Chapter 2
After getting out of his car, he took in the scene—a large white sea captain’s house, typical of this affluent part of Black Hall.
A boxwood hedge surrounded the property.
Mature oak and beech trees shaded the lawn, and blue hydrangeas bloomed along an old lichen-covered stone wall.
He noticed pink gardening gloves, clippers, and a flat basket full of wilted cut flowers at the foot of the wall.
A white canvas sun hat lay on the ground.
A green hose was draped over the wall, water trickling from the spray nozzle, sending a thin stream down the hill toward a wild meadow.
Someone had been interrupted while gardening.
He walked over to the hat, crouched on his heels, and saw that the fabric glistened with morning dew, as if it had been left on the grass overnight or longer.
The crime techs had arrived, and he gestured at the hat and gardening equipment, letting them know to photograph and process them as part of the crime scene.
Black Hall police officers had been the first to arrive. He spotted two uniforms next to a cruiser and headed toward them. A dark-haired woman, clearly distressed, stood between them. The sight of Kate stiffened his spine. He stared at her, thinking how she had changed yet somehow looked the same.
The female officer caught his eye and broke away from the others.
“Hello,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m Conor Reid.”
“I’m Peggy McCabe, and that’s my partner, Jim Hawley. Beth Lathrop is the victim here,” McCabe said. She nodded toward the woman standing with Hawley. “That’s Kate Woodward, her sister.”
Reid stared at Kate, wondering if she would recognize him. He tried to control his breathing.
“Who called you here?” he asked McCabe.
“Kate. Before I tell you anything else, we did break the door to get in. We went upstairs and discovered the body. We debated getting a search warrant.”
“Okay,” Reid said. He shoved his emotions aside, thinking down the road to some defense lawyer using it against them.
“Kate had been trying to reach Beth for three days. She was pretty frantic. The sisters were close. They spoke every day—sometimes many times a day. Beth was pregnant, and apparently the pregnancy wasn’t easy.
Kate felt nervous after the second missed call, but at first she assumed Beth was working at the family business. ”
“The art gallery,” Reid said.
“Yes,” McCabe said. “Or out on the beach with the dog, in the garden, whatever. She wasn’t a big cell phone user. She often left it at home.”
“But there were missed calls?”
“Oh, lots. The sister was out of town, calling and calling. Other numbers in the call log too, including from the husband. Kate couldn’t get here to check until this morning. She cut her trip short, flew home first thing to get here.”
“What kind of trip?” He felt dishonest asking questions to which he already knew the answers.
McCabe looked blank, then reddened. “Sorry, I didn’t ask.”
“Don’t worry,” Reid said. He looked past her toward Kate Woodward. He couldn’t keep his eyes away.
“Anyway, the husband is sailing—a yearly thing with the guys, several days offshore. And sorry, I didn’t ask where.”
“We’ll find out,” Reid said. He nodded with what he hoped was reassurance at McCabe.
He had started out as a police officer in New London, then had spent two years as a trooper for the state police before becoming a detective with the Major Crime Squad.
It wasn’t the local cops’ job to investigate a crime.
It was his, and in the byzantine world of his relationship with the Woodward sisters, he knew more than he would ever tell this officer.
“She was hit here,” McCabe said, tapping her own head just behind her left ear. “And she was strangled.”
Reid nodded, trying to keep his composure.
“What else did you notice?” he asked.
“Marble owl statue, covered with blood, under the bed—obviously the weapon he hit her with.” She paused. “And a weird thing—an empty frame on the bedroom wall. Some threads stuck to the wood as if maybe a painting was cut out.”
“A painting?” he asked, electricity zapping his bones. But it couldn’t be the same one, he thought.
“Looks that way to me.”
“Okay,” Reid said. “Thanks.”
He walked toward Kate Woodward. He wanted to go into the house, to sit with Beth Lathrop.
He always thought of his first encounter with a homicide victim as two people meeting.
An encounter every bit as important in death as it would have been in life, as revelatory as a conversation—in some ways more so.
But this would be different from any crime victim he’d ever met: he knew Beth and had rescued her after what, until today, had been the most traumatic event in her life.
He said hello to Officer Hawley, who was savvy enough to peel off and leave him alone with Beth’s sister.
He took a deep breath, looked into Kate’s eyes.
She stared at him, unrecognizing. He wanted to hold her hand, as he had that day in the art gallery twenty-three years ago.
She had been sixteen, Beth a year younger.
His heart beat so hard he figured she’d see the vein throbbing in his neck.
“Miss Woodward, I’m Detective Conor Reid. I’m very sorry about your sister.”
“I knew, I knew,” Kate said, digging the heels of her hands into her eyes. “I should have come home the minute she didn’t answer—I felt it.”
“What did you feel?”
“That something was wrong.”
“She always answered her phone? Every time you called?” Reid asked, remembering what McCabe had told him.
“Not always, not before this—but both Pete—her husband—and I were away this week, and Beth was having a rocky time, and I made her promise she’d carry her phone and answer when I called. Even so, when she didn’t pick up, I tried telling myself it was just her old habits.”
“What kind of rocky time had she been having?”
“Well, she had wicked morning sickness the first three months, and then her blood sugar spiked. She had gestational diabetes with Sam—their daughter—and it went away after Sam was born. Her doctor said there was no guarantee she wouldn’t have it again with this pregnancy.”
“They have other children?” he asked.
“No, just Sam. And, almost, Matthew.”
“Matthew?” he asked.
“That’s what they were going to name him,” Kate said, her voice cracking. “The baby. Did he, is he . . . did he die too? He did, right? He’s dead?”
“The medical examiner will tell us,” Reid said, although according to the officers’ report, he knew the answer was yes. He knew many details about her sister’s life, but not specifically why there were so many years between the children.
“And Pete’s off sailing,” Kate said, the anguish in her eyes giving way to anger. “Who would leave his wife for a week, knowing she wasn’t completely okay? Especially because I was gone too?”
“Where did you go?” Reid asked.
“I had a charter from Groton to LA.”
Reid waited for her to explain. He had to be careful here and pretend he didn’t know about her career.
“I’m a pilot for Intrepid Aviation,” she said. “Private jets.”
“And you flew back this morning?”
“Yes. It was supposed to be a deadhead, but then the clients decided they wanted to come back. He’s a studio executive, and they have a summer place in Watch Hill.
So I’d thought I would be home a day and a half ago, but I had to wait for them.
I should have left them in LA—my first officer could have taken over for me.
I could have booked a commercial flight home. ”
“Where is Pete sailing?”
Her brow furrowed. Her eyes shut tight for a moment, as if in a private moment, lost in recriminations over her own delay in returning.
Then, “I’m not sure. They meet the boat in Nantucket and sail from there.
Every year in July, Pete and a bunch of his friends charter a Beneteau and take off for a week. ”
“A Beneteau?”
“It’s a sailboat. Fifty feet or so long. It’s fancy. Well, expensive.”
“Okay,” Reid said. His brother, Tom, would know all about it.
Tom was a commander in the Coast Guard, and he knew all things nautical.
He was Reid’s secret weapon when it came to certain local investigations, especially the last one involving the Woodward sisters.
I couldn’t do it without him was an overused phrase, but when it came to Tom, that’s how Reid felt.
Kate was silent, her lips tight. Reid had the feeling she wanted to say something more about Pete. Why hadn’t she suggested they call him?
“What does your brother-in-law do?” Reid asked.
“He’s president of the Lathrop Gallery,” she said, clear derision in her voice.
“Why do you say that?”
“As if he does anything at all.”
“I know the gallery well,” he said carefully. “And that it originally belonged to your grandmother.”
Her expression didn’t change. She didn’t seem surprised that he knew that. Then again, the gallery was well known in the art world, a mainstay in art-centric Black Hall. But did she remember him?
“It’s been in my family for generations. It eventually came to me and Beth.”
After their mother’s death and their father’s conviction.
He stared at Kate, debating how much to tell her about his role the day she was rescued.
Could she be assuming Beth’s murder might be connected to what her father had done?
He began to formulate an idea about who might have been inspired by that crime.
“You changed the gallery’s name,” Reid said. “Is your brother-in-law an owner?”
Kate shook her head. “No. Beth and I are. I let my sister make most decisions regarding the gallery, and she gave him the title. President.”
“Is it just a title?”
“Pretty much,” Kate said. “He just sits back and thinks about . . . himself. Whatever he wants to do next.”
That’s what people had said about her father years ago.
“Why did she give it to him?”