Birthright (40 page)

“I guess we mixed something up. They didn't say when they'd be back?”

“Like I said, a few weeks. He's retired, you know, and she doesn't work, so they come and go as they please. They were out here around ten this morning, loading up—and Barbara, you never see her up and around on a Sunday morning before noon. Must've been in a hurry to get on the road.”

“It's a long drive to the Hamptons,” Callie noted. “Thanks. We'll have to catch up with them later.”

“Mike and Carol Brady,” Jake said under his breath as
they started back across the street. “We're the Brady Bunch?”

“First thing that came into my head. She was too old to have watched it the first time around, and didn't strike me as the type to tune in to
Nick at Night.
Goddamnit, Jake.”

“I know.” He lifted their joined hands, kissed her knuckles.

“Do you think they went to the Hamptons?”

“However much of a hurry they were in, I don't think Simpson would be stupid enough to tell the town crier where they were going.”

“Me either. And I don't think they're coming back.”

“They had to go somewhere, and wherever that is, they'll leave some sort of trail. We'll find them.”

She only nodded, stared at the empty house in frustration.

“Come on, Carol, let's go get Alice and the kids and go home.”

“Okay. Okay,” she grumbled and walked with him. If she was going to get through this, and she was, she needed to hold on to control, maintain her perspective. “So, do you think Carol Brady was hot?”

“Oh man, are you kidding? She
smoked
!”

The Finds

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable,
must be the truth.

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

Y
ou did the right thing.” Back in Maryland, Lana stood out by her car with Callie, jiggled her keys in her hand. She was reluctant to leave, though she'd imposed on Roger far too long that day.

Knowing the Simpsons had evaded them was frustrating. She had to admit, she'd been revved up for a showdown, for the prospect of hammering the Simpsons with questions, twisting them up with facts and speculation.

And the long drive back only to relay the scattered pieces of the puzzle to the county sheriff, leaving everything very much as it had been at the start of the day, was another disappointment.

There should've been something more to be done. Something else.

“Hewitt didn't seem particularly dazzled by our deductive reasoning.”

“Maybe not, but he won't ignore it. Plus, now everything's on record. And he'll—”

“Look into it,” Callie finished, and managed a laugh. “Can't blame the guy for being skeptical. A thirty-year-old
crime solved by a couple of diggers, a girl lawyer and a bookseller.”

“Excuse me, two respected scientists, a brilliant attorney and an astute antiquarian book dealer.”

“Sounds better your way.” Restless, Callie picked up a stone, tossed it toward the creek, where it landed with a sharp plop. “Look, I really appreciate all you've done over and above the call of billable hours and stuff.”

“It's not my usual kind of work, and I have to admit, it's been exciting.”

“Yeah.” She pitched another stone. “Getting burned out must've been a hell of a thrill.”

“No one was hurt, I'm insured, and the fact that it pissed me off is to your advantage. I'm in for the duration. And the fact that this matters a great deal to Doug adds additional incentive.”

“Hmm. Hey, look, there's a black snake.”

“What? Where?” In instant terror, Lana hopped onto the hood of her car.

“Relax.” Callie picked up another stone, took aim. “Right over . . . there,” she said, and tossed the stone toward the creek again where it landed several inches to the right of the snake. Undoubtedly annoyed, it slithered along the bank and into the trees. “They're harmless.”

“They're snakes.”

“I like the way they move. Anyway. Doug. He's an interesting guy. He brought me an Elvis beer cozy from Memphis.”

“Did he?” The sigh escaped before Lana realized it was there. “Now, why should that just touch my heart?”

“Because you've got the hots for him.”

“True. Very true.”

“Listen, that business in the car about your sex life was really just a . . .” She paused, whipped around, and even as Lana prepared to duck and cover, swatted a fat, buzzing bee away, the way a batter might swat a good fastball.

The somehow fat sound of the contact had Lana shuddering. “Jesus. Are you stung?”

“No. Those kind usually just like making a bunch of noise and annoying people. Like teenagers, I guess.”

“Were you, by any chance, a tomboy as a child?”

“I don't get that name. I mean, Tom's probably already a boy, so why is
tomboy
the word used to describe a girl with likes, skills and habits more traditionally ascribed to boys? It ought to be something like
maryboy
. Don't you think?”

Lana shook her head. “I have absolutely no idea.”

“Makes more sense. Anyway, what was I saying before?”

“Ah . . . about my sex life.”

“Oh yeah. That bit in the car was really just a ruse.”

Deciding whatever nature might wing their way, Callie would handle, Lana eased off the hood to lean against the door of her car. “I know.”

“Not that I don't like hearing about other people's sex lives.”

“Living or dead.”

“Exactly. Every life has its defining moments.”

Callie glanced back toward the house as someone inside turned on music. As the Backstreet Boys pumped through the windows, she figured on Frannie.

“My first one happened when I was sleeping in a stroller in December of 'seventy-four,” she continued. “Defining moments create the grid for the pattern, but it's the day-to-day that makes the pattern. What you eat, what you do for a living, who you sleep with, make a family with, how you cook or dress. The big finds, like discovering an ancient sarcophagus—that makes the splash in a career. But it's the ordinary things that pull me in. Like a toy made out of a turtle's carapace.”

“Or an Elvis beer cozy.”

“You are pretty smart,” Callie declared. “I think we'd have gotten along if we'd grown up together, Doug and I. I think we'd have liked each other. So it makes it easier to like him, and it's less awkward to be around him, or Roger, than it is for me to be around Suzanne and Jay.”

“And easier to look for the people responsible, to look
for the reasons how and why it happened than to deal with the results. That's not a criticism,” Lana added. “I think you're handling a complex and difficult situation with admirable common sense.”

“It doesn't stop everyone involved from being hurt to some degree. And if we're right, two people who aren't even part of it are dead because I have the admirable common sense to demand the answers.”

“You could stop.”

“Could you?”

“No. But I think I might be able to give myself a break, to sit back for a while, try to take a look at the pattern I'm in right now, and how I got there. Maybe if you do that, you'll be able to accept it all when you do find the answers.”

I
t wasn't a bad idea, Callie decided, to step back from one puzzle and use herself as the datum point for another. What was her pattern and how had she gotten there? What would her layers expose about her life, her personal culture and her role in society?

She sat down at her computer and began a personal time line from the date of her birth.

Born September 11, 1974

Kidnapped December 12, 1974

Placed with Elliot and Vivian Dunbrook December 16, 1974

That part was easy. Jogging her memory, she added the dates she'd started school, the summer she'd broken her arm, the Christmas she'd begged for and received her first microscope. Her first cello lesson, her first recital, her first dig. The death of her paternal grandfather. Her first sexual experience. The date of her graduation from college. The year she'd moved into her own apartment.

Professional highlights, the receipt of her master's degree, significant physical injuries and illnesses. Meeting Leo, Rosie, her very brief affair with an Egyptologist.

What
had she been thinking?

The day she'd met Jake. How could she forget?

Tues, April 6, 1998

The date of their first sexual consummation.

Thurs, April 8, 1998

Jumped right into that one, she mused. They hadn't been able to keep their hands off each other, and had burned up the mattress in some cramped little room in Yorkshire near the Mesolithic site they were studying.

They'd moved in together, more or less, in June of that year. She couldn't pinpoint when or how they'd evolved into a team. If one of them was heading to Cairo or Tennessee, both of them had gone to Cairo or Tennessee.

They'd fought like lunatics, made love like maniacs. All over the world.

She recorded the date of their marriage.

The date he'd walked out.

The date she'd received the divorce papers.

Not so much time between, in the big scheme, she thought, then shook her head. The point was
her
life, not
their
life.

Shrugging, she keyed in her doctorate. She entered the day she'd gone to see Leo in Baltimore, her first day on the project, which included meeting Lana Campbell.

The day Jake had arrived.

The date Suzanne Cullen had come to her hotel room.

Her trip to Philadelphia, her return. Hiring Lana, dinner with Jake, the vandalism on her Rover, Dolan's murder. Conversation with Doug.

Sex with Jake.

Blood tests.

The first visit to the Simpsons.

Frowning, she went back, consulted her logbook and entered the date each team member had joined the project.

The shot fired at Jake, the trip to Atlanta, the fire. Interviews with Dr. Blakely's widow and Betsy Poffenberger, resulting data discovered.

Bill McDowell's death.

Making love with Jake.

Then the trip back to Virginia, which brought her to the present.

Once you had the events, you had a pattern, she thought. Then you extrapolated from it to see how each event, each layer connected to another.

She worked for a time shifting the data around into different headings: Education, Medical, Professional, Personal, Antietam Creek Project, Jessica.

Sitting back, she saw one element of the pattern. From the day she'd met him, Jake had a connection to every major point in her life. Even the damn doctorate, she admitted, which she'd gone after with a vengeance to keep herself from brooding over him.

She couldn't even have an identity crisis without him being involved.

Worse, she wasn't sure she'd want it any other way.

Absently, she reached for a cookie and found the bag beside her keyboard empty.

“I've got a stash in my room.”

She jolted, jerked around to see Jake leaning against the doorway.

“But it'll cost you,” he added.

“Damnit, stop sneaking around, spying on me.”

“I can't help it if I move with the grace and silence of a panther, can I? And your door was open. Standing in an open doorway isn't spying. What are you working on?”

“None of your business.” And to keep it that way, she saved the file and closed it.

“You're irritable because you're out of cookies.”

“Close the door.” She gritted her teeth when he did so, after he'd stepped inside. “I meant with you on the other side.”

“You should've been more specific. Why aren't you taking a nap?”

“Because I'm not three years old.”

“You're beat, Dunbrook.”

“I have work I want to do.”

“If you'd been dealing with the schedule or the site
records, you wouldn't have been in such a hurry to close the file before I got a look at it.”

“I have personal business that doesn't involve you.” She thought of the time line she'd just generated, and his complete involvement in it. “Or I should have.”

“You're feeling pretty beat up, aren't you, baby?”

Her stomach slid toward her knees at the slow, soft sound of his voice. “Don't be nice to me. It drives me crazy. I don't know what to do when you're nice to me.”

“I know.” He leaned down to touch his lips to hers. “I can't figure out why I never thought of it before.”

She turned away, opened the file again. “It's just a time line, trying to establish a pattern. Go ahead.” She got up so he could have the desk chair. “The highlights and lowlights of my life.”

She plopped down on her sleeping bag while he read.

“You slept with Aiken? The sleazy Egyptologist? What were you thinking?”

“Just never mind, or I'll start commenting on all the women you've slept with.”

“You don't know all the women I've slept with. You forgot some events in this.”

“No, I didn't.”

“You forgot the conference we went to in Paris, May of 2000. And the day we skipped out on it and sat at a sidewalk cafe, drank wine. You were wearing a blue dress. It started to rain, just a little. We walked back to the hotel in the rain, went up to the room and made love. With the windows open, so we could hear the drizzle.”

She hadn't forgotten it. She remembered it so well, so clearly, that hearing him recount it made her hurt. “It isn't relevant data.”

“It was one of the most relevant days of my life. I didn't know it then. That's the tricky thing about life. Too often you don't know what's important until the moment passes. You still have that dress?”

She shifted on her side, pillowed her cheek on her hand as she studied him. He hadn't had a haircut since they'd
started the dig. She'd always liked it when his hair got just a little too long. “Somewhere.”

“I'd like to see you in it again.”

“You never noticed or cared what I was wearing before.”

“I never mentioned it. An oversight.”

“What're you doing?” she demanded when he began to type.

“Adding May of 2000, Paris, to your time line. I'm going to shoot this file to my laptop. I'll download it later, play with it.”

“Fine, great. Do what you want.”

“You must be feeling awful. I don't recall you ever telling me to do what I wanted before.”

Why did she want to cry? Why the hell did she want to cry? “You always did anyway.”

He sent the file to his e-mail, then got up and walked to her. “You always thought so.” He sat down beside her, trailed his fingers over her shoulder. “I didn't want to leave that day in Colorado.”