I agreed, and she gave me the address. Truth be told, I did want to hear the rest of what Kathy might have to tell me.
The afternoon at work was busier than the morning. Several children in one family from Bhutan needed to be checked for tuberculosis. A child from Ethiopia had chronic hepatitis B and I knew him from a previous visit. He was there for a six-month follow-up with labs to make sure the virus was remaining inactive. Two children and their mother from Indonesia had influenza. By six my paper work was done and the clinic was empty.
Vic took a minute to ask how things were going. She’d read the paper like the rest of us.
I told her my plans to spend the day with the children on Saturday. She and I worked out a schedule that would leave me free to do that.
“And Phil Brockton? How are you doing with him? Any old sparks flying?”
I shook my head. “Unfortunately, Mason’s not as sure about that as I am.”
I hurried off to see Kathy. She lived in a high rise on Peachtree. A doorman called her when I arrived and then walked me to the elevator. Kathy greeted me at the elevator door down the hall from her apartment. She looked even more drawn than the last time I’d seen her.
The apartment was elegant and spacious.
“These were supposed to be temporary quarters,” she said, “while we searched for a house, but we never seemed to find one we could both agree on.”
She led me to the living room, done in black and white with framed photographs along the walls. The chairs and couch were covered in soft white leather, midcentury sleek on brass legs. It was all tasteful, and none of it looked like what I imagined would be her taste.
She offered me a glass of wine and poured one for herself. I looked at her.
“I lost the baby,” she said, “so I’m free to have a glass of wine.” She spoke in a monotone. “After I left Lurleen, I started to cramp. I went to the Emergency Room, but I knew what was happening. It was the picture! I’m sure it was the picture that did it.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“I think it’s for the best. How could I cope with another life? I can barely take care of myself right now. I got pregnant to please Carl, and he was pleased. I suppose I have that to hang on to.”
She sounded so calm, it was unnerving. I wondered if the doctor had given her something.
I looked around the room.
“You’re wondering what I’m doing in a place like this. Carl insisted on using a decorator. He said he didn’t have time to pick out fabric and furniture and that we needed a professional to do it correctly. It’s not my taste at all.”
“Did you protest?”
“When Carl wanted something, he went after it and got it. It took me a while to figure out why he wanted me.”
She took a sip of wine.
“I had a small trust fund from my father, and I had good Southern credentials. My father knew Phil’s father. They’d worked together for a while.”
“Carl cared about your Southern connection?”
“More than anything. Carl badmouthed the South because it seemed like a society closed to him. When he saw his chance to belong through me he was ecstatic. He saw children as securing his place and his standing. I do think Carl genuinely wanted to make a better life for his children than the one he had.”
“I never really knew Carl,” I said. “I mostly knew what Phil said about him.”
“Carl could be charming. A lot like my dad. Strangers thought my father was the epitome of the Southern gentleman. To my mom, he’d say terrible things, and she’d just put up with it. When I asked why, she said that’s what women did. It was as if my mother were living in another century.”
Kathy tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Her hair was the color of wheat, a light brown and perfectly straight. For the first time, I realized what a pretty woman she was. She was someone who kept her looks and her secrets under wraps.
“The irony is that I turned out just like her. They say you marry your mother. I married my father.”
“How did Carl come to work for Phil’s dad?”
“They met years ago. Carl spoke as if Phil’s dad owed him a favor. It was odd. He said something about cashing in at last. He was also happy to make Phil miserable, and he knew he could do that by joining the practice.”
“Do you know why Carl hated Phil so much?” I asked.
“I have a theory about that,” Kathy said. “Phil’s Southern lineage went back generations. It was a club Carl was shut out of, and I think that made him furious. By joining the practice Carl could turn the tables—make Phil as miserable as Carl had been in med school.”
“That all makes sense, but I think something more happened second year, something to do with the cheating scandal. They stopped speaking completely after that.”
“Yes. Carl told me Phil came up with a plan to beat the testing system. Sally Cutter got caught in the middle of it and was expelled. Carl thought she got a raw deal while Phil got off scot-free. That’s one reason he was so protective of Sally. Carl vowed he’d get even with Phil if it took him the rest of his life.”
“So that’s what happened,” I said. “Phil denied having anything to do with that scandal.”
“According to Carl, Phil threw Sally under the bus to save his own skin.”
“It’s odd about Sally,” I said. “One minute she’s telling me Phil probably killed Carl, and the next minute she’s telling me he’s a guy who couldn’t hurt a fly.”
“I don’t really know any more about her than you do. She seems to say what she thinks people want to hear.”
“You never worried about how close she and Carl were?”
Kathy shook her head. “She acted more like a kid sister to Carl than anything else.”
I’d finished my glass of wine. It was almost seven, and I needed to get home.
“Just one more question. Have you thought more about who might have been threatening your husband and why?”
“I don’t know any more than I told you before. Carl was scared. He thought someone might bring an end to his career plans and his chance to belong somewhere.”
Kathy took my glass. “You’ll come tomorrow to the service?”
“I’ll come.”
“And you’ll help me find out what happened to Carl?”
“I make no promises about that. My first priority is the safety and security of my children. You can understand that. According to Mason both the Sheriff and the county investigator are competent people.”
“They may be, and I don’t want to put you or the children in harm’s way, but please help me, Dr. Brown. You know everyone involved. You went to school with them. That picture was meant to hurt me—or to threaten me.”
“Why would anyone want to threaten you?” I asked.
“I can’t answer that. Perhaps someone thought Carl confided in me, told me something the murderer didn’t want me to know.”
“Like their identity. Carl must have known the blackmailer.”
“He denied that to me and said it was all done anonymously through text messages from an untraceable phone. I did wonder if he was lying to me.”
“Did you think he might have been trying to protect you?” I asked.
“I never considered that. He did say the less I knew about the whole thing the better.”
I hugged Kathy and left her standing at her open door.
She called after me as I walked down the corridor. “Thank you, Ditie. You’ve given me something to hang onto. Perhaps Carl was trying to protect me in the end.”
Chapter Thirteen
I left Kathy’s apartment and focused on the fact I had to tell two children about the change in plans for Saturday. One of them would be very disappointed. Mason and Lurleen were waiting for me on the porch. Lucie, Jason, and Hermione ran down the steps to greet me.
Even Majestic sauntered by to say hello.
Jason grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the house. “Surprise! Surprise!” he said.
“May I get a kiss first?”
Jason stopped and allowed me to plant a small kiss on the top of his head.
Lucie took my hand and walked beside me up the steps.
Jason raced ahead. “Look,” he said when I finally got inside. “Look what Uncle Danny brought me!”
I saw it lying on the sofa, and I was not happy. It looked like a child-sized wooden musket.
Lucie must have seen the look on my face. “It’s not real, Aunt Di,” she whispered. “It’s just a toy.”
Obviously, Danny hadn’t gotten the word on Saturday.
I moved the gun to the mantle. “You two need to sit down, we have to talk.”
“Did we do something wrong, Aunt Di?” Lucie asked.
“No, I did.”
Lucie sat on one side and Jason on the other.
“I’m sorry to tell you this, but we are not going to the Civil War reenactment on Saturday. I forgot how much noise and confusion there would be. It’s really for adults and not for children, but we’re going to do something just as fun, maybe more fun.”
Lucie looked relieved, and as I expected Jason looked crushed. “But I want to go! Danny said we are going and I can shoot the gun. Like a real soldier.”
He jumped off the sofa and tried to reach for the musket, but he wasn’t tall enough. I got it down, took a look at it, and handed it to him. “No playing with this inside, but you can play with it in the yard.”
Years ago I would have been all about gender neutral toys, but I’d learned a little in the last seven years. Boys will make guns out of whatever is at hand—a stick, a broom, it didn’t matter. Not all boys, but most of the ones I’d seen.
“I want to go to the ’actment!” Jason stamped his feet. He was a little old for a full-blown temper tantrum, but this was close enough.
I waited a moment, and when he was quiet, I asked if he wanted to hear our new plans.
“I do, Aunt Di,” Lucie said.
Jason still had his back to me.
“When you are both ready to listen, I’ll tell you.”
Lucie turned Jason around to face me.
“You may both wear your costumes—all day if you like. Here’s the plan. The three of us will meet Uncle Tommy at the Atlanta History Museum. We’ll get to see real Civil War uniforms and muskets and cannons. Everything! Then we’ll look at an old farm and a grand mansion and eat in a tea room. After that we’ll go to Eddie’s house, and Mason will join us there. We’ll have our own reenactment in her backyard. You haven’t seen Eddie much lately or Uncle Tommy.”
Lucie’s eyes lit up. “Will we see her new dog? Can we take Hermione?”
“You will get to see her new dog, but Hermione will have to wait to visit another time.”
Hermione heard her name mentioned twice, sauntered up to us, and started wagging her tail in hopes of some new adventure. Instead she got a good rub from me and Lucie.
Jason couldn’t seem to make up his mind about whether he should be excited or stay mad. Sometimes it’s hard to be a five-year-old. “Can I take my musket?”
“You can,” I said. “They might not let you take it into the museum, but Eddie will let you have it, that’s for sure.”
“Okay.” He pulled on Mason’s hand. “Can we go outside and play with my musket, Uncle Mason?”
“You bet.” Mason took Jason’s free hand and they went into the backyard, leaving us three girls to work on dinner.
“Aunt Di, why did you change your mind about Saturday? Was it because I wasn’t brave enough?”
“Sweet girl, you are plenty brave. I changed my mind because—well—to be honest, you and Jason have seen too much that’s been scary. You don’t need to see anymore right now, and I don’t either.”
Lurleen had been silent the whole time. She gave Lucie a hug. “I’ll come over after the other reenactment and tell you all about it. You and Jason won’t miss anything but the smoke and noise. Okay?”
Lucie nodded.
Then Lurleen turned to me. “If I’m supposed to be selling things, could we make it a bake shop and could you supply me with something to sell?”
“How about tea cakes, filled cookies, and iced tea, and how ’bout you just give it away?”
“Perfect.”
I breathed a great sigh of relief and made a quick dinner of leftover soup and fresh salad. That seemed to even out everyone’s temper. After dinner, the kids took their baths and got into their own beds on time. Lurleen went home and promised to be back around noon the next day, so I could get to the service.
Mason and I spent a quiet hour together. I asked him if he’d had any luck tracing the photo.
None, he told me. It was probably taken on a cell phone, and anyone on the field might have had one with them.
I wondered how someone had taken a photo and none of us had noticed.
“Inspector Barden interviewed everyone about that. He’s convinced no one got near the body other than the people you saw—Phil Brockton, Ryan and Harper Hudson, Andy Morrison, Frank Peterson, Sally Cutter.”
“I didn’t see anyone take a picture,” I said. “I would have remembered that.”
“You were sent away by the investigator. The photo could have been taken anytime, before you arrived, in the midst of the dust settling, or long after,” Mason said.
I nodded and searched my memory for anything I might have missed. Sally was the one staring at the body when I came over. She could have taken a photo before I talked to her.
“What is unusual is that the cannon was an original Napoleon,” Mason said. “The investigator said that was very rare to see at a reenactment.”
“Phil told me it was an original,” I said.
“Did he mention who owned that gun?” Mason asked.
I could feel my face drain of color.
“It was Phil’s, wasn’t it?” I said. “He brought it because he wanted everything to be as authentic as possible.”
“You got it. He had it hauled on site. He keeps it in Atlanta.”
“Why would Phil fail to tell me that?” I asked, although I knew the answer.
“Phil didn’t want you to suspect the obvious—that he was the one who shaved the bore,” Mason said.
“But he’d know the investigator would figure out it belonged to him,” I said.
“I guess he was buying time or praying for a miracle,” Mason said. “He came clean once Barden confronted him with the information. It seems Brockton has a storage unit in Atlanta where he keeps his precious artifacts, including the cannon. It’s climate controlled with security cameras. Most of the reenactments are in the South, so Dr. Brockton just ships the gun to wherever the next reenactment is. An expensive operation I’ll bet.”
“Phil must have loved that gun, and if he did how could he bear to blow it apart?” I asked.
“Phil said he cleaned it carefully once a year. Last time was in the Spring. It seemed fine then. He claims he might not have seen the thinning if it was subtle—he wasn’t measuring the inside width of the bronze barrel. It could have worn away naturally over time.”
“Did other people have access to the storage unit?” I asked.
“Yes, according to Phil, but only people he trusted. He let his med school friends keep their guns and uniforms in it and had spare uniforms for people to use.”
“I assume Inspector Barden is looking over the security tapes to see who came and went to the unit, maybe who spent a long time inside it.”
“He is, but he’s discovered the surveillance camera was covered for twenty-four hours—two days before the reenactment.”
“So someone knew not only how to make a cannon explode but where the security ca
mera was located as well,” I said. “Surely the experts will be able to see if the thinning was freshly made and not normal wear and tear.”
“Maybe,” Mason said. “Barden says they’re working with fragments.”
Mason could see how disturbed I was. “It’s still possible it was a hairline fracture that wasn’t man-made and just got missed.”
“You don’t really believe that,” I said, “and I don’t either. Not with the blocked surveillance camera.”
Mason nodded his agreement. “The Georgia Bureau of Investigation did say it wasn’t a bomb, which is what a lot of people thought at first.”
“Someone made that cannon explode,” I said, “and then had the audacity or cruelty to photograph Carl’s body and deliver the picture to his wife. Who would do that?”
“You’re assuming that the person who took the photo also killed Carl,” Mason said. “Maybe someone took advantage of a horrible situation and hated Carl or Kathy enough to want to make Kathy suffer even after Carl’s death.”
“I can’t imagine what Kathy could have done to make someone hate her enough to do that. I could imagine a lot of people might feel sorry for her, both for marrying Carl and then for the horrible way he died.”
“I had another thought,” Mason said. “What if someone was supposed to provide proof of his death to Kathy?” Then he answered his own question. “If that were true, she’d never have come running to you, unless she was shocked by what she had done.”
“You’re suggesting it could have been a murder for hire—‘among friends’. Most of the people in that group had no love for Carl, that’s for sure. But if Kathy hired someone to kill her husband why would she ask me to look into his murder? And why would she need proof of a murder that everyone witnessed?”
Mason took my hand. “Maybe she hated Carl as much as everyone else seemed to. Perhaps she wanted to literally see him dead. And maybe she thought if she asked for help you’d defend her just the way you’re doing now.”
I let this sink in. I didn’t know Kathy well, and I tended to take people at face value until I had proof they were not what they seemed to be.
Into the Frying Pan Page 11