His grandfather had certainly been loquacious enough about other topics, particularly about his earlier years in the army and western novels. But he’d always been reticent about what everyone called the “Greatest War.”
Had there been an ominous reason behind that silence? The feeling of uncertainty had clawed at Irish all day. Could there possibly be something?
He watched the sun disappear behind a snow-covered mountain. He gloried in a sky that was clear and so blue it hurt. The first few stars were just barely visible, and a silver disk of a moon appeared translucent. Another thirty minutes and it would be dark.
He started back toward the ranch house. The ride had served the purpose of clearing his mind. He’d made his decision, one he knew he’d really made days ago. He would ask for an extended leave. He sure as hell deserved one.
Irish knew he had to get to the bottom of the charges. The investigator inside him was raging. The absence of any records or memoirs had raised the hackles of every instinct he had. It was uncharacteristic of the General. Someone must have taken them.
He had to do something about the commission report and its implications. He had to do it for the General. And for himself.
He’d read the public part of the report. He’d thought about picking up the phone and contacting the commissioners, accusing them of character assassination. He’d even dialed the first three numbers after locating the office. But then he wouldn’t get any cooperation.
No, he had to get his facts straight first, compile evidence. That meant securing top-secret information, and that might be difficult, even for him.
Perhaps he would start with the other officers named in the report. The names were imprinted in his mind. Brigadier General David Mallory and Colonel—later General—Edward Eachan.
MEMPHIS
Amy Mallory grabbed a quick lunch with her teaching assistant, Sherry Machovitz, who had become both friend and valued ally. She had also been her house sitter when Amy did an occasional visiting lecture, a necessity to gain her tenure.
The last few days had been so busy she hadn’t had time to think of her grandfather, or of the article that had been shoved back on her desk. Once the tenure hearing was over, she would think about it.
Like Scarlett O’Hara, she thought, then grinned at the idea. She was as unlike Scarlett O’Hara as poor Bojangles was unlike the fearless Lassie.
But she was a devotee of old movies, and Gone with the Wind was her all-time favorite despite its skewed history. She knew she shouldn’t like it. She had a doctorate in history, and her colleagues scorned such mindless entertainment. But she harbored a deep rebellious streak, something she suspected she inherited from her mother.
Her mother had been a hopelessly idealistic and extremely impractical romantic. Amy thought of herself as a practical idealist with a touch of romanticism. As long as it was from a distance. She wasn’t sure she believed, as her mother had, that she was destined for any great romantic love. She was, in fact, quite convinced otherwise.
She liked to believe in the abstract that there were knights on white horses, but for herself … there were only mules.
And while she might like mules, she did not want to marry one.
“I found two of your people,” Sherry said with a wide grin. “They are husband and wife. I even have their phone number. Now getting them to talk to you … well, I leave that in your experienced hands.”
Amy gave her a rueful smile. “They didn’t want to talk?”
“Nope,” Sherry said. “They are now fine, upstanding Republicans.”
Amy chuckled. She had done her dissertation on the protest movements of the twentieth century, arguing that the protests of the sixties and early seventies against the Vietnam War and segregation—they became linked in the minds of many people—comprised the first national American protest completely free of economic interest. The abolition movement also was moral in nature, but she’d contended it was far smaller and less national in scope.
Perhaps because her mother had been a part of protests, she was interested in their leaders and what had happened to them in the years since the protests ended. Although her dissertation had centered on the protests themselves, she’d continued to study the effects of those years on the people who led the movement, and planned a book on the subject. There was, she’d found, no common denominator. Some had wasted their lives, unable to survive productively without a cause; others had continued their activism in both governmental and private roles; and still others had turned into what they had once despised the most: their parents.
This, she often thought, was her romanticism: the mysteries and contradictions of history, even modern history.
And it was safe.
Emotional and physical safety meant a lot to her. Her childhood had been chaotic—she’d moved from one city to another, often as a member of an extended family where drugs flowed freely. She was the one who insisted on going to school, on trying to bring some order to their lives. She had been the parent.
Her attention turned back to Sherry. “Good work,” she said. “I’ll call them tomorrow and try to make an appointment.”
“They’re in Chicago,” Sherry warned.
“Are you up to house-sitting with Bojangles again?”
“Are you kidding?” Sherry said. “It’s a refuge.”
Sherry lived with two other graduate students in a small house with only one bathroom. Though her assistant liked her housemates, she relished the privacy she had at Amy’s. And Sherry was the only person who had any kind of rapport with emotionally challenged Bojangles.
In all, Sherry was the best thing that had happened to Amy in years. She was sharp, efficient, fascinated with the same obscurities as Amy, and loved dogs, cats, and anything else with four legs and a tail. It was complete compatibility. Too bad she would probably leave at the end of the year for an instructor’s post at a college in the Midwest.
They talked about one student who showed particular promise, then Amy looked at her watch. “I’m going to run home before my afternoon class. I left a paper there.”
“Right,” Sherry said with a lifted eyebrow.
“All right,” Amy said. “I have office hours this afternoon, and Bojangles.…”
“You don’t have to convince me. He has my heart, too.”
Amy paid the bill, which she often did. Sherry had stopped protesting after Amy had pointed out that Sherry had refused to take pay for house-sitting, and it would have cost her a fortune to board Bojangles. It had become a good arrangement.
Amy got in her twenty-year-old yellow Volkswagen, which she loved just as she loved Bojangles. It was another stray that needed constant and tender care. It had, in fact, been her very first car. Her only car. She wondered what that said about her.
Her house was ten minutes away. It had consumed nearly every penny she had, but it was hers. And that had been very important to her. She impatiently waded through heavy traffic. She had just enough time to get there, take Bojangles out for a short walk, and make it back in time for her class.
While waiting at a long light, her mind flipped over her schedule for the next week. Examinations. Grades. Most important, the tenure hearing in three weeks. And then she had the summer to work on her book. That damned article about her grandfather crept into her mind. She vowed to look into that, too. She owed it to her grandfather.
She had lent three boxes of her grandfather’s papers to one of her colleagues who specialized in World War II. Perhaps she could find something there. She would go through them again before she started her book.
Satisfied that she was doing what she could for his memory, she pressed her foot on the gas, turned left into her neighborhood, then another left. As she reached the house, she saw flames dart out the window, then spread up the side of the house.
Bojangles!
She grabbed her keys, ran to the front door, and unlocked it. Fire was already filling the house with smoke. She grabbed a sweater resting over a
chair and held it to her face. The bathroom. If something had scared Bojangles, he’d be hiding behind the toilet. Amy felt heat as she ran through the hallway toward the bedroom and its bathroom.
“Bojangles,” she called.
She heard a bark and then she saw him streaking toward her. For once, his belief in her overcame his fear. She picked him up and ran for the door, aware that the fire was following her. The smoke was acrid, the heat unbearable. Bojangles huddled against her, his faith in her giving speed to her feet.
She didn’t think she’d make it. Her throat burned and flames were everywhere. She couldn’t see anything; only familiarity with the house kept her going in what she hoped was the right direction.
Fear was suffocating her as much as the smoke. Then she saw light where she’d left the door ajar. Flames ate away at the bottom of the door. Praying, she pushed open the screen and burst through it. She stumbled down the steps, trying to take them in one single leap. Bojangles flew out of her arms but other hands—neighbors’ hands—reached for her and the dog, dragging them away from the fire.
Sirens. She looked back. Her home. Her first home was a roaring inferno. She suddenly realized that cinders had burned through her pantsuit, and Bojangles was frantically licking himself and whining plaintively.
She stooped down and took him in her arms, burying her head in his wiry fur as fire engines pulled up in front of the house and men jumped down and started unrolling hoses. One pulled her away.
But she couldn’t help looking up and watching everything she owned going up in flames. Everything but Bojangles.
If she’d been a few moments later.…
Even through her shock, her practical mind ran over this morning’s routine. She knew she hadn’t left anything on. Not a stove or an iron or another appliance. She was meticulous about that. She’d always had a fear of fire, especially after her mother had left hot oil on the stove and it had caught fire. Amy had been burned when she’d tried to put it out with water. The next-door neighbor had heard her scream and came in, smothering the flames with baking soda.
Bojangles licked her face, and she realized she was shaking.
A fireman came up to her. “Ma’am? Were you inside?”
She nodded. “I’d just driven up when I saw the flames. I went in for my dog.” She clutched Bojangles tighter as he tried to snuggle even closer. His fear of the stranger was palpable.
“You should go to the hospital and get checked out.”
“Just a few surface burns,” she said. “I’ll put salve on them.”
He studied her for a moment. “A fire investigator will want to talk to you.”
She stared at his frown. “Why?”
“My men smelled accelerant,” he said. “The fire spread too quickly to be an accident.”
She knew what that meant. Her legs suddenly felt rubbery, and she trembled all over. Bojangles whined in distress.
A fire was bad enough, but to think.…
Who could possibly want to set her house on fire?
three
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Dustin Eachan stared at the painting hanging in his cousin’s living room and felt a prickling along his back.
“We should report it,” he said. He couldn’t look at his cousin. He knew he would see a feeling of betrayal on her face. He wouldn’t have suggested it if he hadn’t known she would refuse. He certainly didn’t want the public to know that his family had stolen art treasures. God help his career then. Still, he felt he had to say it.
“No,” she said. “I won’t do it.”
“Then you need to put it away,” he said. He knew how much the painting meant to her. It was the last present her father had given her. The fact that it hadn’t meant anything to her father didn’t destroy her pleasure in it.
“They’re dead now,” she said quietly. “It can’t mean anything to anyone but me. It’s not as if it was really worth any money.”
“It’s on a partial inventory list. I saw it. Sea Scape by Ramon Castelli. Someone might remember it,” Dustin said.
“Why? You told me the painting isn’t worth much.”
That was when she was desperate for money. He had bailed her out financially—not for the first time—and she had offered the painting in exchange. He’d refused to take it because he knew how much it meant to her. And in truth it wasn’t worth a fortune, though it would have sold for about fifty thousand.
To Sally, though, it was her only inheritance from a father she’d adored.
“Will you do that?” he asked.
“Store it away?”
“Yes.” He turned and looked at her. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
If only he had lived in the sixteenth or seventeenth or eighteenth century, when marrying cousins was acceptable. But he didn’t, and it wasn’t—especially for someone who planned to go into public service. Some states even prohibited marriage between first cousins. He remembered his mother’s horror when she’d first realized that he felt more than cousinly affection for Sally. She had been merely sixteen then, and he’d been twenty-two.
So he had taken over the role of protector instead, pushing his wayward feelings aside. He’d told himself that there were other women in the world. He was, in fact, almost engaged to Patsy Sandiford. Patsy was beautiful and bright and committed. She was involved in a dozen causes and held a master’s degree in international relations. Her pedigree was impeccable. Just like his. At least, just like his before the goddamned commission report.
And she would marry him in a New York second. He had known that for months.
He liked her. He had just about decided love didn’t matter. They would have affection and similar interests and great sex. Did he really need more?
Then he would see Sally, and know that he did.
He stuffed those feelings back in the mental box where they belonged.
“Will you put it away?” he repeated.
Sally looked at him for a long moment. She was unlike all the other members of the Eachan family. Where most of them were dark-haired with blue eyes, she had golden hair and green eyes. They weren’t vividly green, not like emeralds, but a soft, vulnerable gray green with flecks of gold. “Where?”
“A safe deposit box,” he said.
“And if someone asks me if I have anything.…”
“They won’t,” he said with more assurance than he felt. “They looked into events that happened fifty years ago. They won’t be crawling through all our possessions.…”
“Then why …?”
“Someone might see it and say something,” he said.
She looked at him with those damned eyes that made him feel like God. “All right, if you think that’s best.”
“I do, Squirt,” he said, using his old pet name for her. They had virtually grown up together. He had soothed her when her father disappeared for months at a time, leaving his wife and daughter in the not always gentle hands of their grandparents.
Dustin’s father was with the State Department and often left his children home when stationed in what he said were dangerous countries. Dustin had been shipped off to the grandparents, where he’d been the golden child. He’d been fawned over by grandparents who adored him but disliked Sally’s mother and, therefore, her child.
His cousin had been a lonely child, and now she was a lonely adult who’d never learned to trust anyone but him, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
The ironic thing was that he wasn’t very trusting himself. He had always felt deserted by his own parents, and had turned away from them when his sister had drowned when she was seventeen and he was fifteen. It seemed all his parents cared about was covering up the fact that she had been high on drugs.
He’d learned then that all their talk about duty and honor meant little. Everyone took shortcuts to get what they wanted. You didn’t get where his father had without leaving a few bodies in your wake, even your own children’s.
The only
person he’d allowed himself to care about after that was Sally. She always made him feel better about himself. Better and worse.
She nodded. “I’ll do it tomorrow.”
He went over to the cabinet where she kept the scotch and took out the bottle that was always there. For him, he knew. She drank wine.
He poured a sizable measure in a glass and added some ice, then gulped it. “How’s your job?”
Sally shrugged. “It’s fine,” she said without enthusiasm. She was a public relations officer, or more accurately, an escort for foreign dignitaries visiting the State Department. It was, in fact, a good job for her. She was uncommonly good-natured and competent in her own way, as well as a very decorative part of any office, but she never stayed anywhere long. At thirty-five, she still didn’t know what she wanted to do when she grew up.
Or maybe she did. She’d always liked to draw and paint, but she’d never persevered with any studies in that area. “I’m not good enough,” she’d always claimed.
He thought she was, but she’d never been able to commit to art—perhaps because she was opposed to everything her mother liked. Nor could she seem to commit to a job any more than she could commit to a man. She’d had more boyfriends than he could count, but never one that lasted more than six months. He’d never known how he felt about that.
“Do you believe Grandfather was involved?”
“Well, he took one painting at least,” Dustin said. “We know that,” he added as he looked back at the art hanging on the wall. It was the one really nice thing in the apartment. The other furnishings were either cheap imitations or hand-me-downs. Possessions, other than the painting, had never meant much to her. Another attempt at avoiding commitments.
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