Death on the Family Tree (28 page)

Misty greeted Katharine at the front door as she returned. “We finithed the upstairth. Do you want uth to clean up the attic?” That tongue stud could become annoying, Katharine thought as she followed Misty upstairs to take a look at the attic.

Once they stood in the dusty space, she had to confess, “The robbers didn’t get this far—this is the way it always looks. I keep meaning to clean up here, but I never get around to it.”

Misty wandered over to peer beneath old sheets at dresses they swathed. “Cool! You’ve got thum neat vintage dretheth up here.” Katharine refrained from mentioning that most of them were her own prom dresses and formals. She didn’t want to be classified as an antique.

While Misty examined dresses, Katharine wandered over and looked down at Dutch’s boxes. She felt she ought to get them to Chap, although she doubted he’d want his father’s old yearbooks. Yearbooks?

She knelt on the dusty floor and pulled open the first box.

She found what she wanted in the second: four Sewanee annuals. Dutch had already had the social instinct to keep track of people he knew, because he had bought one every year and collected signatures from every class. Katharine’s dad used to claim that Dutch never forgot a person and was a world champion at networking. He’d parlayed those skills and connections into a successful investment firm.

She looked up as Misty said, “I geth I’ll get back to work, then. What thould we do netht?”

“Shelve the books in the library,” Katharine suggested.

“Okay. But if you ever want to thell any of theeth dretheth—”

“I’ll call you first,” Katharine promised. After all, you never knew when Tom might lose all his stocks and need a few dollars.

She carried the yearbook for ’36–’37—Dutch’s sophomore year—over to Tom’s father’s chair and wiped the dusty covers before she opened the book. Both inside covers, all the ads, and most of the activities pages were covered with scrawled messages. Many of the remarks were light and some were irreverent, but none were cruel. Dutch seemed to have been a favorite with all classes.

Two messages caught her eye. One was written in the lovely European script she was coming to know as well as her own. It read, “Come see me in Austria, Dutch. We will party all night long.” It was signed “L
¹
.” The other, written in a tall, skinny hand with compressed capitals, declared, “Gone but not forgotten. We’re passing the torch, Dutch. Don’t drop it!” That one was signed “L
²
.”

L-one and L-two, not L-squared. Two men whose names both began with L.

Ludwig and…?

Lee. Dutch and Maria had both mentioned him.

The diary had been Ludwig’s, then. Not an Austrian woman, an Austrian man who liked men. No wonder Maria had been guarded when asked about Carter’s friendship with him. Was it Carter he had seduced and then persuaded to love him? Was that why Carter had kept the diary, as a memory of his first love? Or had Carter stolen it as he had the necklace?

She looked through the junior class pictures and found Ludwig Ramsauer. He sported no beard, but the high forehead and humorous eyes were the same as in the newspaper clipping that Carter had slipped in the diary. Carter looked young in his picture, a bit ethereal. If he had been one of Jon’s friends, she would have suspected he was gay. Had Ludwig merely awakened something that was already latent?

She also found Donk—Don K. Western—but didn’t see his brother, Lee.

She flipped through all the classes. Lee Western did not appear.

Was he Donk’s brother? She had presumed he was because Dutch and Maria had lumped them together as “Lee and Donk Western,” but perhaps that was another tape from the past—two names spoken together so often they became one, like Kat-’n’-Hasty. She flipped through the entire junior class and came across several other names she remembered from Dutch’s friends and acquaintances. She also saw Mr. Ivorie, already handsome but a lot less formidable than he would become. It took her two trips through the junior class to discover Leland Bradford.

Leland, shortened to Lee by his buddies. She studied the picture intently. This was the man who had convinced Ludwig’s “little love” to come to Austria and be seduced? Who had bought supplies to blow up a bridge? Who had slept with Ludwig before the big love affair, but turned him down after the bridge exploded? That shy smile and the thick glasses were deceptive, good camouflage for the rake he had been.

Maybe it was because all those boys were younger than Jon, but to Katharine, Leland looked unfinished and callow, timid enough to run from a mouse. What had become of him? Had he died like the others? Or was he the sole survivor of their unholy band?

She stood to go downstairs and caught sight of her reflection in the mirror of an old oak dresser. In that light she again saw the woman with long dark hair and pale, thin face. Now she wore a worried expression. She looked like she wanted something from Katharine, but when Katharine moved closer to examine the image, her own face appeared. She had a smudge of dust on her chin.

She scrubbed her chin with her palm as she headed downstairs to call Hasty. She wanted to tell him what she had learned.

She tracked him down at his office.

“Tom get home last night?” he asked immediately.

“No, he’s coming in tonight or first thing tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” He swore.

She might berate Tom, but nobody else got that privilege. “He had important business to finish. I don’t suppose you called your wife.”

“Not yet. I’ve been busy.”

“Yeah, well, I have, too. I have solved all our mysteries.” She filled him in on what she had learned about Carter from Cleetie and what she had found in Dutch’s old college yearbook. “So Carter may have been Ludwig’s ‘little love,’” she concluded.

“He was. I finished the diary late last night, and it’s real clear about that at the end. I tried to call you this morning, but I guess you were at Cleetie’s. I didn’t like to leave a message, in case—”

He broke off, but she could finish the sentence. “In case Tom got it.” With a pang, she realized their relaxed friendship was almost at an end. Once Tom got home—

Before she could fully explore that thought, he started talking again. “On the last page, there’s a quote. The night before he left Austria, the ‘little love’ said, ‘Ludwig, Hitler has come between us, but you will always be my heart and my life.’ Then Ludwig wrote that he had decided to tuck the diary and ‘a precious family heirloom Carter has often admired’ into his luggage before he left.”

“He mentioned Carter by name?”

“Absolutely. And quoted Carter using
his
name.”

“So that’s how Carter got the things. He didn’t steal the necklace—it was a gift.”

She was glad of that, but Hasty had other things on his mind. “That diary turned out to be dynamite in more ways than one.”

“You mean the part about blowing up the bridge?”

“Not just that. Our friends were active little boys that fall. They started an avalanche, stopped a train, and set off a bomb in a village square late one night, all in the name of calling for revolution. Each of them seems to have had a specialty.”

“Even Carter?” Katharine didn’t know why she cared, but she did.

“No, Carter seems to have been fully preoccupied with his books. But as for the others, Ludwig scouted out the terrain and decided where to attack, Lee bought the explosives, Hans arranged transport, and Donk set the bombs. They apparently hoped to rouse Austria to side with Russia against Hitler. By late autumn, they tired of that and went to Spain to join the Communist forces there. Ludwig kept detailed reports of their daily activities for the rest of the year.”

“Was Carter fighting in Spain?”

“No, though Ludwig spent weeks deploring the fact that he would not come, and agonizing that he himself would die alone on a Spanish plain far from the one he loved. It makes for torrid reading. But Ludwig also recorded every detail of their daily lives and battles. That makes fascinating reading. And he finally persuaded Carter to join him once the term was over.”

“Poor Carter. Imagine surviving both the Spanish civil war and World War II, only to get shot in your own house. I wonder if there’s any way to figure out what happened to him.”

“You’ve got the mystery bug, Katie-bell. It was probably a good old home invasion, just like yours.”

“But what about Dutch? Somebody murdered him.”

“And I know you think his death is connected to the necklace, but it’s probably nothing more than coincidence. Leave it to the police.”

“I don’t believe in coincidence. Daddy always said that what looks like coincidence is usually part of a plan we cannot see. These things are linked. I know it. And I’m getting convinced the key could be Lee. He has come up several times in conversation, and Dutch said he was going to try to get a hold of Lee and see what he might know. I wonder if he did.”

“Did you run his name through a search engine?”

“On what? My computer is history.”

“What’s his full name again?”

“Leland Bradford.”

“Wait a minute.” She heard him typing, then pause. “The name is too common. There are almost forty thousand references, including some bigwig educator from the last century. Any idea how to narrow down the field?”

“No, but I’ve just had another idea about how to track him down. Napoleon Ivorie was in his class at college. Maybe he’d remember him.”

“Good luck getting through. I’ve heard he’s an absolute recluse by now. And if you do get through, are you going to tell him why you want to know?”

“I’ll play that by ear. He may not remember them. Dutch said that Lee and Donk were kicked out after their junior year. But it’s worth a try, don’t you think? And I’m glad the diary turned out to be interesting after all.”

“It’s a terrific personal account of what was going on at that time in history.”

“You may have it as a gift. I know Maria won’t want it. But I’ll copy the last page and send it to her with the necklace, to clear Carter’s reputation.”

“Who’s Maria?”

Katharine had forgotten she hadn’t told him about that call. “Ludwig’s sister. Dutch tracked her down just before he died, through the Sewanee alumni office. I spoke with her yesterday, and she says Georg Ramsauer gave the necklace to one of his daughters—her ‘many-times great-grandmudder’—as a wedding present. It’s been handed down in their family for generations, and she thought Carter had stolen it. I told her I’d send it back—”

His voice was sharp. “It shouldn’t be in private hands. It belongs in a museum.”

“It belongs where it started out. We can’t keep her necklace.”

“It’s not her necklace. Georg Ramsauer had no right to give it to his daughter.”

“That’s for the Austrians to decide, not you.”

“Don’t you mail it back to some old Austrian woman before I’ve spoken to the university lawyers.”

“Emory has no claim on that necklace whatsoever. If any university is involved, it ought to be an Austrian one.”

“Don’t you mail it back. I’m warning you.”

After all she’d been through that week, Hasty’s threats didn’t scare her.

Another summer storm was brewing. The sky to the west was dark and thick with clouds.

She headed back to the kitchen phone and gathered her courage to call the Ivories. They intimidated her more than she liked to admit, but she owed it to them to tell them she had found the rightful owner of the necklace, and she had promised Amy to talk to Rowena about Zach’s funeral. She would begin there.

She found Rowena’s number in a club directory and told the secretary who answered that it was important that she speak to Rowena Slade on a matter of personal importance. She was both disgusted and amused at how gratified she felt when Rowena came on the line at once. “You rate, girl,” she crowed silently.

“Is it about the necklace?” Rowena asked immediately.

“Only partly,” Katharine admitted. “I have some information about it, but I mostly want to talk about Amy. She was over here yesterday and asked me to speak to you, but I’d rather do it in person. Would you mind if I ran over for a few minutes? This is terribly important to her.”

“Amy?” Rowena sounded like she was trying to remember who Amy was or how Amy fit into her current schedule. “Well, if you feel it’s important, I’ll be here the rest of the afternoon. Do you want to come over now?”

“Perfect. Thanks. I won’t take up much time. But I need to ask one more favor, if I may. I need about five minutes with your father, to ask him a question relating to his college days. Do you think—?”

“Dad never sees anyone,” Rowena’s voice was brusque and final. “If you’ll tell me what the question is, though, I will ask him and have an answer for you.”

“Very well. I am trying to track down a man named Leland Bradford. I believe he may be connected with the history of that necklace, and I would very much like to talk to him. If your dad doesn’t know how to get in touch with him, perhaps he could ask the Sewanee alumni office for a number. They are more likely to give it to him than to me.”

Only a few minutes later, Rowena called her back. “Dad asks if you will stop by his house on your way to mine. He says he can give you an address and phone number for Leland Bradford.” Her voice was puzzled. “I told him I’d give them to you, but he said he’d prefer to speak with you personally. You seem to have made a hit with him the other night.”

Katharine was delighted. Once she got the address and phone number, she would turn them plus everything she knew and suspected over to the police who were investigating Dutch’s death. That old laundryman might have even been Leland, who had gotten wind of her investigation and decided to eliminate Dutch, who might have known more than he had realized.

Before she went to the Hill, she decided to send Maria the necklace immediately, and mail the diary’s final page later to clear Carter’s name. It would be a lot easier to tell Rowena about Maria’s claim to the necklace knowing it was already out of reach, so she couldn’t pressure Katharine to change her mind. She would give Rowena Maria’s address if she wanted to try and persuade her to sell. Picturing negotiations between those two, Katharine smiled. How sparks would fly!

She would not mention to Mr. Ivorie that Ludwig had given the necklace to Carter, though. Ivorie lawyers might argue that that gave Mr. Ivorie, the Everanes’s closest living relative, a better claim to it than Maria—particularly if Carter had not willed it to Lucy but merely left it in the family home. Then it might not legally be part of Lucy’s “bits and pieces,” as she had called them. Katharine hadn’t the foggiest notion how to find Carter’s will, but she had no doubt that Ivorie lawyers could.

She retrieved the necklace from the bank and took it to a UPS store. In the parking lot she took it from its bag and held it to her neck once more. In the small rearview mirror, it looked more like a chain of slavery than something a lover would give a woman. She pitied any woman who had to wear it long. She held it a few minutes, though, trying to absorb its age and some sense of all those who had owned it since it was first forged. In the past week it had come to seem a part of her. Sending it away felt like sending Jon to China, except more permanent.

She carried it into the store and watched it being wrapped in several layers of bubble wrap and placed in an ordinary box. She told the man behind the counter that it was a piece of jewelry she had commissioned for a friend and casually insured it for two hundred dollars. When he tossed it into a bin with other boxes, she sent up a prayer that it would arrive safely.

As she left the store, she turned back in indecision. Had she been too impulsive? Too casual? Should she have insured it for thousands? Asked a museum to ship it for her? Waited to ask Tom what he thought she should do?

In the plate glass window she saw her reflection, peering in. At her shoulder stood a slender woman with long dark hair. She smiled and raised one hand.

Katharine turned, but there was no one there. When she looked back at the window again, only her own face peered back.

Entering the Hill was not for the fainthearted. A high brick wall and an equally tall metal gate obscured any view of what lay inside. A uniformed guard asked for her name, business, and picture ID and then walked around to peer into her car on both sides and at the back. Satisfied she was not carrying bombs, firearms, contagious plants, terrorists, homosexuals, illegal immigrants, or whatever else he was currently guarding the Ivories against, he pressed a button to open the gates and waved her through. When they closed behind her, Katharine considered turning around and heading home, but she had come this far. She might as well complete her errands.

Her hands began to sweat and her heart to drum as she drove down a short incline and around a bend. Then she was too enchanted to be nervous. Ahead of her the drive crossed the narrow end of a silver pond that gleamed and glittered to her left, lit by one ray of slanting light that pierced the lowering clouds. The drive then crossed a grassy meadow full of wild flowers and ran alongside a small orchard to the right, where a white van was parked and a man was spraying the trees. Beyond the orchard, the driveway climbed upward and curved toward three houses perched on a hill. The first was built of gray stone and stucco, with steep slate roofs and arched windows, and looked like a chateau airlifted from the Loire Valley of France. The one beyond it was Greek revival style, slightly smaller, but impressive nevertheless. The third was contemporary, all wood and glass. Massive trees framed all three houses.

As Katharine slowed, delighted by the view, thunder boomed overhead. A rabbit hopped alongside her car and across the meadow, and a bluebird darted toward a small birdhouse nailed to one of the peach trees, heading for cover ahead of the storm. They could have been out in middle Georgia somewhere. How many acres were inside these gates? Twenty?

Her nervousness returned as she pulled under the porte cochere of the first house and a uniformed man came to open her door. “Mr. Ivorie is expecting you. I will park your car.”

Katharine wished she had changed into something dressier than the black pants and green shirt she had put on for Cleetie. For the second time that day, she felt like a Cinderella who had come to the ball underdressed. A burly man whom she presumed was the butler met her at the door, wearing a dark suit and white shirt. As he escorted her across a marble-tiled foyer, she saw Amy sitting with a book in a room to the right—a living room half as large as Katharine’s whole downstairs. Katharine would have liked to inform Amy that she was heading to Rowena’s later to present her request, but Amy didn’t look up.

The butler ushered Katharine through wide double doors into a library Tom would covet, where long shelves of books rose twelve feet to a ceiling decorated with an ornate plaster medallion. Before Katharine could do more than glance around, the butler led her across thick red carpet to two black leather chairs placed to face long windows overlooking the meadow. Lightning flickered. Mr. Ivorie turned his head in the nearer chair. “Ah, Mrs. Murray. I am weary today, so I will not rise. Please excuse me.” He looked hearty enough in a red silk dressing gown over a white shirt and black slacks, but his hand was dry and limp in hers. “I am so pleased you could come. Would you like coffee?”

Thunder rumbled while she hesitated, wondering what he would prefer. She didn’t want to intrude too long on his time. He motioned to the butler. “Coffee for two, Styles.” When the butler had moved out on soundless feet, the old man gave her his charming smile. “Welcome to the Hill.”

“Your grounds are gorgeous,” she told him, indicating the view. “I had no idea there was this much undeveloped land in the heart of Buckhead.”

He chuckled. “The developers do—and drool.”

While they waited for coffee, he spoke of his love of plants, of how he had planted the peach orchard with his own hands and tended the trees, trying to develop a new variety with deep pink meat. She told him about finding the book about Conrad Faire and his descendents and how surprised she had been to discover that he and Aunt Lucy had been cousins.

“Oh, yes, I grew up with Walter and Carter.” He touched his fingertips to one another in a arch and looked far over the grounds as if he were looking down the years. “Walter and I grew apart after Carter’s death, but we boys used to have some wonderful times down yonder in the meadow. We would set up our tents and pretend to be Billy the Kid and his cohorts, camping out to avoid the sheriff, or we’d swim and race canoes on the pond. I have always been sorry that Brandon didn’t have cousins. There is a special bond that develops with those of your own blood.” He looked up as Styles set a tray of coffee and assorted cookies on a table between them. When they each had a steaming cup, he murmured, “That will be all for now. Mrs. Murray and I want to speak privately.” He turned to her. “Now, what was it you wanted to ask me? Oh, yes, about Leland Bradford. I called the college alumni office and got an address for him. He’s in a nursing home up near Nashville. I have written it down for you.” He took a folded piece of paper from a drawer in a table beside his chair and handed it to her. She slid it into her pocket to read later, and wondered how quickly she should drink her coffee and depart.

He forestalled her by asking, “Why do you want to speak to him?”

Those piercing silver-blue eyes compelled her to be frank. “Dutch Landrum told me Sunday night he would try to get in touch with Leland. I have been translating the diary I found with the necklace, and while I know you aren’t interested in old books—”

He arrested her midsentence with a gesture of one hand. “I did not say I am not interested in old books.” He waved toward the well-filled shelves around them. “As you see, I have a few. I just don’t collect them seriously. But if this was the diary you found, the one Georg Ramsauer kept of his archeological excavations, I understood from Amy that it had been stolen.”

“The diary was stolen, but fortunately I had made a copy.”

“Ah, yes.” He sipped his coffee. “I believe Amy mentioned that, as well. She has been full of stories about you and your family this week.” He gave her a charming, frosty smile and his eyes twinkled.

Katharine was surprised Amy had had time to notice or hear anything at her house, considering how full her mind had been of Zach. She did not say that, however. Instead, she explained, “The diary turned out not to be the one from Hallstatt, as I first thought, but it may still be of some importance. It was the journal of Ludwig Ramsauer, a descendent of Georg. You may have known Ludwig—he studied at Sewanee for a year.”

“Journaling seems to have to run in their family.” His lifted his cup to his lips again, holding it in both hands because of tremors. “Were you able to translate this diary?”

“With the help of a friend. And as incredible as it may seem, Ludwig, several Austrian friends, and two of your classmates—Leland Bradford and Donk Western—were Communists and conducted a campaign of terror, protesting Hitler’s influence in Austria. They spent several months in the summer and fall of 1937 blowing up things. According to Ludwig, Leland financed their enterprises, Donk set the explosives, and he chose the targets.”

“Remarkable!” Mr. Ivorie paused in the process of lifting a delicate lemon cookie to his mouth. “Are you absolutely certain you translated that correctly? I knew Donk. He died in the war.”

She smiled. “That’s what Dutch kept saying about him, too.”

“You tend to remember friends you have lost in combat. You are certain that Donk was part of this?”

“Pretty sure. Ludwig called him ‘D’ throughout, and Dutch ran into Donk and Leland over in Vienna that summer, with Carter and Ludwig. The diary says that they stayed all fall and eventually went to Spain for a time, to join the communist forces in the civil war.”

“Fascinating.” He again raised his cup to his lips with shaking hands. She looked away to give him privacy. He took a sip and returned the cup to its saucer with a delicate clicking like castanets. “But why should you care about that, especially after all these years? Are you a historian?”

“No, but my friend is. He teaches history at Emory and actually did most of the translation. My German is poor and rusty.”

He brushed a crumb from his leg. “Ludwig mentioned Leland Bradford by name?”

“No, he called him L
²
. Apparently it was a nickname between them. It was Dutch who referred to ‘Lee and Donk,’ and in Dutch’s Sewanee yearbook, I found messages from L1 and L
²
. The handwriting for L
¹
was the same as Ludwig’s in his diary.”

“Fascinating,” he repeated. He turned and looked over the lawn, where the first thick drops of rain were falling. “It sounds like you have been doing some pretty detective work this week, Mrs. Murray. This is one of the most interesting—and disturbing—stories I have heard in a long time. It is hard to believe about people I once knew. And now, you think if you can speak with Leland—what? He will fill in more details for your friend to write a book? Confess to what they did? What help do you expect him to give you, if he can?”

She hesitated. “I don’t know how much news you keep up with—”