Cold Case (15 page)

“I was told the property belonged to your daughter, Thea.”

“Dorothea,” she corrected, caressing each syllable. Her face changed as she spoke the name. Her mouth relaxed. She looked ten years younger. “My brilliant, my beautiful daughter. She has been dead so long and still they try to use her. Everything they try to steal. Even her true name.”

“Dorothy Cameron.”

“Doro
thea
. That is where Thea comes from. Franklin, my husband, he will not let me name this daughter after the wishes of my heart. I name Beryl and Garnet, my treasures, and I think this one will be Ivory, Jade, Lapis, a precious thing also. But my husband's mother has money, and for that money, that hope of inheritance, he writes on the birth certificate Dorothy, his mother's ugly name. I spit at him for that. Now, if he still lived, I would spit at him.”

Was that why Franklin Cameron's picture hung large in the foyer? So she could practice spitting at a man twenty years dead? Did she use his campaign posters for target practice?

“Dr. Manley told me the manuscript meant your daughter was alive.”

She bowed her head, remaining silent for a full minute. Her lips moved as though she were praying.

“Why would he say such a thing, such a lie?” she murmured at last. “You think you know a person, really
know
him, and—”

The knock on the door was strong enough to shake the paneling. It startled both of us.

“Mama, open the door.” The voice was deep, baritone, of the same timbre and pitch as one of the upstairs quarrelers.

Tricky Tessa. I hadn't even seen her snick the lock.

“Please,” Tessa Cameron whispered to me, “say nothing. Pretend you are not here.” Then, loudly, she addressed the door. “Darling, I'm on the phone. Long distance. Very important. It's way past twelve! You'll be late for your meeting.”

“Mother, Henry told me you have a guest.”

I wondered if Henry was the car-key man.

“Cat's out of the bag,” I said to Tessa with a shrug, making my words loud enough to carry. I'd never met a gubernatorial candidate before.

“Ignore, please, this interruption,” she said to me, steel in her voice. “I will pay you.”

“For what?” I asked.

“Damn him,” Tessa muttered under her breath. To me: “No, I do not curse my son, I curse the chauffeur. Why should I be spied on in my own house?”

I didn't have an answer. The knocking was becoming insistent, taking on a regular rhythm.

She shook her head and her smooth coiffure moved all-of-a-piece. She made a clicking noise with her tongue, an expression of pure irritation, in English or Italian. “Shhhh,” she said, moving toward the door. “I'll let you in. A moment, please! Always he must be in charge. Always! His father died when he was young. That is what I say to excuse his behavior. Do not judge him harshly.”

Seemed his mother did that already.

Tessa opened the door, and The Man Who Would Be King charged past like she was the housekeeper. He regarded me for a moment, then did a quick reverse, facing her.

“Mama, I thought we'd agreed you'd stay out of this.”

“No. No. This is so simple, darling. You watch. You see. Miss Carlyle, this is my son, Garnet. He forgets sometimes the politeness.”

Not often, I thought. Not a man with his political savvy and ambition. Garnet resembled his mother, same searching amber eyes, same perfectly oval face. His hair was touched with gray at the temples. No dandruff.

His suit was European-cut, charcoal with a faint stripe. No lint. No creases. He'd teamed it with a pink shirt so subdued it was almost gray, enlivened the ensemble with a hand-painted floral tie that probably cost more than my entire outfit.

All the Dover Camerons, except the elusive Beryl, rated space in
Who's Who
. So I knew Garnet had graduated from Harvard, held a law degree from Yale, was forty-two, and currently married to the much-younger Marissa, with one divorce in his past. No kids. Eighteen when sister Thea had vanished.

For years he'd devoted his considerable energy and influence to politics, on the money side. Fund-raising time, folks heard from Garnet. Folks with money. I bet he rarely forgot his manners then.

He'd racked up favors, bided his time. When the traditional weakness of the Massachusetts Republican Party reasserted itself, he'd picked the perfect moment to switch from money raiser to candidate, fulfill his father's unsated ambitions.

I admit to being politically disaffected, but I vote, even though the things I want to vote for—like giving more money to Paolina's school so they won't have to run an endless stream of bake sales and magazine drives—never end up on the ballot. I was actually looking forward to yanking the lever for this guy. We breed strange candidates in the Commonwealth—rich folks who stand up for the little guy, poor folk who grovel to the rich, longing to be one of their number. The Kennedy model must have rubbed off: Do what's necessary to get rich; once you've got a million bucks to spare, groom your kids for public service.

Garnet Cameron said, “I see you've met my devoted mother, Ms. Carlyle.”

Tension there, thick as butter.

She glued a jovial smile on her mouth, said, “You hear, Garnet, what little I say to her. Only that we have lost some pieces of paper from a sketchpad. She has found them. We pay her for them. A check, cash, whatever it is she wishes. It's so simple, you see?”

“You didn't exactly say you lost them,” I corrected. “More like Andrew Manley stole them.”

Garnet rounded on his mother, but she didn't give him a chance to slip a word into the accusatory silence.

“What? What did I say?
She
tells me his name, not the other way around. Always you belittle me.” Tessa had a delightful accent, I decided, like rippling water. I hoped she'd keep talking because Garnet looked as though he desperately wanted her to shut up.

“Listen to me, darling.” She addressed me quietly, just woman to woman, as if her son had evaporated from the room. Clients rarely call me darling. “Such hair you have! You need a good haircut, true? I have someone for you, a man who works wonders with such hair! This thing I want you to return … The doctor—who is my dear friend—perhaps thought he was doing a good thing, yes, but he didn't realize—‘Stole' is far too strong a word.”

“Mama!”

“What? What? All the time, everything I do is wrong, eh? I can see this is a good person, an honest woman—”

“I asked you to let me handle this.” Garnet's mouth barely opened; his jaw seemed set, locked.

Tessa said, “I think you should not be late for your meeting.”

“Consider it canceled,” Garnet returned.

“Dr. Manley wanted the notebook back very much,” I said. “
If
I'd had it, I would have given it to him.”

Tessa Cameron's eyes flashed. She said, “I don't know why you wish to keep it, but you have no right. This thing we speak of is a—a fraud! It's like with a dead painter, like Picasso, say, a dead master. You think a nobody, a student, perhaps, in an art school, should be able to squiggle lines on a page and then say to me this is a genuine Picasso and you should pay me twenty thousand dollars for this little penciled nothing drawn yesterday? It is an outrage!”

Bingo: Had someone offered to sell her the notebook? For, say, twenty thousand dollars?

“Wait a minute, Mrs. Cameron,” I said. “Correct me if I'm wrong, but with art, forgery devalues the true work. If someone finds another thousand ‘Picassos,' each genuine Picasso is worth less.”

“This would be true, yes,” she admitted.

I said, “But if Thea were alive and writing after all these years, a new manuscript would be a gold mine. It would generate tremendous interest in her earlier novel—”

I have rarely been stared down by a woman a foot shorter than me, but Tessa did an admirable job.

“It is not a new manuscript; it is a fake,” she said coldly. “My Thea is not alive. You think she would run away and never speak to her mother? She loved me with all her heart. Some son-of-a-bitch, some political enemy of my son's, that is all we'll find at the bottom of this. I will pay you, I tell you, not for the single chapter alone, which I trust you will return, but to make this person—whoever it is—stop what he is doing.” She pulled a lacy handkerchief from an invisible pocket, applied it gently to her eyes. “Make him stop writing these hateful forgeries, make him stop breaking my heart.”

“Mama,” Garnet said, trying to grasp her hands. “Please. I can handle this. There's no reason to tear yourself apart.”

“You,” Mrs. Cameron murmured spitefully, “you can't even handle your wife. Even now, if she'd stay until the election—”

“Mother, I'm sure Miss Carlyle isn't interested in the election,” Garnet said, a smile frozen on his face. If he could have wrapped his hand over his mother's mouth I'm certain he would have.

“You're not the man your father was.” Mrs. Cameron hurled the insult like a favorite cudgel.

“Praise the Lord,” he answered sarcastically, “and pass the Martini pitcher. Perhaps, Miss Carlyle, you might return some time when my mother is more herself.”

I admired the way he'd called her an irresponsible alcoholic without using the words for attribution.

I said, “Look, Mr. Cameron, I have an appointment with your mother, not with you. If she wants to talk, I'm happy to listen.”

“She does talk,” he said, his teeth clenched.

“And you, you stink of jealousy every time I mention Thea's name.” The woman turned on her son. “There's some law, perhaps, that I can't talk about my own child in my own home?”

“What was she like, Mrs. Cameron? I've read her book, but …”

“Don't egg her on,” Garnet Cameron said. “Please.”

She froze him with a glance.

“That was a very naughty book for her to write, no? She was a wild thing, my daughter, like a horse no one could tame. My father owned such a horse once, an Arabian, and only I could ride him. But even I could not tame Thea. She wrote of that stuffy school of hers. She made fun of everything and everyone and some lied and said, of course, they did not recognize themselves at all, and some laughed, but the laughter caught in their throats and choked them.” She stifled a noise and I realized she was holding back tears. “Sometimes I think that was why the man killed her, because she spoke to him when she shouldn't have, said something funny and wicked.”

“Sit down,” I urged, leading her back to her chair. A pitcher of Martinis. If she'd overindulged, the smell of liquor was well camouflaged by her camellia perfume.

“She had no talent for kindness, my daughter,” Tessa continued as soon as she sat. “She had a tongue that cut like a blade, so sharp. It was a failing, but I thought to myself, she has plenty of time to grow gentle with the passing of years. In her later life, I thought, she will acquire also this virtue, and become a great lady. And she will be the daughter I will grow old with, the one who will take me to lunch, to tea at the Ritz, because I have already lost my older daughter, and it will be my life to be proud of her and, poof, it is gone, and all I have are memories like a wisp, a puff of smoke.”

“Already lost your older daughter? What do you mean, ‘lost'?”

Garnet shot me a poisonous glance.

“That's enough, Mama,” he said.

She removed a pack of cigarettes from her top drawer, a crystal ashtray.

“Mama, the doctor said.”

“What? I do as I please, Garnet. None of you ever understood me. Not even your father. My children only lie to me or preach to me—except for my brilliant girl, my Thea. Truly, she is the only one who listened—”

“Getting yourself killed isn't so brilliant, Mother.”

There was a moment of uneasy silence while Mrs. Cameron lit her cigarette with a slim gold lighter. She wasn't a woman accustomed to lighting her own cigarettes. Her fingers shook. Garnet wasn't about to help.

“All pleasures you would deny me,” she said bitterly. “Even memory—”

The knock on the door was hesitant this time.

“Contessa? Are you in there?” The voice was high and thin.

Ah, I thought. The arguing soprano.

“Open the door, Garnet,” Tessa said.

He didn't like it, but he obeyed. Hell, if she'd ordered me to open the door in a tone like that, I'd have done it too.

16

Marissa Cameron had attempted to repair runny mascara and powder over tear tracks. Neither technique had worked. Her nose was red, her voice shaky. She and husband, Garnet, had been the screaming couple, no doubt about it.

I studied her with interest. The news photo had been a head shot; it hadn't hinted at how truly young Marissa seemed. I mean, there's twenty-three, and then there's twenty-three. Roz is in her early twenties, but Roz looked like a hardened street player in comparison.

Alice-in-Wonderland hair, tied back with a thin blue ribbon, fell almost to the waist of Marissa's yellow dress. In the photo her hair had been pinned and piled, giving her a commanding air. Devoid of curl, her hair hung like cornsilk, emphasizing her narrow shoulders, fragile build. She seemed frail, small, in need of protection.

I sneaked a glance at her feet. High heels accounted for the staccato footsteps, but it was hard to believe she possessed a voice like a diamond-edged cutting tool.

After a brief moment of indecision, a firming of her stance, she ignored Garnet completely. He and I evidently didn't exist. This was between her and her mother-in-law.

“I came to say good-bye, Tessa, and thank you. You've been good to me,” she said softly. She sounded brave and stoic and hurt. And somehow wrong, as if she were auditioning for a role she didn't quite understand.

“Darling, please stay.” Tessa took her hand, tried to embrace her. With Tessa's cigarette dangling precariously, and only one active participant, the hug was awkward.