Sins of the Fathers (15 page)

“Agnes?” Katharine craned to read the headline:
RETIRED TEACHER FOUND DEAD
. That was not a wise move while trying to merge into a solid wall of eighteen-wheelers. Her sudden swerve earned a blast from a red truck’s horn.

“She was found at home yesterday afternoon, shot through the head. They think the wound was self-inflicted.” Dr. Flo lay down the paper and frowned out the windshield. “I can’t see her killing herself, accidentally or on purpose. Can you? She was so determined to defend her granddaddy’s deed to that property, and she knew how to handle a gun.”

Katharine remembered again Burch Bayard’s claim: “Agnes isn’t gonna give any trouble. I can promise you that.”
Burch didn’t kill her,
she reminded herself.
He was in Savannah yesterday. He must have heard it on the news, or somebody called him from home.

Even though Agnes had touched their lives only briefly (and nearly fatally, Katharine added to herself), they were sobered by her death. While Dr. Flo went into Hayden Curtis’s office to sign the papers, Katharine sat in the car under a shady tree and thought about the gruff woman with her crown of braids, her overalls, and her spunky determination to live the life she wanted to live.

She jumped when her cell phone rang.

“Why didn’t you call me back?” Hasty demanded without a greeting.

“I didn’t get your message until late last night. I forgot to turn on my phone before that.”

“Is something the matter? Your voice sounds funny.”

She didn’t mean to tell him, but old habits die hard. In another minute she was pouring out the story to Hasty like she used to in high school. She started with the little store, and then told about the cemetery, the graves, and Agnes shooting over their heads.

“Are you sure she missed on purpose?” he interrupted. “Maybe she’s a bad shot.”

“I don’t know about that, but now
she’
s dead. Somebody shot
her
and didn’t miss.”

He whistled. “That place is scary. Do they know who it was? And why?”

“Not that we’ve heard. The paper is calling it accidental, and didn’t name anybody, but Dr. Flo and I think it was mighty convenient for Burch Bayard.”

“Sounds like it. Stay out of it would be my advice. Let them figure it out on their own.”

His bossy tone made her want to argue even if she agreed with him in principle. “I maybe ought to tell them Burch called me last night and said he’d been in Savannah all day yesterday. “

“He could have been trying to establish an alibi.”

“You can’t establish an alibi by calling somebody and telling them where you were hours before.”

“I’d still stay out of it. It has nothing to do with you.”

“No, except I sort of liked Agnes. She gave me butter for my chiggers.”

“Obviously a princess among women. When are you getting home?”

She felt a spurt of irritation at how quickly he moved past Agnes’s death to what she suspected was his real reason for calling. “Sometime this afternoon, I guess. Listen, I have to go. Dr. Flo’s coming and we need to get on the road.”

Dr. Flo climbed into the SUV and asked, “Talking to Tom?”

Katharine felt a lot guiltier than the call warranted. “A friend. Did you sign the papers?”

“I did. I also told the mannequin in Mr. Curtis’s office that I’d like to be present for the disinterment. Do you think she’ll remember to tell him?”

Katharine started the engine. “I’d call back Monday and tell him personally.”

“I think I’d better.”

“Would you like me to come back with you?” As soon as she’d made the offer, Katharine wondered why she had.
This has nothing to do with you
, she told herself crossly.
You’ve got a lot to do at home, and Dr. Flo has dozens of other friends who can come with her.

“I don’t need to come,” she added hastily. “I guess I’m beginning to feel like an honorary Guilbert or something.”

“I’d be honored if you would come. Just don’t start feeling like an honorary Bayard.” Dr. Flo clicked her seat belt. “I just wish I didn’t feel like I’ve let Iola and Nell down. With Agnes dead, they are the only two standing between Burch Bayard and his plans.”

Katharine shot her a curious look. “You don’t reckon Burch or Hayden Curtis shot Agnes, do you? They were both supposedly out of town, but maybe while we’re here, we ought to stop by the police station and tell them what we know.”

“It would be the sheriff, wouldn’t it, and not the police, since she lived out in the county? But I don’t know what we’d tell them. We don’t actually know diddly-squat. Certainly no more than the sheriff can find out by talking to Iola and others…”

“But—?” Katharine repeated Dr. Flo’s unspoken word.

“But maybe we ought to at least drop by the sheriff’s office and tell him how she was on Tuesday afternoon and when we spoke to her Tuesday evening. If they have any foolish notion that she committed suicide, they need to know she was healthy and of sound mind the day before she died.”

“Sound mind?” Katharine was backing, but she took her eyes off the rearview mirror long enough to give Dr. Flo a quizzical look. “The woman took a shot at us. So you do the talking, okay? I’m not sure I could say she was in her sound mind with a straight face.”

They found the police station—a small wing attached to one side of city hall—but couldn’t find the sheriff’s office by simply driving around. “Shall I stop and ask somebody?” Katharine offered.

“Why don’t we go on up to Agnes’s? Somebody is bound to still be there we can talk to. It’s on our way back to the interstate anyway, isn’t it?”

“Basically,” Katharine agreed, although she doubted they’d be welcome if the sheriff was investigating Agnes’s death.

By the time they reached the island, scudding clouds had turned the sky as dark as dusk. No sheriff’s cruiser guarded the road beside Agnes’s mailbox. No crime tape stretched across her drive. Although Katharine kept expecting one, no hand of the law forced her to halt as they crunched over the shells on Agnes’s sandy drive.

“Surely somebody will be down there.” Dr. Flo leaned forward in her seat, clutching her purse so hard that her knuckles were pale.

Katharine didn’t answer. The wind was so strong that she had all she could do to steer between agitated trees and avoid branches that grabbed at her car.

They rounded the last bend and found the slough whipped to small waves. Agnes’s chickens huddled beneath the porch, hunkered down for the storm. Katharine slammed on her brakes just in time to avoid a fishing pole that flew across the hood.

“I swan,” muttered Dr. Flo. “Nobody’s here.” The weathered house sat as placid and deserted as when they’d brought Agnes home two days before.

Katharine hated to think what the house would look like when it had been unoccupied a few months. Wood is a strange substance. When used, it lasts, but left alone it quickly begins to decay. Within a year or two, even if Burch hadn’t bulldozed it, the house that had stood since 1874 would be crumbling, prey to vines and termites.

To dispel those gloomy thoughts she pushed her door open, leaned against the wind, and climbed down. The professor didn’t move from her seat. “I wonder where Samson is. He may not remember us.”

“I think he’ll remember. It’s only been a couple of days, and Agnes brought us into the house and gave us tea. Besides, he’s so fat, we could easily outrun him.” Katharine looked again toward the house, half-expecting Agnes to hail them from her back door and invite them in out of the storm. “It does look like he’d be barking by now, though.”

The only sounds were the wind, distressed hens, bleating goats, and cicadas, whose whirr rose to crescendo and fell again. Moss flapped in the trees like flags of warning as they climbed the back steps.

Katharine didn’t know why she knocked, but it seemed the thing to do. Nobody came, of course. She pulled open the screened door and tried the knob. The back door was unlocked. “What do you think?” she asked. The first fat drops of rain pattered on leaves overhead.

“I’d say go in. Agnes wouldn’t mind and—” The patter became an explosion as a sheet of water fell with the suddenness of a curtain descending. Dr. Flo shoved Katharine inside and followed on her heels, brushing drops from her hair and clothes.

Katharine looked around. “They don’t have it taped off or anything, and we couldn’t stand out there in all that downpour.” Who was she explaining to? Practicing for the sheriff when he arrived? She was resisting a strong urge to tiptoe and whisper in the empty house, and was startled when Dr. Flo switched on the fixture that hung over the table. They both flinched at the sudden glare.

Dr. Flo grabbed a hand towel from a rack near the sink and used it to dry her face. “As long as we’re here, I’d like to see if she left those letters lying around.”

Katharine hid a smile. Dr. Flo must also have felt a need to justify their trespass.

Before, they had passed through the kitchen so quickly that Katharine had gotten only an impression of the room, but it seemed much the same: a scrubbed pine table cluttered with junk mail at one end, two kitchen chairs, food boxes and jars on the countertop, dishes left to drain by the sink. Agnes had been a slap-dash housekeeper, but things were clean. The only change was that on Tuesday, the cat bowls by the fridge had been full of dry food and water. Now they were licked dry.

Dr. Flo pointed to the dishes in the drainer. “Why would a woman about to shoot herself wash her dishes?”

“Maybe she wanted to leave things tidy?”

“You know good and well Agnes would never kill herself without providing for her animals.” Dr. Flo was getting snappy.

“Samson?” Katharine called. “Samson?”

No fat basset appeared, but the smaller of the two cats came from the front of the house and uttered a pitiful
meow.

“You poor puss.” Dr. Flo rooted in the pantry and found a bag of food. She filled one dish, filled the water bowl, and watched with satisfaction as the cat crouched on its haunches to eat. The second cat came running and pushed the first aside. “There’s enough for both of you,” Dr. Flo rebuked it as she filled the second food dish. “You are just like a big cat we had. He’d eat all the food, too, unless we put out two bowls.”

Katharine was getting worried about the dog. Where could he be? She wandered toward the hall, but stopped in the doorway. “I wonder where she died.”

“Where she was killed, you mean.” Dr. Flo was getting crabbier by the minute, and had clearly made up her mind about that matter.

Seeing nothing in the hall to distress her, Katharine peered first into the living room, then into Agnes’s bedroom. Furniture was apparently another thing the Morrisons never got rid of. The bed, wardrobe, dresser, and a couple of living room pieces looked old enough to make Posey and Mona shriek with excitement.

In both rooms, however, all available surfaces had piles of things. They looked like the contents of drawers Agnes had turned out Tuesday evening and never put back. If so, she had not slept in that bed Tuesday night, for it was covered with clothes.

When Katharine prowled back into the hall, she noticed Agnes’s shotgun propped against the grandfather clock. Had the sheriff’s men found it near Agnes’s body and put it back? Katharine didn’t know much about police procedure beyond what she had seen on television or read in books, but that seemed unlikely.

Behind her in the kitchen, she could hear Dr. Flo crooning to the cats.

Katharine pulled open the heavy front door, and stepped onto the porch. A gust of wind blew rain through the screen. It had so much force behind it, it stung her cheeks. Rain had already misted a blue bowl of peas on the table and darkened a newspaper beside it, where empty pods lay curling and dead. Only half the peas in a bucket on the floor had been shelled.

Shelling peas wasn’t a chore Katharine had done much of or particularly liked, but she couldn’t imagine it driving a woman to suicide. She also wondered if a woman was likely to leave the job half-done to go clean her gun.

At the screened door she gagged. The rain had come in from the southeast, across the slough, so the rusty trunk of the cedar facing the house had been protected. On its rough, stringy bark, scraps of gray matter were covered by avid flies. Their buzz filled her ears as she pressed her hand to her mouth, jerked open the door, and lost her breakfast into the gush of water from the roof. She didn’t even notice that her head and shoulders were soaked until she lifted her head.

She staggered back to one of Agnes’s rockers and dropped into it, pressing her face to her knees. She took long, deep breaths through her nose until, hearing Dr. Flo in the hall, she lifted her head to call, “Don’t come out here. They didn’t clean up the mess in the yard and the rain hasn’t washed it all away.”

She spoke with such force that the professor asked, “Are you all right?”

“I will be in a minute. I got soaked, though.”

“You can change into something dry before we leave. I’m going upstairs to see if I can find those letters. They aren’t down here and I think she’d want me to have them, don’t you?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. Katharine heard her climb the worn wooden staircase.

In a minute, feeling stronger, she decided to find a towel. After that, if she could walk, she would go upstairs and help Dr. Flo.

An oak Victorian music stand did duty in the bathroom as a towel cupboard. Katharine chose one of the neatly rolled towels—a soft blue one—and did what she could to dry her hair and shoulders, but her clammy shirt clung to her like a shroud.

Where did that image come from? She shuddered as she headed upstairs to find Dr. Flo.

The air in the upstairs hall was so hot and thick, she could hardly breathe. Dr. Flo was in neither of the two bedrooms, and from their dusty surfaces, Katharine concluded that Agnes never used and seldom cleaned them. They, too, were piled with debris from open, empty drawers—artifacts from at least three generations of Morrisons. Staring down at one collection of yellowed, useless envelopes, balls of dingy string, and scraps of lace, she vowed to keep her own drawers and closets cleaned on a regular basis.