Hide Yourself Away (19 page)

Skipping her morning walk had also been a mistake. She should have gotten out and walked along the seaside, looking for her glorious birds. The combination of ocean air, exercise, and her feathered darlings always made her feel better.

But there was no way she was going to leave this house this morning, not when Oliver had finally come to her bed.

He slept upstairs now, finally, after a night of thrashing and sighing and choked weeping over his daughter’s death. It was not the way she would have wanted things, but Elsa would take Oliver any way she could get him. If he had to come to her for
comfort in his anguish, it was still better than not having him come to her at all.

She went to the kitchen, sliced an orange in half, twisted it over the juicer, and poured the nectar into a small glass. While the oatmeal cooked on the stovetop, Elsa washed some fat blueberries and chopped some walnuts to sprinkle on top. A good nutritious breakfast would make her broken lover feel better.

That was her job now. To help Oliver through this horrible loss. To make him whole again. To make Oliver see that life was still worth living.

With her.

Balancing the breakfast tray on her hip, Elsa opened the door to her bedroom, trying not to make any noise. But inside, there was no one to rouse. Her bed was empty, a mess of crumbled sheets.

She could hear water running in the bathroom. Elsa knocked softly on the closed door. “Oliver, dear, I’ve made you some breakfast.”

He emerged, eyes bloodshot, hair disheveled. Her tortured prince, embattled by his raging demons.

“I couldn’t eat a thing.”

“You must, dearest,” Elsa urged. “The days ahead won’t be easy. You have to keep up your strength.”

“What strength, Elsa?” Oliver sighed. “I have no strength left, no reason to go on now.”

Elsa winced within, stung by the slight to her. But eventually and ever so slowly, time would heal this wound.

“Parents lose children and carry on, Oliver,” she said softly.

He turned on her and fairly spat with contempt. “Spoken as only someone who has never had children could.”

  CHAPTER  
64

All in all, Linus was pleased with their first broadcast. They had survived Sam’s no-show, and thanks to that other intern’s quick thinking, they’d been able to sub in Professor Cox to talk about Madeleine’s last night. He prayed the audience wasn’t any the wiser.

Linus still seethed at the thought of Sam, though. That damn kid, if he showed up, could kiss his career with KEY News goodbye. To think that, just last night, he had been ready to give Sam the staff job.

Feeling the sun’s rays strengthening, the executive producer twisted the cap on the bottled water and took a long swig. He
wiped the beads of perspiration from his brow with his forearm and looked around the lawn.

There she was, gathering the cohosts’ completed scripts. Grace Callahan.

She was older than the others, more mature. That was a good thing. Grace thought on her feet. She didn’t crumble in a crisis. He should give her more to do and see if Grace had what it took to become a permanent part of the
KTA
staff.

  CHAPTER  
65

If that was what KEY News considered an eyewitness, then they were pretty hard up, thought Tommy.
We’ve waited for an eyewitness who hasn’t shown up.

Officer James and Detective Manzorella had stood, out of camera range, through the entire broadcast, waiting to see if Professor Cox was the only guest to talk about seeing Madeleine Sloane on the night she died. As far as Tommy was concerned, the only redeeming feature of the two hours spent at The Breakers this morning was the chance to catch glimpses of Joss as she glided around doing errands.

“I can’t believe they can get away with that,” he said as they walked out through the iron gates. “They made it sound like they had somebody who had seen her murdered.”

“That’s the way they do it, Tommy. They make it sound like they have something bigger, more sensational than they actually do. They tease the audience to get ’em to watch.” Detective Manzorella slapped Tommy on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, kid. We’ll get our man, one way or another.”

  CHAPTER  
66

Rusty slept until noon, a deep, exhausted sleep. There wasn’t any reason to get up earlier. No one came in for tattoos in the morning anymore. Rusty had taken to opening the store on the floor below in the late afternoon and staying until midnight, accommodating the customers who came in after being emboldened by a few cocktails.

He pulled back the curtain, squinting at the bright sunlight that streamed into the small bedroom. It was going to be a scorcher.

His stomach rumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t bothered
having any supper the night before. Rusty pulled on a pair of shorts and slipped on his moccasins, not bothering with a fresh T-shirt. He would just go out, pick up a coffee and a newspaper, and come right back. He’d shower and dress for the day later.

The sidewalk was already growing hot. He could feel the warmth penetrating the soles of his moccasins as he walked up Broadway and ducked inside the deli. Rusty grabbed a copy of
The Newport Daily News
and waited his turn on line to order.

The front page of the paper blazed with the news of Madeleine Sloane’s death. The police still weren’t sure if it was a murder, a suicide, or an accident. As Rusty turned the pages, he caught his breath at a picture of Madeleine’s mother, Charlotte, dressed in an evening gown on the night she had last been seen alive.

Yes, Charlotte had been gorgeous that night, even in her distraught state. A damsel in distress, needing a knight to rescue her. The admiral’s car had acted as Rusty’s shining steed.

“What’ll it be, Rusty?”

“Coffee, with two sugars, Joey, and a buttered roll. You got any with poppy seeds left?” Rusty looked up from the paper and smiled at the familiar face behind the deli counter. But Joey wasn’t smiling back. He was staring at Rusty’s shirt.

Rusty looked down and saw the dried blood spattered against the white cotton.

“Occupational hazard.” He shrugged.

  CHAPTER  
67

After treating themselves to a lunch of juicy cheeseburgers and crispy fries at the Brick Alley Pub, Grace and B.J. crossed Thames Street and headed for their scheduled visit to Kyle Seaton’s scrimshaw shop on Bowen’s Wharf. The engraved sign over the shop indicated that Kyle had been doing business at this location for twenty-five years.

Inside the store, glass display cabinets contained pieces of scrimshaw in a wide array of shapes and functions. Walking stick and umbrella handles, letter openers, and cutlery joined cuff links, earrings, hair clips, and bracelets, all engraved and resting on folds of black velvet. Grace picked up a carved paperweight on the counter, thinking it might make a nice souvenir gift for her father. Turning it over, she whistled softly as she saw the price.

“That’s whale’s tooth, of course,” said the scrimshander, walking over to them. “And, as I’m sure you must know, the Endangered Species Act of 1973 makes it illegal to obtain the material now. So these antique pieces are quite valuable.”

“It’s beautiful,” said Grace, gently putting the paperweight down. “So all these pieces are made of whale’s teeth?”

“Whale and elephant ivory mostly here. I do carry some walrus ivory as well, fashioned by the Eskimos. Nineteenth-century American whalers in the arctic took thousands of pounds of walrus ivory, and much of it made its way into the commercial trade in the form of the walking sticks and knife handles you see in the display case.”

Grace and B.J. looked in direction that Kyle indicated.

“It’s okay if I shoot all this stuff, right?” B.J. asked.

“Shoot away,” the proprietor agreed. “There are some cane handles and corkscrews made of boar tusks over there.” Kyle nodded at a case at the rear of the store. “I even have a couple of pieces of engraved hippo tusk. Hippo ivory is the hardest of all the ivories and the rarest. Because the tusk is so hard, it was used rarely for scrimshaw, except by the most determined artisans.”

“This is great,” said B.J., hoisting his camera up and looking through the eyepiece. “We’ll have plenty of video material for our taped piece tomorrow. It’ll lead to the live on-air segment with you and Constance and Harry, where you’ll give a demonstration of how the scrimshaw engraving is actually done.”

“And how long, exactly, do you allow for that, sir?” Kyle asked, looking over his reading glasses at B.J. “I forgot to ask you that when we spoke on the phone.”

“Two minutes, give or take a few seconds.”

Kyle looked at B.J. with disdain. “Out of the question. You understand that we will be able to do almost nothing in such a
ridiculous time frame. Scrimshanding is an exacting, painstaking art.”

“Maybe I can get them to stretch it to three minutes. Will that help?” B.J. asked.

“Hardly.” Kyle sniffed.

“I have an idea,” Grace offered. The two men turned to her and waited.

“In the research I did, I read that there was a large market for fake scrimshaw,” she paused. “Fakeshaw, I think they called it. It’s really plastic scrimshaw. Plastic that looks like ivory.”

“I’m familiar with it.” Kyle frowned. “Worthless trash.”

“Well, like it or not, that’s the scrimshaw most people buy. The kind that they can pick up for ten or twenty dollars or so at a gift or souvenir shop.”

“And your point is?” Kyle looked at Grace as if she were a bug.

“How about if, in the live segment tomorrow, you demonstrated how to tell fakeshaw from the real thing? That could be really interesting to our viewers. Everybody dreams about coming across a treasure at a garage sale or an auction. Show them how to check if that piece of scrimshaw they find in a box at a tag sale is the real thing.”

B.J. nodded with enthusiasm. “I like that idea. Let’s go with that.”

Kyle paled beneath his tan.

Before they left the shop, B.J. broached the subject. “Grace says you told her that you were at the party the night Charlotte Sloane disappeared.”

“Yes. I was.” Kyle looked almost defiant.

“And you were at the clambake the other night when Madeleine Sloane was killed,” B.J. led.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” snapped Kyle.

“Just an observation,” said B.J. “Do you have any thoughts about what happened to either, or both, women?”

“No, I don’t,” Kyle answered shortly. “But I am wondering what I’m going to do with the scrimshaw piece Madeleine had ordered for her father’s birthday.”

  CHAPTER  
68

Detective Manzorella tossed the lab report onto his desk.

The crack in Charlotte Sloane’s skull signaled that blunt-force trauma was the likely cause of death. Microscopic bits of her blood had been found on the iron fireplace shovel that had been buried in the tunnel along with Charlotte’s body. But no fingerprints had been found.

That wasn’t unexpected. On a hard, nonporous surface like iron, a fingerprint might not last fourteen days, let alone fourteen years. But on absorbent surfaces, like paper, decades-old fingerprints could be detected now.

The shovel was not going to lead to Charlotte’s killer. They may have the murder weapon, but there was still no conclusive evidence pointing to the murderer.

  CHAPTER  
69

When Grace and B.J. got back to the Viking, the newsroom was almost empty.

“I bet everybody’s out, at the beach or something, catching rays,” B.J. grumbled. “But damn it, I’ve got to write this script, get Constance or Harry to track it, and get it edited.”

“Life in the fast lane, Beej,” Grace joked.

The producer nodded, smiling. “You should go out and do something fun, Grace. After all, you’re not getting paid for this.”

Grace shrugged. “The allure of lying in the sun is long gone for me, and the other interns don’t exactly seek me out, or haven’t you noticed?”

“Speaking of interns, I wonder if Sam has had the guts to show his face.” B.J. looked around the ballroom.

No Sam. No Joss. No Zoe, either.