Tressed to Kill (16 page)

Chapter Sixteen

I SETTLED ON MY APPROACH AND CALLED FOR AN APPOINTMENT before driving to the bank. I told Philip’s secretary that I was interested in a loan, that I was thinking about setting up my own beauty shop now that Violetta’s was defunct. She sympathized and told me Philip could see me in half an hour. I thanked her and hung up, refining my strategy. I’d ask his advice and play up to him. Somehow, I’d ask about the sword and see how he reacted.
The bank was only five minutes down Confederate Avenue, and I parked in the small lot east of the drive-through banking lanes. Inside, a short line of people waited for one of the two tellers to assist them while a handful of suited men and women did busy things at desks. A large poster on an easel advertised “Free iPod with New Account!” A carpeted hall led to what I presumed were offices in the back.
I was a few minutes early, so I wandered around the lobby examining the abstract art on the walls. Susan DuBois, Philip’s wife, owned an art gallery on Bedford Square, and I’d bet her shop supplied these turquoise, black, and red squiggles with sprays of tiny white dots that looked like what ended up on my bathroom mirror. Sure enough, cards tucked into each frame credited Susan’s gallery, Artrageous, with loaning the paintings and discreetly listed prices. Seeing the number of zeroes on one of the price tags told me that displaying them in a bank was appropriate because you’d have to take out a loan to purchase one.
I was still wondering why someone would pay as much as the average mortgage for a painting that looked like my two-year-old nephew had done it when I heard a familiar voice. I turned to see Del Richardson and Philip DuBois emerge from an office down the hall.
“I’m looking forward to doing business with you,” Richardson said. He wore a black suit and black cowboy boots and the ubiquitous Stetson. Sling a guitar over his shoulder and he’d look like Johnny Cash. His smile didn’t have any of Cash’s warmth, though; he looked more like a crocodile who’d struck a deal with a hapless zebra foal. Not that Philip was a babe in the woods—judging by his expression, he was sure whatever deal he’d struck with Richardson would pay off nicely.
As if Richardson felt my gaze, he turned his head and saw me. For a moment, his face hardened and his eyes narrowed. Then, he smiled, said something in a low voice to Philip, and sauntered my way. My muscles stiffened as he got close, but I held my ground, putting a mildly enquiring look on my face.
“If it isn’t Miss Snip-snip,” he said. “What brings you here? Looking for a loan to tide you over now that your place of employment is shut down?” He laughed.
“We’re temporarily closed for renovation,” I lied.
He laughed again, an unpleasant sound that grated on my ears. If a wolverine could laugh, that’s what it would sound like. “Yeah, right. And I’m the Easter bunny.”
“What brings you here?” I turned the tables on him. “Looks like you get along better with Philip than you did with his mother. How convenient for you that he’s in charge now.”
His smile froze. “You missed your chance to profit from this store being built, missy. Others know enough to open the door when opportunity knocks.”
“Yes, well, opening your door to a stranger can get you killed. Excuse me.” I skirted around him and headed down the hall. My hands were shaking, but I tried to keep my steps steady so he wouldn’t see how he’d upset me.
Offices opened off the gray carpeted hall, and I glanced in each one as I passed, wondering if I’d see Janelle, the head teller who was Stella’s friend. A cardigan sweater was draped over the chair in her office—I identified it by the nameplate in a slot by the door—but she wasn’t there. Probably just as well. Philip’s secretary was away from her desk, but Philip’s door stood open. Through the crack I saw the corner of a desk and credenza, a slice of window, and most of a huge saltwater aquarium. I knocked.
“Come,” Philip called.
I pushed the door wider and walked in, suddenly wishing I’d changed my casual work clothes of khaki slacks and red blouse for something more businesslike. Philip, bug-eyed and thin-limbed, looked formal and unapproachable in a gray pinstriped suit and white shirt. A yellow tie with a faint red pattern and well-shined shoes completed his attire. His thin hair was combed strategically over the bald spot on his domed head. As I stood there, feeling suddenly as awkward as if I really wanted a business loan, he shrugged out of his jacket and hung it on a coat tree behind his desk. “I’ve got to feed the fish,” he said, nodding toward the aquarium, which probably held at least two hundred gallons. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course not,” I said. I dimly remembered a large fish tank at the DuBois house from the one time I’d been invited there. It had been for one of Simone’s grade-school birthday parties, back when you had to invite the whole class so no one’s feelings got hurt. When Simone’s real friends made it clear they didn’t want me in the way while they played pin the tail on the donkey, I sat in front of the aquarium, watching the fish dart back and forth, telling myself it was a stupid game, anyway, and I didn’t really want to play. Philip and a friend, who must have been thirteen or fourteen, ambushed us with water balloons while we were eating cake on the patio. Some of the girls, dressed in taffeta and velvet, burst into tears. I thought getting wet was fun. I didn’t have many other memories of Philip except for seeing him pick up Simone after school a few times once he got his driver’s license. He was off to college before we made it to junior high, and I didn’t remember hearing anything else about him until he got engaged to Susan and they staged the wedding of the year.
Now, blue tang and oscars and sergeant major fish swarmed toward the top-left corner of the aquarium, obviously knowing the routine. A foot-long shark circled at the bottom of the tank, stirring up puffs of sand and debris, its gunmetal gray hide making it look sleek and deadly as a torpedo. Sharks gave me the shivers. I knew they almost never attacked humans, but statistics didn’t comfort me when I braved the surf.
While Philip busied himself with containers of fish food and took something briny smelling out of a small refrigerator, I studied the office. Behind his desk hung the usual diplomas and photos of himself with Georgia dignitaries, including Beau Lansky and the Democratic senator. One featured a brunette beauty I recognized as a former Miss Georgia who had gone on to make her fortune in Holly-wood playing a succession of butt-kicking action heroines.
“Wasn’t that Del Richardson I saw on my way in?” I asked, watching Philip plop tiny shrimp into the tank.
“Probably,” he said, his back to me so I couldn’t read his face.
“Is the bank involved with financing the Morestuf?”
He turned and gave me a disapproving look. “We don’t discuss our customers, Miss Terhune. We’re very discreet.”
“Oh, of course. That’s good.” Strike one, I thought, as he rolled up a sleeve and plunged his hand into the tank to fiddle with the filter. I drifted to the other side of the office. On the wall that adjoined Janelle’s office hung a display of swords similar to what I’d seen in Walter’s shop. I stepped closer to examine them.
Mounted at eye level, each of the four swords had a framed document next to it giving details of its owner’s life and the battles he had fought in. The names—Great Cacapon, Bulltown Swamp, Forty Mile Creek—reverberated from the wall. I skimmed the documents, not wanting to get sucked into the history. A fifth mount showed where another sword was missing, and I stood before it, gazing at the empty space. My heartbeat quickened. Constance
had
given him the sword.
“Looks like you lost a sword,” I said, trying to keep my tone casual.
Philip wiped his fish-foody hands on a handkerchief and joined me at the wall. “Missing only in the sense that I don’t have it yet,” he said. A tightness in his voice caught my attention.
“Oh?”
“My mother’s mother’s family was named Abercrombie. For my fourteenth birthday, Great-grandpap Abercrombie gave me this sword.” He pointed to the second sword from the right. “He told me the story of one of our ancestors, Daniel Abercrombie, who fought with that sword in the Revolutionary War. He died at Yorktown.”
I studied the card next to it more closely, feeling a bit stupid for not having noticed the battles cited were not from the Civil War.
“He got me started collecting Abercrombie family swords. At least one Abercrombie from each generation became a career soldier, and besides Daniel’s sword, I’ve got swords from the French-Indian War, the War of 1812, and World War I.” He pointed at each of the swords in turn. “I have an agent looking for swords in England so I can expand my collection to the pre-Colonial Abercrombies, and every Civil War collector with an Internet connection knew I was looking for Louis Abercrombie’s sword.” His protuberant eyes gleamed behind the lenses of his glasses.
Past tense? Hm. “Wow. It must have been hard to trace your family back that far.”
“Great-grandpap Abercrombie did the genealogy,” he said. “He was a historian.”
“So there’s no sign of the Civil War sword?”
He went still and studied my face, his eyes narrowed. I affected innocence, pretending to study the sword from the French-Indian War, which was considerably more beat up than the others.
“I didn’t say that,” he said slowly. “In fact, Walter Highsmith came across it not long ago and sold it to my mother. She was going to give it to me for my birthday. Or so the police tell me. I understand from them that it turned up in your mother’s closet.” His voice took on a distinctly nasty edge.
“Oh, my goodness, was that the same sword?” I gasped, simulating amazement and sorrow. “How horrid. I’m so sorry. I suppose the police also told you that they think an intruder broke in and left the sword there, hoping to frame my mother for Constance’s murder.”
“The detective mentioned that as one possibility,” Philip said. His tone made it clear he wasn’t convinced. He moved away from the sword wall to his desk.
I could sense he was about to turn the conversation, and asked as if thinking aloud, “I guess you won’t want the sword now? I mean, after all . . .”
He looked at me as if I just didn’t get it. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a piece of my family history. The police need it as evidence in the investigation, but I’m holding them accountable. Just as soon as they wrap this up, I’ll insist on having the sword back.”
I hoped my expression didn’t reveal the distaste I felt. Displaying the weapon that murdered your mother on your office wall seemed colder than cold to me.
He must have read something of my thoughts because he said, “To paraphrase: Weapons don’t kill people, Miss Terhune. People do.”
Ye gods. I wondered if he’d at least clean the blood off the blade.
Philip slicked a hand across his balding pate, maybe checking to make sure his comb-over was still in place, and sat behind his desk. Folding his hands on the leather blotter, he fixed a businesslike expression on his face and said, “So, tell me about this plan of yours. You want to establish your own salon and you need a loan, right?”
I endured a trying half hour of grilling about my professional qualifications, my business experience, and my intentions. I left with a stack of loan application forms, feeling pretty certain that DuBois Bank and Trust had no intention of loaning me enough to buy a cup of coffee. I didn’t know if that was because Philip really thought I was too big a risk, or if he was getting payback for what he saw as Mom’s role in Constance’s death, or if he blamed me for getting his precious sword confiscated by the police. And I still wasn’t convinced Constance hadn’t given him the sword. His birthday was the day before she died—why wouldn’t she have given it to him as planned? I’d tried to work my way back to that question, but he didn’t give me an opening. I had to admit that his obsession about the sword made it seem unlikely he would murder his mother with it, much less hide it in Mom’s hall closet.
I arrived back at Mom’s house to find her sitting on the veranda alone, a glass of iced tea in one hand, a closed-in expression on her face. It took her a moment to notice me and when she did, the smile I got was a ghost of her usual smile. I hurried up the stairs.
“Oh, Mom, this’ll get straightened out in no time,” I said, sinking to my haunches beside her and reaching for her hand. It rested slackly in mine. “We’ll find a way around the rules, and Violetta’s will be open again in a couple of weeks.”
“I’m not so worried about that, Grace Ann. If I have to, I can go to cosmetology school and get my license. It’d take the better part of a year, maybe, but I’ve got enough saved to get by. So does Althea. And Stella could get on at Chez Pierre in a heartbeat. No, with Violetta’s closed and nothing I have to do, I’m looking back and asking myself if I haven’t wasted my life.”
I was aghast. I’d never heard Mom talk like this. Of course, I was too young to remember much about her reaction when Daddy died, but since then, I’d never heard her express doubts about the path her life had taken. “How can you say that?” I asked. “You’ve got a wonderful life.”
“I do,” she acknowledged. “I’ve got you, and Alice Rose and her boys, and lots of friends.”
“Friends who love you.”
She nodded. “But is that enough? Have I done what the Lord wanted me to do with my life or have I opted out? Is cutting hair a calling, Grace, or did I close my ears to the Lord’s voice because I was too afraid to try something else, to move maybe, or get more education?”
“You’ve never been afraid of anything.”
“Oh, baby girl.” Mom looked at me ruefully. “Little do you know.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but I kept quiet. Even at thirty, having long outgrown the conviction that Mom was perfect, it made me uncomfortable to come face-to-face with her fears.
“After your daddy died, I was paralyzed with fear for the better part of two years.”
“Not paralyzed,” I objected. “You came up with a plan to keep the house, and heaven knows Alice Rose and I never knew things were hard, except for all of us missing Daddy.”
“I guess I did keep moving forward,” she said, “but at the time it felt like I was sinking in quicksand. The life insurance policy was enough to keep food on the table, but I was so afraid we were going to lose the house. Then Althea and I came up with the idea of turning the haircuts and facials we’d been doing for friends into a business, and money began to trickle in. Before long, it seemed worthwhile to turn the whole front of the house into a salon and things snowballed from there. But now . . .”