Last Day (16 page)

She began her descent, and the clear blue gave way to dark gray. Clouds boiled around the jet, but she’d left the thunderheads over Fairfield County. No lightning in eastern Connecticut, just rain and the first storm gusts blowing in. After one stomach-dropping bump, she touched down at Groton-New London.

“That was special,” Charlie said.

Kate laughed. Taxiing from the runway to the terminal, she was surprised to see Conor’s car parked outside the anchor fence, windshield wipers going. They hadn’t made plans to meet. The ground crew rolled stairs to the port side, and Jenny, the flight attendant, opened the jet door. Kate adjusted her uniform jacket, tucked stray tendrils of hair up into her French twist, and exited the cockpit.

Jeremy and Peyton Pratt were regulars. He was a Hollywood producer, and she was a documentary director. They owned houses in
Watch Hill, Rhode Island, and Brentwood, California, and they chartered jets at least twice a month, always requesting Kate as their captain.

“I’m sorry about the bumpy ride,” she said, greeting them in the cabin. It was lined with cream leather seats and polished exotic woods, a haven for the rich customers who flew Intrepid.

“Well, you can’t control the weather,” Jeremy said.

“Kate, do you have a minute?” Peyton asked.

“Sure, what is it?”

“Kate. I’ve known you a long time. I can only imagine what you’re going through, losing your sister. I’ll cut right to the chase. I want to make a documentary of her case.”

Kate paused, taken aback. “Thank you, Peyton, but no. We don’t need to relive this.”

“I understand,” Peyton said. “The whole thing must bring back the trauma of when you were young.” She paused, waiting for Kate’s reaction. “Being tied up all night. Your mother’s death—oh my God.”

Kate stared at her, stone faced.

“For Beth to have survived that experience and then to die in such a violent way. I just can’t tell you how affected I feel. This will not be a sensational, ripped-from-the-headlines, crime-of-the-week production.”

“Kate, Peyton knows what she is doing,” Jeremy said. “She will have your family’s interest at heart.”

“It will be an in-depth study of Beth,” Peyton said. “The fact she ran the very gallery where the defining moment of her life occurred: the trauma in the basement.”

“The defining moment?” Kate asked, thinking of all the shimmering, beautiful moments of Beth’s life. Love had defined her, not tragedy.

“Can we schedule an on-camera interview?” Peyton asked.

“No,” Kate said. It was all she could manage. She couldn’t even fake a smile as she turned her back. She heard the Pratts mutter as they gathered their belongings. She barely made it to the head before throwing up.

Her body remembered everything from those hours when the Andersons had tied them up in the basement. Retching over the toilet, she could feel her chafed wrists, bound to Beth’s and their mother’s. The weight of their mother’s body, slumping over, pulling at the ropes. Beth stiff, shaking uncontrollably and leaning into Kate for as much comfort as she could give.

Beth had spoken gibberish through the cotton gag.

“Beth, I’m here,” Kate had tried to say, choking on the cloth they’d stuffed into her mouth behind the strip of duct tape. She struggled like a madwoman to get free, but the harder she pulled, the tighter the ropes felt. She had known her mother was unconscious, but as time went by, her body grew cold, and the unthinkable hit Kate: her mother was dead. Yanking violently, she knocked her mother’s body over on her side so that both she and Beth were trapped beneath her. Beth screamed behind the gag. Kate had stroked Beth’s wrist with her thumb, trying to signal her to calm down, to stop fighting. She had been terrified that Beth would choke too.

“Hey, Kate.”

In the plane on the tarmac, she heard Conor’s voice now. He’d climbed the gangway and stood in the cabin. She washed her mouth out with water, spit into the sink, wiped her lips. Glancing in the mirror, she saw her eyes red rimmed and wet with tears she hadn’t even realized she’d cried. Stepping into the cabin, she saw him standing there, watching her.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She started to nod yes, but instead she shook her head no. He put his arm around her, sat beside her on the wide leather sofa along the starboard bulkhead.

“Those passengers who just got off? The woman wants to make a documentary of my ‘sister’s case,’” Kate said. “Is that how you see her—as a ‘case’?”

“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 pen 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?”