We were the last to arrive and barely had time to drink a festive cup of nonalcoholic eggnog before Bessie Stewart, Miss Emily’s housekeeper who helps out in the kitchen on occasions like this, called us to the table.
Not counting R.W., who sat at a corner in his high chair, fourteen of us sat down to an early dinner. Kate had put all the leaves in the table so that the children wouldn’t have to be shunted off to the kitchen.
Dwight’s sister Beth and her family had gone to spend the holidays with his people down in South Carolina, but Nancy Faye and her husband James and their three stair steps who range in age from six to ten were there, as was Miss Emily.
When we first arrived, I did not immediately recognize the elderly woman who now sat between Rob and little Jake until Kate said, “You remember Mrs. Lattimore, don’t you, Deborah? Jake’s great-aunt?”
“Of course,” I said, taking her thin hand in mine. “How nice to see you again.”
“You’re Susan Stephenson’s daughter, are you not?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, instantly reverting to my childhood when I had been slightly afraid of this tall, autocratic woman.
“You’re the judge?”
I nodded.
Widowed when she was in her early forties, Jane Lattimore had never remarried, but lived on alone in a huge Queen Anne house near the center of Cotton Grove. Built when houses of that size occupied half a block, it had a wrought iron fence all around the property and a life-size iron deer stood on the side where her grandchildren, who were all slightly older than me, used to play croquet and badminton when they came to visit her. I think she had three or four children, who scattered to the far reaches of the country soon after finishing school, but she continued to live alone in that big house except for a housekeeper and a widowed cousin. Her youngest child was Anne Harald, a Pulitzer Prize–winning photojournalist, who lived in New York and occasionally had shows of her photographs at a gallery in Raleigh.
Last year, when I was trying to sort it all out, Kate had patiently sat me down with a family tree she had drawn up for Mary Pat. Kate’s cousin Philip, a wealthy venture capitalist, had married Jake’s cousin Patricia, who was much younger, and both had died before Mary Pat was three.
She then showed me that Jake’s grandfather and Mrs. Lattimore had been brother and sister, which made Mrs. Lattimore his great-aunt and her children his cousins. I’m pretty good with family trees, but my head was spinning when she finished. Nevertheless, it did help me understand how Kate wound up with a rather valuable painting. Before his death, Jake had been fairly close to Mrs. Lattimore’s granddaughter, a homicide detective with the NYPD until she inherited a fortune from the artist Oscar Nauman, who had been her lover when he died. She had given Kate one of his works when little Jake was born and it hung in the front parlor. The painting didn’t really go with the antique furniture, but the colors were nice.
Mrs. Lattimore has always been a very large fish in small-pond Cotton Grove. She’s sat on just about every board the town has, but her abiding love is for the school system, and it was thanks to her efforts that shabby old Zachary Taylor High was torn down and replaced with modern West Colleton. Even though Jake is dead and Kate is no blood kin, Kate still keeps a watchful eye on his great-aunt and often invites her to dinner. This was the first time I had laid eyes on her in over six months and I was shocked to see how fragile she now seemed. Once or twice during dinner, I saw Kate’s lively face look with concern at her son’s great-great-aunt; and when we moved back into the front parlor after dinner, I pulled Kate aside to ask if Mrs. Lattimore was ill.
“I’m afraid so, but she won’t admit it. She’s ninety-one and she says she’s not going to spend her last few months in chemo with a bald head. Worse, she’s made me promise not to say anything to Anne or Sigrid, but I don’t know, Deborah. Maybe when you—” She clapped her hand over her mouth like a guilty child.
“Maybe when I what?” I said.
She grinned. “Never mind. You’ll soon find out.” Then raising her voice, she said, “Okay, everybody. Who’s ready to open presents?”
“Me,” cried Nancy Faye’s daughter Jean.
“Me, too!” Cal and Mary Pat sang out at the same time, which made them dissolve in giggles.
Soon the living room floor was awash in torn Christmas paper and discarded ribbons and bows.
There were the usual sweaters and scarves for the adults and toys and books for the children, but what blew me away was the gift that Kate and Rob gave us.
Elaborately wrapped in a small gold box was what looked like two brass house keys.
Puzzled, I said, “What do they unlock?”
“My New York apartment,” said Kate with a happy smile. “You guys never got a honeymoon and you’ve never been to New York together. The apartment’s going to be empty for most of January because my tenant’s going to Italy then, so I asked if you could housesit for part of the time.”
“Really?” I looked at Dwight. “Can we do this?”
“Well,” he said as a slow smile spread over his face, “I’ve got a lot of vacation time coming and you haven’t taken off much this year.”
“Here,” said Miss Emily, handing Dwight an envelope. “This goes with it.”
Inside were tickets to a Broadway show that was getting good reviews. I hadn’t spent much time in New York since shortly after Mother died when I ran away from home and did some stupid things. Suddenly my head was filled with images of the city: the crowded streets, the delicious-smelling delis, the small funky clubs, the graffiti, the library where I first met—Well. Never mind that particular image.
“Oh, golly, Kate!” I jumped up to give her a hug. “And all we got you was a sweater.”
“Which I love,” she assured me.
By nine o’clock, all the presents had been opened and the little ones were yawning. As Dwight and Cal were taking some of the gifts we’d received out to the car, Mrs. Lattimore pulled me aside and thrust into my hands a small heavy package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. “I’ve been so worried about what to do about this,” she said. “When Kate told me she was going to lend you and Dwight her apartment, I knew this was the answer. I can’t trust it to the mails and Dwight is a police officer, isn’t he?”
“Excuse me?” I said, bewildered by both the package and her words.
With a hint of her old imperiousness, she lifted her chin and fixed me with her crystalline gray eyes. “Please take this to my daughter Anne in New York. She’ll know what to do with it.”
Before I could protest, she turned back into the room and called for her coat.
“I’m ready to go now,” she said, and Rob, who was to drive her home, immediately escorted her down the steps.
There was nothing else to do but to slide the package into a shopping bag with some of Cal’s toys and grab my own coat.
Once home, Cal announced that he was going straight to bed so that Christmas morning would come sooner. With a self-conscious grin, he hung his stocking on a hook over the fireplace and went and got into his pajamas. Dwight and I tucked him in and Dwight said, “Sleep tight, buddy. Sure hope Santa leaves you something besides switches and coal.”
“Not funny, Dad,” he said with a big yawn.
Because we had to wait till he was asleep to help Santa come, I went and put on my own pajamas.
When I came back out, Dwight was sitting on the floor watching his train circle the tree, its small headlight shining and an occasional low tooot-tooot of its whistle.
I sat down on the floor beside him. “That’s a pretty amazing gift from Kate and Rob.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
“You do want to go, don’t you?”
“A week in New York? With you? Of course I do. It’s such a great city.”
I was surprised. “You sound like you know it pretty well. I didn’t realize.”
“Guess I never talked much about it. After Jonna and I split up and she left D.C. to move back to
Virginia, I used to take the train up to New York two or three times a month. Hey, why don’t we do that, too?”
“Do what?”
“Take the train instead of flying.”
“I’ve never been on a train,” I said.
Now it was his turn to be surprised. “In that case, then, maybe we should splurge and get a compartment.” He gave me an exaggerated leer. “Get an early start on our honeymoon.”
I leered right back at him. “You saying there are even more things I don’t know about you?”
He laughed, then we both lapsed into silence until he sighed and blew the whistle.
I touched his hand. “There’s something so sad and mournful about that sound, isn’t there?”
“Yeah,” he said and I knew he was thinking about this past week, too. The Wentworth boys lying dead while ice rained down on them. Sarah and Malcolm standing beside Mallory’s coffin. Malcolm’s suicide.
But life, of course, does move on. Dwight stood up and pulled me to my feet.
“Guess we’d better get started,” he said and went down the hall to make sure Cal was asleep before we began bringing in his gifts.
When Dwight came back a few minutes later, he was smiling.
“Asleep?” I asked.
He nodded. “But it’s the damnedest thing.”
“What is?”
“There’s like a bunch of little shiny things right over his head.”
“What?”
He nodded solemnly. “I don’t know, Deb’rah. Maybe I’m wrong, but they look just like dancing sugarplums.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My heartfelt thanks to retired district court judge Shelley Desvousges and to Karen Scott for setting me straight on certain legal technicalities; to Dana Mochel for a funny incident; to Brynn Bonner Witchger for excellent suggestions; to Luci Hansson Zahray, the mystery world’s “Poison Lady”; and, as always, to Rebecca Blackmore, Shelly Holt, and John Smith, who have given indispensable help almost from the very beginning of Deborah Knott’s career. I truly could not have written these books without them.
And finally, my long-overdue thanks to Les Pockell and Celia Johnson, who have done as much as any two editors possibly could to fill the void left by Sara Ann Freed.
Table of Contents
FRONT COVER IMAGE
WELCOME
DEDICATION
DEBORAH KNOTT’S FAMILY TREE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Deborah Knott Novels
COPYRIGHT
Deborah Knott novels:
CHRISTMAS MOURNING
SAND SHARKS
DEATH’S HALF ACRE
HARD ROW
WINTER’S CHILD
RITUALS OF THE SEASON
HIGH COUNTRY FALL
SLOW DOLLAR
UNCOMMON CLAY
STORM TRACK
HOME FIRES
KILLER MARKET
UP JUMPS THE DEVIL
SHOOTING AT LOONS
SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT
BOOTLEGGER’S DAUGHTER
Sigrid Harald novels:
FUGITIVE COLORS
PAST IMPERFECT
CORPUS CHRISTMAS
BABY DOLL GAMES
THE RIGHT JACK
DEATH IN BLUE FOLDERS
DEATH OF A BUTTERFLY
ONE COFFEE WITH
Non-series:
LAST LESSONS OF SUMMER
BLOODY KIN
SUITABLE FOR HANGING
SHOVELING SMOKE
CHRISTMAS MOURNING
MARGARET MARON
NEW YORK BOSTON
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Margaret Maron
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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First eBook Edition: November 2010
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ISBN: 978-0-446-57404-4
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