17
Conor and Joe had spent the morning interviewing the residents of Bellevigne Island while Tom investigated the boats and dock buildings along the waterfront.
Their efforts centered around East Cove Marina—the marina itself and the small village that surrounded the harbor.
Conor tried to focus on learning whatever he could about the receipt in Suzanne’s name—and now, how it connected to those handcuffs they had seen on Psyche.
But concentration was almost impossible.
He hadn’t slept last night. He kept seeing the look in Kate’s eyes when he’d answered her question about Belinda.
Standing beside her plane, he had watched her nearly melt onto the tarmac.
Or maybe that was him—he couldn’t stand seeing her so hurt and knowing that he was the cause.
He forced himself to get his head in the game.
Joe had taken photos at the rehearsal dinner.
He had gotten a good shot of Belinda with Garrett, sitting together and smiling at the camera.
He had also, inadvertently, captured Suzanne, when she was standing beside Kate at the Harbour Room door.
The Ocean House concierge had printed out copies of the photos, and Joe showed them around now.
Crime scene investigators from the Rhode Island State Police had arrived by helicopter.
They were processing Psyche—taking photos, fingerprinting surfaces, collecting DNA from the mattress and bulkheads.
Conor knew that they would drive or tow the boat back to the mainland, but it was protocol to secure basic evidence before the move.
Some of Tom’s crew had come out from Station Point Judith in a CG45—a forty-five-foot response boat—to meet him at East Cove Marina. Conor could see his brother down by the dock, talking to crew members.
The fact that it was the Fourth of July meant that many of the islanders had the long weekend off; some had headed off island for various mainland celebrations.
Conor and Joe found several residents at home and showed them the photos of Belinda and Suzanne.
No one said they recognized them. Everyone was curious about what the police and Coast Guard were doing there.
One woman said she had been walking her dog late one foggy night last week and had heard an engine.
As the sound grew louder, she saw Psyche motoring alongside the dock.
She hadn’t noticed who was at the wheel, and she hadn’t seen anyone boarding the boat or leaving it since.
Conor and Joe approached the last house on the street. Like several others, it looked run down. The yard held blue plastic fish barrels and a stack of barnacle-encrusted lobster pots.
But Conor noticed that it also had a tidy herb garden and a bed full of colorful cosmos and zinnias—some of the same flowers Kate grew at Cloudlands.
A rustic arbor in the side yard was covered with grapevines; a woman wearing a black dress sat beneath it in the shade.
She had been needlepointing, but at the sight of Conor and Joe, she lowered the canvas and stared at them intently.
“Hello,” Joe said, showing her his badge and ID.
“Rhode Island State Police,” she said, examining his ID.
“Yes, I’m Detective Joseph Harrigan.”
“Who are you?” she asked Conor.
“Conor Reid,” he said. “I’m a detective from Connecticut.”
“A Nutmegger,” she said, using a nickname for Connecticut people.
“Yes,” Conor said.
“What brings you here?” she asked, directing the question to Joe. “Someone on the island in trouble?”
“Not necessarily,” Joe said. “Were you thinking of someone in particular?”
“There’s a bunch of idiots out here,” she said. “They have no respect. I’ve called in complaints before. They know it’s me who reported them, and they throw bottles in my yard, shout names at me on my walks to the water. But it’s okay. I’ve lived here my whole life. I’ll outlast them.”
“Good for you. That’s a strong attitude,” Joe said. “What are the complaints about?”
“Bad things,” she said.
“Like what?” Conor asked.
She glared at him and didn’t answer at first. Then, “I forget.”
Conor gazed at her face. She had sun lines across her forehead and around her mouth, but her eyes were bright. She looked to be in her late forties, not much older than he was, so he didn’t think her confusion was due to age.
“Yes,” Joe said.
“What is your name?” Conor asked.
“Grace Matos,” she said.
“Well, Grace,” Joe said. “I’d like to ask you some questions. Is that okay with you?”
She nodded. “Go ahead.”
“Do you know anyone named Suzanne McKinney?” Joe asked. “Who might keep a boat at East Cove Marina?”
Joe showed her the pictures of Suzanne and Belinda, and Conor saw her lips tighten.
“You recognize them, don’t you?” Conor said.
“I’m not sure,” she said.
“You mentioned that you walk down to the water,” Conor said.
“Every day,” she said.
“When you take your walks,” Conor said. “Have you ever noticed a sailboat tied to the dock?”
“Sailboat,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s for leisure, for rich people. We’re working people here. No one here has sailboats.” She paused. “Except the people who have money. You know, like the rich one who has the parties. Him and that woman.”
The tone in her voice when she said woman caught Conor’s attention. It was a combination of anger and derision. “Do you sometimes see the woman on the sailboat?” he asked.
“A few times.”
“What do you know about the boat?” Joe asked.
“I was hoping you would ask about that,” she said. “I have been hoping for a long time. When the police come to see about the bad things . . . I always hope they’ll go to the boat. But they never do. That’s because they’re paid off. Money can buy anything. It can buy your way out of trouble.”
“Why do you want the police to go to the boat?” Conor asked.
She blinked hard and looked away, as if deciding how much to say.
“Do you know who owns it?” Conor asked.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. Then, “Maybe.”
Conor watched her face. She seemed to be wrestling with something she wanted to say but felt she shouldn’t.
“How long has the boat been here?” Joe asked.
“It just got here,” she said. “This time.”
“You mean it comes and goes?” Joe asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“You mentioned seeing the woman on it,” Joe said. “Do you know who she is?”
Grace shrugged.
Conor’s mind was racing with a line of questions, but he held back from asking them—he wasn’t officially here, and he was trying to stay on his side of the line. He exchanged a glance with Joe, and Joe ran with it.
“Are there other people with her?” Joe asked.
“A man. Well, sometimes more than one. And the girls. They come for the parties.”
“Tell me about the parties,” Joe said.
“They’re up there,” she said, gesturing up the hill. “They’re the real reason I call the police.”
“Because they’re loud? Disturbing your peace?” Joe asked.
“No, they’re quiet. The whole point is for no one to know they’re celebrating. They all arrive in boats—in yachts. Or sometimes in a plane. But you can never hear music. Silent parties. Silent nights.”
“Okay,” Joe said. “Who are they?”
“The girls are like me,” she said, gazing into the distance. “Except they’re not like me. They’re Ghost Girls.”
“Ghost girls?” Conor asked. She didn’t reply. She gazed into the distance, as if seeing specters of the girls who had visited the island.
“It’s a riddle,” she said. “I don’t mean they’re like me now. They’re like the way I was. We’re ghosts of how we used to be.”
Conor and Joe waited for her to go on.
“I was one of the first.” She paused, and her chin began to wobble. “Poor things, they’ve been sick too. Like me. They’ve been in treatment. They are frail. They’re not ready for parties, or for seeing those people.”
“What kind of treatment?” Joe asked.
“Maybe they just don’t want anyone to see them at night,” she said, ignoring his question.
“At night?” Conor asked.
“That’s when they get here,” she said. “Just after dark, and they stay until midnight. They wear white dresses and float up the hill like spirits. Ghost Girls can go anywhere and be almost invisible. Like me.” She frowned. “Do you think they are real?”
Conor watched her clasp and unclasp her hands. She was drifting in and out of reality; he sensed that the treatment she’d spoken of referred to some sort of mental health intervention.
“Maybe they’re dead. Maybe the girls really are ghosts. They leave no footprints. Why is it that I survived when some of them don’t? I get a bad feeling from them. Some of the dead are good, and some are not,” she said.
“Which ones aren’t good?” Joe asked.
She frowned and looked away.
“Do you ever hear any sounds coming from the boat?” Joe asked. “Voices?”
She nodded. “Just like the wind,” she said.
“The sound of the wind comes from the boat?” Conor asked.
“Oh yes,” she said. “A terrible wailing, you know, the way the wind sounds when we’re having a real nor’easter, or even a hurricane before the eye passes over, when the barometer falls.
Just that ungodly shriek. Makes you think your house is going to come apart.
But oh, that wind on the boat. It’s the same thing. Howling.”
Conor felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He couldn’t hold back. “Could it have been a person instead?” he asked. “Screaming, maybe?”
“I don’t like to think about it,” she said. “It makes me upset.”
“Does that sound come from the house too, Grace?” Conor asked. “The wailing?”
“No!” she said, shaking her head hard, as if trying to dislodge memories or sounds. “I told you, the house is silent.”
“Tell me another thing,” Joe said. “You mentioned that the girls from the sailboat are like you but not like you. They’re like you because they were once sick, and in treatment, but how are they different?”
“Because I’m here,” she said. “I have my life. They didn’t take it.”
Conor had the feeling she meant it very literally: that she was alive while other women were dead.
While some of what she said seemed to come from delusion, he felt that she was absolutely solid in saying that she had her life.
He saw her take a quick glance toward the dead end of her road.
A chain was stretched between two wooden posts: Beyond the chain, a gravel road meandered through a field, up a rock-strewn slope, and into a grove of trees.
“What’s up there, Grace?” Conor asked.
“That’s where they have the parties, in a big mansion. The Finishing School. You can’t see it from here. It’s on the hilltop, behind the trees.”
“Finishing school?” Joe asked.
“One of the finishing schools,” Grace said.
“You said the parties last until midnight,” Conor said.
“The clock strikes twelve,” she said.
“What happens then? Where do the people go?”
“Back on the boats,” she said. “And away. They leave the island.”
“On Psyche . . .” Conor began, but she put her hands over her ears.
“I don’t like to talk about it. You have to go now.”
“Okay,” Conor said. “We will.” Then, leaning closer, he looked at the canvas she was needlepointing. “That looks pretty.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Conor could see that she had been stitching a tableau of a big stone building surrounded by trees, in the middle of a vast green lawn. At first the canvas seemed to depict a painterly bucolic scene, but then he saw that the tree branches were bones, the stones in the yard were human skulls.
“What is that place?” Conor asked, pointing to her canvas.
“The mansion.” She pointed at the hill and looked worried.
Conor took the pictures of Belinda and Suzanne from Joe’s hand and showed them to her again. “You’ve seen them, haven’t you, Grace? These two women.”
“The young one,” Grace said, pointing at the photo of Suzanne. “Yes, I’ve seen her. She was here last fall.”
“But not the other one?”
“Maybe,” Grace said, lips tight. “But not here, and it was a long time ago.”
“Where?” Conor asked.
“Somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“The place they get the girls,” she said, swallowing back tears. The words thudded as Conor thought of the restraints he had seen on the boat.
“What about the man?” Conor asked. “Do you know his name?”
“I made a mistake,” she said, avoiding the question.
“I didn’t mean to, but when I was sick at MK, I told the woman about the mansion on the hill.
And she came to see, and she brought one of the men.
And it was perfect for what they needed, so they come back again and again, with the girls.
Girls are being taken, and it’s my fault. ”
“Grace, what do you mean, ‘taken’?” Conor asked. “Kidnapped?”
“Are they there now?” Joe asked. “In the mansion?”
“What is MK?” Conor asked.
Without replying, Grace stood up and gathered up her needlework. Conor watched her start walking toward her house. Then she stopped and turned around. “Don’t tell the man or the woman how you know about MK. Don’t say it was me who told. Do you promise?”
She didn’t wait for an answer, as she had stopped believing that promises could ever be kept. She turned her back on Conor and Joe, then stepped through her door and closed it behind her.
“She’s obviously confused,” Joe said. “Ghost girls? Can we trust anything she said?”
Conor knew that not all of Grace’s words had made sense, but her emotions were genuine. He felt the guilt pouring off her when she’d said it was her fault that the man and woman brought girls to the island.
“I think we have to,” Conor said. “What else do we have to go on?”
Joe nodded. “Okay,” he said.
Then the two detectives walked to the dead end beyond Grace’s cottage, stepped over the chain, and followed the gravel road toward the mansion on the hill.