Twin Speex: Time Traitors Book II (2 page)

She did, however, feel a certain sense of proprietorship over Odette and her legacy, being the first to publish on the subject. So, while she was intrigued by Odell’s pronouncement, Ava’s response was tinged with just a touch of antipathy.

“Indeed,” she replied skeptically, “you would be the first to claim such a connection. Virtually nothing is known of her origins or descendants, if she had any.”

Odell pulled onto his lap a battered leather bag that he had set on the floor by his chair. It was the same book bag Ava had seen slung over his shoulder countless times on campus. She assumed, like she had with much of his behavior, that it was an affectation. No practical backpack or workaday briefcase for the boy wonder, only an artfully battered and antique-looking satchel would do. This being the first time she had seen it up close, Ava noticed that the scuffs and wear actually seemed the work of time and not artifice.

Odell reached into the bag and brought out a small oval object wrapped in thick velvet. He handed it to her.

Ava set the object on the desk in front of her and carefully peeled back the wrapping. Inside was a miniature portrait. She felt a chill run up her spine and drew in a shaky breath. The woman depicted was still young, perhaps in her early thirties. She had thick, black hair as yet untouched by gray and delicate lines about the eyes. Ava knew enough of early portraiture to understand that this was unusual. Even stranger still, was the jagged scar that ran across her forehead just above her eye. An artist of this era would likely soften signs of aging and, most assuredly, diminish any disfiguring mark.

“It looks from her dress to be mid-eighteenth century,” she commented, almost automatically.

“Seventeen sixty-five, to be exact.”

“The eyes,” she murmured to herself. Then looking at him, she asked, “Am I to understand this to be Odette Swanpoole?”

“Yes.”

He handed her a piece of paper. It was an official document of authentication.

“You may wish to get your own appraisal, but Whiltshire and Milford are considered the best in the business.”

She scanned the report, skipping over the more technical jargon to the most relevant facts: portrait of an unknown woman, mid- to late-eighteenth century, watercolor on ivory, likely the work of Jonas Bell…

Ava sat back, the portrait cupped in her hands and let out her pent-up breath. “Jonas Bell.”

Odell leaned intently forward. “You’ve heard of him?”

She looked up and nodded. “Of his daughter, Margaret Bell. She and Mary Wollstonecraft were friends.”

He looked at her questioningly.

“Mary Wollstonecraft was an early English feminist. As a teenager, she was befriended by Fancy O’Sullivan, a very close associate of Odette Swanpoole’s. Fancy O’Sullivan worked with the poor—prostitutes mainly. She gathered about her other like-minded young women, of which Mary Wollstonecraft and Margaret Bell were two.

“In the box of letters I discovered there were several brief correspondences, notes really. The type one would send to a friend living in the same city or village. Apparently, the group was planning a lecture trip to northern England, and they were having some difficulty getting Margaret’s father to consent.”

Odell nodded. “Jonas Bell.”

“Yeah,” she confirmed. “In one note, Fancy asks Odette the favor of speaking with Jonas. ‘His work,’ ” Ava quoted from memory, “ ‘being of very good quality and known to you.’ ”

There was a long silence while Ava studied the portrait. She eventually laid it back down on the desk and looked up at him.

“Very compelling, but hardly conclusive.” She leaned back in the chair and crossed her arms. “There were only a very few contemporary accounts of her, but you’d think they would have mentioned the eyes. What would you call them? Hazel?”

“Golden,” he answered simply, and then paused to gather his thoughts. “I’ve read your work. Most of the accounts you speak of describe her dancing. There is never any detailed description of her features beyond being dark haired and complexioned. As your research revealed, she retired early from the stage, and her social and philanthropic activities were often anonymous. She was a rather reclusive person.”

“This is all true. I can find nothing more of her beyond 1774 or so.”

“It is because you are looking in the wrong place,” Odell said and immediately regretted it when he saw her stiffen. He sighed and sat back again in his chair. “Listen, I’m sorry if my abrupt manner offends you. I typically work alone, and what colleagues I have are a lot like me.”

“Nerdly,” she replied with a slight smile, stating Ettie’s oft-repeated opinion of Odell’s few associates.

He gave an affectionate shake of his head. “Ettie doesn’t pull any punches.”

Ava observed his softened expression and relented a little. “I’ll try to overlook it, if you’ll try to do less of it.”

“A deal.” He smiled. And she smiled back, both of them pleased with this newfound understanding.

Odell cleared his throat. “I think if you search for one Gabriel Wright, you’ll find Odette Swanpoole.”

“And who is, or rather was, Gabriel Wright?”

“He was a barrister of the time. He had all sorts of clients and is noted on several important decisions, particularly those pertaining to slavery.”

“He was an abolitionist?”

Odell nodded. “He was a particularly vehement opponent of slavery. As was his wife, Odette Swanpoole.”

This time Ava did draw back in disbelief. “There is no evidence that Odette was ever married.”

Odell gestured to her laptop. “Give it a go.”

She pursed her lips, irritated at his presumption, but curiosity got the better of her. She turned to her laptop and typed, “Gabriel Wright,” “eighteenth century,” “barrister.”

Several entries popped up, and she clicked on his Wikipedia page. There was a pen and ink drawing of a particularly handsome middle-aged man. His hair was pulled back into a low ponytail. Like a poet, a loose scarf was tied rather romantically about his neck. He wasn’t smiling, but there was something light and casual in his pose and expression, almost as if he had been drawn by a friend at a small, intimate gathering.

Ava read down the page. Gabriel Wright was described as the son of an innkeeper. He had distinguished himself at the bar as an advocate for the poor and disenfranchised. Outside of his work against slavery, he was most famous for gaining the bastard son of a duke’s daughter the right to visit his mother’s gravesite.

He wrote several pamphlets for the abolitionist cause, and she even recognized a quote attributed to him: “
When we treat people like cattle to be bought and sold, we cheapen humanity to the point of self-destruction
.”

She remembered a researcher who had used that very phrase as an eighteenth-century example of percipient thinking, foretelling the devastation slavery would wreak on a young nation through war and social injustice.

Gabriel Wright had immigrated to the colonies in 1775 with his wife…

“Odette…,” she whispered and glanced momentarily up at Odell.

She looked back down at the page and continued reading aloud, “ ‘Odette Wright, of which little is known, was considered to be very influential in her husband’s work. She was rarely seen in society, but was noted by court reports to be in attendance at some of her husband’s more important cases.’ ”

Ava looked again at Odell, who said, “Sound familiar? You know of her beliefs through private letters, her feminist and abolitionist work. It is not a stretch to imagine her married to a like-minded man.”

She shook her head, confused. “She kept her maiden name in all her subsequent writings and correspondence. How did you know? Why Gabriel Wright? And where did you get this portrait?”

“It was bequeathed to me through a family trust,” he answered vaguely.

“
Your
family? How are you connected? According to this, her married name was Wright.”

“That is correct, but Swanpoole was an alias.”

“An alias for what?”

“Speex. Her name was Odette Speex.”

Two

ODELL SAW HER sitting at the corner table next to the window. It had been “their table” since when they were very young. The old Lebanese couple who owned the place had served as surrogate grandparents, plying them with hummus and pita bread while they did their homework.

The small café was situated across the street from their old fifth-floor walkup. It had served as home base for the twins while their mother was busy challenging the “Balanchine Patriarchy,” as she had dubbed the ballet scene in New York City. They had seen even less of her when she decided to ditch it all and start her own company.

The White Swan Dance Theater had proved very successful, and a few years later their mother moved them to a spacious brownstone in a more sedate part of the city. Still, the twins gravitated to the old neighborhood. The Lebanese couple had long since retired, but their son, Jamil, ran the place with the same homey warmth that Odell felt as a physical embrace whenever he entered.

Ettie had been looking at her phone only seconds before and was now staring moodily out the window.

“Not coming, is he?” Odell pulled out a chair and sat down.

“No,” she replied, still looking out the window and abruptly changing the subject, “Do you see that little girl over there? The one with the knit pom-pom hat?” She nodded in the direction of a rather shabby-looking apartment building. “I think she lives in our old place. I wonder if she has my room.”

“
Our
room,” he reminded her with a smile.

She looked at him now and nodded sadly. “Yeah, I guess the one good thing about moving into a ‘proper brownstone,’ ” she said this with an exaggerated upper-class accent, “is that we got our own rooms.”

Odell leaned back in his chair and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Are you really nostalgic for our old apartment, or is Charlie’s latest no-show finally getting to you?”

He was speaking of Ettie’s most recent “boyfriend,” or whatever he was. Odell never really knew how to refer to the many men who vied for her affections. When it came to her amorous entanglements, he had learned early on to just stay out of the way. Ettie’s casual approach to relationships was several degrees removed from his own more sober and exclusive romantic habits. It didn’t help that their mother viewed Ettie’s behavior very unfavorably and often commented on the reversed stereotype of the twins’ sexual tendencies.

“Really, if you were a man, Ettie, I could understand these shenanigans better,” she often admonished.

Not that she in any way approved of Odell’s relative restraint. “When was the last time you went out?” was not an uncommon refrain. Often followed by, “Are you still pining for Emily?” Or Sophia, or Laura, or whatever other name Ivy could pull out of the blur of his past relationships.

He shook his head ruefully. There had been no one of late, too much work and too little opportunity.

But Ettie… well, this new guy was really doing a number on her. She wouldn’t admit it, of course. Ettie breezily dismissed Odell’s concerns. Charlie had twice before canceled a scheduled meet up with him, but Odell didn’t have to actually meet the guy to know he disliked him. A wealthy club owner—gees, he thought with disgust, could it get any sleazier than that?

“Hey, Odell, are you listening to me?”

Odell shook himself and looked at her with an apologetic smile. “Sorry. Work stuff, you know.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Really?” she said skeptically. “If that’s the case, I kind of agree with mom. You’re becoming entirely too monkish.”

“What were you saying?” he asked, ignoring her comment.

“It’s Ivy,” she replied.

Odell deliberately kept his expression bland, but he began to feel some serious trepidation. Ettie only ever used their mother’s given name when she was truly upset or disturbed by something she had done.

They often joked about Ivy’s ambitions, both social and professional. She was probably the oddest person Odell had ever encountered. Busy and driven, Ivy had spared little time for her children. However, the time she had given them was not without fun or affection. Never a physically demonstrative person, she was awkward with her feelings and laughed too loudly at jokes. But she did try to be a good mother—just not very hard.

Odell believed her social ineptitude, some of which he had inherited, would have made her
persona non grata
with all her wealthy benefactors had she not also been a virtuoso dancer and brilliant artistic director. It was his personal experience that genius was forgiven much.

He blew out his pent-up breath. “What’s up with mom then?”

She looked at him, and instead of the anger or resentment he was expecting to see in her eyes, they reflected only concern and some alarm.

“Something is very wrong, Odell. And I don’t mean her usual weirdness.” Ettie rubbed her eyes tiredly. “Baxter called to tell me she hasn’t been to the studio in several days.”

“Baxter?”

“Gees, Odell,” she replied angrily, “he’s her choreographer. You’ve probably met him half a dozen times.”

“Right, right, I remember. He danced with the Royal Ballet. Okay. So, she’s been out—”

“You’re the one who still lives at home,” she berated him, her anger mounting precipitously. “Don’t you even notice what she’s up to?” Just as abruptly, she relented. “Listen, I know you’re gone a lot, but it’s not just her missing some work. It’s where she has been and with whom.”

“Okay…” He raised his eyebrows, prompting her.

“After Baxter’s call, I went to the house. This was last Sunday,” she explained. “Before I could cross the street, I saw Ivy come out. Something about her posture… I don’t know… furtive-like, stopped me from calling to her.” Ettie had been staring off into space, but now focused her gaze upon him. “So I followed her.”

He laughed a little. “Don’t tell me, you jumped into a cab and yelled ‘follow that car!’ ”

She looked at him smugly. “Here’s the thing, Odell, she didn’t take the town car.” Ettie leaned in closer as if imparting a shocking piece of news. “She just waved to her driver and walked past.”