Bloody Kin (14 page)

C
HAPTER
18

Mary Pat Carmichael sat cross-legged on the floor by her toy box feeling slightly muddled. Everything kept changing but she had thought she understood the game the grown-ups were playing with the little wooden box: somebody was supposed to hide it and then everybody else try to find it.

First it was in Uncle James’s trunk and when Sally found it and hid it, Uncle Gordon called people in to help look. Then she found it in that old suitcase under Sally’s bed; only when Sally called everybody in to look, she didn’t tell them about the little box. Just her earrings. And Sally had cried, so maybe earrings weren’t part of the game, just the box.

Mary Pat knew that prying was rude, and she would never open someone else’s drawers or closets uninvited; nor did she ever enter without permission Gordon Tyrrell’s rooms or the servants’ locker room where they changed clothes and left their pocketbooks. There were rules against that and Mary Pat obeyed specific rules.

But Sally had given her free run of their quarters when she and Tom were there and no one had said she mustn’t enter alone; so there was no feeling of breaking any rules, only a slight sense of mischief that made Mary Pat click on the intercom in the playroom a few days ago and then slip down the stairs to Sally’s bedroom. Through the intercom panel over the double bed, she could listen as Sally vacuumed and sang to herself directly overhead.

Mary Pat had done this before; but that day, as she reached for the intercom button, her hand jiggled a pencil on the shelf that formed the headboard and it rolled off the back. She lifted the edge of the coverlet and started to crawl under the bed, to find an old suitcase blocking her way.

She pulled it out, retrieved the pencil, and started to push the bag back under when curiosity overcame her. There was a brief struggle with her conscience; but somehow, a shabby, beat-up suitcase didn’t seem in the same category as drawers and cupboards. And after she opened it, she was thrilled to discover the little wooden box that all the adults had hunted for the week before.

Giggling to herself, she had replaced the suitcase and carried the little box off to a new hiding place, thinking how much fun it would be when Sally discovered it was gone. Because that was part of the game. You weren’t supposed to even hint that you were the one who knew where it was.

Only, Sally wasn’t playing the way Uncle Gordon did. Unless—? Another possibility suddenly popped into Mary Pat’s mind: Maybe Sally didn’t know. Maybe it was Tom who had hidden the little box under their bed. And some bad person really did sneak in and steal Sally’s pretty earrings.

Poor Sally, she thought.

Mary Pat truly regretted Sally Whitley’s sadness, but she was only four and a half years old and she could not resist hugging to herself her secret knowledge of James Tyrrell’s perambulating cedar chest.

That first hiding place was no good, she decided happily. She knew a much better one.

News of the latest theft spread quickly from DeWanda to Bessie to Kate.

Kate had hauled a carload of cartons from the front parlor down to the packhouse and she stopped unpacking when Bessie came back in mid-afternoon with a jug of iced tea, some freshly-baked cookies, and an account of Sally Whitley’s loss.

“That poor child!” said Bessie. “Now she’s got nothing left of her mama’s. It’s so sad.”

Kate went blank for a moment, trying to remember if she had a single keepsake from either of her own parents. She couldn’t think of anything. Her mother had sold all her Carmichael heirlooms long before Kate’s birth. Both parents were scholars and conscientious nonmaterialists who lived Spartan lives, were indifferent to most nonintellectual activities, and supported a dozen or more worthy causes around the globe. They were slightly startled when Kate came along in their late thirties; and, although they tended her well and kindly, they never quite overcame their conviction that childrearing was some sort of intellectual exercise in logic and efficiency. Kate was thirteen before she saw the humor of the whole situation and stopped feeling sorry for herself. In their own way, she knew they felt affection for her. They would not come East for the birth of their grandchild, but eventually there would arrive in her mailbox a notification from some animal-of-the-month club that an endangered dikdik or howler monkey had been adopted in the baby’s name.

Kate abruptly realized that Bessie was staring at her curiously, so she nodded, “Yes, it
is
sad. And scary, too, if it’s the same person that killed that man and stole Jake’s war things. I wonder if Dwight thinks it was?”

“DeWanda said he didn’t rightly say. Mr. Gordon, he thought it was a tramp.” The shrug of her shoulder dismissed Gordon Tyrrell’s theory. “Have some more cookies, honey. Oatmeal’s real good for you.”

Smiling, Kate took another, moist with raisins and still warm from Bessie’s oven. The domestic aroma of oatmeal and molasses made her feel cosseted.

“I’d tell you they tasted just like my mother used to make, only my mother never baked a thing in her life,” Kate said, and gave the older woman a hug as she went back to unpacking her drawing supplies.

Bessie was shocked, and her mouth pursed disapprovingly while she measured the window seat for cushions. She knew times had changed, that working mothers couldn’t bake as often as they might wish, that store-bought cakes and cookies often had to fill in; but what kind of mother never baked at all?

As she carefully wrote down the final figures, she heard a car pull up outside. Kate had heard, too, and went over to a new window beside the door.

“Why, here’s Dwight now,” she said and opened the door.

The detective looked at the half-eaten cookie in her hand. “That’s not one of Bessie’s, is it?”

Kate laughed at the hopeful look on his face and called back over her shoulder, “Here I thought he’d come to tell us about the latest crime and all he wants is one of your cookies, Bessie.”

“He always could sniff ’em out,” said Bessie. “Beatingest thing I ever saw.”

But her dark face beamed as she lifted the napkin from the heaped plate and invited him to help himself.

Dwight did not stand on ceremony. He took three cookies in rapid succession and washed them down with a paper cup of iced tea. “I could smell ’em from the top of the turnpike, Bessie,” he grinned and promptly ate two more.

“Now what’s all this we hear ’bout somebody breaking in at Gilead again?” Bessie asked guilelessly, refilling Dwight’s cup from the tea jug.

“You gonna pretend like DeWanda didn’t give you a blow-by-blow account?” he teased.

“She might of hit the high spots,” Bessie admitted, “but Kate didn’t hear her.”

Whether it was the cookies that loosened his tongue or for reasons of his own, Dwight described the burglary in greater detail than DeWanda had been able to. Kate stretched her long legs out on the window ledge and Bessie perched on the high stool to listen, while Dwight found himself a seat on a countertop and told how the outer doorknob to the Whitley rooms had been wiped clean and how no unexpected fingerprints had been found anywhere else.

“Was it the same man as before?” Kate asked.

“Hard to say. Sure doesn’t sound like Mrs. Whitley’s earrings have anything to do with the rest of what’s happened.”

“It’s been almost three weeks,” Kate said bleakly. “We’re never going to know, are we?”

She was suddenly seized by another of those irrational mood swings as she thought of Jake, killed before her pregnancy was confirmed. He had wanted a child as much as she and to die without knowing? It was so damnably unfair!

“Whoever it was, he’s done what he came to do, got what he wanted, and now he’s gone. Jake was murdered and we’ll never know who did it or even why.”

Her head fell and her hair swirled around her thin face like a veil, but not before Dwight saw her blue-green eyes blur. She shifted on the window ledge and stared out across the field with her back to them.

A lovely woman trying to hold back tears made Dwight as uncomfortable as any man.

“We’ll find out,” he promised. “It takes time, but we’re getting closer every day. That’s really what I stopped by to tell you. I spent the morning up at the airport and it looks awfully much like Bernie Covington was out here when Jake was killed. I don’t have proof that he shot Jake, but he was here.”

Her emotions under control again, Kate swung around to listen.

“He rented a car at the airport that Friday before Jake was shot and returned it that same Sunday night. Paid cash each time. The charge card he used for ID was phony, by the way. The address he used, too. The company doesn’t have any records of a Charles Bernard, so they can’t help us. I was really counting on that to give us an idea of where Covington’s been since last fall and what he was up to.

“All we know for sure is that he was in Mexico about the time James Tyrrell drowned and that he was here in North Carolina when Jake got shot.”

“And then back to Mexico,” said Kate, puzzled. “Isn’t that what you said yesterday? That Bernie Covington was seen in Costa Verde a month or so after the boating accident?”

“That’s right. And I talked to the airlines that had flights heading south that Sunday night. It’s just amazing what those people can pull out of their computers these days! One of those passenger lists for October 9 showed a Charles Bernard routed as far as Brownsville, Texas. From there, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump down the coast to Costa Verde.”

“Why’d he want to go back down yonder for?” asked Bessie.

“We don’t know yet.”

“What about incoming flights for this trip?” Kate asked.

“No luck,” said Dwight. “They punched in the names Bernard and Covington, but nothing useful came up on the screens. He could’ve flown in from anywhere and, of course, he could’ve used a different name altogether. You don’t have to show any ID to buy a plane ticket.”

“Mexico in September,” Kate mused. “Up to North Carolina and back to Mexico in October, then here again in March to get himself killed.”

“I just bet he was the one that stole Mr. James’s stuff out of Gilead’s attic,” said Bessie. “Stole ’em in October and come back for Jake’s things, only this time that Kid was waiting for him and killed him dead.”

Her theory sounded plausible to Kate. “So now the Kid—William Thompson?—could still be roaming around the area? Why, why, why?” There was pain and frustration in Kate’s voice. “What’s here for him?”

Dwight shrugged. “Maybe Covington stashed something here that he needs before he can move on. Maybe he’s broke right now until he can find it.”

“So he’s stolen Sally Whitley’s earrings, risked getting caught here where it could do him the most harm, merely so he’d have something to hock for food or traveling money?” Kate frowned. “Sounds rather stupid to me.”

“Criminals aren’t always known for their smarts,” Dwight told her.

“May not be too smart, but he’s sure got everybody flummoxed,” Bessie said dryly. “And where’s he holed up to do all this, Dwight? Ain’t nobody seen strangers ’round here. Kate, you and Mr. Gordon walk all over both places. Y’all seen any sign of extra boot tracks? Has Tucker Sauls or Mr. Lacy? Willy sure ain’t and he asked up at the store, too.”

She presented a strong argument, thought Dwight. To his way of thinking, a farmer was the most territorial creature going and exceedingly jealous of all unauthorized impingements. A farmer will share his watermelons or sweet corn, invite you to help yourself to a bushel of peas, or help you dig wild dogwoods in his woods to transplant to your lawn; but pick even a dandelion from his fence row without permission and his hackles begin to rise. He lives in such intimacy with the land inside his boundaries that he almost knows when a blade of grass or grain of sand has been disturbed.

Even if William Thompson could live totally on the land, someone would have heard a rifle shot, would have noticed a campfire, or seen one of the hundred other signs a human forager cannot help leaving. In the thickest woods, along a deserted stretch of creek, a woods-smart interloper might escape attention for a week or so, but moving back and forth for three weeks?

Not hardly likely, thought Dwight.

“I don’t suppose you’ve remembered something Jake ever mentioned about Vietnam that would help us?” he asked Kate.

She shook her head. “Nothing. It was so long before we met, and even the few times that he and James got together, there was none of that remember-the-good-old-war-days. At least not that I heard. They felt lucky to get out alive and they just didn’t talk about it.”

“‘The few times they got together’?” asked Dwight. “I thought they were right good friends.”

“They were. What they went through together forged a bond that could never be broken; but after college, Jake got caught up in his career and later we were married. James was sort of drifting along with Gordon and Elaine and he never married, so as time passed, he and Jake had less and less in common. But even though they didn’t see each other much anymore, I think Jake still considered James his closest male friend, and if James had ever needed his help, Jake would have dropped everything to give it.

“But so far as sharing any war secrets?” Kate spread her hands helplessly. “I just don’t know.”

“Don’t worry. Sooner or later, we’ll get a line on William Thompson and everything will fall into place. I’ll keep you informed.”

He swung himself down from the counter to leave and snagged a couple of Bessie’s oatmeal cookies in passing.

“Two for the road,” he told her with the same easy grin that had got round her in his high school days. “Y’all take care, hear?”

“That Dwight, he don’t change a lick,” Bessie said when he’d gone; and while she helped unpack Kate’s art books, she related some of Dwight’s on- and off-court antics. Of his current domestic problems though, she was silent except to remark when Kate alluded to them, “That Jonna ain’t got the sense God gave a turnip. You want me to help you get another load of boxes?”

“No thanks Bessie. You’ve done enough for one day. Come on and I’ll drive you home. We’ll stop at the house and I’ll give you a check for the cushion material now.”