Once that was settled, dinner was a lovely affair. Andy was excited about the fishing trip and he peppered Dad with questions as to what they might catch and what the conditions would be like. He failed to notice that Ryan was uncharacteristically silent, but Jayne did not.
She lifted her eyebrow as she passed me a bowl heaped high with chicken korma. I gave her a slight nod, indicating we’d talk later.
Donald was beyond delighted to discover that Roger and Linda Thompson were Sherlock newbies. Before they knew what was happening, he’d organized a full day of Holmes activities for them tomorrow. “Anyone else want to join us?” he asked.
“Perish the thought,” my mother muttered. Then she added, “Sorry. Court tomorrow. It might be a long day.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask what sort of law you practice, Anne,” Roger said. “Corporate? Criminal?”
“All dreadfully dull, I’m afraid,” she said as she served herself spinach paneer and passed the bowl to Andy. “Most of the law is exceedingly dull.”
My mother was one of the top barristers—trial lawyers—in London. Her career was anything but dull, but she rarely talked about it and never to outsiders.
“I’d enjoy coming to court to watch you in action. Do you wear a wig?”
“I do. And a long black silk robe.”
“Very fetching,” Dad said. Mum gave him a warm smile.
“Perhaps tomorrow—” Roger began, but Donald interrupted before the other man could start formulating plans. “No time, I’m afraid. We’ll be on the hop all day.”
“And on Tuesday we’re off to Scotland for a week,” Linda said. “I’m excited about that.”
“Scotland!” Donald exclaimed. “Sir Arthur was Scottish. He went to the University of Edinburgh. There are a good number of sites in that city you can visit. Such as …” And he was off and running.
I reached under the table for Ryan’s hand. I gave it a hard squeeze. When he turned to look at me, I mouthed, “Love you.”
“Love you too,” he mouthed back.
When I returned my attention to my dinner, my sister was watching us from across the table. She winked at me.
As the North American visitors were still largely jet-lagged, and Dad, Ryan, and Andy had an early start the next morning, we didn’t linger after dinner.
“I’m reconsidering going on this fishing jaunt,” Ryan said to me once we were alone in our room in the house on Stanhope Gardens.
My suitcase had still not made an appearance, and I was wondering if I should take the time for another shopping trip or continue to live in the likely foolish hope that my own things would eventually find their way to me. “Dad will be disappointed if you don’t. Andy will be shattered; he’s truly excited about the trip. If it makes you feel any better, I don’t know that I’m going to accomplish much, if anything. If I have to guess, I’ll guess Paul stumbled upon something of considerable value, and whoever killed him killed him to get it. They left with it, and it’s either on the black market or out of the country by now. My curiously is aroused, that’s all. Not so much about the item in question, but as to why Paul thought I’d be interested in it.”
“Have you considered that there was no item or he had something relatively unimportant and was only trying to get your attention?”
“You think that’s possible?”
“I think it’s more than possible, Gemma. You said the guy was down on his luck, on a downward spiral. If he thought his descent began when you left him, he might have thought getting together with you again would fix everything.”
I thought back over what Paul had said to me. I said nothing. Ryan might be right that Paul was conflicted in his attitude toward me, but he had lain in wait for me, saying he wanted to show me this book he’d come across. Both of those things could be true.
“How hard is it to get the scent of skunk out of a house?”
“A year from now, you’ll walk through the front door and be reminded.”