“He said so,” Kate said.
“Does he know her by sight?”
Kate thought about it. She had had several assistants over the years. Damaged paintings were not common, but when she had one, she sent it to one of two conservators. Of the two, Fernando Harris was her most gifted and reliable, the one she used most often. She knew that Maeve had personally delivered more than one work to be repaired, but had it been to Fernando or to Kate’s other conservator? She couldn’t remember offhand.
“I think he does,” Kate said. Just as she said that, she spotted Dermot and asked him if he had seen Maeve that morning.
“No, Ms. Woodward,” he said. “Her car was gone before I arrived.”
“Thanks, Dermot,” she said.
“I heard,” Conor said, from the other end of the line.
“This is so bizarre,” Kate said. “Why hasn’t she called me? Fernando hasn’t called back either. I have to double-check.” She looked at her phone again—nothing. “I can’t wait to hear from them—I’ll go see him now.”
“Let’s double-check together,” Conor said. “I’ll go with you.”
Kate hesitated. “I thought you were busy withPsyche.”
“Joe and his team are on the boat now,” Conor said. “But Tom and I have photos of those tracings on the porthole, and we’re trying to decipher them. I’d be happy to take a break and go with you. Where is Fernando located?”
“Mystic. I’ve already left him a message,” Kate said. “He always has music on when he works, and he might not have heard the phone. I’ll head over now. It’s not far. You keep going on the tracings.”
Conor was silent. Kate felt her heart beating hard. She knew he might be taking this as a rejection. She didn’t mean it that way, but she was upset about Maeve and wanted to get to the bottom of what she was doing.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Positive,” Kate said. “Everything’s okay. I’ll call you as soon as I talk to him. I’m sure he’s in his studio, oblivious to all this. I know there’s an explanation about Maeve.”
“The way things are going, I wonder,” Conor said. “And even if there is one, will it make any sense?”
Her phone beeped, indicating another call.
“Maybe this is Maeve or Fernando,” she said. She hung up quickly and answered, but not in time. She glanced at her phone screen to see who had called. She didn’t recognize the number. She tried dialing it back, but the call went straight to voicemail with the default standard greeting.
Glancing around, she saw Dermot and asked him to get her Volvo. She texted Conor back to let him know that she missed the call and told him she’d be back by lunchtime. She thanked Dermot for her car and the bottle of water he handed her, and she drove west, toward Mystic, Connecticut, on her way to find Maeve.
Tuesday, July 6; 9:15 a.m.
Conor watched his brother at the computer terminal in the USCG Bay Street office. Tom had transmitted the photos of the window writing toJoe and Garrett, and now he downloaded them from his iPhone onto his work computer. Using an advanced enhancement program, he was able to clarify the tracings.
“Tell me about the diamond rings,” Tom said.
“Some of the girls at Langtry Academy had them.”
“High school girls? Isn’t that a little young to be engaged?” Tom asked. “Who gives a girl that age a diamond?”
“They were mostly heirlooms, passed down through their families.”
“And the girls used them to write on the glass?”
“Some did,” Conor said. “Mostly they scratched their initials, and some dates—going back into the 1800s. The school was founded in 1843.”
“And you were solving an almost two-hundred-year-old murder?”
“No,” Conor said. “It was five years ago. There were two roommates, and one killed the other in their senior year. They had been best friends even before boarding school and had roomed together for two of the four years.”
“What happened?” Tom asked.
