A Widow's Curse (27 page)

“I am,” he confirmed. “By the way, there is no Shultz senior anymore. He's been dead for a while. The man that was dead in your house? He's all there was.”

“Then why would he say—” It was Andrews's turn to pose an unfinished question.

“When a guy wants to buy a cow or a car or something important like that,” Skidmore answered philosophically, “it's an advantage if he can say it's for someone else. ‘I'm not asking for myself, you understand; this is for a friend.' Puts him in a better bargaining position.”

“What are you saying?” Briarwood demanded. “Speak up. I can't hear you. These damned sirens. What are they? What did you say about Huyne?”

“This is—How did you—,” I stuttered.

“You have to finish one of these sentences pretty soon,” Skidmore told me, highly amused. “But as long as I have you confused, let me just tell you also that your family in the old country—the Briarwoods in Wales?—they're rich as all get-out. If Conner had stayed in touch with them, and you'd got your due, I expect you'd be telling your problems to the Rockefellers instead of me and June Cotage. Which, if you don't mind my saying, would probably have been an all-around good deal for everybody.”

“That's how this maniac could afford to do everything he was doing,” Andrews said.

“Bingo.” Skidmore took ahold of Briarwood's elbow. “Let's get on up now. We got to put you in my police car.”

“Wait,” I said instantly, scrambling. “I have a thousand more questions to ask.”

“Preston Taylor is your family lawyer?” Andrews asked Briarwood. He seemed a page or two behind.

“Brinsley Taylor, actually, started our dealings here in America. He was the founder of that firm. When Conner went to him for help, that Mr. Taylor did a bit of checking up, discovered the Briarwoods of Wales—and our money. He got in touch with us, never telling us about Conner, never telling Conner about us, as I have recently discovered. But his firm has handled many of our holdings in America since then, and it's been mutually beneficial, so Bob's your uncle at least in that regard. It seemed a nice nip of serendipity. But Preston Taylor's my man now. And I'm his client.”

“‘Bob's your uncle,'” Andrews pointed out, grinning.

I ignored Andrews. “That's why Taylor lied about Shultz's phone call. He didn't know that Huyne was a fake?”

“What would that have got me?” Briarwood asked. “Huyne's a private investigator; he found Shultz for me, and then he found you, too. He didn't know that you were a Briarwood, though. That might have changed things a bit. Wish he'd dug that up. Doesn't seem as if it would have been so difficult to—”

“You and Shultz were in league?” Andrews couldn't believe it. “And there is no Mr. Shultz senior?”

“Well,” Briarwood allowed as Skidmore pulled him to his feet, “obviously there was a Mr. Shultz senior at some time or other. I mean, he did buy the coin from someone here in Georgia, in these mountains. We still don't know who?”

I shook my head.

“Honestly?” he insisted.

“What would be the point of keeping it from you now?” I asked.

“No point, I suppose.” He winced.

His shoulder was beginning to sting. The blood had dried a bit, and might have irritated the wound.

“And you hired Shultz just to—what? Get a good story?” Andrews pulled on his earlobe.

“There's a world of difference,” Briarwood lectured, irritated, “between a
good story
and a complete history of the facts. But if the two are married, well, then you have a book that someone might publish, and that could get you noticed at your university. Could just put you on the old map.”

I could hear people rushing up the hill toward us. Paramedics, I assumed.

“Why would that matter?” Andrews asked, absolutely amazed. “You can't have needed the money, can you?”

“Did you go to England to direct at the Globe,” I asked Andrews quietly, “just to ensure the two percent annual raise at your university? There's more to this sort of thing than a little bit of money.”

“Well.” He looked away.

“Come on,” Skidmore said softly, pulling on Briarwood's good elbow. “We'll ask a whole lot more questions after we've seen to your gunshot.”

“I just—I still don't quite understand,” Andrews said, coming to stand next to me.

Paramedics had topped the rise and now rushed toward Briarwood. One of them examined the wound, and the professor gave a low moan. There was a bit of discussion about the stretcher going down and up the hills, but it was determined that Briarwood should walk—better for everyone.

One of the men who had hauled the stretcher up looked over at Andrews and me. “Is one of you name of Fever?” he asked.

I blinked. “Yes.”

“That man down there in the—whatever that is, the pond, I reckon—he's asking for you.”

“Dan's alive?”

I shot toward the downhill path.

 

Dan was lying on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance. There was an access road behind the mansion that ended in a patch of dried leaves below the gazebo.

He saw me coming up the steps from the well house.

“Good,” he called out strongly. “You didn't die. I didn't think you would.”

“Okay.” I was trying to catch my breath. “But I thought you were dead.”

“Me? Not tonight. I have too many things to do this week. Maybe I could schedule it sometime in November—that's pretty free at the moment.”

I made it to the ambulance and sat on the back, almost eye level with Dan.

“How's your head?” I leaned against the inside of the ambulance.

“Hurts,” he grunted. “Last thing I remember is going down into the water face-first. I guess you turned me over and dragged me into the reeds. That's where I came to.”

“Sorry I couldn't stay with you,” I said between breaths. “I was trying to stay away from the man with the bat.”

“Is that what he hit me with, a baseball bat?”

“Cricket bat.”

“No kidding. Where'd he get a thing like that?”

“England.”

“Yeah. They got that sort of thing over there.”

“They do.” I smiled. “I'm really glad you're all right.”

“Look.” He turned serious very suddenly. “They're about to cart me off to a hospital against my will, and I told them I had to talk to you before they could take me. They didn't like it, so I'd better make this quick. We did a good job, you and I, and the curse is gone. Nice work. I wanted you to know that we really did a great thing tonight, and it was important to me.”

“I'm not sure why.” I said it as gently as I could.

“Listen.” He struggled up on one elbow and leaned closer to me. “You can say this thing with the Barnsley family is bad luck, or karma, or physics. It doesn't matter to me what you call it. Some people seem to have been dealt a strange hand, and that strangeness follows them wherever they go. I believe the Barnsley family was cursed because they used cursed water from a sacred spring when they shouldn't have, and I believe that you and I lifted that curse tonight. I also believe that our activity was a part of a larger pattern, a participation in the Divine Mind. My impression is that you believe it was just another strange event in a random array of happenings in your life, and that's okay by me. But I'm going to the hospital with a cracked head, and I'm very content because of what I believe. You're going home to your nice little house in relative health, and you don't seem all that content to me. So whose system is better, yours or mine?”

“Well, first,” I said hesitantly, “I wouldn't call what I have a
system.
It's more along the lines of a
mess;
second, I'm not the sort of person who can just say, ‘Oh, you're right, I do believe in magic.' I need evidence. And third,
your
system is better. Much better. And I'm sick with envy, wishing it could be mine.”

“I see.” He laid back down on the stretcher.

“It isn't that I don't—,” I began.

“That's all right, Fever.” Dan nodded gently. “It's your choice to suffer; be sick with envy. If that's what makes you happy, who am I to intrude?”

“If it makes me happy? It doesn't—Listen, if you think you're finally going to get away with dispensing the Cherokee philosophy—” I wanted to make light of what he'd been saying.

He was willing to oblige.

“I don't know why you always think that.” He grinned. “What I just told you? That's from Krishnamurti.”

The engine of the ambulance fired up. The paramedic who had told me Dan wanted to speak with me came to the back and motioned for me to get out.

“I'll visit you in the hospital,” I told Dan over the sound of the engine.

“Don't bother.” He closed his eyes. “I'll be home tomorrow. Visit me there.”

The ambulance doors slammed shut and the siren revved up; moments later the red taillights were lost around a corner of the haunted mansion, and Dan was gone.

Andrews came up beside me.

“Your friend's okay?” He stared at the spot where the ambulance had disappeared.

“Yes.”

“Skidmore got Dr. Freakazoid into the police car. He was still raving about his
book.
Skid didn't want to let the man out of his sight, so he's following the ambulance to take Briarwood to the hospital. I'm riding back with you.”

“Good.” I looked at his profile. “Hey?”

“Mmm,” he answered, obviously exhausted.

“You were like the cavalry tonight,” I told him softly. “I'd be very unhappy or dead if your timing hadn't been so perfect.”

“Those are the perimeters? Unhappy to dead?” He smiled. “I know you were on the ground and he was on top of you, but you can be pretty mean when you're backed into a corner. I didn't count you out when I saw that. I actually thought Skid overreacted. It's my belief that a single cricket bat hasn't got a chance in hell against that titanium cranium of yours. Besides, Skidmore's the cavalry. I'm the sidekick.”

He yawned.

“I'm pretty tired, too,” I admitted.

“I haven't slept in days.” He looked around. “Where's your truck? I'm ready to go home.”

“Up there.” I raised my head in the direction of the business offices of Barnsley Gardens.

We started around the hill, skirting the edge of the mansion.

Inside the walls, moonlight played; somewhere white nicotiana was blooming, moonlight's perfect sensory metaphor, making each breath an ecstasy. Crickets and tree frogs rattled the air once more; the worst of the charcoal clouds had blown to the east, and the sky was clear. A crisp breeze rattled the first bare limbs of the season. I finally realized it had been cold all evening, and I thought that summer might be gone at long last.

When we wake up in the morning, I thought, autumn will surely have arrived.

Our sky the next day was so hard and blue that it cracked the sun and light poured over everything. There didn't seem to be a shadow anywhere on the planet. The air outside my bedroom window was so clear in my first waking moments that I thought someone had come in during the night and taken out all the glass. When I tossed off the blankets, I shivered—and was delighted by it. The spine of Summer's book had been broken for the last time; that story was done, time to set it aside. Open the new one, turn the first page, white as frost, in the book of Autumn.

Out of bed, bare feet on the cold floor, every breath like a cracking apple, I went to the window and stared out. There it was: the first moment of fall.

“Andrews!” I called. “Are you awake?”

I glanced at the clock. It was nearly one o'clock. I'd slept in my clothes again and really wanted a shower.

A weak groan from the other room was my only answer at first, then: “I'm starved! Miss Etta's!”

Andrews was hungry: the dew of normalcy had refreshed the leaves of grass, and all was right with the world.

“What day is this?” I couldn't take my eyes off all the sunlight over the rims of the mountains.

“No idea.” He yawned.

“It's just that if today is Monday—and I'm very afraid that it is—Miss Etta's might be closed.”

“Tragedy strikes,” he mumbled, coming to my doorway.

He had slept in his clothes, too, and he looked like he'd been in a hurricane.

“Not as badly as you might think.” I rubbed my face. “If I call June right this second, she might have us over for dinner. Hek doesn't usually get home until about two o'clock from his services; we'll be right on time.”

“He has services on Monday?”

“He has services
every
day.” I rubbed my forehead. “And when he comes home, they have their big meal.”

“Isn't it a bit—sounds rude: ‘Oh, hello, can we come to dinner?'”

“The beauty of June's hospitality,” I informed him, “is that she thinks it's rude when I
don't
come to dinner.”

“But I mean, will she have made enough food?”

“She's a southern woman. She's cooked for ten.”

“Go to the phone
now
.” Andrews stepped aside.

 

June knew there was more to my call than a visit for dinner. I hadn't been to their house for a meal in months. She suspected that I had something to tell her, something to ask her; both. Andrews had wanted to leave right away, but I prevailed upon him to shower, shave, and attire himself in something other than a wrinkled Hawaiian shirt. When I explained to him that dinner would not begin until Hek arrived, he grumbled his way into cleanliness.

We were out the door by two o'clock, dressed as nicely as the likes of us ever did: I in the only pale blue stay-pressed dress shirt I owned and Andrews in a polo shirt the color of a pistachio nut. We climbed into the truck and were on our way.

The day, against any calendar evidence, did actually seem the first of fall. Overnight, the leaves had begun, just barely, to blush and bronze. It was unusual enough for Andrews to notice about halfway through the short drive.

“A little early for autumn in Georgia, isn't it?” He yawned, mesmerized by the long valleys he could see out his window.

“It is,” I agreed. “But sometimes the weather conforms to a certain spirit abroad in the land.”

“What the hell are you saying?” He turned from the scenic splendor to my profile. “You can't go around talking in metaphysical clichés just because a scary man from the Celtic side of your family hit you in the head.”

“He didn't hit me in the head. I fell on a gravestone. And I only mean that it's time for summer to be over; it's time for a better season.”

“All right.” He wasn't convinced that I hadn't slipped a cog. “By the way, listen to what I came up with in the shower. I think Professor Briarwood may be to his little village in Wales what Fever Devilin is to Blue Mountain.”

“Shut up.”

“Seems clear to me.”

As it happened, I struggled a bit with his comparison, but I thought I mustered a fine response—more than enough to invalidate his proposition.

“Except that I never traveled to another country,” I responded, diction crisp as ice, “to kill a man.”

“Point taken,” he conceded, “but there he is, a nutty professor type, folkloring his way though the rye, and a bit obsessed with his family.”

“Point in your favor,” I acknowledged.

“Or several.”

“
And,
” I said, topping him, “I realize that his psychosis is clear evidence that I come by my strangeness at least in part through the courtesy of genetics.”

“Those little bastards,” Andrews mumbled.

“What?”

“Genes,” he said, mocking me. “You can't escape them. I myself am doomed by the demon of grand breeding—a damnable heritage of beauty. There is no escape.”

“I'm thinking of pushing you out of the truck,” I offered casually.

“Wouldn't do you any good,” he chattered on. “I was also born lucky.”

“Lucky someone hasn't thrown you from a speeding truck already.”

“See?”

Hek and June's house swung into view around the long curve in the road, and I slowed me down.

Their stark white house was a beacon against the black bottom soil, backed by three mountains. Everything about the place, as I had often observed, had an angel's attention. Clear sunlight washed the tin roof. The air was new, lighter than summer air, and I imagined that I could smell the chicken roasting in June's oven as we pulled off the road and headed toward the front porch.

June appeared in the doorway before the truck engine was off, neck to knee in a flower-print apron, wooden spoon in hand. White hair haloed her head, and her eyes were like candlelight.

“Get on into this house,” she demanded. “I'm so proud you could come for dinner.

“She's happy to see us,” Andrews marveled.

“I told you.”

I was on the porch in five steps. June moved aside. Even given the heartfelt joy she and I were both experiencing at the prospect of dining together, there was no maudlin physicalization, no outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual feeling.

Andrews barged in, drawn by the delectable seduction of cornbread dressing and sweet onions.

“Your timing is perfect.” June steered between us toward the kitchen. “Hek's home and washing up.”

“I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to this meal,” Andrews intoned as if he were in church.

“Now,” June demurred, “we don't have much to eat.”

That disclaimer, I knew, was obligatory, a bizarre example of modest manners from a bygone era.

A single step past the threshold of the kitchen door revealed the truth: a table so laden with earthly delights that not a centimeter of surface was visible. A tablecloth made from exactly the same material as June's apron hung nearly to the floor, and June had set out her wedding china—a gift from her mother—which was certainly a hundred years old. Considering that I was capable of breaking at least a plate a week in my own home, I had always appreciated the fact that June had kept these dishes sparklingly clean her entire marriage without ever so much as scratching the delicate golden pattern around the edge. Four large dinner plates were stacked at the head of the table, where Hek would sit.

I thought Andrews might pass out.

“You said it was only chicken and dressing.”

He couldn't take his eyes off the pork roast. It was covered with an arranged pattern of baked apples and looked more like a gallery piece than an item of food.

“June's eyes danced, though her mouth remained a straight line, “Well, I always cook a little extra, just in case.”

She stepped to the oven, opened it, and drew out a long golden baking dish.

“Here's the dressing.”

White steam rose up like the sigh of a sleeping child.

Andrews may have had tears in his eyes.

Hek sauntered into the room, rubbing his belly.

“My, don't all this look good,” he said, staring at the table with the same abandon as Andrews.

Without ceremony, we all sat. Hek's grace was a single sentence.

“Lord, let us take from Junie's food all the love she put into it.”

He immediately began to carve, first the roast, then the chicken. Everyone got equal portions of everything, and plates were passed around. For the rest of the bounty, we were on our own—field peas, boiled new potatoes with fresh parsley, baby pattypan squash that looked like white flying saucers, raw spinach mixed with quartered hard-boiled eggs and bacon, crisp sugar snap peas salted and buttered. I knew that everything on the table had come directly or very recently from Hek and June's garden, including the bird and roast.

For a while, there was no talking. It would have been unimaginably rude to try to wedge words between the diner and the dinner.

But just as Andrews began to reach for seconds of half the items on the table, I managed my first strategic shot.

“So, we found the person who killed that man Shultz in my house the other night.”

Of course it was awkward and obvious, but they'd been expecting something, and I wanted to give them a sense of my own discomfort.

“You'll never guess who he was,” I went on. “A family member. Distant. He was a Briarwood from Wales. Looking for that coin we talked about.”

Hek nodded. June got up from the table under the pretense of fetching the pitcher of iced tea. Andrews stared at me as if I had strangled a kitten at the table, angry that I was wrecking the pristine beauty of the meal.

In the ensuing silence, I could hear the oven timer ticking. It meant that June's dessert was still cooking—blueberry cobbler was my guess. I waited a moment, taking in everyone's discomfort.

“He'd been hunting down that coin for decades,” I went on, taking a bite of chicken, “because it was something of a family heirloom, as it turns out. Minted in the 1600s by our brood in Wales. It may well be the only one of its kind left in existence. He seemed to think it was priceless. So I was thinking, now that everything is over, you wouldn't mind telling me who sold that coin to Mr. Shultz's father all those years ago.”

I was absolutely certain that they knew.

“Well…” June looked out her kitchen window.

Hek had stopped shoveling food onto his fork.

“A man was killed in my home because of it.” It came out of my mouth with a much harsher sound than I thought it was going to.

Hek set down his fork; June nodded.

“You were off at college when your daddy died,” June began. “I don't know what I expected from your mother—she was so strange. Maybe I thought it wouldn't bother her. She didn't live with your daddy no more, and, you know, what with her ways—”

My mother had not been faithful to my father, perhaps, ever in their marriage—that's what June meant by “her ways” I should have known at that moment where the story was headed, but the truth was invisible to me, the way family truths often were. And I was slow-witted from a long night's sleep.

“Only she fell apart.” June looked into the porcelain sink as if she might have lost something there. “I reckon she wasn't quite so hard a woman as…as some used to think.”

June meant herself, of course.

“She come over here,” Hek said, continuing the story while looking at his plate, “busted up. You know, your daddy just closed his eyes and went to sleep when he passed on. He give not a warning nor a word of farewell. Just left.”

His final vanishing act, I thought.

“I can understand why you would have been surprised by her emotional response,” I began.

“I don't need your help with this,” Hek snapped. “Do you want to hear what was said, or not?”

Clearly Hek had something to say that was difficult for him, and he didn't want to be interrupted.

I nodded.

“She come over here busted up is what I'm saying.” He tapped the tabletop for emphasis. “But a part of it was about money.”

“She was worried about the funeral expense,” June added.

“The short of it is this: She'd heard Conner talk about the things he'd bought at the auction and—”

“At the Barnsley estate,” I said, interrupting pointedly.

Hek drew in a breath.

“So you know about that's where the auction was,” June pronounced. “Good.”

“I spent last night at the Barnsley estate,” I explained, “trying to keep the man who killed Shultz from killing me, too.”

“So there's more to the story.” Hek was impatient with me.

“Sorry.” I didn't sound it.

“Your mother knew from Conner that the things he'd bought at auction were worth something. The picture painting had already been sold, you know, for your schooling; the other thing, the Cherokee cross, she was scared of that.”

“Made my father bury it in the backyard, as it turns out,” I said.

“If you keep interrupting me,” he warned.

I nodded, held a finger to my lips.

“Only thing left was the coin.”

Stupidly, it was not until then that I realized where he was going. I had a sudden catch in my throat, like a hand choking my neck.

“Wait.”

But Hek ignored me.

“She found it in that old trunk of your great-grandfather's, put advertisements in some of these newspapers, and sold it to that man from Atlanta.”

“Jesus Christ!” Andrews exploded. “Your
mother
sold the coin?”

It seemed obvious now that it was out in the open.

“Son!” Hek rose out of his seat. “You blaspheme in this house and I get my shotgun on you!”

“Oh.” Andrews was stunned by Hek's vehemence. “Right. You're a preacher. Sorry a thousand times. I—I have absolutely no manners and ought not to be allowed to roam freely.”