Her Last Breath

by Hilary Davidson

  “She found out Theo killed his first wife.” I put it together in a heartbeat. Growing apart was one thing—Caro was a fairly devout person, and she wasn’t going to get a divorce unless there was a reason—but discovering her husband was a killer would’ve been the end of everything.

  “I brought up practical things to her,” Jude said. “I said she wouldn’t want to give up her beautiful town house in a divorce. She told me she wouldn’t have to.”

  “Why not?”

  “She said her in-laws were on her side. Her father-in-law owns the house . . .”

  “I thought he gave it to them as a wedding gift?”

  “He didn’t sign it over, apparently,” Jude said. “He controls the purse strings. He told Caroline that the house was hers and Teddy’s, and Theo could go back to living at one of the hotels.”

  I hadn’t stopped to think about what Theo’s motive might be for killing Caroline. His family was the one with money, but that big cushion of cash wasn’t actually his.

  “What about Teddy?” I asked. “Who’d get custody?”

  “Caroline wanted full custody, but Theo said he’d fight her for it. He told her . . . he said she was an unfit mother.”

  In that moment, every nerve ending in my body was electrified. I wanted to kill Theo with my bare hands.

  “I kept something from you yesterday,” Jude said. “I didn’t want to upset you.”

  “What?”

  “That woman you overheard me talking to, Adinah Gerstein? We were discussing Caroline.”

  “So you did call her crazy.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.” Jude’s expression was horrified. “But Caroline was struggling, there’s no doubt of that.”

  “Struggling how?”

  “She’d suffered from depression for a long time. It wasn’t just postpartum. That only brought things to a head.” Jude’s shoulders drooped. “Did she mention the gremlins to you?”

  “The . . . gremlins?”

  “The ones who put her shoes in different boxes and moved her jewelry around,” Jude said. “They rearranged the books on her shelf. She must’ve told you some of this stuff.”

  I thought about that. A few months back, I’d noticed that Caro had fired most of her staff, including the cleaning people. Her Upper East Side town house had been growing increasingly musty. When I’d mentioned it to her, Caro said the staff couldn’t be trusted. It had struck me as weird, but I’d never had a staff of any kind, so what did I know?

  “Maybe something about the staff moving things around. She was so organized she’d notice the littlest thing.”

  “Caroline was seeing things that weren’t there,” Jude said. “The last time I talked with her, she told me she was going to fire her son’s nanny.”

  “Gloria? Why?”

  “She said Gloria was reporting on her to Theo.”

  I wondered if that was true. Gloria had always been terrific with Teddy, but who knew where her allegiances were? “That’s bizarre.”

  Jude nodded and glanced at her phone, lying faceup on the desk. “I should probably get back to work soon.”

  “There’s one other thing I need to show you.” I wasn’t carrying the printout the guy at Osiris’s Vault had given me, but I’d photographed it with my phone. “Caro sent three messages. One to me, one to our father, and one to someone listed as X. Here’s that last one.”

  “‘If I fail, you have to do it. I am putting all of my faith and trust in you. My son’s future depends on it,’” Jude read aloud. “Who did this go to?”

  “I wondered if Caro sent it to you.”

  “Definitely not. Did you reach out to this email address?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Nothing back yet. Do you know who the email belongs to?”

  “No,” Jude said. “The letters and numbers make it look like spam.”

  Jude’s phone rang, and I glanced at the screen. The name on it was Ben Northcutt.

  “Wait, isn’t that—”

  “Caroline’s boyfriend?” Jude sighed. “Unfortunately, yes.”

  CHAPTER 15

  THEO

  “I’ll be damned. Look what the cat dragged in,” my sister said when she found me in her office, a corner suite at the Thraxton International headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. Tall and broad shouldered, Juliet entered the room with the aggressive grace of a well-fed predator. She’d lost her hat but was wearing a navy suit that could’ve passed for a twin of her funeral attire. “You’re the last person I’d expect to find here. Security still allows you in?”

  “I had to check my conscience at the door,” I said.

  “As if you had one in the first place.” Juliet smirked. “But please, continue your self-righteous routine. Just don’t scare the axolotls.”

  I was standing beside an aquarium that housed a pair of pale ghosts, who were resting at the bottom of the tank. Each was six inches long, with gills and tails like a fish, yet they also had four lizard-like legs. Their broad, rounded faces had eyes so far apart they were on opposite sides of their heads, the hallmark of a beast of prey. “What are they?”

  “They’re a type of spooky salamander,” Juliet said. “Meet Dewey and Louie.”

  “Where’s Huey?”

  “Those two ganged up and ate him,” Juliet said. “Siblings are the worst.”

  I stepped away from the glass. “You missed the service at Green-Wood.”

  “I went to the church, Theo. And the luncheon. I don’t have the luxury of spending all day at a funeral.” Juliet sat down behind her desk. “Besides, there was more than enough drama at the church. Between you punching out that tabloid sleaze and Deirdre getting into it with a security guard, people really got their price of admission.”

  “What happened with Deirdre?”

  “A new hire got aggressive about demanding her invitation.” She shook her head. “Security was shown photos of every family member. It’s not like Deirdre isn’t distinctive looking. He had no excuse.”

  “You fired him?” It wasn’t really a question. Firing staff was Juliet’s hobby.

  “Of course I did.”

  That exhausted our limited supply of small talk. “I need to talk to you about something important.”

  “I knew you weren’t here just to check out my amphibious office mates.” She eyed me with the careful attention of a crocodile sizing up its lunch. “Go ahead, ask me anything.”

  “Did you tell Caroline about my first wife?”

  Juliet stared at me in what appeared to be unfeigned astonishment. Then she started to laugh. Her face flushed and her shoulders shook.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing.” Juliet wiped her eyes. “I just realized what a great conversation starter it would be: ‘You know, this reminds me of the night Theo murdered his first bride . . . ’ Think of all the situations it could work in.”

  “You’re not funny.”

  “Did you mention Mirelle to Caroline?”

  “I can promise you, I never uttered Mirelle’s name to her.”

  I turned to leave Juliet’s office, then stopped dead. The ancient Egyptians believed in a female demon named Ammut, who was equal parts lion, hippopotamus, and crocodile. Ammut wasn’t worshipped, but she was feared. After death, in the Hall of Two Truths, she devoured impure hearts, preventing those souls from ever resting. Whenever I encountered Juliet, I speculated on the possibility of a demon from antiquity being reincarnated as a sadistic socialite with a penchant for gold jewelry, strappy sandals, and sashimi.

  “You never uttered Mirelle’s name,” I said slowly. “But you told Caroline something about her.”

  Juliet’s eyes brightened. “You are getting good at this game, Theo. All right, you win. I may have dropped a sly little reference into a conversation I had with Caroline.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing much. It was ages ago.”

  “You have an excellent memory,” I said. “What happened?”

 
“Caroline was planning some postpandemic European travel—Paris, Barcelona, blah blah blah—and it just came up. I asked if Berlin was on her itinerary, and she said she’d always wanted to go. I said that I supposed you never took her there because it would bring back tragic memories. Caroline thought I meant when you were a drug addict who flunked out of college, but I told her that I meant it because of your first wife.”

  The room felt like it was spinning. I sucked in my breath. “What did she say?”

  “She was upset. I said, ‘Didn’t Theo ever tell you about his first wife?’ She said no, never. I told her the family never talked about it, because it was such a dreadful story, what with her being murdered and all. She begged me for details, but I wouldn’t give them to her.”

  “Did you tell her anything else?”

  “Not a word. It drove her crazy.” Juliet smiled. “She kept asking me, and all I’d say was, ‘It’s too tragic.’”

  “Why would you do that?”

  Juliet shrugged. “Caroline was always so smug. It was hateful. She had just spent an hour bragging to Father about some stupid award she was getting for philanthropy. You know how lavish she was with throwing Thraxton money around. Father thought it was wonderful news, of course. I couldn’t resist popping her bubble of perfection.”

  “You were jealous of her.” I heard the echo of my father in my voice; he’d accused Juliet of jealousy at the church.

  “What was there to be jealous of?” Juliet shot back. “Caroline was an anxious little mouse who didn’t fit in anywhere. She obsessed about every stupid little detail, whether it was a press release no one would read or what toothpaste to use. Am I the only person not surprised she had a heart problem? I’m amazed it didn’t give out earlier.”

  Before I could respond, the phone on Juliet’s desk rang. She answered it.

  “Yes, he’s right here,” Juliet said. “I’ll send him up.” She set the receiver down. “Father will see you now.”

  I frowned. “I didn’t come here for him. I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Well, he knows you’re in the building and wants to see you, which is more than I can say for myself. I have work to do, Theo. Go away.”

  She pretended to look at something on her computer, but when I didn’t move, she slid her gaze in my direction again.

  “Did you enjoy it?” I asked her.

  “Enjoy what?”

  “Being cruel to Caroline.”

  Juliet propped her head on her hands as if she were considering the question. “Everyone should have a hobby.”

  My sister mocked everything, but I wasn’t letting her shunt this off to the side.

  “Before we married, you gave Caroline an etiquette guide,” I said. “You told her she would need it.”

  “I remember. She actually seemed excited about it.”

  “She was,” I said. “She read it cover to cover. But then you gave her another etiquette book, and another. She was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you simply had to prove what a horrible person you were, didn’t you?”

  “If you’re hosting charity galas, you have a responsibility to know what a fish fork is.”

  “You were hateful to her, and you made her life miserable.”

  Juliet leaned back in her chair, smiling. “Let me get this straight. I’m a bad person for schooling a climbing vine from Queens? Okay, fine. What does that make you for keeping so many dirty little secrets from her?”

  “What’s past is past.”

  Juliet laughed. “Our father’s famous words. How convenient for you, Theo. It lets you off the hook, doesn’t it? You didn’t tell your new wife that you’d killed your first wife because that’s in the past.” She leaned forward. “Let me tell you something. The fact you butchered a woman is the first thing I think about when your pathetic face crosses my mind.” She picked up the phone on her desk. “Now get out of my office before I call security.”

  CHAPTER 16

  DEIRDRE

  I blinked at Jude. “You mean ex-boyfriend, right?” I said, thinking of the old photo I’d thought Caro sent me by mistake.

  “I don’t know.” She tapped a button to decline the call.

  “You’re saying my sister was seeing this guy?” I was incredulous. Caro had never hinted at anything like that to me. “I don’t believe it.”

  “I’m not a hundred percent sure,” Jude said. “They were extremely close, and then Caroline broke up with him and they never saw each other again. Until he popped up a few months ago.”

  “Caro gave me a bunch of photos, and there was one of her with Ben. I couldn’t understand why. It was from a house in High Falls . . .”

  “From when they lived together.”

  “They what?” I couldn’t hide my astonishment.

  “They lived in High Falls for about a year. It was back when you two weren’t speaking,” Jude said.

  “But my mom and I never stopped talking. She didn’t tell me Caro lived with anyone!” Even more than I was shocked, I was hurt. When I’d stopped living with my family, it wasn’t exactly voluntary—I’d ended up in the not-so-tender care of the juvenile detention system at fifteen. After months of legal drama and multiple psychiatric evaluations, I’d been released to my parents’ care. But I couldn’t live with them again, which is how I wound up, like a stray animal, at Reagan’s house. I talked with my mom every week—and saw her every month—but she was the only family member I had a relationship with. It wasn’t until my mom was diagnosed with cancer that my sister came back into my life. There had been four long years of silence between us, and while we picked up where we left off—sort of—we never addressed what had happened. I was nineteen then and Caro twenty-four, and we were both immature enough to pretend it was water under the bridge.

  “I don’t know anything about Ben,” I said, thinking of how he hadn’t answered my email. “Caro was already dating Theo when we reconnected. Tell me about him.”

  “They met in journalism school,” Jude said.

  “They graduated together?”

  Jude laughed. “No. He was a guest speaker. He’d graduated a decade earlier.”

  “Oh.”

  “They were close, but he wasn’t really The One,” Jude said. “He was this fearless reporter who would drop everything to fly to Bogotá just to talk with a source. Caroline said once that she wasn’t sure if she was in love with him, or if she wanted to be him.”

  “Caro was a hearts-and-flowers kind of person. You’re making her sound cynical.”

  “She was,” Jude said. “I mean, Theo definitely swept her off her feet, but that was the first time I ever knew her to be head over heels about someone. And it didn’t last.”

  I thought about that and realized Jude was right. Caro had always regarded relationships with a jaundiced eye. More fallout from our parents’ disastrous marriage, even if she’d refused to admit it.

  “Did Caro tell you she was seeing Ben again?”

  “She told me when they reconnected. That was six months ago. But until . . .” She stopped speaking for a moment. “Three weeks ago, Caroline wanted to drop off my birthday gift. I told her I was going to bed, but she said she was practically in my neighborhood already. You know I live by the Midtown Tunnel, right? When she came over, she said she’d been at Ben’s. He’s living in his parents’ old pied-à-terre in Tudor City.”

  Theo’s voice was echoing inside my skull. Caroline wasn’t just out for a jog the morning she died. We both know that, don’t we? She was meeting someone. The news reports about Caro had mentioned her dying across from the United Nations. I’d stood in the spot that morning, at the foot of that grand stone staircase. It had led up to Tudor City.

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” I said defensively.

  “She told me Teddy liked him. They bonded over zoos and exotic animals.”

  I was quiet for a minute, processing that. You didn’t introduce someone to your kid unless you were serious. I bit my lip. “Why is he cal
ling you?”

  “It started the day after Caroline died,” Jude said. “He thinks Theo was involved.”

  “I hope you have Ben’s address,” I said. “Because I’m going to need it.”

  CHAPTER 17

  THEO

  My father’s office was a floor above Juliet’s, at the south end of the building. Standing guard in front of it was his man Harris.

  When I was a boy, I thought Harris was a brooding giant. He was a solid six foot four and broadly built, with tree-trunk limbs and a bald head that shone like a bronze bullet. When he spoke, which was seldom, it was with clipped vowels and an accent that was hard to place. He was from Bermuda, but he’d served in the British military at some point before he’d come into my father’s service. He’d never been married and had no children. He was solitary as a stone castle, with the cold, predatory eyes of a reptile guarding a moat.

  He ignored me as I stepped inside. My father’s longtime secretary, Olga, was probably the only person in that building who was glad to see me. She got up and embraced me. “I’m so sorry about your wife, Theo. The service was beautiful. Caroline would have loved it. She was such a good girl.”

  I opened the door that led into my father’s domain. It was a corner office, of course, with a spectacular panorama of the broad tree-lined boulevard that was Park Avenue. Angels would weep at a view like his. But my father had black screens installed over the glass walls, which permitted one to see the outline of the buildings but allowed no sunlight in. It was permanently twilight in his world. In his youth, my father’s obsession had been with visiting archaeological sites in sun-drenched climes. He’d paid for that passion with two bouts of skin cancer. The world had once been his oyster, but my father had been forced to retreat into a dark shell.

  It was a grand place for a man who’d inherited a motel chain that stretched across America and turned it into a global luxury hotel brand. At one end was a dark wood desk as immobile as a bank vault, elaborately carved with lion heads and claws and intertwined flowers. The desk chair was carved wood as well, but lacquered and gilded so the winged goddesses that formed the armrests looked ready to take flight. Still, they couldn’t match the grandeur of the pair of ancient terra-cotta rams guarding a cabinet by the window; they were at least thirty-five hundred years old and obviously belonged behind glass in a museum.