Trophies (46 page)

"Sir, Evans here," Theresa said. "Do you have
a description of that necklace?"

Paper crackled on the other end of the line.
"It was reported as a series of sapphire teardrops of graduated
sizes, mounted on a necklace of mixed sapphires and diamonds in
gold mountings."

For a moment there was quiet in the kitchen.
Theresa arranged the big blue necklace, still encrusted with mud
from the bungled burglary so long ago.

"Do you have that, Major Evans?"

I closed my eyes at his unintentional double
meaning.

"Yes, sir," Theresa said reverently. "I have
it, all right."

He paused, and I wondered if he could
possibly have guessed. He was a genius, after all, and almost as
intuitive as Caren. It wasn't a comforting thought.

But all he said was, "The blood type on the
woman's clothing matches that of the dead security guard, whose
jacket, by the way," more paper rustled, "was removed, presumably
by the murderer, before the police arrived on the scene. It was
also never recovered."

"Sir," Caren said, "this is Doctor Caren
Gallardo."

"Good afternoon, Doctor."

She smiled. "Good afternoon. Do you have the
name of the security guard?"

Only Caren would think to ask a question like
that. Dread trickled up my spine like a cold, rising tide. It had
been so easy, not remembering that a human being had worn that
jacket when a bullet passed through it.

"Higdon," von Bisnon said. "Officer Ezra
Higdon, a policeman moonlighting after the rash of burglaries
during the previous two years."

She leaned onto the butcher block, head bowed
and hair falling in a curtain about her face. One finger played
with the largest, central sapphire teardrop, meant to dangle
suggestively amidst the curves of a glamorous woman's cleavage.
"Did Officer Higdon leave a family?"

I closed my eyes. The dread rose higher,
raising goose bumps on the nape of my neck. I hadn't thought to ask
that one, either. And with my certainties running high, I didn't
want to know the answer.

Von Bisnon paused, too. "He left a widow and
a son of four years."

The glorious sapphires sparked beneath
Caren's fingers, their lightning slamming through my tired eyes
into my soul. That small child had lost his father, truly lost him.
I shared his ripping abandonment, that sense of being robbed. The
sapphires flashed again and something, a barricade or a dam,
exploded within me. The buried emotions I'd sworn I would not feel
— grief, rage, hate, loss — refused to be contained a moment
longer. I couldn't face any more. I had to escape. I shoved back
from the table and rushed out of the kitchen.

The house stifled me. In the hall, my step
was softened by Aunt Edith's beloved blue Persian rug, Glendower's
bullet hole through it, too. An out-of-place abstract oil of
straight lines and orbs, mixed blues and greens, hung on the wall
near the staircase, its banister polished by her small graceful
hands through the years. There was no escaping her; she was
everywhere; her memory, her influence overwhelmed me. Her very
presence sang throughout the house and hammered at me like a
sledge.

I stumbled into the parlor. It was worse.
There were the white sofas and blue armchair, where she'd
humiliated my father, where I'd read Shakespeare aloud to her,
where she'd convinced me to join the Army. On the sideboard were
her little carved hippopotami, bathed in a pool of sunlight atop
the carefully arranged doily. And there on the opposite wall was
her wedding photo, as usual hanging a bit off kilter.

"Robbie?"

I crossed to the photo and took it down. I
loved that photo. It had been taken on the steps of the cathedral
just after the wedding. Uncle Hubert, in his penguin suit, looked
portly and pompous and very very kindly. Aunt Edith was stunning. I
loved that photo, and I loved Aunt Edith, but I couldn't bear
either of them any more. I had to get her influence out of my life
and find my own balance. I clutched the frame to my chest and
turned my back on Sherlock in the clearest signal I could send that
I wanted privacy.

No need to mention how much good that did me.
"Talk to me, Robber."

I wished I was again eleven years old so I
could cry without feeling shame, so my mum would find me and hold
me and everything would be all right. But she was dead, too, lost
like the little boy's father, and would never hold me again. My
throat constricted. But I found I had a voice and that I needed to
use it. "Do you see?" I asked. "She wasn't Glendower's blackmailer.
She was his accomplice."

It seemed so clear now.

"She shot the security guard," but Caren had
humanized him and I couldn't call him that any more, "she shot Ezra
Higdon. She was Glendower's lover, obviously, and people must have
suspected something. So when that last robbery went south, when she
shot Ezra Higdon while stealing the Earl of Bedford's sapphire
necklace, when Glendower fell under suspicion — however that
happened — it cast a shadow across her. She had to leave England or
possibly face charges as an accessory or even for the murder
itself. So she married Hubert Hunter and moved to Boston. She
didn't love him," and that seemed her worst crime of all. "She
didn't love Uncle Hubert. She merely used him to escape."

"But obviously he loved her."

I'd never considered that. My breath caught
and I turned, still clutching the photo like a teddy bear.

Sherlock filled the parlor entry, blocking
the view of anyone who might be standing behind his big frame. Just
his presence was comforting, even if his hair was a mess.
"Otherwise after all that scandal he'd have no reason to marry her.
Right?"

Countless times Uncle Hubert had stroked her
hair in passing, touched her cheek, smiled wonderingly as if he
couldn't believe he'd been entrusted with such a priceless
treasure. For years I'd thought of her the same way. "He must
have."

Sherlock nodded. "Do you think he knew all
this?"

Uncle Hubert had been a bookworm, a man who
loved reading and writing, but also a man who loved teaching and
people. He was a dreamer but never stupid. "He must have." I freed
one hand and rubbed my face dry.

"He forgave her. And he married her when
maybe no one else would have her."

I caught my breath. "I never thought of him
in that light."

"Is it possible that, over time, she grew to
love him?"

She'd always answered when Uncle Hubert
called, no matter how busy or distracted she might have been nor
how silly his request. She'd hand-knitted his sweaters when no one
knit any more and silently fetched him tea and sandwiches while he
wrote.

"Yes. Yes, I think you're right." Something
else suddenly became clear. "That's why she didn't scream that
night."

He nodded. "She didn't want Glendower caught.
But she put her fingerprints on that murder weapon, Robbie, even
though she could have worn gloves. She held herself
accountable."

The room widened about me, warm, comfortable,
calming. But I still couldn't face Aunt Edith, dead or alive.
Without looking at the photo, I slid it into the sideboard and shut
it away. But that wasn't enough to put the situation right.
"Sherlock, there's an errand I must run."

He rubbed his eyes. "We haven't had a chance
to warn Jacob off yet so you're going nowhere alone. Where am I
driving you?"

I handed him my comb. "To the attorney's
office. There's something I must do."

current time

"You still have it." Langstrom handled his
old family photo as if it was a treasure. "You kept it all these
years."

Sherlock waited in the reception area, I'm
certain smiling at all the women passing. Sherry, Langstrom's
secretary, had fetched me back to his office and without preamble
I'd given him the photo in its mahogany frame.

The need to explain myself was overwhelming.
"It was a trophy, see."

He didn't glance up, seemingly thrilled and
mesmerized in equal measures. "A trophy?"

"Sportsmen keep dead animal heads on their
walls. Travelers have photos of themselves in exotic locales.
Bibliophiles hoard signed first editions." I shrugged, feeling more
foolish with every word. "I stole items of no real value and kept
them."

Now he looked up. With his eyes widened, the
resemblance to an egghead was even more startling. "But why a
photograph, of all things?"

I shoved my hands into my pockets. "Because I
wanted your family, or at least one like it, instead of my own. And
if I couldn't have it any other way, then I at least wanted it
symbolically." I shrugged again. "But I believe I've finally
outgrown it."

"Mum died last year," he said bluntly, "and
there was a fire, see. We lost all our photos. If I'd had this one,
it would have burnt, too." He held out his hand. "Thank you for
keeping it safe."

But I wasn't through. "That's what they threw
me out of school for, you know."

"Yes, I know." His eyes were grateful.

His hand didn't droop. Finally I took it.

"I shouldn't keep you. Make an appointment
for me, would you? I really need to make a will."

"Any time."

In the reception area, Sherlock and I smiled
at the same beautiful woman who'd walked past us the day before.
This time she wore a nice cream suit that showed a lot of curves,
and she smiled back as she vanished through the door behind the
receptionist.

"I do like this law office." He didn't even
glance at the décor. "Where next?"

I shrugged. "Home." It surprised me, but now,
when I used that word, I didn't mean the condo.

He gave me a look. "The price of gas what it
is, especially up here in this God-forsaken part of the country,
and you think I'm gonna drive your happy anatomy all over Cambridge
and Boston just to return a photo? Particularly when there's so
much else we need to finish?" He took my biceps and guided me to
the elevator. "Ohh-h, no, buddy boy. Let's get a move on."

"Where?" I didn't bother pulling back; I knew
resistance was futile. "What now?"

The bed and breakfast was a block off Charles
Street in Beacon Hill, near the shopping district, and it cost
Sherlock a twenty to put the Camaro in the garage. The area was
surrounded by history. A person could throw a rock and hit the
Common, or lob it the other way and smack a window in Mass. Gen.,
where Trés recovered, or twist around and put it over the African
Meeting House, or turn again and drop it into the river itself. It
was the sort of place tourists love and I only got out of the car
under duress.

"I take it you're looking for Jacob?" I
jammed my hands in my pockets.

"Well, if he's here that's a bonus." Sherlock
herded me along the sidewalk. "Will you come on? Let's finish all
this and get back."

He couldn't possibly mean what I thought he
meant. "Butt out of family affairs, boss."

"You are useless to me with this emotional
turmoil dangling over your head. And that makes it my
business."

I hated it when he was right and never more
so than at that moment. But he
was
right. My jumbled family
affairs needed settling, and the only way that would happen was if
I started the process. No matter how little I wanted to.

We matched glares on the sidewalk outside the
bed and breakfast. Of course I'd lose; no one could best Sherlock
at that game. Surrendering stoked my temper, but before it got
serious and I lived to regret challenging him, I broke eye contact
and led the advance. He followed and once through the door peeled
off to the magazine racks nearby.

Father sat in the lobby, where a burnt-gold
sofa and half-dozen easy chairs formed conversational groupings
around highly polished coffee tables. Three floor-to-ceiling
windows with sheer lace draperies brightened the room more than the
chandeliers and gleaming brass table lamps. He sat on a low-backed
lounger beside an armoire, facing the windows with the light
falling across his face and shimmering from his crisp
blue-and-white pinstriped dress shirt. Both hands clasped his
walking stick between his knees. He stared at me as I paused near
the reception desk, his face tight as if pulled back at the edges,
knuckles whitening on the knob of his stick.

I stared back. My heart sank to somewhere
around my middle. It was time to tell this angry and bitter old man
of my decision to keep my distance. Then I'd turn around and walk
away. And even as I considered it, I knew that wasn't the action I
wanted to take, because it was the action of an angry and bitter
young man, and that was no longer what I wanted to be.

The thought flared into my mind fully
developed, like Athena leaping from the forehead of Zeus. Who knew
what expression crossed my face as I thought it, for one second
later, the most amazing thing happened.

My father's lips relaxed, ever so slightly,
and tilted up at the corners. And the fire in his expression
softened to match.

I hung on my heel. But my father's proud
smile, tiny as it was, drew me like a magnet. I could no longer
remain distant and crossed the room to his side.

This time I didn't need that deep breath
before speaking. "Father."

The little smile hadn't wavered. But his eyes
widened as I approached, and when he spoke his voice was soft, as
if something wild and wary had alit nearby and he didn't wish to
startle it away. "Charles."

"May I join you?"

His glance flickered to the chair beside his,
where the light from the three windows would fall on my face, too,
and an experienced courtroom warrior could read every emotion I
expressed while I wasn't certain I'd understand his. I hesitated —
did I want to give him such an advantage? — but when his smile
dimmed I took the indicated seat. This wasn't a competition nor a
trial, but negotiations during a cease-fire. It seemed we both
wanted this. And if he behaved like a barrister, well, perhaps that
was because he was one.