Trophies (39 page)

I shrugged. "I don't know, cuz, but we're
going to put it right."

Finally she met my gaze. Her eyes were still
dark but her expression was grateful. I couldn't bring myself to
smile, though.

"What on earth possessed Aunt Edith to treat
Jacob that way?" she asked.

I tossed the address book back into the
center of the table. "When I spoke with him about those loans, he
let me believe they had an amiable relationship. I wasn't expecting
anything of the sort."

"What loans?"

Her face was blank. I laughed and waved at
the financial records scattered across the table. "What loans do
you think? I asked him at the gallery and he admitted them right
off, one for his flat and the other to start his business."

She kept staring at me, her expression
clouded. "I thought Dad gave him those loans."

I paused. I hadn't detected any sign of lying
from Jacob. But then, his black eyes were so opaque, it was perhaps
difficult to tell.

Sherlock stirred. "Maybe Jacob wound up
needing more money than he'd originally thought and didn't want to
go back to his dad."

"Perhaps." She pushed around some of her
papers. "But how much money does it take to start an art appraisal
service? Besides, whenever I asked to borrow money, Aunt Edith
always gifted it. She said she didn't like contracts with her
family."

"Me, too," I said. "But perhaps she didn't
feel she knew Jacob that well."

She shrugged, lifted a pile of documents, set
them down. "Does anyone?"

I didn't say what I was thinking and
thankfully neither did Sherlock. If Jacob had done something
illegal and Aunt Edith blackmailed him, he was the one member of
the family Trés might not have recognized from a silhouette on a
dark street. But protecting Patty came naturally to both of us, it
seemed.

"Well," Sherlock finally said, "Theresa
called to complain about the number of newspapers and used car lots
in this town, how many cars are for sale at any given time, et
cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam. But she did say she was making
progress. I mean, we got a
really
good description of the
Suburban and its license plate number, too, so it should be only a
matter of time."

"Why in the world did you call Theresa and
invite her?" I asked. "What purpose on earth can she serve
here?"

He laughed. "With her, you never know."

"What's her specialty?" Lindsay asked.

I shot Sherlock an accusing stare; exactly
what had they discussed during their time together today? He
returned the stare, measure for measure.

"Did you carry her case upstairs for her?"
Theresa never put anything away for herself unless she was in her
own home or temporary base housing.

"No," Patricia said, "I did. Why?"

I rose from the table and kissed her cheek.
"Those were high explosives," I said, and left the dining room. If
she was going to faint or have heart failure or a screaming fit,
she could do it all over Sherlock, not me. And that would put paid
to their flirting real quick.

The investigation seemed to be continuing
just fine without my interference, so I popped a fresh bottle,
fetched the tragedies from the matched Shakespeare set in Uncle
Hubert's study, and sprawled across the long sofa in the parlor. A
few minutes later, Lindsay joined me. She too had a book, but a mug
of tea rather than a beer. Perhaps she didn't want to push it.
Yet.

No time like the present to start another
family feud. "Just what did you and Sherlock discuss today?"

She glanced up, green eyes wide. "Mostly we
went through the scrapbook. Did Caren tell you the security guard
in the last burglary was shot with a Browning pistol, just like the
one you found in the garret? Colonel Sherlock thinks that might be
the murder weapon."

Interesting, but not the information for
which I was gunning. "Did you two talk about the Army at all?"

Instantly she returned to her book.
"Some."

Sooner or later, William was going to kill
me. Even if it turned out to be all Sherlock's fault.

"What are you reading?" she asked.

I glanced over. Her book was open, but her
eyes weren't moving any more than mine were. Actually, she appeared
mesmerized by something within her own thoughts, a feeling with
which I could certainly empathize.

I tested her. "The Moor."

She passed. "I hate that play! Othello didn't
trust his wife at all. Why didn't he just ask her what was going
on, instead of listening to Iago?"

"It is pretty awful, isn't it?" I shut the
book and set it aside. Even the Bard wasn't going to hold my
attention after all the day's ugly revelations. "But people don't
ask, do they?"

She was silent for a moment, wheels turning
almost audibly behind those oh-so-familiar green eyes.

"I mean," I continued, speaking my thoughts
to the air, "if I had asked Aunt Edith years ago, would she have
told me the truth?"

"About what?"

I shrugged. "About anything. About being a
blackmailer. About lying to my father, or threatening him, or
whatever it turns out she did to him. About wanting children of her
own but stealing me as a substitute."

"She wasn't a very nice person, was she?"
Lindsay closed her book, too. "I wouldn't know; I only met her a
few times. Although she seemed really keen on the surface."

That simply, Lindsay summed up everything I'd
been thinking. "It doesn't seem I knew her all that well, either.
And it doesn't seem she was particularly nice. You know, Lindsay,
at one time I wanted to be just like her. But now. . . ." I could
only trail that off.

If I hadn't truly known Aunt Edith all that
well, even if I'd grown up with her, watched her every movement,
and copied her mannerisms, then how well had I known my father? my
brother? or my mum, who was dead and beyond the reach of
peacemaking?

Lindsay set her book on the coffee table.
"You must be careful choosing a role model, mustn't you?"

That was my cue. I needed to tell her how
hard William worked for her, how much he loved her, how he'd only
lent her to me for safekeeping. To make certain she understood just
how important her family is.

I said nothing of the sort.

"I suppose you do."

"Dad wants me to be a barrister."

I closed my eyes and settled a pillow beneath
my head. "And what do you want?"

"I don't know yet. But that's not it."

"It wasn't for me, either." I closed my eyes.
The lack of sleep was catching up with me.

"So how did you escape?"

"Mmm, interesting way of phrasing it. I
didn't escape, Lindsay. I was exiled. I misbehaved once too often,
I swore I'd never be what my family wanted me to be, and my father
sent me over here to live with Aunt Edith." It was interesting that
I didn't mind discussing the subject with Lindsay; it was almost
like talking with myself.

"And that's why I never got to meet you
before?"

"You're stuck on that notion, aren't
you?"

Her voice was suddenly cool. "It's a fair
question."

I opened my eyes. She hugged a pillow to her
chest. Spots of color brightened her peaches-and-cream English
cheeks and her green eyes were sullen for the first time since we'd
met. Again I'd underestimated her. I seemed to be repeating the
same actions, and the same mistakes, too often these days.

"You said the last time you and Dad fought,
you lost really badly. Well, there's fights, and then there's
fights. What sort of fight was that?"

She deserved the truth, the same way my own
dad did. I sat up and gave it to her.

"It was a physical fight. William wiped the
sidewalk with me."

"Oh." Her voice was small, now. She actually
sounded fifteen.

"He snapped one of my ribs and cracked three
others. I was black and blue and then green and yellow for weeks. I
hurt in places people aren't supposed to hurt. And to answer your
question, I took that to mean I wasn't welcome. So I stayed
away."

She took some time to consider my words.
"Dad's that good?"

That wasn't the moral I'd expected nor wanted
her to withdraw from that lesson. "You've seen his trophies."

But she shook her head. "Dad doesn't have any
trophies."

I blinked. "Your father has dozens of
trophies from boxing, horseback riding, rowing, cricket, academics,
you name it. They used to be in a big glass case in the main
vestibule."

"Mum has her collection of ceramic doves in
that case. Dad was in boxing?" There was wonder, and a new respect,
in her voice.

I turned away, punched the pillow, and
resettled on the sofa, grabbing a spare pillow on the way down and
cuddling it like a teddy bear. Perhaps stealing her from her father
wouldn't be so easy, after all. "He was in everything. And he was
good at everything."

"So why did he put his trophies away?"

"I don't know." Part of me wanted to know.
But the bigger part of me had tired of the conversation. "Look,
it's going to be a long and busy night. Mind if I catch a nap?"

She managed a few steps toward the door, but
slowly. "Did you have trophies?"

I thought of Langstrom's family photograph
and the other paltry and adolescent items I'd given that name. But
they didn't seem to count any more. "No."

"Neither do I. Trés has all the trophies in
our family. I guess we do have a lot in common, don't we?"

She left. But it took me a long time to
forget her words and drop off to sleep.

nine years earlier

A formal higher education, it seemed, was not
for me. I left school for the last time, a confused, disillusioned,
and angry nineteen-year-old with no goals, no ambition, and no
sense of fulfillment beyond my trophies, ten articles of no
monetary value that I kept hidden and protected like the Crown
jewels.

With the allowance Aunt Edith gave me, I
returned to Boston, found a flat on the waterfront, and fell in
with a fast social set, many of whom I knew during my abortive
undergraduate days. All right, I'll admit it: I went looking for a
fast set. I was tired of the refinement of Aunt Edith's Cambridge.
I'd found nothing that suited me amongst the art and elegance with
which she surrounded herself. It smothered me and left me feeling
stymied, the way I'd felt as a child in Wiltshire when I had to
measure up to the family honor rather than my own sensibilities. I
was ready for a sea change, for a touch of mayhem.

My tennis game was good enough for me to be a
sought-after doubles partner, particularly with women my age, who
seemed to rather fancy my accent although it was now as confused as
Aunt Edith's and no longer the crisp and clean English they
considered it. They also seemed to go for the air of roguishness
that trailed behind me like a cloak, and it wasn't only tennis
where I didn't lack partners.

With more diligence than I'd ever shown in
school, I studied drinking, smoking, and necking in the controlled
riots that passed for parties, although I at least had enough sense
to give a wide berth to the dark and smoky rooms behind the clubs
where harsher drugs were available.

Aunt Edith welcomed me back to Boston, of
course, without a word of judgment, and I stayed with her until I
found my waterfront condo. But during my two years on two campuses,
I had grown accustomed to a rowdier life than she would tolerate.
After I moved out, I stopped by on Tuesdays and Thursdays for tea
and told her the milder exploits of my set, such as Jason being
arrested for driving under the influence and then appearing in
court in a similar state to demonstrate his self-control for the
judge, or Debbie dissecting her first corpse in medical school and
becoming so enamored thereof that she took him home to keep in her
mother's freezer, to her mother's distress.

When I saw tension lines forming about Aunt
Edith's narrow lips, I kept coming by but ceased speaking out. At
first I found it difficult, remembering to guard my tongue against
the woman who was my closest friend. But as I'd always guarded
myself around Patricia, the woman who was my second-closest friend,
this became merely an extension of that self-protectiveness. Of
course, at heart it meant I had no one with whom I could speak
openly.

Aunt Edith saw through my meager defenses, of
course, but as much as she valued honesty — and in a warped sort of
way, that was her only non-negotiable requisite in the people she
considered her friends — she never called me on it. At first I
thought this was because she respected my privacy and right to live
my life as I chose. It was more than my family allowed me, as
William had proven, and I appreciated her tact and showed her every
attention.

But in truth, I believe she realized how
fragile her restraint over me had become. Rather than risk a
resentful severing of our ties, based on our pact as the Ellandun
family black sheep, I believe she preferred to keep intact what
rein remained to her. As the years passed, that became weaker and
weaker. Her garret came between us as a lie of omission after Uncle
Hubert's death. My PTSD followed.

When I received word my mum had been killed
in a traffic accident, I didn't cry for her. I hadn't cried since
my vow at the age of eleven — not even for Uncle Hubert — and I
wasn't about to break it now.

current time

The first problem, of course, was that police
stations never really close and there were lights on all over the
building, even at two in the morning. We had to wait a while before
Caren and Lindsay gave the all-clear from their respective street
corners, then Sherlock cupped his hands and boosted me up. I
grabbed the black iron railing of the fire escape, paused a moment
while my arms adjusted to the strain, then pulled myself up,
jackknifed over the railing, and swung my legs onto the
second-floor landing.