My Daughter's Legacy Page 14

  “I remember your face when we told you that,” I interjected. “You looked dumbfounded.”

  “I was.”

  “You accused us of ‘blindsiding’ you, and then you excused yourself and went upstairs to call your lawyer.” To Maddee, I added, “We should’ve known then there was something Nana wasn’t telling us.”

  “Nicole.” Maddee gave me a warning look, so I didn’t say any more. I knew I was pushing things, but I was just so angry I couldn’t help it.

  The four of us shared an awkward moment of silence, which was broken by my phone ringing from my pocket. Excusing myself, I moved into the hall, pulled it out, and checked the screen, but it wasn’t a number I knew. I decided to answer anyway.

  To my surprise, it was Gabe Koenig, the son of the murder victim and the man Ortiz had said might show up wanting to talk with us. Sure enough, he was in town asking if I would be willing to meet with him now. He suggested a coffeehouse off of I-195, but I invited him to come here instead, without even checking with Nana first. I gave him the address, and he said he could be here in “twenty minutes at the most.”

  When I returned to the room, I saw that the conversation had moved to far less contentious ground and was now focused on Harold’s interest in diasporas.

  “Do you have a collection of your own,” Maddee asked, “or do you just evaluate items for other collectors?”

  He smiled shyly. “Oh, I’m a collector too. I have been for years. In fact, I’d have given anything to buy that Huguenot pamphlet from your grandfather—not that I could’ve afforded it, but even if I could have, his answer would’ve been no. Douglas was dead set on giving it to the Smithsonian.”

  “What sorts of things are in your collection?” Maddee asked.

  Harold’s eyes sparkled as he listed all sorts of documents as well as the odd item, such as a Beothuk hide scraper from Newfoundland and a brick thrown by passengers of the refugee ship Komagata Maru when it was turned away from Canada.

  Back in my seat on the couch, I only half listened, reserving my other ear for the sound of Gabe’s arrival.

  Still, Harold was an interesting guy, and I was starting to feel guilty for how I’d jumped down his throat earlier—especially once he shared with us the sad tale of his own experience with diaspora. He said his parents had been missionaries to Rhodesia back in the ’60s and ’70s, but that during the Rhodesian Bush War, when he was just eight years old, he saw them gunned down by ZANLA guerrillas, leaving him and his little brother all alone. The two boys managed to escape to Mozambique and were eventually taken in by relatives in Baltimore.

  “I suppose that’s how I ended up specializing in documents relating to diaspora,” he concluded, “because of what I’d been through in my own life.”

  “That’s so sad,” I blurted out, the first words I’d said since returning from my phone call.

  He nodded. “Sadder for my younger brother, who didn’t fare so well. He’s a truly gifted artist, but he went through so much at such a young age that I can’t really blame him for how he turned out.”

  “Turned out?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “At some point in his life, he headed down the wrong track, and things deteriorated from there, as you know.”

  Maddee glanced at Nana then back at him. “Did we miss something? Who is your brother?”

  Harold’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry. I thought the detective would have told you that part. She told your grandmother.”

  “That’s why I asked Harold here tonight,” Nana added, “to see if he could shed any light on your grandfather’s involvement with the counterfeiting operation back then.”

  Maddee and I both sat there stunned, listening as Harold explained further, saying that his brother was currently serving time in prison for his part as a counterfeiter.

  “His job was to engrave the plates from which they printed the money,” Harold added. “When all was said and done, he was one of the ones who ended up getting arrested, tried, and convicted.”

  I was so confused. “Wait. I don’t understand. I thought your connection to this case had to do with Taavi Koenig. Didn’t Granddad refer him to you, and then he contacted you to help him find the old illuminated manuscript?”

  “He did.”

  “So it’s just a coincidence that your own brother was involved in the counterfeiting operation being investigated by the Secret Service at that same time?”

  Harold shook his head. “No. As I was about to explain to your grandmother when you two arrived, back in 1996, my brother came to me and asked for a favor. He was in need of a certain piece of equipment that could only be bought through a printing company, but he didn’t know where to start.” Harold explained that because he dealt with documents and papers all the time, his brother thought he might have some contacts in the industry, someone he could recommend. “I told him yes, that I’d just recently been speaking with Douglas Talbot of Talbot Paper and Printing about a lost illuminated manuscript. I said Talbot was a good man and that he should start there.”

  Folding his hands, Harold continued. “Once he heard that, he asked if I’d be willing to request the machinery on his behalf because Douglas might sell it to me at a lower price given our prior dealings. Not realizing the significance of the machine in question, I agreed to try. I came down and met with Douglas and made the request. Though he seemed rather nervous about it, he complied. Maybe he suspected what the machine would be used for, maybe not, I don’t know. But I sure didn’t.”

  Harold told us he arranged for the purchase and saw that it was paid for and delivered within a few weeks, but then he thought nothing more about it until 2004 when federal agents showed up at his door.

  “They arrested you?” Maddee cried.

  He leaned forward. “Not exactly. They brought me in for questioning.” He added that they were rounding up everyone connected with the counterfeiting ring. That was the first he’d heard of it, but it didn’t take long for him to figure out what was going on. His little brother had been mixed up with the wrong people for a long time, and he’d tricked Harold into doing something illegal on his behalf.

  “Well, buying the machine wasn’t illegal, per se,” he said. “It’s just that the enterprise in general was illegal, and he dragged me into it without my even realizing it.”

  “Were you charged?” I asked, dismayed at the thought of this helpless little man in prison.

  Harold shook his head. “It was obvious to the authorities that I’d been duped. I was an ignorant fool who had allowed myself to be tricked by my own brother. At least they understood the situation for what it really was and let me go in the end.”

  We were all quiet for a moment.

  “So, Nana,” Maddee said, “was Granddad taken in for questioning too?”

  “Not that I know of,” she replied, seeming startled at the thought. “Then again, there were obviously a lot of things about your grandfather I didn’t know. Whether he was or not, he was never charged with any crime. Even the detective will tell you that.”

  The ring of the doorbell interrupted us. I admitted to all of them that would be Gabe Koenig, son of the murder victim, who had called a while ago.

  “You asked him here?” Nana whispered, obviously not very happy about it.

  “Why not? Seems like this is the week to lay everything out on the table. It can’t hurt to answer his questions—or to ask him a few of our own.”

  Our visit with Gabe Koenig ended up being fairly uneventful, especially compared to the time we’d spent thus far with Harold Underwood. A tall, slim fellow who looked to be in his early forties, Gabe had an intense, curious sort of demeanor that reminded me of a ferret or a meerkat. He seemed uncomfortable to be in Nana’s home, but to his credit he settled in and accepted an offer of tea and got to the point rather quickly.

  “I’m here for answers—or at least as many as you can give. I’m sorry for barging in like this, but as you can imagine, every time there’s a new development in my f
ather’s case, I get my hopes up again. If you don’t mind, I’d just like to hear straight from the two of you the new information you told the detective this week about what happened back then.” He looked first at Nana and then at me.

  There wasn’t much to say beyond the basics, though I was glad to see that the more times I went through this with someone, the easier it was to talk about it. Nana seemed far less comfortable, but at least she did as asked, running through the same detailed version she’d given us earlier. When we were both finished, he simply nodded and thanked us, though I could see the disappointment in his eyes, and I knew he’d been yearning for more than what we’d been able to give.

  Nana seemed a bit overcome by the discussion and excused herself to make a fresh pot of tea. As she headed for the kitchen, I wondered if she even knew how. Most of the time, she had people to do that sort of thing for her.

  “I’d like to hear the story from your side, if you don’t mind,” I said, returning my attention to Gabe. I added that I’d been off at school and was coming in a little late to the game.

  “Sure,” he replied, seeming relieved to be asked. He began his own tale, and it was interesting to hear it from the point of view of a troubled nineteen-year-old whose father simply disappeared off the face of the earth. Gabe talked about how he’d pleaded with his mother back then to file a missing persons report, but she wasn’t having any of it. “ ‘Your father chose to leave us high and dry, and I’m not about to send any cops chasing after him. He wants out of here? Fine. Good riddance.’ She was bitter and angry and maybe even a little relieved he was gone.”

  According to Gabe, their marriage was a mess by then, torn apart by arguments over money and by “my father’s obsession with that stupid illuminated manuscript.”

  Bristling at the words, Harold seemed to go on the defensive. “At least some good came out of it,” he blurted out. “Like your scholarship.”

  Gabe looked at Harold as if to say, Do you really think a scholarship could make up for the loss of a father?

  “Scholarship?” I asked lightly, trying to diffuse the situation.

  Gabe shrugged. “Uh-huh. My siblings and I all went to Ohio State on full rides.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, the Door of Freedom scholarship. It was a government thing for children who have been abandoned by one or both parents.” As an afterthought, he added, “I guess there is a certain irony there. If we’d known the truth back then, that Dad hadn’t abandoned us at all but instead had been murdered, we wouldn’t have qualified for the money in the first place.”

  We were all quiet for a moment until Maddee said softly, “This must be so hard for you.”

  He nodded, and I thought I could see tears in his eyes. “It’s almost harder now that we know. For the past two years, ever since we learned what happened to him, I can’t seem to stop going through scenarios in my mind. I’ve pictured my father’s final moments a thousand different ways. Was he just strolling in the woods that morning when it started to rain and so he ran for the nearest shelter, which happened to be the cabin? Maybe the sudden chill sent him over to the cot, where he wrapped himself in a blanket, and as he waited out the storm he accidently drifted off to sleep? Did he even see the beautiful double rainbow in the sky that morning, or was he already dead by then?”

  Gabe went on with several completely different scenarios, each of which sent his dad to the cabin for a different reason. “Sadly, with no body to examine for evidence, we may never know why he was in that cabin, much less who killed him.”

  Later, in the car, I took a different way home, zigzagging along back roads south of the James toward Richmond proper. Maddee was so lost in thought she didn’t even seem to notice or care. I think we both needed the quiet of the longer but far less congested drive, the lull of the dark, empty streets, to process all we’d been through.

  Eventually, I pulled onto Lee Bridge, heading north, and as we crossed over the water, Richmond’s beautiful nighttime skyline loomed in front of us. How different this would’ve looked, I thought, back in 1864, back when Great-Great-Great-Grandma Therese lived and worked in this city.

  One of the pictures in Aunt Cissy’s box came to mind, an image taken from a bluff overlooking this river. Back then, there had been no interstates or highways here, much less miles of suburbia filled with houses and stores and people and more. In that old photo, the landscape had seemed bucolic. Rural. Nearly devoid of development.

  Yet that had been deceptive, I thought as I reached the other side of the bridge and continued onto Belvidere. Whether the photographer had done it on purpose or not, according to Aunt Cissy, just outside the range of that picture had been an encampment of refugees and two Yankee prisons. The signs of war.

  As we neared the turn that would bring us the rest of the way home, I decided that perhaps life was never as simple as it could appear for anyone—not now and not back then either.

  Things could be deceptive, whether you were working to unravel a seemingly unsolvable puzzle in the here and now or watching the whole world crumble around you in 1864.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Therese

  It rained over the next three days. At night, Therese dreamed about caring for the wounded and woke up in a panic several times. During the day, she thought about the hospital in every quiet moment she had. She aimed to concentrate on schooling the girls, and she did, working on reading, writing, and arithmetic. But still her mind returned often to the tragedies she’d witnessed.

  Florence mostly observed her older sisters, while Eleanor worked diligently and Lydia longed to spend her time outside, whether it was pouring rain or not. She stared out the window as much as she could. On Thursday, when the rain stopped, Therese took the girls on a long walk. Eleanor and Florence did their best to stay out of the mud puddles, but Lydia splashed through each one she could find.

  They went as far as Harvie’s Woods, a place Therese had walked to as a schoolgirl—though now an encampment of tents lined the edge of the trees, most likely the temporary homes of displaced people who’d fled the nearby battlefields for safety.

  Therese and the girls stood at the edge of the bluff, overlooking the James River and the Falls. All sorts of people—black and white, children and adults, female and male—were fishing along the banks. She pointed out Belle Isle to the girls, which had been turned into a prison for Union soldiers.

  Factories—including Tredegar Iron Works, where artillery for the war was produced—spewed puffs of black smoke above and across the river, which were carried by the breeze.

  Therese directed the girls’ attention to the Virginia capitol and reminded them that Thomas Jefferson had designed it.

  “That’s where Papa works,” Lydia said.

  Therese thought perhaps he worked in a nearby building but agreed with the little girl anyway. She knew it had been an effort to squeeze the Confederate government in alongside the government of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Considering their father was a clerk for the secretary of state, his office would definitely be somewhere in the vicinity.

  Below she could make out the slave auction off Wall Street, several blocks southeast of the capitol, but she didn’t mention that to the girls either. Instead, she gestured toward the seven hills, covered with trees that were just beginning to change color, flashing hints of gold and red among the evergreens. It was such a beautiful city.

  As they walked along the bluff, they came across a young photographer taking an image of the water. They paused and observed for a while before they moved on, Therese feeling appreciative for all the recent advances in photography. The beauty that photo would convey was needed now, more than ever.

  As they walked farther down a bluff, a muffled explosion startled Therese, and she looked behind her.

  “That’s just artillery going off,” Eleanor explained.

  “Yes,” Therese answered. “But from where?”

  “Petersburg.”

  “You can hear it
all the way from there?”

  Eleanor nodded. “You’ll get used to it.”

  Therese guessed she would. The girls certainly had.

  When they returned home, Mrs. Galloway met them at the door. As Therese apologized for the state of Lydia’s boots, the woman quickly dismissed any worry. “We’ve been invited to the Davises’ for a singing tonight after supper. We’d like you to come along.”

  Therese tried not to show her reaction. This was President Davis the woman was talking about. Mrs. Galloway didn’t specify that Therese was being included for childcare purposes, but she knew her role and didn’t mind. At least she would get to see the president and first lady in person, not to mention the inside of their beautiful home.

  Far less impressed, Eleanor groaned, which wasn’t like her. Of the three girls, she was usually the most compliant.

  Mrs. Galloway sighed. “Mind your manners, Eleanor, and set a good example for your sisters.”

  Lydia crossed her arms and stuck out her lip.

  “And you, young lady. Go get cleaned up,” her mother commanded.

  “I’ll see to her boots,” Therese said.

  “Bless you.”

  Therese headed to the pump in the backyard with Lydia’s boots, Eleanor trailing along behind her.

  “Mother thinks I don’t like the Davises,” she said. “But that’s not it. It makes me sad to think about going there.”

  “Why is that?” Therese asked as she grabbed the brush for the boots, but she could guess. The middle Davis boy, Joseph, had died in April after falling off the porch of their mansion. It had been in all of the papers.

  When Eleanor didn’t answer, Therese asked, “Does it have to do with their little boy?”

  The girl nodded. “We played with them outside last time we visited, before the accident.”

  Therese placed her hand on the little girl’s shoulder.

  “And now they have the new baby, and I worry something will happen to her. And I know I’m not supposed to know this, but I worry about Mama’s baby too.”