Page 11 of Blood Game

“What about jewelry, money, credit cards?”

Kris shook her head. “She had a few pieces of jewelry from her father, but she didn’t wear them. She kept those in a safe deposit box. Money, credit cards, she would have had those on her when...”

He caught the hesitation.

“Aye, that makes sense,” he replied.

“Other things,” she went on, “mementoes from places she went on assignment, things she was given...” She made a sweeping gesture of the taproom.

“I don’t think there was anything of real value.”

She picked up a small statue of the Virgin Mary that had been swept to the floor along with the laptop computer, a gift from the Holy See after a story she did on the Vatican and its somewhat colorful history.

No holds barred, Cate hadn’t avoided the controversial issue of the role of the Vatican during World War II, but she hadn’t sensationalized it either. Out of gratitude or perhaps mutual understanding, she had been presented with a St. Christopher’s medal on behalf of the Pope at that time, for protection. Then years later for one of those books, she was given unprecedented access to the Vatican archives.

The book became a bestseller, condemned by the Pope then in residence, for the questions it raised based on centuries-old doctrine that had come full circle to the present, history repeating itself because of the actions and decisions of powerful men in the Church. She had met and interviewed some of those men during her long career.

She and Cate once talked about it, about fate, and the fact that nothing was by coincidence, a long conversation in front of a fire in the hearth at the Tavern.

“You don’t live as long and see as many things as I have without realizing that nothing is coincidence, or by chance,” Cate had said at the time. “We all have a role to play, a path to follow. We’re put in certain situations for a reason.” She had laughed then—laughter filled with irony.

“I was going to be a teacher, a nice, respectable profession. My generation, that’s what women did—nurses or teachers. That’s what my father wanted—a nice, stable profession, meet someone, settle down with a family.” That laugh again.

“He didn’t exactly follow his own advice. Neither did I. “

A chance encounter at a university lecture had set Catherine Bennett Ross in a different direction. She worked for a brief time under Tom Wolfe, but journalism was changing in the radical 60’s.

The new journalism movement became involved in the action of a story. Because she had been raised out of a suitcase on her father’s assignments that took them all over the world, the new movement whetted her appetite for the stories about people and places that weren’t reached from a desk in London or New York.

There were roadblocks and controversies along the way that were all part of her—knowledgeable, driven, principled, trusted, tough when she had to be, and included a brief stay in jail for refusing to reveal a source. All of it went into the person shebecame, but always that laugh, sometimes ironic, sometimes self-deprecating, often with a meaning that left the other person or the viewing audience wondering what she wasn’t telling them.

Then there was the serious side, where viewers kept tuned in, and readers later found in her books—integrity, hard truths, strength. Only once had viewers ever seen the other side of her, the person who had handed over a meal to a boy who was starving in Anbar province, or a few favors called in when she had arranged for a truckload of food to be diverted to a village in Africa where the inhabitants were starving after warring factions had destroyed their crops and livestock—the same person who held an American soldier who lay dying and had pushed away the camera so that his family wouldn’t see his death on the nightly news.

Months later, she had paid a visit to his family at her own expense, with no press, no cameraman, just the last words he had spoken.

“I owed him and his family that much,” she said about it then. “He wasn’t afraid at the end, just sad that he couldn’t go home. It helped me understand things about what my father had gone through during the war, the things he had seen, the photographs he took. That boy gave me a helluva lot more in those last moments, than I gave him.”

It was that part of Catherine Bennett Ross that had shown through in her books, stories of people caught in incredible times, the games powerful people played, and the humanity that often came out of nowhere and changed the course of events.

James stayed with her until the police arrived.

Some things were the same no matter where you were. She showed them her identification along with the authorization letter to retrieve the manuscript from Cate’s solicitors.

“Everything appears to be in order,” the lead officer, Inspector Simson commented after he’d read through the paperwork.

“You’re from New York?” he asked.

She nodded. “I was Ms. Ross’s editor.”

There was a comment that was more a sound, as he took pictures of the documents with his phone.

“We’ll need to check this out. And what is your interest in this, Morgan?”

They had made eye contact, and a brief nod of acknowledgment when the police constables first arrived.

“Didn’t know you were back,” the inspector said, a sliding glance at James Morgan.

“A short stay,” James replied. “Nothing for you to be concerned about.”