Vonda broke in then and said, "Oh, yeah, you mean the guy in the photo."
Schell stopped speaking and turned to her. "What guy in the photo?" he asked.
"The joker sitting across from where I appeared, the one with the beard and the little round glasses?" she said. She made circles with her forefingers and thumbs and brought them up to her eyes.
"The photo, though…," I said.
"Right back there," said Vonda, pointing over her shoulder with her thumb. "On that table in the corner. I looked at it when I came in."
I went to the table in question and lifted the photo we'd retrieved from Parks's house the night he was murdered. As I walked back toward where the others were gathered around the coffee table, I studied it but saw no sign of Dr. Greaves. "I don't see him here," I said.
Vonda reached out for it. "Here," she said, "I'll show you." She took the picture from me and held it up to the light. She looked at it for a moment and then began scraping away the stains on its glass with her long, red thumbnail. "What is this crap?" she asked.
"You see that guy right there?" said Antony. He leaned over from where he sat next to her on the couch and pointed.
"Yeah?" she said.
"That crap is his blood."
"Christ, why didn't you tell me?" She rubbed the residue off her nail onto a napkin on the table. "That's disgusting."
"But where's the good doctor?" asked Schell.
"There's the little pissant, right there," said Vonda, pointing now with her nail but not touching the glass. "Give that guy a beard and a pair of those goofy librarian specs, think of him as a few years older, and I'll bet you a sawbuck that's him."
Schell reached across the table, keeping an eye on the figure Vonda pointed to, and took the framed photo from her. He brought it up close to his eyes, a moment passed, and then he nodded. "You know, I think you're right," he said.
"I know I'm right," said Vonda.
"A sawbuck it is then," said Schell. He passed the photo to me, and I looked closely at the man they had singled out. Vonda was right, but had she said nothing I'd not have noticed it. There was Greaves, dressed in a suit as were the other subjects of the picture, standing a few feet behind Parks in the group of a dozen or so men.
"Let me have your knife," I said to Schell. He took it out, opened it, and handed it to me. I turned the picture frame over and, using the blade, lifted the thin nails that held the photo and mat in place behind the glass. I flipped the frame over and let the photo fall out onto my lap. After handing the knife to Isabel, I placed the blood-splattered frame and the mat on the table, picked up the photo, and studied it more closely.
"Look there," said Morgan, pointing, "on the back."
I turned the picture over, and there on the lower left-hand side, written in pencil was the date, December 23, 1925. Beneath that were the words Cold Spring Harbor followed by the letters ERO.
"Cold Spring Harbor's a town, we know that," I said, "but E-RO, what's that?"
"How do you know they're initials and not a name, Ero?" asked Morgan.
"You might be right, but they're capitalized, which leads me to believe they're initials, each standing for its own word, perhaps the name of the group or club to which all of these men gathered in the photo belong."
"Did you ever hear of anybody called Ero?" asked Antony.
"No," said Vonda, "but I never heard of anybody called Antony Cleopatra either."
"Maybe it's a picture from a Christmas party," said Isabel.
"That'd make sense, considering the date," said Schell. "If I'm not mistaken, a number of the men have drinks in their hands."
"And they're not lined up as if for an official shot," I added, "but seem to have been milling around informally when someone interrupted and said, 'Say cheese!'"
"I think this is a job for The Worm," said Schell. "I'll call the library first thing in the morning."
"The Worm?" asked Morgan, and the conversation moved off in another direction with Schell and Antony telling tales about the incredible memory and equally incredible power to annoy of Emmet Brogan.
The cognac as well as the conversation continued to flow, and before long, the sudden discovery of my own inebriation made me content to again simply sit back, listen, and revel in the sense of the event as a kind of family gathering. Isabel, who was well lit herself, told the ghost story about the silver mine. I translated when it was necessary and was amazed at Schell's reaction to it. Whereas I'd have expected him to adopt a kind of sneering skepticism in the face of a true tale of spirits, he seemed genuinely interested. When she was done recounting the details, he even went so far as to say, "from my experience with the ghost of Charlotte Barnes, I know how you must have felt." Antony and I looked at each other in reaction to Schell's statement, both of us wondering if some change had begun in the boss as a result of our investigation.
There came a time later when, even though the conversation droned on, I was more interested in the butterflies, their flight patterns, and the thought of the fleeting nature of their lives. I must have dozed off for a little while then, because when I awoke, it was to the strains of a duet of "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," being sung by Antony and Morgan. Schell, cigarette clamped at the corner of his lips, was keeping the rhythm by patting his hands on the table, Isabel was humming the background harmony, and Vonda was passed out, her mouth open and an orange theope perched on her nose.
I didn't even remember going to bed but found myself there when I woke, close to noon. Isabel had already gotten up. Feeling a little shaky, I crawled out of bed and threw on my robe. Upon entering the kitchen, I found them all gathered again, save for Schell. The only verbal welcome I got was an "Hola," from Isabel. The others smiled and nodded but looked altogether bedraggled.
"Coffee?" I asked.
"Forget the coffee, kid. It's hair-of-the dog-time," said Antony.
Then I noticed the two open champagne bottles on the table. I took a seat, Morgan passed me an empty flute, and Vonda poured. "Takes the edge off," she said as the bubbles rose in the glass.
I was just going to ask where Schell was when he came into the kitchen. He took his seat and reached for the bottle. Filling his glass with one hand, he held up the other, waving a slip of paper. "That was Emmet just getting back to me," he said. "He does fast work. I called him at eight this morning. He said that the initials ERO, and he thinks they're most definitely initials, in conjunction with the town of Cold Spring Harbor, refer to the"-here Schell consulted the slip of paper again-"Eugenics Record Office."
"What's that?" asked Antony.
"Never heard of it," said Schell. "But Emmet said the study of eugenics has to do with inherited traits, like in Darwin or, more precisely, Mendel. He's going to look into it more deeply and call back later."
That afternoon, Schell, Antony, Vonda, and Morgan took off in the Cord to drop Vonda at the train station and then to take Morgan shopping for a few things that were not in the boxes we had been able to retrieve from the cabin. Isabel couldn't go, as it was still uncertain to the police if she'd been kidnapped or was a suspect in connection with Parks's murder. Even though there were no photographs of her, it was too chancy for her to leave the house yet.
She and I stayed home and lolled on the couch in the living room, talking, kissing, napping. At about two o'clock, the phone in the office rang, and I went to answer it.
"Is Tommy there?" asked the voice of The Worm.