Daughter of Deceit

by Patricia Sprinkle

  Katharine had known Posey long enough to translate all that. “You don’t want Wrens to know you’ve wrecked your car.”

  “I didn’t wreck it, exactly. I got a dent. Can you come? And bring your charge card. I’ll need a little loan.”

  It was Posey’s habit, when she had an expenditure that she didn’t want Wrens to question, to ask Katharine to put it on her charge card and to write Katharine a check. Katharine sometimes wondered what Wrens thought about the fact that his wife wrote her sister-in-law so many checks. Did he suspect Tom wasn’t adequately providing for his wife? Or simply that Katharine was a spendthrift and a sponge?

  Posey’s “teeny little dent” was actually a crushed right front fender with the headlight dangling like a damaged eye from a socket and the wheel bent in like a turned foot. The poor convertible was definitely not in driving condition.

  “You’re so lucky you get to keep your family’s books,” Posey said as Katharine handed the tow-truck driver her charge card. “You can charge anything and write all the checks you want to, and Tom never knows.”

  Katharine signed the charge, but she wasn’t sure lucky was the appropriate word.

  They had to follow the convertible to the dealer, of course, where Posey explained carefully (and several times) that they should call Katharine when the car was ready. While she was making those arrangements, Katharine wandered around the showroom, but saw nothing that caught her eye.

  She was starving by the time they got to her rental car. “OK Café?” she inquired.

  “Yes, but first, I think we need to run by and see Payne. Just for a minute. I want to offer to keep little Chip a day or two this week, if she needs me to.” Posey took a lipstick out of her bag and freshened her lips while Katharine pulled into traffic. She knew good and well that in the end, Posey would either ask Julia, her housekeeper, to entertain the child or persuade Lolly to add Chip to her household, but Posey’s motive sounded more altruistic than the one that propelled Katharine toward Piedmont Hospital. She was simply curious.

  “You look better than I do,” Posey said when her mouth was made up to her satisfaction. “Is that a new outfit? Celery suits you. But I just threw this old thing on to drive to the gym. Do you reckon Payne will mind? Maybe we ought to stop by the house so I can change.”

  Posey’s house was in the other direction and she looked enchanting in a rose cotton jogging suit that Katharine knew for a fact was less than a year old. She had no problem saying, “You look fine for a hospital waiting room. If they give prizes for appropriate clothing, you’re sure to win.”

  Bara was in the ICU. They found Payne in the family waiting room, surrounded by friends, but there was no sign of Scotty or Murdoch. Payne looked wan and exhausted. Her jeans and T-shirt had obviously been slept in. Her dark eyes were circled with darker rings, and her curls were more tousled than fashionable. When she saw Posey, she stumbled into her arms and clutched her without a word.

  “How is she?” Posey asked when Payne let her go.

  “Not good. She’s in a coma, she’s covered with bruises, and she’s got lots of broken bones: her left shoulder and wrist, a couple of ribs, her right tibia, and at least one skull fracture. They’ve put in a tube to drain fluid off her brain, but they say they can’t set anything until tomorrow, after the swelling goes down. Oh, Posey, she looks pitiful!” Payne’s voice wobbled like a top that is slowly winding down. “She’s black, blue, and green all over her arms, her head, her stomach, her face—I can’t believe anybody would do that to her! But thank you both for coming.”

  “Have you eaten breakfast?” Posey asked.

  Payne shook her head. “I couldn’t keep anything down. I’m too worried.”

  “You’ll have to eat,” Posey chided her. “Keep your strength up. Your mother is going to need you. Where are Hamilton and Chip?”

  “At Ann Rose’s. Hamilton took Chip over last night, then came back here. He went on rounds this morning and said he’d have breakfast with them afterward, because we think Chip needs to see one of us. He’s terribly worried about—”

  She broke off as a police officer came into the waiting room and called softly, “Family of Bara Weidenauer?” Payne excused herself and joined him. He looked younger than she, and miserable at what he had to tell her. As he spoke, her eyes widened and she started to sway. He put out an arm to steady her.

  Posey flew across the room and supported her before she crumpled. As she led Payne to a nearby vacant chair and gently lowered her into it, she demanded, “What did you say to her?”

  The policeman remained polite, even when confronted by a Fury in a jogging suit. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I had to explain that we’re putting an officer outside her mother’s door.”

  Payne looked from Posey to Katharine, her expression wild. “When Mama’s well enough, they may charge her with Foley’s murder!”

  Chapter 23

  Payne’s words carried. Her friends clustered around her. Other families in the waiting room faced toward the officer and glared. A lot of solidarity can be built up among people who suffer together through an entire night.

  The man in the chair next to Payne rose and offered Posey his seat. Posey put an arm around Payne’s waist and held her close. “Is that true?” she demanded of the officer. “Are you fixing to charge Bara with killing Foley?”

  “Not me personally.” He held up both hands to deny the accusation. “I’m just the messenger, here. But her prints were the only ones on the murder weapon and there was no sign that the door had been forced.”

  Payne fell forward, head on her knees, shaking with sobs. “Mama wouldn’t shoot anybody! She wouldn’t!”

  Katharine couldn’t help remembering Bara’s declaration that if Foley Weidenauer were found dead, she would have done it. Had shooting been included among her preferred methods of execution? Katharine couldn’t remember.

  “Did you test her hands for gunshot residue?” demanded one of Payne’s friends.

  The officer was polite but stern. “You’ve been watching too many police shows on television, ma’am. Residue doesn’t last but a few hours, and they didn’t think to do it before the hospital cleaned her up after she got here.” He added, to Payne, “If you have the clothes she was wearing, we might get something from them.”

  Payne shook her head. “The emergency room cut them off her, so they were ruined. I told Hamilton to put them in his mother’s garbage. I couldn’t stand to see them again. And the garbage was picked up early this morning.”

  Katharine had a question. “How did the police hear about the murder?”

  “We got a nine-one-one call from the house. Whoever placed it didn’t speak, just laid the phone down on a table. It could have been her, it could have been somebody else. When we got there, the front door was standing open.”

  That was the first hopeful thing they had heard so far.

  Payne lifted her head long enough to point out another. “There isn’t a phone in the dining room.”

  “She wasn’t found in the dining room. Mr. Weidenauer was in there, but she was in the front hall, not far from the table where the portable phone was lying.”

  Posey frowned up at him. “Payne says Bara is black and blue, so either Foley beat the tar out of her or somebody else did. She wasn’t making any calls.”

  Posey might be sitting and the officer standing, she might be five-foot-two to his six-feet-plus, but he backed up a step. “I understand, ma’am, but she could have called before she passed out. She was able to put a pillow under her head. Look, I was simply told to inform the family we’d be stationing somebody at the door. I’d call Mrs. Weidenauer’s lawyer, if I were you.”

  He fled.

  “Don’t call your Uncle Scotty. Have Hamilton call somebody else,” Posey directed Payne. “Have his mother call Oscar and Jeffers, too. You need the whole family here. And get somebody in to take pictures of Bara’s bruises today, while they are still fresh. Some of them could disappear in a day or t
wo.”

  In spite of her fluffy look, Posey could be shrewd.

  Payne nodded and grew calmer now that she had tasks to think about. “I didn’t even know Mama had a gun,” she said after a couple of sniffs. “If I had, I’d have taken it away. She hadn’t been…” She hesitated as if searching for a word.

  Sober was the one that came to Katharine’s mind, but Payne finished, “…very well lately. Still, I don’t know where she would have gotten a gun.” She broke down again.

  Posey sat beside her and held her while she cried. Eventually, Payne lifted wet eyes to Katharine. “I know this must have something to do with what you told Mama. Can’t you do anything to help?”

  Katharine’s protest that she hadn’t done a thing except print out one citation from the Internet fell on deaf ears. “Mama went plumb crazy after you talked to her,” Payne insisted, “and she made a lot of people mad. Maybe one of them—I don’t know, got out of control. You could at least talk to people or something. After all, you started it.”

  “You did start it,” Posey repeated as they walked toward the parking lot.

  “I did not start it. If we have to assign blame here, you started it, by telling Bara I could research those medals. Why don’t you go talk to all those women? You’ve known them longer than I have.”

  “We’ll both go, but first let’s go to the OK Café.”

  “It’s all the way across Buckhead. We’re a lot closer to several other good places.”

  “Yeah, but I’m needing comfort food right now.”

  The OK Café is located at the corner of Northside Drive and West Pace’s Ferry Road—which, with typical Atlanta logic, continues west as plain old Pace’s Ferry Road. For decades the big diner has been a Buckhead institution. Teens stop there at the end of weekend dates. Executives meet for power breakfasts. Friends stop by for coffee and pastry. From early morning until late evening, OK Café’s friendly staff dispenses down-to-earth food at reasonable prices.

  Katharine pulled in at ten, by which time she was ready to breakfast on her fingers, one by one.

  “Payne has a point,” Posey said when they were seated in a booth. “This probably does have something to do with what you told Bara.” Without taking a breath, she looked up at the waitress and said, “I’ll have orange juice, waffles, and bacon.”

  Katharine seconded Posey’s order, then said, “I still have a hard time picturing any of Buckhead’s octogenarians showing up at Bara’s past ten P.M., giving a good reason to be there at that hour, shooting Foley, and beating Bara. Don’t you?”

  “Shhh,” Posey cautioned. “Don’t talk so loud. Maybe it was her real daddy.”

  Katharine leaned across the table and lowered her voice. “Get real, Posey. In that case, why shoot Foley instead of Bara? Besides, if her ‘real’ daddy”—Katharine sketched quotes with her fingers—“exists, all he has to do is sit tight and say nothing. I mean, what’s Bara going to do—run DNA tests on all the old men in Buckhead, or their children? You heard her talking about the way Foley has been treating her lately. Chances are good they got in a fight, he beat her, and she shot him.”

  They became aware of the waitress standing there with two juices and eyes bigger than oranges.

  “A book we’re writing together,” Posey said with an airy wave.

  “I hope Payne remembers to get pictures of those bruises,” she said when the waitress had gone. She reached for her cell phone. “That can make a difference to a jury, and in another day or two, some of them could disappear.” She punched in one digit.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Lolly. She’s a good photographer. I’ll tell her to take the pictures while she’s there.”

  By the time she and Lolly finished talking over the situation, the waffles had come.

  “So we’re agreed we have to do something, right?” Posey asked as she tucked in. “Otherwise, the police are going to arrest Bara.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “Sure you do. We’ll talk to the people Bara talked to and see if any of them can tell us anything.”

  “That’s real specific. You go. You’re the one who wants to know.”

  “I don’t have a car. Drop me off so I can change, then pick me up in, say, an hour? We can go talk to people.”

  Wrens always said that Posey’s best talent was running other peoples’ lives.

  Katharine acquiesced only because arguing with Posey in that mood was worse than driving around Atlanta talking to people, and for the first day in weeks, she didn’t have anything pressing to do.

  After she dropped off Posey, Katharine decided to swing by St. Philip’s Cathedral. She and Tom were members of Trinity Presbyterian, but she had promised Ann Rose she’d see if they could use one of St. Philip’s rooms to train tutors. Her errand only took a few minutes. Ann Rose and Jeffers were such pillars of the congregation that Katharine left the office with the sense that if Ann Rose requested the sanctuary for a rain dance, the church would order umbrellas.

  As she left, she decided a few minutes spent praying for Bara might do more good than any conversations she and Posey were likely to have with Nettie Payne’s old friends. As she slipped into the back pew, she saw only one other person in the holy space: a small, thin woman with her head covered by a gray scarf, kneeling near the front.

  As Katharine sank to her knees and folded her hands, she reflected that there was something fitting about kneeling when praying for others.

  Gradually she became aware of a whisper penetrating the silence. “I have sinned! I have most grievously sinned!”

  Katharine peeped between her fingers and saw Rita Louise approaching up the aisle with her hands clasped before her and eyes on the carpet, like a woman on a pilgrimage. She had not yet noticed Katharine.

  Katharine was torn between slipping out and asking if she could help. As Rita Louise drew nearer, Katharine could see that her cheeks were wet and stained with tears.

  “Can I help you?” Katharine asked softly.

  Rita Louise stopped, startled, then flapped a lace-edged peach handkerchief in distress. “Don’t speak to me, Katharine. I have done a most despicable thing!”

  She rushed out.

  Chapter 24

  “A despicable thing?” Anybody but Posey would have had a deep wrinkle between her waxed brows. Katharine knew Posey didn’t have a wrinkle. She’d spent too much on Botox and plastic surgery to permit wrinkles to form. Posey let tone of voice convey her distress. “You are sure that’s what Rita Louise said? She did a despicable thing?”

  “A most despicable thing.” Katharine wondered if she’d made a mistake by calling Posey on her way home. She had sworn Posey to secrecy, so she didn’t fear that Posey would blurt out the story during a beauty-parlor fest of “sharing heartfelt concern for other women,” but Posey was worrying Rita Louise’s words like a cat with a string.

  “I’ll bet she shot Foley, don’t you? She found him beating the tar out of Bara, and—” Posey came to a stop.

  “And what? Whipped a trusty gun out of her pocketbook and drilled him neatly between the eyes? Pressed Bara’s fingers to the gun and left without being able to say goodbye to her hostess? Don’t be silly. Whatever Rita Louise has done, I don’t think she shot Foley. For one thing, she’s too frail. Any gun has some kick, doesn’t it? But even a little kick, and Rita Louise would have been knocked off her feet, and been found lying beside Bara with a broken hip. Besides, everybody knows she’s in bed by nine.”

  Posey heaved a deep sigh. “I’d rather it was her than Bara. Wouldn’t you?”

  “I’m glad that’s a choice I don’t have to make.”

  “What do you think she’s done if she didn’t kill Foley?”

  “I have no idea, and she made it clear she doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  “She might talk if you went alone, you being Sara Claire’s niece, and all. I mean, you’re practically family.”

  “Think again. She once infor
med me that my mother was a wild political renegade who abandoned Buckhead, taught her daughter none of the social graces, then sent the child back to foist herself on polite society.”

  “She didn’t!”

  “She certainly did. Granted, that was back when I was in my early twenties and more outspoken than I am now. I had asked her why they didn’t take the money they were spending on a black-tie ball and give it directly to the poor, and while it is a question that often deserves to be asked, Rita Louise was heading up that particular function. She has never forgotten—and definitely does not consider me family.”

  “So how soon can you come over so we can go talk to other people?”

  Katharine spoke magic words to thrill Posey’s romantic soul: “I need to go home. Tom may have gotten there while we were out.”

  “Oh. Well, you all spend some time together, then call me. Have fun.”

  Tom wasn’t home. Katharine swiped a couple of chocolate-chip cookies from the round belly of her cookie-jar pig, and while she munched them with a glass of tea, she considered what she and Posey might accomplish by running all over town talking to people Bara had already talked to in the past two days. Nothing. Solving the murder had to be left to the police. She and Posey had no right or reason to poke around in the mystery of Bara’s parentage without Bara’s permission. She had just come to that comforting conclusion right when Payne called again. “I hate to bother you, but Mama’s awake and asking for you. Could you come back?”

  Payne had freshened up since Katharine’s earlier visit. Her hair was combed, her lipstick bright. She had even changed clothes, and her face wore an expression Katharine recognized from her own days in ICU waiting rooms. Payne had gone from frantic to resigned—the only two states of being in a place like that.

  She greeted Katharine like an old friend. “I am so glad you would come. She’s awake but very agitated, and she keeps asking for you.”