Read Online Trail of Blood by Lisa Black - Free Book Online Page B

Edward Corliss handed Theresa a rag for her fingers, switched off his tiny city with obvious regret, carefully replaced the plastic dust cover, and took them to a much smaller room off the back of the house. Bookshelves covered nearly every inch of wall space except for framed prints and drawings of trains, and it smelled of dust and pipe tobacco.
    “They’re not in an album, I’m afraid, only loose in a box,” Corliss warned them as he dug through one of the lower cabinets. “Father didn’t always have my sense of order. Or Mother’s.”
    “Where is your mother?” Frank asked.
    “She passed away, oh, must be more than forty years now. Before father did. Let’s see what we have here.” He sat at a wooden desk that would have required six bodybuilders to lift and flipped the top of a box that had once held Audubon Society note cards. The other three people in the room watched over his shoulder, Theresa leaning close enough to pick up the scent of Old Spice. She loathed Old Spice because her first boyfriend had worn it. She decided not to hold that against Edward Corliss.
    After donning a pair of reading glasses, he turned the photos over, one by one, gently but methodically. “This is my baptism, you don’t need to see that…those were our neighbors, they’ve since moved…my flat in England, I still regret selling that, the prices have shot up in the past few years…my graduation…ah, here’s one. It’s the outside of the building, though.”
    Theresa peered at the black-and-white image, still sharp after so many years. “Which one is your father?”
    He tapped a lean finger on the man in the center, who was wearing creased trousers and a white shirt with a tie. He bore some resemblance to his son, mainly in the deep-set eyes, but seemed taller. He carried his suit coat tossed over one shoulder, and a rounded hat had been pushed back from his forehead. He posed in front of the same entrance Theresa had passed through yesterday morning; his clothing and the shadow behind him told her the picture had been taken in summertime, when the sun hung to the north.
    “Who are the other people?” Frank asked.
    On Arthur’s right stood a gaunt man in similar clothing and a young woman in a long black skirt and a coat festooned with chiffon scarves. She had wavy dark hair and smiled. The man didn’t. On the other side of the owner, two young men seemed to be jostling with each other and their images had blurred. Behind them and off to the side sat a man with less-neat clothing and a ruined expression.
    Corliss said, “I’m only guessing, you understand, but I’m sure my father told me at some point that these two young men are the architects I spoke of. And—again, I’m not sure—this man could be that doctor.”
    “The nutritionist?” Theresa asked.
    “The dietician, yes.”
    “Who’s the woman? Is that your mother?”
    “No.” Edward Corliss brought the photo closer to his face and then backed it away again, as if that might help jog his memory. “I have no idea. She could be the medium. Father always described her as an outlandish dresser.”
    “What about this man, in the background?”
    Corliss shrugged. “Again, no idea. He could be anyone, someone working for the other tenants, a passerby. He could have been a bum, I mean, a hobo. My father used to try to help them during the Depression, give them a meal, let them sleep there a night or two if he had any vacant units. I said he had a soft heart, and during those years there were plenty of men who needed one.”
    “When was this photo taken?” she asked.
    Corliss turned it over, showed them the
May 5, 1936,
printed in block letters. “The man could have been a messenger for the railroads or one of the other businesses, I suppose, or he could have spent the night on the front stoop and hadn’t left before they snapped the picture. As I said, a common occurrence then as now, the poor souls sleeping on the sidewalk. Sometimes I think not much