victims, the better chance we have of understanding the crime.” He wasn’t proud of himself, stringing Max along this way, but he also knew he couldn’t simply blurt his suspicions.
Cavanaugh thought a moment. “She was beautiful. Smart. Vivacious.”
Which were things people said about her, but was that the way a five-year-old would have remembered her?
“Was she an attentive mother?” Cork asked.
“Attentive?”
“Do you have a lot of memories of doing things with her?”
“Not really. But as I said, I was only five. And she was a very active woman in community affairs.”
“That was certainly true in Aurora. What about before you moved here?”
“I don’t remember anything before Aurora.”
“Your parents lived in New York City after they were married, is that right?”
“My father was an attorney for the Great North office there. It’s where I was born, and Lauren. When my grandfather became ill, we moved back here.”
“What about after your mother’s disappearance? Where did you go?”
“My father returned to New York City and raised us there.”
“And turned management of Great North over to others?”
“Yes, it ceased being the family-run operation my grandfather had hoped to continue. It wasn’t at all a bad decision. From New York, my father helped expand Great North into a global concern.”
“Why New York City? Couldn’t he have accomplished the same thing here?”
“Although he was born on the Range, he didn’t really feel at home here. He was a city guy at heart.”
“What about you, Max? You’ve worked mines in India, South Africa, Australia, Germany, Chile. You feel at home here?”
“The truth is I never feel at home anywhere except in a mine. I love the work of mining, Cork. It’s a battle of sorts, and involves all kinds of strategy to get the rock to release what it holds. Done well, it’s an art.”
“From what you’ve told me, you don’t spend much time in the pit these days,” Cork pointed out. “Why’d you come back here to take an office job? I mean why now?”
“The economy,” he said with a shrug. “It’s lousy, and making this mine profitable—hell, making any mine on the Range profitable these days—is a challenge, but it’s one I’m good at. Second, when I learned that the DOE was interested in Vermilion One, I figured I wanted to be here to oversee that process personally. Honestly, I felt I had an obligation to do what I could to discourage the government. The Range has been good to my family. And I feel my family has an obligation to the people here. I don’t want what we created with Vermilion One to end up the death of this place or these people. Literally.”
“What about your sister?”
“What about her?”
“Did she love mining?”
Cavanaugh looked surprised at the question. “She knew absolutely nothing about mining.”
“But as nearly as I can tell, she followed you everywhere, to every mine location, and finally here. Any particular reason?”
“We were close all our lives,” Cavanaugh said. “Neither of us were married, and really we only had each other.”
It was a closeness that seemed more than a little unusual to Cork, but he let it go.
“Did your father ever talk about your mother?”
“No. At least not that I recall.”
“Did that trouble you?”
“Why should it?”
“No reason. Did he remarry?”
“No.”
“He was still a young man, relatively speaking, when he lost your mother, yet he went the rest of his life without marrying again. Any reason that you’re aware of?”
There was a knock at the door, and Harry Potter returned with coffee: two white mugs on a tray with a small container of cream, a little bowl of sugar, some packets of Splenda, two spoons, and a couple of napkins.
“Thank you, Harry,” Cavanaugh said, and the young man left.
Cavanaugh handed Cork a mug, then stirred cream and sugar into his own coffee.
“What do you know about my father, Cork?”
“I’m beginning to think not enough.”
“For starters, he wasn’t exactly the son my grandfather wanted.”
“Why not?”
Cavanaugh sipped his coffee, then said casually, “For one thing, he was homosexual.”
Cork didn’t bother to hide his surprise.
“I’m not telling you any secrets. Most people who knew him in later life were well aware of it. But he hid it well in his early years here. Hell, he probably didn’t even acknowledge it to himself then. The war broke out and he enlisted, and after that he went to college, Yale and then Harvard Law, and by that time his life and what he was willing to accept had changed, I guess. New York City was a reasonable place to be gay in the fifties. But he still needed a good cover for the sake of business and my grandfather. My mother gave him that cover.”
“She knew?”
“Of course.”
“But they had children.”
“To keep the families happy and at bay and to maintain the facade.”
“Did you always know?”
“No. They had separate bedrooms, but I was a kid then, and what did I know? They also had very separate lives, but I don’t suppose that was unusual either. My father was a good man, Cork, and a good father. He loved Lauren and me tremendously.”
“And your mother?”
“Love wasn’t at all what their relationship was about.”
“I meant did she love you.”
“I think we were like expensive vases in the living room, something for people to look at and admire, part of a perfect life. Or the image of a perfect life.”
“But it wasn’t perfect?”
“What I remember wasn’t awful. It was just”— he thought a moment —“a vacancy. Air where a mother should have been. But why all these questions about my parents? That’s ancient history. What about Lauren? Shouldn’t you be asking questions that will solve her murder?”
“Your mother and your sister were killed with the same weapon. That would tend to suggest they were killed by the same person. So, if we could solve the earlier murder we might solve your sister’s murder as well. Theoretically.”
Cork didn’t necessarily believe his own logic, but he hoped it sounded plausible and would keep Cavanaugh answering the questions that concerned him most at the moment.
“Do you have any family memorabilia from that period?” Cork asked. “Photographs, letters, journals?”
“What good would that do?”
“I won’t know until I’ve had a chance to see the things,” Cork replied.
“No,” Cavanaugh said firmly. “Nothing.”
“What about from the time before your folks moved here?”
“Not then either.”
“After?”
Cavanaugh said, “I have some things in storage at home. I suppose I can look and see what’s there.”
“So these would be items your father kept after your mother disappeared?”
“That’s right.”
“He kept nothing from before that, from his time in Aurora and all the earlier places?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
