Bloody Kin (5 page)

C
HAPTER
6

Kate had been aware of the telephone’s distant rings for several minutes before she could pull herself up from dreamless depths and make her body move. Still groggy, she stumbled barefooted out to the hall where their single phone sat on a massive black walnut chest.

“Hello?”

“I was beginning to think you must be out plowing the back forty,” said Gina Melnick’s amused voice.

“No,” Kate said, fluffing her brown hair where the pillow had mashed it flat. Sunlight still brightened the west parlor, but she felt disoriented. “What time is it?”

“Ten after four. What’s the matter? Don’t they have clocks down there?” The agent’s voice became worried. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Honest. It’s the pregnant lady syndrome. You caught me in the middle of a nap and there’s only one phone here, that’s what took me so long to answer. How’s New York?”

“Just as it was when you left yesterday,” Gina said dryly. “Homesick for slush and sleet already?”

Gina had not approved of this move. “It’s the farm you should be selling, not your apartment,” she’d argued; and Kate soon realized that she had not given up the fight.

“Listen,” Gina said now. “I’ve found somebody who’ll rent your apartment for three hundred a month more than your mortgage payments. What do you say?”

“I don’t know, Gina.” The immediate money would be useful, but long-distance landlording might be a hassle.

“This guy’s as honest as Abe Lincoln,” said Gina, reading her mind. “Anyhow, I’ll have my lawyer draw up a no-loophole lease and we’ll put in that he has to vacate on a month’s notice if you change your mind about coming back.”

For a moment, Kate pictured the comfortable modern apartment overlooking the Hudson River. It seemed like days instead of only hours since she had left it for this quixotic adventure. Maybe she should forget about making a home for her baby here and go back to the city where she belonged. The moment passed as she remembered how devastated New York made her feel.

The farm might be Jake’s but curiously it did not cut at her heart the way the city did. Because it was his turf and not hers, it was now more neutral. Here were no landmarks to rise up and scald her with memories of places where she and Jake had met when they were courting: the theater dates, Sunday afternoons in the museums, or bookstores where she had glanced up from a table of bestsellers to find him waving lasciviously-titled book jackets.

The apartment was haunted by their lovemaking—Jake sleepy-eyed and tousled or lustily macho. For the last two months, she had slept on the couch, unable to lie in their bed alone night after desolate night.

“Kate? You still there?” asked Gina. “Look, it’s not just you I’m thinking about. My friend really does need a place to live. He’s desperate.”

“Okay,” said Kate, warmed by her concern. “I’ll call the managing company and tell them to give you the keys.”

They talked a few minutes longer. Kate did not mention the murder because she knew how it would upset Gina, who avoided Central Park and took the risk of subway muggings in stride, but considered the countryside full of gun-wielding escaped convicts. Let Gina hear one word of murder and that brittle sophisticate was capable of catching the next plane south. Gina Melnick under the same roof with Lacy Honeycutt, even for a weekend, was something Kate preferred not to contemplate, so she talked cheerfully of settling in and promised she would soon be sending Gina designs of stunning beauty and originality.

“As long as you don’t start churning out bunnies and horsies and cute little kittycats,” Gina warned sardonically.

Mollified at getting her way, she rang off and Kate went out to the kitchen. There was still some cold coffee in the unplugged coffee maker, but in deference to the baby, she conscientiously drank milk.

There was no sign of Lacy or that he’d planned to do anything about supper, so she found a casserole that she’d left in the freezer last fall and set it on the back of the woodstove to thaw.

She dealt with the co-op’s management company in New York, then changed the bed linens and unpacked the suitcases she’d been too tired to tackle last night. Someone—Lacy? Bessie?—had cleared the drawers and closets of Jake’s country clothes, and she lined the shelves with fresh paper. The windows had been open all afternoon and fifteen minutes with dustcloth and vacuum dealt with the rest of the room’s mustiness.

When she went outside to cut a bowl of flowering quince, Kate heard the faraway whine of a chain saw. It sounded as if Lacy was getting a start on next fall’s woodpile.

She added daffodils to the quince and paused at the scraggly lilac bush. Winters down here weren’t really cold enough for vigorous growth, but the fifty-year-old bush by the kitchen door managed to push out a dozen or so spikes every spring, enough to perfume her bedroom when she carried them inside, but not today. The dark purple panicles were still as tightly closed as a clenched fist. It would take at least another week of warm weather to loosen them.

In the four years that she’d been coming to the farm, Kate had made few changes to the house beyond a new freezer and a gas range for the kitchen. Lacy always treated her with distant formality and Kate reciprocated by playing helpful guest instead of entitled resident. She usually skipped breakfast and tactfully slept in so that Lacy could enjoy Jake’s company unimpeded by her presence. After Jake added a new bath off their bedroom on the ground floor, Kate ceded the whole upstairs to Lacy and had seldom ventured up the staircase unless Jake wanted to show her something.

But the movers were coming tomorrow with the few pieces of furniture she had saved from the apartment and space would have to be found for them.

The front parlor was likeliest, Kate decided. It housed a perfectly horrible settee and matching side chair of horsehair and cracked leather, both of which could fuel a bonfire for all she cared. The rosewood Victorian armchair, pine sugar chest, and small, drop-leaf lamp stand, part of Jane Gilbert’s dowry from Gilead, were worth keeping and the faded chintz couch under the front windows was still comfortable, but the bowfront sideboard with its ugly parti-colored inlays had nothing to recommend it but age.

The settee and chair were not heavy and she tugged them out to the front hall with little effort. The sideboard was unbudgeable.

“What the hell you doing?” demanded Lacy.

Startled, Kate almost dropped the cheap tarnished pole lamp she had dismantled.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” she said.

“Don’t reckon you did with all the mess you’re making.” He stood with his thumbs hooked in the straps of his overalls and glared at her. “What’s the settee doing out in the hall?”

“The movers will be here with my things tomorrow and I’ve got to put them somewhere,” she explained. “This seemed the best place. I didn’t think you’d mind. You don’t use this room much, do you?”

She knew very well that when Lacy was here alone, he liked to hole up in the kitchen. That old-fashioned room was long enough to accommodate dining table, lounge chair, leather couch and the color television she and Jake had given him for Christmas two years ago. With the wood range for heat, the kitchen was cozy and cheerful all winter. In summer, it was well shaded and open windows on three sides provided cool cross-ventilation.

The front parlor was rarely used, but Lacy continued to glare. “Where’re these things going?”

“Out,” Kate said bluntly. “They’re practically falling apart.”

“You ain’t throwing away my mammy’s settee,” warned Lacy. “Her and Pa got that set for a wedding present from her daddy. They’ve stood right here in this parlor since the day they was bought.”

“Then it’s time they had a change of scenery,” Kate almost snapped. Then she remembered how difficult all these changes must be for the old farmer and she apologized instead.

“I’m sorry, Lacy. I should have asked you first. I really do need this space, but if you want to save them—”

“They can go in my room if they ain’t fine enough for your taste,” he said. “Less’n you’re aiming to throw me out, too?”

Kate gritted her teeth. “I’ll help you carry them up,” she said tightly. Together, they maneuvered the settee up the wide stairs into Lacy’s bedroom in the back corner of the house. The only other time she’d ever entered that room was the first day Jake showed her over the house, and she’d forgotten its Spartan bachelor simplicity.

The brass double bed was covered with several patchwork quilts, no spread. There was a rag rug on the bare boards next to the bed. A painted bedside table held a lamp, an electric clock, an ashtray, and a couple of pill bottles. Against the opposite wall, between the side windows, was a tall five-drawer dresser and mirror. On top of the dresser lay an opened carton of cigarettes, a worn comb and brush set, a Bible, and a triple-fold picture frame.

The central photograph was a hand-tinted portrait of Lacy’s mother and father. The right section held a picture of his brother Andrew and Andrew’s wife Jane; the left was an enlarged snapshot of Jake as he sat on the top step of the front porch with the dogs nuzzling his hands.

A straight-back wooden chair by the rear windows completed the furnishings.

The room felt chilly and the air was stale, as if it had been breathed in and out for months on end until nothing was left, only a faint smell of dry flesh, cigarette ash, and sun-faded net curtains over sealed windows.

Lacy seemed uncomfortable with Kate in his room and gave her no time to sightsee. As soon as they had placed the settee next to the chair, he held the door for her to leave.

He carried up the banished chair and lamp alone without comment, but balked again when Kate told him the sideboard had to go, too.

“That come from Gilead,” he protested.

So Kate knew.

Patricia had tried to wheedle Jake out of the sugar chest and lamp stand while she was restoring Gilead, but when Kate later offered to return the sideboard, Patricia had refused in mock horror.

“All Gilead’s geese weren’t swans, honey,” she’d giggled, “and that thing’s a real turkey.”

“It’s too heavy to carry upstairs,” said Kate, “but maybe we could slide it out to the hall and I’ll get the movers to do something with it tomorrow.”

Despite his age, Lacy was still strong, yet even with Kate’s help, the solid oak hulk resisted mightily. The floor beneath shrieked as they managed to heave it a few inches away from the wall.

“Can I help?” asked a pleasant masculine voice.

Kate straightened to see a vaguely familiar man standing outside the parlor door. Just under six feet, he had light brown hair, a medium frame and a diffident, slightly lopsided smile. He wore well-cut gray slacks and a light tweed jacket over a blue oxford shirt unbuttoned at the neck.

“Sorry just to walk in, but the door was open and I
did
knock.” He pantomimed knocking with the knobbed cane he carried. “Good evening, Mr. Honeycutt; welcome back to Colleton County, Kate.”

Lacy gave a formal nod, but Kate crossed the parlor with outstretched hands and impulsively clasped his.

“Gordon!” she said, conscious of his double loss since they’d last met. “How good to see you again. I almost didn’t recognize you without your beard.”

“The nurses shaved it off after the accident,” said Gordon Tyrrell, “and it wouldn’t grow back properly, so I’ve had to get acquainted with a razor again.”

He bent to kiss her cheek in greeting and she saw the long smooth scar. It followed his strong left jawline and was almost unnoticeable now, but it would undoubtedly stand out in white relief if he tried to grow a beard around it.

“You look very nice without it,” Kate smiled.

And he did. Younger, too, and somehow more vulnerable. In the few times they’d been thrown together over the past four or five years, Gordon had always struck her as very Old South—ever aware that the blood of a heroic Confederate colonel flowed in his veins, but ready to be polite to the granddaughter of Irish immigrants since she was the wife of his own wife’s cousin. Without Elaine’s vivacity to play against now, and bereft of his precisely clipped beard, he seemed more human and less standoffish.

“Can I help with that?” he asked, eyeing the sideboard.

“Oh, no,” said Kate. “You shouldn’t.”

“Because of the cane?” Gordon asked. “That’s mainly for show. My leg’s almost completely healed.”

He laid the stick aside and with all three of them shoving, the sideboard edged another six inches closer to the door.

“This isn’t working,” said Kate, “and we’re wrecking the floor. The movers are bound to have a dolly or something and I’ll get them to shift it tomorrow. Come and sit down, Gordon. Can I get you a drink?”

“Actually, I came to offer you one,” he said. “Dinner, too. Much against her will, Mrs. Faircloth’s cooked a whole leg of lamb, and there’s just Mary Pat and me. We’d be very honored if you and Mr. Honeycutt would join us.”

“Thank you kindly,” said Lacy, who’d never tasted lamb till Kate came, “but I reckon I’d better hang around here. Dogs ain’t been fed yet and there’s still some chores need doing.” His voice trailed off.

The thought of spending the whole evening with Lacy’s taciturnity was suddenly more than Kate wanted to face.

“I’d love to come,” she said. “What time?”

“Now,” said Gordon. “Mary Pat’s still a little young for more formal hours. I’ll wait if you want to change.”

“I won’t be more than ten minutes,” Kate promised. “Lacy, there’s a chicken casserole on the stove, if you want it.”

Without waiting to hear his rebuff, Kate hurried down the hall to her room and kicked off her sneakers. She had not forgotten the quick-change tricks she had learned as a model and in precisely nine and a half minutes, she had showered, brushed her hair into an elegant twist, and slipped into low heels and a short cream-colored skirt topped by an oversized pullover of pale blue, green, and lavender cotton that brought out the blue of her changeable eyes and disguised her thickened waistline.

“Beautiful,” said Gordon as she came back along the hall with a white shawl draped over her shoulder in case the night turned chilly. “Elaine never made a huge mystical production about changing either. She could go from a boat deck to a ballroom in less time than it took most women to decide what shade of lipstick to wear.”