Death on the Family Tree (12 page)

Later, she would wonder if that had been a premonition.

Friday, June 9

The morning was bright and fresh. Katharine stood in the breakfast room looking at the pool sparkling in the middle of her lawn and wondered how long it had been since she swam in it. As a child and teenager in Miami, she had practically lived at Coral Gables’s Venetian pool. When she and Tom found their house, they had immediately put in the pool and she had swum with the children every summer day until they got old enough to prefer the company of peers. “I might as well fill it in and plant a flowerbed,” she muttered. “Nobody is around to use it anymore.”

Almost as soon as she finished that thought she marched upstairs and put on a bathing suit. As she padded down through the shade garden to the pool, she heard a voice she had long ago identified as Sara Claire’s inside her head:
Never swim alone, dear. It can be fatal.
She dove cleanly off the side, swam the length of the pool, and turned over to float on her back. As she watched birds swoop high across the sky, she murmured, “If I drown, at least I’ll die happy.”

She floated, swam laps, sent up silent prayers of thanksgiving for such a marvelous day. But one minute she was reveling in beauty and the next she was asking aloud, “What’s the matter with you? You’re acting like you’re on vacation. You have to write up minutes from two clubs, you need to make calls for the cancer society, you’ve got a hair appointment in two hours and a cake to bake, Tom will be home by five, and here you are lying on your back in a swimming pool watching birds.”

She turned over and started for the ladder at a resolute crawl, fully intending to climb out and get on with what she had to do. But the sky was so blue and the water so lovely, even the threat of being thrown out of the Protestant Ethic Society couldn’t get her out of the pool for another half hour.

As if that weren’t hedonistic enough, after lunch she sat in the salon chair, looked in the mirror at the hairstyle she had worn for twenty years, and said, “Do something different.”

Michael considered her with his head tilted to one side and his scissors poised above her right shoulder. “Layers would be brilliant.”

Katharine suspected his British accent and British adjectives both came from watching Brit coms on TV, but his sense of style made him one of the most sought-after hairstylists in Buckhead. “Do it,” she said. Then she sat in fear and trembling while he wielded the scissors. Afterwards, her hair fluffed in layers from eye-level to just above her shoulders.

“This style brings out your eyes,” Michael announced proudly. “They are your best feature—truly unusual. You should always wear your hair like this.”

She knew that was hyperbole to get him a bigger tip, but she headed for her car feeling as gorgeous as Lady Godiva when she flung off her clothes and climbed up on her horse. All the way home she kept shaking her head to feel the soft layers swirl around her. Wasn’t Tom going to be surprised?

But she was surprised first. A BMW sat in her drive and Hollis and Amy Ivorie sat at her new patio table, drinking Cokes.

“Hi!” Hollis greeted Katharine when she joined them. “I don’t have to go to work until four, because we have a performance tonight, so we thought we’d come over here so I could talk to you about your room. Since you weren’t here, I let us in and got Cokes.”

“That’s fine.” Katharine had given Hollis a key and the security code back when she was in high school, so she could feed Jon’s fish and Susan’s dog when the family went out of town. Katharine had never asked her niece to return the key because she had always suspected that on some weekends when they were up at the lake, Hollis needed a place to retreat from her family.

Amy sat hunched in the second chair, her eyes darting to Katharine in short nervous spans, as if she expected to be evicted momentarily. “Your hair looks real nice,” she said shyly.

Hollis finally noticed. “That’s a fantastic cut! Did you just get it done?”

Katharine whirled and preened. “Sure did. You think Tom will like it?”

“I guess so. When did you get this table?” She ran her hands down one leg. “It’s perfect for out here.”

Katharine had known Hollis all her life. It wasn’t hard to interpret that abrupt change of subject. She leaned down, rested her hands on the table, and looked her niece straight in the eye. “I got the table yesterday. And I got this haircut today for Tom. And for me. Nobody else. The man I had lunch with Wednesday was somebody I knew in high school. I hadn’t seen him since then, nor do I expect to ever see him again. We got together at the history center because he was already there and the librarian thought he might be able to tell me about Aunt Lucy’s necklace. Not long after you left, he stomped out mad because I wouldn’t let him take it home with him. He isn’t interested in me, he is hot for Aunt Lucy’s necklace. Got that?”

Hollis looked at Katharine with a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes, but Katharine stared her down until Hollis shrugged. “Okay.”

Katharine grinned. “I’m flattered you think I’ve still got what it takes. Now come on, let’s go look at that room. I’ve got things to do before Tom gets home. Coming, Amy?”

Amy looked around uncertainly. “Zach’s here somewhere. Zach?” Katharine wondered whether Amy was slightly simple or just very sheltered. She seemed more rabbit than human, too naive to someday inherit and manage millions.

“He said he was going to admire the azaleas,” Hollis reminded her. “Zach? Zach! We’re going inside.”

He came around the corner almost immediately. “Hey, Mrs. Murray. You’ve got some great azaleas.”

As far as Katharine knew, her azaleas were no better nor worse than anybody else’s. Azaleas are—well—azaleas. She murmured noncommittal thanks.

“What did you ever do with that necklace and book you found?” He came to the table, reached for Amy’s Coke, and took a sip.

Katharine managed not to wince and swallowed the word “germs,” but she couldn’t repress a little shudder. “I put them in a safe place,” she answered. Actually, the diary wasn’t safe, it was still lying on Tom’s desk where she’d been working on the translation the afternoon before. She would show it to Tom when he got home, then return it to its hiding place.

Hollis’s smirk implied that she guessed the hiding place, but she didn’t say a word.

Amy asked in a worried voice, “Shouldn’t they be in a bank safe-deposit box? That’s what Zach says. Did finding them like that give you goose bumps?”

She so obviously wanted goose bumps that Katharine obliged. “Absolutely.”

“Did that Emory professor tell you all about them?” Hollis asked. “What was his name, again?”

“Hobart Hastings.”

“Dr. Hastings in the history department?” Zach exclaimed. “He was my advisor.”

“Did you like him?” Amy asked.

“Not much.” Zach bent and brushed some mulch debris from his pants. “We disagreed about a number of things, and I wasn’t sorry to see the last of him. Still, he knew a lot about ancient tribes of Europe.”

Hollis headed for the door, then turned and gave her two companions a careless wave. “You all can wait out here while Aunt Kat and I check out her room.”

As they reached the front hall, Katharine said softly at Hollis’s back, “Aren’t you worried Amy might snag your boyfriend?”

Hollis shrugged. “Naanh. Is this your rug? Not what I would have chosen, but we can work with it. Paint three walls green, maybe, and one in that deep red.”

“Paint the walls cream,” Katharine said firmly. “To match the rug.”

Hollis blinked. “Cream is
so
out. And with all that cream in the rug, it would look insipid. How about painting the whole room peach?”

Katharine considered. Peach would brighten the room and set off the mahogany shelves. And she’d look good in there, too. Peach was one of her better colors. She nodded. “Agreed.”

“I have three friends who could paint it for you, if you like,” Hollis offered. “They do real good work, and could use the money. They haven’t found jobs yet.”

“That would be great. The folks I usually use would tell me they could come sometime around October.” Posey might find Hollis difficult, but Katharine found her resourceful.

Hollis peered around. “What else were you thinking of putting in here?”

“I may use that secretary as a desk, but I’ll need my computer table and something for files.”

“Don’t bring your ratty stuff from upstairs.” Hollis was as fierce as Rosa. “You’ll want things in here you enjoy being around. Speaking of which, the first thing we need to do is get rid of that chair. Why you ever bought it in the first place—”

“It was your Grandfather Murray’s.” Katharine’s voice was sharper than she had intended, but she had always hated that chair and resented that she had been stuck with it. “Your mother wouldn’t have it in her house, but neither she nor Tom could bear to part with it.”

“Give it to Goodwill and don’t tell them,” Hollis suggested. “They’ll never notice. If they do, ask forgiveness, not permission.”

“That is not kind,” Katharine objected. “I can’t throw it out without asking. Besides, one of you grandchildren might want it one day.”

“Not this grandchild. At least put it in the attic for now.” Never one to waste time, Hollis went to the kitchen and called, “Zach? Amy? Come help me carry a chair up to the attic.”

She came back and said, “I’ll get samples of paint colors, call the painters, and look for drapery fabric. You concentrate on finding some pictures you like, a computer desk, and a nice-looking filing cabinet—a lateral file so it’s not as noticeable, preferably in wood. Get furniture that looks good with the secretary,” she added. “We ought to be able to knock out the whole project in a couple of weeks.” She crossed the hall and stood in the living room arch. “I like this room a whole lot better now, don’t you?”

“I do. So does Rosa, although she wouldn’t admit it.”

Hollis grinned. “I’ll bet she had a fit if you told her I was helping fix up your new study.”

“She did mention purple and black walls,” Katharine said with an answering grin.

Hollis gave a snort of disgust tinged with hurt. “I haven’t painted anything black and purple since I was in tenth grade, but they’ll never let me forget.”

Katharine went over and gave her a hug that surprised them both. “Don’t worry about what they think, honey,” she murmured. “You’re going to do just fine.”

“You wanted us?” Zach demanded. Amy was pinker than the heat would account for and he looked smug. Katharine threw him a look of disapproval, but he ignored her and moseyed over to the foyer table. “Nice jade.” He picked up several pieces and inspected them. “Don’t I remember you have more in the library?” He headed that way without an invitation, and stood looking into the curio cabinet. “I remember that jade from when I was a kid. I’ve always liked jade.”

“Come help me move this chair,” Hollis commanded.

As he turned, he spied the papers on the desk. “Hey, is that the famous diary?” He ambled over and picked it up. “Hell, it’s not in English.”

“Which makes sense, if it was written by an Austrian,” Katharine pointed out, hoping he wouldn’t damage it.

“I guess so.” He dropped it back on the desk and went to help Hollis maneuver the chair awkwardly up the stairs.

Amy trailed behind them offering helpful advice like, “Don’t hit the banisters. Careful! Don’t fall!”

Katharine watched their progress as far as the landing, then went to look at her new room with misgivings. She had always used a professional decorator in the past. What if she and Hollis had bad taste—or no taste? What if they finished the room and she hated it? What if she tried to install her telephone and failed?

She was considering calling the whole project off when the phone rang. She dashed to the kitchen.

“Katharine? This is Flo Gadney. I told you I’d call—”

“I’m glad you did. Did you ever find that cousin of your husband’s?”

“No, but I found his mother. She says he’s moved to California. She also claims Maurice gave him that property and he sold it. I know Maurice never gave it to him—Maurice couldn’t stand him—but the question will be how to prove it. I didn’t call about that, though. I called to tell you what I know about Carter Everanes. He was a lawyer, and he got murdered—”

“I found that out.” Katharine interrupted because she didn’t want to waste Dr. Flo’s time. “His yard man shot him and stole some things.”

“No, he didn’t.” Dr. Flo sounded as severe as if Katharine had given the wrong answer in class. “Alfred was a second cousin of my mother’s, and a sweeter man never lived. Coming up, I used to talk to Alfred at a lot of family gatherings. He was ten years older than me, but he never talked down to me like some people. By the time I was fourteen, I thought he was the cutest thing in pants, but he was never interested in me that way. Still, when I heard he’d been arrested, I cried for days. And when he was executed? I thought my world had come to an end.”

“But you never thought Alfred killed Carter?” Katharine could understand. It is always hard for a family to admit that one of their own has committed a horrendous crime.

“Anybody who knew Alfred knew he wouldn’t kill Mr. Everanes. He admired him tremendously. Besides, he had an alibi. He said he left Mr. Everanes mixing drinks in the living room a little past six and went home to bathe and dress before going to his auntie’s house for supper. He arrived at her place before seven and didn’t leave until after ten. His lawyer proved that Mr. Everanes talked to his sister on the phone around seven, and Mr. Everanes’s next door neighbors got home from church at nine and sat on their porch until ten-thirty, when they were ready for bed. But Mr. Everanes’s dog was howling, and since his lights were still on, the neighbor went over to ask him to quiet it down. He found Mr. Everanes, dead.”

Katharine was half listening to Dr. Flo and half listening to creaks overhead. Somebody was walking around in Jon’s bedroom. Hollis must be showing Amy the house. She realized Dr. Flo had stopped. “But the jury—” she murmured.

“Pshaw! Alfred was convicted by an all-white jury who didn’t pay one speck of attention to a single witness Alfred’s lawyer produced, including Alfred’s auntie, a god-fearing woman who taught Sunday school at Daddy King’s church.”