Death on the Family Tree Page 15

  Once Katharine had permission to cry, she lost the urge. But her knees felt weak. She took the tissue Posey handed her and stumbled over to a kitchen chair. Dane, the Buiton’s Weimaraner, padded over and lay down with his soft taupe nose on her shoe. As Katharine blew her own nose, Posey propped against the counter and demanded again, “What do you mean, Tom’s in Washington? Did he forget your birthday?”

  Facing Tom’s irate big sister, Katharine tried to soften his crime. “Some meeting got scheduled for Monday, and he has to prepare. We’ll go out next weekend.”

  “But I can’t believe you actually had a burglar inside the house. Were you there?”

  Katharine nodded. She couldn’t trust herself to speak.

  Posey clutched her throat. “What did you do? I’d have died on the spot.”

  Speaking of dying, Katharine wished Posey would make hot tea. Their air conditioner must be set low, for she was shivering like a naked Eskimo. Posey must have heard her teeth chattering, for she went to fill the kettle while Katharine told her story. “I followed the drill Jon had us practice years ago for his home-safety class. Remember? I ran across to his hideout, behind his closet—almost without thinking. And I felt pretty safe, with the bolt on the inside.”

  “You weren’t scared?” Posey turned from fetching mugs with a skeptical look.

  “Terrified,” Katharine admitted, bending to fondle Dane’s velvet ears. “Especially when he came into Jon’s closet.” She clenched her hands together, trying to keep them from shaking.

  Posey had been putting tea bags in the mugs, but she stopped with one dangling from her hand. “He actually came into the closet?”

  “Yeah, but then a siren started down our street, so he panicked, I guess. Anyway, he left.”

  “And you climbed out and called the police, cool as a cucumber.” Posey clearly didn’t believe a word of it.

  “No, I called on my cell phone from inside the hideout and I didn’t stir until the police came and assured me that’s who they were.” Katharine was glad to hear the kettle beginning to crinkle and sputter on the ceramic cooktop. The water might boil in a century or two. She wrapped her arms around her chest and held tight.

  “That could have been the burglar, coming back,” Posey pointed out.

  “It could have been,” Katharine agreed, “but they came upstairs calling my name. A burglar would have to have a colossal nerve to do that. Besides, the 911 operator had said she’d tell them exactly where to find me.”

  “I swan.” Neither spoke again until the kettle boiled. Posey poured hot water over each tea bag and carried the mugs over to the table. Then she fetched milk and sugar and shoved one mug Katharine’s way.

  Finally she sat down heavily across the table and stared morosely into her mug. “What is this world coming to? People coming into other people’s houses when they are there? It didn’t used to be this way.”

  Katharine pulled her mug toward her and cupped her hands around it, bent low to inhale the steam. “Sure it did. Carter Everanes was shot by somebody who came into his house when he was there.”

  “Who?”

  “Aunt Lucy’s younger brother. He was killed in 1951 by somebody who came into his house looking for money. I’ve been reading about it in the paper.”

  Posey was seldom interested in anything other people were reading. “It still seems incredible in this neighborhood. Why didn’t your security system go off?”

  “I don’t know.” Katharine sloshed her tea bag up and down in the dark brew and wound the string around it on the spoon. “I may not have re-armed it. I was out cutting hydrangeas when Tom called, and ran to get the phone. I may even have left the back door unlocked.” But as she added milk and sugar to her tea, she could see herself holding a large bunch of hydrangeas and reaching awkwardly to punch the re-arm button and twist the deadbolt on the French doors before she dashed to the phone. Had she really done that? Or was she merely wishing she had?

  “Lucky burglar,” Posey pointed out, “picking the one house on your street with the alarm off and the door unlocked. It’s hard to believe, don’t you think?”

  Katharine almost voiced her suspicions about Zach, but Posey was already worried enough about Hollis. She didn’t need to think her daughter’s boyfriend was breaking into houses. Time enough for her to find out if he was arrested.

  Posey sipped her own tea. “Don’t you always set the alarm and check the doors before you go to bed?”

  “Yes, but after Tom called I threw something in the microwave—”

  Posey gave her a penetrating look. “Frozen tuna casserole?”

  She nodded. Posey reached over and covered one of her hands with her own. “I could cheerfully throttle my brother.”

  “It’s okay.” But her throat was clogged with tears again, and her eyes burned. She lifted her cup to her lips and felt the rich warmth filter all the way down to her stomach.

  Posey gave her a few minutes then asked, “What did he take? The burglar, I mean.”

  “That diary I found in Aunt Lucy’s things. And Tom’s jade.”

  Posey’s eyes widened. “All the jade? Even the Chinese seal Granddaddy gave him when he turned twelve?”

  Katharine nodded, miserable. “He was using it as a paperweight on his desk. The guy got everything, both from the hall and from the library. And the diary—” She couldn’t go on. Every time she thought about that diary, she wanted to howl.

  Posey was far more prosaic. “Who’d steal a diary?”

  “Anybody who thought it might be valuable.” Hasty’s face rose before her, but she shoved it away. He wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t. At least she hoped that was true.

  “Thanks for letting me come over,” she added. “I couldn’t bear to stay there.”

  “Of course not, honey. Stay ’til Tom gets home, if you like.”

  “No, I’ll be fine once it’s daylight and I can see.” She hoped that was true, too. At the moment the thought of her house—big, dark, empty, and possibly haunted—made her tremble.

  She couldn’t possibly go to sleep yet and Posey was a night owl, so they turned on the tail end of the news.

  “Look,” Posey exclaimed, “here’s our favorite media personality.” Brandon Ivorie spoke behind a podium, then handed a check to somebody in law enforcement. “To help in the war against terror,” he said with a confident smile.

  Posey shuddered. “I wonder if he’d give me a check to combat terror? He terrifies me.”

  Katharine brushed her hair from her face. “But doesn’t he seems a bit off his stroke tonight? He stumbled twice in one sentence, and now he’s repeating himself.” The audio cut quickly and the newscaster came on, smoothly completing the story.

  They were on their second mugs of tea when Dane gave a soft “woof!” and padded to the back door. Hollis came in from the garage two seconds later, looking like a witch who had flown in through the rain. Her black T-shirt and jeans clung to her skin and her new hairstyle lay in bedraggled tails on her cheeks. “It’s raining bats and salamanders out there,” she announced before she was in the door, “and I had to park all the way across the lot from the stage door. I am soaked to the bone.” As she bent to fondle Dane’s head, she did a double take and demanded, “What are you doing here, Aunt Kat? I thought you all were going to the symphony.”

  Katharine shrugged. “Uncle Tom couldn’t come home. We’ll celebrate next weekend.”

  “But she had a burglar,” Posey announced. “Somebody broke into the house. While she was there!”

  Hollis skipped a beat, then her eyes widened. “Really? Who?”

  “We don’t know,” Katharine told her. “He ran away.”

  “You’re dripping all over the floor,” Posey chided. “Here.” She handed Hollis a towel. While Hollis toweled her face, shoulders, and hair, Katharine repeated her story about waiting out the intruder in Jon’s hideout, because Hollis had spent hours up there and would appreciate the fact that it had saved her aunt’s life.

/>   Hollis had the towel over her whole head, so her voice was muffled. “Did he take anything?”

  “The only things I know about so far are Tom’s jade and Aunt Lucy’s diary—the one I found in her things with the necklace. But the power was still out, so I couldn’t take a thorough inventory before I left.”

  Hollis dropped the towel onto the countertop and went to the fridge to pour a glass of milk. Her hand shook as she raised the glass to her lips. She must have felt as cold as Katharine, soaked and in the air conditioning.

  “Why would anybody steal a diary?” Posey demanded. Her forehead creased in thought until she remembered the cost of removing wrinkles. Then she smoothed it instantly. “Do you think it was somebody who heard you talking about the stuff you found, thought it might be valuable, and expected you to be out tonight? Who all knew you were going to the symphony?”

  Katharine ran down a mental list and sighed. “Practically the whole city. Somebody could have overheard me telling you all or Napoleon Ivorie at the club, I told Dr. Flo Gadney and Dutch—”

  “Dutch wouldn’t rob your house! How can you even suggest such a thing?”

  “You didn’t ask who would rob me, you asked who knew I was going to be out.”

  She didn’t add that she had also mentioned the symphony to Hasty. He might have memorized her disarming code the previous night, she realized with a jolt. He had a good head for things like that. Dutch might remember the code, as well, because over New Year’s, when she and Jon had joined Tom in Washington, Dutch had stayed in their house because his was being painted before he put it on the market. But Posey was right—Dutch wouldn’t rob her house. He could have told somebody else the code, though.

  Hollis could have told somebody, too—specifically Zach. Katharine gave her niece a speculative look, but Hollis’s face was buried in her glass of milk.

  “Maybe he took the diary to blackmail you or something,” Posey suggested, stirring her tea with as thoughtful an expression as she could muster after her surgery.

  That finally made Katharine laugh. “For what? My indiscretions aren’t that big. Besides, I never write them down in a diary.”

  When Hollis’s dark eyes turned on her with a brooding expression, Katharine felt a flush rising up her neck. She was glad to hear the phone ring.

  Posey’s eyes darted to the clock. “Who on earth could that be this late?” Katharine knew exactly what she was thinking. Which of my girls or their children is in trouble?

  “It’s probably for me.” Hollis went to answer. “Oh, hey,” they heard her say. She listened, then turned her back and dropped her voice to a low murmur. She listened again, darted an anxious look toward the adults, and swore softly. “Okay. I’ll be right there. Just let me put on something dry.” She set the phone on its charger and headed for the stairs.

  “Who was that at this hour?” Posey asked sharply.

  Hollis paused on the bottom step, but she didn’t answer.

  “It was Zach, wasn’t it?” Posey set her mug down with a sharp click. “You’re not going out this late, are you?”

  “Just for a little while.” Hollis took a couple of steps up.

  “Don’t you all go to those clubs up on Peachtree, the ones where the shootings take place. You hear me?” Posey’s voice was edged with fear.

  “We’ll be fine.” Hollis may have intended to comfort her mother, but the sentence came out in the exasperated tone young adults use with parents of diminished intelligence. She still hadn’t turned around, and her slim back was stiff and unyielding.

  “You won’t be fine if somebody does a drive-by shooting,” Posey warned. “And don’t tell me you won’t get shot. Nobody sets out planning to get shot. That’s why they are called ‘accidental shootings.’” Her fingers sketched quotes Hollis couldn’t see.

  Hollis heaved an enormous sigh. “I am twenty-two years old, Mama. I know how to take care of myself. Besides, we may not even go to a club. I’m going to Amy’s first, and you know good and well that nothing bad could possibly happen up on the Hill.”

  Her voice oozed scorn and contempt.

  “Not unless their politics rub off on you,” Posey replied. But her voice was lighter. Posey would love to drop “when Hollis was up on the Hill Saturday evening” into conversations.

  When Hollis came back downstairs, she had put on dry black jeans and a black tank top, but had merely pulled a comb through her wet hair. She looked anxious to get on the road.

  “Can’t you find Amy a boyfriend?” Posey asked as Hollis reached for cookies from the jar. “It wouldn’t have to be serious or anything, just somebody to—”

  “That’s none of your business!” Hollis stomped out the door and slammed it behind her. In another minute they heard her car roar down the drive.

  Posey stared at the back door like she had been struck, and Katharine was as surprised as she. Hollis didn’t always do what her parents wanted, but she never raged. Her weapons were icy, supercilious silence or ignoring what her mother said.

  “If I’d ever spoken to my mama like that—” Posey carried their mugs to the sink and sighed. “Another happy evening in the Buiton household. Come on, Katharine, you look ready to drop. Let’s get you up to bed.”

  Posey’s guest room had a nineteenth-century canopy bed so high it had its own set of steps, and a wide chaise over by one window with cushions of down. Too restless to sleep, Katharine put on her gown and robe and stood by the window, watching rain fall in sheets. She wondered idly about the call Hollis had gotten. It hadn’t sounded like an invitation to party. Katharine had gotten the impression that something was wrong. What might Jon know about his three classmates?

  It was the thinnest imaginable excuse for calling halfway around the world, but for a mother, any pretext will do. She fetched her cell phone and punched “3.” While she waited for the phone to ring in China, she gave thanks for Tom’s gift of cell phones the whole family could use for international calls. Katharine had considered it an extravagance when he got them. Now she counted it a blessing.

  Jon answered almost immediately. “Hey, Mom, what’s up? Isn’t it nearly midnight there? You ought to be getting your beauty sleep. I was fixing to head out and find a bowl of noodles.”

  “I’m about to go to bed, but I wanted to ask you something and tell you something. Do you remember Zachary Andrews?” She had to move away from the window a little to hear him, the rain was drumming so loud on the slate roof.

  “Zach? Yeah. Why?” His voice was guarded.

  “Tell me a little about him.”

  “You remember him. He used to come over and play.”

  “And took apart the chain on our cuckoo clock, as I remember, and burned holes in my new bedroom carpet.”

  “Not two of his finest moments, huh?” Jon’s gurgle of laughter sounded as if he were just across town and made Katharine clutch the phone, she wanted so badly to have him near.

  “What was he like in high school?” she asked.

  “He didn’t improve much. He was both a genius and a wild man. He got straight A’s when he bothered to crack a book, but he got into trouble a lot.”

  Katharine jumped to the immediate parental conclusion. “Drugs?”

  “Among other things. He took his daddy’s new BMW without asking one weekend and wrecked it drag racing. He drank a lot, too, and threw parties when his parents were out of town. The neighbors called the police a couple of times. I wasn’t ever there,” Jon hastened to add, “but I heard about it. He was kicked out junior year because he threatened a teacher who was fixing to give him a C. I don’t think I’ve seen him since. Why do you want to know?”

  She answered his question with one of her own. “Do you know how long Hollis has been dating him?”

  He laughed. “Hollis? No way. I mean, she knows him and all—”

  “Posey says she’s been dating him at least since Christmas, and I’ve seen her with him a couple of times this week. Both Hollis and Amy Slade.”


  “Oh, really?”

  Something about the way he said that made her press him. “What about Amy?”

  “Nothing.” He was obviously considering what to tell the grownup. “In high school, she was a space cadet.”

  “She must be brighter than she seems. She got into college and managed to graduate.”

  Jon gave a cynical laugh. “Her granddaddy’s contributions may have helped. I used to wonder if Amy had dropped in from another planet. Really. She’s always been weird. But maybe she’s improved since high school. Zach has, from what I’ve heard. He’s still a bit intense, but people say he’s a lot calmer and straighter than he used to be.”

  “Straighter than an arrow,” Katharine agreed. “He’s working for Brandon Ivorie.”

  Jon whistled. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes, and as you can imagine, the idea that Hollis is dating Zach and hanging out with Amy has your Aunt Posey in conniptions.”

  Jon laughed. “Tell her to be careful, or she’ll wrinkle her face. And tell her not to worry. You know Hollis—champion of lame ducks and lost causes. But underneath the black clothes and vampire lipstick, she’s solid.” He changed the subject abruptly. “Did you and Dad finally celebrate your birthday?”

  “No, he couldn’t get home. We’ll celebrate next weekend. But I did want to tell you something else. Remember that escape plan you made up years ago, in case we had a burglar when Dad wasn’t there? It works. I had a burglar tonight and came out unscathed.”

  “While you were home?” His voice rose so high it nearly cracked. Katharine could picture his green eyes wide, red eyebrows almost meeting his hairline, freckles standing out across his nose.

  “Yeah, but I ran to the hideout and was able to call 911 on my cell phone.”

  “I didn’t put cell phones in the plan.”

  “A definite improvement on the original. Everything is fine, now, and I’m over at Posey’s for the night. There’s a big storm going on and all the power is off at our place.”