The Mulberry Tree

by Jude Deveraux

  “Gotta go,” Matt said, then pushed the button to end the call. He moved the switch on the side of the phone to disable it.

  For a moment he stayed in the bathroom and tried to calm himself. Murder was not in his realm of expertise. Part of him wanted to panic, but he knew he couldn’t. He had to keep a clear mind so he could think about what must be done. Should they return to Calburn? Since he and Bailey had sent Alex, who was underage, to Dolores, it was probable that he and Bailey would be charged as accessories to murder.

  Matt took a few minutes, then left the bathroom. Bailey was sitting up in bed, waiting for him.

  “What’s happened?” she asked, her eyes serious.

  Matt debated whether or not to tell her, but she was a grown woman, and she deserved to be told the truth. “Your sister has been murdered, and Alex has been charged and taken into custody. The police are looking for you, for both of us, so if we want to get out of here, we’d better do it now.”

  Bailey sat there blinking at him.

  “How much cash do you have?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. A hundred, maybe. Why?”

  He could see that she was working hard to hold herself together. “Because we’re going to drive to Atlanta, and we’ve got to pay cash for gas. We can’t use credit cards because they can be traced.”

  Bailey looked up at him, her face calm, but her hands were clutching the bedcover hard. “Shouldn’t we go back to Calburn to be with Alex? Why should we go to Atlanta? What could some ancient woman—if she’s not senile—tell us that could help Alex?”

  “I don’t know,” Matt said honestly, “but if Manville trusted this woman enough to leave the paper about your marriage with her, then maybe he trusted her with other information. You have any other ideas of how to help?”

  “No,” she said slowly. “No, but Alex must be so frightened. And my sister—”

  Matt grabbed Bailey’s arms and pulled her up out of the bed. “You can cry later. You can have a nervous breakdown later if you want—in fact, we’ll both have one—but now you have to get dressed, get packed, and get going.”

  Twenty minutes later they were in the rental car, but Matt didn’t start the engine. “I want to check on something,” he said, then got out. There was an ATM machine on the side of the bank next door to the hotel, and he stuck his card in and punched some buttons.

  Minutes later, he got back into the car and started the engine. “Frozen,” he said. “My bank account has been frozen.”

  Bailey just nodded and buckled her seat belt.

  Twenty-nine

  Martha McCallum was eighty years old, much younger than Bailey and Matt had speculated. They’d been in the car for nine hours straight, arriving in the late afternoon, too late to visit the nursing home. They’d used all the cash they had for gas and food, so they couldn’t afford a motel. Matt pulled the car down a dirt road, where they had a dinner of the last of the bread and cheese and shared a gallon of springwater. When the sun went down, they snuggled together in the tiny backseat and tried to go to sleep.

  “Your foot,” Bailey said.

  “Right,” Matt said as he moved his foot. “Maybe one of us should sleep in the front. Or one of us should do a Daniel Boone and sleep outside on the ground.”

  “Bugs or a gearshift,” Bailey said. “I can’t decide which.”

  He pulled her head down on his shoulder and smiled. He was glad she was able to make a joke, because from the way she’d cried for the first three hours of their trip, he thought she might never smile again.

  At nine the next morning, they were in the lobby of the nursing home, waiting to see Martha McCallum. They’d both had sponge baths in the rest room of a nearby service station and done their best to look presentable.

  The rest home they were in today was quite a bit different from the one Burgess had been in. His had been clean and comfortable, homey even, but this one was plush. As Bailey looked up at the huge, double, curving staircase, she said, “And here I thought the Yankees had burned Twelve Oaks.”

  “She’ll see you now,” the receptionist said; she was wearing a suit that Bailey knew had a designer label.

  “Think Manville paid for this?” Matt whispered to Bailey.

  “Excuse me,” Bailey said loudly to the young woman. “Who owns this place?”

  “It’s owned by one of the late James Manville’s corporations,” she said, smiling as she stopped by a door.

  As Bailey stepped past Matt, she raised her eyebrows as though to say, See?

  Martha McCallum’s suite was beautiful, and Bailey recognized the hand of an interior designer. It was done in French country, and all the antiques were real.

  “Well, well,” came a voice from a wooden-framed chair to their left. “So, Lillian, you finally found me.”

  Bailey turned to look at a small woman wearing a perfectly pressed silk shirtwaist dress, discreet gold earrings, and a strand of pearls. She also had on a small gold watch and a gold bracelet. It was a simple costume, but Bailey knew that everything the woman was wearing was of the finest quality and had cost the earth. The woman’s face had few lines on it, and her long, blondish gray hair was softly pulled back to the nape of her neck and tied with a Hermes scarf. Bailey wondered if the same surgeon who had repaired Jimmie’s mouth had done this woman’s facelift.

  “Yes,” Bailey said, then took a seat on the couch when the woman gestured.

  “And who is this lovely man?”

  “Matthew Longacre,” Bailey said, and the woman shook Matt’s hand before he sat down.

  It was Bailey who began to talk. “You seem to have the advantage on us, since you know me, but I’ve never heard of you. I don’t mean to be rude, but we have a clock over our heads that is ticking, and when it goes off, it’s going to explode, so we need to know all that you can tell us as fast as you can tell us.”

  “Yes, of course,” Martha said. “I heard about your sister this morning. I’m sorry, dear, for her death, but she never was much of a sister to you, was she? Luke detested her.” Martha waved her manicured hand. “Forgive me, but I’ve never been able to call him anything but Luke.”

  “What did Jimmie . . . my husband tell you?” Bailey asked.

  “Everything,” Martha said. “Absolutely everything. I don’t mean about business—he never talked to me about that—but he told me everything about you, and about Eva and Ralph and how your sister extorted money out of him, and—”

  “My sister? How—”

  Martha looked at Matt. “You know, don’t you? It took me a while to piece it all together, but you sent that beautiful young man to Dolores to find out about the permission slip, didn’t you? When I read that he was one of Roddy’s children, I can tell you that my heart nearly stopped. Did he find out everything you needed to know from Dolores?”

  “Yes, I think so,” Matt said, studiously ignoring Bailey’s hard stare. He knew she was just realizing that Alex had told him a lot more than Matt had told Bailey.

  “You found out about the car Luke had to give Dolores, and the yearly income, and all the other things?” Martha asked.

  “Yes, ma’am, I did,” Matt said, still refusing to look at Bailey.

  “And Lillian, dear, what did he tell you?”

  “It seems that he told me very little,” Bailey said, her mouth a hard line.

  Martha smiled. “Men do try to protect us, don’t they? By the way, I see you had your nose fixed, and you lost all that weight Luke kept on you.”

  “Yes,” Bailey said, turning away from Matt. “And you? Jimmie’s surgeon?”

  Martha’s smile grew broader. She had beautiful, expensive dental work. “Yes, the same man. He was used to keeping secrets.”

  “And where did Jimmie get the money for all the surgery he must have had?” Bailey asked.

  Martha hesitated. “Some money had unexpectedly come into my possession . . . a box full of money, so I gave it to Luke and told him to use it any way he wanted to.” She smiled. �
�He used it wisely. He got his mouth fixed, then used the rest to start making what would become billions.” She smiled again, pride on her face.

  “Do you have the signed permission for Lillian’s marriage?” Matt asked after a moment.

  “Yes.” Martha looked at Bailey. “Luke was always terrified that you would leave him. Did you know that?”

  “Yes,” Bailey said softly, then her eyes filled with tears. “I killed him.”

  At that Matt looked at her sharply, but Bailey kept her eyes on Martha.

  “No, you didn’t,” Martha said, and when Bailey started to speak, she raised her hand. “Before you tell me that I don’t know the whole story, let me assure you that I do. Three nights before he died, Luke called me and told me that you’d asked him for a divorce.”

  Matt moved his hand across the couch and clasped Bailey’s hand.

  “But Luke wasn’t despondent over it,” Martha said. “He was elated.”

  “Elated?” Bailey said. “He wanted a divorce?”

  “No. He was elated that you’d finally put your foot down. Luke used to tell me that you didn’t love him enough to be jealous.”

  At that Bailey had to get up. She walked to the window and, for a moment, gazed at the beautiful grounds that surrounded the rest home; then she looked back at Martha. “Jealous? He thought I wasn’t jealous of all those tall, skinny, beautiful women?”

  “They meant nothing to him,” Martha said softly.

  “They meant a lot to me!” Bailey said, then calmed herself. “Was he going to give me a divorce?”

  “No, of course not,” Martha said, smiling. “He was going to court you. He said it was something he owed you. Do you know where he was going when his plane crashed?”

  “No. Business. Jimmie was always visiting the places he owned.” Her voice lowered. “Like this one.”

  Martha smiled. “Isn’t it lovely? When Luke was a child, and he and I were alone in that horrible old cabin, we used to make up stories about what we’d buy if we had all the money in the world. Frank saw to it that we had TV, books, and magazines, so Luke and I knew what was available in the world, even if we couldn’t have it.”

  “And what did you two wish for?” Matt asked.

  “I just wanted normal things, like a house with an indoor toilet, but Luke wanted to own the world. ‘And I’d give it all to you and my dad,’ Luke said. He adored his father.”

  Bailey looked at Martha. “Where was Jimmie going the day he died?”

  “You really didn’t know? He didn’t so much as hint?”

  “No,” Bailey said. “I was very depressed at the time. I was tired of everything, all the moving around, all the people who despised me, and all of Jimmie’s women.” She said the last with anger in her voice.

  “But what was it that you wanted more than life itself?” Martha asked.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Bailey said, puzzled.

  Martha looked at Matt. “What does she want?”

  “Kids,” he said. “She gets real gooey every time she looks at one.”

  Bailey looked at Matt in astonishment. “I do no such thing.”

  “What about those twins you saw at the grocery store?”

  “Those were exceptionally cute babies,” Bailey said defensively. “And I—”

  Martha’s words cut her off. “He’s right. Children. Luke wasn’t about to have his own child and risk it inheriting his lip, so he arranged a private adoption.”

  At that Bailey sat back down on the couch beside Matt. “Adoption?” she whispered.

  “Yes. You know how Luke was. He arranged it all in just a few days, and he was flying to some state out West to pick up the child. He meant to surprise you.”

  “Put it in a box and wrap it up?” Matt said, sarcastically.

  “Yes, that would be like Luke,” Martha said, watching Bailey as she struggled with this news. “I told him he should treat you like an adult, and you two should go through the adoption together, but Luke said, ‘Frecks is too sentimental. She’d want to adopt a whole orphanage full of misfits. But I’m too selfish to stand more than one of them taking her time away from me, so I’m going to get her a little blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl.’ ”

  “That sounds just like him,” Bailey said, blinking back tears. For months now she’d been carrying the burden that maybe Jimmie had been so despondent about her asking for a divorce that he had committed suicide.

  “Feel better now?” Martha asked.

  Bailey was too choked to answer, but she nodded vigorously. Yes, she felt better. She felt relieved of the heaviest burden she’d ever carried.

  Martha motioned to Matt to hand Bailey a tissue from the box (elegantly covered in bird’s-eye maple inlaid with walnut) on the table.

  Bailey took the tissue and blew her nose. “Then it really was an accident.”

  “Oh, no,” Martha said. “Eva and Ralph Turnbull killed Luke.”

  Bailey halted, the tissue halfway to her nose, and Martha looked from Bailey to Matt.

  “Atlanta and Ray?” Matt asked.

  “That’s what they call themselves now, but they’re still Eva and Ralph.”

  “Turnbull,” Matt said. “Not Manville and not McCallum.”

  “Heavens no!” Martha said. “Those two murderers are no kin to me or my son—and they were never related to Luke.”

  It took Matt and Bailey a moment to digest what she was saying.

  “Phillip said he didn’t think Atlanta and Ray were related to Jimmie.”

  “Blackmail?” Matt asked.

  “Yes. Blackmail. If Luke didn’t claim them as kin and give them millions, they said they’d tell the world about his childhood in Calburn. And if people learned of Luke’s early life, he might receive what he most dreaded.” She looked to Bailey to supply the answer to that riddle.

  “Pity,” Bailey said. “Jimmie couldn’t bear for anyone to feel sorry for him.”

  “Right.”

  “There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?” Matt said. “Bailey told me about a ‘murder called suicide.’ Was he referring to his father’s death?”

  For a moment, Martha turned and looked out the window, then she looked back at Bailey. “I don’t know if I should tell the story or not. Part of me wants to let the secrets die with Luke. He worked so hard and paid so much to keep his childhood from the world.” For a moment she was quiet as she blinked back tears. “When I heard of Luke’s death on TV—no one called and told me, because no one knew about me—I knew they had killed him. Luke made a lot of people angry.”

  “Yes,” Bailey said. “I warned him about that. He sometimes cut people to the quick.”

  “But then Luke had been cut so many times that it was all he knew,” Martha said. “Eva and Ralph found it easy to bribe someone who worked for Luke to tell them what he was doing. When they found out that Luke was about to adopt a child, they couldn’t allow that, now could they?”

  “An heir,” Matt said.

  “Right.” She looked at Bailey. “Your sister found out at your mother’s funeral that you didn’t know Luke had obtained your mother’s permission to marry. And Dolores knew that if you didn’t know about the paper, then you thought you and Luke weren’t really married. Shame on you!” Martha said. “How could you believe that someone like Luke would have overlooked something as important as that?”

  “When I was married to Jimmie, I didn’t think about legalities much,” Bailey said in her own defense.

  “So Atlanta and Ray and Dolores worked together?” Matt asked.

  “No, I don’t think Dolores was any match for those two, but Dolores had a big mouth. Sorry, dear, but all one had to do was get her to talking about her younger sister, and Dolores told anyone anything.”

  “She told Alex about the signed permission after knowing him only a day,” Matt said.

  “Yes, and it cost her her life,” Martha said.

  “Atlanta and Ray do it?” Matt asked.

  “Oh, yes. J
ust as they killed Luke and his attorney, they killed Lillian’s sister. I’ve tried hard to protect Luke’s past so that the world would never find out about it, so I kept quiet after Luke’s death. It was harder after that lawyer died and left two little children behind. How is his wife doing?”

  “Taking it hard,” Bailey said.

  “Yes. Luke told me that theirs was a good marriage.”

  “You keep saying he told you,” Bailey said. “Did he call you?” There was a hint of jealousy in her voice. Yes, Jimmie had been to bed with many women, but Bailey had survived by knowing that Jimmie talked to no woman but his wife.

  Smiling, Martha pointed toward a cabinet along the far wall. It was large and of waxed pine, and Bailey doubted if it had cost less than a hundred grand. She opened both doors and looked inside. Inside were shelves full of pretty boxes covered with peach silk. Each box had a brass label on it and a date, each box covering about six months.

  “Go on,” Martha said, “open them.”

  Bailey pulled out a box, removed the lid, and looked inside. In a neat row were letters, each one in an envelope of Jimmie’s monogrammed, green stationery.

  “A letter and a photograph,” Martha said softly. “Every other week since July 1978, he sent me a letter and a photograph. And he also kept my bank account filled with money. And, by the way, dear, Luke was born in 1954, not 1959. He was so proud of his new face that he nipped a few years off his age.”

  Bailey opened one of the letters and read.

  Frecks was mad at me when I got home last night, but I soon got her in a good mood again. She lost four pounds while I was away, so I got the chef to bake that chocolate mousse cake she loves so much. I know, I’m a devil, but I like her fat. She’s all mine that way.

  Bailey folded the letter and put it back into its envelope, but she couldn’t help removing the enclosed photo and looking at it. It was a picture of her, sitting on a chair on the patio of their house in Antigua. Near her were a dozen people, all with drinks in their hands, all seeming to be laughing.

  But Bailey was alone in the middle of the crowd, and her face showed her misery. No wonder they disliked me so much, she thought; then she looked across the room at Matt. I’m much happier now, she thought as she slipped the photo back into the envelope, replaced it in the box, put the box away, and resolutely closed the cabinet doors. That part of her life was over. James Manville had not killed himself because his wife had asked him for a divorce.