Lethal Legacy (51 page)

“That’s why Travis killed Tina with one of her own
tools,” Mercer said. “He didn’t go to the library meaning to do it. He was
probably looking for the key that opened the compartment in the basement. Maybe
Eddy sent him to get the job done right the second time. The key might have
dropped out of her clothing when he was carrying her through the stacks, after
she was dead, without his knowing it. I doubt the murder was premeditated—just
a flare-up about the missing goods that ended with him slitting her throat.”

“That’s what Travis Forbes does,” Mercer said. “He
cuts. He mutilates. She couldn’t have known that.”

“Then he dumped Barr’s body the next night.
Probably called Herrick when he took off for his night job at the pub,” Mike
said. “Must have been Herrick who watched us bag the body. He’s the one who
called Tina’s cell phone—and laughed.”

That would chill the jurors as much as it had
sickened me.

“It’s the housekeeper who gets lost in all this,”
I said. “Karla Vastasi.”

“That has to be Minerva’s doing,” Mike said. “She
in the hospital, Loo?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me at her when she’s ready to squeal. Minerva
had Karla dressed up as her double, carrying a forged copy of one of the panels
in her tote. Travis had never met Minerva—wouldn’t know her if he fell over
her,” Mike said.

“My money’s on Eddy Forbes,” I said.

“I read you. You think Eddy was waiting in Barr’s
apartment with Travis that afternoon.
He
knew the lady in black wasn’t
Minerva and realized the panel she was carrying was a fake. Queered the whole
deal.”

“Karla saw that Tina had left behind another
treasure when she moved out—the jewel-encrusted psalm book,” I said. “The one
Tina stole from Talbot’s bedroom. So Karla tried to take it to her mistress,
clutched on to it with what turned out to be her life. One of the Forbes boys
caught her and went ballistic. Whacked her over the head with the garden
ornament.”

The pieces were coming together as nicely as the
panels of the great world map of 1507.

“You better get some sleep, Alex,” the lieutenant
said. “Battaglia wants all of us in his office at ten o’clock.”

“Don’t stretch out here,” Mike said, sweeping his
arm along the back of the old sofa. “You stay still for very long, they’ll find
a box that fits.”

“Make me a better offer,” I said as Mercer helped
me to my feet.

“That cemetery had me craving some fresh air. Feel
like walking up the avenue to the pub? I could use a drink out of a real
glass.”

I thanked the rookie who’d returned with the
plastic cup of scotch. “Give that one to the lieutenant. I’ve got a date.”

Out on the sidewalk in front of Provenzano’s
funeral home, I looped arms with Mike and Mercer. I took several deep breaths
of the cool October air, steadied myself between my friends—fortitude and
patience—and headed off into the night for a bracing bit of cheer as our
manhunt ended.

FORTY-EIGHT

“That’s no way to spend a Saturday night,” Luc
said exactly a week later, when he returned from his trip. “I can’t let you sit
in front of a television set eating popcorn with this great wine.”

“It’s a whole lot better than the way I spent the
last one. Besides, if you tell me you don’t want to watch my Yankees play a
World Series game, we’ve got a real deal breaker here.”

We had flown up to the Vineyard that morning,
after all the drama of the past week had played out in court.

Travis Forbes had been charged with the murders of
Tina Barr and Karla Vastasi. His brother, Eddy, was indicted, too, for acting
in concert with Travis on the Vastasi killing—proved by cell phone records and
credit card receipts for gas and food.

Travis had rolled over on Alger Herrick and
implicated him in the deadly plot to find the twelve panels of the priceless
map, though Battaglia hadn’t needed to promise any leniency. The detectives had
continued to build a rock-solid case against the Englishman, who was indeed the
illegitimate son of Jasper Hunt III.

Luc and I had walked down the path from my
Chilmark home to watch the sun set, sipping a glass of chilled
Corton-Charlemagne that he had brought with him. We had made love in the
afternoon, slowly and without any distractions this time, and I was dressed in
one of his shirts as I lay back in the sand, wiggling my toes in the cool water
of Menemsha Pond.

Luc had driven to the store while I napped
fitfully, still not able to get images of this case out of my head.

“Everything at Larsen’s Fish Market looked
merveilleuse,
darling. I decided on those sweet little bay scallops,” he said.

“I adore them.”

“Lemon, garlic, fettucine.”

I looked at him and cocked an eye. “How do you eat
food like that at a ball game?”

I heard Mike’s voice in the back of my head
ordering a hot dog and a cold beer.

“Trust me. It will be better than anything you get
at the stadium.”

“For starters?”

Luc stood up and dug his toes into the sand as the
gentle waves receded. “Clams. Fresh ones.”

“Let me help.”

I sat up and we scratched below the surface until
we filled a towel with a dozen quahaugs.

“That lady at the library, the one you really
liked,” Luc said, sitting beside me as a bright red ball of sunlight started to
slip down behind the hills of Aquinnah.

“Bea?”

“So she was right about the places that the
eccentric Mr. Hunt hid the panels of the map.”

“She was dead on,” I said.

“You think they will ever find the entire thing?”
Luc asked.

“So far we’re more than halfway there. Four that
Hunt tried to take to the great hereafter with him, the one that Jane Eliot
gave to Minerva, the other that Minerva had all along—in the Strassburg
Ptolemy—and the one that Mike found inside the library, under the water tank.”

“You said Bea found others?”

“Yes, during the week, when the search continued,
two of the curators discovered pieces tucked inside books from the Hunt
Collection, just as Bea had predicted,” I said. “And Talbot Hunt is cooperating
now.”

The Friday morning we first met Talbot at the
library, he had hinted at the fact that he was in the race to find the entire
map. He had unearthed one not long ago in an atlas he inherited from his
grandfather, which he’d ignored until Tina Barr began to work with him.

“So that accounts for ten of the twelve,” Luc
said. “What will become of the map, if it is ever put together?”

I sipped at the wine, then stretched out again in
the sand, watching the crown of the sun disappear.

“The Hunts have finally agreed on something, after
a lifetime of acrimony and unpleasantness. A substantial piece of damage
control,” I said. “They’ve made a gift of the map to the New York Public
Library, along with a sizable contribution for the restoration of the Hunt
Collection. The money will also help the library try to find the last two
pieces.”

“Are you getting cold, darling?”

“No, I’m fine. I don’t want to go in yet.”

The involuntary chill that swept over me had
nothing to do with the weather. There would be hearings and trials to follow, a
system trying to make sense of the senseless deaths of two young women.

“You can get this off your mind now, can’t you?”

Judge Moffett had approved my application for the familial
DNA search of Wesley the Weasel Griggs. A homicide case that had languished for
eight years might now be solved by science, and I would have a new challenge to
fill the fall days.

“Tonight, yes,” I said, as Luc swept back my hair
and put his lips against my forehead.

“And tomorrow?”

“Yes.” I laughed as he moved his lips to the tip
of my nose.

Months earlier, after Joan and Jim’s wedding, Luc
had embraced me for the first time in this secluded cove. All the best memories
of my life were connected to this peaceful, glorious island.

“And Monday, after I’ve flown home to France?”

“Hard to predict,” I said.
“Au revoir, mon
amour.”

“Tuesday?” he asked, entwining his legs with mine
in the shallow water that lapped at our feet.

“Maybe.”

“Only maybe? I’ve got some serious work to do
before I leave,” Luc said.

I put my arms around his neck and we kissed each
other, over and over again. Then I pulled him to his feet and led him up the
hill to the outdoor shower. I wanted to wash off the sand from the beach—and some
of the grit I carried with me, always, from my job.

“C’mon, Luc,” I said. “Time to play ball.”

This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are
the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental.

Copyright © 2009 by Fairstein Enterprises, LLC.

All Rights Reserved

Published in the United States by Doubleday, an
imprint of The Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New
York.
www.doubleday.com

DOUBLEDAY
and the DD colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Waldseemüller Map courtesy of the Library of
Congress

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data

Fairstein, Linda A.

Lethal legacy : a novel / by Linda
Fairstein.—1st ed.

p. cm.

1. Cooper, Alexandra (Fictitious
character)—Fiction. 2. Public prosecutors—Fiction. 3. New York Public
Library—Fiction. 4. Map collections—Fiction. 5. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3556.A3654L47 2008

813'.54—dc22      2008023124

eISBN: 978-0-385-52930-3

v1.0

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Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries