Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

“I spent the evening with Shannon Fargo,” Katherine said.

“What on earth for?”

“Curiosity, I guess.”

He reopened his book. “Any interesting observations?”

“She’s a vagrant child in some ways, but she’s quite combative when her buttons are pushed. She’d hide that, if she were a fraud.”

“So Shannon’s innocent. Feminine intuition?”

“Intuition’s neither more nor less valid when it comes in frilly underwear than when it’s accompanied by a blast of manly cigar smoke.”

“Either way it’s pretty unreliable.”

“I promise to remind you of that next time you have a gut reaction to something.”

“Shannon could be innocent as a lamb unborn and still be the tool of someone who isn’t. Did you see the picture of your grandfather and Shannon and some others that Tom saw when he was at Shannon’s place?”

Her mouth fell open. Only for a count of three. Being surprised was only bad if you let it show. She was sure there’d been no such pictures visible on Shannon’s walls. Had she hidden it? That didn’t sound so innocent.

“No, I’m afraid not.” Being disappointed was dumb. “I guess I have egg on my shirt.”

“Nobody’s perfect,” Charles said.

Katherine said carefully, “I have to admit I find it hard to believe we’re not related.”

“But you’re not. Period. Stay away from that girl, will you? We don’t need defectors under our roof.”

“...All right.” She left the fire, careful to maintain the erect posture, the graceful carriage. “Guess I’ll call it a day. Good night.” In her own room a minute later, her composed exterior crumbled suddenly to reveal a terrible anguish. Which frightened her. When she got herself under control again, it also baffled her. She wasn’t a silly adolescent who wore her emotions outside her clothes like cheap jewelry. She would have sworn she didn’t have them, except for an occasional flare of anger. Maybe she was more tired than she realized.

She started the bathtub filling and took off her clothes. She didn’t wear frilly underwear.

11

It was almost eleven-thirty when Tom got home. He followed the piney scent into the living room and found Charles pouring brandy at the liquor cabinet in the far corner.

Tom asked abruptly, “Who’s Estelle Marchand?”

“No idea. Why?”

“When I asked to see Shannon’s birth certificate, Shannon’s mother asked if Estelle Marchand had put me up to it.”

“Couldn’t find out from Mama, eh?”

“No. But I’ll bet Shannon’s mother isn’t her biological mother.”

Charles came back to his armchair. His slatey eyes had a gun-barrel directness. The flat anvil lips looked hard as rock.

“I take it you didn’t see the birth certificate.”

“Sure I did. Mama was reluctant but responded to threats. The certificate confirmed everything Shannon had told me — names, dates, and places.”

Charles stared at him bleakly for a long moment, then sat down thoughtfully.

“You said Shannon’s mother wasn’t Shannon’s mother.”

“She didn’t want to show me the certificate,” Tom said. “Why not? What could it show? Evidence of forgery, some kind of fraud? Anyhow, because this whole business is about identity and parentage, I got this wild idea and asked her if she knew that a medical examination could determine conclusively whether a woman had ever given birth. Which scared her.”

“How would you force her to submit to such an examination?”

“I probably couldn’t. But she was too rattled to think through any of that. I took advantage of her lack of sophistication to intimidate her, for which I feel fairly lousy. But I still haven’t proved that Shannon isn’t a McCauley.”

“Doesn’t the birth certificate do that?”

“Not if it’s fraudulent.”

“And you’re planning to challenge it — as part of what you owe Mac? Any other secret agendas?”

“You told me to prove she wasn’t a McCauley. Mac wanted to find out if she was. That’s the agenda and that’s all of it. Oh — one more thing. In all these years I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the circumstances surrounding your divorce from the former Mrs. McCauley.”

“The subject is distasteful. And irrelevant.”

“Possibly. But why would Mrs. Charles Gordon McCauley, moneyed lady of West L.A., give birth in a small private clinic in Yucaipa? If you hide behind your right to privacy, you’ll never shake the suspicion that she might have had twins.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, opened them, looked sideways into the fire. He sighed as though contemplating an unpleasant chore. Then he nodded, took a swallow of brandy.