Bloody Kin Read online

  “Well, we know it’s Covington,” said Poole. “Washington’s identified his fingerprints and they’re going to mail us a picture even though it seems like somebody doesn’t want Detective Bryant or me looking at it too quick. Sometime after you people saw it yesterday, that envelope of Jake Honeycutt’s war stuff turned up missing.”

  “Missing?” asked Gordon.

  “Missing or stolen?” asked Miss Emily.

  “Like James’s things?” wondered Gordon. “But that’s so futile. Why would someone bother to take those pictures? Surely they would know Covington could be identified as soon as you compared fingerprints.”

  He frowned at Poole apprehensively. “His fingertips weren’t mutilated, were they?”

  Bo Poole disabused them of that idea. “No, nothing like that. There has to be a reason though. That’s what I wanted to ask you and Mr. Whitley. Was there anything about the pictures that struck you odd?”

  “I hardly saw them,” Tom Whitley blurted from his stand at the counter. “I was already out of the room before Mrs. Honeycutt put everything back in that envelope and I didn’t go back in.”

  “Easy, Tom,” said Gordon Tyrrell. “No one’s accusing you of taking it.”

  Whitley’s deep-set eyes shifted over the group. His face was wary and his body tense. Kate sympathized, knowing how it felt to be an outsider.

  “It isn’t just pictures,” she reminded Sheriff Poole. “That envelope held Jake’s Purple Heart and souvenirs he picked up in Vietnam.”

  She turned to Gordon. “Was anything missing from James’s trunk besides the pictures?”

  “There was a little cedar chest,” said Gordon. “As clearly as I can recall, it held the same sort of things there were in Jake’s envelope—not just pictures, but some letters, traveling papers, and other odds and ends. The chest is gone and everything in it.”

  “What about you, Mr. Lacy?” asked Poole. “Detective Bryant tells me you lost some pictures, too. Was there anything else?”

  “Just them pictures Jake sent me.”

  “Okay,” said Poole. “Now y’all stop me if I get any of this wrong, but the way I understand it is that Jake Honeycutt, James Tyrrell, this Bernie Covington, and a young man they called Kid met up together in Vietnam, right?”

  “They was on patrol together,” said Lacy.

  “And just by happenstance,” added Kate. “James and Jake met in basic training and they didn’t really know the other two until that dreadful patrol.”

  “They got separated and everybody with them was killed except those four, right?” asked Poole.

  Kate, Gordon, and Lacy nodded.

  “Then a sniper tried to shoot Jake, but your brother and this Covington killed him first and later they camped in an old ruined temple where they almost bumped into a Vietcong patrol?”

  “That’s what Jake writ me,” agreed Lacy.

  “And so far as you know, Jake Honeycutt and James Tyrrell had nothing to do with Covington or the fourth man after Vietnam?”

  Troubled, Kate murmured her agreement with the others but she began to see what Sheriff Poole was driving at.

  “But they are connected, aren’t they, Sheriff? James is dead, Jake is dead, and now Bernie Covington. Oh, God!” she cried as the full meaning broke upon her.

  “It wasn’t an accident, was it?”

  CHAPTER 12

  Through the babble of voices, Kate pinned Lacy’s eyes with her own blazing glance.

  “Jake always swore he was careful with guns,” she said. “Why did you let them call it an accident?”

  The old man glared back at her and a muscle twitched in his bony jaw. “I fetched the law out ’fore I moved him, didn’t I?”

  “Now let’s not everybody get excited,” Sheriff Poole soothed diplomatically.

  “No one took anything for granted, Kate,” said Dwight. “We treated it like any unexplained death: took pictures, fingerprinted the gun, searched the whole area inch by inch. Jake was tangled up in the barbed wire; his gun was right where he would have dropped it. No scuffling of the pine straw like there’d have been if he’d fought with someone and besides, he didn’t have a single mark of any fight—no bruises, no cuts on the back of his hands where he might have hit anybody. Or been hit for that matter.”

  “Then how—”

  “We can’t say,” said Poole. “For all we know, it might still be a real accident. Except now, you see, we look at your husband gone, Mr. Tyrrell’s brother dead, and with this Covington man murdered, well, we’ve got to wonder.”

  He turned to Gordon. “Mr. Tyrrell, I never rightly got all the details about your boat accident down in Mexico. Was there a typhoon or did the engine explode or what?”

  “It was a storm,” Gordon said, his voice hesitant.

  “But you don’t remember!” Kate exclaimed. “You had a concussion and when you came to, you didn’t remember anything at all about that day.”

  “I didn’t, but Mrs. McDermott did,” he reminded her. “And one of the crewmen. Both said a sudden squall came up, the main mast snapped, and the boat broke apart.”

  “They ever find the pieces?” asked Poole.

  Gordon shook his head.

  Dwight looked gratified. “So you can’t swear somebody didn’t weaken the mast ahead of time or maybe monkey with some of the equipment so that everything’d fly apart as soon as they had to take any extra strain?”

  “No, of course not,” said Gordon. “But that’s all so iffy.”

  “Law work mostly is till we get all the facts,” said Poole.

  “Far as that goes,” offered Miss Emily, “three men out of four getting themselves killed is sort of iffy, too.”

  “Mother,” said Rob.

  She ignored him. “Makes you sort of wonder where that kid is, doesn’t it?”

  “We’ve asked the army about him,” Poole acknowledged. “Won’t hurt to know if he’s alive and well somewhere in Utah, say.”

  “Instead of skulking around here, stealing back all the pictures of himself so we won’t know what he looks like?” Gordon suggested thoughtfully.

  “There’s that possibility,” Poole agreed. “Dwight?”

  The younger law officer shifted his bulky frame self-consciously. “This is more iffiness, Kate, Mr. Tyrrell, Mr. Lacy, but I hope you’ll hear me out. Like Sheriff Poole here says, we have to wonder when we hear that four men served together fifteen years or so ago and now at least three of them are dead within six months of each other. That drowning and Jake’s shooting? They look like pure and simple accidents; but what happened to Bernie Covington early Thursday morning was no accident. Somebody smashed his head in and threw him down the packhouse steps.”

  While Dwight spoke, Kate glanced around the wide table. Gordon and Lacy were engrossed in the detective’s words and Miss Emily seemed to be enjoying this inside look at her older son’s work. Rob’s pointed face was blank as he stared into his coffee cup. She felt Tom Whitley’s eyes upon her, yet when she looked toward him, he quickly shied away. Sheriff Poole gazed at them all with a genial expression that didn’t quite mask his watchful air.

  “—so we know Covington was a crook,” Dwight was saying. “Mixed up in drugs, trained in jungle fighting, apt to get violent. A man like that wouldn’t think twice about killing. Now what if he and that younger man teamed up to get rid of James and Jake because of something that happened on that patrol?”

  “Jake wouldn’t have kept something like that a secret,” Kate protested.

  “Maybe it was something he knew without knowing he knew. Or else—Mr. Lacy, you said Jake told you those four had to camp all night in a temple or something with Vietcong soldiers swarming all around?”

  “That’s right,” said Lacy.

  “Well, maybe they found something valuable that night, a gold idol or something they couldn’t take with them then so they buried it, planning to go back after the war.”

  Rob tried not to grin and Gordon snorted, “Shades of Jungle Ji
m! Next you’ll tell us they stole the ruby eye out of a giant Buddha and now, fifteen years later, the ancient curse is finally catching up with them.”

  Dwight’s rugged face turned a dull red.

  “But there was a map,” Kate said unwillingly. “Remember, Gordon? Part of an army terrain map that had been torn out of a larger map.”

  Gordon’s derisive smile faded and he twisted in his chair to face her. “I do remember. James had something like that, too. Do you suppose—?”

  Common sense reclaimed him. “No, it really is too preposterous. If James and Jake had shared a secret like that—”

  “They didn’t realize!” exclaimed Miss Emily, who loved thriller adventure movies and was enchanted by the idea of hidden gold or jewels or foreign idols. “Say Jake and James didn’t know about the treasure but they each kept a map, or maybe half a map, of where that temple was located. Say Covington and that other soldier were the two who actually found and stashed the treasure. And when they couldn’t find it again after the war, why wouldn’t they come looking for the maps they knew James and Jake had kept?”

  “Oh come on, Mother!” laughed Rob. “This isn’t Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

  “It could be,” she said stubbornly. “Why else would Covington be murdered? He and his friend probably killed James and Jake and stole the maps and pictures and then had a falling out. I’ll bet you that other man’s on his way back to Vietnam right now with both halves of the map to guide him to the treasure.”

  Her plump little face was so earnest under its fluffy mobcap of improbably red curls that Rob reached across the table and patted her hand. She snatched it away indignantly. “Such things have happened, Bo,” she insisted.

  “Maybe,” the sheriff conceded, “but I never heard of such in Colleton County. Course, times are changing,” he added, remembering some of the bizarre cases that had popped up in the last three or four years as more and more strangers moved into the county. He still found it difficult to pronounce the word “transvestism” and he’d never even heard of “sexual asphyxiation” until the most sophisticated of his detectives reclassified as accidental a death that the coroner originally called a suicide last year.

  Hidden Buddhist idols, torn treasure maps, and murders disguised as accidents seemed only marginally more outlandish.

  “We’ll have to wait and see what the army gives us,” he said. “In the meantime, Mr. Tyrrell, how about you tell us the name of that place in Mexico y’all were staying at so Dwight can see if they’ve learned anything new about that boat since Christmas.”

  “If you want to stop by Gilead,” said Gordon, “I think I may even have the telephone number of the Costa Verde police prefect.”

  “Fine,” said the sheriff. “And Dwight can show me the packhouse on the way over, if that’s all right, Mr. Lacy?”

  “It’s hers,” Lacy said stonily. “And I’ve got work to do.”

  “I’ll ride over, too, Gordon,” said Rob. “I ought to check the big pieces of silver against the inventory, if nothing else.”

  The sunny kitchen was abruptly emptied of men.

  Kate gathered up cups and saucers, stray spoons and ashtrays, and carried them to the sink of soapy water. Miss Emily automatically flapped open a dish towel and began drying the glassware, but tactful silence was not her strongest point and soon her worried eyes peered up to Kate’s.

  “Does this make it worse, honey?” she asked.

  Kate rinsed a saucer mechanically and set it in the drain rack. “What do you mean?”

  “Is it worse knowing somebody might have killed Jake deliberately?”

  Kate stared at her with a welling impatience. Had Miss Emily been widowed so long she had forgotten the searing pain, the ache of missing someone more dear than—

  “At least now you know it wasn’t Jake’s fault,” said Miss Emily, busy with the dish towel; and the truth of her observation sliced open the knots that had constricted Kate ever since that October Sunday.

  With the possibility of murder came a realization of what grief had done to her. She had blamed Jake for his own death, for deserting her when she loved him so desperately. But what if it wasn’t his carelessness? If he hadn’t gone by his own actions? What if someone else had taken him from her?

  Miss Emily was right. Somehow that would make it a little easier.

  CHAPTER 13

  As an adventurous child visiting her Aunt Bessie, DeWanda Sanders had often sneaked over to Gilead and explored its vast decayed emptiness. She had watched Gilead’s restoration with interest after Patricia and Philip Carmichael bought it from old Mr. Franklin Gilbert and as a teenager, she had often helped out at big parties or when the house overflowed with guests; therefore she knew more about Gilead’s ornaments and furnishings than the rest of the current staff.

  While Gordon Tyrrell took the sheriff and Dwight Bryant up to the third floor attic to examine the burgled trunk, DeWanda accompanied Rob Bryant through Gilead’s beautiful rooms. The russet haired lawyer scanned the inventory sheets, reading aloud the most valuable of each room’s bibelots, and the young black maid either pointed it out or told him its current location.

  She knew that the glass-domed 1847 skeleton clock had been sent to a clockmaker in Atlanta for regulating and that the study’s jasper cigarette box was presently in Gordon’s private sitting room. In the butler’s pantry, she was able to confirm that every silver bowl, goblet, or serving piece was in its proper slot.

  To Mary Pat, the adults seemed to be playing games, part treasure hunt, part hide-and-seek. She scampered up and down the wide staircase, now up in the attic with its mysterious boxes and trunks, now down in the drawing room tugging on Rob’s hand to come see how she’d put the shepherdess on the mantle in her bedroom so it could keep Jemima Puddle-Duck and Princess Leia company.

  Indulging her, for it made no difference to him in which order he took the rooms, Rob followed Mary Pat upstairs and along the hall

  “Hey,” said DeWanda. “You’re going the wrong way, honey.”

  But Mary Pat raced to throw open the door of a small guestroom, “This is my really truly room,” she said. “This is my bed and that’s my chair.”

  “And where’re your clothes and all your pretty toys,” laughed DeWanda, who thought Mary Pat was teasing.

  “Somebody put them down yonder,” said Mary Pat, her solemn little face troubled. “But this is my real room.”

  Rob hesitated. He recognized that this was another manifestation of the child’s strange insistence that places and things could change irrationally and arbitrarily, but he wasn’t certain whether one was supposed to humor her and agree, or try to reason her out of it.

  DeWanda had caught on, too, and her dark eyes melted in concern.

  “This is a real nice room, honey,” she said, “but your other room’s pretty, too, and didn’t you want to show Mr. Rob your china dolls?”

  Mary Pat was immediately diverted. Chattering of Jemima, Princess Leia, and Princess Georgiana, she willingly skipped along between Rob and DeWanda down to the room that had been hers from birth.

  Princess Leia was, of course, a plastic Star Wars toy sold by the millions, the Beatrix Potter figurine was modern porcelain, “Princess Georgiana” a Royal Doulton antique. Mary Pat loved them equally and gave Rob a scornful look when he suggested that she should be extra careful with the shepherdess.

  “Manners, Mary Pat,” Sally Whitley reminded with a gentle smile. That young woman had been sorting through Mary Pat’s winter wardrobe when the three entered the room, and she paused with a little fur-trimmed parka in her hands while Rob explained their errand.

  Sally Whitley had small delicate bones and an old-fashioned prettiness. She wore a blue denim shirtwaist with white cuffs and collar. The severely cut dress was a size too large and, instead of lending maturity, made her look like a teenager playing schoolteacher. Her fair hair was very fine and wisped into natural ringlets around a thin face. A slight overbite gave her a tremulous
, vulnerable look. She was naturally shy and her wide hazel eyes usually dropped first if challenged by the eyes of a more assertive person. She reminded Rob of an easily startled woods creature, a young wild rabbit perhaps, timorous and ready to bolt at the first sign of danger.

  “I’m sure there’s nothing missing here,” she told Rob.

  Mary Pat’s quarters consisted of a large corner bedroom, a playroom and a modern bath. Patricia had chosen bright furnishings for the nursery and, except for a low Martha Washington rocker, everything was contemporary with practical, washable surfaces. The only real item of value was a gold-trimmed mother-of-pearl comb and brush set Philip Carmichael had impulsively bought in a London antique store when Mary Pat was six weeks old.

  “It’s just a pro forma exercise,” said Rob, ticking the dresser set off his inventory. “Whoever broke into the attic probably did it before you and your husband moved in and it doesn’t look like they were interested in anything but James Tyrrell’s trunk.”

  “His war souvenirs,” Sally nodded. “It seems so odd. To take pictures and papers when this house is full of expensive things.”

  It’s on account of that dead man,” DeWanda said knowingly.

  “Sheriff Bo’s up looking in the attic right now, but he said he wanted to talk to all of us before he left.”

  “The sheriff?” An expression of alarm flitted across Sally Whitley’s face.

  “It’s only another formality,” Rob soothed. “He’ll want to know if you-all saw any strangers in the neighborhood last week. There may have been a second man.”

  “He was under draft age back then, so he’d probably be in his late twenties or early thirties by now,” said Dwight Bryant. “We don’t have a picture of him yet or any description, but Covington—that’s the dead man’s name—he had black hair and that black mole on his right cheek; so two strangers together, with Yankee accents probably, should have been noticed.”

  The room in which they’d gathered served as both dining and daytime sitting room for the staff. The Whitleys’ quarters were on the other side of the kitchen (an intercom connected their room to Mary Pat’s almost directly overhead), and the cook and two maids commuted from nearby towns.