Sins of the Fathers (28 page)

Hollis abruptly switched sides. “Or look at the environment right now. Folks who are paving over forests, warming up the atmosphere, and spewing gases into the air—they aren’t the ones who will suffer the consequences of their carelessness. It’s their children and grandchildren. Pretty soon we’ll all be walking around in gas masks and living in bubbles.”

Posey tried to interject humor into the proceedings. “No more trips to the beach cottage.”

Hollis huffed. “Get real, Mama. There won’t
be
a beach cottage. Augusta will have oceanfront property by then.”

Dr. Flo shied back from their confrontation with a self-conscious little laugh. “Did I start all this? Maurice would be saying around now, ‘Flo-baby, if the ladies had wanted a sermon, they’d have gone to church.’ Sorry. I didn’t mean to get carried away.”

As Katharine finished her pie, she thought about her SUV. It had gotten pretty beaten up all that week. Maybe it was time to listen to her daddy and trade it in on a hybrid car.

“It works both ways, doesn’t it?” she mused. “Parents and grandparents can also pass on virtues to their children. I figure one reason I’m a relatively moral, law-abiding person is that I had moral, law-abiding parents.”

Dr. Flo swallowed a bite of pie as she nodded. “Me, too. Every time I read a story about somebody going bad, I think ‘There, but for the grace of my upbringing, go I.”

“Oh, sure,” Hollis protested. “I can see you now, shoving a needle into your arm or having a string of illegitimate babies. You’re too smart for that.”

Dr. Flo snorted. “Of course I am. I’d have cooked corporate books instead. I could do that. I’ve got the know-how. But I also have a conscience, thanks to my parents.”

“We were all lucky to have good parents,” Posey agreed. She added with a sideways look at Hollis, “But you have to choose to decide to follow their values.”

Hollis wrinkled her nose. “The good ones.”

Posey signaled for the bill. “I need another potty break after all that coffee.”

Dr. Flo slid from the booth behind her. “May I join you?”

“You’ve been mighty quiet these last few minutes,” Hollis told Katharine. “Are you tired? You’ve done almost all the driving so far.”

“It’s not that. I’ve been wondering what it is that Dalt knows and we don’t. As soon as we get to Jekyll, I want to use Dr. Flo’s laptop to look up the Bayards in the 1850 census. It occurs to me that Mallery Bayard could have been Francis Bayard’s older son. That might mean that his descendant—Dr. Flo—could own the whole blessed island. Maybe that’s why they were so willing to give her the box and get rid of us.”

“This place has a wireless connection.”

Katharine stared. “How do you know that?”

Hollis pointed to a back booth. “That kid over there is checking e-mail on his laptop. Want me to go get my computer?” Katharine handed her the keys, marveling at Hollis’s attention to details around her.

When Hollis returned, Katharine logged on to ancestry. com and pulled up the 1850 census for Chatham County. Her eyes widened as she read the entry for Francis Bayard’s household. “Look at this.” She pointed and Hollis followed her finger.

“Cool! Is Dr. Flo in for a surprise!”

When the other two came back from the restroom, Hollis welcomed them with a grin. “We’ve found Mallery. Come look.”

She turned the computer around to face them.

In 1850, Francis Bayard was thirty-two. He lived in Savannah. His occupation was “Planter.” The value of his real estate was eight thousand dollars. Others in his household were Elizabeth, twenty-seven, Mallery, nine, and Claude.

Dr. Flo’s brows rose above her glasses. “Oh, my!”

In the next column, Mallery’s sex was marked with a large
F.

“A girl?” Posey squeaked. “The pirate was a girl?”

Dr. Flo slid onto the bench and peered closer at the screen. Her lips twisted this way and that while she thought that over. “By the time the war came, Mallery would have been what? Twenty? Maybe she ran off and joined a privateer. There were a few women pirates. Maybe there were women privateers, as well.”

Katharine did a calculation. “Claude would have been thirteen. Maybe he was good with a chisel and proud of his big sister at that time.”

Dr. Flo reached for the keyboard. “Let me look at something else.”

She called back up the McIntosh County census for 1880. This time, she requested a blank census form and enlarged it. When it appeared on the screen, she gave a grunt of satisfaction. “I thought so. By then they were listing where the parents of each person were born, as well as the person themselves. Let’s look at Claude Guilbert again.”

She found the listing for Marie Guilbert and moved the cursor to the far right. “Now we know why Dalton laughed.” She pointed. “We could have found this earlier if we’d thought to look. Claude’s daddy was born in Haiti, but his mother was born in Georgia.”

“The unforgiveable sin,” Hollis said with a grimace. “Mallery Bayard had a black man’s babies.”

Katharine, Hollis, and Posey could scarcely wait to get to Jekyll and open the chest, but Dr. Flo said little on the drive. As soon as Katharine pulled into the garage, Hollis and Posey wrestled the box out of the back and Hollis started scouting for something to break the padlock.

In the middle of that, Katharine’s cell phone rang once more.

“That will be Tom,” Posey said confidently.

“Tom’s heading to a party.” Besides, the screen said it was Hasty again. “I’ll go out in the courtyard where I can hear better.”

“Or something.” Hollis sounded incredibly cross.

Katharine went to the far side of the courtyard, out of earshot.

“Are you at your sister-in-law’s yet?” he demanded.

“Just got here. We’re about to open the pirate’s chest, if we can find something to open it with. The padlock’s rusty. Can I call you back?”

“How about your tire iron?”

“You are an angel.” She could have bitten her tongue. Hasty was so prone to take things more seriously than she meant them.

“Do you need an angel flying to your rescue? You may, if you are staying in that house.”

“The place has a great security system.” She said it as much for her own reassurance as for his, and didn’t mention that the whole back wall was glass. “We’ll be okay.”

“Your house had a great security system, too. People still got in. Twice.”

Her temper flared. “Keep talking like that and your angel badge will be revoked. You’re already losing your halo.”

“I prefer to be a realist. Why don’t you all go to a motel?”

It was tempting, but Dr. Flo would never let Katharine pay, and she couldn’t afford a motel. “We’ll be all right. Now let me off the phone so I can fetch a tire iron.”

“You really ought to bring the chest home and let qualified people open it. You could do all sorts of damage.” His warning reminded her that Hasty the friend was also Dr. Hobart Hastings, the historian.

“We’ll be careful. And Hasty? Don’t call again. It’s making Hollis nervous.”

“You’re making me nervous. You could be in real danger, you know.”

“I know,” she said soberly. “We’ll be careful.”

He grew cheerful again. “Go see what’s in that trunk. And call me if you find anything of intrinsic historical value.”

She hung up wishing Tom was that interested in things that interested her. Immediately she felt guilty for the thought. Tom would be interested once he got home and had time to listen properly. He was a real good listener when he wasn’t preoccupied with business.

She was tempted to call him, but when she checked her watch, she calculated he’d be on his way to pick up Ashley. “May you break out in spots and have a terrible hair night,” she muttered to the woman as she went back in the garage, where Hollis was attacking the lock futilely with a large screwdriver. “Let’s try my tire iron,” Katharine suggested.

“Smart lady,” Posey exclaimed.

If I’m so smart, why do I enjoy Hasty so much when I’m married to Tom?

Hollis was eying her with narrowed lids. “Whose idea was the tire iron really?”

Katharine shrugged. “What difference does that make? It might work.”

Dr. Flo watched while the other three strained and heaved. At last the lock snapped. Katharine stepped back. “It’s all yours, Dr. Flo.”

Hollis held up one hand. “Before you open it, let’s each make a guess what’s in there. Dr. Flo, you go first.”

Katharine was startled to hear the professor echo one of her own fears.

“I’m betting on the bones of an illegitimate baby. I’m trying to like Mallery, but I have a very poor opinion of a woman who has children by a lover, then abandons them to her prejudiced brother. I hope we’ll discover she had a real good reason to leave home.”

“Maybe the baby was the child of incest,” Hollis suggested.

“Whoa!” Posey lifted crossed forefingers to ward off evil. “You all are freaking me out. I’m hoping for pieces of eight, whatever they are.”

“I’d be very happy with that,” Dr. Flo agreed. “Katharine?”

“I suspect we’ll find Mallery’s effects, sent back home after she died.”

“No fair,” Hollis grumbled. “That’s what I was going to say. It’s the only things her parents had to bury.”

“That is the most likely.” Dr. Flo reached for the top of the box. “Here goes.”

The lid creaked in protest as she lifted it. The others held back and let her look first. “Katharine and Hollis win. It’s mostly clothes.”

“Fantastic!” Hollis bent over the box. Dr. Flo pulled out a stack of letters tied with faded red ribbon and what must have once been an exquisite doll with painted golden hair and a pink satin dress. The head was still intact.

“Let me get something to lay the stuff on,” Posey suggested. “Hollis, fetch that tarp.”

“Let
me
get something to lay the stuff on?” Hollis repeated as she unfolded the sheet of yellow plastic and laid it on the floor. “You need to get this straight, Mama. I am not you. Handle the clothes carefully, Dr. Flo. They could fall apart when you lift them.”

“You lift them out, then.” Dr. Flo laid the doll on the tarp and climbed stiffly to her feet, holding the letters. “Maybe these are the ones Mallery got in answer to those we already have. Some could be from Marie.”

Katharine had a growing suspicion Dr. Flo wasn’t interested in a trunk full of a white woman’s possessions. That was confirmed a second later. “I keep hoping we’ll find something to prove the children were Marie’s and the captain’s, and that Mallery was just real fond of them, like I am of Rodney.”

“Then what was the scandal?” Katharine asked.

“I don’t know. Nothing in here seems to shed any light on anything—especially why Dalt was so determined to get rid of this stuff.” Instead of reading the letters, she watched Hollis lift out a blue cotton bodice with dainty flowers.

“This would have been part of a dress. And this was a skirt, and this a petticoat. See? It has a place for her hoop. These are marvelous! Look! Ball gloves!” They fell like snakes, stained white gloves long enough to cover the elbow.

“Did pirates have balls?” Posey asked. Hollis snickered. “I meant dances,” Posey protested.

A few garments later Hollis announced, “That’s it except for a book and something flat. They’re both wrapped in oilcloth, and the book looks real heavy.”

“Might as well see what they are.” Dr. Flo handed Posey the letters. Posey untied the ribbon and began to read the first one.

Hollis lifted out the flat parcel and unwrapped it. “Oh!” It was an oil portrait showing the head and shoulders of a girl in her late teens. She wore a white dress that bared her shoulders, and long white gloves. A red camellia was tucked in her bodice. She had an oval face, wide cheekbones, eyes like chips of sapphire, and blond hair curling to her shoulders.

“You beauty!” Posey breathed.

“I’ll bet she was a flirt,” Katharine guessed. “She has the smile of an imp.”

Posey held up the letter she had been reading. “She went to school in Charleston. This is all about boys she was meeting at the Citadel. I’ll bet she broke some hearts.”

Hollis reached for the painting. “You think this was Mallery? Why would they have buried her portrait?” She propped it up against a tire so they could all look at it.

“They wouldn’t want it hanging in the family gallery if those children were hers,” Dr. Flo pointed out. “She’s certainly not what I ever expected to hang on my family wall.”

Hollis lifted out the book and sat cross-legged on the garage floor with it on her lap. As she began to unwrap it, Posey bent over to watch. “It’s a family Bible, looks like. Does it have one of those family pages?”

“You look at it, Dr. Flo.” Hollis hoisted it above her head. “It belongs to you, and after it has been buried so long, I don’t know if it will fall apart. I certainly don’t want to damage it.”

Dr. Flo took the Bible and laid it on the hood of the SUV. “It’s been buried over a hundred years while nobody cared a thing about it,” she snapped. “I don’t think we have to worry about hurting it. Katharine, would you get my reading glasses from my pocketbook?”

With them perched on her nose, she turned past the first pages. “Here’s the family page. The Bible was presented to Francis Bayard and Elizabeth Mallery on the occasion of their marriage by her parents, but the first entry is for William Bayard, who was born in 1720 and who established Bayard Bluff in 1754. Looks like Francis was a typical Bayard. Elizabeth’s mother may have given her the Bible, but he used it to record the Bayard family history. Here at the tail end are Francis, Elizabeth, and—oh, my!”

She looked down in dismay. Hollis climbed to her feet and they all went to surround Dr. Flo. Beside Mallery’s name were a birth date—June 19, 1841—and her date of death: August 14, 1870. The whole entry had been crossed and recrossed with a heavy, unforgiving line.

“She didn’t die in 1870,” Katharine objected. “She was alive eight years later.”

Posey had retrieved a piece of paper from the garage floor. “Did this fall out of the Bible?”

Dr. Flo opened it, read it, laid it on the Bible, and crossed both hands over it. “Thank God.”

“What is it?” Posey could hardly contain her curiosity.

“A marriage certificate.” Dr. Flo picked it up again. “It’s in French, and says, ‘I certify that Mallery Frances Bayard and Henri Guilbert were married before me this fourteenth day of August, 1870.’ It’s signed by Father Reynauld Achilles, priest of St. Pierre’s Catholic Church, Port-au-Prince, and one of the witnesses was Marie Guilbert. Marie must have been Henri’s sister, the children’s auntie—and my great-great aunt.” She pressed her lips together and blinked back tears. When she could control her voice she looked up at Katharine and whispered, “They were married. The children’s parents were married.”

Until that moment, Katharine hadn’t realized how much that mattered to Dr. Flo.

“They buried everything that belonged to or reminded them of her.” Hollis burned with indignation. “Her doll, her clothes, even her picture!”

Dr. Flo fetched the portrait and looked long and gently at the face of Mallery Bayard. “Your papa disowned and buried you before your time and your brother refused to save you from death, all because you married a man they would not accept. My poor, poor great-grandmother.”

“Francis died the following year,” Katharine said somberly.

Dr. Flo gave a short, unpleasant laugh. “Probably had a stroke when he got this news.”