“Who’d like to know?”
“My name is Irene Kelly. I’m trying to locate my cousin-your brother Arthur’s son?”
There was a pause before he said, “I’ve never met my brother’s b-” He caught himself, started again. “I’ve never met my brother’s son. Sorry I can’t help you.” He paused again. “If you find him, tell him to give me a call someday.” He hung up.
Well, that was quick, if not painless. I suspected the “b-word” wouldn’t have been “boy.” “My brother’s bastard,” he’d been about to say. It might have been easier to judge him harshly for that if he’d said he never wanted to hear from Travis-or if my own family hadn’t also disowned Briana and her son. Arthur and Briana’s false marriage had probably embarrassed the Spannings, too. Gerald, I reminded myself, had at least stuck by his brother when he was accused of murder.
I gathered my belongings and headed over to the city council chambers. The chambers were all but empty when I arrived, and except for a few resident gadflies, not many other people showed up. The most interesting item on the agenda was not one most folks would recognize as such-a change in plans for use of a navy property that was coming back into the city’s possession-but that item was quickly tabled. The rest of the meeting plodded along over relatively unimportant issues. Even the usual sideshow was dull-when long-standing opponents took their expected potshots at one another, the remarks lacked heat.
I had positioned myself so that I could see latecomers entering the audience, but never saw anyone who even faintly resembled Geoff’s description of the man who had asked for me.
The meeting finally came to a close, and I rushed back to the paper to file my story. I had already called in to let Morey know that there was no need to hold much space for the council story.
I knocked the story out fairly quickly, then checked my e-mail. Nothing from Travis. I said good night to the few remaining staff members and hurried home.
The dogs bounced and bounded to communicate their joy at my return. Cody gave one yowl and then managed to regain a proper cat sense of aloofness. The light on the answering machine was blinking.
I pressed the play button.
“Irene? Are you there?” Frank’s voice. He sounded tired. “Oh, wait, it’s Tuesday-you’re probably at the council meeting. The flight went fine and the hotel is okay, but we’ve already encountered some problems with the job, so we may be here a little longer than we expected. Sorry to have missed you. I’m pretty beat, so I’ll probably turn in. I’ll call you again tomorrow if I get a chance.” He left the hotel number, said again that he’d try to call the next day, then hung up.
Well, hell.
I went to bed, pulled Frank’s pillow close before Cody could claim it. I was tired, but I didn’t sleep.
I wondered if Margot got lucky. I wondered who the guy was. I was ticked off at her for interfering, but at least she might be able to tell me his name.
I wondered if Travis would call.
I kept thinking about Frank.
The phone rang. I’ll own up to a perverse wish that my husband had been having trouble sleeping, too, and was the caller. But the caller was Rachel.
“Did I wake you up?” she asked.
“No.”
“You, too? First night Pete’s away is always a bitch. And I missed his call tonight-I was out at the store.”
I couldn’t tell her that her disappointment sounded wonderful to me. “I missed Frank’s call, too. Do you have dinner plans for the next few nights?”
“No. Want to get together? That’s exactly what I was calling to suggest.”
“Why don’t you come over here tomorrow?”
“Okay.”
We talked of inconsequential things for a few more minutes, then hung up. I was drowsy by then, and managed about an hour’s worth of fitful sleep before the phone rang again.
“Did I wake you up?” my husband’s voice asked.
“No,” I said.
“Liar.”
“Okay, so I am, but talk to me anyway.”
He did. He couldn’t sleep, had gone for a walk, finally decided to call. We had a long conversation, not about anything special, but one we were reluctant to end. “I should let you get some sleep,” he’d say every so often, and we’d keep talking, remembering something else that had happened that day, or discussing some plan to do something together when he returned, or recalling something we’d meant to ask about.
“Don’t bother with that leaky faucet in the kitchen,” he said at one point. “I’ll fix it when I get home.” He knew I could fix it if I wanted to, I knew he wasn’t trying to tell me not to fix it myself. There was only one phrase in all of it that mattered: “when I get home.”
The reassurance of the mundane, wearing down our troubles.
I didn’t make much progress in my efforts to find Travis on Wednesday. At work, two vague leads suddenly turned into hot but demanding stories that had nothing to do with one another; trying to do justice to both stories, I was too harried to try to locate my cousin-and was forced to cancel my dinner plans with Rachel. I ended up catching about three hours of sleep between Wednesday and Thursday, worked furiously and turned in both stories Thursday afternoon. I was whipped.
In the long run it was worth it, though. Between the time I had spent on the obit on Sunday and his pleasure with the stories I turned in on Thursday, Morey agreed to give me Friday off.
Late Thursday afternoon, by driving like a demon and begging a favor from a clerk I knew in the county records office, I did manage to get a look at Arthur Spanning’s death certificate for about five minutes before the office closed.
As the holy card from his funeral had said, Arthur Anthony Spanning had died a little over three weeks earlier, at the age of forty-eight.
I glanced at the bottom half of the certificate and learned that the cause of death was bone cancer; I was a little startled to see that he had died at St. Anne’s, where my parents died, and that he had been seen for some time by the same oncologist who cared for my father before his death-Dr. Brad Curtis. Later I would consider the irony of Arthur, a man my father had despised, struggling for his life with the help of the same physician, but in that moment I was thinking only of the suffering he had probably endured-the kind of suffering I had witnessed when my father was ill-and for the first time in a long time, I felt something other than anger toward Arthur Spanning.
The clerk reminded me that it was closing time and so I hurriedly turned my attention to the top of the form, “Decedent Personal Data.”
Arthur’s father was listed as Unknown Spanning; his state of birth, unknown; his mother’s maiden name, unknown. Past experience with death certificates had taught me that this did not mean he was illegitimate-only that the doctor filling out the certificate didn’t have the information.
Arthur had not served in the military, and his years of education completed were listed as six-a surprise to me, since I remembered him as a man who could converse easily on all sorts of subjects. I wondered if this was a typographical error. Then again, he had married into lots of money when he was very young, so perhaps he was self-educated.
I wrote down the Las Piernas address listed in the “Usual Residence” section and tried to picture its general location. Downtown; perhaps one of the new lofts or condos. Not really as snooty an address as I would have guessed, especially supposing he had inherited the big bucks after Gwendolyn DeMont’s death. Maybe it was a case of easy come, easy go. Arthur might have blown that fortune in the first few years after her murder.
There was one other surprise on the form. In space number fourteen, “Marital Status,” the word “Married” was typed in; and in space number fifteen, “Name of Surviving Spouse; If Wife, Enter Maiden Name,” was “Briana Maguire.”
“You liar!” I said aloud, causing the clerk to look up at me. I calmed down. Why should I be surprised that Arthur was still occasionally faking people out about his marriage to my aunt? Grudgingly, I also had to admit the possibility that if Travis spent much time around him, he might have been trying to hide his son’s illegitimacy. But why not say they were divorced?