“You killed me, for Christ’s sake!”
“And now you’re asking me to rescue you from a dachshund?”
“Little piece of shit!” yelled Biden, taking another swipe at the dog with his foot.
Ann reached the dog and bent to pick it up, keeping her eyes on Biden. The dachshund stopped barking but kept its lips peeled back from its tiny teeth. She advanced on Biden.
“I’ve been suffering your ... pranks for all this time, and all I needed was a seven-pound dog?”
“You’re a bitch just like my wife! She got what she deserved and if you hadn’t interfered, it would have ended there!” A querulous note was making its way into Biden’s voice. The dog’s body vibrated with a low growl.
“You’ve been making me burn myself, stab myself—”
“I didn’t do that, you did that to yourself, you dumb bitch.”
“You mean me stabbing myself with the knife wasn’t you?”
Biden clearly regretted having shared this information. He waved one of those sea creature-like hands. “It wasn’t—but it could have been.”
“No,” said Ann slowly. “I don’t think it could have. I think you only have one way of bothering me.”
“You’ve cried over what you did to me—I’ve seen you!” hissed Biden.
“I never gave a damn what I did to you, you bastard! I only cared what I let you do to my dog!”
For a moment even the sound of the dog’s growl was silenced. Then Biden said, “You can’t protect yourself forever. And even if you do, I’ll find a way to make you suffer like you made me suffer.”
Ann tucked the dog more securely under her left arm and extended her right out toward Biden.
“What do you think you’re doing?” said Biden, his voice rising a notch.
“I’m seeing what the worst is you can do.”
She reached her hand out toward one of Biden’s and he drew them back, fists clenched.
“You’ll be sorry!”
“I don’t think so,” said Ann calmly, and grabbed his hand.
There wasn’t anything to grab, but she saw her hand move through his and felt that stabbing pain of her clamping muscle. This time, she was ready for it. She pressed her lips into a thin line, resisting the urge to pull her hand back, but then the pain was gone—as was Biden himself. She turned and scanned the room and saw him standing in the hallway to the kitchen, his hands held behind his translucent back, like a boy afraid of having his knuckles rapped with a ruler.
Ann shook her hand to loosen the cramp. “It hurts, but not that much. It wasn’t the pain so much as the shock of it. And not knowing what was causing it. But now I know what’s causing it—nothing but a schoolyard bully.”
“I don’t care. I got my revenge on you.”
“You’re dead. Dead, for Christ’s sake! Is the best you can do for revenge to hang around and make people spill hot coffee on themselves? Every time you come back, I’m going to make it a point to tell whoever will listen to me—and that includes Elizabeth’s parents and your mother and father, especially your father—that this is the best you can do, this is the grand revenge you are exacting.”
As she spoke, Biden seemed to shrink from her the way he had shrunk from the dog—folding in on himself, becoming dimmer with each word.
“If you can’t surprise me, you can’t scare me. And,” she said, gesturing to the dog still tucked under her arm, “I have an early warning system. And you don’t have any weapon that you can use against it.”
She began to laugh at the absurdity of it all and, as she did, Biden Firth melted into the sunlight streaming in through the window, leaving her and her canine defender alone in the cabin.
*****
Ann went to look for the dog bone she had dropped, but the dachshund found it first, dragging it under the dining room table and working on it for quite some time. The dog’s stomach was noticeably plumper when it emerged from under the table.
“Good heavens, what a little pig you are,” said Ann fondly. “You must need something to wash that down with.”
She reached for Beau’s water bowl, but then changed her mind—it seemed disloyal to use his bowl for another dog. She reached for a Pyrex measuring cup that was staged behind the water bowl on the counter and, just as she was lifting it free, the dachshund gave a sharp, imperious bark. Ann’s hand jerked and the measuring cup caught the edge of Beau’s water bowl.
The water bowl slid to the edge of the counter and had started its tip toward the floor when Ann’s hand shot out and grabbed it. In the process she fumbled the measuring cup which dropped to the counter on its side and was rolling toward the edge when she grabbed it with her other hand. The dachshund gave a happy bark.
She placed the measuring cup carefully back on the counter and filled the water bowl with trembling hands. She put the bowl on the floor and the dachshund crossed to it and lapped delicately at the water. Ann glanced down at her hands, expecting an injury of some kind—a cut from a break in the Pyrex she hadn’t noticed, a jammed finger—but there was nothing. She bent down and stroked the dog’s sleek fur, then crossed to the screen door and looked out to where Beau had disappeared into the woods with his new master.
“Good boy,” she whispered.
Chapter 52
The old man took a sip of caffè doppio from a fine china cup. A pressed linen napkin muffled any rattles as he replaced it on the saucer. A copy of Corriere della Sera, featuring a story about the discovery of a lost masterwork in the state of Maine in the United States, was spread before him, lit in the dark room by a huge chandelier. The chandelier had been a challenge to recover, the buyer difficult to track down and, when located, determined to drive a hard bargain. It had been one of the last pieces the old man had had to recover to return the villa to its former glory. To have had his family home survive the bombings and the invasion, only to be lost when his father had to start selling its contents to save the villa itself—it had been a bitter pill to swallow.
La Signora was one of the last items to reclaim, and it had been by far the trickiest. He was in New York City waiting for his ship to sail after delivering the painting to Signore Furness when he heard of the fire that had consumed Jardin d’Eden. At his father’s telegraphed instructions, he returned to Mount Desert Island. The custode, Pritchard, stuck to his claim that everything had burned with the house, but he himself spoke to the boy who, according to the pretty young maid, was so taken with the painting. He understood little of what the boy said, but something about his behavior made him suspicious. The local man he hired to make inquiries in town did uncover rumors of odd behavior on the part of the Lynam family. On the other hand, a number of the people to whom his informatore spoke suggested that odd behavior was the norm for the Lynams.
He returned to Italy and to his father’s bitter disappointment, but he was not convinced the quest was at an end. The years went by, and he followed the life of the Lynam boy as best he could from the other side of the world. He learned that Lynam had married the pretty maid, and he sent her a letter suggesting that information about the painting could prove remunerative to the family, but never heard back from her.
More years passed and he learned that Lynam and the pretty maid had had a daughter, Ellen. The child grew to an adult and eventually he sent off a letter to her—similar to the one he had sent to her mother decades before—with little hope of receiving a response. However, a few weeks later he received a letter that briefly reignited his hope.
Ellen Lynam believed the painting had survived the fire, that her father had rescued it and had hidden it away for all these years. She asked the old man for his email address, but instead he sent her by express mail a phone number and calling card. When she called, he told her what he was willing to pay for the painting. It was not as much as he would have paid had it been for sale through legitimate channels, and, considering she was selling a stolen artwork, he had the leverage to force a lower price. However, it was a considerable amount
of money—he was too old to be dickering over a few tens of thousands of euros. Miss Lynam jumped at his offer.
She told him that her father had never revealed the location to her, but he had told her brother, Loring—how could he have missed the fact that there had been a son with the same name? The son had killed himself that very year—again the old man thought his quest was stymied—but Ellen Lynam seemed to think that death might not put the knowledge of the painting’s location beyond their reach. He scoffed at first, but then began researching the man she thought could help them—Garrick Masser, they all had such strange names—and he began to believe that perhaps the search was not at an end after all.
Ellen was surprised when he told her everything had to be done with the utmost secrecy—wasn’t he just reclaiming a family heirloom? If it had been a family heirloom there would, in fact, have been no need for secrecy on his side, but La Signora was the only one of his family’s possessions that had been a recent addition—an acquisition, albeit a somewhat involuntary one, from a Jew in Turin. His father had been infatuated with the painting. It has been among the last of the possessions he had sold—only retaining the villa itself was more important—and although his father had not been able, physically or emotionally, to accompany La Signora to America when he was finally forced to sell her to Signore Furness, he had sent his son as his emissary. His father instructed him to familiarize himself with La Signora’s new owners and new situation, hoping to improve the family’s chances of reclaiming it when their fortunes improved. If the painting’s provenance was ever discovered, the bleeding hearts would no doubt take it from him.
Ellen was surprised but not averse to his insistence on secrecy until he pointed out that, in the end, no one save herself could remain who knew of the painting’s recovery. She had initially rejected his insistence that Mr. Masser must die, and he had had to proceed carefully, over many months, to convince her that for a man who could so easily bridge the worlds of the living and the dead, his death would be no more traumatic than a relocation to a new country—a country that spoke one’s own language, at that. He sent her those childish books about the boy and the bird, offering up visions of a glorious existence beyond death. And when she began to believe that she would be doing no wrong by killing a man, he sent her the Taser, describing it as a humane way to hurry Mr. Masser to his destination. He didn’t add that it was also the only weapon he could imagine a middle-aged woman using on a man of indeterminate fitness that would not leave messy evidence behind.
And now, according to the newspaper, this woman Ann Kinnear had succeeded in reviving Mr. Masser, in pulling him back from that destination that awaits everyone. These Americans were being hailed as heroes in his own country, and La Signora had been taken by those very meddlers he had spent so much time and effort attempting to circumvent, and was on its way back to Turin.
Now his own final destination was nearing and the quest he had spent the greater part of his life pursuing had proven unachievable. And it was only a matter of time before the polizia or, worse, the giornalisti showed up at the door of the villa, impugning his father’s reputation, digging up history that was best left buried.
Perhaps it would be most humane to hurry himself along to his destination as well, and he had no need to take precautions to avoid some messiness. He pushed himself slowly to his feet, his butler leaping forward to pull his chair back for him, and, the tapping of his cane marking his progress toward his library, he drew the key to his gun case from his vest pocket.
Afterword
Many of you who live on or have visited Mount Desert Island likely recognize the Claremont Hotel as the inspiration for Lynam’s Point Hotel—Lynam’s Point borrows the structure and general layout (minus the restaurant wing) of the Claremont, but relocates it from Southwest Harbor on Somes Sound to the more remote Bartlett Narrows (renamed Lynam Narrows) on the renamed and reconfigured Bartletts Landing Road. But I hasten to add that the Claremont suffers from none of the deterioration that afflicts Lynam’s Point Hotel—Lynam’s Point failed to make the transitions to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as successfully as the Claremont did. Here’s hoping that those in the twenty-second century still get to enjoy the Claremont’s gorgeous views and gracious hospitality—without resorting to murder.
The painting of The Lady is a mash-up of Young Woman with Unicorn (sans unicorn) by Raphael and Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi and Portrait of Eleanor of Toledo and Her Son by Agnolo di Cosimo, known as Bronzino.
Acknowledgements
Many people had a hand in the creation of this story. Special thanks to ...
Sean Cox and Virginia Mellen of the Mount Desert Island Historical Society for their help with researching mid-twentieth-century MDI and specifically the 1947 fire.
Robyn King and Kate Pontbriand of the William Otis Sawtelle Collection and Research Center - National Park Service - Acadia National Park for their help with fire research, especially photos of the park before and after the fire.
Timothy Stanley, Assistant Manager at the Claremont Hotel, for letting me poke around.
David Fried, MD, F.A.C.P. and fellow Dickinson College alum, for his advice on the medical aspects of the story.
Sandra Paoli for the Italian translations.
Paul Richardson of the Bar Harbor Historical Society for his hospitality.
Faithful readers Mary Dalrymple and Lynda Holl for their insightful feedback.
My editor Jen Blood for making sure my craft was seaworthy.
And, as always, special thanks to my partner in crime (plotting) and in life, Wade Walton, for his unflagging support.
Any deviations from historical fact—intentional or unintentional—are solely the responsibility of the author.
Bibliography
Butler, Joyce. Wildfire Loose: The Week Maine Burned. Camden, Maine: Down East Books, 1987. Print.
Dyer, Deborah M. Bar Harbor: A Town Almost Lost. 2008. Print.
H. A. Manning Mt Desert Island City Directory, 1935. ancestry.com.
Hale, Richard Walden, Jr. The Story of Bar Harbor. New York: Ives Washburn, Inc., 1949. Print.
Helfrich, G.W., and Gladys O’Neil. Lost Bar Harbor. Camden, Maine: Down East Books, 1982. Print.
Mount Desert Island Cultural History Project. “Barberry Ledge,” Christine B. Rowell. Mount Desert Island Historical Society. Web. 01 July 2014. http://research.mdihistory.org/BarHarborcottages/BarberryLedge.htm
Vandenbergh, Lydia Bodman, and Earl G. Shuttleworth, Jr. Opulence to Ashes: Bar Harbor’s Gilded Century - 1850-1950. Camden, Maine: Down East Books, 2009. Print.
Williams, Anson R., Margaret Williams as told to Mary Wilkes Haley, “The Big Fire.” Down East Oct. 1962: 14-41. Print.
About the Author
Reviews are the lifeblood of a book—if you enjoyed this Ann Kinnear Suspense Novel, please consider posting a review on Amazon or Goodreads! For every review posted, Matty will donate $1 to the Animal Welfare Institute.
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Matty Dalrymple is the author of the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels--The Sense of Death and The Sense of Reckoning. She lives with her husband, Wade Walton, and their two Labrador Retrievers in Chester County, Pennsylvania, which is the setting for much of the action in The Sense of Death. In the summers they enjoy vacationing on Mt. Desert Island, Maine, where The Sense of Reckoning takes place. Matty’s husband is a pilot and she has logged time in a Piper Warrior, a Cessna 150, and a 1946 Stinson Voyager. She’s considering an aviation-based plot for the third Ann Kinnear book.
Matty is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the Brandywine Valley Writers Group.
Her dream is for a reviewer to compare her books to the Cormoran Strike novels by Robert Galbraith (a.k.a. J. K. Rowling).
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The Ann Kinnear Su
spense Novels
The Sense of Death
The Sense of Reckoning
The Sense of Reckoning Page 25