Appleton
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
London, England
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Present Day
After his mad scramble to JFK to make the British Airways flight from New York to London, Agent Ben Houston was happy to arrive the following morning at the beautiful home of the late Elizabeth St. Germaine. The house was on Westbury Road in Ealing, West London. It was a lovely old red brick, with a balcony over the front door and a turret to the left. It was as British as Ben could have imagined.
He was let into the house by a soft-spoken woman named Annalise and shown into a bright, sunny conservatory and brought a cup of tea. Ben knew this was urgent, and he asked when Ms. St. Germaine was coming. Annalise said, with a smile, “The earth is not falling off its axis, I hope. Agent Houston, I assure you, Madam is coming. Drink your tea.” Then she disappeared. To keep himself from pacing the beautiful Tabriz, Ben checked his email—nothing new from Nicholas or Gray or any of the rest of the team. He was about to call Nicholas when Melinda St. Germaine came in.
Ben stood immediately, without thinking, and held out his credentials.
She smiled at him, and he found himself smiling back. “That won’t be necessary. I believe you’re the only American law enforcement gentleman I’m expecting today. So sorry to keep you waiting, traffic was beastly. Why Mother wanted to live so far away from central London I have no idea.”
Melinda St. Germaine was small, compact, with an athletic body and an angel’s face, a pointed chin and clear gray eyes. Black heels put her only at his chin. She was a redhead, just like him, her hair in a high ponytail. He appreciated her well-fitted black suit. Probably made for her.
“It’s fine, really, I’ve only been here for a few minutes. I’m Ben, Ben Houston, Agent Houston, I mean. FBI.” He shut his mouth, he was being a git, as Nicholas would say.
She nodded. “Yes, I imagine you’re jet-lagged. I know I always want to fall over when I fly home from the States. You told me you wanted to look at my mother’s papers. Annalise told me you looked like you were going to jump out of your skin, so I suppose you’re in an all-fire rush to get into my mother’s shed, aren’t you?” As she spoke, she fixed herself a cup of tea, two sugars and milk, and watched him, holding the saucer in one hand and the cup in the other. She took a sip and set the cup in the saucer with a gentle clink.
“Annalise is right,” Ben said. “We’re on a case that’s breaking quickly and we think there may be some answers in your mother’s files. I’m so sorry for your loss. I was told your mother died of a heart attack?”
Melinda buried her nose in her cup. “Yes, two weeks ago. I still can’t believe it. I thought, we all thought, her doctor included, that she was in wonderful shape, she’d been steeplechasing the day before she died. But the postmortem showed cardiac arrest. At her age, I suppose it’s common enough.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “She died alone. Out in the shed. I suppose it’s how she’d want to go, surrounded by her books and papers.”
“I’m truly sorry.”
She brushed away the tears. “Yes, well. Since we all thought she was in good health and she was alone when she died, and I’m in bloody Parliament, the coroner opened an inquest, did an autopsy and ran a toxicology screen. They’re still waiting on the toxicology results, but he’s ruled the preliminary cause of her death was, as I said, cardiac arrest.
“The police took a number of her things for testing. It’s all been very disturbing. But the biggest thing, I’m afraid I’m not all accustomed to the idea I’ll never see her again.”
Ben said, “I lost my dad last year, and I don’t know that I’ll ever get over it.”
“So you understand. You keep waiting for them to come into the room, or the phone to ring, and realizing it won’t happen—well, it’s heartbreaking, isn’t it?”
Ben nodded. “I still pick up the phone to call him. Maybe we aren’t supposed to get over it. Maybe we’re supposed to remember them always and appreciate what we had.”
She was quiet for a moment, then. “Just so. If you’re finished your tea, follow me. Mother’s shed is a bit of a train wreck, I haven’t had the heart to go in there. The lawyers have been squawking at me, so you will find everything as she left it.”
“Her estate is still being worked out?”
“Oh, you don’t know?” Melinda stopped in a long hallway and took a left, out double glass French doors into the gardens. “I thought you called because of the lawsuit.”
“What lawsuit?”
“The Kohaths are suing my mother—now my mother’s estate—for defamation and theft. David Maynes, the father of the deadly duo, as I call them—Cassandra and Ajax Kohath—approached my mother after the original biography released, with ‘new information’ as he called it. Mr. Maynes happily cooperated with my mother to draft a second volume. She’d always been fascinated with Appleton Kohath—not only was he a great archaeologist, he was also a scientist, spent time with all the brightest minds of the day. This was around the turn of the last century. He was the one who created the Genesis Group.
“David Maynes showed up with notebooks and letters he claimed were from the family archive. Mother read them and was keen to write a new book, a sort of companion to the first biography of Kohath. One of the new things she’d discovered was Appleton Kohath and Nikola Tesla were great friends and worked together on several major projects before having a falling-out. Mother was interested in what drove the two apart and what their major projects were. The publisher was thrilled with the idea—the original book did very well indeed, and they thought another volume, adding in the Tesla connection and their projects, would make for more in-depth treatment, a second bite at the apple.”
While she talked, Ben hanging on every word, they’d crossed a lovely English garden, brimming with early spring flowers, white and purple and yellow, and were now hiking up a small rise toward a stone cottage.
He paused a moment, looking around. “Fabulous gardens.”
“Yes, they are, aren’t they? I used to hide under that stone bench over there and Mother would pretend she couldn’t see me, would wander the garden calling my name.” Her voice was thick with tears, and Ben reached out and squeezed her shoulder. A few moments later, she gathered herself. “Ah, here we are.”