A long mahogany table draped with a yellowing lace cloth sat squarely in the middle of the room, which, though covered in dust and cobwebs, managed to retain its elegant proportions.
Ma.s.sive Chippendale dining chairs sat on each side of the table, their faded maroon needlepoint seat covers each adorned with a different flower. A floor-to-ceiling bay window dominated the right side of the room, and through its dust-streaked gla.s.s I could see that Birdsong"s side yard was just as overgrown as its front. Standing in the bay window was an Empire mahogany sideboard, its top covered with stacks of gilt-edged floral china. On the facing wall, a gla.s.s-fronted china cabinet seemed full to bursting with more china and dusty cut gla.s.s.
The oriental rug on the floor was threadbare in spots, but its jewel-like reds and blues made a splash of color in the dimly lit room.
"Spooky," Becky said, drawing a fingertip through the dust on the top of the sideboard.
"Like everybody got up from some swell dinner party fifty years ago and just...disappeared," I agreed, holding up one of the delicate porcelain plates.
"This is hand painted," Becky said, picking up another plate and tracing the design of pink roses and forget-me-nots in the center of the dish. "My great-grandmother had a lot of this stuff in her house when she died. My mother"s supposedly saving it for when I get married."
She sighed. "My mother never gives up hope."
We put the plates back and moved across the hall to the door on the opposite side.
This time we found a formal parlor, in more or less the same condition as the dining room.
The parlor walls were covered in a faded floral-stripe wallpaper, which seemed to be molting from water-stained plaster walls. The fireplace had a surround of elaborate flower-printed tiles and a highly carved dark oak mantelpiece. Over the mantel hung a large oil portrait of a brooding woman in a sleek 1920s flapper-era bobbed haircut. The woman was dressed in a gold off-the-shoulder gown and wore a long strand of pearls and dangly pearl earrings.
"Think she"s a relative?" Becky asked.
"Maybe." I shrugged. "Mitch hasn"t exactly been forthcoming with the Dempsey family genealogy. I think his father was pretty bitter after their divorce."
"One thing we know," Becky said. "At one time, they had some bucks."
"They did," I agreed, looking around the empty room. "Wonder what happened to all the furniture in here?"
She rubbed her arms to ward off the gloomy chill. "Maybe they burned it to stay warm."
My cell phone rang, startling both of us. I plucked it from my shoulder bag and checked the caller ID anxiously. It had been two weeks since I"d been fired from my job, and I still hadn"t heard a word from Alex Hodder.
"Unknown caller," I said, hesitating before punching the connect b.u.t.ton.
"h.e.l.lo?"
"Is this Dempsey Killebrew?"
"It is."
"Good. h.e.l.lo. This is Carter Berryhill."
"Yesss," I said cautiously.
"Of the law firm Berryhill and Berryhill? We represent the estate of Norbert Dempsey?"
"Oh yes," I said. "I was just on my way over to see you."
"So I gather," he said. His accent was deeply Southern, with that faint aristocratic tinge and formal diction you hear in men of a certain age from a certain social strata. Alex Hodder had an accent like that.
"My informants tell me you"ve been by to see Birdsong?"
"How did you know that?"
He chuckled. "Oh, Miss Killebrew. You really don"t know the first thing about Guthrie, now do you?"
I walked over to the window and peered out, just in case Carter Berryhill happened to be standing in the side yard, peering in at us. All I saw was a tangle of bare branches and vines.
"Guess not," I said. "As a matter of fact, my friend and I are in the house right now."
"Really?" He didn"t sound pleased.
"The front door was unlocked," I said. "I rang the doorbell, but there was no answer. Mr. Berryhill, has somebody been living in the house recently?"
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. "We can discuss that in my office, if that"s all right with you. Were you heading over here anytime soon?"
"We"ll leave right now," I told him.
"Excellent. Would you do me a favor? Lock the door behind you? We don"t really have much of a crime rate in Guthrie, but you can never be too careful about these things."
I agreed, he had me repeat the directions to his office, and we hung up.
Becky raised an inquiring eyebrow.
"Carter Berryhill. He"s the lawyer representing the estate. Mitch must have given him my phone number."
"And he already knew you were here? This place gets spookier and spookier, Demps. Are you positive you"re up for living here and dealing with all...this?" She gestured at the decrepitude surrounding us.
"I"ll be fine. It"s just small-town stuff. Probably somebody in the neighborhood saw your car with the Atlanta license tags parked at the curb and called him to make sure we weren"t burglarizing the joint."
"Hardly." She sniffed again and tugged at one of the faded deep blue velvet drapery panels hanging from the window. "Scarlett should have made a ball gown from those things."
I reached over to touch the velvet, which seemed to crumble under my fingertips. "This was expensive fabric, back in the day. In fact, everything I"ve seen, what"s left of it, looks like it was pretty costly."
"Speaking of which," Becky said. "This place is falling apart. I don"t see how you"re going to be able to do all this work by yourself. It"s not just a matter of a new paint job, you know."
"I know," I said ruefully. "Crumbling plaster, peeling wallpaper. G.o.d knows about the heat or the wiring or the plumbing. And we haven"t even checked to see if the place has an actual kitchen or bathroom."
"Did your dad give you an idea of how much of a budget you"d have? Does he have any idea of the shape this place is in?"
"Not yet," I said. "But he will."
10.
"So this is greater metropolitan Guthrie," Becky said as we approached the courthouse square. She turned and wrinkled her nose. "Kinda bleak, Demps."
I couldn"t argue with her. The town"s main street, called Confederate Avenue, was a short, two-block strip of tired storefronts, about half of them empty. It faced the courthouse square, where a granite plinth held a bronze statue of a Confederate soldier. The courthouse itself was a hulking dark brown brick affair that looked like it dated from the late 1800s. An awkward yellow-brick boxy building that screamed "70s had been tacked onto the side of the courthouse. Two police cruisers were parked at the curb in front of the courthouse.
"Mr. Berryhill said his office is half a block down from the courthouse," I told Becky. "Look for a dark green house with a red front door." She nodded and drove down Confederate, while I scanned the street for signs of life. It was still cold and windy, but late in the day. There were cars parked along both sides of the street, but I saw only a couple of shoppers, who hurried out of the stores to their cars.
"At least there"s a restaurant," I said, pointing to a storefront window painted with pictures of pies and steaming cups of coffee. "The Corner Cafe. But it isn"t even on a corner."
"Semantics," Becky said. "It"s a restaurant. And they obviously have pie. So, bonus points for Guthrie."
She slowed the car in front of a dark green house with a front porch that had a signpost swinging from its gable: berryhill and berryhill, attorneys-at-law.
"You coming in?" I asked. She shook her head no. "I"ll just stay out here. Give you some privacy." She hesitated. "I hate to bring it up, but I"ll have to get going pretty soon. I"ve got a dinner meeting tonight. I tried to weasel out of it, but this is a new client, so it"s kind of a command performance."
"I understand," I told her. "Let me just talk to Mr. Berryhill and get the key, and I"ll be right out. Fifteen minutes okay?"
"Fine. Hey-what are you going to do about a car down here? I know you didn"t have one in D.C., but this is Georgia, honey. You"re gonna need a car."
"I know. Mitch says he"ll pay for me to buy some kind of secondhand junker so I can get around. Maybe even a pickup truck!"
She hooted. "Dempsey Killebrew in a pickup truck? I want to see that."
"I"m going native," I a.s.sured her. "Pickup truck, blue jeans, boots, the works."
"I bet you don"t even own a pair of jeans."
"Do too. They cost a hundred and seventy-five dollars. Guess maybe I"ll have to get something a little cheaper to work in."
"Have to go back to the hardware store and get you some Carhartts," Becky said. "That"s what every well-dressed redneck wears for ch.o.r.es."
I stood on the porch of the Berryhill law office and wondered what to do. In D.C., you just walk into a lawyer"s office. But this was Guthrie, and the office was in a house, and I"d already walked into one house today, and the spies had notified the authorities. There was no doorbell to ring, so that was out. I knocked. Three demure raps with my knuckles.
No answer. I pounded with the flat of my palm. Still no answer.
I turned the doork.n.o.b and stepped inside. I found myself in a small outer office, furnished with a desk and chair, a bank of file cabinets, and a couple of worn chintz-upholstered wing chairs. The chairs faced a small fireplace with a gas-log fire merrily burning away. Cozy, but empty.
"h.e.l.lo?" I called loudly.
"Coming," a male voice called from the back of the house. I heard footsteps on the wooden floors, and then a tall, angular man with a thick mane of silver hair and a neatly trimmed goatee popped into the office.
"Miss Killebrew?" He stuck his hand out. "Sorry about that. I was in the kitchen getting a cup of coffee. Scott, my secretary, left early to take his dog to the vet, so I"m just minding the store until my son gets back."
I shook his hand. Carter Berryhill had long thin fingers and a firm handshake. "No problem," I said. "I was a little uncertain about the etiquette of visiting a home office."
"Home office?" He laughed. "Good Lord, no. I don"t live here." He gestured toward the hallway he"d just come through. "Come on back and let"s chat."
I followed him past two closed doors and into a large book-lined room with a desk overflowing with papers and files.
He gestured for me to sit in a high-backed leather armchair.
Carter Berryhill pushed his own chair back away from his desk. He looked me up and down. I did the same to him. He looked to be in his mid to late sixties, with sharp brown eyes, a longish nose, and reading gla.s.ses pushed up into his hair. He was casually dressed in brown corduroy slacks and a camel-colored sweater worn over a white dress shirt, a loosened burgundy necktie around the shirt"s collar. A brown tweed sport coat hung on the back of his chair, and he quickly slipped it on over the sweater.
"You look like a Dempsey," he said finally. "Course, I can see some of your daddy"s family looks in you too, the cheekbones especially, but the eyes, that odd slate blue, and those dark eyebrows and lashes, that"s Dempsey through and through. Norbert had amazing eyes, even in his late nineties. How is your father? Haven"t seen him since he was just a little thing."
"He"s fine," I said politely. "People always say I have my mother"s eyes."
He shook his head. "They don"t know the Dempseys. You rummage around enough over at Birdsong, you"re sure to find some old family photos. You"ll see."
"About Birdsong," I started.
"You gave Ella Kate quite a start, driving up there like that," he said. "I guess maybe we should have warned her you"d be coming to town. She burned up my ears about it, let me tell you."
"Ella Kate?"
"Ella Kate Timmons. She"s some kind of kin to you. Second cousin maybe?"
I shrugged. "Don"t know her."
"Sawed-off little thing, gray hair, white Supp-Hose? Always bundled up, even in the summertime? She was walking Shorty when you pulled up to the house. Ran off and called me and ripped me a new one, if you know what I mean."
"The old lady at the house? She"s the one who told you I was there?"
"That"s right," Berryhill said. "Ella Kate Timmons. She sort of took care of old Norbert these last years."
"Why was she upset with you?" I asked. "In fact, why was she upset with me? As soon as I told her my name, she had some sort of fit, and then she just ran away."
I heard a door open somewhere in the house, and then footsteps. The office door opened, and a younger version of Carter Berryhill stepped inside.
"Dad-" He stopped short when he saw me. "Sorry. Didn"t know you were with a client."
"Come on in, son," Berryhill said. "She"s actually your client. Miss Dempsey Killebrew, meet my son, T. Carter Berryhill the third."
"It"s Tee," the younger man said, shaking my hand. "And I"m pleased to meet you. By the way, my sympathy on the loss of your great-uncle. Mr. Norbert was an inst.i.tution around Guthrie."
Tee Berryhill stood a shade over six feet tall, which was just a shade under his father"s height. His hair was reddish blond, and he was clean shaven, but other than that, he looked remarkably like his father. He was dressed in a dark pin-striped suit, with a red-and-blue-striped rep tie stuffed in the breast pocket of his jacket.
"Thank you," I said. "I"m sorry I never met him. This is my first trip to Guthrie."
"Miss Killebrew went by Birdsong and got Ella Kate all stirred up," Carter Berryhill told his son. "I was just about to explain Ella Kate when you came in."
"It"s Dempsey," I said quickly.
"You met Ella Kate?" Tee asked. "I can"t wait to hear Dad explain her to you."
"She was walking her dog in front of the house when my friend and I pulled up," I explained. "We didn"t see the house, not at first, with all the trees and overgrowth. So, I just asked her where 375 Poplar was, and then, when I told her my name, and she got a good look at me, she just sort of freaked."
"Burned up the phone lines calling me and cussing me out," Carter told Tee.