“I’m glad we came down here,” Conor said. “It helps me with Pete’s state of mind.”
“In what way?”
“I think this is where he formed the idea to kill Beth,” Conor said, chasing away any feeling of redemption. “Working on the frames right here in the space where your mother died. Where the three of you suffered. It got him thinking. Even though your father hadn’t intended Helen to die, he had made a plan to get himself out of a situation. Pete did something similar, only murder was the whole point.”
“Let’s go upstairs,” Kate said. The cellar was closing in on her, the damp smell filling her throat and choking her like the gag.
Turning fast, she bumped into the post where she’d been tied. The boiler was halfway between it and the stairs. She tripped on a wooden crate, kicking over bottles of chardonnay and pinot noir, served at gallery openings. One shattered, and when she looked down, she saw glass shards, red wine streaming across the floor. It was just like blood, just like her mother’s.
“Kate?” Conor asked, catching her arm. “What is it?”
She didn’t reply. The floor had a slight tilt, built that way in case the basement flooded, and the wine trickled downward toward a narrow drainage trench cut along the south wall. Kate followed the flow. She blinked hard, remembering a time long before the incident, before her mother died.
She and Beth had come into this basement alone. She could see her sister, nine years old, frustration in her eyes.
“You have a hiding place,” Beth had said. “It’s not fair; I want one too.”
Set into the wall was a massive and long-unused stone fireplace and beehive oven with a heavy cast-iron door. Cut into the wall was a metal grate to allow heat to escape, and by wiggling the grate, Kate had been able to remove it and hide her treasures there: Revolutionary War–era coins, a tarnished silver spoon, a speckled black rock she was convinced was a meteorite, and three arrowheads she’d found in the rose garden alongside Mathilda’s house.
“Okay, we have to find you a hiding place,” Kate said, hugging Beth so she would feel better.
“Like yours,” Beth said.
“Yes,” Kate had said. “How about this?” She had walked over to the beehive oven, but when she had tried the cast-iron door, it had been locked. There had been a keyhole but no key.
Now, with Conor, Kate walked to the beehive oven and touched the lock. She felt hypnotized, as if the poem, the painting of the brook, the melting ice, and the old memories had put her under a spell. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the key she’d been carrying since she’d found it in the box in Beth’s desk drawer.
How could she have not known until now? The heavy square key found its way into the lock, and Kate turned it. The iron door clanged open. She stood staring into the murk, at first not seeing anything.
“Beth’s hiding place,” she said.
Her fingers brushed spiderwebs as she reached inside. She brought forth a dusty packet of letters written on onionskin paper and tied with a blue ribbon. She held them in her hand, gazing at them as if unsure how they had gotten there. She glanced at one, saw that it was signedJ, the same script as the signature on the small nude of Beth. All the way at the back of the oven was a brown cardboard mailing tube.
She felt Conor’s eyes on her as she pulled it out. Peeking into the tube, she saw that a canvas with ragged edges had been rolled up, stored inside. She reached in with two fingers and carefully withdrew the small furled painting. It felt weightless as she carried it to the workbench, laid it flat, smoothed the sides.
She stared at the familiar nocturne. Summer leaves cast shadows on a black lawn, the filmy light from above illuminating the graceful girl twirling in front of the great stone house.
“Moonlight,” Conor said.
41
Reid’s heart was racing—this painting hadn’t been stolen by art thieves. Its existence in the gallery was evidence that someone close to home had placed it here. Reid had mostly ruled Jed out. Although Harris was intelligent, or at least had been before he’d pickled himself, and capable of violence against Beth and stealing the painting, why would he hide the artwork here? It had to be Pete.
“Who had the key?” Reid asked.
Kate acted as if she hadn’t heard him. She leaned over, face practically touching the painting, as if she was examining every brushstroke.
“Beth,” she said after a minute. Without looking up, she tried to hand him the key. He didn’t touch it. He pulled a clear plastic evidence bag from his pocket and had her drop it in.
He felt the weight of the odd, square-shaped key. “How long have you had this?” he asked, trying not to sound frustrated.
“A few weeks. It was in Beth’s desk.”
“Would Pete have hidden it there?”
“No,” Kate said. “He didn’t even know it existed. It was in a box I gave her, along with a sketch, beneath a false bottom. I had no idea it was there until that day I came back here with you.”
“Then how didMoonlightget locked in here?”
