Last Night, page 14
Maddie had felt so attacked by the lawsuit. Genevieve had brought suit in the Cookes’ home state because that was where Maddie had been living when the image had become famous and Maddie had begun making her fortune.
Each time there was a deposition or hearing, Maddie would fly east, and Hadley would pick her up at the airport. Hadley had to juggle her work deadlines, but being with Maddie, being able to support her throughout the long ordeal, had been what mattered to her.
Sometimes Maddie would leave CeCe at home with Bernard and the nanny, but when she brought her along to Connecticut, Hadley would babysit her while Maddie went to the law offices alone. CeCe had been two years old when the lawsuit started. At that time, the family was still spending much of the year in France.
“Aunt Adley,” CeCe had said when she was about three, dropping her H the way her father did, with his heavy French accent. “What we doin’ today?”
“I have to pick up some paint at the hardware store,” Hadley had said. “Then a quick trip to the garage because there’s a funny noise in the engine.”
“Broken?” CeCe had asked, her brow furrowed.
“Maybe,” Hadley had said. “But don’t worry, sweetheart. They can fix it.”
“I fix it for you,” CeCe had said.
“You will?” Hadley had asked.
“Yes, I want to ’elp.”
“Oh, I love you. Thank you.”
“I love you, Auntie.”
Hadley had gone about her errands with CeCe, and she felt that spending her days with her niece was the most wonderful thing in the world. CeCe was always great company, curious about everything Hadley was doing, full of fun and humor. Although Hadley had had boyfriends, there had been no one she’d considered having a child with. But being with CeCe had made her wish she had a daughter.
After a while, CeCe lost her semi-French accent, and Hadley missed it. She loved every stage of CeCe’s development. She almost wished that the lawsuit would go on for years longer, because as long as it lasted, CeCe would be making frequent trips to the Northeast with Maddie.
When the judge eventually ruled in Maddie’s favor, the flights east became less frequent. Maddie, Bernard, and CeCe would occasionally visit for a weekend, a holiday, or a vacation in Newport or on Martha’s Vineyard. Occasionally they would stay in Black Hall. But those times when Hadley would have CeCe to herself were different. Babysitting was only for a dinner or a tennis match, not for the long days when Maddie had been tied up in legal hell.
Hadley knew that many women had babies without partners, and she often dreamed of holding a baby, of raising a child. She knew those dreams were signs from the interior that she longed to be a mother. But the problem was, she loved CeCe. How could any love match what she had for her niece? She had even talked about it with Maddie, because her sister was always worried about her, sad that she was so alone.
“Being an aunt is enough for me,” Hadley had said.
“It’s not the same,” Maddie had said.
“Maybe not, but I can’t imagine loving anyone as much as I do CeCe.”
“Well, and she loves you, too.”
That much? Hadley had wondered. Did CeCe know that Hadley’s world revolved around her and Maddie? That Hadley would do anything for them? Hadley laughed at herself, knowing how sad it was for a forty-year-old woman to be basing her life around her sister and niece, but she honestly didn’t feel deprived. She just felt lucky to have the connection with them. Boyfriends came and went. She sometimes wondered if it could be love, but so far nothing had felt right.
“I just wish you lived closer,” Hadley would say to Maddie.
“So do I,” Maddie would say.
And then, once Maddie had decided to leave Bernard, that wish came closer to being a reality.
“I’m moving back to New England,” Maddie had said after filing for divorce. “I’ve found an amazing place—a suite in the Ocean House just became available. They almost never do. It’s absolutely gorgeous, and I’m going to jump on it. Hadley, it’s close to you and far away from him. I can’t take it anymore. He doesn’t trust me. He is constantly telling me how much he loves me, but you know what? He acts like he owns me. He wants to keep me and CeCe to himself.”
“But I know he does love you,” Hadley had said. “Isn’t there a way for you to let him know you feel constrained?”
“Controlled is more like it.”
“Well, however you put it. How can he bear to lose you, Maddie? And CeCe?”
“He won’t lose his daughter—I won’t keep her from him. But I can’t live with him anymore. He is jealous of everyone, even you.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Is it?” Maddie had asked. “Sometimes I think you are a little like him.”
“What?” Hadley had asked, stunned.
“Obsessed.”
“In what way?”
“With CeCe,” Maddie had said. “You’re a wonderful aunt, but every so often I think you wish you were her mother.”
“Maddie, that is so nuts. I can’t believe you would even say it.”
“We can tell each other everything, can’t we?” Maddie had asked.
“Yes, except that you think I’m a psycho aunt!”
Maddie had laughed, and Hadley had, too, but her heart wasn’t in it. Maddie had just said something that cut her to the quick, partly because there was truth in it.
Now those words of Maddie’s echoed in her mind: We can tell each other everything, can’t we? Hadley listened to Genevieve’s message again. And again, she wondered if it was possible that Genevieve and Maddie really had found a way back to being friends. And if so, if Maddie could tell Hadley everything, why hadn’t she told her that?
Hadley stared at her phone, trying to decide whether to call Genevieve back or not. In the end, she dialed the number, but Genevieve didn’t answer. Hadley got her voice mail, and she didn’t leave a message.
23
Conor and Tom sat in Tom’s truck, heat going, eyes on Zane Garson’s house. The morning sun was up, veiled with thin clouds. It was still so cold that none of the snow or ice was melting. Conor had called Joe Harrigan, wanting to alert him about the key’s connection to the Garsons, but Joe had been too busy to talk for long. He was meeting with a special agent of the FBI, and later he would head to the office of the medical examiner to attend Maddie’s autopsy, something homicide detectives regularly did.
“Do you feel left out?” Tom asked.
“Yeah. I can’t help it,” Conor said. “It’s weird to be on the outside. To be even more invested right off the bat than in most murders, considering Kate and I were right there when Hadley found Maddie’s body.”
“I mean, you’re still involved,” Tom said.
“Of course. I can’t let it go. This might sound morbid, but I mind not being at the autopsy.”
“How would that help?” Tom asked.
“It would give me a better understanding of the way Maddie died.”
“Well, gunshot wound, right?” Tom asked.
“Yes, but being there when the coroner does his exam would show me the bullet’s trajectory. The wound itself, the damage done. It would help me figure out where the shooter stood, how tall he was in relation to Maddie. Whether there were defensive wounds. Did she try to fight him off?”
“You say ‘he,’” Tom said.
“He or she,” Conor said. “We don’t know yet.”
“What else?” Tom asked. The whole time the brothers were talking, they faced forward, toward the Garson house, not looking at each other.
“How close was the shooter? If it was a planned meeting, which it seems to have been, Maddie must have known the person. Was there contact between them? Any injury other than the bullet wound?”
“You saw the bullet wound, right?”
“Yes. In the center of her forehead. Her face was intact . . . which means she was shot from the front. She saw her killer, looked right at him. But the autopsy will reveal more.”
“That’s one part of the investigation I wouldn’t mind skipping,” Tom said.
Conor thought of other cases he had worked. How, early in his career, he had hated going to the autopsy suite. But how, over time, he had come to value it, even need it. It was a way of accompanying the victim through this stage of death, of the body being cut open, taken apart, organs removed. He did it for the families, too. No one dreams of such a thing happening to them, or to someone they love. An autopsy is an invasion, an indignity beyond the murder itself.
“If you were Harrigan, would you be trying to get a warrant to search Garson’s house?” Tom asked.
“I’d want to, but probable cause is thin. This is mostly a hunch—thanks to you,” Conor said. “There is absolutely no real evidence that the flotation key chain belongs to him.”
“Except it does,” Tom said.
“The G?”
“Yes, and the lobster buoys. Check them out,” Tom said, pointing toward a shack on the wharf. Lobster traps were stacked high beside it. Blue bait barrels lined the dock. Gulls perched on the shack’s roof, facing into the wind. In spite of the sun, the frigid air kept the snowdrifts from melting. Protruding from a drift were several foam buoys that must have been mounded underneath.
They were red-and-white striped, large versions of the key fob.
“You think they’re marked with a G?” Conor asked.
“Could be,” Tom said. “They might also be imprinted with the number of Garson’s lobstering license.”
“Let’s take a look,” Conor said.
The Reid brothers got out of the truck and walked through ice-crusted snow to the dock. Conor glanced at Zane’s house, where smoke rose from the chimney, and wondered if father and son were watching.
“Think we’re making them nervous?” Tom asked.
“If they’re guilty,” Conor said.
“I would have said Zane might be, except for the fact he was busy trying not to die in a sinking boat,” Tom said. “But I can’t see the kid being involved. What is he, fourteen, fifteen?”
“Sounds about right,” Conor said. “Are you sure the timeline works out that way for Zane? Could he have killed Maddie, then gone out on his boat?”
“Well, he would have left from this dock,” Tom said. “It’s not far to where he began taking on water, but the conditions would have slowed him considerably. So I don’t see how he could have done it. Do you have a time of death?”
“Hard to be precise,” Conor said. “Because the air temperature and snow would have slowed decomposition. From talking to Isabel, the desk clerk at the hotel, it seems Maddie went out somewhere between one and two hours before Hadley found her.”
“We’d have to know that before saying Zane could or couldn’t have done it,” Tom said.
“How would Zane even know Maddie?” Conor asked. “She’s not local, so she probably wouldn’t have known him from before. Something tells me he’s not a regular at the Ocean House.”
“You never know,” Tom said. “We both see a lot of odd couples in our work.”
Conor knew that was true. Friendship, attraction, employment, and mutual need brought unlikely people together.
“Could she have hired him to do something for her?” Tom asked.
“Like what? She’s staying at the nicest hotel I’ve ever been in. Seems to me they tend to their guests’ every need.”
“I don’t know,” Tom said. “Just thinking out loud.”
They stood at the ramshackle building, looking at the pile of lobster buoys. They were mostly covered by the snowbank, but Conor could see the stripes and numbers on a few of them.
“Are we standing on the Garsons’ property?” Conor asked. “Because I really want to turn one of those buoys and see if there’s an initial on it. Just to prod him, if nothing else. He’s definitely watching us.”
“The dock belongs to the town, but obviously Garson owns the equipment,” Tom said.
“Technically, this is trespassing, but I’m going to relax the standards,” Conor said, reaching into the snowbank and pulling out a buoy. It was marked with the letter G, just like the key fob.
“Well, that answers that,” Tom said.
Conor glanced over at the house. No sign of Zane storming out the door. “I’m a little surprised there’s no reaction. He seems like the excitable type.”
“You’re right,” Tom said. “He doesn’t take kindly to trespassing, which he considers disrespect. Lobstermen are notoriously territorial. Once the Santos clan dropped some pots in the Garsons’ area, and he cut their lines. Seventy-five traps lost on the bottom of the ocean—still catching lobsters, with no way to haul them.”
“What did Santos do?” Conor asked.
“Shot up one of the Garsons’ trucks.”
“That’s serious.”
“And Zane returned the favor, with a twelve-gauge.”
“Lobster wars?” Conor asked.
“Macho wars. They see each other at the Magellan Club and don’t speak. Grub Garson’s girlfriend’s family owns a lobster restaurant down the road from the Coast Guard station. One night the power went out, and the generator didn’t switch on, and a hundred pounds of claw and tail meat spoiled. Turns out, the generator had been disabled.”
“Santos did it?” Conor said.
“That was the rumor,” Tom said. “No proof.”
And then the house door opened, and Zane came walking toward them. Conor would have expected him to be scowling with anger at the sight of him and Tom, but instead he had a big smile on his face.
“Guys,” he said, “you wanted to look at my buoys, all you had to do was ask.”
Conor and Tom watched him approach.
“You like them?” Zane asked. “My father and his father before him used the same red-and-white stripes. In fact, c’mon inside. I’ll show you some old Garson buoys. I got ’em hanging on the wall, kind of like a museum of Garson family history.” He pulled some keys from his pocket and moved toward the door to the shack.
“Hey, do you mind showing me that?” Conor asked, gesturing at the key ring.
“Hey, anything for the commander and his brother,” Zane said, handing Conor his key ring: brass, in the shape of an anchor.
“Don’t you use a floating one?” Conor asked. “What if you drop it overboard?”
“Then it would be bye-bye keys,” Zane said.
“Because I keep thinking about that foam fob that was found in Watch Hill. It sure looked a lot like these lobster buoys of yours,” Conor said.
“Any tourist can buy that shit at the souvenir shops around here. Probably came from one of them. Now, come inside and take a look,” Zane said, kicking snow away from the door and sticking the key in the lock.
“Take a look at what?” Tom asked.
“In here,” Zane said. “I’ll show you the origins. The family secrets to our success. The reason why we rule the fleet. C’mon, Commander. This is my office, ha ha. Did you know one of my great-uncles was in the Coast Guard? Stationed around the corner, right at the lighthouse, like you. I’ve got his picture. And his sidearm! It’s the coolest, a family heirloom.”
Conor knew Zane seemed eager to show them some family artifacts, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t hiding something. He might have wanted to distract the Reids from whatever his son was doing at the house. If this building was Zane’s sanctuary, there would be clues to what motivated him. And that motivation could be connected to Maddie and CeCe.
Tom glanced at Conor, and they followed Zane inside. But Conor stayed by the door, where he could keep an eye on the door to the house and the vehicles parked out front.
24
The suite where Maddie and CeCe had been living was so full of their presence that it felt as if they could come back at any minute. The Ocean House staff had put up a Christmas tree for them, decorated it with sand dollars, scallop shells, a starfish on top, and strands of white lights. Wrapped packages, including the ones Hadley had brought, were strewn beneath the branches. Hadley sat on the love seat by the fire, looking at tiny lights twinkling on the tree, hearing waves crash on the beach, feeling numb.
Someone knocked at the door, and she ran to answer it. Kate stood in the hall, dressed for the outdoors.
“What is it?” Kate asked at the sight of Hadley’s face.
“I just thought . . . ,” Hadley said, with the sense she was coming out of a dream.
“I think I know,” Kate said. She put her arm around Hadley, and they walked into the living room.
“No, it’s too crazy,” Hadley said.
“You thought it was your sister at the door,” Kate said.
Hadley felt startled to hear Kate put it into words.
“I used to think that about Beth,” Kate said. “My sister and I were so close, and after she died, I wanted so badly to believe she was coming back that I would hear and see her everywhere. If the doorbell rang, for one incredibly wonderful moment, I would think it was her.”
“That’s it,” Hadley said. “I thought it was Maddie.”
“You wanted it to be. When someone rings the bell, or when the phone buzzes, I still want it to be Beth.”
“Could you tell me about her?” Hadley asked.
“Of course,” Kate said. “Nothing makes me happier than talking about Beth.” She paused for a few seconds. “She was my younger sister. We had a secret language—one word, one look, was all it took. We could practically read each other’s thoughts. We worked together, running our family’s gallery, together all the time.”
“Gallery?” Hadley asked.
“Yes, an art gallery—it used to be our grandmother’s, and we took it over after she died. That’s how I know Maddie’s work. And why I want to know more about yours.”
“Maddie was so sought after by galleries,” Hadley said. “Not me. I paint on walls. It’s more commercial.” Hadley felt uncomfortable talking about what she did with someone who was obviously so sophisticated about the world of art that she’d always wanted to enter yet felt it was closed to her.
