15

Tessa led the way, and there was little I could do but follow. Her office, I thought ruefully, was probably soundproofed.

We passed beneath Franklin Cameron’s looming portrait. I inquired about it—When had it been painted? Who was the artist?—but she merely shrugged as she executed a quick series of turns, her posture ruler-straight. Each corridor seemed distinguished only by a differently patterned oriental runner. I felt the need to scatter a few Hansel-and-Gretel pebbles. I don’t know much about oriental rugs. If someone told me to follow the Isfahan to the Bokhara to the exit, I’d be in trouble.

Tessa’s office was a time capsule. Framed posters from her late husband’s electoral campaigns covered the walls. Banners swagged the ceiling: Cameron for Senate! Cameron for House! Cameron! Cameron! Cameron! All the posters, all the campaign stuff, dated from thirty years ago. My eyes did a quick circuit: No posters from Garnet’s current contest.

Had I heard Garnet’s voice upstairs? Did he share living space with his mother as well as his wife?

Tessa took a seat behind the tiny desk—I’m sure the decorator’d called it an “escritoire”—Had the decorator determined the nostalgic motif or had Tessa erected this shrine to her late husband?

She gave me an appraising stare.

“You are not exactly what I expected,” she said in her heavily accented voice, staring at my bargain basement suit, noting my shoes, my absence of purse, my worn briefcase. I was sure she’d priced my wardrobe to a nickel. Probably knew my left heel wiggled, needed replacement.

“What did you expect?” I asked.

“Sit, please.”

I took the visitor’s chair, which was too low and cushiony for my taste or comfort.

She shrugged, and her small hands moved expressively. “I don’t know. Someone like on television. One of those ‘Charlie’s Angels,’ you know?”

She’d been watching reruns.

“Or maybe a woman like a refrigerator, no?” she continued. “Big, like you, but heavy, like a block.” She smiled broadly and I found myself enjoying her animated presence.

“What can I do for you?” I asked.

“It’s very little, I’m afraid. Such a small thing.”

She faced away from the windows, while I was forced to stare into the sun. Enthroned in her high-backed chair, she appeared tinier, almost childlike. This was a woman who knew how to manipulate her surroundings. She had the best position, the best light.

Some office. The desktop was bare. There wasn’t a single bookshelf. What did she do in here?

She smiled charmingly, said, “I can explain perhaps best like this: you have people around you, the people who clean your house, iron your clothes, cook, drive your car—”

Right. A full staff. I keep mine in a kitchen drawer.

“And sometimes these people, they are not as honest as they should be. But you do not wish to call the police because there will be notoriety, and after all Helga is an excellent cook and you would so hate to lose her little pastry treats. But she has taken something and you cannot just ignore this. You would like to handle it within the family, no?”

“What did Helga take?”

“No, no. Not so literal, please. Helga is not my cook. She is a person I make up in my mind to show you—”

“A hypothetical case.”

She beamed as if I. were her star pupil. “Right. So you say, ‘hypothetical.’”

When people start beaming at me and generally behaving like ardent admirers who wish to bask in my wisdom, all my alarm bells go off at once. Either they want me to join a weird cult, I figure, or they’re planning a con.

“Tell me a little more about this hypothetical theft,” I said.

“It is of no intrinsic value, this thing that was stolen.”

“Sentimental value,” I suggested.

“Yes. I see you are very perceptive,” she said. “Simpatico.” Her smile was starting to look glazed, frozen, as though it had been pasted on her mouth and was beginning to itch.

“I take it you want my help in recovering this sentimental treasure,” I said.

“That is exactly what I want.” She seemed relieved. The smile ratcheted up a notch in warmth.

“Can you describe it to me?”

“I believe you already know. It consists of papers, an artist’s notebook.”

I decided to plant a zinger, see if a woman of such poise could be rattled. “And the hypothetical thief, that would be Drew Manley?”

Her head turned abruptly and she faced me straight on. Till that very moment I hadn’t realized that she’d arranged herself at a slight angle, as though she were being photographed, presenting her best side to the camera.

“Andrew Manley,” I repeated. “I assume you called me because of Andrew Manley.”

Rattled she was. “But he told me he never—”

“He didn’t give his true name,” I assured her. “He tried an alias. That’s one reason I agreed to come to your house. I figured I’d have a better chance of meeting the real Tessa Cameron.”

She couldn’t decide whether to hit me with indignation or keep her good humor. I could practically see the wheels spin, hear the gears mesh.

“So you know everything?” she said, finally deciding a fishing expedition might be the appropriate response.

“Not everything,” I said lightly. “I’ve seen your photograph, so I do know you are the genuine Mrs. Cameron. But I don’t know what you want.”

“I only want this thing, this treasure that Dr. Manley took from me.” She stared hungrily at my briefcase. “You brought it with you, yes?”

Doctor. He’d made it through med school, just as his yearbook had prophesied.

“You’re calling your doctor a thief,” I prompted.

“Please, put no such word in my mouth. Thief! Fool, perhaps. He regrets what he did. He said you sent him away, you told him you no longer have this thing, these papers. But also he said you could not show him the postal receipt. He is a man like all men, gullible. He believes you would send this to your FBI. Me, I am not so gullible.” She made an elegant exit from the chair, one moment relaxed, the next perfectly upright. “I will see this receipt, or else I will see my stolen property.” For a woman five feet tall in heels she was damned impressive.

“I was told the property belonged to your daughter, Thea.”

“Dorothea,” she corrected, caressing each syllable. Her face changed as she spoke the name. Her mouth relaxed. She looked ten years younger. “My brilliant, my beautiful daughter. She has been dead so long and still they try to use her. Everything they try to steal. Even her true name.”

“Dorothy Cameron.”

“Dorothea. That is where Thea comes from. Franklin, my husband, he will not let me name this daughter after the wishes of my heart. I name Beryl and Garnet, my treasures, and I think this one will be Ivory, Jade, Lapis, a precious thing also. But my husband’s mother has money, and for that money, that hope of inheritance, he writes on the birth certificate Dorothy, his mother’s ugly name. I spit at him for that. Now, if he still lived, I would spit at him.”

Was that why Franklin Cameron’s picture hung large in the foyer? So she could practice spitting at a man twenty years dead? Did she use his campaign posters for target practice?

“Dr. Manley told me the manuscript meant your daughter was alive.”

She bowed her head, remaining silent for a full minute. Her lips moved as though she were praying.

“Why would he say such a thing, such a lie?” she murmured at last. “You think you know a person, really know him, and—”

The knock on the door was strong enough to shake the paneling. It startled both of us.

“Mama, open the door.” The voice was deep, baritone, of the same timbre and pitch as one of the upstairs quarrelers.

Tricky Tessa. I hadn’t even seen her snick the lock.

“Please,” Tessa Cameron whispered to me, “say nothing. Pretend you are not here.” Then, loudly, she addressed the door. “Darling, I’m on the phone. Long distance. Very important. It’s way past twelve! You’ll be late for your meeting.”

“Mother, Henry told me you have a guest.”

I wondered if Henry was the car-key man.

“Cat’s out of the bag,” I said to Tessa with a shrug, making my words loud enough to carry. I’d never met a gubernatorial candidate before.

“Ignore, please, this interruption,” she said to me, steel in her voice. “I will pay you.”

“For what?” I asked.

“Damn him,” Tessa muttered under her breath. To me: “No, I do not curse my son, I curse the chauffeur. Why should I be spied on in my own house?”

I didn’t have an answer. The knocking was becoming insistent, taking on a regular rhythm.

She shook her head and her smooth coiffure moved all-of-a-piece. She made a clicking noise with her tongue, an expression of pure irritation, in English or Italian. “Shhhh,” she said, moving toward the door. “I’ll let you in. A moment, please! Always he must be in charge. Always! His father died when he was young. That is what I say to excuse his behavior. Do not judge him harshly.”

Seemed his mother did that already.

Tessa opened the door, and The Man Who Would Be King charged past like she was the housekeeper. He regarded me for a moment, then did a quick reverse, facing her.

“Mama, I thought we’d agreed you’d stay out of this.”

“No. No. This is so simple, darling. You watch. You see. Miss Carlyle, this is my son, Garnet. He forgets sometimes the politeness.”

Not often, I thought. Not a man with his political savvy and ambition. Garnet resembled his mother, same searching amber eyes, same perfectly oval face. His hair was touched with gray at the temples. No dandruff.

His suit was European-cut, charcoal with a faint stripe. No lint. No creases. He’d teamed it with a pink shirt so subdued it was almost gray, enlivened the ensemble with a hand-painted floral tie that probably cost more than my entire outfit.

All the Dover Camerons, except the elusive Beryl, rated space in Who’s Who. So I knew Garnet had graduated from Harvard, held a law degree from Yale, was forty-two, and currently married to the much-younger Marissa, with one divorce in his past. No kids. Eighteen when sister Thea had vanished.

For years he’d devoted his considerable energy and influence to politics, on the money side. Fund-raising time, folks heard from Garnet. Folks with money. I bet he rarely forgot his manners then.

He’d racked up favors, bided his time. When the traditional weakness of the Massachusetts Republican Party reasserted itself, he’d picked the perfect moment to switch from money raiser to candidate, fulfill his father’s unsated ambitions.

I admit to being politically disaffected, but I vote, even though the things I want to vote for—like giving more money to Paolina’s school so they won’t have to run an endless stream of bake sales and magazine drives—never end up on the ballot. I was actually looking forward to yanking the lever for this guy. We breed strange candidates in the Commonwealth—rich folks who stand up for the little guy, poor folk who grovel to the rich, longing to be one of their number. The Kennedy model must have rubbed off: Do what’s necessary to get rich; once you’ve got a million bucks to spare, groom your kids for public service.

Garnet Cameron said, “I see you’ve met my devoted mother, Ms. Carlyle.”

Tension there, thick as butter.

She glued a jovial smile on her mouth, said, “You hear, Garnet, what little I say to her. Only that we have lost some pieces of paper from a sketchpad. She has found them. We pay her for them. A check, cash, whatever it is she wishes. It’s so simple, you see?”

“You didn’t exactly say you lost them,” I corrected. “More like Andrew Manley stole them.”

Garnet rounded on his mother, but she didn’t give him a chance to slip a word into the accusatory silence.

“What? What did I say? She tells me his name, not the other way around. Always you belittle me.” Tessa had a delightful accent, I decided, like rippling water. I hoped she’d keep talking because Garnet looked as though he desperately wanted her to shut up.

“Listen to me, darling.” She addressed me quietly, just woman to woman, as if her son had evaporated from the room. Clients rarely call me darling. “Such hair you have! You need a good haircut, true? I have someone for you, a man who works wonders with such hair! This thing I want you to return … The doctor—who is my dear friend—perhaps thought he was doing a good thing, yes, but he didn’t realize—‘Stole’ is far too strong a word.”

“Mama!”

“What? What? All the time, everything I do is wrong, eh? I can see this is a good person, an honest woman—”

“I asked you to let me handle this.” Garnet’s mouth barely opened; his jaw seemed set, locked.

Tessa said, “I think you should not be late for your meeting.”

“Consider it canceled,” Garnet returned.

“Dr. Manley wanted the notebook back very much,” I said. “If I’d had it, I would have given it to him.”

Tessa Cameron’s eyes flashed. She said, “I don’t know why you wish to keep it, but you have no right. This thing we speak of is a—a fraud! It’s like with a dead painter, like Picasso, say, a dead master. You think a nobody, a student, perhaps, in an art school, should be able to squiggle lines on a page and then say to me this is a genuine Picasso and you should pay me twenty thousand dollars for this little penciled nothing drawn yesterday? It is an outrage!”

Bingo: Had someone offered to sell her the notebook? For, say, twenty thousand dollars?

“Wait a minute, Mrs. Cameron,” I said. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but with art, forgery devalues the true work. If someone finds another thousand ‘Picassos,’ each genuine Picasso is worth less.”

“This would be true, yes,” she admitted.

I said, “But if Thea were alive and writing after all these years, a new manuscript would be a gold mine. It would generate tremendous interest in her earlier novel—”

I have rarely been stared down by a woman a foot shorter than me, but Tessa did an admirable job.

“It is not a new manuscript; it is a fake,” she said coldly. “My Thea is not alive. You think she would run away and never speak to her mother? She loved me with all her heart. Some son-of-a-bitch, some political enemy of my son’s, that is all we’ll find at the bottom of this. I will pay you, I tell you, not for the single chapter alone, which I trust you will return, but to make this person—whoever it is—stop what he is doing.” She pulled a lacy handkerchief from an invisible pocket, applied it gently to her eyes. “Make him stop writing these hateful forgeries, make him stop breaking my heart.”

“Mama,” Garnet said, trying to grasp her hands. “Please. I can handle this. There’s no reason to tear yourself apart.”

“You,” Mrs. Cameron murmured spitefully, “you can’t even handle your wife. Even now, if she’d stay until the election—”

“Mother, I’m sure Miss Carlyle isn’t interested in the election,” Garnet said, a smile frozen on his face. If he could have wrapped his hand over his mother’s mouth I’m certain he would have.

“You’re not the man your father was.” Mrs. Cameron hurled the insult like a favorite cudgel.

“Praise the Lord,” he answered sarcastically, “and pass the Martini pitcher. Perhaps, Miss Carlyle, you might return some time when my mother is more herself.”

I admired the way he’d called her an irresponsible alcoholic without using the words for attribution.

I said, “Look, Mr. Cameron, I have an appointment with your mother, not with you. If she wants to talk, I’m happy to listen.”

“She does talk,” he said, his teeth clenched.

“And you, you stink of jealousy every time I mention Thea’s name.” The woman turned on her son. “There’s some law, perhaps, that I can’t talk about my own child in my own home?”

“What was she like, Mrs. Cameron? I’ve read her book, but …”

“Don’t egg her on,” Garnet Cameron said. “Please.”

She froze him with a glance.

“That was a very naughty book for her to write, no? She was a wild thing, my daughter, like a horse no one could tame. My father owned such a horse once, an Arabian, and only I could ride him. But even I could not tame Thea. She wrote of that stuffy school of hers. She made fun of everything and everyone and some lied and said, of course, they did not recognize themselves at all, and some laughed, but the laughter caught in their throats and choked them.” She stifled a noise and I realized she was holding back tears. “Sometimes I think that was why the man killed her, because she spoke to him when she shouldn’t have, said something funny and wicked.”

“Sit down,” I urged, leading her back to her chair. A pitcher of Martinis. If she’d overindulged, the smell of liquor was well camouflaged by her camellia perfume.

“She had no talent for kindness, my daughter,” Tessa continued as soon as she sat. “She had a tongue that cut like a blade, so sharp. It was a failing, but I thought to myself, she has plenty of time to grow gentle with the passing of years. In her later life, I thought, she will acquire also this virtue, and become a great lady. And she will be the daughter I will grow old with, the one who will take me to lunch, to tea at the Ritz, because I have already lost my older daughter, and it will be my life to be proud of her and, poof, it is gone, and all I have are memories like a wisp, a puff of smoke.”

“Already lost your older daughter? What do you mean, ‘lost’?”

Garnet shot me a poisonous glance.

“That’s enough, Mama,” he said.

She removed a pack of cigarettes from her top drawer, a crystal ashtray.

“Mama, the doctor said.”

“What? I do as I please, Garnet. None of you ever understood me. Not even your father. My children only lie to me or preach to me—except for my brilliant girl, my Thea. Truly, she is the only one who listened—”

“Getting yourself killed isn’t so brilliant, Mother.”

There was a moment of uneasy silence while Mrs. Cameron lit her cigarette with a slim gold lighter. She wasn’t a woman accustomed to lighting her own cigarettes. Her fingers shook. Garnet wasn’t about to help.

“All pleasures you would deny me,” she said bitterly. “Even memory—”

The knock on the door was hesitant this time.

“Contessa? Are you in there?” The voice was high and thin.

Ah, I thought. The arguing soprano.

“Open the door, Garnet,” Tessa said.

He didn’t like it, but he obeyed. Hell, if she’d ordered me to open the door in a tone like that, I’d have done it too.