19

Take that, Ivy!” Alison piled the last of the correspondence on Ivy’s neatnik desk. Looking to her left and right to make sure she was unobserved, she searched the long middle drawer.

Her fingers fumbled through paper clips and sticky notes. She moved on to the side drawers. Office supplies. Nothing personal or revealing. She gazed about the director’s private office. No photos of children. Ivy and Henry married late in life after the death of his first spouse. No photos of Henry, either.

Plaques covered the walls. Awards and achievements in the field of historic preservation dotted the surface of the side table. A lovely watercolor of Weathersby House, perhaps an artist’s rendition of its past glory, hung proudly over a four-drawer filing cabinet.

Aha!

She knelt, grasping the handle of the bottom drawer.

“What, may I ask, are you doing in my office, Alison?”

She jumped, jamming her thumb in the process. Standing so quickly she saw stars, she spun around to face Ivy. “Dropped a paper clip.” Panting as if she’d run the Raleigh Marathon, Alison removed a paper clip from the pocket of her denim skirt and held it to Ivy’s face, inches from her own.

Willing her nerves to steady and feigning a nonchalance she didn’t feel, she forced herself to move past Ivy. She clipped an envelope to its corresponding letter. “There. All ready for you to inspect and sign.”

Ivy peered at the stack, bearing page after page of the Weathersby letterhead. “All of it?” She examined the first copy. “Well, I must say I’m pleased at your efficiency.” A genuine smile of relief on her face, Ivy waved Alison out of her office. “Let me read over these, so we can get them out with the afternoon mail.”

She beat a quick retreat, closing the adjoining door. Exhaling, she leaned her forehead against the wood-grained panel. Too close. She must be more vigilant if she was going to make a habit of snooping. She’d come back later and search the file cabinet.

Alison bit the inside of her cheek. She must also remember to thank Val’s son, Trey, for teaching her that sleight of hand trick when he was in his magician phase a few years ago.

The stack should keep Ivy occupied for a while. Time for her own toilet break. She, unlike her illustrious boss, had not learned to sublimate that particular urge.

Her lips twitching, she started for the main house. True to its historical nature, the overseer’s office had not contained washroom facilities. And wanting the house to remain historically accurate, Ivy had seen to it that it still did not.

She trotted up the path. “Maybe that’s why she makes so many trips to the Big House?” She was all for historical accuracy, but please . . .

Alison dashed up the back steps of the “new” addition, circa 1940, giving a quick wave to Erica Chambers, the educational director and Jill-of-all-trades at Weathersby. On the phone in what served as the reception area/ticket office, Erica engaged in a heated verbal battle with someone on the other end of the line.

On her way out of the tiny bathroom provided for the docents’ use, she snagged a “Help yourself” oatmeal cookie from the center of the conference table. This area served as the headquarters for board meetings. She didn’t know how she was going to work it, but she intended to be in attendance tomorrow night for one of the all-important board meetings color-coded on Frank’s appointment calendar.

Erica, a wiry strawberry blonde, came out of the ticket office. “Alison, just the person I needed to see. I just got off the phone with Ivy.”

Uh-oh. Alison bit into the cookie. Here comes trouble.

“Natalie Singleton, who’s supposed to be chairing our spring costume ball fundraiser, cancelled on me. Again.” Erica muttered something unpleasant about parts of Natalie’s lineage. “Ivy insists I set up the display mannequins tomorrow so the board can get a preview of the fashion exhibit that opens the ball on Saturday.”

Alison chewed. Wait for it . . .

Erica planted her hands on her hips. “Like that has to be done tomorrow with all I’ve got to do to get ready for the Open House this weekend. Not to mention the six school groups traipsing through here the end of this week with their grubby little hands.”

Alison swallowed. Hard.

Erica cocked her head and smiled. “Ivy said you were caught up with the paperwork and could help me tomorrow.”

Okay. “What do you want me to do?”

“First thing, we have to get the mannequins we’re borrowing from the history museum. I’ll pick them up on my way to work. Then, we need to unpack the garments from their archival storage in the attic and dress the mannequins in their period clothing. I have the layout on my computer.”

Alison frowned. “I don’t know anything about handling such fragile items.”

Erica dismissed her concerns. “No worries. I’ll do the major stuff. I just need an extra pair of hands.”

She nodded. “Sure. I get here about nine.”

“Great. It’ll be fun. Like playing dress up.”

Except, she grimaced, some of the garments were museum quality and priceless in their own way.

“Ivy must have a lot on her mind to let me do this.”

“What do you mean, Erica?”

Erica laughed. “Usually for special exhibits, she allows no one to touch the family heirlooms except for her.” She leaned against the door frame, sticking one hand in her back jean pocket. “You’d never know I graduated last year with a degree in textile preservation. To Ivy, I’m just a kid, too inexperienced to handle the sacred Weathersby treasures.”

Out on the porch, Alison bent to stroke the resident feline, Miss Patty, a Siamese. Around the back corner of the house, a stooped, elderly black woman huffed up the path, waving her broom like a jousting knight, fighting mad.

She stalked past Alison.

“Miss Lula?”

Lula Burke swung full circle. A scowl contorted her ebony features, as lined and creased as one of Alison’s gardening gloves. She leaned the broom against the porch railing and rubbed her arthritic elbow. “Gots to remember my age. But that woman does beat all.”

Miss Patty entwined around Alison’s ankles.

“That cat’s a good judge of character. Forgive me, for ignoring you, Alison. I just got so worked up. That creature, and I’m not referring to Miss Patty, will be the death of me yet.”

Alison disengaged herself from Miss Patty, careful not to trip down the steps. “I wanted to thank you for your sympathy card last October.”

“Humph,” Lula grunted. “I lost my man forty years ago this week.”

“You couldn’t have been more than a girl yourself.”

A brief smile flickered on Lula’s face, revealing the smooth, even facade of new dentures. “I reckon I wasn’t much more than that. We married young in those days. Nothing else to do. Not like today.”

Lula lifted her chin. “My two grandbabies—one in law school at North Carolina Central and the other graduating as valedictorian from high school this year.” She sighed. “But I do remember what it’s like to be left alone to raise young’uns. I don’t envy you that task in this hard world.”

She touched Lula’s arm. “You’re an inspiration.”

Lula patted her hand. “You were always one of the kind ones, a real lady. Not like some”—she dropped Alison’s hand and gestured down the path toward the office—“who think they is somebody and treat those they consider beneath them like dirt.” She kicked the gravel to underscore her point.

“And I’m not just talking about Herself.” Lula clenched and unclenched her fists. “Telling me to get a move on and clean up that, and I quote”—Lula’s deep contralto, pitched itself an octave higher, in a near-perfect imitation of Ivy at her prissiest—“that pigsty of a conference room you were told to clean last week.”

She knew better than to laugh.

“Humph.” Lula grunted again. “I’d like to clean her clock. Told to clean, my . . .” She glanced at Alison. “Makes me forget I’m a Christian woman sometimes.” She wagged a finger. “Somebody on the board complained, Herself said. Like I said before, some people think they is somebody and the rest of us are just trash to do their bidding.”

She’d always been amazed at how immaculate the seventy-year-old Miss Lula kept the historic structure.

Lula placed her hands on her still-ample hips. “Told me I better mind my p’s and q’s or she’d have to let me go. Like she was Miss Ursula Weathersby resurrected.” She tossed her tight gray curls. “She can’t fire me. Said in the will old lady Weathersby left when she transferred the deed of land and the house over to the city, I was to have a job as long as I wanted it.”

She bent on creaking arthritic knees to stroke the cat sitting between their feet. “And Miss Patty was to have her home here for as long as she lived. Isn’t that right, Miss? Just two old girls left, you and me.” Miss Patty gave a low, contented purr as Miss Lula ran her fingers through Miss Patty’s sable-colored coat.

“It was good of Miss Weathersby to look out for you.”

Lula straightened, adjusting her housedress, careful to look Alison right in the eye. She wasn’t smiling. “Nothing good about it. It’s payback for keeping the family secrets all them years.”

Alison stared. “What secrets?”

Lula smiled sphinxlike. “You’re hoping to find out who killed your man, aren’t you?”

Alison’s lips parted. “How did—?”

Lula laughed. “Don’t look so worried. You’re not obvious to anybody but me. ’Cause that’s what I would’ve done in your place.” The old woman’s gaze drifted to the gardens and orchards in the distance. “The secrets I could tell . . . Don’t matter anymore. The living that cared is all dead now, except for me.”

She crossed her arms over her ample bosom. “There’s a lot of blood covering this Weathersby ground. But I warn you,” Lula retrieved her broom. “Be careful. Like me, you got young’uns at home to raise. What’s done is done. And some things are best left alone.” She commenced to sweep the steps as if personally trying to scour out the wickedness, past and present.

Alison sidestepped the flying debris. “You think someone connected to this place murdered my husband, Frank?”

Lula shuffled her feet. “I don’t rightly know who, but after the po-lice questioned everybody, I got to thinking about that night. I was working late, doing the cleanup that lazy hound of a caretaker, Jasper, failed to do after the Harvest Festival.” She shuddered. “I ax you, whose bright idea that was to let loose three hundred rip-roaring young’uns to do a scavenger hunt all over the property? Candy wrappers everywhere.”

“And what exactly did you see?” Alison prompted, knowing Miss Lula’s penchant for getting off topic.

“It was plumb like a parade the folks caterwauling through here and none of them up to any good or any better than they ought to be, including your Frank.” Lula stopped. “I shouldn’t have said that to you, I reckon, but it was the truth.”

How much of the truth did she want to know? Was Miss Lula right? Were there things best left uncovered?

But steely determination stiffened her spine. Her children’s future depended on putting Frank’s murder to rest. “I’m under no illusions as to what Frank was like, Lula. It’s okay. I faced it long ago. Tell me, if you can, who was out here that night.”

Lula leaned on the broom, the handle tickling her second chin. “Your Frank was out here a lot, especially those last few weeks. Early in the morning or late in the evening. He had keys as all the board members do. He wasn’t his usual self. Cocky, I mean. He actually spoke to me that last night.”

Her breath caught. “You mean he was here in the house before going to Orchard Farm Road?”

“Not at first.” Lula shook her head. “He was coming out of your office.” She waved the broom away. “He followed me into the house.”

She twisted her fingers in the folds of her skirt. “What was he doing in there?”

Lula harrumphed. “Not my place to question Mr. High and Mighty Airplane Pilot. I’ve survived and sent three children to college ’cause I know when to keep my mouth shut. I went upstairs to dust. He stayed downstairs. I looked out the upstairs window later and saw that high-heeled hussy, Natalie Singleton, wheeling out of the parking lot. I can’t say for sure when your man left the premises.”

“Who else, Miss Lula? Please.”

“Best I can recollect, ’cause despite rumors to the contrary,” she hissed with a glance down the path. “I do have work to do.”

Alison leaned forward. “Who?”

“Linda Lawrence slunk by here like the alley cat she is, not to mention Jasper was around here somewhere up to no good as usual. And Ivy was here, there, and everywhere like she always is.”

“Ginny Walston?”

Lula sighed. “Now I feel like a tattletale. Yes, she was closing the house and setting the alarms. Winnie was in the gift shop, tallying the day’s receipts, and Little Miss College was right here on these steps, yakking into her cell phone.”

Alison frowned. “Gracious, was the whole city here that evening?”

Lula chuckled. “Just about, Alison. Just about.”