“It’s hard for me to believe she’s gone,” Brooke said wistfully. “Even though I only knew her for a short time, and of course, her illness diminished her on an hourly basis, she was such a strong life force with such an amazing story to tell.”
“I agree. It’s sad.”
“I’m really pissed she died without telling us who killed Russell Strickland or where the body is buried,” Brooke admitted. “My one hope is that Lizzie really will be able to unravel all of Josephine’s secrets while she’s staying at Shellhaven.”
Gabe frowned. “I’m not sure it’s such a good idea for Lizzie to be living there. I mean, I personally don’t really have a problem with it, but as administrator, once I track down those cousins of hers—the heirs apparent, as it were—they might not like it at all.”
“It’s not like she’s moving in for the rest of her life,” Brooke protested. “And it’s a good thing that Shellhaven isn’t empty, with Josephine gone now. What’s it going to hurt?”
“Maybe you’re right,” Gabe said hastily. “Anyway, for the short term, I suppose it’s okay.”
Their appetizers arrived then, and the discussion segued into favorite restaurants, gossip about Savannah, old clients, and mutual friends.
It wasn’t until their desserts arrived—chocolate sea salt gelato with biscotti for her, a glass of port for him—that Brooke realized two hours had flown by.
She dug out the last bite of gelato with the tip of a biscotti, tasted, and rolled her eyes. “So good.”
“Like this evening,” Gabe said, watching her over the rim of his glass. “I love seeing you like this, Brooke.”
He reached over with his napkin and dabbed at a bit of gelato on the corner of her mouth. His hand lingered there for only a moment, but she felt herself blushing.
“You mean with food all over my face? That’s an everyday occurrence. I’m an even messier eater than my three-year-old.”
“He’s a pretty cute kid, by the way. No, I meant seeing you relaxed, enjoying yourself, just being yourself.”
“Are you saying I’ve changed? Since we worked together in Savannah?”
“Definitely. You were always so driven and focused when you were working for the firm in Savannah. I don’t think I was ever with you when you completely let your hair down, the way you have tonight. It’s a nice change. It suits you.”
“Well … thanks. I’ve had kind of a rough three years, raising a child by myself in a new town. There were weeks and months I didn’t think I’d make it. Henry was not an easy baby, and I didn’t get a lot of sleep. But somehow, I guess we weathered the storm. Henry sleeps through the night now, mostly. My practice is finally starting to grow, slowly. I’ve got good childcare—Farrah, who you met tonight, is a godsend. She’s my right-hand girl in the office too. She adores Henry, and the feeling is mutual, and she’s smart as a whip. I don’t know what I’ll do in the fall when she goes off to school in Athens.”
Gabe swirled the port in his glass. “And what about your personal life?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Personal life? Who has time for that?”
“Now you sound like the old Brooke,” he chided. “Don’t you have any desire to see what life is like outside the office? Or Henry’s nursery?”
“You mean date?”
“Yeah. That.”
She sat back in her chair and took a long look at him. His silver hair glinted in the candlelight, and his eyes were frank and appraising.
“I haven’t given it a lot of thought,” she said finally. “For one thing, there’s not exactly a deep dating pool of eligible men in these parts. I mean, sure, I get hit on by your garden-variety rednecks and the occasional horny, inappropriate married guy. And I’ve had some very tempting offers to provide oral gratification to some of the inmates at the county lockup…”
Gabe laughed.
“But otherwise, I haven’t met anybody down here that I’d want to date. And I haven’t felt the need to go looking, despite Farrah’s pleas to set me up with a Tinder account. Now. Turnabout is fair play, Gabe Wynant. What about you? Are you a Match.com guy, or are you more of an eHarmony type? Or maybe Christian Mingle?”
“None of the above. I swear. You know how it is in Savannah, though. For a while after Sunny died, I was fresh meat in the dating supermarket. Her old friends—hell, my old friends—all wanted to set me up, either with themselves or somebody they knew. And I’ll admit, it was lonely. I went out a few times, saw a couple of women for third or fourth dates, but there was never any real connection, so I just kind of gave up.”
“It’s much less stressful to stay home in my yoga pants, read a book, have a glass of wine, and enjoy my own company,” Brooke said.
“Bingo,” Gabe said. “The easy way out. But that gets old too, you know?”
She smiled noncommittally.
The waiter brought the check, Gabe presented his credit card, and he and Brooke drifted out of the restaurant. A breeze was blowing off the river, and as they walked to his car, which he’d had to park a block away, Gabe caught his hand in hers in an easy, natural movement.
“Nice night out,” he said. “Not even that humid.”
“For Georgia. In May,” she agreed.
“Want to take a walk?”
She hesitated, trying to estimate the time.
“Aw, come on. It’s not that late,” he said, reading her thoughts. “It’s not even ten.”
“Okay. But just down to the docks and then back. It’s a school night for me, and Henry’s up at six every morning.”
They swung their hands companionably as they walked along the waterfront. The air smelled of marsh mud and salt water and faintly of fish. The sky was pricked with stars. She thought if she squinted she could see the lights of shrimp boats headed out to sea.
“You look beautiful tonight, by the way,” Gabe said as they reached the municipal docks.
“Um, thanks,” she said. She’d deliberately dressed down for the occasion; white jeans, a simple V-necked navy cotton sweater, and a necklace she’d splurged on at a local boutique, white coral beads with an oyster-shell medallion in the middle.
“Nice to see you not swathed in your typical lady lawyer battle armor of a business suit and heels,” Gabe said.
“Not much call for business suits and heels down here,” Brooke said. “I’ll wear one if I’m in court, in front of a judge, but this is as dressy as it gets for me these days.”
“If you did feel the urge to dress up, I’d love to take you to dinner up at the Cloister,” Gabe said. “They’ve got a great new chef, and there’s an orchestra and dancing on Saturday nights.”
“Oh my gosh. They still have those? My parents used to take me to those when I was a teenager. Mom would make Dad dance with me, and it was total agony.”
“Oh.” He looked disappointed. “You don’t like to dance?”
“I love to dance. And so did he, but it was so damn embarrassing, dancing with your father, who was trying to be all hip and happening. I’ll never forget the night he tried to do the Macarena. The memory is permanently seared onto my brainpan.”
Gabe winced. “If I promise not to try to break out any new dance moves, would you consider coming to dinner with me Saturday night?”
“At the Cloister? But that’s like an hour away.”
“You could stay over,” Gabe said. “Not at my place. I mean, you could stay at my place. There’s room, and I swear I wouldn’t hit on you. But what I meant was I’d book you a room at the hotel. And I’d bring you home first thing in the morning.”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I’d have to see if Farrah is available to stay over. It’s a lot. And you saw how clingy Henry can be. Don’t get me wrong, it sounds like fun, but…”
“Just think about it, okay?”
“I will. Now I’d better get home, or Farrah will have the state patrol out looking for me.”
The ride home took only five minutes. When Gabe pulled into the drivewa
y, they saw a quick flick of the front window curtains.
“Told ya,” Brooke said. “She’s very protective of me.”
“Hmm,” Gabe said.
“But she totally approved of this car. Whatever happened to the Mercedes?”
“I still have it. The Porsche was a complete surprise. Turns out, Sunny bought it without ever saying a word to me. I found it covered by a tarp in the garage at the house at Sea Island the first time I came down after she died.”
“A Porsche 911? She just bought it on a whim?”
He shrugged. “More like on a toot. I’ll sell it eventually, when I sell the house, but for tonight, I thought maybe I’d impress a girl with it.”
“You totally did,” Brooke said.
And before she could say anything else, he leaned over and kissed her softly on the lips. “Don’t tell the babysitter,” he whispered.
46
“Brooke?” There was more than a note of panic in Louette’s voice.
It was Wednesday morning. She’d just walked into her office and hadn’t even had time to fire up the coffee maker or laptop before her cell phone rang.
“What’s wrong?” Brooke asked.
“Those cousins of Josephine’s, Dorcas and Delphine, they’re here! They just come riding up here in a Jeep with some man from the state park. I let ’em in, ’cause I didn’t know what else to do, but now they’re walking around, talking like they own the place. I think you’d better come quick.”
“How the hell did they even find out Josephine is dead?”
“They said there was a big piece in the newspapers yesterday. They already called a lawyer, and he told them they’re fixin’ to inherit this whole island, including the house.”
“What newspaper?” Brooke walked around the office, looking for her copy of the local paper, a weekly that was published on Wednesdays.
“I don’t know. Maybe the Savannah paper? Or Atlanta? We don’t get a paper over here. Shug reads the sports page online.”
“I’ll head over there right now. Can you have C. D. pick me up at the city dock?”
“We ain’t seen C. D. in a couple of days. I’ll send Shug over. He’s off work today.”
“Okay, see you soon. And try not to worry, Louette.”
Brooke flipped her laptop open and did a quick Google search on Josephine’s name. The first citation was an article from the previous day’s edition of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Talisa Island, GA. Josephine Bettendorf Warrick, the legendary heiress owner of this wildest of Georgia’s untamed barrier islands, died last week at the age of 99. Her death signals what is almost certainly the last chapter of private ownership of the 12,000-acre Talisa.
Mrs. Warrick’s father, Samuel G. Bettendorf, was a Boston shipping magnate who purchased the Carter County island more than a century ago with two cousins. He commissioned famed Gilded-Age architect Addison Mizner to design and build a pink stucco Beaux-Arts-inspired twenty-room mansion he dubbed Shellhaven.
Carter County sheriff Howard Goolsby confirmed Mrs. Warrick’s death, saying that the nonagenarian, who’d recently been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, died of a head injury last Saturday after a fall. There are no known survivors.
Bettendorf’s only son, Samuel Gardiner Bettendorf Jr., who was known as Gardiner, enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force at the age of 23 and was killed when the Spitfire he piloted was shot down over Nazi-occupied France in early 1942. The senior Bettendorf died one year later, leaving his daughter as sole owner of much of the island, with the exception of a smaller tract of land on the northern tip of Talisa, which was retained by distant relatives who sold their land to the state for a park in 1978.
In 1949, Josephine Bettendorf married Preiss H. Warrick, a naval captain she met at a bridge party on Sea Island, Georgia. The couple, both amateur naturalists, made the protection of Talisa and its wildlife their life’s work. Preiss Warrick died in 1966 of renal disease.
The couple never had children, and Mrs. Warrick spent the remainder of her life as a fierce guardian of the island, mounting a thirty-year fight to fend off the state’s efforts to buy it.
Brooke closed the laptop and called Gabe Wynant. The phone rang three times, and she got his voice mail.
“Hi, Gabe. Sorry to bother you, but Louette just called to say that Josephine’s long-lost cousins turned up at Shellhaven this morning and are already acting pretty possessive. I’m going over there right now, and I just wanted to give you a heads-up. Talk soon.”
* * *
Shug eased the boat away from the slip at the municipal dock. The water was calm, and seagulls wheeled and soared overhead as they crossed the river.
“How are Varina and Felicia doing?” Brooke asked, as they rode through the no-wake zone.
“Varina’s happy as a clam, but that Felicia, I don’t think she really takes to island life,” Shug said with a chuckle. “She spends most of her time on that computer, teaching her online classes and reading. And she doesn’t leave the house unless she sprays all over with bug spray. Still, she’s got a good heart, taking care of her auntie the way she does.”
“Have you started working on Varina’s house?”
“Oh yeah. We got all the vines and brush tore off outside, and cleared out a whole nest of raccoons that had been living in the chimney. The roofing shingles and insulation and windows and such I ordered should be here by Friday. And you ought to see that little old lady Varina, leaning on her walker and sweeping and mopping the inside of that house.”
“You’re a saint to house them and help them out this way, Shug.”
“Just doin’ what’s right,” he said. “Family’s family.”
“And what about Louette? How’s she holding up with all this stress?”
“Not so good,” he admitted. “Her blood pressure’s up, and she’s worried somebody’s gonna make us move off the island. I told her, ‘Honey, we got money, and we got a place to go,’ but we both know she’s true Geechee. Only place she’s ever gonna be happy is right there in that little house at Oyster Bluff.”
* * *
Louette met her at the front door at Shellhaven. She pointed down the hall toward the library. “They’re back there, and I’m afraid Lizzie is about to snatch ’em bald.”
“I’ll see if I can referee,” Brooke promised.
She heard raised voices as she approached the library’s open door.
“You can’t just ransack our family’s belongings this way,” a woman was saying.
“Hi!” Brooke said, stepping inside.
Two women whirled around to confront the newcomer.
The cousins looked enough alike that they could have been twins. They were skinny, probably in their mid- to late seventies, with dyed strawberry-blond hair so thinned that large patches of pink scalp showed beneath their matching golf visors. They wore T-shirts tucked into their elastic-waisted khaki slacks and sturdy, blindingly white tennis shoes, and they were both glaring at Lizzie, who’d constructed a makeshift office on a card table in the middle of the room.
“Hi, Brooke!” Lizzie looked profoundly grateful for her arrival. She gestured at the women. “These are Josephine’s long-lost cousins, Dorcas and Delphine. Or is it Delphine and Dorcas?”
“I’m Dorcas Fentress, and this is my cousin Delphine McElwain,” said the taller of the two, whose T-shirt was hot pink with a design of sequined kittens. “And you’re the lawyer our cousin supposedly hired to handle her affairs, despite the fact that she had a perfectly capable law firm in Atlanta?”
“That’s me,” Brooke said, extending her hand. “Brooke Trappnell. My grandmother Millie was one of Josephine’s best friends growing up.”
“And my grandmother Ruth Mattingly Quinlan was one of her other best friends,” Lizzie said. “They all went to boarding school together.”
“I never heard Josephine mention either of those names,” Delphine said. Her blue T-shirt had a motif of dancing dolphins, and her wire-rimmed
glasses had blue-tinted lenses.
“When was the last time you ladies saw Josephine?” Brooke asked.
The two women exchanged glances. “It’s been some years now,” Dorcas admitted. “Josephine had become such a shut-in late in life, you know, but Delphine and I made several attempts to contact her.”
“It was my understanding that she refused to see you,” Brooke said. “She was still furious at you for selling your land to the state.”
“That’s all water under the bridge now,” Dorcas said, pressing her narrow lips together. “I must say, it was very upsetting for both Delphine and me to learn about Josephine’s death through a newspaper article.”
“Horrifying,” Delphine said. “We had no idea Josie had even been sick. It breaks my heart to think of our cousin spending her last months so ill and then dying here, all alone, with none of her family around. If only somebody had had the decency to notify us…”
“Oh, she wasn’t alone that night,” Lizzie said cheerfully. “I was here, Brooke and her mother, Marie, were here, Varina and Felicia were here, and of course, Louette, the housekeeper, was here too. And her other lawyer. We had dinner together.”
Dorcas favored Lizzie with a withering stare. “I find it hard to believe that a dying woman would have hosted a dinner party.”
“More like a house party,” Lizzie said. “We all spent the night.”
“And why would she have invited a bunch of strangers to a house party?” Dorcas asked.
Lizzie gestured around the library. “She was going to leave—”
“She was feeling nostalgic,” Brooke said, deliberately cutting Lizzie off. At this point, there was no need to let the cousins know of Josephine’s intent to create a trust to protect Talisa. She would let Gabe Wynant deal with all that. Maybe there was still hope that he would find some loophole to prevent the dreaded Ds from inheriting.
“We should have been notified that she was sick,” Dorcas said. “We would have come immediately. We were her only living family, you know.”
Brooke shrugged. “No offense, but I think Josephine would have contacted you herself if she’d wanted to see you. She was by no means a shut-in. She was making regular visits to her doctors in Jacksonville, and she knew the cancer diagnosis was terminal. That’s why she reached out and asked me to gather these women together. She wanted to meet them and make amends.”
The High Tide Club Page 28