Hidden Devotion (Trinity Masters #5)(18)

Franco jerked on his gloves, moved the letter he’d been examining off the light box, carefully laid out the photos the blonde had brought then flipped the light on.

Planting his hands on the worktable, he peered at the first photo. Three men. The one on the left in white, or possibly tan pants and a jacket. The older man in the center in loose clothing and tall boots, a rifle across his chest. Francisco knew both of them. Well, he didn’t know them, since they’d been dead a long time. He recognized them.

William Ludlow was on the left, and in the center was Calixto Garcia, general in the Cuban revolution. Next to Garcia was the third person—a younger man wearing a hat, sporting a wispy mustache that meant he was probably only in his teens.

“Unbelievable,” he muttered to himself. He needed to check the background against a picture they had in the collection of Ludlow and Garcia together. It looked as if both photos were taken the same day—the men were in the same outfits, with the same scenery in the background. In the photo they had on display, there were a variety of men standing behind and slightly downhill from Ludlow and Garcia. The third man in this picture had to be someone important to merit a photo with two such powerful men. A hat shadowed half the younger man’s face, but there was something familiar about him, as if Franco should recognize him. He almost looked like—

“Pedro Garcia Fernandez.”

Franco’s head jerked up so fast his glasses slid down his nose. He shoved them back into place. The blonde—she’d said her name, but of course he couldn’t remember it—gestured to the photo. “You were muttering to yourself. The third man is Pedro Garcia Fernandez.”

“How do you know that?”

She took a larger envelope from her purse and extracted a single piece of paper. “The photo was mounted to this.”

He accepted it when she held it out, vaguely aware that she was looking curiously around his workroom/office/library. There were four photo corners stuck to the paper, where the photo had once been, and under that, faded handwriting said, “William Ludlow, Calixto Garcia, Pedro Garcia Fernandez”.

Ignoring the other photos for now, Franco took off his glasses and looked at the woman. She’d removed a pile of folders from a chair he’d forgotten was there and taken a seat, seeming tidy and elegant amid the controlled chaos of his workspace.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Juliette Adams.”

“How did you get this photo?”

“It was in my family’s papers.”

Her voice was smooth, but something about the way she said “family” had his Spidey senses tingling.

“Why did you bring them to me?”

Juliette Adams raised a brow. “Isn’t the young man in the photo, Pedro, your great-grandfather?”

“How do you know that?”

“Is it a secret?”

“Not a secret, but not something we talk about.” Franco looked at her, letting the silence stretch out. He never minded silence, since his mind had a tendency to wander anyway, but he’d been told it made other people uncomfortable and had used that to his advantage several times.

Juliette kept a small smile in place. Apparently silence didn’t bother her.

Franco broke first. “Come with me, there’s something I want to show you.”

Juliette followed Francisco out of the mad-scientist laboratory. He opened a door, muttered, closed it. He nearly tripped over his feet as he sped towards the next door. Throwing it open, he stuck his head through then motioned for her to follow.

The elegant front room was on the north side of the house, the afternoon light diffused. Francisco darted across the room, flipping on the display lights. Small spotlights shone on large glass panels that divided the room into sections. Each glass panel was printed with semi-opaque images depicting photos, letters and maps. Francisco tucked his glasses in his hoodie pocket as he stopped in front of one of the panels. Juliette waited until she was sure he was done moving before joining him.

“My family has been fortunate. My great-grandfather, Pedro, immigrated to the US, and through friendships with several powerful families, including the Smiths, he was able to build his business and assist other Cuban immigrants.”

Francisco pointed to a photo of a young Hispanic man. It was a posed photo, the man’s expression serious and unsmiling.

“This is Luis Garcia Cruz. My grandfather.” Francisco’s voice fell into a rhythmic tone of someone telling a familiar story. “He was born in 1922 and was studying to be a priest until World War One, when he left the seminary after the death of his close friend Henry Smith.” Francisco motioned to a photo of Luis with a young man in an army uniform. Both were smiling.

Juliette took a few steps to the side, pointed at another display with the header “The Spanish-American War”. “But your great-grandfather fought in the Cuban Revolution.”

“You refer to it as the Cuban Revolution?” Francisco seemed surprised.

“The United States was late to a war the Cuban people had been fighting for a long time.”

“True.” Francisco gestured to the image of Luis. “Grandfather told stories about how his father had fought in the revolution. But my grandfather was full of stories, some of them believable, many of them not. The craziest ones are mostly about Pedro, which is why we don’t include him in the museum.”