Death on the Family Tree (7 page)

Some folks take a cruise on their birthday. Katharine took a cab.

It was nearly four before she got home, considerably poorer.

She was also jumpier than she could ever remember being. All the way back from the tow lot, she had watched her rear-view mirror. As soon as she got inside the house, she activated their alarm system—something she had gotten out of the habit of doing during the day when she was going in and out. Feeling like a prisoner and annoyed both at herself for being such a coward and at the two men who had made her that way, she dumped the tote bag beside the diary copy on the countertop, kicked off her shoes, and reached for the phone to retrieve messages.

The first was from Susan, bubbly as usual. “Hi, Mom! Just calling to wish you a happy birthday. The market’s up and I actually made money! Did you get my package? They promised it would arrive today. Hope you like it. It reminded me of you.”

Wondering what on earth might have reminded Susan of her, Katharine waited for her second message. It was from Dr. Flo Gadney and did nothing to calm her nerves.

“Katharine. I am heading down to Butts County for a day or two, trying to track down Maurice’s no-count cousin Drake, but I will call you when I return. Driving home, I finally remembered why the name of Carter Everanes seemed familiar. I’ll call and tell you all about it when I get back. He was murdered, back in the summer of fifty-one.”

When the doorbell rang, her legs began to tremble. Shakes moved up her whole body until she had to lean against the counter for support. She told herself she was being ridiculous, but the message didn’t reach her extremities. Had one of the men followed her after all? What should she do?

She waited for the doorbell to ring again. It didn’t. Had whoever it was concluded she wasn’t home? Or did he know she was, and alone? Would he try to break in?

She couldn’t stand the suspense. She tiptoed to the living room on spaghetti legs and peered through the arch to the front hall. Beyond the sidelight beside the front door sat a parcel. Down at the drive, a stocky woman in brown shorts and shirt was climbing into a UPS truck.

Katharine felt so foolish that she backed into the nearest chair and laughed until tears ran down her cheeks. Laughter provided catharsis and strength to get up and retrieve the parcel. She stood in the doorway for a few minutes vowing not to be so silly again. Still, she made sure the door was locked and the security system reactivated before she returned to the kitchen.

The box contained Susan’s present: a perky blue kettle for her newly redecorated kitchen. “To cheer you up since we can’t be there.” Dear Susan. Tears stung Katharine’s eyelids as she headed to the sink, washed out the kettle, and put it on to boil.

Out of the corner of her mind’s eye she saw her daughter’s dark head bent over the kitchen table, coloring. Jon’s fiery mop caught the light as he played with trucks on the floor under her feet. Why hadn’t she cherished every single minute she spent with those children? Whoever coined the term “empty nest” obviously never had one. Children may leave home, but they leave a houseful of ghosts behind.

A few minutes later she poured a mug of tea and sank into a chair, limp after the shocks she had sustained in the past few hours. As the tea began to revive her, she reviewed what she had learned.

Fact One: Lucy and Walter Everanes had a brother Carter, whom they never mentioned.

Fact Two: He was thirteen years old when the 1930 census was taken.

Fact Three: He was in Austria in 1937, at twenty.

Fact Four: By 1939 Carter was at home, in Sara Claire and Walter’s wedding.

Fact Five: Carter somehow ended up with a necklace from Hallstatt, and a diary.

Fact Six: Carter was murdered in 1951.

Fact Seven: You got Carter’s necklace and diary today, and two men chased you to get them.
The words rose unbidden and hovered in the air.

None of the facts answered the questions of how Carter got the things or how Aunt Lucy wound up with them. Uncle Walter would have been more likely to be the executor of Carter’s estate, and Uncle Walter would never have given them to Lucy. He’d have taken them straight to somebody to have them identified, then he’d have handed them over to any museum that would promise to put up a plaque stating that they were the gift of Walter Everanes. He’d also have had them evaluated so he could get a tax deduction. Walter Everanes had tight fists and a sense of his own importance—two reasons why he and Aunt Sara Claire got along so well.

The most logical conclusion, then, was that Carter gave the things to Lucy before he died. As gifts, or for safekeeping?

Speaking of safekeeping, what was Katharine to do with them until the curator of the Carlos Museum returned?

She considered the small safe behind books on Tom’s library shelves, but it didn’t feel secure enough. Finally she smiled. She knew exactly where no thief would find them.

She spent the rest of the afternoon going through Aunt Lucy’s boxes. A call to Lucy’s old school verified that the drama department would, indeed, like to look through whatever Katharine didn’t want, so she sorted things into a pile the school might want, a very small pile for herself, and a minimountain of absolute junk—starting with the peach pits. After she took those off, she went straight upstairs to wash her neck.

Things Katharine decided to keep were a wall hanging from Colombia that Susan had always liked, a set of carved ivory (bone?) elephants Jon used to play with for hours, a rain stick from Chile for Tom’s instrument collection, and a small, framed watercolor of the Alps for herself. The Alps looked like the ones behind Carter in his picture.

She shelved Lucy’s books on the bottom shelf in the music room, to go through another day. Junk she put into large black garbage bags to be hauled away. Things she had set aside for the school she repacked into three of the boxes and carried them out to her SUV to deliver the next time she was out. As she slammed the back door, she knew Aunt Lucy would have been pleased to think some of her things would remain at the school, whether anybody remembered her in ten years or not.

Katharine carried the empty boxes to the garage to be recycled, vacuumed up the debris, and sat on the piano bench taking a new look at the music room. It was a nice room, really, with the fireplace and tall shelves—the perfect size for an office. She wondered why, since she had lived basically alone in the house for four years, she still had her computer and files in one corner of her bedroom. Last thing at night and first thing in the morning she saw a pile of things she ought to be dealing with. Surely that couldn’t be good for her soul. Why shouldn’t she work in the music room instead? She would just need to take out the piano.

Once she had mentally removed the piano, Katharine found herself stripping the room further. Those books weren’t read. They could be packed away and her favorite books put on the shelves. The red floral drapery was heavy and dark, but if she replaced it with something lighter, the afternoon sun would stream through the double windows. Those dark oils had been chosen by the decorator. She would put up her favorite pictures, starting with Aunt Lucy’s Alps. As soon as she had that thought, she took down a floral painting beside the arch to the hall and hung the Alps in its place. They looked splendid.

She would buy a new rug, she decided. Tom’s investment could go to the attic or he could find another place for it. For her birthday, she would treat herself to what Virginia Woolf said every woman needs: a room of her own.

Katharine felt a small stirring within her that was not unlike the beginnings of pregnancy.

Posey called at five, bubbling over with indignation. “Why didn’t you remind me it was your birthday? You know my girls start calling with countdowns before theirs—‘Only five more shopping days before my birthday, Mama.’ You need to do that next year, so I won’t forget.”

“Did Hollis rat on me? I saw her at the Swan Coach House with Rowena and Amy Slade, and she looks wonderful. Her new haircut suits her.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” Posey was always happy to accept compliments on behalf of her girls. “It’s a bit odd, but not as bad as we’ve had before. The best part is, it probably cost the earth, but Rowena paid. She asked Holly if she’d come along with a group of girls to help celebrate Amy’s birthday, and said she was treating them all to a makeover to celebrate their graduations. Holly wasn’t too keen, but when she talked to some of the other girls and found out nobody else was going, she decided to go.”

Katharine was touched, and embarrassed at her own suspicions. “In spite of her unorthodox exterior, Hollis has a very kind heart.”

“She does,” agreed Hollis’s mama. “I am glad she went, too, because she found out it was your birthday. Listen, how about if we take you over to the club for dinner? Julia had a toothache today and didn’t come, so we are going anyway.”

Julia was Posey’s cook, and “the club” in Buckhead meant the Cherokee Town Club, down on West Paces Ferry not far from the governor’s mansion.

When Katharine hesitated, Posey begged, “Come on, you can’t eat alone on your birthday.”

Not until she hung up did Katharine realize that Posey hadn’t mentioned Hasty. Did that mean Hollis hadn’t mentioned him to her mother? Or that Posey was waiting to pounce?

She was choosing something to wear when Dutch returned her call. “Sorry for not calling sooner, Shug, but that little excursion plumb wore me out. I slept a couple of hours, then had to drive over to a meeting at the church. But hey, Doll Baby, are you having a good birthday even without old Tom?”

“An eventful one, anyway. And Tom will be here Friday to take me to dinner and the symphony. You’ll never guess what I’ve been doing today.”

Knowing how he loved a good story, she sat down on the bed in her underwear and gave him a colorful description of finding the artifacts among Aunt Lucy’s boxes, going over to the history center, being helped by the aging hippie, running into Hasty, stopping to get the diary copied and having her car towed. She did not tell him about being chased. She didn’t want to be responsible for his having another, possibly fatal, heart attack.

“I remember that long drink of water called Hasty,” he rumbled. “Real sweet on you, wasn’t he? Your daddy thought you all were far too serious for your age.”

“He didn’t need to have worried. It was just a high school thing.”

His deep old chuckle rolled down the wires. “Maybe that’s how you looked at it, but I knew the signs. That feller was real stuck on you back then, so you watch out. We don’t want him gettin’ ideas, with Tom away so much.”

“I doubt if he’ll ever speak to me again after I wouldn’t let him take Aunt Lucy’s things home with him to keep them safe.”

“If they’ve been safe with Lucy all these years, they ought to be safe with you. But you say Hasty thinks they could be real old and valuable?”

“If they’re as old as he says, they could be extremely so.”

“Looks like Lucy would have sold them and taken a few more trips after she retired. She was pretty strapped in her later years. Walter put too much of her money in tech stocks. Where are you keeping the things?”

“In a safer place than she did. She just had them in an old cardboard box with Carter’s name on it. You knew Carter, didn’t you?” She held her breath, hoping he had.

“Sure. He and I were always in school together. We even both went to Sewanee.”

She repressed a spurt of irritation that nobody had ever bothered to mention Carter in her presence, and asked, “Do you know how he might have gotten the things in the first place?” She again held her breath as she waited for his answer.

“No—” He drew out the word like he was thinking it over. “But you say they may have come from Austria? He studied in Vienna one year. Maybe he got them then. He went over the summer of 1937, planning to stay his whole junior year. I went to Oxford that same summer, but just for a six-weeks’ course.” His chuckle rumbled across the wire. “I don’t remember doing much studying, either. Lucy and Sara Claire had just finished their first year at Vassar—Lucy was two years younger than Carter, but she had skipped first grade. Anyway, they came over with several of their Vassar classmates, and I met them in London and traveled with them nearly three weeks. I never was much for studying when there were girls around.” His voice dropped to a confidential level. “And I was sweet on Sara Claire back then. Did you know that?”

“No, I never did.” She had known these people all her life. Dutch and her daddy had always been best friends, and Dutch and his wife had a condo down on Key Biscayne in Miami, where they spent part of every winter. Summers, she and her mother always joined Sara Claire at their old family place in Cashiers, North Carolina. Aunt Lucy popped up for a few weeks, and Dutch’s family had the house next door. Now, she was beginning to feel she hadn’t known any of them at all.

“Well, I was,” he said, “but she didn’t give me the time of day when Carter was around. Carter was twice as handsome and a heck of a lot richer than me back then—my daddy kept me on a very tight allowance. Those things mattered to Sara Claire.”

“I’m sure they did.” Especially the richer, but Katharine didn’t say that. Instead, she asked, “Did you all go to Austria while you were in Europe?”

“Eventually. I met the girls in London, like I said, and we went over to Paris. Carter came up to spend the weekend and we had a gay old time—not the way the word is used nowadays, of course, but a good time was had by all. The other girls stayed on in France, but Lucy and Sara Claire decided to go back to Austria with Carter, and since I’d never been to Austria, I went along. I hoped Carter would break Sara Claire’s heart and I’d be around to pick up the pieces.”

“Did he break her heart?”

“He certainly didn’t pay her a speck of attention. Carter was bookish—he never paid girls much attention. But Sara Claire didn’t look at me, either. She went moony over one of Carter’s friends—an Austrian who had gone to Sewanee as a junior exchange student the year before. I can’t remember his name right now, but he showed us a real good time. Lee and Donk Western were over there at the time, too. Did you ever know Donk? I guess not. He died in the war. Anyway, they had been in that Austrian fellah’s class at Sewanee, a year ahead of us, and had gone over to visit him for the summer. Lee and Donk were both wild at college—both had just been kicked out, in fact. They were chemistry majors, and got caught giving girls some hundred-proof alcohol at a party. I think they stayed in Vienna that entire fall. Donk never did graduate from college, but Lee eventually came home and went—I don’t remember where, but it doesn’t matter.”

It sure didn’t. Katharine hadn’t expected a novel when she’d asked a simple question, but Dutch had a lot of memories and few people to share them anymore. He was still rambling on. “We had great fun in Vienna, because that Austrian knew the best places to get good beer. We stayed and partied a week.” He ran down and waited for her to speak.

“Lucy has some pictures of your visit, I think.”

“She ought to. Every time I turned around she was sticking her camera in my hands and begging, ‘Take another picture, Dutch.’ But I never heard if any of them came out.”

“She has three or four in her album. I’ll show you next time you come over.”

“I’d like that. We had a whale of a time. And don’t worry that the Austrian broke Sara Claire’s heart. Before I got home in August, she had already hooked up with Walter. He was heading up to Yale for his master’s in bidness, and I guess they kept the roads hot the next two years, and got married when he finished.”