Kingdom by the Sea (Romantic Suspense) (38 page)

Cautiously,
Ginger eyed her sister.

Hazel
seemed preoccupied with Puddle, who chomped on the biscuit happily and then
hopped up onto the settee.  Ginger waited for her sister to squeal, to recoil,
to pitch a fit, but instead, Hazel just twisted her lips in disapproval.  Then
she did something unexpected.  Slyly, she reached over and broke off another
piece of tea biscuit.  She held it a few inches from the dog’s twitching nose. 

While
the dog crunched it, Hazel turned her head.  As if to see whether Ginger was
watching.  Smartly, Ginger had dropped her gaze, pretending to notice only her
crochet.

Dear
Nicole,

Several
months ago I went through a brief remission.  I used the spurt of energy to
paint again.  I'm sure it's no surprise that I found much happiness in the
subject of you and your sisters.  Robert and I always wanted children of our
own.  As expressive as I can be, I can not properly say how much I truly love
you girls.

These
paintings are my gift to you.  So much of what I had planned to leave you has
gone now, lost to medical bills and other expenses, and I'm not exaggerating
when I tell you that it broke my heart not to be able to give you more.  Given
how much the value of an artist's work increases posthumously (sorry to be
macabre), it occurred to me that I could secure a very modest fortune for each
of you, after all.  (Though you're welcome to sell the house, I have a feeling
that you won't.)

The
problem, I realized, was that the Goliath Gallery in
Boston
still has me
under contract.  I'll spare you the legalese, but basically, even though the
contract expired at the end of August, the gallery retains ownership of any new
works created within a six month grace period from that end date.  It's called
the Termination of Rights clause; as you can imagine, it protects the gallery. 
Gallery owners can be very suspicious, worried that their “temperamental
artists” might hold back new works until their contracts expire and then go right
to another gallery.  Which, I'm afraid, is precisely what I'm attempting. 

The
Goliath Gallery has no knowledge of these new works.  I painted “The Three
Princesses” for you girls—not for Goliath to snap up, sell off, and then give
you a percentage.  The only person who knew I'd begun painting again was Abel. 
He hadn't said much one way or another at first.  Honestly, he'd been so
preoccupied about his business and all the money he'd lost.  It pains me to
say, but while I still loved him, we'd become nowhere near as close as we used
to be.

Things
got worse after I hosted a luncheon for the
Chatham
Preservation
League of Ladies about a month back.  Later in the evening, after everyone had
gone home, my doorbell rang.  It was one of the ladies, Edith Winchell,
returning.  I'd never cared much for Edith, though I didn't know her well.  But
I couldn't fathom what she would want.  I was beyond stunned when she told me
that earlier, during the luncheon, she had gone in search of the bathroom and
accidentally “stumbled upon” my studio.  She told me that she'd seen my latest
work on the easel, and that she was prepared to buy it from me, right then and
there.  She proceeded to pull out a thick wad of cash and try to make an
exchange! 

So
many thoughts were running through my head.  First of all, I didn't believe
she'd stumbled upon anything; she must have been wandering around, or even
snooping.  At the very least, she'd lifted the sheet covering the painting.  I
recalled one or two ladies in the past making snide remarks that this or that
in their homes had disappeared after Edith had been there, and I thought that
perhaps there was something to those snide little insinuations, after all. 

The
other, more pressing thought I had was that I needed to deny what Edith saw.  I
couldn't have the word get out that I was producing new work; it would ruin
everything I was trying to achieve.  As far as everyone knew, I had retired
from painting.  That was what I needed people to go on believing.

So
I tried to fool Edith, told her simply that she'd been mistaken, that she'd
confused the artwork for mine, but she wouldn't be swayed.  When she offered me
even more money, it confirmed to me that she was acting on
Chester
Northgate's
behalf.  Where else would a housekeeper get this kind of money?  And everyone
knew that
Chester
was an art patron and collector.  

Because
of Edith's persistence for this painting she'd seen—the one of you, Nicole, as
a little girl, sitting in front of a tree—I could only assume that she'd
mentioned my new painting to Chester after the luncheon and he'd insisted she
return and barter for it on his behalf.  It seemed probable to me that, given
my precarious health,
Chester
considered a “Nina Corday” to be a good
investment. 

In
any case, Edith wouldn't let up.  She became almost agitated, demanding that I
sell her the painting.  She kept saying, “the painting of the girl in the blue
dress and a tree, you know what I'm talking about.”   I finally managed to get
her to leave, but the whole conversation rattled me so much, I told Abel all
about it.  I was expecting some support, but instead, he told me I was being
foolish.  He said that I
should
sell my new work to this woman for quick
cash.  He emphasized that it would all be under the table, so the gallery would
never know.  He kept repeating the words: “quick cash.”  Uncomfortably, I
started to worry that it was really
he
who wanted the quick cash. That
perhaps he figured once I had it, I would give him some.  It broke my heart,
but I just didn't feel like I could trust him anymore.  I suppose financial
downturns can change anyone, but Abel wasn't quite the man I'd known.

It
was at that point that I decided to hide “The Three Princesses.”  I asked my
friend, Herman MacDonald, to help me.  I probably should have trusted him from
the get-go, because he always seemed to have a soft spot for me.  At my
request, Mac hid them in the tree house and didn't even ask why.  Without
hesitation, he promised to keep it a secret.  I told him that if anything
happens to me before March (figuring six months from August), to have the
Annabelle flowers sent to you; he would only need to date and fill-in the check
I'd signed and left with him.  Mac became terribly upset, with me talking of
death like this, but I'd become almost lawyer-like about the possibility.  I
guess illness and weakness first makes you paranoid, then makes you practical.

I
hope you never need to find this letter.  I hope I make a full recovery and am
able to give you the paintings outright someday.  If you
do
find this,
hold onto the paintings for at least a year.  Whenever you do sell them, sell
them in
New York
.  You shouldn't have any problems then. 
Goliath has so many artists to focus on, and besides that, is firmly rooted in
Boston
.

All my love, always,

Nina

Michael
finished re-reading the letter, and set it down on his lap. 

Deep
in concentration, he sat in the living room of his townhouse.  The room was
dark except for one light on the table beside the couch.  Just yesterday he'd
said goodbye to Nicole and to
Cape Cod
, but both still weighed on his mind.

The
letter explained a lot, but not everything.  Like what Abel Kelling had been
doing dead in Nina Corday's basement.  The letter was dated September 5
^th
. 
Nicole had mentioned once that her aunt died in early September from a fall
down her stairs, which put this letter eerily close to her death.  According to
Nicole, the fall was attributed to her aunt's frail health. 

Michael
kept returning to this thought that whomever had duped Lucius about the
Demberto had not been seeking money in this, after all.  He had been seeking a
specific painting—the girl in the blue dress.  And if not for money, then for
what reason? 

Was
it this art connoisseur mentioned in the letter—Chester Northgate?

Where
had Michael heard that name before?  He thought back and then it dawned on
him.  It was the night he'd first met Nicole.  At the
Chatham
police station
one of the cops had said that Chester Northgate and his housekeeper had spotted
Lucius.  In fact...hadn't they accused Nicole's assailant also of stealing a
motorboat?

Suddenly,
Michael sat forward.  Why hadn't he recalled this sooner?  Things began to come
together.  Chester Northgate had lied to put the police in the wrong
direction—while his confederate, Lucius, slipped off to a motel and awaited
further instruction.  It stood to reason that just as Edith Winchell had been
doing
Chester
's bidding that
night when she returned to Nina's house to buy the painting, she'd also given
her witness statement to the police at
Chester
's request.

But
hadn’t someone else backed up that story, too?  Wasn’t there another “witness”
who set the police in the same direction?  Jim White of White’s Nursery—wasn’t
that what Officer Donovan had said?  What reason would some guy who ran a tree
nursery have to lie to the police?  Was he doing Chester Northgate’s bidding,
too?

Now
the other unavoidable question: why such secrecy?  Why not have Lucius, or some
other criminal, break into Nina Corday's house?  Why not stage a burglary, with
that one paining as the true objective? 

Michael
had a thought.  Maybe because a break-in so soon after Nina's death could make
her death suddenly seem suspicious?  He was vaguely aware that his mind was
spinning out of control, but he was not inclined to stop it.  Instead, he
hopped to his feet and began pacing, thinking this through. 

You
only got one shot at a break-in, he reasoned.  What if Lucius had busted in,
but come out without the painting?  According to Nina's letter,
Chester
's housekeeper
kept saying, “
the painting of the girl in the blue dress and a tree, you
know what I'm talking about.
”

Impatiently,
Michael crossed over to his desk.  He switched on his laptop, which was sleek
and black like most of the furnishings around here; damn, he'd never realized
just how uninviting his place was until now.  The computer screen lit up almost
instantly, and Michael began searching online for information about this man,
Chester Northgate.

GIRL
GOES MISSING AT SCHOOL PICNIC; LOCAL PHILANTHROPIST FUNDS SEARCH.
  Michael had
tried fifty different search word combinations, before he’d struck gold.  An
eerie, murderous kind of gold.  The article was from 1999.  It detailed the
disappearance of Marlee Wurther, a fourth grader at a nearby school who had
wandered off during the annual picnic. 

Local
philanthropist, Chester Northgate, expressed his profound sadness and concern
for the missing little girl and her parents, and has offered a $500,000 reward
for the return of Marlee, unharmed, to her family.  Marlee's parents, Anna and
Rick, have thanked Northgate publicly for his generosity. “He proves the
goodness of the human spirit,” Anna Wurther has said. Marlee was last seen
wearing a navy dress with a white collar.  

The
article paid lip service to the general speculation that Marlee had
drowned—that she had possibly fallen into the ocean, as the picnic had been
adjacent to the beach, and her parents confirmed that she couldn't swim.  There
were several articles on the case.  When the girl was not found in the
following months, people tended toward the theory that she had gotten carried
away with the tide. 

Now
Michael studied the photo on the lower corner of the screen.  According to the
caption, the photo was of Anna and Rick Wurther, and Chester Northgate,
standing in front of Northgate's home.  The infamous housekeeper, Edith
Winchell, was nowhere in sight.  The house that stood behind them was a huge
medieval-looking thing with tall arched windows. 

He
minimized this window and opened another. Then did an image search of Chester
Northgate.  What the search pulled, besides photos of
Chester
himself at
various publicized events, were photos of his house.  Apparently it had been
photographed for an architectural magazine in 2001, and while Michael flipped
through the images on his screen, he noticed something.  Wait—no...

He
flipped to the previous page, zoomed in, checked the date of the photo.  Then
he went back to the minimized screen and studied that photo again.   

Nina's
letter replayed in his mind. 
The girl in the blue dress and the tree
. 
It was the first Michael had heard mention of a tree.  The photo of Chester
Northgate's house from 2001 showed a thick, triangular tree in front of it,
diagonally obscuring one of the windows.  An odd place to put a large tree. 
And did it grow of its own design? 

Not
according to the photo from two years earlier, the snapshot with Anna and Rick
Wurther in 1999.  They stood with
Chester
in front of his house, and there
was no tree.  No tree obscuring the window...no tree covering anything...Holy
shit...  Swallowing, Michael tried to keep his focus sharp.  This might be the
long-shot of the century, but what the hell?  It was worth a try.  Maybe the
old guy had just had some landscaping done, but let's evaluate the facts, along
with theory: