Garden of Thorns

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  “Jenny,” asked Zapata, “do you think it was Kenneth who moved the crate with the Jesus figurine from your closet to the study, trying to incriminate you? He could have found out Nathan was going to be in the house that night—Sharon was a databank of information.”

  Jenny didn’t quite smile; one corner of her mouth tightened. “At first I thought it was Arthur who’d moved the crate, as a way of confessing his crimes. But yes, I suppose it was Kenneth. I saw him earlier that evening, performing his ghost masquerade. It had to have been Arthur, though, who brought the sweater from the attic.”

  “There were several photographs on the floor showing Arthur with Felicia in her sweater,” admitted Zapata.

  Mark hid his smile. That was as far as she was willing to go; there was no police procedure for the admission of supernatural evidence. But if the violent atmosphere of yesterday had stirred Arthur to speak, perhaps the violence of that March Friday had stirred him to physical strength.

  “I imagine,” Leslie said, “that not only did Nathan recognize the figure and try to rescue it, but he recognized the sweater from the pictures. He remembered Felicia’s murder and Arthur’s trial.”

  “Doesn’t everyone remember Felicia’s murder?” Mark asked.

  Zapata laughed. “I don’t. I was in high school in San Antonio then, living from track meet to track meet. I wasn’t interested in anything that didn’t have running shoes.” Everyone uttered a much-needed laugh at her half-bragging, half-apologetic expression.

  Hilary pulled the Bible cover from another box. Its gold was an alloy, Mark knew, or it would bend in her hands. A couple of the spinels had been jarred from their settings. Hilary wiped the gems off and reset them, using a miniature pair of pliers with padded tips and her own exquisite touch.

  Jenny, thought Mark, was an unlikely alloy of Coburg and self-reliance. She said, “I almost have to admire Dolores, keeping her composure whilst all her schemes crashed at her feet. No one confided in anyone else. She deduced the truth about Kenneth on her own. And what a truth it was.”

  “Kenneth burglarized Vasarian’s room, out of simple jealousy, I bet. Hoping to find something he could use to drive a wedge between Vasarian and Dolores.” Mark hoped Jenny wouldn’t take the opportunity to expound on the deplorable masculine tendency to equate sex and power.

  All she said was, “Kenneth told me everything was my fault. I suppose he saw Arthur’s infidelity as a symptom of his other dishonesties. Although Arthur was married to Felicia when I was conceived, not Dolores.”

  “When it came to his parents,” said Preston, “Kenneth was definitely perpendicular to reality.”

  “Kenneth was thirteen when Felicia was killed,” Zapata said with a sigh. “I wonder if it was before or after that he found the room in the attic. Can you imagine a kid sitting there and studying that stuff, convincing himself that his father and his grandfather were murderers?”

  Jenny shivered, as though someone walked over her grave. “I can imagine it. I can see him wanting to think they were innocent, and yet not quite being able to do so. I don’t know whether he hated Arthur or wanted to be him, wanted to protect the house and his mother or wanted to destroy them both. I don’t want to know.”

  Mark remembered hearing his parents talking in the next room, their words distorted, meanings too subtle for him to catch. He imagined Kenneth overhearing his parents talk about garages and artifacts and roses. “I wonder if Felicia knew about the Cross? I wonder if Nathan knew who Jenny is?”

  “Unless you plan on conducting a séance,” Zapata told him, “you’re going to have to keep on wondering.”

  Bradshaw was glancing furtively left and right, perhaps trying to think of some snide remark he could make before they remembered he’d played Igor to Dolores’s Frankenstein. Mark sidled up to him. “You know, the fake artifacts would be quite a draw, with all the publicity.”

  “Put the fakes in Arthur’s gallery beside the Van Meegeren, and you could charge admission.” Hilary’s eyes glinted with suppressed laughter. She rescued the ivory bishop and placed it on the mat before her.

  Bradshaw looked from Mark to Hilary, his tiny features puckered. Behind him June bent blandly over her easel. Leslie nudged Preston, and they both looked innocent. Zapata grinned. “I’ll be first in line.”

  “Well, now,” said Bradshaw, “I think perhaps I’ll check with—that is, I’ll see if I can find a catalogue….” Mumbling, he walked out of the room, leaving the door swinging back and forth.

  On its inward swing it flew open. Yeager maneuvered a wheelchair through the opening, while Vasarian smiled regally at the surprised expressions that greeted him. His dark suit, pastel shirt, and paisley tie gleamed like a photo layout in Gentleman’s Quarterly. Some people, Mark thought, just can’t appreciate a good T-shirt.

  “He insisted,” Yeager rationalized to Zapata’s raised brows.

  “I give my word of honor to return to hospital straightaway,” added Vasarian. “I simply must reassure myself the artifacts have survived their misadventures—for which I, in a way, feel responsible.”

  Jenny nodded, as though thinking, What’s a punctured lung compared to a good stiff upper lip?

  “Come and look.” Hilary scooted her chair aside. Yeager pushed Vasarian to the worktable. “The bishop here is the only piece that doesn’t have some minor scrapes and bruises.”

  “Ah.” The art expert gazed raptly at the row of artifacts. His silver hair and pale face gave him an uncanny resemblance to the ivory chess piece. He wasn’t the bishop, Mark told himself, but the knight, jumping diagonally while everyone else plodded along their straight lines.

  “Valuable pieces, eh?” Jenny prodded.

  “Anything for which men die is valuable,” returned Vasarian. “Miss Underwood, Detective Sergeant Yeager was kind enough to bring the Eleanor Cross from police headquarters. It’s in Mr. Bradshaw’s office.”

  “I’ll go get it!” exclaimed Leslie. She and Preston hurried out.

  “Jacob Sikora called,” Yeager said to Jenny. “He wanted to talk to you but didn’t know where you were. I said I’d pass on the message.”

  “Arthur’s will, I presume?” Jenny responded.

  “What?” demanded Zapata.

  “The letter that Hilary saw on Nathan’s desk,” Jenny explained. “The one in which Felicia asked Jacob to help get her ring back. It was in the back of the notebook and fell out when I went into the kitchen to answer the telephone.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “When I picked it up, I saw my mother’s name.” Jenny offered Zapata a soothing gesture. Grudgingly Zapata accepted. “Whilst Felicia seems to have been unaware that Arthur was busily copying her ring,” Jenny went on, “she was not at all unaware where it had been. The purpose of her letter was to ask Jacob to convince Arthur to acknowledge me. I’ve wondered whether it was to talk about me that Felicia approached Arthur the night she died.”

  Mark and Hilary looked doubtfully at each other. Vasarian turned around, his scorched eyes expressionless.

  “It wasn’t. Arthur had already acknowledged you—more or less.” Yeager, getting everyone’s undivided attention, continued, “Jacob said that Dolores called late yesterday afternoon asking him to set her affairs in order. He didn’t know why, of course, until he turned on the news last night. When he pulled out her will, he also pulled out Arthur’s—which was made a few months before Felicia’s death. Arthur provided a sizeable trust fund to be shared among all his children. The word ‘all’ had Jacob buffaloed for years, until he heard about you, Jenny.”

  “Oh, I see.” Jenny’s face seemed to be tugged two different ways, between the positive of the dollar and the negative of a knife in the dark. “I’ll ring Mr. Sikora and sort something out. Perhaps the Lloyd would like a contribution toward that new wing for Arthur’s collections.”

  Vasarian’s eyes sparked. “Well done,” he said, as though Jenny were a matador who had just evaded a pair of sharp horns.
She glanced down at him, with a half smile Mark could only interpret as cynical. The two Europeans might have more than a few things to say to each other, he thought, if the opportunity ever arose.

  “Having to share his inheritance gave Kenneth another motive to frame you,” Zapata commented. “This is one report that will be very interesting to write up.”

  “Yeah,” Yeager said brightly, no doubt anticipating several days of glorious deskwork.

  Preston and Leslie slipped through the door, one carrying a wooden crate, the other a cardboard box. With ceremonial bows they set them down. June pushed back from her easel. Vasarian scooted closer to the table. Hilary looked as though a mouse were running up her pants leg. Mark gave her a thumbs-up and an encouraging nod.

  “Mr. Vasarian,” she began, “if you’d prefer to do this yourself….”

  “No, no, my dear. You’ve amply proved your competence.”

  “Yes, I suppose I have.” Pulling her gloves more snugly over her hands, Hilary laid the two pieces of ivory onto the mat. The smooth highlights of the carving were creamy white, its hollows a deep amber. The tiny figures on the Cross signaled their emotions and recited their lines in the great passion play. The Christ was larger than them all, the quiet center of all the activity, calm not in death but in eternal life.

  Hilary picked up the figurine and inspected its back. With her dental pick she cleaned the three pegs at wrists and crossed ankles. Then she reamed out the three corresponding holes hidden in the tracery of the Cross. Her touch was so light that even in the silence of multiple bated breaths Mark heard not one scrape.

  She laid the figure onto the Cross and with an almost subliminal click locked the two halves together. Small figures and large curved in one intricate pattern, their play complete.

  Applause erupted from the watching group, leaving Hilary flustered and blushing. Grasping the restored crucifix, she offered it to Vasarian’s avuncular nod, then to Jenny’s gratified smile. “Queen Eleanor,” Jenny said, “would be quite pleased to know her Cross is in such good hands.”

  From the corner of his eye Mark saw Yeager take advantage of the general euphoria and, with the studied nonchalance of a teenager snaking his arm along the back of a theatre seat, hug Zapata’s shoulders. She looked at him quizzically, then with a rueful smile hugged him back. Yeager dropped his arm, grinning like a man who’d just won the Kentucky Derby.

  Not that his glow was anywhere near as bright as Hilary’s. She laid the Cross in its box, telling Vasarian, “I’ll pack this for you this afternoon. And I’ll put the real artifacts in the boxes I fixed for the fakes.”

  “Don’t get them mixed up!” Preston exclaimed.

  “Don’t worry,” she assured him. “I won’t.”

  And she wouldn’t, Mark told himself. He caught her smile and magnified it. “It’s past noon. I don’t think I’ve appreciated a meal in days. I hear the buffet here is pretty good.”

  “I hear they have great hot fudge sundaes,” replied Hilary, already peeling off her gloves. “I never let myself have one before, but today I plan to indulge.”

  Vasarian said, “So shall I, if my guardians don’t insist on rushing me back to hospital.”

  “I’ll defend you,” Jenny told him, and pushed him toward the door. Leslie and Preston held it open. A bemused Zapata exited beside Yeager, and pushed the button for the elevator.

  “I had a fantasy about ice cream once,” Hilary murmured to Mark as they took the stairs.

  “Yes?”

  “But I’d rather eat it than roll around in it. It could get awfully sticky.”

  Laughing, Mark opened the door into the office wing. At the end of the corridor sunlight streamed into the atrium. “We have to ask Lucia if we can borrow her garden.”

  “Yes. We do.” Hilary reached out and took his hand.

  He tightened his fingers around hers, determined never to let her go again. Hand in hand they walked toward the light.

  About the Author

  After starting out in science fiction and fantasy, Lillian Stewart Carl is now writing contemporary novels blending mystery, romance, and fantasy, along with short mystery and fantasy stories. Her work often includes paranormal themes. It always features plots based on history and archaeology. While she doesn’t write comedy, she believes in characters with a sense of humor. Her novels have been compared to those of Daphne du Maurier, Mary Renault, Mary Stewart (no relation), Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s colleague Charles Williams.

  Her fantasies are set in a mythological, alternate-history Mediterranean and India. Her contemporary novels are set in Texas, in Ohio, in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, and in England and Scotland.

  Of her Lucifer’s Crown, Library Journal says: “Blending historical mystery with a touch of the supernatural, the author creates an intriguing exploration of faith and redemption in a world that is at once both modern and timeless.

  Of her Shadows in Scarlet, Publishers Weekly says, “Presenting a delicious mix of romance and supernatural suspense, Carl (Ashes to Ashes) delivers yet another immensely readable tale. She has created an engaging cast and a very entertaining plot, spicing the mix with some interesting twists on the ghostly romantic suspense novel.”

  Among many other novels, Lillian is the author of the Jean Fairbairn/Alasdair Cameron cross-genre mystery series: America’s exile and Scotland’s finest on the trail of all-too-living legends. Of The Secret Portrait, Kirkus says: “Mystery, history and sexual tension blend with a taste of the wild beauty of the Highlands”. Of The Burning Glass, Publishers Weekly says: “Authentic dialect, detailed descriptions of the castle and environs, and vivid characters recreate an area rich in history and legend. The tightly woven plot is certain to delight history fans with its dramatic collision of past and present.”

  With John Helfers, Lillian co-edited The Vorkosigan Companion, a retrospective on Lois McMaster Bujold’s science fiction work, which was nominated for a Hugo award.

  Her first story collection, Along the Rim of Time, was published in 2000, and her second, The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and Myth, in 2008, including three stories that were reprinted in Year’s Best mystery anthologies.

  Her books are available in both print and electronic editions. Here is her website. Here is her Facebook Group Page Here is a listing of more Smashwords books.