Twin Genius

by Patricia Rice

  I waved away this deluge of words. “History of the World 101. I take it you’re telling me that Arden used my father as a tool in his political arsenal and talked him out of buying GenDef’s weapons?”

  “Your mother did. She convinced Brody to listen to Arden.”

  My mother? Magda talked my father out of blowing up half Ireland? I tried to process this but my mind wouldn’t compute and Graham kept talking.

  “You’ll have to ask Magda what the discussion was. I don’t even know for fact that the purchase was cancelled. The world was told that our fathers died in a disagreement over weapons, and everyone assumed it was over type of gun or price or just a deal gone sour. But the rest I learned from your grandfather. At that time, you were a toddler, your father wanted peace, and his only enemies were presumably across the pond. Nothing short of a deal gone bad could have justified blowing up three promising young men.”

  Oh crap. My mother had told me flat out that she blamed herself for my father’s death. She’d spent her life avenging him—undoubtedly fighting the weapons dealers she thought had killed him. In my own sick way, I had to admire her determination. Guns were the tools of the devil—or so she’d taught me.

  She’d also been so furious with my grandfather that she’d turned her back on all his wealth and never returned. At one point, she’d told me they’d argued and she’d called him an Oracle of Mammon. My tired brain kicked that over and I winced.

  My grandfather had been an extremely wealthy man who had been hand in glove with the kind of corporate sharks behind Senator Paul Rose’s current campaign. That meant his investments had undoubtedly included weapons manufacturers. In a way, we were now living off blood money. I could see where Magda might refuse to take it.

  Magda and William Arden had talked my father out of buying guns. I got it, sort of.

  “You want me to talk to Joshua’s father,” I said, rubbing my forehead and trying to rearrange my thoughts. “You think GenDef is involved in the park, at the very least. Weapons and Jesus do not compute.”

  “They do if Joshua Arden needed funds for the park, and Paul Rose needed the support of Josh’s large fan base. Desperate people make strange bedfellows. I sent a file to your box.” He wheeled back to his bank of monitors and scrolled through visuals of the park gates—where reporters were gathering. He brought up shots of the hospital—where a vigil of Arden fans held candles.

  So, GenDef had probably had a lot of people killed over the years, including my father and Graham’s. I let that knowledge sink in. What were a few assassinations measured against the hundreds of thousands of innocent people their guns had killed? GenDef and their lobbyists were responsible for corrupting a lot of silly people into believing prophets and George Washington carried AK-47s, fine.

  I didn’t like any of it. But right now, right this minute, all the people who mattered to me were safe and almost all under one roof. I determinedly ignored Juliana’s concern for her roommates.

  “Make me care,” I muttered obstinately. “I do not want to be part of Magda’s vendetta.”

  He gave a frustrated sigh but didn’t turn around. “I don’t want you involved. I want you and your siblings scattered across the country, teaching school and petting ponies. I want Magda and her cohorts to all go to a hell of their own making. And I want peace on earth and goodwill toward mankind.”

  He zoomed up two monitors to show videos of Patra and Nick. Patra was looking rather posh in a fitted red cashmere blazer and matching beret she’d no doubt bought at a thrift store since her paycheck wouldn’t cover it. Her red lip-sticked smile dazzled a security guard—outside the hospital? I’d told her to check on the park story.

  Nick—my lovely golden Nick—was looking harassed. The Windsor knot in his pink and blue tie was loose, and he ran his hand through his thick hair as he engaged in argument—discussion—with his British embassy employers. Nick never argued exactly. He talked people to death. I’d comment on Graham’s spying on an ally embassy but I was too busy trying to figure out what Nick was doing.

  Graham zoomed closer, shutting out people and focusing on a desk covered in glossy photos—photos of my father, me, Magda, and Juliana. In the photo, Julie was talking to Joshua Arden in a ratty-looking coffee shop.

  Patra was already investigating GenDef. Nick was being asked about us. My family was already involved in this rubbish. My opting out wouldn’t help.

  “Filthy bad word.” I dragged myself and my coat up. “This all has to be Magda’s fault somehow.” I lied, but it made me feel better to blame her.

  “This”—he gestured at the screens—“is why I want you out of here.”

  “That”—I leaned over his broad shoulder, hit the keyboard, scrambling his monitors, then bit his ear lobe—“is why I cannot leave.”

  This time, instead of letting me go, he reacted. He grabbed my waist, yanked me down on his lap, and kissed me until I thought my head had lifted from my body and my mind had entered an altered state. One thing to say about quiet men, they could be explosive kissers.

  “I know,” he growled against my ear when he’d put me in my place. “And that is what is making me crazy.”

  “Crazier.” I stood and straightened out my sadly wrinkled lawyer suit. “There is no sane place for intelligent people in this world.”

  With that pithy, if somewhat ambiguous, remark, I gathered my coat and hat and departed.

  “My, look at the two of you! You were adorable as toddlers but now—you’re nothing less than impressive. I can see your father so clearly. . . .” Their mother sniffed tearfully and patted Julie’s cheek.

  Strangely, Magda was not the vision Julie recalled from her oldest memories. She’d no doubt embroidered reality with the fairy tales Ana had read to her. Magda was merely a statuesque middle-aged woman with dyed blond hair, impressive cheekbones, and a domineering personality. Julie had lots of experience with domineering personalities. Her antie and gogo had out-domineered Magda. Nothing beat having your own family war party.

  “It is good to finally meet you as an adult,” Julie said, hugging Magda again and feeling her mother resist the gesture. Then turning to Zander, she gave him another enthusiastic hug. He was more receptive. “Thank you for looking for me. I really was fine, you know.”

  “Not if you couldn’t communicate with me,” he said stiffly, leading the way into a formal parlor adorned with an eccentrically tilted Christmas tree. Julie pulled out her phone, wanting to take a photo, then remembered the bug just in time.

  She held out the phone to Zander. “Ana says the bug can be removed. Do you know how?”

  Magda exclaimed in annoyance, grabbed the phone, and marched off with it. “I’ll be right back. I just had my fingernails done and don’t want to break them.”

  They both watched her go. Zander shook his head in bewilderment. “I have imagined meeting our mother in many ways, but I have never thought of her as. . .”

  “A one-woman army?” Julie suggested. “Really, our father tried to tell us. It is our own fault if we did not believe.”

  “She is very beautiful,” Zander said with a hint of uncertainty.

  “But we are looking for a mother, someone human. I am sure she is a very good person, but we were probably better off being raised by our anties.” Julie wandered over to examine the tree. She found the hanging photo ornament immediately. “Is this our grandparents?”

  “Yes, and Magda as a child. Our brother Nicholas hung that. I want to think of something personal I can hang, so they remember us when we are home again.” Zander leaned over to examine the packages under the tree. “I have ordered a few gifts. Do you think we might stay until after the holiday?”

  “What about your employer?” she asked, crouching down to read the tags.

  “Work is slow this time of year. I have emailed them to say I am meeting with a very important client. Ana has asked me to look after one of our grandfather’s funds. There may be more, so I am being honest.”

 
“There is a package for me!” She rattled the oddly decorated box.

  “I think the package you are holding is from Elizabeth Georgiana, our youngest sister. Her wrappings are. . . interesting.”

  The paper was purple with super-hero characters and a big black bow. Julie smiled and allowed herself to relax, just a little. She had been worried about her friends and Reverend Arden and what she would do next, but right now, right this moment, she was safe with her twin and the mysterious family she’d always wondered about.

  “I should go shopping for gifts too. I have been afraid to do anything online for fear that I was being watched.” She sat cross-legged beneath the tree, found the tree light switch, and turned them on against the dull gray day outside.

  The lights flashed like a little piece of heaven against the cheap plastic ornaments and the colorful packages.

  “Do you have any idea why you were being watched? Or if everyone was?” Ana asked, striding into the room.

  Julie glanced up and blinked in surprise. The assured, sophisticated lawyer had morphed into a short woman in an ugly denim maxi dress over a knit Henley. Without any of her earlier toughness, Ana curled her legs up in an old chair and simply waited for an answer. She was wearing what appeared to be sandals with heavy socks. Only the shiny black braid remained the same.

  “You are a chameleon,” Julie exclaimed. “But you choose not to blend into these elegant surroundings. Why is that?”

  Ana’s long dark lashes blinked in surprise, then she tilted her head in consideration. “A chameleon changes colors when it feels threatened. Here, I’m at home and can be myself. I am an introvert by nature, a basement-residing spider who prefers to watch the world through my computers.”

  “Agoraphobia is the danger of introversion,” the lamp beside the chair intoned.

  Julie thought her eyes might pop out. She stared as Ana patted the lamp shade fondly.

  “That’s Amadeus Graham, the pot calling the kettle black,” Ana explained. “Except he’s not a natural introvert, just a tarantula hiding in the dark, waiting for his next victim. Never expect privacy in this house. Back to the bug in your phone. . . .” She waited expectantly.

  Magda sailed in, holding said phone out in triumph. “All better now. I’ll see if anyone can trace that fairly crude mechanism.”

  Ana snatched the phone from her mother’s hand before Julie could stand up. She pulled a tool out of her dress pocket, pried the back off, and removed a tiny card. “There, now you can turn on the GPS when you want, and Magda doesn’t have to know if you’re meeting your boyfriends.”

  Zander took the phone and handed it over to Julie so she didn’t need to stand up. “I see I have much to learn if I’m to know our family,” he said warily.

  Magda glared at Ana, who didn’t even bother turning to look at their mother.

  “Understand that you are loved,” Ana said. “But accept that our love comes in the form of protection, which means we all lack privacy. I try to respect boundaries. Magda doesn’t know boundaries exist. And Graham. . . I won’t even try to explain. But we need to know who was watching you and why, because it wasn’t us doing it, so it was most likely someone who didn’t have your best interests at heart.”

  Julie bit her bottom lip, studied her newly-freed phone, and reluctantly responded. “I told my supervisor I thought the security cameras had caught a man being murdered, and I stupidly showed her the image on my phone.”

  Chapter 15

  I watched as Magda pretended to study the Christmas tree while Julie spoke. The whole setting felt exceedingly strange, yet strangely familiar. I had barely shared the same space with our mother in a decade. It had been nearly twenty years since we’d jointly shared a home with the twins. I felt the presence of the twins’ formidable father. Before he died, he had been that strong a character.

  If I felt him, how did Magda feel?

  But Magda was an adult who could take care of herself. The twins weren’t quite there yet, so I focused on Juliana’s horrifying revelation.

  “Mrs. Overcamp treated me as if I were a criminal after I showed her that photo,” Julie explained in bafflement. “I wanted to call the police. She said the administration would handle it. It looked as if a body had been dumped into one of the construction holes, and she didn’t immediately call someone to look? I was appalled and confused. Shortly after that, I couldn’t find my phone. I retraced my steps, hunted all over, and it turned up in my desk the next day. I never kept it there. So I was suspicious. And then I noticed the battery ran down too quickly. I got very nervous after that.”

  “I assume that was the end of October, early November? The same time you drew out all your cash and stopped using your bank account?” I probed deeper, hoping this was the only incident that had panicked her.

  “I didn’t like knowing my phone was bugged. I assumed my computer was also not private,” she said with a shrug. “I was taught to keep a stash of money for emergencies, so I went to town and withdrew everything. As odd events continued, I didn’t return to the bank. I feared I might be followed. I tried to stay to myself and monitor my cameras in hopes of finding definitive evidence of what was happening.”

  “You should have notified us at once!” Magda exclaimed.

  Julie looked mulish. I tried not to roll my eyes.

  “She doesn’t know us any better than she knows Mrs. Overcamp,” I pointed out. “Even less so, actually. Julie did exactly what she should have done under the circumstances—look for evidence to give to the authorities. But now it’s time to combine our knowledge and try to figure out what is happening.”

  Magda hadn’t sat down since she’d returned to the room. She was like a trapped bird. She flitted to the foyer doorway again, and I could feel her tension. I knew what came next and didn’t even bother to turn to see her scowl.

  “It’s rather obvious what is happening. I’ll handle this. Tell Elizabeth I’ll see her tomorrow. I may be late this evening.” She took flight down the hall.

  “Mallard will be disappointed you won’t be home for dinner,” I said to the empty doorway.

  So would EG, but she’s a tough little kid and was used to our vanishing mother. The twins. . . looked a little shell-shocked.

  “This is why your father let your family take you away,” I explained as gently as I could. “But you’re adults now. You make your own decisions. As I’ve told you, this house belongs to you as much as any of us, so you’re welcome to stay. For now, the expenses for food and Mallard and so forth come out of our family account, but you’ll have to pay for personal items yourself until everything is sorted out.”

  “But what of Reverend Arden?” Julie cried. “I cannot go home until I know what is happening.”

  I hid my smile of satisfaction. “Then we work together to find out. Zander is helping by digging through the foundation’s accounts. Do you think you could start contacting all the students you know to ask about your missing friends? And possibly find out more about the parties the second year students attended?”

  Julie nodded. “Is there a computer I can use?”

  Zander and I exchanged grins. He’d learned quickly that computers were our bread and butter.

  Graham had arranged a meeting between me and Reverend William Arden. I was already heading for the Metro when Nick called me.

  “Is Juliana okay?” he asked first.

  “She’s with us. Graham is spying on the embassy,” I informed him as I hurried down the wintry street. “You don’t have to get involved if it’s a problem for your career.”

  “I’m not certain I’m cut out to be a flunky,” he said unhappily. “General Defense is an international industry with offices in the UK. The ambassador wants to know what Graham knows about them, and they’re encouraging me to stay in the mansion for Christmas, which means they’ve bugged my phone or my suitcase or something because they know Graham is bugging them. I think I’ll go back to cheating at cards. It’s less stressful.”

 
“I’ll have Zander send you his analysis of the GenDef embezzlement and how the funds were being shunted through Jesus World. That ought to give them a bone to gnaw on while Magda struts her stuff. Best not to discuss more on the phone. Come home and Graham will find the bugs and send your Brits whatever makes him happy. Keep remembering that once we have our finances straightened out, you won’t have to work for them if you don’t want to. That might throw them into a bit of a tizzy.”

  I could almost hear him smile. “I like that, a gentleman of leisure condescending to give them the time of day out of loyalty to the Crown. It’s flunkydom to which I object. Power, I can handle.”

  I snorted inelegantly. That was so Nick—Queen of the World. “I’m heading into the Metro. See you at dinner?”

  He agreed and signed off. I checked my watch. I’d left EG happily working with Julie on video footage, so she should be well occupied for the moment. If Nick went to the house for dinner, I could take as long as I needed. Rush hour to Alexandria was not a good commute by rail or car.

  I caught my Uber lift from the Metro station to the Reverend William Arden’s spacious home and grounds outside Alexandria. An electronic gate blocked the drive. A reporter hanging out on the corner noted the Uber car’s license plate—one of the many reasons I didn’t like limos; their tags can be traced back to the owner. The driver announced my name into the intercom and the gate swung open.

  I gave the Uber driver a tip and told him that, if anyone asked him, I was the good reverend’s substitute nurse. The driver grinned and pocketed the extra cash. Since the Uber website specified that customers needn’t tip, he probably didn’t see a lot of cash coming his way. I expected he’d be happy to oblige.

  Normally, I’d wear full-dress business camouflage at an interview with a stranger, but I was a little shocked by Julie’s observation of my chameleon habits. I had decided to stay truer to myself while still being respectful of an elder and a friend of Graham’s. I wore comfortable leggings, a long sweater, and my leopard boots. I could pass as a home nurse.