“I know the one you’re talking about. The lion wasn’t dead— that's a tranquilizer gun I’m holding, not a rifle. Keen eyes though. I can see why you suspected me.”
“Not to mention the fact that last night I saw you bagging up the wineglasses Rob and Dad and I were using, as if they were evidence. I figured you were the killer, and planning to frame one of us if you got the chance.”
“You did?” Blake exclaimed. “That's rich!” He threw back his head and laughed vigorously.
“But now I figure you were snooping around, too,” I went on. “You were trying to solve the murder and collecting DNA from your suspects. Is that it?”
“Not exactly,” Blake said. “I wasn’t worried about the murder investigation. I figured it was in good hands.”
“Thank you,” Chief Burke said. Blake glanced at him with mild surprise, as if he’d forgotten the chief was there.
“But you’re right,” Blake went on. “I did want your DNA. I want to compare it with mine.”
We all stared at him in astonishment. I was the first to get my tongue back.
“You think we’re related?”
“I think you’re my granddaughter. And my son,” he said, turning to Dad.
Dad took a step back.
“I’m a foundling,” he said. “No one knows who my parents were.”
“Found in the fiction section of the Charlottesville library,” Blake said. “That's what the local paper said, am I right?” “That's right,” Dad said. “Just where my poor Cordelia left you.” “Your poor Cordelia?” I echoed.
“I was...um, engaged to one of the librarians there.”
“ ‘Um, engaged’?” I echoed again. “Had you asked her to marry you, or is that just a euphemism for something else?”
“A beautiful young woman,” Blake said. “I was planning to ask her to marry me as soon as I was able. But I was a poor graduate student. And I got a chance to go on my first zoological expedition. A six-month trip to the Galapagos. I explained how important it was to my career. I thought she understood.”
“And you came back and she’d vanished.”
He nodded.
“I assumed she’d grown tired of waiting—the trip went on a little longer than planned.” “How much longer?” “It was only a year and a half,” he said.
“Smart woman,” I said. “I’d have sent the Dear Montgomery letter after seven months.”
“Very smart,” he said. “And very beautiful.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out an old photo in a plastic protector. He looked at it, then handed it to me.
It was like seeing myself in costume from the Roaring Twenties. Like me, Cordelia was a little too busty to carry off the flapper look, but she had a certain panache. I might have liked her if I’d known her, growing up. I wasn’t sure I approved of her taste in men, though.
“How old was she, anyway?” I said. She looked about sixteen.
“It's the only picture I have,” he said. “Her high school graduation photo. She was a few years older when I met her.”
I handed the photo to Dad.
“I came to town to see Lanahan,” Blake was saying. “Just a courtesy. Wasn’t going to bother with his little zoo, but then I happened to see your picture in the Caerphilly Clarion. Did some research on you. Learned that your father was abandoned as an infant in the same library where Cordelia and I used to meet on my trips to Charlottesville.”
He and Dad gazed at each other. Blake looked triumphant and happy. Dad looked as if he was beginning, too late, to appreciate the joys of being an orphan.
“Yippee,” I said. “So instead of coming up and telling us this, you hung around spying on us.”
“I had to figure out if you were people I even wanted to know, much less claim as family.”
So if he didn’t approve of us, he was just going to sneak off again? I wasn’t sure I trusted a paternal—or grandpaternal— feeling that kicked in only after Blake had made sure we met his standards.
“And you decided to claim us after the events of the last few days?” I said aloud. “I’m surprised you didn’t run away screaming.”
“You lead entertaining lives,” Blake said. He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and smiled, as if awaiting the next installment of entertainment.
I stared at him, baffled. I had no idea how I felt about this. I needed time to think it through. I had a sudden frustrating vision of Michael and me, strolling along that romantic beach, Parisian street, vineyard trail, or whatever, talking about Montgomery Blake instead of us.