Donna Andrews - Chesapeake Crimes - This Job Is Murder!

The Colonel was napping while they talked. Margaret had shot a couple of looks at Keri throughout the conversation: envy, disbelief, warning glares? Keri hadn’t been sure. (Margaret told her later, on the sly, that Claire was a drinker. Claire, in turn, confided that Margaret was a thief-little things, but hardly negligible.)

It was after the Colonel went down for his nap another afternoon, only a week ago now, that Claire and her siblings-Beatrice and Dwight-had made their inventory. This was the first time that Keri had met the other two, since both lived just out of state, and Margaret’s comment about having her work cut out for her with “all of them” echoed throughout the day.

With Pete on campus again-early office hours, eternal office hours-Keri had played host alone. Claire asked her to make a salad for lunch, “something simple, no trouble,” and Keri had, laying it out on the table, not planning to join them until the Colonel insisted, asking his son to move down a seat, make room for the ladies.

Dwight had smirked at that. “Aye aye, sir,” he said, taking his salad with him as he slid down.

The Colonel had seemed to recognize them only dimly, but he nodded politely when Beatrice spoke about her children’s latest report cards and Dwight talked about the business finally turning a profit again last quarter-“despite what the president’s doing,” he insisted, which prompted Beatrice to complain bitterly about the state of political discourse in the country today. More smirks from Dwight at that, and cold looks from Claire.

The Colonel had watched all of them with interest but no reaction. Claire tried at each turn of the conversation to nudge her father to recall Beatrice’s children or the nature of Dwight’s business or just the name of that current president, but she had finally given up, simply watching the Colonel with a mixture of curiosity and distress. Keri had watched each of them and didn’t know exactly how she felt.

After lunch was done and the Colonel had retired to his room for some light R &R, the three of them began to divvy up the belongings, prepping to make an easy sweep of it between the day they moved the old man out and the scheduled demolition of the house, quick work for the condo development ahead. Claire had brought small circular stickers to help with the division. Each of them would simply mark the items they wanted to take. “Pop will appreciate the patriotic touch,” Dwight said, holding up a package of red stickers and leaving blue and white for his sisters. Unmarked items would be slated for donation to the Salvation Army. “And a military nod again,” Dwight said, already beginning to stake down his claims.

When the three of them ended up squabbling about an autographed photo of Eisenhower standing with the Colonel and his late wife, Keri felt like she saw the three of them most clearly. Beatrice, the eldest, argued that the photo was hers because she was actually in the picture, cradled in their mother’s arms. Dwight, now the baby of the bunch, pointed out that he’d been named after the president, “which ought to give me dibs.” Meanwhile Claire-caretaker-turned-peacemaker-tried as best she could to keep the simmer from becoming a boil.

“So doesn’t that give you claim to all of this, Bea?” Dwight demanded. “You saw it first, you were there first? It’s all yours?” And then trying to recruit Claire to the cause: “Isn’t that how it’s always been?”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Beatrice said. “I’m saying I’m in the damn picture. It’s a picture of me. ”

“Let’s leave it for father, for his room at the nursing home,” Claire said. “He always loved it so.”

“He wouldn’t even know it’s there,” Dwight said.

“Let’s leave it unmarked then,” Claire went on. “No one will take it. We can donate it somewhere. A tribute that-”

“Stick it up in some museum?” Dwight said. “Hell no. That sucker’s worth something.”

“Is that what you’re planning?” Beatrice flashed with rage. “Selling it somewhere?”

“Please keep your voices down,” Claire said, and Keri could sense something stretched thin in her own voice. “He’ll hear us.”

“If he does wake up,” Dwight told Keri, “just keep him in the room for a while.”

“How should I do that?” Keri asked, startled by the sound of her own voice.

“Tell him,” Dwight began. “Tell him the base is on lockdown.” He seemed to be thinking. He grinned broadly, something cruel behind it. “There’s a sniper. Delta Force is handling it. Tell him, ‘Orders from the general.’”

“General.” Beatrice snorted. “Is that how you picture yourself in all this?”

Bickering spun out of selfishness, anger where there should have been empathy, lies built high on the Colonel’s dementia-Keri hated it all.

But later, she reflected that she wasn’t much better, at least in one regard.

When the real estate agents, surveyors, and repairmen had made their rounds, Keri had dutifully pretended to the Colonel that they were visiting dignitaries, military attaches, envoys from D.C. And when the Colonel woke from his nap and asked what all the dots were for-on the lamps, on the furniture, everywhere-Keri told him “inventory” and then “supply room,” trying to think of the right term, build another lie he might believe.

“Midnight requisitions,” the Colonel said vaguely, with a sigh of contempt, and something about a “five-fingered discount,” and then, grinning himself, just like Dwight had, “Oh, well, Sergeant, we’ll just have to requisition it all back,” like he knew the game.

“Lear,” Pete said when Keri told him all about it. “The grasping, the selfishness. Siblings showing their true colors. Claire sounds like the best of them: ‘You have brought me up and loved me, and I return you those duties back as are right and fit, obey you, love you, and most honor you.’” Pete performed the last part with a stagy British lilt.

“It didn’t feel like honor,” Keri said. “Or love either.”

“That’s what Lear thought, too.” Pete raised his eyebrow. “And you know how that turned out. So who got the photo?”

“Beatrice,” Keri said. “She traded Dwight the dining room table for it, but he said it didn’t matter, he’d get it back someday. Told her that since she was older, she’d go first. ‘I’ll keep these handy,’ he said, and he waved his extra stickers in the air.”

“Charming,” Pete said. “Sorry I missed it.” Keri had hoped for a little more empathy, but Pete was already moving on: “You know, I think I’ll add Lear to the syllabus. Sub it in instead of Othello -that’s done too much in high school anyway, don’t you think? And Lear -”

“But what should we do?” Keri insisted. “What’s our role in all this?”

She doesn’t entirely remember his answer-several possibilities, comparing them to the Earl of Kent or the Fool. Did Keri have a touch of Cordelia herself? Little of substance, nothing practical, no solace. Instead, it’s more of Margaret’s words that have persisted: “Not a word of thanks, unless you demand it. Not a single token of appreciation, unless you take it yourself. I’m telling you: You’ve already been bought and paid for.”

The Colonel dresses and undresses himself, handles all of his own bathroom duties, but Keri follows up with him each morning and each night. This evening, as usual, he’s had trouble with his nightclothes-his “old man jammies,” Pete calls them. One side of his top hangs low, unfastened, while the skipped button bunches out on the other side, the fabric opening to reveal the aged flesh of his belly, a thin tangle of gray hairs. “He does it on purpose,” Pete has joked, “just so you can fluff him up.” She tries not to think about that as she straightens the buttoning, a complicated dance of discretion and helpfulness.