A.W. Hartoin - Mercy Watts 04 - Drop Dead Red (36 page)

Chuck turned around with his frying pan and saw me, standing there like weirdo stalker.
 

“What are you doing?” he asked.
 

Watching you.
 

“I was hungry.”
 

He smiled and I did my best not to look down from his face. Those PJ bottoms were hanging low on his hips. Very low.
 

“Great. I made pancakes and cinnamon apples.”
 

“Um…good. Great. I’m just going to go back to the living room and do some stuff that I have to do.”
 

Smooth, Mercy.
 

“We can eat in there,” said Stevie.
 

“Yeah, great.” I practically ran out. What a loser.
 

We ended up sitting around Pop Pop’s sofa table, eating, and watching
The Hobbit
. The pancakes were fabulous. Aaron had competition, except there wasn’t any chocolate. The cinnamon apples were very tasty, though.
 

Chuck kept looking at me the whole time and it was unnerving. I think he expected me to Fike him at any minute. My dad had a partner named Michael Fike, who used to lose him on purpose. Getting ditched came to be called getting Fiked. I knew I should Fike Chuck at the first opportunity, but my mind was dulled by copious amounts of sugar. I wasn’t sure where to start. We now had listeriosis, mass murder, a rape, and a strangling. Why couldn’t we have a nice white collar crime? A little tax evasion or fraud? Something that didn’t cause the victim physical pain.
 

“I’m sorry we didn’t find anything on the Bleds,” said Chuck after scraping the last of his syrup off his plate and licking the fork clean. I think I was supposed to watch the licking. I didn’t. Well, maybe out of the corner of my eye.
 

“It was a long shot,” I said. “At least we can say we left no stone unturned.”
 

The cat walked in from the kitchen and jumped up onto Pop Pop’s chair. The same place I’d found him three times that morning before tossing him out.
 

“How does that thing keep getting in?” I asked.

“While you were gone yesterday, I did a little investigating,” said Chuck.
 

“And?”
 

“I have no idea. There are no open windows and no cat flap.”

Stevie belched, loud and juicy. “No, we didn’t.”
 

Chuck and I looked at him, but the goofball didn’t elaborate. He started licking his plate. His mother would have had a heart attack. Olivia didn’t approve of any kind of licking. How that prim woman gave birth to Stevie was a mystery and made me wonder if I should remain the last egg in the family basket. If I did breed and came up with someone like Stevie, it wouldn’t be worth it.
 

“Okay,” said Chuck. “I can’t stand it. We didn’t what?”
 

“Huh?” asked Stevie, peeking over the rim of his plate.
 

“You said we didn’t do something. What didn’t we do?”
 

“Oh, yeah. We didn’t look in there.” He pointed to the sofa table. Of course. The sofa table wasn’t a table at all. It was a tool chest, made by Pop Pop’s grandfather. Pop Pop didn’t have much use for tools, so he made it into a sofa table. We cleared off all the rubbish. Pop Pop did like his sports magazines. He had everything from
Sports Illustrated
to
Golf Digest
. We made stacks next to the chest and then examined its padlock.
 

“I can pick it,” said Chuck.
 

“And relock it?” The padlock was an old brass job with a large keyhole. If we needed the key to relock it, covering up our snooping would be a lot harder.
 

Chuck examined the lock. “Maybe not. Let’s look for the key.”
 

We searched the house for a half hour and came up empty. It was pick the lock or give up.
 

“I say you pick it,” said Stevie.
 

“You would,” I said.
 

“You want to know what’s in there, you gotta be bad.” He grinned. “They’ll get over it. They always do.”
 

“That’s your parents.”
 

“You’re their only grandbaby. What’re they gonna do? Take away your birthday?”
 

“Fine. Go for it, Chuck,” I said.
 

“Music to my ears.” He waggled his eyebrows at me.
 

“Will you never learn?”
 

More waggling. “Probably not, but I’m hoping you will.”
 

I rolled my eyes.
 

“Learn what?” asked Stevie.
 

“Never mind.”
 

Chuck got his picks and had the lock off in two minutes flat. The chest opened with a loud creak. It was filled with photo albums, old ones with crumbling paper pages and black and white photos held on with little black triangles on the corners. We carefully lifted out each one and went through the pages. The oldest album was from the 1920s and it was filled with family pictures of a car trip out to the Grand Canyon.
 

“One more,” said Stevie.
 

I leaned over and looked, gripping the side of the trunk. “That’s it.”
 

Stevie and Chuck scooted over on either side of me and all three of us gazed down at the last album in the bottom of the trunk. It was large and square with an embossed cover that said, ‘Our Friends.’
 

“How do you know?” asked Stevie.
 

“It’s identical to the scrapbook Florence Bled kept on Stella Bled Lawrence during the war,” I said.
 

“There’s a scrapbook on Stella?” asked Chuck as he lifted the album out and put it into my lap.
 

“There’s probably lots of books like that,” said Stevie.
 

“No way. It’s exactly the same. Look at this clasp and the border. The Bleds don’t buy things at Walmart. Stella’s book was specially made. This is hand stitching.”
 

“What does Stella’s book say on the front?’ asked Chuck.

“Tarragon,” I said.
 

“Like the spice?”
 

“I guess.”
 

“Open it. Let’s see what we’ve got,” said Chuck.
 

I opened the cover and found a large portrait of a couple under a sign that said ‘Happy 40
th
Anniversary.’ The man was thin and studious-looking with thick glasses and thinning grey hair. His wife was a buxom blond.
 

“Hey. She looks like you, Mercy. Not so Marilyn though. Who is it?” asked Stevie.

“Amelie and Paul. They’re my great-great-great-grandparents.”
 

I turned the page and found pictures of the party. There were tons of people. Amelie and Paul must’ve been pretty popular.
 

“What year is it? The hair is weird,” said Stevie.
 

“Has to be the thirties.” I carefully pulled a photo out of its triangles and read the back. It was dated September 24, 1938 and had a bunch of names identifying the people in the photo. I didn’t recognize any of them.

“Are there any Bleds?” asked Chuck. “I only know a few.”
 

I thought back to all the portraits in the Bled mansion and in Prie Dieu, the family seat. I did know Bleds, but there were a lot of them. I’d only recognize the ones closest to Myrtle and Millicent, their father, uncles, and close cousins like Stella. There was a certain look to the Bleds, a self-assurance that great wealth brought. I didn’t see that in the photos.
 

I leafed through the pages and the photos changed from the party to what I assumed was Amelie and Paul’s anniversary trip. They took a huge ocean liner called
The Destiny
and went to Europe. No Bleds in any of the shipboard photos or on their Grand Tour around Europe. They landed in Liverpool and toured England, then Italy, Greece, Austria, and Germany (a questionable idea in 1938). I was about to give up when I got to the last country, France. Gorgeous pictures of a happy couple still in love after thirty years decorated the pages as they traveled through Burgundy and the Loire Valley. There were lots of laughing shots and a few where Paul was grinning in a bad boy sort of way and Amelie’s eyes were narrowed, shades of my parents. Chuck leaned in and slid his arm around my waist. He was smiling down at my ancestors and I didn’t stop him. I didn’t want him to stop.
 

“Maybe it’s not there. The album could be a coincidence,” he said.
 

“It could be, but it’s not. I know it’s not. I have a feeling.”
 

“Then by all means, flip the page,” he said, his breath warm on my ear.
 

And I did. Amelie and Paul were in Paris in1938. They went to all the usual spots. Notre Dame. The Eiffel Tower. Then I was on the third to last page, scanning the faded photos and there they were, sitting at a table in a little café overlooking the Seine. Stella Bled Lawrence and Nicky Lawrence. They were squashed together to fit in the frame with Amelie and Paul. I couldn’t breathe. We’d found it. The connection in black and white.
 

“Is that…” Chuck squeezed me.
 

“It is.”
 

“Check the back.”
 

I gingerly slid the picture out. The back was blank. I put it back and stared at the faces. Amelie and Paul were much as they’d been throughout the entire album. Happy. Perhaps a bit tired. Stella and Nicky were smiling, but happy wasn’t in their eyes. I remembered that they’d gotten married in 1938 and went on their wedding trip through Europe, a trip the entire family tried to talk them out of. There was a photo of Stella and Nicky in Venice, sitting in a place of honor in the Bled mansion. It was my favorite of the family pictures. They stood in front of a gondola being amazingly gorgeous, set for a big adventure which they had in World War Two. That picture was taken…what did Millicent tell me?

“What are you trying to remember?” asked Chuck.
 

“When the photo of Nicky and Stella was taken, the one at Myrtle and Millicent’s, it was their honeymoon, but I think they’d already been to France. There was some story about Stella buying a whole new wardrobe in Paris at the beginning of the trip. Her mother was furious. Her original honeymoon clothes are in the attic at Prie Dieu. She had them sent back. I don’t think they would’ve gone to Paris twice on the same trip. Look at their faces. They were blooming in Venice, but in this picture they look like they’ve lost twenty pounds at least.”
 

We flipped through the rest of the photos. Stella and Nicky didn’t appear again. The next shots were of Marseille and then of another ship, not the one they’d taken over.
 

“Stevie, can you run up and get Nana’s magnifying glass? It’s on a pole next to her bed for stitching.”
 

He got the magnifying glass and I went back to the picture with Stella and Nicky. I held it over the photo. It was easy to see with magnification. Stella was wearing heavy makeup in an attempt to conceal a split lip and some faded bruises. Nicky’s hands had something wrong with them. He held them in his lap like he was in pain. The clothes were brand new and off the rack, nice, but the fit wasn’t quite right. Stella’s clothes were always custom as were Nicky’s suits. He was a very tall man with broad shoulders and the suit he had on pinched and bunched.
 

“You see the bruises, right?” asked Chuck.

“Oh, yeah,” I said.
 

“What do you think happened?”
 

“No clue, but it was something serious. The clothes aren’t right. There’s the weight loss and bruising. Look at the rings under their eyes. They wouldn’t have gone to Paris twice. That’s not how the grand tours worked.”
 

“It looks like Paul and Amelie were only with them a short time.”
 

“Long enough to bind my family to the Bleds for life.”
 

“For generations.”
 

“Well, we know when Paul and Amelie left for Liverpool,” said Chuck. “So we can figure out the date or at least get damn close.”
 

“From the way they’re all dressed, I’d say November.”
 

“That’s one long anniversary trip,” said Stevie. “Are we done?”
 

“Not quite,” I said.
 

I got out my phone and took multiple shots of the Stella and Nicky photo, and then documented the ship names and the countries Paul and Amelie visited to pin down a date. Then I sent it all to Spidermonkey.
 

He texted back, “Paydirt.”
 

“You know,” said Chuck, “when I said I’d help, it was just for you.”
 

“Yeah,” I said.