Death on the Family Tree (15 page)

Office Howard was writing in a notebook. “Do you know where we can get in touch with Zachary Andrews?”

“I don’t know his address, but he works for the Ivorie Foundation.”

Officer Williams whistled. “That makes it touchy.”

“I realize that, but maybe they could give you a home address.”

“We’ll check him out,” Officer Williams promised. “We’ll also put a description of the jade out on the wire in case it turns up. But there’s not much more we can do here. We can’t look for evidence outside in this gully-washer, and you’ll need to go over the house again when it’s daylight. I suggest you go to a hotel or a friend’s house for the night.”

“I’ll go to my sister-in-law’s,” she decided. “Will you wait until I pack a few things?”

“Sure.” He handed her his light. “Would you like me to come up with you?”

“Maybe to wait in the hall.” Her imagination pictured a hidden intruder stepping from her bedroom closet and creeping up behind her in the dark.

“I’ll wait here.” Howard lounged against the kitchen cabinets. Those two probably had no trouble whatsoever playing good cop, bad cop, Katharine reflected as she led the way upstairs. It seemed to come naturally.

Officer Williams waited in the hall outside her door while she pulled on some clothes and slid her feet into shoes. She didn’t want to waste time going to the attic for a suitcase, so she dumped what she would need for the night into an old Bloomingdale’s carrier. “One more thing,” she told him when she rejoined him. “I left something where I was hiding.” She climbed back through the door and retrieved the necklace. As she shoved it down in the carrier under her clothes, her fingers tingled as if a current ran through them. As she passed the upstairs hall mirror, she saw again the reflection of a dark-haired woman with a worried face. Or was that her own face in the odd light? She shivered and ran down the stairs.

As she got downstairs, she decided to take the copy of the diary and her German/English dictionary to Posey’s, as well. At least she could salvage that much for the historians.

The officers had come in two cruisers. They waited until she headed down the drive, then drove out behind her. One turned off in the other direction, one followed her. She wondered which one was on her tail.

Wind and lightning had abated, but rain still poured down and the hilly streets were slick in her headlights, littered with small branches and clumps of leaves. The familiar route to Posey’s seemed eerie and unfamiliar with no streetlights, no gate lights in estate walls along the way, no brightness in any of the windows. Her vision was blurred, too. Not from rain, but from tears. How could she have lost that diary?

She was halfway there before she remembered she had not called Posey to say she was coming. Was the cruiser still following? She peered in her mirror and saw a car not far behind. Was that a bar of blue lights on top? She couldn’t tell. She also couldn’t recall whether the city had passed a proposed law against talking on cell phones while driving inside the city limits. Since she seldom did, she hadn’t paid any attention. But she didn’t want to show up at Posey’s without calling first. She pulled the cell phone from her purse and set it in her lap, ready to call at the next stoplight.

There weren’t any stoplights. All the power was out. Katharine crept through streaming intersections wondering if she could place a quick call without being seen from behind.

At a four-way stop she opened the phone and punched in “8.”
I really ought to delete Mama, Aunt Lucy, and Aunt Sara Claire
, she told herself.
I’d be mortified if Posey found out she was that far down on my auto-dial.

“Yes? Who is it?” Wrens answered, gruff and drowsy. They were probably watching the late-night news.

Katharine glanced behind her. Was the cruiser near enough to see her? Getting arrested by Officer Howard was not how she wanted to end the day.

“It’s me, Wrens. Katharine.” Intent on avoiding discovery, she spoke softly.

“Speak up,” Wrens barked. “I can’t hear you.”

“Sorry. It’s Katharine. I’ve had an intruder, and am coming over to spend the night in one of your guest rooms. Tell Posey to unlock the back door, please, and lay out the sheets. I’ll make the bed when I get there.”

“You will not!” That was Posey, indignant. “I’ll have you know there’s always a bed made in this house for guests. We never know when one of the girls or the grandchildren will sleep over. But what happened? Wrens just handed me the phone, and all I heard was that you need a bed. Did you and Tom have a fight?”

“No, he’s still in Washington and I had an intruder,” Katharine repeated. “Do you have power? It’s out in our block.”

“Ours went out for a few minutes, but it’s fine now.” Posey and Wrens lived near the governor’s mansion. If any part of the neighborhood had power, it would be theirs. “But what do you mean you had an intruder? And what’s Tom doing in Washington? He’s supposed to be—”

“I can’t talk any longer. I’ll be there in a—”

Blue lights flashed behind her.

“Gotta go. Bye.” She punched the off button and pulled over at the next driveway. How mortifying, to get a ticket from the policeman you summoned with 911.

The cruiser behind her executed a U-turn in the middle of the street, turned on its siren, and disappeared in the other direction.

Posey’s kitchen was a happy place, decorated in red, white, and black with roosters everywhere. Even the teapot was a rooster, for roosters were one of Posey’s passions. But Katharine stood in that happy kitchen, took one look at Posey, and burst into tears.

“Oh, honey!” Posey was beside her in an instant, cradling Katharine’s wet cheek against her soft one. “Cry it out. It was a terrible thing to happen. Go ahead. Cry it out. What did you do to your hair? It looks fantastic!”

Once Katharine had permission to cry, she lost the urge. But her knees felt weak. She took the tissue Posey handed her and stumbled over to a kitchen chair. Dane, the Buiton’s Weimaraner, padded over and lay down with his soft taupe nose on her shoe. As Katharine blew her own nose, Posey propped against the counter and demanded again, “What do you
mean
, Tom’s in Washington? Did he forget your birthday?”

Facing Tom’s irate big sister, Katharine tried to soften his crime. “Some meeting got scheduled for Monday, and he has to prepare. We’ll go out next weekend.”

“But I can’t believe you actually had a burglar inside the house. Were you there?”

Katharine nodded. She couldn’t trust herself to speak.

Posey clutched her throat. “What did you do? I’d have died on the spot.”

Speaking of dying, Katharine wished Posey would make hot tea. Their air conditioner must be set low, for she was shivering like a naked Eskimo. Posey must have heard her teeth chattering, for she went to fill the kettle while Katharine told her story. “I followed the drill Jon had us practice years ago for his home-safety class. Remember? I ran across to his hideout, behind his closet—almost without thinking. And I felt pretty safe, with the bolt on the inside.”

“You weren’t scared?” Posey turned from fetching mugs with a skeptical look.

“Terrified,” Katharine admitted, bending to fondle Dane’s velvet ears. “Especially when he came into Jon’s closet.” She clenched her hands together, trying to keep them from shaking.

Posey had been putting tea bags in the mugs, but she stopped with one dangling from her hand. “He actually came into the closet?”

“Yeah, but then a siren started down our street, so he panicked, I guess. Anyway, he left.”

“And you climbed out and called the police, cool as a cucumber.” Posey clearly didn’t believe a word of it.

“No, I called on my cell phone from inside the hideout and I didn’t stir until the police came and assured me that’s who they were.” Katharine was glad to hear the kettle beginning to crinkle and sputter on the ceramic cooktop. The water might boil in a century or two. She wrapped her arms around her chest and held tight.

“That could have been the burglar, coming back,” Posey pointed out.

“It could have been,” Katharine agreed, “but they came upstairs calling my name. A burglar would have to have a colossal nerve to do that. Besides, the 911 operator had said she’d tell them exactly where to find me.”

“I swan.” Neither spoke again until the kettle boiled. Posey poured hot water over each tea bag and carried the mugs over to the table. Then she fetched milk and sugar and shoved one mug Katharine’s way.

Finally she sat down heavily across the table and stared morosely into her mug. “What is this world coming to? People coming into other people’s houses when they are there? It didn’t used to be this way.”

Katharine pulled her mug toward her and cupped her hands around it, bent low to inhale the steam. “Sure it did. Carter Everanes was shot by somebody who came into his house when he was there.”

“Who?”

“Aunt Lucy’s younger brother. He was killed in 1951 by somebody who came into his house looking for money. I’ve been reading about it in the paper.”

Posey was seldom interested in anything other people were reading. “It still seems incredible in this neighborhood. Why didn’t your security system go off?”

“I don’t know.” Katharine sloshed her tea bag up and down in the dark brew and wound the string around it on the spoon. “I may not have re-armed it. I was out cutting hydrangeas when Tom called, and ran to get the phone. I may even have left the back door unlocked.” But as she added milk and sugar to her tea, she could see herself holding a large bunch of hydrangeas and reaching awkwardly to punch the re-arm button and twist the deadbolt on the French doors before she dashed to the phone. Had she really done that? Or was she merely wishing she had?

“Lucky burglar,” Posey pointed out, “picking the one house on your street with the alarm off and the door unlocked. It’s hard to believe, don’t you think?”

Katharine almost voiced her suspicions about Zach, but Posey was already worried enough about Hollis. She didn’t need to think her daughter’s boyfriend was breaking into houses. Time enough for her to find out if he was arrested.

Posey sipped her own tea. “Don’t you always set the alarm and check the doors before you go to bed?”

“Yes, but after Tom called I threw something in the microwave—”

Posey gave her a penetrating look. “Frozen tuna casserole?”

She nodded. Posey reached over and covered one of her hands with her own. “I could cheerfully throttle my brother.”

“It’s okay.” But her throat was clogged with tears again, and her eyes burned. She lifted her cup to her lips and felt the rich warmth filter all the way down to her stomach.

Posey gave her a few minutes then asked, “What did he take? The burglar, I mean.”

“That diary I found in Aunt Lucy’s things. And Tom’s jade.”

Posey’s eyes widened. “
All
the jade? Even the Chinese seal Granddaddy gave him when he turned twelve?”

Katharine nodded, miserable. “He was using it as a paperweight on his desk. The guy got everything, both from the hall and from the library. And the diary—” She couldn’t go on. Every time she thought about that diary, she wanted to howl.

Posey was far more prosaic. “Who’d steal a diary?”

“Anybody who thought it might be valuable.” Hasty’s face rose before her, but she shoved it away. He wouldn’t. He just
wouldn’t.
At least she hoped that was true.

“Thanks for letting me come over,” she added. “I couldn’t bear to stay there.”

“Of course not, honey. Stay ’til Tom gets home, if you like.”

“No, I’ll be fine once it’s daylight and I can see.” She hoped that was true, too. At the moment the thought of her house—big, dark, empty, and possibly haunted—made her tremble.

She couldn’t possibly go to sleep yet and Posey was a night owl, so they turned on the tail end of the news.

“Look,” Posey exclaimed, “here’s our favorite media personality.” Brandon Ivorie spoke behind a podium, then handed a check to somebody in law enforcement. “To help in the war against terror,” he said with a confident smile.

Posey shuddered. “I wonder if he’d give me a check to combat terror?
He
terrifies me.”

Katharine brushed her hair from her face. “But doesn’t he seems a bit off his stroke tonight? He stumbled twice in one sentence, and now he’s repeating himself.” The audio cut quickly and the newscaster came on, smoothly completing the story.

They were on their second mugs of tea when Dane gave a soft “woof!” and padded to the back door. Hollis came in from the garage two seconds later, looking like a witch who had flown in through the rain. Her black T-shirt and jeans clung to her skin and her new hairstyle lay in bedraggled tails on her cheeks. “It’s raining bats and salamanders out there,” she announced before she was in the door, “and I had to park all the way across the lot from the stage door. I am soaked to the bone.” As she bent to fondle Dane’s head, she did a double take and demanded, “What are you doing here, Aunt Kat? I thought you all were going to the symphony.”

Katharine shrugged. “Uncle Tom couldn’t come home. We’ll celebrate next weekend.”

“But she had a burglar,” Posey announced. “Somebody broke into the house. While she was there!”

Hollis skipped a beat, then her eyes widened. “Really? Who?”

“We don’t know,” Katharine told her. “He ran away.”

“You’re dripping all over the floor,” Posey chided. “Here.” She handed Hollis a towel. While Hollis toweled her face, shoulders, and hair, Katharine repeated her story about waiting out the intruder in Jon’s hideout, because Hollis had spent hours up there and would appreciate the fact that it had saved her aunt’s life.

Hollis had the towel over her whole head, so her voice was muffled. “Did he take anything?”

“The only things I know about so far are Tom’s jade and Aunt Lucy’s diary—the one I found in her things with the necklace. But the power was still out, so I couldn’t take a thorough inventory before I left.”

Hollis dropped the towel onto the countertop and went to the fridge to pour a glass of milk. Her hand shook as she raised the glass to her lips. She must have felt as cold as Katharine, soaked and in the air conditioning.

“Why would anybody steal a diary?” Posey demanded. Her forehead creased in thought until she remembered the cost of removing wrinkles. Then she smoothed it instantly. “Do you think it was somebody who heard you talking about the stuff you found, thought it might be valuable, and expected you to be out tonight? Who all knew you were going to the symphony?”

Katharine ran down a mental list and sighed. “Practically the whole city. Somebody could have overheard me telling you all or Napoleon Ivorie at the club, I told Dr. Flo Gadney and Dutch—”

“Dutch wouldn’t rob your house! How can you even suggest such a thing?”

“You didn’t ask who would rob me, you asked who knew I was going to be out.”

She didn’t add that she had also mentioned the symphony to Hasty. He might have memorized her disarming code the previous night, she realized with a jolt. He had a good head for things like that. Dutch might remember the code, as well, because over New Year’s, when she and Jon had joined Tom in Washington, Dutch had stayed in their house because his was being painted before he put it on the market. But Posey was right—Dutch wouldn’t rob her house. He could have told somebody else the code, though.

Hollis could have told somebody, too—specifically Zach. Katharine gave her niece a speculative look, but Hollis’s face was buried in her glass of milk.

“Maybe he took the diary to blackmail you or something,” Posey suggested, stirring her tea with as thoughtful an expression as she could muster after her surgery.

That finally made Katharine laugh. “For what? My indiscretions aren’t that big. Besides, I never write them down in a diary.”

When Hollis’s dark eyes turned on her with a brooding expression, Katharine felt a flush rising up her neck. She was glad to hear the phone ring.

Posey’s eyes darted to the clock. “Who on earth could that be this late?” Katharine knew exactly what she was thinking.
Which of my girls or their children is in trouble?

“It’s probably for me.” Hollis went to answer. “Oh, hey,” they heard her say. She listened, then turned her back and dropped her voice to a low murmur. She listened again, darted an anxious look toward the adults, and swore softly. “Okay. I’ll be right there. Just let me put on something dry.” She set the phone on its charger and headed for the stairs.

“Who was that at this hour?” Posey asked sharply.

Hollis paused on the bottom step, but she didn’t answer.

“It was Zach, wasn’t it?” Posey set her mug down with a sharp click. “You’re not going out this late, are you?”

“Just for a little while.” Hollis took a couple of steps up.

“Don’t you all go to those clubs up on Peachtree, the ones where the shootings take place. You hear me?” Posey’s voice was edged with fear.

“We’ll be fine.” Hollis may have intended to comfort her mother, but the sentence came out in the exasperated tone young adults use with parents of diminished intelligence. She still hadn’t turned around, and her slim back was stiff and unyielding.

“You won’t be fine if somebody does a drive-by shooting,” Posey warned. “And don’t tell me you won’t get shot. Nobody sets out planning to get shot. That’s why they are called ‘accidental shootings.’” Her fingers sketched quotes Hollis couldn’t see.

Hollis heaved an enormous sigh. “I am twenty-two years old, Mama. I know how to take care of myself. Besides, we may not even go to a club. I’m going to Amy’s first, and you know good and well that nothing bad could possibly happen up on the Hill.”

Her voice oozed scorn and contempt.

“Not unless their politics rub off on you,” Posey replied. But her voice was lighter. Posey would love to drop “when Hollis was up on the Hill Saturday evening” into conversations.

When Hollis came back downstairs, she had put on dry black jeans and a black tank top, but had merely pulled a comb through her wet hair. She looked anxious to get on the road.

“Can’t you find Amy a boyfriend?” Posey asked as Hollis reached for cookies from the jar. “It wouldn’t have to be serious or anything, just somebody to—”

“That’s none of your business!” Hollis stomped out the door and slammed it behind her. In another minute they heard her car roar down the drive.

Posey stared at the back door like she had been struck, and Katharine was as surprised as she. Hollis didn’t always do what her parents wanted, but she never raged. Her weapons were icy, supercilious silence or ignoring what her mother said.

“If I’d ever spoken to my mama like that—” Posey carried their mugs to the sink and sighed. “Another happy evening in the Buiton household. Come on, Katharine, you look ready to drop. Let’s get you up to bed.”

Posey’s guest room had a nineteenth-century canopy bed so high it had its own set of steps, and a wide chaise over by one window with cushions of down. Too restless to sleep, Katharine put on her gown and robe and stood by the window, watching rain fall in sheets. She wondered idly about the call Hollis had gotten. It hadn’t sounded like an invitation to party. Katharine had gotten the impression that something was wrong. What might Jon know about his three classmates?

It was the thinnest imaginable excuse for calling halfway around the world, but for a mother, any pretext will do. She fetched her cell phone and punched “3.” While she waited for the phone to ring in China, she gave thanks for Tom’s gift of cell phones the whole family could use for international calls. Katharine had considered it an extravagance when he got them. Now she counted it a blessing.