Her Last Breath

by Hilary Davidson

  I glanced around again, spotting her handiwork in the clean-lined, modern steel furniture paired with gilded mosaics. “Juliet takes every detail seriously.”

  “She took over the global portfolio after you left,” Pierre said. “Frankly, I miss working with you. Why did you leave, Theo? I never understood.”

  Pierre worked for my family—and only on the legitimate side of the business—so there was only so much I could say. Still, I wanted to be as truthful as I could. “When I was growing up, I would see these amazing works of art—Babylonian lions, Egyptian funeral art, great paintings—coming through my father’s hotels. Sometimes they’d go on display; sometimes they’d end up being sold. But I’d see them and think, ‘That belongs in a museum.’”

  “I understand. When I was a kid, my family vacationed in the South of France,” Pierre said. “One time, we went to a museum that had been an artist’s house. There were a pair of ancient Egyptian statues there—tremendous things, taller than me.” He gestured with his hands. “I couldn’t believe they had ended up in a private home. They clearly belonged in a museum.”

  “There’s always been a gray market for pieces like that,” I said. “A lot of institutions won’t take pieces anymore if they don’t know their provenance, but private collectors will. I told my father that if he wanted me to work with him in the hotel business, he had to stop taking part in it.”

  “But he did, yes? Honestly, there’s nothing like that being moved through here. There wasn’t in Paris either.”

  I took a breath. “My father is clever about technicalities. He feels like he’s honored our agreement, but he was skirting the edges of it. That’s why I quit.”

  That was as much as I could tell Pierre. The truth was, as far as I knew, my father had stopped trafficking in stolen antiquities. However, he’d embarked on a different illegal venture with some new partners. That was it for me. I’d told Caroline exactly what he was up to. She hadn’t cared. What does it matter, when there’s so much good you can do with the money? she’d asked me. We were, from that moment on, an ocean apart, figuratively and literally.

  “That is why you do what you do now?” Pierre said appraisingly. “Please do not tell me that you are here to take our Nefertiti away. Germany acquired it from Egypt legally.”

  The bust he referred to was on permanent display at the Neues Museum, just north of where we were sitting. “The German team that found it had a license from Egypt, but Egypt was under Ottoman rule, and the British were dominating Egypt,” I said. “It’s all part of the legacy of colonialism.”

  “Do you think, if all their artifacts were returned, they could care for all of them?” he asked. “You’ve been to Istanbul. Think of the national museum. They have so much Roman art they are drowning in it. It lies outdoors, getting rained on, with cats crawling all over it.”

  We spent the next hour discussing art and politics, which was a welcome distraction. Afterward, we went to his office, where a series of files was laid out on his desk. Thraxton International had a photograph of every staff member, so if the man I remembered had worked at the hotel, I knew I’d find him. It didn’t take me long. The thirteenth file I picked up belonged to a man named Mehmet Badem. As I stared at his photo, time seemed to stop. That was the man who had carried me onto the plane.

  “Does he still work for you?” I asked, holding up the photo.

  “I don’t know him.” Pierre peered at the file. “He left work here on permanent disability five years ago. Some kind of accident, but it doesn’t say what happened. How odd.” He flipped through the pages, then went to his computer. “He does receive a pension.”

  “You have his address?” It was hard to contain my eagerness.

  While Pierre wrote it down for me, I flipped through the other files. There was no one else I recognized. But another curious idea was coursing through my brain with the insistent buzzing of a mosquito. Exactly how much of a coincidence was it that Juliet had been nearby the night Mirelle had died? She had still been a student that January, earning her Ivy League MBA. I could clearly picture her face, squeezed tight with anger. You ruined my week in Paris, you stupid piece of shit. I wish you were dead. It wasn’t the first time I wondered how far Juliet would go to take control of the business, but my blood had never run that cold when I’d considered the question.

  CHAPTER 26

  DEIRDRE

  I didn’t know where to go or what to do after I spoke with Ben. I called Jude on her cell phone and then on her work line, getting voice mail both times. I didn’t leave a message, because I was afraid my voice would give me away. Jude had made it clear she was keeping some of my sister’s secrets from me. Even so, the idea that Caro had confided in her about criminal activity at the Thraxton business really hurt. That wasn’t personal, not like details about her unhappy marriage. It made me feel like Caro had decided she could only trust me so far.

  Of course, there was the possibility that Ben was lying. He’d told me about the money laundering. Maybe he’d been the one who told Jude too. He was an evasive character who needed a kick to the head. Taking anything he said at face value felt like a mistake.

  I was finishing my water and contemplating whether to take the subway south to city hall and ambush Jude when I got a call from the cops. “Deirdre, we’d really like you to come in to the precinct again. We have to talk to you about some new developments,” Villaverde told me.

  I couldn’t believe it. The cops were calling me? I had the distinct impression that Villaverde thought I was a drama queen when I’d gone in. It was a huge relief to see he was actually following up on the tangled threads of my sister’s case.

  “I can come over now,” I said, sounding like the eager beaver I was. “I’ll be right there.”

  I practically flew to the precinct. I had a short wait when I got there, but a friendly officer took me to the interview room and offered me a soda. When Villaverde walked in, he introduced me to his partner, Detective Gorey, a short, round man with orange hair and freckles. Gorey squinted at me dubiously, staring at my arms as if cataloging my tattoos. When he shook his head, I knew we were off to a great start.

  “We need to ask you a few questions, Deirdre,” Villaverde said.

  “Sure. But first, I have one for you. Did you know that Theo is in Berlin right now?”

  They glanced at each other. “No, we hadn’t heard,” Villaverde said.

  “He’s free to go anywhere,” Gorey said.

  “His wife just died, and he’s running away, leaving his son behind?” I put my hands out, palms up. “There’s something wrong with him. You know, I talked to his father this morning.”

  “Did you?” It wasn’t really a question from Gorey. He sounded bored.

  “He admitted that Theo’s first wife died. He said drugs were involved.” As I spoke, I realized I didn’t want to get the old man in trouble. I didn’t exactly trust him, but I also didn’t want to ruin his life. He needed to tell the cops his story his way. “He also told me Theo came home a day earlier than anyone realized from his last trip. He went to his house early the morning my sister died.”

  “Look, Deirdre, that’s not why we wanted you to come in,” Villaverde said. “We want to help you out, but we need some information first.”

  “About what?”

  “You told us your father abused your mother,” Gorey said. “But you never said a word about the fact that you tried to kill your father.”

  Time came to a screeching halt. I could only stare at him, my heart booming like a cannon in my ears. There was no point in belligerently asking what he meant. I couldn’t pretend to be innocent.

  “I was protecting my mother,” I said. “She’d written a letter saying her husband was going to kill her. I found it by accident, and I . . .”

  “You what?”

  “I had to help her.” My voice came out in choked bursts. I’d grown up in a house where the shadow of violence always loomed. For as long as I could remember, it was a
place where a casual slap could land on you for not moving quickly enough. The two years Reagan had mostly lived with us had been an oasis of calm, because my parents never behaved like that around other people. But when we were on our own, without eyes on us, our house felt like a feral place. When I was fifteen, things went badly at my father’s business, and our homelife really went downhill.

  “You stabbed him with a steak knife,” Gorey said. “He had organ damage. He could’ve died.”

  Stop being so dramatic, Caro had told me back then. This is just what they do. But I hadn’t taken her advice. The week I found the letter, our mother had been wearing a scarf around her neck every day, which was odd. One night, she slipped it off without thinking, and I caught sight of the necklace of bruises circling her pale throat. That was when I’d gone to the kitchen and disappeared a knife into an old tea towel. I told myself I’d act next time I heard them fighting in their bedroom. I hadn’t seen the worst of my father’s violence, but I’d heard it.

  “He was drunk,” I said. “He was beating my mother.”

  I remembered that night like it was a shaky amateur home movie. Maybe it was because I was so rattled when I entered my parents’ bedroom. Get out, my father had barked at me, but all his fury was directed at my mother. She had started to scream, and he shoved her back. Instead of arguing with him, I’d jabbed the knife into his side.

  There was a long silence in the room. “Look, we understand you were in a horrible situation,” Villaverde said. “And I’m sorry you went through that. We both are.”

  His words seemed to nudge his partner along. “No one should ever be in a situation like that,” Gorey muttered.

  “I was fifteen.” The words embarrassed me as they hung in the air between us. Was I using my age as a defense? There was no way to explain to the cops that, in my family, letting outsiders in on our secrets was a crime far worse than violence. Aside from Caro, I had no one I could talk to. Stabbing my father had felt like my only option.

  “We understand that. We see people all the time who take the law into their own hands. Some of them mean well, but I can tell you their situation never ends well.”

  Gorey’s words were sharp. I couldn’t argue. My father had actually refused to call the police or go to the hospital the night I stabbed him. The next day, he’d been so ill he’d passed out with a raging fever. My aim with the knife hadn’t been very good, but he caught sepsis, and he ended up in the hospital for weeks.

  My mother came to see me as much as she could at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, where they’d locked me up to see how criminally insane I was. Why’d you do it, lamb? she’d asked me gently, in her lilting Irish accent. That was a terrible thing.

  He was going to kill you, I’d told her. I found your letter.

  What letter?

  The one in the Bible.

  She’d crossed herself at that. That wasn’t for you to read, lamb. I’m sorry you saw it.

  I’m glad I did. He got what he deserved.

  That’s not true. He needs help. I think we all do.

  The memory was making my hands quiver. I clasped them together. “What happened with my father has nothing to do with Caro’s death.”

  “It has everything to do with it,” Gorey said. “You think men who have bad relationships with their wife deserve to die.”

  I had thoughts on his definition of bad relationships, but I kept them to myself. “I believe in justice.”

  “But you’re out looking for vengeance,” Gorey said. “That’s not the same thing. I’m not going to pretend I understand what you’re going through right now, but you’re in dangerous territory.”

  “I don’t understand what ancient family history has to do with this.”

  “Aubrey Sutton-Braithwaite wants us to file charges against you for what you did to him yesterday,” Villaverde said. “We’ve tried to explain you’re under a lot of stress, and—”

  “Aubrey?” I was incredulous. “He attacked me.”

  “You’re sitting in front of us, and you look fine,” Gorey said. “Meanwhile, he’s got two fractured ribs and a concussion.”

  “He deserved all of it,” I muttered darkly. I doubted that his injuries were really that bad. He was probably faking the head trauma.

  “What was that?”

  It was so tempting to give in to white-hot fury. I wanted to turn the table over, run out of there, hunt down Aubrey, and crack his skull like an egg. But the memory of my mother stopped me.

  “Why don’t we call my lawyer?” I said. “His name is Hugo Laraya. He’s with Casper Peters McNally.”

  “We know the name,” Gorey said. “You can’t afford someone like that.”

  “Yet again, you are wrong,” I said. “Where’s your phone?”

  CHAPTER 27

  DEIRDRE

  I’m not sure what I expected Theodore Thraxton’s high-powered lawyer to be like, but it sure wasn’t the guy who walked into the interview room. Hugo Laraya looked as if he’d been pulled from a Great Gatsby–themed game of lawn croquet. He was dressed in immaculate white from his pointy leather wingtips to his trilby hat. The detectives stared at him as if he were a storybook character who’d stepped off the page.

  “Hi, I’m Deirdre,” I said.

  “My favorite new client,” Laraya said with a smile.

  “We were just—” Gorey started to say, but the lawyer put out one hand.

  “I know what you were up to,” he said pointedly, staring them down. “I’ve already spoken to an outcry witness to whom Ms. Crawley here described her sexual assault by Aubrey Sutton-Braithwaite.”

  I blushed at that. Thinking of myself as a victim made me about as comfortable as if fire ants were burrowing under my skin.

  “Outcry witness?” Villaverde asked.

  “Theodore Thraxton,” Laraya said. “The senior one, to be clear.” He took a seat next to me. “I spent all of ten minutes researching this Aubrey character, and do you know what I found? Multiple DUIs. A couple of assault charges. Plus, several accusations of sexual assault or rape. Yet here you are, treating one of his victims as if she were the criminal. What are you doing, gentlemen? Where are your heads?”

  “Aubrey’s dad called the ADA,” Gorey said. “He sent over the hospital report. That’s how it got to us.”

  “We knew Deirdre was in mourning for her sister. We wanted to help,” Villaverde added.

  “Ah, so you were helping her by treating her like a perp,” Laraya said. “And you wonder why people don’t trust the police.” He glanced at me. “Let’s go, Deirdre.”

  I was still stunned by what had happened. “I can go?”

  “You’re not under arrest,” Laraya said. “You are most certainly free to go.”

  Both cops wore the expressions of cartoon characters who’d been run over by a truck. We walked out of the room.

  “Let’s get out of here before we have a proper chat,” Laraya said. “The walls have ears in places like this.”

  We went out to Fifty-First Street and crossed Third Avenue. Half a block down was Greenacre Park. The name was a bit misleading—it was a fraction of an acre—but it was a green oasis. We sat on a concrete bench and watched the cascading waterfall at the north edge of the park in companionable silence for a minute.

  “I don’t understand what just happened,” I said finally, after I felt calm enough. “Theodore Thraxton gave me your card. I never thought I’d use it. How did you know all that about Aubrey?”

  “I did a quick search on the taxi ride down here,” Laraya said. “Mr. Thraxton called me, probably just after he spoke with you. He’s sort of a strange bird, but he has a tendency to take certain people under his wing.”

  “It was hard to hear you call me a victim,” I said. “I knocked Aubrey on his ass, and he deserved it.”

  “In the eyes of the law, it’s essential that you acted in self-defense. It doesn’t look kindly at vigilante justice.”

  “What do I do now?”

 
“We need to talk about what happened yesterday,” Laraya said. “Then I’ll have a word with the ADA. We’ll file a police report about what happened to you . . .”

  “But I don’t want . . .”

  “You need to do it,” Laraya said firmly. “Don’t worry—I’ll be able to handle most of it on your behalf. But since he’s trying to have charges filed against you, you need to get your side on the record.”

  “I also told Jude Lazare. She’s my sister’s friend. She works for the mayor’s office—she’s in communications. I didn’t know where to go after Aubrey slimed on me. I was kind of dazed afterward. He lives a block from City Hall Park, and Jude’s office was right there.”

  “You went there immediately afterward? That’s perfect.” He looked delighted. “Every witness, every detail is invaluable.”

  It was helpful, having someone else jog my memory. Through his questions, I remembered I’d told Reagan as well. Then Laraya turned his attention to Snapp.

  “You can sue them, you know. They knowingly put you in a dangerous situation.”

  “They did, but the police just raked me over the coals about some things in my past. I don’t want that being dredged up.”

  “Legally, they can’t do that, but of course the law works in funny ways for people with money,” Laraya said. “But it’s also an option to sue them and settle. Unless they’re stupid, they’ll want this to go away.”

  “Wouldn’t I be telling the world I was a victim if I did that?”

  “They abused you, Deirdre. Snapp was in a position of authority, and they acted like a pimp. They knew what they were sending you into. There’s no shame in speaking up and telling the truth. Silence protects them, not you.”

  There was a hard knot in my throat that made it hard to answer. “Can I think about it?”

  “Of course. I know you’ve had an awful week,” Laraya said. “I haven’t even told you yet how sorry I am about Caroline. She was such a warm, lovely person.”