Death on the Family Tree (17 page)

The woman watched her go, then turned and looked back up the hill. “Protect her and all to whom it belongs,” she said softly. Then she turned, looked again at Katharine, and dissolved like mist.

Katharine lay on Posey’s chaise wrapped in the afghan. Rain tapped the pane, and the sky was dark. She felt disoriented and muzzy-headed. Had she dreamed? Or had she slipped through a crack in time? Whichever, she was holding on to the necklace as if for her own dear life.

It tingled in her hands as if a current ran through it. Her fingers were stiff as she unclenched them and laid it on her lap. She closed her eyes and saw again the wide blue eyes of the child for whom it had been made, and the dark eyes of the woman who had blessed it. “I will be faithful,” she vowed in the empty room. “I will take care of it while it is mine.”

By now she was wideawake. She stroked the circlet once more, then wrapped it in the cloth and returned it to the bag. Now she would tackle that diary. Reports from an archaeological dig ought to put her to sleep fast enough.

She started by looking up the German words for “archaeology” and “archaeologist,” to be sure she would recognize them. As in English, they were taken straight from the Greek:
Archäologie
and
Archäologe.

The sheets of the copy had gotten mixed up when she thrust the first ones back into the envelope, and it took her a while to reorder them by date. The second entry was written over a week after the first, and as she thumbed her dictionary for unfamiliar vocabulary words, she discovered that it did not deal with picks and shovels.

When will we finally come together? Can you care for me as I care for you? Will you ever come to me of your own free will? I do not deserve that you even look my way, but I shall die if I do not possess you—no, never possess, but rather discover together what love can be. I nearly despair when I think that may never be. But L
²
assures me it will, that I must only be patient until you are ready. And because L
²
knows you so much better than I, I will be patient.

Surrounded by the music of rain on the roof and hitting the patio below, Katharine let the sheet fall to her lap and sat staring into the darkness beyond her window. This was such a letdown. Either Georg Ramsauer had fooled his fellow archaeologists into thinking he was keeping a detailed account of their work while he was actually conducting an affair, or the diary belonged to someone else—probably Carter. Georg Ramsauer had twenty-four children and a full-time job. When would he have had time for a passionate affair?

Still, a man with twenty-four children must have an enormous sex drive.

And why should Carter keep his diary in German? To practice the language while he was in Vienna? Why would Lucy have kept it all these years?

One thing made it likely that this was Carter’s diary: the name L
²
scattered throughout. Katharine thumbed through several more pages and saw it on almost every one. That was probably his code name for Lucy, something they had dreamed up when they were children. Was Sara Claire his intended love? Was he far more involved with her than Dutch had known or been willing to accept?

Katharine had a hard time picturing her aunt ever inspiring that kind of passion. Sara Claire had about as much warmth and sex appeal as a Canadian lake in February, and her nose was so permanently tilted up in scorn that Susan and Jon used to giggle when it rained and say, “Call Aunt Sara Claire and warn her not to go out. She could drown.” Yet she must have had something in her college days, if Dutch had been, in his own words, “sweet on her.”

Katharine rested her head against the chaise and watched drops slide down the window. Their journey was erratic and unpredictable, without pattern. She had grown up believing that human lives have a pattern, that there is purpose in everything. Now she was losing the pattern of her life—and realized she had never known that of her parents and their friends. Had Dutch looked at Sara Claire over the years and regretted he had lost her to Walter? Had she, in fact, become the person she did because she married Walter? It was all so long ago.

“Why didn’t I ask more questions when they were all still alive?” Katharine murmured.

Because you cannot ask what you do not know needs asking.

She used to be pleased that none of her elderly relatives ever got to the stage where they lived in the past instead of the present. Now she thought with regret,
If they had babbled about their youth and childhood, I might have some answers.

For the third time that day, tears coursed down her cheeks, but this time they were neither tears of anger nor of fear, but gentle tears of sadness, weariness, and release. She relaxed and let them flow.

She must have dozed, because when she next glanced out the window the rain had stopped, the sky had cleared, and her face was reflected against darkness silvered with the light of a bright half-moon. Or was it hers? The face was long and thin, the hair dark, the eyes watchful. But when she bent closer, it was definitely her own face she saw, as transparent and no more substantial than it had appeared in her kitchen two days before.

Saturday, June 10

Katharine didn’t wake until nearly ten and she had a crick in her neck. Posey’s fat guest pillows were chosen for decorative appeal rather than comfort. Or was it because she had slept with the necklace under her pillow?

After stowing it at the bottom of her Bloomingdale’s bag, she headed down to breakfast.

The Buiton cook prepared most of the family’s meals, but on Saturdays, Wrens fixed country ham, eggs, grits, and his famous cheese biscuits. That morning, however, Katharine went downstairs to find Wrens gloomily reading the paper at the breakfast room table with half a muffin still on his plate.

Posey slid a plate of suspiciously yellow eggs, flat bacon, and muffins in front of Katharine and handed her a glass of juice that was a peculiar shade of orange. “At our age, we need to watch our calories and cholesterol, so today we are having carrot-apple juice, turkey bacon, egg whites, and banana bran fat-free muffins. They taste almost like the real thing.”

“And make you wish you had a real meal,” Wrens added gloomily. “Would you like some artificial butter for your sawdust muffin?” He passed the spread. “Did you sleep all right?”

“Not entirely,” she admitted. “I kept wishing I had put that diary and necklace in our safe-deposit box yesterday afternoon. My bank’s not open on Saturdays.”

Posey poured coffee that tasted suspiciously like decaf. “If that diary’s been gone a hundred and fifty years, nobody is missing it now.”

“That’s not the point.” Katharine stirred in lots of milk and sugar. “It might shed light on some valuable history. And the thing that makes me most miserable is that whoever’s got it may not know what it is and throw it out.”

“It’s done, Katharine,” Wrens said firmly. “Always look forward, not back.”

Posey leaned over and murmured in his ear, “I’m going to remind you of that when you lose your next golf match.”

Katharine was determined to go home and check out the damage in the daylight, but Posey insisted she come back to spend one more night and take Dane over to keep her company that day. Katharine didn’t object. She also left the necklace in the bottom of her Bloomingdale’s carrier, which she hid under an afghan on the shelf of Posey’s guest room closet.

Her own house looked remarkably normal in the sunlight. The shrubs stood tall and perky after their soaking the night before. The flowers had been beaten down but were beginning to lift their heads. Robins explored the grass for unwary worms washed out of their holes by the storm. Katharine expected to feel a foreboding as she drove into the garage, but all she felt was relief to be home. With Dane padding beside her, she roamed the downstairs looking for signs of the intruder, but except for the bare table in the foyer and Tom’s empty curio cabinet, everything looked fine. Nor did she see any broken windows.

With a curious sense that she must have imagined the whole thing, she left Dane in the kitchen and started upstairs. That’s when she noticed how big and hushed the house was. It took all her willpower to mount the first step and as she lifted her foot for the second, a wave of unease swept down the staircase and pressed her back. “Dane, come!” she called. Tom would have a conniption if he knew the dog had been in the house, but she was unable to go upstairs without him.

With Dane beside her, she had no problem checking the house from top to bottom. He was perfectly willing to sniff his way in and out of every room. In the basement he had such a fine old time snuffling the dark corners that Katharine began to wonder what small creatures they harbored.

Back in the kitchen, the big dog stretched out on the cool tile floor and chewed a treat while Katharine called the police for a status report on her break-in. They assured her that the officers who came the night before had filed a crime report and would call her that afternoon.

Frustrated that nothing was being done at the moment, she decided to make a list of all the people who knew she’d be out and who had access to her key and her security code, then do a little checking on her own. The police would check out Zach, but what if it hadn’t been Zach? She didn’t want to send them to her friends and family until she had eliminated the innocent.

She fetched a pen and paper and quickly wrote “Hasty, Dutch, Zach.” It took longer to add Hollis to the list, but she told herself, “You can’t leave anybody off until you are sure.”

She also added Lamar Franklin from the history center. He’d heard her telling Rowena that Tom was coming home Friday and they’d be going out, and a man with his research abilities probably could find information on the Internet about breaking into houses.

She called Dutch first, because she knew his number by heart.

He sounded delighted to hear her voice. When she brought up the storm, he said, “Oh, this place lost power soon after dinner, but fortunately I had already gone up to my room. I’d had a touch of indigestion after dinner, and wanted to lie down. But some folks were stranded downstairs without their medications until somebody figured out how to get the generator up and running. What’s the point of having a generator if they don’t train anybody on the nightshift how to use it? One of the residents had to show them how to turn it on.” He wheezed. “If they’d let us, us geezers could run this place a heck of a lot better than they do.”

“But you were in your room? I tried calling you, and didn’t get an answer.”

Several seconds of silence filled the line. “You musta dialed the wrong number, Shug. I was right here.”

“I called your number,” she insisted.

Silence fell between them, then he admitted with embarrassment she could hear over the line, “I stepped into the facility for a minute and couldn’t make it to the phone.”

She didn’t mention her intruder. If his touch of indigestion had been a mild heart attack, she didn’t want to bring on another. But she hoped he hadn’t faked the indigestion—and lied about being in his room—to cover up the fact that he had gone out in the storm to rob her. He had always admired Tom’s jade.

Before she could look up Hasty’s number on her caller ID, the phone rang. She was startled to hear a familiar mountain twang. “Hey, Miz Murray. Lamar Franklin here. Just wanted to be sure you and those things you found are still safe.”

Was he putting out feelers to see if she had missed the diary yet?

“Everything is fine,” she said. “Did you all lose power in that big storm last night?”

“I don’t know. I’m over in South Carolina this weekend making two speeches on genealogical research. Spoke in Greenville last night and I’ll be over in Columbia this evening. But I just wanted to check and make sure you are okay.”

Katharine assured him she was, and scratched his name off her list. She just wished she could scratch her name off his.

Which brought her to Hasty, the prime suspect after Zach. He wanted the necklace and the diary, he had possibly memorized her alarm code, and he’d always been good with mechanical things, so he could probably break into a house. On the other hand, he was Hasty, once her dearest friend. She felt guilty for suspecting him. On the third hand, as the father in
Fiddler on the Roof
would say, she could either check him out herself or turn his name over to the police. That was enough to make her find his number and call it.

She had planned to chat casually and ask where he’d been the night before, but once she heard his voice on the other end she felt sixteen, not forty-six, and blurted out her troubles like she used to. “I got robbed last night. Somebody took the diary.”

Silence filled the line. Finally he said, “I thought you were going to put those things in a safe place.” From his tone, he was clenching his teeth and trying not to swear.

“I did. But I was translating the diary Thursday, and left it on Tom’s desk. Somebody came in last night and took it.”

“Came in? You mean a burglar?”

“Yeah. But all he took was the diary and Tom’s jade collection. Every piece of it.”

“I guess Tom was pretty furious, huh?” Hasty didn’t sound particularly upset by that.

“Tom doesn’t get furious, but he’ll be upset when he hears about it.”

“When?”

“He didn’t get home. And he has an important meeting Monday that he’s preparing for, so I don’t want to bother him yet.”

“You came back alone to an empty house and found it had been robbed?”

“I didn’t go out, with the rain and all. I was here the whole time.”

Hasty swore long and fluently. Was that because he was worried about her or because he was furious she’d been in the house while he was robbing it? It was some comfort that he swore better than the intruder. His next words, however, were not comforting. “So now that priceless diary is gone. Who knows what it might have told us? I warned you—”

“Don’t, Hasty. I already feel terrible. Besides, I did make a copy.”

“You did?”

She reminded herself that the relief in his voice could be faked, that he could have the diary right there beside him. “Sure. While you and Lamar were talking to the policeman.”

“Well, that’s something. At least the data isn’t lost. How about the necklace?”

“It’s safe.”

“Let me keep it until—”

“It’s safe,” she repeated.

“That’s what you said about the diary.” With that, he was gone.

Why should she feel bereft?

She roamed the downstairs, uneasy and uncertain what to do next. She took out the booklet she had bought on how to install a phone line, but didn’t feel like learning anything new at that moment. Finally she went into Tom’s library and made another copy of the diary so she would have one to write on. His copier wouldn’t do books, but it made excellent copies of flat sheets. While she waited for it to finish, she realized that the diary might tell her when the necklace was found, and where. With a new sense of excitement, she read a page at random. It described an evening in a
Biergarten
with friends. L2 had taken the others away and left the lovers alone.

She was trying to make out the next bit when the telephone rang. A clipped voice started speaking as soon as she answered. “Katharine, this is Rowena Slade.”

“Ohhh—” Katharine drew the word out, trying to figure out how to ask when the Ivories’ dinner meeting had ended and whether Zach could have been burglarizing her house by nine-thirty. Nothing tactful came to mind.

That didn’t matter, because Rowena didn’t pause long enough for her to speak.

“Brandon had a great idea about that necklace you found. Daddy’s ninetieth birthday is next month, and we’d like to give it to him, if it turns out to be authentic. I know he told you to call him once you have established its authenticity, but I want you to call me instead. Would you do that, please?”

“The diary—”

“We aren’t interested in the diary.” Katharine could almost see Rowena brushing it away. “Daddy has never collected books. But if the necklace turns out to be genuine—”

A man spoke in the background. “Excuse me,” Rowena said to Katharine, then spoke in a lower voice to somebody else. “I don’t know if she even knows him.”

“Her son went to school with him, and Hollis is her niece.” It was Brandon, and he sounded real put out about something. “Here, I’ll ask her.”

His voice came on the line, formal but irritated. “Mrs. Murray, do you know how to reach Zachary Andrews? He was supposed to bring my speech to a dinner last evening, and he never arrived. I had to wing the whole thing. He hasn’t showed up today, either, and he’s supposed to be helping me with logistics for an important march down at the capitol on Monday. Do you have any idea where he might be? We’re getting rather p—ah—perturbed.”

Katharine got the impression “perturbed” wasn’t his first choice of word.

“Sorry,” she told him. “I have no idea.”
Unless he has hightailed it with my husband’s jade,
she wanted to add. But her father had drilled into her all her life that a man is innocent until proven guilty. She added, instead, “I don’t really know Zach. I hadn’t seen him for years until Wednesday night, with you all.”

Rowena came back on the phone. “So you will call us as soon as you have a price for the necklace?”

Katharine wasn’t certain she could ever part with the necklace now, but what could she say? Had anybody ever said a successful “no” to Rowena?

Katharine sat at Tom’s desk and set to work on the diary again. The third entry, dated two days after the former one, was not at all like the ones she had already read. Instead, it was brisk and businesslike:

Everyone is here. We had our first meeting this evening. All are agreed on what we must do, although some protested the method. L
²
stressed that unanimity is essential for success, and was able to persuade them all. L
²
also reported that all supplies have been purchased and stored in safety. D has acquired the necessary skills. I have the maps and schedules. One week from today, we begin.

Katharine reread what she had written with rising excitement. Perhaps this was Ramsauer’s diary after all, and he had interspersed personal remarks into the report on the dig. Why hadn’t she studied harder, so she could read these pages with ease?

Dane got up and padded to the door, needing to go out. She left the diary and took him into the front yard where he could chase butterflies for an hour while she did some weeding. They had been there scarcely thirty minutes when she heard a car in the drive and Dane sent up a volley of barks.