An Illustrated Death (21 page)

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY-
T
WO

I
WAS NEARLY
to the van when I remembered I had locked the doors because my computer was inside.
No.

If my keys were in my woven bag, I might as well stop right there and let her push my face into the sand. Yet I had known I might need to leave fast. Praying I had jammed them in my jacket pocket, I reached inside and pulled out a fistful of metal.
Thank you.

I pressed the remote unlock button.

Now I was on the tarmac, wrenching open the driver’s door and halfway inside when Sonia was there too, yanking on my arm, trying to topple me out. I squeezed the steering wheel in a death grip, then pressed my chest against the horn. The sudden blare was enough to startle her, giving me the chance to swing my left foot around and jam it hard against her chest.

Sonia staggered backward several feet, catching herself before she fell, but giving me the chance to close my door. Frantically I pressed the “lock” button.

She was back the next moment, yanking at the door handle. Her face through the glass was hideous now, red and contorted. When she found she could not get in, she pounded with her fists on the window.

Was she strong enough to break it?

Then she stepped back, looking behind her as if for a rock or piece of metal strong enough to shatter glass.

I didn’t wait for her to find it. I turned the key and started the van as she tried to grab the door handle. Her fingers may have grazed it but they couldn’t hold on.

A
LTHOUGH
I
HAD
no idea whether Lynn would meet me or how Sonia might explain everything to her, I drove to Starbucks in Easthampton. I had chosen the coffee shop because she would know it and because there were always a crowd of people inside
. Safety in numbers
.

Because it was early afternoon, past lunchtime, I was able to find a small wooden table with no trouble. I bought a cappuccino and settled myself against a wall facing into the room. Not that I needed caffeine. My adrenaline was still in the stratosphere, my heart just now realizing that it could calm down.

If death had been imminent, would I have given her the flash drive? Would it have mattered to her then? If what I suspected was true, then one more death would have made no difference to her.

I looked around the room. It was time to find out. I couldn’t wait for Lynn to read “What Happened.” Unzipping the black canvas bag, I brought out my laptop and opened it. My fingers were still shaking as I pressed the flash drive into the machine.

The first thing I found was that the Erikson file was unharmed. Then I opened Sonia’s file and began reading. I scanned through how she had come to New York and met the abusive theater director. How she had gone to A Safe Haven and ended up at Adam’s Revenge. She was in the middle of describing her life there when the door opened and I saw Lynn step over the threshold and look around. She came over to me quickly.

“You’d better tell me what’s going on.” She looked almost as angry as she had been when Puck had been cruel to Bianca about Morgan. “Sonia said you broke into her cottage!”

“I was waiting for her inside,” I admitted.

“And then you
attacked
her. I have to tell you, she’s going to press charges.”

“I attacked her? You were there. You saw her run after me. You tried to stop her.”

“She was just trying to get back what you took.”

“I’ll show you what it was. Can I get you something?” I looked toward the counter.

“Of course not! I had stopped by Sonia’s to pick up a quilt she’s working on for me, and I never expected anything like that.” She loomed over me, a stern presence. “I should never have told you anything about her.”

“Please sit down. I need to show you something.”

Grudgingly she started to pull out a chair, then changed her mind. “I want a water. I’ll get it myself.”

I kept reading. I had just finished the section where Sonia mistakenly drank the lye, when Lynn returned. She sat down and I turned my laptop so we both could read what followed:

I kept waiting for Nate to come see me at the hospital and apologize—he should
never
have kept lye on his desk—but he never did. Finally I couldn’t wait any longer and went to the compound to see
him
. I had to make him realize that now more than ever we needed to be together. I wrote out how I felt on a piece of paper and went early when I knew he would be swimming laps.

He looked happy to see me. He came to the side of the pool and read my paper, and then said no. He couldn’t leave Eve. He had his family and his reputation to think about. He was too old. I leaned over to kiss him anyway and when he got close I realized how unfair he was being and banged his head on the side. With both hands.

I guess it knocked him out because he slipped under the water. I was going to go for help when Morgan came running to me out of nowhere. She was so happy to see me, but I had to push her away. She fell into the pool and I felt terrible, but I couldn’t have her telling people she’d seen me there. I had to get away.

I didn’t remember the paper until I was safely home. But I hadn’t signed my name, and nothing happened. Then Saturday Gretchen came to see me. She said she had seen a strange car parked on the road besides the woods that morning, but hadn’t thought it was important since the drownings were an accident. Then Thursday when she was dropping off some dry cleaning she saw me get out of that car and recognized it by the daisy on the door. That damned daisy! She wouldn’t have remembered it otherwise, it had been three months.

Not only that, she said she had picked up a piece of paper by the pool when she found Nate and now that she knew I had driven there that morning she was sure it was my handwriting.

To calm her down I made her tea and put in the sedative they gave me at the hospital. When she started to get groggy I made her lie down on my bed. I think by then she knew what was happening to her. She told me she didn’t have the paper anymore, but I got her to say she had given it to Rosa. The sedative was wearing off and she tried to get up, so I put my pillow over her face. I couldn’t take her back until that night when everyone was at the memorial—yes, I still keep track of the family— and drove Gretchen’s car back and put her in the pool to make it look like an accident.

It was too weird driving with a dead body in the car. I parked by the woods and dragged her over to the pool, but then I couldn’t find the paper in her room. The trouble with such a tangled web is that there’s never any end, even when it’s not your fault. But I wasn’t going to hurt anyone else. I made sure Rosa was outside when I burned the paper inside her cottage. No more deaths, though they had all been accidents.

I just have to find the strength to go on.

It ended there.

“Where did you get this?” Lynn whispered.

“From Sonia’s laptop.”

“This paper she keeps talking about?”

“The police have it. Rosa gave it to me to keep. I didn’t know what it was until today when I saw a list Sonia had made and saw it was the same handwriting.”

Lynn looked at me, as anguished as if she had caused a fatal crash. “It’s all my fault! I was the one who brought her there and she
killed
everyone.”

“Come on, Lynn. You didn’t force Nate to get involved with her.”

“It’s still my fault.”

“You can’t predict how life will turn out.”

I don’t know if she heard me. Elbows on the table, she covered her face with her hands.

While Lynn wept quietly, I called Frank Marselli and insisted he come out to East Hampton. Now.

M
ARSELLI AND THE
East Hampton police went to the cabana that same night. Sonia was in the process of loading up the Beetle to head home for Minnesota. They brought her in for questioning instead and confiscated her computer. She maintained, Marselli told me, that none of it had been her fault.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY-
T
HREE

I
NEARLY FORGOT
the meeting at the bookstore the next afternoon. Hurriedly I picked up a bottle of Chardonnay and some plastic cups, then stopped at La Bonne Chance Boulangerie
.
I felt nearly as nervous as I had when I had introduced Colin to my parents all those years ago. They had been ready to dislike him for interrupting my education. They knew that we would be getting married and traveling to archeological sites, but they didn’t yet know about Jane.

I was nearly at the bookshop door when Susie emerged from where she had been hiding in the shelter of the Whaler’s Arms, next door. “Delhi?”

I jumped. “My Lord! What—”

“I was scared to go in the shop by myself,” she confessed. “Marty’s been known to eat his inferiors.” She was wearing a blue sleeveless dress, makeup, and small pearl earrings. Her hair was tucked neatly behind her ears.
Miss Nebraska goes on a date.

“Susie, you’ve got to get over that. Marty’s no better than anyone else.”

“If you say so.”

The windows of the Old Frigate were still undecorated, but the “Closed” sign had been replaced by one that read, “Opening Soon.”

Marty unlocked the door. “I don’t drink,” he barked when he saw the wine.

“More for us.” I set the bottle down on the coffee table along with the white bakery box. Then I dropped my purse next to one of the wing chairs and sat down, leaning forward to unscrew the bottle cap. I poured wine into three cups anyway, as Susie undid the red-and-white bakery twine. Marty slouched into the other wing chair. Today he had on a royal blue T-shirt advertising “Buster’s Vintage Mufflers” in white script.

“I guess you should find a new name for the shop,” I said.

I could feel them both staring at me. I reached into the box and extracted a tiny éclair. “Shoot,” I said. “I forgot napkins.”

“You have something in mind?” Marty asked.

“Not me.”

“We could always call it the New Shipwreck.” Susie giggled, but subsided at his frown.

“The Re-Read Page?” I suggested.

Marty scowled. “Nothing cutesy.”

“It might help if we knew what this shop would be like,” I said. “Margaret had a lot of common books, popular I mean, and people came in off the street to buy them.” I turned to Marty. “Your books are on a different level. People aren’t going to climb off the ferry and spend two hundred dollars on something ‘collectible.’ ”

“Your point?”

“That it’s not worth keeping a high-end shop open for hours and hours. Susie would be better off uploading the titles to the book services, and then shipping them.”

“What’s the point of having a shop then?”

Because you already own it?
“Because it’s a beautiful space. You could do a combination of our books. Susie’s and some of mine in front, your collectible books protected. When collectors find out about your books, they
will
come. In the meantime, foot traffic will be able to find something to read.”

Marty frowned at me through his black-framed glasses. “Why would I want to bring your books in?”

“Because if you don’t, you’re throwing your money away keeping an open shop in Port Lewis.”

“Can I say something?” Susie asked timidly. “I’m good at uploading books to the Internet and mailing them. I could do that at the front counter and handle sales at the same time. We could put a couple of bookcases or tables outside with bargain books to pull people in—like they do at the Strand.”

Marty looked as surprised as if Dr. Johnson’s mythical dog had stood on its hind legs and discussed sales techniques.

“Susie’s really fast,” I agreed. “I could always decorate the windows. I wouldn’t be here much, but I could fill in when Susie couldn’t be.” I turned to her. “Would that work for you?”

“Sure. Paul won’t be happy about weekends. But it’s my life, too.”

“Do you know how to describe books that
aren’t
dreck?” Marty demanded.

I held my breath, but Susie laughed.

We thrashed out the details, including hours and Susie’s salary. Even though I’d known how much Susie would be making, when I heard it again, my heart fluttered. Was I making a mistake by turning Marty down?

“I’ve got a ton of books warehoused,” Marty warned Susie. “And it’s still only an experiment. We’ll give it six months.”

I thought of the hours she would have to spend researching and describing his books, and decided it was no mistake at all.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY-
F
OUR

O
N
S
UNDAY
I
printed out the Erikson book list and brought it along with my flash drive to Bianca. First I deleted Sonia’s confession. There was no reason for anyone else to read it. Lynn had told the family everything, blaming herself more than she should have, and the story had been on the news.

Bianca met me at her cottage door, still too pale. She hadn’t bothered to change out of a dark green bathrobe.

I sat down in what had now become my familiar spot on the quilted sofa, and took the cup of tea she handed me. “The final total for the books is high,” I said. “You won’t get quite that much, but it will be a nice amount.”

“Good. We’ve decided to do things a little differently though.”

I waited for her to tell me that my work had been irrelevant.

“We’re still going to sell the books, some of them. But first we’ll go through and pick out the ones we want. Regan too. There’s no point in selling off our heritage. When she came to see me in the hospital yesterday, we talked for hours. She told me that Gretchen had done the detail work on the illustrations.” Bianca’s expression was wondering. “I never even guessed. At least my father paid her well.”

”What are you going to do now?”

She stared into her teacup moodily. “When I was in the hospital, I couldn’t stand the pain at first so they gave me morphine. Lying in the dark, imagining if I had really died, I realized no one else would feel badly about it.” She put up a hand to stop my protests. “I mean, I’m not special to anyone. Morgan and my father . . . but they’re gone. Even you don’t think I have a life.”

“I never said that!”

“Maybe it’s just the way you live compared to me. The way you do whatever you want. You still have all these things, all these people in your life. You’re free—and I’m not.”

I was stunned that she had been thinking anything like that. “Bianca, I’m just making it up as I go along.”

“At least you’re on a path.”

“You can be too. Especially now, with Gretchen’s money. What are the others going to do?”

“Claude’s putting everything into his lab. He has an idea for something that might work this time. Lynn’s just happy to stay on Long Island with her beloved shelter. My mother wants to go back to Charleston permanently. If she does, it will free Puck up to move to the Village. Where else will they appreciate performance art? And being Nate Erikson’s son will help him.” She shrugged. “It’s the way of the world.”

“Rosa?”

“Oh, Rosa. She’ll never come back here. She already has money of her own and with Gretchen’s she can buy a house somewhere and have a real studio. And collect all the junk she wants.”

“How do you feel about everything breaking up?” Thinking about the end of the dynasty made
me
sad. It was as if a beautiful piece of porcelain had been knocked off the mantel and shattered, with no one able to put it back together again.

“Nothing lasts forever. My father created this fairy tale world, we all believed in it, but he lived in fear that something would destroy it. It’s ironic he was the one who did. Sonia—I can’t even think about Sonia. I’m just thankful it wasn’t one of
us
, we’re crazy enough already.”

I laughed. I wondered what would become of Adam’s Revenge if everyone decided to leave, but I didn’t ask. Early days yet, as Marselli would say.

Bianca set her teacup down and looked at me directly. It reminded me of the day I met her and she had asked me if I was satisfied with the books I had bought. “What are
you
going to do?”

“Me? Go back to the book business, I guess. Do the photos for your book if you still want them.”

“I mean about Caitlin.”

At that moment something surfaced in my mind, as tangible as a notice slipped under a door. “I’m going to look for her. I hope Colin will too. It would change everything for us, for the whole family.” Again, that bug on the windshield feeling. Exhilarating. Terrifying.

The way I seemed destined to live.