Authors: Sally John
After Sheridan had scurried off, Luke had asked questions about their father. It soon became apparent that she and Bram had barely scratched the surface of what Harrison might have done.
Calissa looked at Luke, now at last doing the guy thing with the fire. He added split logs and poked at it. Sparks flew. He shut the screen and backed up, still not looking at her.
Why hadn’t he followed Sheridan, talked some sense into her, comforted her? In Houston, he was always at her side, getting her through the rough moments.
“Luke,” she said.
He turned. “Hm?”
“Did you and Sheridan ever, you know . . . were you ever . . . you know.”
“Did we ever commit adultery?” He shook his head. “No.”
“I mean, I wouldn’t blame either one of you after what happened. Eliot half-dead, Sheridan vulnerable, you . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“I what?”
“Well, you’re a man. There was opportunity. Emotions had to have been crazy off the wall. She needed to be comforted.”
“You ever consider writing romance novels?”
“Honestly, Luke, you know most men would have taken advantage of the situation. Most women would have welcomed—”
“Your sister isn’t ‘most women,’ Calissa. I think you might keep that in mind as we go forward here today.”
She had no response and grew self-conscious under his gaze. He didn’t say it, but he was not like most men, either. Actually he wasn’t like
any
man she’d met. She chalked it up to his clandestine type of work. Now she saw something else in him, though, something almost otherworldly.
A shiver went through her. Who was this man? She had the sudden impression that she stood in the presence of someone who trafficked not in the shadows, but in a light. A luminescence.
She shook it off. “But you love her.”
He smiled, an enigmatic twist of his thin lips. “And yet that has nothing to do with what you’re imagining.”
“Whatever.” She huffed. “So is she going to make it through this or not?”
“Depends on what you mean by ‘this.’”
“This knowledge that our father is a criminal. It’s going to reflect on her and Eliot,
The Ambassador
.”
“They’re not exactly in the diplomatic spotlight anymore.”
“Still.”
“It’s more a family affair, Calissa. It impacts countless details about your life. Things you assumed were true are not. Perhaps what you and she assumed about your relationship as sisters is not true.”
Calissa blinked. “What do you mean by that?”
He shrugged. “Maybe there’s no reason after all for you two to resent each other.”
Now he was getting a little too personal. “But don’t you think Eliot will return to public life someday?”
“At this point I’d say it’s unlikely. Sheridan and Eliot are expatriates, but they’re not simply American citizens living overseas. They’ve cut themselves off entirely from the government they used to serve and from personal relationships. There isn’t even phone service where they live. Mail is not dependable, and so they have a post office box in another town. The shooting and his ill health threw them so far off the track, they don’t know what to do except hide away and try to make it on their own, in their own way.”
“How are they surviving? Isn’t anyone there to help them?”
“There are a few that I observed.”
“Locals?”
“It’s best that she tell you the details.”
Calissa waited a beat and gave up. Even if she prodded, he would not elaborate.
What Luke had said rankled her, but there was truth. These new revelations about Harrison could redefine everything, even her relationship with Sheridan. But still. Why was it she always had to take the lead?
Calissa swore under her breath. “Where do I go to resign from big-sister duty?”
* * *
The papers covered the top of the coffee table. The markings on them were varied diagrams, lists, and chicken scratch in everything from pencil to marker to dot-matrix print.
Calissa sat cross-legged on the floor before them and peeked through her lashes at Sheridan sipping Bram’s peppermint tea. Her sister had resumed her position in the chair near the fireplace, an afghan around her legs. She’d lived near the equator way too long if she couldn’t handle the coolness of a little spring rain.
“Okay.” Calissa double-checked the papers, overwhelmed at the hugeness of what they represented. “Basically what we have here falls into four categories: notes, memos, transcripts, and invoices.”
Luke leaned forward. “You said the latest reference is from 1983. How long of a period does this cover?”
“From 1975 to 1983.”
“And what are these papers exactly?”
“Dad’s handwritten notes to himself. Memos between him and a House rep from Kansas. Minutes from meetings of the House subcommittee on trade, specifically about multinational corporations. Those would be classified. And telephone bills showing calls to overseas numbers.”
“‘Subcommittee on trade’ means your father was on the Ways and Means Committee?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the common thread between these four categories of information?”
Calissa glanced at Bram beside her. She’d been involved in politics since childhood, more or less. She had been her dad’s right-hand woman for years. She was preparing to run for the Chicago City Council. In short, she understood the ins and outs of complex issues. But this . . . this she could not begin to explain.
Bram nodded and took over for her. “Diamond trade. Harrison’s notes are cryptic, but he makes clear reference to three things: Ysabel’s Place, falling stars, and flashers.”
“Flashers.” Sheridan shook her head. “That’s what he called diamonds. He gave Mamá jewelry all the time, usually diamonds, and talked about the ‘flashers.’ She hated them.”
“She didn’t hate them,” Calissa said.
“Detested, then. Loathed. Whenever she opened one, her face looked like she’d just swallowed a spoonful of cod-liver oil. Except for that gaudy engagement ring, she never wore them, did she?”
Calissa didn’t reply. Even as a kid she thought Ysabel’s reaction weird. What woman didn’t adore extravagant gifts from her husband? What woman didn’t love diamonds and gems and jewelry? Apparently she might have had good reason to feel contempt for diamonds and her husband.
Sheridan said, “She must have known what he was up to.”
To hear her sister conclude the same thing tore Calissa’s last shred of hope to tiny bits. If Ysabel knew, then it was further proof that Harrison was indeed a diamond smuggler, a crook, a lie.
Luke cleared his throat. His bland expression could have been that of a court reporter intently entering information. “What’s the reference to Ysabel’s Place?”
Bram shook his head. “We haven’t figured it out. Ysabel was a native of Venezuela. She and Harrison met there in Caracas, in a restaurant where she worked. Perhaps that’s her ‘place.’ But what it has to do with all this is anybody’s guess.”
Sheridan stirred. “I know where it is.”
Calissa stared at her in disbelief.
“I lived there for five years, remember?”
“You found it?”
“No. Not exactly. I didn’t have much information to go on. Mamá had only told me it was a lounge, a popular hangout for travelers. Male travelers. She hinted that more than drinks were served, and it wasn’t food. Liss, it wasn’t a restaurant. You’ve got your rose-colored glasses on again.”
She bristled. “What does it hurt to clean up the story a bit? Neither Dad’s constituents nor our friends needed to know the details of our mother serving drinks in a . . . in a . . . in a lounge.”
“Serving drinks and whatever else they offered. Liss, we know she had an awful life before they met. She couldn’t bring herself to tell us how bad it was, but as adults I think we can admit that she might have—”
“Does it matter? Does it really matter now what she did for a living?”
“You’re the one bringing up their past.”
Luke said, “Uh, ladies, let’s get back on track, shall we? Sheridan, what were you saying about the place your parents met?”
She twisted her lips into a curlicue, an expression that drove Calissa nuts when they were younger. It meant the verbal argument might be over but Sheridan’s mind had not been changed. It meant Sheridan believed she was morally superior to and more intelligent than her sister or their father. Calissa wanted to yell at her, but the sad thing was, those things were true. They always had been.
Sheridan’s lips smoothed out. “I wanted to learn more about Mamá’s history. The village she grew up in was too remote. It wasn’t feasible to visit during the time we had in Venezuela. The next-best thing was to explore Caracas. I got to know much of the city through my work. I thought I might find the place or at least the general vicinity where she worked. To walk where she had walked. . . .” She shrugged. “I don’t know. It seemed important to me.”
“Of course it did,” Bram said. “Just knowing you were where she might have walked would be a link to the mother you didn’t have much time with.”
“I guess. Anyway, I didn’t have much to go on. No name, no address. So I asked Eliot—”
“Eliot?” Calissa exclaimed.
Sheridan rolled her eyes. “He lived there before I met him, remember? It was his first overseas assignment.”
“Well, excuse me for the memory lapse.”
Bram touched her shoulder. “Darling.” There was a reprimand in his quiet voice.
Calissa thrust out her lower lip.
“Anyway, I asked Eliot where government workers might have hung out when he was there.”
Luke said, “And when was that? And yes, before you roll your eyes again, I do have this information.” He winked at Calissa. “The memory lapsing must be contagious.”
Sheridan smiled.
Now Calissa glanced at the ceiling.
Don’t tell me there’s nothing between you two.
“Eliot was first assigned to the Caracas embassy long after our parents met,” Sheridan said. “Of course he was so straitlaced, I doubted he knew from firsthand experience anything about a lounge frequented by male travelers. But he had heard. I think that was when he started calling me ‘naive princess.’ He said there were several possibilities, but his news was almost thirty years old, and did I really need to visit one? I pressed him and he gave me information. A driver took me around. Eliot refused to go along.”
Calissa said, “It doesn’t exactly sound like a walk down Mamá’s memory lane.”
“No, it wasn’t. I guess the point is I don’t really know where Ysabel’s Place is or was, but I agree that it’s probably where Mamá worked, where they met.”
Luke nodded. “Okay. What do you all make of the reference to falling stars?”
Bram shook his head. “No clue. Stars twinkle. Sparkle. Maybe it’s another word for diamonds, but what does that have to do with falling?”
Calissa said, “I thought of the old song: ‘catch a falling star and put it in your pocket.’”
Sheridan hummed. “‘Save it for a rainy day.’”
Luke said, “If something falls, that means it’s coming down from a higher place. A star can be a person, as in a rising star.” He shrugged. “What about the memos and the minutes?”
Bram replied, “They’re all about trade with Venezuela during that time period.”
“And the telephone invoices?”
“They show calls from a Virginia number that Calissa remembers as theirs at the house, where they lived part-time when the girls were little. The receiving numbers are in Venezuela. We don’t know how to trace them, but they’d most likely be disconnected by now.”
“All right. So you’re surmising what exactly?”
Bram exchanged a glance with Calissa. “We believe that Harrison was in some way involved with smuggling. He used his position on the House subcommittee to cover up, to make it work.” Bram sighed. “Sheridan, I think you’re on track. It’s probably how he paid for his two houses and lavish vacations and everything else. From what I know of Harrison’s lifestyle, we know his salary didn’t cover it, and I don’t think lobbyists could provide quite that much extra.” He blew out a breath. “I remember one conversation in particular with him in which he indicated that he was an expert in money laundering. I had no idea it came from personal experience.”
“Do you have any proof yet?”
“I did some research into legislation and trade policies. I got a bead on one direct thread from his work on the committee to U.S. policy in Venezuela fifteen years ago. Nothing concrete. But like I said, current policy is so similar it’s like his hand has been in it all along.”
“You really believe, then, that he may have influenced national policy?”
“Yes, unfortunately, we do. And we’re afraid that this business is ongoing. Will you take these papers, Luke? Handle it however you must. I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing; maybe it’s the tip of an iceberg.”
“I only see one problem at this point.” Luke reached over and touched the papers on the coffee table. “These are all photocopies. Without originals, it’s going to be more difficult to know whether or not they’re valid.”
“I wondered about that,” Bram said. “And I wondered, why would he make copies? Who makes copies of proof of illegal activity?”
“He didn’t make them.” Luke’s brows rose. “Somebody else did. The somebody who hid them in the attic.”
Sheridan sighed. “Mamá.”
Sheridan had had enough talk about Harrison, his fraudulence, his past, present, and future despicable character.
She needed to talk to Eliot. He would deny that his own reputation still counted, but he was a national public figure. How would this affect him? If even just the autobiography he was working on? His sole dream was to publish his book. Would anyone want to hear from the son-in-law of another national public figure who was a major crook?
Good grief. Probably hordes would want to hear from him. This could be a boon to sales.
She hurried up to her room, ignoring Calissa on her heels, and yanked open the nightstand drawer. She took one look at the cell phone lying beside the crucifix and slammed the drawer shut. The small lamp on top wobbled and bounced onto the carpet.
Calissa picked it up and set it back on the stand. “Swearing helps.”