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the Liggetts ,
particularly my grandmother, who was a straight-laced Southern Baptist. She
would have nothing to do with him and absolutely forbade my mother to marry
him.”
    Jill gave me a knowing look. “I can
sympathize with your mother. My father tried to talk me out of marrying Greg.
He didn’t have a very high regard for career military men. He finally gave in
when I refused to budge. Obviously, your mom ignored her mother’s protests,
too.”
    “She did, but Grandma refused to
relent. Mom and Dad wound up eloping and moving to Seattle. I had no contact
with my grandparents until after I graduated from college.”
    “And went to work for the
congressman,” I said without thinking.
    Her glance bore an icy sheen. “I
thought we had a deal.”
    “We only checked a couple of open
sources,” I said with a shrug. “Newspapers, to be exact. You were chronicled in the press for several years. Practically
a minor celebrity.”
    Her frown deepened. “Then I’m sure
you found out about John Hunter.”
    “And his death at
the hands of terrorists. We noticed that Kelli Kane Hunter faded from
the headlines after that. I saw no reason to look any further.”
    She gave a mirthless laugh. “You
would have found nothing. Unfortunately, there was no way to erase my past. My
parents were killed in the San Francisco earthquake in 1989. Not long after
that, my grandmother died. Grandpa Liggett retired a couple of years later. He
tried to stay in touch with me after that. I was living in Europe at the time,
but I kept in contact as best I could. It’s been more difficult in recent
years.”
    Kelli brushed supple fingers across
her damp forehead and turned toward the doorway. “Damn this heat. Would you
like something cold to drink? I think I’ll run up Grandpa’s electric bill and
keep the air conditioner running full blast.”
    Compared to outside, it felt fine
in here. She stopped to adjust the thermostat as we followed her into a large
traditional kitchen that hadn’t been trashed like the office. A few dish towels
lay where they had been tossed from a cabinet drawer.
    “Grandpa obviously doesn’t do a lot
of cooking,” Kelli said. She opened a refrigerator that looked almost bare and
took out three soft drink cans. Jill chose a Coke. Being a non-cola person, I
took the Sprite. Kelli set them on the table and brought us glasses. “Let’s
just sit here and talk, if you don’t mind.”
    Jill and I joined her at a vintage
kitchen table with a plastic top that reminded me of one I ate at as a wartime
tyke in St. Louis. Kelli scored several points with me when she moved a crowded
ash tray from the table to a counter. Opening a cardboard box filled with
letter-sized envelopes, she pulled one out.
    “These are the letters I found in
the attic, the ones from my great-great-grandmother. Her younger sister had
bundled them up and stored them. Grandpa said a cousin found the box when her
mother died. She recently mailed it to him, but he hadn’t had time to read any
of them.”
    “Do they date back to the time
Sydney disappeared?” Jill asked.
    “Right.” She glanced at the envelope in her hand. “This one sets the stage. It was
written early in 1914.”
    She opened the flap and pulled out
a brittle sheet of paper filled with dainty penmanship in blue-black ink. She
read:
    “Dearest Sister,
    “Things have not been going at all
well in Nashville. As you know, Sydney does not like to talk business at home.
He spends much of his time tinkering with his woodworking hobby, building
cabinets and that sort of thing. But he has been so gloomy of late that I
finally prodded him into telling me something about what was wrong. Still, he
would only say some things were being done at the company
that were not right, and he was afraid Marathon may not survive. I asked
what sort of things and he would only say it involved money, what else? I got
the impression his boss was doing something that he didn’t approve of.
    “It is