I had to admit, I was thinking along those lines as well. Camilla, taking my silence for consent, slid the issue of Chronology toward me again, snapping me out of my contemplation. “So you’ll look into this for me?”
I didn’t move to take the magazine. “I appreciate your reasonings, of course, but I’m still not sure. Chronology is a respected publication.” I tapped the name of the reporter at the top of the article. “If this Savannah Lundstrom found evidence that Charles Braithwaite deserted his regiment and never ascended to corporal, I’ll likely find the same thing.”
“Isn’t it enough that I’m happy to pay you to try?” she asked.
My eyebrows rose even as, inwardly, I sighed. The old Camilla I knew—distant and unwilling to offer up a measure of friendship—was back, her expression impassive.
I thought about my three upcoming projects. One of the clients had been clear that they weren’t in a rush, and I hadn’t yet confirmed a start date for the other two. Nevertheless, I’d been planning on doing some preliminary work on all three during the upcoming week, mostly on the days Ben had meetings. Otherwise, I’d deliberately left the upcoming week light so I could spend as much time with him as possible.
After all, Ben and I had enjoyed only a couple of weeks together in early January before he was sent off on another undercover assignment. When he’d resurfaced a couple of days ago, hearing the sound of his voice on the phone had made me all kinds of happy. He was still in Washington, DC, for some meetings, but he’d be back in Austin tonight. Even better, after a week of rain, today had been gorgeous, and it was forecasted to be in the low sixties and sunny for the next couple of days. I couldn’t think of better circumstances to enjoy getting reacquainted with my relatively new boyfriend, and I really didn’t want to be working on a project for Camilla Braithwaite in the meantime.
However, as a self-employed person, I could always use the money, and I did need to keep busy while Ben was in his occasional meetings. Plus, I was already thinking that proving the article’s truth would probably be as easy as pie. I’d just have to look up Charles Braithwaite’s compiled military service record, or CMSR, and that would likely tell me most of what I needed to know. I might not even have to spend more than a couple of days on the project, so why not take it?
“I think you know I’d do my best to get clear proof either way,” I began, “but what if I find that the reporter discovered the truth? Will you be all right with that?”
Camilla hesitated, but answered, “Not really, but if that’s what it comes to, then that’s the breaks.” She shook her hair back once more, half with her stressed-out twitch and half brushing it back with her hand, making me believe she was trying her best to believe what she’d just said.
I nodded. I wasn’t going to try to talk her out of it again. I’d done what I could and I wouldn’t feel guilty about taking her money for the rush job.
“All right, Camilla,” I said. “That’s all I can ask for, and I’m happy to take the project.” I told her my retainer price for a rush job and that an electronic money transfer would be better, and she didn’t even blink. Moments later, my phone pinged with a deposit to my work account.
“Are you going back to Houston, then?” I asked, after we discussed contract terms and I forwarded her a copy of the agreement from my iPad. She also gave me her copy of Chronology so I could read the article again.
Camilla slid off her barstool and slipped money for her bill under a bottle of Flaco’s special homemade hot sauce. “Not until Tuesday afternoon. I’m taking a couple of vacation days. My boys are with their father, and I’m here to see friends and to visit my great-uncle, who’s in his mid-eighties and not doing so well lately.”
I dunked a tortilla chip into my queso. “I’m sorry to hear that. Is your great-uncle from the Braithwaite side?”
“Yes, though he descends from Charles’s eldest son, while I descend from the younger son. Trent, the new in-house genealogist, showed me a relationship chart. Technically, my great-uncle and I are something like third cousins, a couple of times removed,” she said. “Anyway, he’s always been really tight with my side of the family, so I grew up calling him Uncle Charlie.”
“Well, it is exhausting and a little weird to say ‘my third cousin, twice removed Charlie’ all the time,” I deadpanned. Camilla stared at me for a moment like she’d never heard me be funny before, then her lips quirked up briefly.
I popped the chip in my mouth, only to find the queso had gone stone cold. I pushed the dish away, switching back to my guacamole. “I think I’ll go see your ancestor’s things at the Alden museum on Monday. Would you like to meet me there in case I have any questions?”
Camilla looked a little hesitant at the thought of spending time with me in a semi-social situation, but she nevertheless agreed. We discussed times and settled on ten o’clock on Monday at the museum’s entrance.
Picking up her purse, she said, “Anything else before I go?”
I pursed my lips in thought, then asked, “Are there any other artifacts of Charles’s history that aren’t in the museum?”
“Just a couple. One is a copy of Oliver Twist that Charles kept on his bedside throughout most his life. It’s not a first edition or anything, and it’s in rough shape, if I recall. My uncle Charlie has it on his bookshelf. It was given to Charles by his wife, Violet, my however-many-times-great-grandmother …” She raised her eyebrows in question at me.
“If you and Charlie are third cousins, twice removed, then Charles and Violet are your fourth great-grandparents and Charlie’s second,” I answered. “For people our age, in their thirties, our ancestors who married and had babies around the Civil War years are generally either our fourth or fifth great-grandparents, but it all depends on how early or late they had children.” I pulled another tortilla chip from the basket. “Any other family artifacts?”
“There’s just one more thing, and the Alden museum didn’t want it,” Camilla said. “Charles made a three-paneled painting of a battle scene at some point after the war ended. It’s a pretty big painting when the panels are side by side.” She held out her arms to their full extent, saying, “About six feet long by three feet high. Charles designed it so his three children would each have a third.”
“He painted the battle scene as a triptych?” I said. “How cool.”
“I think so, too,” Camilla said. “Though it’s not really a triptych anymore because one panel, the left one, went missing. It originally went to Charles’s daughter and it was last seen around 1988, which is the year the last whole-family reunion happened. That piece presumably bounced around to various members in that branch of the family since then, and no one knows where it ended up.”
“Do you know any of your cousins from that side of the family?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No, I don’t. The branches descending from Charles’s two sons stayed in touch because so many of us remained in Houston, or at least in the southern half of Texas, but the branch descending from Charles’s daughter scattered a long time ago.”
“Well, it’s not surprising in any family when you go back that far,” I said. “In six generations, your family tree has branched a minimum of …” I gazed off at the huge velvet painting of Flaco dressed like Elvis in Blue Hawaii (but holding a cast-iron skillet instead of a ukulele), while I did some mental genealogy gymnastics in my mind. “Oh, at least sixteen times since 1865, and likely much more if some of the branches had multiple children, which it sounds like they did. You’re likely one of anywhere between a hundred and fifty to well over two hundred of Charles’s great-great-great-great-grandchildren. You can easily lose track of distant cousins when there’s that many.”
Camilla’s eyes widened. “Sheesh. Are you serious? I have that many cousins?”
Entertained, I used a tortilla chip to point at her. “And that’s from only your Braithwaite line. You have thirty-two couples who make up your fourth great-grandparents. So, think on those numbers of cousin
s.”
Now she gaped at me, and I had to admit, it felt kind of nice to impress her with my knowledge.
Camilla gave her head a little shake, as if to clear away the numbers I’d put in her mind. “Like I said, all I know is that the third panel was last seen at the family reunion in 1988, when the triptych was put back together for the day.”
Despite myself, I smiled at the hint of mystery. “That’s a neat story in and of itself,” I told her. “I’d love to know what happened to that left panel.”
Camilla shrugged. “So would I, but no one else in the family really seems to care, except for Uncle Charlie, who has the center panel, and me. I have the right panel and I barely saved it from my younger brother after my dad passed. My brother—he’s Charles Braithwaite the Fourteenth, if you can believe it. Every relative of mine wanted to name a kid after Charles.” She gave an indulgent eye roll. “We’ve always called him Tor, though. It’s short for quatorze, French for ‘fourteen.’ Anyway, Tor was about to sell our painting for ten bucks at a garage sale, and I grabbed it literally seconds before some guy handed over the money.”
My look of scandalized horror mixed with dramatic relief actually earned me one of Camilla’s rare smiles, softening her face and warming her eyes.
I asked, “Do you know why the Alden museum didn’t want the painting?”
She hitched her shoulders again. “Charles often made sketches and doodles—you’ll see that in his journal in the museum—and he was really good at drawing people, like in the drawing he did for the Texas Emancipation Day celebration. But the triptych is … something different entirely. It looks a bit more like folk art, with the soldiers painted somewhat crudely and the clouds looking like white blobs, but I still like it. Anyway, with the museum, I think it was a combination of Charles using an unusual style and the fact that one of the three panels was missing. They told my family that they found our painting interesting, but it had more sentimental than historic value.”
We both heard a ding and she reached into her purse to check a text.
“I’ve got to go,” she said. “My friend Sarah is waiting for me.” She hesitated, then gave me a nod. “Thank you, Lucy, for looking into this for me.”
“You’re welcome,” I said.
She began walking away, then turned back. “Monday, after we go to the museum, would you like to see Uncle Charlie’s third of the triptych?”
“That would be fun,” I said with a smile. There was a closeted art historian inside me who longed to get out, and I indulged her whenever I could.
Camilla was watching me, though, her eyes becoming narrower and narrower as I lifted another guacamole-laden tortilla chip to my mouth.
“Lucy, are you really this nice?”
“Huh?” I said, so surprised I didn’t have an intelligent response.
“Never mind,” Camilla said hastily, another uncharacteristic flush rising up on her cheeks. “I’ll see you Monday at the museum.” She was out the door before I could even blink.
FIVE
“What’s wrong with being nice?” I said.
“Absolutely nothing, love.”
“Maaaaybe you could stick up for yourself a little more with some people, though.”
“Yes, but was Camilla trying to be snarky to me?”
“Surely not.”
“Eh, I’d put it at fifty-fifty.”
“Good grief. Do y’all think I’m too nice?”
“Darling, of course we don’t.”
“Certainly we do, but we love you anyway.”
I looked between my two best friends, which meant whipping my head from one side to the other, since I was sitting in between them. We were out on the little balcony of our shared office space, which was on the third floor of the historic downtown building known as the Old Printing Office. We were sipping on our first glasses of rosé of the season while lounging in our deck chairs and watching cars navigate the Saturday-afternoon traffic on Congress Avenue. As usual, it was like listening to the sweet angel with an English accent that was Josephine on one shoulder and the naughty-but-lovable devil with a slight Texas drawl that was Serena on the other.
“Y’all are only semi-helping, you know.”
“It’s what we do best, my friend,” Serena said, clinking her wineglass to mine. Her phone was buzzing and she got up, answering the call as she headed back into the quiet of the office. Josephine and I could hear her saying, “Hasana, thanks for calling me back. I’ve got more dresses on hold for you than will fit in five dressing rooms and I think you’ll love every one of them. Can you meet me in an hour?”
I lifted an eyebrow. “I didn’t think she was taking on any more personal-shopping clients. Her Shopping with Serena blog has gotten so big, she barely has time for rosé on the balcony.”
“Ahh, but Hasana Pritzger isn’t just any client, darling,” Josephine said.
Using my wineglass to point back into the office, I whispered. “The Hasana Pritzger? The host of Making a House a Home?”
Josephine nodded, her dark curls bouncing in time, and we both squealed like the fangirls we were. Making a House a Home was our favorite lifestyle show, and Hasana Pritzger, her husband, Milo, and their three wavy-haired children were the best thing on television right now.
“How come I didn’t know?” I asked.
“It just happened yesterday, when you were out on an errand,” Jo replied. “I was on a conference call with a client in Spain and one of my clients here in Austin when Hasana walked in. I was so gobsmacked, I nearly switched from Spanish to Portuguese. All I can say is, it was a good thing I wasn’t translating anything important. Had she arrived two minutes later, I might have told my Spanish client the Austin company had called their handblown glassware esquisito instead of exquisito.”
Since I spoke only one other language—Spanish—compared with Josephine’s six, I looked blank as to the difference. “Exquisito means ‘exquisite’ in Spanish,” she said, “but esquisito is Portuguese for ‘weird’ or ‘strange.’”
I grinned. “That so? Interesting. I’m thinking we should petition to change our city’s slogan from ‘Keep Austin Weird’ to ‘Keep Austin Esquisito.’ It has a nice ring to it.”
Josephine gave a throaty laugh and held up her wineglass. “Cheers to that.”
We drank, then she held out a hand, resting it on my arm. “Darling, I’m terribly sorry I told Camilla you were at Flaco’s earlier. When she showed up here looking for you, I was the only one in the office. She introduced herself as one of your former coworkers, but I thought she was one from your time at the Hamilton Center. I had no idea she was one of those three until Serena explained later.”
“You weren’t to know,” I assured her. “Camilla, Roxie, and Patrice—or ‘those three,’ as you called them—were out of my life and forgotten within hours of my last day at the Howland library, which was months before I moved from Houston to Austin and Serena and I met you.” I took a sip of my rosé, adding, “Plus, it was no big deal in the end, really. Camilla was willing to pay the rush premium, and it should make for a quick project for me to work on this coming week during the times Ben has to be in meetings.”
The smile on my friend’s face went full-on Cheshire cat, and she used one of her long legs to give mine a knowing nudge. “You mean in between times you’re having your way with Special Agent Turner.”
I grinned, even as my cheeks battled with the potted azaleas on our balcony for brightest pink. “Maybe.”
“It’s about time, love.”
“You’re darn right it’s about time,” Serena said as she took her deck chair again. “Go ahead, tell us all the ways you plan to ravish him. Inquiring minds want to know.”
“Yes, we do, so do tell,” Josephine said.
“You two are shamelessly proud of your gutter minds,” I said.
“Absolutely,” Jo said, then used her wineglass to indicate all three of us. “That’s the rules with our little triumvirate—details on all the really
fun parts of our love lives, and the naughtier the details, the better.”
Laughing, I held my hands up in surrender. “Hey, I’m all for giving up the juicy details, you know that. But until very recently, all I’ve been able to do is listen to y’all. I decided to think of it as research.”
Serena pointed her finger over my shoulder. “Well, as much as we’d like to know your research findings, Luce, I bet he’d like to know them more.”
I spun around in my chair. Ben was standing behind me, grinning, hands in the pockets of his jeans, and a totally adorable flush coloring his cheeks.
“Hi,” he said.
The speed at which I jumped into his arms and kissed him earned me appreciative whistles from my rosé-drinking, gutter-minded best friends.
* * *
Ben and I sat at my kitchen island and caught up over take-out sushi and wine, then took bowls of butter pecan ice cream over to my sofa, where I sat with both my legs hooked over one of his as we enjoyed our dessert.
The scruff on his face was the same it’d been the last time I’d seen him, but while weeks ago his hair was long enough to curl over his collar (and run my fingers through over and over), now it was quite short and textured. Very Harrison Ford in Blade Runner, actually, so really sexy indeed. A cut over his right eyebrow deep enough to need two stitches further added to the sense that he could be a cop from the gritty future, sent to hunt down rogue bioengineered human replicants.
Gently, I touched the wound. “I really want to know what your undercover job was that caused you to get this, but I know you can’t tell me, so I won’t ask.”
Fatal Family Ties Page 3
