The Black Painting
The Black Painting
Neil Olson
An enthralling well-written mystery for readers who enjoyed The Keeper of Lost Things and The Improbability of Love.A dead body. A family torn apart. Someone is lying.Years ago, a forgotten Goya masterpiece was stolen from Teresa’s family home, a crumbling mansion at Owl’s Point. Ever since, Teresa has stayed away, terrified of the rumours surrounding the Black Painting and the jealous accusations that tore apart her family.Now her grandfather has summoned his descendants back to the mansion to discuss his will, and Teresa knows she has no choice except to return. But when she arrives, she finds the door hanging open and her grandfather dead, his eyes open and staring at the empty space where the Goya once hung.Someone in the family is lying, but will Teresa unravel the mystery of the missing painting before it is too late?
An old-money East Coast family faces the suspicious death of its patriarch and the unsolved theft of a Goya painting rumored to be cursed
There are four cousins in the Morse family: perfect Kenny, the preppy West Coast lawyer; James, the shy but brilliant medical student; his seductive, hard-drinking sister Audrey; and Teresa, youngest and most fragile, haunted by the fear that she has inherited the madness that possessed her father.
Their grandfather summons them to his mansion at Owl’s Point. None of them have visited the family estate since they were children, when a prized painting disappeared: a self-portrait by Goya, rumored to cause madness or death upon viewing. Afterward, the family split apart amid the accusations and suspicions that followed its theft.
Any hope that their grandfather planned to make amends evaporates when Teresa arrives to find the old man dead, his horrified gaze pinned upon the spot where the painting once hung. As the family gathers and suspicions mount, Teresa hopes to find the reasons behind her grandfather’s death and the painting’s loss. But to do so she must uncover ugly family secrets and confront those who would keep them hidden.
A masterful, deftly plotted novel, The Black Painting explores the profound power that art, and the past, hold over our lives.
NEIL OLSON is the author of The Icon, a novel of art theft and family intrigue, and the play Dealers. He lives in New York City with his wife and works in the publishing industry.
Also by Neil Olson
The Icon
Copyright (#u8de205d9-4585-5c78-b904-58472c628699)
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Neil Olson 2016
Neil Olson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9781474070584
Advance praise for
The Black Painting
“The volatility of memory, the treacherous crucible of family lore, and the myths and mysteries of Goya’s Black Paintings all come hypnotically together in Neil Olson’s outstanding novel. With taut, confident prose and breathless plotting, Olson leads us through a dark and dazzling kaleidoscope of a story. Here is a writer to watch.”
—Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife and Circling the Sun
“You’ll need extra coffee in the morning because The Black Painting is going to keep you up reading way too late! A well-crafted psychological thriller with an intricate plot and first-rate characters, this deluxe suspense literally bursts with surprises.”
—M.J. Rose, author of The Reincarnationist
“Neil Olson’s The Black Painting is an expertly confected, delicious mystery/thriller, and also a deeper study of the family romance, with echoes of Cheever’s ‘Goodbye, My Brother.’”
—Madison Smartt Bell, author of Behind the Moon and National Book Award finalist for All Souls’ Rising
For my mother, Rose
Contents
Cover (#ub26ecb71-97af-54eb-9fa1-7dcaf0f43b9a)
Back Cover Text (#u7148ba86-d947-5e48-8df6-bb55d6de2d96)
About the Author (#ud6c720db-4554-5d58-9b33-86ee5eecd37f)
Also by Neil Olson (#u76903329-a37f-5612-bcdb-aa8305452085)
Title Page (#u5ec11b6d-aa6e-5b9d-b8c9-218daf9ee3a1)
Copyright (#u47e3ad40-24b1-5a84-ae48-ab80ae9a0bcb)
Praise (#u3e3cba04-2f17-54bf-8ca3-58d1c7073e40)
Dedication (#u45ff9e4f-a89e-5123-9266-effd958c280f)
Chapter 1 (#u2d3c3a7f-cc59-5417-9c86-7c586c98a6fd)
Chapter 2 (#u633a4fae-a8c6-52cd-8d66-5427a76ab4fb)
Chapter 3 (#u1bf98931-652d-5dc7-a69c-bb842ee1641a)
Chapter 4 (#u13a55606-2c7e-537c-8dc2-88ca47fcb7fa)
Chapter 5 (#ufd19b1a0-ecba-57bc-9981-371f31ba144a)
Chapter 6 (#uc159ee39-cd8b-5b20-8f86-767478a17ea7)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
1 (#u8de205d9-4585-5c78-b904-58472c628699)
Last night she dreamed of the house on Owl’s Point. Waning sunlight bathed the old brick face, and waves pounded the rocks below. Her cousins were there. James, whom she loved, and his sister Audrey, whom she despised. James tried to warn her of some threat hidden in the pines, but his sister only laughed. Audrey was grown-up, looking as she had at her wedding. Disheveled and slightly mad. James was the child he always was in her dreams, never older than eleven. As if his life had stopped there. Though the dream disturbed Teresa, there was nothing odd in the fact of it. At her grandfather’s request she was returning to Owl’s Point for the first time in fifteen years.
The train car swayed gently. Connecticut coast swept past the window. Rocky woods gave way to broad swaths of gray water and the dark smudge of Long Island. Streams ran through acres of marsh grass, and an egret took flight, white wings pumping. Sometimes it felt like Teresa had spent her life on this train. Going back and forth to school. Later to visit friends and professors still in New Haven. Before that, long before, were the trips to her grandparents in Langford. The house and grounds were a vast and beguiling world where she and her cousins burned countless hours, outside the normal flow of time. They built a tree fort in the big oak. They explored the inlet by the bridge in their canoes. They played epic games of hide-and-seek. There was no beach, but Audrey—against all warnings—would leap from the black rocks into the surf. Just as she would climb the tallest trees, or slip out an attic window to crawl around on the slate roof of the mansion. No punishment or injury deterred her, and that recklessness continued into adulthood.
It was Teresa and James who discovered the indoor secrets. The dumbwaiter that ran from the cold cellar to the master bedroom—by way of the kitchen, where you could fling open the door and scare Jenny, the cook. The hidden closet under the stairs, where they fell asleep one afternoon and threw the house into a panic. The unfinished room in the attic, the crawl space in the wine cellar, more places that she had since forgotten. Only Grandpa’s study was off-limits. Teresa looked forward to the trips to Owl’s Point for weeks beforehand. They were the highlight of summer, or any season. Until they abruptly stopped.
No one else left the train at Langford. The platform was short and broken. Only eight cars were in the lot, none of them her grandfather’s green Jaguar. Teresa remembered that he no longer drove, so she looked for Ilsa. Had they forgotten she was coming? That seemed unlikely, but ten minutes passed without any sign of a ride. She reached for her phone, then stopped. If she had ever known the Owl’s Point number, it was lost to memory. She could call her mother, of course, but she would rather drink paint thinner. It was two miles to the house, more or less. On a narrow and twisty lane. Teresa sighed. Then she slung her bag, walked past the coffee shop, bank, jewelers, and up the slope of Long Hill Road.
“There is absolutely no need to go there,” she heard her mother say, an echo of last night’s argument.
“He’s asked all the grandchildren,” Teresa had replied, though Miranda knew that. “Kenny and Audrey and James have agreed.”
“That’s their choice. You can make a different one.”
“Mother.”
“Whatever he wants to say he can put in a letter or a telephone call.”
“Do you know what he wants to say?”
“For goodness’ sake, how would I know that?”
“Because he’s your father.”
Miranda treated the fact as an accusation, and the conversation went downhill fast. Trudging up the steep and tree-shrouded lane, Teresa pictured her mother in the West Village apartment, bought when there was still family money. Tending her exotic roses or painting in her studio. Flitting about in those bright Indian shawls with her artsy friends. Clueless about the real world.
“Stop,” Teresa said aloud. Only the trees as witnesses. Just stop. Stop being angry with your mother, with everyone.
A car was rushing up the hill behind her. She could hear the high performance motor straining through the steep turn. They all drove too fast around here, and of course there was no sidewalk. Who would walk anywhere in Langford? She stepped off the road into a mass of saplings and early fallen leaves. Praying not to be hit. Or that at least it should be a quick death from a very expensive car.
It was a red Lexus convertible, which missed her by several feet. She saw a blur of blond hair and sunglasses, then the car slowed immediately, pulling onto the scant margin forty yards ahead. The driver jumped up in the seat and turned, calling out merrily.
“Tay-ray!”
Dear God in Heaven. Audrey.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” her cousin shouted.
At least she would not have to walk the rest of the way. Dutifully, Teresa marched toward the vehicle. Like a condemned man. To her horror, Audrey leaped out and swept her into a hug. She smelled musky. Some combination including sandalwood, vodka and sweat. She carried a few extra pounds, though in all the right places. Audrey stepped back to survey her younger, skinny, dark-haired cousin.
“Look at you all grown-up,” she gushed.
“I was twenty years old at your wedding,” said Teresa.
“Yeah,” Audrey conceded. “But there were, like, four hundred people there. And I was completely wasted.” Teresa had to laugh at the admission, and Audrey flashed a peroxide smile. “Get in. I guess we’re going the same way.”
Teresa climbed in and buckled up as Audrey gunned the engine. With hardly a glance either way, she shot back onto the road.
“When did you get this car?” Teresa shouted over the wind and motor.
“In the divorce,” said Audrey, matter-of-fact. “Piece of crap, but I’m broke right now, so I’m stuck with it. What do you drive?”
“Nothing.”
“Seriously?”
“New York has excellent public transportation.”
“Socialist,” Audrey jeered. “This ain’t New York. Why were you walking?”
“Because you were late?” Teresa guessed. Audrey did a double take.
“Wait, what? Nobody told me to pick you up. I didn’t even know you were coming.”
Teresa’s anxiety, briefly quelled, rose up again.
“There was no one at the station. I figured Ilsa would get me. We spoke two days ago.”
“Ilsa,” Audrey scoffed. “She must be like a hundred years old now.”
“I don’t think she’s more than seventy. Maybe not even.”
“Whatever, at least you were wearing the right shoes.”
Teresa’s boots were low-heeled and comfortable. She never wore anything that was not good for walking. For her grandfather’s interview, she had put on a tasteful gray suit. Audrey was driving barefoot, but a pair of red pumps was jammed half under the seat. She wore tight black jeans and a white V-neck tee to show off her big tanned boobs. Because you never knew when you might meet a hot guy at your decrepit grandfather’s house.
“So qué pasa, Tay-ray? What’s going on in your life?”
The nickname came from her father Ramón’s pronunciation. Not the Anglicized Ta-ree-sa, but the Spanish Tay-ray-sa. For the Saint. James started calling her Tay-ray when they were four years old. She liked the name on his lips. With Audrey, it always sounded like a taunt.
“I’m back in school,” Teresa replied. “Graduate school.”
“I heard. Art appreciation or something?”
“It’s called art history,” she said impatiently. “Art appreciation is what your mother does at the country club.”
“My mother just got plowed there.” Audrey slid the sunglasses down and smirked. “A little defensive, are we?”
“No.”
“Are you painting? Isn’t that what you really wanted to do?”
“Watch the road.”
They had swung up on the rear of a gray Volvo. Its cautious speed annoyed Audrey beyond reason.
“This is ridiculous. Speed up or move over, granny.”
“Don’t,” Teresa said, sensing her cousin’s intention. “Do not try to pass her on this narrow—Audrey!”
The Lexus was already moving around the slower car, simultaneously shaping a very tight—and blind—curve. Teresa closed her eyes and prayed to the God in whom she no longer believed. When she opened them again they were accelerating along what must be the only straightaway in Langford. Audrey was hooting.
“Oh, Tay, you should see your face. Am I going to have to clean that seat?”
“I would punch you in the head if you weren’t driving.”
Audrey laughed even harder.
“I like this feisty you,” she declared. “You were such a drip as a kid. With your pasty skin and your books and your condition. Who knew you would grow up to be such a tough girl? All ninety pounds of you.”
It was a hundred and three, by why argue? Teresa had as much trouble keeping weight on as other women did losing it. It was actually a problem, but not one for which she would get any sympathy, so she learned not to discuss it.
“Is James at the house?” she asked, as much to change the subject as from real curiosity.
“Nope,” Audrey answered. “James and Kenny were yesterday. You and me today.”
“Oh.” Teresa tried to hide her disappointment, though her cousin surely noticed. She used to tease that James and Teresa would get married someday. “Why?”
“Why do you think?” Audrey said, smile gone sour. But her disgust was not with Teresa. “Boys first, then girls. Men have serious stuff to talk about, right? Careers, obligations, all that. Women, we’re just frivolous creatures.”
It probably doesn’t help that you act like a frivolous creature, Teresa wanted to say, but did not.
“I don’t think Grandpa feels that way. I don’t remember—”
“Exactly,” Audrey cut her off. “You don’t remember. You were how old the last time you saw him? Nine, ten?”
“I’m the same age as your brother.”
“So eleven. Both of you off in your own little world. Kenny and me were older, we saw what was going on. This family has always been about the boys.”
“Did James tell you why we’ve been summoned?”
“No,” Audrey said. “Little prick hasn’t returned my call. I’m guessing it’s to pass on some precious wisdom before the old geezer kicks it.”
Teresa recognized the brick pillars wreathed in ivy even as Audrey slowed for the turn. Sixty-Six Long Hill Road. Owl’s Point. The drive dipped down into a marsh with a narrow bridge, barely wide enough for the car. This was where they swam and canoed. Where Kenny caught the sand shark. Where he nearly drowned Audrey after she teased him once too often. It was as Teresa remembered, but also different. Smaller. They ascended again, through a grove of cedars and a huge bank of rhododendron. And there was the house. Three stories of red brick and slate. The blue shutters and door were faded. The steel cross on the lawn—the work of some second-tier sculptor—was rusted and had a branch wedged in the crossbar. There were no cars in sight. Audrey killed the engine, and silence fell over them.
“Huh,” Audrey said, beginning to share Teresa’s unease.
“You think they might be out?”
“Ilsa maybe.” Audrey stepped from the car and slapped her door closed, startling a crow from a pine tree. “The old guy never goes anywhere.”
“Have you seen him?” Teresa asked, getting out and following. “I mean, have you been here since...”
“Since the theft? Maybe twice, but not for years. You?”
“No,” Teresa said. “Never. I’ve spoken to him on the phone. I thought I might see him at your wedding.”
“He was invited,” Audrey said. “I think someone told him not to come. Wow, this place has really gone to hell.”
They stood before the door, which was badly chipped. The whole house had a mournful air about it, though that may have been Teresa’s imagination. And the late September light. Audrey was about to hit the bell when Teresa noticed the door was a few inches ajar.
“Look. It’s open.”
They exchanged a quick glance. Then Audrey pushed the heavy door and marched in.
“Hello? The girls are here—anyone around?”
Teresa followed her into the front hall, papered in a fading green of leafy vines. A wide, carpeted stairway ascended on the right. The look and even the smell of the place—wood polish and dust—was instantly familiar. Yet like the property outside, it was diminished by time and wear. That magical house of Teresa’s childhood no longer existed. Near the stairs, Audrey was looking at the control panel of what must be a fairly new house alarm. The display read: Disarmed.
“They must be home or they would have set the alarm,” Audrey said, tightness creeping into her voice. “You look around here, I’ll check upstairs.”
Teresa started to protest, but could think of no reason why. Then she realized that she did not want to be left alone. Her face flushed with embarrassment, but Audrey was already bounding up the stairs. Get a grip, Teresa said to herself. It’s an old house. Full of sadness and memories, but nothing to be afraid of. You haven’t believed in evil paintings since you were a little girl, and anyway it was stolen. It’s not here anymore.
It took only a glance into the sitting and dining rooms to confirm they were empty. She went slowly down the hall, glancing at old vases and portraits without seeing them. Dread gripped her. She had shed childish superstitions in college. She took pride in her scientific view of art, of the world. Yet some habits stuck. Such as the belief in her own instinct, which was correct more often than she could explain. And which was telling her right now that there was nothing alive in this house.
The billiard room was also empty, the table covered in a white tarp. Teresa enjoyed the game, but she was a poor player. Audrey was the pool shark. Hustling Kenny for his summer allowance while James and Teresa played chess in the corner. For a moment, she saw the ghosts of their younger selves scattered around the room. There and gone.
The corridor to the kitchen beckoned, but she was stopped short by something she had never seen before. The door to her grandfather’s study stood open. In all of Teresa’s time here that door had been a virtual wall. Locked when the old man was not inside, closed even when he was. Always closed. Now, just the glimpse of afternoon light falling across an ornate desk and a blue-and-red oriental carpet, thrilled her with fear and wonder. She took a deep breath and forced herself to walk through the door.
It was a smaller room than expected, but otherwise exactly as she had envisioned it. Bookcases lined the walls, though there was space enough for one painting directly behind the desk. Did she only imagine the faint square where the cream paint seemed brighter? It had hung there a long time before some brave soul seized it. She looked away, as if even this outline might retain a lethal potency. A set of casement windows let in the mellow autumn light. The fireplace stood like an open black maw. Was that the same iron poker the thieves had used to clout Ilsa, or did Grandpa replace the set?
On the near wall was a cracked leather sofa, and on it sat a man.
Not sat, but sprawled, in a position that must surely be uncomfortable. One slipper dangled off the pale left foot. His dressing gown—dusky gold with red Chinese dragons—was badly rumpled. Teresa knew that dressing gown. Indeed, she would have said the man was her grandfather, except for his awful stillness. And the expression of abject terror which twisted his features. The dead blues eyes were fixed on the empty space across the room.
“Teresa?”
Audrey’s voice from the back stairs broke the spell. Teresa shuddered with an animal revulsion, then backpedaled. Until she struck a bookcase and fell to her knees. There had been a noise. A deep, guttural moan whose source she could not identify. The man? Had he groaned? Then she understood that she herself had made the noise. She tried to speak, but no words would come.
“Was that you?” Audrey asked, rushing into the room. “Did you hurt yourself? What is the... Oh. Oh, man.”
Teresa could not even look at her cousin. As much as she wished to, she could not take her eyes from the hideous gray face.
“Okay,” said Audrey between deep breaths. “Okay, Teresa? Look at me. Don’t look at him, look at me.”
She tried to obey, but could not move her head. She could not even close her eyes. She would be looking at that face for the rest of her life. Then something intervened. Audrey’s white T-shirt. Then her face. Those blue eyes. Like their grandfather’s, though bright and full of life.
“Audie,” Teresa whispered. A frightened four-year-old girl again.
“I know, sweetheart. It’s all right, let’s get you out of this room. No, don’t.” The voice went from compassion to anger in a moment, or maybe it was only panic. “Don’t you dare have one of your fits right now. Stay with me, Teresa.”
It was no use. The hard edges of the world fractured into prismatic color. Her senses closed down, and she saw into the heart of the universe. For a bare moment she understood everything. Then a blinding light absorbed her. She felt her body go slack, go liquid, vanish. She gave herself up to the light.
“Teresa. Teresa.”
2 (#u8de205d9-4585-5c78-b904-58472c628699)
For madness, no one could top Goya. Drunks, murderers, victims of violence. Lunatics beset by demons or witches summoning them. Gods destroying their children. The Spaniard had seen it all, in the war-torn landscape of his country or in his own troubled mind, and captured it on canvas. Including at least one thing he should not have caught.
Francisco José de Goya. Teresa had known the name always. It was synonymous with fear. She was as easily scared as any sensitive girl who read too much, and the scariest things were those left to your imagination. Her grandfather, usually kind, was stern and absolute in one matter. Stay out of the study. Never go in for any reason. The fear could not be explained away as Teresa grew older because it was so obviously shared by her mother and uncles. They had also known of the painting all their lives, although only the eldest, Philip, had actually seen it. And he never spoke to his brother or sister about what he saw. Of course the old man saw it every day, and he was neither struck dead nor driven mad. There was a trick to it, or there was a type of person able to withstand the portrait’s awful gaze. More than withstand it, but learn and prosper from the contact. This was explained to Teresa by her father, Ramón, who counted himself among those so gifted. For he had seen the painting many times. Whether and how it had damaged him was anyone’s guess.
There were many reasons Teresa could invent for her obsession with art. Because it was something she shared with her father and grandfather, who took her to all the best museums in New York and Boston. Because her impulse toward the mystical and curiosity about her Spanish heritage found their perfect union and expression in the artists she adored: El Greco, Zurbarán, Goya. Because she was so bad at the hard sciences that a humanities degree was her only choice. But she knew very well that the obsession had its roots in that first terror and fascination of childhood. The haunted self-portrait by Goya from his solitary days in the Quinta del Sordo. A painting that had left one man dead in Teresa’s lifetime, and carried the rumor of death and insanity in a long train behind it. A painting she had never seen, and never would.
* * *
The ambulance made its slow way around the drive and out of sight. No lights or siren. There was no need. A police cruiser escorted it, but the nondescript brown sedan that arrived later was still parked out there. The detective must be somewhere talking to Audrey, yet the house was quiet. Teresa was in the sitting room. She had been lying down, recovering from her migraine. But the settee was too hard, made for perching, not reclining. She was sitting up now, sipping from a glass of water Audrey had left for her. Everything that had happened since finding the dead man was vague and disjointed.
She was ashamed of her uselessness. She should be calling people, starting with her mother. She should be speaking to the sad-faced detective—it was she who had found the body, after all. Mostly she should not be falling to pieces like a fragile girl, leaving Audrey to handle everything. Audrey, who had been praising Teresa’s toughness only an hour ago. Who had kept her cool in the presence of death. Whatever her faults, the woman clearly had strengths which Teresa had been slow to perceive. Slow or unwilling. Her sense of Audrey as a person was trapped in the past, in a wounded child’s perceptions.
Voices approached down the hall, and Teresa stood. She was unsteady, but did not want to seem meek or ill. Audrey’s voice rose sharply just outside of the room, then fell silent. One set of footsteps retreated, and a moment later the detective appeared in the door.
He was tall and lean, though his face was puffy. Dark hair retreated from his forehead, and his hound dog eyes made you want to comfort him. It was a face you trusted, which must be useful for a detective.
“Miss Marías. How are you?”
“Fine,” she said, pleased by the firmness of her voice. “Call me Teresa.”
“I’m Detective Waldron.”
“You introduced yourself before,” she remembered.
“Right, I wasn’t sure if you, ah...”
“Was in my right mind?” she supplied, forcing a smile. “I really am okay now. Won’t you sit down?”
Won’t you sit down! Who was she, a society hostess? This wasn’t even her house. But he did sit, and she did, too, which was a relief.
“This shouldn’t take long,” he said, flipping through a small notepad. “Ms. Morse has filled me in pretty thoroughly. I wonder if you could run through your arrival here, and the um, the discovery of your grandfather’s body?”
Your grandfather’s body, thought Teresa, reality hitting home. Not “the body” or “the dead man” but Alfred Arthur Morse. Arrogant, secretive collector of and dealer in European art, with a big house, a bad heart and three estranged children. A man to whom Teresa had once felt close, and for whom she harbored a lingering affection. She had suppressed how deeply she was looking forward to seeing him, and tears welled up in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Waldron said, closing the notepad and beginning to stand. “Your cousin said it was too soon.”
“Is this normal?” Teresa asked tightly. Humiliated by his sympathy.
He slumped back into the chair.
“Your shock? It’s absolutely normal, most people never have to—”
“I mean you being here,” she corrected. “He obviously had a heart attack or a stroke or something. Why would they send a detective? Is it because he’s rich or, or what?”
He nodded several times.
“His prominence has something to do with it,” Waldron conceded. “That’s off the record, please. Also, there’s the matter of the housekeeper.”
“Ilsa.” She had forgotten all about the woman.
“Yes, um, Ilsa Graff. I understand that she lives in the house. For the last—” he consulted his notes “—thirty years or so?”
“I guess that’s right,” Teresa said.
“Do you have any idea where she is?”
“No, none. She was supposed to meet me at the train. Or I think she was. I don’t remember anymore what we agreed.”
“But you didn’t see her at the station?” he prompted.
“No,” Teresa replied, clutching the water glass nervously. Why was she nervous? “So I started walking. And I got about half a mile before Audrey pulled up.”
“There was no understanding between you two beforehand? She simply appeared?”
“There’s only one road,” Teresa said, annoyance creeping into her tone. “Whether you walk or drive.”
“Nothing implied,” Waldron said, holding up a forbearing palm. “These are routine questions. I hope you understand.”
“I don’t, to tell you the truth.” The headache was pulsing behind her eyes again. “You think Ilsa did something to my grandfather?”
He puffed up his cheeks and exhaled.
“I think her not being here when you two were expected is odd. But I have no theories at this time, and every expectation that it’ll turn out as you say. Older man, weak heart. We just have to be as thorough as possible.”
“All right.”
“So you were walking to the house when your cousin drove up?”
“Excuse me?”
“Ms. Morse said you were standing off to the side of the road. She couldn’t say with certainty which direction you had been going before she came around the turn. I just want to confirm you were coming from the station.”
As opposed to where? Teresa’s hands were shaking, and there was a buzzing in her ears. She could not tell whether she was stunned or furious or both.
“Is this about my father?” she blurted.
He sat back and gazed at her curiously.
“I don’t know. Is there some reason it should be?”
Idiot, Teresa scolded herself. That’s exactly what he wanted you to say. This is not a friendly talk, it’s a grilling. He thinks you did something.
“I already said that I was coming from the station,” she replied slowly.
“Apologies, my notes are a little messy. You mentioned your father.”
“I don’t think I have anything more to say to you, Mr. Waldron.”
“If we could cover one or two other points,” he said patiently, “then we’re done.”
“Get out.”
Teresa had not seen Audrey enter the room. She was standing very close to the detective, a murderous look in her eyes. Waldron stood and nodded politely at her, as if she had not spoken.
“Get out,” Audrey said again, louder.
“Your cousin and I were discussing the—”
“I heard what you were discussing. I told you to leave her alone.”
“I believe,” Waldron answered, “that Miss Marías is best equipped to make that decision herself.”
“Then you obviously know nothing about trauma,” Audrey said. “So listen to me. Our uncle, who will be here any minute, is a big-time attorney. And I will sue you personally and your entire podunk department for harassment, coercion, mental cruelty and anything else I can think of, if you do not get out of this house right now.”
The detective shook his head like a man wronged, but not overly concerned about it. He tucked the notebook into the pocket of his baggy trousers and shuffled out of the room. Audrey followed him closely, a barely restrained violence in her posture. Waldron did not seem to notice.
“I’m sorry again for your loss,” he said by the front door. “And I apologize for causing any distress during this difficult time.”
“Save it for the judge,” Audrey growled.
“It’s all right,” said Teresa, coming to her senses. They were both overreacting badly; the man was only doing his job.
“There’s no tape on that door,” Waldron mentioned, speaking of the study. “But please do keep it closed and locked. I’ll be in touch if there’s any need to follow up. Oh, and please let me know right away if you see or hear from Ms. Graff.”
“We’ll do that,” Teresa said, a moment before Audrey slammed the door. And they were alone. Audrey turned to her with such vehemence that Teresa stepped back. She could feel her cousin wanting to lash out, and Teresa was now the only available target. Yet the angry eyes seemed blind to her presence.
“You okay?” Teresa asked.
“He was trying to twist my words.”
“I don’t know what—”
“He was trying to make it sound like I thought you were coming from the house. I never said that. I never implied it.”
“Of course not,” said Teresa. Was that what upset her so much? Or was it shock finally kicking in? That seemed more likely. Teresa looked steadily into those blue eyes until the other woman met her gaze. A phrase popped into her head. “Mental cruelty?”
Her cousin blinked rapidly. Then giggled, and just like that the old Audrey was back.
“Okay, maybe I had a divorce proceedings flashback.”
“It sounded good,” Teresa said, relieved. “I think you scared him.”
“Nah, only embarrassed him a little. I’ve yelled at cops before. They don’t listen to most of what you say.”
“Maybe just as well. But it’s weird, right? Him coming here?”
“Not really,” Audrey replied, wandering into the sitting room and throwing herself down on the blue settee. “Ouch, how did you sleep on this?”
“I didn’t.”
“Are you all right now? You scared the shit out of me.”
“Yeah, fine.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be taking medication?”
“I do,” Teresa lied. In fact, she did, but not lately. “It doesn’t always work. So why do you think he was here?” she persisted.
“Ilsa’s disappearing act, for one thing. And, you know. The history.”
Her father’s face appeared to Teresa. Or her memory of it, she could no longer attest to the accuracy. Long nose, black hair to his shoulders, black eyes. An expression which said that he had seen things others could not see. That he knew things which he would impart, if you only had the means of understanding. Maybe when you were older.
“That was a long time ago.”
“A long time to you,” Audrey said. “You were just a kid. I doubt enough happens in this boring town that they’re going to forget something like that.”
“They convicted Jenny’s brother.”
“His name is Pete.”
“I know his name,” Teresa said, though in truth she had forgotten. He was always simply Jenny’s brother, with his shaggy beard and crazy eyes, who helped out with the yard work. And helped himself to whatever was lying around. Silver serving utensils that no one used, fine china collecting dust in the cellar. The occasional brooch or cigarette case. He had never touched any of the artwork before that day of the funeral. “He went to prison. What would that have to do with this?”
“He’s been out of prison awhile,” said Audrey, letting the fact hang there a moment. “And a lot of people don’t believe he took the painting.”
“I know what they believe,” Teresa snapped.
“I didn’t mean that,” Audrey groaned. “God, you and your mother, so defensive.”
“He was my father.”
“So what? You can say what you like about my father, I don’t care. He bailed out on the two of you.”
“He had problems,” said Teresa, barely above a whisper. Her throat was almost too tight to speak. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Anyway, it isn’t only the theft. There was that appraiser keeling over a few years before. You probably don’t even remember that.”
“I remember,” said Teresa.
“Right in front of the painting. On that same leather sofa! You don’t think that might seem odd to the cops?”
“That an obese art historian and a sick old man had heart attacks on the same sofa twenty years apart?” she replied. Incredulous. “What should that mean? I really hope the police are smarter than that.”
“Well,” said Audrey in a reasonable tone. “Maybe it’s just me that finds it odd.”
“Even if you believe in fairy tales,” Teresa went on, wondering why she did, “like a portrait killing the appraiser, it still makes no sense. Grandpa looked at that painting for decades. And it’s not even here anymore.”
“You don’t believe in the painting?” Audrey asked, eyeing her closely. “You used to.”
“Like you said, I was a kid.”
Teresa retrieved her water glass and sat in the chair the detective had used. She was twice as tired after her outburst. The chair was hard. The room was hard. You were supposed to look at it, not actually use it. One of those stupid customs of the rich.
“I spoke to my dad,” Audrey said. “And Philip. I didn’t call your mom, I figured it would be weird me calling since you’re here. She may have heard from one of them by now.”
“I’ll call her,” Teresa said, wondering where her phone was. “Thanks for doing all that. For taking care of everything.”
“That’s what I do.”
“Yeah?” Teresa said, her mind elsewhere.
“You thought I just made messes that my father had to clean up,” Audrey replied, a hard edge beneath her light tone.
“I didn’t mean anything.”
“I admit that’s been true too often,” Audrey went on. “But I also watch out for everyone. Don’t you be surprised if—”
She was interrupted by the front door opening.
“What now?” Audrey complained, jumping up. “Did he forget his plastic badge?”
It was not Waldron but their uncle Philip. The very man who was to terrorize the Langford police force, in Audrey’s overblown threat. The attorney’s face was more lined, and his hair grayer than when Teresa last saw him. He wore a suit, though it was Sunday. No tie, loafers without socks, and a deeper tan than his niece, though he never took a vacation. Through the lenses of his designer glasses, his eyes looked startled.
“Audrey,” he said softly. “You poor thing.”
The words rang false. Perhaps because Teresa had never heard gentleness from her uncle’s lips. Or perhaps because she was a fault-finding bitch who had swallowed her mother’s hatred for her family whole. And yet she did not mistake the distaste with which her cousin recoiled from their uncle’s embrace.
“Hey, Philip,” Audrey said. “Sorry about Grandpa.”
“Yes,” he said distractedly. “Yes, it’s... Teresa, look at you.”
Not wanting to embarrass the man twice, Teresa gave him a quick hug. He was tall, like all the Morse men. Philip patted her back perfunctorily, then took her by the shoulders.
“Are you all right?” he asked. How many times would she have to answer that today? Not this time, anyway, since he went on immediately. “Have you called your mother?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ve spoken to her already, but you should call. She’s worried about you. Audrey, where is your father?”
“Don’t know,” she said with shrug.
“You don’t know? You told me you talked.”
“He was in an airport. In the States, I think. Said he would get here as soon as he could.”
Philip shook his head in annoyance. Audrey’s father did some kind of international finance, or maybe it was mergers and acquisitions. Teresa could not keep it straight. But he was always flying around the world. Making and losing fortunes, but mostly losing them. Philip turned back to Teresa.
“You found his body?”
“Yes,” she said.
“That must have been terrible. Terrible. I’m so sorry. Where are the police?” he asked Audrey accusingly. As if she had made up their presence. Or as if she had chased them away, which was in fact the case.
“The detective just left,” Audrey replied. “I told him he would be hearing from you.”
“Damn right he will,” the attorney said, though what he meant was unclear. True to form, Philip seemed supercharged with purpose. Yet in these circumstances, uncertain where to direct it. “He was in the study?”
“We’re not supposed to go in there,” Teresa said automatically.
“Girl Scout,” Audrey snarked.
“Why not?” asked Philip. “Did they say there was an investigation?”
“No, but they’re worried about Ilsa.”
“As we all are,” he said, moving swiftly down the hall. “I don’t see what that has to do with sealing off rooms. The study is where Father keeps his papers.”
“Action Man is here,” Audrey announced, as they listened to Philip rattle the handle to the study door.
“What in God’s name,” he called. “They locked it? Where is the key?”
Audrey reached into her pocket and pulled out a key, dangling it before her cousin and putting a finger to her lips. Audrey was always stealing keys when they were young. She even claimed to have been in the forbidden study. Teresa shook her head in puzzlement.
“You’re Waldron’s watchdog now?”
“Nah, I just enjoy pissing off Philip. But it’s funny,” Audrey mused. “I don’t remember telling him that Grandpa was in the study.”
3 (#u8de205d9-4585-5c78-b904-58472c628699)
Miranda surprised her. Teresa’s mother had done nothing but disparage her father for years, and was all business when Teresa finally called. Caring only that her daughter was well. But her arrival at Owl’s Point that evening told a different story. Her eyes were red and damp, her face haggard. She clutched Teresa fiercely and would not let go for a long time. They were not a warm family. Neither Grandpa Morse nor Ramón Marías were physically demonstrative. Yet there had once been this kind of strong affection between mother and daughter, so long ago that Teresa had nearly forgotten. When did it stop? And which of them had been the one to pull away?
“He loved you very much,” Miranda said as she drew back. “I’m sorry he didn’t get to tell you. I’m sorry I kept the two of you apart all these years.”
Her tone was matter-of-fact. No hair-pulling theatrics from Miranda; that was not her style. But Teresa heard the depth of grief in those few words.
“He told me,” she said. Had he? In one of those occasional phone calls? If he had not used the word, he had surely conveyed love in the ways of which he was capable. In his curiosity about Teresa’s life, her studies, her desires and fears. “I could have gone to see him anytime. I spent four years half an hour away from here.”
“You knew it would upset me,” her mother countered. Which was true, but not the whole truth.
“It doesn’t matter now. I’m sorry for you. You must have been close to him once.”
“No.” Miranda dabbed her face with an overworked tissue. “I don’t know, maybe when I was small. Mostly he was this faraway figure. Always traveling, or locked in the study. Then he would come crashing over us like a storm. Poor Phil got the worst of it.”
“Never heard you sound sorry for Philip,” Teresa said.
“Yes, well. These last few hours some things have come back to me. Memories.”
After briefly enjoying her uncle’s torment, Audrey “found” the study key and gave it to Philip. He searched the room at length, not finding whatever he sought. Later he was on the telephone, barking at lawyers and law enforcement types, talking to the newspapers. Now he sat at the dining room table, speaking quietly with his sister. Audrey’s father—Alfred Arthur Morse III, called Fred—was flying in the following day, and James and Kenny were both on the train from New York. Audrey was phoning friends and family, and pouring drinks. Mostly for herself. Teresa kept falling asleep. All it took was sitting down and she went right out. Shock, the others kept telling her. Rest, we have it all covered. But she would not be under more than a few minutes before that dead gray face came swirling out of the void. Jolting her awake. It was going to be a bad night.
A good smell drew her to the kitchen, where she was treated to the sight of Audrey in a frayed pink apron. Stirring the contents of a large pot.
“Don’t laugh,” Audrey warned.
“I wasn’t going to,” said Teresa. “Okay, I was.”
“Rick used to say I could burn water.”
“Is that why you divorced him?”
“Try this.”
“What is it?”
“Ilsa’s famous beef stew. There’s a vat of it in the fridge.”
Teresa did not remember the famous stew, nor did she usually touch beef. But she had eaten nothing since an apple on the train, and slurped the spoon greedily.
“Delicious, count me in.”
“Find some bowls.”
Teresa served while Audrey got a bottle from the cellar. A dark, complex French red. Teresa did not know wine, but it seemed too fancy for a grieving family eating leftovers. Then again, maybe there was no better occasion.
“This hasn’t had time to breathe,” Philip complained.
“Neither have I,” Audrey shot back. There were a few minutes of peace while they ate, but Audrey could not endure peace for long. “I wonder if this is poisoned. Like if that’s how Ilsa knocked off Grandpa?”
Everyone stopped eating but Miranda. Teresa felt her stomach turn over.
“Ilsa did not poison your grandfather,” Philip said. “She was devoted to him.”
“Sure she was,” Audrey agreed. “But who knows what all those years of abuse can do. How it can twist a person. You know what I mean?”
Philip would not meet her gaze.
“Stop it,” Miranda said, dropping the spoon into her empty bowl. “Father didn’t abuse Ilsa. She was the one person he always treated with respect.” Then she began to laugh. “Sorry, I’m imagining poor Freddie coming in and finding us slumped over our bowls.”
“Oh yeah, that’s really funny, Mom,” Teresa said, but Audrey was also laughing. Look at you two, Teresa thought, not for the first time. There was no love lost between them. Audrey thought Miranda was pretentious, and Miranda found Audrey a bad influence on her cousins. Yet they were similar in so many ways. Same dirty blond hair, bleached gold. Same round face and high cheekbones, same curvy build. Same sense of humor and raucous laugh. If you had to guess the mother and daughter at this table, Teresa would not be in the equation. As a teenager she used to ask, who is my real mother? Of course Miranda was not reckless like Audrey. Or not anymore, but Teresa had heard stories of her youth. Crashing her mother’s car on Long Hill Road. Calling home from a Mexican jail during spring break. Sleeping with her professors, including the one she married: the handsome, penniless, half-mad philosopher from Madrid. What a disappointment it must have been when her father ended up loving Ramón. Teresa herself had heard Grandpa Morse say, “He is more of a son to me than my sons.”
“Dead soldier,” Audrey announced, tipping the last of the bottle into her glass. “Tay-ray, help me pick out another.”
“You’re still calling her that ridiculous nickname?” Philip said in dismay. “She’s a grown woman.”
“At least I know how to pronounce her real name,” Audrey replied, sauntering off.
“I’m useless about wine,” Teresa said, but she got up and followed.
The door to the wine cellar was between the kitchen and study. She got shaky even approaching the latter room, but made it down the wooden steps without incident. The cellar was dimly lit, yet brighter and cleaner than Teresa remembered. The cracked stone walls had been smoothed over and it appeared that some racks had been replaced, as well. She had once known this chamber intimately—it was James’ favorite hiding place—but now it felt alien.
Rather than examine bottles, Audrey leaned against the wall and slipped something out of her pocket.
“Sorry,” she said, unwrapping a baggy and removing a bent joint. “Had to get away from the grown-ups.”
“Aren’t we grown-ups?”
“Speak for yourself.” She patted her pockets, looking for a lighter, no doubt. “I’m holding out ’til my forties.”
“Good plan.”
“You’ve always been an old lady.”
“I guess,” Teresa said, leaning against the wall beside her. “Or just a weird one.”
“You and James,” Audrey scoffed, finding a tiny blue lighter. It had to be tiny to fit into those jeans. “You’re so invested in being different.”
“More like resigned.”
“I love my brother to death.” Audrey lit the joint and inhaled. “He’s a good kid,” she squeaked, holding in the smoke. Then exhaled forcefully. “But nobody could dispute that he’s a little off, you know? You’re not like that. You get other people. You see the world straight on. I always feel like you’re faking the weird girl act.”
“I’m not faking anything,” Teresa said. She knew better than to let Audrey rile her, but she was feeling vulnerable. “I promise you, I spent years trying to be like everybody else. To like the clothes or the music or the movies they liked. To have friends. To fit in.”
“Poor little Tay.”
“Fuck you. You call me a fake and I don’t get to answer?”
“Hey, we’re just talking.”
“It’s not just talk,” Teresa insisted. “Words can do damage. You don’t say whatever you like to someone.”
“Why not?” Audrey replied evenly. “You can say whatever you like to me.”
“Can I? So if I called you a talentless, overweight drunk with a mean streak, that would be okay?”
The flicker of shock moved over her cousin’s face so swiftly that Teresa nearly missed it.
“Whoa,” said Audrey, fixing her cracked smile back in place. She took another hit off the joint and immediately began coughing.
“I’m sorry,” Teresa sighed.
“No, no,” Audrey said between coughs. “I asked for it. Forgot how well you read people’s weakness. Know exactly where to stick the knife.”
“It’s not a skill I cultivate.”
“Guess you’re a natural, then.”
Teresa slid down until she was sitting on the cold concrete floor. A few moments later, Audrey slid down alongside her and passed the joint. Teresa held it for too long, sniffing the pungent smoke. Tempted. Then she handed it back.
“I can’t, my brain’s too messed up.”
“This will smooth you out,” Audrey replied. “But suit yourself.”
“I’m sorry I said that.”
“Let it go. It’s all... Do I really look overweight?”
Teresa laughed.
“What?” Audrey asked, but she wore a sly smirk.
“That would be the one word you focused on,” said Teresa. She had remembered how Audrey always hurt her feelings, but forgotten how she could make you laugh at anything. Not a bad talent to possess in the current circumstances. “You look gorgeous. You always look gorgeous, I’m just jealous.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute,” Audrey quipped.
“Go ahead, let me have it,” said Teresa. “I’m too short, I’m too skinny. I’m either too shy or all snotty and superior. I have a blank expression on my face because I’m always stuck in my own brain. What else?”
“That’s pretty good. I think that about covers it.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Well.” Audrey considered. “You have kind of a martyr complex. And your clothes are pretty awful. You do have a nice face. Your dad’s face.”
“Certainly not my mom’s.”
“Your dad was hot.”
“Please, Audrey.”
“What? He was. You can’t help being short, and being skinny isn’t against the law.” She took another hit on the almost vanished joint. “It should be, but it’s not.”
“I’m glad we got that straight,” Teresa said, feeling calmer. “We should go back up.”
“Nah, let’s hide down here. You and James used to do that, remember?”
“I do. There was a crawl space. Like an alcove they walled up partway and forgot. It was a tight squeeze.”
“Too tight for me,” Audrey recalled. “James showed me once, but my hips wouldn’t fit. You’re shocked, I know.”
“It was bigger inside. Not much.” Enough for two nine-year-olds to sit side by side, Teresa thought. Holding hands, whispering. All the space we needed.
“Where was it?”
“I think,” Teresa said, starting to crawl on her hands and knees, “back along this wall somewhere.”
“Back here?” Audrey came shuffling after her. “There’s a rack in the way.”
“I know, but that’s new. They’ve moved things around. It was near a corner, I’m pretty sure it was this one.”
They both peered through wooden slats and over dusty bottles. There was nothing to see but wall.
“Wrong place,” Audrey decided.
“No, it was here. They’ve plastered it over.”
“What?” Audrey seemed outraged. “Your kiddie hideaway—how could they do that?”
“Might have even filled it in.” Teresa stood, bracing herself against a momentary dizziness. “It was strange that it was there at all.”
“Huh.” Audrey remained crouched by the rack, biting her thumbnail. Then she stood also. “Let’s drink more of Grandpa’s wine. Though I guess it’s not really his anymore.”
“Whose is it?”
“That’s what we all want to know, right?” Audrey said with a wicked laugh. “First we have to get through the fake expressions of grief. Then stick him in the ground.”
“Jesus, Audie, do you have to be so...”
“What? Okay, you were shocked, that was a rough thing to see. But are you really upset that he’s dead? Couldn’t you use a few bucks for school, or whatever?”
“I didn’t think there was any money,” Teresa said, which was the wrong response. Yes, I am upset that he is dead. I seem to be the only one who is. But Audrey would not believe her, nor believe that Teresa didn’t care about the money one way or another. “He couldn’t even pay his help, and the house is a wreck.”
“Dad thinks he was just cheap. He’s sure the old guy was sitting on a pile of cash.”
“He told you that?”
“Of course not,” Audrey snorted. “I hear things. But I’m with you. He never paid the help enough, that’s why Jenny and Pete stole from him. But he wouldn’t be selling paintings or letting the place fall down if he had the money to fix it.”
“He was selling paintings?”
“You don’t keep track of any family stuff, do you?” Audrey seemed half appalled and half impressed. “Don’t worry, there are plenty left, and the property is worth millions. He was cash poor, but there’s money in the estate. Question is, who gets it?”
That was not Teresa’s question.
“What do you think happened to him?”
“Heart attack,” Audrey guessed, wandering down a dim aisle between racks. “These are the Rhônes.”
“Then why did you mention the Goya, and the appraiser?”
“I was trying to see it like the cops would, that’s all. Did you like that Châteauneuf we just drank?”
“You saw his face,” Teresa said pointedly.
The other woman was quiet for a moment. “Yes.”
“Something scared him to death.”
Sounds came through the ceiling. Heavy footsteps followed by voices raised in greeting.
“The boys are here,” said Audrey, her voice brightening. “Better grab an extra bottle.”
Audrey was always cheered by the arrival of men. Apparently even her brother and cousin did the trick. Teresa was also pleased. She was eager to see James, and their presence would liven up the gloomy house. Yet she was uneasy. Why? Because too many Morses in one place meant trouble? Perhaps it was only the echo of those last words she had spoken, and the memory they conjured.
While Audrey slid bottles out, blowing off dust and mumbling to herself, Teresa went to the stairs. She was halfway up when the door at the top opened and a figure loomed. She took a panicked step back down, trying to make out who or what it was.
“Hello,” a voice said uncertainly.
“James?”
They had stayed in touch by phone and email, but not often. Despite mutual affection, they were both hopeless introverts, afraid of intruding. She had seen him at Audrey’s wedding, and once since, but they had been with other people. He hunched his shoulders and avoided eye contact. Teresa was surprised when her mother mentioned how tall James was now. In her mind he was still a floppy-haired boy.
“Did I frighten you?” he asked.
“No,” she stammered. “Yes. I frightened myself.”
Teresa rushed up the stairs and threw her arms around him. It was out of character, but what the hell. He had an unfamiliar smell. Like a man. Yet underneath was the warm bready scent she remembered. After a short hesitation he wrapped his long arms around her. The very awkwardness with which he did it was comforting.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Teresa said.
“Your mother told me. I’m sorry.”
“Be sorry for all of us,” she said, stepping back to look into those curious brown eyes. His expression had not changed.
“I’m sorry it was you who found him.”
“Might as well be me as anyone.”
“No,” James said earnestly. “You’re more sensitive. It should have been Uncle Philip or Audrey. It wouldn’t have bothered them.”
You didn’t see his face, Teresa thought. She had not told her mother or uncle about the expression their dead father wore. It seemed cruel and unnecessary. Yet Audrey was sure to say something. If not immediately, then eventually.
“Audrey was there. She took care of me.”
“She takes care of everyone,” he said. Repeating his sister’s mantra, without conviction.
“Yeah, I heard that.”
“I need to talk to you,” James murmured.
“Of course,” she replied, stepping closer. But a voice nearby intruded.
“Where else would she be?” Kenny shouted back to his father as he approached. Loud, confident Kenny. “Probably grabbing all the best bottles for herself.”
“Later,” James said, staring at his shoes. “When we’re alone. I need your help.”
“Whatever I can do.”
“You know what’s going to happen.” His voice grew hard, as did his eyes when he looked at her again. “Don’t you? They’re going to blame this on me.”
4 (#u8de205d9-4585-5c78-b904-58472c628699)
In a fever dream she rose and fell. Surfacing, she was in the bedroom at Owl’s Point. It was day, but the light through the curtains was weak. Rain spattered the window. Her skin was hot and damp. James stood next to the bed, watching her with a clinical concern. He was a boy again, or still, or always.
Is she going to die?
She better not, said another voice. Or we’ll get the blame.
We didn’t make her sick.
We’re in charge of her until they get back from burying Grandma.
Why isn’t Ilsa in charge?
Don’t be stupid, Audrey said. Ilsa’s the help. We’re family.
James leaned in and touched her burning neck with his cool finger. His touch was soothing.
I don’t want her to die.
Then get your hands off her, Audrey said.
Why? he asked, pulling away.
Because you’re the Angel of Death. Everyone you touch dies.
I am not, he screamed. James rarely raised his voice, and the pained cry was awful to hear. That’s not true. That’s not true.
All right, Audrey groaned. Shut up, I’m sorry. She slumped down in the window seat. God, this is boring. Tell me if she stops breathing.
James leaned close again, careful not to touch her. There were angry tears in his eyes. Don’t die, Tay. Please. I’m going to help you, Tay.
She was pulled under, into a black and suffocating silence. She struggled, not seeing, not breathing, a red flashing behind her eyes. Suddenly the darkness released her, and she shot upward.
The same room. But empty and nighttime. Teresa was sitting up in a small bed. The same that she had slept in when visiting this house as a child. The same bed in which she had thrashed in a fever on the day of her grandmother’s funeral. Miranda had not understood how sick her daughter was, and in any case it was her mother they were burying. She had to be there. Audrey was assigned to watch Teresa, and James stayed with them. Which meant they were all in the house when the theft occurred.
Teresa reached for the water glass and took a sip. It was a different dream than usual. She knew dreams were not memory, and that even memory lied. But the standard nightmare featured James’ faraway scream of terror. Audrey waking from her nap in the window seat to rush out and find him. Teresa desperately trying to rise from the bed, only to collapse again. Something like those things had happened. This new dream took place earlier that day, and must be an anxiety-fueled construction of her unconscious. Surely Audrey never said those cruel things. Surely James’ words to Teresa the previous evening—that he would be blamed—had simply worked their way into her sleep.
She drank more water and put the glass down. Where had he gotten the idea? How could he be blamed? She had learned no more; they were not left alone the rest of the evening. James receded into himself while everyone else talked manically and to no purpose. Teresa fell asleep in her chair, then finally dragged herself to bed. She waited for James to tap on her door, but if he ever did she was long gone to dreamland.
As the room slowly brightened she realized there would be no more sleep. She rolled out of bed and unzipped the travel bag her mother had brought, with spare clothes. The ugly green corduroys and extra-large Yale sweatshirt. Good old Mom. Teresa dressed, pulled on her sensible boots and went down the back stairs to the kitchen. Then out the mudroom door. A heavy mist rolled in from the sea. The pines were shadows and the ocean invisible. The house might have been sitting in the clouds. It was cold. She needed a jacket, but was not willing to go back for it. She drew her hands into the sleeves of the sweatshirt and wrapped her arms around herself, then made her way toward the sound of surf. The gazebo materialized out of the mist. It needed paint, and the floorboards were rotting. How long since anyone had sat here, drinking a cocktail and watching the sunset over the Sound? What a bleak and barren place this had become in her time away. She could not have imagined it. Maybe she would come out here this evening. Wrapped in blankets, with a whisky.
The lawn ended abruptly and there was the ocean. Or a murky stretch of it. Just beyond where she stood, a rocky slope fell thirty feet to the phosphorescing water. Teresa looked for a spot where Audrey might have leaped into the waves without killing herself. It did not seem possible. Maybe it had been farther along the ledge, or maybe the tide was higher. Maybe Audrey was indestructible. For the first time in days, Teresa missed Marc. He would try to comfort her if she called him now, but she would not do that.
She stared down at the dark seaweed swaying in the white foam. Afraid of losing her balance, she crouched. Her fingers twitched, seeking a pencil. How would she capture this on paper? The monstrous shape of that rock, the black water. Would she shade in the mist or represent it as an absence, the white of the page? And why was she thinking about this when she had not sketched in months? A shred of memory or an image from a dream flitted around her brain, and she tried to get hold of it. Before she could, a strong emotion seized her. Indistinct at first, it coalesced into a kind of dread. Which shifted quickly to fear as Teresa sensed someone rushing at her from behind. She stood up fast and turned.
No one. Only the mist, beginning to dissipate. She had been certain of a presence, about to place a hand on her shoulder. An involuntary shudder went through her. Cold and damp were penetrating the sweatshirt. She started back to the house and immediately saw a figure in the pines. It was a man in a gray coat, his head bent in thought. He had cleared the trees and was crossing the lawn before she realized it was James.
“Good morning,” she called.
He stopped and looked at her, making no reply. He seemed distracted, possibly anxious. Damp hair hung in his face.
“I didn’t think anyone else was awake,” Teresa said as she reached him.
“Me, neither,” James replied. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“And I’m all slept out.” She nearly mentioned the dream, then did not.
“Kenny snores.”
“What, Mister Perfect?” she laughed. “Don’t tell me you were in the same room.”
Kenny and James had shared a bunk bed those summers when the house was full.
“No, but I could hear him through the wall.”
“He had a lot of wine,” Teresa remembered. “I guess we all did.”
“Not me.”
“You still don’t drink?”
“A little,” he conceded. “People make a big deal if you refuse. But I don’t like the feeling it gives me.”
“I didn’t used to,” she said. A fallen woman. “Now I like it too much.”
“You seem the same.” The words surprised her. “I thought you would have changed, but you seem the same to me.”
“Is that good?”
“Yes.” He smiled bashfully. His smiles were so rare that it felt like a gift to get one. “I think it is.”
“We’ve all changed, but I’m glad that I seem familiar. You also seem the same, except for being too freaking tall.”
“Sorry,” he said. “Couldn’t help it.”
James had never cared for small talk, and Teresa waited for him to seize this chance to speak of what troubled him. Yet he showed no inclination. Last night’s urgency had vanished, or been suppressed.
“You’re brave to walk the woods on a morning like this,” she said, taking his arm and starting them forward again. “Must be spooky.”
“They’re just trees,” he said with a shrug. “I was looking for our old tree house.”
“My God, is it still there?”
“Sort of. The roof and one wall are gone, but the rest is intact.”
“I don’t remember how we got up. There was a ladder?”
“Wooden rungs nailed into the trunk.”
“Right,” she said, the memory coming back.
“They looked kind of rotted. I didn’t try to climb.”
“That was wise. Audrey would have,” she said, at the same precise moment that he did. They both laughed. Even his laugh was awkward, a high-pitched gurgle that pulled on her heart. She squeezed his arm. “How is school?”
James was in medical school in Boston. Doing well, Teresa had heard, which was no surprise. He tested off the charts in IQ and everything else. But he did not do well with other people, and needed five years and three colleges for his undergraduate degree. Then he left law school after one year, hating it. No one in the family had gone into medicine before.
“Good,” he said firmly. “I like it, especially the labs. I like doing things instead of talking about them.”
“Have you dealt with cadavers yet?”
“It doesn’t bother me. Everyone is afraid of them, but you can’t hurt the dead.”
“That doesn’t make them fun to spend time with,” she said, fighting another shiver.
“There’s no better way to understand the human body than to open it up and look inside. I want to help people. No one knows that about me. Nobody believes it.”
“I believe it,” Teresa said.
“They think I’m crazy and can’t take care of myself. But I want to help people. You have to be willing to do the hard things.”
They were near the mudroom door, and James shuffled to a stop. As if he could not bear going inside. Teresa tugged him the other way, toward the front of the house.
“What did you want to talk about last night?”
He looked away, then shook his head quickly.
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“I’m not going to call you crazy. Trust me.” But he would not speak. The yew hedges beside the garage had grown rangy and brown. The sun was beginning to cut through the mist. She tried a different tack. “What happened yesterday, with Grandpa?”
James tensed up instantly.
“Do you mean the day before?” he asked.
“Yes,” she sighed. “Sorry, I’ve lost track.” It seemed one long and shapeless day since she had stepped onto the platform at Langford Station. It also seemed like a week.
“It was bad,” said James, biting off the words. “We argued.”
“About what?”
“My erratic behavior. I think that’s the word he used. One of them.”
“Such as?”
“You know,” he said impatiently. Assuming that Teresa had heard the family gossip. “Temper tantrums, as if no one else has those. As if Audrey’s aren’t ten times worse than mine.”
“What else?” she asked.
“Pointing a knife at her. At Audrey. I wasn’t going to hurt her, but you know the things she says. Threatening a professor.”
“Really? How did you threaten him?”
“This was years ago,” he insisted, as if she was missing the point. “At Amherst. The guy was a condescending jerk. I don’t remember what I said, but I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t going to do anything.”
“Okay.” Teresa squeezed his arm again. “It’s okay, I believe you.”
“I guess Grandpa was writing it all down,” he said bitterly. “Keeping track of everything I ever did wrong. And not only me, all of us.”
“So we’re all behaving erratically?” she asked, trying to lighten the mood. The things he said should have disturbed her, but she had witnessed such behavior when they were children. She knew what Grandpa Morse was getting at, but she also knew James. He did not understand people, didn’t get their jokes, became easily frustrated. Instead of taking that into account, friends and family taunted him. For their amusement, maybe, or simply because it’s what people did. James’ own father, Fred, was a terrible tease. Miranda, too. And of course Audrey was the worst. She knew how to send James into a fit with just a few words. He would cry and yell and break things. Hurt himself, perhaps. But never hurt anyone else. She had never heard of his doing so, and could not imagine it.
“Kenny argued with him, too.” James spit the words out, as if ashamed of speaking.
“He told you that?”
“Yes. He left before I got here, but after my talk with Grandpa I went to the city to find him. He was staying with a friend, in the place he rented when he used to live there.”
Which answered a question that Teresa had been meaning to ask. Why had James arrived with Kenny from New York instead of coming from Boston?
“I couldn’t remember where it was,” he went on, “so I wandered around for a long time. It’s a big city.”
“It is,” Teresa agreed, imagining James wandering Manhattan’s late-night streets. He was lucky he didn’t get mugged.
“I slept on a bench. When I woke up I remembered the address, so I went there.”
“In the middle of the night?” she laughed. “I bet he was thrilled to see you.”
“It was morning, but yeah, he wasn’t happy. He had someone with him.”
“I bet she wasn’t too happy either.”
“It was awkward,” James concurred. “Once we started talking, I could see he was upset, too. That his conversation had been as bad as mine.”
“What was Grandpa’s problem with him?” she asked. Curious to know what flaws Kenny could possibly possess.
“The thing is, he had a problem with all of us. He was calling us in one by one to tell us our faults. What we had to fix. The old jerk.”
“Jerk” was about as harsh as James got. But she heard more hurt in his voice than anger. They cleared the last corner of the house and the sun struck them full in the face.
“Why?” Teresa brought them to halt short of the circular drive. “Why was he doing it?”
“Because he didn’t think his heart was going to last much longer.”
“So?” she said, exasperated. “He had to tell us the errors of our ways before sailing off into eternity?”
“I like how you put things,” he said. “I should read more.”
“It rots the mind.”
“It’s about money, Tay.” James shifted uncomfortably. “We had to change these things about ourselves if we wanted to get any money. In his will.”
She looked to see if he was joking, but of course he would never make such a joke.
“You’ve got to be kidding. That’s what it was about?”
Could he be lying? Not lying, James would not consciously lie, but telling a story he believed? Why would he come up with this? No, it was a sad revelation, but all too credible. And yet more proof that she had never really known her grandfather. What would her own flaw have been? She could think of many, but what would have seemed important to the old man? And what about Audrey? Drinking, drugs, sleeping around? A list too long to consider. It did not matter now; they would never know.
A hundred feet to their right, the front door opened. And there she was, as if Teresa’s thoughts had conjured her from the mist. Audrey. She wore the same clothes from yesterday, but with an old green coat over her T-shirt. They waited for her to look in their direction, but she skipped down the steps and toward her car without a glance left or right.
“What’s she doing up at this hour?” Teresa wondered.
James shrugged, but he watched his sister carefully.
Audrey jumped into the Lexus and gunned the engine to life. Without waiting for it to warm up, she spun around the drive and out through the opening in the rhododendrons and was gone. It was only then that Teresa realized Philip’s car was also missing. Philip had gotten Miranda from the train yesterday, and James and Kenny had taken a taxi, so the drive was now empty of vehicles. Despite James standing beside her, Teresa had a panicky sensation of being abandoned on this foggy point of land. In this house of the dead.
“Where is she going?”
“It’s no use trying to figure out Audrey,” James said in resignation. “Be happy she’s gone for a while.”
His words raised questions about the sibling relationship, but a more urgent question nagged Teresa.
“How does that stuff about Grandpa make you to blame for his death?”
“I didn’t say I was to blame.”
“You said you would be blamed. Why?”
“Because,” he said, then said no more. A crow shambled from one pine tree to the next, a blue jay shrieking after it. She waited him out. “Because I was there,” James finally continued. “Every time something bad happens, I’m around. Grandma falling on the terrace. The painting vanishing. Now Grandpa dies right after I argue with him.”
“Oh, James,” Teresa said, grabbing the lapels of his coat and shaking him. “No one thinks you’re responsible for any of that.”
“Maybe you don’t,” he mumbled.
You’re the Angel of Death. Everyone you touch dies. Who had said that? Where had Teresa just heard it?
“Has anyone accused you of something?” she asked.
“They don’t have to. I can see it in their faces.”
“Grandma fell because she had a stroke,” Teresa said patiently. “It was, like, her fourth. One of them was going to kill her. Audrey was there, too. And she and I were both there when the theft happened. As for Grandpa, well, it sounds like he started the fight. With Kenny also. It’s not your fault.”
It was like talking to stone. He was still as a stone, too, his whole body gone rigid. He stared at the ocean with absolutely no expression. Teresa was good at reading people, but could read nothing in that blank visage. Despite the sun, the damp had penetrated her clothes and she began to shiver.
“I’m sorry, I have to go inside.”
“I saw someone,” James said then. “Or I thought I did. In the pines.”
“Just now, when you were walking?” Philip and Audrey had clearly been awake, but what would either have been doing out there? “Anybody you recognized?”
“No. I couldn’t tell. He, um, he had...” James’ voice shrunk to a whisper. “He had something covering his face.”
What did it mean? Did it mean anything?
“But you’re not sure you saw him?” she asked, confused.
“Afterward, it didn’t seem to make sense. I’ve been told to question the things I see. That I think I see.”
“Who told you that?” Teresa demanded to know.
He shook his head firmly. Doors opened and closed within him swiftly, and hammering on them never seemed to do any good. James looked down and noticed her shaking.
“You’re cold,” he said in surprise. “You should go in.”
“Will you come with me?” she asked.
“In a while. I don’t like it in that house.”
“Please? I don’t like it either. I’ll make you an omelet.”
It was one of the few things she could make, and she hoped there were eggs.
“I want to hear about your school,” James said. “I’ve been reading a lot about art lately, and I have some questions.”
“You’re full of surprises,” said Teresa. “Come inside, then, and we’ll talk.”
She moved toward the front door, willing him to follow. Reluctantly, he did.
5 (#u8de205d9-4585-5c78-b904-58472c628699)
It was the right house, but no one was home. How he could know that without leaving the car was a fair question, yet Dave felt certain. There were obvious tells. No vehicles in the drive, no lights, no gently parted curtain. It was more than that, though. There was something about houses, about the way they sat. They announced their occupancy. This one was empty. No spirits within, living or dead. He drank his coffee and read the New York Times.
He was early. He was always early, a habit picked up during the years when meetings carried potential threat. Arrive first, check out the location, see who else is watching. Dave supposed there might be threats today. The guy was a lawyer, after all, and had reason to dislike him. They would not be of the lethal kind, however, and he was not worried. More curious, which he had not been for some time. Which was the reason he was here at all. That and needing money.
At 8:55 a.m. he decided to survey the property. It was a nice house. Yellow clapboard with white trim, a porch running along two sides. Big, but no mansion. A top attorney from a wealthy family could do better. It certainly could not compare to the old man’s pile of brick by the sea. Then again, maybe the son would inherit that, the father having keeled over yesterday. Dave had read the obituary in the car. The collector got two columns with a photo. The tone was decidedly negative, which was sad. Dave had known the man a little, and it was hard to like Alfred Morse, but he felt a grudging respect.
Tennis court, luridly green lawn, bushes all around the house—laurel, azalea? He wasn’t good with shrubs. Primitive security system. Dave was ready to give hidden cameras a friendly wave, as if he were not casing the joint, but he saw none. He was back in the car sipping coffee when Philip Morse drove up, fifteen minutes late. Older model Mercedes, well maintained. The man was also well maintained, yet stress showed around his cold blue eyes. The eyes always give you away, thought Dave, stepping out of his car.
“Thanks for your patience,” said the attorney. No doubt he had read some asshole’s success-in-business guide that said never apologize. He did not shake hands but headed straight for the house. Dave followed, not hurrying. The side door opened into the kitchen, which was large and white and appointed with the latest gadgets. For the wife, Dave guessed. He would bet twenty bucks that Philip Morse could not boil an egg.
“I’ve been at my father’s,” the attorney said, lighting the gas jet under the steel kettle. He knew how to do that much. “I need to get back as soon as possible.”
“I’m sorry about your father,” Dave replied. “I liked him.”
“You were among the few,” Morse said sourly.
“I would have been happy to go to his house, under the circumstances.”
“I wanted this to be private. Would you like some tea or coffee?”
Dave declined, and Morse turned off the kettle, making nothing for himself. They sat at the kitchen table, and the attorney played with his glasses before speaking.
“My wife is in Paris,” he said pointlessly. Maybe to explain the empty house. “With friends. She’ll be back for the funeral, of course.”
“Of course. Your children are around?”
“My son, Ken. He’s at the house. You know why I asked you here, I suppose?”
The question had an accusatory edge, but Dave was not playing.
“I try not to presume anything. I would guess it’s related to your father’s death, except you called me before he died.”
“I did,” Morse agreed. “You’ll remember I tried to speak to you after your investigation.”
“I remember,” said Dave. “I wasn’t free to talk.”
“You invoked client confidentiality. But your client is now deceased.”
“Well, you would know better than me,” Dave replied carefully, “but I’m pretty sure that confidentiality continues after death.”
“Client-attorney privilege does,” Morse said, “but you’re not a lawyer. And even lawyers are allowed exceptions when settling estates.”
“Are you the executor?”
“I assume,” Morse huffed, tossing his glasses on the table and looking uneasy. “I haven’t seen the will yet. I’m meeting his attorney later, at the house.”
“That case was a long time ago,” Dave noted. “I’m no longer employed by that firm.”
“I am aware of that,” said the lawyer snidely.
“I was required to leave my notes with them.” A half-truth. That he was required to do so did not mean that he did. In fact, Dave had been reviewing them last night. “And my memory isn’t what it used to be. I mean, fifteen years...”
“So you don’t intend to tell me anything.”
“About?”
“About your conclusions. In your report to my father.”
“I see.” Dave leaned back in his chair. It was what he expected, though the timing was odd. Why all these years later, twenty-four hours before the old man’s death? If the attorney knew the death was imminent, then it was estate-related. Money. It was always money. “I’m not sure what I could say that would be useful.”
“Then why are you here, Mr. Webster?”
Yes, why? A rainy afternoon in Madrid. Dim rooms on the second floor of the Prado. Luisa had dragged him in to see something else, but he was taken hostage by those nightmare images by Goya. If they were Goya, no one knew for sure. Maybe his son, or the son painting over the father. Maybe the Devil himself. That was easy to believe when you stood before the works. Fourteen of them. Mad pilgrims with white eyes, screaming a song. Saturn’s dark maw devouring a bloody corpse. Witches floating in the air, the black shadow of the He-Goat before his coven. Fourteen, and one missing. A ghost painting, a rumor. For Dave, an obsession. Three years later Alfred Morse called Luisa’s father, Dave’s boss. There had been a theft. An indescribably precious work. He had no faith in the police. Luisa’s father gave the job to Dave, and his life unraveled. Not at that moment, but inexorably over the months and years that followed. And you ask why I’m here.
“You don’t even know why,” Morse said contemptuously.
“Let’s say out of respect for your father. And your loss.”
“I don’t need your respect,” said the attorney. “I need your assistance. I would not ask if it wasn’t necessary, but it’s you who created this mess.”
“Me?” said Dave, amused. “Do you think I took the painting, Mr. Morse?”
“No, but you apparently thought I did,” the attorney raged, straining forward in his chair. Dave wondered if the man was about to attack him. “You destroyed my father’s trust in me. Ruined our relationship. And now you can sit in my house and smirk at me like that, you pathetic fraud.”
That didn’t take long, thought Dave.
“Even if any of that is true,” he answered, “it’s a couple of days too late to fix it.”
That was cruel, he thought, surprised at himself. Why was he provoking the man? Did he want a fight? Did he want to roll around on the spotless tile floor with the lawyer, trading punches? Dave did not like Philip Morse. Fine. But the man had just lost his father, and there was some truth in his words.
Used to being provoked, or maybe embarrassed by his outburst, the attorney grew calm. He smoothed his hair and put his glasses back on. Like Superman becoming Clark Kent.
“Sadly, that is the case,” he said. “I can’t express my hurt at the idea my father died believing me guilty. Another man might feel shame, but I can see you aren’t such a man.”
“You have it wrong, Philip.”
“Then set me straight,” the attorney insisted. “How does your silence serve anyone?”
How indeed? He should beg the man’s pardon and leave. But he knew that he was not going to do that.
“Why now?” he asked. “Why after all this time did you call me two days ago?”
“Why should I answer that?”
“You don’t have to,” Dave said. The attorney eyed him closely, sensing an unspoken deal. He rose from his chair and went to the sink, gazing out the window there.
“My father had no use for his children,” Morse said. “The feeling was more or less mutual. So his coldness toward me in the last decade didn’t really register. It was only a few days ago that I learned he suspected me of stealing the painting.”
“You had no suspicion before?”
“Why would I?” the attorney demanded, wheeling around on him. “He was upset with all of us when it happened. Like it was some group failure. But I didn’t feel it was directed specifically at me.”
“You think I put that idea in his head.”
“You’re free to deny it.”
And who will you blame, then, Dave wondered.
“How did you hear? Who waited until the last couple of days to tell you?”
“That person only just heard it, as well,” the attorney replied. “I’m not free to say who.”
The man desperately wanted Dave to talk. If he would not reveal his source under that inducement, it was pointless to push.
“I can only speak about the investigation as it related to you,” Dave said. “No one else.”
The attorney moved back to the table and sat.
“Understood.”
His expression was so eager that Dave hesitated. But it was too late to hold back.
“I didn’t come to any conclusions,” he said. “For that matter, I didn’t submit a report. There was nothing on paper, it was all verbal.”
“What, on the telephone?”
“Never,” Dave replied. “In person. In his study. I think we met three times.” The big mahogany desk, the blue eyes even colder than his son’s, a crown of white hair swept back from his forehead. And that empty space above where the demon portrait so recently hung. “That’s how he wanted it done. I reported on my progress and he asked questions.”
“About me,” Morse said.
“All the children,” Dave admitted. “Spouses, the help, the caterers for the wake, dealers and collectors. It was a long list, and I didn’t get through half of them.”
“Why not?”
“I can only conjecture. We didn’t trade theories. Your father kept his own council.”
“Tell me about it,” said Morse, massaging the bridge of his nose. “Conjecture away.”
“He didn’t believe the groundskeeper was the thief. Or if he was, he acted on someone else’s behalf.”
“We all suspected that,” the attorney said dismissively. “But whose?”
“There was a collector who wanted the work very badly,” Dave replied, violating his own conditions. “A man named Charles DeGross.”
“That’s right. He made my father at least two offers. Generous offers, I understood.”
“You encouraged your father to sell to him,” Dave stated, rather than asked.
“And that makes me suspect? My mother, my brother and his own lawyer encouraged the exact same thing.”
“Yes, but they didn’t meet secretly with Mr. DeGross. You did. Twice.”
Morse took a deep breath. Far from looking angry, he seemed relieved to have arrived at the heart of the matter.
“It wasn’t secret. For heaven’s sake, we were in a restaurant.”
“You were in a private room. Alone except for the waiter. And on at least one of those occasions you lied to others about where you would be.”
Morse sighed again and shook his head.
“Your memory is better than you claim,” he said ruefully. “Fibbing to my secretary is not a crime. It was essential that it be kept private. I was, in fact, acting in my father’s interest.”
“Just without his knowledge or permission,” Dave replied.
“You have no idea,” the attorney said sharply. “Or maybe you do.”
“About what?”
“His finances. My father didn’t understand money, and he ran through it at an alarming rate. He paid high prices for works he wanted, and hardly sold a thing. It wasn’t sustainable. Ten million dollars would have gone a long way toward curing his problems.”
“He felt the painting was worth many times that,” said Dave.
“To whom?” Morse asked, tossing his hands up. “You’re not a dealer, but you must understand the market a little. That kind of money was a delusion. No one has ever paid that for a Goya, and certainly no one would without a clean provenance.”
“You think your father acquired it illegally?”
“I don’t know, nor do I care. That painting...” The attorney became glassy-eyed for a moment. As if he went away from the conversation, away from the bright room to some other, darker place. “That painting was never going to a museum,” he rasped, his gaze slowly finding Dave again. “Anyone who would take it for a good price and keep it hidden was doing our family and the world a service.”
Dave held his tongue. They had come to what he cared about, but the questions he wanted to ask would take them away from the lawyer’s concerns, and expose his own. He mastered himself.
“What was your purpose in meeting DeGross?”
Morse nodded, as if he, too, had forgotten the point and was grateful to be brought back to it.
“The first time was after his initial offer. Seven million. I convinced him that my father swearing not to sell was a bluff, that he should go higher. I’m the one who got him to ten million. Not that Dad would have thanked me for it.”
“Which of course he couldn’t,” Dave pointed out, “because he didn’t know. Why the second meeting?”
“DeGross asked for that. After my father rejected the higher offer. He wanted to know if there was any point in continuing. If there was anything left to try.”
“Like stealing, for instance,” Dave baited him.
“DeGross may have been behind the theft,” Morse answered evenly. “But he didn’t share his plans with me. I did not have anything to do with that, Mr. Webster. And I still don’t understand why you stopped the investigation.”
He sounded sincere, Dave had to admit. He might be a good liar, or he might have talked himself into his own innocence. People did that. Or, Dave conceded grudgingly, he might be telling the truth.
“Your father suspected DeGross. I could tell from his questions. But I couldn’t find a link to the groundskeeper or any of the other help. I didn’t investigate the caterers closely, that was another thing I was going to get to. The suspicious behavior I did uncover involved members of the family. Especially you.”
“You mean those meetings with DeGross.”
“That was the worst of it,” Dave confirmed. “Your father was determined to solve the case. He put all his energy into it. When I told him about those meetings, well, the steam went out of him. He didn’t even want to hear about my other findings. He just asked me to leave. The next day he called to say he was ending the investigation.”
They were both quiet for a time. The attorney was so deeply wrapped in thought that the sound of a car pulling into the driveway did not rouse him.
“I understand this is painful for you,” Dave said, risking the other man’s wrath. “And I’m not accusing you of anything. But one way to look at this is that your father was trying to protect you. As important as that painting was, it was more important to him not to implicate his son in any wrongdoing.”
Morse stared at him with a curious expression, and Dave considered the possibility that for once in his life he had said the right thing. A car door slamming erased any response the attorney might have made. He rose quickly and went to the window.
“What the hell does she want?”
Three seconds later the kitchen door banged open and a woman in tight jeans and a baggy coat swept in. Curvy, blond and flushed. And obviously a Morse. She barely paused to throw a contemptuous glance at Philip, but she stopped short when she saw Dave. He stood up fast, banging his knee on the table.
“Sorry, did I interrupt something?” she asked, not sounding sorry. More annoyed that the presence of a guest required a halfhearted courtesy. “Who are you?”
“What are you doing here, Audrey?” Philip snapped. The girl made him nervous, though Dave could not guess why.
“Clothes,” she said.
“Clothes?”
“For the funeral and, like, the next few days. It’s four hours round-trip to my apartment, without traffic. And the cops want us to hang around.”
“I wasn’t aware,” said Philip suspiciously, “that you had left clothes at my house.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, making silly sound like a humiliating condition. “Cynthia and I wear exactly the same size. Nice to meet you...”
“Dave,” he said, taking her offered hand. Her blue eyes had a warmth missing from her uncle’s, and her smile seemed genuine, if not exactly kind. She had a firm handshake.
“I’m Audrey,” she replied, brushing against him as she passed. More closely than the space required. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”
“Wait, have you spoken to Cynthia?” Philip called after her.
“She won’t mind,” Audrey declared, already in the hall and headed for the stairs. Philip went as far as the kitchen door in pursuit. Then stopped, shoulders sagging.
“My niece,” he said in resignation.
“I remember,” Dave replied. She was a mouthy teen when he last saw her. The children had been off-limits for questioning. Which was appropriate, yet frustrating, as three had been in the house during the theft. One of them had actually been in the room. A boy, in therapy for some trauma. Dave could guess the source of that trauma, but none of the adults would speak of it. He’d met Audrey because she sought him out during her father’s interview. Flirting, he guessed. Or wanting to know what was up, the way teenagers did. She was cute, but fifteen-year-olds were not his thing, and he hadn’t given her a second thought. She was all grown-up now.
Morse shuffled back to the table. Audrey’s entrance had severed the brief bond between the men, and Dave sensed a dismissal. But the attorney sat down again.
“Thank you for telling me those things.”
“I can’t imagine they were what you wanted to hear,” Dave answered, sitting down also.
“No, but not as bad as I guessed. Tell me something else, please. Did you believe I was the thief? Is that what you would have reported to my father?”
“That’s a tough question, Philip.”
“The truth will do. You won’t offend me.”
“I hadn’t made up my mind. I needed more time, and more freedom. You looked suspicious, but so did other people.”
“Like my brother-in-law,” the attorney said. “Ramón.”
“I can’t answer that.”
“You don’t need to.” Morse reached into his jacket and slipped out a checkbook. They had not discussed a fee for Dave’s time, but without asking, the attorney began to write. “What I would like to do is ask you to pick up where you left off fifteen years ago,” he said, tearing the check from the book. “I don’t know how realistic that is.”
“It’s a cold trail,” Dave managed, covering his surprise. Was he serious? “I would have to track down a lot of people. They would have to be willing to talk.”
“Many hurdles,” the lawyer agreed. “Don’t answer now, but consider the possibility. Last question. Or request. Would you be willing to repeat everything you’ve just said to my brother and sister?”
There it was. The old man was gone but not the siblings. Did one of them control the purse strings? Or was this just an emotional thing? Did it matter?
“If they’re willing to listen,” said Dave, “I’m willing to talk.”
Morse nodded and handed over the check. It was for a thousand dollars, far too much. Dave thought of handing it back, then thought better.
“Consider yourself on retainer,” the attorney said. “We’ll be speaking more.”
6 (#u8de205d9-4585-5c78-b904-58472c628699)
The diner was a mile from Morse’s house, at the first intersection going east. Anyone returning to Owl’s Point would pass this way. There was also a gas station, post office and antiques shop, but little activity this Monday morning. Little to attract Dave’s eye while he ate a late breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. He could not have said what he was watching for until the red Lexus sped by the window.
Philip had shaken his hand when they parted. As if they were pals now, or at least co-conspirators. Dave did not know why it bothered him. He had worked for worse men, and very little had been asked of him so far. He had no inflated sense of his own honor, but there was something tainted about the attorney. About the whole family. They were people to avoid; Dave felt it on an instinctive level. Yet he’d accepted the check, and gave Morse his mobile number. Going to his car, he had stolen a glance back and caught a figure in a second-floor window. Near the back of the house, the master bedroom probably. It was her, Audrey. She examined a blouse in the window’s natural light, and it took a moment to realize she wore nothing but a white bra. She didn’t look up, but Dave had no doubt the show was for him. Before he averted his gaze, she turned around quickly. As if someone in the room behind had startled her. Yet she made no effort to cover herself.
He had been trying to sort it all out—what the attorney really wanted, why Audrey had made an appearance, what was going on between the two of them—when her car shot by. She drove too fast. Any careless pedestrian would have been instant roadkill. In the minimum time it would take to find a place to turn around and come back, the Lexus reappeared and swung in next to his blue Taurus. She got out slowly and scanned the long window until she spotted him. Then waved. Dave did not wave back, but she bounded up the stairs and entered the little diner nevertheless.
The same black jeans, but now she sported a pink blouse with the sleeves rolled, along with a turquoise bracelet and silver chain around her neck. Also fresh lipstick and eye shadow, which did not quite distract from the dark crescents of sleeplessness. She had the weathered look of a woman a few years older, a look Dave found appealing. Indeed, he was quite attracted to her, and the sooner he admitted that to himself the better he could resist.
“Hey,” she said, sliding in across the table from him. “Mind if I join you?”
“You already have. But I was just finishing.”
“Doesn’t look like you enjoyed it.” She grabbed his coffee cup and took a swig, leaving a red smear on the white ceramic. “That is terrible,” she announced.
“It is,” he agreed. “You didn’t give me time to warn you.”
“I know you,” Audrey said, drilling him with those blue eyes. It struck him that she had a slightly crazed look, and Dave could not decide if it was natural or a put-on. “I could feel it right away, but it took a little while to figure out. You won’t remember me.”
“I do.”
“Really?” She seemed far too pleased. “They wouldn’t even let me talk to you.”
“You managed to barge in anyway.”
“For like thirty seconds before they hustled me out.”
“You were too young,” Dave said. “It wasn’t allowed.”
“I was fifteen. I made a statement to the police.”
“And I got a copy of that.”
“Maybe I didn’t tell them everything,” she said, letting that sit. He would not take the bait, and he could see that she had no patience. “So what’s the story, Dave? Did my uncle hire you to investigate something?”
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Neil Olson
An enthralling well-written mystery for readers who enjoyed The Keeper of Lost Things and The Improbability of Love.A dead body. A family torn apart. Someone is lying.Years ago, a forgotten Goya masterpiece was stolen from Teresa’s family home, a crumbling mansion at Owl’s Point. Ever since, Teresa has stayed away, terrified of the rumours surrounding the Black Painting and the jealous accusations that tore apart her family.Now her grandfather has summoned his descendants back to the mansion to discuss his will, and Teresa knows she has no choice except to return. But when she arrives, she finds the door hanging open and her grandfather dead, his eyes open and staring at the empty space where the Goya once hung.Someone in the family is lying, but will Teresa unravel the mystery of the missing painting before it is too late?
An old-money East Coast family faces the suspicious death of its patriarch and the unsolved theft of a Goya painting rumored to be cursed
There are four cousins in the Morse family: perfect Kenny, the preppy West Coast lawyer; James, the shy but brilliant medical student; his seductive, hard-drinking sister Audrey; and Teresa, youngest and most fragile, haunted by the fear that she has inherited the madness that possessed her father.
Their grandfather summons them to his mansion at Owl’s Point. None of them have visited the family estate since they were children, when a prized painting disappeared: a self-portrait by Goya, rumored to cause madness or death upon viewing. Afterward, the family split apart amid the accusations and suspicions that followed its theft.
Any hope that their grandfather planned to make amends evaporates when Teresa arrives to find the old man dead, his horrified gaze pinned upon the spot where the painting once hung. As the family gathers and suspicions mount, Teresa hopes to find the reasons behind her grandfather’s death and the painting’s loss. But to do so she must uncover ugly family secrets and confront those who would keep them hidden.
A masterful, deftly plotted novel, The Black Painting explores the profound power that art, and the past, hold over our lives.
NEIL OLSON is the author of The Icon, a novel of art theft and family intrigue, and the play Dealers. He lives in New York City with his wife and works in the publishing industry.
Also by Neil Olson
The Icon
Copyright (#u8de205d9-4585-5c78-b904-58472c628699)
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Neil Olson 2016
Neil Olson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9781474070584
Advance praise for
The Black Painting
“The volatility of memory, the treacherous crucible of family lore, and the myths and mysteries of Goya’s Black Paintings all come hypnotically together in Neil Olson’s outstanding novel. With taut, confident prose and breathless plotting, Olson leads us through a dark and dazzling kaleidoscope of a story. Here is a writer to watch.”
—Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife and Circling the Sun
“You’ll need extra coffee in the morning because The Black Painting is going to keep you up reading way too late! A well-crafted psychological thriller with an intricate plot and first-rate characters, this deluxe suspense literally bursts with surprises.”
—M.J. Rose, author of The Reincarnationist
“Neil Olson’s The Black Painting is an expertly confected, delicious mystery/thriller, and also a deeper study of the family romance, with echoes of Cheever’s ‘Goodbye, My Brother.’”
—Madison Smartt Bell, author of Behind the Moon and National Book Award finalist for All Souls’ Rising
For my mother, Rose
Contents
Cover (#ub26ecb71-97af-54eb-9fa1-7dcaf0f43b9a)
Back Cover Text (#u7148ba86-d947-5e48-8df6-bb55d6de2d96)
About the Author (#ud6c720db-4554-5d58-9b33-86ee5eecd37f)
Also by Neil Olson (#u76903329-a37f-5612-bcdb-aa8305452085)
Title Page (#u5ec11b6d-aa6e-5b9d-b8c9-218daf9ee3a1)
Copyright (#u47e3ad40-24b1-5a84-ae48-ab80ae9a0bcb)
Praise (#u3e3cba04-2f17-54bf-8ca3-58d1c7073e40)
Dedication (#u45ff9e4f-a89e-5123-9266-effd958c280f)
Chapter 1 (#u2d3c3a7f-cc59-5417-9c86-7c586c98a6fd)
Chapter 2 (#u633a4fae-a8c6-52cd-8d66-5427a76ab4fb)
Chapter 3 (#u1bf98931-652d-5dc7-a69c-bb842ee1641a)
Chapter 4 (#u13a55606-2c7e-537c-8dc2-88ca47fcb7fa)
Chapter 5 (#ufd19b1a0-ecba-57bc-9981-371f31ba144a)
Chapter 6 (#uc159ee39-cd8b-5b20-8f86-767478a17ea7)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
1 (#u8de205d9-4585-5c78-b904-58472c628699)
Last night she dreamed of the house on Owl’s Point. Waning sunlight bathed the old brick face, and waves pounded the rocks below. Her cousins were there. James, whom she loved, and his sister Audrey, whom she despised. James tried to warn her of some threat hidden in the pines, but his sister only laughed. Audrey was grown-up, looking as she had at her wedding. Disheveled and slightly mad. James was the child he always was in her dreams, never older than eleven. As if his life had stopped there. Though the dream disturbed Teresa, there was nothing odd in the fact of it. At her grandfather’s request she was returning to Owl’s Point for the first time in fifteen years.
The train car swayed gently. Connecticut coast swept past the window. Rocky woods gave way to broad swaths of gray water and the dark smudge of Long Island. Streams ran through acres of marsh grass, and an egret took flight, white wings pumping. Sometimes it felt like Teresa had spent her life on this train. Going back and forth to school. Later to visit friends and professors still in New Haven. Before that, long before, were the trips to her grandparents in Langford. The house and grounds were a vast and beguiling world where she and her cousins burned countless hours, outside the normal flow of time. They built a tree fort in the big oak. They explored the inlet by the bridge in their canoes. They played epic games of hide-and-seek. There was no beach, but Audrey—against all warnings—would leap from the black rocks into the surf. Just as she would climb the tallest trees, or slip out an attic window to crawl around on the slate roof of the mansion. No punishment or injury deterred her, and that recklessness continued into adulthood.
It was Teresa and James who discovered the indoor secrets. The dumbwaiter that ran from the cold cellar to the master bedroom—by way of the kitchen, where you could fling open the door and scare Jenny, the cook. The hidden closet under the stairs, where they fell asleep one afternoon and threw the house into a panic. The unfinished room in the attic, the crawl space in the wine cellar, more places that she had since forgotten. Only Grandpa’s study was off-limits. Teresa looked forward to the trips to Owl’s Point for weeks beforehand. They were the highlight of summer, or any season. Until they abruptly stopped.
No one else left the train at Langford. The platform was short and broken. Only eight cars were in the lot, none of them her grandfather’s green Jaguar. Teresa remembered that he no longer drove, so she looked for Ilsa. Had they forgotten she was coming? That seemed unlikely, but ten minutes passed without any sign of a ride. She reached for her phone, then stopped. If she had ever known the Owl’s Point number, it was lost to memory. She could call her mother, of course, but she would rather drink paint thinner. It was two miles to the house, more or less. On a narrow and twisty lane. Teresa sighed. Then she slung her bag, walked past the coffee shop, bank, jewelers, and up the slope of Long Hill Road.
“There is absolutely no need to go there,” she heard her mother say, an echo of last night’s argument.
“He’s asked all the grandchildren,” Teresa had replied, though Miranda knew that. “Kenny and Audrey and James have agreed.”
“That’s their choice. You can make a different one.”
“Mother.”
“Whatever he wants to say he can put in a letter or a telephone call.”
“Do you know what he wants to say?”
“For goodness’ sake, how would I know that?”
“Because he’s your father.”
Miranda treated the fact as an accusation, and the conversation went downhill fast. Trudging up the steep and tree-shrouded lane, Teresa pictured her mother in the West Village apartment, bought when there was still family money. Tending her exotic roses or painting in her studio. Flitting about in those bright Indian shawls with her artsy friends. Clueless about the real world.
“Stop,” Teresa said aloud. Only the trees as witnesses. Just stop. Stop being angry with your mother, with everyone.
A car was rushing up the hill behind her. She could hear the high performance motor straining through the steep turn. They all drove too fast around here, and of course there was no sidewalk. Who would walk anywhere in Langford? She stepped off the road into a mass of saplings and early fallen leaves. Praying not to be hit. Or that at least it should be a quick death from a very expensive car.
It was a red Lexus convertible, which missed her by several feet. She saw a blur of blond hair and sunglasses, then the car slowed immediately, pulling onto the scant margin forty yards ahead. The driver jumped up in the seat and turned, calling out merrily.
“Tay-ray!”
Dear God in Heaven. Audrey.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” her cousin shouted.
At least she would not have to walk the rest of the way. Dutifully, Teresa marched toward the vehicle. Like a condemned man. To her horror, Audrey leaped out and swept her into a hug. She smelled musky. Some combination including sandalwood, vodka and sweat. She carried a few extra pounds, though in all the right places. Audrey stepped back to survey her younger, skinny, dark-haired cousin.
“Look at you all grown-up,” she gushed.
“I was twenty years old at your wedding,” said Teresa.
“Yeah,” Audrey conceded. “But there were, like, four hundred people there. And I was completely wasted.” Teresa had to laugh at the admission, and Audrey flashed a peroxide smile. “Get in. I guess we’re going the same way.”
Teresa climbed in and buckled up as Audrey gunned the engine. With hardly a glance either way, she shot back onto the road.
“When did you get this car?” Teresa shouted over the wind and motor.
“In the divorce,” said Audrey, matter-of-fact. “Piece of crap, but I’m broke right now, so I’m stuck with it. What do you drive?”
“Nothing.”
“Seriously?”
“New York has excellent public transportation.”
“Socialist,” Audrey jeered. “This ain’t New York. Why were you walking?”
“Because you were late?” Teresa guessed. Audrey did a double take.
“Wait, what? Nobody told me to pick you up. I didn’t even know you were coming.”
Teresa’s anxiety, briefly quelled, rose up again.
“There was no one at the station. I figured Ilsa would get me. We spoke two days ago.”
“Ilsa,” Audrey scoffed. “She must be like a hundred years old now.”
“I don’t think she’s more than seventy. Maybe not even.”
“Whatever, at least you were wearing the right shoes.”
Teresa’s boots were low-heeled and comfortable. She never wore anything that was not good for walking. For her grandfather’s interview, she had put on a tasteful gray suit. Audrey was driving barefoot, but a pair of red pumps was jammed half under the seat. She wore tight black jeans and a white V-neck tee to show off her big tanned boobs. Because you never knew when you might meet a hot guy at your decrepit grandfather’s house.
“So qué pasa, Tay-ray? What’s going on in your life?”
The nickname came from her father Ramón’s pronunciation. Not the Anglicized Ta-ree-sa, but the Spanish Tay-ray-sa. For the Saint. James started calling her Tay-ray when they were four years old. She liked the name on his lips. With Audrey, it always sounded like a taunt.
“I’m back in school,” Teresa replied. “Graduate school.”
“I heard. Art appreciation or something?”
“It’s called art history,” she said impatiently. “Art appreciation is what your mother does at the country club.”
“My mother just got plowed there.” Audrey slid the sunglasses down and smirked. “A little defensive, are we?”
“No.”
“Are you painting? Isn’t that what you really wanted to do?”
“Watch the road.”
They had swung up on the rear of a gray Volvo. Its cautious speed annoyed Audrey beyond reason.
“This is ridiculous. Speed up or move over, granny.”
“Don’t,” Teresa said, sensing her cousin’s intention. “Do not try to pass her on this narrow—Audrey!”
The Lexus was already moving around the slower car, simultaneously shaping a very tight—and blind—curve. Teresa closed her eyes and prayed to the God in whom she no longer believed. When she opened them again they were accelerating along what must be the only straightaway in Langford. Audrey was hooting.
“Oh, Tay, you should see your face. Am I going to have to clean that seat?”
“I would punch you in the head if you weren’t driving.”
Audrey laughed even harder.
“I like this feisty you,” she declared. “You were such a drip as a kid. With your pasty skin and your books and your condition. Who knew you would grow up to be such a tough girl? All ninety pounds of you.”
It was a hundred and three, by why argue? Teresa had as much trouble keeping weight on as other women did losing it. It was actually a problem, but not one for which she would get any sympathy, so she learned not to discuss it.
“Is James at the house?” she asked, as much to change the subject as from real curiosity.
“Nope,” Audrey answered. “James and Kenny were yesterday. You and me today.”
“Oh.” Teresa tried to hide her disappointment, though her cousin surely noticed. She used to tease that James and Teresa would get married someday. “Why?”
“Why do you think?” Audrey said, smile gone sour. But her disgust was not with Teresa. “Boys first, then girls. Men have serious stuff to talk about, right? Careers, obligations, all that. Women, we’re just frivolous creatures.”
It probably doesn’t help that you act like a frivolous creature, Teresa wanted to say, but did not.
“I don’t think Grandpa feels that way. I don’t remember—”
“Exactly,” Audrey cut her off. “You don’t remember. You were how old the last time you saw him? Nine, ten?”
“I’m the same age as your brother.”
“So eleven. Both of you off in your own little world. Kenny and me were older, we saw what was going on. This family has always been about the boys.”
“Did James tell you why we’ve been summoned?”
“No,” Audrey said. “Little prick hasn’t returned my call. I’m guessing it’s to pass on some precious wisdom before the old geezer kicks it.”
Teresa recognized the brick pillars wreathed in ivy even as Audrey slowed for the turn. Sixty-Six Long Hill Road. Owl’s Point. The drive dipped down into a marsh with a narrow bridge, barely wide enough for the car. This was where they swam and canoed. Where Kenny caught the sand shark. Where he nearly drowned Audrey after she teased him once too often. It was as Teresa remembered, but also different. Smaller. They ascended again, through a grove of cedars and a huge bank of rhododendron. And there was the house. Three stories of red brick and slate. The blue shutters and door were faded. The steel cross on the lawn—the work of some second-tier sculptor—was rusted and had a branch wedged in the crossbar. There were no cars in sight. Audrey killed the engine, and silence fell over them.
“Huh,” Audrey said, beginning to share Teresa’s unease.
“You think they might be out?”
“Ilsa maybe.” Audrey stepped from the car and slapped her door closed, startling a crow from a pine tree. “The old guy never goes anywhere.”
“Have you seen him?” Teresa asked, getting out and following. “I mean, have you been here since...”
“Since the theft? Maybe twice, but not for years. You?”
“No,” Teresa said. “Never. I’ve spoken to him on the phone. I thought I might see him at your wedding.”
“He was invited,” Audrey said. “I think someone told him not to come. Wow, this place has really gone to hell.”
They stood before the door, which was badly chipped. The whole house had a mournful air about it, though that may have been Teresa’s imagination. And the late September light. Audrey was about to hit the bell when Teresa noticed the door was a few inches ajar.
“Look. It’s open.”
They exchanged a quick glance. Then Audrey pushed the heavy door and marched in.
“Hello? The girls are here—anyone around?”
Teresa followed her into the front hall, papered in a fading green of leafy vines. A wide, carpeted stairway ascended on the right. The look and even the smell of the place—wood polish and dust—was instantly familiar. Yet like the property outside, it was diminished by time and wear. That magical house of Teresa’s childhood no longer existed. Near the stairs, Audrey was looking at the control panel of what must be a fairly new house alarm. The display read: Disarmed.
“They must be home or they would have set the alarm,” Audrey said, tightness creeping into her voice. “You look around here, I’ll check upstairs.”
Teresa started to protest, but could think of no reason why. Then she realized that she did not want to be left alone. Her face flushed with embarrassment, but Audrey was already bounding up the stairs. Get a grip, Teresa said to herself. It’s an old house. Full of sadness and memories, but nothing to be afraid of. You haven’t believed in evil paintings since you were a little girl, and anyway it was stolen. It’s not here anymore.
It took only a glance into the sitting and dining rooms to confirm they were empty. She went slowly down the hall, glancing at old vases and portraits without seeing them. Dread gripped her. She had shed childish superstitions in college. She took pride in her scientific view of art, of the world. Yet some habits stuck. Such as the belief in her own instinct, which was correct more often than she could explain. And which was telling her right now that there was nothing alive in this house.
The billiard room was also empty, the table covered in a white tarp. Teresa enjoyed the game, but she was a poor player. Audrey was the pool shark. Hustling Kenny for his summer allowance while James and Teresa played chess in the corner. For a moment, she saw the ghosts of their younger selves scattered around the room. There and gone.
The corridor to the kitchen beckoned, but she was stopped short by something she had never seen before. The door to her grandfather’s study stood open. In all of Teresa’s time here that door had been a virtual wall. Locked when the old man was not inside, closed even when he was. Always closed. Now, just the glimpse of afternoon light falling across an ornate desk and a blue-and-red oriental carpet, thrilled her with fear and wonder. She took a deep breath and forced herself to walk through the door.
It was a smaller room than expected, but otherwise exactly as she had envisioned it. Bookcases lined the walls, though there was space enough for one painting directly behind the desk. Did she only imagine the faint square where the cream paint seemed brighter? It had hung there a long time before some brave soul seized it. She looked away, as if even this outline might retain a lethal potency. A set of casement windows let in the mellow autumn light. The fireplace stood like an open black maw. Was that the same iron poker the thieves had used to clout Ilsa, or did Grandpa replace the set?
On the near wall was a cracked leather sofa, and on it sat a man.
Not sat, but sprawled, in a position that must surely be uncomfortable. One slipper dangled off the pale left foot. His dressing gown—dusky gold with red Chinese dragons—was badly rumpled. Teresa knew that dressing gown. Indeed, she would have said the man was her grandfather, except for his awful stillness. And the expression of abject terror which twisted his features. The dead blues eyes were fixed on the empty space across the room.
“Teresa?”
Audrey’s voice from the back stairs broke the spell. Teresa shuddered with an animal revulsion, then backpedaled. Until she struck a bookcase and fell to her knees. There had been a noise. A deep, guttural moan whose source she could not identify. The man? Had he groaned? Then she understood that she herself had made the noise. She tried to speak, but no words would come.
“Was that you?” Audrey asked, rushing into the room. “Did you hurt yourself? What is the... Oh. Oh, man.”
Teresa could not even look at her cousin. As much as she wished to, she could not take her eyes from the hideous gray face.
“Okay,” said Audrey between deep breaths. “Okay, Teresa? Look at me. Don’t look at him, look at me.”
She tried to obey, but could not move her head. She could not even close her eyes. She would be looking at that face for the rest of her life. Then something intervened. Audrey’s white T-shirt. Then her face. Those blue eyes. Like their grandfather’s, though bright and full of life.
“Audie,” Teresa whispered. A frightened four-year-old girl again.
“I know, sweetheart. It’s all right, let’s get you out of this room. No, don’t.” The voice went from compassion to anger in a moment, or maybe it was only panic. “Don’t you dare have one of your fits right now. Stay with me, Teresa.”
It was no use. The hard edges of the world fractured into prismatic color. Her senses closed down, and she saw into the heart of the universe. For a bare moment she understood everything. Then a blinding light absorbed her. She felt her body go slack, go liquid, vanish. She gave herself up to the light.
“Teresa. Teresa.”
2 (#u8de205d9-4585-5c78-b904-58472c628699)
For madness, no one could top Goya. Drunks, murderers, victims of violence. Lunatics beset by demons or witches summoning them. Gods destroying their children. The Spaniard had seen it all, in the war-torn landscape of his country or in his own troubled mind, and captured it on canvas. Including at least one thing he should not have caught.
Francisco José de Goya. Teresa had known the name always. It was synonymous with fear. She was as easily scared as any sensitive girl who read too much, and the scariest things were those left to your imagination. Her grandfather, usually kind, was stern and absolute in one matter. Stay out of the study. Never go in for any reason. The fear could not be explained away as Teresa grew older because it was so obviously shared by her mother and uncles. They had also known of the painting all their lives, although only the eldest, Philip, had actually seen it. And he never spoke to his brother or sister about what he saw. Of course the old man saw it every day, and he was neither struck dead nor driven mad. There was a trick to it, or there was a type of person able to withstand the portrait’s awful gaze. More than withstand it, but learn and prosper from the contact. This was explained to Teresa by her father, Ramón, who counted himself among those so gifted. For he had seen the painting many times. Whether and how it had damaged him was anyone’s guess.
There were many reasons Teresa could invent for her obsession with art. Because it was something she shared with her father and grandfather, who took her to all the best museums in New York and Boston. Because her impulse toward the mystical and curiosity about her Spanish heritage found their perfect union and expression in the artists she adored: El Greco, Zurbarán, Goya. Because she was so bad at the hard sciences that a humanities degree was her only choice. But she knew very well that the obsession had its roots in that first terror and fascination of childhood. The haunted self-portrait by Goya from his solitary days in the Quinta del Sordo. A painting that had left one man dead in Teresa’s lifetime, and carried the rumor of death and insanity in a long train behind it. A painting she had never seen, and never would.
* * *
The ambulance made its slow way around the drive and out of sight. No lights or siren. There was no need. A police cruiser escorted it, but the nondescript brown sedan that arrived later was still parked out there. The detective must be somewhere talking to Audrey, yet the house was quiet. Teresa was in the sitting room. She had been lying down, recovering from her migraine. But the settee was too hard, made for perching, not reclining. She was sitting up now, sipping from a glass of water Audrey had left for her. Everything that had happened since finding the dead man was vague and disjointed.
She was ashamed of her uselessness. She should be calling people, starting with her mother. She should be speaking to the sad-faced detective—it was she who had found the body, after all. Mostly she should not be falling to pieces like a fragile girl, leaving Audrey to handle everything. Audrey, who had been praising Teresa’s toughness only an hour ago. Who had kept her cool in the presence of death. Whatever her faults, the woman clearly had strengths which Teresa had been slow to perceive. Slow or unwilling. Her sense of Audrey as a person was trapped in the past, in a wounded child’s perceptions.
Voices approached down the hall, and Teresa stood. She was unsteady, but did not want to seem meek or ill. Audrey’s voice rose sharply just outside of the room, then fell silent. One set of footsteps retreated, and a moment later the detective appeared in the door.
He was tall and lean, though his face was puffy. Dark hair retreated from his forehead, and his hound dog eyes made you want to comfort him. It was a face you trusted, which must be useful for a detective.
“Miss Marías. How are you?”
“Fine,” she said, pleased by the firmness of her voice. “Call me Teresa.”
“I’m Detective Waldron.”
“You introduced yourself before,” she remembered.
“Right, I wasn’t sure if you, ah...”
“Was in my right mind?” she supplied, forcing a smile. “I really am okay now. Won’t you sit down?”
Won’t you sit down! Who was she, a society hostess? This wasn’t even her house. But he did sit, and she did, too, which was a relief.
“This shouldn’t take long,” he said, flipping through a small notepad. “Ms. Morse has filled me in pretty thoroughly. I wonder if you could run through your arrival here, and the um, the discovery of your grandfather’s body?”
Your grandfather’s body, thought Teresa, reality hitting home. Not “the body” or “the dead man” but Alfred Arthur Morse. Arrogant, secretive collector of and dealer in European art, with a big house, a bad heart and three estranged children. A man to whom Teresa had once felt close, and for whom she harbored a lingering affection. She had suppressed how deeply she was looking forward to seeing him, and tears welled up in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Waldron said, closing the notepad and beginning to stand. “Your cousin said it was too soon.”
“Is this normal?” Teresa asked tightly. Humiliated by his sympathy.
He slumped back into the chair.
“Your shock? It’s absolutely normal, most people never have to—”
“I mean you being here,” she corrected. “He obviously had a heart attack or a stroke or something. Why would they send a detective? Is it because he’s rich or, or what?”
He nodded several times.
“His prominence has something to do with it,” Waldron conceded. “That’s off the record, please. Also, there’s the matter of the housekeeper.”
“Ilsa.” She had forgotten all about the woman.
“Yes, um, Ilsa Graff. I understand that she lives in the house. For the last—” he consulted his notes “—thirty years or so?”
“I guess that’s right,” Teresa said.
“Do you have any idea where she is?”
“No, none. She was supposed to meet me at the train. Or I think she was. I don’t remember anymore what we agreed.”
“But you didn’t see her at the station?” he prompted.
“No,” Teresa replied, clutching the water glass nervously. Why was she nervous? “So I started walking. And I got about half a mile before Audrey pulled up.”
“There was no understanding between you two beforehand? She simply appeared?”
“There’s only one road,” Teresa said, annoyance creeping into her tone. “Whether you walk or drive.”
“Nothing implied,” Waldron said, holding up a forbearing palm. “These are routine questions. I hope you understand.”
“I don’t, to tell you the truth.” The headache was pulsing behind her eyes again. “You think Ilsa did something to my grandfather?”
He puffed up his cheeks and exhaled.
“I think her not being here when you two were expected is odd. But I have no theories at this time, and every expectation that it’ll turn out as you say. Older man, weak heart. We just have to be as thorough as possible.”
“All right.”
“So you were walking to the house when your cousin drove up?”
“Excuse me?”
“Ms. Morse said you were standing off to the side of the road. She couldn’t say with certainty which direction you had been going before she came around the turn. I just want to confirm you were coming from the station.”
As opposed to where? Teresa’s hands were shaking, and there was a buzzing in her ears. She could not tell whether she was stunned or furious or both.
“Is this about my father?” she blurted.
He sat back and gazed at her curiously.
“I don’t know. Is there some reason it should be?”
Idiot, Teresa scolded herself. That’s exactly what he wanted you to say. This is not a friendly talk, it’s a grilling. He thinks you did something.
“I already said that I was coming from the station,” she replied slowly.
“Apologies, my notes are a little messy. You mentioned your father.”
“I don’t think I have anything more to say to you, Mr. Waldron.”
“If we could cover one or two other points,” he said patiently, “then we’re done.”
“Get out.”
Teresa had not seen Audrey enter the room. She was standing very close to the detective, a murderous look in her eyes. Waldron stood and nodded politely at her, as if she had not spoken.
“Get out,” Audrey said again, louder.
“Your cousin and I were discussing the—”
“I heard what you were discussing. I told you to leave her alone.”
“I believe,” Waldron answered, “that Miss Marías is best equipped to make that decision herself.”
“Then you obviously know nothing about trauma,” Audrey said. “So listen to me. Our uncle, who will be here any minute, is a big-time attorney. And I will sue you personally and your entire podunk department for harassment, coercion, mental cruelty and anything else I can think of, if you do not get out of this house right now.”
The detective shook his head like a man wronged, but not overly concerned about it. He tucked the notebook into the pocket of his baggy trousers and shuffled out of the room. Audrey followed him closely, a barely restrained violence in her posture. Waldron did not seem to notice.
“I’m sorry again for your loss,” he said by the front door. “And I apologize for causing any distress during this difficult time.”
“Save it for the judge,” Audrey growled.
“It’s all right,” said Teresa, coming to her senses. They were both overreacting badly; the man was only doing his job.
“There’s no tape on that door,” Waldron mentioned, speaking of the study. “But please do keep it closed and locked. I’ll be in touch if there’s any need to follow up. Oh, and please let me know right away if you see or hear from Ms. Graff.”
“We’ll do that,” Teresa said, a moment before Audrey slammed the door. And they were alone. Audrey turned to her with such vehemence that Teresa stepped back. She could feel her cousin wanting to lash out, and Teresa was now the only available target. Yet the angry eyes seemed blind to her presence.
“You okay?” Teresa asked.
“He was trying to twist my words.”
“I don’t know what—”
“He was trying to make it sound like I thought you were coming from the house. I never said that. I never implied it.”
“Of course not,” said Teresa. Was that what upset her so much? Or was it shock finally kicking in? That seemed more likely. Teresa looked steadily into those blue eyes until the other woman met her gaze. A phrase popped into her head. “Mental cruelty?”
Her cousin blinked rapidly. Then giggled, and just like that the old Audrey was back.
“Okay, maybe I had a divorce proceedings flashback.”
“It sounded good,” Teresa said, relieved. “I think you scared him.”
“Nah, only embarrassed him a little. I’ve yelled at cops before. They don’t listen to most of what you say.”
“Maybe just as well. But it’s weird, right? Him coming here?”
“Not really,” Audrey replied, wandering into the sitting room and throwing herself down on the blue settee. “Ouch, how did you sleep on this?”
“I didn’t.”
“Are you all right now? You scared the shit out of me.”
“Yeah, fine.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be taking medication?”
“I do,” Teresa lied. In fact, she did, but not lately. “It doesn’t always work. So why do you think he was here?” she persisted.
“Ilsa’s disappearing act, for one thing. And, you know. The history.”
Her father’s face appeared to Teresa. Or her memory of it, she could no longer attest to the accuracy. Long nose, black hair to his shoulders, black eyes. An expression which said that he had seen things others could not see. That he knew things which he would impart, if you only had the means of understanding. Maybe when you were older.
“That was a long time ago.”
“A long time to you,” Audrey said. “You were just a kid. I doubt enough happens in this boring town that they’re going to forget something like that.”
“They convicted Jenny’s brother.”
“His name is Pete.”
“I know his name,” Teresa said, though in truth she had forgotten. He was always simply Jenny’s brother, with his shaggy beard and crazy eyes, who helped out with the yard work. And helped himself to whatever was lying around. Silver serving utensils that no one used, fine china collecting dust in the cellar. The occasional brooch or cigarette case. He had never touched any of the artwork before that day of the funeral. “He went to prison. What would that have to do with this?”
“He’s been out of prison awhile,” said Audrey, letting the fact hang there a moment. “And a lot of people don’t believe he took the painting.”
“I know what they believe,” Teresa snapped.
“I didn’t mean that,” Audrey groaned. “God, you and your mother, so defensive.”
“He was my father.”
“So what? You can say what you like about my father, I don’t care. He bailed out on the two of you.”
“He had problems,” said Teresa, barely above a whisper. Her throat was almost too tight to speak. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Anyway, it isn’t only the theft. There was that appraiser keeling over a few years before. You probably don’t even remember that.”
“I remember,” said Teresa.
“Right in front of the painting. On that same leather sofa! You don’t think that might seem odd to the cops?”
“That an obese art historian and a sick old man had heart attacks on the same sofa twenty years apart?” she replied. Incredulous. “What should that mean? I really hope the police are smarter than that.”
“Well,” said Audrey in a reasonable tone. “Maybe it’s just me that finds it odd.”
“Even if you believe in fairy tales,” Teresa went on, wondering why she did, “like a portrait killing the appraiser, it still makes no sense. Grandpa looked at that painting for decades. And it’s not even here anymore.”
“You don’t believe in the painting?” Audrey asked, eyeing her closely. “You used to.”
“Like you said, I was a kid.”
Teresa retrieved her water glass and sat in the chair the detective had used. She was twice as tired after her outburst. The chair was hard. The room was hard. You were supposed to look at it, not actually use it. One of those stupid customs of the rich.
“I spoke to my dad,” Audrey said. “And Philip. I didn’t call your mom, I figured it would be weird me calling since you’re here. She may have heard from one of them by now.”
“I’ll call her,” Teresa said, wondering where her phone was. “Thanks for doing all that. For taking care of everything.”
“That’s what I do.”
“Yeah?” Teresa said, her mind elsewhere.
“You thought I just made messes that my father had to clean up,” Audrey replied, a hard edge beneath her light tone.
“I didn’t mean anything.”
“I admit that’s been true too often,” Audrey went on. “But I also watch out for everyone. Don’t you be surprised if—”
She was interrupted by the front door opening.
“What now?” Audrey complained, jumping up. “Did he forget his plastic badge?”
It was not Waldron but their uncle Philip. The very man who was to terrorize the Langford police force, in Audrey’s overblown threat. The attorney’s face was more lined, and his hair grayer than when Teresa last saw him. He wore a suit, though it was Sunday. No tie, loafers without socks, and a deeper tan than his niece, though he never took a vacation. Through the lenses of his designer glasses, his eyes looked startled.
“Audrey,” he said softly. “You poor thing.”
The words rang false. Perhaps because Teresa had never heard gentleness from her uncle’s lips. Or perhaps because she was a fault-finding bitch who had swallowed her mother’s hatred for her family whole. And yet she did not mistake the distaste with which her cousin recoiled from their uncle’s embrace.
“Hey, Philip,” Audrey said. “Sorry about Grandpa.”
“Yes,” he said distractedly. “Yes, it’s... Teresa, look at you.”
Not wanting to embarrass the man twice, Teresa gave him a quick hug. He was tall, like all the Morse men. Philip patted her back perfunctorily, then took her by the shoulders.
“Are you all right?” he asked. How many times would she have to answer that today? Not this time, anyway, since he went on immediately. “Have you called your mother?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ve spoken to her already, but you should call. She’s worried about you. Audrey, where is your father?”
“Don’t know,” she said with shrug.
“You don’t know? You told me you talked.”
“He was in an airport. In the States, I think. Said he would get here as soon as he could.”
Philip shook his head in annoyance. Audrey’s father did some kind of international finance, or maybe it was mergers and acquisitions. Teresa could not keep it straight. But he was always flying around the world. Making and losing fortunes, but mostly losing them. Philip turned back to Teresa.
“You found his body?”
“Yes,” she said.
“That must have been terrible. Terrible. I’m so sorry. Where are the police?” he asked Audrey accusingly. As if she had made up their presence. Or as if she had chased them away, which was in fact the case.
“The detective just left,” Audrey replied. “I told him he would be hearing from you.”
“Damn right he will,” the attorney said, though what he meant was unclear. True to form, Philip seemed supercharged with purpose. Yet in these circumstances, uncertain where to direct it. “He was in the study?”
“We’re not supposed to go in there,” Teresa said automatically.
“Girl Scout,” Audrey snarked.
“Why not?” asked Philip. “Did they say there was an investigation?”
“No, but they’re worried about Ilsa.”
“As we all are,” he said, moving swiftly down the hall. “I don’t see what that has to do with sealing off rooms. The study is where Father keeps his papers.”
“Action Man is here,” Audrey announced, as they listened to Philip rattle the handle to the study door.
“What in God’s name,” he called. “They locked it? Where is the key?”
Audrey reached into her pocket and pulled out a key, dangling it before her cousin and putting a finger to her lips. Audrey was always stealing keys when they were young. She even claimed to have been in the forbidden study. Teresa shook her head in puzzlement.
“You’re Waldron’s watchdog now?”
“Nah, I just enjoy pissing off Philip. But it’s funny,” Audrey mused. “I don’t remember telling him that Grandpa was in the study.”
3 (#u8de205d9-4585-5c78-b904-58472c628699)
Miranda surprised her. Teresa’s mother had done nothing but disparage her father for years, and was all business when Teresa finally called. Caring only that her daughter was well. But her arrival at Owl’s Point that evening told a different story. Her eyes were red and damp, her face haggard. She clutched Teresa fiercely and would not let go for a long time. They were not a warm family. Neither Grandpa Morse nor Ramón Marías were physically demonstrative. Yet there had once been this kind of strong affection between mother and daughter, so long ago that Teresa had nearly forgotten. When did it stop? And which of them had been the one to pull away?
“He loved you very much,” Miranda said as she drew back. “I’m sorry he didn’t get to tell you. I’m sorry I kept the two of you apart all these years.”
Her tone was matter-of-fact. No hair-pulling theatrics from Miranda; that was not her style. But Teresa heard the depth of grief in those few words.
“He told me,” she said. Had he? In one of those occasional phone calls? If he had not used the word, he had surely conveyed love in the ways of which he was capable. In his curiosity about Teresa’s life, her studies, her desires and fears. “I could have gone to see him anytime. I spent four years half an hour away from here.”
“You knew it would upset me,” her mother countered. Which was true, but not the whole truth.
“It doesn’t matter now. I’m sorry for you. You must have been close to him once.”
“No.” Miranda dabbed her face with an overworked tissue. “I don’t know, maybe when I was small. Mostly he was this faraway figure. Always traveling, or locked in the study. Then he would come crashing over us like a storm. Poor Phil got the worst of it.”
“Never heard you sound sorry for Philip,” Teresa said.
“Yes, well. These last few hours some things have come back to me. Memories.”
After briefly enjoying her uncle’s torment, Audrey “found” the study key and gave it to Philip. He searched the room at length, not finding whatever he sought. Later he was on the telephone, barking at lawyers and law enforcement types, talking to the newspapers. Now he sat at the dining room table, speaking quietly with his sister. Audrey’s father—Alfred Arthur Morse III, called Fred—was flying in the following day, and James and Kenny were both on the train from New York. Audrey was phoning friends and family, and pouring drinks. Mostly for herself. Teresa kept falling asleep. All it took was sitting down and she went right out. Shock, the others kept telling her. Rest, we have it all covered. But she would not be under more than a few minutes before that dead gray face came swirling out of the void. Jolting her awake. It was going to be a bad night.
A good smell drew her to the kitchen, where she was treated to the sight of Audrey in a frayed pink apron. Stirring the contents of a large pot.
“Don’t laugh,” Audrey warned.
“I wasn’t going to,” said Teresa. “Okay, I was.”
“Rick used to say I could burn water.”
“Is that why you divorced him?”
“Try this.”
“What is it?”
“Ilsa’s famous beef stew. There’s a vat of it in the fridge.”
Teresa did not remember the famous stew, nor did she usually touch beef. But she had eaten nothing since an apple on the train, and slurped the spoon greedily.
“Delicious, count me in.”
“Find some bowls.”
Teresa served while Audrey got a bottle from the cellar. A dark, complex French red. Teresa did not know wine, but it seemed too fancy for a grieving family eating leftovers. Then again, maybe there was no better occasion.
“This hasn’t had time to breathe,” Philip complained.
“Neither have I,” Audrey shot back. There were a few minutes of peace while they ate, but Audrey could not endure peace for long. “I wonder if this is poisoned. Like if that’s how Ilsa knocked off Grandpa?”
Everyone stopped eating but Miranda. Teresa felt her stomach turn over.
“Ilsa did not poison your grandfather,” Philip said. “She was devoted to him.”
“Sure she was,” Audrey agreed. “But who knows what all those years of abuse can do. How it can twist a person. You know what I mean?”
Philip would not meet her gaze.
“Stop it,” Miranda said, dropping the spoon into her empty bowl. “Father didn’t abuse Ilsa. She was the one person he always treated with respect.” Then she began to laugh. “Sorry, I’m imagining poor Freddie coming in and finding us slumped over our bowls.”
“Oh yeah, that’s really funny, Mom,” Teresa said, but Audrey was also laughing. Look at you two, Teresa thought, not for the first time. There was no love lost between them. Audrey thought Miranda was pretentious, and Miranda found Audrey a bad influence on her cousins. Yet they were similar in so many ways. Same dirty blond hair, bleached gold. Same round face and high cheekbones, same curvy build. Same sense of humor and raucous laugh. If you had to guess the mother and daughter at this table, Teresa would not be in the equation. As a teenager she used to ask, who is my real mother? Of course Miranda was not reckless like Audrey. Or not anymore, but Teresa had heard stories of her youth. Crashing her mother’s car on Long Hill Road. Calling home from a Mexican jail during spring break. Sleeping with her professors, including the one she married: the handsome, penniless, half-mad philosopher from Madrid. What a disappointment it must have been when her father ended up loving Ramón. Teresa herself had heard Grandpa Morse say, “He is more of a son to me than my sons.”
“Dead soldier,” Audrey announced, tipping the last of the bottle into her glass. “Tay-ray, help me pick out another.”
“You’re still calling her that ridiculous nickname?” Philip said in dismay. “She’s a grown woman.”
“At least I know how to pronounce her real name,” Audrey replied, sauntering off.
“I’m useless about wine,” Teresa said, but she got up and followed.
The door to the wine cellar was between the kitchen and study. She got shaky even approaching the latter room, but made it down the wooden steps without incident. The cellar was dimly lit, yet brighter and cleaner than Teresa remembered. The cracked stone walls had been smoothed over and it appeared that some racks had been replaced, as well. She had once known this chamber intimately—it was James’ favorite hiding place—but now it felt alien.
Rather than examine bottles, Audrey leaned against the wall and slipped something out of her pocket.
“Sorry,” she said, unwrapping a baggy and removing a bent joint. “Had to get away from the grown-ups.”
“Aren’t we grown-ups?”
“Speak for yourself.” She patted her pockets, looking for a lighter, no doubt. “I’m holding out ’til my forties.”
“Good plan.”
“You’ve always been an old lady.”
“I guess,” Teresa said, leaning against the wall beside her. “Or just a weird one.”
“You and James,” Audrey scoffed, finding a tiny blue lighter. It had to be tiny to fit into those jeans. “You’re so invested in being different.”
“More like resigned.”
“I love my brother to death.” Audrey lit the joint and inhaled. “He’s a good kid,” she squeaked, holding in the smoke. Then exhaled forcefully. “But nobody could dispute that he’s a little off, you know? You’re not like that. You get other people. You see the world straight on. I always feel like you’re faking the weird girl act.”
“I’m not faking anything,” Teresa said. She knew better than to let Audrey rile her, but she was feeling vulnerable. “I promise you, I spent years trying to be like everybody else. To like the clothes or the music or the movies they liked. To have friends. To fit in.”
“Poor little Tay.”
“Fuck you. You call me a fake and I don’t get to answer?”
“Hey, we’re just talking.”
“It’s not just talk,” Teresa insisted. “Words can do damage. You don’t say whatever you like to someone.”
“Why not?” Audrey replied evenly. “You can say whatever you like to me.”
“Can I? So if I called you a talentless, overweight drunk with a mean streak, that would be okay?”
The flicker of shock moved over her cousin’s face so swiftly that Teresa nearly missed it.
“Whoa,” said Audrey, fixing her cracked smile back in place. She took another hit off the joint and immediately began coughing.
“I’m sorry,” Teresa sighed.
“No, no,” Audrey said between coughs. “I asked for it. Forgot how well you read people’s weakness. Know exactly where to stick the knife.”
“It’s not a skill I cultivate.”
“Guess you’re a natural, then.”
Teresa slid down until she was sitting on the cold concrete floor. A few moments later, Audrey slid down alongside her and passed the joint. Teresa held it for too long, sniffing the pungent smoke. Tempted. Then she handed it back.
“I can’t, my brain’s too messed up.”
“This will smooth you out,” Audrey replied. “But suit yourself.”
“I’m sorry I said that.”
“Let it go. It’s all... Do I really look overweight?”
Teresa laughed.
“What?” Audrey asked, but she wore a sly smirk.
“That would be the one word you focused on,” said Teresa. She had remembered how Audrey always hurt her feelings, but forgotten how she could make you laugh at anything. Not a bad talent to possess in the current circumstances. “You look gorgeous. You always look gorgeous, I’m just jealous.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute,” Audrey quipped.
“Go ahead, let me have it,” said Teresa. “I’m too short, I’m too skinny. I’m either too shy or all snotty and superior. I have a blank expression on my face because I’m always stuck in my own brain. What else?”
“That’s pretty good. I think that about covers it.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Well.” Audrey considered. “You have kind of a martyr complex. And your clothes are pretty awful. You do have a nice face. Your dad’s face.”
“Certainly not my mom’s.”
“Your dad was hot.”
“Please, Audrey.”
“What? He was. You can’t help being short, and being skinny isn’t against the law.” She took another hit on the almost vanished joint. “It should be, but it’s not.”
“I’m glad we got that straight,” Teresa said, feeling calmer. “We should go back up.”
“Nah, let’s hide down here. You and James used to do that, remember?”
“I do. There was a crawl space. Like an alcove they walled up partway and forgot. It was a tight squeeze.”
“Too tight for me,” Audrey recalled. “James showed me once, but my hips wouldn’t fit. You’re shocked, I know.”
“It was bigger inside. Not much.” Enough for two nine-year-olds to sit side by side, Teresa thought. Holding hands, whispering. All the space we needed.
“Where was it?”
“I think,” Teresa said, starting to crawl on her hands and knees, “back along this wall somewhere.”
“Back here?” Audrey came shuffling after her. “There’s a rack in the way.”
“I know, but that’s new. They’ve moved things around. It was near a corner, I’m pretty sure it was this one.”
They both peered through wooden slats and over dusty bottles. There was nothing to see but wall.
“Wrong place,” Audrey decided.
“No, it was here. They’ve plastered it over.”
“What?” Audrey seemed outraged. “Your kiddie hideaway—how could they do that?”
“Might have even filled it in.” Teresa stood, bracing herself against a momentary dizziness. “It was strange that it was there at all.”
“Huh.” Audrey remained crouched by the rack, biting her thumbnail. Then she stood also. “Let’s drink more of Grandpa’s wine. Though I guess it’s not really his anymore.”
“Whose is it?”
“That’s what we all want to know, right?” Audrey said with a wicked laugh. “First we have to get through the fake expressions of grief. Then stick him in the ground.”
“Jesus, Audie, do you have to be so...”
“What? Okay, you were shocked, that was a rough thing to see. But are you really upset that he’s dead? Couldn’t you use a few bucks for school, or whatever?”
“I didn’t think there was any money,” Teresa said, which was the wrong response. Yes, I am upset that he is dead. I seem to be the only one who is. But Audrey would not believe her, nor believe that Teresa didn’t care about the money one way or another. “He couldn’t even pay his help, and the house is a wreck.”
“Dad thinks he was just cheap. He’s sure the old guy was sitting on a pile of cash.”
“He told you that?”
“Of course not,” Audrey snorted. “I hear things. But I’m with you. He never paid the help enough, that’s why Jenny and Pete stole from him. But he wouldn’t be selling paintings or letting the place fall down if he had the money to fix it.”
“He was selling paintings?”
“You don’t keep track of any family stuff, do you?” Audrey seemed half appalled and half impressed. “Don’t worry, there are plenty left, and the property is worth millions. He was cash poor, but there’s money in the estate. Question is, who gets it?”
That was not Teresa’s question.
“What do you think happened to him?”
“Heart attack,” Audrey guessed, wandering down a dim aisle between racks. “These are the Rhônes.”
“Then why did you mention the Goya, and the appraiser?”
“I was trying to see it like the cops would, that’s all. Did you like that Châteauneuf we just drank?”
“You saw his face,” Teresa said pointedly.
The other woman was quiet for a moment. “Yes.”
“Something scared him to death.”
Sounds came through the ceiling. Heavy footsteps followed by voices raised in greeting.
“The boys are here,” said Audrey, her voice brightening. “Better grab an extra bottle.”
Audrey was always cheered by the arrival of men. Apparently even her brother and cousin did the trick. Teresa was also pleased. She was eager to see James, and their presence would liven up the gloomy house. Yet she was uneasy. Why? Because too many Morses in one place meant trouble? Perhaps it was only the echo of those last words she had spoken, and the memory they conjured.
While Audrey slid bottles out, blowing off dust and mumbling to herself, Teresa went to the stairs. She was halfway up when the door at the top opened and a figure loomed. She took a panicked step back down, trying to make out who or what it was.
“Hello,” a voice said uncertainly.
“James?”
They had stayed in touch by phone and email, but not often. Despite mutual affection, they were both hopeless introverts, afraid of intruding. She had seen him at Audrey’s wedding, and once since, but they had been with other people. He hunched his shoulders and avoided eye contact. Teresa was surprised when her mother mentioned how tall James was now. In her mind he was still a floppy-haired boy.
“Did I frighten you?” he asked.
“No,” she stammered. “Yes. I frightened myself.”
Teresa rushed up the stairs and threw her arms around him. It was out of character, but what the hell. He had an unfamiliar smell. Like a man. Yet underneath was the warm bready scent she remembered. After a short hesitation he wrapped his long arms around her. The very awkwardness with which he did it was comforting.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Teresa said.
“Your mother told me. I’m sorry.”
“Be sorry for all of us,” she said, stepping back to look into those curious brown eyes. His expression had not changed.
“I’m sorry it was you who found him.”
“Might as well be me as anyone.”
“No,” James said earnestly. “You’re more sensitive. It should have been Uncle Philip or Audrey. It wouldn’t have bothered them.”
You didn’t see his face, Teresa thought. She had not told her mother or uncle about the expression their dead father wore. It seemed cruel and unnecessary. Yet Audrey was sure to say something. If not immediately, then eventually.
“Audrey was there. She took care of me.”
“She takes care of everyone,” he said. Repeating his sister’s mantra, without conviction.
“Yeah, I heard that.”
“I need to talk to you,” James murmured.
“Of course,” she replied, stepping closer. But a voice nearby intruded.
“Where else would she be?” Kenny shouted back to his father as he approached. Loud, confident Kenny. “Probably grabbing all the best bottles for herself.”
“Later,” James said, staring at his shoes. “When we’re alone. I need your help.”
“Whatever I can do.”
“You know what’s going to happen.” His voice grew hard, as did his eyes when he looked at her again. “Don’t you? They’re going to blame this on me.”
4 (#u8de205d9-4585-5c78-b904-58472c628699)
In a fever dream she rose and fell. Surfacing, she was in the bedroom at Owl’s Point. It was day, but the light through the curtains was weak. Rain spattered the window. Her skin was hot and damp. James stood next to the bed, watching her with a clinical concern. He was a boy again, or still, or always.
Is she going to die?
She better not, said another voice. Or we’ll get the blame.
We didn’t make her sick.
We’re in charge of her until they get back from burying Grandma.
Why isn’t Ilsa in charge?
Don’t be stupid, Audrey said. Ilsa’s the help. We’re family.
James leaned in and touched her burning neck with his cool finger. His touch was soothing.
I don’t want her to die.
Then get your hands off her, Audrey said.
Why? he asked, pulling away.
Because you’re the Angel of Death. Everyone you touch dies.
I am not, he screamed. James rarely raised his voice, and the pained cry was awful to hear. That’s not true. That’s not true.
All right, Audrey groaned. Shut up, I’m sorry. She slumped down in the window seat. God, this is boring. Tell me if she stops breathing.
James leaned close again, careful not to touch her. There were angry tears in his eyes. Don’t die, Tay. Please. I’m going to help you, Tay.
She was pulled under, into a black and suffocating silence. She struggled, not seeing, not breathing, a red flashing behind her eyes. Suddenly the darkness released her, and she shot upward.
The same room. But empty and nighttime. Teresa was sitting up in a small bed. The same that she had slept in when visiting this house as a child. The same bed in which she had thrashed in a fever on the day of her grandmother’s funeral. Miranda had not understood how sick her daughter was, and in any case it was her mother they were burying. She had to be there. Audrey was assigned to watch Teresa, and James stayed with them. Which meant they were all in the house when the theft occurred.
Teresa reached for the water glass and took a sip. It was a different dream than usual. She knew dreams were not memory, and that even memory lied. But the standard nightmare featured James’ faraway scream of terror. Audrey waking from her nap in the window seat to rush out and find him. Teresa desperately trying to rise from the bed, only to collapse again. Something like those things had happened. This new dream took place earlier that day, and must be an anxiety-fueled construction of her unconscious. Surely Audrey never said those cruel things. Surely James’ words to Teresa the previous evening—that he would be blamed—had simply worked their way into her sleep.
She drank more water and put the glass down. Where had he gotten the idea? How could he be blamed? She had learned no more; they were not left alone the rest of the evening. James receded into himself while everyone else talked manically and to no purpose. Teresa fell asleep in her chair, then finally dragged herself to bed. She waited for James to tap on her door, but if he ever did she was long gone to dreamland.
As the room slowly brightened she realized there would be no more sleep. She rolled out of bed and unzipped the travel bag her mother had brought, with spare clothes. The ugly green corduroys and extra-large Yale sweatshirt. Good old Mom. Teresa dressed, pulled on her sensible boots and went down the back stairs to the kitchen. Then out the mudroom door. A heavy mist rolled in from the sea. The pines were shadows and the ocean invisible. The house might have been sitting in the clouds. It was cold. She needed a jacket, but was not willing to go back for it. She drew her hands into the sleeves of the sweatshirt and wrapped her arms around herself, then made her way toward the sound of surf. The gazebo materialized out of the mist. It needed paint, and the floorboards were rotting. How long since anyone had sat here, drinking a cocktail and watching the sunset over the Sound? What a bleak and barren place this had become in her time away. She could not have imagined it. Maybe she would come out here this evening. Wrapped in blankets, with a whisky.
The lawn ended abruptly and there was the ocean. Or a murky stretch of it. Just beyond where she stood, a rocky slope fell thirty feet to the phosphorescing water. Teresa looked for a spot where Audrey might have leaped into the waves without killing herself. It did not seem possible. Maybe it had been farther along the ledge, or maybe the tide was higher. Maybe Audrey was indestructible. For the first time in days, Teresa missed Marc. He would try to comfort her if she called him now, but she would not do that.
She stared down at the dark seaweed swaying in the white foam. Afraid of losing her balance, she crouched. Her fingers twitched, seeking a pencil. How would she capture this on paper? The monstrous shape of that rock, the black water. Would she shade in the mist or represent it as an absence, the white of the page? And why was she thinking about this when she had not sketched in months? A shred of memory or an image from a dream flitted around her brain, and she tried to get hold of it. Before she could, a strong emotion seized her. Indistinct at first, it coalesced into a kind of dread. Which shifted quickly to fear as Teresa sensed someone rushing at her from behind. She stood up fast and turned.
No one. Only the mist, beginning to dissipate. She had been certain of a presence, about to place a hand on her shoulder. An involuntary shudder went through her. Cold and damp were penetrating the sweatshirt. She started back to the house and immediately saw a figure in the pines. It was a man in a gray coat, his head bent in thought. He had cleared the trees and was crossing the lawn before she realized it was James.
“Good morning,” she called.
He stopped and looked at her, making no reply. He seemed distracted, possibly anxious. Damp hair hung in his face.
“I didn’t think anyone else was awake,” Teresa said as she reached him.
“Me, neither,” James replied. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“And I’m all slept out.” She nearly mentioned the dream, then did not.
“Kenny snores.”
“What, Mister Perfect?” she laughed. “Don’t tell me you were in the same room.”
Kenny and James had shared a bunk bed those summers when the house was full.
“No, but I could hear him through the wall.”
“He had a lot of wine,” Teresa remembered. “I guess we all did.”
“Not me.”
“You still don’t drink?”
“A little,” he conceded. “People make a big deal if you refuse. But I don’t like the feeling it gives me.”
“I didn’t used to,” she said. A fallen woman. “Now I like it too much.”
“You seem the same.” The words surprised her. “I thought you would have changed, but you seem the same to me.”
“Is that good?”
“Yes.” He smiled bashfully. His smiles were so rare that it felt like a gift to get one. “I think it is.”
“We’ve all changed, but I’m glad that I seem familiar. You also seem the same, except for being too freaking tall.”
“Sorry,” he said. “Couldn’t help it.”
James had never cared for small talk, and Teresa waited for him to seize this chance to speak of what troubled him. Yet he showed no inclination. Last night’s urgency had vanished, or been suppressed.
“You’re brave to walk the woods on a morning like this,” she said, taking his arm and starting them forward again. “Must be spooky.”
“They’re just trees,” he said with a shrug. “I was looking for our old tree house.”
“My God, is it still there?”
“Sort of. The roof and one wall are gone, but the rest is intact.”
“I don’t remember how we got up. There was a ladder?”
“Wooden rungs nailed into the trunk.”
“Right,” she said, the memory coming back.
“They looked kind of rotted. I didn’t try to climb.”
“That was wise. Audrey would have,” she said, at the same precise moment that he did. They both laughed. Even his laugh was awkward, a high-pitched gurgle that pulled on her heart. She squeezed his arm. “How is school?”
James was in medical school in Boston. Doing well, Teresa had heard, which was no surprise. He tested off the charts in IQ and everything else. But he did not do well with other people, and needed five years and three colleges for his undergraduate degree. Then he left law school after one year, hating it. No one in the family had gone into medicine before.
“Good,” he said firmly. “I like it, especially the labs. I like doing things instead of talking about them.”
“Have you dealt with cadavers yet?”
“It doesn’t bother me. Everyone is afraid of them, but you can’t hurt the dead.”
“That doesn’t make them fun to spend time with,” she said, fighting another shiver.
“There’s no better way to understand the human body than to open it up and look inside. I want to help people. No one knows that about me. Nobody believes it.”
“I believe it,” Teresa said.
“They think I’m crazy and can’t take care of myself. But I want to help people. You have to be willing to do the hard things.”
They were near the mudroom door, and James shuffled to a stop. As if he could not bear going inside. Teresa tugged him the other way, toward the front of the house.
“What did you want to talk about last night?”
He looked away, then shook his head quickly.
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“I’m not going to call you crazy. Trust me.” But he would not speak. The yew hedges beside the garage had grown rangy and brown. The sun was beginning to cut through the mist. She tried a different tack. “What happened yesterday, with Grandpa?”
James tensed up instantly.
“Do you mean the day before?” he asked.
“Yes,” she sighed. “Sorry, I’ve lost track.” It seemed one long and shapeless day since she had stepped onto the platform at Langford Station. It also seemed like a week.
“It was bad,” said James, biting off the words. “We argued.”
“About what?”
“My erratic behavior. I think that’s the word he used. One of them.”
“Such as?”
“You know,” he said impatiently. Assuming that Teresa had heard the family gossip. “Temper tantrums, as if no one else has those. As if Audrey’s aren’t ten times worse than mine.”
“What else?” she asked.
“Pointing a knife at her. At Audrey. I wasn’t going to hurt her, but you know the things she says. Threatening a professor.”
“Really? How did you threaten him?”
“This was years ago,” he insisted, as if she was missing the point. “At Amherst. The guy was a condescending jerk. I don’t remember what I said, but I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t going to do anything.”
“Okay.” Teresa squeezed his arm again. “It’s okay, I believe you.”
“I guess Grandpa was writing it all down,” he said bitterly. “Keeping track of everything I ever did wrong. And not only me, all of us.”
“So we’re all behaving erratically?” she asked, trying to lighten the mood. The things he said should have disturbed her, but she had witnessed such behavior when they were children. She knew what Grandpa Morse was getting at, but she also knew James. He did not understand people, didn’t get their jokes, became easily frustrated. Instead of taking that into account, friends and family taunted him. For their amusement, maybe, or simply because it’s what people did. James’ own father, Fred, was a terrible tease. Miranda, too. And of course Audrey was the worst. She knew how to send James into a fit with just a few words. He would cry and yell and break things. Hurt himself, perhaps. But never hurt anyone else. She had never heard of his doing so, and could not imagine it.
“Kenny argued with him, too.” James spit the words out, as if ashamed of speaking.
“He told you that?”
“Yes. He left before I got here, but after my talk with Grandpa I went to the city to find him. He was staying with a friend, in the place he rented when he used to live there.”
Which answered a question that Teresa had been meaning to ask. Why had James arrived with Kenny from New York instead of coming from Boston?
“I couldn’t remember where it was,” he went on, “so I wandered around for a long time. It’s a big city.”
“It is,” Teresa agreed, imagining James wandering Manhattan’s late-night streets. He was lucky he didn’t get mugged.
“I slept on a bench. When I woke up I remembered the address, so I went there.”
“In the middle of the night?” she laughed. “I bet he was thrilled to see you.”
“It was morning, but yeah, he wasn’t happy. He had someone with him.”
“I bet she wasn’t too happy either.”
“It was awkward,” James concurred. “Once we started talking, I could see he was upset, too. That his conversation had been as bad as mine.”
“What was Grandpa’s problem with him?” she asked. Curious to know what flaws Kenny could possibly possess.
“The thing is, he had a problem with all of us. He was calling us in one by one to tell us our faults. What we had to fix. The old jerk.”
“Jerk” was about as harsh as James got. But she heard more hurt in his voice than anger. They cleared the last corner of the house and the sun struck them full in the face.
“Why?” Teresa brought them to halt short of the circular drive. “Why was he doing it?”
“Because he didn’t think his heart was going to last much longer.”
“So?” she said, exasperated. “He had to tell us the errors of our ways before sailing off into eternity?”
“I like how you put things,” he said. “I should read more.”
“It rots the mind.”
“It’s about money, Tay.” James shifted uncomfortably. “We had to change these things about ourselves if we wanted to get any money. In his will.”
She looked to see if he was joking, but of course he would never make such a joke.
“You’ve got to be kidding. That’s what it was about?”
Could he be lying? Not lying, James would not consciously lie, but telling a story he believed? Why would he come up with this? No, it was a sad revelation, but all too credible. And yet more proof that she had never really known her grandfather. What would her own flaw have been? She could think of many, but what would have seemed important to the old man? And what about Audrey? Drinking, drugs, sleeping around? A list too long to consider. It did not matter now; they would never know.
A hundred feet to their right, the front door opened. And there she was, as if Teresa’s thoughts had conjured her from the mist. Audrey. She wore the same clothes from yesterday, but with an old green coat over her T-shirt. They waited for her to look in their direction, but she skipped down the steps and toward her car without a glance left or right.
“What’s she doing up at this hour?” Teresa wondered.
James shrugged, but he watched his sister carefully.
Audrey jumped into the Lexus and gunned the engine to life. Without waiting for it to warm up, she spun around the drive and out through the opening in the rhododendrons and was gone. It was only then that Teresa realized Philip’s car was also missing. Philip had gotten Miranda from the train yesterday, and James and Kenny had taken a taxi, so the drive was now empty of vehicles. Despite James standing beside her, Teresa had a panicky sensation of being abandoned on this foggy point of land. In this house of the dead.
“Where is she going?”
“It’s no use trying to figure out Audrey,” James said in resignation. “Be happy she’s gone for a while.”
His words raised questions about the sibling relationship, but a more urgent question nagged Teresa.
“How does that stuff about Grandpa make you to blame for his death?”
“I didn’t say I was to blame.”
“You said you would be blamed. Why?”
“Because,” he said, then said no more. A crow shambled from one pine tree to the next, a blue jay shrieking after it. She waited him out. “Because I was there,” James finally continued. “Every time something bad happens, I’m around. Grandma falling on the terrace. The painting vanishing. Now Grandpa dies right after I argue with him.”
“Oh, James,” Teresa said, grabbing the lapels of his coat and shaking him. “No one thinks you’re responsible for any of that.”
“Maybe you don’t,” he mumbled.
You’re the Angel of Death. Everyone you touch dies. Who had said that? Where had Teresa just heard it?
“Has anyone accused you of something?” she asked.
“They don’t have to. I can see it in their faces.”
“Grandma fell because she had a stroke,” Teresa said patiently. “It was, like, her fourth. One of them was going to kill her. Audrey was there, too. And she and I were both there when the theft happened. As for Grandpa, well, it sounds like he started the fight. With Kenny also. It’s not your fault.”
It was like talking to stone. He was still as a stone, too, his whole body gone rigid. He stared at the ocean with absolutely no expression. Teresa was good at reading people, but could read nothing in that blank visage. Despite the sun, the damp had penetrated her clothes and she began to shiver.
“I’m sorry, I have to go inside.”
“I saw someone,” James said then. “Or I thought I did. In the pines.”
“Just now, when you were walking?” Philip and Audrey had clearly been awake, but what would either have been doing out there? “Anybody you recognized?”
“No. I couldn’t tell. He, um, he had...” James’ voice shrunk to a whisper. “He had something covering his face.”
What did it mean? Did it mean anything?
“But you’re not sure you saw him?” she asked, confused.
“Afterward, it didn’t seem to make sense. I’ve been told to question the things I see. That I think I see.”
“Who told you that?” Teresa demanded to know.
He shook his head firmly. Doors opened and closed within him swiftly, and hammering on them never seemed to do any good. James looked down and noticed her shaking.
“You’re cold,” he said in surprise. “You should go in.”
“Will you come with me?” she asked.
“In a while. I don’t like it in that house.”
“Please? I don’t like it either. I’ll make you an omelet.”
It was one of the few things she could make, and she hoped there were eggs.
“I want to hear about your school,” James said. “I’ve been reading a lot about art lately, and I have some questions.”
“You’re full of surprises,” said Teresa. “Come inside, then, and we’ll talk.”
She moved toward the front door, willing him to follow. Reluctantly, he did.
5 (#u8de205d9-4585-5c78-b904-58472c628699)
It was the right house, but no one was home. How he could know that without leaving the car was a fair question, yet Dave felt certain. There were obvious tells. No vehicles in the drive, no lights, no gently parted curtain. It was more than that, though. There was something about houses, about the way they sat. They announced their occupancy. This one was empty. No spirits within, living or dead. He drank his coffee and read the New York Times.
He was early. He was always early, a habit picked up during the years when meetings carried potential threat. Arrive first, check out the location, see who else is watching. Dave supposed there might be threats today. The guy was a lawyer, after all, and had reason to dislike him. They would not be of the lethal kind, however, and he was not worried. More curious, which he had not been for some time. Which was the reason he was here at all. That and needing money.
At 8:55 a.m. he decided to survey the property. It was a nice house. Yellow clapboard with white trim, a porch running along two sides. Big, but no mansion. A top attorney from a wealthy family could do better. It certainly could not compare to the old man’s pile of brick by the sea. Then again, maybe the son would inherit that, the father having keeled over yesterday. Dave had read the obituary in the car. The collector got two columns with a photo. The tone was decidedly negative, which was sad. Dave had known the man a little, and it was hard to like Alfred Morse, but he felt a grudging respect.
Tennis court, luridly green lawn, bushes all around the house—laurel, azalea? He wasn’t good with shrubs. Primitive security system. Dave was ready to give hidden cameras a friendly wave, as if he were not casing the joint, but he saw none. He was back in the car sipping coffee when Philip Morse drove up, fifteen minutes late. Older model Mercedes, well maintained. The man was also well maintained, yet stress showed around his cold blue eyes. The eyes always give you away, thought Dave, stepping out of his car.
“Thanks for your patience,” said the attorney. No doubt he had read some asshole’s success-in-business guide that said never apologize. He did not shake hands but headed straight for the house. Dave followed, not hurrying. The side door opened into the kitchen, which was large and white and appointed with the latest gadgets. For the wife, Dave guessed. He would bet twenty bucks that Philip Morse could not boil an egg.
“I’ve been at my father’s,” the attorney said, lighting the gas jet under the steel kettle. He knew how to do that much. “I need to get back as soon as possible.”
“I’m sorry about your father,” Dave replied. “I liked him.”
“You were among the few,” Morse said sourly.
“I would have been happy to go to his house, under the circumstances.”
“I wanted this to be private. Would you like some tea or coffee?”
Dave declined, and Morse turned off the kettle, making nothing for himself. They sat at the kitchen table, and the attorney played with his glasses before speaking.
“My wife is in Paris,” he said pointlessly. Maybe to explain the empty house. “With friends. She’ll be back for the funeral, of course.”
“Of course. Your children are around?”
“My son, Ken. He’s at the house. You know why I asked you here, I suppose?”
The question had an accusatory edge, but Dave was not playing.
“I try not to presume anything. I would guess it’s related to your father’s death, except you called me before he died.”
“I did,” Morse agreed. “You’ll remember I tried to speak to you after your investigation.”
“I remember,” said Dave. “I wasn’t free to talk.”
“You invoked client confidentiality. But your client is now deceased.”
“Well, you would know better than me,” Dave replied carefully, “but I’m pretty sure that confidentiality continues after death.”
“Client-attorney privilege does,” Morse said, “but you’re not a lawyer. And even lawyers are allowed exceptions when settling estates.”
“Are you the executor?”
“I assume,” Morse huffed, tossing his glasses on the table and looking uneasy. “I haven’t seen the will yet. I’m meeting his attorney later, at the house.”
“That case was a long time ago,” Dave noted. “I’m no longer employed by that firm.”
“I am aware of that,” said the lawyer snidely.
“I was required to leave my notes with them.” A half-truth. That he was required to do so did not mean that he did. In fact, Dave had been reviewing them last night. “And my memory isn’t what it used to be. I mean, fifteen years...”
“So you don’t intend to tell me anything.”
“About?”
“About your conclusions. In your report to my father.”
“I see.” Dave leaned back in his chair. It was what he expected, though the timing was odd. Why all these years later, twenty-four hours before the old man’s death? If the attorney knew the death was imminent, then it was estate-related. Money. It was always money. “I’m not sure what I could say that would be useful.”
“Then why are you here, Mr. Webster?”
Yes, why? A rainy afternoon in Madrid. Dim rooms on the second floor of the Prado. Luisa had dragged him in to see something else, but he was taken hostage by those nightmare images by Goya. If they were Goya, no one knew for sure. Maybe his son, or the son painting over the father. Maybe the Devil himself. That was easy to believe when you stood before the works. Fourteen of them. Mad pilgrims with white eyes, screaming a song. Saturn’s dark maw devouring a bloody corpse. Witches floating in the air, the black shadow of the He-Goat before his coven. Fourteen, and one missing. A ghost painting, a rumor. For Dave, an obsession. Three years later Alfred Morse called Luisa’s father, Dave’s boss. There had been a theft. An indescribably precious work. He had no faith in the police. Luisa’s father gave the job to Dave, and his life unraveled. Not at that moment, but inexorably over the months and years that followed. And you ask why I’m here.
“You don’t even know why,” Morse said contemptuously.
“Let’s say out of respect for your father. And your loss.”
“I don’t need your respect,” said the attorney. “I need your assistance. I would not ask if it wasn’t necessary, but it’s you who created this mess.”
“Me?” said Dave, amused. “Do you think I took the painting, Mr. Morse?”
“No, but you apparently thought I did,” the attorney raged, straining forward in his chair. Dave wondered if the man was about to attack him. “You destroyed my father’s trust in me. Ruined our relationship. And now you can sit in my house and smirk at me like that, you pathetic fraud.”
That didn’t take long, thought Dave.
“Even if any of that is true,” he answered, “it’s a couple of days too late to fix it.”
That was cruel, he thought, surprised at himself. Why was he provoking the man? Did he want a fight? Did he want to roll around on the spotless tile floor with the lawyer, trading punches? Dave did not like Philip Morse. Fine. But the man had just lost his father, and there was some truth in his words.
Used to being provoked, or maybe embarrassed by his outburst, the attorney grew calm. He smoothed his hair and put his glasses back on. Like Superman becoming Clark Kent.
“Sadly, that is the case,” he said. “I can’t express my hurt at the idea my father died believing me guilty. Another man might feel shame, but I can see you aren’t such a man.”
“You have it wrong, Philip.”
“Then set me straight,” the attorney insisted. “How does your silence serve anyone?”
How indeed? He should beg the man’s pardon and leave. But he knew that he was not going to do that.
“Why now?” he asked. “Why after all this time did you call me two days ago?”
“Why should I answer that?”
“You don’t have to,” Dave said. The attorney eyed him closely, sensing an unspoken deal. He rose from his chair and went to the sink, gazing out the window there.
“My father had no use for his children,” Morse said. “The feeling was more or less mutual. So his coldness toward me in the last decade didn’t really register. It was only a few days ago that I learned he suspected me of stealing the painting.”
“You had no suspicion before?”
“Why would I?” the attorney demanded, wheeling around on him. “He was upset with all of us when it happened. Like it was some group failure. But I didn’t feel it was directed specifically at me.”
“You think I put that idea in his head.”
“You’re free to deny it.”
And who will you blame, then, Dave wondered.
“How did you hear? Who waited until the last couple of days to tell you?”
“That person only just heard it, as well,” the attorney replied. “I’m not free to say who.”
The man desperately wanted Dave to talk. If he would not reveal his source under that inducement, it was pointless to push.
“I can only speak about the investigation as it related to you,” Dave said. “No one else.”
The attorney moved back to the table and sat.
“Understood.”
His expression was so eager that Dave hesitated. But it was too late to hold back.
“I didn’t come to any conclusions,” he said. “For that matter, I didn’t submit a report. There was nothing on paper, it was all verbal.”
“What, on the telephone?”
“Never,” Dave replied. “In person. In his study. I think we met three times.” The big mahogany desk, the blue eyes even colder than his son’s, a crown of white hair swept back from his forehead. And that empty space above where the demon portrait so recently hung. “That’s how he wanted it done. I reported on my progress and he asked questions.”
“About me,” Morse said.
“All the children,” Dave admitted. “Spouses, the help, the caterers for the wake, dealers and collectors. It was a long list, and I didn’t get through half of them.”
“Why not?”
“I can only conjecture. We didn’t trade theories. Your father kept his own council.”
“Tell me about it,” said Morse, massaging the bridge of his nose. “Conjecture away.”
“He didn’t believe the groundskeeper was the thief. Or if he was, he acted on someone else’s behalf.”
“We all suspected that,” the attorney said dismissively. “But whose?”
“There was a collector who wanted the work very badly,” Dave replied, violating his own conditions. “A man named Charles DeGross.”
“That’s right. He made my father at least two offers. Generous offers, I understood.”
“You encouraged your father to sell to him,” Dave stated, rather than asked.
“And that makes me suspect? My mother, my brother and his own lawyer encouraged the exact same thing.”
“Yes, but they didn’t meet secretly with Mr. DeGross. You did. Twice.”
Morse took a deep breath. Far from looking angry, he seemed relieved to have arrived at the heart of the matter.
“It wasn’t secret. For heaven’s sake, we were in a restaurant.”
“You were in a private room. Alone except for the waiter. And on at least one of those occasions you lied to others about where you would be.”
Morse sighed again and shook his head.
“Your memory is better than you claim,” he said ruefully. “Fibbing to my secretary is not a crime. It was essential that it be kept private. I was, in fact, acting in my father’s interest.”
“Just without his knowledge or permission,” Dave replied.
“You have no idea,” the attorney said sharply. “Or maybe you do.”
“About what?”
“His finances. My father didn’t understand money, and he ran through it at an alarming rate. He paid high prices for works he wanted, and hardly sold a thing. It wasn’t sustainable. Ten million dollars would have gone a long way toward curing his problems.”
“He felt the painting was worth many times that,” said Dave.
“To whom?” Morse asked, tossing his hands up. “You’re not a dealer, but you must understand the market a little. That kind of money was a delusion. No one has ever paid that for a Goya, and certainly no one would without a clean provenance.”
“You think your father acquired it illegally?”
“I don’t know, nor do I care. That painting...” The attorney became glassy-eyed for a moment. As if he went away from the conversation, away from the bright room to some other, darker place. “That painting was never going to a museum,” he rasped, his gaze slowly finding Dave again. “Anyone who would take it for a good price and keep it hidden was doing our family and the world a service.”
Dave held his tongue. They had come to what he cared about, but the questions he wanted to ask would take them away from the lawyer’s concerns, and expose his own. He mastered himself.
“What was your purpose in meeting DeGross?”
Morse nodded, as if he, too, had forgotten the point and was grateful to be brought back to it.
“The first time was after his initial offer. Seven million. I convinced him that my father swearing not to sell was a bluff, that he should go higher. I’m the one who got him to ten million. Not that Dad would have thanked me for it.”
“Which of course he couldn’t,” Dave pointed out, “because he didn’t know. Why the second meeting?”
“DeGross asked for that. After my father rejected the higher offer. He wanted to know if there was any point in continuing. If there was anything left to try.”
“Like stealing, for instance,” Dave baited him.
“DeGross may have been behind the theft,” Morse answered evenly. “But he didn’t share his plans with me. I did not have anything to do with that, Mr. Webster. And I still don’t understand why you stopped the investigation.”
He sounded sincere, Dave had to admit. He might be a good liar, or he might have talked himself into his own innocence. People did that. Or, Dave conceded grudgingly, he might be telling the truth.
“Your father suspected DeGross. I could tell from his questions. But I couldn’t find a link to the groundskeeper or any of the other help. I didn’t investigate the caterers closely, that was another thing I was going to get to. The suspicious behavior I did uncover involved members of the family. Especially you.”
“You mean those meetings with DeGross.”
“That was the worst of it,” Dave confirmed. “Your father was determined to solve the case. He put all his energy into it. When I told him about those meetings, well, the steam went out of him. He didn’t even want to hear about my other findings. He just asked me to leave. The next day he called to say he was ending the investigation.”
They were both quiet for a time. The attorney was so deeply wrapped in thought that the sound of a car pulling into the driveway did not rouse him.
“I understand this is painful for you,” Dave said, risking the other man’s wrath. “And I’m not accusing you of anything. But one way to look at this is that your father was trying to protect you. As important as that painting was, it was more important to him not to implicate his son in any wrongdoing.”
Morse stared at him with a curious expression, and Dave considered the possibility that for once in his life he had said the right thing. A car door slamming erased any response the attorney might have made. He rose quickly and went to the window.
“What the hell does she want?”
Three seconds later the kitchen door banged open and a woman in tight jeans and a baggy coat swept in. Curvy, blond and flushed. And obviously a Morse. She barely paused to throw a contemptuous glance at Philip, but she stopped short when she saw Dave. He stood up fast, banging his knee on the table.
“Sorry, did I interrupt something?” she asked, not sounding sorry. More annoyed that the presence of a guest required a halfhearted courtesy. “Who are you?”
“What are you doing here, Audrey?” Philip snapped. The girl made him nervous, though Dave could not guess why.
“Clothes,” she said.
“Clothes?”
“For the funeral and, like, the next few days. It’s four hours round-trip to my apartment, without traffic. And the cops want us to hang around.”
“I wasn’t aware,” said Philip suspiciously, “that you had left clothes at my house.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, making silly sound like a humiliating condition. “Cynthia and I wear exactly the same size. Nice to meet you...”
“Dave,” he said, taking her offered hand. Her blue eyes had a warmth missing from her uncle’s, and her smile seemed genuine, if not exactly kind. She had a firm handshake.
“I’m Audrey,” she replied, brushing against him as she passed. More closely than the space required. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”
“Wait, have you spoken to Cynthia?” Philip called after her.
“She won’t mind,” Audrey declared, already in the hall and headed for the stairs. Philip went as far as the kitchen door in pursuit. Then stopped, shoulders sagging.
“My niece,” he said in resignation.
“I remember,” Dave replied. She was a mouthy teen when he last saw her. The children had been off-limits for questioning. Which was appropriate, yet frustrating, as three had been in the house during the theft. One of them had actually been in the room. A boy, in therapy for some trauma. Dave could guess the source of that trauma, but none of the adults would speak of it. He’d met Audrey because she sought him out during her father’s interview. Flirting, he guessed. Or wanting to know what was up, the way teenagers did. She was cute, but fifteen-year-olds were not his thing, and he hadn’t given her a second thought. She was all grown-up now.
Morse shuffled back to the table. Audrey’s entrance had severed the brief bond between the men, and Dave sensed a dismissal. But the attorney sat down again.
“Thank you for telling me those things.”
“I can’t imagine they were what you wanted to hear,” Dave answered, sitting down also.
“No, but not as bad as I guessed. Tell me something else, please. Did you believe I was the thief? Is that what you would have reported to my father?”
“That’s a tough question, Philip.”
“The truth will do. You won’t offend me.”
“I hadn’t made up my mind. I needed more time, and more freedom. You looked suspicious, but so did other people.”
“Like my brother-in-law,” the attorney said. “Ramón.”
“I can’t answer that.”
“You don’t need to.” Morse reached into his jacket and slipped out a checkbook. They had not discussed a fee for Dave’s time, but without asking, the attorney began to write. “What I would like to do is ask you to pick up where you left off fifteen years ago,” he said, tearing the check from the book. “I don’t know how realistic that is.”
“It’s a cold trail,” Dave managed, covering his surprise. Was he serious? “I would have to track down a lot of people. They would have to be willing to talk.”
“Many hurdles,” the lawyer agreed. “Don’t answer now, but consider the possibility. Last question. Or request. Would you be willing to repeat everything you’ve just said to my brother and sister?”
There it was. The old man was gone but not the siblings. Did one of them control the purse strings? Or was this just an emotional thing? Did it matter?
“If they’re willing to listen,” said Dave, “I’m willing to talk.”
Morse nodded and handed over the check. It was for a thousand dollars, far too much. Dave thought of handing it back, then thought better.
“Consider yourself on retainer,” the attorney said. “We’ll be speaking more.”
6 (#u8de205d9-4585-5c78-b904-58472c628699)
The diner was a mile from Morse’s house, at the first intersection going east. Anyone returning to Owl’s Point would pass this way. There was also a gas station, post office and antiques shop, but little activity this Monday morning. Little to attract Dave’s eye while he ate a late breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. He could not have said what he was watching for until the red Lexus sped by the window.
Philip had shaken his hand when they parted. As if they were pals now, or at least co-conspirators. Dave did not know why it bothered him. He had worked for worse men, and very little had been asked of him so far. He had no inflated sense of his own honor, but there was something tainted about the attorney. About the whole family. They were people to avoid; Dave felt it on an instinctive level. Yet he’d accepted the check, and gave Morse his mobile number. Going to his car, he had stolen a glance back and caught a figure in a second-floor window. Near the back of the house, the master bedroom probably. It was her, Audrey. She examined a blouse in the window’s natural light, and it took a moment to realize she wore nothing but a white bra. She didn’t look up, but Dave had no doubt the show was for him. Before he averted his gaze, she turned around quickly. As if someone in the room behind had startled her. Yet she made no effort to cover herself.
He had been trying to sort it all out—what the attorney really wanted, why Audrey had made an appearance, what was going on between the two of them—when her car shot by. She drove too fast. Any careless pedestrian would have been instant roadkill. In the minimum time it would take to find a place to turn around and come back, the Lexus reappeared and swung in next to his blue Taurus. She got out slowly and scanned the long window until she spotted him. Then waved. Dave did not wave back, but she bounded up the stairs and entered the little diner nevertheless.
The same black jeans, but now she sported a pink blouse with the sleeves rolled, along with a turquoise bracelet and silver chain around her neck. Also fresh lipstick and eye shadow, which did not quite distract from the dark crescents of sleeplessness. She had the weathered look of a woman a few years older, a look Dave found appealing. Indeed, he was quite attracted to her, and the sooner he admitted that to himself the better he could resist.
“Hey,” she said, sliding in across the table from him. “Mind if I join you?”
“You already have. But I was just finishing.”
“Doesn’t look like you enjoyed it.” She grabbed his coffee cup and took a swig, leaving a red smear on the white ceramic. “That is terrible,” she announced.
“It is,” he agreed. “You didn’t give me time to warn you.”
“I know you,” Audrey said, drilling him with those blue eyes. It struck him that she had a slightly crazed look, and Dave could not decide if it was natural or a put-on. “I could feel it right away, but it took a little while to figure out. You won’t remember me.”
“I do.”
“Really?” She seemed far too pleased. “They wouldn’t even let me talk to you.”
“You managed to barge in anyway.”
“For like thirty seconds before they hustled me out.”
“You were too young,” Dave said. “It wasn’t allowed.”
“I was fifteen. I made a statement to the police.”
“And I got a copy of that.”
“Maybe I didn’t tell them everything,” she said, letting that sit. He would not take the bait, and he could see that she had no patience. “So what’s the story, Dave? Did my uncle hire you to investigate something?”
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Neil Olson
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: An enthralling well-written mystery for readers who enjoyed The Keeper of Lost Things and The Improbability of Love.A dead body. A family torn apart. Someone is lying.Years ago, a forgotten Goya masterpiece was stolen from Teresa’s family home, a crumbling mansion at Owl’s Point. Ever since, Teresa has stayed away, terrified of the rumours surrounding the Black Painting and the jealous accusations that tore apart her family.Now her grandfather has summoned his descendants back to the mansion to discuss his will, and Teresa knows she has no choice except to return. But when she arrives, she finds the door hanging open and her grandfather dead, his eyes open and staring at the empty space where the Goya once hung.Someone in the family is lying, but will Teresa unravel the mystery of the missing painting before it is too late?