The Secret Price of History. Gayle Ridinger
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"Sure we did," said the blond policeman before the nurse could reply. "She's waiting for you outside."
He opened the door and Delia walked slowly into the room with one hand tightly clutching the shoulder strap of her handbag; four steps, and then her other hand groped for the foot of Angie's bed as if she were unable to find her balance. "I've been in a state, Angie. You know how I get. And naturally Stan is worried too. How are you, sweetheart?"
"I'm OK, Mom."
"The doctor says it's not serious," Delia said hesitantly. "The bullet was fired from far away. It didn't hit bone or muscle."
"That's right. You've got just a bloody groove," the small nurse said in the bright voice she'd been trained to display, as she left the room.
Delia gazed at her daughter, tanking up on full certainty about this. A ringlet of her curly reddish gold hair—the same as Angie's, except for the grey streaks—escaped from its bobby-pin behind her ear, as she reached out to stroke her daughter's hand with strenuous affection.
"Ms. Cebrelli, the bullet hit you was .22 Caliber," said the second policeman present, dark in complexion and sounding Indian or Pakistani. "But the hand gun used wasn't modern, and this could make a problem for determining the model from a ballistics test. Any idea of who shot you?"
She shook her head.
"Our first thought was of course that it was an accident. There's no denying that accidents have happened in the past. But the only re-enactors authorized nowadays to carry side arms during the battle re-enactments are the officers, who all get checked out." He stopped. Angie Cebrelli's mother was crying now, those tears of relief he'd seen in many other cases, as she muttered 'my girl, my girl.'
Of course Delia could feel the policemen's desire for her to finish her display of relief and affection but they had riled her and she would make them wait on purpose. The questions they'd put to her out in the hall—especially the blond officer—had been nosy bordering on disrespectful. Why had the family moved to Virginia from Memphis a few years ago? And Memphis? That wasn't the kind of place with lots of Italians, it seemed to him. She had found herself giving this oaf, who looked like his ancestors had been yodellers from the hills in Austria, their family history on the defensive, fielding his ignorant and unsolicited remarks. In the 1800s both her and her husband's families had immigrated with many others to Memphis from Bassignana, a village in Northern Italy. "The whole town just up and came to Memphis, Tennessee?" the policeman had marvelled, with his strange toddler-like eyes. Her husband had helped her mother run their small cheese factory and Italian deli up to her death, carrying on alone until his own death in a hit-and-run accident. From then onwards, she had needed something more than her part-time job as public librarian in Memphis. She'd happened to find a full-time position in Virginia, and now she and her daughter lived in Manassas.
"So how come you didn't just take over the deli and cheese business in Memphis?" he'd asked.
What did this have to do with her daughter's shooting? And what gave him the right to poke around in her past like that? Anyway, the answer was that they had just been breaking even, and so after Bill's death she'd sold out.
But the oaf wasn't satisfied.
"You must have been sad to see the business go. It had been in your family so long. It'd been your father's and grandfather's."
"It was my great-great-grandmother's down to my grandmother's, and mother's, actually," she'd bristled.
"Mom?" breathed Angie plaintively now, "you're making my hand sore."
Delia let her daughter go with a final pat and the blond cop approached the bed again.
"Well, Angie, where's that medallion you were wearing?"
She clutched at her neck.
He smiled. "It's in your drawer."
She drew it out and lay back on the pillow with it.
"Was it a present?"
"No."
"Looks antique."
"Yes," Delia interceded.
"Ah. And is it valuable?"
"In what sense? It's a family memento."
"I see. Well now that Angie is awake, there are a few things we want to tell you both. The man sitting next to Angie in the grandstand has testified that some guy crowded in on him as he was applying the tourniquet—his T-shirt—to your arm. We've seen cell phone footage that shows a second figure by your head, yanking and pulling—maybe with a cutter—to break your necklace chain. He's a real fast operator, but your neighbour suddenly realizes what he's doing and repels him with his hand, while at that moment the ambulance attendants move in. Presumably your thief drops below the bleachers and gets away. In a crowd of fifteen thousand that's pretty easy. Did you notice anything suspicious or bothersome, from the time you arrived, I mean?"
The only thing she could recall was that scene between the cashier and the re-enactor at the Gettysburg Inn.
"Describe him."
"He was dressed like a soldier." She recalled the strips on his uniform. "An officer," she added. "He had a dark goatee."
The two officers exchanged glances, and the blond one seemed suddenly to lose a bit of his verve.
"Your hostess, Mrs. Reilly, has just been able to put her family business back on solid financial ground. Something—something you might understand."
"Was that man with the goatee the one in the photos you saw?" she blurted.
"No, ma'am."
"Well, did he shoot me?" Hadn't the policeman said that re-enactors who were officers could carry pistols?
The cop's jaw tightened. "We have no suspects at present."
"Give our investigation time, please," the Indian partner interjected with dignity. "As regards your medallion, we have taken a photo of it. If I were you, I would do some serious thinking about where it comes from."
"It's from Rome. That's where our ancestor found it," said Delia.
"If you would allow me, I would like to say that I have seen something similar in India, actually."
His blond colleague nodded at him in satisfaction. "OK, Ron, we're finished. Goodbye ladies. Get a good night's sleep, Ms. Cebrelli. You're going home the day after tomorrow."
She was?
A bandaged arm. Frick it. And yet by switching cars with her mother, Angie managed, thanks to the automatic transmission, to drive home to Virginia, steering rather well. She kept the radio on in order not to entertain thoughts that she'd rather not have had, especially the frightful image of some creep trying to cut the medallion off her neck while she risked bleeding to death.
It was nice to be following her mother into the safer, pretty state of Maryland. It was nice even to stop in the service area for coffee and a donut. Too bad that as soon as they sat down with their order, the blond policeman had to call her again.
He had some news. Mrs. Reilly had denied talking to any man with a goatee at her restaurant.
"Denied?" she sputtered.
"She says she—."
"I didn't make up what I said, Officer."
"She says—."
"You do remember what I said? She was there at the cash register." Angie squinted angrily at the corner of the table. "She was plump. Plump and....middle-aged with stooped shoulders."
"What color was her hair?"
"Color? Something neutral, not black or bright white or anything. Neutral."
"That's—that's not very clear to me, Angie."
So this was their little game.
"What's important is that this Mrs. Reilly of yours is lying."
She