Tall, Dark And Difficult. Patricia Coughlin

Not every man is willing to risk his life in the cockpit of an experimental fighter jet.

      It might be his clothes, or the look in his eyes, but a casual observer would never discern that the man in the picture and the man in the parlor were one and the same.

      The kindest way to put it would be to say that Major Hollis “Griff” Griffin was out of uniform. Way out. Instead of starched linen and polished brass, he was wearing old jeans and an even older T-shirt with faded traces of a tequila logo. He was barefoot and unshaven, and unless someone were handing out medals for bad attitude, he wouldn’t be adding to his collection anytime soon. All in all, he looked pretty much like what he was; a man who’d been to hell and back and didn’t give a damn about anything. Or anyone.

      Least of all himself.

      If any of his old friends had happened to walk in and see him at that moment, they would have wasted no time informing the major that what he needed more than the beer in his hand was a haircut and a kick in the butt. However, Griff wasn’t expecting company, and if any did show up, he wouldn’t let them in. His old friends, like his old life, were thousands of miles away.

      From his slouched position in the rocking chair he aimed the remote control, and through a miracle of modern ingenuity froze the image of his late great-aunt Devora on the screen of the massive, state-of-the-art projection television that was the only visible remnant of his home in California. Former home, Griff reminded himself, for much the same reason some people can’t resist poking at a sore tooth. The hillside condo, located precisely far enough from the airfield for him to drink a medium coffee on his way to work each morning, was gone now, along with everything else that meant anything to him.

      Everything but the TV, that is. A man—even a useless, washed-up, broken-down man—had to draw the line somewhere. And so the television—a sleek monument to technology, surrounded by a century’s worth of…stuff. And as hopelessly out of place in this godforsaken mausoleum Devora had called home as he was.

      “Don’t let it get to you, pal,” he advised the television, swigging beer as he gazed around the room full of ornate furniture, cluttered tabletops, and overflowing curio cabinets. “Just as soon as we unload all this crap, we’ll be moving on.”

      He’d loved his aunt as much as he’d ever loved anyone, but ever since he’d set foot in this place he’d felt trapped. Which made sense, he reflected without a flicker of amusement. He was trapped, and he had sly old Devora to thank.

      His gaze wandered from the shelves displaying her collection of egg cups to the tall mahogany breakfront fairly bulging with her wedding china, and her mother’s, and her mother’s mother’s. He’d never bothered to look, but he’d bet there was a set of stone-age bowls with the Fairfield crest tucked away in there somewhere.

      His aunt Devora, he had long since concluded, had been certifiable. Sweet, in her own fussy way, but a first-class nutcase nonetheless. What else could account for the fact that she had obviously never, in all her eighty-six years on earth, thrown away so much as a piece of thread or scrap of aluminum foil?

      He knew that for a fact, because all of it, nearly a century’s worth of string and foil, was crammed into kitchen drawers and wicker baskets and every other nook and cranny in the place. And, just for the record, this three-story, fourteen-room dinosaur had a lot of nooks and crannies.

      New England’s answer to the catacombs, he thought, mystified that he, who felt as free as the wind in the smallest airplane cockpit, felt so caged in this house. It hadn’t always been that way, he mused, recalling a string of long-ago summers, summers he used to wish would never end. Once it had sunk into his eight-year-old head that Devora wasn’t nearly as forbidding as she first appeared, they had gotten along just fine. She had taught him to dig for clams and catch fireflies and make ice cream. And on rainy afternoons she turned him loose in her trunk-filled attic, where he would try on several wars’ worth of old military uniforms that Devora had saved along with everything else, and pretend he was—

      Griff abruptly halted the thought. It, like so many others, led to that large chunk of memory he had shut down and marked permanently off-limits.

      Frowning, he returned his attention to the present and his aunt’s larger-than-life smile on the screen before him. He still considered it the height of irony that a woman so firmly ensconced in a bygone era that she insisted upon hand-embroidered linen napkins and hand-cranked ice cream, had seen fit to videotape her last will and testament.

      He had first viewed the tape in her attorney’s office nearly two years ago and had promptly dismissed it with an amused laugh. Good old Aunt Devora, he’d thought, eccentric right to the end. He’d been riding high two years ago and had neither the time nor the inclination to think about his inheritance and the bizarre strings attached.

      He wasn’t laughing now.

      Jaw rigid, eyes narrowed, he jabbed the play button to hear it one more time.

      “And so, my dear Hollis,” said Aunt Devora, “there you have it. My final request. I am certain you will not fail me, dear boy.”

      “Perish the thought,” he muttered as the tape faded to black. God forbid he fail at the senseless, totally absurd, utterly Devora task that she had set for him. It was still hard for him to believe it was even legal, but all five attorneys he’d consulted had assured him it was.

      With the exception of modest bequests to her church and several friends, Devora had left her entire estate to him, with a single caveat. Among the many useless things she’d collected during her lifetime, she most prized the glass birds displayed in a locked curio cabinet in the parlor. Her will explained that it had been her intent to complete the collection and donate it to the state Audubon Society. And now her wish was for him to do it on her behalf.

      Strike that. Wish was not exactly accurate. It was more like a command, quite literally from on high. And until he accomplished the mission, he was not permitted to sell the house or anything in it.

      For a long time after he’d been informed of the conditions, he’d simply put the matter from his mind and hoped that a hurricane swept the place out to sea before he was forced to deal with it. He might have felt differently if he had needed the money, but he hadn’t. One thing you could say was that Uncle Sam took care of his own. As long as Griff didn’t develop a taste for high-stakes gambling or designer suits, he’d get by just fine. Not that it could hurt to have a nice chunk set aside for security, he thought, his mood turning grimly philosophical. After all, you never knew when life might decide to drop yet another grenade in your lap.

      Twists of fate aside, in the end his decision to sell was practical rather than mercenary. As the attorney for Devora’s estate had repeatedly pointed out, any vacant property was a liability. An older house of this size, on the waterfront, in an area swarming with kids and tourists, was a lawsuit waiting to happen. And that was a hassle he didn’t need.

      Selling was the only logical option, he told himself, doing his best to ignore the hot, guilty feeling that kicked up whenever he thought of Devora’s reaction to strangers living in her beloved “cottage.” Fairfield House had been built by her grandfather, and she had been batty about the place, referring to it as if it were a member of the family. A living, breathing member.

      If ignoring the guilt didn’t work, he would remind himself just how wily and determined his aunt could be, and how in all likelihood this whole final request business was nothing but a clever posthumous scam to trap him here forever. That thought never failed to snap him back to his senses.

      His decision was made. The house had to go. It was just a question of how quickly he could unload it.

      Griff reached for his beer, realized he’d finished it, and pondered whether it was worth the effort of hauling himself to the kitchen for another.

      Damn Devora, he thought. As if his life wasn’t complicated enough these days without this stupid wild-goose chase of hers hanging over his head. He didn’t even know where to begin, and she sure hadn’t left any clues. At least, not any clues worth a damn. What she’d left was a name: Rose Davenport. Apparently some old friend