Palace Council by Stephen L. Carter Page B

unfamiliar hand on stationery from a famous Florida hotel that admitted no Negroes:

    After PC, problem. Too soon. Ask KG to find testament. He can have

    And there it stopped.
    Well, KG was obviously her husband, and PC had to be Philmont Castle, and here again was the testament mentioned in the note delivered to their London hotel. She was right. That was why Kevin was running around the country: he was searching for the testament. But why would anyone who could get into a fancy segregated resort—that is, anyone white and rich—care about the testament? And what was it that Kevin could “have”? A reward? Assistance in the search?
    Puzzled, Aurelia crossed to Kevin’s desk, took paper and pen, and copied the pages. There were eight altogether. She sealed them back up, retaped the flap—which had plainly been taped many times—and, letting her fingers relax, signed her husband’s name across the cellophane.
    She put the envelope back, then opened the bag.
    Inside was a single item of jewelry—a man’s signet ring—and set into the ring was an inverted cross.
    Memory brushed her.
    Eddie, sitting with her at Chock full o’ Nuts on Seventh Avenue a few weeks before the wedding, his thin face determined as always, asking if she had ever seen anything around Harlem bearing what he called the Cross of Saint Peter, then showing her a drawing he had made. And Aurie, after telling him, no, she had never seen anything like that, had rebuked him for looking so sour. Cheer up, she had told him. Cheer up and go find somebody to love.
    â€œAlready did,” Eddie had said, judging her with those gentle eyes.
    Not sure whether to slap him or kiss him, Aurelia had settled for instructing him to grow up. Then she left in a huff.
    Now, sitting on the ledge inside her husband’s office safe, holding in her hand a cross just like the one in Eddie’s drawing, she wondered. Eddie had never told her where he had seen the cross, and she had never asked. Did he have some kind of connection with her husband, some secret the men shared and she did not? Men were like that, and Harlem was chockablock with clubs and societies with passwords and symbols and odd names. Perhaps Eddie and Kevin were members of one. Maybe Eddie wanted to join Kevin’s.
    Closing the massive door, Aurelia laughed mirthlessly at her own pretensions. She knew nothing. That was what Sister Dorcas used to call the final truth, except that a much younger Aurie always thought she was saying “the fine old truth.” And the fine old truth was this: She had all but broken into her husband’s safe and found his secret compartment—and still she knew nothing. But she was surer than ever that there was something to find.
    (III)
    â€œF OUND WHAT YOU WERE LOOKING FOR ?” said Matty, ushering her out, beefy arm around her shoulders once more. “Good girl. That’s the way. I’ll clear up the evidence, don’t worry.”
    â€œThere wasn’t anything,” she said, faintly.
    â€œLying for the cause. Don’t blame you, really. Done it a time or two myself. Keep the secrets, that’s the thing.” His voice was booming, as if he didn’t care who heard him. As they crossed the open, airless room where the firm did its trading, the clerks all managed to turn the other way. “Don’t worry, my dear. Things will work out. Husbands, well, we get up the damnedest nonsense from time to time. I do. My sainted Daddy did. My sainted brother did. I bet even my sainted nephew Oliver does. Wives, well, job is to understand us. Civilize us, my Daddy used to say. You’re a good woman. Better than my boy deserves. Things will work out,” he thundered. At the elevator, Matty kissed her forehead. Only later did it occur to her that he was helping establish an alibi for her visit.
    Aurelia sat up smoking half the night, and spent the next day with her slender fingers creeping