Tangled Roots

by Marcia Talley

  Georgina was no longer at the shell jewelry booth. Deborah Kelchner had last seen my sister heading in the direction of Beaded Magic. I wandered through the maze of exhibits looking for her, but when I got to Beaded Magic, she’d already moved on.

  If I were correct, and both married-to-other-people Brother Bob and Judee Two-Es had been caught by an artist canoodling on Maryland’s eastern shore, it would be important to know when. It was impossible to tell from the etching itself; the only assumption I could make from the shorts and flip-flops the couple wore was that it was summertime. I’d need to consult the artist.

  Earlier, I’d noticed a forty-something guy wearing an oxford button-down shirt belted into a pair of chinos, holding forth near the front of the gallery. Since he stood behind a table smiling, greeting and dispensing champagne in three-ounce paper cups to all comers, I assumed he was one of the owners.

  ‘Those amazing etchings in the back room?’ I asked as I accepted a cup of champagne from the man’s outstretched fingers. ‘What can you tell me about the artist?’

  ‘Jim Earl? He’s one of our favorites. Retired a few years ago from the University of Maryland. He was a physics professor.’

  ‘I’m thinking about buying the plovers,’ I said truthfully, ‘and I’d like to know a little more about him.’

  He reached for a loose-leaf notebook on a shelf behind him and laid it on the table in front of the ice bucket. ‘This has information about each of our artists.’

  I chug-a-lugged the champagne then tossed the empty cup in the wastebasket near his feet. ‘Thanks,’ I said, reaching for the notebook. ‘I’ll take a look.’

  ‘It’s got Jim’s CV and contact information in it,’ the owner said, ‘but why don’t you go talk to him yourself? He’s over there, by the display window.’

  Sometime in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good.

  James Earl sat at the front of the store in a tall-backed wicker chair, sipping from a cup of coffee that I knew from the logo had come from the High Spot Café directly across the street. He seemed to be sketching in a small, leather-bound book.

  From the information in the gallery’s notebook, I learned that Earl had a degree from MIT and had earned a second degree in studio art, one semester at a time, while teaching Astronomy at the University of Maryland. Blessed by a financially conservative father and a mother who was a canny investor, Earl’s family foundation generously supported music and the arts as well as local environmental causes.

  If the information in the notebook was correct, the philanthropist was ninety-three years old, but from where I stood, about ten feet away, he didn’t look a day over eighty. I returned the notebook to its place on the shelf and walked over to introduce myself.

  ‘Hi, I’m Hannah Ives. May I talk to you about your work?’

  Earl looked up from his sketchbook – a leather-bound book about the size of a paperback – and holstered the pen between the leaves. ‘Always delighted.’

  I got straight to the point. ‘I love your etchings, Mr Earl. I’m planning on buying the plovers, but one of the other etchings caught my attention. I think you’ve drawn a couple of my friends. The couple in the Adirondack loveseat? With the heron?’

  ‘Could be,’ he said.

  ‘Do you know who they are?’ I asked.

  ‘I thought you said they were your friends.’

  I smiled ruefully. ‘They look like my friends,’ I said, but from the twinkle in his dark eyes, I knew he was teasing me.

  ‘I didn’t ask them,’ he said. ‘Frankly, I was more interested in the heron, the way he stood still for so long, like an artist’s model, posing for me.’

  ‘Do you work from photographs?’ I asked.

  He frowned and shook his head, as if suggesting such a thing was sacrilege. ‘I draw from life. You probably noticed me sketching just now. There was a pretty redhead looking at jewelry a few minutes ago …’

  He had to be talking about Georgina. ‘She’s my sister,’ I told him.

  He opened the sketchbook to the page he’d been working on. In the short time Georgina’d been standing in front of the jewelry counter, Earl had captured her perfectly, down to the details of the claw that held up her hair, the flowered design on her T-shirt and the fact that her left shoestring was untied.

  ‘You’re very good,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘May I have a closer look?’ I asked, holding out my hand for the sketchbook.

  With a smile, James Earl placed his sketchbook in it.

  Earl had sketched Georgina on the right-hand page, and on the left side, facing it, Earl had written, ‘Redhead, Blue Crab Gallery, Elizabethtown, Maryland, September 2, 2018.’

  I started to turn back a few pages before thinking to ask permission. ‘May I?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He’d drawn each of his sketches in the same format – a drawing to the right with the subject, place and date documented on the facing leaf to the left. ‘Did you do a preliminary sketch for the heron etching?’ I inquired.

  ‘I always do preliminary sketches,’ he said.

  ‘Would it be in this sketchbook?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Earl said. ‘It was some time ago, but you can check. I run through sketchbooks fairly quickly, but if it’s in this one, it will be toward the beginning.’

  Sometimes you get lucky. The preliminary sketch for ‘Ready for My Closeup’ appeared on the third page: Great Blue Heron, Chesapeake Bay Hyatt, Cambridge, MD, July 29, 2018.

  ‘Here it is!’ I announced triumphantly. ‘I see it was done in Cambridge this summer.’

  The Cambridge Hyatt’s full name was a mouthful: the Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay Golf Resort, Spa and Marina. It was also an upscale conference center. In a picturesque setting overlooking the Choptank River, it attracted groups from all over the country who could afford the costs.

  ‘Refresh my memory,’ he said, holding out his hand for the sketchbook.

  He studied his work, brow furrowed. ‘Ah, yes. I was speaking at a physics symposium in Cambridge that weekend. There was a golf tournament going on, and the place was crawling with visitors.’ He paged forward. ‘Here’s a sketch of some kids playing giant chess near the Grand Fireplace, and another one of seagulls at the bar on the Breakwater Pavilion.’

  I checked out those sketches, too, just to be polite. Wearing what I hoped was a disarming smile, I said, ‘Do you mind if I take a photograph of the heron sketch? To show my friends?’ I added hastily.

  ‘Not at all.’ Earl paged back to the heron. Using both hands, he held the sketchbook open in front of my iPhone.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said as I aimed, framing both pages on the screen, and touched the button to capture the image. ‘My friends will appreciate it.’

  After I finished, James Earl closed his sketchbook and slipped it into his breast pocket. He smiled up at me from his chair. ‘But I’d rather they bought the etching.’

  I tapped my temple. ‘I’ll see what I can do about that, Mr Earl.’

  ‘It’s Bob and Judee, for sure,’ Georgina said when I finally tracked her down and dragged her to the back room to view Earl’s etchings first-hand. ‘See that butterfly on the woman’s ankle? Judee’s got one just like it.’ She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. ‘Well, I’ll be damned!’

  ‘Not you,’ I said reasonably. ‘It’s Brother Bob who needs to be worrying about damnation. Last time I looked, Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery was still on the list of Ten Commandments.

  ‘One problem. I checked out the date with the artist,’ I told her. ‘July 29th was a Sunday. Wouldn’t Brother Bob have been in church?’

  ‘Not necessarily. One of the assistant pastors takes over when Bob is away. But, there’s a way to find out. Church of the Falls posts their sermons online. It’d be easy to see who was preaching that Sunday.’

  Prompted by Georgina, I logged onto the Church’s website on my iPhone. A search of the sermons revealed that Bro
ther Bob’s slot on the 29th had been filled by Brother Vernon speaking on ‘Storm-Proofing Your Life’.

  ‘If Brother Bob was doing what we think he was doing that Sunday, he might need a bit of storm-proofing himself,’ I said. ‘Tamara didn’t strike me as the Live-and-Let-Live type.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Georgina snorted. ‘Ever wonder why the church secretary looks like your maiden aunt? Tamara hired her.’

  I had to laugh.

  ‘Click on the pull-down menu for News,’ Georgina suggested, leaning in close. ‘Let’s see what Bob said he would be doing that weekend. There should be a newsletter for July.’

  ‘What’s KidMin?’ I asked after the newsletter filled the screen.

  ‘It’s short for children’s ministry.’

  I turned the iPhone screen in her direction. ‘According to this, he and Judee were attending a KidMin conference in Cambridge that weekend.’

  ‘Let me see that.’ Georgina practically snatched the phone out of my hand. As I watched speechlessly, she initiated a fresh Safari search and tapped a few keys. ‘Then he’s a big, fat liar. The KidMin Conference was in Dayton, Ohio this year.’

  We exchanged glances.

  ‘Do you suppose Scott discovered they’d lied about where they were that weekend?’ Georgina said. ‘And if he knew about their affair, my God, was Scott killed to keep him quiet about it?’

  ‘That seems extreme,’ I said, ‘especially in this day and age. Was Scott bothered when a serial adulterer married a nude model and moved into the White House?’

  Georgina snorted. ‘Not particularly. He even voted for him.’

  ‘Then it’s possible he wouldn’t have been troubled by learning that his pastor was having an affair with a co-worker,’ I said. ‘Perhaps something was going on here that had nothing to do with Scott.’

  ‘Better safe than sorry,’ Georgina said. ‘Open your email, attach that photo and type what I tell you.’

  A minute later, my email swooshed. If Dick Evans, the homicide detective in charge of the investigation into my brother-in-law’s murder was on top of his inbox, a copy of James Earl’s sketchbook and what Georgina and I knew about it would soon be in his hands.

  THIRTY

  I’d been so busy providing the police with suspects in my brother-in-law’s murder that I was barely able to keep up with my email via iPhone let alone any heretofore unknown relatives who might be trying to connect with me through Gen-Tree. And I’d completely forgotten about my custodial arrangement with Julie’s family tree, until a message popped up on the email account I’d linked to it.

  Dear JLC2000.

  Twenty-five years ago, my mother underwent in vitro fertilization at the Great Lakes Center for Fertility and Women’s Health in Chicago and became pregnant with sperm from Donor #7135. Through Gen-Tree DNA testing, I have located fifteen half-siblings, also children of Donor #7135. Your DNA results indicate you may be a donor sibling, too. Were you a child of Donor #7135? Hope to hear back from you soon. DavidM23

  I sat back, stunned, trying to take that in. When I could breathe again, I clicked back through the Gen-Tree menus to Julie’s test results. In the weeks since I’d first uploaded her data, DavidM23 and at least ten other individuals were showing up as ‘close family’ with ‘high probability’.

  Scott was definitely Julie’s father: you had only to look at her to figure that out. Her glorious hair came from the Drew side of our family, true, but her green eyes and the dimpled chin were pure Cardinale.

  I explored some more and discovered that while I shared DNA with Julie, as expected, none of her donor sibling matches shared anything with me.

  For Julie and her donor siblings, then, Scott had to be the common denominator.

  Where had Scott been twenty-five years ago – I counted backwards – in 1983? Nineteen years old, studying for an undergraduate degree in Economics at the University of Chicago, that’s where. We’d all heard, time and time again, ‘poor me’ stories of how he’d worked his way through college waiting tables. No surprise he failed to mention that he’d supplemented the income from his part-time job in a campus dining hall by selling his sperm.

  No wonder Scott had been so squirrelly about Julie being tested. Despite all privacy assurances that presumably had been given by the clinic at the time, Donor #7135 had just been outed to at least one person: me.

  I felt like a bomb had gone off in the basement. Fifteen matches and counting. Donor #7135 had apparently been a bestseller. How many other little #7135s were out there? How many children did my late brother-in-law have?

  And what’s more, what was I going to do with this information?

  Do I answer DavidM23?

  I decided to leave that up to Julie. ‘Do you want to tell your mother or shall I?’ I wrote, attached David’s email and hit send before I could change my mind.

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ Julie said when she phoned, ‘because this is totally freaking me out. I have sixteen half-brothers and sisters, all around twenty-five years old.’

  ‘So far,’ I added helpfully.

  ‘What if I had married one of them?’ she wailed.

  ‘Now you won’t,’ I said.

  ‘So I emailed the guy and he got right back. They’re planning a reunion.’

  ‘Reunion!’ Georgina shrieked in the background. ‘That’s a funny way to put it.’

  ‘I’m putting you on speaker,’ Julie said. ‘Mom’s really pissed.’

  ‘Pissed is putting it mildly, Hannah. If Scott weren’t already dead, I’d kill him.’

  ‘I warned you,’ Julie said, lowering her voice.

  ‘You tell that David person that I have absolutely no interest in joining his sister-mom club, either, Hannah. I got my sperm donations the regular way, thank you, by cutting out the middle man.’

  ‘Oooh, that’s harsh,’ her daughter said.

  ‘Georgina, stop sputtering and listen to me. Do you think Scott knew that his donor kids had connected?’

  ‘If he did, do you think he’d tell me?’

  ‘I’m worried that one of them may have tracked him down. Think about it. Somebody was seen in the backyard talking to Scott on the day he died. Somebody who looked exactly like Sean.’

  ‘It wasn’t DavidM23,’ Julie cut in. ‘He sent me a photo. He’s got masses of dark hair.’

  ‘Are you thinking that one of Scott’s donor sons tracked him down and Scott blew him off?’

  ‘Oh, Scott would deny it if confronted, that’s for sure,’ Georgina snarked. ‘Sixteen kids out there, maybe more? Shit!’

  ‘Dad could deny it all he wants, Mom, but DNA doesn’t lie.’

  ‘Maybe the kid couldn’t deal with rejection,’ I said.

  To me, Julie said, ‘Should we tell the cops?’

  ‘I think you’d better.’

  ‘That’ll take their mind off Sean,’ Julie said.

  ‘We can hope so,’ I said.

  ‘OK, Aunt Hannah,’ Julie said, her voice unnaturally loud. ‘I’ll get that number for you now. Let me put you on hold.’

  What on earth? But I was dealing with Julie, so hang on for the ride.

  After a brief silence, my niece returned to the call. ‘Hi, I’m back. Had to get rid of Mom.’

  ‘What did you do with her? Lock her in the bathroom?’

  ‘Ha ha, I wish. No, I wanted to talk to you about something. In private.’

  ‘Why do I have the feeling I’m about to be sorry you called?’

  ‘I want to go to that reunion,’ she said without preamble.

  ‘Then go,’ I said. ‘What’s stopping you?’

  I figured Julie was going to ask me for money, but she surprised me by saying, ‘I want you to go with me.’

  ‘Julie!’

  ‘I do, I’m completely serious, Aunt Hannah. I’ll even pay your way.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t have that kind of money.’

  ‘Do, too. I’ve been saving up from my day care job.’

&
nbsp; ‘Well, I wouldn’t accept it.’

  ‘Then you’ll go?’

  ‘I didn’t say yes, Julie.’

  ‘But, you didn’t say no either.’

  ‘What does your mother say about it?’

  ‘She says those children have nothing to do with her, and that I should do whatever I want. And what I want is to go to that reunion. Besides, maybe this guy who looks like Sean will be there.’

  ‘Where is it?’ I asked, feeling my resolve weakening.

  ‘A place in Illinois I’ve never heard of called Des Plaines.’

  ‘Bummer,’ I said. ‘If you’d said Honolulu …’

  ‘Please?’ Julie begged. ‘If you were in my situation, wouldn’t you need moral support, too?’

  I had to agree that I would, and I was curious about the Sean lookalike, too.

  Which explains why three hours later I found myself on the American Airlines website booking two flights to Chicago. On my VISA.

  THIRTY-ONE

  O’Hare Airport: the tenth circle of Dante’s hell. Four terminals, nine concourses and a complex so large that it spans both Cook and DuPage counties. You need wizardry, not moving walkways, to get from one concourse to another.

  I had planned on a rental car for our trip to Des Plaines until DavidM23, the organizer whose last name turned out to be Moody, told us about the Best Western courtesy airport shuttle, so I signed us up for a round trip.

  After a forty-minute drive, the shuttle pulled under the portico of a Best Western by the BP Station, just past Mr Pup and directly across the street from Burger King. Modest accommodation to be sure, but clean and comfortable, and the seventy-nine dollar rate suited my pocketbook just fine.

  Julie didn’t want to be seen until she’d had a chance to freshen up, so we checked in at reception and hustled up to our room on the second floor.

  ‘Which bed do you want?’ I asked as the door clicked shut behind us. ‘I’m not particular.’

  Julie dropped her rucksack and fell backward, like a tree, onto the bed nearest the window. She bounced up and down a bit, testing out the mattress. ‘This is cool,’ she said. After plumping up several of the pillows and propping them behind her back, she opened the Welcome Envelope we’d been given at the front desk.