Last Night, page 4
There were lots of shops, and her mother had bought things in them, presents for CeCe. The dark-brown building by the dock was the yacht club. Her mother had said that maybe they would get a sailboat next year and join so they could sail through the harbor and around Sandy Point, and meet people and make friends. But now it was closed for the winter.
“Why are we sitting in the car?” she asked the boy.
“Because we’re waiting for my dad’s boat, and it’s not here yet. And we can’t drive to it. Check it out. I mean, can’t you see the freaking snow? They’d stop us if we drove anywhere. Besides, this piece-of-shit car has shitty tires because we don’t have enough money to fix stuff.”
CeCe closed her eyes tight. After the boy had grabbed her away from her mother and put her in the car, they’d had a scary ride. It wasn’t very far, just down an icy hill, and the car had spun around in a circle, like a ride at the Santa Monica Pier when her father had taken her there on one of his weekends, and the boy had steered the car into the alleyway just behind the row of shops. There were other cars here, too, lumpy under the snow in the dark.
“Nobody is going to see us back here unless you do something dumb,” he said. “Like try to escape.”
How would that be dumb? CeCe wondered. Running away from him would be smart, and she would, but she was afraid to make him even madder.
“Because if you got out of this car, you could die in the snow. They wouldn’t find you till spring. Like your . . .”
CeCe didn’t want to know what he was talking about, but she sort of did anyway, and that thought stabbed her in the heart so hard she wrapped her arms around herself and bent over double in her seat.
“What’s the matter?” he said. “You still crying about your frozen fingers?”
“I didn’t cry about them,” she said.
“It’s not my fault if you got frostbite. I didn’t know you’d be there with your mother. I am going to get in so much trouble.”
She didn’t know what any of that meant.
“You should thank me for going back for you,” he said. “I could have left you there, but I was feeling bad; you’re just a little kid.”
“Who are you?” she asked instead of thanking him. She would never thank him for anything.
“I’m my father’s son,” he said. “And my uncle’s nephew. They taught me, you know? Oh yeah, that’s the truth. I do what they tell me.”
That was a weird thing to say. She gazed at him long and hard. He was skinny, and his dark-blue jacket was dirty, stained with black smudges. There was a patch on his chest embroidered with red script and a lobster. He smelled like fish, or like the beach when it was covered with seaweed. The letters RG were above the lobster.
“Stop staring at me,” he said. “I should’ve blindfolded you. No, forget that—I should have left you there.”
“I thought you had to be a grown-up to drive,” she said. “You don’t look very old.”
“Yeah, well, I’m fifteen,” he said. “So what if it’s not legal? A lot of things aren’t legal. I should know. But don’t think it was my idea!”
What was he talking about? What wasn’t his idea?
“You weren’t supposed to be there,” he said again.
Why did he keep saying it?
“You were supposed to be in the stupid hotel,” he said, banging the palm of his hand hard on the steering wheel. “Waiting for her in your nice warm room. What kind of mother would take her kid out in a blizzard?”
“Don’t say that about her,” she said.
She wouldn’t say another word to him. She curled up in a ball on the seat, trying to stay warm. He kept turning the car on and off. It would heat up, then get cold right away. Every time the car got cold again, he swore. She wondered how long they had been there and how long they would stay there.
“It will be warmer on the boat,” he said.
A boat? In the winter? What was he talking about?
“Once my damn father gets here. Where are your mother’s paintings, anyway? They’re worth a fortune, aren’t they?”
He sounded crazy. Why was he asking about her mother’s paintings? CeCe scrunched down in her seat, leaning against the cold door, as far away from him as possible.
She wanted to reach inside her pocket to hold the key. She kept thinking of how it had been in her mother’s hand. If she could touch the key, it would be as if her mother were in the car with her.
Maybe CeCe had dreamed the bad things. It had been a terrible dream, and it was still going on. An endless dream—she just hadn’t woken up yet. She would wake up and be in their suite in the hotel, with the fireplace burning and a good dinner in her tummy and her mother watching TV on the sofa beside her.
It was night, dark and late, so that meant she really was asleep; her mother never would have let her stay up this late. She didn’t have to be upset, because this wasn’t real. She was in Sea Garden, leaning against her mother by the fire.
But deep down, she knew it wasn’t a dream, no matter how much she wanted it to be. It was something else; she just didn’t know what. At least she was near the yellow hotel, the place she and her mother loved and where they were happy. It was just up the hill. That made her feel better. Her mother wasn’t in her body anymore, under the snow. She was here with CeCe.
She had to be sure she had the key. She wriggled her fingers into her pocket, but it wasn’t there. Her pocket was empty. No snowman decorations, no key, and no Star. She must have dropped them in the snow cave. She thought of Star alone in that horrible place, and she had to bite her fist to keep from making a terrible sound, from wailing louder than the wind.
5
Conor and Kate sat in their room, a peaceful refuge amid the chaos. She had a book open, but he could tell she wasn’t reading it. She was lost in her own visions; he was, too. He wondered if she was seeing Maddie’s body, and if that was giving her flashbacks to finding Beth. He felt a surprising emptiness, stuck in the room while the investigation went on without him. He was in the middle of a crime, with no assigned role to solve it or help. He scrolled through the photos on his phone, the ones he had taken in Maddie’s suite. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but that was always the way in the early hours after a murder.
“Are you okay?” he asked, glancing over at Kate.
“Yes, are you?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She smiled. “We’re both lying.”
“This getaway isn’t turning out the way I’d planned,” he said. He still had the ring in his pocket. Watching her, he had the feeling she might know, or at least suspect it. They never had taken that walk on the beach; they never had gotten to Coast for dinner.
“Coming here was the perfect idea,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to stay in the Ocean House and to be here during a blizzard—I love the wild weather. I mean, you couldn’t have planned it better.”
“Except . . . ,” he said.
“Yes. A young mother being murdered,” she said. She inched closer to him on the love seat. He put his arm around her. He almost wished she would cry so he could comfort her, but except for that quick burst of tears when they’d first returned to the hotel, that wasn’t Kate. She held it all in. Her way was to pull back, harden her shell, shut him out.
“I am glad we are here,” she said. “I wouldn’t trade being here right now for anything.”
He nodded. He knew what she meant.
“We need to be here,” she said. “Hadley needs us. Maddie does . . .”
“I feel that way, too,” Conor said. “But part of me wishes we’d never come. I don’t want to put you through it. Reliving it all. As soon as the roads open, we can check out. We can come back another time.”
“As if you would,” Kate said. “No, we belong here right now. It’s meant to be.”
Meant to be. Was this Kate? Sometimes, during murder investigations, he had heard victims’ families try to make sense of the unthinkable act: if only their mother/daughter/brother/sister/friend had left the house ten minutes later, or if she had never fallen in love with the man who turned out to be her killer, or if the victim had remembered to turn on the house alarm before going to bed. “It must’ve been part of God’s plan,” he had heard the families say. “God needed her in heaven. It was meant to be.”
But not Kate. She wasn’t religious. She was an inveterate pragmatist. She had never sought refuge in what she would consider easy sentiment—she hated it. She was a pilot and owned her own Cessna. She kept it at Westerly State Airport, just five miles from here. She tended to go flying when things got rough—temporary escapes that helped clear her head and push the world away. She relied on her own inner toughness, never platitudes. She wasn’t a “meant to be” kind of person, so the words, coming from her, were alarming.
“You look worried,” she said. “Don’t be; I’m not losing my mind.”
“I don’t think you are,” he said.
“Yes, you do. I can read it in your face.”
That was probably true. They’d been able to do that with each other, almost since the beginning.
“I know you want to protect me from—what did you say?—‘reliving it all.’ I do anyway,” Kate said. “I think about Beth every day. I think about finding her—I see how she looked; I picture her on the bed. That’s not going away.”
Conor felt the same way—not just about Beth but about all the murder victims. He had seen them in death, and to solve their murders, he’d had to get to know them as they had been in life.
“So I don’t want you to protect me, okay? But there is something I want.”
“What’s that?”
“I want you to work the case.”
“We’re in Rhode Island,” he said.
“So what? Just because you’re not assigned to it? It’s still yours.”
“It’s Joe’s.”
“Then what are all those photos on your phone that you keep staring at?”
She had noticed. Kate was an astute observer of life—especially of Conor. Even when she seemed emotionally detached, nothing escaped her. She ran an art gallery, and it wasn’t just a business to her. She saw clues in paintings: about the artists, about the subjects, about the world.
“Just habit,” he said.
“Right,” she said. “Conor, we fell into this. From the minute we followed Hadley to the path. You know why we did, right? We saw something was wrong. The way she ran into the storm—we wanted to make sure she was okay. And she wasn’t.”
“How could she be?”
“Exactly. No one understands what she’s going through more than we do. It doesn’t matter whether this is a Connecticut State Police case or not. You can help her.”
“Joe Harrigan’s a good detective. He’s got a whole team . . .”
Kate shook her head. “It’s different.”
He stared at his phone. She knew how badly he wanted to examine each shot, let the images sift through his brain, come up with questions that might assist with the case.
“Do you think they’re finished questioning Hadley yet?” Kate asked.
“Maybe,” he said, checking his watch.
“And going through the suite?”
“That could take a little longer.”
“Should we go see?” Kate asked.
Conor didn’t want to get in their way, but the answer was yes. “We should. Let’s go see,” he said.
He’d call the front desk and make sure they could keep their room. The hotel had been fully booked, but because of the storm, there had been cancellations, and there was availability. Conor extended the reservation.
He and Kate were going to stay and see this through.
6
Hadley felt the detectives’ eyes on her. The questions they were asking made her feel like a suspect. She knew they were trying to read her, to look beneath the answers she was giving to their questions. Joe Harrigan was the senior detective, Garrett Milne obviously his subordinate. Harrigan sat in the chair opposite Hadley, and Milne stood behind him. Neither of them took notes. She had the feeling that what she said mattered less than how she said it. She was ready to jump out of her skin. All she wanted was for them to get out there and find CeCe.
They asked for the note Maddie had left for her.
“When will I get it back?” Hadley asked, not wanting to let go of it.
“I’m not sure. The lab has to examine it,” Detective Harrigan said.
Before Hadley handed the note to them, she gazed at it long and hard. These were the last words Maddie would ever write to her. She couldn’t stand to hand it over.
“I’m going to take a picture of it, just in case,” she said.
“Of course,” Detective Harrigan said.
She took photos of the front and back. But Maddie had held the actual note in her hand; her pen had touched the paper, this beautiful stationery. Photographs weren’t the same. After a few moments, Hadley let Detective Milne take the note, and the two detectives left.
Just past eleven o’clock that night, the police finished with Maddie’s suite. Martyn, the hotel’s hospitality manager, had sent housekeeping to clean, and by midnight they had helped Hadley move in. Her things were already there, from when she had first arrived. She changed into her pajamas. They were ridiculous—green silk imprinted all over with the face of Tigger, the gray tiger cat she and Maddie had had as children. Maddie had given them to Hadley for Christmas last year. She had sent a picture of Tigger to the pajama company, and they silk-screened it onto the fabric. She had gotten a pair for herself and one for CeCe, too.
When she heard the knock on the door, Hadley went running—she had the quick, insane thought that Maddie had forgotten her key. But it was Kate and Conor, the couple who had walked her back from the path. She saw Kate notice her pajamas.
“From my sister,” she said.
“They’re great,” Kate said.
Hadley felt embarrassed. She opened the coat closet by the front door and reached for Maddie’s long black cashmere dress coat. She pulled it on over the pajamas, tied the belt tight, and turned back to Kate and Conor.
“We were wondering if you’d like some company,” Kate said.
Hadley had thought that was the last thing she wanted, but now she was glad they were here. She nodded and invited them in. They all sat around the fireplace. As soon as Hadley had been allowed back, she’d turned on the gas flame to try to warm up. She had gotten so cold out in the snow that every bit of her was still chilled. Maddie’s soft, warm coat felt good.
“Hadley, I’m a detective with the Connecticut State Police,” Conor said. “I don’t want to intrude, but if there’s any way I can help, I’d like to.”
“I just want to find CeCe,” Hadley said. “Did someone take her? Or what if she’s lost in the snow?”
“The police are searching,” Kate said. “See their lights?”
Hadley looked out the window, and it was true—through the screen of driving snow, the beach was illuminated.
“I’m sure Detective Harrigan went over everything with you,” Conor said. “But maybe something different will come to you. A detail, a memory you might not have thought was important. Do you mind if I ask you some questions?”
“No, if it will help find her,” Hadley said.
“Tell me what you can about the family,” he said.
“No one in the family would hurt her,” she said.
“It’s not to blame anyone,” he said. “It’s just, the more we know about Maddie and CeCe’s background, the better the chance of figuring out who did this.”
“Someone knows the truth,” Kate said. “I don’t want to say I know what you’re going through—no one can—but my sister was murdered. Talking about it was so hard at the beginning; I just wanted it to go away. I wanted to hide from what had happened. But you’d be surprised how the smallest things, the ones you think couldn’t possibly matter at all, can turn out to be incredibly important.”
“Did they find her killer?” Hadley asked.
“Yes,” Kate said. “Conor did.” Hadley saw her glance at him. “He solved the case; it’s how I met him. You can trust him, Hadley.”
Something about the look in Kate’s eyes, the sorrow in her bearing, made Hadley believe it was true. Kate had said she couldn’t know what Hadley was going through, but Hadley thought that maybe she did.
“A good place to start would be CeCe,” Conor said. “Does she have any brothers or sisters?”
“She’s Maddie’s only child,” Hadley said.
“Are Maddie and her father together?”
“No,” Hadley said. “They’re getting divorced.”
“Where is he now?” Conor asked.
“That’s a good question,” Hadley said. “I’ve tried calling and texting him, and I’ve left messages with his office. Now the police have his information, and they’ll follow up.”
“The way you said ‘they’re getting divorced’ . . . ,” Kate said. “Is it contentious?”
Kate’s tone of voice made Hadley believe that she knew something about bad divorces.
“Did you go through one?” Hadley asked.
“No, but my sister had a . . . difficult marriage.”
“So did Maddie. And the divorce is even worse.”
“Where does he live?” Conor asked.
“California,” Hadley said. She wanted to hold on to the next part as long as she could. The minute she said his name, Conor and Kate would see everything differently. The police had. Everyone did. “Her husband is Bernard Lafond.”
She could see on their faces that it registered in a hazy way, a big name from years past. A film star and director with a lifetime of award-winning movies and a long list of lovers and ex-wives.
“I thought he lived in France,” Kate said.
“Well, he’s French, and they have places there, but long ago he decided that Los Angeles was where the work was. The kind he wanted to do, anyway.”
“Is that where Maddie lived before she moved here into the Ocean House?” Conor asked.
