Page 48 of Under the Stars

“Yes, I am,” says Meredith. “Winthrop is home for me, at the moment. What seems to be the trouble here?”

The woman looks at Mike. He shrugs. “Miss Fisher is part of the family,” he says.

“Very well,” she says. “My name is Erica Burnside from the legal firm of Willig, White and Williams. We represent the Irving family. Descendants of the great American painter Henry Lowell Irving?”

“I’ve heard of him,” says Meredith. Not the husband at all, then.

“Yes. Well. I’m sure you have. I don’t know if you’re aware, but our firm is zealous in its defense of Irving’s legacy and the family’s rights of ownership over his unsold works. His contribution to American art—”

“Erica,” says Meredith, “skip intro, please.”

Erica’s face drops into a faint scowl. “All right. I’ll get to the point.

We understand that you’ve discovered a previously unexhibited trove of his work.

Which must be very exciting for you. Congratulations.

” Erica smiles the strained, thin-lipped smile of a lawyer doing law.

“But the family has sent me here today to inform you that legal possession of these paintings rightfully belongs to Irving’s heirs. ”

Meredith looks to Mike and back to Erica.

Her best expression of confused innocence.

“I don’t understand. These paintings have been sitting in the cellar of the Mohegan Inn for well over a century.

I think it’s fair to say that they belong to Mr. Kennedy, whose family has owned the building since—well, I’m sure it’s before that time. Isn’t it, Mike?”

“Built in 1760,” he says. “Older than America.”

“You see?” says Meredith. “Finders keepers. Or whatever you call it in legal terms.”

“Interesting. Did you know, that’s exactly the legal argument used by those who acquired works of art stolen by the Nazis in World War Two,” Erica says.

“But I’m afraid that both morally and legally, the paintings belong to my client, Ennis Irving, a direct descendant of Henry Irving’s surviving son, Maurice. ”

She turns to the briefcase that sits on the bar counter and pulls out a packet of brilliant white paper, typed up inside the familiar margins of legal documents.

“As you’ll see here in the attached exhibits to our filing, those paintings were stolen from Henry Irving’s studio by his murderer, Providence Dare, who escaped from Boston in the aftermath of that crime and was never heard from again.” She smiles at Mike. “Until now.”

“This is bullshit,” says Mike. “Those paintings belonged to her.”

“Mike, honey? I’d be careful what you say.”

He looks at Meredith. “Seriously? You too?”

“I’m just saying. I have some experience in legal proceedings, Mike, and the rule is to say as little as possible. Isn’t that right, Erica? In fact, not to say anything at all outside an official deposition with your own lawyer present.”

“I don’t have a fucking lawyer, Meredith. I don’t need a fucking lawyer. Those paintings are mine. Shit. I need Audrey here. Where’s Audrey?”

“That’s a great question,” says Meredith. “Where is Audrey?”

“Beats me. She wasn’t here when I got here. She’s gone and the painting’s gone, and she’s not picking up my calls because she left her damn phone upstairs in my office, for some reason.”

Deep in Meredith’s stomach, the panic starts to whir again. “In your office? What was she doing in your office?”

“Fuck if I know,” he says.

They stare at each other. This child they share.

The one thing they still hold in common, after their lives shot off in opposite directions a quarter century ago, like divergent branches on an evolutionary tree.

Gorilla and chimpanzee. Well, except the sex.

They still have that, apparently—God knows why.

And the way she feels when she’s staring at him like this, like he’s the one man in the world who knows exactly how shitty a person she is and would die for her anyway.

Okay, maybe not die . But possibly kill.

He says, “You don’t think. Do you?”

Meredith reaches into the pocket of her linen palazzo pants and finds the small cardboard rectangle that says Harlan Walker .

She looks at Erica Burnside, who stands there wearing her crisp suit and a bemused expression. “Ms. Burnside,” she says, smiling, because if you learn one thing in Hollywood, it’s how to eat shit and smile. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to return at a more convenient time.”

—

They pull up to the address on Bay Hill Lane in Mike’s pickup.

Meredith recognizes the house. The Macallisters used to summer there with their three kids, who were a few years younger than Meredith.

They must be renting it out now. Kids all grown up and summering somewhere more stylish, somewhere more spendy, like the Hamptons.

The cottage is constructed along austere New England proportions—two or three bedrooms, pitched roof, cedar shingles, fieldstone fireplace in case of unseasonable chill.

An ancient bicycle sits out front, propped against the porch railing.

A couple of pots overflow with white impatiens.

Mike grinds the gearshift into park and cuts the engine. “I’ll go in,” he says.

It’s on the tip of Meredith’s tongue to say Not without me, you won’t.

But something freezes her up. Over the shoulder of the hill on which the house perches, she glimpses the waters of Long Island Sound, stretching toward the Connecticut shore.

At the bottom of this hill, where the water washes up on Winthrop Island, there will be rocks.

Some boulders. Mike climbs out of the truck and she doesn’t stop him, doesn’t open the door to follow him.

She watches him circle around the hood and walk up the gravel path to the porch.

He rings the doorbell, peers through the front window, rings the doorbell again.

Then he tries the front door. It’s unlocked. He disappears through the doorway.

Fuck, Meredith thinks.

She reaches for the door handle and climbs out of the pickup.

The front room is stuffed with white wicker furniture and faded pastel cushions that smell of grandma.

No Mike, no Mr. Walker. Not a sound except the whir of a fan somewhere.

She passes a glass-topped coffee table on which rest a couple of books and an empty teacup, and enters a dining room that shows no sign of having been dined in since the last episode of Seinfeld .

Mike’s voice calls out nearby. Thank God for that, anyway.

To the left is a small, quaint kitchen. To the right is a sunroom with sliding glass doors, open to the sultry breeze that kicks in from the water.

Meredith’s brain is so jammed with panic signals that she forgets to hesitate, forgets to gird herself, and walks right out that door to the slope of clipped meadow grass and Mike, standing about twenty yards away, calling down to the rocky shore.

Now her throat seizes up. She throws out a hand to steady herself on the post that holds up the porch overhang. The breeze reeks of brine. She calls out Mike’s name in a watery voice and gathers herself.

You can do better, Meredith. This is your daughter, for God’s sake.

She calls again, projecting her voice across the grass.

Mike turns and points down the hill. Meredith launches herself forward—screw the hill, screw the boulders, screw the water—until the slope unfolds before her, the big gray rocks at the bottom, Harlan Walker making his way up toward Mike.

When he sees her appear next to Mike, he falters.

But only for a second or two. Then he gathers himself and continues up the steep slope until he arrives before them, a little out of breath.

A shock of windblown white hair flutters from his head, like Einstein.

His face is lined and wasted with age. With grief.

Of the man she met in the hospital room thirty years ago, nothing remains.

He holds out his hand. “Meredith. Harlan Walker.”

“My God,” she says.

He smiles. “Don’t you recognize me?”

“I don’t care who the fuck you are,” says Mike. “We’re looking for our daughter.”

The man frowns. Looks back and forth between the two of them. “Do you mean Audrey?”

“Yes, I mean Audrey! My daughter! I come back to the inn an hour after I left her there, and she’s gone! And the last person she saw there was you, asshole.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Mr. Walker looks at Meredith, alarmed. “I haven’t seen Audrey since I left the inn. That was some time ago. I walked straight home. Drank a glass of water and walked down to the shore—”

Mike reaches forward and grabs him by the collar. “Now, listen up—”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” says Meredith. “He’s telling the truth.”

“What the hell do you know?”

Meredith stares at Mr. Walker. “I just do.”

Mike makes an exasperated sigh and releases Walker’s shirt. Walker steps back, straightens his collar, and looks over his shoulder at the sea. His face wrinkles with concern. “I assume you’ve tried calling her. Or looking for a note.”

“You think?” says Mike. “She left her phone behind.”

Walker’s chest still moves from the effort of climbing the slope. His cheeks are pale.

“Hey,” says Meredith, “are you okay?”

“It’s nothing.” He looks at Mike. “Why do you think something’s happened to her? She might have gone off for a walk or an errand.”

“Because there’s something else missing,” Mike says.

“Something extremely valuable. And we’ve just found out that the whole fucking world seems to know about this thing and where it is, and— damn it.

Mair, come on. Let’s get back into town and start looking.

Someone’s got to have seen something, right? ”

Meredith’s staring at Walker’s face. The worry for Audrey still dizzies her—the panic still boils in her veins—but she can’t move her gaze from Walker’s eyes, from his pale, exhausted face.

Something’s wrong, she knows. She senses this with an instinct that eluded her thirty years ago in that hospital room in New London—a human sympathy that comes with knocking around the world a little, getting knocked around yourself.

It isn’t just that he looks so terribly old.

It’s something inside him, rotting away.

Maybe for years. Maybe since she last saw him.

“Let’s get you back in the house,” she says. “I think you need a little more water. Hot day like this.”

“Meredith?” says Mike. “Let’s go.”

Meredith takes Walker by the arm.

“I’m all right, really,” he says. “You should go with Mike.”

“ Hey. How do you know my name?”

“Mike, take it easy—”

“Hold on a second,” says Mike. “Hold on. You . I know you. You’re that guy, aren’t you? Bunch of years ago. You used to come and stay at the inn every year. You took my fucking dog with you, asshole. That was you .”

Harlan smiles. “Herman was a good girl. Filled a hole in my life. She passed away a couple of years ago, I’m afraid.”

“I’m so sorry,” says Meredith.

“The fuck with both of you!” Mike yells. He turns and starts back across the lawn to the sliding doors, but before he’s gone more than a few yards, he stops and yanks his phone out of his pants pocket.

“Who is it?” she calls out.

He lifts the phone to his ear and motions her to wait. “Hey, man. We’re in the middle of a situation here and—wait, what ? Are you sure? You’re sure it was her? With who ? Well, what did he look like?”

Meredith lurches forward. “What’s going on? Who saw her?”

Mike motions frantically. “Go. Don’t let her out of your sight. I’ll be on the next ferry. Just tell me—keep me posted, right?”

He lowers the phone and looks at Meredith. “Come on. We gotta go.”

“What the hell’s going on?” she yells.

“Sedge Peabody. Says he just saw Audrey roll off the ferry in some car driven by a guy he didn’t know. He said it looked off to him. He’s pulling out of line to follow them.”

“Oh, shit,” says Meredith. “It is the husband.”