FORGET ME NOT (Mark Kane Mysteries Book One) (14 page)

“Touché,” I said.

I was on my fifth visit to the Philips’ house
and I was beginning to think that it really was enchanted. When I
left home there wasn’t a clear patch in the sky and the clouds were
spitting at me, but now I was negotiating the subtle curve of
Greg’s drive the weather had backed off, the clouds were in full
retreat and the sun was so bright I had to fish my shades out of
the glove box.

“So we’re no further forward yet?”

Greg sat down opposite me in the living room
in his favorite chair, carefully hitching up his light grey pants
as he did so to maintain the knife-sharp crease on the front of
each leg. I watched in fascination as he crossed his legs. I swear
that those creases didn’t move at all; it was as if they were
ironed to his leg.

“Well a little. My interviews with Susan
certainly seem to have fortified your suspicion that she may be
hiding something about her past, and I’ve managed to get a sample
of her DNA. As you know, I’ve submitted it to the lab and they’re
profiling it just in case we are able to get something to match it
with. I’m still optimistic about the hair. Even if we can’t get a
match that would pass muster in a courtroom it may be possible to
get a sufficient comparison to give us an indication about the
likelihood of Susan’s maternity.”

I was stretching the truth here because I had
called Jill to run that idea past her. She said it wasn’t like
fingerprints where you could have degrees of probability based on
the number of ridge characteristics that matched. With DNA either
you had sufficient for a match or you didn’t. The fact was, she
explained, that practically everyone had some shared DNA
characteristics. I was playing for time until I could speak to the
other family members. My next pronouncement was an extension of
this game-plan, although it wasn’t without possibilities.

“My assistant is a bit of a wiz with
computers. She suggested that if you can provide sufficient details
of Gloria’s family background she will do a search on a
genealogical website to try and construct a detailed family tree.
It’s possible that this could reveal a living relative somewhere
that shares Gloria’s maternal bloodline.”

This statement was both true and untrue in
several respects, and also an exaggeration. No doubt Lucy would
have been both astonished and delighted to hear herself described
as my assistant if I was ever foolish enough to let her know that I
frequently used that term to describe her, but I was careful not to
let that cat out of the bag. It was also untrue that Lucy had made
the suggestion I referred to because the idea had only occurred to
me moments before. It was true, however, that Lucy was skilled with
computers, or at least so it appeared to a novice like me. And the
idea wasn’t so far-fetched as to sound like nonsense. I’d get Lucy
onto it right away.

“In the meantime I would like to have
meetings with your two sons if you have no objection to that, to
see if they can shed any light on the matter.”

“I don’t have any objection to that but, as I
told you, they knew nothing about Susan until after Gloria’s death,
so I don’t see how that can help you.”

“Well you can’t even be certain about that,
can you?”

“Gloria would have told me, I’m sure.”

“She didn’t tell you about the will. It’s
conceivable that she may have said something which later slipped
her mind. There’s no harm in asking them, and in any event I would
like to discuss the issue concerning Susan with them; after all it
will have a considerable impact on their inheritance one way or
another.”

“Yes, of course I can see that. You’re quite
right; they deserve to be fully in the picture.”

I’ll give you my sec…assistant’s email
address. Perhaps you’d be good enough to let her have as much
detailed information about Gloria as possible and we’ll see what
she can come up with. She’s very smart.”

I shuddered inwardly at the thought that Greg
might one day reveal this accolade to Lucy herself.

“Just give me a minute and I’ll get you the
contact details of my two boys. There’s Simon, he’s married to
Sally, and Paul. I’m sorry I don’t think I’ve really told you
anything about them yet.”

Greg stood up, and the knife-edge creases
accompanied him. They walked over to the living room door together,
whilst I remained seated.

Greg was back in a few minutes with the typed
addresses and phone numbers of his sons.

“Those are their home numbers; I’ll jot down
their cell phone numbers as well. They both live locally so you
shouldn’t have difficulty getting together. Would you like me to
preface your approach in advance?”

It was an example of the rather quaint and
formal way Greg sometimes spoke and which I had noticed before.

“Good idea, yes. Is there anything you’d
rather I didn’t tell them about my investigation?”

“Not at all. There have been enough secrets
already. Not that it was ever my or Gloria’s intention to hurt them
in any way, but it’s a case of once bitten twice shy; I want them
to be fully in the picture. I don’t know; perhaps as a sympathetic
outsider you might be able to help mend some bridges for me.”

“I’ll do what I can; and I am sympathetic to
your situation. There is something else I’m hoping you can help
with. When I last saw Susan she said that there was email contact
between Gloria and her. It occurred to me that there might be
something significant in their correspondence. Would you be able to
provide me with her email account details? I expect it’s still
technically active. I’ll need the password too. I hope you don’t
have any objection to this, only I need to explore every angle
available.”

“No, I don’t have any qualms about that. Her
user-name was gloriarphilips – the r stands for Rose, which was her
middle name − I’m not sure about the password though. I’m pretty
sure that Sally has it, because before Gloria became…incapacitated
she gave details like that to her, because it was necessary to
cancel subscriptions and such like. I’ll let you know as soon as
possible. You won’t need the actual computer will you, I’m afraid
it’s the only one in the house?”

“No, the email address and password will be
sufficient.”

“Alright.” Greg looked at his wristwatch.
“Would you care to join me in sampling another grape? I don’t want
to get on the slippery slope of drinking alone, so I hope you won’t
mind.”

I didn’t mind, and we adjourned to the deck.
While Greg was preparing the glasses and before he surprised me
with the days vintage I thought about the implications of what he’d
just told me. If Simon’s wife, Sally, had access to Gloria’s email
account while she was alive, she would have had access to the
emails between Gloria and Susan. It seemed more than possible in
that case that she and Simon might well have known about the
relationship well before Gloria passed away; and if he knew, then
perhaps Paul knew as well. If they did know, they almost certainly
wouldn’t have disclosed the information to their father because
they would have to admit to snooping in Gloria’s private
correspondence. This set my mind spinning about a new set of
possibilities which may have led to Gloria’s premature death.

My thoughts were interrupted as Greg
reappeared with a decanted bottle of Merlot and some crystal wine
glasses and filled each glass half full. “I opened the bottle
before you arrived to let it breathe; in anticipation so to
speak.”

We raised our glasses to each other. “Santé,”
he said.

“Tell me a bit more about yourself?” Greg
said. “What do you do in your spare time? That is if you have any
spare time. I imagine your job is fairly time consuming.”

“I read mostly,” I said, slowly swirling the
wine in my glass and watching the sun glint on the surface. “I
don’t have any other hobbies. I don’t play golf or go fishing.
Actually I’m not a particularly gregarious person and I enjoy being
alone with a book.”

“Hmm, I used to read a lot too when Gloria
was alive – I mean before she became unwell. We’d read together,
side by side, often sitting out here on the deck long into the
evening. It probably sounds a bit strange to you, reading together
like that, but we had a shared love of good literature and it was
pleasant sitting together whilst we read.”

“I guess it’s no stranger than watching a
movie with someone,” I said, “or television.”

“I don’t even have a television anymore,”
said Greg. “You may have noticed. Spot the missing item.” He
laughed.

“What kind of books do you enjoy?” I asked
him.

“Novels mainly, and short stories; but not
the sort of novels that are churned out nowadays, which are only
really stories, as opposed to literature. I mean there’s nothing
wrong with a story that’s really no more than an entertainment, but
they lack depth and insight into what makes people tick. Good books
lay bare the foibles of modern man: the good the bad and the
ugly.”

“That’s one of Lucy’s favorite movies,” I
said, without really thinking. I didn’t mean to interrupt him – it
just slipped out.

“Is it? I don’t think I know that one. I’m
not really a movie-goer, I’m afraid; never have been.”

It would certainly have been hard to picture
Greg and Gloria back in the day making out in the back of a
Chrysler at the local drive-in, I thought. “Sorry to interrupt,” I
said.

“Well, then there’s the beauty of language,
the rhythm of the words. Look at Dickens, say, or Mark Twain. Great
literature is like great architecture, or music or art. It’s
uplifting, enriching. I think that being taught about literature at
school puts many people off, but the majority of great writers were
the popular entertainers of their day. They didn’t write for a
select few, but for the masses. Most of Dickens’ novels were
originally published in serial form in inexpensive and popular
magazines. And who could ever tire of Shakespeare? His plays were
written for the masses to enjoy. Thirty seven plays by the age of
fifty and countless poems. Scribbling away with a quill pen and
writing long into the evening by candlelight. Mind you, his plays
were written to be watched, not read, and certainly not
studied.”

“But he’s not to everybody’s taste, Greg,” I
said. “Tolstoy thought his writing was crude, immoral, vulgar and
senseless. Voltaire described his work as an enormous dunghill. And
George Bernard Shaw fantasized about digging him up and throwing
stones at him.”

Greg permitted himself a silent laugh. “Well,
you can’t be all things to all people, I guess,” he said. “How
about you, Kane; what do you enjoy?”

“I have an eclectic taste, everything from
Cervantes to Clancy. Well, not everything. I try to avoid the crap,
but I’ll give most books a try a long as they’re absorbing and
well-written.”

“Our boys were instilled with a love of
reading, from an early age,” Greg said, following his own train of
thought. “They used to perform little plays for us at Christmas
when they were small. You know, a scene out of a Shakespeare play
or maybe they’d dramatize a scene out of a novel. They even did a
scene from Waiting for Godot once. It was hilarious.”

Greg was mentally turning back the years,
reminiscing and comforting himself with memories of happier
times.

“Gloria and I played bridge but we couldn’t
interest the boys. They liked the outdoors too much. Do you
play?”

I had a fleeting idea that he was going to
ask me to be his new bridge partner.

“I know how to play, but I’ve never played
seriously,” I said.

We drank our way through the entire decanter,
talking about many diverse things, but not about the case in hand.
It turned out there was more than one bottle in the decanter.
Finally I excused myself.

“I’ll have to be going,” I said. “Time and
tide wait for no man.”

Greg saw me to the door. “Once more unto the
breach,” he said, as I left the house. It was Greg’s little
joke.

“You look cheerful,” Lucy said.

I was, but I sensed that was about to change.
The words were innocuous enough by themselves but there was an
undertone of pending admonishment lurking beneath the surface. Greg
and I had consumed more than one bottle and I had been compelled to
drive home very slowly indeed. I had raided the refrigerator and
devoured everything I could find that was edible and didn’t need to
be cooked, then fallen asleep on the front porch for an hour or
two. It had seemed to me that things were on track and I’d deserved
the afternoon off. Lucy eyed me up and down disapprovingly.

“You’re a technological midget.”

“Would you care to elaborate on that slur?” I
said, in the tone of an English butler.

“The email address is no good on its own; you
need the computer that Gloria used to access her email
account.”

“Why’s that? I thought emails existed in
cyberspace, or resided in banks of servers in Silicon Valley.”

“That’s because you don’t understand modern
technology. The email address is all very well if you have the
password, which you don’t as yet. But you’ll need to check for the
possibility of deleted or saved emails as well, and for that you’ll
need to access the computer’s hard drive.”

I’d already had a hard drive earlier in the
afternoon and was finding it difficult to follow her mumbo
jumbo.

“There’s only one computer and Greg’s using
it. You are speaking in riddles. How can you find something that’s
been deleted from the ether by looking at the computer’s hard
drive?” The word ether was unfortunately punctuated by a hiccup,
which I hoped Lucy hadn’t noticed.

“You’re being deliberately obtuse Kane; even
you can’t know as little as that. You’re supposed to be an
investigator.”