“Despite the old-fashioned clothes, it has to be a painting of Darcy,” Claire insisted. “When did you do it?”
Nick took her hand as if to steady her, or maybe to warn her to be careful of what she said.
His voice quiet but not calm, Will told them, “You have heard that all of us have strangers who are doubles somewhere in the world, haven’t you? It’s just that we seldom see them.” He hugged the album to his chest, resting his chin on it. “That is not Darcy, but my dear grandmother, Vanessa White Warren. I have her to thank for my obsession with butterflies.”
There it was, Claire thought. But she didn’t believe him. He must have had an obsession with Darcy, and if it was because she looked like his beloved grandmother, that didn’t change her suspicions of him.
“But you never showed her this, or she would have told me,” Claire accused, trying to control her voice and expression.
“No, I—I just kept it all to myself. I actually think it might have unsettled her, made her think I didn’t like her for herself. But I must admit it made me want to keep her as a friend.”
To keep her... Those words echoed in Claire’s head. The crazy collector in that novel had wanted to keep his prisoner trapped, like a caught butterfly. So, Claire agonized, Darcy had never been here, or at least didn’t see this portrait. But could she believe this man?
“Let me explain,” Will said as she tore her gaze away from the painting. It seemed—how she wished—that the real Darcy could just step from the canvas, to be here, alive and well.
“Sit, both of you, please,” Will said, indicating a rose-hued velvet settee under the window Claire had peered through. All the furniture in this room off the kitchen was tastefully old-fashioned, like a little shrine to the era of the painting.
They complied. Nick kept ahold of her hand, and Will cleared magazines away to perch on the coffee table in front of them, though the picture still loomed large behind him.
“Let me explain,” he said yet again, and Claire forced herself to look at him. She told herself she had to use her forensic skills to see if he was telling the truth, to read his expression, words and tone of voice, his body language. He seemed uptight, emotional, but then, so was she.
He opened the old photograph album and turned it toward them on his knees. Mostly small black-and-white photographs, some evidently glued on the black paper pages, some set in little corner gummed holders so they could be removed. He flipped several pages, and she noticed his hands shook. Eagerness? Nerves? Guilt?
“Here’s the photograph I painted from, though there are many others you might want to look at,” he said, pointing. “Ironic that her name was Vanessa, and that’s the genus for the painted lady butterfly. Ironies and coincidences do happen in life,” he added as Claire recalled that Detective Jensen had always insisted there was no such thing as a coincidence in a criminal investigation.
Looking closely at the picture, Nick cleared his throat, and Claire gasped. They both leaned closer. Yes, an old photo of that woman in the painting, holding a butterfly net, though the dress was not quite the same as the one Will had painted. Claire looked up at the painting, then squinted back at the photo again.
“Paternal or maternal grandmother?” she asked.
“Paternal. She was born in 1902, died in her early eighties. I figure that photo was taken when she was about eighteen, 1920 or so, though I admit the picture looks almost Victorian. But then American styles in the wilderness of south Georgia where she lived probably did not keep up with shorter skirts and bobbed hair.”
Claire skimmed the other photos on these two pages, then flipped the page to look at others of the same woman. Yes, a distinct, powerful resemblance to Darcy. So that was why he’d been drawn to her?
“So much like Darcy,” she whispered, then spoke louder. “Will, under the circumstances, under all this pressure, I was certain you had painted Darcy.”
“No. If I had asked her, you and Steve would have known.”
“Yes. That was Darcy. She shared most important things, so if she’d intended to leave Naples in any way, she would have told me.”
“I was just blown away when I returned from several years living in Japan and saw her—I think you and Lexi might have been with her and Jilly that first day—at the library for story time. Darcy’s resemblance to Grandmother Vanessa is uncanny. You know, I have that very butterfly net Grandmother is holding in that photo and several others in the album. And I did plan to share all this with Darcy—someday.”
He rose and went to a framed shadow box on the wall nearer the kitchen, lifted it off hooks and carried it to them. He removed the back of the box and the net. He shook it out and swirled it in the air.
“She taught me, among other things, when she was widowed and came to live with us in Florida, that there is an art to making and using a net. First, the material must be soft as a spiderweb and at least that strong.”
He looked up at them. His eyes seemed glazed. With emotion? He sounded almost poetic. She would have to admit he was telling the truth with all this proof, with his intensity—wasn’t he? Although he was looking at them, he seemed to be seeing someone somewhere else. And from the first day Darcy disappeared, he had always seemed genuinely distressed, even desperate, and she knew how that felt. Surely she’d been wrong to suspect this man of anything. That haunting novel about the butterfly collector had set her off, wasting time on Will when someone else must be at fault.
When she and Nick said nothing, Will went on. “You need to make a swift sweep with the net to capture the butterfly. Get the net under your prey, then with a strong move, swing it up so as not to injure the plant it may be on or just leaving. To release it, just reverse,” he said with a flick of his wrist, “and none the worse, butterflies are free. Yet, there is a real art to it, you see.”
Nick finally spoke. “Are those butterflies mounted on the wall ones you netted?”
“Every last one here or there,” he told them with a nod. “I’m sure, given a choice, they would have preferred to live, but it is not only for my good but the good of all mankind that we catch, examine, preserve and write about them. And display them in all their captured beauty.”
Handing the album back, Claire told him, “You know, just as if there were a swoop of someone’s huge net, Darcy is gone—but I hope not harmed. I hope she is only being held but then released.”
“We’ll be sure she’s found,” Nick promised, and Will nodded.
But how Nick had worded that terrified her more than anything that had happened so far. Before, Nick had always said, “We’ll find her.”
After Will served them iced tea, Nick and Claire finally got around to asking him their other questions. The tension in the air had lifted slightly now, Nick thought. Still on the settee with the long-gone Vanessa staring at them, he said, “We know Larry Ralston’s father is a prominent funeral director here and up and down this coast, but Detective Jensen mentioned his brother, Clint, claimed his body. There must be some kind of a family feud.”
“Very strange,” Will said, “but then the family is a bit estranged. You know, Aaron Ralston does the let-us-comfort-you TV commercials for his funeral homes. He’s also quite well-known around town since he’s been here so long and his father was what they used to call an undertaker before him. His funeral home buried both my parents.”
“My mother, too,” Nick said.
“And mine,” Claire added.
Will said to her, “I believe your mother—her name was Miranda, correct?—used to patronize the library extensively, brought you two little girls to story time.”
“Yes, she was the reader to end all readers, sharing books aloud with us that we were sometimes too young to understand. Darcy always kidded about our childhood honorary English and American literature degrees from having an agoraphobic, bibliophile mother. Yes, she would go out to the library or, later, just send us with her list. And didn’t you drop books at the house once?”
“I believe I did,” he said with a wistful little smile, yet his eyes were sad. “Yes, I remember.”
Nick cleared his throat. “So anyway, you don’t really know Clinton Ralston?”
Will shook his head and rattled his ice cubes in his empty, sweating glass. “I don’t really know the man per se, but I’ve observed him closely at two funerals where I’ve had butterfly releases. He must have known the deceased, because he certainly wasn’t there to help his father with the arrangements. I’ve seen and overheard some conversations he’s had at community events, conversations with strangers that seemed secretive and anxious who then more or less nodded and quickly disappeared. Call me too suspicious and interested in mystery and suspense novels, but from time to time I’ve thought he must be into something secretive or illegal. I’ve tried to look more into him, but haven’t gone so far as to follow him yet,” he said with a short laugh. “But he seems at times to be a mystery man.”
“Maybe just an investor in his father’s funeral empire,” Claire put in, “but one who doesn’t want anything to do with morticians and death. Then why was he so intent on getting his brother’s body? Maybe, since Larry was a fisherman, he wanted to be buried at sea—anathema to their father and very bad public relations for the Ralston funeral empire—so Clint agreed to take care of that and even prepared a legal document in case their father balked.”
“You did see the obit in the morning paper, didn’t you?” Will asked, getting up to go back into the kitchen. “I mean, there was all that further coverage of Darcy’s disappearance, so maybe you missed it,” he called back over his shoulder.
He opened and folded the newspaper as he hurried back, extending it to them. “Only a memorial service announcement, not visiting hours per se or burial mentioned for Lawrence Ralston.” He summarized what they were reading with their heads bent together. “Even the place and time are not given here, but you have to get on his Captain Larry website for details. Sad. Quite a young man, I believe, though his age isn’t given, either. Someone on the library staff thought he was divorced with no children. At least there is no mention of the court trial he’s escaped regarding that dolphin, right, Counselor?”
“Correct. So, two mysteries,” Nick said, putting his empty glass on a coffee table coaster. “I won’t get to defend him on whether he caught or killed a dolphin. Now, the question may be who killed him.”
“But the earlier newspaper article implied that his death could be accidental.”
“A text came in while you were making the tea and Claire was looking through the photo album,” Nick said. “The police techs that are combing his boat checked Larry’s phone that was lying on a seat in the stern. It contained an email of a brief suicide note sent only to his brother.”
“Really?” Will said, wide-eyed. “I hope the police checked that phone to see if there were fingerprints or DNA on it that weren’t Larry’s.”
“If that’s true, then he didn’t fall in but jumped,” Claire said, reaching out to grip Nick’s arm. “I know a suicide is especially terrible for you, sweetheart, but you may not be able to disprove this one.”
Will said nothing but pulled his chair closer. It was almost as if the three of them, in mutual trust now, observed a moment of silence for the tragedy—and Claire again feared for Darcy’s life.
“I don’t tell many people this, Will,” Nick said, his voice quiet, “but I think we’ve learned we can trust you. My father’s death was ruled a suicide when I was young—he had a gun in his hand, bullet to the brain. I’ve since founded a small group that helps people whose lives are impacted like that. Maybe the insurance company reneges on their insurance, or someone is blamed who shouldn’t be, or it was a staged suicide that was actually a murder. It took me years, a law degree and Claire’s help, but I proved my dad was killed and ultimately brought the murderer to justice—that is, he paid with his life.”
“You don’t mean you killed him?” Will asked.
“No. His own evil and the god of justice did that—actually, he drowned, so this Larry Ralston thing hits close to home even though all our efforts must go to finding Darcy. I know I for one won’t rest until we find her!”
Nick was about to finally drop off to sleep that night when Claire spoke from beside him. She’d already woken him up once earlier, saying, “It was really nice of Will to send those books he bought for Jilly home with us.”
“Mmm. Very nice. He’s a strange guy.”
“I mean, Lexi has that doll, but he’s the first person who has given us something for Jilly.”
“Yeah. Glad you changed your mind about him.”
“He had proof that woman was his grandmother. Just chance she looked like Darcy.”
“Yeah. For sure,” he said, stifling a huge yawn.
Now he was ready to drop off again, swimming in exhaustion.
“Nick, we need to go to that Larry Ralston memorial. I read the invitation over twice. Out on the rocks at Doctors Pass, no less. Could that be a link to Lincoln Yost or is it just a coincidence—well, there I go again with that. And at sunset, when it will soon be dark and everyone will be way out on those rocks? They are dangerous enough in the daytime. If we stand far enough back, maybe no one will ID us. Or we could go in some sort of disguise.”
Nick rolled onto his back and stared at the dark ceiling. “Claire, I don’t think Clint Ralston will want the people who found his brother’s body there.”
“I don’t care! And that’s a reason to go a bit disguised. If not that, then we need to follow Clint when he leaves, at least find out where he goes, where he lives. Who is he really that he’s so mysterious?”
“Sweetheart, you read Will wrong, so don’t go jumping to conclusions about Ralston just because he keeps his occupation private. Maybe he’s a big investor, maybe he’s undercover FBI, maybe he’s Mafia. I just mean, okay, I’ll think about that, but it seems too cloak and dagger—in other words, damned dangerous.”
“But for Darcy, damned dangerous is nothing—or everything, I don’t know.”
He heard her sniffle and start to cry. As tired as he was, he pulled her to him, turning her back toward him so that they were lying sideways and she was curled protectively against him. He kissed her shoulder and held her close until she quieted.
“We’ll do it, but be careful,” he promised. “I think—I hope—Bronco’s got things locked down here if any of Clint’s subtle threats were real. But we cannot—cannot—rile him, give him or that Jedi watchdog an excuse to come after our family.”