Jimmy Fox - Nick Herald 02 - Lineages and Lies (13 page)

“What I found out is in your P.O. box as we speak,” Nick said. “According to the probate records, if that was the guy, he died with no share of the treasure. He left a grand total of $7,500 to that church, including three gold dollar coins in poor condition. Rumors added a few zeros to the guy’s wealth. By the way, you owe me $400.”

“I thought you were on retainer.”

“Right, but you haven’t paid me for months.”

“Well, I’ll, er—speak to my bookkeeper. Oh, never mind.”

Grumbling, Coldbread withdrew his wallet—with Mickey Mouse embossed on the leather, from Disneyland Paris, he said, with a childlike gleam in his eyes—and paid Nick. Four hundreds. He was the heir to twenty-or-so million in his middle years, and as hard as he tried he would never spend it all on his grand passion. He was a smug, fastidious, peevish, paranoid little man, with a face only a mother with cataracts could love. But he had the antiquarian’s wide-eyed fascination with the imagined sights and sounds of the past, combined with something of the professional genealogist’s addiction to gathering the obscure facts of family relationships.

Nick had to like the peculiar fellow. Besides, Coldbread had published Nick’s last two books, which, for genealogical works, had done fairly well in sales, surprising them both. Coldbread’s own works were worthless, almost unreadable flights of fancy and self-justification that no reputable house would touch. Which explained why he had his own publishing company.
Fortunately he employed a handful of exceptional editors, who humored the mercurial Coldbread when necessary while they carried on with the real work of running a small publisher with an otherwise well-regarded list.

“I’m onto something here,” Coldbread whispered. “A son of one of the Packenham Five might have married a great-granddaughter of an
Allégorie
passenger. If I can find her, I might be able to find her husband’s father. Imagine, discovering first-hand testimony, even if in code! Or a map!”

“Which passenger?” Nick asked, innocently enough.

Coldbread, the sheen of treasure-hunter’s lust on his face, shook his head violently. “I refuse.”

The Packenham Five, as he’d dubbed them, were five of Lafitte’s men within earshot of the dying Sir Edward Packenham, who, Coldbread believed, blabbed the hiding place of the legendary hoard of stolen American gold. If it existed, and if together they found it, Nick and he would split it. Nick had persuaded him that this deal was the least he could do after having tried to murder him. But Nick wasn’t holding his breath.

“I might be able to help, but fine,” Nick said. “Just remember we have a deal.”

“Oh, all right. Now go away, please. I’m busy.”

Nick wanted to tell Coldbread what an ass he could be sometimes—well, quite often, actually. But he kept quiet.

Nick walked to the door, which opened with a
whoosh
. He turned back to see Coldbread again absorbed in his studies, his nearly bald head dangling greasy strands perilously close to the manuscript, his lips moving in trance-like concentration as he
read. The young man at the desk took a puffy white surgical cap from a box, walked over to Coldbread, and suggested he put it on.

Off one of the spiral staircases, a long hallway led to a large and impressive paneled door. Busts of past Captain-Directors sat on column pedestals on both sides of the hall, each staring at his counterpart across the colorful naturalistic patterns of an exquisite Savonnerie carpet runner.

The door at the end of the hallway opened an inch, and then more as Jillian Vair emerged; she closed it quickly, carefully, and soundlessly behind her. She entered a code on the numeric keypad beside the door; a green light went out, a red one began flashing.

Jillian started down the hall, a folder under one arm. She stopped in front of one of the marble busts, touched the cold face, and then hurried on, her head lowered.

She was midway down the hall when Nick saw her.

“Hey, I’ve been trying to get in touch with you,” he said, stopping at the entrance to the hall. “Hey, Jillian. Jillian, what’s wrong? It’s me, Nick.”

She seemed not to see him through her tears or hear him even as he held her by her birdlike shoulders and faced her.

He noticed the two rows of marble busts stretching down the hall behind Jillian, and unbidden, Nelson Plumlaw’s casual remark about the doppelganger floated into his consciousness.
In folklore and in art, he recalled, meeting one’s double was an event fraught with danger—and sometimes death.

“Nick? What … what are
you
doing here?” Jillian stammered.

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

“Oh, I work here now,” she said, forcing an unconvincing smile. “You know how I told you I was so interested in genealogy?” She tried furtively to wipe the evidence of her tears away.

“Let’s go sit down,” Nick suggested. “Your color doesn’t look so good.”

But the rest of her did. With understated style and grace she wore a neutral tailored suit over an emerald-green blouse. Anyone else might have mistaken her for a rich patron rather than an employee. Her only concession to what Nick took to be the library’s dress code was a scarf that showed dozens of small
Allégorie
s navigating folds of silk, disappearing as if in a whirlpool into the loose, simple knot at the side of her neck. But even though her costume set her apart, she seemed to fit in here, to be at home.

“Just startled, that’s all,” she protested, as Nick led her to a study alcove with a table and chairs, amid the stacks of books.

“You’ve been trying to reach me?” she said, dabbing her eyes and nose with a tissue.

“I certainly didn’t call to speak to your machine.”

“Sorry. I never check that thing. Anyway, I’ve been really busy. Started here … what’s today?”

“Thursday.”

“Yesterday, actually. There’s so much to learn.”

Nick patted her arm. “I just hope they didn’t put you in charge of scheduling anything, somebody who doesn’t know what day it is. What’s in the office down the hall, with the monumental door?”

“Oh, that’s the Captain-Director’s office.”

“Is that where you were? I heard he wasn’t in the building.”

She pulled the tied flap folder toward her, avoiding his eyes. “I was in another office. I—I had to get some files.”

Nick felt she was lying, but he couldn’t be sure. When he’d first noticed her, she was already halfway down the hallway.

“You seem uptight, Jillian. Anything I can do?”

An elevator behind them opened. A man in a wheelchair rolled himself out with effort, nodded and smiled at them, and then rolled toward the Rare Documents Room.

“It’s just … just the new job,” Jillian said, when the man was gone. “And my family, too. I get sad sometimes when I think about my brother and my father. It’s like I have this rat of pain inside, and my soul is a cat. Every now and then the cat nibbles a piece of rat ear, a piece of tail, and saves the rest for later.”

“There goes my great idea for the evening. I was about to suggest a sinfully delicious meal, followed by some deliciously good sinning. But I’ve lost my appetite!”

She loosened up a bit, returning from the dark place where her soul had hidden the rat. “There’s nothing I’d rather do tonight than be with you. I’m going to see Daddy this afternoon. Come with me, and then we can play.”

CHAPTER 10

L
ifePath Estates was the brainchild of a national hospital chain and an international hotel conglomerate. The infirm of any age with the hefty entrance fee, the exorbitant yearly tab, and whatever could be squeezed out of Medicare and private insurance, could spend pampered convalescent years with resort-hotel amenities and top-notch medical care.

Hugh Montenay had been a resident here since the death of his son nearly two years before. This mild late afternoon he sat in the coppery spring sunlight on a bench, a warm breeze frolicking in his thick salt-and-pepper hair. He was a handsome man with an outdoorsy complexion and a slightly overfed but still-vigorous physique. At sixty-three he looked at least ten years younger. His eyes told a different story, though, of sadness beyond his age.

Now and then he explored the white scar along his left cheek with his left hand; but this seemed only to awaken unpleasant thoughts for him. Soon he would slowly draw his hand away, letting it drop once again into his lap, to rest limply beside his other hand.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Montenay,” a stooped, wizened woman said. She had stopped on the gravel path in front of the bench. Her rail-thin husband held the arm that wasn’t propped on her cane.

“Isn’t it a beautiful view?” she said. “I love to sit there, myself. The pool down the steps, and the fountain, and all the lovely lawn and flowers we have at our disposal … oh, it’s simply delightful!”

“Come on, Maude,” urged her husband. “He’s in one of his moods today. Must’a gotten the wrong kinda candy from his ex-wife.”

“Oh, hell!” Mr. Montenay said, with sudden Victorian stage melodrama.

“Well, I think it’s nice she sends it,” Maude said to her husband, making sure Mr. Montenay heard her, ignoring his outburst.

“But it’s the wrong kind, Maude. He doesn’t like fruit centers. He likes the creams. I think she does it on purpose.”

She patted Mr. Montenay on a knee. “Oh, that’s all right, dear. You’re just having a bad day. I hope you feel better.”

Maude and her husband crunched off down the path and began a careful descent along a handrail. Six wide steps led gradually down to another level of the pleasantly landscaped grounds.

“Daddy?”

Jillian and Nick stood before him now.

“Daddy, this is Nick Herald. He’s a good friend. He wanted to meet you.”

“How do you do, sir,” Nick said, extending his hand. Mr. Montenay kept his hands in his lap and looked reproachfully at his daughter.

“I don’t need to be here, Jillian,” he said, his dry lips stuck to his teeth in what looked to Nick like a snarl. Mr. Montenay crossed his arms in a pout. His eyes welled up.

The visitors sat on the bench, Jillian between the two men.

“Yes, you do, Daddy. They’re good to you out here. You know they are. Look, I brought you some goodies.” She bent over her knees to get the gifts from her Saks shopping bag. She presented them with obvious pride. “Here are some new pajamas, all cotton, like you like. And a pair of slippers. A magazine on model shipbuilding. A backgammon game. And our little secret.”

She looked around for staff members and then handed him a plastic flask, which he grabbed and stuck in a pocket of his expensive silk robe.

“Here’s a box of your stationery, and some nice rollerball pens. They were on special at rite Aid. A brand new design.”

“But K&B has the kind I—”

“Now Daddy, I’ve told you that K&B sold to rite Aid. Just a different color on the sign, that’s all.”

K&B’s purple oval signs had dotted New Orleans street corners for decades. Mr. Montenay seemed unable to take in the loss of the beloved homegrown drugstore chain. Most other area residents were similarly chagrined.

Jillian turned to Nick, and said in lowered voice: “He used to like building models. And writing letters, especially to Jules, my brother.”

“Cigars?” Mr. Montenay asked, looking with disdain at the gifts on the bench beside him.

“Linda sends those. Remember, Linda, Jules’s wife? You have a picture of her and the grandkids on your TV. I’ll call her and ask her to send it a little earlier this time. Don’t let them catch you, Daddy.”

“Bastards!” said Mr. Montenay.

Nick had interviewed many mentally deteriorating elderly people, trying to squeeze even one drop of genealogical nectar from their silences or jabbering. But this looked like a hopeless case. He was already counting the minutes until he and Jillian would leave.

To Nick, Jillian’s father didn’t seem to be making an effort, didn’t seem to deserve all the love his daughter so obviously had for him. But he tried not to be too hard on the old fellow. He knew from experience that you seldom realize you’re being a cranky, selfish asshole at the time, especially not someone as sick as Mr. Montenay. And he had fallen before into the trap of blaming sick friends and family members, as if illness were their deserved punishment for being weak-willed enough to succumb and then to show their suffering.

This was tough on Jillian. Her face wore a look of deflated hope, of old fears turning to resignation. She was the student who knew she didn’t know the answers, but sat there staring at her blue book, waiting for some sudden enlightenment, as the other students wrote furiously. It was the way Nick had seen her the night of Bluemantle’s death at the hotel.

He put a hand on her shoulder. Mr. Montenay noticed and eyed him with what Nick took to be anger and jealousy.

“What do you do for a living, Dick,” Mr. Montenay said, for an instant the normal father of a beautiful woman.

“It’s Nick, Daddy, like in Nicholas.”

“I’m a professional genealogist. You know, family trees, lineage societies—”

“I
know
what it is!”

“Daddy, now calm down or we’ll have to call a nurse. Go on, Nick, please.”