Daughter of Deceit

by Patricia Sprinkle

  “Then stay up there and see it through. You have stuff to read, don’t you?”

  “I have plenty of books, but you’re having to deal with all the party stuff.”

  On a scale of things she didn’t want to deal with, plumbing ranked far above the party.

  “The party is under control. Go ahead and get the plumbing fixed while the man is there.”

  “I could come on home and tell him to do the work and bill us.”

  “Heavens, no. Things crop up in plumbing you don’t expect. You have to be available to make decisions. Otherwise, he’ll stop when he gets to a new problem and leave with the job half-finished. We might never see him again. Or he’ll do stuff we didn’t want or need. Tell him you can only stay until Monday night, so he needs to be done by then.”

  “I think you ought to come up here. You know how to handle these things.”

  He probably meant it as a compliment. Three months earlier, Katharine would have canceled her plans with Kenny, driven to the mountains, and dealt with the plumbing problem. Taking care of people was what she did. On her forty-sixth birthday, when she’d realized her children were all through college, her elderly relatives were all dead, and nobody really needed her, she’d had a few moments of panic. What would she do with the rest of her life?

  Since then, however, she had discovered it had never been her life; it had been somebody else’s. She didn’t regret a moment she had spent caring for people, but this was the season for her to find out who she was and was meant to be, and it was past time for her husband and children to learn to care for themselves.

  “No.” She firmly pushed down tendrils of guilt sprouting around the edges of her resolve. “I’ve made plans for tomorrow and have things I need to do down here today.”

  “But you know how to talk to these people better than I do. You’ve got more experience.” That was the closest Tom Murray—competent, capable Tom Murray—would ever come to a whine.

  She took a deep, steadying breath. “Consider it a learning curve.” That’s what he said when she faced some new challenge while he was away. “I’ve already mastered learning curves for dealing with repair people, caring for children, caring for the elderly, and coping with break-ins and vandalism. It’s time you mastered some of them, too.”

  Silence.

  “I don’t want you so helpless that you have to stop off on your way home from my funeral to get yourself another wife.” She hoped to make him laugh.

  Silence.

  “Tom, it’s your house as much as mine. Deal with it.”

  He sighed. “Okay. Can I call you if I run into something I can’t answer?”

  “Of course. And honey? I love you.”

  He sighed. “Love you, too, but I gotta go. The man is waiting for my answer.”

  Katharine sank into the nearest chair and pumped air with one fist. She was as worn out as if she had run a marathon or swum a mile, but she had won. She had won!

  Payne called at noon. “Mama is feeling better today, and really wants to see that envelope. Do you think you could bring it over?”

  Katharine felt she ought to take something to Kenny’s family on Sunday, and decided on a plant. On her way to the florist’s, she could drop the envelope by the hospital.

  Instead, in the waiting room Payne suggested, “Why don’t you visit her this hour instead of me? I’ll run down and get something to eat.”

  Katharine nodded briefly to the officer at Bara’s door and wondered if the nurses were used to him by now. Probably so. Human beings can get accustomed to the most outrageous things.

  Bara looked worse than the day before. Her bruises had turned yellow and purple with green edges. She wore a bandage on her head, had a cast on her left wrist, and her right leg was in traction. Her mind was clear, however, and she was feeling garrulous.

  “I’m not at my best,” she greeted Katharine in a murmur. “Half my bones are broken and my face is a mess.”

  “It really is.” Katharine saw no reason for subterfuge. The woman had a mirror in her bed table. She laid the envelope on the covers. “I brought your envelope and the locket.”

  “Would you take out the locket and try to open it? I’m a little handicapped here.” Bara gestured to her arm cast.

  Katharine opened it with a fingernail and held it where Bara could see it. “It doesn’t have anything in it except your picture.” Or did it? She hadn’t pried out the picture to see if anything was behind it.

  Bara peered through bleary eyes. “That’s not me. I never wore my hair like that. It must be my grandmother Payne. She had dark eyes like mine.” She again peered at the picture. “You think I look like her?”

  “Very much.”

  Bara grabbed the locket and clasped it in one fist. Tears squeezed between her lids. “I miss her so much. She was a wonderful grandmother. I used to go over to her house when I was small and we’d make biscuits. We’d roll them out, then she’d let me cut them out with a bottle top. They made the cutest little biscuits you ever saw.” She dropped the locket back into the envelope. “You’ll need to take all this back with you. I don’t have space to keep anything here. I’ll get it later.”

  “Why don’t I leave them with Payne?”

  Bara echoed what Payne had said the day before. “She has enough on her mind right now. She might lose it. Besides,”—Bara’s face lit with a flicker of a grin that made her look more like her old self—“my old report cards are in there. No point giving her more ammunition against me than she’s already got. Would you hand me my water?” She motioned toward a big cup on her nightstand. “They keep putting it where I can’t reach it.” When she had slaked her thirst, she confided, “I’m in a bigger mess than I look. Have you heard they think I shot Foley?”

  “I heard.” Katharine kept her voice noncommittal.

  “The disgusting thing is, I can’t remember. Doesn’t that take the cake? I may have killed the bum and can’t remember doing it. Can’t remember a thing after I came home Thursday afternoon. I remember going to the storage unit to look for something—I don’t know what it was—and I remember driving home and cooking supper. I made a pork chop and a cantaloupe.” She said it as proudly as if she had prepared a six-course meal. “The cantaloupe was rotten though. The middle was all full of slimy stuff and seeds.”

  “They all have that in them. You have to scrape it out.”

  “Really? That’s what I did.” Bara’s husky laugh rang through the unit. A curious nurse looked their way and smiled. “I must be a better cook than I thought. I thought it was rotten, but I ate it anyway and it tasted great. The pork chop was a bit dry, though. What do you do to make them moist?”

  “Get well and come over to my house, and I’ll show you.” Katharine couldn’t believe she had said that. Was she offering to teach Bara Weidenauer to cook?

  “Okay, but I’m gonna be out of commission for a while. After here, I have to go to rehab. Not rehab like drunks go to,” she added quickly, “but the kind where they make you walk on a track and swim and stuff.”

  “You’ll be home before you know it.” Katharine was trying to cheer her up, but Bara looked gloomier.

  “If they convict me of killing Foley, I may go to jail. Wouldn’t it be the funniest thing you ever heard if I have to go to jail for killing the louse when I can’t remember doing it?”

  “Surely they have other suspects.”

  “Not that I’ve heard. I had a detective in here all morning asking questions like ‘Who else besides you has been in the dining room recently?’ I told him the whole world may have keys to my front door, but the only people I can remember are Foley, Scotty, Murdoch, and Carlene, Foley’s bimbo. She was in the house when I got home Wednesday, and so were Scotty and Murdoch. Carlene was stealing my jewelry upstairs, Murdoch was checking that I hadn’t hocked the Dolley Madison tea set, and Scotty was wanting part of his fee for doing nothing about my divorce. He suggested I sell the tea set and pretend it had gotten stolen—even offered
to find me a buyer on the QT—but he’s out of the running for suspect. He was playing poker Thursday night like he always does, and Murdoch was on her way to Boston.” Bara gave a wry smile. “Looks like the only real suspects are me and Foley, but nobody thinks he killed himself, even me. Besides, he was shot with my gun, which I admit leaving on the dining-room table. I don’t remember shooting him, though, even if the detective does think I’m faking.”

  Katharine picked up what sounded like the weakest link in that chain of evidence. “Why would you have left the gun lying around on the table?”

  Bara shrugged. “I didn’t know what else to do with it at the time.”

  Katharine thought that over. Things did look black for Bara.

  Bara broke the silence and echoed her thoughts. “It doesn’t look real good, does it? I was the only one with a motive to murder Foley, my prints are on the gun, no stranger had been in the house, and I’ve even admitted it was my gun. Winnie gave it to me back when I was in college.”

  “What does your lawyer say?”

  Bara gave a short, blunt laugh. “I can’t afford a lawyer. Until this mess is cleared up, I still can’t get to my bank accounts. Hamilton wanted to hire one and pay for it himself, but I told him no way. I am not going to be beholden to my kids. One good bit of news, though. Mason Benefield was in this morning. He was representing Foley in the divorce, but now that Foley’s dead, he’s slinking back with his tail between his legs, wanting to be my friend again. He said he’s uncovered evidence that Foley was squirreling money away in offshore accounts. If I manage to stay out of jail, I may inherit all of that as Foley’s next of kin. How about them apples?” She leaned against her pillow with a smug smile. “Foley tries to do me out of everything I have, and instead winds up murdered and making me richer. There is a God.”

  “There is a God, but I don’t think he’s in the business of murder to make folks richer,” Katharine cautioned.

  “Justice,” Bara murmured, her voice growing weaker. “In the business of justice. Speaking of justice, do you think they’ve got enough to convict me?”

  “I have no idea.” But Katharine had to admit, the case looked grim. Like Bara said, there wasn’t another suspect.

  “If I don’t go to jail, I’m not going back to that house.” Bara’s voice was drowsy, as if medication was taking effect. “It was never a happy house. I’m gonna sell it and get something smaller. Something like yours, maybe.”

  Katharine managed not to wince. Bara hadn’t meant it for an insult. After living in her mansion, six bedrooms would be “something smaller.”

  “Or a condo,” Bara mused. “Like Winnie—”

  She broke off abruptly to stare out the window at the Atlanta skyline. “Winnie wasn’t my daddy. Did I tell you that, before I”—she struggled to find the right words—“came here?” Her voice was growing weaker with every word.

  “You told me.” Katharine reached out and smoothed a wrinkle in her blanket. “But you know, a daddy isn’t simply the man who helps create you. A daddy is somebody who is there for you all your life. I think Winnie was definitely your daddy.”

  Bara grabbed her hand and held it. “He loved me. I know he loved me.” Her face begged for comfort.

  “Everybody knew he loved you. You were the pride of his life.” Katharine held out the envelope. “This is full of clippings about you.”

  Bara took a deep breath and roused a bit. “No matter who Nettie slept with, Winnie loved me. He was my daddy.”

  “He sure was.”

  Katharine was ready to leave, but Bara still held her hand. “I don’t think I shot Foley,” she said with a frown. “I think I would remember that, don’t you?” She looked away, toward the window, and muttered under her breath, “I sure as hell remember killing Winnie.”

  Katharine was startled. Had the policeman outside the door heard? If so, he gave no sign.

  Before she could think of a reply, Bara was saying, “Oh! I remember Foley hitting me, too! He punched me in the stomach.” Her lips twisted in a wry grin. “I spewed all over him. I’d just eaten supper. Served him right.” She removed her hand from Katharine’s and gingerly touched her ribs. “He musta busted something. It’s funny, but I don’t think he hit me in the ribs and I know he didn’t hit me this hard.” Her hand swept from her head toward her toes sticking out from the cast.

  “Do you remember anything else?”

  “He went down to the basement. I remember that. I yelled at him, and locked the door. That’s the last thing I remember. I lost a whole day. Have you ever lost a day of your life, Katharine?” Her voice was scarcely audible. “As old as I am, I can’t afford to go around losing days. If I did, the day I killed Foley isn’t one I’d want to lose. I’d want to remember that.”

  A nurse stepped in. “There’s someone else to see you, Mrs. Weidenauer. A woman named Maria Ortiz. Do you feel up to another quick visit?” She slewed her eyes toward Katharine on the last two words and Katharine knew her time was up.

  “Maria.” Bara lingered on the word like it was chocolate. “I wonder how she knew I was here. Let her come in.”

  The nurse headed to the waiting room and Katharine said her goodbyes. On her way out she passed a short, stocky woman with a swarthy complexion, black hair grizzled with gray, and a bright green shirt. The woman didn’t notice her. She was trotting toward Bara’s cubicle like a horse heading to the barn. “¡Querida!” Katharine heard her cry out.

  Payne sat in the waiting room with Scotty beside her. Legs stretched out before him, he was snoozing. Payne wore a puzzled expression. “Did you meet somebody named Maria in Mama’s room?” she asked Katharine.

  “No, but I think we passed on my way out.”

  “I wonder who she is. She showed up here a few minutes ago and insisted she had to see my mother. I told her I’d ask the nurse, thinking they’d say no, but the nurse said Mama wanted to see her.”

  “Bara sounded delighted she had come.”

  Payne shrugged. “Maybe she’s one of the maids Foley fired. Mama used to know the names of all their kids and husbands, and used to sit in the kitchen with them drinking coffee and talking all morning sometimes. It drove Foley crazy.”

  “She seemed better today, I thought.”

  “A little better. They were able to set her leg and her wrist. They don’t set ribs or collarbones. She’s still in pain, but she’s more coherent than she was.”

  Their voices roused Scotty. He blinked and struggled to his feet in a half-awake show of manners. “Good to see you, Katharine. Good of you to come.”

  He rubbed his florid face to get the sleep out of his eyes, then stuck out his hand. His palm was hot, damp, and revolting. “I must have been dozing. Seem to be doing a lot of that lately. Fell asleep on the couch last evening and almost missed my weekly poker game. Didn’t get there until nearly ten. Isn’t this some to-do?” He seemed oblivious that his booming voice might be disturbing other families. “Who could have done such a terrible thing to our Bara?”

  Katharine had never liked Scotty, but she pitied him. What she pitied was his inability to live up to the illustrious Atlanta reputation his family had achieved in nearly two centuries. In another pond, among other frogs, Scotty might have been modestly successful at a number of things. In Buckhead he was the incompetent who had failed to live up to his family. What Katharine disliked was his façade of bonhomie and success that forced others to pretend along with him. She and Tom sometimes wondered how Scotty paid Buckhead taxes and kept up his membership in the Ansley Park Golf Club.

  “Do the police have any more ideas who it could have been?” she asked Payne.

  Scotty answered. “Not a clue. I don’t know what we pay them for. By now they should have had those fellas by the scruff of the neck.”

  “What fellows?” Again Katharine addressed Payne, and again, Scotty answered.

  “Those ruffians who broke in there, robbed the place, and did this to Bara.”

  Katharine persiste
d in trying to talk to Payne. “Bara said they still think she shot Foley.”

  “Fools!” The words burst from Scotty like a minor explosion. “They think he beat her and she shot him. I keep telling them she doesn’t know a thing about guns, but they say her prints were on it. Any fool who watches television knows you can put somebody’s prints on a gun and make it look like they shot it.”

  Katharine wondered if it was really that simple. Wouldn’t it be hard to get somebody else’s hand to hold the gun in the right position without smudging the prints or getting your own on the gun as well?

  “I don’t think they’re as sure about Mama as they were.” Payne seized the crack in her great-uncle’s tirade and slid softly into the conversation. “Not since they’ve learned about the missing silver and painting.”

  “Including a tea set that has been in our family for two hundred years,” Scotty said in a blend of boast and chagrin. “Should have been mine. I was older than Nettie.” He didn’t actually say, “Then it wouldn’t have gotten stolen,” but the implication was clear.

  “Grandmother Payne left it directly to Mama,” Payne told him sharply, “and told her to leave it to her oldest daughter. Besides, the tea service wasn’t the only thing stolen. They took several trays, a vase, a pitcher, a set of candelabra, the Monet from the hall, and the Louis Tiffany lamp by the window. Anything that was easy to grab in the dining room. They also knocked over a plant and shattered that crystal heron in the front hall.”

  Scotty shoved one hand through his gray curls. “Murdoch is gonna kill me when she finds out about that tea set. She must have told me fifty times before she left town to call Bara and make her take it to the bank for safekeeping. It was the last thing she said as she climbed in the cab to the airport, and she even called from Boston last night—in the middle of the best hand I had all evening—to see if I’d talked to Bara.” He rubbed his face. “I meant to, I just hadn’t gotten around to it.” He gave a blunt, not-funny laugh. “All Murdoch was worried about was that Foley might get his hands on that tea service. She never imagined it would get stolen. She is flat-out gonna kill us all.”