Regrets Only

by Nancy Geary

  Lucy focused instead on the bedside table. A black leather Bible was opened to 1 Kings, chapter 3. Beside it two images filled a silver double frame. On the left was a handsome boy in a loose red T-shirt and bathing trunks, standing in the sand with a boogie board resting against his leg. His eyes were dark, his stare slightly vacant, but he had a big smile of white teeth and windblown hair. The right side of the frame held a photograph of a girl with an athletic build. She wore jodhpurs, dark brown riding boots, and a white T-shirt. In one hand, she held a leather crop, and in the other, a black riding hat with the plush red satin lining facing the camera. Lucy couldn’t resist picking up the silver frame to get a closer look. Engraved on the top were the words HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!

  Both faces looked familiar, although she could place only the girl. It was the same person she’d seen in the photograph with Dr. Reese. She stared at the boy, hoping to retrieve a match from her memory bank.

  “Attractive children, aren’t they? They were twins. Fraternal, I guess you’d call it,” Gail remarked. “The girl’s lovely. The boy—oh, it’s such a tragedy!”

  “Why is that?”

  “He committed suicide this past winter.” She shifted slightly, recrossing her legs, and then lowered her voice to a conspiratorial tone. “When they first approached me about listing the house, I knew what had happened. It had been in the paper, you know. I convinced them to lower their asking price by nearly a quarter million. Frankly, this place is a bargain if you look at the comparables, but I explained to them you just can’t charge full market if there’s been a violent death on the property—self-inflicted or not. Many prospective buyers can’t get beyond that.”

  She looked again at the picture of Foster, suddenly realizing the significance of this face: the portraits, the snowy December night, the moment she’d first met Archer.

  Whatever his family secrets, he’d danced around them long enough.

  24

  6:43 p.m.

  Lucy sat alone in the cubicle temporarily vacated by the sole member of a joint federal-state task force on gang violence. Except for Eddie Herskowitz on the fugitive squad and Ben DeForest, the Homicide Unit’s up-guy, the precinct was relatively quiet; most everyone had gone over to the Ukrainian-American Society for a retirement party. Hal Woodberry had been an integral part of Special Investigations. Other than the wrath he’d incur for the hangovers tomorrow, he’d be dearly missed. But Lucy had to leave the revelry to her colleagues. There were too many unanswered questions surrounding Morgan’s murder to think of anything else.

  She took a sip of bottled water and leaned back in the chair. Other than a neurotic attachment and a restraining order, nothing linked Calvin Roth to Morgan’s death. But the mystery of who had accompanied the psychiatrist to pick up her patient from Friends Hospital remained. A young, unidentified woman had escorted her on what had to be a dismal errand less than twelve hours before she died. Ellery remained the lead suspect, but until Santoros returned from the party, she couldn’t get his okay on a search warrant for his home and office, and there was still no physical evidence to link him to the crime. Plus, he had no connection to the morass of personal mysteries that surrounded Morgan’s life.

  Perhaps that didn’t matter. Perhaps her personal choices in life had no bearing on her death. But something still gnawed at Lucy.

  Turning on the computer in front of her, she followed a series of prompts to bring up the Department of Motor Vehicles’ driving-record history. She typed in William Foster Herbert, Jr., and the only address she had for him on Greaves Lane. The information she sought appeared instantly. He’d been issued a learner’s permit two days after his sixteenth birthday. There was no indication that Avery Aldrich Herbert had done the same. For all his problems, he’d been a careful driver. He’d received no tickets and no moving violations in the four months that he drove. But the screen of innocuous information appeared unusual, and she studied it for several minutes before the relevance occurred to her.

  His Social Security number began, like every other, with three digits. But his were 525. A child born in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania would not have been issued such a number; those digits belonged to the state of New Mexico.

  She glanced at her watch. With the two-hour difference, it wasn’t yet five o’clock Rocky Mountain time. Lucy quickly dialed information and waited for her call to be patched through to the Department of Vital Statistics in Albuquerque.

  “Yahto Jones, here.” A pleasant-sounding man with a singsong voice answered after nearly a dozen rings. “Why, isn’t this something?” he exclaimed after she introduced herself. “I can’t remember the last time we had an iota of interest from an Easterner. Now what can I do for you today?”

  She gave him the little information she had on twins born sixteen years before, at least one of whom had been issued his Social Security number in New Mexico. “If you’ve got a birth certificate, it could help a lot.”

  “I’m going to have to put you on hold,” he said, speaking slowly.

  “I’ll wait.”

  “The long distance call’s going to cost you,” he added, laughing.

  “I think our commonwealth can still pick up that tab,” she replied to humor him.

  With that, the line switched to music piped in from a local radio station. She listened as the commentator announced a two-for-one drinks special and upcoming ladies’ night at a local watering hole, then an advertisement for a casino just fifteen short miles from the airport. After an interminable mix of easy listening, Yahto finally returned to the line.

  “We do have a record of those births. Took place at Our Lady of Grace Hospital. That used to be outside Los Alamos, but it shut down a while back.”

  “Are the parents listed?” Lucy asked.

  “Yes indeed. Or should I say one is. The mother is a gal named Morgan Reese. The father’s unknown, although I have to tell you, that’s pretty common around here.” He paused to slurp his coffee. “Ended up with twins she did. Now that’s a handful,” Yahto continued, seemingly amazed.

  But Lucy wasn’t listening any longer. She’d been right. Morgan had gone halfway across the country to give birth for the second and third times.

  9:45 p.m.

  Lucy climbed the stairs to her apartment two at a time. At the landing, she paused to both listen and catch her breath. Driving back from Gladwyne, she’d called The Arch only to learn from Sapphire that Archer hadn’t shown up.

  Through the door she could hear the Kronos Quartet. Despite Archer’s protestations that its members were the great modern musicians of the twenty-first century, she found the discordant sounds jarring, so he tended to listen to the CDs when she was away. She imagined him lying on the couch with his head cradled in his palms, lost in the music he loved, blocking out the rest of the world.

  She took a deep breath. Relationships were about discovery, she told herself. He’d done his best to remain a mystery to her. Now his time had run out. She opened the door.

  To her surprise, Archer sat at the kitchen table, his head in his hands, with papers scattered in front of him, next to which were a glass, a fifth of scotch that was nearly empty, and a half-filled ashtray. The small apartment was filled with smoke. She stepped inside, dropped her bag to the floor, and coughed.

  Hearing her, he looked up. His eyes were red, his skin pale. Although they’d seen each other just that morning, he looked strangely unfamiliar.

  “You knew about this,” he said, waving a piece of paper at her. “How could you not tell me?

  “I just found out the details of the insurance policy myself,” she said, recognizing the document even from a distance. “I was going to explain as soon as I knew what it meant. You have to understand. This is an active investigation. I can’t disclose anything that might jeopardize—”

  “Don’t give me the party line, Detective. I don’t want to hear it.” He refilled his glass. “My mother’s dead on a golf course, and I’m reading about her life in the newspaper
. I see these pictures of her. I learn about all that she’s accomplished, and yet nowhere does it mention she had a family. It was so long ago that it’s not even part of the relevant past. Can you imagine what that feels like?” He waved his hand dismissively. “No, you can’t. Not with the way your family operates. The close-knit O’Malley clan that loves one another even when they fight. How perfect. How fucking perfect,” he said, mockingly.

  Lucy didn’t know how to respond. She wouldn’t deny that the closeness of her family sustained her, or that she would ever want anything else. She’d take intimacy—even with the inevitable confrontation it brought—over silence and distance any day. But she could empathize with the onslaught of information that Archer had been forced to process, and the disorientation it had caused. Perhaps it was best to let him vent his rage, frustration, and hurt.

  “Then I’m told something that, for a brief moment, makes me feel special, makes me feel that she actually thought about me before she died, thought about me to the tune of millions of dollars. No small sum. Not an insubstantial hurdle she must have overcome to purchase a policy that size. If how much trouble you go to and how much money you spend indicate how much you love somebody, hey, I’ve hit the jackpot. Dad’s enraged. Thinks she’s still being manipulative. She’s come back from the grave to undermine his value system. Because of her, I can continue to be the renegade that I am. Ha! But you know what? I’ll take posthumous care if I couldn’t have it while she was alive.”

  He grabbed his pack of Camels, stood, and walked to the oven. Turning on the gas, he ignited a flame and then leaned in, lighting his cigarette. He straightened up and exhaled a thick plume of smoke.

  “Just as I’m trying to get my head around this revelation, I’m told I haven’t got it quite right. No, it’s not time to feel special yet, or ever, because somebody else—some person I’ve never met and know nothing about—gets half. Some other person is as important as I am. Even after she’s dead, she needs to remind me of that. I never was what mattered most. I never will be. So why did she bother at all?”

  Lucy stood and moved toward him, her arms outstretched. “I’m so sorry.”

  He shook his head and raised his palms, indicating for her to stay back. “My father told you about this, and you didn’t bother to tell me. You knew about Avery Herbert. Whose side are you on?”

  “You can blame me, but I’m not your enemy. I didn’t know about Avery until I saw the policy earlier today. Your father had told me all the proceeds had been left to you.”

  “Well, who is she?”

  Lucy wanted to delay the disclosure. He was too angry, and perhaps too drunk. But she also knew he’d fixated on the answer and wouldn’t be deterred for long. “Do you remember Foster Herbert? You showed his artwork around Christmas.”

  He gave her a quizzical look. “Foster? Yeah, why?”

  “Did you know anything about him?”

  Shows at The Arch ran for a week. Foster and Archer must have spent hours—days—together. Two women in the same enclosed space for seven consecutive days wouldn’t have a secret left—with or without alcohol to fuel the conversation. Yet she knew that Archer would come up empty.

  “Uh . . . I knew he lived somewhere on the Main Line, so he must have told me that much. And I think he had a girlfriend. Or maybe he said it was a sister. I can’t recall. But I remember a girl coming in to see the work once or twice. What is the importance of this anyway?”

  She reached into her bag and found the picture she’d taken from Dr. Reese’s office. “Is this that girl?”

  He studied the photograph, his eyes darting between the recent image of his mother and the girl beside her. “I’m not sure. But it could be. As I said, I only met her a couple of times.” Then he put the picture facedown on the table. “Why is Morgan in this?”

  “Did you ever ask Foster why he’d approached you to begin with?”

  “No, I did not. I own the place. I can show anything I want. What does this have to do with Morgan?”

  “Did any of his work sell?”

  Archer glared at her. “Look, I don’t know what you’re doing or what you want from me, but I’m sick of your inquisition. You’re the one who’s been withholding information, information that directly impacts me and my life.” He picked up the papers and shook them at her again.

  “Did you sell one of his drawings?”

  “No, for your information, I did not. The only one that sold I bought myself because I felt bad.”

  “Where is it?”

  There was a long pause. When he spoke again, his words were a barely audible mumble. “I don’t have it anymore. I gave it away.” When he looked up at her, his anger had dissolved, leaving exhaustion in its wake. “You’re supposed to be investigating my mother’s death. Foster and his work had nothing to do with that.”

  His defensiveness convinced her that her hunch had been right. “Your mother wanted one of Foster’s self-portraits, didn’t she?”

  The room was so quiet she thought she could hear the sizzle of the rolling paper as his cigarette burned. Even Cyclops, lying by one end of the couch, didn’t stir.

  “How did you know?” His tone was flat.

  Lucy sat opposite, reached for his hands, and clasped them between her palms. “Can you tell me what happened?” she asked, ignoring his question.

  He freed his hands, raised his glass, and threw back his scotch in one swallow. Then he collapsed back into his chair. “What happened? I wish I knew. She came into the bar one afternoon a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t recognize her, although after she introduced herself I realized she hadn’t changed that much. I think it was the oddity of seeing her after so many years. She started off by making a big deal about the fact that I hadn’t responded to her lunch invitation, the one she’d sent me in March. She asked if I was angry with her—a pretty stupid question in my view—but I said I wasn’t. What else could I say? ‘You raving bitch’ didn’t seem worth the effort. I can’t be any angrier at this point. I also told her that I didn’t want explanations, rationalizations. Why she’d done what she did was her business. If she needed to get something off her chest, that was her problem. I couldn’t make it mine. And then she asked about Foster. She somehow knew of the show and wanted to purchase one of his drawings. I told her I didn’t have his work anymore. He’d taken the stuff back. But I had his home address, and she could contact him directly. And then . . . then . . . ,” Archer’s voice quivered. “She started to cry. It was a kind of quiet weeping—not wailing or hysterical, just the saddest image of this woman—a stranger to me who shouldn’t be. She begged me to get her a drawing. She said she couldn’t contact him, but she would pay anything if I could track one down. None of it made sense.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “The best that I could. I called the cell number I had for Foster, but it was out of service. Then I remembered my drawing. I had it in the closet, hadn’t yet decided where to hang it, or even if I wanted to, so I figured I’d give it to . . . to . . . I just brought it out and handed it over to her. She stared at it, crying, wiping her eyes, and crying again. She offered to pay, as if I cared about that. By this point, I wanted her to leave.”

  Lucy wished for a moment she could turn back the clock and coach him through the meeting again. Why had he been so unwilling to hear what she’d wanted—or needed—to say? He may have maintained his composure, his control, but he’d lost his only opportunity.

  “I had to ask her to go. The bar was filling up. Sapphire was pretty busy. That was when . . . when she asked if I’d reconsider about lunch. She wanted to talk. ‘You know what it’s like to be a Haverill. You’ve rebelled, too,’ she said. I told her I’d think about it.”

  “Was that the last you heard from her?”

  “No.” Archer lit a second cigarette off the burning end of his first and then ground out the small butt on a plate. “She sent me an invitation.” He reached into his back pocket and unfolded a worn ivory card trimmed in red
. It had several smudges on it, as if it had been opened, read, and refolded dozens of times in the week that he’d had it in his possession.

  Your mother requests the pleasure of your company on Sunday, May 18th, at eleven o’clock at the Liberty Bell. Regrets only.

  “Regrets only?”

  “I took the formality as a joke, you know, given what she’d said about being a Haverill. It’s actually an arrogant social protocol if you ask me. The premise is that if you invite a big crowd and assume most people will come, you want to hear only from the ones who can’t. It’s more efficient that way for the host, but much more awkward for the guests. They have to call and explain why they aren’t attending. When I got her invitation, I figured I’d play along. I didn’t respond because by that point, after everything, I planned to meet her.”

  “When did you get this?”

  “Thursday. The day before . . .” His voice trailed off. He picked up the card and tore it in half, then quarters, and then smaller pieces still. “Then she’s killed.” They sat for several moments in silence.

  “Why an invitation?” Lucy asked. “Do you think anyone else got one?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You didn’t go to the Liberty Bell on Sunday, did you?”

  He shook his head. “With all that had happened the night before, I completely forgot about it, but even if I had remembered, what was the point? She wasn’t going to be there.” He paused, closing his eyes. “So who is Avery Herbert?”