The Affliction Read online

  “Cranach’s Sybille of Cleves was coming to auction and Hugo had promised it to his collector for such and such a price. He knew there wouldn’t be heavy interest in the piece; it had been offered two years before and withdrawn when it didn’t meet its reserve. But he thought Madame Collector would never know that. Not surprisingly, Hugo had poached Madame Collector from the dealer in Paris who had shaped her holdings. Hugo met her somewhere socially, I forget the details. He romanced her and convinced her that the Paris dealer had been overcharging or self-dealing or something. I’m trying not to name names here, you understand.”

  “I do.”

  “Dealers are a competitive lot, but they don’t like it when someone is spitting in the common soup. So they made a pact to bid the piece up. Hugo couldn’t figure out what was happening. He was in the room, but the bids were coming in by phone. Clearly he had to make a good show of fighting for the piece, even as his margin of profit got smaller and smaller. He had quoted Madame Collector a much higher price than he thought he’d buy it for. He just had to choose the right moment to drop out, when he’d be able to say he’d done it to protect Madame from overpaying. But they played him. They dropped out while he still had his paddle up. The selling price was way more than he had. Someone put Madame wise and she refused to advance him the money, and he couldn’t settle his account with the auction house and the sale had to be canceled. You don’t get to do that twice in this lifetime; he’d have been barred. He was pretending it wasn’t a big deal, but he desperately needed that loan.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I made the mistake of telling Caroline what I just told you. She got angry at me, and protective of Hugo, and that was the last time she asked me for advice.”

  “Dessert? Coffee, monsieur, madame?” said the waiter, dropping new menus on the table.

  “Coffee, please,” said Hope with a bright smile. She noticed that the champagne bottle was upside down in the bucket again.

  “Dessert?”

  “Just the fruit for me,” said Angus.

  “Madame?”

  “A double espresso, please,” said Hope, wondering if they served a triple.

  “Dessert wine, monsieur?”

  “What about a little port?” Angus asked her. “Or the late harvest Sémillon from the North Fork, that’s very nice.”

  Hope pretended to think about it, then said, “Just the coffee, please.” She wanted to add “and a pillow and a blanket and I’ll just lie down over there, under the piano,” but she made it through to their parting at the curb where Angus kissed her on the cheek and put her into a taxi. He was looking after her, wistfully waving as the car pulled away.

  * * *

  Hope and Maggie had agreed to Skype at nine o’clock that evening.

  On her computer screen, Hope could see that Maggie was in a room she didn’t recognize. It had French toile wallpaper that must have cost a king’s ransom when it was new, which was not at all recently.

  “Where are you?”

  “Christina’s house. In the second-best guest room.”

  “Who got the best one?”

  “Pinky.”

  “That’s right, I forgot.”

  “I thought staying here would be easiest. And certainly cheapest, and I can be more help to Christina from here. Also her French is much better than mine, so she can help me stay a step ahead of the class. Why do you keep putting that spoon against your eye?”

  “When was the last time you drank a whole bottle of champagne at lunch?” Hope asked.

  Maggie looked startled. “I don’t think ever.”

  “Well I have, but not lately. I had no idea how much difference thirty or forty years would make in my capacity.”

  “Where on earth did you have lunch?”

  “Members Dining Room. The Met. With Angus Westphall. Oh, my god, that man has a hollow leg.”

  “This was very noble service, you. I’ll see that you get the department’s commendation.”

  “You better. I’ve never had such a headache in my life. My eye feels like it’s going to explode.”

  “Was it worth it?”

  “To who?”

  Maggie would have said “whom,” but she couldn’t bring herself to torture an ailing colleague. “I’ll rephrase. Did you learn anything useful?”

  “Did I ever. Let’s see if I have enough brain cells left to repeat it.”

  Hope then did a creditable job of reporting Angus’s story.

  “Well, that is very very interesting,” Maggie said.

  “I know,” said Hope, making a piteous sound as she laid the cool spoon against her other eye. “How are things there?”

  “Jesse Goldsmith is out of the hospital.”

  “Did they let him go home?”

  “Oh no. He’s in custody. Probably good; he’d need massive protection if he wasn’t under arrest. It’s gotten really ugly here.”

  “In what way?”

  “Someone painted a swastika on the front of Marcia’s house. There’s a thing trending on social media here. People keep retweeting ‘A loaded gun in a crowded church? Hashtag Jewsneedtoleave.’”

  “I don’t even understand what you just said.”

  Maggie wrote it on a piece of paper, as it would look as a tweet, and held it up for Hope to read.

  A loaded gun in a crowded church? #Jewsneedtoleave.

  “Yes but . . . Oh, wait. I think I have it. If he took a loaded gun to a crowded church that means he’s Jewish?”

  “That’s the gist.”

  “Oh god. Is it just me, or is there something really evil slouching around out there?”

  “But wait. Did I tell you about my conversation with Hugo, the first night I met him?”

  “A little bit. You told me something about that way he stammers . . .”

  “Yes. I remembered who he reminds me of. A father of one of my students in Washington, a politician. He used to do that exact stammering thing when he was controlling the conversation. This was some time ago, when—”

  “Darling, please don’t tell me a story, I’m not a well woman.”

  “Oh. Sorry. It’s interesting, though.”

  “Punch line, please.”

  “He was a total liar. He’s in jail now. My theory is he did that stammering thing to give himself time to come up with the right lie for the right person.”

  After a pause, Hope said, “That is interesting.”

  “But that wasn’t what I meant to tell you. In that first conversation, do you remember, Hugo told me he had flown to Europe with Caroline on their honeymoon, but his back went into spasm and they had to turn around and come right back on the QE2? Something about claustrophobia on planes and boats.”

  “The QE2 is a boat,” said Hope.

  “You’re missing the point. Isn’t it convenient that he never can go to Europe with his wife, where he has a reputation he’d rather she didn’t hear about?”

  After a long silence, Hope said, “Oh poor Caroline. I’m beginning to have a really creepy feeling about this guy. And now, I am going to bed.”

  Chapter 18

  Saturday, May 9

  As will happen in spring, especially in a year of El Niño, the rain had cleared off by Saturday morning in Rye-on-Hudson and the temperature had risen into the seventies. Maggie and Pinky Tyson sat in the shade of the front porch of the head’s house after breakfast, each studying French for different reasons. Pinky was wearing a newsboy hat over her moth-eaten hair and she was chewing gum. This was technically not allowed on campus, but since it helped her concentrate, Christina had declared a dispensation within her walls, and this morning extended the boundary to include the porch.

  Maggie looked up to ask Pinky a question about irregular verbs and found that Pinky was not reading but watching the street in front of Sloane House. A silver Mercedes-Benz SUV had pulled up to the curb, and Maggie followed Pinky’s gaze in time to see Hugo Hollister get out, wearing green linen pants and a short-sleeved polo
shirt showing off his tanned and muscular arms. In a very few minutes, Lily Hollister, Steph Ruhlman, and two other girls whose names Maggie didn’t know came out chattering among themselves, wearing shorts and flip-flops and pulling roller suitcases. They stopped and posed close together, sporting huge smiles, wide open eyes, and raised eyebrows while Steph took a selfie of them all with her phone and Hugo loaded their luggage. When everyone was in and belted down, the car drove off.

  “What’s all that?” Maggie asked.

  “They’re going to Lily’s country house overnight,” said Pinky.

  “That sounds like fun.”

  “Yes,” said Pinky neutrally.

  Both were still looking at the street where the SUV had been.

  “Have you ever been there?” Maggie asked.

  “No. I’ve seen the pictures though. Lily takes friends, and they post about it all weekend.”

  “I know Lily and Steph. If the other two are in my classes I haven’t met them yet.”

  Pinky picked up her phone from the table between them and opened Instagram. She showed Maggie the screen, on which glowed the picture they’d just seen taken.

  “The one in the red hat is Melanie Meek. Ann Semple is this one.”

  Pinky’s phone made a noise, and she saw that she’d gotten another picture, this one taken inside the SUV.

  “Here,” she said, showing it to Maggie. “That’s Ann.”

  Ann was holding a cellophane bag of licorice allsorts up to her cheek, beaming and pointing to the candy.

  * * *

  Detective Phillips paused outside the Frigate Bookshop on Main Street, in Rye-on-Hudson. Inside, all was quiet. She could see a small colorless man sitting behind the counter, head bowed, so still she wasn’t entirely sure he was breathing. But the sign in the window read open, so she did.

  A bell tinkled above the door as she stepped in, and the man came to life, closed his book, and said, “Good morning.”

  “Good morning.”

  After a pause, the man asked, “Are you looking for something particular? Or just kicking the tires?”

  “Neither, really. Detective Phillips, White Plains PD.”

  “Well, welcome,” said Mattias Benes. “We live to serve.”

  Phillips walked farther into the shop, looking around with genuine curiosity. The last time she’d been in a shop selling nothing but books—no cards, no chocolate, no cappuccinos, no calendars—she’d been about ten. She inhaled, remembering something from childhood, maybe to do with libraries.

  “I didn’t know stores like this still existed,” she said.

  Mattias made a small laugh-like sound. “All swept away in the Amazon? Not quite. At least not yet.”

  Detective Phillips had wandered toward the vintage children’s books. After a while she pulled out a worn hardcover copy of Curious George. She opened it in the middle, and Mattias watched her read. Without realizing it, she’d begun to smile.

  “That’s just a readers’ copy,” he offered. “Hardly pristine, and priced accordingly.”

  She put it back and pulled out a book entitled The Roosevelt Bears, featuring the illustrated adventures of Teddy B (for brown) and Teddy G (gray). She turned the pages. Then she looked at the price penciled on the flyleaf and whistled.

  “It’s a first,” said Mattias. “I should keep it in the locked case, but I like looking at it myself.”

  Phillips put the book back in the shelf with care.

  “I came to town to talk to Todd Goldsmith,” she said. “His office is closed.”

  “There’s a lot of feeling in town about what his boy did. There were some incidents.”

  “So I’ve gathered. Do you know where I can find him?”

  “He had a little apartment in the Pendleton building, but I think he’s left town. His son, the other one, was here for a little while yesterday morning, helping him pack. I haven’t seen either of them since. Kate Curtin in The Wooly Bear would know more.”

  “That’s Ellie Curtin’s mother?”

  Mattias nodded.

  “She’s next on my list. Thank you.”

  She left the shop, bell tinkling. Mattias watched from behind his desk as she crossed the street midblock and went into the yarn shop opposite.

  Detective Bark stood in the open door to the firehouse, getting his eyes adjusted to the dark interior. The town firetruck stood facing out and ready. It was far from a new model, but the hardware was polished. He began to walk in, his hard soles sounding on the concrete floor. By the time he reached the back of the building, where four men sat around a folding table with cards in their hands, the game had stopped and four heads were turned toward him, staring. There was a wiry little one with a belly that hung out over his belt like a plaid beach ball. There was a dark-haired unshaven one whose T-shirt said lipsey plumbing on the front. There was a fair-haired one with a toothbrush mustache, and there was the one with the butternut squash head. Ray Meagher was glaring at him.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” said Bark.

  “You can’t just follow me around and barge in here,” Ray said aggressively.

  “Pretty sure this is a municipal facility, Ray. Anyone with business here can come in.”

  “What’s your business then?”

  “You gentleman all auxiliary police, are you?”

  “I’m not,” said the Lipsey Plumbing man.

  “Uh-huh. So the rest of you are. I have a few questions. Would I be right, that you all act as watchmen for the school up there on the hill, Rye Manor?”

  There was a pause.

  “We patrol the town when needed,” said the mustache man, quoting some job description or employment contract.

  “That a full-time job?” the detective asked, eyeing the playing cards.

  “When needed,” the same man said again, a little louder, as if Bark were deaf or slow.

  “I see. And when are you needed?”

  They kept nervously exchanging glances, as if they would coach each other if anyone knew what to say, or what not to.

  Mustache said, “Parades. Concerts. Night patrol at the campuses. That type of thing.”

  “I see. And this is on foot, in a car, what?”

  “Foot. Car. Bicycle. It depends.”

  Mustache was doing the talking but Bark kept his eyes on Ray. Who was not enjoying it.

  “You wear uniforms, the whole deal?”

  “Sometimes just the badge at night.”

  “If it’s too much trouble to put on the whole kit?” Bark asked.

  “That type of thing,” said Mustache.

  “And you have firearms, do you? When you’re on duty?”

  The three who were not Ray shifted or twitched in various ways. Ray narrowed his eyes.

  “Nah,” said Mustache.

  “Sometimes I take a baseball bat, if I’m in the car,” said the belly.

  “Dangerous job?”

  “You never know.”

  Then everyone looked at Ray. “Auxiliary police are not armed,” he said coldly, knowing that Bark knew the answer before he asked.

  “But what about you, Ray? You were an air marshal. You had a weapon with the marshals, didn’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “You still got it?”

  “What’s it to you? It’s licensed. What are you trying to say here?” He suddenly raised his voice, rising from his chair.

  “Whoa,” said Bark. “Just asking questions. Why, is there a problem?”

  “There’s a problem and you know it! You are harassing me! I am an innocent man and you keep inferring something . . .”

  “I think you mean implying, Ray,” said Bark. He’d been helping his youngest study for the SATs. “Or maybe insinuating.” Ray’s face began to turn red.

  Mustache said softly to Ray, “Sit down, Ray. We got this.”

  Ray had a hard time downshifting, but after a minute, still bristling, he sat.

  Mustache said, “Is there something you needed, detective?”<
br />
  “Yeah, one more thing. When you patrol say, down at the junior high at night, do you have keys to the buildings?”

  Mustache said after a beat, “No, we don’t.”

  “What about up at Rye Manor, do you have keys to the buildings up there?”

  “No. We just watch for things that don’t look right, and if we see something we call the police.”

  “The real police.”

  “The police in White Plains,” said Mustache, exactly as offended as he was meant to be, but resisting the bait.

  “What about you, Ray? You have a set of keys to the buildings there?”

  Everyone had seen this coming. They all looked at Ray to see how he’d field it.

  Ray looked levelly at Bark. “The dorms have keypad systems. I don’t have the codes. There’s a set of keys in the office if I need them. Why don’t you ask Sharon Comfort if she put Florence in the swimming pool? She’s got the keys to the whole shebang. Or those dykes at the stable, or Carlos, the maintenance guy? He’s got keys to everything. He’s got a wife and nine kids but hey, maybe he and Florence were having a thing, you check that out?” He did not add “asshole,” but everyone heard it hanging in the air.

  The three other guys at the table were looking at their cards or their laps. They knew that Ray was not doing himself any favors.

  “What makes you think we haven’t?” Bark asked, genially. He stood for a long minute, his eyes locked on Ray’s until Ray looked away. Then Bark turned and left the firehouse.

  In the car on the way back to White Plains, Phillips said, “You get anything from the poker boys?”

  “Nope. I keep thinking if I keep Ray rattled, he’ll eventually make a mistake.”

  “What kind of mistake?”

  “Contradict himself. Try to get rid of something. Lose his temper and blow.”

  Phillips drove in silence. “You talk to the DA?”

  “Yep. Still no. She wants more than circumstantial.”

  “And they want us on the home invasion in Scarsdale?”