Bloody Kin

by Margaret Maron

  Kinship stitches you into the community fabric and makes you familiar.

  Anecdotes about people dead a hundred years were not uncommon and everyone seemed to have the most intricate relationships at their tongue tips. Kate once heard one old lady tell another, “Why sure you know him! Remember my Uncle Rassie? Mama’s second-oldest brother? Well, his wife’s brother married this boy’s granddaddy’s sister.”

  Since Kate’s first American ancestors had emigrated from Ireland in the mid-1800s, she was hopelessly out of it. Or so she thought. Then Rob Bryant had seized on her maiden name, O’Bryan, and immediately she was his “little Cousin Katie from up North.”

  What began as a joke was soon picked up by local genealogists and, six months later, Kate had been amused to overhear someone murmur, “Jake Honeycutt’s bride. You know: she and Rob Bryant? Their great-granddaddies were first cousins.”

  Smiling at Rob, Kate realized for the first time how comforting such kinship, even make-believe kinship, could be.

  Jake’s lawyer was tall and whiplash thin with pointed, almost foxlike features. Sleek russet hair and rakish eyebrows added to his feral look; and when he smiled, small even teeth gleamed whitely. But his eyes were a clear, astonishing green, and Kate was as grateful for his presence as if he really were a protective cousin.

  “I didn’t realize you and Rob were brothers, Major Bryant,” she said. “Miss Emily always spoke of a son on the Washington police force.”

  “That’s me,” said the burly detective. “I decided last winter I’d been in the big city long enough and it was time to come on back home.”

  Miss Emily often said her children split the genetic deck between them: “Rob and Beth look just like me, and Dwight and Nancy Faye are the spitting image of their daddy.”

  Kate had never met Calvin Bryant. He’d been killed when his tractor overturned on him years ago while all his children were very young; but having seen Nancy Faye and now Dwight, Kate began to form an idea of Miss Emily’s dead husband. Dwight was two years older than Rob, two or three inches taller, and at least thirty pounds heavier with wide shoulders, thick brown hair, and brown eyes. Where Rob seemed to have a reined-in intensity, Dwight appeared easygoing and uncomplicated. It was hard to reconcile Miss Emily’s boasts of all the difficult cases her son had solved up in Washington with this country-talking, lazy-looking man.

  Nevertheless, reclassified by Rob’s claim to kinship, she could sense a relaxing in the detective’s formality, a formality she hadn’t even realized was there until she felt the subtle shift in her status from suspected outsider to accepted one-of-us.

  “Mama called you, I reckon?” he asked Rob.

  “She did. And she’s going crazy because no one could tell her who’s been hurt.”

  “I’m with her,” Dwight Bryant said, “but he doesn’t seem to have any ID on him.”

  A small spare man appeared in the packhouse doorway, delicately brushing cobwebs from his immaculate gray suit. L.V. Pruitt, the county coroner, blinked in the bright March sunlight, nodded to Rob and spoke to Dwight in the hushed tones of a professional funeral director, which he was.

  “They’re bringing him out now. You’ll have to wait for a complete autopsy, but tentatively, and very tentatively, mind you, I would say a blow on the back of the head and then thrown down the stairs.”

  “Murder?” asked Kate incredulously.

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid so,” Pruitt said solemnly.

  “Any idea when?” asked the detective. The little undertaker was reluctant. “Now, Dwight, you know I’m no real pathologist.”

  “Oh come on, L.V., make a guess,” Dwight urged.

  “Well, judging from my experience, I’d think no earlier than eight last night and not much past four this morning. We’ll know more after they’ve had a look at him over in Chapel Hill.”

  The beep of a car horn drew their eyes to the top of the lane and they saw a young woman standing there watching them.

  “Who’s that?” Kate asked. Before Rob could answer, a bright purple Triumph whipped over the crest and skidded to a stop beside the girl, who got in after a momentary pause.

  “School’s out,” Rob murmured. He stepped forward to meet the iridescent little car, which jounced on down the lane and pulled up behind Pruitt’s sober black Lincoln.

  “You must have rushed those supervisors around on roller skates,” he told his mother.

  Emily Bryant thrust oversized, wraparound sunglasses into a tangle of brick-red curls, bounced out of the car, tugged down the tunic of a lavender plaid pantsuit, and said, “Don’t be impertinent, Robert. Hello, Kate. What a dreadful thing for you to come home to!”

  She held out her arms and embraced Kate warmly. “Oh, my dear, how skinny you’ve gotten! Don’t they feed you in New York? Bessie’s making pecan pies today. You just come home with me for lunch and we’ll start fattening you up again. You, too, Sally,” she said to the fairhaired girl who’d gotten out of the TR and shyly joined them. “Oh, no, that’s right. You have to find Mary Pat and— Kate! You haven’t met Sally yet, have you? Sally Whitley, Kate Honeycutt. Sally and Tom are helping out at Gilead while Tom goes to State. Isn’t Gordon lucky to have such a pretty young nursemaid for Mary Pat?”

  Dwight and Rob’s plump, nosy, gregarious mother had to be nearing sixty-five, but her energy was unflagging and only her shrewd eyes gave away her age. Kate knew better than to try to speak before Emily Bryant ran down, so she merely smiled at Sally Whitley and waited for Miss Emily to pause for breath, something she showed no signs of doing.

  “Oh, Dwight, good! I was so afraid it would be that Jamison man from the south end of the county and I don’t know him from Adam. Or else that lazy Silas Lee Jones and why Bo keeps him on—”

  There was a sudden stir of movement inside the packhouse and even Miss Emily fell silent as they all stepped back from the door to make room for the awkward stretcher that two ambulance attendants were bringing out. The women had started to turn away when Dwight said, “I’m sorry, ladies, but I need for y’all to tell me if you’ve ever seen him before.”

  He gestured to one of the attendants, who turned back the edge of the covering.

  The man appeared to be about forty. His black hair was short and curly and he was clean-shaven. Except for a dark mole the size of a pea on his right cheek, there was nothing remarkable about his features and yet, thought Kate, there was something . . . “Do you recognize him, Mrs. Honeycutt?” asked Dwight, who was watching her closely.

  “I’m not sure,” Kate said slowly. “I don’t think I ever met him, but I have the feeling I’ve seen him somewhere.”

  “Here or in New York?” Kate shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t remember.”

  “Mama? Rob?”

  Both shook their heads, too.

  “Mrs. Whitley?”

  “No, of course not. We’ve only lived here a few months. Tom’s in school most of the time. There hasn’t been time to meet hardly anyone and besides—” The girl seemed to hear herself chattering and clamped her tongue.

  “I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. “I never saw a dead person before.”

  Sally Whitley looked scared and so very, very young that Kate took pity on her.

  “You’re probably worried about Mary Pat, too,” she said.

  Sally Whitley nodded gratefully.

  “She’s okay. I left her with my husband’s uncle. I guess I should have called over to Gilead, but I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  “That’s all right. She loves Mr. Honeycutt. Would follow him around all day long if I’d let her. It’s just that, well, Mr. Tyrrell’s nice about it, but he does like to have his meals on time and he wants Mary Pat there.”

  “Now don’t you worry. Rob’ll give you a ride up to the house and then drive you and Mary Pat right back to Gilead,” said Miss Emily as blithely as if she were arranging a picnic. “And, Rob, tell Lacy that Kate’s having lunch with us and see if you can make
that stubborn old mule come, too. Dwight?”

  The detective shook his head regretfully. “Sorry, Mama, but get Bessie to save me a piece of that pie and I’ll stop in later.”

  His tone was easy, but Kate saw the speculative look in his eyes as he watched Sally Whitley walk away with Rob. Behind him, the ambulance doors clanged shut, and, although the sun shone just as warmly, Kate found herself suddenly shivering.

  CHAPTER 3

  Casual acquaintances were constantly telling Emily Bryant what a jewel she had in Bessie Stewart. “A treasure,” they gushed. “A relic of the old days.” By which they meant the old pre-civil rights days when everyone, meaning blacks, knew his place and kept to it. The gushers were usually women who had to make do with indifferent help for which they paid premium wages, gave uneasy instructions, and were truly puzzled by the lack of loyalty they commanded.

  When Emily Bryant first came to the farm as an inexperienced young bride, she found one of her childhood playmates married to her husband’s chief tenant. A matron of eight years’ standing at that point, Bessie had taken her in hand, taught her the rudiments of keeping house, the secret of feather-light hush puppies, and how to grass tobacco and cotton without chopping up all the tender plants. She had helped deliver Dwight a year later when a hurricane blocked the roads with uprooted trees and downed power lines, and later showed Miss Emily how to turn dresses and suits to fit four growing children when hail destroyed the tobacco two years in a row and money was nonexistent. After Cal Bryant died, it was Bessie Stewart who pushed Miss Emily to get a teaching degree, “’Cause you ain’t never going to be no farmer, I don’t care how long you live on one.”

  Bessie had her own standards of what was fitting in a mistressservant relationship and she needed no movement, civil or feminist, to define them; but after all their years together, she still hadn’t pounded those standards into Emily Bryant’s fluffy head.

  “Now this is really just too bad!” she scolded when Miss Emily turned up at the back door unannounced, with Kate in tow, and informed her that Rob was coming for lunch as well.

  Bessie Stewart had dark brown eyes and skin the color of mellow, smoke-darkened oak. She was no taller than Miss Emily, but her honest salt-and-pepper hair was pinned into a neat bun on top of her head and she lacked her employer’s plumpness. Nor would she have been caught dead in the flashy pantsuits Miss Emily fancied. Day in, day out, she wore neat print dresses with immaculate white aprons.

  Kate, who’d only seen Bessie’s perfect treasure side, tried to leave, but Bessie wouldn’t allow it. “I’m not fussing at you, honey. What we got, you welcomed to share. But you!” She glared at Miss Emily. “Why’d they make telephones if it wasn’t so some people could let other people know what they planning to do? What kind of food you expect and you don’t tell me you’re coming?”

  “I’m not very hungry,” Kate offered, trying to pour oil on Bessie’s troubled waters.

  “And Rob’s not fussy either,” said Miss Emily. “Just give us grilled cheese and coffee. Anyhow,” she added indignantly, “how could I tell you we were coming if I didn’t know it myself?”

  Bessie snorted. “You knew you were walking out of that schoolhouse four hours early, didn’t you? You called Rob to come, didn’t you? While you had that little dialing finger working, you could have called me, couldn’t you? I know you, Em’ly Wallace. You always so afraid something’s gonna happen you won’t see, you don’t use good sense. Ever since you in pigtails you be sticking your nose in everybody else’s playhouse. One of these days you gonna get that nose cut off! Grilled cheese, huh! And what you laughing at, you sassy fox?” she asked Rob, who’d arrived in the middle of her tirade.

  He did look foxlike standing there in the doorway grinning at her with those small white teeth.

  Miss Emily held her tongue while Rob charmed Bessie back into good humor. Eventually, Bessie allowed herself to be hugged and coaxed into admitting that there might be a platter of cold fried chicken left over from the day before, and she further relented by letting him set the kitchen table instead of banishing them to the chilly dining room.

  An astonishing stream of food issued from the packed refrigerator: deviled eggs, spiced pears, butter beans, potato salad, and bread-and-butter pickles joined the chicken, and a pan of hot biscuits materialized as if by magic.

  “What more would you have done if you’d known we were coming?” Kate marveled.

  Completely mollified now, Bessie perched on a stool at a nearby counter with a glass of strong iced tea and demanded a rehash of the morning’s events.

  Already, Kate had told how she’d found the body to Lacy, to Dwight when he arrived with two patrol deputies, and again to Rob and Miss Emily. Now, feeling a bit like the Ancient Mariner, she told it once more to Bessie and found that each retelling made the horror recede a bit further. Bessie hung on every detail.

  “You see? You’re every bit as curious as me,” Miss Emily said, complacently buttering a third biscuit.

  “Maybe so, but you don’t see me dropping everything and running over to stick my nose in, do you?”

  Miss Emily pounced. “Then who’s the extra pie for?”

  Four pairs of eyes regarded the fragrant evidence cooling on the counter. Bessie tried to bluster it through. “Now, Kate, didn’t I use to bring you and Jake a pie whenever y’all came down?”

  Remembering those homey gifts, Kate was embarrassed to feel tears sting her eyes. If they were down for just the weekend, she and Jake usually finished off Bessie’s pie on the long drive back to New York, a thermos of hot coffee and Kate holding a slice up for him to bite as they drove through the night together. Their own moveable feast.

  Kate tried to keep her voice steady. “Yes, Bessie, you always did.”

  “There now!” Bessie snapped at Miss Emily. “You see what you made me do? Oh, Kate, honey, I’m so sorry.”

  Miss Emily patted her hand, Bessie bent to cradle Kate’s honeybrown head against her soft white apron front, and across the table, Rob helplessly proffered paper napkins, his handkerchief, anything to staunch her tears.

  “No, please,” Kate said. “Don’t apologize, Bessie. It’s okay,” she gulped. “It hurts to think about Jake, talk about him, to know he’s gone forever, but it would hurt even more if we cut him out, pretended he never lived, that there’s nothing left of him.”

  Unconsciously, her hand touched her abdomen and, above her head, Miss Emily’s eyes met Bessie’s in wordless confirmation.

  Suddenly both women were talking at once, urging food on Kate, fussing at Rob for pigging the biscuits, pushing grief aside with talk of the man so mysteriously dead in Kate’s packhouse pit until Kate was able to join in again.

  Discussing Mary Pat’s unemotional reaction to their discovery reminded Kate: “Why is Gordon Tyrrell here with Mary Pat? I thought he intended to stay in Mexico.”

  “Didn’t Lacy tell you?” asked Miss Emily. “Why, he opened Gilead before Christmas.”

  “Lacy doesn’t talk to me any more than he can help,” Kate said dryly. “After all this time, he still considers me a damn yankee. I thought I was making progress, but since Jake died . . .” She shrugged thin shoulders.

  “Stubborn as a mule and touchy as a hornet,” said Bessie, “but you’d think Mary Pat hung the moon the way he treats her.”

  “Then it’s only because she’s blood kin,” Kate said bitterly.

  “I didn’t know the Gilberts and Lacy were related,” said Rob.

  “Just by marriage,” said his mother. Absently, her fingers twined in and out of the chain that held her reading glasses around her neck as she sorted through the generations. “Let’s see now . . . Patricia Gilbert and Jake Honeycutt were first cousins because Franklin Gilbert and Jake’s mother Jane were brother and sister; so Mary Pat and Jake are first cousins once removed, but she’s certainly no kin to Lacy.”

  “That wouldn’t stop him,” said Kate. “You know Lacy—blood kin to Jake’s like blood kin
to him.”

  Bessie patted Kate’s shoulder as she poured the younger woman another glass of iced tea. “Never mind, honey, he’ll come round; you wait and see.”

  Kate smiled gratefully and changed the subject to less emotional ground. “I still haven’t heard why Gordon’s back at Gilead. Los Angeles or Mexico or even Vail I could understand, but here? I had the impression that Elaine and Gordon thought this part of the country too dull. Of course, I never knew them very well.”

  “How could you?” Miss Emily asked tartly. “They were like a pair of hummingbirds the way they darted in and out. Here for breakfast and gone by dinner.”

  “Well, he’s settled in to stay now,” said Bessie.

  Like many large black families of the new South, Bessie’s embraced a wide economic spectrum. She was proud of her sons who owned their own small businesses or farms, tending with sophisticated machinery lands which had once required the labor of slaves and sharecroppers; of the granddaughter who taught at Duke; of the nephew who was a chemist out at the Research Triangle. High achievers all and worthy of commendation, but of more personal gratification were the apples that hadn’t rolled very far from the tree: the cousins, nieces and nephews who still hired out as domestics or day labor in the county and who could bring her all the local gossip.

  Bessie may have stayed at home while Miss Emily went out to work, but her grapevine was just as extensive and she spoke with scornful authority when she asked, “Where else he gonna live like a king on nothing?”