Mask Market

handled for you, quite a number of years ago. I’ve driven a long way, and I’d sure appreciate a few moments of your time.”

“If it’s about the business, that was closed when—”

“No, sir,” I said, politely. “It was a private matter.”

He stared into my face, nakedly searching. Came up empty.

“Look, Mr…. Logan, is it? I don’t know any—”

“My brother’s name was Burke, sir. And the matter he handled for you concerned your daughter. Do you think we could…?”

Inside, the cottage looked like a lot more money than it had from the road. The peaked ceiling must have gone up fifteen feet, with massive beams running across; a series of skylights cut into one side flooded the room with pale northern sun. The furniture looked like it was wall-to-wall antiques, but, for all I know about stuff like that, it could have been a collection of three-dollar bills. A serious- looking woodstove occupied one corner, the cast-iron ducting showing it was used to actually heat the house. The stone fireplace that took up most of one wall must have been put there for entertainment.

“Coffee?” he asked.

“No, thank you.”

“Tea? Hot chocolate?”

I could see he wasn’t going to engage unless I gave him time to put himself together. “Hot chocolate sounds great, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” I told him.

“Nothing to it,” Preston said, leaving me alone in the living room. I could hear the sounds of glass and metal in what I guessed had to be the kitchen.

Enough time passed for him to have called the cops, if that was what he was going to do. But I didn’t think so; he wouldn’t have let me in if he didn’t want to hear what I had to say first.

“How’s that?” he said, handing me a heavy white china mug.

“Smells perfect.”

“It’s store-bought,” he said apologetically, as if I had been expecting him to produce something more authentic.

“Just about have to be, right? I’ve never been up here before, but I can’t believe the cocoa bean would survive this climate.”

“Yes,” he said, seating himself in a rocking chair covered by a white horse-blanket with red diagonal stripes. “Now, can you explain the whole thing to me, please? I’m a bit confused as to what you’re doing here”—smiling to take the edge off his words.

“My brother and I had different fathers,” I told him. “His name was Burke.”

The expression on his face told me he was ahead of me, but I went on, a man explaining his mission.

“We weren’t close,” I said. “Different lives, different coasts. So, when I learned I had been appointed the executor of his will, I admit I was surprised. I flew in from Portland—Oregon, not Maine—and the lawyer who had handled the will gave me an envelope. Inside, there was a list of my brother’s cases—apparently, he was some sort of private detective—and, well, I suppose you’d call them a list of last requests. Things he wanted me to do.”

“He wanted you to finish his cases?”

“Nothing like that,” I said, smiling to show how absurd the idea was. “I’m not a private detective, I’m a small businessman. Very small—I own a motor court on the coast, me and my wife. What Burke wanted me to do was, well—I’m not sure how to say this—kind of, maybe, check on how his cases turned out. It seems most of them involved children. I guess he wanted to know they came out okay. In the long run, I mean.”

“Why do you call him that?”

“Call him…what?”

“‘Burke.’ It seems strange to call your brother by his last name.”

“Oh,” I said, chuckling. “I see what you’re saying. Well, that’s what I always called him—a private thing, just between us. He always called me ‘Logan.’”

“I always called him Mr. Burke.”

I shrugged, as if to say my brother’s ways were a mystery to me.

He rocked gently in his chair. “So your brother’s records indicate he did some job for me?” he said.

“That’s right. There isn’t a lot of information there, but, whatever he did, it concerned your daughter. Beryl, right?”

“I had a daughter named Beryl,” he said, planting his feet to stop the rocker from moving. “But you’re going back a very long time. She’s a grown woman now.”

“So everything turned out for the best?”

“That’s what your brother wanted to know?”

“I guess so. He left…bequests to several of the children on his caseload. Not very much,” I said, holding up my hand as if to disclaim any big-bucks potential, “but…Well, like I said, we weren’t close. I couldn’t begin to tell you what was in his mind. He left some property he owned to me, and his car—that’s it, sitting out there in your driveway—too. But all the rest of his estate, and, like I said, that wasn’t much, he wanted divided up among five people. From the instructions he left, I could tell they were all old cases of his.”

“And you started with my daughter?”

“Actually, I’m finishing with your daughter. The other bequests have all been disbursed.”

“Well, as I said, Beryl’s not a child anymore. So why not just go straight to her?”

“That is what I did, for the others,” I said. “It took me a while—I don’t have to be a private detective to know that some women change their names when they get married. And the only addresses I had were for the parents, anyway.”

“I haven’t lived at the address Mr. Burke had for me for many years.”

“I found that out when I tried to visit. Luckily, your number was listed.”

“So why didn’t you just call?” he said, a flash of color showing under his grayness.

“I don’t believe this is the kind of thing people would take seriously if they heard it on the phone. With all the con men and scam artists running around today—you’d be amazed at what you learn, managing a motel—how would you have reacted if a stranger called and said he had money he wanted to give to your daughter?”

He nodded, but didn’t say anything.

I took a sip of the hot chocolate. “I couldn’t find a Beryl Preston in any phone book—I used the Internet to search. So I thought I’d drive up, answer any questions you have, and you’d tell me how to get in touch with her.”

He cupped his mug closely, as if warming his hands.

A minute passed.

“You think I’m nothing now, don’t you?” he said.

A beam of sunlight bent itself through the skylight, standing between us like the third rail on train tracks.

“I don’t understand,” I said, buying time.

“This house, the land it sits on, the furniture you see here, it’s mine. Truly my own. I never knew what that felt like, back when I was…back when I first met you.”

“Me? I—”

“I wasn’t just a dog on a leash,” he said, bitterness etching his thin voice like vitriol on glass. “Not just an actor playing a role, either. I ran the company, even if I didn’t own it.”

“I don’t know what—”

“You know what my strength always was? My secret strength? I was a good listener. I paid attention. A person’s voice, it’s like an instrument. You can hear if it’s out of tune, whether it’s under stress. The FBI even has machines now, for listening to voices. It’s supposed to be better than a polygraph. I’ll bet it is.”

I sat back on the couch, waiting for whatever he was going to come at me with.

“Feel free,” he said, pointing at a shallow brass bowl on a coffee table made from a cross-sectioned piece of timber, varnished to a high gloss. “That’s an ashtray.”