“Two point five million dollars,” James said, taking off his glasses and wiping them on the hem of his golf shirt. His glasses fogged up every time he walked out of the air-conditioned house on Washington Avenue and into the broiling late-day sun. “That’s what the paper company paid for Beaulieu.”
Jonathan whistled. “What did Miss Anna Ruby do with all that money?”
“She endowed the Willis J. Mullinax Foundation.”
“And what does the foundation do?”
“Vocational training and community leadership assistance,” James said. “Don’t ask me what that’s supposed to mean. I’m just quoting from the legal documents, which seem to suggest that Gerry Blankenship, as executor of the will and director of the foundation, can spend the money as he wishes.”
“Gerry Blankenship,” Jon said, drawing out the name. “I smell a rat.”
“So you know Gerry,” James said. “Now, if I were assigning him to a rodent family, I’d be more likely to call him a weasel than a rat.”
“Good point,” Jon said.
James turned up the air-conditioning in the Mercedes to the setting he thought of as arctic blast, and backed out of the driveway.
“Did you ever talk to the Flanders girls about Caroline’s mystery boyfriend?” Jonathan asked.
“I did,” James said. “And I’ve called the owner of the house on Gaston Street. Unfortunately, he’s up in Highlands, North Carolina, and he’s one of those throwbacks who don’t believe in having telephones while they’re vacationing.”
“Were Anna and Emily any help?”
“Some,” James said. “Unfortunately, their description of the fella doesn’t fit Gerry Blankenship. He’s a big lard-ass of a guy, hard to miss. The Flanders sisters described Caroline’s friend as average-sized and middle-aged, but with a baseball cap pulled down over his face. And the friend drove some kind of a silver sedan. Gerry drives a fire-engine red Corvette.”
“Doesn’t Blankensip just have red Corvette written all over him?” Jon asked, and they both laughed.
“So the mystery man is middle-aged and drives a silver sedan. That certainly narrows it down,” Jonathan said.
“Piece of cake,” James agreed.
“What else have you learned?” Jonathan asked.
“The sale was finalized a week before Miss Mullinax’s death. And the clock is ticking. Coastal Paper Products, as of Friday, has a permit to clear Beaulieu.”
“Clear—as in tear down the house?” Jon asked, stunned. “How can that be?” he asked. “Beaulieu is the last intact antebellum plantation house on the Georgia coast. The Savannah Preservation League wouldn’t stand for it being bulldozed. If Merijoy Rucker finds out, she’ll personally have a world-class hissy fit.”
“There’s nothing SPL can do about it,” James said. “And your friend can have all the hissy fits she wants. Beaulieu isn’t in the historic district. It isn’t even in the city of Savannah. It’s in unincorporated Chatham County. And they’re the ones who issued the permit.”
“So they’re free to just knock down a historic landmark?”
“For now,” James said. “The state environmental folks and the Army Corps of Engineers still have to rule on the issue of the paper company’s request to dredge on the marsh, and that really is questionable, thank God. And there are some other serious roadblocks they’ll have to clear before they can start building. But I took a ride out to Beaulieu yesterday and saw a surveying crew at work. The foreman said he was told tree-clearing work could start immediately.”
“All those beautiful old oak trees,” Jonathan said. “Some of them are at least two hundred years old. So why are we going back there? What do you hope to accomplish?”
“I want to take a look around the house,” James said. “Remember, I didn’t get much done the last time I was out there. And I thought it would be helpful to have your perspective on things.”
“And Detective Bradley agreed to this?” Jonathan looked dubious.
“He still thinks he owes me,” James said, a little sheepishly. “I had a long talk with him and filled him in on what we’ve learned about Caroline’s mysterious friend, and the odd way Miss Mullinax’s will was set up. I think he’s beginning to have his doubts about Weezie’s guilt.”
“There’s something else you’re not telling me,” Jonathan said.
“Detective Bradley took me into his confidence,” James said. “No matter what I say, he still thinks of me as a priest.”
“But you’re not a priest, and you don’t take confessions anymore,” Jonathan pointed out. “And I’m trying to help.”
“It could get him into a lot of trouble, professionally.”
“What about me?” Jon asked. “If the DA finds out I’ve been poking around out at Beaulieu, my career could be finished.”
“True,” James said. “Fair enough. Bradley is in the process of applying for a medical disability discharge. That episode at Beaulieu really frightened him. He has a happy second marriage and children, and he doesn’t want to die on the job.
“I think he’s a good cop,” James continued. “He doesn’t want to leave the job thinking he arrested the wrong person for this homicide. And he admitted to me that his instincts tell him Weezie didn’t do it. Despite the circumstantial evidence to the contrary.”
They were driving out on Skidaway Road now, past the Bacon Park golf course and the city tennis facility. It was nearly eight o’clock. The brilliant summer sky had faded to a pale blue, with pinkish strands of clouds shot through with orange and gold. They drove along the marsh, where shorebirds picked through tide-exposed expanses of reeds and mud, and closer to the road the live oaks stretched moss-draped branches across the narrow pavement.
The wrought-iron gates to Beaulieu were chained and locked. A large white billboard proclaimed the property to be the future site of Coastal Paper Products’ Plant Mullinax. A yellow hard hat was painted on the sign, beside the cheery slogan “Watch Us Grow!”
“Hideous,” Jonathan said, sighing.
James put the Mercedes in park, got out, and fit a key in the padlock. Jonathan slid across the seat and drove the Mercedes through the open gates, and James closed and locked the gate behind them.
“Does the paper company know anything about Bradley giving you a key?” Jon asked, when James got back in the car.
“Don’t ask,” James said.
The Mercedes rolled slowly down the now-darkening oak alley, the tires crunching the crushed-oyster-shell roadway.
“Beautiful,” Jonathan said, his voice reverent—the cool green arches reminded him of a cathedral, its stillness marred only by the pink ribbons fluttering from survey stakes along the way. “It’s got to be saved.”
“You can worry about saving Beaulieu,” James said. “My job is to save Weezie.”
By the time he pulled the Mercedes to a stop in front of the old house, it was full dusk. Fireflies blinked in the softening haze, and a whippoorwill called out in the darkness.
James handed Jonathan a flashlight.
“Isn’t there any power in the house?” Jonathan looked alarmed.
“It’s an old house. And it seemed pretty dark the last time I was here.”
“The last time you were here a man nearly died,” Jon reminded him.
James held up a knapsack. “I brought bottled water and a cell phone. I’m not taking any chances this time.”
He took out the key ring Bradley had given him, and opened the front door, ignoring the sign posted on a porch column, proclaiming the house to be the private property of Coastal Paper Products.
Jonathan stepped inside and snapped on his flashlight, searching for a light switch. He found one, and a single naked bulb lit up the foyer’s cracked plaster walls.
“Sad,” he murmured, walking into one of the twin parlors. His footsteps echoed in the empty rooms.
“Didn’t you say this place was full of antiques?”
“It was,” James said. “It was packed when I was here a week ago. I wonder where everything went? There was supposed to be a sale. And there’s a piece of furniture Weezie wants to buy.”
“I know what happened,” Jonathan said, snapping his fingers. “They’ve moved the sale. I got a flyer in the mail yesterday. It’s going to be held in a warehouse over on East Broad Street. I suppose they’re emptying the house to get it ready to raze.”
“Not much to see now,” James said, playing the beam of his flashlight around the empty parlor walls. “Just a falling-down old house.”
Jonathan walked slowly around the perimeter of the room, looking up at the ceiling and down at the floors.
“I’m surprised,” he said. “All the moldings, light fixtures, baseboards, everything you’d expect to see in a grand old house of this vintage, none of it’s here. It’s really pretty unremarkable, at least on the inside.”
James looked up to where Jonathan’s light was pointed. The plaster ceiling was crumbled and showing gaping holes. He frowned. “There was some kind of stuff up there before, I think.”
“Stuff? What do you mean?”
“You know. Doodads. There was a fancy light fixture. Like a chandelier. And sort of decorations, I don’t know what you call them. Like frosting on a wedding cake. But they were there before.”
“A plaster rosette?” Jon asked. “What about the outside of these walls? Were there other kinds of doodads, as you call them?”
“Some,” James said. “Painted white. Along the floors too, and there were carved things around the doorways and on top of the doorways.”
Jonathan walked through the hall into the twin of the first parlor. “James. Were there any fancy mantels or fireplace surrounds?”
James followed his friend across the hall. “I think so. But so much furniture was piled everywhere, it was hard to see. Not that I paid that much attention.”
“You’re hopeless,” Jonathan said. He pointed at a fireplace that was little more than a square hole in the wall. “Son of a bitch,” he exclaimed.“They stripped the place.”
“How do you mean?” James asked.
“That’s how they got past the county’s historic preservation review board,” Jonathan said, pointing at the firebox. “Somebody came in here and took down all the old moldings, the cornices, overdoors, mantels, everything. Even the period lighting fixtures.”
“To sell?”
“Well, yes, the stuff probably could be sold after it was salvaged,” Jonathan said. “Somebody stripped it so the house wouldn’t be certified as a historically significant landmark.”
“So the house could be torn down,” James said.
“Were all the moldings gone when you were here with Bradley?”
“I didn’t notice,” James said. “Bradley collapsed upstairs. I just don’t know.”
“Let’s go upstairs,” Jonathan suggested. “See what they did up there.”
The box fan was still in the upstairs hallway where James had pulled it out to cool Detective Bradley down. Another naked bulb’s dim wattage threw little in the way of light, but enough to convince Jonathan that the upstairs, too, had been stripped of its architectural detailing.
Still, they walked from room to room, Jonathan bemoaning the loss of Beaulieu’s trappings, James wondering aloud what evidence might have been destroyed.
The two of them stood in front of the bathroom closet where Caroline DeSantos’s body had been found. It was just a closet.
“Let’s go,” James said. “This place is depressing.”
“It’s haunting,” Jonathan said.
James looked at him with an expression of surprise. “You’re the last person in the world I would have expected to talk like that.”
“Not supernaturally haunting,” Jonathan said. “Nothing like that. No ghosts or wee things that go bump in the night. All these years, through the Civil War, and the stock market crash, through hurricanes and tornadoes, one family made a living here, and other families lived off the land. And after a hundred and fifty years, poof, it’s all gone. The Mullinaxes, a great old Georgia family, vanished. And the house will be gone soon too. Not to fires or floods. Just greed. Good old American greed.”