Past Malice (22 page)

“Yes, I did.” He hesitated. “You know, I really appreciate it when someone tells me straight out that they don’t know something. That’s the mark of a professional.” And with that, he walked away.

Okay, it might not have been what I was looking for, but
maybe it told me why he’d brought the Chandler paper to my attention, rather than to the museum or someone else’s.

Aden a blackmailer? Whew, that made a lot of sense. A lot of ugly sense. I couldn’t think of too many things worse than holding someone hostage with their own indiscretions. It certainly went a long way to help me understand the state of relations between the town and the Historical Society. The only problem was, it also widened the field of suspects, as Detective Bader said, not only in terms of Aden’s murder—and Justin’s too, for that matter—but the strikes against the Historical Society as well. It might be that all of the vandalism and other problems were the result of several different perpetrators, not just one. It did feel, though, based on the people and where I’d found them, that it had to do with the Chandler House. And maybe even the people associated with it.

It was with some relief that I returned to my work. Although the house was still open for visitors, most of the grounds outside the immediate perimeter of the house were not, as Detective Bader and the lab crew were still working out by the northern part of the site. That did not stop, however, many people from gathering on the street side of the fence to ask us questions, and we were pretty busy for most of the morning. A little too busy, in fact, because I heard a soft curse from Joe around ten thirty.

I gently extracted myself from a gentleman who was telling me about his family history (“Since you’re sort of an antiquarian, you might find this interesting,” was how he had started, too long before), and went over to see what the problem was. It turned out to be a simple matter of a mislabeled feature number that involved a lot of erasing, renumbering, and cross-checking the drawings he’d made yesterday, but it seemed to hit him hard. His dark hair was soaked with sweat so that it stood up. Between that and his
dark eyebrows against his pale skin, he looked rather like an anxious Muppet.

“It’s not like I’ve never done this before,” he said.

“You know, you could just be tired. Are you thinking about what’s been going on around here lately?” I indicated the northern part of the site, where it was still possible to detect the movement of the crime scene squad over there. “That could shake anyone’s nerves,” I pointed out. “Completely natural.”

He shrugged, then shook his head. “No, not really. It’s horrible, but…don’t take this the wrong way, will you?” He lowered his voice even further. “It’s kind of interesting, too, you know what I mean? I mean, to see it from a distance. With Justin, it was hard to take. I knew him a little and it was really creepy. The violence, everything. I didn’t feel that way then. But with Aden, I know it is terrible, even if I don’t know him, but I can’t help feeling a little curious about it all.” He put his head in his hands. “Oh, God, I sound like a shithead, don’t I?”

I stared at the side of the house. “No, I understand what you mean. I can see how it would be interesting, out of the ordinary for you. I don’t think you have to feel ashamed of that. But you seem to be taking a few clerical errors too hard today. Are you sure you’re not just upset about the murders?”

He looked up, but his shoulders slumped. “No, it’s not that. And it’s not just the paperwork I’m screwing up. I mean, yesterday? I didn’t catch the edge of that planting hole until I was centimeters down into it.”

“It was irregular and mottled, that’s what makes it hard to see. I mean, not that you shouldn’t try hard, but it’s not the end of the earth, if you’ll excuse the pun.”

He wasn’t convinced, though. “I just can’t seem to get into it today. This week. I keep making mistakes.”

I nodded. “But you keep catching them and correcting
them, which is a good start, a good sign. Everyone has an off moment or two. Just take it slower, and you’ll find your groove again.”

“This morning you told everyone to pick up the pace,” he muttered.

“Right. Well, you know what I mean. Go quicker, but slowly and carefully.”

That at least brought a grin from him. “Okay.”

Although I knew what Joe meant, I was one hundred and eighty degrees away from where he was, right on top of my game today. Because we were all forced by the investigation to work on our original set of units, I was caught up on the eternal paperwork, and had begun to think of where we might put an extra unit on this side if we had the time, which wasn’t really likely, but it was nice to be able to think ahead.

“That’s lunch, folks,” I announced a while later. “Clean it up and lock it down. Pick a spot in the shade and I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Lunch flew by, and we were soon back hard at it. Even though Joe seemed a little disheartened by missing the transition and by the frustration of trying to get the surfaces cleaned, everyone else had had a pretty good day. In fact, I felt quite confident now that the wing on the other side of the house was original and not a later addition: Our garden wall was the anomaly. There was some reason for them not having built this wing again, and I knew I would eventually find out why.

“Time to wrap it up, guys,” I announced, after I realized that the sun was moving a lot faster than I’d given it credit for. “Good day, everyone.”

Joe gave me a defeated look, his face sunburned and lined with unusual concentration and fatigue, as he went around and collected the tools that were lying about.
“You’ll get it back tomorrow, don’t worry about it,” I said to him.

Joe nodded, accepting my statement, but still not believing me. He looked past me and suddenly his face changed from hangdog to puzzlement and then into a big grin. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m helping close up,” said a familiar male voice. “Isn’t that what it’s called?”

I looked over my shoulder and was surprised to see Brian putting half a brick onto a corner of the tarp that he and Meg were handling.

“I figure the extra hands don’t hurt at the end of the day,” he said, looking up at me.

“And the extra eyes, either?” I said in a low voice so only he could hear.

He shrugged. “I’m not so much keeping an eye on you as seeing for myself what is going on here. Call it reassuring myself that there’s nothing going on I don’t know about.”

“Okay, I can live with that,” I announced, then frowned. “Just pull that corner a little tighter, would you? It’s crooked.”

He smiled. “Aye aye.” He turned and said to someone behind him. “Pull that corner tighter, would you Kam?”

“I believe that is what is known as passing the buck,” Kam announced. He was dressed casually—casually for him, at any rate—in a crisp white shirt and jeans that were pressed. I saw Dian frankly checking him out, intrigued by his refined English accent as much as by his form.

“Hey you!” I gave him a hug. “It’s been weeks! How was the honeymoon?”

“Oh, it was lovely, thank you very much. And it was nice to get away from work.”

“Kam! I can’t believe you!”

He looked pained. “Honestly, Emma. What am I supposed to tell you? You’d be no happier if I’d merely said that I thought that the hotel was worth every penny, would you? And if you’re fishing for the lurid details, you’ll not have them from me. My wife, however, is in the car, and you may have some luck there.” A funny look crossed his face, a kind of worried indecision I’d never seen him before.

I ran out to the parking lot, to see my oldest friend Marty sitting in Kam’s Jaguar XJR. Something was up, though, because I know how much Marty likes surprises and couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t come out to see me. She was sitting in the car, the door opened and her feet on the ground outside the car, her head low. I picked up my pace when I got a glimpse of her face; she wasn’t made up. Something was wrong.

As I got closer, I saw she wasn’t dressed up, not even in designer casual, which was another shock to me. What she was wearing looked like the sort of thing that Kam might have worn to the gym, a T-shirt that looked as though it might have been ironed—a thought that nearly made me giggle—and a pair of sweat pants that were rolled up almost a foot to reveal worn-out sneakers. She looked up and I realized that Marty’s face was drawn and her eyes were red.

I ran to her side. “Oh my God, Marty! What’s wrong? Tell me.”

“Oh, Emma. I’m so pregnant!”

“Marty, oh, sugar! It’s all right.” I drew her into a gentle hug because, tiny as she was, I had never seen her look so fragile. I pulled back to look at her. “It is all right, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s all right, it’s fine. We’re very happy.” And then she started to cry as if her heart was breaking.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“We were going to tell you, I wanted to tell you in person. But I just keep throwing up. Oh, God, I’ve been so sick. I’ve
never been this sick. I feel like I’ve been throwing up things I ate twenty years ago.”

“But everything’s all right, isn’t it? I mean, what’s the doctor said?”

“She said I’m fine, if you can believe that. She says it might be better in another six weeks or so, but….” Sheshrugged tiredly.

“But it might not.”

“I’m hungry all the time, but I can’t keep anything down. It’s awful. It’s not just morning sickness, either. Motion sickness, smells drive me crazy these days, even things I used to crave make me ill. And I look horrible.”

“You don’t look horrible. You just feel that way because you’re not made up.”

“Trust me, that’s the last thing on my mind right now. I just pity Kam, having to see me like this. At least I can avoid mirrors.”

“It’s not that bad, I’m telling you. You just feel out of sorts.”

“I’m not the only one. Kam gave up smoking.”

“So I heard.” And now it all made sense. “Good for him.”

“I’ll tell you, Em, that hasn’t been easy for him and if that weren’t bad enough, he’s really stretched at the moment.”

“Work has been tough?”

“That, always, but it’s hard for him to be the kind of person he’s used to being, lately. So many changes, so many things to think about.”

“What with the baby and all.”

“It’s more than that, Em.” She put her hand on my shoulder and leaned in to me, even though no one was around. I was instantly transported back to our days as undergraduates together, sharing confidences. “Please don’t tell anyone else. Even Brian, I mean.”

So it was serious then. “Okay.”

“He’s worried about bringing a baby into this world,” she whispered.

I nodded. “I can imagine. But you can’t wait for the perfect time to have a baby, there never is one. It doesn’t work like that.”

“I know, I know. It was time, as far as I was concerned. I mean, my folks, well, they were actually telling us to go for it, practically as soon as we were engaged. My sister threatened to have his baby if I didn’t—but you know my sister.”

“I do.”

“And his mother is so excited by the thought of it, she nearly pees when she walks past Baby Gap. That’s helped a lot, but—”

“But it must still be pretty scary for him. For you too.”

She nodded. “It doesn’t bother me so much; I just know everything will be all right. Kam would never worry about himself, it’s the thought of a family that he won’t always be able to protect that drives him nuts.”

I thought about Brian’s reaction to my returning to the site. “He’ll be okay.”

“I know.” Marty cocked her head to one side. “I mean, it shows, how very excited he is, though. He’s already talking about putting the little one’s name down for Winchester. I think he’s a couple years early for that, though.”

“And assuming the baby will be a boy,” I agreed. “A little eager, is Kam? But there probably isn’t so long a waiting list at your old school. What was the name of that juvie hall you attended? P.S. Three-to-Five?”

“He’d sure as hell learn self-defense, if I sent him there. Or her. And she’d swear like a champ, too.”

“The best of both worlds: an American high school and an English public school. That’s real training for life.”

Marty started to laugh, then clamped her hand over her mouth and reached for a plastic grocery bag.

I stood aside, not knowing whether to try and help or give her some space. “Anything I can do?”

“I’ll be okay in a—oh God.”

More unhappy noises followed. I went into the house and got her a paper cup of water.

“All right now?” I handed the cup to her.

“Yeah, for the moment, anyway. Thanks, Emma. I need you to be my friend now.”

“You got it.” If I hadn’t felt the tears starting then, I would have for certain with her next words.

“And you’ll be a godmother, right? Promise me.”

“I promise.” I hugged her again, carefully. Then I made a face. “Oh, man. I thought it would be years yet before I had to worry about someone calling me “Aunty Em, Aunty Em.” I’ve been dreading this day, but since it will be for you….”

Marty drew herself up and looked as dignified and reproachful as she ever did, and it did me good to see it. “Emma, please. No child of mine would be that obvious.”

W
E GOT HOME AND GOT OUR GUESTS SETTLED IN
the kitchen. I claimed the shower first, pleading company to be entertained, and ran up to the bathroom. After I shucked off my clothes, I thought I could hear laughter downstairs. I grabbed a quick shower to cool off; I’d also hoped to scrounge the time to tease out another stray thought or two about the paper that Bader had showed me, but that well was dry, for the moment. I went downstairs in an even better mood than I had been and was a little surprised when the conversation stopped as I entered the kitchen. Everyone—students, friends, family—was lolling around the kitchen, crowded on chairs, the floor, the counters, looking far too relaxed and chummy.

“What? Why did you all clam up when I came in?”

“No reason,” Bucky said in a tone that suggested that there was plenty of reason. Everyone exchanged grins and I began to get worried. “I was just telling them about the time we went to Montreal.”

Oh damn. “Which time was that?” As if I didn’t know very well.

“The time with Grandpa Oscar. The time you brought your trowel, you know, just in case, and set off the metal detector.” She turned to Dian. “Airport security guards don’t like trowels and don’t like wise-ass teenagers.”

“I wasn’t a wise-ass; I was just explaining why I had the trowel with me. It wasn’t my fault he didn’t understand I wasn’t just going to dig up some monument and take stuff home.”

“Our luggage got searched,” Bucky offered. “Oscar thought it was pretty funny, though we thought that Dad and Grandma Ida were going to blow a gasket.”

“And what brought that up?” I asked.

Brian smiled. “Well, it was just the four-clunk-Emma-tracking system. Boot one, clunk, boot two, clunk, pants, big clunk, shirt, small clunk, shower goes on. We can track your progress pretty good from down here.”

“Lovely.”

Quasi liked Kam very well, which was not surprising, since it had been ascertained in an early, ugly incident that Kam was hysterically allergic to cats in general and to Quasi in particular. When Quasi made as if to jump into Kam’s lap, Kam merely said, “Do your worst, you, my little bête noir. I took my antihistamines before I came.”

Quasi yawned hugely and settled for rubbing against Kam’s knees, leaving a trail of long white and black cat hairs clinging to his meticulously pressed jeans.

“Good God, that cat’s like a porcupine,” Marty said. She was doing a lot better now, with a glass of ginger ale in one hand and a pile of oyster crackers in another. “I’m sure he can just shoot those damn things like missiles at a distance.”

“Porcupines don’t shoot quills,” Bucky said. “But I wouldn’t give Quasi any ideas, if I were you.”

“What do you guys want to do about dinner?” I asked.

“Well, the only reason we’re here is because Marty thought she had a better-than-average chance of getting a hot dog for dinner,” Kam said.

“Miss the hot dogs in the city, huh?” I said.

“I’m not going home to visit for another month, but I can’t wait that long. And since I don’t know any of the vendors in Boston, I thought this would be close enough to hold me.”

“Well, I’m flattered you consider us a tolerable second to the guy down the street from the Met,” I said. “I think we can help you out there. But just give me fair warning if you decide a dog with everything is one of those old favorites that is suddenly going to make you hurl, okay?”

“Deal.”

“Joe, give me a hand with these?” I handed him a plate of salad and a plate of buns, took up a big platter of meat, and then bumped the screen door open with my elbow, holding it for the student.

“I don’t want to keep you from your shower,” I said. “But I wondered if you’d made plans for next summer yet?”

“Emma, I’m still trying to get through this summer.” His voice was heavy with fatigue.

Oh man, he thought I was trying to rub it in or something. “I know, it’s a long way off, but I’m already starting to block out field time, and I wanted to know if you’d be available.”

“As far as I know.” His face brightened. “Sure. You’ve officially got first dibs. Thanks.”

“Good. I’ll keep you in mind when I plan the schedule.”

We heard Rob shout from the house. “Shower’s free, Joe.”

“Thanks!” he called back. He rolled his eyes. “God, I was afraid I’d be next. Rob has so much goddamned hair that he always leaves about a pound of it behind in the tub.”

“And that is officially more information than I needed,” I said. “Go on, it’s better than no shower at all.”

I watched as Joe headed back into the house, a little bounce in his step that hadn’t been there earlier.

After dinner, the wind changed and the muggy air started to lift. Maybe it was the wind, maybe it was the smoke from the fire, maybe it was the amount of garlic that Meg and Brian loaded into the barbecue, but the bugs were mysteriously absent as the sun went down, leaving the sky tangerine and pink in the west, blue overhead, and dark violet in the east. As the shadows lengthened and merged, sunlight was replaced by the flickering orange glow of the fire.

It all started out ordinarily enough, but sitting around a campfire at night changes things. Bright sun that lights everything evenly allows for distinctions that aren’t as easily made by firelight. The wavering semidarkness alters status, blurs age, evokes stories that are common to us all, or at least makes a space where it is easier to relate to those stories. It could be because telling stories around a fire at night is one of the oldest shared communal experiences, and we yearn for some lingering memory of that, or it might simply be because, by firelight, we are reminded of just how little our human distinctions matter, how much closer we are to our roots than complicated cultures suggest. A fire under a starry sky changes the way people look, the way they seem, and the way they behave. The darkness grants license; the magic of fire, largely lost in the modern world, provokes daring. There is something dangerous in seeing people, friends or strangers, by firelight. It can deceive. It can reveal. It is illuminating.

The tenor had been set in the house and it was officially
“pick on Emma night.” Many cultures have something like a Twelfth Night tradition, where those who are usually in charge are temporarily made fools, deposed by those they govern. It was fun, it was good for morale, and I was fully prepared to go along with the teasing, not minding that the memories that people were sharing were all of me at something less than my best.

Besides, I was completely outnumbered.

“I can’t believe she was that boring,” Dian was saying. The pop of a burning branch punctuated her observation.

“I was, completely,” I confirmed. “Within whiskers of being a prig.”

“You never had detention?” Rob was incredulous. “Never skipped school?”

“Never dared to,” I said, taking a sip of beer. But I also never got caught when I did dare to do something. But those times didn’t really count, because they were usually when I was out in the field with Oscar, and that was different. “Bucky was the one who made up for both of us.”

“It’s true,” my sister said. “But it didn’t make much difference to me whether I stayed after school and read, or went home to read. It was later on, when I really started to get bored, that was the problem. Emma saved my ass a couple of times, kept me from getting caught.”

“I didn’t want to,” I protested. “I didn’t think you should be leaving the house at night, after you were supposed to be in bed.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t squeal either. And you had the credibility that counted when it mattered.”

Meg nodded: Loyalty was important.

I knew the time Bucky was thinking of. She’d fallen out of the tree that was outside her window. I’d suspected for some time that she was using it as a means of illegal egress
and entrance, but this time, she’d busted her arm. I was home for one of the last times, it was Thanksgiving break of my senior year, and I heard the crash. I was up late on the phone and ran outside, beating my parents by an instant.

Spying my sister sprawled on the ground, I’d said, “Bucky, I said I’d take care of it!”

“Take care of what?” Dad had asked.

“There were some kids from school,” Bucky had said. “I didn’t even see who they were.”

“I was just going to the door, to turn on the light,” I’d said. “And Bucky fell out of the window.”

“They were going to TP the house. I guess I leaned out too far when I yelled at them.”

Mother and Dad looked at me and I nodded, astounded by the speed with which she’d invented the lie. They weren’t thrilled with the notion that our lawn and trees might be the target of the toilet paper treatment, but they would have been even less pleased to know that Bucky hadn’t been home snug in bed as they thought she was. Something changed between us that night, something that made us more friends than sisters. A mundane event with longterm repercussions.

I was thinking about that when I realized that the subject had changed. Joe was talking, Joe who seldom offered much in the way of conversation. Joe had been talking the whole time I’d been remembering.

“…he bought me my first bike and taught me to ride. We went out almost every weekend.”

I knew a little about this, that Joe’s father had died when he was just twelve. I realized what was happening when I started to get tired, sitting on the ground and leaning against Brian’s legs as he sat in a lawn chair and was reluctant to move, even to shift my weight. Joe was telling us about a bicycle ride he’d taken recently, over three hundred miles, camping along the way, over the course of a week. He said
he’d been taking it fairly easy, which I found difficult to believe, though I couldn’t have gainsaid him.

“That’s when I learned that you see the land in a whole different way than you would in a car,” he continued. “You get very familiar with the landscape when you’re pedaling up all those hills and feeling every change in every microclimate—hot and steamy in one place, and chilly with a breeze one minute later. You start thinking about how farmers and ranchers think about the land, in terms of wind and vegetation and grade, and a lot of little things start to make sense. I go out and it’s like being with him again.”

It was more than I’d heard from Joe the whole summer, and suddenly I saw where he had focus, how he saw things, in the hard, the physical, the concrete. Direct experience was what fueled him. I filed it away to make the most of it when directing him later in the semester, or with his master’s thesis.

Around and around it went, everyone picking a story to tell, the care with which they chose them showing that they all felt it too, that there was communion around that fire. It was like building a rope bridge over a chasm, each step important and a link between the last and the next, one after the other, until it was completed. Or maybe it was like building a fire, feeding the thing between us, already so fragile, so elusive that we didn’t want it to die away or be extinguished by an ill-considered contribution. It wasn’t the stories themselves that were important, or the questions either, it was the trust. I leaned back against Brian’s knees and gazed at the stars through the smoke.

At last, we fell quiet. It was late and it had to end sometime, and it was better that it should be intentionally than have some wrong note jar and ruin the harmony. I got up and threw another stick onto the fire. “Well, it’s late and I’ve got to get my beauty sleep. I’m heading in.”

“And we’ve got to head for home,” Kam announced. He helped Marty out of her chair, even though she was months away from showing yet. “Enough hot dogs, beloved?”

She nodded and patted her belly. “And the little one liked them, too.”

“For which I am, on behalf of the car’s interior, eternally grateful.”

We all exchanged good nights, and Brian and I walked Kam and Marty out to the driveway. We said quiet goodbyes, and Kam and Brian shook hands; a truce had been called or an understanding reached; perhaps now that Brian knew about the baby, some of Kam’s worry was lifted. We lingered on the porch as the Jag pulled away and left us in the quiet of the night—crickets, ambient light from the center of town nearby luminous over the field across the street. We heard everyone come in the back, so we locked up and set the alarm. Brian and I went up to bed, neither feeling the need to talk.

We were the last ones up; the students had decided to come in. After I confirmed that they’d doused the fire, I ran into Bucky as she was coming out of the bathroom.

“Okay. I get it now,” she said, as if she was here to observe me. Maybe that was why she’d come to visit in the first place.

I paused outside the doorway. “What do you get?”

“I get the attraction. Of what you do. Why archaeology means so much to you.”

“Oh?”

“Psychology aside?”

“Please.”

“Well, maybe just a little psychology. At first it was just because I thought you were misanthropic, but you’re not re
ally a hermit. Studying the past, that allows you to think about why people do things without getting too messy. Too personal. Possibly a reaction to Ma and Dad’s divorce.”

“Interesting.” I cocked my head. “And here I thought I was in it for the money. But I was into archaeology well before they split.”

“But then there’s the influence that Grandpa Oscar had on you, when we were growing up. And it’s because it gives you the chance to build these communities. That’s important to you.”

“Yeah. It is.”

“And you know something? It’s just as important to them too.”

I mulled that over, hoping she was right. “You want to know the real secret? The real reason I became an archaeologist?”

“Why?”

“It was the only job I could think of where I could read someone’s diary and get paid for it.”

“Every job has its perks. Good night, Emma.”

I gave Bucky a hug. “Goodnight, kiddo.”

I got up early again, reluctantly, but I wanted to make the most of my time to check out some of the names I’d come across yesterday, to see if I could figure out what Sarah Holloway meant to the Chandlers, and what her connection was to Nicholas Chandler in particular. It seemed likely that he was her son, but while it seemed that Matthew Chandler had been ruled out as his father, it still seemed that there must be some strong tie to bind him to the Chandlers, if she was able to persuade them to take him. Nothing came up, but that didn’t do anything but make me more curious and more determined to ferret out the real story.