1 Died On The Vine

by Joyce Harmon

  I nodded approvingly. “Killing him wouldn’t get the money back.”

  Harkey grinned suddenly. “Would have felt good, though. But Bob said he could make him suffer more in court. Trust a lawyer.”

  “So what will you do now?”

  “Bob says we go ahead against the estate. We’re alleging fraud and misrepresentation.” He seemed to enjoy the terminology. “Say! You could help. If it was obvious that Winslow was selling you a bill of goods, it might show what Bob calls predisposition.”

  “We’ll see,” I temporized. “Have Bob call me. Right now I’m more concerned with making sure my husband doesn’t get arrested for murder.”

  “Which reminds me,” Julia interrupted. “Forgive me for asking, but where were you Wednesday night?”

  “I’ll forgive you because the police already asked. And please, it’s Wayne.”

  “Wayne, then.”

  “I was working that night and made all my scheduled stops, logged in by folks that know me. Sorry to disappoint you ladies, but I do have an alibi.”

  “Oh, that’s fine,” Julia beamed at him. “I just felt I had to ask. To be thorough, you know.”

  “What’s your mother’s situation now?” I asked. “Not that it has anything to do with the case, but I’m curious. Poor woman, I wish there was something I could do.”

  “Mom stays with me and Sylvia until the kids start getting on her nerves too bad, then she goes up to Bob’s – he’s in Bethesda – until his pipe becomes more than she can take. Bob’s cut back on the pipe, he says. It’s a darn shame. She was so independent, and proud of it, too.”

  I sighed. “It is a shame. I hope you can get at least some of her money back.”

  Wayne leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees. “Mrs. Rayburn, when your husband died in Viet Nam, I’m sure you didn’t consider yourself lucky. But you were in a way. Because it’s worse not knowing. It’s worse putting your life on hold and the next thing you know, it’s two decades later.”

  I shivered. Tried to imagine never marrying Jack, raising Pete and Deb on my own, and always wondering. Reading stories about hidden POW camps and wondering if they were true, if Jimmy was there – I twitched my shoulders and tried to pull myself together.

  “You’re absolutely right,” I told Wayne. “I wonder what I would have read in that aerial photograph?”

  ELEVEN

  As we buckled our seatbelts, Julia observed, “I’m sorry I never met this Winslow character. He sounds like a real piece of work. Have you noticed that all his enemies we’ve met so far claim to have wanted him to stay alive so they could make him suffer?

  “Two isn’t much of a statistical sample, but I know what you mean,” I told her. “What gets me is that both Mary and Wayne Harkey were so confident of their ability to make him suffer. I’m not so sure of that. He struck me as pretty thick-skinned.”

  “We’ll never know. Wendy’s?”

  “Wendy’s it is.”

  And we cruised back to our river valley fueled by chocolate shakes.

  As we pulled into the back yard, we discovered Mary’s little blue Miata parked by my wagon. Mary herself was seated cross-legged on the old picnic table. She had found an old piece of twine and was moodily swinging it in front of one of the barn cats (Rayburn Six, I think), who was responding with backflips of feline aggression.

  When she saw us, Mary jumped down from the table, beginning her tirade as soon as we had the car doors open.

  “You won’t believe what that son of a bitch did! You friggin’ won’t believe it!”

  “You must be referring to your late father,” Julia said, a hint of reproof in her voice.

  “The son of a bitch left me some money! Me, his ‘illegitimate daughter, Mary Nguyen’. What a lot of nerve!”

  “Maybe he felt guilty about the way he treated you and your mother,” I suggested.

  “Hah! You know what your problem is, Cissy? You’re just too nice, that’s what your problem is.”

  I smiled at her as I unlocked the back door. “There are worse problems,” I reminded her. We all trooped into the kitchen, where I automatically started the coffee and gave the ever-present Polly a large Milk Bone. She retreated under the table, from which crunching sounds emerged.

  “How did you find out about this legacy, dear?” Julia asked.

  “Andrew Billington Smith called. He managed to track me down to Washington House. He’s the executor of Winslow’s estate, and told me that Winslow had left me fifty thousand dollars to, quote ‘get a start in life’ close quote. What a lot of nerve!”

  Mary had found the ashtray and was carrying it protectively around the room with her, starting an ash collection. “I mean really – get a start in life! I’ve already started. I’ve got a Gold Master Card, for chrissake!”

  “It does sound a bit patronizing,” I admitted.

  “What about the rest of the will?” Julia asked eagerly. She was being Robert Redford again, following the money.

  “I don’t know. I’m supposed to go up and see Andrew B.S. tomorrow.” I gave an involuntary snort at her characterization of the unknown Andrew, and she turned to me. “Come with me, Cissy. Please? Pulleeeze?”

  I was rather disarmed by her transformation from hard-headed newswoman to wheedling adolescent. “Well…” I began.

  Julia cut in. “Of course we’ll come with you, Mary,” she said stoutly. So now it was We.

  The next morning, we met by arrangement at my house and set off for horse country. It was a glorious day, with the forsythia blooming aggressively and the treeline purple with buds. I took possession of the back seat, alternatively talking with Julia and Mary, and leafing through the impressive deck of index cards Julia had amassed on the Pruning Shears Murder (the moniker the Passatonnack Register had coined).

  Mary jittered restlessly in the front seat, switching the radio on, selecting and rejecting several radio stations, and then flipping it off.

  “Mary, why are you so antsy?” I finally had to ask.

  “I don’t know for sure. Maybe it’s suddenly being treated like a member of the family. That’s a first from the Winslow household.”

  “Explain to us what happened when you and your mother came to America,” Julia suggested. “How did you, or she, I suppose, find Winslow? Did you go to this estate and get shown the door?”

  “Nothing quite that melodramatic. I didn’t understand a lot of it at the time, because I was only about seven or eight, and my English wasn’t that good. We got here through being sponsored by a church group in Washington. Washington State, I mean. There was a translator and a lot of paperwork about finding my father.”

  Mary leaned back and lit a cigarette. I expected fireworks from Julia, but she wasn’t about to interrupt the story. “We had a little apartment in Tacoma, and Mom was working in a convenience store. Isn’t that the first rung on the ladder to the American Dream? Next stop, open ethnic restaurant.” Mary sounded cynical.

  “In D.C., I believe the step one is driving a taxicab,” Julia said. “Step two still applies. Wonderful restaurants in D.C. covering the cuisine of every trouble spot of the past fifty years.”

  “Anyway,” Mary continued. “I do remember the day the lady from the church came by with the translator, to tell Mom that the group had contacted Winslow in Virginia, where he lived with his Real Wife. That was such a shock to her. I was in school then and had picked up a lot more English than Mom had. I heard the two ladies talking in English about poor things and it happens all the time.”

  Mary sighed. “Poor Mom. All that time she’d been thinking that they’d been split up accidentally through the fortunes of war. Lots of families we knew got split up and didn’t know where the others were. She was so sure he’d be looking for her, and glad to hear she’d made it out safely. And here was this nice lady from the church telling her that her ‘husband’ said that he didn’t want to see her or me, and that we’d better not bother him again.”

  I was glad
I was in the back seat. I had a huge lump in my throat and a burning desire to dig up that SOB and stab him again.

  Mary went on. “He even implied that Mom was not quite a nice person and that I probably wasn’t his daughter. I got that from what they were saying in English to one another. The translator didn’t tell Mom that; I could tell they didn’t believe him, and she was obviously upset enough without knowing what he’d said about her.”

  Stab, hell! Chop him into teeny-tiny pieces and feed him to the eagles!

  Julia was pretty steamed, too. “Some men are just scum,” she announced.

  We were rolling through horse country now. Thoroughbreds and Arabians and Saddlebreds cropped the grass on either side and ignored our passage. The fences were gleaming white. The stables were large and comfortable. It occurred to me that there were people in the world who would consider themselves lucky if they could live in accommodations as nice as these horses had. The Nguyens, newly arrived in America, would have thought them palaces.

  We slowed down to read the signs. All the residences here had names, painted tastefully yet discreetly on hanging wooden signs. Windemere, Elsinore, The Elms, and finally our destination, Billington Forge. I guess that must be a play on words. Smith – Forge, simply too cute for words. Perhaps if you had money and a name like Smith, you would feel compelled to jazz it up.

  We drove up the winding drive to pull up at the back of the main house, which faced the river. Rather like Mount Vernon, as I’m sure we were supposed to think. Long and white, with three stories and huge windows to allow the river breeze into the house in the pre-air conditioning days.

  The entrance facing the drive appeared to be the one we were expected to use, so Mary pulled the bell cord and was rewarded with the sound of a three-note chime.

  After a moment, the door opened and we were greeted by a stout woman in a housedress and apron. She smiled mechanically at us. “You must be Miss Nguyen?” she asked Mary. Obviously neither Julia nor I were in the right age or ethnic group to qualify as Winslow’s illegitimate daughter.

  “And these are my friends, Mrs. Rayburn and Mrs. Barstow.” Mary didn’t identify us any further.

  “Come right on in and I’ll tell Mister Andrew you’re here.”

  We entered a large hall which bisected the house from front to back. Mount Vernon again. The hall was two stories high, with a magnificent cherry staircase curving up one wall to a balcony above.

  The décor was comfortably colonial, with a parquet floor visible around the edges of the faded oriental carpets. It was a look no parvenu could duplicate, the look that said Old Money. I tried to picture Winslow in this setting. The best I could come up with is Charles Bronson in Buckingham Palace.

  The housekeeper had squeaked away on crepe-soled shoes, and in a few minutes (time well spent examining the hall) a young man appeared above us. “Miss Nguyen! Wonderful to see you again.”

  We looked up and Julia breathed, ”Ye gods, it’s Ashley Wilkes!”

  He was trotting down the stairs now with a non-Ashley-like vigor, but he did have the blond aristocrat air about him. And he did indeed seem to find it wonderful to see Mary again. He pumped her hand enthusiastically. “When you were here last year, I had no idea we were practically related. This is wonderful, wonderful.”

  I remembered Mary’s description of him, “kind of sweet in a geeky way”. Poor Ashley, I mean Andrew – doesn’t Mary realize that most men are geeky when they’re smitten?

  Mary obviously didn’t get it. She introduced the two of us, and Andrew greeted us politely and ushered us into the living room.

  More comfort and faded elegance here, with French doors looking out to the gardens and down to the river. The housedress lady appeared again with coffee.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Griffith.” Andrew told her. “I’ll be talking business with Cousin Mary, so if there are any calls, please take a message.”

  Polite to the help; that’s a good sign.

  I gingerly accepted the porcelain cup and sipped daintily as Andrew turned to Mary. “So you’re Uncle Obie’s daughter. And here I thought you were working on a book.”

  Mary choked on her coffee. “I am working on a book – or I was, anyway. I finished it. I have a publisher lined up.”

  “Oh.” Andrew seemed taken aback. “Well, I’m certainly looking forward to reading it.”

  “I’ll send you an autographed copy,” Mary told him, dabbing at the coffee stain on her skirt.

  Andrew went on. “When I told Uncle Obie about a journalist visiting here, I thought he looked funny, odd I mean, when I told him your name. But he didn’t say anything.”

  Mary spoke sharply. “What do you mean, you told him?”

  He looked dismayed. “Wasn’t I supposed to?”

  Mary paused. She thought deeply, apparently reviewing last year’s meeting. Finally, she admitted reluctantly, “I don’t think I actually told you not to mention it. I didn’t want to tip my hand and let you know the book wasn’t going to be flattering to Winslow.”

  “It’s an expose?”

  “No, it’s a hatchet job.” Mary smiled nastily.

  This was not going well. I decided to butt in. “We’re looking into Mr. Winslow’s finances, Mr. Billington Smith. That could have a bearing on his murder.”

  Andrew turned to me with a puzzled frown. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get – are you with the police?”

  “No, but I found the body. Winslow’s body. It was in our vineyard.”

  “Rayburn!” He exclaimed. “That’s where I heard the name before. The policeman who was here earlier said he’d been found on the Rayburn estate.”

  Estate. I liked that.

  “So you’ve heard the name Rayburn; how about the name Hooper?”

  Another puzzled frown. “I don’t think so. Could you give me some context?”

  Mary had regained her composure and was back in the ballgame. “Mr. Billington Smith – “

  “Oh, please, Andrew.”

  “Andrew, then, when I was here last year – “

  “Researching your book,” he interrupted with a smile.

  “Yes, researching my book. You said that you didn’t have any dealings with the Lest We Forget organization.”

  “Perfectly true. I thought it was all rather pathetic.”

  “Bogus, maybe?” I asked.

  “Maybe. Please understand, I wasn’t particularly close to Uncle Obie. He certainly wasn’t a father figure to me.”

  “Me either,” Mary said.

  Andrew turned to her eagerly. “And that’s awful for you. Criminal, I think. I want to assure you that I had no idea that Uncle Obie even had a daughter. If I had, I certainly would have done something about it. I’ve had a lot of success in getting non-custodial parents to pay child support. That’s part of my practice that I’m proudest of.”

  “Were you Winslow’s attorney?” I asked.

  “What, a wet-behind-the-ears cub like me?”

  “I guess not.”

  “No, the family legal is handled in his rather dottery fashion by old George Milton. He was Priscilla’s lawyer, her father’s lawyer too. He did Obie’s will for him, though I think Lest We Forget had an attorney on retainer for their business.”

  “So maybe we should go see this George Milton about who gets what,” Julia suggested.

  “Oh, I’m the executor,” Andrew said. “Look, here’s the will right here.” He picked up a file folder from the end table and handed it to Mary. Julia and I clustered around, craning our necks to read.

  Amid yards and yards of legalese was the bequest of the estate known as Billington Forge to Andrew Billington Smith, the bequest to “my illegitimate daughter Mary Nguyen, to enable her to get a start in life”, various stock, bond and real holdings to Andrew, and the residue to the Lest We Forget organization.

  Mary frowned thoughtfully. “So if the murder has a financial motive, it’s between this organization and – well – you.”

  Andrew chuckled a
nd shook his head. “Just me. As executor, I’ve been going over Obie’s accounts, and if the residue amounts to a couple thousand dollars, I’ll be surprised. He received a good income from the organization, but he didn’t save. Virtually everything he had he inherited from Priscilla, and that comes back to me.”

  He pointed to the line leaving him Billington Forge. “He gave my family’s estate back to me; wasn’t that big of him?” He looked around the room possessively. “My family has owned this land for almost two hundred years.”

  “How did he get it in the first place?” I wanted to know.

  Andrew sighed. “Because Priscilla never got around to making a will. She must have thought she would live forever. I think she kept expecting to have children, but that never happened. So when she died, her entire estate went to her husband as next of kin. I was only a teenager, but I remember old Milton almost had a coronary about the situation.”

  “Why is that?” Julia asked eagerly.

  “This place was Obie’s absolutely. He could have sold it, subdivided it, anything he wanted. Actually, he was surprisingly decent about everything, let me stay on, and didn’t move in a harem or anything. I think he wanted to keep his country squire image and stay in the good graces of the horsie set. Didn’t like horses himself, but he liked owning them, liked hosting the hunt, all that sort of thing.”

  “It must have seemed like the big time for a shoestore owner’s son from Indiana,” Julia surmised. My, that woman has a memory for details.

  “Is that what he was?” Andrew chuckled. “He always gave the impression that he was born full-grown in the mud in Nam.”

  One of us had not been taking part in this conversation. Mary was still eying the will, doing a slow boil. Now she boiled over. “’My illegitimate daughter, Mary Nguyen’! Why did he feel it necessary to underline it like that? Whose fault was it, anyway, if not his?”

  Andrew stared at her for a moment. Finally he answered, “Stop giving yourself airs; I’m a bastard too.”

  I knew I liked the guy.