Murder at Monticello (12 page)

24

“I thought it would take some of the burden off you. You don't need people at you right now.” Ansley Randolph leaned on the white fence and watched the horses breeze through their morning workout around the track—the Fibar and sand mix kept the footing good year-round. “Not that anything will make you feel better, for a time.”

Pain creased the lines around Warren's eyes. “Honey, I've no doubt that you thought you were doing the right thing, but number one, I am tired of being whipped into shape by Mim Sanburne. Number two, my family's diaries, maps, and genealogies stay right here at Eagle's Rest. Some are so old I keep them in the safe. Number three, I don't think anything of mine will interest Kimball Haynes, and number four, I'm exhausted. I don't want to argue with anyone. I don't even want to explain myself to anyone. No is no, and you'll have to tell Mim.”

Ansley, while not in love with Warren, liked him sometimes. This was one of those times. “You're right. I should have kept my mouth shut. I suppose I wanted to curry favor with Mim. She gives you business.”

Warren clasped his hands over the top rail of the fence. “Mim keeps a small army of lawyers busy. If I lose her business, I don't think it will hurt either one of us, and it won't hurt you socially either. All you have to do is tell Mim that I'm down and I can't have anything on my mind right now. I need to rest and repair—that's no lie.”

“Warren, don't take this the wrong way, but I never knew you loved your father this much.”

He sighed. “I didn't either.” He studied his boot tips for a second. “It's not just Poppa. Now I'm the oldest living male of the line, a line that extends back to 1632. Until our sons are out of prep school and college, the burden of that falls entirely on me. Now I must manage the portfolio—”

“You have good help.”

“Yes, but Poppa always checked over the results of our investments. Truth be told, darling, my law degree benefitted Poppa, not me. I read over those transactions that needed a legal check, but I never really paid attention to the investments and the land holdings in an aggressive sense. Poppa liked to keep his cards close to his chest. Well, I'd better learn fast. We've been losing money on the market.”

“Who hasn't? Warren, don't worry so much.”

“Well, I might have to delay running for the state Senate.”

“Why?” Ansley wanted Warren in Richmond as much as possible. She intended to work nonstop for his election.

“Might look bad.”

“No, it won't. You tell the voters you're dedicating this campaign to your father, a man who believed in self-determination.”

Admiring her shrewdness, he said, “Poppa would have liked that. You know, it's occurred to me these last few days that I'm raising my sons the way Poppa raised me. I was packed off to St. Clement's, worked here for the summers, and then it was off to Vanderbilt. Maybe the boys should be different—maybe something wild for them like”—he thought—“Berkeley. Now that I'm the head of this family, I want to give my sons more freedom.”

“If they want to attend another college, fine, but let's not push them into it. Vanderbilt has served this family well for a long time.” Ansley loved her sons although she despised the music they blasted throughout the house. No amount of yelling convinced them they'd go deaf. She was sure she was half deaf already.

“Did you really like my father?”

“Why do you ask me that now, after eighteen years of marriage?” She was genuinely surprised.

“Because I don't know you. Not really.” He gazed at the horses on the far side of the track, for he couldn't look at her.

“I thought that's the way your people did things. I didn't think you wanted to be close.”

“Maybe I don't know how.”

Too late now, she thought to herself. “Well, Warren, one step at a time. I got along with Wesley, but it was his way or no way.”

“Yep.”

“I did like what he printed on his checks.” She recited verbatim: “These funds were generated under the free enterprise system despite government's flagrant abuse of the income tax, bureaucratic hostilities, and irresponsible controls.”

Warren's eyes misted. “He was tough duty, but he was clear about what he thought.”

“We'll know even more about that at the reading of the will.”

25

The reading of the will hit Warren like a two-by-four. Wesley had prepared his will through the old prestigious firm of Maki, Kleiser, and Maki. Not that Warren minded. It would be indelicate to have your son prepare your will. Still, he wasn't prepared for this.

A clause in his father's will read that no money could ever be inherited by any Randolph of any succeeding generation who married a person who was even one-twentieth African.

Ansley laughed. How absurd. Her sons weren't going to marry women from Uganda. Her sons weren't even going to marry African Americans, quadroons, octoroons, no way. Those boys weren't sent to St. Clements to be liberals and certainly not to mix with the races—the calendar be damned.

Warren, ashen when he heard the clause, sputtered, “That's illegal. Under today's laws that's illegal.”

Old George Kleiser neatly stacked his papers. “Maybe. Maybe not. This will could be contested, but who would do that? Let it stand. Those were your father's express wishes.” Apparently George thought the proviso prudent, or perhaps he subscribed to the let-sleeping-dogs-lie theory.

“Warren, you aren't going to do anything about this? I mean, why would you?”

As if in a trance, Warren shook his head. “No—but, Ansley, if this gets out, there go my chances for the state Senate.”

George's stentorian voice filled the room. “Word of this, uh, consideration will never leave this room.”

“What about the person who physically prepared the will?” Warren put his foot in it.

George, irritated, glided over that remark as he made allowances for Warren's recent loss. He'd known Warren since infancy, so he knew the middle-aged man in front of him was unprepared to take the helm of the family's great, though dwindling, fortune. “Our staff is accustomed to sensitive issues, Warren. Issues of life and death.”

“Of course, of course, George—I'm just flabbergasted. Poppa never once spoke of anything like this to me.”

“He was a genteel racist instead of an overt one.” Ansley wanted to put the subject out of her mind and couldn't see why Warren was so upset.

“And aren't you?” Warren fired back.

“Not as long as we don't intermarry. I don't believe in mixing the races. Other than that, people are people.” Ansley shook off Warren's barb.

“Ansley, you must promise me never, never, no matter how angry you may become with me or the boys—after all, people do rub one another's nerves—but you must never repeat what you've heard in this room today. I don't want to lose my chance because Poppa had this thing about racial purity.”

Ansley promised never to tell.

26

But she did. She told Samson.

The early afternoon sun slanted across Blair Bainbridge's large oak kitchen table. Tulips swayed outside the long windows, and the hyacinths would open in a few days if this welcome warmth continued.

“I'm not surprised,” Samson told Ansley. “The old man made a lifetime study of bloodlines, and to him it would be like crossing a donkey with a Thoroughbred.” Then he smirked. “Of course, who is the donkey and who is the Thoroughbred?”

She held his hand as she sipped her hot chocolate. “It seems so—extreme.”

Samson shrugged. The contents of Wesley's will held scant interest for him. Another twenty minutes and he would have to hit the road. His stomach knotted up each time he left Ansley. “Say, I've got people coming in from California to look at Midale. Think I'll show them some properties in Orange County too. Awful pretty up there and not so developed. If I can sell Midale, I'll have some good money.” He pressed his other hand on top of hers. “Then you can leave Warren.”

Ansley stiffened. “Not while he's in mourning for his father.”

“After that. Six months is a reasonable period of time. I can set my house in order and you can do the same.”

“Honey”—she petted his hand—“let's leave well enough alone—for now. Lulu will skin you alive and in public. There's got to be a way around her, but I haven't found it yet. I keep hoping she'll find someone, she'll make life easier—but she has too much invested in being the wronged woman. And that scene at Big Daddy's funeral. My God.”

Samson coughed. The knot in his stomach grew tighter. “Just one of those things. She leaned over to whisper in my ear and said she smelled another woman's perfume. I don't know what got into her.”

“She knows my perfume, Diva. Anyway, when we're together I don't wear any perfume.”

“Natural perfume.” He kissed her hand in his.

She kissed him on the cheek. “Samson, you are the sweetest man.”

“Not to hear my wife tell it.” He sighed and bowed his head. “I don't know how much longer I can stand it. I'm living such a lie. I don't love Lulu. I'm tired of keeping up with the Joneses, who can't keep up with themselves. I'm tired of being trapped in my car all day with strangers and no matter what they tell you they want to buy, they really want the opposite. I swear it. Buyers are liars, as my first broker used to say. I don't know how long I can hold out.”

“Just a little longer, precious.” She nibbled on his ear. “
Was
there another woman's perfume on your neck?”

He sputtered, “Absolutely not. I don't even know where she came up with that. You know I don't even look at other women, Ansley.” He kissed her passionately.

As she drew back from the kiss she murmured, “Well, she knows, she just doesn't know it's me. Funny, I like Lulu. I call her most every morning. I guess she's my best friend, but I don't like her as your wife and I never did. I couldn't get it, know what I mean? You can sometimes see a couple and know why they're together. Like Harry and Fair when they were together. Or Susan and Ned—that's a good pair—but I never felt the heat, I guess you'd say, between Lulu and you. I don't really feel like I'm betraying her. I feel like I'm liberating her. She deserves the heat. She needs the right man for her—you're the right man for me.”

He kissed her again and wished the clock weren't ticking so loudly. “Ansley, I can't live without you. You know that. I'll never be as rich as Warren, but I'm not poor. I work hard.”

Her voice low, she brushed his cheek with her lips as she said, “And I want to make sure you don't join the ranks of the nouveau pauvre. I don't want your wife to take you to the cleaners. Give me a little time. I'll think of something or someone.” She leapt out of her chair. “Oh, no!”

“What?” He hurried to her side.

Ansley pointed out the kitchen window. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker merrily raced to the stable. “Harry can't be far behind, and she's no dummy.”

“Damn!” Samson ran his hands through his thick hair.

“If you slip out the front door I'll go out to the stable and head her off. Hurry!” She kissed him quickly. She could hear the heels of his shoes as he strode across the hardwood floors to the front door. Ansley headed for the back screen door.

Harry, much slower than her four-footed companions, had just reached the family cemetery on the hill. Ansley made it to the stable before Harry saw her.

“What's she doing in Blair's house?”
Tucker asked.

Mrs. Murphy paused to observe Ansley.
“High color. She's het up about something and we know she's not stealing the silver. She's got too much of her own.”

“What if she's a kleptomaniac?”
Tucker cocked her head as Ansley walked toward them.

“Nah. But give her a sniff anyway.”

“Hi there, Mrs. Murphy. You too, Tucker,” Ansley called to the animals.

“Ansley, what are you up to?”
Tucker asked as she poked her nose toward Ansley's ankles.

Ansley waved at Harry, who waved back. She reached down to scratch Tucker's big ears.

“Hi, how nice to find you here.” Harry diplomatically smiled.

“Warren sent me over to look at Blair's spider-wheel tedder. Says he wants one and maybe Blair will sell it.”

A spider-wheel tedder turns hay for drying and can row up two swathes into one for baling. Three or four small metal wheels that resemble spiderwebs are pulled by a tractor.

“Thought you all rolled up your hay.”

“Warren says he's tired of looking at huge rolls of shredded wheat in the fields and the middle of them is always wasted. He wants to go back to baling.”

“Be a while.” Harry noted the season.

Ansley lowered her voice. “He's already planning Thanksgiving dinner for the family. I think it's how the grief is taking him. You know, if he plans everything, then nothing can go wrong, he can control reality—although you'd think he would have had enough of that with his father.”

“It will take time.” Harry knew. She had lost both her parents some years before.

Mrs. Murphy, on her haunches, got up and trotted off toward the house.
“She's lying.”

“Got that right.”
The dog followed, her ears sweeping back for a moment.
“Let's nose around.”

The two animals reached the back door. Tucker, nose straight to the ground, sniffed intently. Mrs. Murphy relied on her eyes as much as her nose.

Tucker picked up the scent easily.
“Samson Coles.”

“So that's it.”
Mrs. Murphy walked between the tulips. She loved feeling the stems brush against her fur.
“She must really be bored.”