Chapter 11
Kate followed Pete up the river road, in no danger of being seen.
Once he left Bryer Funeral Home, passed the library, and headed north, she knew exactly where he was going.
A dump truck from Pawlik Construction, loaded with trap rock, rumbled between her car and Pete’s, belching black exhaust. The countryside was beautiful—rolling hills overlooking the Connecticut River and Sill Cove—the same landscape painted by the Black Hall Colony artists.
But development was rampant—lots clear-cut, three-hundred-year-old trees felled, and acres of wildlife habitat destroyed for ugly six-thousand-square-foot houses.
Instead of going in that way, she turned left down an untended dirt trail that belonged to the property and skirted the cove out of sight of the driveway and house.
The family used to come here to swim and canoe and have picnics.
She parked where the pebble-strewn road dead-ended in a thatch of marsh grass.
At the sound of an engine, she turned around and saw a black Dodge Charger bouncing over the ruts. It stopped behind her Porsche, and she recognized Conor’s unmarked state police vehicle.
“What are you doing?” he asked, getting out.
“I own this place, I told you. My grandmother’s,” she said.
“I know that, but why are you here now? You’re following Pete?”
“You’re following me?”
“No, him. But you got in the middle. I saw you all at the funeral home.”
“Yes, we were there,” she said.
“What are these steps?” he asked, pointing at the steep stairs carved into the granite ledge, shaded by tall pines, half overgrown by myrtle and poison ivy, green with moss.
“They lead to the house,” she said, looking up. “We used to come down here to swim and canoe and have picnics. They’re a shortcut, and if we hurry, we’ll beat Pete.”
She took the steps two at a time, and although it was a hot day and Conor was wearing a jacket and tie, he kept up without losing his breath. So she went faster. Something drove her to practically run the 473 steps—she and Beth had counted once—to the clearing behind the house.
They stayed in the shadows of what the family called Mathilda’s Forest. The clay tennis court was sprouting weeds, and the deep stone swimming pool was dry.
But Harold Maxwell, the gardener, still came once a week, and the blue hydrangeas were as dazzling as ever.
Black-eyed Susans, pink and white phlox, and bee balm grew tall along the stone wall circling the house.
Kate had refused to allow the big center chimney to be capped—both Beth and Pete had argued that squirrels could get inside, but Kate had prevailed—and a family of endangered chimney swifts wheeled through the blue sky above the roof.
“Why are you following him?” Conor asked.
“Because of what you said last night.”
“You think you’re going to catch him with evidence?” he asked.
“I just thought . . . if I could see how he acted when he didn’t know people were watching, I would know.
” She looked down at her feet for a few seconds.
“Last night, after I talked to you, and this morning, seeing him at the funeral home, I was sure it’s him.
But I don’t want it to be. For Sam. No matter how I feel about him, Pete’s her dad. ”
“Look, you have to let me do this,” Conor said. “He’s coming in for questioning later. There’s a whole process, so why don’t you—”
“Leave?” she asked. “No chance.”
Conor squinted at her, then looked up at the house. “How are we supposed to see him from here?”
Without answering, Kate led him behind a tall hedge into a boxwood labyrinth. Once they reached the innermost path, they came to a weathered wooden door. The hinges squeaked, and the door opened into a damp cellar.
“You’re allowed to do this, right?” Kate asked, glancing over her shoulder. “You won’t get in trouble for not having a warrant?”
“I’m with the owner,” he said, smiling at her.
They took a few steps inside. There was a light switch at the far end of the house, but this part of the basement was pitch dark.
She knew every step of this house, could have found her way blindfolded, but Conor swore as he stumbled into her. She grabbed his hand to steady him.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“A cellar Pete knows nothing about.”
“Why doesn’t he?”
“Well, there’s another, one we actually use. It has a wine cellar, a storage room, the furnace, all the water pipes—normal house things. But this was dug during the Revolutionary War, a staging point to fight the British. It was a hiding place, in case of attack.”
“Cool history,” Conor said as she pulled her hand away.
“We found cannonballs once.”
They walked through the darkness. A few times they heard claws scrabbling on the rock walls.
“Monsters,” she said.
“Field mice,” he said.
“You’re right. My grandmother always had a cat, and he brought us little furry gifts nearly every night.”
At the far end of the passageway, Kate flipped the light switch to illuminate a single bulb, swinging from a cord overhead. She carefully and quietly unlatched a door, wincing when it creaked open. They climbed the narrow spiral staircase.
As children, she and Beth had played here, pretending to be spies hiding from the redcoats.
The stairs led up three flights to a tiny room, originally built for escape from enemy soldiers, accessible from the main house by a secret door that only Mathilda and the girls knew about. A peephole gave onto the library.
She and Conor looked down. There was Pete. He’d obviously just walked in and was puttering around, putting his wallet and car keys on the desk. He disappeared, and Kate heard him in the kitchen. It was just past noon. He returned with a sandwich on one of Mathilda’s blue-and-white Canton plates.
Now he sat in the chair, pointing the remote toward the TV, wolfing down his lunch.
This had always been a room for Mathilda’s vast collection of books, including works of fiction, art, Connecticut history, and aviation.
Pete gave every impression of being alone.
There were no sounds coming from within the house.
Not Nicola calling a greeting, not the baby laughing or crying.
That surprised Kate. Pete had claimed he and Beth had been working it out, but she had never really believed that. He had always been out for himself. He had moved Nicola and Tyler into this house and destroyed his marriage to Beth in the process. Kate had been dreading seeing them here today.
But it was just Pete, sitting in an ugly brown leather recliner that Mathilda would have thrown down the cliff before allowing in her house.
He had obviously brought it here, moved it right in.
Kate watched him flipping through television channels.
The quiet made Kate all the more aware of Conor squeezed so close beside her, their arms pressed together.
“Where’s Nicola?” Conor whispered.
“And the baby?” Kate whispered back.