5 Murder by Syllabub (2 page)

T
he airport was small, even smaller than San Luis Obispo’s, and filled with people, almost all in uniform. They seemed cheerful enough as they crowded around the luggage carousel. More cheerful than I felt. We’d caught the first flight out of San Luis Obispo, waited in L.A. an hour for our next flight to Philadelphia and almost missed our connection to Newport News. A light flashed and the conveyor belt started to move. Luggage came out of a chute and fell onto the moving belt. My eyes were glued on it. We’d made our connection. I wasn’t sure our luggage had.

Aunt Mary paid no attention. She kept looking around the terminal. “Elizabeth’s not here.” She tugged at the hem of her cranberry wool jacket, trying to pull it down farther over her best
—actually her only—pair of gray pants. She’d bought that jacket at St. Mark’s fall rummage sale, definitely one of her better buys. She’d called me up after the event, riddled with guilt because as the organizer, she felt she shouldn’t buy anything until the very end, after all the best items were gone. But the jacket was to her liking, her size and only two dollars. Did I think she should put it back for the next rummage sale? No. So, she kept it and it looked nice.

“What if something happened and Elizabeth doesn’t come? What will we do?”

Never forgive her
. I wasn’t about to say that aloud. “You have her cell number. We’ll call if she doesn’t appear soon. Is that your suitcase?”

Her suitcase came sliding down the chute, much to my relief. I’d
advised her to tie a ribbon to the handle so she could find it easily. She had followed my suggestion, choosing a bright blue plaid ribbon. Before I could get there, she leaned forward and grabbed it, heaving it up and stepping backward. I could only watch as her heel landed on someone’s foot.

“Oh. I’m so sorry.” She turned to look into the face of the silent man who had sat beside her from Los Angeles to Philadelphia.

“No problem.” He winced a little and stared down at the toe of his once immaculate black loafer. “That your bag?”

She nodded. He took hold of it and set it upright, facing away from him. “You might want to get a cart.”

She looked over at me, a little lost. “It has those little wheels.”

He nodded and looked toward me as well. “Yes. Are you with someone or is someone meeting you?”

Was he afraid he’d get stuck with the old girl? I started toward her but my own case slid down the ramp and I hurried forward to grab it. I turned just in time to catch her reply.

“My friend, Elizabeth Smithwood. I don’t see her, but I’m sure she’ll be here soon.” She
took another look around the terminal, which was emptying rapidly.

“Smithwood?”
For a moment his expression lost its neutrality, but not long enough to be read. What had I seen, surprise, annoyance? Impatience, definitely.

“Yes. Do you know her?”

The man’s eyes darted around the terminal then settled back on Aunt Mary. “I hope you enjoy your stay,” he said. Suitcase trailing behind him, he headed for the terminal door, paused and headed for a side door. A sign above it proclaimed, “Rental Cars.”

“Friendly sort.” I parked my suitcase
next to hers and gave the place a once-over. I was beginning to feel concerned. The terminal was almost empty. The fading light said it was getting late and so did my growling stomach. What would we do if Elizabeth didn’t show up?

A tall
, angular-looking woman rushed into the building, clutching a straw hat onto her head. A long gray braid hung down her back and a full denim skirt swirled around her legs, which were covered with bright red stockings. Her face had a sculptured look—high cheekbones, straight, strong nose, large gray eyes that seemed to take in the whole room, and a very determined chin. Elizabeth.

She came toward Aunt Mary at a gallop. “Mary.”

Aunt Mary beamed. “We made it.” She gave Elizabeth a hug then held her at arm’s length. “You look great.”

She didn’t look great to me. Elizabeth was too thin. There were
bruise-like smudges under her eyes and hollows under her cheekbones. The rigidity in the way she held herself screamed tension. Elizabeth smiled at Aunt Mary, though, and shook her head slightly. “If it was only so.” She enveloped her in another hug, almost lifting her off her feet. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here. Both of you.” She turned to me and grinned. “Did you have a good trip? Where’s your luggage? Is that it? You didn’t bring much. Oh, well. We can always go shopping.”

“We can also wash
,” Aunt Mary said. “I assume you have a washing machine?”

Elizabeth nodded and laughed. “Mary, you never change. Of course I do, but if my sister-in-law has anything to say about it, you’ll go shopping. Come on. The car’s right outside so we won’t have to walk. No. I’ll get that.”

Elizabeth, towing Aunt Mary by one arm and her suitcase by the other, headed for the terminal door. I trailed behind. A silver blue Toyota Prius waited in the loading zone.

A tall black man in a police uniform stood beside it. “Miss Elizabeth, if you don’t quit parking like this, you’re going to get a ticket.” His voice had the soft accents of a native Virginian.

“I know, Noah, but I was late and I had to rush. What are you doing here anyway?” Pulling open the back door, she shoved Mary forward and added, “This is Mary McGill, my oldest friend. We went to college together.” She picked up Mary’s suitcase and tried to shove it through the opening. “This is her niece, Ellen McKenzie. Dunham. I almost forgot. She got married right about the time William died.” She gestured at me as her introduction ground to a halt.

Noah sighed. “I know. Get in and pop the trunk.”

Aunt Mary and I were equally surprised when Elizabeth meekly did as she was told.

Noah took Aunt Mary’s suitcase, then mine, and heaved them in. He reached for my carry-on bag. “You want this in here or in the backseat?”

“Back there is fine.” Who was this man who was obviously so well acquainted with Elizabeth and shouldn’t—if his uniform was any clue—be handling luggage. He shouldn’t even be here, in Newport News. His arm patch clearly read “Williamsburg Police Department” and the stripes, “sergeant.”

He held out his hand to Aunt Mary
who, though confused, extended hers. He took it and helped her into the car. “Glad you’re here safe and sound. Ever since she heard you were coming, Miss Elizabeth has been fretting something would happen to you. Only thing that got her through was knowing you’d be with her.” He grinned at me and opened the back door. I climbed in. He smiled, closed my door and poked his head in Aunt Mary’s open window. “Fasten your seat belts, all of you, and get out of here. Chief Brewley’s coming in on the next plane and I’ve got to meet him.”

“Thanks, Noah,” Elizabeth called out. “See you at home later. Tell your mama to come by. I’ve made
syllabub.”

She pulled out into traffic, barely missing a hotel bus. Tires screeched and a horn blasted. I looked back. Noah stood on the curb, hands on hips, watching us drive away.

E
lizabeth drove down a dark country road, nervously peering over the steering wheel. She talked almost nonstop during the drive, providing a somewhat abbreviated history of the last few months—William’s and her retirement from the college, their return to Smithwood, William’s stroke and their hasty marriage right before his death. None of this was news to Aunt Mary and little of it to me. It was the mysterious and frightening events that had prompted Elizabeth’s plea for help we wanted to know about.

“I saw him a couple of days before I called. It must have been after midnight, not too long after I’d put down my book and turned off the light. The dog started to growl so I got up to investigate. It never occurred to me someone might actually be in the house. I opened my door and there he was. Looking for all the world like a Colonial gentleman with his pigtail and
tri-corner hat. He turned when he heard the door but didn’t seem surprised, at least not until the dog charged out. That’s when he turned and headed back down the stairs.”

“What did you do?” I leaned over the back of Aunt Mary’s seat as much as my seat belt would
allow.

“Nothing, at first. I was so startled I couldn’t think what to do. Finally, I put the upstairs light on and went downstairs. Nothing. No one around. No open doors. No sign anyone had been there. I decided I’d had a bad and very real dream
and went back upstairs. It wasn’t until a couple of days later I went down into the cellar. Petal, my dog, was with me then too. Good thing. It was her growling that made me stop just in time for that crate to miss me.”

“You must have been terrified.” An understatement. I would have been paralyzed with fear.

“I was. I followed the dog up the stairs and out of the cellar. I pushed a table in front of the cellar door, grabbed the poker and ran upstairs.”

“Then what happened?”

“Not one damn thing. I sat on the bed for over an hour, trying to listen. Finally I went back downstairs. The table hadn’t been moved. I finally got up enough courage to open the door. The cellar light was still on. The remains of the crate lay there but nothing else. I checked to make sure all the doors were locked, even the outside cellar door. They were. I didn’t know what to do. I thought maybe I was going crazy, but the crate had fallen and I thought I’d seen someone, just a glimpse. Only, I wasn’t sure.”

“So you called me.” Aunt Mary’s statement wasn’t quite a question, but not quite a statement either.

“Isn’t that what I always do? Whoops. Almost missed it.” Without slowing down, she turned into a dark drive. Large iron gates, attached to brick pillars topped with a design I couldn’t make out, stood open. Huge old trees lined both sides of the gravel road, bending gracefully toward each other, creating a tunnel of fresh spring leaves. On one side, shadowy animals stood behind white fences, silently watching us pass and then taking off to race us to the house. Horses. White, almost silver in the moonlight. A row of small houses was tucked behind the trees on the other side of the road.

“What are those little houses?”

Elizabeth’s drama was temporarily eclipsed by the unexpected sight of the cluster of houses.

Elizabeth
decelerated and hit a rut. Aunt Mary lurched forward, held in place only by her seat belt.

“Sorry.” Elizabeth glanced at Aunt Mary and slowed
down a bit more. “You all right? We’re doing a lot to the old place but haven’t gotten around to fixing the road yet.” Coming almost to a stop, she twisted in her seat to look at the cabins. “It’s the original slave cabins. Most slave cabins were wood, but those are made of brick. Smithwood had a kiln, a quarry—whatever you call those places where you make bricks—and they used the chipped or broken ones to build the cabins. They came out looking a little lopsided but were a lot warmer than the wood ones and didn’t burn down. We’re in the process of restoring them.”

“Oh.” I felt faintly embarrassed.

“My goodness.” Aunt Mary sounded as uncomfortable as I felt. There were no slave cabins in California. At least none I knew of. However, there were plenty of migrant workers’ cabins. I doubted there was much difference.

“Slavery was a part of colonial life, just like outhouses, detached kitchens and well water drawn by hand.” Elizabeth didn’t sound as if she approved of any of it.

Slave cabins. Lots of them. People had lived in them, but how? “They’re so tiny. They look like dollhouses.”

“They’re tiny, all right. I imagine they were smoky, as well. Not the most comfortable accommodations on the plantation.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Instead, I looked out the window at the horses. “I didn’t know you had horses. My daughter, Susannah, likes horses.”

“They’re Noah’s. He’s working with Colonial Williamsburg to keep the breed alive.”

“Are they all white?”

Elizabeth smiled. “They’re called American Creams and, yes, they’re all white. Well, cream.”

Aunt Mary didn’t seem interested in horses. “Is Noah a Longo?”

Elizabeth stopped
the car, evidently to give us a better look at the white faces peering intently over the fence. “Yes. Noah and his mother are the only ones who still live here. Their house is way over a hundred years old. They raise horses, chickens and sheep. All rare breeds. I get fresh eggs and none of the work.”

I wondered who the Long
os were, why and where they lived on the property and how Aunt Mary knew about them. Before I could ask, Elizabeth flicked on her brights. “There. That’s Smithwood.”

“Oh! It’s beautiful.” Aunt Mary leaned forward.

Horses forgotten, I craned my neck to see over her shoulder. It was beautiful.

Elizabeth nodded. She rested her arms on the steering wheel, a smile in her voice. “I love to look at it like this, in the moonlight, or with just the car lights on it. You can’t see the old age marks until you get a lot closer.”

“If that house is suffering the deterioration of old age, I hope it treats me as gently.” Aunt Mary seemed mesmerized by the beautiful Georgian mansion, red brick softened by the lights, white pillars and shutters gleaming.

“It’s huge!” It
was as elegant as a movie set in the moonlight. At any minute I expected a woman in a hoop skirt to come out onto the covered front porch.

“It’s actually three separate houses linked together by brick passageways. The third story of the main house, the one with the dormers, is attic storage. I think the house slaves used to sleep up there, but now it’s full of boxes, trunks and old furniture. The second floor is bedrooms for the family. The first floor has the dining room, sitting rooms and big hall. I’ll show you tomorrow. The other houses are smaller.”

“Why would anyone want three houses right next to each other?” I’d dealt with properties that had small guesthouses before, but nothing like this.

Elizabeth started the car and we crept closer. Now I could make out the passageways. They weren’t very long, but they were tall, in keeping with the proportions of the houses, with openings like windows without
the glass.

Elizabeth gave a snort of laughter. “They’re guest wings. Back then, travelers expected to stay at the plantations. Roads were bad
, travel was slow, and inns infrequent. Guests just showed up. They stayed, sometimes for days or weeks. They used those covered passageways to get to and from the main house, mainly for meals.”

For meals. People you didn’t know came to stay with you for days, ate at your table, used your beds and then just left? I thought of all the estate properties I’d seen in my
relatively brief real estate career, both in Southern California and Santa Louisa. Not one had facilities like that. Not one had an owner who would have considered such a thing.

“The house on the west side is mine. William and I renovated it last year when we moved
in. Actually, Cora Lee did a lot of it before we came back to live here full-time.” Elizabeth took a long breath and let it out slowly. “We’d barely finished when he had his stroke.”

Aunt Mary gave what sounded like a small sob. “Elizabeth, I’m so sorry. I should have been here for you.”

Elizabeth reached over and squeezed her hand. “And done what? You were involved with Ellen’s wedding and all your charities. We were busy winding things up at the college, moving down here and getting the house ready. Then William had his first stroke and decided we needed to get married. I’d never given marriage a thought, but he insisted. We got married in our house.” She pointed to the west wing and sighed.

“Why not the main house?” That was really none of my business but curiosity got the better of me.

Luckily, Elizabeth didn’t seem to mind. “Why didn’t we get married there, or why didn’t we choose to live there?”

“Both.”

Elizabeth leaned back and brushed the corner of her eye with the sleeve of her jacket. “Couple of reasons. William hated the big house. His father was a tyrant and made his childhood miserable. Anyway, after his father died and his mother moved into a retirement home, he came back and lived there a short time before he got the job at the college where we met. When we decided to come back here to live, he didn’t want any part of the main house.”

Aunt Mary had been silent. Now
, when she spoke, her tone was soft and full of compassion, as much for Elizabeth, I thought, as for William. “Memories of childhood should be warm and wonderful. You should be able to build a life on them. How sad to have such bitterness.” She paused. “What was the other reason?”

Elizabeth twisted in her seat so that she faced Aunt Mary. “You know I have a PhD in American History.”

“I typed your dissertation.”

“So you did. Well, I’ve had this idea for a long time.”

“What?” Aunt Mary gave a little start of surprise.

“I want to
found a school for history teachers.”

“A school
?” Aunt Mary repeated, incredulous. “For history teachers? They’ve already been to school.”

“Not the kind I have in mind.”
Even in the dim light I could see that Elizabeth was positively beaming. “For most kids, history class rates in popularity with a visit to the dentist. I think it’s because teachers make it that way. Nothing but dates and dry facts. I want to teach teachers to make it real.”

“How?”

“By making it real for them. They’ll come here and live for a week. I think a week is about all I’ll get. Don’t look like that. We’re going to take this place back to the eighteenth century.”

“I’ve read about Colonial Williamsburg. Like that? Living history?”

“Only more so.” Elizabeth waved her hand in the air, pointing at the slave quarters, the big house and the fenced pasture where several horses stood, as if transfixed by her enthusiasm. “The people who work in the historic district are actors. They go home and change clothes. My students will live in the main house exactly as they would if they were living in the eighteenth century. They’ll each have a role, a job. They’ll sleep in beds with ropes for springs and straw for mattresses. They’ll warm themselves with fireplace heat and wash up with pitchers and basins and use slop jars for … other things. We’ll take field trips to the historic district to see events reenacted then come back and talk about them as if they had just happened, assess their effect on people’s lives. It’s going to be wonderful.”

A light went on over the porch on the west wing. A small figure appeared on the top step, looking down the driveway.

“That’ll be Cora Lee. We better get on up there.” Elizabeth let out the clutch with a jerk and the car moved forward. “The first time I came here with William, I fell in love. It’s so beautiful, and the history! I’d been teaching American history for years, but in this place it came alive for me as never before. I want to instill that feeling in other history teachers.” She slowed down as the driveway split to make a circle with the houses at its top. “I’ll take you into Colonial Williamsburg. It isn’t far. We’ll go to the House of Burgess and stand in the same hall where Patrick Henry gave his famous ‘Give me liberty or give me death’ speech. It’s enough to make a shiver go up your spine.” She stopped behind a bright red BMW. “Yep. Cora Lee’s back.”

Elizabeth was out of the car, tugging at the suitcases, before I could untangle my seat belt. I was glad to get out. I was tired, rumpled and hungry. I had no idea who Cora Lee was but hoped she’d started dinner. It was after eight (dinnertime in California) and neither Aunt Mary nor I had eaten since we grabbed a quick bite in between planes in L
.A. That seemed a long time ago. Aunt Mary climbed out of the front seat slowly. She seemed to be feeling much the same. She stopped, rested her hand on the open door and looked at the houses. So did I.

The main house was dark, as was the one on the east side, but the west wing was ablaze with light. The fresh white paint on the shutters and the trim around the windows gleamed against the soft red of the brick walls. A small woman stood on the porch.
She was impeccably dressed in pale blue slacks and a matching cardigan over a white silk blouse. Her silver hair, not a strand out of place, glistened in the porch light. She leaned on a cane of burnished wood with a silver handle as Elizabeth dragged the last suitcase out of the trunk. She didn’t look like someone who’d get dinner.