Last Night, page 23
“Have you checked your news app?” Conor asked, interrupting him.
“No, why?” Tom asked. “Did you identify the body at the Park & Ride?”
“It’s about CeCe,” Conor said. “Tom, she’s been found.”
Tom let the words sink in. He felt choked up; he heard it in his brother’s voice, too.
“Come to the hotel,” Conor said. “The police are bringing her here now.”
“On my way,” Tom said.
41
Hadley stood outside, in front of the Ocean House, waiting. Joe Harrigan had called her right away, told her that they would be there in twenty minutes. He had phoned and texted Bernard, too, but Bernard hadn’t responded.
She wore her parka. The wind was bitter and blew up the hill, off the harbor on one side and the ocean on the other, but she didn’t feel it. She faced north, in the direction the police car would come. She listened as hard as she could, wondering if they would speed up with sirens going. She felt they should. To announce this moment, to commemorate it, to clear the way of slow traffic so they could get here faster.
Her arms ached because of who she hadn’t been able to hold. She tensed them now, hugging the air. She stared at the hotel’s grand portico, the white columns and graceful porch railings, the holiday greenery and red ribbons, the little white lights starting to come on as darkness fell. She looked at the shingled houses where Bluff Avenue met Plimpton Road and curved northward into Westerly Road. Her gaze ranged back and forth from one road to the other, knowing that any minute she would see the car.
She strained to hear, was distracted by the howl of the wind, so much so that she almost missed it: the dark-blue car coming fast and silently, headlights on, no flashing strobes, no sirens. She walked straight into the road, pulled to it like a magnet, before realizing she was in its way. She stepped aside, then ran alongside it until it pulled into the Ocean House’s circular drive.
Dermot, the bellman, stood ready. The front desk staff had stepped outside and were ranged in a half circle at the top of the stairs. Hadley didn’t see any of them. She was lost in this moment, with the darkening sky and the tiny white lights and the car stopping, its brake lights glowing red and CeCe inside.
Joe Harrigan got out of the driver’s seat. A policewoman Hadley didn’t recognize opened the back door and climbed out. She held the door open, and the little girl slid across the seat. The policewoman held out her hand to help CeCe out of the car, but it was as if she wasn’t even there.
CeCe just launched herself out of the back seat as if she could fly, straight into Hadley’s arms. Hadley lifted her up, held her and rocked her, whispered her name over and over.
“Aunt Hadley,” CeCe said, her breath warm against Hadley’s ear.
“It’s me,” Hadley said. “And you’re here.”
“The yellow hotel,” CeCe said. “I’ve been trying to get back here for so long, for days and days and nights. I don’t know how many.”
“Too many,” Hadley said. She reached into her pocket, pressed the little piece of flannel into CeCe’s hand.
“Oh, Star,” CeCe whispered, holding it to her cheek. She tilted her head back, just enough to look up toward the porch and front door, at the greenery, the garlands, the wreaths, the Christmas lights.
“Millions of lights,” CeCe said.
“Yes,” Hadley said.
“Can we go to our room?” CeCe asked, clutching Star.
Hadley nodded. She put CeCe down. CeCe took her hand, and together they walked up the stairs. The hotel staff surrounded them, but at first no one said a word. They just stepped aside so Hadley and CeCe could walk through. The silence felt holy. But then they began to clap and cheer.
When CeCe saw Isabel, she stopped to give her a long look. “Mommy’s friend,” CeCe said.
“I’m your friend, too,” Isabel said. “I’m so glad you’re home.” Then she leaned down to kiss the top of CeCe’s head.
Hadley felt CeCe tug her hand, and they kept going—through the lobby, past the Christmas trees decorated with lights and starfish, to the elevator. CeCe pushed the button. When they got to their floor, she ran ahead of Hadley to the suite’s door, danced in place while Hadley pulled out the key card and touched it to the sensor.
CeCe shoved the door open and burst inside. She tore down the short corridor into the living room, then into all the bedrooms, calling at the top of her lungs: “Mommy, Mommy! Where are you? I’m home! Mommy, I’m home!”
42
Conor had come to realize that crime created unlikely, even impossible, families. There were the victims’ blood relatives, of course, but the dead also acquired another branch of the family tree: the investigators, the people who came to know them without ever having met them, and to care about their lives, their deaths, their hopes and dreams that would never come true. Conor felt that way about all the victims whose murders he had investigated.
When he and Kate had knelt beside Maddie’s body, they had signed on. Her death had made him care about the life of Madeleine Cooke Morrison and her daughter, Cecelia, just as if they were members of his own family. He saw CeCe as Maddie’s greatest hope personified, and he knew he would do everything he could to care for and nurture all the dreams CeCe would have that Maddie no longer could.
The morning after CeCe came back, he and Kate sat in the suite with her and Hadley. Since CeCe had returned last night, she was inseparable from her aunt. She clung to Hadley, not letting go for a moment. When Conor and Kate stopped in to see her after breakfast, he heard her slip up and call Hadley Mommy twice before correcting herself and saying “Aunt Hadley.”
Conor knew it was a trauma reaction. Victims of violent crime internalized and expressed their experiences in different ways. Some remembered the entire thing, every sense on high alert. Others blocked out what they had gone through, unable to bring up any aspect of it. He suspected that CeCe’s loss of her mother was too horrible to accept, and that Hadley’s resemblance to Maddie comforted her and allowed her to have moments of respite.
Through it all, Bernard was missing in action. Hadley had told Conor that her brother-in-law had been out of control, his anger so frightening that she was actually glad he hadn’t come back. Law enforcement was looking for him—and not because he had disappeared without paying his hotel bill. He was still high on the list of suspects who might have hired Ronnie to kill Maddie.
Kate stayed with Hadley and CeCe while Conor walked to the beach path to think about the case. Joe met him there and told him that Zane wasn’t saying anything, but Ronnie had said he was a hired killer and immediately confessed to shooting Maddie.
“Why did Ronnie do it?” Conor asked.
“His father told him to.”
“Isn’t that taking being an obedient son a little too far?”
“His father told him it would make him proud. He said they were going to get rich, that Ronnie would get all the credit for that. They’d have a decent house. They could fix up the boat, the dock. They could pay their crew. He said Grub would be proud of Ronnie, too. Ronnie thought he’d be the family hero.”
“Where was the money coming from?”
“That, Ronnie didn’t know,” Joe said. “He said some lady was paying it.”
“Ronnie didn’t know the lady?” Conor asked.
“That part is unclear, even to Ronnie. He said his father told him she was ‘a friend’ and that she and Grub had made the deal. But Zane never told Ronnie her name.”
“How much money?”
“Ronnie says he doesn’t know, just that it’s ‘a lot,’” Joe said. “I can’t decide what makes more sense. That the person who paid for Maddie to be murdered was a Garson friend or acquaintance, or whether she was a semi-stranger who zeroed in on the Garsons because of their reputations. Anyone local would know that they’re not exactly the most law-abiding folks around.”
“I think the first scenario is more likely,” Conor said. “That whoever set this up knew exactly who she was dealing with.”
“So someone from the Garsons’ inner circle,” Joe said.
“Yes. Have you gone back to Elise?”
“Yeah,” Joe said. “She still claims to know nothing—can’t even help us find Grub.”
“She sounded pretty done with him,” Conor said.
“Someone called to warn him, though,” Joe said. “He left the Magellan Club fast, disappeared after he got the call. My money is on her.”
Conor nodded. Love and denial in the world of murder. “Does this mean Lafond is off the list?”
“Of course not—he could have used a woman as a go-between. We’re still curious about Genevieve and her relationship with him. Any word on the parking lot victim’s dental records?” Joe asked.
“Not yet,” Conor said. “Waiting to hear.”
“Okay. Anyway, Lafond’s not using his credit cards. We pinged his phone, and nothing. It’s off. Either he lost it or ditched it. Or someone got to him, and he’s a victim, too. LAPD is sending a detective to question his assistant—not just to find out what she knows about his whereabouts but also because she’s a woman. Maybe she did the hiring.”
“That’s good,” Conor said. “What about the Garsons’ crowd? What other women are there besides Elise?”
“Endless possibilities,” Joe said. “There is a big network of extended family and friends—the Garsons’ lobster fleet at the center, spreading out to the Binnacle, and who knows from there. But who would want Maddie killed and would benefit from her death? Who would even know her?”
“Worlds collide,” Conor said. Murder never made sense. But in some cases, connections seemed logical, at least in retrospect, and the intersection between the victim and the killer was easy to trace. Then there were other cases in which everything seemed random, and previous meetings didn’t exist.
“Could this whole thing have snowballed since she and CeCe moved to Watch Hill?” Joe asked. “She pissed off the wrong person? Is this about the pregnancy?”
“I think it’s about her art,” Conor said. Given what Tom had discovered on Zane Garson’s boat, Conor believed that they held the key to her murder.
“Why kill her? Why not just rob the storage unit?” Joe asked.
Conor didn’t have the answer. He had looked at the photos Kate had taken of Maddie’s painting Last Night. Now, standing on the beach path on a sunny morning, it was still possible to conjure up a vision of Maddie in the blizzard. Kate had been right—the painting had been predictive. It was as if Maddie had dreamed her own death, right down to the bloom of red, the gush of her lifeblood.
A phone buzzed. They both checked their devices, but it was a message for Conor.
“Wow,” he said, staring at his screen.
“What?” Joe asked.
“It’s from my office. They just got an ID on our Park & Ride victim.”
“Genevieve Dickinson?” Joe asked.
“No, Donna Almeida. The paralegal who worked with Maddie’s lawyer,” Conor said.
43
When Conor spoke with Hadley about Donna, she told him that Johnny sounded wild with grief and rage. She said she felt it over the phone when she called him. She wanted to drive straight to Providence to help him through the shock of losing Donna, but she couldn’t bear to leave her niece. CeCe wouldn’t let her out of her sight.
Conor and Kate waited in the Sea Garden suite’s living room until CeCe finally drifted off to sleep in the bedroom. Hadley joined them, and they talked quietly, so as not to disturb CeCe.
“Will you go up to Providence?” Hadley asked Conor. “Johnny shouldn’t be alone, and even though you two don’t know each other, you’re so invested in the case. I know he’ll be grateful to talk to you. The murders have to be related, don’t you think?”
“It seems as if Maddie is the connection,” Conor said, “considering Donna worked on her estate.” He didn’t add that of course he would be going to see Johnny, and not as a family friend.
“And she was seeing Maddie’s ex-husband,” Kate said.
“I haven’t said anything about this,” Hadley said. “But that day in the storage unit, Donna was watching me when I opened Maddie’s desk. I almost felt like she knew I was going to find that receipt from Genevieve. Kate, she told us she’d never been there before, but what if she had?”
“She could have planted it,” Kate said.
“That occurred to me,” Hadley said.
“Everything about that receipt feels fake,” Kate said. “It’s printed, not handwritten, no signature. If I didn’t know from experience that Donna’s law firm has engaged in shady business practices, I wouldn’t be so suspicious.”
“Stealing valuables from a client’s house or failing to include them in the inventory the way they did with your artist is bad,” Conor said. “But it’s a leap from that to forging a document assigning a seven-figure amount to be paid to Genevieve Dickinson. Is your theory that Donna—or others at the law firm—and Genevieve are working together?”
“Why not?” Kate asked. “Makes sense to me.”
“How would they have connected? How would Maddie’s lawyers have known to get in touch with someone out of her past?” Hadley asked.
“Because of the lawsuit,” Kate said. “When the law firm took on Maddie as a client, they would have investigated her whole financial profile, as well as past legal actions. If they were inclined to steal from Maddie, what better way than to require her estate to pay out a million dollars? Besides, didn’t Donna act surprised when you said Genevieve had reached out to you? She had heard about her.”
Hadley nodded. “That’s right, she did.”
“If Maddie were still alive,” Conor said, “she would figure it all out—she’d know they forged a document.”
“So she had to be killed,” Kate said. “The thing is, how did they rope Ronnie into it? How did they even get to him?”
Obviously through his father, Conor thought. But what was Donna’s connection to Zane? To the Garsons? He pictured Zane’s boat, tricked out with shelves to hold artwork. Was the plan that part of the payment would be made in Maddie’s artwork?
“Hadley,” Conor said, “when you went through Maddie’s storage space, were there any missing paintings?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “I don’t know what was there before.”
Conor wondered if Donna could have stolen works before she opened the unit to Hadley and Kate. Because who would miss them? Even if there was an inventory list, Donna could have destroyed it. Zane might have already received paintings as partial payment for killing Maddie.
“Oh my God,” Hadley said. “You asked about how they got to Ronnie. That night at my studio, when I first met Donna, she told me her family owns the Binnacle.”
“Where Zane and Grub sell their lobsters and hang out,” Conor said, the connection falling into place. “And where Grub’s girlfriend works. Donna obviously knows the Garsons—she’s related to Elise.”
“Even if that is the case, how did they approach Genevieve?” Hadley asked. “It seems crazy that they would suggest to a total stranger that they become partners in stealing from Maddie Morrison.”
“What if Genevieve went to them?” Kate asked.
“How would she know they represented Maddie?” Hadley asked.
“Because she’s obsessed with Maddie,” Kate said. “Remember how Bernard said she showed up to work on his film set? She engineered that—to be near Maddie, to torment her. Maybe she’s gotten good at hacking, or maybe she has other ways . . .”
As a cop, Conor had access to databases that provided details about a person’s private banking, legal dealings, employment information. Certain versions were available to the general public. It just took money; anyone could subscribe to the services, including Genevieve.
“Why was she coming here?” Hadley asked. “If she was involved, I’d think she would want to stay as far away as possible. To keep from being suspected. Why would she call me?”
“Because of her obsession,” Kate said. “She wouldn’t have been able to stop herself from being close to the action surrounding Maddie’s death.”
Conor watched the reality hit Hadley. She closed her eyes, and he thought he saw her shiver. He didn’t blame her. Obsession could be deadly. He had seen it in cases before, including in the murder of Kate’s sister.
“Genevieve didn’t just want to take everything from Maddie in that lawsuit,” Hadley said. “She wanted to be Maddie.”
“I think we should go look at Last Night again,” Kate said. “Maddie’s last painting.”
“Why?” Hadley asked, but Kate didn’t answer. She had a thoughtful, faraway look in her eyes.
“Something else,” Conor said. “We know that Maddie’s safe-deposit box is at the BSNE office in Hartford, and I’m pretty sure Joe’s gotten a court order to have it opened by now. He’s got the key. We should find out what was in there. I’ll check with him. Maybe there’s something that will help with all this.”
“Thanks,” Hadley said. Conor watched her turn away and knew how overwhelmed she must be.
He left the Ocean House to head up to Providence. Hadley had given him the addresses for both Johnny’s home and the warehouse where she and he shared a studio. Conor found him at the studio. The freight elevator creaked its way upstairs, and when Conor stepped into the vast space, he was greeted by Johnny. Conor introduced himself as a Connecticut State Police detective who was investigating Donna’s death.
“Hadley told me you were coming,” Johnny said. “I just can’t believe this. Donna’s dead. She’s the nicest, best, most caring person. No enemies, just people who love her.”
“When did you last see her?” Conor asked.
“Last week,” Johnny said.
“And the last time you talked?”
“A few days ago.”
“Was that unusual?” Conor asked. “To go days without talking?”
“No,” Johnny said. “She lived in West Hartford, Connecticut, a town away from her office. I’ve been working on a project that’s taking all my time. Hadley and I have a commission to do a large mural in Charleston, and she’s just not available—for good reason.”
