Харлан Кобен - Win

Nigel peeks in on us. “Do we need anything?”

“Just some privacy,” my father snaps. He says “privacy” with the short i , as though he’s suddenly British. Nigel rolls his eyes and gives my father a mock salute. To me, he glares a quick warning before closing the doors.

We sit across from one another in the red velvet chairs near the stone fireplace. My father offers me a cognac. I pass. He starts to pour his own, but his arm is slow and uncooperative. When I offer to help, he shakes me off. He can manage. It’s still early in the morning. You must think he has a drinking problem, but that’s not it; he just has nowhere else he needs to be.

“Your cousin Patricia was here with you,” he says.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“She is a member of the family,” I say.

My father lances me with the blue eyes. “Please, Win, let’s not insult my intelligence. Your cousin hasn’t been to Lockwood in over twenty years, correct?”

“Correct.”

“And it isn’t a coincidence that the day the Vermeer is found she came back, is it?”

“It is not.”

“So I want to know why she was here.”

This is my father, the somewhat bullying interrogator. I haven’t experienced much of this side of him since his stroke. I’m glad to see his ire, even though it is aimed squarely at me. “There may be a connection,” I say, “between the art heist and what happened to her family.”

Dad’s eyes start blinking in astonishment. “What happened to her...?” His voice trails off. “You mean her abduction?”

“And Uncle Aldrich’s murder,” I add.

He winces at his brother’s name. We stay silent. He lifts the glass and stares at the amber liquid for far too long. “I don’t see how,” he says.

I stay still.

“The paintings were stolen before the murder, correct?”

I nod.

“A long time before, if I recall. Months? Years?”

“Months.”

“Yet you see a connection. Tell me why.”

I do not want to go into details, so I switch topics. “What caused the rift between you and Uncle Aldrich?”

His eyes flare at me from over the crystal. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“You never told me.”

“Our...” He takes a moment to think of the word. “Our dissolution took place years before his murder.”

“I know.” I stare into his face. Most people claim that they cannot see family resemblances when it comes to themselves. I can. Almost too much. “Do you ever think about that?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you and Aldrich hadn’t” — I make quote marks with my fingers — “‘dissolved,’ do you think he would still be alive today?”

My father looks stunned, hurt. “My God, Win, what a thing to say.”

I realize that I’d wanted to draw blood — and apparently, I succeeded. “Do you ever think about that possibility?”

“Never,” he says too forcefully. “What has gotten into you?”

“He was my uncle.”

“And my brother.”

“And you threw him out of the family. I want to know why.”

“It was so long ago.”

He raises the glass to his lips, but now it is shaking. My father has gotten old, an obvious observation alas, but we are often told how aging is a gradual process. Perhaps that’s true, but in my father’s case, it was more like a plummet off a cliff. For a long time, my father clung to that beautiful edge — healthy, strong, vibrant — but once he slipped, his descent was steep and sudden.

“It was so long ago,” my father says again.

The pain in his voice is a living thing. The thousand-yard stare, not all that different from the one I’d seen in that barn so many years ago, is back. I see where he is looking — another blank spot on the wall. Once upon a time, a stunning black-and-white photograph of Lockwood Manor hung in that spot. The photograph had been taken by my uncle Aldrich sometime in the late 1970s. It, like my uncle, was long gone now. I had never really thought about that until now, that even Uncle Aldrich’s artistic contributions to this estate had been scrubbed away when he was hurled out of the family circle.

“You told me that it was some sort of money issue,” I say. “You implied Uncle Aldrich embezzled.”

He doesn’t respond.

“Was that true?”

He snaps out of it with a fury. “What difference does it make? That’s the trouble with your generation. You always want to unearth unpleasantness. You think dragging the ugly out in the sunlight will destroy it. It doesn’t. Just the opposite. You give the ugly thing life nourishment. I never spoke of it. Your uncle never spoke of it. That’s what being a Lockwood means. We both knew that many people thrive on our familial misery. They want to exploit any weakness. Do you understand that?”

I say nothing.

“Your responsibility, as a member of this family, is to protect our good name.”

“Dad?”

“Do you hear me, Win? The Lockwoods don’t air our dirty laundry.”

“What happened?”

“Why are you suddenly in touch with Patricia?”

“Nothing sudden about it, Dad. We’ve always stayed in touch.”

He rises. His face is red. His entire body is quaking. “I’m not discussing this any longer—”

He is too agitated. I need to calm him. “It’s okay, Dad.”

“—but I’m reminding you right now that you’re a Lockwood. That’s an obligation. You inherit the name, you inherit all that comes with it. Whatever happened with this art heist — whatever happened to my brother and Patricia — it has nothing to do with a very old rift between Aldrich and me. Do you understand?”

“I do,” I say in my most tranquil tone, rising from my seat. I hold up my hands in a composed, I’m-unarmed gesture. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

The door opens, and Nigel is there. “All okay in here?” He sees my father’s face. “Windsor?”

“I’m fine, dammit.”

But Dad doesn’t look fine. His face is still flushed as though from overexertion. Nigel gives me a baleful look.

“It’s time for your medication,” Nigel says.

Dad grabs me by the elbow. “Remember to protect the family.” Then he shuffles out of the room.

Nigel stares at me. “Thanks for not upsetting him.”

“How long were you listening in?” I ask. Then I hold up my hand. It doesn’t matter. “Do you know what the rift was about?”

Nigel takes his time. “Why don’t you ask your cousin?”

“Patricia?”

He says nothing.

“Patricia knows?”

Dad stands at the foot of the stairs now. “Nigel?” he shouts.

“I need to look after your father,” Nigel Duncan tells me. “Have a pleasant day.”

My Jaguar XKR-S GT is waiting for me.

I slide in as my phone buzzes with a text from Kabir. It informs me that a meeting with Professor Ian Cornwell, the watchman who’d been on duty when the paintings were stolen, has been arranged for an hour from now. Kabir hadn’t told Cornwell what it was about — just that a Lockwood wanted to meet. Perfect. Kabir drops a pin on the exact location of Cornwell’s office at Haverford College. Roberts Hall. I know it.

As I drive through the gates of Lockwood, I call Cousin Patricia. She answers on the first ring.

“What’s up?”

“No ‘articulate’?” I say.

“I’m nervous. Do you have an update?”

“Where are you?”

“At the house.”

“I’ll be by in ten minutes.”

Cousin Patricia lives in the same home from whence she was abducted and where her father was murdered. It’s a modest Cape Cod at the end of a cul-de-sac. She is divorced and shares custody of her ten-year-old son, Henry, though Henry’s primary residence is, interestingly enough, with her ex, a renowned neurosurgeon appropriately named Don Quest. The cliché is that Patricia’s life is her work, but clichés exist for a reason. She travels a great deal for her charity, the Abeona Shelters, making speeches and doing fundraisers the world over. Patricia was the one who suggested this somewhat unconventional custody arrangement, a fact that makes the local hoity-toity tsk-tsk over what they want to see as maternal neglect.