Cal gave his dad a wave and went on into the house to take a shower.
Instead of getting out of the truck immediately, Dwight gave me a wait-a-minute gesture and opened the door, with the phone still to his ear. When he finally did emerge, his face was grim.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“That was Bo. Malcolm Johnson’s killed himself.”
“Oh, Dwight.” Even though I was sure he had killed at least three young men, the news was still shocking. “How? Why?”
“We went out to arrest him just now. When I left, he was on his way in to wash up and get his wallet. Bo thinks he palmed a razor blade when he opened the bathroom cabinet to get his toothpaste, and even though McLamb and Sarah were standing right there by the open door, he cut his jugular before they realized what he was doing. He practically begged us not to mention Gallagher in front of Sarah. I guess he couldn’t stand to see her learn that he’d killed Jeff.”
“Poor Sarah.” I sighed. “Do you have to go back?”
“No, Bo says he’ll take care of it.”
“You want me to call Kate and say we can’t come?”
“No.” He took a deep breath as if to shake it off and reached for my hand. “Let’s walk down to the pond and take another look at that damn fountain.”
We walked and talked for a good forty minutes, and yes, that silly fountain finally did make us smile again when we turned it on.
We agreed that we wouldn’t mention the murders or Malcolm’s death at the party tonight. No need to cast a pall for the others. And once we had loaded our presents for Dwight’s family in the trunk of the car and headed out into the cool evening, Cal’s excitement and high good spirits kept us from dwelling on it.
Kate’s first husband, Jake Honeycutt, had inherited a house that had been in his family for well over a hundred years. Initially built as a four-over-four wooden farmhouse, the passage of time and the family’s increasing prosperity had brought extensive remodels and renovations that added porches and ells and a long single-floor addition on the back until it was difficult to see the original lines of the house.
Inside, all was warmth, red velvet ribbons, glowing candles, and traditional decorations that would have made Scrooge’s nephew feel right at home. A wide central hall ran the length of the original house and the staircase that curved up to the second-floor landing had a thick evergreen garland twined in and out of the railings. (“Fake cedar,” Dwight murmured in my ear, although it looked so real, he had to touch it to be certain. “Don’t be a snob,” I murmured back.)
Both the front and back parlors had pocket doors that could be opened to form a large space. The front parlor was the living room with two large couches and several lounge chairs. After Jake’s death, Kate had turned the back parlor into a formal dining room.
We were the last to arrive and barely had time to drink a festive cup of nonalcoholic eggnog before Bessie Stewart, Miss Emily’s housekeeper who helps out in the kitchen on occasions like this, called us to the table.
Not counting R.W., who sat at a corner in his high chair, fourteen of us sat down to an early dinner. Kate had put all the leaves in the table so that the children wouldn’t have to be shunted off to the kitchen.
Dwight’s sister Beth and her family had gone to spend the holidays with his people down in South Carolina, but Nancy Faye and her husband James and their three stair steps who range in age from six to ten were there, as was Miss Emily.
When we first arrived, I did not immediately recognize the elderly woman who now sat between Rob and little Jake until Kate said, “You remember Mrs. Lattimore, don’t you, Deborah? Jake’s great-aunt?”
“Of course,” I said, taking her thin hand in mine. “How nice to see you again.”
“You’re Susan Stephenson’s daughter, are you not?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, instantly reverting to my childhood when I had been slightly afraid of this tall, autocratic woman.
“You’re the judge?”
I nodded.
Widowed when she was in her early forties, Jane Lattimore had never remarried, but lived on alone in a huge Queen Anne house near the center of Cotton Grove. Built when houses of that size occupied half a block, it had a wrought iron fence all around the property and a life-size iron deer stood on the side where her grandchildren, who were all slightly older than me, used to play croquet and badminton when they came to visit her. I think she had three or four children, who scattered to the far reaches of the country soon after finishing school, but she continued to live alone in that big house except for a housekeeper and a widowed cousin. Her youngest child was Anne Harald, a Pulitzer Prize–winning photojournalist, who lived in New York and occasionally had shows of her photographs at a gallery in Raleigh.
Last year, when I was trying to sort it all out, Kate had patiently sat me down with a family tree she had drawn up for Mary Pat. Kate’s cousin Philip, a wealthy venture capitalist, had married Jake’s cousin Patricia, who was much younger, and both had died before Mary Pat was three.
She then showed me that Jake’s grandfather and Mrs. Lattimore had been brother and sister, which made Mrs. Lattimore his great-aunt and her children his cousins. I’m pretty good with family trees, but my head was spinning when she finished. Nevertheless, it did help me understand how Kate wound up with a rather valuable painting. Before his death, Jake had been fairly close to Mrs. Lattimore’s granddaughter, a homicide detective with the NYPD until she inherited a fortune from the artist Oscar Nauman, who had been her lover when he died. She had given Kate one of his works when little Jake was born and it hung in the front parlor. The painting didn’t really go with the antique furniture, but the colors were nice.
Mrs. Lattimore has always been a very large fish in small-pond Cotton Grove. She’s sat on just about every board the town has, but her abiding love is for the school system, and it was thanks to her efforts that shabby old Zachary Taylor High was torn down and replaced with modern West Colleton. Even though Jake is dead and Kate is no blood kin, Kate still keeps a watchful eye on his great-aunt and often invites her to dinner. This was the first time I had laid eyes on her in over six months and I was shocked to see how fragile she now seemed. Once or twice
