Garden of Thorns Read online

“You mean the rumor that Edward was really an illegitimate son of the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII? The King certainly collected professional beauties. ‘Grand horizontals’ they were called, like performing automata.” Hilary shook her head incredulously.

  “Coburg was one of the royal family’s German names,” said Mark. “They were more German than British, actually.”

  “As our Scottish friends reminded us more than once.” Hilary closed the suitcases and wedged them into the closet. She laid the newspaper on the dresser and put her carry-on bag with its incriminating pharmaceuticals behind the bathroom door. Her bag of knitting she set by the door; the repetitive knit-purl-cable, magically growing a sweater out of strands of yarn, was more calming than a tranquilizer.

  Mark stretched. “Supposedly Edward Coburg received an income from England all his life—again, no receipts or ledgers survive. And that money was just lagniappe. Vicky was an only child, wealthy in her own right.”

  “Maybe that’s why Edward killed her and then himself.” The room had grown dark while Hilary unpacked. Her blunt statement was loud in the shadowed silence. She turned on the bedside lamp.

  Mark stepped from the doorway into the room, a moth drawn by the light. For a moment she thought his face had gone more taut than usual. But he asked, “Would you like dinner?” quite equably. “Mexican? Chinese? Side of cow?”

  “Mexican, please. What passes for Mexican in Indianapolis is mostly wishful thinking. They serve Old Dutch brand taco sauce.”

  “Sacrilege!” Mark rolled his eyes in horror.

  Hilary took a couple of the aspirin she found in the medicine cabinet, checked the broom handle locking the patio door off the dining room, and turned on the light in the entry. “Would you mind taking me by a grocery store? All that’s in the kitchen is a jar of pickle juice and some petrified raisin bran.”

  “You’ve got it.” Mark ushered her back into the van.

  The twilight air was refreshingly cool. They turned right onto another residential street, then left onto a wide boulevard, streetlamps spilling yellow light into the dusk. The restaurant was decorated with red, green, and white streamers, and cheerful music played inside. When Mark opened the door, Hilary’s nostrils were filled with an aroma similar to that of a French bakery, but not quite the same. “Tortillas,” he said, gallantly seating her at a small table. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starved.”

  If sexual frustration makes you hungry, Hilary thought, we both ought to look like blimps. A waiter appeared with corn chips and salsa. She dipped a corner of a chip and crunched. Tomatoes, peppers, and onions exploded on her tongue. She seized her glass of water. “You know it’s good when you break out in a sweat,” Mark teased. He loaded a chip with red chunks and blissfully chewed.

  It was when Mark had offered her a bite from his cache of salsa last summer that he’d first kissed her. And she’d ducked and run. Blushing, Hilary reached for another chip and nibbled. Mark was scanning the menu, not her. A rare quality in a man, to be perceptive but nonjudgmental.

  The music stopped, and hidden speakers emitted a rapid-fire commentary in Spanish. Hilary pricked her ears—Spanish was a lot like French…. She caught “Dolores Coburg” and “Regensfeld”.

  Mark ordered. The waiter ambled away. A young man sporting a magnificent black moustache entered the restaurant, waved at Mark, and collected a white carry-out sack. “I see Lucia isn’t fixing tamales tonight,” Mark commented, then explained, “That was Gilbert Hernandez, my landlady’s son. He and his family live with Lucia—she’s a widow with a big old house—and they swear by her cooking. But since she’s spent years cooking for Fort Worth society, she deserves an evening off every now and then.”

  “Did she ever work for the Coburgs?”

  The waiter delivered a bottle of pale beer with a slice of lime perched on the top and a mug of sangria, its swizzle stick impacted with fruit. Mark poured his beer and took a deep drink before he answered. “She sure did. She’s the one who found Felicia Coburg’s body, as a matter of fact. I’ve always wondered why the first Mrs. Coburg was hanging around Osborne fifteen years after Arthur divorced her.” He dunked another chip, face down, eyes concealed.

  A murder-suicide in 1912, an unsolved murder in 1975. Hilary remembered hearing about the latter in Indiana, even though she’d been only eight. The media had called it the trial of the decade, and TV cameras had laid siege to the Tarrant County courthouse all through the heat of the summer. In the end Arthur had been acquitted of murder. And Dolores, his much younger second wife, had built a contemporary mansion several miles to the southwest, out of Osborne’s shadow.

  Hilary ate another chip with its sheen of sauce and decided the savory aftertaste was worth the original burn. There was more ice than wine in her glass; it rattled against her teeth. She and Mark shouldn’t be sitting here talking about murder, she told herself. They’d actually been involved in a murder investigation last summer.

  She tried another gambit. “When I was in grade school we watched all those old filmstrips: Arthur Coburg Walks the Great Wall of China, Arthur Coburg Cruises Down the Rhine, Arthur Coburg Interviews Amazon Headhunters.”

  “The one I always liked,” said Mark, rising to the bait, “was Arthur Coburg doing his Edward R. Murrow impression during the Blitz. And that exclusive interview with Hitler at Berchtesgaden in 1939! Masterful bits of popular geography and history. I bet he covered every inch of the Earth’s surface between the thirties and the sixties.”

  “And spent the seventies and eighties writing his books, editing his films, and gloating over his art collections. You’d think he wasn’t born rich, he worked so hard to earn wealth on his own. If he had any connection with British royalty, he never played on it.”

  “Something to do with losing his parents at the age of two?” Mark asked. “Of course, there’s something to be said for being raised by your grandparents. They might make better role models.”

  “Not mine,” said Hilary. “They’ve already got a couple of divorces apiece.” The sweet sangria was only slightly astringent on her tongue.

  The waiter arrived with a tray full of mysterious but delectable-smelling items. Murmuring a benediction of, “Hot plates”, he arranged bowls of relishes and a sizzling platter of meat strips and onions on the table.

  “Tex-Mex lesson numero uno,” said Mark, and proceeded to instruct Hilary in the arcane art of rolling fajitas.

  By the time they left the restaurant Hilary was comfortably full, not quite bloated, and had traded her headache for lightheadedness. At least she didn’t have to go to work until day after tomorrow.

  Mark pulled into a grocery store a few blocks away where they shopped for items from the four basic food groups—bread, vegetables, meat, and ice cream. “Have you learned how to cook yet?” he asked.

  Hilary replied indignantly, “I’m working on it. How about you?”

  An elderly lady passed them with a fond smile, perhaps remembering a romantic episode in her youth. Or maybe not romantic but domestic; if romance was a bonfire, domesticity was a stove, controlled warmth and comfort…. Hilary paid for her purchases and climbed back into the van.

  Even though the night was clear, the lights of the city bleached from the sky all but the two or three brightest stars. After a short drive Hilary saw before her a long building, one end arching upward, a modern cathedral devoted to art instead of religion. Its granite was soft pink in the glow of floodlights and its skylights radiated a halo of luminescence, imitating the halos of the precious relics stored within. “I’ve seen lots of pictures of the Lloyd,” she said, “but reality is impressive.”

  “Definitely.” Mark drove on by, turned a corner several blocks down, and stopped. He killed the engine and doused the lights. In the sudden silence the wind moaned, with pleasure or pain Hilary didn’t try to guess. Through the dim transparency of night she saw the dancing limbs of oak trees, and beyond them a black bulk that could be either a medieval castle or Disneylan
d’s haunted mansion. Osborne House’s tall windows were the faintest of gleams….

  A blurred yellow light shone in one window, disappeared, shone in another one. A gust of wind sent the oak leaves tumbling across the house, then swept them away again. The light moved to a third window.

  Hilary blinked. “A flashlight with weak batteries. Has the electricity been turned off?”

  “In the main house, yes,” Mark replied. “They’re renovating it, going to turn it into one of those restaurants where the tip alone is more than we spent at Ricardo’s tonight. But Jenny’s staying in the servants’ quarters. I’m sure the electricity is on there.”

  Mark let the van roll down the slope of York Boulevard to where they could see Osborne undisguised by trees. The square shapes of illuminated windows gleamed in a one-story extension at the back of the house.

  In the main house the light, more like a lantern than a flashlight, vanished and reappeared. “Is that Jenny in there?” asked Hilary.

  “Must be. Part of her job is to be caretaker—some of Arthur’s papers and scrapbooks are still there—he used it as an office, even died there.” Mark’s voice rasped. “Of course there’s a resident ghost, too. Vicky, they say, Arthur’s mother, in full bustle and bodice.”

  Hilary glanced at his shadowed face but could see only the harshly highlighted angle of nose and chin. Don’t ask, she ordered herself. But she did. “Osborne scares you, doesn’t it?”

  Mark eyed the progress of the light from window to window. “My parents ordered me to go watch TV, to leave them alone. So I watched, all by myself. In my memory the room is dark except for the glow of the screen, but I know I must’ve turned on all the lights. I turned up the volume so I couldn’t hear my parents screaming at each other. It was a week before they realized why I was having such terrible nightmares—I’d been watching the reports of Felicia’s murder and the re-capping of Vicky’s.”

  It was Hilary’s turn to take Mark’s hand. His fingers were cold.

  “My parents screamed at each other for four more years before they finally separated. But it was during those news reports from Osborne that I first realized something was wrong.”

  Abruptly he shed Hilary’s hand and started the van. The headlights ripped a hole in the dark. The noise scattered the moan of the wind. Hilary craned her neck to look back. She saw no lights in the house but those in the servants’ quarters.

  Back at her condo, Hilary unloaded her groceries while Mark fished a scrap of paper from his wallet and punched out a number on the telephone. “Jenny? Mark Owen. We just drove by Osborne and saw lights in the windows—wanted to let you know—check the locks against prowlers and vandals….” He paused, then said, “Oh, okay. See you tomorrow.”

  Hilary shut the refrigerator door and waited.

  “It was her,” said Mark. “She says she was ‘taking a shufti’ about half an hour ago. With only a flashlight. Nerves of titanium.”

  “We were there ten minutes ago,” Hilary said. “Well, if you’re not wearing a watch it’s hard to say, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Mark leaned against the wall, Hilary against the cabinet, both staring at the floor. The vinyl tiles held no answers, about Osborne or about themselves. “Would you like some coffee or something?” Hilary asked.

  “No thanks. I really need to be going—I’m supposed to be fixing the artifact record sheets.”

  And now for a good night handshake? That would be ludicrous; they knew each other too well to start over. Hilary raised her chin, squared her shoulders, marched across the floor, and kissed Mark on the lips.

  After a ragged exhalation he returned her kiss with interest. The flavor of lime and cilantro in his mouth was as heady as wine. His embrace was a promise, not a threat. She shivered in delight. Again and again during the winter she’d indulged in visualization therapy, imagining herself in Mark’s arms, tiptoeing through the physiological details—he wouldn’t want to hurt her, but to ease the aching knots in her body—physiology was all right, even pleasant….

  From the witness stand Ben had said she’d teased him until he couldn’t help himself. She’d asked for it; she’d dressed nicely and laughed politely at what she hadn’t realized were obscene jokes. The defense attorney had invaded her school, searching for boys to swear she’d been hot to trot. Her doctor had had to testify she’d been a virgin—her word hadn’t been enough. Her bruises had healed by the time of the trial, and after multiple tests she at last believed Ben hadn’t given her any loathsome diseases. It took somewhat longer for the pain and horror to contract to a cold kernel lodged deep in her stomach.

  The shiver of delight clenched around that kernel. Bile crested in her throat. The glow drained from her cheeks, leaving them tingling cold. Her lips skidded away from Mark’s and her suddenly clammy forehead fell against his shoulder. No! she wailed silently. No, not again!

  In well-learned response his arms dropped away, leaving her an escape route. His hands rose to either side in the time-honored gesture of “Look Ma, no weapons.”

  “I wanted it to be different this time,” she said woodenly.

  “So did I.” Mark’s face was flushed, but his eyes were cool.

  His eyes were stove lids. Oven doors. Fireplace dampers, concealing the heat inside. He hadn’t hurt her—she’d hurt him. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to lead you on, please believe me.”

  “Don’t keep apologizing to me. You have nothing to apologize for.” With another quick peck on the cheek, he turned to go. “I’ll pick you up at eleven-thirty tomorrow. Okay?”

  “Okay. Good night.”

  He shut the door very carefully. She wished he’d gone ahead and slammed it.

  In the bathroom Hilary looked at the dazed eyes, the tousled hair, the smudged lips of her reflection as though they were the images of a recurring nightmare. Her carry-on bag still lay behind the door, the packets of pills inside a silent rebuke. She’d intended to tell Mark about them. She’d intended a lot more. But the moment, like so many other moments, had been raped, pillaged, and murdered.

  For a long time she stood braced against the counter, listening to the hollow echo of her own heartbeat, until she went at last to her solitary bed.

  Chapter Three

  The pinkish-gray haze that had yesterday matted the horizon now spread across the entire sky, turning blue to tarnished silver. By early afternoon the day had gone from unseasonably warm to oppressively hot. The gusty wind was tinted with red dust and left a muddy taste on Mark’s tongue.

  As he shut the door of his van, he saw Jenny herding the students back into their assigned spots. Good—he hadn’t overstayed his lunch break. He’d left Hilary in the leasing company’s driveway, a map of Fort Worth unfolded on the steering wheel of her new car, plotting a course to the nearest mall.

  They’d been friendly and polite to each other, as though last night’s scene hadn’t occurred. Not that that scene had been very different from the scenes last summer. Then a female friend had told Mark, “You get to be the man who convinces her most men will take no for an answer. You get to teach her to trust men again.”

  “I’m not martyr material,” he’d responded.

  “Sure you are, if you care for her.”

  Scowling, Mark walked toward the dig. Hilary had been brutalized. She was still in shock. He understood that. He would’ve happily vasectomized Ben with a back hoe. But it wasn’t fair, damn it, that the undertow of Ben’s sickness had to pull innocent bystanders under, too.

  Mark picked up his trowel and winced—his fingertips were raw. He’d stayed up past midnight, playing passionately on his guitar the ballads he wanted to play on Hilary. He did care for her, more’s the pity. So here he was again, aching with frustration, needing to show his caring by making love to her, able to show his caring only by not making love to her.

  Hilary had commented last summer that distant loyalty, like a knight’s for his lady, was the truest and purest love of all. But Mark recogn
ized rationalization when he heard it. Physical love was a court jester capering as knight and lady traded courtly bows, impossible to ignore.

  Pondering the absurdities of sacred and profane love, he began cutting the edge of the now two-inch-deep garage trench. “We’ll use a plumb bob to get a ninety-degree angle and a smooth face,” he told the students. “Is that a row of paving stones?”

  “Could be,” said Amy. “Is it the original driveway?”

  “More likely a decorative edging to a flower bed or walkway. See, you don’t have the packed dirt here that would indicate other stones were once laid next to these.”

  A shadow loomed over him. Preston stood holding the surveyor’s theodolite like a toothpick under one arm. “You’re supposed to show me how to use this,” he stated. “She’s found some kind of log foundation.”

  In the garden trench, Jenny was the focus of a circle of faces. “This is clay soil, which means wood preservation would be quite good if it weren’t for the termites. See the mortise and tenon joints? When I was excavating a Swedish settlement in Delaware last year….”

  Mark showed Preston how to triangulate the position of the feature and draw it onto the sketch board. Last summer Hilary had been dig artist, the tiny, precise strokes of her pencil catching details photographs missed.

  He heard the crunching of car tires and half expected to see Hilary’s Caprice. But this car was a navy-blue Lexus, as subtly expensive as a designer suit. Another Coburg, no doubt. Jenny brushed herself off and advanced toward the drive. She was wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat so decrepit Huckleberry Finn would’ve thrown it away, and Mark couldn’t see her face. But he read the sardonic courtesy in the set of her jaw and shoulders.

  The thirtyish man who climbed out of the car was tall and lean, with a self-absorbed bearing that suggested his body had been tailored as carefully as his polo shirt and slacks. “Kenneth Coburg,” he announced and shook Jenny’s hand. “Welcome to Texas, Dr. Galliard. I’m sorry I was out of town when you arrived. Foundation business.”