Death on the Family Tree

by Patricia Sprinkle

  Posey heaved a martyred-mother sigh. “What do you care? You’re driving me to drink, moping around here all day. Weren’t you supposed to go to work?”

  “No, I went last night to get a feel for the theater. Now I’m going to be working at home, making costumes for the next play. I’ll have to go in for fittings and stuff, and to make sure that what I’m doing matches the sets, but I’ll do the cutting and sewing here. Can I use the dining room table until my own place is ready?”

  “Lord help us,” Posey muttered. “Whatever happened to the empty nest?”

  “I’ve got an empty nest you can have,” Katharine offered.

  Hollis shifted her chair and turned one shoulder toward her mother. “Are you lonesome at your place, Aunt Kat? I could come over and stay until we finish the carriage house here, if you’ll let me sew in your dining room. I won’t scratch your table. I have a pad to put over it when I’m cutting. And as you can see, I am not welcome here.” She shot her mother an angry look.

  “You’re welcome, honey,” Posey assured her. “I’d just prefer a bit of sweetness and light.” She got up. “I ought to go ask Wrens if he wants a snack.”

  “Sorry,” Hollis muttered after Posey had gone, “but I don’t feel sweet or light at the moment.”

  Katharine pretended to be fascinated with the wine in her tumbler. “What’s going on?” Young people were more likely to talk if they thought you weren’t seriously interested.

  Hollis heaved a sigh that took five seconds to exhale. “Nothing.” She ripped the top off her yogurt as if she’d like to be removing somebody’s body parts, and stirred savagely.

  Katharine hazarded a guess. “I understand Zach has disappeared.”

  Hollis lifted an overloaded spoon to her mouth with what would have looked like indifference to anybody who hadn’t known her all her life, and didn’t say a word.

  “I had a call from Rowena this morning,” Katharine continued. “She was wanting me to sell her the necklace as a present for her father. Then Brandon got on the phone, asking if I knew where Zach was. Apparently he was supposed to take a speech to Brandon last night at some dinner, but he never made it.”

  Hollis swallowed the yogurt and wiped her mouth with a cloth napkin she’d found on the table—possibly her own. “Yeah. I heard about that. Rowena came home from the banquet mad enough to chew nails and spit them out.”

  “What time did she get there?” Katharine tried not to sound too eager.

  “She’d been home long enough to put on a robe before I got there.”

  That wasn’t much help, considering that Hollis hadn’t left home until nearly midnight. Katharine was more interested in Zach, anyway. He had shown an inordinate amount of interest in the jade. “So you don’t have any idea where he might be?”

  Hollis frowned. “No, and Amy must have called a hundred times asking the same question. He was supposed to help Brandon get ready for a march Monday down at the capitol, and Brandon was hopping mad. I kept telling her I’d call if he showed up, but fifteen minutes later she’d be back on the phone with the same question.” Hollis sighed. “She can be so dense. Just like the rest of her family.” She dipped up another large spoonful of yogurt, and then muttered so low that Katharine almost didn’t hear, “It would never occur to them that maybe Zach has finally decided he doesn’t want to promote hatred any longer.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  At the rate she was going, Hollis would soon be queen of sighs. “That march on Monday? It’s part of Brandon’s big campaign to get gays out of Georgia. Hasn’t he ever read European history? He sounds like Hitler when he talks about ‘those people.’” Hollis sketched quotes with sarcastic fingers. “And that’s the only thing he does talk about these days—except terrorists, and how none of us will be safe unless we all carry photo IDs and guns and ship all foreign-born people back to the countries where they came from. To hear him talk, you’d think he was a pureblood American Indian. I don’t know how Zach can stand working for him. Of course, Zach is pretty mixed-up himself.” She stared morosely into her yogurt.

  Posey ought to be upstairs dancing a jig. This conversation did not bode well for a long-term relationship. “So have you and Zach broken up?” Katharine inquired.

  Hollis shook her head. “Uh, no. We haven’t broken up. I just don’t know where he is.”

  Katharine hoped he wasn’t out of town somewhere trying to sell Tom’s jade. Maybe she ought to at least mention that possibility. She listened to be sure Posey wasn’t coming back, then asked urgently, “When you all came over the other day, did Zach watch you disarm our security system? And is there any way he could have gotten your key?”

  Hollis’s head came up like a deer’s, alert to danger. “Why?”

  “Because I’ve been wondering if it was Zach who came into my house last night. I am almost positive I locked the doors and put on the alarm. I can picture myself doing it. And there was no sign of a break-in. So whoever came in may have had a key and known our code, may have even been in the house before. He knew where to find the safe, knew about Tom’s jade, and actually came into Jon’s closet, as if he knew the hideout was there. Zach used to come play with Jon sometimes, and I’m sure Jon would have bragged about the wall safe and his daddy’s jade. He and Zach played in the hideout a lot, too. So that leaves me wondering—”

  “I wouldn’t give him your key!” Hollis shoved back her chair and jumped to her feet, knocking over her carton and sending yogurt flying all over the table. She ignored it, whirled, and dashed into the kitchen. The back door slammed.

  When Hollis neither returned to the house nor drove away in her Mini, Katharine became alarmed. She went to the garage and heard the sound of stormy weeping above.

  She climbed the stairs to the carriage house and found the door open. In the dimness—for the only light came from a halogen light on the parking apron—Hollis sat on a lumpy couch, shoulders shaking, dabbing her eyes with the remnants of a sodden tissue.

  It was not an ideal place to sit and cry. The air was thick and close. In the scant light, Katharine saw that cobwebs festooned the windows and dust lay like white powder on an old coffee table, the only other furniture. The linoleum was cracked. The sofa sagged with age. Through an arch at the left side of the far end, a small kitchen alcove was bare except for a wide shallow sink, supported by two unpainted pipes that dubbed for front legs. Katharine couldn’t suppress a groan of dismay at the thought of how much work would be needed to turn the place into something habitable.

  Hollis jumped, and her head swiveled toward the door. Tears sparkled on her lashes.

  “I’m sorry I upset you.” Katharine walked in and pretended to examine the angles of the ceiling and the dimensions of the room.

  Hollis sniffed. “It’s okay. But I did not give Zach your key. Or your code.” She sniffed again and tossed the soggy tissue into a pile of debris on the floor. “There’s so much dust up here, it gives me allergies.” She got up with an unconvincing little laugh. “I know it doesn’t look like much yet, but this place has great potential.” She walked around waving her arms. “With a little paint and some paper, and the floors refinished, plus some cleaning—it’s a bit dirty.”

  A bit dirty? An army of cleaners would need a week to make a dent in the filth. But Katharine wasn’t half as concerned about the apartment as she was about Hollis. Years of living with teens had taught her that while some of their tragedies seem minor to adults, few are to them. Hollis’s expression just then reminded her of Anna Karenina’s before she leaped in front of the train.

  Katharine strolled over to peer out the grimy front windows. Because the garage faced the backyard, the carriage-house views were reversed. Its front windows overlooked the acres of woodland that covered the back of the Buitons’s lot while its back windows looked out onto their large front lawn and flowerbeds. Just then the woodlands were so dark, Katharine felt like she perched at the edge of the world. “You’ll have a good view.” She adjuste
d a crooked blind and it fell with a clatter. She jumped back. “Sorry!”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll need new ones.” Hollis moseyed to the kitchen and turned the water tap on and off several times. “The guys said they can come paint your room Tuesday morning. Will that be okay?”

  “Fine with me. I never imagined they could come so quick.”

  “I told you, they need the work.” Hollis was silent for another minute or two. “Are you positive you locked your door and turned on the alarm?”

  “Not positive, no. I was waiting for Tom, you see, and went out to cut some flowers. Then, after he called to say he wasn’t coming, I decided to take my supper upstairs and read in bed. I may have forgotten to lock up and put on the alarm, but I think I remember doing both. I’m just not sure.” Again she saw herself standing with an armful of hydrangeas, awkwardly punching in the numbers.

  “Oh.” It was a small chilled word. “Do you still have the necklace at your house?”

  “Not any more. I had hidden it under Jon’s comic books in the hideout—”

  Hollis made a small, barely perceptible sound, then grew still again.

  “—but whoever broke in last night seemed to suspect the hideout was there, so I had to find a better hiding place.”

  “Take it to a bank!” Hollis said fiercely. “Anything else is dumb!”

  “I know. Now, tell me why you want to live up here instead of getting a place of your own.” Katharine didn’t want to think about burglars any more. Her courage was beginning to fray at the edges.

  Hollis came back to the living room and flipped on the light, revealing more dirt. But she held out her arms and twirled as if she stood in a palace. “Because this is a great place. I always loved coming up here as a kid. Of course, it wasn’t so dusty then. Julia used to clean it when we played up here.” With one toe she nudged a ball that looked like a dead mouse.

  “Don’t!” Katharine didn’t mean to squeal, but it came out that way.

  Hollis laughed, sounding like herself again. “It’s just a dust bunny. I know the place is filthy. Julia won’t come up anymore. She claims it’s too hard to drag the vacuum cleaner and supplies up the stairs, but she’s really scared of ghosts. Molly and Lolly told her the place is haunted by a woman who was murdered up here fifty years ago.”

  “Really? Your mother never mentioned a murder or a ghost.” It was the kind of story Posey normally would bring up at every opportunity.

  Hollis grimaced at her aunt’s gullibility. “There weren’t any. Molly and Lolly told Julia that because they were smoking up here and didn’t want her telling Mom. But once it’s cleaned out, this will be a perfect place to work. I can put my stretching frames over there—” she waved toward the back, “and the steamer in the kitchen, and a big cutting table under the front windows. This room gets lots of light during the day.”

  Maybe it did. It extended across the entire depth of the garage, which meant it had windows both on the front and the back.

  “The windows will need to be washed, of course.” Hollis added in the offhand tone of one who wouldn’t do the washing. “Come see the rest.”

  She led the way like a realtor showing off a prize property. “That’s the bath, and here are the two bedrooms.” Bedrooms, bath, and hall would fit into Hollis’s room inside her parents’ house, but she boasted, “I’ll sleep in the little bedroom—” she waved toward the back room as if that part of her life was inconsequential “—and sew in the big one.” She strode into the front bedroom, which had a double window looking out into the forest and a single side window overlooking the pool. Katharine wondered how the former owner’s chauffeur had enjoyed living up there looking out at a pool he wasn’t allowed to use.

  She tuned in as Hollis was saying, “And my sewing machine under the big window.” As she pointed, Katharine could see, dimly, the ghost of her dream, and she felt an unexpected twinge of envy. Hollis was right. It would be fun to have a little place like this, all of one’s own. And Hollis knew what she wanted to do with her life.

  “Don’t you love the way the roof slants at the front?” Hollis touched the slanted ceiling with a loving hand. “I’m going to paint that wall dark green, so it will blend with the trees and grass outdoors, and I’ll feel like a saint living out in a wooded hermitage or something.”

  Anybody less like a saint than the thin dark girl in front of her—or less likely to tolerate living her life totally isolated from other human beings—Katharine could not imagine, but Hollis did burn with some of the same intensity saints are made of. That evening she was talking so feverishly that Katharine wondered if she was on some kind of drug.

  “It could be charming,” she said with reservations.

  “It will!” Hollis insisted. “It’s going to be perfect. Everything is going to be perfect!”

  Then she burst into tears, dashed toward the living room, and clattered down the stairs. In a minute Katharine heard the Mini engine rev and Hollis roar down the drive.

  Chapter 18

  Sunday, June 11

  After church and dinner with Posey and Wrens, Katharine insisted on returning home Sunday afternoon. She couldn’t live in fear all her life. But what was she to do with the necklace until she could get it to the bank?

  She set the Bloomingdale’s bag on the kitchen counter and reached down inside to touch the circle of bronze, considering her options. Where could she keep it until the bank opened? No place in the house felt secure. Should she hide it among the garden tools in the shed? Under the cushions in the patio locker? Bury it? She opened the cloth and peered inside, trying to remember exactly how wide it was. It glowed a soft green. That’s when she got her inspiration. The color should be perfect.

  But first she carried it into her downstairs powder room and switched on the light. The soft taupe wallpaper flamed with red-orange poppies, Katharine’s one flamboyant choice when the downstairs was being redecorated. Her hair gleamed in the mirror lights and her skin was softly tanned above her creamy dress. “Not bad-looking for an old lady, eh?” she asked her reflection, pleased with the way her hair seemed to float around her head. She held the necklace to her throat and waited. Sure enough, as she looked at its soft green gleam in the mirror, she seemed to see, dimly, the woman with dark hair and proud dark eyes. That day the sun seemed to shine fully on her long, thin face, which was also tanned by the sun. Her lips moved as if in supplication, and her eyes were anxious.

  “I’m doing my best to protect it,” Katharine whispered. She held the circlet reverently and carried it back to the kitchen, where she put it inside a one-gallon Ziploc bag, pressed out the air, and closed it tight. She put the first bag inside a second and again pressed out the air. Then she went outside.

  In the yard, she tossed a stick to send Dane off in another direction and strolled down to the pool. After a quick look around, she knelt and dropped the treasure into a corner near the diving board, where the water was ten feet deep.

  The necklace drifted slowly and settled on the bottom, so close to the color of the pool that it looked like twigs or a clump of leaves. She gave a satisfied nod. The pool man wasn’t due until Tuesday. Nobody else was likely to be near it until then. While Dane nosed around in the bushes, she sat beside the pool and took stock of her afternoon.

  Katharine’s parents had considered that the commandment to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy was God’s way of telling people they needed one day for worship, rest, and recreation after a week’s hard work. Neither went to their desk on Sunday afternoons nor did Katharine do homework. Instead, their family snorkeled or rode bikes together, lazed around with the Sunday papers, or visited with friends. When Katharine and Tom married, he had insisted that he had too much work to do getting established in business to take a whole day off every week, but when the children came—and especially after he started traveling—he had capitulated and they began to set aside Sundays for church and family fun. When the children grew older and wanted to go out with friend
s, Tom and Katharine relaxed together. In the past year, if she knew he would be gone on a Sunday, Katharine had either invited Jon and his friends for lunch or planned a special outing for herself and Aunt Lucy.

  That particular Sunday afternoon stretched ahead like a mini version of the rest of her life: a big void. She was too restless to read, too lazy to call a friend, too apathetic to swim.

  She decided to do some family research. She took Dane inside and left him in the kitchen while she pulled out every old family album and box of letters she could find and pored over them for any hint that either of her aunts had a wild and lurid youth. The closest she came was up in the attic, where she found a stack of letters Sara Claire and Walter had exchanged between Vassar and Yale. She sat down in Tom’s daddy’s uncomfortable old chair and spent an hour reading the record of what was surely the most boring and circumspect courtship in American history. Only when the air grew hot and stuffy did she re-tie the letters with the blue satin ribbon Sara Claire had used to keep them together and drop them back in the dusty box. Feeling grimy and sticky with heat, she headed toward the kitchen for a glass of tea.

  She paused in the front hall, surprised. Through the sidelight of her front door she saw Hasty’s Jeep in her drive. She opened the door and peered out, but he wasn’t in the Jeep, nor was he in the front yard. Puzzled, she went to the kitchen, where she found Dane perched in the bay window emitting low growls in his throat. When he heard her enter, he began to bark.

  Across the lawn, Hasty swam lazily, turning after completing a lap. Any minute now he would peer down through the water and spot the necklace.

  She left Dane in the kitchen (she drew the line at dogs in the pool) and dashed outside. “How did you get in the yard?” she demanded, breathless from running. “Wasn’t the back gate locked?” What she wanted to ask was “How dare you come swim in my pool without a specific invitation?” and “Have you spotted the necklace yet?”