Spoilers!
Sometimes what’s forged by blood ends in blood. Such is the case with Luanne Rice’s 2020 book, Last Day. Like an intricate painting — a theme throughout the book is art and its immersive, and alluring, power — Rice’s brushstrokes here are masterful and poetic, detailed and rich with symbolism, and like the best art, necessitating a second look at what was missed.
Kate and Beth are two sisters bonded by more than their sisterhood: the trauma of being literally bonded to their mother, who died from choking on the gag two art thieves put on her. Worse still, their gambling addict father is the one who paid the art thieves. More than 16 years later, Beth is brutally murdered in what appears at first to be both a sexual assault-turned-murder and another art theft of the same painting, no less. The same detective from the earlier case is on this case, too, Conor Reid. He almost has tunnel vision from the get-go that the culprit is Pete, Beth’s narcissistic (he’s constantly going on about his IQ and his Mensa score) and cheating husband. He had an affair with a younger graduate student working at their art gallery and impregnated her. In turn, Beth, when alive, had an affair with a younger artistic man, Jed, who she met while in prison visiting with her father at that same prison. She was pregnant at the time of her murder with Jed’s baby.
So, Pete was clearly a red herring thrown in by Rice, akin to an object at the forefront of a painting to obscure something else (and in this case, more sinister) in the background. But to Reid’s credit, with wise counsel from his Coast Guard brother, Tom, and new evidence coming to light, Reid turns his attention to other suspects, including Jed, Martin Harris (a sexual deviant in parole and who knew Beth through a soup kitchen she volunteered at), and Pete’s young lover.
Kate meanwhile and in contrast to Beth, turned cold after the tragedy that shaped their young lives. She turned off completely from anything romantic and instead took to the skies, quite literally, as a pilot. Now grounded by her sister’s tragic murder, she’s trying to help Sam, her niece, who cuts herself, and navigate whether she really knew her sister, at least as well as Lulu and Scotty did.
You see, Kate, Beth, Lulu, and Scotty were the “Compass Rose,” friends since childhood, who christened their friendship with a blood oath to stay together forever and with a promise of no secrets. Yet, secrets are bountiful among friends who maturate beyond the naïveté of youth. Beth didn’t tell Kate about Jed, or that it was Beth and Lulu who stole the painting as a way to reclaim some ownership, of a kind, from Pete. And also I think it’s clear Lulu loves Kate in a romantic way, but has never and still doesn’t reveal as much to her. Then, there’s Scotty, who also has an older daughter, Isabella, Sam’s best friend, who is rebelling, a husband who beyond the metaphor is running away from their marriage (he goes running for hours at at time), and a young daughter, Julie, with an intellectual disability. Scotty’s also drinking too much, and pitying herself over her comparison to Beth’s seemingly perfect life: the art gallery, the money, the perfect husband and daughter, and even the charitable efforts, like at the soup kitchen, which Scotty does, too (and where she also met Harris). Then, Scotty learns that it’s all a façade; Beth is cheating, she stole the painting, and Sam isn’t perfect, either.
That’s why Scotty is the one who killed Beth and made it seem like a sexual assault to probably make the cops think either Pete or Harris did it.
There are three reasons I started suspecting Scotty was the killer fairly early on:
1.) Like the artistic misdirection I mentioned earlier, a fact that wasn’t dwelled on, but was revealed, was that Scotty was also at the scene of the crime, Beth’s house, on her “last day.”
2.) Rice was spending enough time on developing Julie’s character, particularly how nobody had the patience to listen to her observations, that I figured she was going to be the key to the whole mystery, i.e., that Julie overheard and/or witnessed something crucial about Beth’s murder, and she did, with her mother.
3.) Harris knew details about Beth’s murder he could only have known if he was the killer, if he witnessed the killing, or if the real killer told him those details. Who else knew Harris besides Beth from the soup kitchen? Scotty; ergo.
So, while Rice didn’t fool me, I did get goosebumps when the moment was revealed to Kate (and Lulu). That’s indicative and representative of how well-handled the plotting, character-building, and reveal was by Rice. Phew, that was quite the scene, and just … sad. It wasn’t even a moment where you were hoping Kate decked Scotty in a fit of rage or impulsive revenge. It was just sad and tragic, which is what I think Rice was aiming for with her story.
And Rice even pays off Kate’s icy character arc by having Kate gingerly and lovingly take care of a rabbit nearly killed by a hawk, and them imbuing that metaphor with how Beth was a hungry ghost, lingering in the world of the living, until justice was done and Kate was okay, and then when she (and the rabbit) were done justice and healed, they were let go. Beautiful.
The best paintings, in my humble opinion, make you think and feel in equal measure, and to the latter, often in an aching way, evoking the pain innate in something beautiful. That’s what Rice achieved here with, Last Day. This was my first Rice book, and I’m happy to see how prolific she is, because it will not be my last.
Milam's Musings 