Cameron had clearly made up his mind, so there was no point in arguing with him. I nodded reluctantly and took off down the path, feeling slightly dejected and a tiny bit fearful. What would I do if Bree flew into a rage? I wondered. Fend her off with my day pack? Reginald and Ruru wouldn’t make much of an impact, but the biscuit tin would pack a good punch. I slipped the day pack from my shoulders and held it by its straps in one hand, the better to swing it with.
If I hadn’t been so preoccupied with defensive measures, I would have enjoyed my solitary stroll. The weather was splendid and the gardens weren’t devoted exclusively to flowers. The path meandered past a lily pad-laden pond, a croquet lawn, a bowling green, and a set of tennis courts. It wound its way through trees adorned with glorious spring blossoms to a formal rose garden, which hadn’t yet come into bloom. And each time I remembered to look up, there was Lake Wakatipu, glinting through the greenery.
Beyond the rose garden sat an enormous gray granite boulder inset with a pair of marble plaques. Above the plaques, five white marble stars formed a constellation that had guided explorers for centuries. I gazed at the stars and realized, with a warm rush of affection, that Cameron had kept the promise he’d made to me in Ohakune. I’d finally seen the Southern Cross.
The somber purple flowers surrounding the boulder were enclosed by a knee-high hedge interspersed with short granite columns. A girl sat on the grass with her back to one of the columns, reading a ragged paperback copy of The Return of the King, the third book in Tolkien’s trilogy. She wore blue jeans, sneakers, and a black tank top. A greenstone pendant carved in the shape of a koru—an opening fern frond—hung around her neck. A dark-blue hooded sweatshirt and a canvas book bag lay by her side.
I recognized her immediately. The spiky hair, the tattoos, and the piercings did nothing to diminish Bree’s dark beauty. Angelo had been right, I thought. A girl like that could shave her head and still be a knockout.
“Excuse me,” I said quietly. I didn’t want to startle her.
Bree raised her heart-shaped face. Her slight build made her look younger than eighteen, but when I gazed into her liquid brown eyes I saw someone who had forgotten, or who had never known, how to be young.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your reading,” I said.
“No worries.” She sat up and closed the book. “Do you want to take a picture of the memorial? I’ll get out of your way.”
“I’m not interested in the memorial,” I said, motioning for her to remain seated. “My name is Lori Shepherd and I came here to speak with you.”
Bree’s eyes narrowed slightly, and I tightened my grip on my day pack, but to my relief she seemed curious rather than hostile.
“How did you know I’d be here?” she asked.
“I’ve been to the Southern Lakes Gallery,” I replied. “Gary Whiterider told me where to find you.”
“Are you an American?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, “but I live in England.”
Bree slipped the book into her bag and leaned back against the granite column. “Why would an American living in England want to speak with me?”
“It’s a long story,” I said, “but there are a few things you need to know before I tell it.” I dropped my day pack on the ground and sat beside it, facing her. “I visited your flat in Auckland a few days ago. While I was there, a nurse from North Shore Hospital stopped by. She was the nurse who looked after your father while he was in the critical care unit.”
“Is he dead?” she asked, without a flicker of emotion.
I nodded, murmuring, “I’m sorry.”
Bree sighed softly and bowed her head. “Did he ask for me before he died?”
“Yes,” I said. “The nurse told me that he asked for you repeatedly. When it became apparent that you weren’t going to show up, he asked her to give you a message. He wanted you to know that he was sorry.”
“Again,” Bree murmured with a bitter laugh.
“The nurse would appreciate it if you’d call her as soon as possible,” I continued. “She has your father’s personal effects and she needs to know what you want to do with his . . . remains.” I took Bridgette Burkhoffer’s business card from my pack and handed it to Bree. “You can use my cell phone to call her, if you like.”
Bree studied the card, then shook her head.
“I can’t afford a funeral,” she said.
“Not a problem,” I told her. “I’ll cover the expenses.”
Bree frowned at me. “Why would you pay for my father’s funeral? ”
“I’m a friend of the family,” I said.
“What kind of friend?” she asked, her face hardening.
Her reaction brought to mind Amanda’s admission that Ed hadn’t been the most faithful of husbands. I quickly raised a pacifying hand.
“Not that kind,” I assured her. “I never met your father. I wasn’t even sure where New Zealand was until a few days ago, but I’ve seen an awful lot of it since then. I’ve been chasing you all over the place. I’ve followed you from Auckland to the Hokianga and from Ohakune to Wellington. I’ve spoken with your horrible landlady and your father’s nurse. I’ve spent time with Amanda and Daniel, Angelo and Renee, Kitta and Kati, and Holly and Gary, among others, because I had to find out where you were. I said it was a long story, but I should have called it an epic saga. And now here I am, sitting in the Queenstown Gardens, face-to-face with you at last. I don’t think I would have gone to all of that trouble if I were one of your father’s, um, acquaintances.”
“Why did you go to all of that trouble?” Bree asked, looking understandably bewildered.
“For one thing, I had to return this to you.” I pulled Ruru out of my pack, smoothed his mottled wings, and deposited him gently in Bree’s hands. “Try not to lose him again, okay?”
“Where did you find him?” asked Bree, peering dazedly at the bedraggled little owl.
“You left him behind when you sneaked out of the Velesuonnos’ condo,” I said, “which, by the way, was a pretty thoughtless thing to do.”
“How do you know—”
“I’m sure you were embarrassed about the hissy fit you threw at the tattoo parlor,” I interrupted, “but you shouldn’t have disappeared like a thief in the night. Kati and Kitta deserved a more polite farewell. As a matter of fact, so did Roger, but we did what we could to make it up to him. My friend Cameron paid for the glasses and the lamp, which reminds me,” I went on, struck by a sudden thought, “I have to pay him back.”
“Cameron?” said Bree. “Who’s Cameron?”
“He’s my native guide,” I explained. “Without his help, and his airplane, and his encyclopedic knowledge of your country, I never would have found you.”
“Why did you want to find me?” Bree demanded, her dark eyes flashing. “Why have you been following me?”
“Because I’m doing a favor for two very dear old ladies,” I answered calmly. “Ruth and Louise Pym are my friends as well as my neighbors. They also happen to be your great-grandaunts.”
Bree’s mouth fell open and the color drained from her face. She stared at me in dumbfounded disbelief, then whispered, “The English aunts? It’s not possible. They must be dead by now.”
“They’re not. They’re just getting on in years. Would you like a biscuit?” I asked, taking Donna’s chintz-patterned tin out of my pack. “Sugar is good for shock and you look as though you’re about to pass out.”
“I feel as if I’ve seen a ghost,” Bree said faintly.
“I know the feeling,” I told her, with complete sincerity, “but Ruth and Louise aren’t ghosts. They may not be in the best of health, but they’re still alive. At least they were alive when I spoke with my husband last night. The situation may have changed since then, though I hope it hasn’t.” I opened the tin and held it out to Bree. “Help yourself. Something tells me that we’ll be here for a while.”
Bree munched on Anzac biscuits and listened almost without blinking while I rep
eated everything Fortescue Makepeace and Aunt Dimity had told me about Aubrey Jeremiah Pym, Sr., and his identical twin sisters. By the time I finished, the sky had turned from blue to steely gray and a brisk wind had begun to whip the treetops. Bree had donned her hooded sweatshirt midway through my monologue and I’d slipped into my rain jacket.
“Ruth and Louise didn’t know your branch of the family existed until they found the letter in their mother’s trunk,” I concluded.
“They asked me to come to New Zealand because they wanted to reach out to their nephew—your grandfather—before it was too late.”
“But Granddad was dead,” Bree said, “and my father was dead. So you came to find me.”
“You’re Ruth’s and Louise’s only surviving relative,” I said, reaching into my day pack for the letter Bill had e-mailed to Donna Mackenzie. “Look, Bree, I realize that the situation may seem improbable, but—”
“It doesn’t seem improbable to me,” she broke in. “Ruth and Louise aren’t the only members of my family who’ve been kept in the dark. I didn’t know a thing about my great-grandfather until I read Granddad’s obituary. He wrote it himself.” Her brow furrowed as she rummaged through her book bag. “He must have written it during the day, while I was at school.”
I left the letter in the day pack and watched her intently, wondering what she wanted to show me. Her search produced a folded newspaper clipping. When she unfolded the clipping, I saw that it was the same size as the blank spot I’d noticed on the corkboard in her bedroom and that it had a telltale pinhole in each corner. A. J. had apparently written a lengthy account of his life because the typeface was miniscule.
I expected Bree to pass the clipping to me, but she kept hold of it.
“Tell me about my great-grandaunts,” she said, without preamble. “What did they do for a living before they retired?”
“I don’t think they did anything for a living,” I replied readily. It seemed only natural that Bree should be curious about her newly discovered relatives. “They’re magnificent gardeners and accomplished seamstresses and they’re on the flower-arranging rota at the local church, but as far as I know, neither one of them has ever held a paying job.”
“Have they ever had any trouble making ends meet?” Bree asked.
“No,” I said. “And believe me, if they had, I would have heard about it. News like that gets around faster than fleas in Finch.” I smiled. “You don’t have to be concerned about them, Bree. Ruth and Louise live quite comfortably.”
“My great-grandaunts have never worked a day in their lives, yet they live quite comfortably.” Bree raised her pierced eyebrow. “Haven’t you ever wondered how they pay for their comforts?”
I shrugged. “I assumed that their father—”
“Their father was a village parson,” Bree interrupted impatiently. “Even if he’d scrimped and saved, he couldn’t have left them enough money to enable them to live in comfort for the rest of their lives.”
“I suppose not,” I acknowledged equably. “I’m sorry, but I can’t answer your question, Bree. I don’t know anything about your great-grandaunts’ financial affairs.”
“Granddad did.” She glanced down at the newspaper clipping, then stowed it and Ruru in her bag. “Granddad wrote about the English aunts in his obituary.”
“What did he write?” I asked.
Once Bree started speaking the words came tumbling out, as if she’d longed to confide in someone but had known full well that no one would believe or understand her. The intensity of her loneliness came home to me as I realized that there were only two people in her entire country to whom her story would make sense. One was the American woman who sat in front of her, and the other was sitting on a park bench, waiting for me.
“My great-grandfather, Aubrey Jeremiah Pym, Senior, was for a short time one of the wealthiest men in New Zealand,” she began. “He got rich by marrying an heiress named Stella McConchie.”
In my mind’s eye I saw the silver-framed wedding portrait Cameron and I had discovered on the mantelshelf in A. J.’s filthy flat. Cameron had said at the time that it looked as though Aubrey had married money, and Bree had confirmed his guess. Aubrey, it seemed, had used his charm and his dashing good looks to jump to the top of the social ladder in his adopted country.
“When he took control of Stella’s money,” Bree was saying, “the first thing he did was to set up a trust fund for the sisters he’d left behind in England. He tied it up in miles of red tape because he didn’t want his father to touch a penny of it. He’d never gotten on well with his father.”
I leaned forward, intrigued. It had never occurred to me that the family’s black sheep, an unrepentant scoundrel who’d committed every sin short of cold-blooded murder, would behave so magnanimously.
“Aubrey didn’t get on well with the McConchie family, either,” Bree went on. “They didn’t approve of him, so when Stella died in childbirth and Aubrey reverted to his bad old habits, they turned their backs on him and his newborn son. Aubrey drank and gambled his way through the rest of his fortune in less than a year. His sisters’ money was safe, though. Aubrey had tied it up so tightly that not even he could touch it. When he died in the Great War, therefore, his penniless son was put into an orphanage.”
I thought of the mustachioed man holding the lace-bedecked baby in the arched entryway of ChristChurch Cathedral, and bowed my head. Aubrey had gone from rags to riches in five short years, but while he’d enjoyed the riches, his son had been left nothing but rags.
“Granddad beat the odds,” said Bree, with a wan smile. “He had a rough start at the orphanage, but he made a success of his life. Then he and Gran had Ed. I don’t know what they did to deserve a son like Ed, but it must have been terrible because Ed grew up to be a worthless piece of . . . tripe.”
She huddled more deeply into her sweatshirt, but the chill she felt seemed to come from within, not from the swirling breezes. When I suggested that we move indoors she didn’t seem to hear me.
“Ed broke his parents’ hearts,” she went on. “He drank, he stole, he lied, and he manipulated everyone who tried to help him. His mum and dad ordered him to leave home on his eighteenth birthday because they couldn’t stand the chaos anymore. When Amanda showed up years later with their granddaughter in tow, they felt as if they’d been given a second chance at parenthood. They took the child in and showered her with the love Ed had squandered. Granddad set aside money for her education and Gran told her that she had a bright future ahead of her.”
Bree stared at the ground with unfocused eyes, lost in memories. Then her lips tightened.
“But Ed came back,” she said. “My grandparents believed him when he promised to clean up his act. The prodigal son had returned and they rejoiced. But his saintly phase didn’t last.”
“He reverted to his bad old habits,” I murmured.
“He drove Gran to an early grave,” said Bree. “And Granddad and I became his prisoners. I was too young to throw him out and Granddad was too old, so he took over. He sold Gran’s jewelry to pay off his gambling debts. He forced Granddad to cash in his investments and to sell the furniture, the house, the cars.” Bree lifted her chin. “But Granddad refused to touch the money he’d set aside for me. Ed threatened to kill him for it, but Granddad said he’d rather die than to see my future thrown away at the track.”
“Why didn’t your grandfather report Ed to the police?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t let him,” she replied, as if she were stating the obvious. “My grandparents had never adopted me formally, and I was still underage. If the police had gotten involved, I might have been put into care and there would have been no one to look after Granddad.”
The wind had let up, but the temperature had taken a nosedive. I was certain that Bree was as cold and stiff as I was, but she didn’t show it. She sat with her back to the granite column and her arms wrapped around her knees, occasionally meeting my eyes, but staring mostly at the ground.
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“Eventually,” she said, “we had nothing to live on but Granddad’s pension, my education fund, and the money Ed brought in when he felt like working. We should have found a cheaper flat in another part of the city, but Granddad wanted me to go to a good school, so we stayed in Takapuna. I left the day after I buried him.”
“And went looking for your mother,” I said.
“I thought she might . . .” Bree’s face crumpled, but she quickly mastered her emotions. “But it was no good. Every time Amanda looked at me, she thought of Ed. I could see it in her eyes.”
“She called you her taonga,” I murmured. “Her treasure.”
“Some treasures are cursed,” Bree said harshly. “So I moved on.”
“Your mother told me that Ed cursed the English aunts,” I said.
“He did,” said Bree. “He blamed them for ruining his life. If the English aunts hadn’t robbed us blind, he would have been wealthy, famous, influential. He kept the silver picture frames as proof of our family’s lost riches. I didn’t know what he was talking about until I read Granddad’s obituary.”
“How did Ed find out about the English aunts?” I asked.
“Granddad must have mentioned them somewhere along the line,” said Bree, “but he never mentioned them to me.” She peered puzzledly into the middle distance. “Maybe he thought I would resent them.”
“Do you?” I asked.
“No.” Bree’s mouth twisted in a humorless smile. “Money didn’t make Granddad a good man, and the lack of it didn’t turn Ed into a monster. If Ed had inherited a million dollars, he would have blown it all on booze and bets. I’m glad the money went to two women who like flowers.”
“I think they’d like you, too,” I said.
“I doubt it,” said Bree, wrapping her arms more tightly around her knees. “Ex-cons have trouble adjusting to life after prison. I disappointed my teachers by not going on to university. I haven’t been able to hold on to a job since I left Takapuna. I attacked Roger for no good reason, and I expect I’ll do the same to Holly. I don’t know how to behave around normal people.” She pressed her hands to her eyes. “I’ve given up hope of learning.”
Aunt Dimity Down Under Page 16
