by Robert Lane
“I think you do.”
“No.” He shifted his weight. I was surprised his uniform didn’t crack from the movement. “For a brief moment I thought I did, but I’ve never seen that—”
“You’re lying.”
“I beg your par—”
“Look again.” I jiggled the picture.
“I have no…” He glanced at the picture and back at me. “The name and the picture are unfamiliar to me.” He straightened his back even more—an incredible feat. “Is there anything else I can help you with? I have a meeting that starts shortly.”
“Didn’t mean to ruffle your feathers, Tommy.”
“It’s…never mind. You didn’t—”
“How come you didn’t ask me?”
“Ask you what?”
“Who Alexander Paretsky is?”
“Because I never heard of—”
“Or the identity of the man in the picture?”
“I assume that is a picture of your Mr. Parrot—whatever his name is.”
“Did I say that?”
“Well, no. But one would expect—listen here, Mr.—”
“One would expect curiosity as to why I showed you the picture and threw out the name. Don’t you agree, Father McKenzie?”
He hesitated, as if expecting me to say more, but I remained silent. I placed my left hand in my jacket pocket. I felt a ticket stub. A show at the Mahaffey?
“Mr. Travis, what does this have to do with Elizabeth Lambert?”
“I was hoping you would tell me.”
“I am afraid I must disappoint you. Please,” he said, and he extended his arm as he’d done earlier. “I do need to be getting back.”
I remained motionless. “Do people always move in the direction of your arm?”
“Are you always so impudent?”
“I thought we were getting along just swell.”
“Good day, Mr. Travis. I do hope that you find whoever killed Mr. Lambert. I am afraid there is nothing here to help you, and I can be of no further assistance.” He lowered his arm and started back on the path toward the great house. I came up beside him.
“How did you know her first name?”
“Whose?”
“Elizabeth Lambert’s. I never mentioned her first name, and you said you weren’t familiar with her.”
“My secretary provided me with their names.” He didn’t skip a beat; I’d give him that.
“She that pleasant lady sitting behind the desk who greeted me? The one with the white bow in her hair?”
“No, that is not her. Cynthia is our receptionist and nothing else.” I wondered how Cynthia felt about being “nothing else.”
“I’ll pass along your condolences to Mrs. Lambert.”
“But she’s d—” He trailed off, and his eyes narrowed.
“She’s dead, of course.” I stopped walking, which forced him to do the same. “But you’re not supposed to know that, seeing as how you’re not familiar with the Lamberts—your words, Father—and I only said I was here to investigate the death of Mr. Lambert. What are you afraid of? Why are you lying to me?”
He shook his head as if he had no patience for any of this. “What I am afraid of is that I am out of time. My secretary did provide some background for…your visit. I see a great many people every day, and I try to be as accommodating and informed as I can be. Nothing else should be implied. Pity my efforts are met with such rude cynicism. I apologize, Mr. Travis, if I misled you in any way. Do have a safe trip back across the pond.” He strolled away before I had a chance to counterpunch.
“Thomas.” I raised my voice after him and walked briskly up to his side. I don’t like others having the last word. “You said you were Cardinal Antinori’s secretary.”
“What of it?” Guarded now, knowing that he had stumbled badly on the battlefield.
“Why was he in Kensington Gardens the morning the madman found him?”
He abruptly stopped. “Jacob?” He pronounced my name as if introducing me to a royal court.
“Yes?”
“I thought you were investigating the murder of a Mr. Lambert.”
McKenzie strikes back.
I had to be careful. Standing in front of this man, I was not without sin. I certainly didn’t want to raise his suspicion of me and suffer the consequences of his influence and power. I handed him my card. “If you ever feel the urge to confess, Father, give me a ring.” He held my eyes with his while his hand found the card and took it from me. He stared at it for a long moment, but he couldn’t have been spending all that time reading. It contained only my name and phone number.
He brought his eyes up to mine. He said in a different tone, as if he was sitting around the dinner table with his family and friends, the bottles empty, and the yawning begun, “Jake, if you ever find what Giovanni was doing by Peter Pan’s statue, please give me a ring.”
He held my gaze long enough to let me know that he trusted me about as much as I trusted him and that he knew we were playing the lying game.
He turned, and this time I let him go. I felt as if I’d won the battle and lost the war.
He knew Paretsky. Bet my last pair of sneakers on that. He covered well when I mentioned the name, but he couldn’t mask his recognition of the photo. He knew the Lamberts. There goes my record collection if I’m wrong. He did not know why the cardinal had been there that morning. That hurt Father McKenzie. He knew everything about the man—it was his job—and yet the cardinal had secrets, and dark ones at that.
Under normal conditions I would extend Father McKenzie’s and my special time together, inflict the necessary pain, and find out what he was hiding. A nasty piece of business that I’m not fond of but is often required. But not here. Not in this country, where my previous deed was still headline news. Not with a well-connected man whose vestments put him beyond reproach.
I wandered back out to the lawn and took a seat on a concrete bench by a sculpture of Aphrodite. A reproduction, of course. Kathleen and I had viewed the original in the Louvre. I wondered what she was doing right now. Kathleen, not Aphrodite. Garrett planned to shadow her for protection. There was no reason to believe that Paretsky knew I was on his trail—that would be a real compliment considering my snail-paced progress—yet if he did know, I had to circle the wagons around her. Did she still love me? A juvenile and silly thought. I glanced up at Aphrodite for guidance, but she had her own issues, namely that she was missing both arms.
I was contemplating how to approach the other person I wanted to see when she rounded the corner, clutching her handbag and scurrying down the path as if she were late for the Mad Hatter’s tea party. She halted in front of me.
“Mr. Travis?”
“Yes, Cynthia?” If my use of her name startled her, it didn’t show.
“Follow me. Be quick.”
CHAPTER 23
Her version of quick did not exactly sync with mine.
I trailed her to the far end of the gardens by a curved, wooden gate with a single tarnished, brass lamppost on the right side. Brick columns supported the gate, and the hinges looked as if they could be melted down into bridge trusses. She popped off her high heels, took out a pair of flat shoes from her handbag, slipped them on her feet, and stuffed the heels into the bag, acting at once bored and put off with the whole process.
“Do you have a car?” she said.
“One might call it that, but I have serious reservations.” She gave me a puzzled look. “I’ve got wheels.”
“Wheels. Yes, well, very good, then. You’ll need to use them. Meet me at Red Lion, London, Audley and—”
“N Row?”
“You know?” Another puzzled twist of her face, but this one was accompanied by a nervous glance around me, over me, and just about everywhere but above me.
“I do. Why there?”
A young girl pedaling a bike with a white bunny in the basket strung between the handlebars came from the opposite direction. The girl half sang and half hu
mmed a song, like you do when you don’t know all the words. As she approached, she rang the bell on her handlebars. Cynthia seemed mesmerized by the girl and then broke away from her trance and faced me. “One hour,” she said and bustled away.
I cautiously entered the Red Lion. I was familiar with it; it was just around the corner from the flat where Kathleen and I had stayed. I was sure this was coincidental, but I wouldn’t be the first or the last person to make a false assumption and walk into a trap.
The bar, roughly the size of the top deck of an aircraft carrier, ran along the left side of the pub. I strolled to a back room that was elevated a few steps and took a seat overlooking the lower room. A side door was on my port side in the event I needed to make a mad dash. A pair of afternoon drinkers anchored the stern of the bar. An electric guitar riff from the speakers competed with the constant, tuneless hum of gasoline engines coming in from the side and front doors, both propped open.
I got up and checked out both the men’s and the ladies’ rooms. The stalls were empty. No windows. I returned to my seat.
A girl with blue hair, red lips, double-pierced ears, and a tattoo across her chest planted herself in front of me, popped out her right hip, and said, “What’s it gonna be?” I told her a water and a pint. She turned and got a few paces away from me.
“Wait,” I called after Blue. She pivoted her head, opened her mouth, and sprung her eyes wide as if she were breathless with anticipation. A real clown. “Fish and chips,” I said. She poked out her other hip, gave a thumbs-up, and flipped her blue hair over her left shoulder.
Cynthia came in ten minutes later, just after I had doused my fish with vinegar and taken a bite. Her eyes wandered around the pub, found me, and kept wandering. I put my fork down. Shoved away my chair. One of the drunks at the bar glanced over his shoulder. Two young men came through the front door. One of them caught my eye and looked away. I stood. Cynthia’s eyes scanned the pub, clearly expecting someone else.
I stepped toward the side door. A flying leap and I could be out of the place. I mapped out my—
“Mum!”
Blue bounded out of the kitchen and embraced Cynthia, who wrapped her arms around her, and they stood like that, suffocating each other as if the whole world had melted away. The drunk’s head returned to home position. The two young men, laughing, took stools at the bar. I reclaimed my chair.
Cynthia and her daughter raced through some foreign dialect of English, and then Cynthia broke off and joined me. I rose as she approached.
“Mr. Travis,” she said as she took a seat.
“It’s Jake.” I nodded to where Blue stood talking to a couple who had entered while she was jabbering with her mother. “Your daughter?” I sat down. I’d noticed at Granville Estate that she didn’t wear a wedding ring. I wondered if she was divorced or widowed. I decided to slip in the question if the opportunity presented itself—if I cared.
Cynthia glanced at her and shook her head. “My only child. I’m so proud of her.” She turned back to me. “I do hope you didn’t mind driving in. You seemed a little, well, shocked, when I mentioned the pub.”
“No problem at all. I’m actually staying in town.” Why did she look so familiar?
“I haven’t seen her in a week. We’re very close, you know, and a week is such a long time. I just had to see her.”
“I call her Blue,” I said.
“Don’t you just love it?” Cynthia gushed. “She was red a year ago. I never had that nerve when I was her age,” she let out a humph, “let alone the residual of it now. All I managed to do was go from a brunette to a blonde, and that took me thirty years.”
Cynthia was dressed in the same white sweater over a knee-length skirt. I placed her in the neighborhood of forty-five to fifty-five, but as I’ve admitted, I don’t do age well—don’t see the point. She was borderline matronly, which is enigmatic ground to occupy. She could swing either way, and I fought the urge to lean across the table and untie her hair, see who was really there. “Lizzy,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’m so lucky to have her.”
“Here, Mum.” Lizzy positioned a pint in front of Cynthia. “Still shopping this Saturday?”
“If you have the time.”
“Always. My flat at noon? We can do an early dinner, too. I’m not going out till later.” She glanced over at me. “Those chips OK, Yank? Not too soggy?”
“Perfect,” I replied. “They serve as a vessel so that I may dine on vinegar.”
“A vessel for vinegar.” It came out well paced as she nodded her head. “There’s a man for you.” She leaned in a bit and lowered her voice. “Betcha these kids,” she gave a nod to her left where the couple sat, “will dip them in ketchup—just watch.” She straightened back up. “Usual, Ms. Cynthia?”
“The usual will be fine.”
Lizzy spun and waltzed into the kitchen like she was dancing on air. I took a swig from my mug. “You have a wonderful relationship with your daughter.”
“No. I have a jubilant relationship with my daughter.” She took a draw from her glass, and a good fifth of it disappeared. Must have been a hard day at the factory. “She’s my best friend, I can tell you that.”
“You and your husband must be proud.”
“I’m divorced.” Where had I seen her before?
“Sorry to hear that.”
“No need to be. Not everything’s made for distance; we barely made a lap but, voilà, a daughter forever.”
She smiled, and that brought it home. She was in the picture of a young Antinori at the high striker with everyone grinning at the camera lens, except for one young woman off to his side, who kept her eyes on Antinori. She had worn a white sweater then, too.
She was that woman. Was she?
Whether or not that meant beans, I hadn’t a clue. I blurted out, “Why did you want to meet me?”
“It’s Mr. Travis, correct?”
“Please, just Jake.”
“I suppose. You Americans always pick brevity over form.”
“We’re a nation in a hurry. It’s in our DNA. It is Cynthia.” I spread my hands out. “Is it not?”
“Yes, my goodness, I failed to introduce myself. But how did you know my name?”
“Thomas. We bonded. Instant karma.”
She squinted her left eye, waited a beat for it to sink in, and then let out a staccato laugh. “Oh, that is so good, Mr.—Jake. Yes, Father McKenzie. A real charmer, isn’t he? He can freeze butter on a hot day.”
“I didn’t get your last name.”
“What an example of manners I turned out to be. Richardson.” She extended her hand across the table, and I met her halfway. Her handshake was firm and confident. She’d take Father McKenzie down any day. “Cynthia Richardson, but please, just Cynthia.”
“Pleasure to meet you.” She held my hand a beat too long, and I thought of her flipping down the corner of my business card.
I sat back and took a drink of the stout. Lizzy served her mother a fish sandwich with a side salad sans dressing. She inquired if I wanted another, and I gave her a thumbs-up. She cocked her head, raised her eyebrows, shot one back at me, and frolicked away.
After a few moments of partaking, Cynthia pampered her lips with her napkin and said, “It was me you were supposed to see today. We get so many requests for, oh—visitors, donations, tours, jobs—they routinely go to me. And I,” she sat up straight with mock authority, “am the ‘no’ person. They enter the door, I smile, sympathize with their cause, and, with professional politeness, usher them back out.” Her body relaxed, as if she’d been acting the part. “But Father McKenzie, as he occasionally does, perused the list and saw that next to your name I had written ‘Elizabeth Lambert.’ He inquired as to why you called, and I told him that you were investigating the death of her husband, Donald Lambert.”
“But you wrote Elizabeth’s name?”
“Yes. Well, we’ll get to that.”
No reason why we couldn’t get to it now
, but it wasn’t like I had anyplace to go. “He recognized the name,” I pointed out. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t have questioned you any further.” McKenzie had denied knowing the Lamberts, insisting that his secretary provided the background material. I knew that shiny, little gourd was lying.
She took a second with that. “Yes, but I wasn’t surprised. I assumed he recalled her from an incident a couple years back. He asked if you were coming for any business other than the death of Mr. Lambert. I said not that I was aware of. He asked why I thought that you thought that we would have any information on Mr. Lambert’s death. Did I say that right? What I—”
“You did. And what did you say?”
“I told him I hadn’t the faintest idea of why you were coming beyond what I had stated—that you were investigating the death of Donald Lambert.”
“Does he normally intercede with random visitors, even if he knows them?” I gave her a little latitude on her comment about a past incident two years ago to see if she fit it naturally into her story.
“No, that struck me as odd. It was odd. Father McKenzie—how shall I say this—is not a man of the people. He likes being the silent power, the lever of authority. Long before he took the stage, I was Cardinal Antinori’s secretary. That, mind you, was centuries before he became a cardinal, and I…” Her eyes briefly left mine but returned just as quickly. “I was a young woman. Father McKenzie always maintained a streak of jealousy because Cardinal Antinori and I shared a history that superseded his own involvement with the cardinal by over two decades.”
Something in her last statement urged me to slow down, but I rushed ahead, a flag bearer if there ever was one. “And yet he wanted to see me. Why? What was the incident you referred to?”
Lizzy brought my second and picked up my first. She addressed her mother. “Suzette just texted me and wanted to know if I had plans this weekend. Mind if she joins us for shopping on Saturday?”
“Oh, that would be wonderful. I haven’t seen her since she came by the house at Christmas.”
Lizzy smiled, bent over, and landed a kiss on Cynthia’s head. “Thanks. Already gave her the green light.” She hustled off back to the bar, and Cynthia’s eye followed her. She rotated back to me.