Харлан Кобен - Win

“Do you recognize this suitcase?” Young asks.

“Should I?”

But of course, I do. Years ago, Aunt Plum had one made up for every male member of the family. They are all adorned with the family crest and our initials. When she gave it to me — I was fourteen at the time — I tried very hard not to frown. I don’t mind expensive and luxurious. I do mind vulgar and wasteful.

“The bag has your initials on it.”

The technician tipped the luggage so I could see the tacky baroque monogram:

WHL3.

“That’s you, right? WHL3 — Windsor Horne Lockwood the Third?”

I don’t move, don’t speak, don’t give anything away. But, without sounding overly melodramatic, this discovery has given my world a shove off its axis.

“So, Mr. Lockwood, do you want to tell us why your luggage is here?”

Young and Lopez want an explanation. I start with the complete truth: I had not seen the suitcase in many years. How many years? Here my memory becomes foggier. Many, I say. More than ten? Yes. More than twenty? I shrug. Could I at least confirm that the suitcase had belonged to me? No, I would need a closer look, to be able to open it and look at its contents. Young doesn’t like that. I didn’t think she would. But can’t I at least confirm the suitcase is mine just by looking at it? I couldn’t for certain, sorry, I tell them. But those are your initials and your family crest, Lopez reminds me. They are, I say, but that doesn’t mean someone didn’t make up a duplicate suitcase. Why would someone do that? I have no idea.

And so it goes.

I make my way down the spiral staircase and move into a corner. I text Kabir, my assistant, to send a car right away to the Beresford — no need to get a return ride from my federal escorts. I also have him prepare the helicopter for an immediate trip to Lockwood, the family estate on the Main Line in Philadelphia. Traffic between Manhattan and Philadelphia is unpredictable. It would probably be a two-and-a-half-hour car ride at this hour. The helicopter takes forty-five minutes.

I am in a rush.

The black car is waiting for me on Eighty-First Street. As we head toward the helipad on Thirtieth Street and the Hudson River, I call Cousin Patricia’s mobile.

“Articulate,” she says when she answers.

I can’t help but smile. “Wiseass.”

“Sorry, Cuz. All okay?”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t heard from you in a while.”

“And I you.”

“So to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I’m about to take a copter into Lockwood.”

Patricia doesn’t reply.

“Could you meet me there?”

“At Lockwood?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“In an hour.”

She hesitates, which is understandable. “I haven’t been to Lockwood in...”

“I know,” I say.

“I have an important meeting.”

“Cancel it.”

“Just like that?”

I wait.

“What’s going on, Win?”

I wait some more.

“Right,” she says. “If you wanted to tell me on the phone, you’d do so.”

“See you in an hour,” I say, and disconnect the call.

We fly over the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, which traverses the Delaware River separating New Jersey from Pennsylvania. Three minutes later, Lockwood Manor rises into view, as though it deserves a soundtrack. The copter, an AgustaWestland AW169, passes over the old stone walls, hovers in the clearing, and lands in the lawns by what we still call the “new stables.” It is coming on a quarter century since I razed the original stable, a building dating back to the nineteenth century. The symbolic move was uncharacteristically mawkish on my part. I had convinced myself that a tear-down-and-rebuild might hurl the memory in the mind’s debris.

It did not.

When I first brought my friend Myron to Lockwood — we were college freshmen on a midterm break — he shook his head and said, “It looks like Wayne Manor.” He was referencing Batman, of course — the original television show starring Adam West and Burt Ward, the only Batman that counted to us. I understood his point. The manor has an aura, a magnificence, a boldness, but “stately Wayne Manor” is reddish brick while Lockwood is made of gray stone. There have been additions over the years, two tasteful albeit huge renovations on either side. These new wings are comfortable and air-conditioned, brighter and airier, yet they try too hard. They are facsimiles. I need to be in the original stone of Lockwood. I need to experience the damp, the must, the drafts.

But then again, I only visit nowadays.

Nigel Duncan, the longtime family butler/attorney — yes, it’s a bizarre mix — is there to greet me. Nigel is bald with a three-wisps comb-over and double chin. He sports gray-on-gray sweats — gray sweatpants with a Villanova logo and a tie-string waist around the protruding gut, and an equally gray hoodie with the word “Penn” across the front.

I frown at him. “Nice groufit.”

Nigel gives me an elaborate bow. “Would Master Win prefer me in tails?”

Nigel thinks he’s funny.

“Are those Chuck Taylor Cons?” I ask, pointing to his sneakers.

“They’re very chic,” he tells me.

“If you’re in eighth grade.”

“Ouch.” Then he adds, “We weren’t expecting you, Master Win.”

He is teasing with the Master stuff. I let him. “I wasn’t expecting to come.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Groovy,” I tell him.

Nigel’s sometimes-English accent is fake. He was born on this estate. His father worked for my grandfather, just as Nigel works for my father. Nigel has taken a slightly different path. My father paid for him to go to the University of Penn undergrad and law school in order to give Nigel “more” than the life of a butler and yet handcuff him via obligation to stay on at Lockwood permanently, per his family tradition.

PSA: The rich are very good at using generosity to get what they want.

“Will you be staying the night?” Nigel asks.

“No,” I say.

“Your father is sleeping.”

“Don’t wake him,” I say.

We start toward the main house. Nigel wants to know the purpose of my visit, but he would never ask.

“You know,” I say, “your outfit matches the manor’s stone.”

“It’s why I wear it. Camouflage.”

I give the horse stables no more than a quick glance. Nigel sees me do it, but he pretends otherwise.

“Patricia will be here soon,” I say.

Nigel stops and turns toward me. “Patricia, as in your cousin Patricia?”

“The very one,” I tell him.

“Oh my.”

“Will you show her into the parlor?”

I head up the stone steps and into the parlor. I still get the faint whiff of pipe tobacco. I know that’s not possible, that no one has smoked a pipe in this room in almost four decades, that the brain not only conjures up false sights and sounds but, more often, scents. Still the smell is real to me. Maybe aromas do indeed linger, especially the ones we find most comforting.

I walk over to the fireplace and stare up at the empty frame where the Vermeer once hung. The Picasso took up residence on the opposite wall. That was the sum total of the “Lockwood Collection” — three hundred million dollars of value in only two works of art. Behind me I hear the clatter of heel against marble. The sound, I know, is not being made by Chuck Taylors.

Nigel clears his throat. My back stays toward them.

“You don’t really want me to announce her, do you?”

I turn, and there she is. My cousin Patricia.

Patricia’s eyes roam the room before settling on me. “It’s weird to be back,” she says.

“It’s been too long,” I say.

“I concur,” Nigel adds.