As we drove out to the development, Will told me what he’d learned from his talk with Dave Carter.
“I swear, sometimes I think Daddy’s had dealings with everybody in the whole damn county,” he said, leaning on his horn for a motorist who seemed to have fallen asleep at the light. “Dave says Daddy floated a loan for his mother to start the business. She was a widow with nothing more than good taste and a network of elderly aunts who had some family jewelry they needed to sell. He wouldn’t talk till he made me promise it wouldn’t get back to Daddy, so you gotta keep your mouth shut, too, okay?”
“Hey, I’m the one told you and Amy and Dwight not to go blabbing this around the family, okay?”
“Okay. And yeah, they were real diamonds. He told me that if the matching earring was the same quality, he could offer Daddy twenty thousand for the pair. The stones were absolutely flawless and set in platinum. Circa 1920. That seemed to be important to Daddy, for some reason.”
“That the diamonds were flawless or that the earring was old?”
“That it was definitely old and that any competent appraiser would recognize that it was old from the way the diamonds were cut and set.”
“Where on earth did he get it, Will?”
“He didn’t tell Dave. Or if he did, Dave’s not telling me.”
“Which?”
My brother shrugged. “Daddy’s always played his cards close to his chest, so I’d say Dave’s telling the truth.”
“Did Daddy want to sell it to him?”
“Nope. Just wanted to know how much it was worth and if it was really old.”
We kicked it back and forth until we got to the upscale development where Candace’s house was one of those in a far corner of the site, surrounded on the roadside and the back by thick privacy hedges. Candace’s lot looked to be no more than a half acre here, so she had practiced what she preached: lots of rooftops on small lots.
Many trees had been carefully spared when the sites were cleared, and banks of azaleas bloomed beneath the dogwoods and pines. Thick rows of yellow and pink pansies edged the circular driveway.
“Nice,” I said, when Will stopped his van behind a dark blue Lincoln.
“And you’ll note that this is one of the smaller houses,” he said.
Cameron Bradshaw must have been watching from inside, because the door opened before Will could ring the bell.
He wore what was probably casual dress for a man of his background—dark slacks, tie and white shirt, and a maroon cardigan. Despite a warm smile, his face was haggard as he welcomed us with old-fashioned courtesy.
Although they had spoken over the phone, he and my brother had never met, nor had I met him, so there were introductions all around and I told him how sorry we were for his double loss. Bradshaw knew who I was and seemed a bit confused as to why I was there.
“She’s going to help me pack up the dollhouse,” Will said breezily as he pulled flattened cardboard boxes and a roll of strapping tape from the back of the van.
This was news to me, but no surprise. Around the courthouse, I’m treated with a modicum of respect as a district court judge. It’s “yes, ma’am” this and “Your Honor” that and “Permission to approach?” But to my brothers, I’m still the kid sister who can be ordered around and told what to do.
Bradshaw walked us through the house to give Will an overall view before getting down to details, pointing out along the way the history of various ornaments and knickknacks that Candace had valued. Although decorated in an excessively feminine style with lots of floral upholstery, it was a bright and cheerful place. Daylight flooded the rooms through large windows and artfully placed skylights and bounced off the white carpet. The overall impression was of frothy pink and red and white.
Until we got to Candace’s bathroom.
“Wow!” I said.
Bradshaw looked a little embarrassed. “This was her favorite place in the house. She used to say that hot water was our country’s greatest achievement.”
He must have seen my raised eyebrows because he said, “You and I may take hot water for granted, Judge Knott, but we have to remember that Candace grew up without it. That’s why she treated herself to this.”
“This” was a room where almost every single surface was mirrored. Walls, countertops, cabinet doors, shower stall, even the ceiling. Only the rose-patterned floor tiles and ceramic sink and the rose toilet were exempt.
I’m comfortable with my body and Dwight seems to like it, too, but damn! How could any woman love her body so much that she’d want to see it reflected every hour of the day from groggy early morning to exhausted night? I knew Candace seemed to think she was hot stuff, but looking at this altar to vanity, she must have thought she sizzled. She was what? Early forties? How much would she have liked this room when she hit sixty and everything began to sag?
The other two bedrooms and bath lay at the far end of the house. Dee’s bedroom was a shambles—clothes and shoes flung everywhere, the mattress half off its box springs, the coverlet and pillows tossed, the drawers and closet doors ajar.
“She was starting to pack up her things,” Cameron Bradshaw said defensively. He touched the lacy white camisole that hung from the doorknob, then his fingers convulsed around it and for a minute, I thought he was going to break down.
Tears moistened my own eyes and I reached out to him impulsively. “We’re so sorry, Mr. Bradshaw.”
With a visible effort, he reined in his emotions and closed the door on his daughter’s room, then showed us into Candace’s immaculate and blatantly feminine office—frothy white sheers under rose damask drapes, a floral-patterned area rug atop the white Berber carpet.
Like the rest of the house, there were no books on these shelves either. Instead, they held numerous brightly colored porcelain flowers, the kind of “collectible” sold to people with more money than taste.
“The SBI agents took her computer and most of the file folders from the cabinet there,” said Bradshaw. “And that’s the dollhouse. She loved it so much that Dee wanted to keep it. I just hope that some scared little girls can lose themselves in it, too.”
The dollhouse was at least three feet tall and looked like Tara. It sat on a wooden base that had been painted green and decorated to look like a lawn with flowering shrubs and pots of flowers on the porch. Beneath were casters that let the whole house be easily moved. Some tiny pots and pans lay on the floor next to a shoebox, along with a kitchen butcher’s block and some bar stools, all to the same scale. I assumed Dee had begun to take the house apart in preparation for its move.
Will taped together some small cartons and handed me a thick stack of tissue paper and a handful of pint-sized plastic zip bags. I was given instructions to wrap the delicate furniture and carefully place the items in the boxes so they wouldn’t smash. I meekly agreed, but as soon as he and Bradshaw left to look at the rest of the house, I was right over to the file cabinet, where I paused to look at the silver-framed photographs on top of it. All of them seemed to feature Candace looking up adoringly to whichever man of power stood next to her—the movers and shakers of the region and, as Jamie Jacobson had pointed out, no women. I was amused to see that she had her hand on G. Hooks Talbert’s as they cut the ribbon to open the Grayson Village Inn.
Unfortunately though, the SBI agents had been way too thorough. Anything of interest once held by those four drawers must now be at the SBI headquarters in Garner. Ditto the desk.
There was nothing for it but to dismantle the three-story dollhouse. I knelt down on the rose-patterned rug that overlay the white carpet and began with the nursery on the top floor. A spindly rocking chair, a crib with a tiny baby doll inside, a high chair—each piece was soon nested into its own cocoon of tissue. The child’s bedroom followed, then the master bedroom. I was amazed to see that the lamps even had tiny wires and realized that there was a small transformer that stepped down regular house current so that the lamps and chandeliers in the dollhouse could actually light up. I couldn’t resist rolling it over to a nearby socket and plugging it in. Some of the furnishings were truly exquisite: there was a mahogany grandfather clock that showed the correct time, ticking away with the help of a watch battery. A gilded birdcage held a pair of lovebirds and a silver tea service sat on the dining room buffet.