Daughter of Deceit

by Patricia Sprinkle

  “Maybe you could tell about coming to the house without involving your friend,” Katharine suggested to Maria. “At least tell them Bara was deeply unconscious and the door was wide open.”

  Bara immediately disagreed. “Maria has a record of her own. Besides, they’d be sure to find out she doesn’t drive, and under cross-examination, they’d crucify her. She’d have to tell about Bert, and they might even try to implicate her. She can’t testify. It’s enough that I know she saved my life.” She turned back to Maria. “Katharine is helping me figure out who my daddy was.” To Katharine, again, “Have you had any more luck with that?” She clearly wanted to change the subject.

  “Not exactly.” Katharine wondered how much to tell her.

  “Lean on Rita Louise. She ought to know something, but she wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Can you picture me or anybody else leaning on Rita Louise? But I did speak with her.”

  “And?”

  “Ann Rose and I went over because she found a picture of your parents in one of Oscar’s albums—”

  “Let’s talk plain here. You mean Nettie and her husband?”

  If Bara wanted plain talking, she would get it. “Of Nettie and Winnie, taken in June of forty-five. Nettie wasn’t pregnant.”

  “She wasn’t? She had to have been.”

  “She wasn’t. So Ann Rose asked Rita Louise point-blank if you were adopted. Rita Louise said yes, they adopted you while they lived in New York.”

  “Adopted me?” Bara said it slowly, taking it in. “Neither of them were my parents?”

  Maria spoke sharply. “Both of them were your parents. They raised you just as I raised Farah after my friend Sonja was killed by her pimp. I am Farah’s mother as much as I am the mother of the children I gave birth to. Birth only takes nine months, querida. Parenting takes a lifetime.”

  “I know.” Bara spoke slowly, processing as she went. “Winnie was my daddy. He was a great dad. But even if she’d birthed me, Nettie wasn’t much of a mother.”

  “She was still your mother.” Maria stood up. “I must get home. I will come tomorrow. You will be fine until then.” It sounded more like a command than a statement.

  “I will be fine until then,” Bara concurred, “but I still want a drink. I need one, bad!” Her body shook with intensity, and she gave an involuntary groan of pain.

  Maria kissed her cheek. “Poor dear, you hurt, yes. And you wish you could take away all the pain of what has happened. But liquor will only add to your pain, and wanting and needing are two different things. You want a drink, but you need to give it up. Hasta luego.”

  “There goes my real mother,” Bara told Katharine when Maria had gone. “She’s a good ten years younger than me, but she’s raised me.” She pulled her good arm out from the covers and peered at it. “Maybe I’m really Hispanic, like Maria. Maybe I was the illegitimate child of Latino teenagers from New York. Maybe that’s why I am so dark.”

  “I don’t think Rita Louise knows anything about that—or even Eloise.”

  Bara laughed. “Eloise doesn’t know her own name. You went to see her?”

  “Ann Rose and I did. She was muddy about the present, but remembered several things about the past. She seemed to know you were adopted, but she didn’t tell us anything more than that.” Katharine saw no point in giving Bara the conflicting stories about which of her parents insisted on adopting her and which one protested.

  Bara closed her eyes and seemed to be taking it in. “Then I have no clue who I really am. That is the weirdest thing about this whole setup. Why didn’t they tell me?”

  “People didn’t always, back then.” Katharine repeated what Ann Rose had said. “Perhaps they didn’t want to upset you.”

  “Still, Winnie was a good daddy. The best.” Bara spoke the words as if tasting each one. “Now I know why Nettie didn’t want people to know when I was born. And what Art used to mean when he’d say things like, ‘Before you came.’ Winnie never made a distinction between Art and me, though, like Nettie did. He was my real daddy, and I killed him. I killed him as surely as if I’d pulled the trigger.”

  With her eyes closed, she could have been talking to herself. “I went to his place and told him the board was going to make Foley CEO as soon as he retired. Foley had just called to tell me. Winnie said that would happen over his dead body, that he would make some calls and get it stopped. I told him I knew that’s what he would say, but that I had come to tell him I thought Foley deserved it, that he had worked hard for the company all those years, and that he—Winnie—shouldn’t try to stop the board. So help me, God, I believed it. I never knew what Foley had in mind. But Winnie knew what a low-down snake Foley was. After I left, he made some calls. I know at least two men he spoke with. They told me later he’d asked them not to vote for Foley. Both told him they’d think it over, but neither promised. Later that afternoon Winnie went out on his balcony and…” Her voice grew thick and she looked away.

  Was Bara sincere? Or was she preparing Katharine for a time when she might be called to the witness stand to testify, if the murder of Winnie was added to the charge of murdering Foley?

  When Katharine didn’t speak, Bara said roughly, “I know some people think somebody else came in and shot him, but I never will. I think Winnie saw everything he had worked for going up in smoke, and me taking Foley’s side. I killed my daddy!” Tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks.

  Katharine wanted a direct answer to a direct question. “You didn’t literally shoot him?”

  “Not literally.”

  “They’ve found the gun that did it.”

  Bara’s eyes flew open. “Where?”

  “In a drawer in your dining room.”

  “Oh. That gun.” Her excitement vanished as suddenly as it had come. “It wasn’t in a drawer, it was lying near me, with my fingerprints all over it. But that was a gun Winnie gave me in college. It couldn’t have been used to kill him. It had been in my attic for forty years. Nobody knew I had it except Winnie. I’d brought it down one day last week and left it on the dining-room table, fool that I am. Whoever used it just had to pick it up and fire.”

  “I’m not talking about the gun that killed Foley. This was another one. The detective said they found it in a drawer. Didn’t Payne tell you?”

  “Payne doesn’t tell me a dadgum thing. She keeps saying, ‘Don’t worry, Mama, rest.’ How am I supposed to rest when I may have shot and killed a man and can’t remember doing it? I mean, Foley was a rat and he wanted killing, but I cannot believe I would have actually done it—or that I could have if I’d wanted to. I’m a lousy shot.” She looked at her hand. “Unless alcohol improves your aim. Do you reckon?”

  “I doubt it. But the gun I was talking about, the one that killed Winnie, was a second gun they found in a drawer in your dining room.”

  “No way! I’d been through every one of those drawers the Monday before, hoping I might have left money or liquor in one of them. There wasn’t a gun in there. Who was it registered to?”

  “Winnie. He had reported it stolen three years before he died. The detective told Payne on Saturday that they’d found it and traced it to Winnie. While we were out in the hall a minute ago, he said they’ve matched it to the bullet that killed your dad.”

  “He was murdered? Oh, God!” It was a sigh of a prayer, followed by a wince of pain. Bara said nothing for several minutes. At last she said, “I never had it. Did they say my prints were on it, too?”

  “No prints. It had been wiped.”

  Bara pulled the covers over her head, as if this was one thing too many to know. Katharine wondered if Payne was right, and she should not have been told.

  Bara had gone to earth to think. In a moment she said, as if working it out as she went, “I did not put it in my drawer and it wasn’t there last Monday. That morning I looked everywhere I could think of for money to buy groceries, and finally went to the storage unit. That’s when I found the medals. This gets weirder and weirder,
Katharine. Could somebody want me in jail? I don’t mean to sound paranoid or anything, but somebody has planted two guns on me and left me next to Foley’s body. Who could hate me that much? Have I offended someone to that extent?”

  Katharine couldn’t answer that, but she could ask some pertinent questions. The problem was, the most pertinent one was also impertinent, the one a lady never asks. Since Bara wanted plain speaking, Katharine asked it anyway. “Who benefits from your death?”

  Bara wasn’t offended, but her laugh was harsh. “Nobody, until all this mess is cleared up. Foley froze my accounts, remember? But if we ever get through this without it all going to the lawyers, then Payne gets everything. As soon as Foley started talking about wanting a divorce, I went to our lawyer and changed the will so that Payne would get everything if I died either during or after a divorce. I’m not utterly dumb. I knew it would be easier for Foley to hire somebody to kill me than to divorce me, and I wanted to make sure he wouldn’t get more than half no matter what happened. It’s a shame Foley got shot. He’d be such a good suspect.”

  “Nobody else benefits? Not Scotty, or Murdoch?” Katharine hated bringing them into the discussion, but if Bara was right, somebody had to have a motive for all this.

  Bara shook her head. “Scotty poor-mouths about needing money all the time, but I didn’t leave either of them a penny. Why should I? They’re taken care of for life, and Murdoch’s too old to have kids. Besides, they have no claim to my money. Most of mine was Winnie’s or Ray’s. My share of our grandparents’ estate was the house, some silver, a Monet painting I liked, and a Tiffany lamp Nana always kept in the front window and I loved as a child. It doesn’t go with a thing I own, but I still keep it in the window.”

  Katharine didn’t tell her the tea set, painting, and lamp were stolen. If Payne was shielding her mother from as much as possible, she would honor that.

  She heard Payne’s voice in the hall and rose to leave. But before Payne got through the door, Murdoch burst into the room screeching, “You poor darling! You look absolutely awful!”

  Chapter 33

  “It’s good to see you, too.” Bara put up one cheek with the air of one who wishes she didn’t have to. Murdoch kissed her as if she wished she didn’t have to, either. “So glad you came to cheer me up. I thought you were in Boston for the week. I hope you didn’t hurry home on my account.”

  “Of course I did.” Murdoch set her big purse on Bara’s uninjured foot. Payne moved it to the floor. Murdoch tugged down the jacket of a green polyester pantsuit that made her look like a chubby frog and patted her dreary hair. “When Payne called Saturday, I’d have come right away, but changing tickets is so expensive, especially for the same day. A cousin doesn’t count for those bereavement tickets, like a member of your immediate family.”

  Bara didn’t try to conceal a yawn. “I think they are called compassion tickets and are for when somebody dies. You could have counted Foley, I suppose, if you could have drummed up some compassion for him. No, I don’t mean that. He was a weasel, but he’s a dead weasel and deserves some respect, even from me. Did you get in last night?”

  “No, I had my car at the airport and came straight here. I’d have been here sooner, but there was a wreck on the connector and I had to sit there half an hour.” She went closer to the head of the bed and peered down. “You look terrible.”

  “You don’t look so good yourself, but I’m getting better each day. Hope to be out of here and to a rehab center—the exercise kind—soon. Maybe by then they’ll know who did all this.”

  Murdoch looked confused. “Didn’t you shoot Foley? I heard you tell him you would.”

  Bara forgot her injuries long enough to rear up as far as she could. “You what?” She collapsed against her pillows, groaning.

  “Tuesday night, when I called to tell you to put the Dolley Payne Madison tea set in the bank—remember?” Murdoch sounded so put out with Bara that Katharine wanted to smack her.

  “Vaguely,” said Bara.

  Murdoch sighed. “And see? It got stolen, just like I said.”

  “Stolen?” Bara looked from Murdoch to Payne. “What got stolen?”

  Payne glared at Murdoch. “I wasn’t going to tell her.” She said to her mother, “Some silver and stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “The Monet in the hall, a lot of your silver, and the Tiffany lamp.”

  “Oh!” Bara arched her neck and screwed her eyes shut like she’d gotten a new physical blow. “I was just telling Katharine about that lamp and picture. Anything else?”

  Payne shook her head. “Not that I saw, but you’d know better than I would. I don’t know why they didn’t take the flatware. It was in a drawer right under the Madison tea set.”

  Murdoch leaned closer to Bara and spoke in what Katharine presumed she thought was a consoling tone. “Losing the tea set doesn’t matter as much as it could have. The only two George Paynes I’ve found in our family so far were born a hundred years too late. I’ll bet somebody in our family bought the tea set at an auction or estate sale because of the name. Alas, so far, I cannot find any connection between Dolley Payne Madison’s family and ours.”

  Katharine noticed that even so, Murdoch still gave the president’s wife her full name. To keep the possibility of a connection alive?

  “The set is priceless, nevertheless,” Payne pointed out.

  “Yes, but it isn’t as if it belonged to the family.” Murdoch looked around for confirmation, but got none. Miffed, she said waspishly, “You forgot to hang up the phone, Bara. Before Foley found it, I heard you tell him you were going to shoot him and get it over with.”

  “Don’t you ever repeat that!” Payne said fiercely.

  “If they ask me, I’ll have to. I can’t lie in court.”

  And you’ll enjoy every second of it, thought Katharine.

  There’s something lovable about every human creature, her mother reminded her. You just have to look for it.

  I’m pretty sure Murdoch is the exception that proves that rule.

  “I didn’t say I was going to shoot him,” Bara corrected Murdoch. “I may have said something like, ‘I might as well shoot you and get it over with,’ but that was two days before he died, and I didn’t shoot him—at least I don’t think I did. I don’t remember doing it.”

  “Daddy said you had a concussion and can’t remember anything about that night. But I’m sure you had a good reason to shoot him, even if he was bending over backward to give you a good deal.” Seeing blank stares from everybody in the room, Murdoch elaborated. “I heard Foley tell Bara he’d give her the Buckhead house and just take the lake house, and he’d split all their money. All she had to do was give him enough shares of Uncle Winnie’s company so he could vote to sell. He was being reasonable,” she said to Bara.

  “He was never reasonable,” Bara snapped. “Payne, get her out of here. She makes me hurt all over.”

  Payne shot Katharine a pleading look. Reluctantly, Katharine shoved her feet back into her new shoes and tried not to wince as she stood. “I was about to leave. Bara needs to rest. Want to walk with me to the parking lot, Murdoch?”

  Payne called as they reached the door, “Don’t you say a word to anybody about—you know.”

  “I couldn’t lie, Payne,” Murdoch said, loud enough for the policeman outside the door to hear her. “If somebody asks me, I’ll have to tell them.”

  Murdoch’s rubber soled shoes squeaked on the vinyl tiles as they walked down the hall. When they were out of earshot of Bara’s room, she complained, “I knew they would try to make me lie. As soon as I heard what had happened, I told myself, ‘They aren’t going to want me telling what I heard.’ But I did hear it. She said, ‘I ought to shoot you and get it over with.’”

  “It’s the kind of thing people say in an argument. It doesn’t mean she was going to do it.”

  “She was furious. And Foley was being kind. He truly was. I know some people didn’t like him, but he w
as always a gentleman to me. He’d ask about Mother and how she was, or he’d make little jokes like, ‘Still climbing the family tree, Murdoch?’” She tittered. “He had such a great sense of humor. I found him charming. Bara never really appreciated him.”

  “He could be charming,” Katharine agreed. “I liked him at the few functions where we met. But he lost his charm for me as soon as I heard he hit Bara hard enough to break bones.”

  She was having trouble concentrating on the conversation. She could feel a blister forming as they walked. She contemplated the long hobble to her car with dread.

  “He didn’t!”

  Katharine had to think a second to remember what Murdoch was referring to. “He or somebody did. You saw her. Broken shoulder, broken wrist, a couple of ribs, her right leg, and at least one skull fracture. Not to mention the bruises on her face and the concussion.”

  “Why should they think Foley did all that? She could have fallen downstairs.”

  It was an idea. Katharine remembered the curving marble staircase, ending at a marble foyer. And how was it Maria had described Bara when she found her? Lying in a heap at the bottom, as if she had gotten drunk and fallen down? Would a fall down a marble staircase result in the injuries Bara had? Looked like it would have killed her. But it was carpeted….

  Katharine would have to think about that later. At the moment her whole attention was on a spot on her little toe smaller than a dime.

  To distract her thoughts while they waited at the elevator, she said, “Both your daddy and Payne thought you’d be a lot more upset about the tea set.”

  “I would have been devastated if it had been connected to our family, but since it isn’t—there’s no use crying over spilt milk.”

  Especially if the milk belongs to your cousin.

  In the elevator, Murdoch was full of her research. “I got a lot of work done yesterday. I found all sorts of relatives I didn’t know we had! I even found a George Payne of the right age, married to Ellen, and he probably was a cousin of Dolley Payne Madison, but I couldn’t find any connection between his family and ours. Of course, his was up in New England, and ours was down in Georgia.”