by Luanne Rice
“No, I see her as Beth.”
Kate took a deep breath, felt herself relax a little at that. Conor’s arm tightened around her shoulders.
“They come out of the woodwork at a time like this,” Conor said. “They all want to be first, get the exclusive.”
“Have they called you?”
“Yes. The answer is always ‘no comment.’”
“Thank you,” she said.
“They’re all important to me, every murder victim, but this one even more so.”
“Why?”
He paused and reddened. She sensed him trying to find the words. “Because it feels personal.”
She wanted him to say more. Personal because Beth reminded him of someone? His wife, his sister? As she stared into his eyes, the tiniest spider threads of memory began to spin and weave together. She felt the rope around her wrists, scraping the skin raw. Someone had untied her.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” she asked in a low voice.
“Me?”
“Who found us in the basement. Who rescued me and Beth.”
He nodded.
She felt torn in half. She wanted to hold him, press her body against him as hard she could, and she also wanted to turn away, to stop seeing his eyes and remembering the way he had looked at her that day.
She cleared her throat. “There’s no way I can thank you . . . ,” she began.
“Don’t, Kate. You don’t have to.”
“Yeah, I do,” she said.
“I just want you to be okay,” he said. “I know how hard this is, going through this kind of loss again. I don’t want to push you.”
“Push me?”
“I came here to ask if you’ll go with me to the gallery,” he said.
She shivered, closed her eyes, and opened them again. “Why?” she asked.
“Just looking for leads, anything that will help the investigation. I’d need your permission no matter what, but I’d rather have you with me. You can help me see if anything’s off, different than it should be. But if it’s too much . . .”
Kate steadied herself. “Of course I’ll go with you,” she said. “I’ll meet you there.”
“Thanks, Kate,” he said.
They walked off the plane together and drove away in separate cars. She went straight to her loft to walk and feed Popcorn. After he ate, he looked at her with big expectant eyes. She knew he wasn’t hungry anymore; he was waiting for Beth to come back. She hugged him for a long minute. Then she changed out of her uniform; put on blue jeans, a crisp white T-shirt, and brown suede ankle boots; and headed into Black Hall.
The gallery was halfway down Main Street, between the firehouse and the white Christopher Wren–inspired church that had been the subject of so many Impressionist paintings. She directed Conor to park in the gallery’s driveway. The Victorian house had once belonged to Lydia Stewart Smith, the benefactor who had founded the town’s library, and had been impeccably restored with a bequest from Mathilda.
The house turned gallery had been an almost enchanted sanctuary during her mother’s lifetime, a place where Kate and Beth had spent rainy days and gotten lost in stories created by the paintings. Kate had loved the house as a child, but when she entered it now, it felt like a tomb. It reminded her of crime and unbearable loss.
She unlocked the front door. The space was very much as it had been in her grandmother’s day: wide-plank pine floors, eight-over-eight windows, white walls hung sparely, each with one or two large-scale, gilded-framed, nineteenth-century paintings. A fireplace with a white marble mantel hadn’t been used in recent years.
Upstairs was a second gallery space. There the walls were packed tightly with small paintings, drawings, and etchings, floor to ceiling, salon style, the way art was hung in Gertrude Stein’s home at 27 rue de Fleurus. The arrangement had inspired Mathilda during a visit to the house in Paris immediately after the war.
Beth and Pete shared an 1875 mahogany partners desk, flush against the back wall. One of Beth’s sweaters hung over the back of her chair. Kate’s fingers trailed over the soft blue wool. She felt vertigo imagining how recently Beth had sat here. Her sister’s work surface contained stacks of books and monographs.
Across the desk’s tooled green leather surface, Pete’s work area was laid out with invoices and letters. His chair had been neatly pushed in. She wondered what it had been like for Beth to spend her days sitting opposite the husband who had betrayed her.
“What are you hoping to find here?” she asked.
“Mainly the missing canvas,” he said. “Moonlight.”
“So, you still think Pete did it?”
“He’s my strongest suspect.”
“You think he’d put it in the gallery? Isn’t that a little obvious?”
“Pete thinks he’s smart, right?”
“That’s for sure,” Kate said.
“Well, I believe he’d hide it in plain sight. Rolled up with other canvases, hanging on the wall, anywhere. And he would laugh at everyone for not figuring it out.”
Kate nodded. They started at opposite sides of the room, taking down every frame, looking behind the paintings. Conor lifted the antique rugs, checked the umbrella stand, went through the upright compartments in the third-floor storage room. He moved slowly, taking his time, meticulously gazing at the art.
“Could someone have painted over the original painting, to hide it?” he asked.
“Pentimento,” Kate said. “Theoretically, yes. But I can’t imagine Pete would have that done with a picture that valuable.”
“‘Have that done’?” Conor asked, jumping on the phrase.
“Pete’s not an artist. He would have had to hire someone.”
“Well, he must know a lot of painters. What about Nicola?”
“She’s an art historian, not an artist. She wouldn’t be able to pull it off.”
“Then someone else?”
“Who’s going to desecrate Moonlight, then not come forward after hearing Beth was murdered?”
“You’d be surprised what people do,” Conor said.
Kate couldn’t disagree with him. She thought of her father. Her gaze was pulled to the basement door. When she dreamed about what had happened to her family down those stairs, she always saw her mother and father dissolving away. They had turned into memories.
She drifted away from Conor back to the partners desk and sat in her sister’s chair. Beth’s absence felt as real and solid as the furniture. It was an actual, physical force. Her sister had been flesh and blood and kindness and humor—and now she was gone. Now Beth was a memory too.
Kate stared at the top book in a tall pile, a volume about the flag paintings of Childe Hassam. Beth had flagged many pages with yellow Post-its, each covered with her neat handwriting. Kate read: Hassam was the only major American Impressionist to paint the home front during World War I. Between 1916 and 1919, he produced his flag series, over thirty paintings of flag-draped Fifth Avenue. Stars and Stripes/British Union Jack/French Tricolor—celebration of the allies, Armistice. Exhibition—next July 4th? Dedicated to Mathilda? Discuss with Katy.
Kate moaned softly, her shoulders curved forward. She felt actual pain, seeing her name in her sister’s handwriting. Childe Hassam and his World War I paintings had been a favorite subject of Mathilda’s. She had been moved by his patriotic dedication, the way it had emboldened his primary colors and broken brushwork. It was incredibly poignant to think of a gallery show to honor their grandmother.
Kate’s heart broke to know that Beth had wanted to talk to her about the exhibit and that she would never have the chance. She was glad Mathilda wasn’t here anymore. She would never have to bear what had happened to Beth.
She began opening drawers. Each one seemed to contain a gift from her to Beth. Whenever she traveled, she always picked up souvenirs, the tackier the better, and brought them home for her sister. She’d found a slot machine key fob from Las Vegas, a teddy bear wearing a straw hat from Miami, an Eiffel Tower–shaped p
en from Paris, a beer stein pencil holder from Munich. She reached into the drawer for the small box she’d bought at Liberty in London last April. Covered with deep-red William Morris print cotton, it was an uncharacteristically serious present, something she’d thought Beth might actually use, instead of only making her laugh.
She took the top off and looked inside. It seemed empty. She and Beth had always loved boxes and bags with hiding places, a legacy of their grandmother. She pried open the silk-covered rectangular false bottom that had made the box irresistible to her and was shocked to the core by what she saw.
There was a key, a slip of paper with a phone number, and a small beautiful charcoal drawing of a nude woman. The subject of the drawing stood looking out a window, completely unselfconscious, hair cascading over her shoulders and full breasts. The artist had signed it JH.
The woman in the drawing was Beth. Kate could hardly breathe. The artist had captured her sister’s beauty, gentleness, and spirit. There was such intimacy in the work—who had drawn it? Who had Beth posed for?
Kate glanced across the room. Conor was standing by a tall bookcase, looking through coffee table–sized art books, apparently waiting for Moonlight to fall out from between the pages. She knew she should show him the box’s contents, but she couldn’t, not before she knew more about her sister’s secrets. When she was sure he wasn’t watching, she slipped the drawing, key, and paper into her jacket pocket and pretended to keep searching her sister’s side of the desk.
17
Sam’s phone rang. She looked at the screen—it was her dad, and the sight of his name made her stomach flip. She wanted to kill the call, but finally she answered.
“Hello,” she said, forcing her voice to remain flat.
“Sammy,” he said. “How’s my girl?”
She did not reply because anything she would say would come out in a scream.
“Not so great?” he asked. “Me neither, honey. It’s just unbelievable. God, I miss your mother. I just want to see her again. You doing okay at Kate’s?”
“Fine,” she said.
“You sound mad,” he said.
“Dad, what do you think?”
“At me?” he asked.
Her blood simmered, nice and low and constant, just like lava in a volcano before it blew. She fought not to.
“I didn’t say that,” she said.
“Well, you sound it. I’m suffering just like you, missing her, and . . .”
“You miss Mom?” she asked, the simmer starting to really bubble. “Because it honestly didn’t seem that way when she was alive.”
“Sam! Don’t you talk to me that way. I am devastated about your mother. Beyond that—I am destroyed. You can’t even imagine. We were trying to fix everything. The new baby, all of us together.”
“But you’re still with her, aren’t you?” Sam asked. “You’re with them right now, Nicola and Tyler, right?”
Silence on the line. She could hear her father breathing—wait, was he turning on the tears? “Dad?” she asked.
“Mom is gone,” he said. “I’m your dad, Sam. I am here for you. That’s all that matters to me right now.” Then he started to babble. Here come the waterworks without the water.
Sam held the phone away from her ear because if she had to listen to her father faux weep, she would start to scream.
“Dad, please stop,” she said, her voice shaking.
“I wish I could, honey,” he said. “I’m so sorry to upset you.” She heard him trying to swallow a sob. She really couldn’t take it.
“It’s okay,” she said.
“Let me come pick you up,” he said.
“You don’t sound great to drive. It’s okay if you get me later,” she said.
“Oh, Sammy. Thanks for understanding. Things are just really hard right now,” he said. “They’ll get better.”
How the fuck? Sam wanted to ask. But instead she just blew a kiss into the phone and said goodbye.
After hanging up, she closed her eyes. She didn’t like the way he always brought pity out in her. She hated herself for thinking that sometimes he faked crying. Her mother had always said what a rough life he had had. Born without money, always wanting it, his father dying young, his mother working just to put food on the table. Sam had never really understood how bad it was.
But now that her mother had died young, she did.
18
They’ll get better? Had he really just said that to Sam? Her mother had been murdered.
Pete was waiting to hear back from his lawyer. Everyone said Mac Green was one of the top defense attorneys in Connecticut, but Pete found him incredibly annoying. He didn’t have the courtesy to return Pete’s calls in a timely manner. In fact, if Nicola hadn’t insisted Pete engage a lawyer, and if Lee Ackerley hadn’t asked around and gotten a referral to Mac, Pete would have been happy handling the situation on his own.
One thing Pete hated was someone telling him what to do and how to do it. Mac was an old-school, old-boy, white-haired Yalie who had rules for his clients. One was no taking a lie detector test, no matter what. Pete stared at his phone, pissed off that it wasn’t ringing. As soon as Mac deigned to call, he was going to hear Pete’s rules. He had a few of his own.
Beth had died angry at him, and she had had every right to feel that way. Waiting gave him too much time to think, and his mind kept racing through all the things he could have done differently, starting with letting Nicola stay in Beth’s grandmother’s house. It had been a horrible, disrespectful thing to do. His mother would be even more ashamed of him if she knew—at least Beth had left that detail out when she had called to tell her about the affair with Nicola. She had run straight to his mother, knowing that would hurt him more than anything.
Maybe he deserved it. He literally could not bear to think about what he had put Beth through. And Nicola, too, for that matter. Nicola had loved being at Cloudlands at first, but even that had changed. He couldn’t believe she had actually taken Tyler home to her mother’s. What a slap in the face that had been. It had made him feel he didn’t matter. That she could leave so easily, even though she had returned, was disturbing. He wouldn’t forget it.
Lately, she kept saying she wished she could feel clean again. She had had an affair with him while he was married, gotten pregnant, and had his child. Now it seemed she wanted to go back to the easy piety of her days as a Catholic girl. Obeying God and the capital C Church was easier than existing in moral ambiguity and let her feel as if she was a good girl. Pete, a lapsed Catholic himself, knew that guilt had been drummed into her from the start.
There was so much about Nicola he understood. They had similar backgrounds. He had sensed her nervousness when she had first started working at the gallery—although she was brilliant and beautiful, it was daunting to be around all that old money. He knew because he had felt it himself. His mother had worked her fingers to the bone to send him to private school, but the kids at Saint George’s—Episcopal, of course, the high-class religion—would ask him how the other half lived. They’d meant from the wrong side of the tracks. His mother would have been furious if she’d known how they’d treated him.
He had shown Nicola compassion, knowing it would move her. He had a special gift for knowing what women needed—not just wanted. She began to find ways to be near him at the gallery. At first, she was just scholarly and pretty, and then she was scholarly and sexy. It wasn’t that she changed the way she dressed—she wore a near uniform, slim black pants and a white silk blouse, sometimes with a black blazer. It was more a shift in attitude. They gravitated toward each other.
Beth never would have believed this, but Pete had grappled with his desires for a long time before giving in to Nicola. He enjoyed the act of seduction, getting someone to want him. He craved knowing a woman felt passion for him, but acting on his own was another story.
He had been a good husband. He had had plenty of opportunities too. Women would stop by the gallery, divorced women from tow
n or visiting their summer places, pretending to look at art but so obviously lonely, seeking what everyone wanted: someone to love.
Sometimes the women would pretend to consider buying a painting; occasionally they would actually do so. At openings, when there was wine, they would stand a little too close, link arms with him to lead him across the gallery and ask about the provenance of this Hassam, that Morrison.
The affair with Nicola began in the least romantic of places—down in the gallery basement, damp from the water table, recent rains, and shades of the Woodward family horrors. Pete had been framing a little jewel of a painting by Malcolm Grant, a lesser-known Black Hall artist. It was a tiny oil of a frozen stream at dawn, bright with breaking light.
He stood at the workbench, measuring segments of wood. A harsh overhead lamp illuminated particles of sawdust in the air. Nicola walked over to him. He could picture the painting as if it were in front of him right now, he could feel the sawdust stinging his eyes, but he couldn’t remember the words she said. Suddenly his mouth found hers, her arms were around his neck, and he swept all the framing materials and that valuable little picture aside, lifted her onto the table, his cheek against hers.
Six months later, six months of passion, they were in the basement again.
“I’m going to . . . ,” she said.
“Going to what?”
“Have your baby. Love you.”
“I love you to death,” he said, putting his hand on her belly, already starting to get slightly round. He knew he should be upset—they hadn’t planned on her getting pregnant, and when Beth found out it was going to be hell for everyone. But he had never felt love like this, so pure and true.
“I want to be with you forever,” she said.
Her words filled him with such emotion. “I want that too,” he whispered.
“Just one little problem. You’re married to someone else,” she said.
He hadn’t liked her saying that. It made her sound callous, and he knew she wasn’t. She cared about Beth. That was what caused them exquisite pain—they both had Beth on the mind, but their desire was so great it overrode their consciences. Too often the institution of marriage became one of convenience and habit; he and Beth had let that happen. He would have to extricate himself as kindly as possible—take care of Beth and Sam. He would not fall into habit, into the mundane, when he and Nicola were finally able to marry. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again with her.