Daughter of Deceit (22 page)

“How valuable was this set? Was it insured?”

“It was insured, but it’s priceless. It was a gift from President Madison and his wife to one of her cousins. Their names were engraved on it.” Payne stroked the top of the buffet as if she were rubbing a magic lamp for a genie who could return the set.

Having wept over losing her own grandmother’s silver service in her break-in, Katharine thought she understood Payne’s stricken look until she heard the repeated whisper. “Murdoch is going to kill us!”

“This Murdoch,” said the officer, pencil poised. “Who is he?”

“She. She’s Mama’s first cousin, and obsessed with family history.”

“Could she have taken the service?”

Payne shook her head. “She’s in Boston. She called today from up there, begging me to have Mama put that tea set in a safe place. She was worried Foley would try to take it in the divorce.” Payne’s voice faltered. “I had to tell her he’s dead.” She whirled to ask Katharine, “Will we have to plan his funeral? I don’t think I could stand that.”

“Don’t worry about it right now,” she advised.

“Anything else missing?” the officer inquired.

His brisk tone helped Payne recover. She peered around. “Silver candlesticks used to be on the mantelpiece. There were silver trays and a pitcher on that shelf of the china cabinet.” She pulled open a drawer. “All the flatware is here.” She looked around again, then pointed to a round table between two front windows. “A Tiffany lamp sat on that table.”

The officer made a note. “Would you check the other rooms, please?”

They roamed the entire house, but nothing else seemed to be missing until they got to her mother’s room.

“What happened here?” Payne demanded of the crew inside. All the covers were on the floor, the duvet dragged nearly to the door.

A woman shook her head. “We don’t know. We’re trying to work it out.”

All the terror of the past hours caught up with Payne in the doorway. She started to shake and then to sob, pressing her face into her hands. “Whoever it was found Mama here! He must have killed Foley first, then dragged her—beat her—who knows what he did to her?” She fell to her knees, sobbing.

Katharine put her arms around Payne’s shoulders and spoke in her most soothing voice. “Calm down, now. We don’t know what happened. We need to wait until Bara is better. Calm down. Calm down.” Gradually Payne’s hysterics subsided and she let Katharine lead her down the stairs. Katharine wondered if Payne had seen the empty bourbon bottles on the nightstand.

The kitchen was their last stop. Payne wrinkled her nose and sniffed. “This place is a mess and it stinks.” She spoke in the grumpy voice of somebody who regrets losing control and is willing to take her frustration out on the next irritant that comes along. “Foley fired the staff and hired a cleaning service to come once a week. I don’t know which service he was using, or what day they are supposed to come, but I suppose we can’t get them out here anyway until the police are done.” She noticed a skillet full of burned eggs sitting in a box on the counter. “What is that?”

“Evidence,” the officer told her. “We found it in the trash compactor.”

“And you think what?” she demanded with a brittle laugh. “That Foley beat Mama because she burned his eggs? She never cooked.”

“Her fingerprints are on the skillet, ma’am. Excuse me, I need to make a call.” He stepped into the hall and closed the swinging door, leaving them alone.

Payne stared into the skillet as if it were a magic mirror that could tell her who the murderer was.

Katharine spied a large manila envelope on the countertop with a locket lying beside it.
Locket
, not
lock
. That’s what Bara had been trying to say.

“This is what she wanted me to get—the envelope and the locket.”

Payne peered into the envelope. “Looks like old newspaper clippings and stuff.” She slid a fingernail into the locket. “And this is just an old picture of Mother. Maybe the locket was Nana’s.” She put the locket in the envelope, slid the envelope sideways into the front of her pants, and pulled her shirt low over it. “Can you see it?”

Katharine heard something outside in the hall: the jingle of coins. She motioned for Payne to be quiet. Payne shivered. “I don’t like being here, do you? Let’s go.”

Katharine was nervous about Payne walking out of the kitchen with what might be considered evidence. “Do you think you ought to?” she whispered. “It’s illegal to remove something from a crime scene.”

“If Mama wants it, I’m taking it.” Payne’s mouth was set in a line very like her mother’s.

Change was still jingling faintly in the hall.

Katharine spoke louder. “If there’s nothing missing in here, I need to be going. I have other things I have to do today.” Payne was rustling as she walked, so Katharine added, “I guess you don’t look forward to telling Murdoch about that tea set, do you? When does she get back?”

“Too soon.” Payne took her cue and spoke loudly, too. “It took all the tact I had to keep her from getting on the first plane and coming home. The best I could do was persuade her to stay until Monday evening. I wish she’d stay up there all week. Mama doesn’t want Murdoch hovering over her. She says Murdoch reminds her of fingernails on a blackboard.”

Katharine wished she hadn’t heard that. It was so apt, it would be hard to forget.

As they went out the swinging door, the detective pushed away from the wall. “Mrs. Anderson? May I have a word?”

He looked at Katharine, obviously waiting for her to disappear.

She was going to oblige, but Payne grabbed her elbow. “I want her to stay. Have you found evidence to clear Mama?”

“No, ma’am, but I have just gotten a report on a second gun we found in a drawer in the dining room. It was one reported stolen by Winston Holcomb three years before his death.”

“You think Mama stole a gun from Winnie? She doesn’t even like guns.”

“We don’t think anything at the moment. I wanted to keep you abreast of developments.” His change jingled merrily. “We’re having some tests run on it. Are you finished in the house?”

His eyes flickered toward the kitchen door, but he didn’t open it.

In the car on the way back to the hospital, Payne pulled out the envelope and peered inside. She pulled out a political button that read I L
IKE
I
KE
. “Odd,” she said. “Winnie voted Democrat.”

“He fought in Europe,” Katharine reminded her. “Maybe he liked Eisenhower even if he didn’t vote for him.”

“Or he liked the button.” Payne tucked the flap inside the envelope. “It looks like a lot of junk, frankly.”

“Your mother wanted it, though.”

Payne reached behind her and laid the envelope on Katharine’s backseat. “She doesn’t have any place to keep it right now, and I’ll lose it if I take it. Keep it for a day or two and bring it to her when she gets her own hospital room.”

As Katharine drove home after dropping Payne off, she wondered how and when she had become Bara Weidenauer’s personal assistant.

Posey called before Katharine got home. “Are you on your way to my house?”

“No, I’m on my way home from the hospital. Bara is conscious and wanted to see me about something.”

“What?” Posey had no problem with blatant curiosity.

“There was an envelope at her house she wanted me to check on.”

“Okay. We can do it on our way to talk to the women.”

“I got it. I went with Payne to walk through the house to see if anything was missing.”

“Oh.” Katharine could tell Posey was miffed at being left out. “And…?” Posey hinted.

“The only things Payne noticed missing were a painting and some silver, including a tea set Murdoch was telling me about on Monday. Oh, and a Tiffany lamp.”

“Well, come get me. It’s almost one. If we’re going to see any people—”

“I don’t want to go see people. I want to get home and check my to-do list.”

“You promised we’d go to lunch.”

“We didn’t eat breakfast until ten.”

“I know, but I’ve gotten dressed. We can get a salad or something and you can tell me about Bara. I don’t like you talking on the phone while you’re driving.”

Katharine turned at the next corner, willing to visit over a light lunch.

She was halfway to Posey’s before she remembered that her sister-in-law had called
her
.

She found Hollis alone in the kitchen, wearing black shorts and a black tank top, eating yogurt. “Mama’s upstairs fixing her face and Uncle Tom called a few minutes ago. He said he couldn’t get you on your cell phone.”

That must have been while she was talking to Posey. “Was he still in Washington?”

Hollis brushed a dollop of yogurt from her flat chest before she answered. “No, he said he was going up to the lake house, and to call him.”

Katharine punched in his number. The lake house? The lake house was three hours away. Why should he be going there when they had so much to do?

He probably wasn’t outside the metro area yet. Maybe she could persuade him to turn around.

“Sorry, hon,” he told her, “but we’ve sprung a major water leak in the yard, and with the water restrictions, the county is threatening to levy enormous fines and turn off our water for months if we don’t get up there and see about it. They left a message on the machine. I picked it up when I came in. Where were you?”

“Visiting Bara Weidenauer.”

“Again? I told you she was going to consume you.”

“If I hadn’t been with Bara, I’d have been home to take the call about the leak, then I’d have been consumed by that. Besides, Bara’s not consuming me, she’s in the hospital and just wanted to tell me something.” Enough of that subject. She had far more important issues at the moment. “When will you be home?”

“Heaven only knows. I will be running on PST—plumber standard time. I’ve called somebody, but he said he can’t get out until tomorrow morning.”

“Which could mean afternoon or even Monday. I guess this wipes out shopping for a car tomorrow, then.” She didn’t mean to sound cranky, but she was not only disappointed, she was tired of being disappointed.

“Afraid so. We can look next week. I’ve been wondering if we ought to lease you one instead of buying it.”

“My dad always said leasing a car is like renting a house. You pay off somebody else’s loan and wind up with nothing in the end.”

“Yeah, but they’d take care of maintenance. You wouldn’t have to worry about it.”

“I’m used to car maintenance.” She heard her tone of voice and wondered,
Why are we having this conversation? Cars weren’t important at the moment
. “Why don’t I keep the rental until after the party? We don’t need to be thinking about cars with everything else we have to do, and you sure don’t need this discussion while you’re driving up I–85.”

He was agreeable. “Okay. But hey, why don’t you come up for the weekend? I bought a case of drinking water, we can swim to keep clean, and I’ll fill buckets for toilet flushing before I cut off the water.”

She almost agreed. That was what she usually did. But if she went up, Tom would expect her to deal with the plumber. That’s what he usually did.

“We’ve got people coming next weekend,” she reminded him. “I’ve got things to do.”

“Then I guess I’ll see you when I get back.”

“Have fun.”

He would have fun. Tom loved nothing so much as a lazy couple of days to read and swim. It sounded so tempting that Katharine almost reconsidered. She had her finger on the redial button when Posey came down the stairs calling brightly, “I’m ready for lunch. Let’s go!”

As Katharine headed down the Buitons’ drive, Posey fanned herself with a piece of paper she’d brought along. “Turn up the air conditioner. I’m having a menopausal moment.”

She didn’t look menopausal, she looked gorgeous. She’d put on a suit of peacock blue with a wisp of a skirt and peacock-blue heels to match. She even had a little boa around her neck.

“You’re a lot more dressed up than I am.” Katharine was still wearing the celery pants and top she had put on in a hurry after Posey called.

“I know, but I just got this suit and I wanted to break it in. Did Hollis tell you what she was doing this morning while you and I were with Payne?”

“Sleeping?” Katharine was well acquainted with the younger generation’s topsy-turvy schedules.

“No, she was visiting Oriental rug dealers looking for a part-time job.” Posey was as upset as if Hollis had been enlisting in the army. “I reminded her she is already designing and making costumes for two theaters, which keeps her up half the night, she is still working for you, and she has promised to help Marsha Montague redecorate her house when yours is done. And heaven knows, Marsha’s needs it, although I don’t know if she will like a single thing Hollis suggests, and I don’t want Hollis offending one of my very best friends—”

“Hollis has excellent taste,” Katharine assured her as she pulled out between the high pillars that supported the Buitons’ wrought-iron gates.

She still wished she knew what problem Kenny had been referring to. He’d sounded like Hollis had an ongoing problem, not a one-time mistake in judgment, and there were some very serious problems young adults could have in this generation. AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases, addictions, and alcoholism came to mind. Katharine hoped her niece wasn’t concealing something and trying to carry a heavy burden alone.

From the passenger seat, Posey’s lament rolled on. “…said she has hired two women to come to her place to sew costumes and your house is finished and Marsha’s won’t take all her time, and she realized this week that she doesn’t know enough about Oriental rugs to make recommendations about them, so she wants to work in a store for a while to learn what she can. A store!” Posey made it sound like a brothel.

“She really ought to know about rugs if she plans to recommend them.”

“I don’t see why. All she has to do is go somewhere and pick one with colors that match the room. Besides, I don’t like the idea of strange women coming into our house to sew.”

Hollis lived in four rooms above the Buitons’ garage in a renovated apartment once designed for a chauffeur. “They won’t come inside your house. Her stairs go up through the garage. And they might not be strange.”

“Get real. If they are Hollis’s friends, they will be strange.”

That was true enough. “Speaking of Hollis, do you know if she had any serious problems in college?”

Posey gave a genteel snort. “The child
is
a problem. Nothing but one problem after another since she was born. I swear, if I hadn’t been awake for her birth—”

“—you would think she was a changeling. I know. Relax. You’re frowning.”

Posey’s face reverted to the wide-eyed look her plastic surgeon had created. “You always stick up for her. But why should you think she had problems?”

“Somebody asked me recently if she was dealing with her ‘problem.’ I wondered what he meant.”

“Beats me. As far as I was concerned, the years Hollis was down in Savannah were the most peaceful years I’ve had since her birth. But you know kids today. They never tell us anything. She could have been on drugs, had annual abortions, and eloped with an alien from Mars without our knowing a thing about it. All we knew was that she got good grades, called whenever she needed money, and seemed the same at holidays—dreadfully the same, dragging a parade of the most awful boys home to meet us.”

Katharine hid a smile. She was convinced Hollis mostly brought the young men home to shock her mother. She had never seen any indication that Hollis gave a flip for any of them. “She got that national award for the textile she designed,” Katharine pointed out. “And didn’t she make better grades than either Lolly or Molly?”

“What did I say? You always take up for her. But speaking of trouble, do you know what else Foley Weidenauer has done?”

Katharine was startled. “Since he got shot?”

“No, two days ago. I called Payne just before I came downstairs, and she was distraught. When she got back to the hospital a little while ago, they informed her that Foley canceled Bara’s health insurance! They admitted her last night with the information she used a month or so ago when she had a little face-lift, but when they checked with the insurance company this morning, they found that Foley had taken her off his policy! I tell you, if that man hadn’t been killed, I’d go over and kill him myself. He was lower than a basement leak.”

“So what’s happening with Bara?”

“They were talking about moving her down to Grady. Payne was frantic! Bara’s money isn’t accessible, Winnie’s estate hasn’t been probated yet, and she and Hamilton have put most of what Ray left Payne into their house, Hamilton’s retirement account, and a college fund for Chip that they aren’t supposed to touch. I told her to stop worrying, we’ll manage to pay the bills somehow.”

Posey sounded like she and Wrens would be down to their last nickel if they helped with Bara’s bills, but Katharine knew that wasn’t true, no matter how high the bill might go. Still, it was a generous thing they were doing. She couldn’t imagine Bara in the county hospital.

“You shouldn’t have to pay it all.”

“We won’t. I’ll call people and ask them to chip in. How much could you and Tom come up with?”

Katharine didn’t mind frowning, wrinkles or no wrinkles. “I haven’t taken that woman to raise! I’ll talk to Tom, but I keep telling you, I don’t really know her.”

Posey ignored her. “Can you imagine being that low-down dirty? I swear—”

Katharine inserted a CD. “Maybe this will take your mind off him for a few minutes.”

Posey listened to the mellow, blended voices and shook her head. “Low-class, trashy music. How you can stand that country-western stuff is beyond me.”

“It’s not country western, it’s a bluegrass group Tom heard in Washington, and it’s not low class or trashy. Tom likes it, I like it, Hollis likes it, even Bara liked it when she came by to bring her daddy’s medals. Listen to how well those voices blend.”

Music wasn’t one of Posey’s interests. “Speaking of Bara, I don’t think I’d better make anybody mad right now—do you? Since I’m calling around to ask folks for help with her hospital bills. So I think you’ll have to go in and ask questions by yourself. I’ll wait in the car. Then we can stop by the Swan Coach House for a late lunch.”

“I am not going to ask anybody any questions. We’re only going to lunch, remember? I told Payne at the hospital I have no reason whatsoever to be asking people if they know who Bara’s daddy was.”

Posey looked at her watch. “But it’s hardly one, and we ate breakfast at ten. You could at least go see the people Bara upset the most in these past two days. All you have to ask is whether they have any idea why somebody would want to beat her up.”

“From what Payne said, every one of them wanted to beat her up. Most of them are, however, too genteel to do so.”

“So they sent somebody to do it for them. The thug beat Bara, Foley surprised them, and they killed him.”

“How many elderly people around here know how to hire a thug? Be serious, Posey.”

“You might be surprised. All you have to do is watch to see if anybody looks guilty.”

“The police could do a better job of that.”

“They won’t. They think Foley beat up Bara, and she shot him.”

“Which is the most likely scenario.”

“Nonsense. She hasn’t been sober enough in the past few weeks to shoot straight.” Posey held up a small sheet of paper. “While Payne was on the phone, I asked her for a list of the women who were most upset after Bara was there. It’s only six people. Won’t you at least talk to them—if you won’t go see Rita Louise?”

“I am not going to talk with Rita Louise. That is final.”

“Okay, then turn right. You might as well start with the closest house.”

Katharine felt like she had been run over by a small, blond steamroller.

She drove from one home to another, citing Payne’s request and Posey’s reason for her being there, and feeling more and more foolish. Every woman she visited was horrified at what had happened to Foley and Bara, but still miffed by her earlier visit and glad to pour their irritation into Katharine’s lap.

Posey polluted the environment and wasted gas keeping cool in the car while Katharine trekked from embarrassing interviews to mortifying ones. She was not a happy camper as she climbed in the car after the fourth visit. “Okay, is that everybody on your list?”

“Everybody except Ann Rose and Rita Louise. And I’m starving.”

Katharine checked her watch. It was two thirty. “I am willing to talk with Ann Rose, but after that, I am going home. I know you and Payne think I have nothing to do with my life but traipse all over Atlanta trying to do the police’s job, but I do have other things to do.”

“What about lunch?”

“I’ll stop by a filling station and get you a candy bar.”

Posey decided to go in at Ann Rose’s. “I’d like to make sure Chip is okay.”

“He’s with a doting grandmother,” Katharine pointed out.

“Yeah, but his other grandmother got beat up, and I’m sort of his third grandmother. I want to make sure he’s all right.”