Death on the Family Tree

by Patricia Sprinkle

  “That is the first sensible thing you have said since you called. If I don’t see you before Dutch’s funeral, don’t bother to come home at all.” She hung up and leaned against the wall, clutching her middle and sick to her stomach. What was happening to her? She never used to fuss at Tom. He was just like most of the men who ran the country—preoccupied with important things.

  “But I’m important, too,” she said, and for the first time in a week, she believed it.

  When the phone rang almost immediately, she thought he was calling back. Instead, she heard, “Katharine? Chapman Landrum here. I’ve been over at Daddy’s today packing up his junk—”

  No “Hello, Katharine, how are you?” or other conversational lubricant. No acknowledgement of grief—his or her own. And the term “packing up his junk” was the insufferable sort of remark that always made Katharine want to knock Chap down. She surfaced from memories of times she’d decked him good to hear, “—thought you’d want to know.”

  “Want to know what? I’m sorry, I got distracted.”

  “About the note.” Impatience poured through the receiver. “There was a note on Daddy’s desk, under his phone book, with your name on it and a long number. Do you have a pencil?”

  “Wait a minute while I find a one.” That took longer than it should have, for the pencil she usually kept by the kitchen phone and its companion pad had disappeared in the chaos. She found her purse and rummaged in its depths for a pen, then grabbed a cereal box from the trashcan and ripped off a flap to write on. “Was there anything else on the note?” Dutch had a habit of keeping all the notes and numbers from one project in the same place.

  “Yeah, a 931 number and the name Maria. Here’s the number. Ready?”

  She copied it carefully. “There’s nothing to indicate what it is?”

  “No, but it looks like an international phone number, since it starts with 011. Listen, I have to go. There’s a lot to do here, and I left my kids at a motel and promised them we’d check out the aquarium this afternoon.”

  What else do you do with your children the afternoon after you arrive to attend your father’s funeral?

  Katharine rebuked herself for that thought. Chap’s children hadn’t seen Dutch more than twice since their parents’ divorce five years earlier. According to Dutch, Chap only saw his kids at Christmas and for a few weeks each summer. Dutch had claimed that was because Chap’s new trophy wife wasn’t fond of children. She wasn’t fond of her father-in-law, either. They had never invited Dutch to share their holidays. But while Dutch used to complain about not seeing the boys, he had never invited them down since his wife died, so far as Katharine knew. Remembering the phrase in Genesis, ‘it is not good that man should be alone,’ she knew God hadn’t been talking just about sex. Some men could be such klutzes when it came to maintaining relationships.

  She was surprised that the boys had even come, until she remembered they were out of school for the summer. She’d have been willing to bet that Chap had called his wife and asked her to take them back that week and she had refused, and that he had asked his trophy wife to keep them in New York and she had refused, too. It just went to prove that men got the kind of wives they deserved.

  Then he surprised her. “I know you and Daddy were close. Is there anything of his you would like to keep, as a memento?”

  She answered at once. “I’d like his genealogy books, if you don’t want them.” She could see the place on her shelves where they would go.

  “I sure don’t want them. I’ll box up all his books for you. Keep what you want and get rid of the rest. And Katharine, thanks for picking out his clothes. I couldn’t have done that.” Was that a tremor in his voice?

  She hung up feeling more charitable toward Chap than she had in her life.

  Katharine looked at the long number for some time and then checked her phone book, which was still intact. She found that 931 was a Tennessee area code. Had Dutch managed to call Sewanee about Ludwig Ramsauer’s relatives before he died?

  She used her cell phone and dialed the long number, was rewarded after only two rings. “Ja?” It was a loud, forceful syllable, the voice decidedly female. Katharine pictured a large stout woman with grizzled braids wound around her head.

  She hoped the virago spoke English. “Is this Maria?”

  “Ja.” The voice was guarded now.

  “My name is Katharine Murray. I am the friend of a man named Dutch Landrum from Atlanta. He seems to have gotten your phone number from his college—”

  She got no further. A delighted laugh rippled over the wire. “Dutch? He is still alife? He is vell? Och, some of us old var horses go on longer dan de rest. Ve had such goot times ven he vas over here vun summer. Dat man loved gut beer and a gut laugh.”

  Katharine amended her picture to include a jolly pink face. “He sure did,” she agreed. She explained as gently as she could that Dutch was now neither alive nor well. “But Sunday night, just before he died, we were talking about Ludwig—”

  “About Ludvig? Did Dutch not know he died? It vas many years ago dat he vent.”

  “Yes, he knew, but he was puzzled. He had heard it was a climbing accident—”

  Maria interrupted, and Katharine struggled to translate v’s into w’s and d’s into th’s as the woman spoke excitedly, “Dat’s vat dey said, but Ludvig vas always careful. He had no accident. Myself, I alvays t’ink he vas pushed.”

  “By whom?” Katharine was so startled she blurted the words before she thought.

  “I do not know, but Ludvig did not climb alone. Never! I tell dat to the police, but dey insist it vas an accident, dat he was alone.” Her voice grew dark. “Or dat he vent up alone and it vas no accident. Dat vas impossible. Ludvig vould never kill himself!”

  Katharine remembered the five question marks in the margin of the article she had found in Carter’s box. “Dutch said he was a very careful climber. He said Ludwig fussed at him for even hiking alone. So you think he went up with somebody else?”

  “I don’t know. I just know Ludvig never vent up a mountain alone before, and ven he vent out that morning, he vas whistling, which meant he vas happy. He said before he left, ‘I have a surprise for you tonight, Maria. Fix a special meal.’” Her voice grew dark again. “It vas a surprise, yes? Ludvig carried home on a stretcher.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  “It vas long ago.” The voice was brusque, refusing sympathy from a stranger.

  “Do you remember the summer when Dutch came over? Ludwig had other friends over from America, too, didn’t he?”

  “Ja. Lee and Donk. Lee, Donk, and Ludvig—t’ree of a kind. Alvays up to some prank. Donk died in the var, but for years after, ven Lee came across on business, he alvays looked me up. Ve liked to talk about happier times.”

  “How long were you and Ludwig married?” Katharine inquired.

  “Married?” Her surprise rippled through the wires. “Ach, no, I am Ludvig’s sister. Neither of us married, so ve lived together until his death.” She sighed. “I hope Ludvig and Dutch are sharing a beer in heaven tonight. Dutch alvays made me laugh.”

  Katharine scarcely heard the last two sentences, her heart was pounding so loud. Had she found the Austrian woman who had written the passionate diary? “Did you know Carter Everanes?” She held her breath while she waited for the reply.

  Maria’s voice was guarded. “Ja. He vas here for a while. Until Hitler came.”

  The sudden chill in her tone puzzled Katharine. Was that the sound of a woman scorned? Had Maria expected Carter to write when he came back to the States and been disappointed? “Carter and Ludwig were good friends, too, right?” she hazarded.

  “Ja.” It was a grudging admission. Had Carter and Ludwig remained friends after Carter and Ludwig’s sister were no longer lovers? Was there a tactful way to ask? But Maria had questions of her own. “How do you know Carter? Is he still alive?” She didn’t sound like she was inquiring about someone she had loved—quite the opposite,
in fact.

  “His older brother married my mother’s sister, but Carter died before I was born. I found a diary in a box with his name on it among his sister’s things when she died recently. The diary was in German.” What the heck—she wasn’t likely to ever meet this woman. “Could it have been yours?”

  “Mine?” Katharine could almost see the elderly Austrian woman leaning back from the phone in horror. “I never kept a diary. Nor vould I read dat of another. Burn it!”

  Katharine added a staunch aura of Lutheran morality to the stout, pink-faced Amazon with grizzled braids. Unless Maria had changed greatly, she didn’t sound the sort of woman to plan a seduction, much less describe it to an earlier lover and expect to sleep with him when the new lover didn’t turn up. She was definitely not the sort to let any record of her own passions out of her own capable hands.

  Katharine floundered, wondering what else to ask. She didn’t know any more than she had before she called. She reminded herself again that she wasn’t ever likely to meet Maria. That gave her the necessary audacity to inquire, “Did Carter have a special romance while he was over there, do you know?”

  “Let de dead keep der secrets,” Maria said gruffly. Then she seemed to remember her manners, for she added, “I am glad you called to tell me about Dutch. I did not see him for many years, but it makes me smile to t’ink of him now. I vill say a special Mass for him tomorrow.”

  Not Lutheran, then. Katharine would never make a detective. Ludwig’s sister was probably a tiny woman with the bones of a bird and gray sausage curls. And if she knew about Carter’s romance—which seemed likely—she wasn’t going to gossip about it.

  Katharine had only one more question to ask. “Are you related to Georg Ramsauer, who excavated Hallstatt back in 1846?”

  A sharp intake of breath bounced up to a satellite and back down to earth, followed by eager words. “Did you find anyt’ing else in Carter’s box? A circle of metal, perhaps? Green, vit little knobs on it?”

  “Yes,” Katharine admitted. “They were both in the box.”

  “Dat circle is mine! Carter stole it from dis house! You must send it back. It is very special to our family, and it curses dose who misuse it.”

  “How did it come to your family?” Katharine intended it for a test. She held her breath while she waited for the answer.

  The accent grew strong with agitation. “My many times great-grandmudder vas a daughter of Georg Ramsauer. He gaf it to her for a vedding gift. It has been in our family for many generations. It does not belong in America!” Katharine heard a pounding sound, as if she were pounding the wall or a table with her fist.

  “If you will give me your address and send me a letter, describing it and saying what you have just told me, I will return it to you,” Katharine promised.

  Maria gave her address readily. “I vill write you dis afternoon, and God vill reward you for an honest voman ven de necklace has been returned.”

  Katharine hung up feeling like she had been pummeled by large, heavy hands. Whatever Maria might look like, her spirit was not that of a bird-framed little female.

  Katharine rummaged in the fridge again and found a carton of yogurt in the far corner. It was a couple of weeks out of date, but she carried it outside with a spoon and sat on the patio, her back to the disaster inside. It was good to know where the necklace had come from, but she felt a decided sense of anticlimax.

  Carter Everanes was a thief. Perhaps Maria and Ludwig had regaled him with stories of their famous ancestor, showed him the necklace, and left him alone with it once too often. If he had stolen the necklace, he might have stolen the diary, too, thinking it was Ramsauer’s accounts of the dig. Perhaps it was Maria’s mother’s diary, or maybe she and Ludwig had a sister who died in the war. Carter could even have stolen it from another house altogether. Did he make a practice of lifting items from his friends? Was that the dreadful secret that had come out during his trial? If so, had a providential balancing of the scales of justice decreed that he be killed by a thief? She hoped Dr. Flo’s cousin would provide a few answers.

  Chapter 26

  Thursday, June 15

  “I don’t know what to tell you about Cleetie except Alfred Simms was her brother and she’s willing to talk to you about what happened to him.”

  Dr. Flo had suggested that she pick Katharine up and drive her to Cleetie’s house, which was in the same quadrant of Atlanta as Buckhead, but out what used to be called the Bankhead Highway—a term synonymous with drugs and death until the city dealt with that problem in typical bureaucratic fashion: they changed the name of the street to Hollowell Parkway.

  Katharine had not been in that part of Atlanta for several years, since she had tutored in an elementary school. While Dr. Flo continued talking, Katharine found herself surreptitiously checking her car door lock. She felt ashamed—until she saw Dr. Flo reach over to punch the button to make sure all four doors were locked.

  “Cleetie was a nurse,” Dr. Flo continued, “and a choir soloist back when Daddy King and Martin were preaching at Ebenezer Baptist. She doesn’t get out much any more, though. Her legs are so bad, she can hardly maneuver from her chair to the bathroom or her bed.”

  “But she lives alone?” Looking at the poverty of the neighborhood, Katharine couldn’t help comparing the plight of her own elderly relatives with the plight of the elderly poor.

  “Not exactly. Her three daughters, their children, and even their grandchildren take turns staying with her, so there’s somebody over there all the time. One granddaughter is a doctor and checks her out at least once a week, one is a nutritionist and plans her meals, and one grandson owns a lawn ser vice and keeps up her yard. It helps to have family in town. But they would all move her out of here in a second if Cleetie would go. She flat-out refuses to give up her house.” Katharine detected exasperation in Dr. Flo’s voice as she pulled her Volvo up to the curb. “She says, ‘I been livin’ in this house for more than fifty years, and I might as well stay here ’til the end.’” Dr. Flo’s voice changed to a deep boom, then resumed its normal pitch. “Watch your step on that sidewalk.”

  Katharine opened her door and stepped onto a patch of grassless red clay littered with cans and shards of glass. The sidewalk it bordered was cracked and uneven. Beyond it, a short, smooth walk led to a small house with two concrete steps leading up to a wide screened porch. The house was dazzling white, its concrete steps fresh green, its gray roof neat and whole. Bars on the windows were green to match the steps. Pink and white begonias bloomed on each side of the steps, and a handkerchief-sized plot of grass lay on each side of the walk.

  In that neighborhood, the house looked like a fresh pillow case thrown on a dung heap. Other houses in the block seemed in competition to see which would fall down first, and several had a good chance at winning. Porches sagged. Steps crumbled. What little paint there was curled and flaked. Most roofs sported several shades of shingles, while others had bits of metal nailed over leaks. The yards—lawns would be too kind a word for those plots of tall weeds—were filled with debris and discarded appliances in various stages of rusting out. The air was heavy with a smell she could not identify, but associated with rancid meat and decay.

  The specimens of humanity that Katharine could see lounged on porches or steps looking as if they, like their houses, had been inadequately cared for and patched up so often they had given up on life. A shirtless young man sat with his back propped against a discarded washing machine on the porch next door. He raised a hand in languid greeting. “Hiya.” Dreadlocks hung past his shoulders and his eyes were slits in his face, half-covered by lids too heavy to rise.

  Dr. Flo grabbed a green thermal cooler from her back seat, then took Katharine’s elbow and led her briskly up the walk. “Don’t say a word and don’t look at him, or he’ll be over here wanting money. Spends every penny he gets on drugs and there’s not a thing you or I can do about it. Let’s get inside before he rouses himself enough to stand.” She hustled
Katharine up the steps and used a key to open the first deadbolt Katharine had ever seen on a screened door.

  She had time to notice three white rockers—one of them gigantic and rump-sprung—on the screened porch while Dr. Flo used her key to lock the deadbolt behind them and unlock another on the front door, which led straight into a small room. “Cleetie,” she called in. “It’s Florence. I’ve brought my friend.”

  “Tha’s nice. Tha’s real nice.” The deep voice came from the corner. Katharine was fully inside before she saw who was speaking.

  The old woman was a mound of flesh in a huge recliner over in the corner. She filled the recliner and spread out on both sides, and her enormous calves were elevated and encased in white support stockings. Katharine used to put stockings like that on her mother each morning, and they were so hard to pull up on her mother’s dainty legs that they used to joke that they needed two people and a hydraulic jack to get them on. Who on earth pulled Cleetie’s stockings up each morning—sumo wrestlers?

  Whoever it was had also helped her into a black crepe dress with a white linen-and-lace collar. Katharine wished she had put on something dressier than black slacks and a bright green shirt. It was some comfort that Dr. Flo wore another bright cotton skirt and top, but she was family. Katharine realized that Cleetie considered her visit a momentous event.

  The woman must have been past seventy but her face was plump, unlined, and ageless, surrounded by gray hair neatly combed and waved around her face. “How do you do?” She put out a hand the size of a salad plate. “I am Cleetie Webb.” Her voice was low and well modulated. Katharine wished she had been able to hear Cleetie sing.

  Katharine gave Cleetie her hand and murmured a greeting. Cleetie waved her toward a nearby chair. “Have a seat, and pardon me that I don’t get up. My legs aren’t what they used to be. Florence said you want to talk to me about Alfred.”

  Dr. Flo, who had trotted through the small living room to the adjoining kitchen, came back with several Krispy Kreme doughnuts on a large plate and three smaller plates. “I’m making coffee. It will be ready in a minute. But go ahead and start on these. I picked them up on my way, and they were piping hot when I got them.” She distributed plates and napkins and then passed the doughnuts. Katharine took one.