Death on the Family Tree (30 page)

Rowena stared down at him. “You’re a chip off the old block, aren’t you, boy? The trouble is, the block is cracked, flawed to the core. What is it the Bible says?” She turned to Katharine. “We don’t really believe in it, honey, but we can sure quote it. ‘The sins of the fathers will be visited on the children to the third generation.’ Isn’t that how it goes? Well, Daddy, you had your fun and did your sinning. The rest of us are paying for it.”

“Mama!” Brandon said urgently.

She looked down at him with a sad smile. “Your daddy was a wonderful man. I wish you had known him. Oh, I wish—” Her voice broke. The diary fell to the floor as she turned away, covering her face with her hands. Tears flowed between her fingers.

Katharine stood and walked from the room. Just beyond the doors she took a quick look around the foyer to be sure the bodyguards were not around. The butler was nowhere to be seen, either, so she walked alone toward the door. If she got out of the grounds alive, she would go to the police. She would take them what she knew and show them the proofs she had. And no matter how long it took, she and Dr. Flo would clear Alfred Simms’s name.

As she reached the front door, she heard a voice behind her. “Goodbye, Mrs. Murray.” She turned in time to see Amy slip back into the library. As the door closed behind her, Katharine heard shots. She did not turn back.

Friday, June 16

“Mr. Ivorie wants to see you.” The voice on the phone was cool, professional, belonging to a woman who dealt with pain and death every day.

Katharine froze. Then she recalled that Napoleon Ivorie was no longer a threat to her. He lay, critically wounded, in intensive care at Piedmont Hospital with guards at his door, accused of attempted abduction and murder. The police had all her proofs and the complete story, including one copy of the diary and photographs of the rope burns on her wrists and bruises on her cheek where Clark had held her. Leona, the receptionist at Autumn Village, had positively picked out Napoleon’s picture from a photographic lineup. “I’d know them eyebrows anywhere,” she had exclaimed. As Katharine had suspected, killing Dutch was one of the things the old man had done for himself. Whether his lawyers could get him off was moot. Nobody expected him to live long enough to stand trial.

The press had reported Rowena Slade’s version of how Napoleon had been wounded. “My daughter Amy accidentally shot my father and herself with his bodyguard’s gun, which the bodyguard had laid aside while being bandaged for a self-inflicted wound. Amy did not realize the gun was loaded.”

Poor Amy, Katharine thought—as inept at shooting people as she was at everything else, and still being wrapped in cotton wool and money. Her grand gesture would ultimately kill her grandfather, but having only a vague understanding of anatomy, she had managed to shoot herself only through the shoulder, not the heart, and would soon be released from the hospital to face whatever charges the D. A. decided to bring.

Rowena had stuck by her story even when Brandon tried to insist it was Katharine who shot his grandfather and Amy and then dashed to her car and got through the gates before they could order the guard to stop her. But Rowena visited her father daily. Brandon had not yet come. He was too busy fending off reporters who were having a field day with rumors about Napoleon Ivorie’s past—rumors that must have leaked from Katharine’s statement to the police, but which Brandon laid at her door every chance he got to speak. “That godless liberal,” he raved, “spreading lies about our family.” She wore the title proudly, considering the source.

She drove to the hospital and found the room. The guard at the door checked her ID and told her, “Five minutes. Doctor’s orders.” He added in a tone too low to be overheard, “Good thing the kid’s hand trembled, or he’d be dead already. Still not likely to make it, you know.”

With a bandage covering most of his chest and tubes sprouting from his cavities, Napoleon looked so old and vulnerable that Katharine felt a pang of pity. He reminded her of her father, and Dutch, and Uncle Walter. What were they called? The greatest generation?

Then he opened his eyes and his frosty gaze glittered. He gasped for air between snatches of words. “So, Mrs. Murray—you have—won. Satisfied?”

“Satisfied?” She shook her head. “No. Not satisfied. And I’m very sorry for Rowena and Amy.”

“Amy is—weak.” His graceful fingers played with his top sheet, clutching and unclutching. After a lifetime of gathering power, all he had left to cling to was a sheet. His voice was bitter as he went on, “—spineless—like her dad.” He paused to take several shallow breaths. “What more—do you want?”
Gasp.
“Confession?”
Gasp.
“Repentance?” He attempted a chuckle, but achieved only a series of faint coughs.

She considered. “Repentance is always good. But what I’d really like to see would be a little compassion—compassion for Dutch, Alfred, Zachary, Carter, and Ludwig. For Amy, and your bodyguards. For poor Rowena. And a little—at least a little—for yourself.”

His lips curved in a sardonic smile. “None—for Brandon?”

Her mouth twisted. “I’ve never cared for Brandon very much.”

His hands continued to play with his sheet. “Take—more.” His head jerked slightly toward a bedside table. “Drawer.” He struggled for air while she opened it and lifted out the caramel leather diary. “Give—to your—professor.”
Gasp.
“Won’t matter—soon.”
Gasp.
“Sign paper.”

She saw a paper folded inside, and took it out. It was a promise that she would not permit the contents of the diary to be published for twenty-five years. She found a pen and signed, then put the document back in the drawer and balanced the diary in one hand. The leather was cool and impersonal in her palm. “Five lives for a bit of history,” she mused sadly. “Not a very fair exchange.”

“All I—have left.”

“You have one more thing—the Ivorie Foundation. Give it to Rowena. She’d run it well, and fairly. And people like her.”

“She’s—a woman.”

“She’s the best thing you ever did. Is it a deal?”

He turned his head away.

She waited, in case he had more to say, but he did not. She had been dismissed.

“God have mercy on your soul,” she murmured as she prepared to leave.

“Never—cared about—God.” His breath was labored.

She bent and kissed the top of his white hair. It was as soft as her father’s had been at the end. “That doesn’t matter,” she told him, smoothing down a strand where she had mussed it. “God cares about you.”

She reached the door before he spoke again, one breathy word. “Deal.”

She carried the diary to her car and called Hasty’s cell phone. “Where are you?” he demanded. “And what’s going on? I didn’t like to call you—”

In case Tom answered. He didn’t have to say it.

“At Piedmont Hospital,” she replied. “I’ve just had an audience with his majesty. He asked to see me.”

“How’s he doing? I read in the paper he got shot.”

“Not well. They don’t think he’s going to make it. More important, he doesn’t think he’s going to make it. Old people often know these things.”

“So, did Tom ever get back to town?” He was casual. Too casual.

“Last night.” On the first plane he could catch after they had talked—having arranged for somebody else to handle his important meeting. He had been at Posey’s when she had gotten back from the Ivories’ and Katharine had never been so glad to see him in her life.

“I suppose you welcomed him with open arms and forgave everything?”

“I was glad to see him,” she agreed without going into details. “He’s over at the house as we speak, seeing to things, talking with the adjuster and making him recalculate everything. He’s going to meet me at Dutch’s funeral, so I can’t talk long. Did you ever call your wife and daughter about coming down?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, when they get to town, give me a call. You all can come over for supper and a swim, and I’ll give you Ludwig’s diary. The real diary.”

“The real diary?” His voice was shrill with excitement. “Not a copy?”

“Nope. Mr. Ivorie wants you to have it. He was Lee, Hasty. Napoleon Ivorie was Lee.”

He took several seconds to digest that. “Son of a gun,” he finally murmured. “Why don’t I meet you somewhere and you can tell all and hand it over?”

“Because for the next two hours I’ll be at Dutch’s funeral and the cemetery. Then I’ll be packing. After that Tom and I are going up to our house at the lake. I plan to spend next week sitting on the porch drinking gin and tonics and watching ducks while he commutes back home to deal with the mess. We’ll come back next Friday, and after that, come anytime. Bring one wife and daughter, and the diary is yours. There’s just one catch—you can’t publish anything from it for twenty-five years. I figure that’ll give you something to look forward to in retirement.”

He was silent, but the silence on the line felt familiar. She and Hasty used to commune silently on the phone for minutes on end, just listening to each other breathe and feeling each other there. Finally he asked, “What about the necklace? If Mr. Ivorie can’t buy it—”

“The necklace is on its way back to its lawful owner as we speak. I sent it yesterday.”

She ignored all the nasty things he said about her just then. Having failed to forgive Hasty once, she had no intention of making the same mistake twice.

Finally he said thoughtfully, “It might be good for my wife to meet you. Might set her mind at ease.”

“Not the most complimentary thing you’ve ever said,” she chided him.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant that she’d see you aren’t competition—”

“Dig that hole a little deeper and you won’t ever get out.”

“Oh, hell, she’ll see you aren’t the least bit interested in me. Do I have to say it straight out?”

“I’m very interested in you—as a friend.” She said it firmly. She needed to believe that as much as he did.

Patricia Sprinkle grew up in North Carolina and Florida, graduated from Vassar College, and afterwards spent a year writing in the Scottish Highlands. She has been writing mysteries full time since 1988, and currently lives in Smyrna, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. She and her husband have two grown sons. When she is not writing, Patricia is active in advocacy for abused, neglected, and deprived children. You can visit her website at
www.patriciasprinkle.com.

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