Hidden Devotion (Trinity Masters #5)(14)
Juliette was flicking through everything idly, not really paying attention, when she stopped, fingers curled around a black-and-white photo of three mustachioed men. The man on the left wore light-colored pants and jacket, a scarf tied around his neck. In the center was an older man in loose clothing with knee-high boots, a rifle strap cutting across his chest. Next to him was a younger man with a flat-brimmed hat, his rifle held proudly in front of him. Though the hat shadowed his face, the younger man’s posture and build mirrored that of the older man. The photo was tacked to a larger sheet of paper with photo squares, and the caption under it read “William Ludlow, Calixto Garcia, Pedro Garcia Fernandez.”
“Ludlow. Ludlow and Garcia.” The names were setting off bells in her head. After jumping through several security hoops, she got the computer on the desk to connect to the Internet.
“General William Ludlow, US Army Corps of Engineers, fought at the Siege of Santiago in the Spanish-American war.” Juliette’s fingers were trembling slightly from a surge of adrenaline. “And then we have Calixto Garcia, general in all three Cuban uprisings.” She had a tingly feeling, the same feeling she sometimes got just before she got someone to open up to her about their experiences, or before she put the pieces together and was able to identify where women were being held. “That leaves Pedro.”
Leaping up, Juliette checked the archived member files. “Ah ha!” For a second, Juliette looked around for someone to share her discovery with. There was no one.
Sobered by that, Juliette pulled out the file labeled “Garcia, Pedro Fernandez.” In it were a few other black-and-white pictures, several where Pedro was holding a gun, probably during either the Cuban War of Independence or the Spanish-American war. There were a few copies of official documents, including immigration papers from 1900. Pedro had settled in Florida and gone to school, joining the Trinity Masters in 1901. The timing probably meant that he’d been identified as a potential member and someone had helped with his immigration prior to his official joining. The bastard son of the famed Cuban general was exactly the kind of person the Trinity Masters liked to scoop up.
There wasn’t much in his file after that besides some newspaper clippings. He’d been a politician and activist in Tampa and Key West.
Juliette switched over to the files about the trinities. More than just biographical, these files were meant to help chronicle the reason each trinity had been formed—a politician, soldier and socialite brought together to help shape military policy; an activist, lawyer and educator who together empowered social change. Locating the records from the early 1900s, she checked for one including Pedro. When a quick scan didn’t yield what she wanted, she went through it methodically.
There was no file for a trinity including Pedro.
Juliette went back to the Victrola boxes. She’d noticed, but not really thought about the fact, that some of the bundled papers in the older box had three names on the labels.
It took her less than a minute to find a large envelope with faded handwriting that said “Garcia – Smith – Cruz”.
“Why are you in here, and not with the other trinity files?” Rather than stay hunched on the floor, Juliette gathered up everything and took it to the conference table, spreading everything out so she could make sense of it.
Pedro Garcia Fernandez, bastard son of the Cuban revolutionary general, had been only seventeen when he joined the Trinity Masters. He’d fought in World War One, and been called to the altar after the war, marrying Lucille Smith and Maria Cruz in 1920. Lucille, a legacy, had lost both her husbands in the war and her only child to measles. Maria was the daughter of another wealthy Cuban family, and like Pedro, a new addition to the Trinity Masters.
Lucille and Maria each had a child, though their birth certificates both listed Maria as the mother, since by law only Pedro and Maria had been legally married, Lucille living under the guise of wealthy widow, next door to Pedro and Maria.
One of the sons had died fighting in World War Two. The other, Luis Garcia Cruz, joined the Trinity Masters in 1942. And…that was it. That’s where the “official” file seemed to stop.
Several smaller envelopes had been stuffed inside the larger one. In those she found a marriage certificate for Luis and a birth certificate for his son Henry. Another envelope contained a copy of Henry’s driver’s license dated 1974, his marriage certificate from 1985, and a 1987 birth certificate for Henry’s son, Francisco.
The last envelope bore Juliette’s father’s handwriting in the lower front corner. She squinted at it for a moment, before deciphering the word “inactive”.
In it was a second copy of the birth certificate for Francisco Garcia Santiago. Behind that was a copy of a driver’s license. The boy in it had an artificially serious expression, spiked hair and a puma shell necklace—the perfect image of a nineties teenager.
Smiling, Juliette flipped to the next page. “Well, hello, Francisco.”
The photo was a professional shot, and seemed to be a color copy from the page of a magazine. The title of the article was “Next Year in Cuba: 100 years of the Cuban-American Experience”, and it went on to discuss a new exhibit at a museum located in Key West. The caption under the photo said, “President of the Garcia Cuban Heritage Foundation, Francisco Garcia Santiago, will speak at the exhibit grand opening.”
The dorky teenager was gone. Francisco had a lean face, slightly too-long dark hair, and startlingly light-colored eyes. He was smiling in the photo, and it was a quiet smile, almost reserved. The black suit, white shirt and black tie seemed a bit severe, but his arms were casually folded.