“Yes,” she said, but her voice came out in a croak. Trying to get control of herself, she cleared her throat. “Ah…thanks.”
“Anytime, Sam, my girl. Anytime, any place, any body part,” he said as he slipped her arm in his and led her out to the waiting limo.
Now, as they finally reached Barrett’s house, Samantha looked out the window in awe, for it wasn’t a house but an estate, in the full meaning of the word. Huge gates that were flanked by high brick walls opened to a long drive that meandered through a tree-lined park. They seemed to drive for hours before they reached the house, which was as big as an institution.
Everywhere they looked there were muscular men jammed into too-tight suits with wires running from their ears down into the backs of their ill-fitting jackets. Two men with lean, hungry-looking dogs on leashes walked around the perimeter of the walls. As Samantha got out of the car, she thought that this must be how the president of the United States was protected, except that there looked to be more men here than she’d seen in photos of the president.
Standing for a moment looking about the place, Mike was trying his best to memorize every rock, every tree, and, more importantly, every face around him. He was the first and maybe only outsider to see this compound since Barrett had moved here many years ago, and he was going to have to describe it all in his book.
Mike dawdled as long as he could, even once bending to retie his shoelace. On the surface, everything about the place looked good, but on second glance, Mike saw evidence of neglect: gutters that hadn’t been cleaned, a window pane that had been cracked and not replaced, flower gardens that needed weeding. Was it that Doc didn’t care how the place looked? On the other hand, maintaining a place this size took a lot of money.
“Move it,” the big man who had ridden with them—and not said a word during the entire trip—said as he gave Mike a shove. Mike had to force himself not to retaliate to the man’s pushing as he f
ollowed Samantha into the house.
Inside, Samantha was looking about in astonishment. The rooms in the house were huge, made for a time of gracious living, and they were filled with antiques and paintings. Porcelains filled the niches in the walls.
While Samantha was feeling that she wished she had on a hostess gown and a few emeralds, Mike was looking at the place with the eye of one who has grown up in a house that made this one look like a pauper’s den. For the most part, the antiques were fakes, as were the paintings and the porcelains. They weren’t even very good copies, and there were a couple of places on the walls where the flocked wallpaper was lighter, as though a painting had been removed.
Also, there were no servants in sight, only the goons with the ear wires. Surreptitiously, Mike ran his hand over a table, feeling the dust on it as the guard motioned for them to follow him into another room.
The living room was big and light with windows looking onto the ocean, and at once Samantha went to them to look out, but Mike stayed where he was, looking about the room. There in a corner, sitting in a wheelchair, was the old man Mike had spent the last few years of his life reading and writing about. Mike liked to think he would have known him anywhere, although there had never been, to his knowledge, a photo made of the man, for Barrett had always had an aversion to photographs that verged on an obsession.
At first glance, Barrett looked like any very old man: shrunken, shriveled, dark brown skin—but his eyes gave him away. All the intelligence that had brought this man up from the slums of New York to controlling most of the crime in the city still showed in his eyes. The skin around those eyes might be old and wrinkled, but what was inside them was as young and alert as it ever had been.
Now those eyes were looking at Mike. He’d scanned Samantha and dismissed her, as though she were of no significance, but he was studying Mike, looking him up and down as though trying to judge his physical strength as well as trying to figure out what was in his mind. In spite of himself, Mike shivered. It was as though he’d just been subjected to some sort of other-worldly intelligence that could look inside a man and see what was in his soul.
“Won’t you sit down?” the old man whispered. His voice was as frail as his body, and Mike had an idea that Barrett’s physical disabilities infuriated him.
Samantha nearly jumped when she heard the man’s voice as she had not known anyone else was in the room. Turning, she saw a small, thin old man sitting in a wheelchair. Immediately her heart went out to him, as she wondered if he was lonely here in this big house. Did he have friends and family? She smiled at him.
He gave her what looked like a smile, and she thought, Why, he’s shy. Going forward, she offered him her hand and he took it. Holding her hand for a long while, he turned it over in his dry, leathery old palm and studied her young skin.
After a while he released her and motioned for her and Michael to sit down. Samantha did so, starting to take a chair, but Mike pulled her to the couch to sit near him. Giving Mike a bit of a frown that she didn’t allow Mr. Barrett to see, she sat forward on the edge of the couch while Mike leaned back in silence.
“You have come to ask me about Maxie,” Barrett said.
Samantha hadn’t thought much about this meeting; she’d thought little past getting away from Mike and out of New York, but now she was interested. “My grandmother left my family the year after I was born, and I…We thought perhaps…” She looked down at her hands.
Pushing the controls of his electric wheelchair, Barrett moved closer to her and again took her hand. “And you want to ask if Maxie left your family to come to me.”
“Actually…” Samantha began, then looked up at him. “Yes.”
He smiled at her warmly. “I have not been so flattered in all my life,” he said, squeezing her hand, then put his hand on her chin and moved her head so that the light played on her hair and cheeks.
At other times Samantha would have been annoyed at a stranger touching her, but now all she could think of was that this man might be her only remaining relative and that she had nowhere to go when she left Michael’s house.
Barrett dropped his hand from her face. “You look like her. You look very much like her.”
“I’ve been told so.” Leaning toward him, she put her hand over his on the controls of the chair. “Do you know what happened to my grandmother?”
He shook his head no. “On the twelfth of May, 1928, she disappeared from my life and I never saw her again.”
Letting out her pent-up breath, Samantha suddenly felt as though she’d lost something. In just a few minutes she had seemed to fill herself with hope. Never mind that she’d told Mike that she didn’t care about a grandmother who’d committed adultery, she knew now that if an old woman who said she was Gertrude Elliot, also known as Maxie, had walked through the door, Samantha would have thrown her arms about the woman’s neck.
“I didn’t really believe…” she said, stammering over the words, then not knowing what else to say. She couldn’t very well say, By the way, did you and my grandmother have a cuddle about that time and maybe, perhaps possibly, produce a kid that was my father?
“Come in here,” Barrett said, leading the way in his wheelchair. “We’ll have tea and I’ll tell you what I know.”