Merijoy Rucker knew something was up. Not for nothing was she the biggest snoop in Savannah. “A paper plant? And I bet I know who’s behind it. It’s that Mayhew person, isn’t it?” she said. “Coastal Paper Products? Diane Mayhew was at the Symphony Ball planning coffee this week, and she wouldn’t even look me in the eye. I knew right away something was wrong. She’s been toadying up to me for months.”
I looked around helplessly. The minister was shaking hands with people and making her way toward the door. Others were drifting that way too. If Merijoy Rucker kept me trapped here, giving me the third degree about Beaulieu, I’d never get back to the other parlor to check out the merchandise. Uncle James was no help. He was still deep in conversation with the Loudermilks.
“Do you think anyone would mind if we looked around the house a little?” I asked Merijoy. “I’ve never been inside Beaulieu before. I’d like to get a last look, especially if they’re going to tear it down.”
It was as if I’d issued a battle cry. Her nostrils quivered in indignation. “Nobody’s tearing anything down,” she assured me. “Let’s go peek in that other parlor. I think that wallpaper in there may be an old Scalamandré pattern. Prewar.”
We both knew she was talking about the only war that counted in Savannah. The War of Northern Aggression. The Late Unpleasantness.
As we turned right off the hallway, Merijoy stopped short—so short, I plowed right into the back of her.
“Lewis!” she exclaimed, backing up quickly.
The man she’d collided with seemed surprised to be recognized. He scowled in annoyance. His right hand moved quickly to the pocket of his blue blazer. But not so quickly I didn’t see him slip a small black camera into the pocket.
“Well, hello, Merijoy,” he said, his frown dissolving. He nodded curtly in my direction. “Hello.”
Lewis Hargreaves knows my name. All the antique dealers in Savannah know me, even the ones who pretend they don’t buy from pickers like me. Not that I’d ever sold much to Hargreaves.
Hargreaves owns L. Hargreaves. It’s an “antique gallery”—nothing so plebeian as a shop. His specialty is big-ticket, one-of-a-kind early Southern antiques. Hargreaves himself is regarded as something of a boy wonder. We went to parochial school together, but whereas I was still a measly picker, Lewis had opened his own “gallery” his first year out of Georgetown University. It wasn’t long before his shop was being written up in all the big shelter magazines like HG and Architectural Digest.
Merijoy Rucker leaned forward and gave Lewis a light kiss on the cheek. A soft pink suffused his pale face, and he blushed to the roots of his white-blond hair.
“Lewis, you naughty thing,” she said teasingly. “What are you doing skulking around all by yourself in here?”
Hargreaves blinked rapidly. “Just paying my respects to Miss Mullinax.”
“Bull hockey, Lewis,” Merijoy said. It was the strongest language I’d ever heard her use. “You weren’t in the room during the memorial service.”
“I was invited by Gerry Blankenship,” Hargreaves said. “It’s confidential, that’s all I can say right now.”
Hargreaves walked rapidly down the hallway, toward the staircase.
“He’s casing the place,” I said, watching his immaculately tailored back disappear. “There’s sure to be an estate sale, you know. I’ll bet he’s already putting in a bid for the good stuff.”
Merijoy sighed. “I was hoping the furnishings would be left intact. It’s really vital to retain the original pieces for an important house museum like this.”
“Sure,” I agreed. We turned in to the parlor. It was stuffed with piles of furniture, rugs, boxes, and crates.
“Oh!” Merijoy cried, running the palm of her hand against the wall. The paper was a robin’s-egg blue, with murals of coastal birds: wild herons, marsh hens, egrets, and kingfishers. The paper hung from the wall in ribbons; large parts of it were obscured by spreading brown water stains.
“My God,” Merijoy moaned. “This is a Menaboni mural. Hand-painted. And it’s ruined.” She pulled out her own pocket camera and snapped it.
“Maybe there’s a way to mend it,” I offered.
Over in the corner of the room, a stack of boxes obscured a large piece of furniture. It was a cabinet of some kind, loaded with bits and pieces of old blue-and-white china.
I pulled the boxes away from the cabinet, sliding them against a moth-eaten braided rug on the floor. My hands were filthy from the dust and mildew on the boxes. Nothing in this room had been used in a very long time.
Even in the dim light of the parlor, the corner cupboard stood out like a diamond in a handful of pebbles. I held my breath while I ran my palm over the satiny wood. It was burled elm, eight feet tall at least, with three scalloped shelves behind a pair of wavy glass doors. Below were carefully wrought doors and a scalloped apron. Bells went off in my head. This cupboard was the work of a master cabinetmaker, early nineteenth century. The craftsmanship would hold up to that of any of the famous Philadelphia or Boston artisans of the time, but the design looked Southern vernacular.
“That’s nice,” Merijoy said, flicking at the cabinet door. “I’ll bet it’s original to the house. Look at the way it fits in that corner. You’re into antiques, Weezie. What kind of china is that?”
“Canton ware,” I said, my eyes still on the cupboard. “From the 1700s. Very valuable.”
Merijoy sighed. “The neglect. The ruin. I could weep. I really could. Look at that mantel.”
I tore myself away from the cupboard and walked over to the mantel enclosing the fireplace. It was highly carved, with bas-relief nymphs and caryatids and all types of doodads.
“Nice,” I murmured. I wasn’t really into Victoriana. I kept glancing over at the corner cupboard. It was calling me, seducing me.
“It’s horrid!” Merijoy exclaimed. “So tacky! And it’s all wrong for this house.” She poked a pencil into the wood, which seemed to crumble like stale cake. “And it’s riddled with termites.” She snapped another photo.
She stamped her foot on the floor. “I hate it when the owners fool around with an old house like this. There should have been a cypress mantel here. Or marble, maybe. Not this.” She flicked her hand over the carving. “Grotesquerie.”
“Maybe the original is up in the attic someplace,” I said. “Or in one of the outbuildings. I saw a barn and what looks like a smokehouse outside. And that building right next to the house. A summer kitchen. All those sheds are probably packed with old stuff.” I looked around the room, at the dusty piles of books and papers, the boxes of linens and kitchen utensils, glassware and photo albums. “I don’t think the Mullinaxes ever threw anything away.”
“Maybe,” Merijoy said, unconvinced. “Of course, the rest of the house could be a pile of sawdust too—just like this mantel.
“Let’s go, Weezie,” she said, catching my sleeve in her hand. “It’s too depressing to look around anymore. Just from what I’ve already seen, it could take hundreds of thousands to restore Beaulieu. Millions, maybe.”
I took one last, longing look around the room. At the cupboard. It was what had drawn Lewis Hargreaves and his pocket camera into this room.
Fortunately, the main parlor was nearly empty, because we were both a mess. My hands were dirt-streaked, my dress a network of wrinkles. Merijoy looked like someone had swiped her favorite toy. Her elegant black linen was smudged, her hair mussed. She’d bitten off all her lipstick.
“That woman, Caroline DeSantos,” Merijoy said. “Is she really living in your house with Tal? Right under your nose?”
Uncle James saved me from any more questions about our unusual living arrangement. He strolled up with Mr. and Mrs. Loudermilk trailing in his wake. He looked pleased with himself. Spencer Loudermilk looked happy too, for a petrified person.
“Weezie,” James said, “I believe you already know Mr. Loudermilk.”
I held out my hand to shake his withered little claw. “Your granddaughter BeBe is a good friend of mine, Mr. Loudermilk. She’s told me a lot about you and Mrs. Loudermilk. And Mr. and Mrs. Loudermilk, this is Merijoy Rucker. Merijoy is quite active in preservation.”
Lorena Loudermilk squinted up at me from behind a cloudy pair of eyeglasses that had been patched in two places with duct tape. She was bent nearly double with the most pronounced dowager’s hump I’d ever seen, but her pale skin was smooth and pink, her teeth still even and white.
“I know you,” Mrs. Loudermilk said, nodding at Merijoy. “You married that Rucker boy.” She hardly paused. “My husband, Spencer, has got a clamp lodged in his lower intestine. This lawyer boy here is gonna sue the pee-diddly out of Candler Hospital.”
Spencer Loudermilk looked like a liver spot with legs. He beamed and patted his abdomen. “That’s right. You should see what I do to those metal detectors at the airport.”
Merijoy’s one-track mind refused to be derailed for long. “Weezie and I were just catching up on old times.” She turned to James and gave him a dazzling smile. “Mr. Foley, you’re an attorney. Have you heard any scuttle-butt about what’s to happen with Beaulieu?”
James has a very good poker face. My father says it’s because he was educated by the Jesuits. Daddy blames everything bad that’s ever happened with the Catholic Church or modern civilization on radical left-wing Jesuits.
“Haven’t heard a thing,” James said blandly. “Excuse us, please, would you all? Weezie and I have an urgent appointment back in town.”
He bowed and I said pretty good-byes, and as we walked out onto the front porch of Beaulieu, somebody grabbed my wrist. Caroline. Fine beads of perspiration dotted her upper lip. “What was Merijoy Rucker talking to you about?” she demanded.
“Preservation,” I said. “She’s very interested in preserving old houses.”
I tried to pull away from her, but Caroline’s nails dug deeper into the flesh of my wrist. The dark eyes were mere slits. “If she thinks she can turn Beaulieu into a museum house, she’s sadly mistaken. We’ve got a deal with the paper company. Airtight. And if she tries to raise some stink about it, we’ll raze this old rattrap to the ground. In a single morning.” She released my hand. “Tell her that, why don’t you? Tell her how single-minded I am.”
I looked down at my wrist; there were red claw marks in the flesh.
“You don’t know Merijoy Rucker, do you, Caroline? Well, I’m sure you’ll get acquainted very soon. The two of you actually have a lot in common. It’ll be interesting.”