Death on the Family Tree (18 page)

Hasty rolled down his window and asked in a mock British accent, “Does your dug bite?”

Katharine immediately responded with another line from
The Pink Panther
. “That is not my dug. He’s my brother-in-law’s dug. And if you are nice, he won’t bite.”

Hasty eyed the taupe snout and sharp teeth warily. “How will he know I’m being nice?”

“Good point. Come, Dane.” She bent to grab his collar, glad of a reason to duck her head. She didn’t want Hasty to see how glad she was he had come. She told herself she wanted to observe him at close range, to figure out whether he seemed familiar with her house, but because she was generally honest with herself, she also admitted she had gotten tired of her own company that morning.

He reached into the back seat and brought out two Publix bags. “Lunch,” he announced, holding them aloft.

As they went inside, she had little luck figuring out whether he seemed familiar with her house, for his whole attention was focused on Dane. “Stay,” she commanded when they reached the kitchen. Dane sat on his haunches like a great taupe god, watching Hasty as though he might be the next sacrifice.

Hasty started taking food out of the bag and setting it on the counter. “Roast chicken, potato salad, coleslaw, and mixed fruit. Good eating where I come from.”

“Where I come from, too,” she agreed.

He looked at her with an unreadable expression. “Nice haircut, Katie-bell. Really dynamite.”

She flushed at the old pet name and the praise. “Thanks.” She touched it self-consciously.

Hasty looked around. “Where did the burglar get in? Did he break a window?”

“Not that the police or I have found. The police said the front door was open when they arrived, but I didn’t leave that door unlocked. He must have gone out that way.”

“Well, you sure have come up in the world.” He looked around her kitchen, then peered into the backyard with admiration. “This place is elegant and enviable.”

It was only the truth, so why should she feel defensive? “It’s also empty, now that the kids have gone,” she said sharply.

He grinned. “So how did your folks like it?”

She grimaced. “What do you think? Mama’s first comment when she saw it was, ‘Do you plan to open up an orphanage?’ and Daddy’s was, ‘Can you get your money back and support half the homeless in Atlanta?’ But it grew on them. They used to love to come over and swim with their grandchildren.”

“Do you think you’ll move into something smaller now?”

She could not imagine Tom ever moving unless he was elderly, decrepit, and too poor to afford a maid, a cook, and a lawn ser vice. He’d been born and bred in Buckhead, and took its amenities for granted. She didn’t say that to Hasty, however. Instead she shrugged. “Maybe, eventually. Jon only graduated last month, so we haven’t talked about it. Have you bought a house in Atlanta?”

“Not until my wife decides what she’s going to do. For now, I’m in a little apartment about as big as this kitchen.” Still eyeing Dane, he began to roam.

Dane gave a low growl, but Katharine said, “It’s okay, boy.” They followed Hasty through the dining room, den, and the sunroom. He moseyed, picking up small knickknacks and putting them down. When they reached Tom’s library, he whistled in admiration. “This is one terrific room. Is this where you work?”

“No, it’s where Tom plans to work when he stops traveling so much. His intention is to read every book on the shelves.”

“I could go for that, with breaks to swim in that pool out yonder. Man, you folks have got it all, haven’t you?” Before she could reply, he spotted the pages she had left on the desk and hurried to bend over them. “Is this the diary?”

“Yeah. I was working on it—” She trailed off, because he had picked up the sheet she had just worked on for an hour and scanned it in seconds. His hands trembled.

“I can’t believe you let it get stolen.” He flung the page back on the desk and stomped across the hall to the music room. He held on to the doorjamb. “What’s this room for?”

“Nothing much at the moment. We used to have the piano in here, but now I’m fixing the room up for myself.”

He looked around. “So where’s the piano?”

“I moved it to the living room.”

He stepped across the hall and gave the room a long, considering look. “The living room where nobody lives, apparently.” He slid onto the piano bench and lifted the cover from the keyboard. A rippling arpeggio filled the air. “Nice tone.”

She had forgotten that he played. She had also forgotten how much at home he had always been in her house. He played a thunderous Chopin prelude then stood. “How about lunch?”

She was ready. It had occurred to her, a bit late, that he was managing to leave fingerprints in every room.

“How about eating on the patio?” She preferred to have him outside the house. Dane would be happier, too, out where he could roam.

“Or down by the pool? It’s shadier.” He started putting food back in the bag. “Have you got paper plates in this swanky place, or do we have to use china?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She filled a small cooler with ice, then collected paper plates and napkins and plastic cups and utensils. At the last minute she grabbed up a damp sponge and a couple of placemats. “The table may be filthy. It hasn’t been used all spring.”

He carried the bags of food and jug of iced tea. “What’s the point of having a place like this if you don’t enjoy it?”

“Don’t be rude.” She refused to admit she had been asking herself the same question that past week.

Hasty set out the food while she returned for the telephone and turned on the outside ringer. “In case the police call,” she explained. “They promised to give me a report.”

Dane explored the yard briefly, then lay with his nose on her toe. Hasty sprawled in a chair across from her and shook his head. “Seriously, Katie-bell, all this for you? Doesn’t it make you feel decadent? When did you last swim in that pool?”

She tilted her chin. “Yesterday morning. I haven’t had time today. Did you bring a suit?”

“No, we’ll have to swim another time. But I can’t dive any more. I’ve developed real bad sinuses, so I don’t put my head under water.”

He had some nerve presuming there would be another time. But that was Hasty all over—give him an inch and he’d take over your whole life. She reached for the carrier and began to spread food on the table.

He speared a grape from the fruit salad and chewed it thoughtfully. “So who do you think robbed your house? I’d vote for that old hippie, myself. If he’s any good at research, he could find out where you lived and how to break in, and he was mighty interested in the necklace. Seriously, let me put it in a safe place.”

“It’s in a safe place,” she said hotly. “Besides, Lamar Franklin has an alibi and isn’t the only person interested in the necklace. What about you? Where were you last night?”

His mouth dropped open. “You think I’d break in your house to get it? I would just come to the front door and ask nicely, ‘Would you hand it over, Kate?’ You’d do it at once.”

Was he playing a game? He seemed to be joking, but he had been president of the high school thespians. During a performance of
Guys and Dolls,
he had brought the house down with his performance of a stooped elderly man sweeping the street in the opening scene. Later the principal had run into him in costume in the hall and asked, “May I help you, sir?” before he realized who it was. Katharine’s suspicions sharpened when he leaned back in his chair and asked, “So where are you keeping it?”

“You haven’t answered
my
question,” she pointed out. “Where were you last night?”

He frowned. “Mostly on the telephone with my daughter, Kelly. She and her mother were having one of their eternal quarrels, and she had to give me a blow-by-blow description.” He gave an exasperated huff. “I guess it’s her being fifteen, but I don’t remember them fighting so much before. Now, they’re at each other’s throats half the time, and I get caught in the middle. You’ve raised teenagers. What am I supposed to do?”

“Be there,” she said promptly. “Be there to back up your wife when she has to be the heavy and to take your daughter out when she’s feeling moody.”

“Your husband wasn’t here,” he reminded her.

“He was here almost every weekend, and I had Jon. A third person in the house is a lot of help. Why don’t you go back up there and persuade them to come down here with you? Does your wife hate Georgia so much?”

“No, she likes living near her mama so much.”

“Is her mother ill?”

“No, demanding. Things were fine all those years we lived away, but once we’d been in the same town for three years, Melissa got convinced her mother needs her.”

“Persuade her you need her more. Have her come down to visit. Look at houses. Bring her and Kelly over here to swim. She might be just waiting for you to beg her to come.”

“I don’t beg.”

“You could.”

“That’s my business. Now where is the necklace?”

“That’s my business,” she parroted him. “But would you like to look at the diary? I tried translating more of it, but I’m very slow. I made a second copy to make notes on.”

He started clearing the table. “Let’s get it, then.”

He took in the scraps and dishes while she fetched the copy and a couple of pencils. She also brought her dictionary, in case his German wasn’t as perfect as he had bragged.

They laid the pages on the table between them and weighted them down with stones from her flowerbed. Katharine knew she was taking a risk. Would Hasty eventually try to overpower her and make her tell him where the necklace was? Would Dane attack him if he tried?

The man didn’t look dangerous as he picked up a handful of pages and started riffling through them, scanning lines here and there. He looked like a handsome college professor going gray around the temples, with bifocals.

The telephone rang. “Good afternoon,” Officer Williams said, “I wanted to check back and see if you have discovered anything else missing, ma’am.”

She got up and moved away from the table, out of earshot. “Nothing except the jade collection and that diary. And you might be interested to know that Zachary Andrews has disappeared. His employers called here this morning wondering if I knew where he was.”

“They called us, too. We’re checking him out. Now, if you can get those pictures and the list for us Monday, we’ll pick them up.”

She got back to the table to find Hasty muttering while he read. As soon as she sat down, he slammed the pages on the table and exploded. “This isn’t Ramsauer’s diary! It’s tripe—some woman prattling about her boyfriend. Listen to this.” He snatched up the top page. “‘As we stood watching the sun set over the Alps, did I feel you beginning to care for me as I care for you, my little love?’ Drivel!” He flung the pages back on the table. “You told me this was from Hallstatt.”

“I never did,” she protested. “I said the diary was with the necklace, and they were the only two things in an old box. I have no idea what it is. The most logical explanation is that it belonged to Aunt Lucy’s brother, Carter.”

“The phrase ‘my little love’ is masculine. It was probably your Aunt Lucy’s diary.”

“I can’t imagine her keeping a diary in German. Besides, she wasn’t in Austria very long, and she certainly wasn’t holding meetings and making plans. Here, read the first three entries.” She found them and slung them toward him.

He read swiftly what had taken her hours to translate. “It’s a seduction,” he concluded. “A deliberate plan to meet somebody in Vienna and seduce him. But I don’t understand about these meetings. The whole thing is ambiguous enough that if that’s all you had read when you first saw me, no wonder you said it was Ramsauer’s diary.” It was a grudging admission, but as close to an apology as she was likely to get.

Katharine’s temper rose. “I hadn’t read any of it yet, and I didn’t say it was Ramsauer’s diary. I said it might be. Later that afternoon, when I read the first page, I still thought it might be. Now I don’t know what to think.”

“Think it’s some love-crazed woman plotting to get her man. I can’t think of any other explanation, can you?”

He picked up another couple of pages and skimmed them. “It’s twentieth century, too. Here the writer talks about going to the movies.” He dropped the page to the table and scanned another. His lip curled. “Well, here it is. ‘Drove to a rustic inn in the mountains to spend the weekend, and I have achieved my desire. Oh, ecstasy! L
²
was right—the right setting, good wine, plus gentleness and tenderness won in the end. Afterwards, my little love wept in my arms with remorse, but I overcame all his qualms and we have pledged our love forever.’”

Hasty read to the bottom of the page then gave a grunt of disgust. “The writer of this diary was not a nice person, Katie-bell. After the seduction, she shared all the juicy details with the one referred to as L-squared, and boasts, ‘How jealous he was.’ Not a nice person at all.”

“I thought L-squared might be Aunt Lucy,” Katharine said hesitantly.

“No, he’s a man. Besides, L-squared implies somebody whose first and last names both begin with ‘
L
.’ Maybe Aunt Lucy was the seducer, and used unorthodox methods of inducing jealousy in multiple lovers.”

“It was more likely Sara Claire.” Had Sara Claire been fluent in German? How little she knew about her relatives!

“The Acid Aunt? Not likely.” Hasty’s laugh was rude. He had met Sara Claire when she visited Miami and had dubbed her that immediately.

“She might have been different in college,” Katharine argued. “More—you know—loose.”

“This woman was loose all right. A vamp.”

“Dutch was saying this week that he liked Aunt Sara Claire back then,” Katharine protested. “He wouldn’t like a tramp.”

“I said vamp, not tramp,” he corrected her. “Is Dutch still around? I always liked him.”

“He’s very much around. Lives over at Autumn Village, where Aunt Lucy and Aunt Sara Claire used to be. And he was telling me just this week about how he, Lucy, Sara Claire, and Carter were all in Europe the summer of 1937, and how much fun they had.”