23
Kate and Conor had stayed up for hours, sitting on the widow’s walk until the fireworks were over, until the revelers had left the beach, and the staff had stowed the chairs and tables.
They sat quietly, feeling the stillness.
The only sounds were the tumbling waves and the bell buoy marking Watch Hill Passage.
She didn’t want to leave the tower. Being up here felt enchanted, in the same way as when they’d stayed in the Welcome Hotel.
They sat side by side, holding hands. She barely noticed the time passing, but then the dark sky began to turn gray, and the first pink line of dawn appeared on the eastern horizon.
Conor put his arm around her, and she leaned her head on his shoulder until the sun had risen and turned the ocean pure gold.
After sunrise, they climbed down the ladder, into the suite, and Conor made coffee in the kitchen—the way he always did at home.
She sat at the table by the door to the terrace and watched him, feeling something new.
They had been together for years, they had been engaged since two winters ago, but after last night, she felt that they had started over in some mysterious way.
“Good morning,” he said, handing her a cup of black coffee.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Are you tired?” he asked. “After staying up all night?”
She shook her head. “No, are you?”
“Not at all.”
They drank their coffee for a while. She didn’t want to talk or break the spell; she didn’t want to return to reality. She wanted the magic of the tower, of last night, to stay with them and keep them safe. But eventually she sighed.
“I want to show you something,” she said. The box that Miranda had given her was across the table, and she opened it and handed Conor the little wire ring. She watched his face, for his reaction.
“Belinda’s?” he asked, turning it over in his palm. “How did you get it? She gave it to you?”
“No, Miranda gave it to me,” she said.
“Bernard’s girlfriend?” Conor asked.
“It seems they’re not really together, though I’m not sure he knows that.”
“Then why is she here?”
“Because Belinda was her cousin.”
Conor looked up. “Okay . . .” he said.
“They both wangled invitations to our wedding,” Kate said. “Belinda got close to Garrett, and Miranda began seeing Bernard.”
“But why?” Conor asked.
Kate took a deep breath. “Miranda said Belinda wanted to kill me, and she wanted to stop her.”
Conor stared at Kate, seeming stunned. He reached for her hand.
“There’s another element,” Kate said. “It’s insane, literally.
Sam and Maeve found out that Belinda had been married before, and her husband was murdered in the exact same way as she was.
His throat was slashed. Belinda was right when she told you she could marry a doctor—she did.
He was a psychiatrist at a hospital . . . ”
“Where?” Conor asked.
“Maynard-King,” Kate said. “It’s a psychiatric hospital in Narragansett, not far from here.”
“There’s a woman out on the island,” Conor said. “Her name is Grace. She said she had been in treatment, like other girls—‘Ghost Girls,’ she called them. She talked about girls going to ‘MK.’”
“MK—Maynard-King,” Kate said.
Conor nodded. “That must be the same place. She said that she survived, but some of the other girls didn’t.”
“Survived what?” Kate asked.
“I don’t know,” Conor said. “But women are being taken, held captive, and murdered.”
“How do you know?”
“You saw Psyche,” Conor said. “The restraints on the bulkhead. He—whoever he is—uses the sailboat to bring them to the island, and then he locks them in a room. The Beauty and the Beast room.”
“Where the photo is?” Kate asked, thinking of the text he had sent her, with the image from the Jean Cocteau film.
“Yes,” Conor said. “He has some sort of obsession with the fairy tale.”
“But who is he?” Kate asked. “If there’s a connection to Maynard-King, could it be another doctor there?”
“Possibly,” Conor said. “He has a whole bookcase full of different editions, including translations. Some are vintage, probably valuable, which—along with the boat and mansion itself—makes me think he has money.”
“Who owns the house?” Kate asked.
“Joe is on that,” Conor said. “Another thing—the way the number 1740 runs all through this.”
Kate nodded, excited. “The year Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve wrote and published La Belle et la Bête. It’s the oldest known version of the story . . . Beauty and the Beast,” she said.
“The date was stenciled onto the door of Suzanne’s truck,” Conor said.
“It was at the grave too,” Kate said. “Someone left a note by Jonathan Tyler’s headstone, along with a bouquet of white roses.”
“Roses?” Conor asked sharply.
“Yes, roses are an important part of the story. They are the reason Beauty became the Beast’s prisoner.”
“In what way?” Conor asked.
“Beauty’s father stole roses from the Beast’s castle, and the forfeit he had to pay was his daughter. He gave his daughter to the Beast,” Kate said. “So it makes it even stranger that Belinda calls you both by those names. Because if you’re the Beast, it means you somehow imprisoned her.”
“But I didn’t,” Conor said.
Kate touched his hand. “I know,” she said. “Of course you didn’t. But someone did, and obviously she would have suffered trauma.”
Conor was quiet for a minute. He walked over to a window and stared out across the ocean, toward the island. When he turned back to Kate, he shook his head.
“I think it’s the other way around,” he said.
“Talking to Grace, I have the feeling that the girls became more traumatized after they went to Maynard-King. Maybe the doctor was reenacting the fairy tale—or someone was. And whatever happened there took away their hopes of getting well. Or got them killed.”
“How do you and I figure in?” Kate said. “She started calling you Beast on that weekend in Salem . . . but what about me?”
“She hated you because I love you,” Conor said.
“She did everything she could to ruin our wedding . . .”
“And she got killed instead.”
“By someone who thought she was me.”
Conor was silent for another minute. “Or maybe he didn’t think she was you.
What if he meant for Belinda to die? What if she was the intended victim?
The killer is someone passionate about Beauty and the Beast. I keep thinking of Psyche and of that house on the island—there are so many references to his obsession.
And when he killed Belinda, he left a rose imprint in her blood. ”
“Or she,” Kate said. “It could have been a woman.”
“Possible,” Conor said. “What if it was Suzanne who did it?”
Kate considered that. “Her name tracks—it’s an homage to the author, to Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. She might well have left a rose—in Belinda’s blood, but also at the hospital grave site.”
“Could they really have been mother and daughter?” Conor asked.
“I don’t know,” Kate said. “Maybe you should get the tooth and hair DNA tested.”
“I’m already on that. It was weird and disturbing to get them, but they weren’t associated with a crime, so I just stuck them in a drawer. I’ll get them to our lab.”
“Is there any way Suzanne would have intentionally murdered her own mother?” Kate asked.
Conor didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Kate knew that over the years he had worked on the worst, most unbelievable murder cases. So often the killer was someone who had once loved—or should have loved—the victim.
“I want to get a copy of that note we found on Tyler’s grave,” Kate said. “I should have made one myself, but I left it to Maeve. Maybe something in it—the 1740 reference—will make more sense considering what you found on the island.”
Kate texted Maeve:
Hi, I’m with Conor and want to show him that note. Can you send me a photo?
They drank another cup of coffee while waiting for her to respond.
It took so long, Kate wondered if Maeve was sleeping late.
The sun was fully up, and people were starting to stroll down to the beach.
Kate checked her watch. It was almost nine, and Maeve was an early riser.
Maybe she was all packed up, checking out of the hotel, possibly even on her way home.
She could be taking the slashed Suydam painting to the conservator.
“She’s not answering?” Conor asked.
“No, and I’m surprised. She’s always got her phone with her.”
“Give her another minute,” Conor said.
“Maybe she’s already checked out,” Kate said. She met Conor’s eyes. The whole wedding party was supposed to check out today. “I guess we should too.” She stood up.
Conor didn’t answer. She wondered if he felt the way she did. They had spent the whole wedding weekend apart. This was the first time she’d started feeling as if they could be together again. She didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay with him, right here in the Tower Suite.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, pushing his chair back and standing up.
“That Maeve might be on her way home,” Kate said. “Or maybe she’s already taking the painting to the conservator, to have it repaired.”
“I don’t mean about Maeve,” Conor said, taking a step closer to her. “Or the painting. I mean what are you thinking about us.”
“Don’t you already know?” she asked. She felt energy pouring off him, electricity that rocked her.
She took his hand and led him down the stairs, past the joyful Garrett Price New Yorker covers, into the master bedroom.
When she had packed for her wedding last week, anticipating the most important day of her life, she had folded each item perfectly, with great care.
Yesterday, anticipating leaving the Ocean House, she had pulled out her suitcase and tossed everything into it.
She hadn’t been at all careful; she had packed her clothes the way she felt—as if nothing mattered anymore.
But that was yesterday, she thought. Now everything mattered again: How quickly things could change.
The bedroom, like the rest of the Tower Suite, had windows facing the ocean, all the way out to Watch Hill Point, and Montauk beyond, across Block Island Sound.
She stared down at the waves, as if they were telling her the most wonderful story, and then she turned to Conor.
“Don’t you already know?” she asked again.
“About us?” he asked. “Yes, I do.”
“And I’m sorry that I forgot who we were for a while. Did you too?”
Conor reached for her hand. They stood there, looking out the window at the summer morning, at the blue-green Atlantic Ocean. They didn’t move. They hardly breathed.
“Never,” Conor said. “I never forgot, not even for a minute.”
And he kissed her, and Kate knew that they were staying. They weren’t going anywhere.