Blue Willow

by Deborah Smith

  “But why would they have been so desperate?” Elizabeth asked. “Couldn’t they have just told Julia that the project would run over budget? There’s no evidence that any money was embezzled. They weren’t diverting the construction accounts. Perhaps they simply miscalculated the cost to complete the building. That happens all the time.”

  “Or they were sloppy and extravagant in managing the budget, then had to cover it,” Cass answered.

  “No, Julia was obsessed with tracking every expense. She’d have known if they were running over budget in some areas.”

  Michael felt grief pulling at the corners of his eyes. He tried to smile, but winced. “She always bragged about that. She could recite the per-unit cost of everything from the doorknobs to the filters in the air-conditioning system. And she knew labor costs to the penny. For each job title. One time she told me what the electricians were paid per hour, then whipped open that leather binder she always carried and pointed to her notes to prove it.”

  Elizabeth gave a painful little laugh. “She said she’d show us that she could bring even the Taj Mahal in on time and on budget.”

  Cass straightened ominously. “She was wonderful, and they killed her. And that bitch Artemas calls his friend is part of it.”

  Silence descended. Finally Michael said, “Our brother won’t condemn an innocent person. But if she’s not innocent, he won’t hesitate to make her regret it.”

  “I know that,” Cass told him, the fury fading from her eyes. Michael put one long arm around her and gave her a hug. Elizabeth and Alise moved into the circle. The four of them stood together, linked in faith.

  An elevator door opened at the end of the hall. They gratefully watched Artemas stride toward them. He frowned at their huddle. “Has something happened with—”

  “No, he’s fine,” Elizabeth said quickly. “We were just letting him rest a minute while we waited for you.”

  Artemas studied the weary, ragged-looking group protectively. Sometimes he had to remind himself that they were no longer children, nor he their surrogate parent. Michael and Elizabeth and Alise were thirty-one years old, Cass, thirty-three. He wanted to tell them that he felt broken inside, that today he’d lost more than they could imagine. But how could they understand? They only knew bits and pieces of the Mackenzie-Colebrook history, only that he had been planning to begin restoring the old estate at Blue Willow as part of the corporate move to Atlanta, only that Lily and he had been casual, distant friends over the years.

  “How did your meeting with Lily Porter go?” Michael asked.

  Artemas shook his head. “Badly.” Later he would have to relay the important points to them. God help him, there might be no way to prevent them from hating Lily and wanting to punish her. His eyes felt hollow and grainy. His throat was raw. But he had a role to play here, and he would not let them down. He never had. He cleared his throat and said brusquely, “Let’s go see James.”

  Sixteen

  The office she and Richard had shared was a large, handsome, comfortably folksy room of oak walls and muted colors. Big windows fronted the azalea groves outside. Soft print drapes were drawn over them now, keeping out the cold black night. The room was cast in shadows from the lamps.

  It felt like a prison.

  Lily sat on the floor, with file folders stacked around her and notepads spilling onto the thick beige carpet. Perspiration trickled between her breasts and down her armpits. The ink pen couched in a fold of her sweatshirt was leaking a dark blue blot onto the gray material. As she scanned yet another page from the files, she brushed the pen aside heedlessly It began staining the carpet.

  Her energy was devoted to searching for any clue, any salvation.

  Two of the architectural interns who had worked for Richard and Frank had crammed an extra chair in front of the computer on Richard’s desk. Side by side, their eyes bloodshot and faces strained, their shirtsleeves rolled up, they peered in tandem at the screen, scanning section after section of blueprints on the CAD system. The firm’s comptroller, a prim-mouthed, middle-aged woman who looked stern even in a blue jogging suit, sat at a table with folders from Richard’s file cabinets spread before her. She bent low over them, pursing her small mouth and occasionally pushing a pair of black reading glasses up the narrow bridge of her nose. The firm’s chief attorney was sprawled on a couch in one corner, reading copies of correspondence Richard had kept at home.

  “I’ll bring another pot of coffee,” Little Sis said from the doorway. She didn’t mind everyone seeing her in her plaid nightshirt and fuzzy slippers.

  Lily shook her head dully. “No, go on to bed. Please. Maude and Big Sis already have.”

  “You all need some sleep too. ’Specially you.” She frowned at Lily.

  The thought of confronting the bedroom filled with Richard’s clothes and other personal items, and the king-sized bed they had shared, or of having to walk past Stephen’s room to get to it, made a dry cavern behind Lily’s eyes. “I can’t. I’m sending everybody else home soon, but I can’t sleep.”

  Little Sis grumbled and disappeared back into the den, her fuzzies scuffing aggressively on the wooden floor.

  “There’s nothing new here,” one of the interns said, rubbing his eyes. The other young man pushed a key, and the computer monitor went dark. “No changes in specifications, no amended drawings for the bridge. Just the original blueprints.”

  Lily looked at the pair with weary bewilderment. “Richard kept copies of everything. Drawings, notes, letters. So he wouldn’t be inconvenienced when he worked at home.”

  The attorney, a large gray-haired man whose reputation for brutal honesty had always impressed her, steepled his fingertips under his chin and leaned forward, lost in thought. “So it’s possible that the design work on the bridge—and any changes made to the design later—was done at the firm’s offices and not here.”

  She said quickly and firmly, “Marcus, he did not alter the design, and he wouldn’t have let Frank do it, either, not to cut construction costs. Never. Don’t even suggest that he might have.”

  Marcus sighed. “Let’s look at what we know for certain. Frank and Richard had a half-dozen other clients—other projects underway—besides the Colebrook Building. Frank concentrated on the aesthetics. Richard was primarily involved in structural analysis.”

  She nodded. “Frank was the artist.”

  One of the interns added, “I’ve seen him spend hours debating the shape of the bricks to be used in a facade. And when he talked about the bridge in the atrium of the Colebrook Building, he said he wanted a masterpiece. Something so graceful it seemed to defy gravity.”

  “It was a masterpiece,” the other intern said. “And there was no sacrifice of structural integrity in the design. Richard reinforced every crucial stress point by fifty percent over maximum load. We sat in on the discussions he had with Frank about it. There were a lot of them.”

  “But those specs must have been changed at some point,” Marcus noted. “When? And why weren’t any of the interns aware of it?”

  “We were assigned to other projects. There was a lot going on. The recognition the firm got from the Colebrook Building kept bringing in new clients.”

  Lily bit her lip until it throbbed. All the hopes, all the plans for expansion—destroyed, along with her husband, her son, and all those other lives. Last fall the firm had moved from a suite of rented offices into its own building, a beautiful two-story complex Frank and Richard had designed, with space for the additional staff they had hired.

  “I’m certain Richard didn’t change the bridge specifications,” she said abruptly. “If he had, the revised blueprints would be here on his CAD system.”

  Marcus stared at her intently. “But that suggests Frank could have changed them without Richard’s knowledge.” He glanced at the interns. “Would that have been possible?”

  They traded speculative looks. “Yeah,” one said. “But there was no good reason for it.”

  Lily felt
as if the blood were draining from her head. Dizzy, she took a shallow breath and rubbed her temples. Could Frank have done something behind Richard’s back?

  “We may never know exactly what happened,” Marcus reminded them. “Unfortunately, that means we may never be able to conclusively clear the firm from liability.”

  Lily stifled a moan of despair. They had reached a dead end.

  The comptroller, Mrs. Lacey, closed a file and removed her glasses. Lily had never liked the woman, though she was very good at her job. There was something self-righteous about her. Frank and Richard had hired her from the established firm they’d worked for after graduating from college, and the first time she and Lily met, Mrs. Lacey told her it was God’s will that they hire her to work for them when they started their own firm. Nothing to do with pay raises.

  “We must face the possibility of scandal and have the courage to place the blame where it belongs,” Mrs. Lacey said now. “Pride goeth before a fall, and as much as I respected Frank and Richard, they were sinfully proud men.”

  Lily got up slowly, went to the table where Mrs. Lacey sat, retrieved the woman’s stern little purse from the floor, and set it in front of her. Bending down so that she was on the same level as Mrs. Lacey’s startled, rebuking eyes, she said, “Get out of my house and don’t come back.”

  Mrs. Lacey gasped. “Mrs. Porter, you’re not being rational. Really—”

  “Out,” Lily commanded, and slung the purse. It thudded against the doorframe.

  “Easy now,” Marcus said quickly, leaping up and coming to Lily. He clamped a hand on her shoulder.

  Lily leaned closer to Mrs. Lacey. The woman’s eyes flickered with fear. “Richard was good to you. He was good to everyone. And the least you can do is believe in his innocence—and Frank’s.” Lily’s voice shook with violence. She raised her head and stared at Marcus. “And you too.” Then the interns. “All of you.”

  When she was disconnected from her pain, she reacted with plodding determination—hypnotized by any chore that crossed her path. But when something provoked a fresh wave of agony, she lashed out recklessly. Suddenly she wanted to grab Mrs. Lacey by her short brown hair and drag her out of the chair. “Don’t preach sin to me,” Lily told her. “You’re just worried that somebody’ll accuse you of something.”

  “Lily, calm down,” Marcus interjected. “No one’s trying to accuse Richard. We’re trying to get the facts.”

  Mrs. Lacey sniffed. “But I won’t allow myself to be coerced into ignoring my suspicions.”

  Lily slammed a fist on the table. Mrs. Lacey bolted, barely pausing to snatch her coat from the back of the chair and her purse from the floor. She whirled around, backing from the office, her pallid face contorted with fear and disdain. “I have my own reputation to think of!”

  Lily started around the table. Marcus grabbed her by one arm. “Leave.” he told Mrs. Lacey. She spun on her heels and hurried off. Lily struggled to get free of the attorney’s grip. “Lily, she’s the least of our worries,” he said. His voice penetrated her fury. Lily sank down in her vacant chair and stared grimly at the file folders there, listening until she heard the front door slam. Awkward silence filled the room.

  There was a rattle and crash. Her head jerked toward it. One of the interns scrambled out of his chair. The office’s answering machine lay upside down on the floor. “Lily, I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I was thinking of ways to strangle her, and my hand slipped.”

  “What happened?” Little Sis asked. She had returned at a run, and stood in the doorway, again.

  “Chuck just knocked the answering machine off.” Lily leaned back in the chair and shut her eyes. The intern replaced the machine next to the phone on Richard’s desk. “Don’t worry about it. It was broken anyway.”

  Little Sis shuffled in. “No, it’s not.” She checked the connections and punched a button. The answering machine whirred smoothly. “It just didn’t have a tape in it. And it had been unplugged. I noticed one day. Got a new tape for it. It works fine.”

  Lily straightened quickly and opened her eyes. Her mouth went dry with bewilderment and dread. Richard had said it was broken. When? How long ago? Her thoughts whirled. She pressed her fingertips to her forehead, dug her nails into the skin. About a week before he died.

  Why would he lie about it? Had he simply made a mistake? Or had there been recordings of conversations he didn’t want her to hear?

  “Lily?” Marcus spoke her name worriedly. He was rubbing her shoulders. She felt dazed.

  “She needs some rest,” Little Sis snapped. “She hasn’t slept more than an hour or two a night since Artemas Colebrook came to see her, and that was a week ago.”

  Lily dragged herself out of the chair and looked at the group. She would hold herself together by sheer willpower until she was alone. “Y’all go on home. And thank you for coming.” She turned to Marcus and clasped his hand. “I’m sorry I’m not able to look at this objectively. I’ll pack all these files up and send them to you. I know you have to have them.”

  “Yes,” he said gently. “Don’t turn anything over to Colebrook. He had no right to ask you to help him.”

  “He has a right,” she said. “But I can’t let him turn that into a crusade against Richard.”

  After Little Sis herded the men outside, Lily shut the office door. She walked numbly to the answering machine and ran her fingers over it. She was seeing Richard, remembering small details the fog of grief had shut away from her until this moment.

  How strained and jumpy he’d been at the office ceremonies. How he’d been that way for days—at least a week—beforehand. She shut her eyes and recalled waking up just after dawn once to find him down here, with the door shut, talking on the phone. He’d looked upset when she’d opened the door, and he’d ended the conversation quickly. When she’d asked him what in the world he was doing at that time of morning, he said he’d called Frank to go over last-minute details again. Julia Colebrook was hounding them about some minor problems, as usual.

  She remembered him yelling at Stephen the next night for leaving toys scattered on the couch in the den. Richard had never raised his voice to his son before. And when Stephen burst into tears at the shock of it, Richard had hugged him desperately, looking very close to tears himself.

  She remembered reaching for Richard in bed, thinking she could break through his bewildering moods that way He’d shoved her hands aside, then apologized profusely, then gotten out of bed and gone downstairs to the office. She had followed and found him staring at the computer. At the Colebrook blueprints.

  All of it could have been ordinary nervousness over the project. But none of it was remotely like the man she had known since college.

  Lily paced the office, her hands latched behind her neck. Her legs felt like rubber. Without knowing why, she went to her drafting table near the windows. Bookcases on the wall beside it overflowed with volumes on landscape design and horticulture, with framed photographs of Stephen and Richard. She clutched the edge of a shelf and bent her head to it. From the corner of one eye she glimpsed books jumbled in front of something that was barely visible behind them. Blue and white.

  She shoved the books aside and cupped her hands around the Colebrook teapot. It had resided there for years. Richard, who’d known that her family and the Colebrooks had been neighbors, had assumed it was a gift the family had received long before her birth. She had let him believe that small fable, because she never discussed Artemas with anyone, not even Richard.

  Shivering, Lily jerked her hands away She should never have let Artemas return it to her. Touching it filled her with guilt, as if she’d betrayed Richard. She sank down on the couch. She’d married the best man for her, a man who hadn’t measured his love for her against his ambitions and loyalty to his family. A man who kept no secrets from her. Had she been wrong? No. Her life had unfolded as it should. Shutting her eyes, she remembered.

  She was bent over a dresser in the tiny attic bedroom of Aunt
Maude’s house. In the fall she’d move to a dormitory at college, down in Atlanta. A window fan pushed the sticky afternoon air across her flushed face. Boxes and paper bags were strewn around the room. It seemed impossible that she could fit her things into the cramped dresser and closet. Impossible that she could never go back to her own home. Impossible that she’d lost Artemas.

  “Someone’s here to see you.” Lily pivoted quickly at the sound of Aunt Maude’s voice. “From New York.”

  Her hands closed tightly around a stack of folded white socks. Artemas. He’s come back to get me, was her first thought, but it died when Aunt Maude shook her head. “Not him,” Aunt Maude said, her tone gentle but stern. “He sent someone else. A Mr. Tamberlaine.”

  Lily bolted past Aunt Maude and went down the short, narrow stairs to the second floor. Squaring her shoulders, she made herself walk slowly down the long stairs to the first floor. Her heart pounded.

  Mr. Tamberlaine was as well dressed and courtly looking as she remembered from her trip to New York in March. He didn’t see her immediately because he stood with his back to the parlor’s arching entranceway. Little Sis was planted in front of him. One of his large, dark hands lay stiffly in her pale ones. She prowled over his palm with a fingertip. Big Sis sat in a chair by the window, chewing tobacco and peering at him avidly.

  Lily stopped in the doorway and said nothing, her voice trapped in her throat. She glanced down the front hall. Through the screened door she saw a sedan with an Atlanta taxicab company logo waiting by the curb. Mr. Tamberlaine wasn’t going to be here for long then. And she doubted Artemas had sent him here to get her. The last shred of hope melted.

  “We never had a colored man dressed in a nice suit as a guest in this house before,” Big Sis announced. “It’d be exciting, except you’re here for no good.”

  “I assure you, that’s not the case,” Mr. Tamberlaine said. He sounded awkward. Leave it to the sisters to derail his dignity.