Death on the Family Tree

by Patricia Sprinkle

  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 alway
s 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.”

  All these revelations about her aunt’s romantic life—or lack thereof—might have been interesting at another time, but right then Katharine had a one-track mind. “While you were in Austria, did you all visit a salt mine called Salzberg, where there’s a Celtic archaeology site?”

  “We were twenty years old, Shug. We weren’t looking for archaeology sites, and salt mines would have reminded us of school. I don’t think we left Vienna that whole week, then the girls and I went back to England.”

  “But Carter—he stayed in Austria after that?”

  “Oh, yes. He meant to stay the whole school year, but he had to come back earlier than he planned. Hitler, you know. Snuck into Vienna early in 1938 and took over the place slick as a whistle, before anybody caught on to what he was up to, including most of the Austrians. Carter hightailed it home in March, scared the Nazis would conscript him.” Dutch paused for a wheezing laugh. “As it turned out, he wound up in Europe with the American army. He was real worried he might have to shoot at some of his buddies from Vienna. He did all right, though. Got him a Purple Heart.”

  “Do you know that I never heard of Carter Everanes until today?” Katharine didn’t try to keep the indignation out of her voice, although she knew it wasn’t fair to dump it all on Dutch simply because he was the last of their circle alive. “Nobody told me that Aunt Lucy and Uncle Walter had another brother.”

  “They didn’t talk about him.” Dutch lowered his voice a notch. “You see, honey, there was a little unpleasantness.”

  “I heard he was murdered.” Katharine had little patience with that generation’s reluctance to talk “in front of the children”—especially now that she was forty-six.

  “Yeah. It was made to look like a home invasion, but he was actually shot by his own yardman in his living room. Alfred Simms, the man’s name was, and it shocked everybody. Alfred was a handsome-looking buck, well liked, good worker. We never knew how he came to do such a thing. Maybe looking for money. The police said all the drawers were emptied and closets torn apart, stuff strewn all over the rooms. A real mess. Alfred claimed he didn’t do it, of course. Said he’d left right after six, when he finished cutting the grass, and that Carter was setting out glasses for a friend to come over for a preprandial drink. But Lucy and Walter asked everybody they knew, and they never found anybody who planned to visit Carter or go out with him that evening, and there was only one glass in the living room. Smashed. Then Alfred was seen wearing a valuable ring Carter brought back from Europe. When he claimed Carter gave it to him, the police arrested him, of course. That’s where the unpleasantness began.”

  “Looks like that’s where it would have ended. Was he convicted?”

  “You’d better believe it, sweetie.” Dutch’s voice was rough with the same brutality she had heard in other Southern males when discussing punishment for folks of other races who, they felt, had gotten out of line. “But at his trial, Alfred said some very nasty things about Carter. Lying, of course, trying to save his own skin, and the jury sent him to the chair anyway, but the newspapers had a field day with Carter’s reputation. Plumb ruined it. A lot of people believed what they read. Lucy and Walter never talked about Carter much after that. A sad bidness for everybody concerned.” Dutch wheezed on the other end and grew silent.

  Katharine was silent, too, trying to absorb the story.

  “Did all that happen here—the murder and the trial?” she finally asked.

  “No, it was down in Decatur.” Dutch sounded like Decatur was south of Antarctica, not a few miles away and butted up so tight to Atlanta’s eastern edge that nobody could tell where one stopped and the other began. “Why you want to know about all that, Shug?”

  Katharine had no idea. She wasn’t a morbid person. She never watched televised murder trials. She seldom even watched local eleven o’clock news, it was so blatantly a crime report. When you stay alone a lot, it makes no sense to fill your mind with scary things. Still, she knew she would be back at the Atlanta History Center as soon as possible, reading back issues of the Atlanta Constitution for information on Carter Everanes’s murder.

  She gave what she hoped was a careless laugh. “Just put it down to curiosity—or boredom. There’s not much happening around here with Jon gone to China.”

  “How’s he doing? Have you heard from him?”

  When they had discussed Jon a few minutes, she asked, “Why was Carter living in Decatur?”

  If Dutch thought it odd that she kept hopping back to Carter, he didn’t say so. Many of his elderly friends hopped from one subject to the other other, so he probably thought it normal. “Carter could have lived with Lucy in their old home place. Neither of them was married, and their folks were dead. But Carter liked his privacy, so when he got back from the army and finished law school, he bought him a place with a little patch of yard around it and he hired Alfred to come help him out in the house and the y
ard. Alfred had a magic touch where flowers were concerned, and Carter was crazy about flowers. Between them, they created the prettiest yard in Decatur. But I never could forgive Alfred for the things he said about poor Carter. It nearly killed Lucy. She was crazy about Carter.”

  Heaviness for the honorary uncle she had never known and for Aunt Lucy’s grief weighed Katharine down while she dressed. She considered calling Posey to say she had a headache and would prefer to eat alone, but if she did, Posey would bring take-out food to keep her from being alone on her birthday. Besides, Katharine reminded herself with a rueful smile born of experience, if she lied about having a headache, she would develop one out of guilt.

  Chapter 8

  Festive in a black silk dress and black sandal heels, Katharine was fastening a long gold chain around her neck when Posey and Wrens arrived. Hollis wasn’t with them. “She’s meeting us there,” Posey explained. “She plans to go out afterwards, and will want her car. You know how kids are.”

  As soon as they were seated at the club, Posey handed Katharine a small white box. “I know my brother will bring you something, but I wanted you to have a present to open today.”

  A pair of delicate gold earrings shaped like dogwood blossoms glinted in the candlelight. Katharine gave Posey a wordless hug of thanks.

  Hollis joined them before they had finished their first drinks and handed Katharine a package wrapped in tissue paper. Katharine exclaimed as she removed a square of colorful silk. “A scarf from the House of Buiton,” Hollis said lightly, but her eyes were anxious as her aunt lifted up a stream of subdued shades of blue, green, and teal.

  “You hemmed this?” Katharine exclaimed, amazed. The stitches were so small they were almost invisible.

  “And designed and dyed it,” Hollis admitted with pride.

  “How?” When Katharine held up the scarf, it caught the light like jewels.