Daughter of Deceit (5 page)

“Besides, I really don’t know a thing about—” Katharine had gotten that far in her refusal when two things stopped her. One was the look Bara gave her: that of a drowning woman clutching a slender plank in a dark and desperate ocean. The second was the realization that she had greatly enjoyed the research part of two genealogy investigations she’d been involved in that summer.

She hadn’t enjoyed
all
the investigating, of course. Parts had been downright dangerous. But how much danger could be involved in investigating military medals?

“I can try to find out something about them,” she capitulated, “but I’m not sure I can succeed.”

“Of course you can,” Bara encouraged her. “You are an intelligent woman.” Katharine had no time to preen, for Bara immediately added, “Tom Murray would never have married an unintelligent one.” She returned to the subject of the medals. “I might hang them on my own wall for a while. Maybe they’ll inspire me to get my act together again.”

“Did you ever have your act together?” Murdoch may have tried to make it sound like a tease, but the question had a spine of spite.

Bara jutted out her chin. “I most certainly did. Back in nursery school, before you were born. I knew exactly who I was and what I was going to be. I had Miss Collins. I’ll bet you did, too, Posey.”

Posey nodded. “So did my girls. That woman taught until she was older than God.”

“I had Miss Collins too,” Murdoch chimed in, “but what did she have to do with you having your act together, Bara?”

“One day she asked us to go around the circle and tell what we wanted to be when we grew up. I was the first to answer, because I knew exactly what I wanted to be. You know what I said? ‘A daddy.’ It had never occurred to me I had to grow up to be a mommy. Real shame, too. I’ve made a mess of it. But Mama wasn’t much of a role model.”

“Don’t talk about Aunt Nettie like that!” Murdoch protested as Rita Louse drew herself up like a porcupine preparing to strike.

“Your mother was notable for her devotion to others
and
her common sense,” she said in an icy tone.

Bara grimaced. “The only sense Mama ever had was the good sense to marry Winnie, and the only thing she was notable for was belonging to every organization in Atlanta devoted to good works. I never imagined I’d grow up to be just like her. Lordy, I hate good works, don’t you? I mean, do those folks really want our help? I keep thinking if we gave them the money we spend on balls and fancy fundraisers, they could help themselves. Have you ever stopped to ask what percentage of money given to help the poor winds up buying booze for charity do’s or paying salaries for middle-class do-gooders?”

Rita Louise pulled herself to her feet. “You are clearly under the weather, dear. I advise you to go home and sleep it off. Posey, would you see if my car is at the door?”

Posey came back to offer her an arm, and Rita Louise stumped off with her head high.

Bara watched until she was gone, then lifted a leg and ruefully inspected her red flat. “I seem to have inserted foot into mouth up to knee. What made me bait that poor woman? But if Mama had let me grow up to be an architect—” She broke off with a self-deprecating laugh. “I’d probably have messed that up, too.” She leaned over and clutched Katharine’s hand. “You cannot know how grateful I’ll be if you can help me identify those medals.”

Katharine felt a twinge of the compassion her mother had spent a lifetime trying to teach. “I can try, but I’m not promising anything.”

“Wouldn’t matter if you did,” Posey grumbled as she resumed her chair. “You promised not to leave me alone with Ann Rose, and look what happened. Next thing I know, you’re over there pouring coffee, and I’m getting coerced into teaching somebody to read. Never trust a do-gooder. They’re too easily sidetracked by another good deed. Are you ready to go?”

Katharine remembered the good deed she had originally come to perform. “Do you want me to drive you home, Bara? I could walk home from there. I don’t live far from you.”

Bara struggled to her feet. “I am fine. Besides, I have to take Murdoch, or she’ll never let me hear the end of it.”

“I’ll get another ride.”

Katharine couldn’t blame Murdoch for looking nervous.

“You blamed me in front of everybody for not coming to get you. I’ll jolly well take you home.” Bara caught her cousin firmly by the elbow and steered her out. At the arch, she called over her shoulder, “I’ll bring the medals over later so you can get to work on them.”

When the others had gone, Katharine frowned at her sister-in-law. “Why’d you force me to tell her I’ll identify those medals? What if I can’t?”

“Tit for tat. If I have to tutor, you have to identify medals. Besides, like she told me, it won’t kill you to try. Now let’s get out of here before Ann Rose catches me and starts asking when I’m fixing to take that training.”

“You think she’s okay to drive?” Posey asked a couple of minutes later, shading her eyes to watch Bara’s Jag roar down the drive and make a fast left between the high brick pillars.

“I don’t know, but she wasn’t going to let us tell her she wasn’t. Let’s pray she doesn’t hurt herself or somebody else before she gets home.”

Walking downhill was faster than coming up, but hotter. Katharine was glad to reach the little car, and hoped Posey would hurry home. Instead, as soon as she started the engine, Posey inquired, “Do you mind if we tool around a little? I haven’t gotten to drive it hardly at all. I’ll be very careful,” she added, seeing Katharine’s expression, “and I’ll tell you more about Bara’s troubles.”

Katharine tied the chiffon scarf around her hair. “I don’t mind riding around for a little while, but I don’t need to gossip.”

Posey—who garnered information like jewels, at aerobics classes, spas, and the beauty parlor—sputtered with indignation. “I don’t gossip! I simply share my heartfelt concern for other people. Poor Bara needs all the concern we can give her right now. You know what-all she’s already been through this past year, right? Her son killed in Iraq before Christmas, then right after Easter, her daddy—well, you know the mess about how he died.”

Winnie Holcomb had plunged from the balcony of the penthouse he’d moved into after giving Payne and Hamilton his house. Atlanta had been doubly shocked by his death. Winnie was widely beloved. He had also designed the tower he lived in, and Holcomb & Associates had set a high standard in Atlanta for architectural safety. Their parapets were higher, their railings more closely spaced than any others in the city.

“He must have been pushed,” Buckhead had insisted.

“His deadbolt was locked and his security system armed,” the police reported.

“Do you suppose he jumped?” people began to whisper.

“How could he climb over a chest-high parapet with that artificial leg?” Winnie’s staunchest supporters retorted.

Before anybody had satisfactorily answered those questions, even more shocking discoveries emerged. The autopsy revealed that Winnie had been dead before he hit the ground. A bullet was found in the remains of his skull, but no gun had ever been found.

For weeks, Atlanta was rife with speculation. Had somebody managed to come into Winnie’s penthouse, kill him, lock the deadbolt, and arm the security system on the way out without being detected by cameras in the elevator or stairwell? Or had Winnie climbed on the parapet and blown out his own brains, then dropped the gun as he fell?

Proponents of the first camp drew diagrams to show how a person could stand in the elevator and avoid the camera. Proponents of the second camp were divided between those who believed the suicide gun had been picked up by somebody on the street and those who believed it was still lodged high in one of the trees ringing the condo. Four months later, the mystery remained.

Katharine said soberly, “I’ve heard several people say he adored his grandson, and Win’s death unhinged his mind.”

“It could have. It certainly sent Bara into a tailspin. She had a complete breakdown. And then Winnie died—but you haven’t heard what Foley has done most recently?” Posey’s voice rose in astonishment.

“Only what she told us today. I told you, I don’t know the Weidenauers that well.”

Posey set out to educate her. “Bara’s family on both sides has been here forever. One of her many-great-grandfathers was mayor, back in the mid-nineteenth century, when the town was called Terminus.”

Katharine nodded. “‘Regarded as a brash nonentity south of Marietta, never expected to be anything more important than the place where railroads came together.’ That’s more or less a direct quote from your brother.”

“I’m surprised Tom hasn’t given you the whole history of the Paynes and the Holcombs, then. Their history is Atlanta’s history. Both sides of the family made a lot of money after the war, one in lumber and the other in cotton. Connor Payne, Bara’s granddaddy, ran for governor back when Nettie was in college. He lost, but he got the Buckhead vote, and Harold Holcomb, Winnie’s father, ran his campaign. They were real good friends. My mother used to say that Winnie’s marriage to Nettie was arranged before they were even born.”

“Surely not!” Katharine knew that several Buckhead couples had grown up together, but she had presumed they’d chosen each other in spite of that.

Posey was far more practical. “They could have decided to marry other people if they’d wanted to, but it united the fortunes and kept the money from outsiders.”

“Outsiders like me?” Katharine teased.

“You aren’t an outsider. Your mother grew up in Buckhead, so you belong here, whether you like it or not.”

“But Tom wouldn’t have married me if I didn’t?”

“Tom would have married you if you’d been born on Mars. He came home from the party where he met you and said, ‘Okay, Pose, there might be one woman I could stand to spend the rest of my life with.’ He’d sworn he was going to be a confirmed bachelor if all women were like me. But getting back to Bara and Winnie—”

“I know about Winnie. ‘Football hero, war hero, outstanding architect, and founder of Holcomb & Associates, which has designed and built a number of the skyscrapers that grace our lovely skyline.’ That’s not Tom, that’s too many banquet introductions to count. But Winnie’s dead. Can we move beyond the past and get to the present?”

“In a minute. Did you ever know Winnie’s son, Winston Arthur Junior? Of course you didn’t. He was killed before you came. Not to speak ill of the dead, but Art was a lot like Nettie—stuffy, rigid, self-righteous. I think he must have been a disappointment to Winnie, although I never heard him say so, but Nettie adored him. The light of Winnie’s life was Bara, who was five years younger. She—you weren’t here when she was in high school, were you?”

“I wasn’t born until she was in high school.”

“I wasn’t hardly born, either.” Posey conveniently forgot the five years she had on Katharine. “But I was fascinated by her. She was a track star, president of a lot of clubs, and always up to pranks. She also wore dreamy clothes. I thought her utterly glamorous and wanted to grow up to be exactly like her. Once she started Randolph-Macon, though, she went off the rails. Started smoking and drinking and did wild, zany things. One night she danced in her slip in a downtown fountain. Mama said they were fixing to put the picture in the paper until Winnie called Ralph McGill and got him to pull it. Another night she sideswiped the governor’s limo, drag racing down Peachtree. And when she got arrested for driving under the influence, she wound up teaching the entire lockup a series of bawdy songs.”

“Are those stories true?”

“Absolutely. Daddy was the lawyer Winnie sent to bail her out of jail. He said she wouldn’t leave until the prisoners got the harmony right.”

“That’s weird. I heard the drag-racing story back when I first joined the Junior League, but at a small dinner party at Aunt Sara Claire’s one evening, I mentioned it and Aunt Sara Claire said, ‘Don’t believe those ridiculous lies, dear. Bara would never have gotten into the Junior League if they were true.’”

“Pooh,” was Posey’s inelegant reply. “Bara got into the Junior League the same way anybody else in Atlanta does, including you: because of her mother. And every one of the stories is true, no matter how much Sara Claire and Rita Louise tried to whitewash them for Nettie’s sake.”

Katharine remembered more of that long-ago conversation. “Father John and Rita Louise were at dinner that night, and Rita Louise said, ‘I always thought Bara got into difficulties because she lost her grandmother her freshman year of college. Except for Winston, Viola Payne was the only person in the world who could exert any control over that girl.’ But Father John frowned at both of them and said—pretty sternly, for him—‘Perhaps that was because Viola was the only person besides Winston who ever showed that child any love.’ Do you think he could have been right?”

“How should I know? Like I said, I was a mere infant when she was growing up. But I do know Bara stopped drinking after she married Ray Branwell.”

“For love?”

Posey’s laugh held little mirth. “For self-preservation, is more like it. Ray was the heir to a restaurant-chain fortune, but very wild. He drank a lot, got into public brawls, and my mother used to wonder if he beat her. Mama claimed Bara would never have married him if her mother hadn’t disapproved of him so strongly. But for whatever reason, Bara stopped drinking soon after Payne was born, and settled down.”

“Settled down?” During Katharine’s years in Buckhead, Bara’s excesses had provided constant fodder for conversation. Her clothes were brighter, her vacations more daring, her conversation spicier than Buckhead was accustomed to. Her most flamboyant excess had been her steamy romance with Foley Weidenauer six months after Ray Branwell died. Their escapades had furnished the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
with “Peach Buzz” tidbits for two months before the couple flew to Greece and married. Bara had been forty-seven, Foley, thirty-two. Her children were fifteen and twelve.

Posey went on sharing her heartfelt concern for Bara.

“All this mess with Foley is what has started her drinking again. It’s a dadgum shame she ever married him in the first place, and let him worm his way into Holcomb and Associates. Nobody knows who his people are, but anybody could tell when he first got to town that he wasn’t raised right. His manners have improved a lot since he married Bara.”

Katharine, whose parents had firmly preached the equality of all people and had declined to raise their daughter by society’s restricted definition of a lady, felt pity for the man. “Wasn’t he a CPA? I thought that’s why Winnie hired him.” At the time of the Weidenauer marriage Katharine had been busy raising two children and keeping house while Tom traveled, but she had absorbed that much.

“Maybe so,” Posey sounded dubious, “but the board would never have considered Foley for chief financial officer a few years ago if he hadn’t been Winnie’s son-in-law. God only knows why they made him CEO after Winnie died, but Wrens says Foley’s strength is knowing how to charm the socks off people in high places.”

“Has he done anything worse than ask for a divorce, take a mistress, and get himself made CEO of Holcomb and Associates? I mean, that’s bad enough, but you sound like he has single-handedly introduced bubonic plague to the city.”

“He just about has. Apparently, even before Winnie’s death, Foley had been chatting up an Arab conglomerate that’s interested in buying the firm. A couple of weeks ago they made him an offer, but in order to get the votes to sell, he needs Winnie’s shares. Winnie’s lawyer informed Foley that Winnie left those shares exclusively to Bara, so Foley informed Bara that she can either give him those shares, or they will have to sell both houses and most of their investments to give him all he’s entitled to.”

“Can he do that?”

“Wrens says he can. When they got married, Bara was stupid enough to put Foley’s name on the titles to both her Buckhead house and her Lake Rabun house, and she let him mingle their bank accounts and investment portfolios—which means all of that is now legally common property, and Foley is entitled to half of it. Bara would have to sell a lot more than their Buckhead house to give Foley half of everything they own. If he can manage to get Winnie’s shares put into the mix, she could well lose everything else. Wouldn’t you think she would have insisted on a prenuptial agreement? But no, she was crazy in love.” Posey’s drawl deepened in disgust.

“I never thought about a prenuptial when I got married.”

“Neither did I, but we were kids, starting out. Bara was in her forties when she married Foley, with two big houses and pots of money she had inherited from both sets of grandparents, her mother, and Ray. The worst thing Foley has done so far, besides parade his bimbo all over town, is tie up their bank accounts and put a freeze on the credit cards. Bara is practically destitute.”

“Destitute? She drives a Jag and lives in an humongous house.”

“But she had those things before this mess started. She couldn’t sell them if she wanted to, until the divorce is settled.” Posey slammed on her brakes at a red light. “Sorry. I was going a little faster than I realized.”

Katharine had to wait for lunch to settle back into her stomach before she asked, “Would her shares in the firm be an equal exchange for half of all the rest?” She had no idea how much Bara’s shares in Holcomb & Associates were worth, but big houses on Lake Rabun were worth small fortunes, and a house about the same size as Bara’s in Buckhead had recently listed for seventeen million dollars. Housing woes that had afflicted the rest of the country scarcely made a ripple in the sale or purchase of houses that size.

“It doesn’t matter what’s worth what.” Posey sounded like she was reminding a sixth grader that two plus two equals four. “Bara’s daddy founded that company and her granddaddy Payne built both houses. Her granddaddy Payne gave Bara the Buckhead house when she married Ray, so they could raise their children there, and her mother left her the lake house when she died. Foley’s only been married to her for fifteen years. Both houses and the business ought to be hers.”

A car across the intersection moved. Posey took out her rage at Foley by gunning her engine and leaping forward. Brakes squealed. Two very expensive pieces of machinery nearly collided. The other driver shook his fist.

“Watch where you’re going,” Posey shouted at the other driver as she roared by.

“He was making a left on the arrow.” Katharine hoped her heart rate would eventually revert to normal. “Our light hadn’t changed.”

Posey slapped one cheek in chagrin. “Oh, drat! I forgot that arrow. It didn’t used to be there.” She waved an apology at the other driver, but he had already disappeared—probably to vent his anger on another hapless motorist.