“Do you think that?” Conor asked.
“No. I know you didn’t,” Kate said. “But you need to prove it to everyone else.”
Conor nodded and felt a flood of relief. At least Kate believed him. He heard Tom clear his throat, and he knew that he and Joe were getting impatient to take off and start the investigation on Bellevigne Island.
“It’s time,” Kate said, nodding her head toward the others.
Their fingertips touched. It wasn’t another hug, but it was something.
Conor watched her pull herself together and get into pilot mode.
“Our flight will be smooth on the way over,” she said to the group, “but there’s weather coming. There are a few storms tracking north of us. They won’t impact us directly, but they could cause turbulence on the way back. We have about two and a half hours until dark, and we should plan to be on our way back again.”
Kate and the three men climbed into the plane. Joe and Tom took the back seats, leaving Conor to sit up front, next to Kate. He glanced over at her. She was always cool and focused when flying. The only sign that she was still feeling emotional was the flush spreading upward from her neck to her cheeks. She ran through her preflight checklist and started the engine.
The propeller began to turn. The airport was small and didn’t have a tower, so she tuned the radio to 122.8, the frequency monitored by pilots.
“Westerly traffic, this is Cessna 2122 Quebec departing runway 5, northeast bound. Crossing midfield,” she said into the mike, stating her intention.
Then she taxied, and they took off.
Conor had taken off from this airport with her a hundred times. She flew with grace and confidence. Her eyes never stopped scanning the horizon and the airspace around them. He felt proud to have Tom and Joe in the plane, to see her as a pilot. The plane gained altitude, flying over the marshes and salt ponds, banking over the long barrier island, heading out over Block Island Sound.
They quickly climbed to three thousand feet, and he saw ferries and pleasure boats down below on the glass-smooth water. The sky was still bright blue, but the sun was moving west, just enough to touch the ocean’s surface with gold. Gazing down, Conor thought of the people on all those boats, of how they had chosen the perfect weekend for their cruises.
And it hit him hard, to think that it was also a perfect evening for a wedding. Of how wonderful it would have been, there under the white tent, holding Kate close and dancing her around the floor.
He wanted to look over at her again, but he couldn’t. Instead, he turned his head to the window and stared out to sea, beyond Block Island, past the windmills, out toward the banks where the ocean was too deep for any light to pierce.
12
Saturday, July 3; 6:00 p.m.
Sam sat at a table on the Ocean House verandah, drinking lemonade and listening to distant thunder. The sky that had been blazingly blue all day began to darken until it was the color of a ripe plum. The bright-blue sea had turned a shade of deep gray green, and white caps began to kick up.
Kate had told her that she had found a receipt in Belinda’s room. Written in Suzanne’s distinctive handwriting, it listed the address of a marina on a small island. Kate was flying out there with Conor, Tom, and Joe. Sam had no idea what they hoped to find. She could imagine the tension in the plane, given the fact that two of the occupants had just canceled their wedding, but she was guardedly glad to think of Kate with Conor for any reason. She just hoped that he had told her about the envelope he had stuffed into the desk at home.
Sam gazed across the croquet lawn, past the tent and bowers of hydrangeas, at Bluff Avenue. Two police cars and a forensics van were still parked there. Crime scene personnel had been in the house for hours. They had searched the yard and the street in both directions. It looked as if they were wrapping up—loading up the van, closing the door to the house.
She watched them impound a vehicle parked in the driveway—a navy-blue Ford F-150 pickup truck with an insignia stenciled on thedriver’s-side door. The number 1740 was printed in white, set inside an oval that looked like a vine of thorns. She had seen Suzanne driving it yesterday morning. Now she saw it being taken away on a flatbed.
Sam knew her trucks. Kate had inherited an estate from her grandmother Mathilda. Cloudlands, the stone mansion at the top of Sachem Hill, overlooked a hundred acres of fields, a pine and cedar forest, and tidal wetlands. Kate kept a pickup truck there so they could care for the property and drive the dirt roads into the less accessible regions. Kate’s truck happened to be a Ford F-150, and it made sense to Sam that she would need it at Cloudlands.
But what would Suzanne, a calligrapher, be needing with a pickup? In the short time Sam had observed her, Suzanne had seemed prissy. Sam pegged her as a girl who’d wear makeup to an 8:00 a.m. class, lived inAlice + Olivia, and wore Celine sunglasses even after the sun went down. Sam had noticed the red soles on Suzanne’s sandals. Because a girl in her dorm had worn them, she knew they were Louboutin. Thousand-dollar sandals.
And, considering all that, what was Suzanne doing with a Ford truck?
Sam spotted Maeve and Lincoln approaching the shingled house where Belinda’s body had been found. They spoke to one of the last police officers on the scene, and Maeve seemed upset. At first Sam assumed it was because of finding the body, but then Maeve raised her voice and began gesturing, pointing at the front door. Lincoln put his arm around her shoulders, as if trying to calm her down. The police officer shook his head vehemently, and Maeve and Lincoln walked away.
They came into the hotel’s circular drive and up the wide, curving stairs. Sam caught Maeve’s eye and waved. Maeve waved back, and then she and Lincoln joined her at the table.
“What’s going on?” Sam asked.
“I can’t believe this,” Maeve said.
“Maeve left her purse in the house this morning,” Lincoln said. “And she needs to get it back.”
“It has everything in it,” Maeve said. “My wallet, credit cards, the notebook I use for the gallery, even my passport.”
