Daughter of Deceit (20 page)

If only her memory weren’t so muddy.

“Old age,” she muttered.

She remembered fixing supper and Foley coming in from work. They had talked. What had they talked about? She couldn’t remember. He hit her. She remembered that. She just didn’t remember why.

How had she gotten up the stairs to bed?

She stumbled back into the bedroom to check out the scene. Two fifths of bourbon stood on her night stand, empty.
Rare Breed,
the kind Foley bought. Had she taken it? Was that why he’d hit her?

She couldn’t remember. “I musta needed a little something to forget,” she consoled herself.

What was that noise? Thumps. Sounded like it came from downstairs.

Had she locked the doors and armed the security system before she came up?

“Everybody in town has a key. I gotta set the security system.” She headed for the hall.

At the top of the stairs she saw that the front door wasn’t even shut. Had somebody already gotten in? Where was that gun? Had she left it on the dining-room table? Could she reach it before somebody else did?

The next day, she would not be able to remember.

Katharine flipped on the television at eleven to watch the rest of the news in case something had happened that Tom would mention later and think she ought to know.

In the middle of a report that Tropical Storm Auguste was pounding the Northeast with strong winds and torrential rain, the anchor’s face appeared. “We interrupt the weather to bring you a tragic breaking story. Foley Weidenauer, CEO of Holcomb and Associates, has been shot and killed this evening in his Buckhead home. Bara Weidenauer, his wife, has been rushed to Piedmont Hospital with severe injuries. We’ll have more on this story as information becomes available. Stay tuned.”

Katharine sank into her pillows, scarcely able to breathe. Surely this had nothing to do with Bara’s medals. How could it?

She watched until the news was over, but the only additional information was that the houses were too far apart for neighbors to have heard or seen anything. Katharine could have told them that.

What she could not have told anyone was why she felt so guilty.

Friday

Katharine’s night was full of uneasy dreams interspersed with wakeful periods during which she worried about and prayed for Bara. She told herself repeatedly the tragedy had nothing to do with the medals, but guilt hovers close in the dark. Not until dawn did she sink into a dreamless sleep. When the phone rang, she grabbed the receiver with an absolute conviction that any caller at that hour had dreadful news about some member of her family.

“Yeah?” she managed through frozen vocal cords. She eyed the clock. Eight o’clock. Her muzzy brain sorted through the days of the week and came up with Friday.

Posey was immediately contrite. “Did I wake you? I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you something I heard on the news. Foley Weidenauer has been shot and Bara is at—”

“Piedmont. I know.” Katharine stifled a yawn. “I heard it on the TV last night. It is awful. You’re right.” In spite of that, she yearned to cocoon herself in her sheets and sleep another couple of hours.

“Why didn’t you call me as soon as you heard?” Posey demanded.

“I didn’t want to wake
you
up.”

Sarcasm rolled off Posey like oil off Teflon. “Next time, do.”

Katharine considered saying Foley wouldn’t have a next time and she hoped Bara wouldn’t, either, but it was easier to say, “I will. Do they know who did it?”

“Not yet. They said the usual stuff about anybody having information please call the police. Maybe you ought to call them.”

“I don’t have any information.”

“Payne called Lolly yesterday and said lots of women are no longer speaking to Bara—and probably not to Payne, either—because of what you said. Maybe one of them killed Foley.”

Indignation shot through Katharine and jolted her awake. “I didn’t say a thing. All I did was print out a citation her daddy got with his Medal of Honor.” Irritated out of sleep, she sat up and shoved back the cover.

“We ought to go over to the hospital for at least a little while. Lolly won’t be able to go until she gets the twins off to school.”

“You go. I scarcely know Payne, and she’ll have lots of friends there, I’m sure.”

Posey ignored the last half of the sentence. “Of course you know her. She and Lolly roomed together at Vanderbilt, and they’re both Tri-Delts, remember?”

Posey was a Tri-Delt, her mother had been a Tri-Delt, her grandmother had probably been a Tri-Delt. In the South, the sorority is practically a family legacy. It also forges a mystical bond among women of all generations. Posey’s mother used to tell how, in the thirties, as a college student she had been traveling in England and lost her return ticket. On the wharf, panicked, she had seen a Tri-Delt pin on an elderly woman’s collar. “I put out my hand and said, ‘Brenau.’ She said, ‘Ole Miss,’ and she bought me a ticket home.”

“I can see why you ought to go over,” Katharine agreed, “but I’m not a Tri-Delt and I scarcely know Payne, so I can’t see one reason why I ought to go. Besides, if she blames me for what happened, I’m the last person she’ll want to see.”

“She doesn’t blame you, exactly. And you could apologize.”

“Apologize for what?” Hours spent reminding herself that she had no reason to feel guilty erupted into frustration. “You were the one who insisted I research those medals. You were the one who told Bara I could find out what her father earned them for. That’s exactly what I did and all I did. Maybe you ought to apologize.”

“What I heard at aerobics yesterday afternoon was that you told Bara that Nettie was sleeping with half the men in Buckhead while Winnie was at war.”

“I said no such thing! I printed out one citation from the Internet, the one for Winnie’s Medal of Honor. It said that he was wounded in December 1944 and sent home in February 1945. Since Bara was born in September 1945, she herself concluded that Winnie could not have been her birth father.”

“That’s all you did?”

“That’s all.”

Posey paused again to mull that over. “Maybe he flew home for some quick R&R. He was a pilot. Or maybe one of his pals flew Nettie over there. You’re sure you didn’t imply that poor Nettie…”

“I didn’t imply a thing. But the soldiers were fighting a war, Posey, not flitting across the Atlantic for conjugal visits.”

“Oh. Then it almost had to be Nettie and somebody around here, didn’t it? I wonder who?”

After Bara’s histrionics, Katharine suspected a lot of other people were wondering the same thing. “I can’t see what any of this has to do with Bara getting shot, can you?”

“She wasn’t shot, she was beaten up. Why did you think she was shot?”

“Last night’s news said Foley had been shot and she was taken to the hospital with severe injuries. I presumed…”

“No, he was shot and she was beaten. They think somebody came in and beat her up, Foley interrupted him, and whoever it was shot him.”

“And you think Bara upset someone badly enough these past two days for them to want to beat her? That’s ridiculous. Any candidate for her birth father would have to be well over eighty. I have a hard time seeing anybody that age waltzing in at ten o’clock at night to beat her, don’t you?”

Even as she said it, Katharine remembered that during the summer she had encountered two other men well up in years who had still been capable of inflicting violence on others. Surely they were the exceptions.

Posey didn’t think so. “They could if they were upset enough. But I don’t really think the killer was anybody from Buckhead. Those kinds of people don’t live in our neighborhood. Probably somebody on drugs or something. And I still think we need to go sit with Payne, at least for a little while.”

“You go. She won’t want to see me.”

“I’ve got a little problem.” Posey hesitated, then spoke in a rush. “I was on my way to aerobics when I heard the news, and I got so upset, I went a tad fast around a corner, ran off the curb, and hit a tree. My front fender has a teeny little dent and the engine is making a funny
clunk clunk
, so I don’t think I ought to drive it, do you? I’ve called Triple A to come tow it to the dealer’s, but could you come get me? I’ll take you to breakfast at the OK Café afterward. Don’t tell Tom if you talk to him, though—he’d tell Wrens, and I’d hate for Wrens to worry.”

Katharine had known Posey long enough to translate all that. “You don’t want Wrens to know you’ve wrecked your car.”

“I didn’t wreck it, exactly. I got a dent. Can you come? And bring your charge card. I’ll need a little loan.”

It was Posey’s habit, when she had an expenditure that she didn’t want Wrens to question, to ask Katharine to put it on her charge card and to write Katharine a check. Katharine sometimes wondered what Wrens thought about the fact that his wife wrote her sister-in-law so many checks. Did he suspect Tom wasn’t adequately providing for his wife? Or simply that Katharine was a spendthrift and a sponge?

Posey’s “teeny little dent” was actually a crushed right front fender with the headlight dangling like a damaged eye from a socket and the wheel bent in like a turned foot. The poor convertible was definitely not in driving condition.

“You’re so lucky you get to keep your family’s books,” Posey said as Katharine handed the tow-truck driver her charge card. “You can charge anything and write all the checks you want to, and Tom never knows.”

Katharine signed the charge, but she wasn’t sure
lucky
was the appropriate word.

They had to follow the convertible to the dealer, of course, where Posey explained carefully (and several times) that they should call Katharine when the car was ready. While she was making those arrangements, Katharine wandered around the showroom, but saw nothing that caught her eye.

She was starving by the time they got to her rental car. “OK Café?” she inquired.

“Yes, but first, I think we need to run by and see Payne. Just for a minute. I want to offer to keep little Chip a day or two this week, if she needs me to.” Posey took a lipstick out of her bag and freshened her lips while Katharine pulled into traffic. She knew good and well that in the end, Posey would either ask Julia, her housekeeper, to entertain the child or persuade Lolly to add Chip to her household, but Posey’s motive sounded more altruistic than the one that propelled Katharine toward Piedmont Hospital. She was simply curious.

“You look better than I do,” Posey said when her mouth was made up to her satisfaction. “Is that a new outfit? Celery suits you. But I just threw this old thing on to drive to the gym. Do you reckon Payne will mind? Maybe we ought to stop by the house so I can change.”

Posey’s house was in the other direction and she looked enchanting in a rose cotton jogging suit that Katharine knew for a fact was less than a year old. She had no problem saying, “You look fine for a hospital waiting room. If they give prizes for appropriate clothing, you’re sure to win.”

Bara was in the ICU. They found Payne in the family waiting room, surrounded by friends, but there was no sign of Scotty or Murdoch. Payne looked wan and exhausted. Her jeans and T-shirt had obviously been slept in. Her dark eyes were circled with darker rings, and her curls were more tousled than fashionable. When she saw Posey, she stumbled into her arms and clutched her without a word.

“How is she?” Posey asked when Payne let her go.

“Not good. She’s in a coma, she’s covered with bruises, and she’s got lots of broken bones: her left shoulder and wrist, a couple of ribs, her right tibia, and at least one skull fracture. They’ve put in a tube to drain fluid off her brain, but they say they can’t set anything until tomorrow, after the swelling goes down. Oh, Posey, she looks pitiful!” Payne’s voice wobbled like a top that is slowly winding down. “She’s black, blue, and green all over her arms, her head, her stomach, her face—I can’t believe anybody would do that to her! But thank you both for coming.”

“Have you eaten breakfast?” Posey asked.

Payne shook her head. “I couldn’t keep anything down. I’m too worried.”

“You’ll have to eat,” Posey chided her. “Keep your strength up. Your mother is going to need you. Where are Hamilton and Chip?”

“At Ann Rose’s. Hamilton took Chip over last night, then came back here. He went on rounds this morning and said he’d have breakfast with them afterward, because we think Chip needs to see one of us. He’s terribly worried about—”

She broke off as a police officer came into the waiting room and called softly, “Family of Bara Weidenauer?” Payne excused herself and joined him. He looked younger than she, and miserable at what he had to tell her. As he spoke, her eyes widened and she started to sway. He put out an arm to steady her.

Posey flew across the room and supported her before she crumpled. As she led Payne to a nearby vacant chair and gently lowered her into it, she demanded, “What did you say to her?”

The policeman remained polite, even when confronted by a Fury in a jogging suit. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I had to explain that we’re putting an officer outside her mother’s door.”

Payne looked from Posey to Katharine, her expression wild. “When Mama’s well enough, they may charge her with Foley’s murder!”

Payne’s words carried. Her friends clustered around her. Other families in the waiting room faced toward the officer and glared. A lot of solidarity can be built up among people who suffer together through an entire night.

The man in the chair next to Payne rose and offered Posey his seat. Posey put an arm around Payne’s waist and held her close. “Is that true?” she demanded of the officer. “Are you fixing to charge Bara with killing Foley?”

“Not me personally.” He held up both hands to deny the accusation. “I’m just the messenger, here. But her prints were the only ones on the murder weapon and there was no sign that the door had been forced.”

Payne fell forward, head on her knees, shaking with sobs. “Mama wouldn’t shoot anybody! She wouldn’t!”

Katharine couldn’t help remembering Bara’s declaration that if Foley Weidenauer were found dead, she would have done it. Had shooting been included among her preferred methods of execution? Katharine couldn’t remember.

“Did you test her hands for gunshot residue?” demanded one of Payne’s friends.

The officer was polite but stern. “You’ve been watching too many police shows on television, ma’am. Residue doesn’t last but a few hours, and they didn’t think to do it before the hospital cleaned her up after she got here.” He added, to Payne, “If you have the clothes she was wearing, we might get something from them.”

Payne shook her head. “The emergency room cut them off her, so they were ruined. I told Hamilton to put them in his mother’s garbage. I couldn’t stand to see them again. And the garbage was picked up early this morning.”

Katharine had a question. “How did the police hear about the murder?”

“We got a nine-one-one call from the house. Whoever placed it didn’t speak, just laid the phone down on a table. It could have been her, it could have been somebody else. When we got there, the front door was standing open.”

That was the first hopeful thing they had heard so far.

Payne lifted her head long enough to point out another. “There isn’t a phone in the dining room.”

“She wasn’t found in the dining room. Mr. Weidenauer was in there, but she was in the front hall, not far from the table where the portable phone was lying.”

Posey frowned up at him. “Payne says Bara is black and blue, so either Foley beat the tar out of her or somebody else did. She wasn’t making any calls.”

Posey might be sitting and the officer standing, she might be five-foot-two to his six-feet-plus, but he backed up a step. “I understand, ma’am, but she could have called before she passed out. She was able to put a pillow under her head. Look, I was simply told to inform the family we’d be stationing somebody at the door. I’d call Mrs. Weidenauer’s lawyer, if I were you.”

He fled.

“Don’t call your Uncle Scotty. Have Hamilton call somebody else,” Posey directed Payne. “Have his mother call Oscar and Jeffers, too. You need the whole family here. And get somebody in to take pictures of Bara’s bruises today, while they are still fresh. Some of them could disappear in a day or two.”

In spite of her fluffy look, Posey could be shrewd.

Payne nodded and grew calmer now that she had tasks to think about. “I didn’t even know Mama had a gun,” she said after a couple of sniffs. “If I had, I’d have taken it away. She hadn’t been…” She hesitated as if searching for a word.

Sober
was the one that came to Katharine’s mind, but Payne finished, “…very well lately. Still, I don’t know where she would have gotten a gun.” She broke down again.

Posey sat beside her and held her while she cried. Eventually, Payne lifted wet eyes to Katharine. “I know this must have something to do with what you told Mama. Can’t you do anything to help?”

Katharine’s protest that she hadn’t done a thing except print out one citation from the Internet fell on deaf ears. “Mama went plumb crazy after you talked to her,” Payne insisted, “and she made a lot of people mad. Maybe one of them—I don’t know, got out of control. You could at least talk to people or something. After all, you started it.”

“You did start it,” Posey repeated as they walked toward the parking lot.

“I did not start it. If we have to assign blame here, you started it, by telling Bara I could research those medals. Why don’t you go talk to all those women? You’ve known them longer than I have.”

“We’ll both go, but first let’s go to the OK Café.”

“It’s all the way across Buckhead. We’re a lot closer to several other good places.”

“Yeah, but I’m needing comfort food right now.”

The OK Café is located at the corner of Northside Drive and West Pace’s Ferry Road—which, with typical Atlanta logic, continues west as plain old Pace’s Ferry Road. For decades the big diner has been a Buckhead institution. Teens stop there at the end of weekend dates. Executives meet for power breakfasts. Friends stop by for coffee and pastry. From early morning until late evening, OK Café’s friendly staff dispenses down-to-earth food at reasonable prices.

Katharine pulled in at ten, by which time she was ready to breakfast on her fingers, one by one.

“Payne has a point,” Posey said when they were seated in a booth. “This probably does have something to do with what you told Bara.” Without taking a breath, she looked up at the waitress and said, “I’ll have orange juice, waffles, and bacon.”

Katharine seconded Posey’s order, then said, “I still have a hard time picturing any of Buckhead’s octogenarians showing up at Bara’s past ten
P.M.
, giving a good reason to be there at that hour, shooting Foley, and beating Bara. Don’t you?”

“Shhh,” Posey cautioned. “Don’t talk so loud. Maybe it was her real daddy.”

Katharine leaned across the table and lowered her voice. “Get real, Posey. In that case, why shoot Foley instead of Bara? Besides, if her ‘real’ daddy”—Katharine sketched quotes with her fingers—“exists, all he has to do is sit tight and say nothing. I mean, what’s Bara going to do—run DNA tests on all the old men in Buckhead, or their children? You heard her talking about the way Foley has been treating her lately. Chances are good they got in a fight, he beat her, and she shot him.”

They became aware of the waitress standing there with two juices and eyes bigger than oranges.

“A book we’re writing together,” Posey said with an airy wave.

“I hope Payne remembers to get pictures of those bruises,” she said when the waitress had gone. She reached for her cell phone. “That can make a difference to a jury, and in another day or two, some of them could disappear.” She punched in one digit.

“Who are you calling?”

“Lolly. She’s a good photographer. I’ll tell her to take the pictures while she’s there.”

By the time she and Lolly finished talking over the situation, the waffles had come.

“So we’re agreed we have to do something, right?” Posey asked as she tucked in. “Otherwise, the police are going to arrest Bara.”

“I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Sure you do. We’ll talk to the people Bara talked to and see if any of them can tell us anything.”

“That’s real specific. You go. You’re the one who wants to know.”

“I don’t have a car. Drop me off so I can change, then pick me up in, say, an hour? We can go talk to people.”

Wrens always said that Posey’s best talent was running other peoples’ lives.

Katharine acquiesced only because arguing with Posey in that mood was worse than driving around Atlanta talking to people, and for the first day in weeks, she didn’t have anything pressing to do.

After she dropped off Posey, Katharine decided to swing by St. Philip’s Cathedral. She and Tom were members of Trinity Presbyterian, but she had promised Ann Rose she’d see if they could use one of St. Philip’s rooms to train tutors. Her errand only took a few minutes. Ann Rose and Jeffers were such pillars of the congregation that Katharine left the office with the sense that if Ann Rose requested the sanctuary for a rain dance, the church would order umbrellas.

As she left, she decided a few minutes spent praying for Bara might do more good than any conversations she and Posey were likely to have with Nettie Payne’s old friends. As she slipped into the back pew, she saw only one other person in the holy space: a small, thin woman with her head covered by a gray scarf, kneeling near the front.

As Katharine sank to her knees and folded her hands, she reflected that there was something fitting about kneeling when praying for others.

Gradually she became aware of a whisper penetrating the silence. “I have sinned! I have most grievously sinned!”

Katharine peeped between her fingers and saw Rita Louise approaching up the aisle with her hands clasped before her and eyes on the carpet, like a woman on a pilgrimage. She had not yet noticed Katharine.

Katharine was torn between slipping out and asking if she could help. As Rita Louise drew nearer, Katharine could see that her cheeks were wet and stained with tears.

“Can I help you?” Katharine asked softly.

Rita Louise stopped, startled, then flapped a lace-edged peach handkerchief in distress. “Don’t speak to me, Katharine. I have done a most despicable thing!”

She rushed out.