The Night Visitor (28 page)

“I didn’t know she was seriously involved with someone. I knew she was sexting with some guy who merited one of her dedicated cell phones. I asked her if it was another nude. To tell you the truth, I didn’t want to do another nude of her. She said, ‘No. It’s a traditional portrait.’ So, I told her I’d do it. It’s not my style to copy somebody else’s work, but I needed the money.”

Rory continued working. “Anya was ecstatic. She said, ‘Now I’ll really make a statement to the world and especially to someone I really want to stick it to.’ ”

Evelyn’s expression turned hard.

“I didn’t ask what was going on, because I didn’t really want to know. Anya said she took a photo of this other painting on her cell phone, so I could start working on it right away. I told her that to do a good job, I needed to paint from the original. She said that would be a problem, but she’d figure out a way to get it to me.

“She found the photo on her phone, but before she showed it to me, she said, ‘Once you see this, you’ll know who my lover is. Promise me you won’t tell anyone. Especially Rory. Everyone’s gonna find out real soon anyway, so just keep it a secret until this new painting is done and I can properly present it. Then, baby, stand back ’cause all hell’s gonna break loose.’

“Little did Anya know what that
really
meant. Obviously I shouldn’t have agreed to do it, and I definitely shouldn’t have lied to Rory.”

Rory dropped the brush into a jar of solvent, straightened, and looked at her mother. “Evelyn, come and have a look at my last painting. I hope my family can sell it for a lot of money as a recently discovered Junior Lara masterpiece.”

Evelyn went to stand beside Rory. Her eyes widened.

“What do you think, Mrs. T.?”

60

The framed portrait of Boo Tate, missing from its spot over the ballroom fireplace, was on one easel. On the other was a copy, exact in every way, except the model was not Boo but Anya.

Rory picked up the palette and a brush and dabbed the brush into a hue. “The eyes look great, if I say so myself.” She touched Anya’s eye with the brush. “To me, that’s what I find the most similar between Anya and…What’s her name? Oh yeah. Boo. You society types kill me. You and your nicknames. Boo and Anya both have this wonderful raven hair and porcelain skin. Beyond that, they’re not so similar, until you get to the eyes. Those eyes, full of life and sadness. It’s like looking into the same soul.”

Evelyn watched, her lips quivering.

Rory dragged the brush through black paint on the palette, dropped to one knee, and signed “Junior L” in a corner of the canvas. Pushing herself up, she dropped the brush into its dirty bath and closed her fingers, drawing them against her palm as if to seal the sensation of holding the brush. She stepped back to admire the painting. “Five years after Anya asked me to paint it, it’s finally done. And it’s good.”

Evelyn grabbed Rory’s arm and swung her around. “Give me a break. I know bad acting when I see it. I’ve done enough of it. Knock this crap off right now.”

Rory silently stared at her mother for a moment. “Whoever you hired to fix the Boo portrait after you slashed it did an amazing job.”

Evelyn said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No? Now who’s acting?” Rory crossed the room and ascended the steps to the roof.

Evelyn breathed through her mouth as she stared at the two paintings. She spied a small knife on a TV tray. She grabbed it in her fist and looked from Anya to Boo, wavering as she took in the two pairs of dark eyes that seemed full of mockery and derision. She threw the knife back onto the tray with a clatter.

She bolted away and inadvertently started to pass behind the orange couch, stopping dead when she saw a dried pool of brown blood. She backed away and hurried up the staircase to the roof. By the light of a spotlight there, she saw Rory looking at the decrepit remains of Junior’s bird coop. Evelyn approached her.

“Junior used to say that doves mate for life. Pretty profound, isn’t it, Mom? Such loyalty and commitment.”

“So, you’re back to being Rory again?” Evelyn smirked. “Why did you lure me here?”

“Here’s what I think happened, Mom. Correct me if I’m wrong. Anya was devastated when Jonah dumped her for another woman. Not a model or a star, just a nice girl. Anya’s ego couldn’t handle it. She decided to land someone who was more rich and powerful, who would never kick her to the curb, and who she could treat as badly as she wanted. It was about revenge too. Anya was really going to rub your face in it. She’d be the one to get Richard to finally take down his beloved Boo portrait. Something you couldn’t do. Anya thought a sexy nude of her would make the right statement. ‘Here I am, the new Mrs. Richard Tate,’ but then she realized she had to fit into Richard’s world, not the other way around. That’s a lesson she learned from you. She had a brainstorm. She’d replace Richard’s Boo painting with a replica. It’s what she’d always been to him anyway. Anya always was crazy like a fox.”

Rory walked to the low wall bordering the roof and looked at the city lights. “I love the irony of Anya nearly beating you at your own game,” she said sadly.

Evelyn’s eyes welled. “You’re cruel. I don’t deserve this. Are you girls going to punish me for the rest of my life?”

Rory turned toward her mother. “Richard must have been so excited when he saw Anya for the first time when she was thirteen. In her, he saw his lost Boo, the love of his life. I bet she had a bad feeling about him right away. Anya always was a good judge of character. Richard Tate, pillar of society, nearly fifty, couldn’t have a scandalous relationship with another teenager. You found a way to make it work, didn’t you, Mom? You’ve never been one to let an opportunity slip through your fingers, not one that had a billionaire attached to it.”

“Don’t lay that guilt crap on me. Anya was no angel.” Evelyn’s eyes had gone steely. “Anya was already fooling around with some neighborhood punk in your aunt’s toolshed.”

“At least that was normal.”

Evelyn shook her clenched fists. “I promised Anya I would make her dream happen and I did. I put her in front of the right people. I made sure she had the look, the walk, the clothes. I took her from nothing and turned her into a superstar. I
made
her. It was a small price for her to pay.”

“Right. The cost was only her innocence. Her childhood. Just keep talking, Mom. Eventually you’ll believe your own bullshit.”

“It’s the truth. Anya was deluded. Richard was never going to divorce me to marry her. You know how the Tates hate publicity. Prenup, my eye. Contracts were made to be broken. I would have made sure all the Tate business was on the front page.
All
of it. I would have given him the messiest divorce the world’s ever seen and he knew it.”

“But Anya figured that angle too. She raised the stakes. She got pregnant.” Rory relished the expression on her mother’s face, vicariously experiencing her sister’s revenge.

“That baby was not Richard’s.”

“If you were positive it wasn’t Richard’s baby, why did you go to such lengths to hide the fact that she was pregnant after you
murdered
her?”

“Murdered Anya. You have lost your mind.” Evelyn started to walk away. “I won’t listen to this.”

“You will listen.” Rory grabbed her mother’s arm and held on. “You guessed that something new was going on between Anya and Richard. After all the years of calling him a scumbag, Anya’s attitude had changed. You saw the way Richard looked at her, the way he’d never stopped looking at her. After all the years of running from him, Anya had decided to claim what had always been hers. And she’d finally found a way to make you pay for pimping her out as a teenager to Richard. It disgusts me to think that she’d let Richard near her again. I guess she was even more screwed up than I thought.”

Evelyn wrenched her arm away. She took a moment to compose herself. “Rory, I’m leaving now. I’ll call Tom. Have him come get you. Take you home to your condo. I promise that I’ll get Richard to stop Richie’s plot to boot you out of Langtry. Before long, you’ll be back to your old self, in your old life. You’ll get married to Tom. Have babies. Live happily ever after. We’ll put all this behind us and never speak of it again.”

Rory wiped away a tear. “Mom, don’t you get it? I can’t go back to my old life. None of us can.”

“Oh, I can, sweetheart. Watch me.” Evelyn spun on her heels and started across the roof.

61

“Well, Mom, you’re going to have some trouble with that.” From a pocket of Junior’s pants, Rory took out Anya’s cell phone that had the rhinestone, tiger-striped cover. She keyed in Anya’s security code, which had been easy to figure out: “Anya.”

“There’s this text you sent to Richard from Anya’s phone the night of the shootings.”

Evelyn had reached the entry to the stairs. She turned and gaped at Rory.

Rory sniffled as she read the text. “ ‘This is Evelyn. Come to Junior’s loft ASAP. Alone. Something bad happened.’ ” She held up the phone. “Of course it’s all misspelled and has crazy spell-check changes, as if you were really shaken up when you typed it.”

Evelyn marched back to her daughter and tried to snatch the phone from her hand. “That’s why you were snooping in Anya’s rooms at the villa.”

Rory jolted back, close to the wall bordering the roof. “I wasn’t snooping, Mom. I was looking for something that day, but I didn’t know what. I was just trying to learn about my sister, who I realize I didn’t know well at all. I found the phones tucked in the back of a drawer of Anya’s sexy lingerie. Anya’s phone and its mate, the one that belonged to Richard. Today, after I snuck into the villa to get the Boo painting, I took a chance and slipped up to Anya’s rooms on the third floor to get the phones. When I got those phones recharged, boy, was I shocked to see what Anya and Richard had been up to.”

From another pocket, Rory pulled out a second cell phone. As Evelyn watched in horror, Rory played a voice message, turning the phone’s speaker on. It was Richard. “Hello, beloved. It’s your dirty old bastard…”

Rory stopped the message. “The rest of it is one of his typical disgusting sexual fantasies. But that’s what Anya called him: dirty old bastard. DOB.”

Evelyn’s bluster evaporated. She seemed to shrink inside her clothes. She trudged to the wall and sat.

“ ‘Something bad happened.’ ” Rory read Evelyn’s text again. “You sent it just before midnight. Was that before Junior had come home, or had you already put a bullet in his head when he showed up at the wrong time?”

“It wasn’t my idea to keep those phones, Rory, or to keep Anya’s rooms and house just as she left them. It’s what Richard wanted. You were right about one thing. Richard never stopped loving her.” Evelyn reached into her coat pocket and took out the pistol.

Rory lurched toward the stairs.

Evelyn set the gun on top of the wall. “I’m not going to shoot you, Rory. I brought it for protection in this neighborhood.” She looked at Rory, who was now tensely standing a few yards away. “Is that what you think of me? That I’m a woman who would intentionally kill her daughter? Both her daughters?” Her face sagged. She looked hopelessly sad.

Evelyn picked up the gun by the barrel and held it out, grip first, to Rory. “Take it, if that makes you feel better.”

Rory stepped to snatch it from her and tossed it across the roof, where it slid into a far corner.

Evelyn took a deep breath and looked over her shoulder at the city lights. She turned back and met Rory’s eyes. “Richard shot Junior.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I killed Anya, but it was an accident.” Her eyes watered, but tears didn’t fall.

Rory went to sit on the wall beside her mother. “An accident?”

“Yes. It just happened.”

“How did it happen, Mom? Tell me, please.”

Evelyn took another deep breath and pressed her eyes closed as she exhaled. She opened her eyes, took Rory’s hands between hers, and stared intently at her. “That night, Rosario came and told me that Anya had gotten Hector to help her put the Boo portrait in her car. Anya had asked Hector not to say anything. She’d wanted me to just find it gone. Anya had already left the villa. I called her. She said she was taking the painting to Junior’s loft. He was making a copy of it but with her in place of Boo. It was a gift for Richard and there was nothing I could do about it. She told me she was pregnant. Richard knew and was over the moon with happiness. Leland was drawing up divorce papers. It could all be done quickly and quietly, and I would be very comfortable for the rest of my life. She said she had to go and hung up.”

Evelyn let out a sob. She let go of Rory’s hands and took a handkerchief from her coat pocket. After blowing her nose, she continued. “It all clicked. Richard’s constant calls and texts on a special cell phone, which he tried to hide from me. I saw some of the texts, the crotch shots, the boob shots from a girl who called him ‘dirty old bastard.’ The pornographic photos he sent her. The times he said he was at the club and I knew he wasn’t there. He’d had his flings before. I’d just wait for them to blow over. This time it was different. I’d also seen a change in Anya when she was around him. How she was playing him.

“After Anya hung up on me, I texted and called Richard. He didn’t respond. I didn’t know what to do. My world was falling apart. So, I drove to Junior’s. I just wanted to talk to Anya face-to-face. I got here. The building was wide open. I went up to the loft. I didn’t see Anya, but I saw the paintings. The nude that Junior had painted of Anya and the portrait of Boo from over the fireplace. There was a box cutter on a tray. I grabbed it and started cutting. I guess I snapped.”

Rory looked deeply into her mother’s eyes, as if she were only now really seeing her. She felt, for the first time, her sadness and desperation.

“Anya came clomping down the stairs from the roof, madder than hell. She’d seen me through the skylight. She told me to stop. I didn’t stop. She came up to me, actually holding a gun! I told her, ‘Go ahead and shoot me. It’ll be faster than the way you’re killing me now.’

“Then a bird flew in. A dove. More came and they kept coming, flying in our faces. Anya swatted at them and I leaped on her to try to get the gun. She wouldn’t let go. It went off. She fell.”