Murder Runs in the Family

by Anne George

  Fred shuffled into the kitchen in the backless bedroom slippers he's never learned to walk in. "You want some milk?"

  "No." The phone rang again. Trinity. I told her Georgiana was at UAB and Castine Murphy had gone to see about her. "I'll call you, I promise, soon as I know something."

  Fred settled into his recliner with the evening paper and promptly went to sleep; I tried to read some more letters from Meg's computer. Haley was right. Boring. I put them back in the envelope and picked up a

  novel, which I had trouble concentrating on.

  At eleven-thirty, Cassie called. Georgiana had a perforated ulcer and they were going to do immediate surgery.

  "There's no need for you to come down," she said when I offered. "There's not a thing you can do except sit here and worry."

  "I could keep you company."

  "I'm fine."

  "Did you get her sister?"

  "I tried, but no one answered."

  I paused before I asked, "How sick is she?"

  A pause before she answered. "Very sick."

  "Call me if you need me."

  "I will."

  Fred was awake and listening. "She's in bad shape?"

  "They're fixing to do surgery. A perforated ulcer." For which I had given her bourbon!

  "Would you feel better if you went down there? I'll take you."

  "There's nothing I can do."

  But later, after I had called Trinity, after I had gotten into bed and heard Fred's breathing change into sleep, I lay awake and thought of Georgiana, the little bird with the eyes that missed nothing. I thought of her brother, George Peach, and the Moon Pie story. And I reached over and rubbed the hem of Fred's silk pajama coat like a child does a security blanket.

  Down the block, a dog bayed at the moon. Another joined in, and then I heard our Woofer. He sang into the night as loudly as he had as a young dog.

  "Good dog," I said, knowing that I should get up and quiet him, that tomorrow I would have to apologize to Mitzi and the other neighbors for their disturbed sleep. "Good dog."

  Twelve

  A call to the hospital the next morning gave me the news that Georgiana was in surgical intensive care in critical condition. As I hung up the phone, it rang, Cassie telling me what I had just heard from the hospital.

  "No malignancy," she said, "but peritonitis. The colon was ulcerated, too. They're pumping her full of antibiotics and have her totally sedated, of course."

  "What kind of chance do they give her?"

  "The doctors say she has a chance. That's as committal as they'll get."

  "I can't believe she got so sick so quickly. Where are you now?"

  "I just got home. I'm going to get a couple of hours' sleep and then go to the office. It wasn't that sudden, though. Georgiana hasn't been feeling good for quite a while, and we've been trying to get her to go to the doctor. But she kept saying she was okay."

  "Can I help you? Answer the phone for you?"

  "Thanks, but I'll just put an answering message on it that says Georgiana's ill and I'll get back as soon

  as I can. One of the nice things about working in genealogy, you don't get emergencies."

  "That's true." I asked if she had gotten in touch with Georgiana's sister.

  "No. She must be out of town."

  "Well, Georgiana's lucky to have you. Get some sleep now."

  "Thanks, Mrs. Hollowell."

  I hung up and dialed Trinity.

  "Eating all those boiled peanuts," she said when I told her the details. "I swear I never saw anybody could eat boiled peanuts like Georgiana. I'd say, 'Georgiana, you are going to tear your stomach up with all those peanuts,' but you let us pass a curb market with a sign that said 'Boiled Peanuts' and Georgiana was pulling in to buy some. I declare, you could have followed her all over Alabama like Hansel and Gretel with peanut shells." Trinity paused, and with a catch in her voice, asked, "Is she going to be all right?"

  "The doctors say she has a chance," I said truthfully.

  "I can't lose her, too."

  "You won't." My voice sounded sure and steady. Not at all the way I felt.

  One more phone call, this one to Mary Alice to tell her about Georgiana. She was already gone, probably over to Debbie's to see the grandbabies. I dialed Debbie's number and Richardena, the nanny, answered.

  "Hey, Mrs. Hollowell. Sure, she's here. She's been telling me about that poor lady at the wedding got kidnapped and hid in those caves under Vulcan. That poor soul."

  "Nobody's been kidnapped and hidden in a cave, Richardena."

  ' 'Mrs. Crane said they had. That nice little aunt of Henry's, not big as a flea. Why would anybody treat that lady that way?"

  "Mrs. Crane's a dingbat, Richardena. May I speak to her?"

  "Okay, but you know it's God's truth there's no telling what's in those caves. Bodies. All sorts of stuff. No telling."

  "Well, Meg Bryan's not one of them, Richardena. Let me talk to Sister."

  "Here she is."

  "For heaven's sake, Sister," I said when she answered. "Why are you telling Richardena that wild story?"

  "Who says it's wild?"

  "I do. Now, listen, Georgiana Peach is real sick." I told her about Trinity's call, Georgiana's surgery, and what Cassie had said about the prognosis.

  "That's terrible," Mary Alice said. "Do you think it was the bourbon?"

  "No more than I think it was the boiled peanuts."

  "What boiled peanuts?"

  "Forget it." In the background, I could hear Fay and May babbling to each other in their twin language that only they understand. "Are Debbie and Henry coming home today?"

  "Yes, but what are you talking about? Boiled peanuts?"

  "Georgiana Peach likes them."

  "So do I. You know when I'm going to Florida, I'll go out of my way through Florala just so I can get boiled peanuts from that old guy by the railroad track with the kettle. Do they think boiled peanuts messed Georgiana's stomach up?"

  no.and it's the guy has the kettle, not the railroad track."

  "Who said the guy had the railroad track?"

  "Good-bye, Sister," I said, hanging up. It was too early in the morning for tbis.

  Woofer wasn't particularly anxious for his walk. The community sing he had been involved in the night before had lasted several hours, and he thought he would sleep in.

  "No, you don't," I said when he held back. "You danced and you have to pay the piper."

  I let him set his own pace, though. We ambled down the block, sat on the curb once for a rest, enjoyed the smell of the wisteria. We were turning into our driveway when Bo Mitchell pulled up beside us in her black-and-white police car.

  "Hey, Patricia Anne."

  "Hey, Bo. You looking for me or just cruising?"

  "Just cruising. Saw you and Woofer out practicing for the Olympics."

  "Can you come in for a cup of coffee?"

  Bo looked at her watch. "Just a minute. Let me make a call."

  "I'll be in the kitchen." I put Woofer up and made a fresh pot of coffee. By the time Bo came in, I was taking some sticky buns from the microwave.

  "Just what I need," she said.

  I poured us both a cup of coffee and we sat at the kitchen table.

  "Anything new on Judge Haskins's murder?" I asked.

  ' 'Not that I know of. His wife showed up bitching because he got blood on one of her fancy carpets. I keep hoping she's the one did it. About thirty years old. Looks like a tart."

  I looked at Bo admiringly. "I haven't heard anyone described as looking like a tart in ages."

  "One of my grandmama's favorite things. She'd say, 'That girl's nothing but a tart, Bo Peep. Switching her tail like a mule.' "

  "And the judge's wife is a tail-switcher?"

  "Switches it all, honey."

  "I can't imagine him married to Meg Bryan," I said. "She didn't have anything to switch." Which reminded me. I told Bo about what sounded like Meg's voice saying "Help me" on Georgiana Peach's
answering machine.

  "Did you hear it?"

  "Sure." I explained about Georgiana's visit and her illness. "It really did sound like Meg," I said. "Sister says she's not dead, that someone's kidnapped her and hidden her in those caves under Vulcan."

  Bo snorted. "Might as well put her in the middle of Highway 280 there's so much traffic in those caves."

  "I thought they were boarded up."

  "They are." Bo held out her cup for a refill. "I'd like to hear that message."

  "It's probably still on Georgiana's machine, but I don't know how to access it. Her phone's connected to her business, The Family Tree, so Cassie Murphy probably can get it. Isn't that illegal, though? Like wiretapping or something?"

  ' 'I have no idea. I just ride around in my black and white making folks feel safe." Bo Mitchell looked at her coffee thoughtfully. The dissatisfaction in her voice surprised me.

  "What would you like to be doing?" I asked.

  "Homicide or vice."

  "Yuck."

  Something to sink my teeth into."

  I wasn't going to touch that one with a ten-foot pole.

  Bo got out her notebook and pen. "The Family Tree?"

  I nodded. "It's Georgiana Peach's company, but Cassie Murphy is her assistant. They do genealogical research."

  "They make a living doing that?"

  "A good one, apparently."

  "Cassie Murphy?"

  "Castine, really. I taught her in high school. She's listed in the phone book, but she's asleep right now. She was up all night with Georgiana." I watched Bo jotting this down. "You think there might be something to the message?"

  "I don't see how, since Meg's dead as a doornail. Deader." Bo stuck her pen back in her pocket.

  "Well, do you think there's any connection between Meg's death and the judge's?"

  "I doubt that, too. A judge gets shot, you got suspects coming out of the wall. Some of them switching their tails."

  "But he was a bankruptcy judge!"

  "Same difference. Somebody always gets mad when a case goes to court, regardless of what it is." The pager hanging on her belt beeped. Bo turned it off. "Okay if I use your phone?"

  "Sure." I watched her as she went to the kitchen counter. She looked fit and attractive in spite of the extra ten pounds. And God knows, she was smart and a hard worker.

  "Is it the glass ceiling?" I asked her when she finished talking.

  "Nope. It's a hit-and-run on Vulcan Parkway."

  Then she realized what I was talking about and laughed. "Glass ceiling? More like a ton of bricks. But we gals can get there. We just have to bust our butts to do it. Don't worry about me, Patricia Anne. I'm just feeling a little sorry for myself today." She took the last sip of her coffee and started out the door. "Thanks for the pick-me-up."

  "Any time." I watched her striding toward her car heading for a hit-and-run. And she wanted homicide and vice. Lord!

  I straightened up the house and got out the letters that Haley had printed from Meg's disk. I realized as I started reading them that I hadn't mentioned the disks to Bo. She probably would have been interested to learn they had been stashed in Mary Alice's glove compartment. She might even have been able to read them without going to sleep, which was more than I could do.

  I took the letters to the kitchen table and decided I would organize them. Letters to companies went in one stack, to individuals in another, and in a third, stack I placed what seemed to be memos that Meg had written to herself. The first stack was the largest and the least interesting. A glance showed it to be principally requests for newsletters, catalogs, out-of-print books. The second stack was more interesting, but it would take more careful reading. It consisted of recommendations for membership in such organizations as the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and the DAR, as well as Sons of the American Revolution. There were also letters that must have surprised the recipients, and Meg pulled no punches. Your grandmother, she wrote one woman, was brought up before the church for adultery and found guilty. Another woman seeking admission to the DAR

  was informed that records showed that her great

  grandmother was a mulatto. I grinned, but then I sobered. There are still many Southerners who believe their family trees are strictly Caucasian and to say otherwise might be asking for trouble. Would they kill the person who said that a drop of blood, God forbid, from another race had entered the pure Caucasian stream? Crazier things had happened. I put the letter to the side to check on later.

  There were many more of the personal letters, but I put them off until later and glanced at the memos. Many of them were dated, but they were in a code that only Meg would understand. For instance, under September 10, she had entered, "Bride, no. Cromwell, Cropwell. Jenkins says yes. Check." Nothing here, I thought. I glanced at the ones with the latest dates. On March 10, Meg had written, "Williams, Murphy, Bobby. Williams, Murphy, Bobby. Bobby, Murphy. Georgiana? Trinity?"

  It made no sense, but something told me it was important. I knew all the names but Williams. Who was Williams? I stared at the memo, Williams, Murphy, Bobby. And then I remembered. Heidi Williams was the other woman who worked with Cassie and Georgiana. So this was a memo about The Family Tree staff, plus Judge Haskins and Trinity with a question mark.

  Meg had done some work for The Family Tree, Georgiana had said. So this could well be something they were all working on. But why Bobby? Williams, Murphy, Bobby. I put this memo to the side with the questionable letters, including the one to Camille At-chison informing her of her descent from General Sherman. The rest of the letters I put back in the en-

  velope. I would read them all later. Or make Sister help me.

  The phone was ringing as I got out of the shower. It was Frances Zata, my oldest friend, who is still counselor at Robert Alexander High, where I taught for most of my career and which I still miss.

  "Tell me about the wedding," she said. "I hated like everything to miss it, but we'd had this cruise planned since last September. You should have been with us, Patricia Anne. We had a ball. Tell me everything, now. What about Debbie's dress?"

  "It looked like Princess Di's. Fred said that much virginal white was damaging to the retina."

  "What about the bridesmaids?"

  I settled down on the bed for a long chat. Finally, just before I hung up, I thought to ask Frances if she remembered Castine Murphy.

  "Sure I remember her. Bless her heart."

  "Well, I ran into her a couple of days ago. She's a professional genealogist, works with a lady named Georgiana Peach who has a company called The Family Tree. She must be quite a good researcher, too."

  "Castine Murphy's a genealogist?"

  "She's Cassie now."

  "I wondered what happened to her after her parents died."

  "They're both dead?"

  "When she was in college. Hit by lightning on the beach at Destin."

  "How tragic! I don't remember hearing about it."

  ' 'It may have been the summer you and Mary Alice went to Europe."

  "Could have been. I've blocked that summer from my memory."

  Anyway, if I remember correctly, they had just declared bankruptcy."

  "You're kidding! Two doctors?"

  "Hard to believe, isn't it? Some kind of land deal in Florida that went under."

  "So the poor child was left without anything?" I asked.

  "Maybe some insurance. I don't know whether that would have been included in the estate or not."

  "Well, she seems to be doing okay. You ought to see her, Frances. Very much a lady. Thoughtful. She spent last night at University Hospital with Georgiana Peach, the lady she works for who's critically ill."

  "Are you sure we're talking about the same Castine Murphy? The one who never took her nose out of a book long enough to see what was going on around her?"

  "They surprise us sometimes, don't they?"

  "A lot of the time. Thank God."

  We said good-bye with plans to meet for lunc
h soon. I fixed a peanut butter and banana sandwich and sat down to watch Jeopardy. When it was over, I decided to go work in the library some more. Before I left, J called the hospital. Georgiana's condition had not changed.

  Cheerleader Emily was actually working on what looked like a research paper. Several books were open around her, and she was jotting notes onto a yellow legal pad. "Hi, Mrs. Hollowell," she said, looking up and smiling.

  "You look busy."

  "It's a paper for my Twentieth-Century Writers class. You ever heard of anybody named Adrienne Rich?"

  "Sure. She's wonderful."

  Emily gestured toward the books. "That's what everybody says. Actually, my boyfriend and I are into diving. He's dived the Great Barrier Reef, but so far I've just been to Panama City. Anyway, when I saw this woman had written a book called Diving into the Wreck, I thought, well heck, that's the writer I want to do my paper on. Figured I'd learn something. You know?"

  "You haven't learned anything?"

  "It's all poetry!"

  "See, you did learn something."

  A wide smile. "I guess so."

  "Hang in there." I left her to her notes, and went to the Montgomery section. On the way, I passed several people who nodded a greeting. Three days and I was becoming a fellow genealogist, one of the gang. When, I wondered, did the "dog-eat-dog" part begin? When you shook the branch of someone else's family tree?

  One of Fred's great great great uncles, I discovered in West's Montgomery County and the War Between the States, had refused to serve in the Civil War. Pursued by his own brothers who were, I suppose, going to persuade him by threats of bodily harm to support the Confederacy, he jumped into the Alabama River from a cliff. His long hair became snagged in the branches of a tree and his neck was broken. That bend in the river where he died is still called Daniel's Bend for the young man with the unfortunately strong head of hair.

  The story reminded me of Absalom in the Bible. I got a Kleenex out and was sniffling a little thinking about the mother who had had to hear what had happened from her other sons, and probably a good story

  they made up, too, not taking any blame at all on themselves. Emily tapped me on the shoulder.

  "Mrs. Hollo well, Cassie Murphy wants you on the phone."