Sins of the Fathers (30 page)

Katharine dashed down the walk and toward sea grape bushes between Posey’s and Jenny-Jill’s, aware of the open door behind her. Any second she expected a bullet to stop her.

The rain had strengthened. It plastered her hair to her face and her blouse to her chest.

When a cruiser glided to a stop at the curb, she swerved to meet it.

The driver rolled down his window. “Are you the woman who called 911?”

Katharine gasped for air. “No, but I was fixing to. There’s a woman in there with a gun.” She jerked one thumb toward Posey’s.

He climbed out and opened his back door. “Get inside out of the rain, then we’ll talk.”

She huddled on the vinyl seat, shivering, while he explained, “A neighbor called. Said there were two women in the house and one had a gun.”

She spoke through chattering teeth. “I was the other one. Something crashed on the deck and startled us, and when Iola jumped up to check on it, I ran out.”

The officer in the passenger seat gave her a keen look. “You know the woman with the gun?”

“Slightly. But listen, my niece and my friend are still in there somewhere and at least one of them is hurt. You need to get them out!”

The driver reached for his radio. “Possible hostage situation.” He asked for help. The officer in the passenger seat shrugged out of his jacket and handed it to Katharine. It was warm from his body. She clutched it gratefully around her as the three of them waited and watched the house. It sat white and solid, keeping its secrets.

Police, fire, and emergency vehicles appeared on the street. None used sirens or flashing lights, but as if a silent message had gone through the neighborhood, people began to creep from nearby houses and crane their necks to see what was going on. A few held umbrellas, prepared for the duration. Two held the hands of small children.

Some faces were avid for excitement as they inched closer to the scene. Katharine wanted to scream at them, “Go to bed! This is not late-evening entertainment!”

But she also saw white, worried faces—expressions that said, “I wish I could help, but all I know to do is stand here in support.”

Jenny-Jill was one of those. She had come out without an umbrella, and she was dripping wet, but she stood in her yard with her eyes fixed on Posey’s house. Under the halogen streetlight, her hair looked purple and her face sickly white. Her eyes were wide with terror.

“She must be the one who called. Could I go over to thank her?” Katharine asked.

“You’ll get soaked,” the officer warned.

“I’m already soaked.”

She hurried across the squishy St. Augustine grass. “Jenny-Jill? I’m Katharine, Posey’s sister-in-law.”

That was as far as she got. Jenny-Jill flung her arms around her in a cushiony hug. “Thank God! I hoped you could get out. Did the plant help?”

“Plant?”

“I threw one of the plants off my deck onto yours, hoping it might distract the woman with the gun. It made a gosh-awful mess, but—”

Katharine squeezed her tighter. “You saved my life.”

They stepped apart and looked at each other in the rain. “Where are the others?” Jenny-Jill asked anxiously. “Did they all go out? I heard the car leave not an hour ago.”

“I’m scared Posey’s daughter and our friend may still be inside.”

Jenny-Jill pressed one hand to her cheek. “I should have called sooner. I just couldn’t decide if anything was wrong or not. Jeff is always saying I have a vivid imagination, but I saw somebody on the deck, then I heard something that could have been a shot. I waited and waited, trying to make up my mind, and finally I decided to go over and just peek in the living room. I didn’t mean to pry or anything—”

“I’m so glad you did.”

“Me, too, because I saw you and the woman sitting there, and she had a gun. I couldn’t think of anything else to do but throw that plant. I hoped it might distract her enough so you could get her gun.”

Jenny-Jill had clearly been watching too much television. However, silly as the idea sounded, it had worked.

“Then I called the police.” Jenny-Jill’s teeth chattered. The rain had a chilly edge. She clutched her arms around her to keep herself warm.

One of the officers spoke behind Katharine. “You should go back inside now, ma’am,” he told Jenny-Jill. “The police have the place surrounded and you could be in a line of fire.”

Jenny-Jill nodded, but she did not move.

Katharine took her arm and pulled her deeper into her yard, behind an oleander.

The police held a consultation, crouched behind their cars. Among the newcomers was a tall man in civilian clothes who seemed to be in charge. Katharine heard him say, “Where’s the woman who got out of the house?”

She left Jenny-Jill and hurried toward him, keeping behind the cars. She arrived breathless, but she hadn’t breathed well since she first saw Iola.

“Did you want me? That’s my house. Are you planning to go in?”

“Not yet. We hope to talk her out. What can you tell me about the situation?”

“My niece and my friend are in there with a woman and a gun. My friend is over seventy.” She filled him in on who Iola was and as much about her as she knew.

He began to talk on a megaphone, his voice calm and persuasive. The neighbors crept closer. Katharine moved over to the shadow of an oleander bush, watching the house.

Suddenly Katharine thought she saw movement in one set of French doors. Was somebody standing in the left-hand pair? She crouched and ran to tell the nearest officer, “I think somebody is looking out of that upstairs room on the left.”

“Get down!” he said urgently. “You’re visible in the streetlight!”

He pushed her down so fast, she fell forward and skinned her knee and palm on the rough street. For long minutes, nothing happened. Her legs began to cramp and her scrapes stung. She sent up silent, desperate prayers.

Down the block a car screeched to a stop. A door slammed and someone pounded up the block. In the streetlight Katharine saw the gleam of Chase’s hair. “Daddy! No! No!” he shouted, gasping for breath.

From the other direction, Burch shouted, “I’m okay, son. I’m here.” He ran to meet his son.

Katharine saw the French doors open an inch and the glint of a rifle. She yelled, “Chase! Go back!”

The Bayards met where Katharine crouched. A shot rang out. Chase, on the left, fell to the ground.

Another shot. Katharine felt a spurt of blood, sticky and warm, as Burch crumpled on top of her.

An officer dragged her free as a team of paramedics dashed toward them. Mona came pelting down the sidewalk. For once she was not beautiful. She was distraught. “Chase? Chase!” She fell to her knees beside her son and began to scream.

Chase’s eyes stared at her but could not see.

Paramedics held her and pinned her arms, but she struggled and fought them. “Not Chase. Not my baby!” They carried her to shelter behind a fire truck.

Katharine was dimly aware of police storming the house, but the officer who had rescued her from Burch was tugging her hand. “Come on! Can you get as far as the bushes over yonder?” Crouched, they scuttled to the shelter of the sea grapes between Posey’s and Jenny-Jill’s.

Katharine’s skinned knee and palm burned like fire. She tasted salt on her lips. She was shivering from shock and rain-soaked clothes.

She could hear Mona speaking disjointed words and phrases. “…down here to supper…Burch left…waiter said hostages…this street…” Her voice strengthened with anguish. “Chase was scared it was his daddy. He made me come. I drove as fast as I could, but it wasn’t Burch. Thank God, it wasn’t him. Oh, Burch! Chase!”

Katharine could not bear to hear Mona’s anguish and do nothing. She started around the bushes as Mona shouted angrily, “Somebody get my child and husband out of that street!”

As Katharine watched, Mona’s knees buckled and she collapsed onto the asphalt, face down and arms spread out. She lay there, sobbing. Her white neck looked very vulnerable in the rain.

Katharine ran and held her until paramedics came to put Mona on a stretcher and carry her to one of the rescue vehicles.

A shout came from the front door. “We’ve got her, but somebody get an axe in here!”

Katharine knelt in the street, her face in her hands, while rain fell around her like a robe. It took her several moments to recognize a familiar voice.

“What in heaven’s name is going on here?” She turned her head and saw her SUV creeping slowly down the street. Posey was calling through the driver’s window.

An officer stepped to the car and explained.

“My child is in there!” Posey abandoned the car in the street and slid to the ground. With no regard for the rain or the gaping crowd, she dashed up the walk. Several officers stepped forward to hold her, but she wriggled away like an eel and dashed through the open door.

Katharine was trying to summon the energy to stand up and move her car when she saw someone slide over from the passenger seat. She gasped. “Tom?”

He jumped down and hurried toward her, lifted her up, and held her close. “Are you all right? If anything has happened to you—”

Joy took wings in her heart. Tom was here. Not at a party in Washington being charming to Ashley. Here. When she truly needed him, he had come. “I’m fine now.” She clung to him.

He held her close for another second or two, but Tom was a pragmatist at heart. “Let’s get you in the car. You are soaking wet.”

He fetched the stadium blanket she always carried in the back and wrapped it around her before he pulled the car down the street out of the way. When he had turned off the engine, he turned to face her. “The policeman said there’s been a shooting. Were you in there? How did you get out? And is Hollis still there?”

“I’m afraid so.” In an instant, the adrenalin that had sustained her evaporated. She felt so faint she had to lay her head on her knees for a few seconds.

As she managed to sit erect again, he flicked on the interior lights. “What have you got all over you?” He reached over and touched her forehead and cheeks.

She rubbed one cheek with her hand. “Blood, probably. Not mine. A man got shot—”

He pulled out his handkerchief (Tom always carried handkerchiefs), held it out in the rain, and washed her thoroughly. “That will do for now.” He gestured toward the hole in the backseat window. “Posey told me how you got this. Rough day, wasn’t it?”

“It has seemed like a week. Can I tell you about it later?”

“Yeah. I’ve heard Posey’s version. I can wait for yours. Right now I’m worried about Hollis.”

“Me, too. Do you think—?” She had been about to suggest they try to get in the house, but two men came out just then with Iola, hands cuffed behind her and head down.

A stretcher followed. Hollis’s eyes were closed, but her face was uncovered.

“Thank God,” Katharine breathed. “She’s alive.”

Posey trotted behind the bearers, her face white.

Tom jumped out and intercepted his sister. They were near enough for Katharine to hear.

“How badly is she hurt?”

“Bad. She took a bullet in the chest. They think it missed vital organs, but she’s lost a lot of blood and they won’t know anything for sure until they check her out. I’m going with her.” She started toward the ambulance, calling over her shoulder, “If you find Katharine, tell her Dr. Flo’s hurt, too. I can’t stay to see about her.”

Tom and Katharine ran hand in hand to the front door.

Dr. Flo lay on the couch with a host of EMTs around her. Her lids fluttered when she saw Katharine. “Hollis saved us,” she whispered.

“What happened?” Katharine demanded.

“I don’t know. Asleep…”

“Don’t talk,” one of the medics commanded. “Save your strength.” They prepared to move her onto a stretcher.

“Mary…Rodney…”

“I’ll call them,” Katharine promised. “And then we’ll join you at the hospital. How do I get the number?”

Dr. Flo recited it drowsily. Katharine waited until the paramedics had carried her out before she cried to Tom, “I didn’t have a pencil!”

“Get one now.” She fetched one from Posey’s telephone and he dictated it. Tom had always had a phenomenal memory.

They couldn’t stay in the house, of course. It had become a crime scene. They couldn’t even pack up Dr. Flo’s things, since that room was sealed off, but under police supervision they gathered up suitcases for Katharine, Posey, and Hollis and headed to a hotel.

“I want to go be with Dr. Flo,” Katharine said when they had checked in.

“You’d better shower first, or the emergency room will think they ought to admit you.”

He made calls while Katharine cleaned up. She threw her white slacks and striped jacket in the trash. She could never bear to wear them again, even if someone could get out all the stains.

When she returned to the room, Tom looked up from his book and smiled. “You look better. Rodney and Mary are on their way from Savannah, Wrens is on his way from California, I persuaded Molly and Lolly we do not need them down here with four small children, and Posey says both patients are doing as well as can be expected and are headed to ICU. Do you still want to go to the hospital?”

He was already standing and reaching for his keys. He knew she wouldn’t sleep until she saw Hollis and Dr. Flo for herself.

Several hours later they returned to the hotel. Katharine expected to lie awake for hours and have dreadful nightmares. Instead, as soon as Tom climbed in beside her and pulled her against his chest, she fell asleep and didn’t wake until the sun was high in the sky.

After checking with the hospital again, they ate breakfast and lazed beside the hotel pool.

Back in Atlanta, they’d have been in church by then. Katharine felt like a child given permission to play hooky.

“I’ll need to find someplace to get shorts and shirts,” Tom commented as one of the teens in the pool splashed water close to his legs. He hadn’t had any casual clothes in D.C., so for the time being he wore black suit pants and a white shirt, but he had rolled up the sleeves and left the collar open and had borrowed a pair of sandals from Wrens’s closet while they were still at the house. He wasn’t as handsome as Hasty, she thought fondly, but he was familiar and dear.

“You look very nice,” she told him.

“Shall I buy a bathing suit? You’re going to want to swim, aren’t you?”

“Another day. Today, I’m too tired to put on a suit.”

He read (Tom never left home without a book) while she dozed in her lounge chair.

“How did you get here?” she finally thought to ask as the waiter set drinks before them.

“Posey called from some restaurant where you all were eating pie. She said she thought you were in danger and I ought to be here. She sounded pretty worked up, so I figured I’d better check things out. I called another fellow to take Ashley to her party—which, frankly, was a relief—and told the pilot to gas up the company jet. We got here as fast as we could. When I called the house to say I had arrived, Posey said you were out for a walk, so she came to get me.”

Bless Posey. She must have suspected Tom had come when she had answered the telephone, then had sent Katharine out to the beach to make his arrival a surprise.

Katharine shaded her eyes with one hand and looked out to sea, hating to ask but needing to know. “How long can you stay?”

“As long as you need me. I’m sorry I’ve been such a beast since the break-in—going back to work so soon and leaving everything to you. Posey raked me over the coals on our way in from the airport. She told me how hard you’ve been working, you and Hollis both.”

“You needed to go,” she reminded him.

He reached for her hand and played with her fingers. “Well, I can stay a while this time. I have enough accumulated vacation time to take a couple of months, if I need to.”

“You know you can’t be gone that long!”

He gave her a rueful smile. “No, I really can’t. There’s an important Senate hearing in a couple of weeks. But I could manage ten days. Why don’t we stay down here and rest a little?”

She couldn’t afford ten days at the beach with all she had to do at the house, but she wasn’t worried. Tom would be content for a couple of days. Then he’d get antsy to work on the house. They’d go home. By Friday he’d be on the phone most of the time checking on the office, and he’d be off the next Monday. That’s how Tom was made.

She smiled. “That would be nice.” At least he was here now.

Hollis sat up in bed with tubes and wires running in several directions. “I’m wired,” she announced. “Somebody take a picture for the nephews. They’ll love to see me looking like a space monster.”

“I’m glad to see you at all,” Katharine told her soberly. “We can only stay a little while, but can you tell us what happened?”

Hollis had already given her statement to the police. She looked wan and tired.

“Dr. Flo was asleep, so when Mama left, I went upstairs to watch TV. I heard something downstairs that I thought was a knock, so I started back down, thinking it was you and you’d gone out without your key. But it wasn’t you.”

Hollis’s voice dwindled and her hands twisted on the blanket. Posey reached over and caught them between hers. “Just tell it slowly, honey. You’re safe.”

“It was the woman from the cemetery, the one who shot at the old man. She had broken one of the doors and gotten in, and was standing there with her hands behind her. When she saw me on the stairs she said something like ‘Nice place you got here.’” Hollis’s voice deepened and rasped, like Iola’s. Before textile arts, she had considered majoring in drama. “She said, ‘Could I talk to the black woman for a minute? It’s real important.’ I told her Dr. Flo was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake her, but she said, ‘I don’t give a dog’s rear end what you want or don’t want, you go wake her up and tell her I want to talk to her.’ And she brought her hands out from behind her and pointed a rifle at me.”

Hollis’s voice wobbled. She paused to look out the hospital window for a moment while taking Posey’s recommended deep cleansing breaths. Finally she was ready to continue.

“I figured she had come to kill Dr. Flo. Mama had left Daddy’s pistol on the countertop, and I thought if I could get to it before she saw it—but I didn’t.” Her voice wobbled. “She got it first, and laid her rifle on the counter. After that, I didn’t know how to stop her. I decided I could do more behind her than in front of her, so when we got to the door, I stepped back and said, ‘She’s in there. You wake her up if you want her.’”

Katharine smiled. Hollis had probably used exactly that snotty tone.

Hollis paused to sip water. “She went in the door and I opened the hall closet to get one of Daddy’s golf clubs. They weren’t there.”

“He took them home the last time we were down,” Posey told the others. “Wanted to get them refinished or something.”

Hollis gave a little snort. “Now you tell me. Nobody ever tells me anything in this family. All I could find was a stupid badminton racket one of the kids had left. So I grabbed up a racket and tiptoed after her.”

“A badminton racket?” Tom looked flabbergasted. “Against a gun?”

Hollis grimaced. “Yeah. Not real smart, huh? But it was all I could find. When I got to Dr. Flo’s door, the woman was standing halfway across the room taking aim. All I had time to do was hit her arm and deflect her aim. But at least the shot went wild and didn’t hit Dr. Flo. She fired real quick again and did hit her, then she turned on me. I tried to run, but she shot me.” Her voice still sounded surprised at that. “I thought I was a goner. I screamed ‘Mama!’—which was dumb since I knew you’d gone after Uncle Tom…”

Posey got up and drew Hollis’s head to her chest. “Everybody cries for their mama when they are in danger, baby. I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

For once, Hollis didn’t pull away. She rubbed her cheek against her mother’s soft blouse. “But the woman must have thought you were upstairs or something, because she ran past me. I had just enough time to pull myself into Dr. Flo’s room and drag a chair under the doorknob before I fainted.” She gave Katharine a wobbly grin. “I won’t laugh at you again. That chair trick really worked. Even the police couldn’t get in until they chopped the door down.”

“Time for visitors to leave,” a nurse announced in the door.

Hollis was already closing her eyes for a nap.

From there Katharine and Tom went to see Dr. Flo.

Rodney and his mother occupied the two guest chairs, but he immediately rose and offered Katharine his seat next to the bed.

“She’s awake, but a little groggy,” Mary whispered.

Katharine took her hand. “Dr. Flo? It’s Katharine.” At the enormous bandage around the professor’s small chest, she felt a lump rise in her own. “I am so sorry I wasn’t there.”

Dr. Flo made an impatient gesture with her other hand. Most of her words were inaudible, but Katharine made out a few. “…bad enough Hollis…never forgive myself…if you…” Her eyes closed.

“She comes and goes,” Rodney murmured.

“We want to thank you for all you are doing for Florence,” Mary added. “You are so kind. She’s coming home to us when she gets out of here, and Rodney will drive us back to Atlanta when she’s able.”

Katharine made polite noises and stayed a few minutes longer, but all the time she was wondering what she had ever done for Dr. Flo besides drive her straight into danger.

When they were alone in the elevator, she said, “Tom?”

He was engrossed in reading the safety certificate. Tom read cereal boxes if there was nothing else to read. “Yeah?”

“Could we cover Dr. Flo’s expenses while she’s here? I can’t say much without her permission, but Maurice left her badly off. Her money—it’s all gone.”

He finished reading the certificate before he nodded. “I heard something about that.”

“When? From whom?”

“People were talking about it all over town right after the doctor died.”

“People meaning men in clubs and locker rooms?”

“I suppose so. The rumor was that he’d gotten too heavily invested in tech stocks back at the turn of the century, and never recovered.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why haven’t we done anything for Dr. Flo before?”

“We scarcely knew the woman. You can’t walk up to a casual acquaintance and offer her money.”

It was so reasonable. It was so wrong.

“What about now? Can we pay her bills?”