11
When Conor walked out of the state police barracks, he breathed in fresh air and felt the relief of freedom.
He had never been detained by law enforcement before, had always been able to enter and leave police stations and jails at will.
This had shown him a different reality, one he hoped never to experience again.
He and Joe walked into the parking lot, and he saw his brother leaning on Joe’s black Crown Vic Police Interceptor.
Tom came toward him, looked him straight in the eye, and clapped him on the shoulder—the Reid brothers’ version of a hug.
“Let’s get you out of here,” Tom said, opening the front passenger seat door and standing aside to let Conor in.
“Thanks,” Conor said.
“You okay?” Tom asked.
“I’m fine,” Conor said. That was Irish Catholic code for the exact opposite—I’m not fine, I feel like shit. “What about Kate? Have you seen her?”
“She stayed with Hadley and CeCe last night. Call her,” Tom said, handing Conor his phone.
He dialed her number, but it went straight to voicemail.
He stepped away from the truck to leave her a message.
“Kate, I love you. It’s all going to be okay, I promise.
I just need to talk to you, and we’ll be fine.
” When he disconnected, he wondered why he had said “fine”—considering it was Irish for anything but.
“You might be wondering why I brought your brother along,” Joe said, pulling out of the parking lot.
“I wasn’t wondering that,” Conor said. “Just glad that you did. But since you mention it . . .”
“A few things have come up. Tom can help with one in particular,” Joe said.
“You did say I’d thank you when you told me what you’ve been doing,” Conor said.
“The house and Belinda’s connection to it,” Joe said.
“Okay,” Conor said.
“The caretaker came by. He knows the cops, and one of them called him, told him to get over there. He said there’s a succession of young women who stay there. Like college-aged.”
“A party house?” Conor asked.
“Not at all. No noise complaints, no one trashing the property. The opposite, in fact.”
“In what way?”
“He said it’s like a nunnery. Everyone is very quiet. Polite.” He paused. “One of the girls was Suzanne McKinney.”
“Wait, Garrett mentioned a Suzanne . . .” Conor said. “Who is she?”
“She was around last night,” Tom said. “Working at the dinner, and Maeve said she’d hired her to do the place cards.”
“Okay,” Conor said, picturing her. He wondered about the house, about Suzanne, and what Belinda’s connection to them had been.
“The caretaker does the garden as well as the house. He said hardly anyone seems to go to the beach or walk down the hill to Bay Street—they don’t socialize.
But every so often he sees a Mercedes pull into the drive.
An older woman gets out, enters the house through the back door.
He has the feeling she didn’t want him to see her face.
She stays for a while, then leaves with one or more of the girls. ”
“Maybe she owns the house,” Conor said.
“Turns out the owner of record is a business—Leprince de Beaumont Associates, LLC.”
Conor knew that it was not uncommon for homeowners, especially wealthy ones, to put their houses under the names of their trusts, corporations, or limited liability companies.
These were time-honored ways to protect the owner’s privacy and provide tax advantages.
It was hard to crack the shield and learn the identities, but there were ways around it.
“What’s Leprince de Beaumont Associates, LLC?” Conor asked.
“No clue. I checked out the secretary of state’s website and found the listing. There’s a registered agent but no actual owner listed. I left a message with the agent’s service, and I’m waiting for a callback,” Joe said.
“What about that truck that was parked outside? Can you trace it?” Conor asked.
“That’s registered to a different corporation—1740 LLC.”
“That number was stenciled on the truck’s door,” Conor said, picturing it. “Are there any other leads?”
“A few,” Joe said. “Starting with Maeve Longacre. She’s our 911 caller—she saw the blood.”
“Why was she at that house?” Conor asked.
“She said she’d gone out for an early walk,” Joe said. “She heard screams and ran to look through the open door.”
“Who did she think it was?” Conor asked.
“Kate,” Joe said. “See, Maeve had gone to check on her, and when she found the Tower Suite empty, she saw the cut-up veil and realized that the dress was missing. She was on high alert for Kate.”
“Kate had no connection with that house,” Conor said, doubting that scenario. “Why would Maeve have assumed it was her?”
“She didn’t know,” Joe said. “Her nerves were raw after the scene last night. She was worried about Kate.”
“And instead she came upon Belinda dead. Wearing Kate’s dress,” Tom said.
Conor nodded. “You said a few leads. What else?”
“Suzanne McKinney,” Joe said. “She apparently had an agenda.”
“What about her? How did Maeve come to hire her?”
“It’s the other way around,” Joe said. “Suzanne found Maeve.”
“How?” Conor asked.
“Maeve’s boyfriend is a musician—”
“Lincoln Adams,” Conor said. “His father buys paintings from Kate’s gallery.”
“Okay,” Joe said. “I’ll have to talk to him. Because Lincoln played at a wedding in Jamestown, and Suzanne approached him—told him that she’d heard about a big wedding at the Ocean House—yours—and that she wished she could get hired to do assistant-type stuff and the calligraphy.”
“So Lincoln put her in touch with Maeve?” Conor asked.
“Yes. Suzanne made it seem she had no idea who was getting married. But that doesn’t ring true, considering other developments—we’ll fill you in, but it seems Suzanne had a connection to Belinda. Could Lincoln have lied to Maeve, told Suzanne from the start?”
“I don’t know him that well,” Conor said. “But Kate does—through his father, then through Maeve. Sometimes she has music at gallery openings, and he’s played a few times. She said he seems like a good guy. But wait—what connection to Belinda?”
“She might be living on a boat,” Tom said. “There was a marina receipt made out in her name. The bizarre thing is, it was found in Belinda’s room.”
“So they knew each other?” Conor asked.
“Seems so,” Joe said. “We’ll ask Suzanne when we find her, hopefully soon.”
“Where is she?”
“According to the receipt, she’s off-grid, at one of the dumpiest marinas in Rhode Island. We’re going to check it out now,” Tom said.
Joe pulled into the parking lot at Westerly State Airport. This was where Kate kept her plane. The knowledge made Conor’s heart tighten.
“Where are we going?” Conor asked.
“The marina’s on Bellevigne Island. It has a grass strip, and flying is the fastest way to get there,” Tom said.
Joe drove straight toward the tarmac, where private planes were parked.
Conor spotted Kate’s Cessna. Joe pulled into a space and turned off the engine.
Then Conor saw the pilot standing by the cockpit door, arms folded, hair tossed by the summer breeze.
It was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.
“Here’s our ride,” Joe said dryly.
“Kate,” Conor said, getting out of the car.
Kate took a step toward him, then stopped.
Her eyes were full of emotions, too fleeting for Conor to translate.
All he cared about was seeing love in her eyes—he thought he saw it, along with sorrow, hurt, confusion—so he moved closer to her.
He wanted to put his arms around her. He hesitated, and then he did.
Tom and Joe were standing right there, but he felt as if he was alone with Kate.
She leaned her head against his chest. “Oh, Conor,” she said.
“Kate, I am sorry . . .”
“Don’t say that right now,” she said. “I want to hear everything, I want us to talk, but not here.”
“I know, Kate. I have a lot to tell you. I can’t work, do anything right now, until I can explain what happened.
It’s so important. And I’m so fucking sorry—about our wedding.
I swear, if I hadn’t been in police custody, I would have been right there with you.
We would have done it, Kate. We would have gotten married, no matter what. ”
She didn’t reply to that. She leaned back, stepped out of his embrace. Her eyes filled with tears, and Conor’s heart fell. Was she saying she wouldn’t have married him? Was the damage between them too great for her to go on with him?
“We would have, right?” he asked.
She nodded, but no words came out.
“Please say it,” he said.
This time she looked down at her feet, as if she wasn’t sure—or worse—as if she had decided she couldn’t. He knew she was thinking of Belinda, the silver ring, the baby picture. He could feel all her doubts and suspicions pouring off her.
“Let me tell you the whole thing,” Conor said, feeling desperate. If only he could explain, put the truth in perspective, he would have her trust again. He would tell her the whole story about what had happened; he would come clean about it all.
“Not right now. Tom told me you’re still under suspicion. I’ll fly you to the island so you can go to that marina, get Suzanne to put it all together. You have to get out from under this. People think you killed Belinda.”
“Do you think that?” Conor asked.
“No. I know you didn’t,” Kate said. “But you need to prove it to everyone else.”
Conor nodded and felt a flood of relief. At least Kate believed him. He heard Tom clear his throat, and he knew that he and Joe were getting impatient to take off and start the investigation on Bellevigne Island.
“It’s time,” Kate said, nodding her head toward the others.
Their fingertips touched. It wasn’t another hug, but it was something.
Conor watched her pull herself together and get into pilot mode.
“Our flight will be smooth on the way over,” she said to the group, “but there’s weather coming.
There are a few storms tracking north of us.
They won’t impact us directly, but they could cause turbulence on the way back.
We have about two and a half hours until dark, and we should plan to be on our way back again. ”
Kate and the three men climbed into the plane.
Joe and Tom took the back seats, leaving Conor to sit up front, next to Kate.
He glanced over at her. She was always cool and focused when flying.
The only sign that she was still feeling emotional was the flush spreading upward from her neck to her cheeks.
She ran through her preflight checklist and started the engine.
The propeller began to turn. The airport was small and didn’t have a tower, so she tuned the radio to 122.8, the frequency monitored by pilots.
“Westerly traffic, this is Cessna 2122 Quebec departing runway 5, northeast bound. Crossing midfield,” she said into the mike, stating her intention.
Then she taxied, and they took off.
Conor had taken off from this airport with her a hundred times.
She flew with grace and confidence. Her eyes never stopped scanning the horizon and the airspace around them.
He felt proud to have Tom and Joe in the plane, to see her as a pilot.
The plane gained altitude, flying over the marshes and salt ponds, banking over the long barrier island, heading out over Block Island Sound.
They quickly climbed to three thousand feet, and he saw ferries and pleasure boats down below on the glass-smooth water.
The sky was still bright blue, but the sun was moving west, just enough to touch the ocean’s surface with gold.
Gazing down, Conor thought of the people on all those boats, of how they had chosen the perfect weekend for their cruises.
And it hit him hard, to think that it was also a perfect evening for a wedding. Of how wonderful it would have been, there under the white tent, holding Kate close and dancing her around the floor.
He wanted to look over at her again, but he couldn’t. Instead, he turned his head to the window and stared out to sea, beyond Block Island, past the windmills, out toward the banks where the ocean was too deep for any light to pierce.