horn-rim reading glasses. “Huh?”
“I just got in. I thought I’d see if there was anything else you need.”
“A couple dozen years to organize all of this, a new pair of eyes . . .” He lifted the pot on the desk with him. “More coffee.”
“I can help with the last at least.” She crossed over, mounted the steps to the second level.
“No, that’s all right. My blood level’s probably ninety percent caffeine at this point. What time is it?”
She noted the watch on his wrist, then looked at her own. “Ten after five.”
“A.M. or P.M.?”
“Been at it that long?”
“Long enough to lose track, as usual.” He rubbed the back of one shoulder, circled his neck. “You have some fascinating relatives, Rosalind. I’ve gathered up enough newspaper clippings on the Harpers, going back to the mid-nineteenth century so far, to fill a banker’s box. Did you know, for instance, you have an ancestor who rode for the Pony Express in 1860, and in the 1880s traveled with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show?”
“My great-great-uncle Jeremiah, who’d run off as a boy, it seems, to ride for the Pony Express. Fought Indians, scouted for the Army, took both a Comanche wife and, apparently, another in Kansas City—at more or less the same time. He was a trick rider in the Wild West Show, and was considered a black sheep by the stuffier members of the clan in his day.”
“How about Lucybelle?”
“Ah . . .”
“Gotcha. Married Daniel C. Harper, 1858, left him two years later.” The chair creaked as he leaned back. “She pops up again in San Francisco, in 1862, where she opened her own saloon and bawdy house.”
“That one slipped by me.”
“Well, Daniel C. claimed that he sent her to a clinic in New York, for her health, and that she died there of a wasting disease. Wishful thinking on his part, I assume. But with a little work and magic, I found our Lucybelle entertaining the rough-and-ready crowd in California, where she lived in apparent good health for another twenty- three years.”
“You really love this stuff.”
“I really do. Imagine Jeremiah, age fifteen, galloping over the plains to deliver the mail. Young, gutsy, skinny. They advertised for skinny boys so they didn’t weigh down the horses.”
“Really.” She eased a hip on the corner of his desk.
“Bent over his mount, riding hell-for-leather, outrunning war parties, covered with dirt and sweat, or half frozen from the cold.”
“And from your tone, you’d say having the time of his life.”
“Had to be something, didn’t it? Then there’s Lucybelle, former Memphis society wife, in a red dress with a derringer in her garter—”
“Aren’t you the romantic one.”
“Had to have a derringer in her garter while she’s manning the bar or bilking miners at cards night after night.”
“I wonder if their paths ever crossed.”
“There you go,” he said, pleased. “That’s how you get caught up in all this. It’s possible, you know. Jeremiah might’ve swung through the doors of that saloon, had a whiskey at the bar.”
“And enjoyed the other servings on the menu, all while the more staid of the family fanned themselves on the veranda and complained about the war.”
“There’s a lot of staid, a lot of black sheep here. There was money and there was prestige.”
He pushed some papers around, came up with a copy of another clipping. “And considerable charm.”
She studied the photo of herself, on her engagement, a fresh and vibrant seventeen.
“I wasn’t yet out of high school. Green as grass and mule stubborn. Nobody could talk me out of marrying John Ashby the June after this picture was taken. God, don’t I look ready for anything?”
“I’ve got clippings of your parents in here. You don’t look like either of them.”
“No. I was always told I resembled my grandfather Harper. He died when I was a child, but from the pictures I’ve seen, I favor him.”
“Yeah, I’ve come across a few, and you do. Reginald Edward Harper, Jr, born . . . 1892, youngest child and only son of Reginald and Beatrice Harper.” He read his notes. “Married, ah . . .”
“Elizabeth McKinnon. I remember her very well. It was she who gave me her love of gardening, and taught me about plants. My father claimed I was her favorite because I looked like my grandfather. Why don’t I get you some tea, something herbal, to offset the coffee?”
“No, that’s okay. I can’t stay. I’ve got a date.”
“Then I’ll let you go.”
“With my son,” he added. “Pizza and ESPN. We try to fit one in every week.”
“That’s nice. For both of you.”
“It is. Listen, I’ve got some other things to deal with and some legwork I’d like to get in. But I’ll be back on Thursday afternoon, work through the evening, if that’s all right with you.”
“Thursday’s New Year’s Eve.”
“Is it?” As if baffled, he looked down at his watch. “My days get turned around on me during holidays. I suppose you’re having people over.”
“Actually, no.”
“Then, if you’re going out, maybe you wouldn’t mind if I worked.”
“I’m not going out. I’m going to take care of the baby, Hayley’s Lily. I’m scooting her out to a party, and Stella and her boys are going to have a little family party of their own at Logan’s house.”
“If you weren’t asked to a dozen parties, and didn’t have twice that many men after you for a New Year’s Eve date, I’ll eat those newspaper clippings.”
“Your numbers might be somewhat exaggerated, but the point is, I declined the parties, and the dates. I like staying home.”
“Am I going to be in your way if I work in here?”
She angled her head. “I imagine you were asked to your share of parties, and that there were a number of women eager to have you for their date.”
“I stay in on New Year’s. A tradition of mine.”
“Then you won’t be in my way. If the baby’s not restless, we can take part of the evening to start on that interview.”
“Perfect.”
“All right, then. I’ve been busy,” she said after a moment. “The house full over Christmas, all my sons home. And those are only part of the reason I haven’t brought this up before.”
“Brought what up?”
“A couple of weeks ago, Amelia left me a message.”
“A couple of
“I said I’d been busy.” Irritation edged into her voice. “And besides that, I didn’t want to think about it through the holidays. I don’t see my boys very often, and there were a lot of things I wanted to get done before they got here.”
He said nothing, simply dug out his tape recorder, pushed it closer to her, switched it on. “Tell me.”
Irritation deepened, digging a line between those dark, expressive eyebrows. “She said:
“That’s it?”
“Yes, that’s it. She wrote it on a mirror.”
“What mirror? Did you take a picture of it?”
“No, I didn’t take a picture.” And she could, privately, kick herself for that later. “I don’t know what difference it makes what mirror. The bathroom mirror. I’d just gotten out of the shower. A hot one. The mirror was steamy, and the message was written on it through the steam.”
“Written or printed?”
“Ah, printed, with an exclamation point at the end. Like this.” She picked up one of his pens, demonstrated.
