“So, you believe there could have been three strikingly similar murders in Regent’s Park, and a fourth one wouldn’t be noticed by the very detectives who police the park?”
“Maybe.” My mind was reeling with a myriad of reasons why, like their not wanting things to get all mucked up by the media, not that I felt I had to justify myself to him. “This is all just your imaginings. It is possible that other detectives know about the pattern, and the ones at our scene just don’t know about it.”
“Why wouldn’t they know? Why wouldn’t all of them be on the lookout?”
I shrugged. “Any number of reasons. To keep it from leaking out to the public. To stop mass panic.”
“And in the meantime, he just roams free? Killing at will? No.”
“Maybe we’re making more of the pattern than is there. Have you thought of that? Without the police files, we have no way of knowing if these crimes are truly connected. It could be there’s no connection at all.” Of course, I knew the connection, and a part of me was even tempted to confess it all, tell him about the photo and see what crazed theories he’d come up with once he knew. But the people in this photo were my mother’s secret—another secret that bound us together forever, just like her coin. But only if I kept it.
Besides, in my mind the connection of the people in the photo to each other and to my mother made it less likely there was a policeman killing people, not more. The most likely scenario was that one of the people in the picture was killing all the others, and whenever I looked between the two main survivors, my eyes couldn’t seem to shift off the blue-haired woman. Something about the way she looked at the camera . . .
“The files are exactly why it must be police at the heart of this. Someone must be doctoring the files, keeping the pattern from being seen. And the only people with access are?”
God, he was being smug. “You are wrong. And really, Lock, if you’re going to be wrong so much of the time, you should learn how to take it with an ounce of humor. You’ll have plenty of time for condescension when you’re right about something.”
Sherlock climbed forward in the boat until he sat on the bench facing me, so that our knees tapped with every soft rocking wave of the lake. He stared into my eyes in this rather disarming way, and then he said, “You think you’re more clever than me.”
It was true, but I supposed I should show him a bit of deference. “I am female. That comes with a few advantages.”
“Such as?”
“Understanding and perception, a unique worldview, and the power that comes with being constantly underestimated.” I made sure to underscore those last two words by staring unflinchingly back at him.
“So, you believe women are more clever than men, but men cannot see it?”
I shrugged, though our staring match probably detracted from my attempt at casual discussion. “We can be, if we assert ourselves. Unfortunately, many do not. And yes, sadly, men see very little when it comes to women.”
“So, you are a feminist?”
“No. Feminists fight for equity, which is an unsatisfactory goal.”
He grinned. “You’re not satisfied with equity?”
“Why should I be? Men aren’t. For all our generations, men have fought for control and power. Why should women be satisfied to be merely equal?”
Sherlock shrugged. “I don’t understand the need for power, really. There are more important pursuits.”
“Only those who have never felt powerless can afford to think like you.”
Sherlock tilted his head and studied my face a moment, then broke into a giant smile that once again seemed to age him backward. “You are brilliant.”
I bit back my own smile and said, “I am right.”
“You are brilliant and right, and I think we should . . . that is to say, I should . . .” He studied my face again, and before I could quip about his staring, he swooped forward and kissed me, gently and just long enough to separate this kiss from the quick and playful kiss I’d given him. Almost as an afterthought, his palm came up to cup my cheek just as he pulled away and dropped his hand back to his knee. Then, for what felt like the first time in hours and hours, he looked away, down, up at the sky—anywhere, it seemed, but at me. “I thought perhaps such a moment should be marked,” he said quietly.
I was still a little breathless when I replied, “We should, perhaps, mark it again.”
He leaned in to kiss me again, but we were both laughing before our lips could touch.
“Can’t believe I said that.”
“Never mind,” he said.
I dared a glance in his direction, and sure enough he was staring at me again. Only this time there was something odd in his gaze. Maybe the look someone gives before walking into the blackest of caves without a torch. “Well, then.”
He smiled and didn’t wait a moment before returning his hand to my cheek and his lips to mine. Though after just a few quick seconds he released me to stare into my eyes. “And again?” he asked, his voice satisfyingly not quite his own.
I smiled and started to tell him how ridiculous he was and perhaps something else, which I forgot utterly when he kissed me again and again, no longer asking my permission, it seemed. Or perhaps I gave it every time I kissed him back.
Chapter 11
The day after our boat ride, two miracles happened.
First, the boys all filed off to bed on time. I was half convinced they had been replaced by changelings who’d grown weary in their years at the faerie courts. But then Michael belched loudly before I could close their door, sending Seanie into giggle fits, and I knew they were all still human. Well, still my brothers, at any rate.
No sooner had I walked down the stairs than the second miracle materialized in the form of a knock at the front door. Of course, not every miracle comes without a price.
“Door,” my dad grunted helpfully from his near-permanent perch at the table in the kitchen.
I tried not to indulge in a sigh before stepping down the final stairs and reaching for the doorknob, little knowing that the mundane act of opening the door would be like stepping back in time a full year to the first night I remember Dad drinking.
He and Mum always had wine with dinner, and, more often than not, their date nights had ended in drunken giggling as they fell through the front door and stumbled across the entry and into their room. But the night we found out my mom was sick and would have to stay in the hospital awhile—that she wouldn’t get better, even if she came home—that was the first night Dad brought out the bourbon, sat at the kitchen table, and drank until he forgot himself.
That’s how I’d lived with it later, the terror of that first night. I’d told myself and the boys that he wasn’t being himself when he slapped Freddie upside his head for spilling milk across the counter. That he didn’t mean it when I stepped between them and he yelled until his face was red about how worthless we all were, how he should just kick us out on the street to learn to appreciate what we have, and how we were probably what drove our mother sick. I told the police dispatcher that he’d never been drunk like that before, that he would never hurt us on purpose.
He’d never hurt us before that night. He wasn’t a mean dad. He never screamed or did anything that particularly scared me. Honestly, he’d barely paid attention. There wasn’t one picture of my dad holding me or playing with me in our family albums. Not even one of him and me together without my mom. He just always seemed indifferent, until the boys were born. But from the moment they brought Freddie home from the hospital, the boys were all that mattered. Our albums are full of pictures of boys-only trips and outings to the carnival. Those few times my dad wasn’t lingering around the house were when he was off with the boys in tow for another of their adventures.
His ever-present indifference toward me was perhaps the reason why I’d always assumed the things he said that first time,
and every “Memories of You” night since, were the things he’d always secretly thought about me, the reasons why he’d never wanted me around. But none of that explained why he’d hit Freddie, why he’d screamed me into a shivering mess on the floor, why he’d gone after Michael for trying to hide. Not even Seanie had escaped a backhand that night, and still I’d made excuses for Dad.
“He’d never hurt us on purpose,” I’d told the dispatcher, which is maybe why, when I dared come out from where I’d hidden the boys away to answer the door, I’d found they’d sent my dad’s two closest friends to calm him down and assure us that it would be right as rain in the morning. That we’d see how sorry he was. DS Day and DI Mallory had showed up to our house twice more before I gave up calling—one more time than it should’ve taken me to learn. They wouldn’t even take him from the house, or take us until he could sleep it off. It was before “Memories of You,” before I’d learned to hold my infuriating smile and wait to stand between him and the boys. We had no warning, no defense, and Day and Mallory made sure we had no escape.
When I opened the door and the same two officers were on our stoop, that memory dug its claws into my brain. That memory was why it took me a while to realize that they were my second miracle of the night. I would never in a million years expect those two to help anyone, least of all me.
“Heya, Jimmy Junior,” DS Day said, barging through the door. “Where’s the monster hiding himself?” He headed off to the kitchen without my answer.
“Mori.” DI Mallory nodded his head as he, too, invited himself into the house. He flung down his bag and coat by the bottom step of the staircase, stopped a moment to stare at me oddly, then followed Day into the kitchen, where the junior officer was loudly patting Dad on the back and laughing at his own dumb jokes. I stood in the hall, watching them warily.
“Right, well, Mallory here got this idea that you’d want to come down to pub with us for the first night in months. And I tell him, ‘Naw! Moriarty’s got better things to do than take a pint with the likes of us.’”
My dad laughed without smiling and downed the rest of his tumbler in one go.
“So, let’s have it,” Day said. “Who’s right? Mallory says you’ll never pass up a free drink. I mentioned that, didn’t I? First round on whoever loses. And I say you’ll keep to your hidey-hole, where the real spirits are. Who’s right?”
“The gents ask about you, James,” Mallory said. “You should show them you’re good for more than putting in your shift.”
And that’s when the miracle happened. Instead of mumbling them out the door, my dad said, “Yeah. All right. Let’s go.”
Then he left the house. I stood dumbly by the stairs for probably longer than I should have, almost as though I were waiting for him to come back in the door. But he didn’t, and soon I managed to snap myself out of my shock and walk slowly and calmly into my parents’ room. My dad’s room.
It was his room, though it still smelled like Mum’s pungent perfume. I caught a bit of sandalwood from the jar of cologne on the dresser as I walked by, but mostly it smelled like Mom—even down to the undercurrent of urine from when she’d accidentally overturned her commode. Near the end. When she could still stand enough to sit on a commode. He’d spent more than an hour on his knees rescrubbing the carpet after she’d passed. It hadn’t worked. Or maybe he’d missed something.
I forced down the wave of emotions that threatened to overtake me and started my search for Mum’s box. I’d watched him pack up her things not even three days past her funeral, drunk to oblivion, sobbing like a small child, with “Memories of You” playing over the stereo. I might have stopped him, or asked for a few things of my own, but it was the first night we learned what that song would mean for us.
Freddie got the worst of it again. I hid him away with a sack of frozen peas and sat on the stairs as a sentry, to make sure Dad wasn’t going to attack us again while we slept. But instead of the giant monster of fury I’d stared down to get him away from Fred, I watched a lost child crawling around the floor of his room, sobbing out empty threats to no one and everyone. “They did this to you. I know they did it. They won’t get away with it. They won’t.”
I didn’t sleep that night, even after Dad crawled to his bed, too drunk to remember to close his door. I just stared at the box in the middle of the floor and wished I had the courage to sneak in and steal it away. Instead, I went in the next day and picked up the few things he’d forgotten to pack. Nothing worth keeping, really. Just all that was left crumpled on the floor.
Maybe it was the remembrance of that night that kept me from taking the box down from where I spotted it in the closet. I stared at the garish pink rose pattern the way I had stared that night and caught myself breathing heavily, like I’d just woken from a nightmare. I looked over my shoulder, like a paranoid freak, then turned back and grabbed the box before I became too worked up.
The inside was a jumble of papers and random objects, none of which seemed all that important—random photos of Mum as a baby, business cards, old insurance and credit cards—like he’d just dumped her pocketbook into the box on top of everything else. There was a broken sand dollar, a handprint mold from Michael when he was five, and, on top of it all, an empty picture frame with a few orange Xs drawn on the glass like one of the boys had gotten to it with a crayon. Two books were tucked along the side, a diet and nutrition guide and an ancient-looking copy of The Alchemist. I also found old gloves, a few disintegrating dried flowers, and a wine-colored scarf with gold threads woven through the sheer.
By the time I reached the bottom of the box, I had a stack of photos next to me and I’d discovered exactly nothing that meant anything. Most of the photos were from her preteen years and then of her after she was married. Like a whole segment of her life went undocumented—or maybe my dad just didn’t know where those photos were. Maybe none of us would ever know.
I did my best to put everything away where I’d found it, and just when I’d pushed the box back up into the closet, I heard a door slam. I closed the closet door and ran from the room to the stairs, tripping over something in the dark. I managed to catch myself and freeze in place, listening. The small patter of one of the boys’ feet jetted across the hallway upstairs, and I released my breath.
When my heart once again found a normal rhythm, I turned on the hall light and looked around me. I found DI Mallory’s bag tipped over, a few files spilled out at my feet. And my two miracles became three. I had no idea why Mallory would leave his bag at the house, and I didn’t really care. I just didn’t want him to think I’d riffled through his things.
Which is obviously why I riffled through his things.
From the front page or so, two of the files looked to be cases dealing with theft at local galleries, both labeled UNSOLVED. The third stopped me cold. I flipped open the cover and Mr. Patel was staring back at me, smiling widely in that forced portrait kind of way—the same picture I’d seen at his funeral. It was the file. The actual file of Mr. Patel’s murder, and it had fallen directly into my lap.
I thought about the look DI Mallory gave me right before he went into the kitchen—right after he set down his bag. Had he been trying to tell me to look in it? But that was ridiculous. In no universe does one of my father’s lapdogs leave me a police file to peruse. For what? Was he going to quiz me on it later? Was he looking for my opinions?
I shooed the notion out of my head and, instead, focused on what I had in my hands. The file. And chances were, Mallory wouldn’t come back for it tonight—not after a full night of drinking at the pub. I had the file, and I had a window of time. I might have smiled my widest smile of the year as I pulled my mobile from my pocket.
File attained. When?
Sherlock responded almost immediately. ASAP.
I looked up the stairs. The boys were asleep. Dad would come home drunk and stumble into bed. No one would even know I was go
ne. Fine, but it has to be at your house.
He sent just a number with his next text—221. His house number, I presumed. Which meant that all this time, I was a mere eight doors down from Sherlock Holmes and I’d never known it.
The game was definitely afoot.
x x x
Lock’s house was a lot larger than mine. Maybe even two of mine put together. The entry led to a large living room on one side and an open kitchen and dinette on the other. The stairs were straight ahead. After leading me toward the kitchen, Lock made a beeline for the electric kettle sitting out on the counter. I stood dumbly in the doorway, watching as he checked under the lid and then plugged it in, pulling down two cups and tossing a tea bag in each.
“Hungry?” he asked, his back still to me.
I followed the stripes of the wallpaper up to an ornate molding and across a metal ceiling to the chain that held the pendant over the dinette. “Not really.”
I should’ve known better than to believe that he really wanted to know. I watched him set our tea mugs on a small wooden tray with a tube of biscuits and then pull a plate of sandwiches wrapped in film from the refrigerator. He must have caught me staring at the crustless triangles when he turned around, because his cheeks went a little pink as he explained, “Mother always has something made up for when guests come over.”
I followed him to the dinette, and he waited for me to sit before placing the tray and sitting in the chair closest to mine. “You have a lot of guests?”
“No. We don’t.”
He sloshed milk into both our cups, and then scowled as he handed me mine. “I suppose I should’ve asked.”
“Do you know anyone who doesn’t take milk in their tea?”
“Mycroft.”
The mere mention of Lock’s brother brought a voice from the doorway of the kitchen. “And who is this?” It was as though he’d just materialized there—tall like Sherlock, but stockier, and with sleepy eyes that seemed to take in every detail of the room and still look like they couldn’t be bothered about what they saw. Just then, his eyes were turned on me. I couldn’t help but stare back. I wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t some shadowy apparition. I hadn’t heard the front door open or someone coming down the stairs.
Lock & Mori Page 8
