There was a second lead, and a third. A possible fourth.
Three weeks after I had taken possession of Fairbank, it dawned on me that I couldn’t remember the last time I had phoned the Roman police, or turned over the clues of my parents’ murder in my mind. I caught myself waiting for word on the fourth lead.
“What happened to your son?” I asked the damp air of Fairbank. There could be another line of Holders. Relatives I didn’t even know about.
The fourth lead was a bust. Will told me that the funds allocated for the search of the trunk were nearly gone, and there was talk of giving up. That would be a loss, such a loss, and I couldn’t bear the thought. I stayed up all night walking through Fairbank, and I heard gentle crying. There were tears on my cheeks. When the sun rose, I dried them. Or maybe Mary did it for me.
Once New York was up and running, I placed a call. There were several beats of silence after my erstwhile editor picked up. I knew I had to grovel. I had to apologize. I had made her look bad at the publishing company; I was her author, and I had screwed up.
“I’m ready to get back to work,” I swore. “I want to write a Sherlock Holmes homage. It’s about someone I’m related to. Her uncle—my several-times-great-uncle—was a client of Holmes, and she turned out to be the guilty party in the case.”
“Really.” She sounded warmer. Intrigued. “Run it down for me.”
I told her the story of Mary Holder and her trunk, leaving out the haunting. I didn’t want her to think I was still crazy. I said, “But I don’t know how it ends yet.”
“Well, you’re a horror writer. You could leave it open-ended. You could say that some mysteries aren’t meant to be solved.”
“Yes. Absolutely. We’ll let the readers write the ending.”
“Love it.” She was excited. Our game was afoot.
“And we’ll shoot my house for the cover,” I added. “It will be beautiful by then.”
It’s beautiful now, I heard Mary whisper. Or maybe that was me. I didn’t know, and it didn’t matter, not one jot.
THE CLOSING
by Leslie S. Klinger
McParland pulled into the empty parking spot in the Santa Monica strip mall, turned off the car, and got out, taking the folder of papers from the front seat. The escrow company’s small office was a few doors down, but he could see through the windows that Rachel was already there, seated in an office in the corner. He opened the door and spoke to the woman at the front desk.
“James McParland, for the Arizona Avenue escrow closing. Betty is handling it.”
The receptionist didn’t look up from her monitor but waved in the direction of the back of the office. “She’s in the conference room.”
McParland circled her desk and walked to the small conference room. It was sparsely furnished, with glass walls, thin blinds that could be closed for privacy, if needed, and a cheap table and eight chairs. Rachel sat on one side, pen in hand, while another woman—evidently Betty—passed her papers to sign. They both looked up as he entered.
“Mr. McParland?” Betty said. “Mrs. Lund is almost done. I’ll help you sign the papers next.”
“Fine,” said McParland, taking a seat opposite Rachel. He looked through the window behind her at the parking lot outside, seeing little but dazzle from the mid-afternoon sun.
Rachel finished the last few documents, put down her pen, and looked at McParland. His heart thumped, as it always did.
“How are you?” she said. “Charlotte says you’ve been on the road.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, had to go to New York for a client. Just a few days, though. How are you?”
Rachel smiled. “Great. Great.” McParland loved her smile. “How’s Sherlock?”
McParland smiled back. This had been a running joke with them, ever since law school, when she’d bought him an annotated edition of Conan Doyle’s stories and he’d gotten hooked. He’d been especially thrilled when he learned that his great-great-grand-uncle was the real-life model for a Pinkerton agent who appeared in one of the stories. His bizarre fascination with Holmes and his world had always amused Rachel, he thought, especially the Sherlockian “game” of pretending that Holmes and Watson weren’t fictional.
He turned to Betty. “You know, could you give us a few minutes, before you go through these with me?” he said, gesturing at the pile of legal documents.
“Sure,” said Betty, and stood up. “I’ll be at my desk.” She closed the glass door behind her.
Rachel shifted in her chair. She was wearing a track suit, McParland noticed, but as always, she made it look like haut couture. A small diamond pendant sparkled at her neck. She frowned slightly. “You know, I never thought you’d want to sell the building.”
McParland shrugged again. “Didn’t have a choice. UCLA said sell or they’d force us to sell it. We got a fair price. Remember when we bought it?”
“Thirteen years ago,” said Rachel. “I remember being pretty nervous. It seemed like an awful lot of money, with a new baby to pay for. It took a lot of our cash, but you believed in it.”
“I told you it would be a good thing,” said McParland. “Here we are now, selling it for three times what we paid for it. And no taxes either, at least not for you.” Rachel looked momentarily confused. “Bill’s death, you know,” McParland continued, embarrassed now. “Remember? I explained about the tax rules? Because you put it in both names?”
Rachel nodded. “Oh, yes. That was good advice you gave us. When Bill got sick. Thank you.” She gave him a small smile.
McParland felt his face get hot. Was he actually blushing? “The benefit of having an ex-husband who’s a tax lawyer. The only benefit, I guess.” Time to change the topic. “How’s Charlotte?”
Rachel frowned. “She’s fourteen, what do you expect? She’s deep into her ‘please-God-don’t-let-me-turn-out-like-my-mother’ stage. It’ll pass, I’m told, but for now, everything’s a fight. Maybe you could take her somewhere for a weekend? I’d really like a break from the battle.”
McParland smiled. “I’d love to. She hasn’t figured out yet that I’m uncool, so we might have a good time. Maybe I’ll take her up to San Francisco. She hasn’t been there since she was little. I could show her the Sherlock Holmes sitting room model they have there.”
“Bill and I took her to the Bay Area for her twelfth birthday,” said Rachel. She added quickly, “But it’s still a good idea. Take her shopping—she wasn’t much interested at twelve. And maybe the art galleries. She seems to be enjoying her art history class at school. And sure, show her your friend Sherlock’s room .”
McParland nodded. “Sounds good. I forgot you and Bill took her. Charlotte looks great. More like you every day. When she’s eighteen, she’ll be your twin.”
“In my dreams of eighteen, maybe.”
“No, really.” McParland frowned.
Rachel looked at him closely. “Are you OK?”
McParland took a deep breath. “I was excited to do this,” he admitted. “Spend a few minutes with you. Actually see you, not just talk on the phone. Sorry.”
Rachel reached across the table and put her hand on his.
“How did we get here?” McParland said. “Meeting at an escrow company?”
“You know,” she said.
“Last week was our 16th anniversary. But I’m sure you know that.”
Rachel pulled her hand back. “Jimmy . . .”
“Sixteen years ago, we went out for pizza. A year later, and you were pregnant. Two months after that, we were married. And then we lived happily ever after,” he said bitterly.
“I tried,” said Rachel, her voice thick with emotion. “I really did.”
McParland was quiet. “I know,” he finally said. “But I just wasn’t the one.”
“No,” Rachel said quietly. “I couldn’t love you the way you loved me. It was my fault.”
“It was no one’s fault,” said McParland. “I know we don’t get to choose who we love. I didn’t choose yo
u, the lightning just hit me. We were good together, though.”
“You mean the sex?” Rachel asked. “It was great. And we made a beautiful girl! But I was lying to you all the time. Lying that I loved you. I thought you were great, a little weird with your invisible friends, but smart, kind, romantic, devoted—but I could tell. I could tell right away. I wanted to love you because you loved me so much. So I lied, and then I just couldn’t anymore.”
“I just wasn’t the one.”
“No.”
McParland hesitated. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Was Bill the one?”
Rachel closed her eyes and didn’t speak for a minute. When she opened her eyes, they were shining. “Yes he was. When I first met him, I couldn’t breathe. That happened a lot. Even with the cancer. Even that last day at the hospital.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
McParland was silent. That last day . . .
Bill Lund lay shriveled on the hospital bed, his face and skin a disturbing yellow. Charlotte was in the cafeteria, Rachel off on some errand. McParland sat next to the bed, wondering awkwardly why he was here. Lund spoke in a rasping voice.
“Are they gone? Are we alone?”
McParland nodded, then said “Yes.”
“I need you to do something for me. For Rachel and Charlotte. You’re the only one. I’m too weak to get up now.” His voice sounded like it was tearing his throat. “In the zipper pocket of my sweatpants. In the closet there.” He opened his eyes, turning his head towards the closet. “There are some patches.”
McParland waited.
After a moment, Lund continued. “Pain patches. A new thing to help. Supposed to use them one every six or eight hours. If I put a bunch of them on, like I kept trying to get rid of the pain and didn’t know that they take a while to kick in, it would look like an accident. So there won’t be a problem with the insurance.” He paused. “She’ll need the money.”
“Bill, look, I—”
“I thought I was a tough guy. Not so tough. This—” his eyes swept the room—”is killing me.” Something that probably was meant to be a chuckle passed his lips. “The doctor says another month or two, but I can’t do it. Don’t tell Rachel.”
McParland sat very still. “Bill, it . . . it’ll kill her too.”
Lund closed his eyes. “You’ll be here for them. I know you will.” A tear ran down his temple. “Don’t make me beg.”
It was “The Veiled Lodger” all over again. McParland’s least favorite Holmes story included a woman tempted by suicide. “Your life is not your own,” Holmes admonishes her, sanctimoniously urging her to be an example of “patient suffering.” He wasn’t the one patiently suffering.
McParland got up and crossed to the closet, opened the door, found the sweatpants. He unzipped the pocket and found a packet of patches. Fentanyl, said the label. He brought them over to Lund and laid them on the bedside table, next to his water glass and straw.
Lund opened his eyes. “Now leave. And . . . take care of our girls.”
Our girls, McParland thought. He stood and walked to the door. He turned to speak, but Lund waved a hand, dismissing him. “Go on. Go find Charlotte.”
McParland left the room and walked over to the nurses’ station. He waited, said a few meaningless words to one of the nurses. Then he turned and went down to the cafeteria, looking for his daughter.
That evening, Bill Lund was dead. Rachel’s phone call had awakened McParland in his basket chair, where he’d fallen asleep drinking in front of his faux Sherlock Holmes mantel. Her hysteria cut through his grogginess. “He wasn’t supposed to leave me—not yet!” she wailed.
After he’d calmed her down, he drove back to the hospital and met her in the visitors’ lounge. There, he sat with her, holding her hand, while the doctor repeated over and over, “Respiratory failure from accidental overdose of morphine and Fentanyl.” A hospital administrator was there too, a middle-aged woman in a rumpled suit, looking worried—probably afraid, thought McParland, that Rachel would sue the hospital. “The patient failed to turn in the medication,” explained the administrator, “contrary to the rules set out clearly in his signed admission form.” She read from a handwritten report, adjusting her glasses. “The patient evidently did not understand that the patch delivery system is not immediately effective. He repeatedly dosed himself with patches on the underside of his body, where the nurses could not be expected to discover them. Apparently, the patient also used the intravenous pump to the maximum extent permitted. The result was that the patient entered a drug-induced stupor resembling deep sleep and suffered respiratory failure.”
“Jimmy?”
McParland realized that he’d been staring out the window, unseeing. He blinked against the dazzle in his eyes.
“Sorry,” he said. “Not enough sleep on the plane last night. Let’s get these papers done.” He turned to look for Betty in the outer office, and waved her back in. Rachel rose to leave. He plucked at her sleeve. “Could you wait while I sign the papers? I want to talk with you for a second.”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll get some coffee.” She left him in the conference room while he and Betty finished up.
When he came out, they stepped outside together.
“My car’s over here,” said Rachel. They walked toward it.
McParland opened the driver’s door but didn’t step aside for her to get in.
“Could I ask you something?”
“Okay,” she said, hesitantly.
McParland took a deep breath. “Would you marry me? Again?”
Rachel looked confused. “You mean—now?”
McParland looked embarrassed. “It’s been more than a year since Bill died.”
Rachel looked him squarely in the face. “I know that. And I know how much it would mean to Charlotte if we did. But I can’t. I can’t lie to you or anyone else again. I can’t pretend to the world that I love you . . . like that.”
McParland nodded slowly. “You and your damned principles. Do you really think that all married couples are in love? Maybe some are together because they like each other? Or . . .” He shook his head. “Never mind.”
“Jimmy . . .” Rachel said, reaching for his shoulder.
“No,” he said. “I knew the deal.” He stepped back and held the car door for her. “I’ll let you know about the San Francisco trip.”
Rachel got into the car and started it. She put down the window and looked up at him. “You’re a good man, James McParland. Your friend Sherlock would be proud.” McParland cringed inwardly, thinking of what Holmes would have said to Bill in those final moments. Your life is not your own. He leaned down and kissed Rachel softly on the cheek. She put the car in gear and drove off.
McParland watched her go, savoring her words. If Holmes could come back from the Reichenbach Falls three years after he supposedly died, he thought, then maybe nothing is really over until it’s over. He wouldn’t wait that long, though—he’d call her next week. “See you ‘round, kiddo,” he said to himself. “The game’s afoot.”
HOW I CAME TO MEET SHERLOCK HOLMES
by Gahan Wilson
I must confess I do not remember the precise date I first came to meet Sherlock Holmes but I know it was back in the brewing days of World War Two. Hitler and his Nazis had been building their extraordinarily powerful killing and crushing machine for some time and I was a very young lad living with my parents in a pleasant apartment building in Evanston, Illinois which had a very spacious backyard/parking lot to serve the tenants’ needs.
The building was full of families with young people such as myself, and we children played games enthusiastically and generally got along quite well with one another. I grew to be particularly fond of young, blonde Helen Stumph who lived in a tiny cottage at a corner of the lot close to the tiny alley which divided the block we lived on. She was the daughter of Matt Stumph who was the building’s janitor. He was a big, burly fell
ow with a thick German accent and, in spite of his rather threatening appearance and lack of higher education, he was a very intelligent man. He and I had long, thoughtful and very interesting conversations, which very often centered on Germany and the highly unfortunate happenings going on there, and which alerted my young mind to the solid reality of human lives going on in these foreign climes. This in turn led to my taking books concerning foreign folk and their countries from the nearby public library, with great enthusiasm.
I found my interest very much taking the lead in those volumes concerning England and—once I was fortunate enough to stumble upon them—the delicious ones written by Arthur Conan Doyle concerning none other than his glorious creation Sherlock Holmes!
Another grand Holmesian I adventure I always delight in recalling (I notice I still get an actual thrill from remembering it!) took place aboard an elevated train riding the rails back to Evanston from an late night evening’s entertainment in Chicago, as a full grown adult. I had settled in my seat and after several stops going through the center of that toddling town my eyes lazily wandered over the passengers—and then my body froze, and my jaw did not drop only from an enormous effort of will, because, sitting a mere five feet away with his deerstalker hat, a Victorian rain coat, and a look of hugely profound thought working a startling series of different expressions across his lean face, was Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes!
We rode all the way to Howard Street, which divides Chicago from suburban Evanston. His face continued, in a stately way, to move from one thoughtfully profound expression to another, until he rose and exited. He stood on the platform, looking thoughtfully (for Moriarity?), and then he made his way into the darkness of the night.
I am a very fortunate fellow.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
LAURA CALDWELL is a former civil trial attorney, now a professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law where she founded Life After Innocence. A published author of 14 novels and one nonfiction book, she says she finally understands Sherlock mania.
In the Company of Sherlock Holmes Page 25