Daughter of Deceit (4 page)

Not that interested.

Katharine didn’t say it, because she recognized the snide remark for what it was: not the truth, but a desire to put Murdoch down. She said lightly, “I’ve only begun to wet my toes in the genealogy ocean. Until I get in deeper, I have no idea how far I’ll want to go.”

But I won’t bore other people with it,
she vowed. She looked pointedly at the woman behind Murdoch. “May I give you some coffee?”

“I’ll catch you later,” Murdoch promised as she reluctantly moved away.

After a busy twenty minutes Katharine was relieved by Francie, Ann Rose’s cook. “Go on and get yourself a plate. I’ll take over here.” Katharine gratefully handed over the coffeepot and piled a plate with vegetables, small sandwiches, and tiny muffins. She added two petite éclairs and a couple of pecan tarts, claimed a glass of iced tea, and roamed the house looking for a seat. All the chairs were full except for the best seat in the conservatory.

“Sorry. We’re saving this for Rita Louise,” a woman at the table apologized. Katharine didn’t mind. The conservatory—filled with tropical plants and Oscar Anderson’s sizable orchid collection—was so warm and humid, she preferred another room.

In the living room, she found Rita Louise with Bara. The old woman sat rigid with propriety in the chair next to the couch, without plate or cup. She wore the expression Katharine would have expected to see on the face of a determined martyr—or the wardress of a women’s prison. Clearly, she intended to guard Bara during lunch to be sure she did nothing outrageous. The women made a stark contrast: Rita Louise the pale ice of a gray winter’s day and Bara, in red silk, a vivid fire. Bara had moved to the end of the couch and had laid her head back against the cushions with her eyes closed. Was she paying any attention to what Rita Louise was saying? Rita Louise was saying it with force and indignation.

Katharine, hesitating to interrupt, heard, “Nettie promised me that lamp! My aunt was great friends with Louis Tiffany’s family.”

Bara spoke without opening her eyes. “Nana left it to me, not Mother.”

Rita Louise gave a small huff of impatience. “Your grandmother was very unfair to your poor mother at the end. Nettie deserved better.” She looked up and noticed Katharine hovering nearby. “Did you want something, dear?”

“Hello, Miss Rita Louise. They’re saving a place for you in the conservatory. May I sit here?” Rita Louise was past eighty, and ought not miss a meal. Besides, if Bara was still a bit under the weather after lunch, Katharine would offer to drive her home. Bara might think her presumptuous, but Bara’s house was in walking distance of her own. And while the neighborhood’s lack of sidewalks could make walking a bit dicey during rush hour, Katharine was sure she’d be safe enough at one thirty—safer than driving home with Posey.

Rita Louise rose. “Thank you, dear.” Her nod conveyed gratitude both for the information and for Katharine’s rescue. “Eat something, Bara,” she urged as she departed.

Bara didn’t move.

Katharine was grateful to find that the whiskey fumes had mostly evaporated. “Are you all right?” she asked, seating herself in the vacated chair. It was scarcely warm from Rita Louise’s tenure. The woman was far too civilized to generate body heat.

Bara opened one eye to see who the intruder was, then closed it again. “I’m not real well this morning. Had a shock earlier today and it hasn’t worn off.” Her voice was the deep, husky drawl Katharine associated with too much whiskey and too many cigarettes, yet until that morning, she had never known Bara to smoke or drink.

“Could I get you some coffee and a few snacks?”

Bara considered the matter with closed eyes. “Coffee would be good. Black. I’m not hungry.”

She ought to be, Katharine thought. Once thin, she was now gaunt. The bones of her wrists and ankles were downright skeletal. Yet she must have had some cosmetic surgery recently, because the skin of her neck was smooth, her jawline as sharp as it had been at forty, and her eyes had that wide look plastic surgeons seem to think is natural.

Katharine set her plate and cup on the glass-topped coffee table, left her purse to reserve her chair, and headed back to the dining room. She returned to find that Posey had claimed her seat, rosy with indignation. “You forgot your promise, Katharine,” Posey complained as soon as Katharine was in earshot. “Ann Rose backed me into a corner and made me agree to teach a woman to read. It’s all your fault.”

“It’ll do you good.” Bara hauled herself erect and reached for the cup Katharine offered with an offhand “Thanks.”

Exactly as if I were one of the maids,
Katharine thought as she sat on the couch. She knew it was petty to resent Bara’s casual acceptance of her service, but she had missed the mark when she’d told Posey she and Bara were only slightly acquainted. She was utterly beneath Bara’s social radar.

Posey, who had been born in the same circle as Bara, transferred her glare to the older woman. “Easy for you to say. First I have to get trained, and then, what if my pupil doesn’t learn? It’ll all be my fault because I’m a bad teacher.”

“It won’t kill you to try.” Bara drank the hot black coffee greedily. “The training is only one weekend. After that you tutor an hour a week. Do something for somebody else, Pose.” She reached over and took one of Katharine’s éclairs from the plate on the coffee table. Katharine was astonished to see that her nails were chewed and ragged, the polish chipped. Bara was usually exquisitely groomed.

She was also surprised that Bara had absorbed so much of Ann Rose’s presentation. “Are you going to tutor?”

“Not right now. I’m a little busy at the moment. My dearly beloved husband has been giving me all sorts of grief, and I have to sort that out before I do much else. You’ve heard what he’s trying to do, haven’t you?”

“I have,” said Posey, at the same moment Katharine said, “No, I haven’t.”

Bara was more than willing to share her troubles.

“Oh, hon!” she moaned dramatically to Katharine, “my daddy was scarcely in his grave before Foley announced he wants to divorce me, take half of every blessed thing I own, and spend it on my former maid.”

She began to shake. Her tremors grew so violent that Posey put a hand on her shoulder and urged, “Take deep, easy breaths. Inhale. Exhale. That’s right. Now another. Inhale. Exhale.”

Gradually Bara calmed. “Sorry about that. Hits me all of a sudden sometimes.”

“Who is your lawyer?” Posey demanded.

“Uncle Scotty.”

“Scotty? He doesn’t know a thing about divorce, and he’s not tough enough. Why didn’t you use Mason?” Mason Benefield was the Buckhead divorce lawyer of choice.

“Mason is representing Foley, and Uncle Scotty’s giving me a good deal. Foley has frozen all my bank accounts and charge cards, so I had to take what I could afford. It’s a real mess.” Bara rubbed her ravaged face with one hand. “On top of all that, I found a cigar box this morning full of war medals among some of Winnie’s things. He must have kept the box hidden in his desk drawer, because I hadn’t ever seen Art’s medal or…or Win’s.” She took another deep breath and exhaled through rounded lips. “Finding them plumb knocked me for a loop.”

Katharine and Posey exchanged a look, but neither came up with anything to say. To Katharine, finding medals seemed insignificant beside everything else Bara was facing, but she knew from recent experience that sometimes it is the small things that push you over the edge. And she had never held in her hands a medal her son had earned by giving his life.

Bara gave a harsh laugh. “I’d better hide the medals from Foley, hadn’t I? Or he’ll want half of them, to add to his horde of stolen goods.” She picked up her cup and took a quick, nervous swig.

“He can’t have your medals,” Posey objected. “They have nothing to do with him, not even Win’s. You had Win long before you married Foley.”

Bara reached over to Posey’s plate and extracted a tiny éclair. “I had my house long before I married Foley too, but he wants that.” She bit into the éclair as if she wished it were some portion of Foley’s anatomy.

“Why don’t you get the medals framed for your wall?” Posey suggested. “You could leave them at the framer’s for ages. Foley need never know you’ve found them.”

Bara finished the éclair, purloined Katharine’s corn muffin, and spoke in a muffin-muffled voice. “Might get them framed for Chip. He’s only three, but one day he might appreciate them. I don’t know what most of them are for, though. Not much point in giving a kid medals if he doesn’t know who got what for doing which. Or which for doing what. Whatever.” She drained her cup and peered down into it. “I’m out of coffee.”

Aunt Sara Claire used to couch requests as statements like that. It’s what children learn when they are raised with servants or doting aunts who wait on them. Katharine went to refill Bara’s cup. While she was at it, she filled another plate. Might as well insure that she and Posey got something to eat.

She came back to find Posey saying, “Katharine knows a lot about genealogy. She can find out about your medals, no problem.”

“Oh, really?” The way Bara was staring at her, Katharine had the feeling it was the first time the woman had really looked at her in the years they had been acquainted. Her gaze was that of somebody inspecting a museum exhibit that had turned out to be more interesting than expected.

Katharine, who had auburn hair and the temper to go with it, felt her face flush. Twenty-five years in Buckhead and she was still, to the core of the inner social circle, nothing more than Tom’s wife, Posey’s sister-in-law, and Sara Claire’s niece?

“I don’t know a thing about medals,” she said tersely, “and I’m just beginning to learn about genealogy. Here. I brought you some food to go with your coffee.” She set the plate and hot coffee before Bara.

“I’m not hungry.” Bara demolished a crabmeat sandwich in two bites.

Posey finished a strawberry dipped in white chocolate and wiped her hands on her napkin. “Don’t be modest, Katharine. Look how you figured out about that family down on Bayard Island last month.”

“Where’s Bayard Island?” Bara ate a second sandwich.

“Between Jekyll and Savannah.” Posey launched into a long and greatly embellished account of what had happened when Katharine and a friend went down to investigate whether a grave belonged to the friend’s grandfather. “Katharine figured out all sorts of stuff about the family, going all the way back to the Civil War,” Posey concluded.

While Posey talked, Bara steadily continued eating the food Katharine had brought. At the same time, she was considering Katharine with thoughtful eyes. A writer describing Bara’s expressions might have used phrases like “dawning realization” and “new respect.” Katharine was caught between being flattered by the woman’s unwonted attention and resenting it.

Bara is very important, dear,
her Aunt Sarah Claire reminded her.
She comes from two of the wealthiest, most influential families in Atlanta.
Katharine had long ago accepted that her relatives, though dead, persisted in hovering around her in what the Bible calls “a cloud of witnesses,” providing a running commentary on her life.

But she’s only a human being,
her father insisted.
No point in holding her in awe.
Her father had been a great believer in the equal value of all people.

And for twenty-five years she has treated me like a ghost and looked right past me,
Katharine silently agreed.

That’s not fair, dear. She remembered your name at Payne’s wedding,
her mother chided.

Katharine tuned in to Posey and Bara to find Posey describing some research Katharine and Dr. Florence Gadney had done on the Internet.

Bara interrupted mid-sentence. “I’ve never been much interested in family history. Murdoch takes care of all that. She’s a nut about genealogy. She’s even traced Winnie’s family, and he had nothing to do with her. Don’t let her get to talking about it, or you’ll never get away.” She took a sip of coffee and grimaced. “Stuff’s gone cold on me.”

Katharine refused to rise to that bait a second time.

Cultivate compassion, dear,
her mother reminded her.
She is a human being, after all. Don’t dismiss her because she’s rich.

Katharine sat like a rock.

Posey—who clearly expected Katharine to fetch more coffee—gave her a surprised look and rose to get it. While she was gone, Bara confided, “Murdoch nearly wet her pants last year when she found out one of our ancestors came over on the
Mayflower
. Heck! Simple logic could have told her that any family, who’s been in this country since the 1800s, ought to be able to trace somebody back to the
Mayflower
. Those people bred like rabbits. But to hear Murdoch go on about it, you’d think our ancestor was the captain. I figure he was probably a stowaway.” She threw back her head and laughed, a raucous sound that earned her several curious stares.

After a minute’s silence, she added, “I do wish I could identify those medals, though. Winnie had them all crammed together in that old cigar box. Purple Hearts and Art’s Bronze Star are the only ones I recognize. Do you think you could figure out what they were earned for?”

“No,” said Katharine. “I don’t know a thing about military medals.”

“Sure she could.” Posey handed Bara her coffee and gave Katharine the encouraging look of a mother whose child has been asked to play the piano.

“I don’t—” Katharine began.

Bara interrupted again. “I really like your idea of framing them for Chip, Katharine.”

As Katharine recalled it, Posey had suggested framing the medals and Bara had had the idea of framing them for Chip.

Bara consumed a cucumber sandwich and chased it with a swig of black coffee. “I want Chip to grow up knowing what kind of man his great-granddaddy Holcomb was. You’ll help me, won’t you, Katharine? For Chip? Don’t make me ask Murdoch,
please.
”

“Don’t ask Murdoch what?”

They hadn’t noticed Murdoch and Rita Louise approaching.

Posey stood and offered Rita Louise her chair.

“Nothing important,” said Bara.

Posey didn’t mind explaining. “We’re talking about Bara framing her daddy’s military medals for little Chip. I think it’s a great idea. Katharine has offered to help her identify what he earned each one for.”

Katharine opened her mouth to protest, but Rita Louise was first to the mark. “Oh, my dear!” she objected. “That was so long ago! Surely you have enough on your plate to worry about right now.”