Past Malice

by Dana Cameron

  “Why not admit to yourself that you investigate these other things because you like it?”

  I looked away from her. “What do you care what I say or don’t say?”

  “Because I’d like to see you, just once in your life, admit that you’re doing something because you like it and not strangle yourself with rationalizations that only account for a small part of the story. Big words you’re bound to use, like ‘obligation’ and ‘morality,’ sound so much more noble than ‘I like it,’ don’t they?” She began to wheedle. “C’ mon, Em, admit it, I’m the only one here. You like prying into other people’s business—that’s a professional requirement for you—you like the idea that you can catch a bad guy, you like doing things you’re not supposed to be doing and all under the oh-so-high-toned rubric of responsibility!”

  “Bucky—”

  “You get off on coloring outside the lines, you love the idea of doing something naughty, all in the name of being a good citizen. Come off it yourself. Just say it for me once, Em.”

  “Bucks, you couldn’t have picked worse timing,” I said. I put my nearly untouched beer bottle in the sink and left the kitchen for my room. I changed into my workout gear and went to the gym.

  I don’t bother working out when I’m in the field. I could say it’s because I’m getting all the exercise that I need, but really, it’s usually because there’s just no time and I’m too damned tired. I do move around more when I’m out in the field, but it’s hardly aerobic and never sustained. Somehow, though, even just sitting and thinking and answering questions for eight hours leaves my muscles aching by the end of the day, don’t ask me how it happens. So it actually felt pretty good to run a few laps in air-conditioned splendor and lose some of my tension.

  It was just as I was starting to warm up, put on a little speed, and really get into the effort that I almost heard him sneak up on me. That in itself was a minor triumph, just realizing the split second before he spoke that there was a presence beside me. So it was a great credit to me that I didn’t fall on my butt, that there was just a prickling at the back of my neck, and I had already started looking to my right as I heard the words.

  “Good evening, Dr. Fielding.”

  The voice was something coming from the bottom of the ocean, very soft, very deep, and profoundly elemental. Old as rock and just that hard. It was the voice of command, and I found myself running through the simple phrase looking for some order to obey before I got hold of myself and managed a grin. “Good evening, Nolan.”

  It was always “Nolan” with him, never “Mr. Nolan” or anything else. I didn’t know whether it was his first name or his last name, but that’s how everybody in town knew him too, so there was never any confusion. Neither was there any confusion about what the lack of an honorific might mean: In Lawton, across the world, for all I knew, the one name contained its own title of respect.

  “Not used to seeing you here during the summer. To what do we owe this honor? Surely it’s not in response to my message.”

  I glanced just above my shoulder, meeting Nolan’s eyes. They were a green hazel, and I’d learned to my cost that while they were very attractive eyes, it didn’t do to get too wrapped up in looking at them. Nolan was perfectly capable of exploiting every hesitation and weakness; he was teaching me to guard against them in myself and use them against others. He was a better teacher than I was a pupil.

  “Tough day today.”

  He dismissed that immediately. “Has to be more than that. You’d be at home otherwise. What’s going on at home?”

  There was no point in trying to bluff Nolan; he has a state-of-the-art, built-in bullshit detector. Besides, he knew all about me. That was one of the prerequisites for taking me on as a student; getting to know me well enough so that he could identify my Achilles’ heels.

  Sometimes I hated Nolan quite a lot.

  “It’s too crowded,” I said. “Brian and I are fighting.” It felt strange to say that word again. We had arguments, sure; every couple does. But this was a no-doubt-about-it fight.

  “Ah. About the business at the Chandler House.”

  He wasn’t even breathing heavily as he matched my pace and dissected me. I wasn’t surprised that Nolan knew about the Chandler House and I wasn’t surprised that he expected that it would have an impact on me. I expect that he also knew that wasn’t even registering on my “I Love Nolan” meter.

  “Yup.”

  “Tricky. I can’t help you with that.”

  Which made me wonder…“Is there something you can help me with?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  Fatigue and frustration made me stupid. “That’s a first.”

  I regretted that as soon as it left my mouth. Nolan had an account he kept in his head, where unnecessary remarks, sarcasm, or repeated stupidity accrued and made for a tougher workout when next we met. Nolan was as good an accountant as Fee was.

  Maybe he was taking my present situation into account as well; he simply responded, “That’s the mark of a professional. To admit when you don’t know something. You should know that.”

  The little rebuke stung, especially as Detective Bader had recently paid me that particular compliment. “I do. I’m sorry.”

  “I know. Come to my office, Dr. Fielding. I’ll buy you a bottle of water.”

  We trotted over to the side of the track where Nolan’s office was. He always called a client—student, victim, whathaveyou—by courtesy titles before a lesson. After that brief interlude, the lesson began, and he inevitably found the nickname that was most galling to her and used it as a goad and a provocation. He almost never called anyone by their first name. A very high tribute was to be called by your last name only, during a lesson. I hadn’t heard mine yet.

  Framed in the door of his office, I was struck by the fact that Nolan resembled the letter T, serifs and all. His posture was superlative and relaxed, his shoulders were ridiculously broad in comparison to his waist and hips, and he had very small, almost dainty, feet, on which he moved with catlike grace and speed. They certainly didn’t feel small when they were kicking your legs out from underneath you. Like many men of short stature, he was a little vain—the first thing he did before reaching into the fridge was to glance at the mirror and smooth the last of his graying hair into place—but unlike most short men, he never extended the fact of his height to his behavior. Being a tall woman, I often run into a lot of attitude from guys who aren’t any taller than I am, and I’ll tell you frankly, there is nothing more tedious. Outside the schoolyard, no one cares. It was a relief that there was none of that in Nolan.

  He handed me a water and settled into the chair behind his desk, indicating that I could take a seat opposite him. Nolan gazed at the wall a moment, then drank off half of his water in one go. “You drinking enough water at work?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Even when it’s not hot out, your body needs water. Now, as for this other thing. I’m not hearing much about it.”

  I shook my head. “There hasn’t been much in the news.”

  “I’m not talking about the news. I’m sure you realize that it is not only professorial types who are coming to me for training?” He paused while he drank the rest of his water, and got another out of the fridge. “I do get a very wide spectrum of the community, shall we say? I see who’s in the weight room because they want to be fit, and who’s there because they might need to beat the tar out of someone in their professional life. Sometimes on one side of the law, sometimes the other.”

  I gaped. You just don’t think about that sort of thing.

  “While it is understood that I know how to keep my mouth shut and that I don’t ask too many questions when they’re not needed, I will keep my ears open. If there is anything that I hear that will be of use to you, I will let you know.”

  I was struck by the magnanimity of his offer. “Thank you, Nolan.”

  “You might be very surprised to see who I work with.” He tapped his
Rolodex thoughtfully. “It gives one an entirely different outlook on our quiet little community. I can say that it both depresses and inspires me. If I ever retire, I could write a book that would curl your hair.” He looked up. “Did you ever think about cutting yours, by the way? I think that braid makes all-too-useful a handle in an unfair fight. Also,” he studied my face, “I think a shorter cut would do a lot for adding character to your face.”

  “Thanks, I’ll think about it.” I took a big sip of my water to cover my irritation. Everyone had an opinion about my hair. I liked it the way I had it.

  “I have a late student tonight,” he said, standing. The conference was over.

  “Thanks for your help, Nolan. I appreciate it.”

  “My pleasure, Dr. Fielding. Of course, I expect to see you back here as soon as you are done with your outside work. Krav Maga waits for no one.”

  “Oh, yes. First thing.”

  “And you could stand to leave one or two beers in the refrigerator at the end of the day, you know. I happen to know that you don’t actually spend your time digging ditches and leaping through the trees, Red.”

  I flinched; there was the hateful nickname that had haunted me all my life.

  “And watch the sunscreen; your nose is getting a little burnt. Now, if you don’t mind….” He glanced over my shoulder. I turned and saw Delilah Voeller, in sneakers and workout gear, her hair pulled back into a ballerina’s bun, and sans makeup. She glanced at me sharply and nodded recognition as I squeezed past her.

  “Ah,” Nolan said. “Good evening, Mrs. Voeller.”

  I wondered again about the power of gossip—let us call it unofficial news through alternative channels. So far, most of the help I’d been to Detective Bader, apart from telling him what I’d observed on finding the bodies, had been because I’d seen things or heard things he didn’t have access to. In the past, if you put Nolan in the role of a fencing master, say, Ted Cressey as a gardener, and Fee or Perry as housekeepers, all of a sudden, you could start to see how information was communicated faster across fences and by the village pump than by broadsheet. Thing was, as useful as it was, it could also work against me. Participating in that network, especially in the course of searching out the killer—or killers—could be dangerous, because the information might not be true. Or it might be handed my way to deliberately mislead Detective Bader. A lot of people seemed to think that he and I had exchanged much more information than we had. I thought it made me a rather likely target, just as Brian had suggested. But I also counted on the fact that I was much more in the middle of all this information than the murderer or murderers were, and that worked for me. At least it was a spur for me to try and put this together, before he or she decided I’d heard too much.

  Suddenly I was thinking about the fragment of the chatelaine Bucky’d found at the site. I suppose it was my contemplation of things historical, but also seeing Delilah Voeller at the gym, that made it pop into my thoughts. While basic human behaviors and emotions hadn’t changed much, the reasons for them had changed quite a lot. Once upon a time, the chatelaine might have represented the woman’s power in the home, but what had made it possible for me in the twenty-first century to get out of the home and away from the side of the cow also made it my responsibility to look after myself while I was out in the world. My power was not to be found in my husband’s name or reputation—my own name and my own reputation were sufficient, thank you very much—and neither did my protection lie solely in him. If we were able to negotiate our relationship as equals, it meant that my physical safety was my job too. The problem with this modern arrangement was that all of the protocols hadn’t been worked out yet; it was still too new to our culture to have been completely and successfully negotiated.

  Apparently Delilah Voeller, who according to Daniel was a partner in her husband’s business affairs, thought the same way. That kept me thinking until I felt the crunch of the gravel of our driveway under the tires.

  Brian called soon after I arrived home. I knew he was mad, but Brian wasn’t the kind of guy to punish someone by scaring her. All he said was that he needed some time to think, he’d get dinner out, and he’d be in later. I did wonder whether he might unconsciously be giving me a taste of my own medicine, by not letting me know exactly what was going on, but then I was tired and out of sorts.

  I showered and read up in bed for a while, and against every instinct and inclination I have to working late at night, I fell asleep.

  I woke up a while later; the clock said it was close to three-thirty. The bedside light was off and after an instant of panic, I realized that Brian was in bed next to me. Relief flooded through me, and I was able to calm myself by listening to his own slow, regular breathing. I thought about waking him up and then rejected the idea; he hadn’t woken me up, it was late, and it seemed that one of us should get some sleep tonight. I realized that he might not have wanted to wake me up because he still wanted time to himself. Maybe he didn’t want to talk to me. Maybe he was still angry, maybe he wasn’t, but I was too much of a coward to wake him up and ask.

  I thought about how easy it might be to excuse myself from working on the dig any further this summer. No one could blame me, and some would say that I was making a wise decision. But I couldn’t leave work just because something nasty had happened there. Nothing to do with me, I was taking all the right precautions, and I was reluctant to be shifted on such circumstantial grounds.

  It just wasn’t in my nature to leave. And I didn’t know if Brian could accept that. I didn’t know if I could have, if I were in his shoes. I didn’t know how to be fair about this.

  My head ached. I rubbed my forehead, moving very slowly so as not to disturb Brian, and tried not to watch the clock as it seemed to be frozen in time. I stared blankly at the closet door and realized that I’d been shot at, beat up, and threatened in a variety of ways in the course of what I thought of as my work. It had been horrible; you can’t even imagine the place your head has to be when you are struggling for your life unless you’ve actually been there. The uncertainty of it all, the choices you are forced to make, never knowing if what you do will make the situation worse, is grim beyond words. Physical confrontation is fascinating and terrifying and even if you are good at it, which I am not, you try to avoid it if you possibly can. Clinging to the side of a rock, worrying about being dragged out to sea to drown, even what had happened on the scaffolding, I could still remember how afraid I was, even if it was only an intellectual recollection of what I’d been through; the emotional impact was fading, thank heavens.

  Wanting to reach out for Brian, without knowing whether he would want me to, seemed worse to me at this moment than any of those situations.

  Chapter 21

  I SPENT THE MORNING OF JULY FOURTH THROWING notes together for my talk. The students took off, leaving the house quiet again. By the time I’d figured out what to wear, gotten angry at Bucky for not having to work on the holiday, and achieved a kind of détente with Brian, it was time to go.

  At the historic site, there was a uniformed officer in front—Officer Lovell—and another one back in the crowd. “For public safety,” Lovell had told me, but I thought the reasons were probably a lot more specific than that. The Bellamys had decamped, presumably, in the face of so many Chandlers. Monet and Matisse were barking their heads off, jumping as far up the fence as they could manage. Bucky wandered over across the street and started talking to them. She stuck her fingers in through the fence before I could stop her and fondled them. They licked her fingers, delighted at having met a kindred spirit.

  “What good doggies you are! Yes, you are! You’re just bored, aren’t you? Oh, you’re good babies. You be quiet now. Go lie down, be good.”

  After one more ear scratch each, the dogs obediently trotted away and were quiet. I gave Bucky a disgusted look, mostly for having shown me up, but also for having managed to sound so much like Claire Bellamy.

  “They’re nice dogs. Real smart,” wa
s all she said when she returned. Her face was all innocence save for the little smirk she was unable to conceal. “You know, they were used for hunting in France?”

  Bitch.

  Behind the house on the lawn, Perry and Ted were armed with trays of the famous, even notorious, Chandler punch, circulating among the guests. I’d heard only that the recipe was supposed to have been handed down through the generations and included, among other ingredients, both brandy and rum and a number of spices. Perry and Ted both stopped by Bucky, Brian, and me a couple of times. I refused each one, not liking to drink before work. Bucky made a face at me and remarked that it was nice not to have to work when everyone else was playing.

  “It sure would put you into the swing of things,” Ted said, and he was right. The party was going full force, after the hastily improvised ceremony marking Aden’s passing was over. I suddenly thought I had a good idea of how the Chandler House might have looked during its heyday, lights from every room, light from torches and candles outside, the salty breeze making them all flicker.

  After refusing Perry’s offer again, I heard my cue to hit the stage, so to speak, in the big meeting room. “Good luck,” Brian whispered.

  “Thanks,” I said, but my mind was already on my presentation. I went upstairs and started my lecture.

  The talk went very well, although I was a little nervous doing it. It wasn’t stage fright; far from it. I’d done a thousand of these sorts of things and still get a little excited about doing them. And frankly, the situation couldn’t have been better set up for a good reception: The members of the Chandler family had been well fed and had made several toasts and were now pleasantly situated to hear me tell them interesting and scandalous things about their ancestors.

  No, what I was worried about were the people I knew were in the audience who wouldn’t be so pleased about the news I had. I saw that the Bellamys were in fact present, had been invited as a courtesy; they weren’t going to be thrilled to learn that what I’d found not only warranted more research, but with a larger area to be opened. Bray Chandler kept darting dirty looks at me every time our eyes met, and I wasn’t ready to forget how upset he was by the fact that his ancestor, Nicholas, might have been something less than the legitimate offspring of Margaret and Matthew Chandler. I’d also spoiled one of his trysts and now that he would probably be made director of the Chandler House, my chances of doing more work there were diminishing. Fee had barely spoken to me since that day at Wendy’s Bakery with Grace, and she too would be put off by the thought of more fieldwork, and now I wondered what kind of shenanigans she was pulling with the old Mather House, especially when she was supposed to be broke. Perry, who now knew that I’d spoken to both Dr. Spencer and Daniel Voeller about her, kept smiling too hard and chattering too excitedly for someone wholly at ease. Daniel himself was watching me with a focus that I knew had nothing to do with my talk and more to do with my supposed discussions with Detective Bader. Ted was passing around a tray of miniature desserts and avoiding my glance. Only Janice Booth seemed the same as I remembered her the day in her garden and studio; eating with titanic gusto, whispering to her near neighbors, Franklin clutched to her bosom.