Last Night, page 6
“Where did he think she was living?” Conor asked.
“In our family home, in Connecticut,” Maddie said. “We still own it and rent it out. She had all her mail sent to our local post office, and Steve, our postmaster, forwarded it here. She hired security for a while. This hotel was the perfect place for her to hide. They’re so discreet here. They take such good care of her. Other than me, they don’t let people up to the suite. If anyone calls, the switchboard operator says there’s no such guest. She only took calls on her mobile.”
“Divorce lawyers follow the money and dig into real estate transactions. He might have hired someone to track her down,” Conor said.
“I don’t know, but I don’t think so. He really is broke. She’s been paying him temporary alimony, but it barely covers his expenses. I doubt he could have afforded to fly out here to visit CeCe.”
“And how did CeCe feel about that?” Conor asked.
“She misses him, I’m sure,” Hadley said, her voice catching in her throat.
Conor and Kate sat there quietly. They all did. Hadley’s heart was pounding. How did CeCe feel about that? Conor had asked. How would CeCe feel when she learned her mother was dead? Was she feeling anything right now? Was she still alive?
“Where is she?” Hadley asked, wrapping her arms around her body as if she could hold herself together, as if she could stop the river of icy worry and grief flooding through her. “Where is CeCe?”
7
Conor could see how troubled Kate felt by everything Hadley had just told them. “What do you think of all that?” she asked Conor when they returned to their room.
“Maddie led a complicated life. Was she really a great artist?” Conor asked. “Or, should I say, was MC?”
Kate stared into the middle distance to think about it. She took her time. Conor knew how discerning she was, how carefully she assessed the art that she represented at the Woodward-Lathrop Gallery and that she saw when they visited museums and other galleries.
“She almost was,” Kate said. “Her paintings were extraordinary. They were technically brilliant. Her brushstrokes were exquisite. As I said to Hadley, her work was poetic. Every painting held worlds of meaning. Secrets and mysteries in each one.”
“What does that mean?” Conor asked, partly because he still, after years with or at least around Kate, didn’t know much about art, but mostly because he loved to hear her talk about it.
“Think of Claire’s shadow boxes,” Kate said.
Claire Beaudry Chase was an artist in Black Hall. She had been the victim of a violent crime, and Conor had worked the case. Much of it was connected to Claire’s work—deep frames separated into compartments, each filled with treasures Claire had found in nature: sea glass, crab claws, fallen leaves, a mouse skull, a shard of old pottery, a silver button. The effect was to give the viewer the feeling they had entered a private world. Kate had told him that together the elements contained the key to the artist’s soul.
“MC’s art is like that—but she does paintings on linen, not shadow boxes. She incorporates dreams, myths, legends, talismans, spells into each one. They’re woven together. Often disparate things you wouldn’t expect to see together.”
“Like a swan riding on a whale?” Conor asked.
“Yes. Hadley mentioned that particular image. It’s one of the two that took off. They were beautiful, they seemed to be out of a dream, and they captured people’s imaginations.”
“The whale and swan,” Conor said. “And the upside-down tiger? Like the one Hadley showed us, embroidered inside Maddie’s coat sleeve?”
“Yes, exactly. MC became a phenomenon, and you can’t imagine how unheard of that is, in the world of serious art. To bypass the gallery world on the way to a larger marketplace. Andy Warhol did it, obviously, with soup cans and images of Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. Georgia O’Keeffe’s Ladder to the Moon. Jeff Koons’s balloon dogs. Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. Monet’s water lilies have wound up on everything from coffee mugs to mouse pads to shower curtains. Prints that kids hang on dormitory walls. But for a contemporary young artist known for making fine art as opposed to the deliberately mass-produced work of a commercial artist, it doesn’t happen.”
“But it did for Maddie. So . . . to go back to my question, you’re saying she—MC—was great?” Conor asked.
“What I said is, she almost was. There was truly a Georgia O’Keeffe quality to her—the way she used color and light, archetypes and symbols. Her inspiration was the Northeast, not the Southwest. Whaling ships, anchors, breakwaters, swans, ospreys, white church spires filled her work.”
“Sounds like the murals Hadley says she does with Johnny Morrison.”
“Similar elements. All except the tiger. That never fit. What did a jungle cat have to do with the rest of her themes, mostly set in New England?” Kate paused, considering her own question. “She was already larger than life when she just stopped showing. And suddenly she went from exhibits at the best galleries here and in Europe, with whisperings of a major exhibition at the Whitney and the Grand Palais, to front-of-store displays at Target and Walmart and in airport gift shops. And then . . . nothing. She went silent.”
“Hadley explained it, but it still seems strange,” Conor said.
“A letdown,” Kate said. “Everyone wanted to know what she would do next, other than print money for those mass-produced reproductions. And the clothing line and the perfume.” She shook her head. “She had haters, as brilliant people often do. Envy over her financial success, but even more because of her talent. Some claimed her disappearance was a publicity stunt.”
“Maybe she just stepped away. Hadley said she continued to paint but kept it to herself.”
“That is an exciting idea,” Kate said. “If there is a body of work that she’s hidden from the public, I would love to see it.”
Conor kissed her. He could tell by the way she’d talked about MC that she was caught up in the fascination that art held for her. For his part, he was gripped by an investigation he hadn’t been invited to pursue. He put on his snow boots and parka and told Kate he was going to look at the path again. He made sure he had his room key card and left Kate at her laptop. She was searching the archives of ARTnews and Artforum for stories about MC and barely looked up when he left.
As Conor walked through the lobby, he heard other guests talking about the blizzard, calling it a “bombogenesis.” Three feet of snow had already fallen, power was out throughout the region, and with high tide still an hour away, coastal storm-surge flooding was guaranteed. When he stepped outside, he noticed that the neighborhood was dark, but the Ocean House was glowing like a beacon. He told the valet he needed to access his car, and Dermot seemed relieved when Conor said he would do it himself. He went to the parking lot and grabbed his big flashlight.
The weather energized him. In a storm like this, it was all hands on deck for the Connecticut State Police. Whether the roadways were officially closed or not, there were always accidents on the interstate highways and secondary roads. House fires were more prevalent, as people used badly wired space heaters or fireplaces with chimneys that hadn’t been cleaned in years. Cheap landlords kept the thermostats low, and some residents used their gas ovens for heat, with deadly potential for explosions or asphyxiation. Homeless people froze to death.
Head down, Conor trudged along Bluff Avenue into the wind. He thought of how domestic violence calls skyrocketed during blizzards or other severe weather. He considered the possibility that Maddie had been attacked by a partner Hadley was unaware of. In most storm-centric domestics, the violence seemed to erupt when the couple was trapped inside, with no way to escape each other. A partner prone to anger could find any number of reasons to blow up. It could happen anywhere but usually happened inside the home. And clearly Maddie had been outdoors.
Conor had no idea what he’d expected to see here, revisiting the scene where Maddie had been found. The crime-scene tape had, for the most part, been blown down in the gale, but a few scraps of yellow, tied to branches, blew straight out in the wind. The body had been removed; he saw packed sled marks in the snow. He wouldn’t disturb the marked-off section; he knew that once the blizzard abated, investigators would be back to search for more evidence.
Still, he wanted a closer look. Hedges lined both sides of the path, which began at Bluff Avenue and meandered downward toward the ocean. It had some elevation at the road end—Conor estimated about fifty feet above the beach. He could see that the area was somewhat protected from the blowing snow. The thicket to the north abutted private property. He backtracked to a stately stone wall and found the driveway. He cut through it, through thigh-high snow, over to the hedge. He had been right—there was less snow accumulation in the bushes, where the tangled branches had blocked the worst of the snowfall.
The hedges ran from Bluff Avenue all the way down the length of the snow-covered sandy path. They were mostly made up of coastal scrubs, but there were also oak and pine saplings. This was outside the perimeter marked by the police, so he walked slowly toward the beach, shining his flashlight into the gorse, stopping when he drew even with the place where Maddie had lain. That spot was just on the other side of the bushes.
He shouldered his way into the shrubbery, but he didn’t get far before he noticed a small hollow. It was the size and shape of a pup tent, a place where branches had either broken or had never knit together at all. The ground was nearly bare inside, other than a thin layer of snow, but the wind had changed direction, and now the snow was blowing sideways, straight into the hollow.
Lying there were a handful of objects: some grapes, a red glass bulb, a gold ribbon, and a square of flannel. Did these things have anything to do with Maddie or CeCe, or had someone else dropped them? Had they been here long? He reached in, dislodging a clump of snow from a pine bough. It went into his collar, but he barely felt it.
His hand, gloved in black leather, closed around the flannel, and when he pulled it out of the hedge, he saw that it was wrapped around a silver key. The key looked like the kind that went to a safe-deposit box.
Because he was wearing gloves, he wouldn’t be destroying fingerprints. He photographed both items as well as everything else. He made sure to capture the spot where the key and flannel had been. Blowing snow was filling the indentations, covering the entire space. He rang Joe’s number.
“What’s up?” Joe asked.
“I found something,” Conor said. “Might be connected to Maddie, or might not. Can you meet me on the path?”
“Can’t right now,” Joe said. “What have you got?”
“A collection of little objects, including a key.”
“A key to what?”
“I don’t know. The snow’s coming down hard, and this space is a little hard to locate. I’d like to show you. Or I can secure the items for you before they get buried.”
Conor waited for Joe to tell him what to do. The line was silent, and after a minute he realized the call had dropped. He figured cell service had been interrupted by the storm; it usually was along the coast when winds hit these velocities.
His hands were frozen, and snow blew straight into his eyes. He hadn’t heard Joe’s response to his question about whether or not to secure the items, so he did what he would have wanted a colleague to do if the situation were reversed. He removed evidence bags from his jacket pocket—he seemed to never leave home without them—and slipped the key and flannel into them. Then, one by one, he collected the grapes, bulb, and ribbon. When he was finished, he backed out of the small hollow, turned into the wind, and hurried along Bluff Avenue the way he had come.
He walked into the Ocean House and felt instant warmth. The lobby fireplace was going strong. He knew he should head straight upstairs to the room. Take off his boots and jacket, sit down with Kate to go over the notes about Maddie’s case that he had made so far. But the bar, just behind the fireplace, looked awfully inviting.
The barroom was mostly empty. He thought he’d take a seat right there at the bar, text Kate and ask her to come downstairs to join him. But the bartender smiled and nodded his head toward another fireplace. There were three tables with deep leather chairs and a wraparound window seat.
“Hello,” Kate said, smiling. She sat at the window seat, her laptop on the table in front of her. “I was waiting for you. I thought you might come in here.”
Conor didn’t reply. He dropped his jacket on an empty chair, slid next to her, and put his arms around her. He kissed her, glad no one was at the nearby tables.
“Mr. Reid has arrived, so on cue, here’s the Jameson,” the bartender said, placing two glasses of whiskey in front of them.
“Thank you,” he said.
He and Kate clinked glasses and drank. He reached across for his jacket, pulled the evidence bags out, and placed them on the table. The key and fabric scrap were visible through the clear plastic, and the key glinted in the firelight.
“What are they?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I found them under the bushes close to where we found Maddie. I’m not sure whether they were there before or if they were dropped by her or CeCe during the attack.”
“Do you think the killer might have torn the fabric?” she asked.
Conor leaned forward. The bar was cozy and the light was dim, but even so, he could see that the flannel was worn almost threadbare. It had once been pale blue, but it had faded to gray. It was printed with a pattern of tiny white whales, each with a swan balanced on its back.
Conor and Kate were so absorbed by what they were seeing that they hadn’t heard Hadley come up behind them.
“That’s Star,” she said, grabbing the plastic bag. Before Conor could stop her, she pulled out the square of well-worn flannel. Eyes closed, she squeezed it in her hand.
“Hadley, that’s evidence,” Conor said, trying to take it from her. But she held on tight, half turning away to protect it from him getting it.
“Star?” Kate asked.
“All that’s left of CeCe’s baby blanket. She had started to outgrow it, but during the separation, when everything was so tense, she needed it again. She took it everywhere, never put it down. To bed, on the plane, to the beach, to school. She wouldn’t let Maddie wash it.” Hadley held it to her face. “It smells like CeCe.”
“I recognize the whales and swans,” Kate said. “MC’s design.”
“Yes, they were printed on baby things,” Hadley said.
“So this means CeCe was definitely with Maddie, there on the path,” Conor said. He had assumed it—everyone had—but this discovery made the theory more likely to be true.
“It means she saw her mother killed,” Hadley said, her voice rising.
Conor was silent. He thought Hadley was probably right.
Kate turned her laptop slightly so that Hadley and Conor could see the screen. She had her browser open to an article with photographs of Maddie’s paintings. The largest showed a detail of one titled The Whale and the Swan. It depicted a white whale with a swan on its back. In this context, it was possible to see that the creatures were flying through the night sky, surrounded by constellations.
“Is this why CeCe called her blanket Star?” Kate asked.
“Yes, exactly. Maddie was so inspired by nature, and she was very precise about the things she painted. The constellation you see here is Cygnus—the Swan. It’s visible from our childhood home in summer and fall, and it was Maddie’s favorite. Deneb is one of the brightest stars in the sky . . .”
“Deneb is in Cygnus?” Kate asked.
“Yes. It is the most distant first-magnitude star that we can see from Earth. There’s so much meaning to it, especially for me and Maddie. We grew up loving astronomy, oceanography, anything to do with nature. We dreamed of having an observatory and a marine biology lab.”
“Sister dreams,” Kate said quietly. “I had them with Beth.”
Hadley nodded, as if she knew exactly what Kate meant, as if sister dreams were part of their language.
“We took sailing lessons,” Hadley continued. “And our parents let us take a semester at sea, on a schooner out of Woods Hole. We did whale research. Our cruise track took us into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and we studied humpback whales—feeding behaviors and migratory routes. We filled sketchbooks with watercolors of everything we saw, especially the whales. We learned celestial navigation.”
“To steer by the stars,” Conor said, thinking of his brother Tom and how, even though Tom was a commander in the United States Coast Guard and had the most sophisticated navigational equipment on his ships, he still knew how to use a sextant, how to shoot sun lines and navigate by the stars.
“Yes,” Hadley said. “We loved the Summer Triangle—an imaginary triangle in the sky with three stars as defining vertices. Deneb is one; Altair and Vega are the others. Maddie claimed Deneb as her favorite. Mine was Vega, in the constellation of Lyra.”
“Who was the third in the triangle?” Kate asked.
“A friend we met on the schooner,” Hadley said. “A girl from Maine. Her star was Altair, from the constellation Aquila.” She folded her arms across her chest. She was still wearing the black cashmere coat she had put on in the suite upstairs, and the soft wool shimmered in the firelight.
Conor had done plenty of profiling in his day, and he recognized her arm crossing as a self-protective gesture indicating she wanted to end the conversation.
“Was that Genevieve Dickinson?” Kate asked.
“How do you know about her?” Hadley asked, sounding shocked.
“I read about the lawsuit,” Kate said, gesturing at the laptop.
“The suit was completely unfounded,” Hadley said.
“But Maddie settled it,” Kate said.
Conor had no idea what they were talking about, but he paid attention to Hadley’s body language, and he saw her pupils enlarge with what he knew from countless interrogations to be rage.
