Hearse and Gardens (21 page)

Everyone was in Sandringham's dining room for Kate's party, except Ingrid and Brandy. Maurice had dropped Elle off, and she'd saved me a seat. I was surprised to see Nathan Morrison was there, not in jail. He hadn't shaved and his eyes were downcast.

Sandringham's formal dining room brought to mind all the PBS miniseries I'd watched over the years, ones set in English manor houses or castles; eighteenth- and nineteenth-century breakfast buffets: kippers and eggs in sterling hot water-warmed chafing dishes and buttered toast in silver filigree toast servers. Today, the table was set casually—more in line with Kate's style. I added my gift to the others on the glossy polished sideboard that smelled of beeswax. It made me wonder about the crew that came in daily to keep the mammoth house clean. I
knew from my Realtor and friend Barb, many of the housecleaners who worked in the Hamptons had to commute from towns more than thirty miles away. Not a bad ride off-season, but in-season, it could take an extra hour or two.

I'd had a hard time picking Kate's gift. What did you get someone whom you suspected was up to no good? In my case, I bought her a Grateful Dead T-shirt from Montauk's Rockin' Retro because I remembered Kate had worn one the day we had chowder.

Ingrid had outdone herself, which I didn't think was possible. I even heard Celia thank her for going the extra mile for Kate. Celia seemed as low as Nathan, validating the news she'd been served with divorce papers. Brandy arrived in time for the main dish or should I say dishes: six huge pizzas all with different crusts and ingredients, ranging from a classy pie of lobster, shrimp, and clam in a garlic-butter sauce on thin crust; to a campy White Castle pie with thin square burger patties with onion-filled holes, topped with pickles and ketchup on flatbread. The White Castle pie looked pretty bad, but it tasted more than pretty good. Brandy had taken the only seat left, which was next to Nathan. She kept inching her chair away, perhaps afraid she'd catch his killer cooties.

Uncle Harry was the biggest surprise. He was clear-headed and told jokes in which he remembered the punch lines. Everyone laughed with him, not at him. I believed he had a fondness for Kate and might have felt guilty about kicking her and Celia out of the house.

Ingrid brought in the cake with its twenty-three lit
candles. After the last “you” in the birthday song, a banging came from the direction of the front door.

Ingrid said, “Ignore it, Kate. Blow out your candles.”

Richard left the room.

Kate hesitated for a second, then blew. It took two tries, but she finally got them all out.

Detective Shoner entered the dining room, followed by Chief Pell and two Suffolk County officers. Chief Pell was top brass in the Hamptons' law enforcement hierarchy. We'd met last spring under similar circumstances.

Detective Shoner walked up to Nathan. “Nathan Morrison, you're under arrest for the murders of Pierce Falks and Helen Morrison.”

The two officers went to Nathan's chair. He stood and one of the officers put him in handcuffs, while the other read him his rights.

Nathan turned his head toward Ingrid.

Ingrid said, “I'll call you a lawyer. They've made a mistake.”

He nodded and Liv ran to his side. “Uncle Nathan. Tell me you didn't do it?”

“I didn't do it.”

Then the officers prodded him out of the dining room and into the hallway.

Chief Pell, who could have been a professional wrestler in another life, lumbered over to my chair. “How are you, Ms. Barrett?” Like it wasn't strange for me to be at the site of another murder in the mostly crime-free Hamptons.

“I'm well. Thank you.”

Chief Pell went over to Detective Shoner, mumbled a
few words, tugged on the detective's pocket square, and left the room, his head barely clearing the doorway.

Elle hobbled over to Detective Shoner and he whispered something in her ear. I read his lips, “We found Helen's handbag and Pierce's wallet in the Morrison gatehouse.”

The birthday party disbanded. Maurice came and retrieved Elle. Before she left, she told me Helen Morrison's purse and Pierce's wallet were found in the bottom of a humpback trunk in Nathan's bedroom.

It seemed too obvious a spot to keep evidence from a murder committed twenty years ago. On the day we hoofed it over to the gatehouse, Liv had opened the door with a key that was hidden outside. Who else knew about the key? The missing Warhol could have been another motive for their murders.

I'd woken with my own theory about the Warhol. As soon as I left Sandringham, I planned to go to East Hampton and visit Detective Shoner.

I'd told Liv earlier about her father's journals that I'd found in the trunk from the bungalow. As soon as the police
left and Uncle Harry was taken to his suite, we went up to her room.

When I gave her the first journal, a smile spread from ear to ear. Her hands trembled as she placed it on the desk in front of her.

Maybe this wasn't the best time, especially after Nathan Morrison's arrest. “If you want to do this another day, that's fine.”

“I'd rather do this than go down and see Mrs. Anderson. Did you know her and Uncle Nathan are in love? Even if they won't admit it to themselves. I don't know what to think anymore.”

I thought I heard a slight hesitation before the word “Uncle.”

She opened the first journal, her eyes bright as she turned the pages.

After a few minutes, Liv said, “I've been looking at these drawings of these two girls, and I think I've figured out who one of them is. But I'm stumped on the other.”

She slid the journal closer and I scanned the sketch. “Celia, right?”

“Yes. Hard to picture her and my father dating in high school, and then to think she married Granddad.” She pointed to the page. “See how my father drew that hardness in her eyes. She still has it. Let me show you something.”

She took a chain from around her neck; hanging on the chain was a small key. She turned the key in a locked bottom desk drawer and pulled out a scrapbook. Below the scrapbook were her father's sketch journal and the children's books I'd returned to her after we'd found Helen's bones.

Liv opened the scrapbook to the first page. There was a newspaper article with the headline:

Falks Sells Fake

and an UPI photo of Harrison and Pierce on the steps of the East Hampton courthouse. Pierce was quite an attractive guy, probably homecoming king to Celia's queen. I shivered when I thought of my first meeting with him in the bungalow.

The article was about the Jackson Pollock scandal, recounting that Pierce had brokered the sale of a bogus Pollock to a museum in Czechoslovakia.

Liv pointed to a young girl in the crowd.

“Celia?”

“Yep. I always suspected she had something to do with the Pollock. It sounds like something she'd orchestrate, especially after knowing she wanted Granddad's power of attorney.”

“It's possible.”

“Celia went right from high school to an art gallery in Bridgehampton. Four galleries later and a gig at the MoMA, she marries Granddad.”

Liv put the scrapbook away and we looked at the sketch of the other young girl in Pierce's journal.

I pulled the journal closer. “If I had to guess, I'd say it's Brandy. Look at her bosoms and sweater.”

Liv giggled. “Bosoms? You could be right.”

Pierce hadn't been too kind to the features on her face. He'd drawn Brandy's nose bigger and her eyes smaller, like two little slits. But in the chest area, he'd been on target. Brandy looked to be in her teens. She sat Indian-style on the floor, with a blanket on her lap. There was
no mistaking which room Pierce had drawn her in. It was the attic in the bungalow. The bungalow where his skeleton was found. Pierce's go-to hideout. I knew I was right because in the background was the easel holding the portrait he'd made of his mother, Tansy. Also pictured was the trunk that was now on my porch and on top of it, a
Rolling Stone
magazine.

Liv looked closely at the page. “Brandy practically grew up here. Her mother was sick and her father was Granddad's financial assistant. Granddad took her under his wing after her father passed away. It turned out to be a good thing because she's the one who stopped all the prescriptions Granddad was on. I don't know what he would do without her.”

I couldn't agree more.

The other pages in the journal had numerous drawings of Tansy. Maybe they'd been practice for Pierce's portrait of Tansy.

I'd saved the last sketch journal for last. It was smaller than the rest and had only two pages of drawings. The surprise was the handwriting at the bottom of each sketch.

Liv opened to the first page. “Oh. This is wonderful! This might be the first time my father got his idea to do my children's books.”

The drawing was of a baby's nursery with a crib. And there was the figure of an infant inside the crib. Tiny penguins dangled from the strings of a mobile. At the bottom of the page Pierce had written:
It was a cold and snowy night and the penguins wanted to come out and play. But baby wanted to sleep.
Liv turned the page. Pierce had reverted to one of his non-human sketches. It looked like
the interior of Liv's bedroom, with the huge fireplace, mantel, and the mahogany four-poster bed. There was a fire burning in the fireplace and a blanket on the floor. And on the blanket was a baby rattle. The rattle was similar to the one I found in the trunk from the bungalow. The caption read:
Where have you gone? Are you hiding with Grandma?

“Is that your father's room in the drawing?” I didn't want her to know I'd been snooping in her room on the day she and Kate got locked in the cellar.

“It was. Now it's mine. We're sitting in it. I took it over after college. Do you think the reason for my father's drawing is that I'm meant to look for clues in the picture and find out where the baby is hiding, so I can find more treasure?”

“Maybe.”

I left Liv in her bedroom, holding the drawing from the journal up to a mirror to see if there was any reverse writing, like she'd found before. I thought about saying good-bye to Uncle Harry and Ingrid but wanted to get to East Hampton to talk to Detective Shoner about the Warhol.

*   *   *

When I was almost at my Jeep, something hit me. The date on the Tiffany's receipt for the sterling baby rattle I'd found in Pierce's trunk had been dated years before Liv was born. Then I thought about Pierce's drawing with Brandy and the blanket in the bungalow attic. He had drawn little squares in the blanket. Granny squares. Thirdly, I thought about the small white suitcase in Brandy's armoire.

I needed to see what was in that suitcase.

Heading to the side of the mansion, I approached the
kitchen door, knowing it wasn't usually locked in the daytime. The door opened before I reached it. Ingrid stepped out wearing her coat and carrying a handbag. “I'm going to the courthouse to see if anyone has set bail.” Her eyes were red and swollen.

“I forgot something in Liv's room.”

She held the door open. “He didn't do it. I know he didn't.”

As I passed by, I put my hand on her shoulder. “Keep the faith.” Then I stepped inside.

I took the secret stairway up to the second floor, then crept down the hallway toward Uncle Harry's and Brandy's rooms. The door to Brandy's sitting room was open and so was Uncle Harry's. Brandy was reading aloud to him in his room. After Nathan's arrest, Uncle Harry had been so distraught, she had to bring him to his suite in a wheelchair. Sad, because he'd been doing so well with the walker after the competency hearing.

I tip-toed into Brandy's sitting room, unlocked the armoire, and took out the suitcase. I could still hear Brandy reading, but her words were getting fainter and fainter. I cupped my hand to my right ear. No feedback. My right hearing aid battery was dead. I looked around for something to use to pick the suitcase's lock. Time was of the essence, so I grabbed a letter opener and pried open the latch.

Inside the small suitcase were photos of Brandy pregnant and ready to pop. In the background of the photo, she was standing in a room with two single beds, almost like a dorm room. She wasn't smiling. On the bed was the same granny square afghan from Pierce's sketch. I turned and looked through the doorway to Brandy's bedroom. The
same crocheted blanket from the photo lay on the rocking chair. There were also photos of Pierce as a young man. Candid shots. Under the photos were crocheted baby clothes: a pink hat with satin ties and a pair of matching booties. Below the clothing was a newborn's plastic bracelet, which read:
Millard Fillmore Hospital, F and Port
. The bracelet had been cut, but before someone taped the ends back together again, they'd threaded the bracelet through a man's wedding ring.

Through my left hearing aid I heard, “Well. Well. Aren't you the nosy one?”

Then I felt pain like I'd never felt before.