The Last Word (12 page)

“Oh, my God,” she murmured, her eyes filling with tears.

Nurse Love had sighed at the scene. “I never get tired of watching people do that for the first time.”

The women fell silent, wordlessly observing the rapid rise and fall of Anders’ chest.

“I’m ready to go now,” Olivia had whispered. “I can’t
do
anything for him.”

“You already did,” the nurse had assured her. “You were here. On some level, through some wonderful and mysterious means, he knows it too.”

Brushing the moisture from her cheeks, Olivia had cast one more glance at her sleeping nephew and hurriedly left the ward.

After calling Kim with the news that Anders’ surgery had been a success and that he was resting peacefully in the care of a team of skilled doctors and nurses, Olivia had driven over to the closest hotel offering suites with kitchens and paid in advance for a two-week stay. “I need a list of area restaurants that make deliveries,” she told the manager. She then drove to the nearest grocery store, where she bought a cartload of food and sundries, including several coloring books and Barbie dolls, and put everything away in the suite. Lastly, she placed a few hundred dollars in cash in the room’s safe.

It was her intention to bring Kim the room key when she was released from the hospital in two days’ time. Kim had already informed her that Hudson refused to shirk his duties at The Bayside Crab House during its first weekend in operation, so she and Caitlyn would stay in Greenville until Anders could go home.

Olivia had pointed out that the assistant chefs could handle the grand opening but was honestly relieved to know that Hudson would be in the kitchen later that weekend.

Now, in her dark bedroom, Olivia tried to relax, but failed.

“If I don’t get some sleep tonight,” she spoke to Haviland, “it won’t matter how many chefs are in the kitchen. I’ve got to bring my A game to tomorrow’s staff meeting.” Olivia thumped the space on the bed beside her. “Come here, Captain. Chase those hospital images away, would you?”

Haviland jumped onto the bed, licked her cheek, and snuggled against her, sighing contentedly. As Olivia listened to him breathe, the sights and sounds of the tiny babies in the NICU finally released their hold on her.

The next morning, she stood with coffee cup in hand and listened to her messages. There were half a dozen calls pertaining to Friday’s grand opening, one from Harris asking what she’d discovered at the art museum, and a surprise call from Nick Plumley. Apparently, he was still renting the house down the beach from hers and said to stop by anytime she wanted.

Olivia copied down his number from her caller ID and then dialed.

When Plumley answered, she immediately apologized for phoning so early in the day. “It’s just that I have a historical object here that you might be interested in seeing,” she explained.

“Don’t tease me,” he complained good-naturedly. “I haven’t even had my coffee yet.”

Olivia hesitated. She wanted to see Nick’s face when he first looked at the painting, but something prompted her to show more of her hand right now. “Harris found a watercolor hidden inside one of his stair treads. Turns out, the artist was Heinrich Kamler. Does that name ring a bell?”

She heard a sharp intake of breath over the line. The name definitely meant something to Plumley. “Is there a connection between this artist and your sequel? Didn’t you already write about how he murdered a prison guard in order to make his escape?”

There was a long moment of silence. “May I see the painting today? How about now?” The eagerness in Plumley’s voice was transparent.

“Sure,” Olivia replied brightly. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, but I expect an answer to my question first.”

“Kamler’s story might not be finished,” Nick murmured cryptically, and Olivia could sense that a measure of anxiety, perhaps even a little desperation, tinged the writer’s mumbled words. Soon, she would discover why Heinrich Kamler was so important to him. Was it possible Kamler was still alive?

Olivia glanced at the canvas tote containing Harris’s painting. “Walk time, Captain,” she told Haviland and jogged upstairs to put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.

Outside, the air bore all the signs of summer. The edge of crispness lent to the breeze by spring had been replaced by the heavy breath of humidity. Memorial weekend was supposed to be hot and sunny, and Olivia predicted that both of her eateries would be packed with tourists.

She gazed out at the sparkling ocean as she walked, feeling incredibly distanced from yesterday’s highways and hospital rooms. Haviland splashed about in the surf, eagerly searching for gulls or crabs to chase, but the beach was quiet, as though its creatures still slumbered in their burrows of damp sand.

Reluctant to disturb the serenity, Olivia took out her cell phone and dialed Harris’s number. When he picked up, he shouted a hello over the throb of hip-hop music. “I’m heading to work!” Abruptly, the music stopped. “Sorry, this is how I get fired up for the day. A cup of joe and some P. Diddy.”

Having no idea who P. Diddy was, Olivia repeated what she’d learned during her visit with Shala Knowles.

“Holy crap!” Harris exclaimed. “Good thing I’m at a red light or I might have just driven into the ditch! That little winter scene could be worth twenty grand?”

“Yes. In fact, I believe the curator was being cautious in her estimation. She indicated that if the painting were sold at auction, it could bring even more.” Olivia grinned, imagining her friend digesting this bit of happy news. “What are you going to do?”

Harris exhaled loudly. “Dunno. I wouldn’t even know which auction company to take it to.”

“The curator gave me a name. Before you sell the painting, however, she and her colleagues would like to examine it further. They’re also willing to give you a document stating that they believe the artist is Heinrich Kamler.”

“Sweet!” Harris declared. “I’ve got to tell Nick about this! He probably knows all about this guy after researching him for
The Barbed Wire Flower
.”

Olivia’s mouth curled into a wry smile. “I’m headed to his place as we speak. I didn’t think you’d mind if I let him have a look at your soon-to-be-famous painting.”

“Not at all,” Harris stated with his customary affability.

Leaving her friend to his rosy visions of newfound wealth, Olivia pocketed her phone and picked up a stick. She hurled it into the water and watched Haviland lunge into the waves in pursuit.

As she paused to wait for the poodle, a memory of her return home after her father’s death crept into her head. Once her father was gone, Olivia had fled Okracoke Island immediately. She’d called Rawlings and asked him to meet her on the beach in front of the lighthouse. Without requiring her to explain where she’d been, he’d simply registered the need in her voice and had been there, waiting for her.

She remembered seeing his figure in the shadow of the lighthouse and feeling such a burning impatience to reach him, to be held by him, that her longing felt like pain. In fact, when the shoreline was close enough, she’d swung her leg over the side of the boat and leapt into the sea. Rawlings had rushed toward her at the same time, and their bodies met, knee-deep in cold water. Wet and shaking, they’d grabbed hold of each other and kissed hungrily, tasting salt on each other’s lips.

They’d ignored Haviland’s barks and the shouts of the boat captain, pressing ever closer together, their melded bodies illuminated by a swath of moonlight. In that moment, the police chief who wore tacky Hawaiian shirts, drank chocolate milk, took up oil painting as a hobby, and lost his wife of over twenty years to cancer had filled up the emptiness in Olivia’s heart.

Now, standing near the spot where he’d waited for her that night, Olivia knelt down and scooped up a handful of warm sand. She watched it flow from her palm, the warmth as fleeting as those hours she’d shared with Rawlings.

Wrapped in blankets, they’d curled up on her living room sofa. As the fire in her stone hearth crackled, she’d told him everything that had happened on Okracoke. She described her father’s death, the pain he’d caused her when she was a child, and her discovery that she had a half brother.

Rawlings had listened silently, stroking her hair as she spoke. She found comfort in his scent of soap and sandalwood and paint thinner, in his broad, solid chest and the tenderness of his fingers.

The next morning, she’d sent him on his way with a thermos of hot coffee and her thanks.

And she hadn’t let the chief get close to her since.

“I miss him,” Olivia confessed to Haviland, who had retrieved the stick and brought it back for another round of fetch. Standing up, she shouldered the canvas bag again and tossed the stick for the last time. She then increased her pace and traversed a series of dunes obscuring the path leading to Nick Plumley’s rental property.

If the author had been in search of both privacy and luxury, he’d chosen the perfect house. Olivia had been inside when it had first been built and thought it magnificent, but too pretentious for her tastes. Of contemporary design, the house had been constructed with one thing in mind: the view. One could see the ocean from three of four sides. Instead of walls, the exterior was composed of floor-to-ceiling windows. The interior floor plan was also exaggeratingly open. The entire first floor was a single room interrupted by only support beams.

Olivia rang the doorbell and waited. When she heard no movement from within, she peeked in through the clear panes, but Nick Plumley didn’t appear. She could easily see into the kitchen and noted the evidence of the author’s breakfast—half a bagel, an apple core, and a coffee cup.

“We hardly want to start banging away if he’s in the shower,” Olivia said to Haviland and decided to wait for Plumley on the back patio.

After placing the canvas bag containing the painting on a wooden dining table, she settled onto a cushioned chaise lounge, crossed her legs, and sighed.

“Maybe I can come up with ideas for the rest of my chapter,” she told Haviland, who had begun a round of investigative sniffing.

Ten minutes later, Olivia became too impatient to remain seated. When the doorbell went unanswered once again, she decided to peer in the windows on the side of the house, allowing her a glimpse of nearly every square foot of the lower level.

With her inquisitive poodle at her heels, Olivia followed a flagstone path around a group of low bushes, walked over a bed of raked gravel, and blatantly stared into the house.

Her eyes were immediately drawn to a splash of blue in the middle of the bleached pine wood floor. It took her a moment to understand what she was seeing, but when it became clear, she sucked in her breath and jumped away from the window.

Fumbling in her pocket, she withdrew her cell phone, cast a frightened glance over her shoulder, and dialed Rawlings’ direct line.

“Good morning, Ms. Limoges,” he said cordially.

“Chief, you need to get down to Nick Plumley’s rental house. I think he’s dead.”

She took a step closer to the window and then hastily stuck the phone back in her pocket, cutting off whatever Rawlings had started to say.

Olivia raced to the front door and grabbed the handle, but the door was locked. She ran to the back door, adrenaline surging through her, but experienced the same result.

Sensing her agitation, Haviland began to bark.

“He could still be alive!” Olivia yelled, searching the ground for a large rock. There was nothing but gravel.

Desperate, she grabbed one of the patio chairs, dumped the cushion on the ground, and raised it waist high into the air. Made entirely of metal, it was cumbersome, but Olivia smashed it into the glass door with all the force she could muster.

The glass splintered but didn’t break. She heaved the chair against the fractured door again and again until it crashed inward, chunks of ragged glass scattering across the floorboards, shards lethal as icicles raining everywhere.

“STAY!” Olivia shouted at Haviland and, only after being certain that he would obey, darted inside and fell to her knees alongside the prone writer.

Gently, she rolled him over and then cried out in shock. Covering her mouth with a trembling hand, she retreated.

“Too late,” she whispered, her voice echoing in the light-riddled room.

—EDGAR ALLEN POE

 

 

 

 

 

N
ick Plumley’s glassy eyes were fixed on the ceiling. His mouth was misshapen, stretched unnaturally like a python expanding its jaw in order to swallow a fat rabbit. His lips were blue. A wad of paper filled the entire cavity of his mouth.

Olivia knew she should go back outside. There was nothing she could do to help the dead man, and though every fiber of her being longed to remove the papers crammed into his mouth, she knew that an influx of fresh air would provide him no relief. His lungs would never again expand or contract. They would no longer be invigorated by the sea breeze or by the sharp wind that raced ahead of a thunderstorm. The smoke from wood fires wouldn’t irritate the sensitive bronchioles. They’d never feel the keen ache of being outside on a frigid February morning or tingle as they were infused by the magic of the season’s first snow.

Exhaling slowly, as though she feared her own body might be affected by the writer’s immobility, Olivia tore her gaze from Nick Plumley’s frozen expression of agony. As her eyes traveled down the length of his body, she noticed an angry red welt encircling his neck, just above the larynx.

Plumley was clad in a cotton robe of blue and white checks and matching boxer shorts. He was barefoot and smelled of soap. Olivia noticed that he’d yet to put on his watch and that his hair was still wet. As her eyes returned to his face, she noticed a bead of dried blood on his chin, indicating that he’d cut himself shaving.