Summer Sons(106)

Riley nodded twice, punched his shoulder with a loose fist, and mounted the stairs to his room. Andrew watched him go. As he lay on the couch with a pillow and his comforter, his phone buzzed with a single message.

I don’t want to share not even with a dead man



* * *



At a quarter to eleven the following morning, Sam texted Called in to the garage, omw.

Andrew tapped a quick okay and ate another bite of cereal, seated at the kitchen table with Riley like siblings. He’d expected to wake to an email or five from Troth, but his inbox disappointed him: nothing so far. Of unspoken accord, the cousins were keeping him company instead of going to their respective jobs for the afternoon—just in case she reached out, or to help him figure a follow-up if she didn’t.

“I read the chapter on her creepy ancestors,” Riley said through a soggy mouthful.

“Yeah?”

“No more fucked up than yours, but that’s not saying much,” he replied.

“Eddie’s, not mine,” Andrew said out of habit.

Riley cocked one brow. Andrew crammed another bite of cereal in his mouth for cover, because he knew better—whether he accepted it or not, Eddie had left him all the Fulton wealth and a Fulton curse to boot. On the tabletop his phone began to buzz, rattling the glass raucously. He fumbled for it, not recognizing the number, then answered with a blank “Hello?”

“Mr. Blur,” Jane Troth said on the other end of the line.

The paste of cereal and milk almost lodged in his throat as he swallowed too soon, saying, “Hey, hello.”

“I apologize for calling uninvited, but there’s something I need to share with you and it was not appropriate for our university email server.” Strain pulled her voice thin around the edges. “It appears Mark has a copy of the text you were looking for, and more besides, that I wasn’t aware he’d collected. I have concerns to discuss.”

“What concerns?”

Riley watched him with a hawk’s focus, gripping the rim of the table.

Troth hesitated for so long that, without the sound of her breathing, he’d have thought the call had dropped. “I’m worried that my husband might have interfered with Edward, to a degree. Would you be willing to come to the house to speak with me, as soon as possible?”

Interfered was a polite, euphemistic turn of phrase.

Andrew’s skin shivered with suspicion. “I could be there in an hour or two.”

“Thank you, I’ll be waiting,” she said and hung up.

Andrew laid his phone flat on the glass, goose bumps prickling along his arms.

Riley asked succinctly, “What the hell?”

“Troth thinks her husband did something to Eddie,” Andrew said, slow and testing. “She wants me to come out to her place, said she found the monograph.”

“That’s too fucking perfect,” Riley said.

“The timing is a little much, ain’t it?” he said.

“You’re not going alone,” Riley said.

“No, Sam’s on his way.”

To warn him ahead of time, Andrew texted:

she took the bait, said she found the book in her house

thinks her husband might have done it

will you come with me to her place this afternoon for a chat?

Sure

What a coincidence, her figuring that out all the sudden

But probably not huh

The instant Sam opened the porch door twenty minutes later, Riley pre-empted his hello: “Let me go with you.”

“Dude,” Andrew said, clinking his spoon on the rim of his long-finished bowl.

Sam had a cardboard carrier of iced coffees for the three of them balanced on his left hand. The door swung wide, letting the air-conditioning out, while he sat the drinks on the table and clapped a hand on his cousin’s shoulder.

“Upstairs,” he said, hauling Riley to his feet. “Let’s have a chat just the two of us.”

While the pair of them tromped up the steps, Andrew paced the ground floor, straightening objects and generally fidgeting with the detritus of daily life that unfolded over their tables, couches, front room floor. From the end table he snagged Eddie’s double black-and-red key fob. Two of the keys on the ring didn’t fit the doors at Capitol, both cold iron, battered and tarnished. Andrew flicked them to and fro with his thumb, waiting while the murmur of Sam and Riley’s low-grade argument filtered through the vents. Keys to the old home he assumed, his full inheritance lurking out in the overgrown countryside, just like the Troth estate he was about to head for.

The coffees sat sweating on the table when he returned to the kitchen, a welcome courtesy from his—courtesy of Sam. Footsteps thumped in the hall above him. Riley said down the stairwell, “You’re going to need help once you’re there, if she’s the one that fucked with that ring. Neither of you is a sensitive or whatever like me.”

“Then what am I?” Andrew hollered to them.

Sam jogged down the steps in shorts and desert boots, caught Andrew’s waist in one big hand and snagged his coffee from the carrier. The casual touch felt like forgiveness, or an allowance. Riley followed at a more sedate pace and rolled his eyes at Andrew, collapsing onto his usual chair in a petulant pile of tawny limbs.

“You’re not psychic, man, you’re something else entirely. Especially if that book is right,” he said.