Bloody Kin (3 page)

He gestured to one of the attendants, who turned back the edge of the covering.

The man appeared to be about forty. His black hair was short and curly and he was clean-shaven. Except for a dark mole the size of a pea on his right cheek, there was nothing remarkable about his features and yet, thought Kate, there was something . . . “Do you recognize him, Mrs. Honeycutt?” asked Dwight, who was watching her closely.

“I’m not sure,” Kate said slowly. “I don’t think I ever met him, but I have the feeling I’ve seen him somewhere.”

“Here or in New York?” Kate shook her head.

“I’m sorry, I can’t remember.”

“Mama? Rob?”

Both shook their heads, too.

“Mrs. Whitley?”

“No, of course not. We’ve only lived here a few months. Tom’s in school most of the time. There hasn’t been time to meet hardly anyone and besides—” The girl seemed to hear herself chattering and clamped her tongue.

“I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. “I never saw a dead person before.”

Sally Whitley looked scared and so very, very young that Kate took pity on her.

“You’re probably worried about Mary Pat, too,” she said.

Sally Whitley nodded gratefully.

“She’s okay. I left her with my husband’s uncle. I guess I should have called over to Gilead, but I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“That’s all right. She loves Mr. Honeycutt. Would follow him around all day long if I’d let her. It’s just that, well, Mr. Tyrrell’s nice about it, but he does like to have his meals on time and he wants Mary Pat there.”

“Now don’t you worry. Rob’ll give you a ride up to the house and then drive you and Mary Pat right back to Gilead,” said Miss Emily as blithely as if she were arranging a picnic. “And, Rob, tell Lacy that Kate’s having lunch with us and see if you can make that stubborn old mule come, too. Dwight?”

The detective shook his head regretfully. “Sorry, Mama, but get Bessie to save me a piece of that pie and I’ll stop in later.”

His tone was easy, but Kate saw the speculative look in his eyes as he watched Sally Whitley walk away with Rob. Behind him, the ambulance doors clanged shut, and, although the sun shone just as warmly, Kate found herself suddenly shivering.

C
HAPTER
3

Casual acquaintances were constantly telling Emily Bryant what a jewel she had in Bessie Stewart. “A treasure,” they gushed. “A relic of the old days.” By which they meant the old pre-civil rights days when everyone, meaning blacks, knew his place and kept to it. The gushers were usually women who had to make do with indifferent help for which they paid premium wages, gave uneasy instructions, and were truly puzzled by the lack of loyalty they commanded.

When Emily Bryant first came to the farm as an inexperienced young bride, she found one of her childhood playmates married to her husband’s chief tenant. A matron of eight years’ standing at that point, Bessie had taken her in hand, taught her the rudiments of keeping house, the secret of feather-light hush puppies, and how to grass tobacco and cotton without chopping up all the tender plants. She had helped deliver Dwight a year later when a hurricane blocked the roads with uprooted trees and downed power lines, and later showed Miss Emily how to turn dresses and suits to fit four growing children when hail destroyed the tobacco two years in a row and money was nonexistent. After Cal Bryant died, it was Bessie Stewart who pushed Miss Emily to get a teaching degree, “’Cause you ain’t never going to be no farmer, I don’t care how long you live on one.”

Bessie had her own standards of what was fitting in a mistressservant relationship and she needed no movement, civil or feminist, to define them; but after all their years together, she still hadn’t pounded those standards into Emily Bryant’s fluffy head.

“Now this is really just too bad!” she scolded when Miss Emily turned up at the back door unannounced, with Kate in tow, and informed her that Rob was coming for lunch as well.

Bessie Stewart had dark brown eyes and skin the color of mellow, smoke-darkened oak. She was no taller than Miss Emily, but her honest salt-and-pepper hair was pinned into a neat bun on top of her head and she lacked her employer’s plumpness. Nor would she have been caught dead in the flashy pantsuits Miss Emily fancied. Day in, day out, she wore neat print dresses with immaculate white aprons.

Kate, who’d only seen Bessie’s perfect treasure side, tried to leave, but Bessie wouldn’t allow it. “I’m not fussing at you, honey. What we got, you welcomed to share. But
you!”
She glared at Miss Emily. “Why’d they make telephones if it wasn’t so some people could let other people know what they planning to do? What kind of food you expect and you don’t tell me you’re coming?”

“I’m not very hungry,” Kate offered, trying to pour oil on Bessie’s troubled waters.

“And Rob’s not fussy either,” said Miss Emily. “Just give us grilled cheese and coffee. Anyhow,” she added indignantly, “how could I tell you we were coming if I didn’t know it myself?”

Bessie snorted. “You knew you were walking out of that schoolhouse four hours early, didn’t you? You called Rob to come, didn’t you? While you had that little dialing finger working, you could have called me, couldn’t you? I know you, Em’ly Wallace. You always so afraid something’s gonna happen you won’t see, you don’t use good sense. Ever since you in pigtails you be sticking your nose in everybody else’s playhouse. One of these days you gonna get that nose cut off! Grilled cheese, huh! And what you laughing at, you sassy fox?” she asked Rob, who’d arrived in the middle of her tirade.

He did look foxlike standing there in the doorway grinning at her with those small white teeth.

Miss Emily held her tongue while Rob charmed Bessie back into good humor. Eventually, Bessie allowed herself to be hugged and coaxed into admitting that there might be a platter of cold fried chicken left over from the day before, and she further relented by letting him set the kitchen table instead of banishing them to the chilly dining room.

An astonishing stream of food issued from the packed refrigerator: deviled eggs, spiced pears, butter beans, potato salad, and bread-and-butter pickles joined the chicken, and a pan of hot biscuits materialized as if by magic.

“What more would you have done if you’d known we were coming?” Kate marveled.

Completely mollified now, Bessie perched on a stool at a nearby counter with a glass of strong iced tea and demanded a rehash of the morning’s events.

Already, Kate had told how she’d found the body to Lacy, to Dwight when he arrived with two patrol deputies, and again to Rob and Miss Emily. Now, feeling a bit like the Ancient Mariner, she told it once more to Bessie and found that each retelling made the horror recede a bit further. Bessie hung on every detail.

“You see? You’re every bit as curious as me,” Miss Emily said, complacently buttering a third biscuit.

“Maybe so, but you don’t see me dropping everything and running over to stick
my
nose in, do you?”

Miss Emily pounced. “Then who’s the extra pie for?”

Four pairs of eyes regarded the fragrant evidence cooling on the counter. Bessie tried to bluster it through. “Now, Kate, didn’t I use to bring you and Jake a pie whenever y’all came down?”

Remembering those homey gifts, Kate was embarrassed to feel tears sting her eyes. If they were down for just the weekend, she and Jake usually finished off Bessie’s pie on the long drive back to New York, a thermos of hot coffee and Kate holding a slice up for him to bite as they drove through the night together. Their own moveable feast.

Kate tried to keep her voice steady. “Yes, Bessie, you always did.”

“There now!” Bessie snapped at Miss Emily. “You see what you made me do? Oh, Kate, honey, I’m so sorry.”

Miss Emily patted her hand, Bessie bent to cradle Kate’s honeybrown head against her soft white apron front, and across the table, Rob helplessly proffered paper napkins, his handkerchief, anything to staunch her tears.

“No, please,” Kate said. “Don’t apologize, Bessie. It’s okay,” she gulped. “It hurts to think about Jake, talk about him, to know he’s gone forever, but it would hurt even more if we cut him out, pretended he never lived, that there’s nothing left of him.”

Unconsciously, her hand touched her abdomen and, above her head, Miss Emily’s eyes met Bessie’s in wordless confirmation.

Suddenly both women were talking at once, urging food on Kate, fussing at Rob for pigging the biscuits, pushing grief aside with talk of the man so mysteriously dead in Kate’s packhouse pit until Kate was able to join in again.

Discussing Mary Pat’s unemotional reaction to their discovery reminded Kate: “Why is Gordon Tyrrell here with Mary Pat? I thought he intended to stay in Mexico.”

“Didn’t Lacy tell you?” asked Miss Emily. “Why, he opened Gilead before Christmas.”

“Lacy doesn’t talk to me any more than he can help,” Kate said dryly. “After all this time, he still considers me a damn yankee. I thought I was making progress, but since Jake died . . .” She shrugged thin shoulders.

“Stubborn as a mule and touchy as a hornet,” said Bessie, “but you’d think Mary Pat hung the moon the way he treats her.”

“Then it’s only because she’s blood kin,” Kate said bitterly.

“I didn’t know the Gilberts and Lacy were related,” said Rob.

“Just by marriage,” said his mother. Absently, her fingers twined in and out of the chain that held her reading glasses around her neck as she sorted through the generations. “Let’s see now . . . Patricia Gilbert and Jake Honeycutt were first cousins because Franklin Gilbert and Jake’s mother Jane were brother and sister; so Mary Pat and Jake are first cousins once removed, but she’s certainly no kin to Lacy.”

“That wouldn’t stop him,” said Kate. “You know Lacy—blood kin to Jake’s like blood kin to him.”

Bessie patted Kate’s shoulder as she poured the younger woman another glass of iced tea. “Never mind, honey, he’ll come round; you wait and see.”

Kate smiled gratefully and changed the subject to less emotional ground. “I still haven’t heard why Gordon’s back at Gilead. Los Angeles or Mexico or even Vail I could understand, but here? I had the impression that Elaine and Gordon thought this part of the country too dull. Of course, I never knew them very well.”

“How could you?” Miss Emily asked tartly. “They were like a pair of hummingbirds the way they darted in and out. Here for breakfast and gone by dinner.”

“Well,
he’s
settled in to stay now,” said Bessie.

Like many large black families of the new South, Bessie’s embraced a wide economic spectrum. She was proud of her sons who owned their own small businesses or farms, tending with sophisticated machinery lands which had once required the labor of slaves and sharecroppers; of the granddaughter who taught at Duke; of the nephew who was a chemist out at the Research Triangle. High achievers all and worthy of commendation, but of more personal gratification were the apples that hadn’t rolled very far from the tree: the cousins, nieces and nephews who still hired out as domestics or day labor in the county and who could bring her all the local gossip.

Bessie may have stayed at home while Miss Emily went out to work, but her grapevine was just as extensive and she spoke with scornful authority when she asked, “Where else he gonna live like a king on nothing?”

“Oh, but surely money’s not a consideration for Gordon,” Kate protested.

“And why not?” asked Miss Emily. “The Tyrrells may be a First Family of Virginia, but Gordon’s branch was the poor relations—plenty of breeding, but not much money. And what Elaine had from the sale of Gilead was probably all gone in two or three years. Patricia gave them a real big allowance, poor child! She always did feel guilty about Gilead. Remember, Rob?”

Her son nodded.

“She loved Gilead so much that she kept thinking she’d taken advantage of Elaine when she and Philip bought out her share. The allowance probably stopped when she died, but isn’t there income from a trust fund or something? How does that work, Rob?”

“Oh no you don’t,” Rob grinned.

“Now don’t go all stuffy and lawyerish on us,” Miss Emily wheedled. “It’s not gossiping. Patricia’s will is on file over at the courthouse for the whole world to read. And Kate has just as much right to know as anybody else. Really, now that I think about it, she has lots of right because Philip Carmichael was
her
cousin. Except for Franklin Gilbert, who’s let himself go senile, and honestly! that man’s only ten years older than me. He never did have any backbone. Anyhow, except for Franklin, Kate’s probably the only blood kin Mary Pat has left in the world.”

“Am I?” asked Kate, startled. “Well, yes, I suppose I am. Here, anyway. There’s my mother, of course. She and Philip were first cousins—”

“—so that makes you and Mary Pat second cousins,” Miss Emily said, keeping her eye on the moving pea.

Curious as she was on the subject and rewarding as it might be now that Kate had mentioned her, this was not the time to get sidetracked into a discussion of Kate’s mother, a Ph.D. at some university out in New Mexico. At the moment, Kate’s mother was a trivial technicality. Kate was of the here and now. “So why shouldn’t she know how things stand?” she asked.

Rob threw up his hands in capitulation, knowing he would reveal no secrets since, as his mother had already pointed out, both wills were on public record. They were straightforward instruments, drawn up before Philip Carmichael’s heart attack, and they contained no surprises.

“When Philip died, the corporation was dissolved, all his assets liquidated, and everything channeled into various trusts for Patricia and Mary Pat. I guess he didn’t think she could handle all those interlocking subdivisions.”

“That wasn’t it,” said Kate, defending her late cousin against implied chauvinism. “Philip used to tease Patricia that she could run his affairs with one hand behind her back if she’d give them half the attention she gave Gilead. She and Jake used to get into the most complex discussions about crop rotation or farm support legislation—things that left Philip and me numb—but he couldn’t make her read a balance sheet or a financial statement on any other part of his holdings; and after Mary Pat was born, he quit trying.”

Kate took another of Bessie’s buttermilk biscuits. “Philip was realistic about their age difference, too,” she told Rob. “He knew Patricia would probably outlive him and that it was silly to expect she’d turn into a financial wizard the moment he was gone.”

“Everything went into trusts?” asked Miss Emily.

Rob nodded. “They were very flexible, though. Philip worked out the main details, but left it so that Patricia could have changed some of them if she’d wanted. So far as I know, the only thing she did was enlarge the allowance Elaine and Gordon would get if they ever became Mary Pat’s guardians.”

Miss Emily sighed. “I declare, it just breaks my heart to think about Patricia and Elaine. Both of them with everything to live for and then both of them dying so young!”

Bessie pulled one of the pecan pies closer and began to cut wide wedges. “Long as you’re talking so free, Rob, tell me this little thing: if Mr. Gordon’d drowned, too, who’d have Mary Pat now?”

“I’m not sure,” said Rob. “The bank would probably establish a household for her until she was old enough to go off to boarding school.” He looked at Kate dubiously. “Or would your mother ask for custody?”

“No,” said Kate.

There was nothing emphatic about her answer, but it did not invite further questions.

Bessie Stewart and Emily Bryant shared another significant glance. Both had been truly shocked when neither of Kate’s parents came east for Jake’s funeral and they had puzzled back and forth for a cause. Their grapevines pushed no tendrils farther west than Memphis, though, so the puzzle remained.

“What might happen doesn’t matter,” Miss Emily said briskly. “The important thing is that Mary Pat still has Gordon and he’s crazy about her. I was talking to him last week and he thinks the psychiatrist is making real good progress.”

“Psychiatrist?” asked Kate.

Miss Emily’s plump round face became solemn under the auburn curls. “She was having bad nightmares, child. And she’d wear a dress one day, then the very next day declare it wasn’t hers, that somebody had changed them. Same with her books and toys.”