need for themselves,” Angus said.
“Maybe he wanted someone to share it with but couldn’t find anyone,” Penny said. “So he gave it to us.”
Angus shook his head. Last night, when Emma told him what was going on, he’d said the whole thing seemed fishy. Emma had agreed with him then, but all that was forgotten now that she was standing in the space that she realized was going to change her life. For the first time in a very long while, she didn’t feel like she was treading water. Her daughter would have a beautiful place to grow up. And when she was an adult, Penny could sell it and have financial security.
Penny ran from room to room, practically jumping up and down with excitement. Emma followed close behind, her own joy barely any more contained.
“We should have brought bathing suits,” Penny said, gazing out the window at an infinity pool. Beyond it, a stretch of beach along the bay. Angus moved to stand next to her. “What do you think?” Penny said to him.
“I do not swim.”
“Well, now that we live here, you’ll have to learn.”
Emma smiled. And then she heard a noise from upstairs.
She was probably imagining it, or maybe the house was settling in a way she wasn’t used to. The house on Mount Misery made al
l sorts of creaks and groans that she hardly noticed anymore. A few strange noises were the least of what she’d have to get used to in this sprawling home.
Could she live in this kind of luxury? She didn’t know. Why not try? Maybe life didn’t always have to be a slog. Maybe sometimes good things did just happen.
Bea stood at the top of the stairs, her heart pounding.
Could the interlopers be moving in already? She supposed if they were con artists—and, really, what else could they be?—they were well prepared for their scheme to come to fruition. Well, they hadn’t factored one thing into their plan: her.
“We’re going to confront them,” she whispered to Kyle.
“Absolutely not. We’re not even supposed to be here.”
“What kind of attitude is that?” Bea descended the stairs slowly, holding the railing. She moved briskly through the central living space, following the sound of voices. There, in the dining room, she found three people standing side by side staring out at the pool.
“Excuse me,” Bea said, her voice gratifyingly steady.
The trio looked around, startled. Then it was Bea’s turn to be surprised. She knew that woman from somewhere. Her brain struggled to piece together discordant information, and finally the outrageous reality hit her: The American Hotel’s desk manager. “You?” she said. Bea turned to look at Kyle. He shook his head and walked out of the room. When the front door slammed shut, she barely registered the sound.
“I’m sorry. We didn’t expect anyone to be here today,” the woman said. A young girl with wild curls stood by her side, and next to her was a gray-haired, African-American man dressed in khaki pants, a collared shirt, and a lightweight sweater-vest. What connection could this odd bunch have to Henry?
“You’re staying at the hotel. Ms. Winstead, right?” the woman said.
The hotel, yes—now it made sense. Henry had spent a great deal of time in his final years sitting at that bar. He had drunk too much. He had said too much. This woman had wormed her way into Henry’s life just to take everything upon his death. Had he slept with her? At his age?
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