Trophies

by J. Gunnar Grey

She smiled. "Good afternoon. Do you have the name of the security guard?"

  Only Caren would think to ask a question like that. Dread trickled up my spine like a cold, rising tide. It had been so easy, not remembering that a human being had worn that jacket when a bullet passed through it.

  "Higdon," von Bisnon said. "Officer Ezra Higdon, a policeman moonlighting after the rash of burglaries during the previous two years."

  She leaned onto the butcher block, head bowed and hair falling in a curtain about her face. One finger played with the largest, central sapphire teardrop, meant to dangle suggestively amidst the curves of a glamorous woman's cleavage. "Did Officer Higdon leave a family?"

  I closed my eyes. The dread rose higher, raising goose bumps on the nape of my neck. I hadn't thought to ask that one, either. And with my certainties running high, I didn't want to know the answer.

  Von Bisnon paused, too. "He left a widow and a son of four years."

  The glorious sapphires sparked beneath Caren's fingers, their lightning slamming through my tired eyes into my soul. That small child had lost his father, truly lost him. I shared his ripping abandonment, that sense of being robbed. The sapphires flashed again and something, a barricade or a dam, exploded within me. The buried emotions I'd sworn I would not feel — grief, rage, hate, loss — refused to be contained a moment longer. I couldn't face any more. I had to escape. I shoved back from the table and rushed out of the kitchen.

  The house stifled me. In the hall, my step was softened by Aunt Edith's beloved blue Persian rug, Glendower's bullet hole through it, too. An out-of-place abstract oil of straight lines and orbs, mixed blues and greens, hung on the wall near the staircase, its banister polished by her small graceful hands through the years. There was no escaping her; she was everywhere; her memory, her influence overwhelmed me. Her very presence sang throughout the house and hammered at me like a sledge.

  I stumbled into the parlor. It was worse. There were the white sofas and blue armchair, where she'd humiliated my father, where I'd read Shakespeare aloud to her, where she'd convinced me to join the Army. On the sideboard were her little carved hippopotami, bathed in a pool of sunlight atop the carefully arranged doily. And there on the opposite wall was her wedding photo, as usual hanging a bit off kilter.

  "Robbie?"

  I crossed to the photo and took it down. I loved that photo. It had been taken on the steps of the cathedral just after the wedding. Uncle Hubert, in his penguin suit, looked portly and pompous and very very kindly. Aunt Edith was stunning. I loved that photo, and I loved Aunt Edith, but I couldn't bear either of them any more. I had to get her influence out of my life and find my own balance. I clutched the frame to my chest and turned my back on Sherlock in the clearest signal I could send that I wanted privacy.

  No need to mention how much good that did me. "Talk to me, Robber."

  I wished I was again eleven years old so I could cry without feeling shame, so my mum would find me and hold me and everything would be all right. But she was dead, too, lost like the little boy's father, and would never hold me again. My throat constricted. But I found I had a voice and that I needed to use it. "Do you see?" I asked. "She wasn't Glendower's blackmailer. She was his accomplice."

  It seemed so clear now.

  "She shot the security guard," but Caren had humanized him and I couldn't call him that any more, "she shot Ezra Higdon. She was Glendower's lover, obviously, and people must have suspected something. So when that last robbery went south, when she shot Ezra Higdon while stealing the Earl of Bedford's sapphire necklace, when Glendower fell under suspicion — however that happened — it cast a shadow across her. She had to leave England or possibly face charges as an accessory or even for the murder itself. So she married Hubert Hunter and moved to Boston. She didn't love him," and that seemed her worst crime of all. "She didn't love Uncle Hubert. She merely used him to escape."

  "But obviously he loved her."

  I'd never considered that. My breath caught and I turned, still clutching the photo like a teddy bear.

  Sherlock filled the parlor entry, blocking the view of anyone who might be standing behind his big frame. Just his presence was comforting, even if his hair was a mess. "Otherwise after all that scandal he'd have no reason to marry her. Right?"

  Countless times Uncle Hubert had stroked her hair in passing, touched her cheek, smiled wonderingly as if he couldn't believe he'd been entrusted with such a priceless treasure. For years I'd thought of her the same way. "He must have."

  Sherlock nodded. "Do you think he knew all this?"

  Uncle Hubert had been a bookworm, a man who loved reading and writing, but also a man who loved teaching and people. He was a dreamer but never stupid. "He must have." I freed one hand and rubbed my face dry.

  "He forgave her. And he married her when maybe no one else would have her."

  I caught my breath. "I never thought of him in that light."

  "Is it possible that, over time, she grew to love him?"

  She'd always answered when Uncle Hubert called, no matter how busy or distracted she might have been nor how silly his request. She'd hand-knitted his sweaters when no one knit any more and silently fetched him tea and sandwiches while he wrote.

  "Yes. Yes, I think you're right." Something else suddenly became clear. "That's why she didn't scream that night."

  He nodded. "She didn't want Glendower caught. But she put her fingerprints on that murder weapon, Robbie, even though she could have worn gloves. She held herself accountable."

  The room widened about me, warm, comfortable, calming. But I still couldn't face Aunt Edith, dead or alive. Without looking at the photo, I slid it into the sideboard and shut it away. But that wasn't enough to put the situation right. "Sherlock, there's an errand I must run."

  He rubbed his eyes. "We haven't had a chance to warn Jacob off yet so you're going nowhere alone. Where am I driving you?"

  I handed him my comb. "To the attorney's office. There's something I must do."

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  current time

  "You still have it." Langstrom handled his old family photo as if it was a treasure. "You kept it all these years."

  Sherlock waited in the reception area, I'm certain smiling at all the women passing. Sherry, Langstrom's secretary, had fetched me back to his office and without preamble I'd given him the photo in its mahogany frame.

  The need to explain myself was overwhelming. "It was a trophy, see."

  He didn't glance up, seemingly thrilled and mesmerized in equal measures. "A trophy?"

  "Sportsmen keep dead animal heads on their walls. Travelers have photos of themselves in exotic locales. Bibliophiles hoard signed first editions." I shrugged, feeling more foolish with every word. "I stole items of no real value and kept them."

  Now he looked up. With his eyes widened, the resemblance to an egghead was even more startling. "But why a photograph, of all things?"

  I shoved my hands into my pockets. "Because I wanted your family, or at least one like it, instead of my own. And if I couldn't have it any other way, then I at least wanted it symbolically." I shrugged again. "But I believe I've finally outgrown it."

  "Mum died last year," he said bluntly, "and there was a fire, see. We lost all our photos. If I'd had this one, it would have burnt, too." He held out his hand. "Thank you for keeping it safe."

  But I wasn't through. "That's what they threw me out of school for, you know."

  "Yes, I know." His eyes were grateful.

  His hand didn't droop. Finally I took it.

  "I shouldn't keep you. Make an appointment for me, would you? I really need to make a will."

  "Any time."

  In the reception area, Sherlock and I smiled at the same beautiful woman who'd walked past us the day before. This time she wore a nice cream suit that showed a lot of curves, and she smiled back as she vanished through the door behind the receptionist.

  "I do like this law office." He didn't even glance at th
e décor. "Where next?"

  I shrugged. "Home." It surprised me, but now, when I used that word, I didn't mean the condo.

  He gave me a look. "The price of gas what it is, especially up here in this God-forsaken part of the country, and you think I'm gonna drive your happy anatomy all over Cambridge and Boston just to return a photo? Particularly when there's so much else we need to finish?" He took my biceps and guided me to the elevator. "Ohh-h, no, buddy boy. Let's get a move on."

  "Where?" I didn't bother pulling back; I knew resistance was futile. "What now?"

  The bed and breakfast was a block off Charles Street in Beacon Hill, near the shopping district, and it cost Sherlock a twenty to put the Camaro in the garage. The area was surrounded by history. A person could throw a rock and hit the Common, or lob it the other way and smack a window in Mass. Gen., where Trés recovered, or twist around and put it over the African Meeting House, or turn again and drop it into the river itself. It was the sort of place tourists love and I only got out of the car under duress.

  "I take it you're looking for Jacob?" I jammed my hands in my pockets.

  "Well, if he's here that's a bonus." Sherlock herded me along the sidewalk. "Will you come on? Let's finish all this and get back."

  He couldn't possibly mean what I thought he meant. "Butt out of family affairs, boss."

  "You are useless to me with this emotional turmoil dangling over your head. And that makes it my business."

  I hated it when he was right and never more so than at that moment. But he was right. My jumbled family affairs needed settling, and the only way that would happen was if I started the process. No matter how little I wanted to.

  We matched glares on the sidewalk outside the bed and breakfast. Of course I'd lose; no one could best Sherlock at that game. Surrendering stoked my temper, but before it got serious and I lived to regret challenging him, I broke eye contact and led the advance. He followed and once through the door peeled off to the magazine racks nearby.

  Father sat in the lobby, where a burnt-gold sofa and half-dozen easy chairs formed conversational groupings around highly polished coffee tables. Three floor-to-ceiling windows with sheer lace draperies brightened the room more than the chandeliers and gleaming brass table lamps. He sat on a low-backed lounger beside an armoire, facing the windows with the light falling across his face and shimmering from his crisp blue-and-white pinstriped dress shirt. Both hands clasped his walking stick between his knees. He stared at me as I paused near the reception desk, his face tight as if pulled back at the edges, knuckles whitening on the knob of his stick.

  I stared back. My heart sank to somewhere around my middle. It was time to tell this angry and bitter old man of my decision to keep my distance. Then I'd turn around and walk away. And even as I considered it, I knew that wasn't the action I wanted to take, because it was the action of an angry and bitter young man, and that was no longer what I wanted to be.

  The thought flared into my mind fully developed, like Athena leaping from the forehead of Zeus. Who knew what expression crossed my face as I thought it, for one second later, the most amazing thing happened.

  My father's lips relaxed, ever so slightly, and tilted up at the corners. And the fire in his expression softened to match.

  I hung on my heel. But my father's proud smile, tiny as it was, drew me like a magnet. I could no longer remain distant and crossed the room to his side.

  This time I didn't need that deep breath before speaking. "Father."

  The little smile hadn't wavered. But his eyes widened as I approached, and when he spoke his voice was soft, as if something wild and wary had alit nearby and he didn't wish to startle it away. "Charles."

  "May I join you?"

  His glance flickered to the chair beside his, where the light from the three windows would fall on my face, too, and an experienced courtroom warrior could read every emotion I expressed while I wasn't certain I'd understand his. I hesitated — did I want to give him such an advantage? — but when his smile dimmed I took the indicated seat. This wasn't a competition nor a trial, but negotiations during a cease-fire. It seemed we both wanted this. And if he behaved like a barrister, well, perhaps that was because he was one.

  "I was sitting here, thinking of you," he said.

  "Were you?" The sunlight through the windows drenched me in warmth.

  His smile deepened. "That's not particularly surprising under the circumstances, is it? I intended to ring you and apologize. I was attempting to decide where to begin when you entered. You see, William and I had — well, a long talk this morning."

  Although his voice remained gentle, I could easily picture him ripping William's face off. I winced. At the same time, I couldn't help feeling a certain satisfaction. For the first eleven years of my life, I'd watched our father give preference to my elder brother; this partial settling of that score eased something tight and ugly deep inside me.

  "When I saw you the other night at the gallery, I was shocked," he said into our pause. "You were always such a happy, playful child. I couldn't imagine what turned you so hostile."

  I remembered myself as selfish and prying, into everything and particularly where I shouldn't be. Perhaps William and my father weren't the only ones who needed to reconsider my role within the family.

  "I had hoped," he continued, his voice lowering almost to a whisper, "for a full family reconciliation, but I see now that may not be possible."

  I shrugged and his eyes widened again, this time with surprise. My relationship with William, with its layers of rage and love and resentful sibling rivalry, was rather more complicated than the one with my father. But the occasional flashes of sympathy and understanding I felt for William indicated that, if we were able to work through the rage, as it seemed Father and I had done, the potential for peace existed there, too.

  Somewhere along the line, while Father had spoken, the remaining tension eased between us. We had much to discuss, he and I, much to understand and forgive. But the willingness to simply quit fighting and accept one another sat down with us in the lobby of the bed and breakfast, and I knew that no matter how we argued in the future, our relationship would never be quite the same again.

  Which gave me the confidence to ask the question that preyed on me.

  "Father, there's one thing I must know."

  His chin lifted.

  I chose my words carefully; if this was something he didn't know about his little sister, I didn't want to be the one to clue him in. "I've learned a lot about Aunt Edith since she died, the sort of thing one doesn't expect, you know."

  An angry sort of understanding flashed across his face. I paused: it was at this point during our conversation at the law office that he'd lost his temper. But it seemed he, too, now understood that old grudge, for he drew a long, steadying breath and nodded.

  "What hold did she have over you so you didn't return to fetch me?"

  For the first time he looked away, dropping his gaze to the walking stick he clutched between his knees. "Think back to the reading of the will."

  "She left you an embroidered lace handkerchief."

  "It wasn't your mother's."

  I'd imagined a lot of possibilities. But this one had never crossed my mind. I managed to keep my voice from rising. "You abandoned me to keep an affair quiet?"

  Even as I said it, I knew I wasn't being fair. He hadn't hesitated to admit his impropriety when I asked. Ashamed he might be, he was also determined to be honest.

  More honest than Aunt Edith, who never explained that real life was the cost of the magical lure she dangled.

  His inspection of that stick became even more concentrated. "I was a coward and a bloody fool. Can you forgive me?"

  His honesty didn't help. My re-awakened anger throbbed unabated.

  But Caren had asked for the security guard's name; she'd humanized Ezra Higdon, who died leaving a wife and four-year-old son. She'd reminded me the victims are human, too, and the rawness of that vulnerable mome
nt still coursed through my veins. I stared at my father's immobile profile and the quiet depth of his pain joined it, seventeen years of wondering if his son would ever speak with him again. It became a part of me, too. In a way, I'd murdered the proud barrister my father had been, the same way Aunt Edith had murdered Ezra Higdon. But instead of killing him swiftly with a well-aimed bullet, I'd cut his heart with a thousand tiny strokes and left him to bleed.

  Perhaps I wasn't like Aunt Edith at all. Perhaps I was worse.

  I fought off the tumbling emotions as I would a flashback and focused. Had I ever felt like a coward and a fool? Yes, indeed. The spotter had been in my sights and a dead man walking when the machine-gun fire had ratcheted into the sandbags beneath me and I'd flinched. If I'd held firm and not been faked, I might have had him. And that moment lived on in my waking nightmares and might do so for the remainder of my life.

  Father stared at the knob of his walking stick, a man equally disappointed with himself and awaiting my judgment.

  In my heart, our peace treaty was ratified.

  "I can't say I've never been either." It was easier, I found, to forgive him than myself. "Remember your suggestion, that night at the gallery? We don't have to get into this right now. Let's save this particular argument for a rainy day."

  When his eyes widened in an entirely different manner, I knew the awkward moment was past.

  Off to our right, a newspaper rattled. We glanced aside together. Sherlock stood at a distance out of hearing for anyone else, propped against a wall reading some touristy publication. His gaze remained on the glossy pages and never turned toward us.

  "Perhaps I shouldn't keep you," Father said.

  But seeing Sherlock, patiently or otherwise waiting while Father and I worked things out, reminded me of more current events. I swung back toward him and the window and leaned forward, propping my elbows on my knees. "Father, what can you tell me about a man named Basil Glendower?"

  Archive Fifteen

  five years earlier

  At the end of two physically and emotionally satisfying years in the Army, something distressing happened.