The Perfect Summer (Hubbard's Point) (31 page)

“No,” Dan said. “I was actually a little late. I had stopped by Bay's house—”

“Bay?”

“That's me,” Bay said. “Bay McCabe. I live in Black Hall. The Hubbard's Point area.”

The look of recognition was unmistakable. Both detectives registered the name; realizing that “McCabe” was probably notorious to law enforcement agencies from Black Hall to Westerly and beyond, Bay felt herself blush.

“My daughter is Eliza's friend, and she told us that Eliza had tried to call her at about four forty-five. When Annie picked up, the phone was dead, but caller ID registered this number. That worried Annie, and she told us—”

“Why would that specifically ‘worry' Annie?” Detective Rivera asked. “Maybe Eliza changed her mind; maybe something came on TV that she wanted to see, or—”

“But she wasn't here, when we arrived,” Dan said, a thread of panic beneath his trying-to-be-patient demeanor. “That's the point. No matter what distracted her, she's not here.”

“What I'm asking,” the detective said calmly, “is there a reason that her friend would instantly worry? Something about Eliza that would put her at risk?”

Dan took a breath, exhaling long and hard, and Bay knew how devastatingly hard this was for him, to lay Eliza's life and history out for these strangers to see.

“She's very sensitive,” he said. “Her mother died last year, and Eliza has had a very hard time with it.”

The detectives were silent, waiting. Bay could see him trying to gather his thoughts, not wanting to betray his daughter by revealing anything too private. But Bay saw compassion in their eyes.

“We know this is difficult, Mr. Connolly,” Detective Keller said. “Please tell us what you can.”

“Tell them, Danny,” Bay said, encouraging him, staring into his eyes as he turned to look at her. “So they can find Eliza.”

“She's been hospitalized,” Dan said. “At Banquo, in Massachusetts. It's a psychiatric hospital . . .”

“Yes, a very good one,” Detective Rivera said kindly.

“She witnessed her mother's accident,” Dan said. “And she was traumatized. She's been diagnosed with P.T.S.D. and D.I.D.”

“Dissociative Identity Disorder,” Detective Keller said. “Does she have multiple personalities?”

“No. But she dissociates. Just shuts down and goes inside . . . She's very imaginative. Once she thought—” he stopped, looking toward the stairs, then at Bay. “Once in October she thought she heard strangers—‘evil people,' she called them—at her window. Saying that her mother wanted her. I checked—”

“What did you find?”

Danny shook his head. “Nothing. Scratches on the window screen—but they were made by tree branches.”

“Which window?” Detective Rivera asked.

“Her bedroom,” he said. “Upstairs, on the left. The window just beside her bed.”

The detective gestured for one of the uniformed officers to go up and check.

“Has she ever run away before?”

Dan shook his head. “The opposite. She's very cautious about going out. She talks about wanting to live in a cloister. Home is her favorite place to be, except for going to Hubbard's Point to see Annie.”

“Is it possible she is on her way over there now?”

“No, she would need a ride.”

“Might she have decided she needs to go back to the hospital?” Detective Keller asked. “And made her way up there?”

“No. She would have told me,” Dan said.

“Kids have secrets from their parents,” Detective Rivera said. “It's nothing personal, it's just a fact of life. Could she be seeing someone you don't want her to see? Or could there be drugs?”

“No,” Dan said. “To both. Eliza is very . . . very special. She's fragile; she doesn't go out after school. Getting her to even
go
to school is hard. That's one reason,” he glanced at Bay, “I've been so grateful for her friendship with Annie.”

“Drugs?” Keller asked again.

“No,” he said.

“I hate to ask you this,” Rivera said. “Because I know it will cause you pain to hear it, but—has Eliza ever talked about or attempted suicide?”

At that, Bay saw Dan clasp his hands, staring down at them for a long time. Bay pictured the scars she had seen on Eliza's wrists, and she knew there were many more she hadn't seen.

“She has,” Dan said, his voice strangled. “She began to talk about it after her mother's death.”

“So it's possible,” Detective Rivera said gently, but with urgency, “that she might be thinking of it now.”

“I don't know,” Dan said. “I . . . It's possible.”

Detective Rivera nodded, and she stood up and walked into the hall, where Bay heard her talking to the two police officers. Detective Keller leaned forward. “Has she ever mentioned ways she would do it?”

Dan shook his head. “She cuts herself,” he said quietly.

“Oh . . . I'm sorry.”

“I told her if she did it again, I'd send her back to the hospital,” he said, and his eyes filled with tears. “She's so beautiful. She has such incredible beauty, inside and out, and she wants to mutilate herself. She thinks she's ugly . . . and her mother's death left her so full of pain, she has to let it out.”

“We'll find her,” Detective Keller said.

But it was as if her words meant nothing, carried no weight. As Bay watched Dan hold in the silent sobs, she felt him thinking that his daughter had already been lost, or taken from him, in so many important ways; that her grief was so heavy, that it was dragging her down somewhere he could never reach. Bay reached for his hand and held it.

When Detective Rivera walked back into the room, she had a different look on her face: sharp, edgy, and galvanized. Joe Holmes accompanied her. Detective Keller looked up, alert to his presence and Rivera's change of attitude. Police radios crackled in the hallway.

“I got the word,” Joe said.

“If someone came to the door, would Eliza open it?” Detective Rivera asked.

“I hope not; I don't think so,” Dan said. “Unless she knew them. Why?”

“Have you had any plumbing repairs recently? Any heating system breakdowns?”

“No,” Dan said, standing up, catching the sense of something new in the room. Bay heard the police in the hallway calling for the forensics squad. “What are you talking about?”

“The officers found duct tape outside, in the bushes. Do you know how it could have gotten there?”

“No, I don't.”

“Do you own any?” Joe asked.

“At the shop, in New London,” he said. “Not here.”

“Exactly what did you find when you walked into your house,” Detective Rivera asked sharply, “that was different, unexpected?”

“The door was unlocked,” Dan said. “The phone was off the hook. Eliza had started eating, but not finished.”

“And the cup, Dan,” Bay reminded him.

“Right—and her silver cup is missing.”

“Her silver cup?”

“It's priceless, almost. Paul Revere made it; it plays a part in a state legend, almost like the Charter Oak. It belongs in a museum, but her mother gave it to her, and Eliza won't let it leave the house.”

“And the cup was here when you left for work this morning?”

Dan shrugged. “I don't know. I assume so. It reminded both me and Eliza so much of Charlie—her mother—that we've left it in the cupboard all this time. I haven't even looked at it—Eliza either, as far as I know—since just before Charlie died.”

“Describe the cup,” Detective Rivera said, writing it down.

“You think someone took it?” Dan asked, growing agitated. “That's what happened?”

“We're not sure,” the detective replied. “But the duct tape makes us think someone might have taken your daughter.”

TARA HELD DOWN THE FORT WITH THE KIDS, WHILE BAY
stayed with Dan Connolly and tried to help him from going crazy. Tara could only imagine. A lifetime, so far—and, at a little past forty, looking like forever—of not having kids left her wondering what true parenthood must be like. She experienced the blessings of faux parenthood . . . even faux aunthood . . . through her relationship with Bay and her kids.

Tara had loved Annie, Billy, and Pegeen (but secretly, especially, her goddaughter Annie) since their births. She had helped Bay nurse them through colic, chicken pox, poison ivy, jellyfish stings. Many nights, baby-sitting, she would rock them back to sleep after nightmares.

But at the end of the day—or night—she always got to go home. Kiss the children good-bye, close the door behind her, and enter her own single paradise of solitude, pedicures, and a secret passion for reruns of
I Dream of Jeannie.

But that didn't keep her from empathizing to the point of heartache with Danny right now. She loved Bay's kids so much, it was as if she had children herself. She couldn't imagine what he was going through, and she was so glad he had Bay there with him.

It made her long for Joe. But with Eliza missing, and the hours ticking by without word, she knew he was right where he belonged: at Dan Connolly's house in Mystic.

And she was really glad she'd been the one to call him in.

31

I
T WAS PROBABLY ALMOST MIDNIGHT NOW.

Although there were no windows or clocks in the back of the van, although she hadn't worn a watch, Eliza could feel the time passing and sensed that it was very late, and that they had stopped moving.

Why were they keeping her alive?

Her face felt sore and swollen, from where she had fallen, and she couldn't stop touching her broken front teeth with her tongue. She nearly cried every time she thought of her chipped teeth, but her mouth was covered with duct tape, and crying made her gag, so she held back the tears. She knew she was lucky to still be alive.

She prayed all night long. Deep in the darkness, she had felt her mother with her, in the van that had killed her, wrapping Eliza in her arms, in her angel wings, to keep her warm. She was sure that if her mother hadn't come, she would already be dead. Her mother was keeping the murderers from killing her.

Her mother was saving her life, and from that Eliza discovered within herself a huge, overriding desire to live. Now that she was faced with terror, she knew she had to get out of it alive. She would do
anything
to survive this and see them all brought to justice.

Suddenly, the thought of suicide seemed terrible, selfish, and frivolous—as alien to her spirit as anything she could imagine. Eliza wanted to live, and she prayed to God that she could make it.

DAN CONNOLLY HAD EXPERIENCED HEARTACHE, GRIEF,
and terror before. His parents had been good, kind people, and they had both died too young. Charlie's death had left him feeling like a specter, a lost soul. And he had been desperately worried about Eliza since then. But nothing compared to what he felt now, as if he had been ripped apart, limbs torn off his body by wild animals. He thought he understood the idea of shark attack, in slow motion.

Eliza was his baby. She was part of him and he was part of her. He had held her in the moment of her birth—first Charlie, then him. From the instant he'd seen her face, looked into her eyes, Dan had been locked into the kind of love that never quit, that had him for life, that regardless of the responsibility and intensity, he wouldn't change for anything.

The police came and went: Detectives Rivera and Keller, members of their squad, and forensics experts, as well as Joe Holmes. Throughout the night, various bits of information came through: the duct tape had been part of a lot sold to the maintenance department at Shoreline Bank.

No unknown fingerprints had turned up on the house's doorknob or porch railings, but Joe seemed to believe that the scratches on Eliza's screen hadn't been made by branches at all, but by a knife trying to pry apart the frame. He thought the tree had been used to get up on the roof, and the police were combing the area for any clue that might still be left behind.

Bay stayed right by Dan's side.

“You must want to get home,” he said, checking his watch at eleven-thirty.

“I'm not leaving,” she said.

Their eyes met and held. He saw in hers all the care and affection she'd had for him all those years ago, but clouded now with pain. She put her arms around him and he buried his head in her shoulder, feeling that he was holding on to her for dear life.

“Think of this, Dan—how strong she is. How much she's been through already. And how much you love her—she knows that.”

“Do you think she does?”

“I know she does,” Bay said, still holding him. “You're the most important person in her world.”

“Her mother used to be,” Dan said. As he said those words, he imagined yet again Eliza seeing Charlie get hit by that van, and he flinched. The trauma had nearly killed his little girl—how could he expect her to withstand whatever she was going through right now?

Bay didn't respond, but kept her arms around him, gently stroking the back of his head.

“She loved Charlie so much,” Dan said. “Her mother never let her down. God, I can't help thinking that this wouldn't be happening if I had been more together myself these past few years. Charlie was so steady—she never stepped off the path, did anything wrong. She was just so upstanding, with such integrity. And Eliza saw her that way. She never—”

“Eliza
didn't
see her that way,” Bay said, releasing Dan, stepping back. Her voice was angry, her eyes filled with tears.

“What do you mean? Yes, she did. She—”

“NO, Dan,” Bay said, a sob ripping from her chest. “She didn't! She didn't see her mother that way at ALL!”

The police were all over the first floor, so Dan took Bay's hand and led her upstairs into his bedroom, the room he'd shared with Charlie. He led her to the edge of the bed, and they sat down together, Bay crying heavily. Now it was Dan's turn to hold her, his right arm around her slender shoulders, his left hand trying to tilt her chin up, to get her to look him in the eyes.

“Tell me, Bay. Please.”

“I'm sorry, Dan,” she cried. “I shouldn't have said anything. Not tonight, at least . . .”

“Well, it's too late for that. You might as well finish what you started. What were you trying to say about Eliza and her mother?”

“Eliza didn't idolize Charlie. She didn't see her as someone with integrity at all.”

“Bay, she did.”

“NO, Dan. She didn't. She saw her mother kissing Sean!”

“What?”

“She saw Charlie kissing my husband. They thought she was asleep in the back seat of the car.”

“Eliza told you this?” Dan asked. He felt numb, cold inside.

“No. She told Annie.”

“And Annie told you.”

“Yes. That's supposed to be how it works. The child turns to the parent for love and comfort—not deception and betrayal! I'm sorry, Dan, but I hate her. I hate her for kissing Sean, for letting Eliza see, for making you—” She stopped short.

“Tell me,” he whispered, holding Bay even tighter now, his mouth against her hair. “Please tell me what you were going to say.”

“For making you feel you were doing something wrong,” she said, with such wrenching sobs her whole body shook. “For making you feel you weren't enough. That you weren't making her happy. That if only you found that magical combination, if only you could guess the words she wanted to hear, the place she wanted to go . . . if only you touched her the way she wanted to be touched . . .”

Dan knew that Bay was talking about herself and her own husband, but he related to every word, took it in and processed it through his heart and soul, and knew that she and he had been in the same place, at least during that last year, and not even known it.

“I'm sorry he did that to you,” Dan said. “Sean . . .”

“And I'm sorry Charlie did it to you.”

“How did I not figure it out? Why didn't Eliza say something?”

“You didn't figure it out,” Bay said, her voice raw, “because you trust. You love with your whole heart and mind.”

“I do,” he said, looking down at the top of her head, at her golden red hair glinting in the cold November light, wishing she'd look up into his eyes.

“And Eliza didn't say anything because she didn't want you to be hurt more than you already were. The kids have protected me more than I can stand to know.”

“Do you know when it happened?”

Bay shook her head. “Not long before Charlie died, is the impression I have. You can ask Eliza.”

What if he never had the chance?

Bay saw the pain in his eyes and shook her head. “Don't think that,” she said, and with tears streaking her face and mouth, she reached up to touch the side of his face, slid her hand around the back of his neck, and kissed him on the lips.

The kiss was wild and alive, life-giving and miraculous. Dan clutched Bay with every ounce of strength he had, feeling her hands on his back, sliding up under his sweater as if she had to touch his skin, had to get as close as possible to his heart and blood and bones.

When they walked back downstairs, they found Joe Holmes in the dining room. As he heard them enter the room, he pointed at the wooden china cupboard. “Is this where Eliza's silver cup was stored?” he asked.

“Yes,” Dan said. “I told Detective Rivera—the cup was made by Paul Revere. It belongs in a museum. Is that why they, whoever, took Eliza?”

“It could have been bought at Walmart,” Joe said grimly. “The value had nothing to do with who made it, how old it is.”

“What do you mean?” Dan asked. “Of course it does. Why else risk, justify, taking a child? What else could explain—”

Joe shook his head; he seemed impatient, but his eyes were bright.

“The cup is connected to her disappearance,” he said. “It's connected. But it's incidental.”

“How is it connected?”

“We've known since the night of the Pumpkin Ball who we were after,” he said, staring at Bay. “Tara helped me figure it out. We were at the Bolands' house, looking at all his trophies, and she said that he and Sean might well have played sports against each other.”

“They grew up in different parts of the state,” Bay said. “Mark lived here on the shoreline; Sean only summered here. He grew up in New Britain. The schools were in different leagues.”

“Yes,” Joe said. “Except for the state championships.”

“The time it counts most,” Dan said.

“Basketball, their senior year,” Joe said. “Their teams made it to the state finals, Gampel Pavilion at UConn. Mark Boland and Sean McCabe, head to head on the court. We went back and read the old clippings.”

“Is Mark the other inside man?” Bay cried. “Did Sean talk him into embezzling from clients, too?”

Joe shook his head. “It was the other way around,” he said. “Boland had been doing it for years at Anchor Trust, and he'd never gotten caught. Never left any hint of a paper trail. Not one complaint, not even a suspicion. He was very, very good at covering his tracks—the forensic accountants are just starting to uncover them now. He arrived at Shoreline, and turned the whole thing into a game.”

“With Sean?” Bay asked, looking shocked.

Joe nodded. “A big competition. Like the state finals, all over again.”

Bay thought of all the years she'd watched Sean playing basketball, football, baseball, fighting to the death just to win the game. Why hadn't Sean told her about him and Mark being rivals? Because his anger over the promotion had been too great, she supposed.

“To see who could make the most money,” Danny said.

“Who could conquer the most accounts,” Joe said. “And every time one of them succeeded, there had to be a prize . . .”

“The silver cups,” Bay said.

“Yes, but there was an even bigger prize,” Joe said, reaching into the cupboard, taking out one of Eliza's little blue teacups.

“I don't get it,” Danny said, frowning.

“The accounts,” Joe said. “All the money they stole. There was just one witness who could put them away. Ed.”

“Ed?” Bay asked, remembering the notations on Sean's manila folder, his doodles of the truck and . . .

“I assumed ‘Ed' was a man,” Joe said. “A banker, or maybe a client. I never thought—”

“Eliza,” Bay gasped, her eyes falling on the monogram, so delicately painted on the teacups and teapot:
ED
. “Eliza Day!”

WHO WOULD HAVE EXPECTED THAT THE VALUE OF ONE OF
the trophies would have exceeded some of the other spoils? The Eliza Day trust had come with quite a nice prize: a silver cup forged by Paul Revere. The day Sean had started using the trust as a way to hide and move money, he had taken the cup from the Connolly home. Alise Boland thought again how stupid he had been, as they waited for the tide to rise.

Who knows how he had talked his way in—that was Sean. Perhaps he had seduced Charlotte; or perhaps she thought she was seducing him. And although Charlotte Connolly hadn't caught the shifting of funds in the family trust, she had most certainly noticed that Sean McCabe had stolen her daughter's silver cup.

Ironic, to have an icon from someone so connected with freedom. Because that was what the whole thing had started off to be: a way to get free, to have more, to rise above the rest of the world's worker bees. To take what people wouldn't even miss . . . and hadn't, for so long.

But then Charlotte had threatened to call the police, and just as all that was finally dying down, Fiona had caught Sean's slip with the Ephraim account. Things were falling apart.

If only people had been more careful. No one would have had to die. There could have been ways to avoid this entire nightmare. When everything was considered, a lot of the blame had to go to Fiona. She had never fit in, could never have been invited to join. In fact, wouldn't she be surprised to know that Mark had taken money from her very own money market fund?

That had rated the taking of her horse show trophy.

Sean had laughed at that—been amazed by Mark's audacity. That was more Sean's style. But Sean's daring extended only to sports and money. When he learned that the child had witnessed her mother's murder, was the
only
witness, he folded.

His soul-searching had started with Charlotte's death, and led to a few foolish attempts to pay back some of his smaller raids on various accounts. But it wasn't until the problem of what to do about the girl began to grow . . . until she emerged from the hospital . . . that Sean had really begun to fall apart.