Freddy meowed loudly. She laughed, petted his head, and crumbled up some more bacon. “Freddy did finish out last night with me, though. I woke up this morning and there he was lying flat on my chest. It was tough to breathe.”
Freddy suddenly froze. The hair on his back stood straight up and he hissed.
“Get down, Julia!” Cheney shoved her under the table, drew his SIG, and made his way from the kitchen toward the front of the house.
CHAPTER 19
GEORGETOWN, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Dix said, “It was her eyes—not quite Christie’s— but so close, for a moment I couldn’t breathe. I kept wishing I hadn’t gone.”
Ruth closed one of her hands over his. “You had to go, Dix, you had to see her, you had to be sure. Now you know, and it’s over.”
“But it isn’t over, Ruth, not with that bracelet Charlotte Pallack was wearing. There’s no coincidence that great in the universe.”
Savich said, “Since you called yesterday, Dix, I’ve checked out Charlotte Pallack. That’s why I asked you guys to come over today and sent the kids off to the movies with Lily and Simon. Dix, did Charlotte tell you she was from money?”
Dix thought back. “Well, not really, but she certainly gave me that impression, sort of like she was the poor little rich girl, rebelling, and so she ran off with a German guy as a young girl, but she didn’t marry him, she came back. She said her parents were dead. She’s got one brother—there was maybe something there, but I didn’t pursue it. I just wanted to leave.”
“Okay, here’s the deal. Let me say first that it took even MAX a good amount of time to find out much about Charlotte Pallack’s past. Seems Thomas Pallack went to great lengths to keep it obscure—or perhaps she did it herself. But MAX was able to start from their marriage license.” Savich paused a moment. “We found the girl, Charlotte Caldicott, in the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services database. She didn’t lie about her father, he’s dead sure enough, shot by police while he was attempting to rob a liquor store about two months after he’d abandoned his family. Charlotte was five years old.
“Like you said, Dix, she has a brother, younger by four years, David Caldicott. She, her brother, and her mother lived in Durham, true enough, but there wasn’t a dime. Her mother, Althea Caldicott, worked two jobs to support her kids, then she died of runaway breast cancer when Charlotte was eleven, David seven. The children were sucked into the foster care system until they were eighteen. Then MAX lost her for a while.”
Dix said, “No college?”
Savich shook his head. “It’s interesting, though. She did tell the truth when she could. About her brother, David Caldicott— he’s now thirty-three and plays the violin for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. He was evidently taught as a boy by one of his foster parents, a Maynard Lee Thornton, who played the fiddle like a dream. David had a truckload of talent. Maynard Lee managed to wrangle a violin for him, and was apparently an excellent teacher. Maynard Lee died when David was seventeen. When David turned eighteen, he took off for Europe, Prague, to be exact, then Paris, then London. According to his bio with the Atlanta Orchestra, he played his violin in clubs, in parks, in cafes, wherever.
“Now I have another unbelievable coincidence for you, Dix, something I’m afraid throws a new light on everything. When David Caldicott got back to the U.S. he applied to and was accepted by your very own favorite music school—Stanislaus.”
Dix could only stare at him. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Ruth said, “Come on, Dillon, you made that up.”
Savich shook his head. “Nope.” He drew a deep breath. “Dix, he was in Maestro, at Stanislaus, when Christie disappeared.”
Dix nearly fell off his chair. He rose, paced the length of the living room and back again. He felt like a fist was squeezing the life out of his heart. He sucked in a deep breath. He said as he turned to face them, “I mean, really, Savich, this is nuts, some sort of a vicious cosmic joke. The bracelet, Christie’s bracelet, it was on Charlotte’s wrist. Everything ties together now, but how? Did David realize his sister Charlotte was Christie’s twin? Did he murder her? Or was it Charlotte who murdered Christie? But why? Dammit, why?” He slammed his fist against the mantelpiece and winced.
He rubbed his knuckles as he said, “And then there’s Thomas Pallack, bloody rich, hooked up through David Caldicott—it had to be—because Thomas knows Chappy, he was in Maestro. But how would David Caldicott meet Pallack? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I’m going to shoot myself.”
“It’s a head slammer, all right,” Sherlock said.
“Lots of pieces flying around,” Ruth said. “But maybe they’ll come together, somehow.”
Dix looked from one to the other. “Why, if Charlotte is innocent, if her husband is innocent, if it’s all a mad coincidence, why then didn’t she simply tell me her brother attended Stanislaus Music School? Like ‘Hey, you’re from Maestro, Virginia? Gee, my brother attended Stanislaus, and isn’t it a small world?’ Doesn’t that seem like the natural thing to say?”
Savich said, “It’s certainly a question to ask her, but a believable answer would be easy, like ‘I forgot, it simply didn’t occur to me at the time,’ or ‘It didn’t seem important.’ “ He handed them a bowl of popcorn. “It’s well salted just as you like it, Ruth.”
“The bracelet, Dix,” Sherlock said, “in your gut, how sure are you really that it’s Christie’s bracelet.”
Dix said, “I was very certain when I first saw it, but all I can truthfully say is that it’s very similar. She even took it off so I could see it. That doesn’t bode well for her guilt, does it? Hooked at the back, where I’d had Christie’s bracelet engraved, but it was as clean as the day the bracelet was purchased. There was nothing there, no sign of the jeweler’s etchings.”
