Death on the Family Tree (24 page)

“You haven’t talked to Tom?” Posey sat with Katharine at the kitchen table drinking chilled white wine while Julia was over at the stove fixing her special grilled-cheese sandwiches with a slice of Vidalia onion and a big slice of one of Katharine’s own red tomatoes. “And why you aren’t bawling your head off, I cannot understand.”

Katharine sighed. “I’m cried out. And I’ve tried to reach Tom twice, but can’t.”

“Eat up.” Julia lifted the crisp brown sandwich onto a plate and added a slice of cold dill pickle and a few chips. “It’s the best thing you can do right now.”

“And while you do,” Posey added, “I’m calling Tom myself and telling him to get his backside home before dark, if he has to sprout wings.”

Suddenly she jumped up, her ear cocked toward the kitchen television, and dashed toward the den. “Wait a minute! Holly asked me to tape this if it came on.”

The small kitchen television showed an antigay rally in front of the Georgia capitol. People on both sides of the issue faced off and shouted hate slogans at one another. Katharine couldn’t help thinking of one of Jon’s gay friends from college, a sweet, gentle boy who never hated anybody and who died in a car accident at twenty. She wasn’t the only person with troubles in the world.

“What could Tom do if he did come home?” she asked as Posey came back. She smiled her thanks as Julia refilled her glass and set the wine bottle in easy reach.

Posey counted on plump pink fingertips. “Call the insurance company. Hassle the police to find the jerks who did this. Take you somewhere for a few days to get away from the mess. Hold you while you cry. But for now, eat up. You look like a drowned hamster.”

“That makes me feel so much better.” But Katharine did feel better, looking at food.

“You want some of this watermelon?” Julia asked, taking it out of its bag.

Katharine teared up again. “That was for Dutch.”

“Then you oughta eat it in his memory. It looks too good to waste.” She fetched two plates and divided it between Katharine and Posey.

Posey might look flighty, with her big blue eyes and flyaway hair, but she was a practical woman at heart. While they ate, she considered what Katharine needed to do immediately. “Call the insurance company as soon as you finish eating,” she advised. “They need to see the house before you start putting anything back in place. Then call a cleaning company. Rosa won’t be able to deal with all that.”

“No, cleaning up is going to be awful. And I’ll have to call Hollis’s painter friends and put them off for a week or two, at least.”

“They could clean.” Posey fetched spoons for the watermelon. “From what she says, they’ve got nothing better to do. Just tell them what you want done.”

“I can ask them.” If Katharine sounded dubious, it was because she hadn’t met a friend of Jon or Susan yet who knew how to clean. Still, at the very least they could carry debris to the curb. “I don’t know when they can start, though. The police have to finish checking everything out, then the insurance adjuster has to come.” She slapped one cheek as another thought occurred to her. “I forgot to call the insurance people after Friday night’s break-in! How could I be so stupid?”

“Or so overwhelmed?” Posey sprinkled her watermelon with salt. “Eat up. Watermelon stimulates brain cells. It’s full of vitamin C.” She chewed thoughtfully. “Do some adjusting of your own. Lump the jade with the stuff you lost today.”

After lunch, Katharine called the insurance company, who said they would speak to the police and call her back to set up a time to come to her house.

“Now call Tom,” Posey ordered.

She got Louise again. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Murray, but Mr. Murray didn’t come back to the office after his meeting. He did call to say he was going to lunch, and I gave him your message.”

“Call him on his cell phone,” Posey ordered when Katharine reported back.

“And try to discuss all this while he sits in the middle of a power lunch?”

“He might not be at a power lunch.”

“Don’t be silly. All Tom’s lunches are power lunches, unless he eats at his desk. Wonder what it would be like to eat elegant lunches all the time while discussing how to run the world.”

Posey added more salt to her watermelon. “In one word? Fattening. Call him!”

She did, but again got voice mail.

Posey waved her toward the stairs. “Go stretch out a while. Molly has a robe in the closet that ought to fit you, if you want to take off your clothes. Get a little sleep and we’ll talk about what else you need to do.”

Katharine went upstairs feeling like her shoes were soled in lead. She got into Molly’s robe—which was blue chenille and as soft as a mother’s hug—climbed onto the bed and pulled the covers over her ears, but she knew at once she couldn’t sleep. When she closed her eyes she saw her house with everything all over the floor. When she opened them and tried again, she saw Dutch lying on his couch with his face purple and his tongue sticking out. Those were not scenes she wanted to meet in her dreams.

She flung off the covers and headed to the chaise. Maybe lurid German prose would distract her. Her vocabulary for terms of passion had increased so much she probably wouldn’t even miss her dictionary.

She flipped through the diary copy and pulled out a page at random. It was dated 15/8 and the first line read:
Morgen sprengen wir werden den Brücke.

“
Morgen
” was tomorrow, and the verb was future tense. Was “
Brücke
” the word for brook? “
Sprengen
” was a verb she didn’t know, but it looked like “spring.” Were they going somewhere to spring over a brook?

“Context, context, context,” her professor used to tell her. She scanned down the page. They were to meet very early the next morning and it must be a surprise, for the writer hoped that L
²
would not inform “my dearest love” of the plan. The following evening there was to be a party at the writer’s home, and beer had already been delivered. Most of the other sentences could have been Greek. Katharine wished she had worked harder on memorizing vocabulary. She wished she had the dictionary she had left on the kitchen table that morning. Heaven only knew what shape the vandals had left the poor book in.

Her cell phone rang while she was trying to decipher another unfamiliar word. She grabbed it without looking at the number. “Tom?”

“No, Hasty. I’ve been thinking—”

“Wait a minute. What does ‘
emächtigen
’ mean?”

“Empower,” he said promptly.

“So
Emächtigen die Leute
means—”

“Empower the people. As in ‘Power to the People.’”

“And ‘
sprengen
’?”

“Blow up.”

“Blow up a brook?”

“Brook?”

“
Brücke
.”

“That’s bridge. I thought you said you knew German.”

“I do, sort of. I just don’t have much vocabulary.”

He snorted. “That’s like saying you speak English, you just don’t know words. Are you planning to blow up a bridge?”

“No, but maybe our friend was. It says right here—wait a minute. Here it is. ‘
Morgen sprengen wir werden den Brücke.
’ Are you sure ‘
sprengen
’ means ‘blow up’? It couldn’t mean ‘to spring across,’ as in the carefree action of somebody in love?”

“No, but maybe it used to be slang for a stupendous romantic encounter.”

“Or maybe it’s like ‘burning your bridges’ in English—maybe they were getting married.”

“Or something.” He sounded impatient. “Listen, I’ve been thinking about that necklace.”

“The necklace is fine,” she snapped. “The diary is fine. It’s just the rest of my life that is currently lying in pieces all over my floor.” Her voice trembled so she laughed to cover it. “I think there’s a curse on Aunt Lucy’s things, given what’s happened to me since I found them. Where were you this morning?”

“Is that related to the curse?” She could picture his black brows rising above his glasses, but he didn’t sound like he was stalling for time. Would she be able to detect it if he were?

“It may be,” she told him.

“Well, let’s see. I got my teeth cleaned bright and early at eight-thirty. Then I had a fascinating department meeting until eleven. After that—”

“That’s enough.” She was surprised at the relief she felt. “Let me tell you about my morning.”

When she had finished, he said, “I’m real sorry about Dutch.”

She wondered if a police officer could detect confession in his voice. She heard only sympathy. “Me, too. He was a special friend.”

“And one of the last ties with your parents.”

She appreciated his understanding that so quickly. “Yes. The very last.” She didn’t mean to sound pitiful, but she did.

“Well, at least you know I wasn’t robbing your house or killing poor Dutch, if that’s what you were hinting at. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“It was just—” She stopped. There is no sufficient apology for suspecting a friend of rampage and murder.

“Where are you now?” he demanded.

“Over at my sister-in-law’s. I’ll be staying here again for a few days until things get cleared up at the house.”

“Why don’t I come get you and take you out for coffee?”

She ought to refuse. It was entirely possible that he wanted to get her alone so he could force her to take him to the necklace—or to simply take him. But she also knew she wasn’t going to sleep, and Hasty could read the diary a lot faster than she could.

“Let’s meet somewhere,” she said quickly. “You know what I really want? A Krispy Kreme fix. You know where the main store is on Ponce de Leon?”

“Who doesn’t? I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll be there in twenty.”

“Bring the diary?”

“Of course.”

Posey wasn’t in the kitchen when she went downstairs, which made things simpler. She told Julia she’d be out for a while and left.

Hasty stood inside the store beside a long plate glass window watching soft dough form into circles that were put on shelves and carried up several levels inside a hot-air tunnel while they rose. “Watch this,” he said as she came up beside him. “I’ve got my eye on that row right there.” Together they watched the shelf of skinny doughnuts swell into plump ones and then fall simultaneously into a river of hot oil. Hasty put a hand at the small of her back and guided her down the window while the doughnuts bobbed and cooked. “Now they’re going to turn over,” he announced as if he had personally orchestrated the event.

When the rounds were cooked on both sides, they were carried by conveyor belt out of the oil to drain, then under a solid sheet of liquid sugar that coated them. “There’s our batch done,” he said with satisfaction. He tapped on the glass and pointed them out to the woman standing at the end of the conveyor, putting hot doughnuts into boxes.

“We don’t need a dozen,” Katharine objected.

“Did you eat lunch?”

“A sandwich and some watermelon I’d bought for Dutch.” Tears filled her eyes. She blinked and looked away.

“We need a dozen.” His hand at her waist steered her to the counter, where he handed her the warm box while he picked up two cups of coffee. She clutched the box to her chest and the heat melted some of the ice within her as she followed him to the farthest end of a long counter with an unprepossessing view of the parking lot and street. The only other person in the vicinity was a man who looked homeless, dozing over a cup of coffee.

The doughnuts were hot to touch and went down like greased sugar. Katharine felt her spirits rise as she reached for her second. Hasty grinned. “I’ve always thought the world can’t be skidding to hell in a handbasket so long as Krispy Kremes are still being made. Remember how far we used to have to drive to get them back home?”

Miami’s only shop was on a causeway to the beach at the far north end of town. Katharine blushed as she remembered some of their extended stays on the beach after those doughnut runs. “I brought the diary,” she said to cover her confusion.

He put a hand on her arm. “We had some fun times, didn’t we, Katie-bell?”

“Yeah, we did.” For one wistful moment she wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t gotten drunk, if she had forgiven him, if they had—

That road took her places she didn’t plan to go. She drew her thoughts back to hear him saying, “And I was infernally stupid. I cannot imagine why I went off with Janie that night. I made her bring me right back—you need to know that. Nothing happened. If you had just let me tell you so at the time—”

“I know. I was a self-righteous little prig.” She gave him a searching look. “But it’s over now. You do know that, right? I have Tom, Susan, and Jon. And you have Kelly and Melissa. Have you talked to them about moving down?”

“Not yet.” He looked away. “I’m thinking about it. I just haven’t decided it’s worth the hassles.” He reached for the diary pages. “But I solemnly swear that my only interest in you at this moment is these pages. Where’s that one about blowing up the brook?”

She found the page and he perused it and those that followed while she ate a third doughnut. She was reaching for a fourth when Hasty let out a surprised whistle, but before he could explain, her cell phone rang. She snatched it from her purse. “Hello?”

“What’s going on, Katharine?” Tom sounded rushed. “I’ve got two messages from you on my cell, and just got back to the office and found two more. Louise says you want me to come home today, but that’s not possible. I—”

“You have to. Somebody else broke into the house again and this time they completely trashed it. Then somebody—” Her voice wouldn’t go on until she swallowed, and even then, it trembled. “Somebody murdered Dutch. I need you, Tom. I can’t deal with all this alone.”

He used up a minute while he digested all that. “Dutch was murdered?” His disbelief echoed her own. When she confirmed it, he asked, “How bad is the house?”

“Bad. They took all our silver including Grandmama’s silver ser vice and all my jewelry and some of the paintings and the televisions and stereos and the computer, and they slit our pictures and cushions and mattresses, and—”