She stared at the familiar nocturne. Summer leaves cast shadows on a black lawn, the filmy light from above illuminating the graceful girl twirling in front of the great stone house.
“Moonlight,” Conor said.
41
Reid’s heart was racing—this painting hadn’t been stolen by art thieves. Its existence in the gallery was evidence that someone close to home had placed it here. Reid had mostly ruled Jed out. Although Harris was intelligent, or at least had been before he’d pickled himself, and capable of violence against Beth and stealing the painting, why would he hide the artwork here? It had to be Pete.
“Who had the key?” Reid asked.
Kate acted as if she hadn’t heard him. She leaned over, face practically touching the painting, as if she was examining every brushstroke.
“Beth,” she said after a minute. Without looking up, she tried to hand him the key. He didn’t touch it. He pulled a clear plastic evidence bag from his pocket and had her drop it in.
He felt the weight of the odd, square-shaped key. “How long have you had this?” he asked, trying not to sound frustrated.
“A few weeks. It was in Beth’s desk.”
“Would Pete have hidden it there?”
“No,” Kate said. “He didn’t even know it existed. It was in a box I gave her, along with a sketch, beneath a false bottom. I had no idea it was there until that day I came back here with you.”
“Then how did Moonlight get locked in here?”
“Beth. She stole it herself,” Kate said in a flat voice. She sounded hypnotized.
Why would Beth steal her own painting? Pete staging a theft made sense, but not Beth. What was she trying to accomplish? Finding Moonlight was the most significant part of the case in weeks, and Reid knew he had to get it to the lab. But he was still overwhelmed by how Kate had acted upstairs. She’d gone into a fugue state when he’d tried to kiss her, and she’d led him down into the basement like a sleepwalker.
Standing at the workbench, thinking about the wood engraver, she’d come out of the trance. But once the bottle of wine had broken, the spell had overcome her again, and she had gone straight to the metal door and unlocked it. Had she known the painting would be there? Had she experienced a waking dream?
Did Kate’s actions, like Lady Macbeth’s, reveal a guilt-ridden mind? He stared at her, wondering if he’d been blind all along. He went back to that first day, at the house when she’d discovered Beth’s body and asked if she was a suspect. Had she killed her sister and hidden the painting here? The thoughts rattled his bones.
“Kate, why would Beth steal it from herself?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“She couldn’t have put it here after she died,” he said.
“Then maybe before. I don’t know,” she said. She turned away from him, held her head in her hands, leaving him to stare at the painting. He knew that the initial examination should be done by a state police lab technician, perhaps with the help of an art conservator, but he put on latex gloves and turned it over anyway.
On the back of the canvas was a rust-colored drawing in the shape of a heart. It looked as if it had been made with blood. At the very bottom was a small smudge, barely a dot.
Kate glanced back, over her shoulder, and fixed her gaze on the heart. She stood beside him, staring down, reaching out with a trembling hand. He felt her wanting to trace the lines with her finger, but she didn’t.
Perhaps the blood—he was pretty sure that’s what it was—belonged to the artist who had painted Moonlight a century ago, but Reid didn’t think so. He believed that heart was the signature of whoever had cut the canvas free just months earlier, in July, leaving the blank frame on the wall of Beth Lathrop’s bedroom, within sight of her body.
42
Driving toward Mathilda’s, Kate needed to clear her head.
Images from the gallery came back to her in quick bursts, starting with the brook painting and poem. She felt as if Beth had been with her, guiding her. She saw herself staring at the pole, touching the wooden surface, hearing a bottle smash, following the red liquid, feeling the heavy key in her hand, unlocking the beehive oven, hearing the creak of metal hinges.
She couldn’t remember finding the painting inside, but she had definite, clear memories of seeing Conor hold it in his hands. She could see the heart-shaped scrawl of blood. It reminded her of being sixteen, when she, Beth, Lulu, and Scotty had become blood sisters, pricking their fingers with sewing needles, marking the moment in blood on the endpaper of a book in Mathilda’s library.
It always happened this way after an episode. Pictures and memories filled her mind in bits and pieces, as if they had been chopped up with scissors. Dissociation was followed by an aura, cloudiness, and sickness, physiological complications of traumatic shock. Twenty-three years ago, the murky feeling could last for weeks. But more than two decades had gone by, and she had gotten better; her spirit had knit back together. She knew from experience, even though she doubted it every time, that this feeling would pass within the day.
The Porsche passed through the stone gates, tires rumbling up the long gravel drive to Mathilda’s house. An allée of beech trees lined the road, their trunks tall blue shadows, September leaves still green but dry, rustling in the interlocking branches overhead. Rounding the last bend, she almost wished to see Pete’s black car. She wanted a fight, to discharge the terrible, sick feeling that had been building inside, that always came when she got too close to those twenty-two hours, when her mind blacked out the worst of them and she felt the vertigo of lost time.
But Pete either wasn’t here or he had hidden his car. Kate’s stomach ached at the idea of seeing Nicola, and she felt it was a mistake, bad judgment, to let her and Tyler stay here. Popcorn jumped out of the convertible and went running out of sight to investigate the paths and hedges. Kate rang the doorbell; a minute later, Nicola answered.
“Kate, hello,” Nicola said, taking a step backward and looking worried. “Pete’s not here.”
“Good, I’m glad. I’m not here to see him.”
“I’ve been looking for a place to rent; I really have,” Nicola said. “If you’re here to tell me it’s time to go, Tyler and I can stay with my mother in Groton.”
“You’ve had Pete staying with you, haven’t you?” Kate asked.
“He shows up sometimes.”
Kate gave her a long hard stare. “And you don’t have the balls to tell him to leave?”
“I’m sorry!” Nicola said.
“You should be. For yourself and for Tyler. Where is he, by the way?”
“Sleeping,” she said.
“Can I see him?” Kate asked, surprising herself.
Nicola nodded. She was about five feet four inches, the same height as Beth. Following her, looking at her from behind, Kate felt a pang in her heart. She wanted her sister back. Nicola wore shorts and a white T-shirt, and she was barefoot.
Tyler slept in a blue baby seat in the shade on the wide back porch, his chin tucked onto his chest, arms at his side. His yellow onesie had an orange lion on it. Kate crouched down beside him. She closed her eyes and thought of Matthew. She leaned closer, smelled Tyler’s clean baby smell of shampoo and lotion and sleep. When she opened her eyes, she saw that his had fluttered open, and he was looking straight at her.