“There’s a word,” he said. “Or at least some letters.” Some of them had been written backward, but the closest Conor could get wasSfalon.
He typed it into the search engine, but nothing came up.
“What does it sound like to you?” Tom asked.
“S. Falon? Could that be a name?” Conor kept staring. “Or is that 5?5Falon. A license plate number?”
“Or a letter-number combination,” Tom said. “To a mailbox? Or a keyless lock?”
Conor texted Joe:
Can you check RI DMV for this registration?Sfalonor5Falon.
Will do. What’s up?
Conor didn’t reply right away. He was already accessing the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles, noting the fact that there was no such registration number in his state.
Nothing, Joe texted back at the same time Conor was coming up empty on the CT DMV site.Why you ask?
Written on the boat glass. Can you see it?
Negative.
Look again—Sfalon.
And now that Conor had told Joe what to look for, the scrawl was legible, and Joe shot back:
Got it. But still no plate coming up. Must be something else. Where are you now?
Tom’s office, Bay Street.
Conor waited for a reply, but before he received one, he heard Tom answer a call on his desk phone.
“Where?” Tom asked. “Do you have an ID?”
Conor froze at the sharpness in Tom’s voice and the look in his eyes when he disconnected the call.
“What is it?” Conor asked.
“A fisherman just found a woman’s body,” Tom said. “My crew got the call.”
“Who is it?” Conor asked, thinking immediately of Maeve.
“They haven’t identified her yet,” Tom said. “They’re transporting her body to our dock in Galilee. Come on, let’s go.”
31
Tuesday, July 6; 10:00 a.m.
Kate drove into Mystic, Connecticut, just thirty minutes away from the Ocean House. There had been a traffic jam on Route 1, with cars stopped dead until the accident was cleared. When she got close to the center of town, the bascule bridge had swung open for boats that couldn’t clear it.
So she waited in more traffic, watching the classic steamboatSabinochug upriver toward Mystic Seaport, and she felt anxiety building. Fernando Harris still hadn’t returned her call, and in spite of what she had told Conor about him listening to music while he worked, she expected that he would have checked his messages.
When the bridge lowered and the road was open again, she inched through the town crowded with tourists, past shops and restaurants, until she could take a right onto Gravel Street. With the Mystic River on one side, and elegant nineteenth-century houses on the other, Kate could well understand why Fernando lived and had his studio here.
She pulled into a driveway behind a stately white Federal-style house with black shutters and a columned porch. Pots of white geraniums flanked the front door. Fernando’s van, with his logo on the side, and a dark-gray Range Rover were parked in back. She occasionally encountered collectors and curators, waiting for Fernando to work his magic on their damaged artworks. Some of them had bought paintingsfrom her gallery, and she usually enjoyed hearing about their collections. But she wasn’t in the mood for that today.
The house’s main entrance was in front, facing the river, but the back door led into Fernando’s studio. The bell chimed when she stepped inside—it was programmed to announce arrivals.
