Restoration Heights by Wil Medearis

Author:Wil Medearis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Published: 2018-11-22T15:56:42+00:00

Twelve

To the warehouse first, on an empty weekend train. His legs stiff from yesterday’s adventures, from lumbering through snow, from being soaked through with this incorrigible winter. Raw from last night’s alcohol and spent emotion. He meant everything he said and regretted all of it; it was an argument he tried never to air. It was too embedded in his own past, in his own experiences, for him to expect anyone to understand. He needed an hour or two on the courts to loosen up, which he wasn’t going to get. He looked for Harold outside the turnstiles and wasn’t surprised when he wasn’t there—all of his relationships deteriorating in the wake of his crusade.

After the warehouse—a subdued reunion, his coworkers hesitant to prod the wound of his week off—it was the Sewards’. The house seemed unfamiliar. The limestone exterior, the polished stairways, the rugs and sideboards, the just-so spacing of every arrangement, the abundance of effort that was apparent in every room, every nook—the sense that this was a space maintained by commitment and visual acuity—none of it seemed harmless anymore. It had abandoned the pretense of neutrality, become a testament of character, of motive. It vibrated with meaning.

They weren’t planning to be there long—four or five hours, just wrapping up details that the unplanned painting swap had pushed aside. Four paintings in the first floor dining room, a suite of photographs for a hallway upstairs. The dining room was the problem, and had been all week. Dottie had made them rearrange it four times, in each instance unsatisfied with something, the color or the size or some problem with the pattern—too much Leipzig, too clear a historical or conceptual link between whichever four artists were up at the time. Trying to make it work together without seeming like some sort of thesis. Mrs. Seward would have cut off the discussion days ago but she had left the city that morning with her husband, and Dottie’s appetite for nitpicking was insatiable.

She pulled Reddick aside when they arrived. “You’re only here because there was no one else.”

“I already told Lane I won’t cause trouble,” he said.

“This is none of your business. But I’m going to tell you anyway, in hopes that it will help you keep your word. We have heard from Hannah. She apologized for the way she left. She’s gone home to be with her family.”

“When did this happen?”

“Shortly after the incident.”

“So Tuesday? Wednesday?” Her timeline didn’t add up—Franky had admitted that Hannah was still missing yesterday morning.

“What does it matter?” she snapped. “I didn’t have to tell you at all. I only did so because I thought it would help you drop it, so please—drop it.”

They spent the morning on the dining room, then debated whether to break for lunch or push through and reach their weekend. Reddick voted lunch—it might be his only chance to sneak away. It was an even split—two for and two against—but the tie was broken when Dottie interrupted them again. She

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