George, Anne (23 page)

"Elizabeth's mama probably didn't brag about her marrying Clovis, either."

"Probably not. But you want to see something strange? Pull up the plain Camille Atchison file and look for Elizabeth Sherman's parents."

Fred complied with an agility that was infuriating. "Okay, here's Clovis and Elizabeth and William T. Sherman."

"Look him up in the biographical section of that file."

"Okay. Sherman, William Thomas, born South Carolina, 1820, served in the army of the Confederacy, wounded at Shiloh. Married Rebecca O'Donnell. Six children. Lifelong resident of Greenville. Occupation, tailor. Died 1886." Fred looked up. "What is this? Two different people?"

"I have no idea. But I certainly know which version Meg Bryan gave Camille Atchison. And Camille said she had the problem worked out, so she obviously got the second one, too."

Fred studied the screen. "I wonder which one's right."

"I think it's interesting that there are two versions." I thought for a moment, sipping my coffee. "What does the biographical part say about Clovis and Elizabeth?"

Fred typed a message to the computer which obliged with the knowledge that Clovis Reed Johnson was a farmer and Baptist minister and had lived in Mount Olive, Jefferson County, Alabama, from 1870 until his death in 1905. There was no biographical entry for Elizabeth.

"A Baptist minister's wife in a tiny Alabama town? There's no way she would have told anyone her father was General Sherman," I said.

"If he was." Fred pushed his chair back. "This is interesting, but I've got to go to work. You want me to leave the computer on? All you have to do is punch the keys Philip wrote down."

"Sure," I said, knowing full well that "Fatal Error" was lurking in wait.

Fred leaned over and kissed me. "Bye, Sweetie."

"Bye, Pop."

He grinned and bounced out of the back door. Amazing what that trip to Atlanta had done for him.

I moved to the seat Fred had vacated and read the
biographical information on
Clovis Johnson again. Mount Olive was a suburb of Birmingham, so the records should be at the Birmingham Public Library.

I
got a bowl of cereal and sat at the table thinking about the two versions of Camille Johnson Atchison's family tree. William T. Sherman wasn't an uncommon name. It could have been a simple mix-up. But that thought went zipping out of my head. General Sherman appearing on a pedigree chart wouldn't have been an accident. It's only been a hundred and forty years or so since the Civil War—like yesterday in Southern time. A few diehards down here still won't carry fifty dollar bills because Grant's picture is on them, and the fives don't fare much better. Mary Alice, who adores legal tender of every denomination, as do I, says thank God those folks have American Express.

So General William Tecumseh Sherman perched on a branch of Camille Atchison's family tree a mistake? No way. The name would have hit any Southern genealogist between the eyes like the rock that slew Goliath.

I finished my cereal, turned up the bowl to drink the milk, and got up to get more coffee. Cup full, I wandered back to the table and stared down at the computer. Something told me I had found something important. Something also told me I didn't know enough about computers or genealogy to figure out what it was.

The phone rang and I reached over to answer it.

"Patricia Anne?" Trinity said. "I hope I didn't awaken you."

"No. How's Georgiana this morning?"

"Her condition is unchanged. She recognizes me."

"Are
you at Mary Alice's?''

"No. I'm at the hospital. Georgiana seemed glad to see me during the five-minute visits. And she's so sick, I hated to leave."

"You stayed all night? You must be exhausted!"

"I am. The lovely young woman who works with her, Cassie Murphy, has come in, though, and says she'll stay a while. She has suggested that I go to Georgiana's apartment. I've never stayed in her new apartment, but I understand it's close by. I'm sure it would be all right with Georgiana."

"Of course it would. Do you have a key?"

"Cassie does. I'll go sleep a few hours."

"You do that. Call me when you wake up, and I'll bring you something to eat."

"Thank-you, dear."

I started to hang up when I heard Trinity calling, "Patricia Anne?"

"Yes?"

"Georgiana keeps asking me if you found someone named Heidi. Do you know who she's talking about? She seems very agitated about it."

"She's a woman who worked at The Family Tree, and I couldn't find her phone number. I imagine Cassie knows it, though. In fact, I left word for her to call me last night so I could ask her, and she didn't return the call. Why don't you ask her?"

"I will. I'll talk to you later."

I finished my coffee, put on my sweats, and went out to take Woofer for his walk. It was a perfect spring morning, bright sun, low humidity. Mitzi was already out in her yard examining her climbing Peace rose. Woofer and I stopped to speak.

"Loaded with buds," she explained. "Just don't let us have another hard freeze."

"I'll do my best," I said. I started down the sidewalk and turned around. "Mitzi, what do you think about the Civil War?"

She smiled. "Doesn't keep me awake at night."

"What if you found out General Sherman was your great great great whatever grandfather?"

"Wouldn't bother me a bit. I'd just keep it a secret." She smiled wider. "Or move up north. Why?

You found out he's your ancestor? Am I going to have to move?"

"Not that I know of. I don't think I want to know what's hanging on my family tree."

"Well, don't look at what's coming down the street, then."

I looked up and saw Mary Alice's car.

"She's out early," Mitzi said.

"She sure is. I hope everything's okay."

Mary Alice spotted me and pulled over to the curb, letting down the window on my side. "I am totally distraught," she said. "Get in." She didn't look distraught. She had on a green linen jacket, and her makeup was perfect.

"I can't. I've got the dog. What's the matter?"

"Mitzi doesn't want to hear my problems."

"Sure I do." Mitzi looked very interested.

"Well, for starters, Buddy may be gay."

"Buddy's not gay. He's ninety."

Mitzi's eyebrows went up.

"Besides," I continued, "he was a tiger at the opera. You said you had to fend him off."

"True, but last night in the hot tub, nothing."

"Probably the heat and the water. Hot tubs can do interesting things to the male anatomy."

"Bill was always at his best in the hot tub."

"Maybe Buddy's taking blood pressure medicine. Heart medicine, too."

"He is. And he's on the Pritikin diet and didn't even tell me. Brought his own food, and I'm stuck with all this chicken tetrazzini. Here." Sister handed me a casserole. "Somebody might as well enjoy it."

"Gee, thanks."

"And then he asked me to marry him. And I said, 'Buddy, I know you're the second richest man in Ala-

bama. I looked it up. But, Buddy, I marry for love.' "

"And what did he say?"

"That he appreciated my honesty, and he hoped I would allow him to woo me."

"Woo you?"

"Woo me."

"This was in the hot tub with absolutely nothing going on?"

"Or off."

"Umm. If he's gay, why would he ask you to marry him?"

"Protective coloring?"

Mitzi leaned on her fence. "And to think I just came out to look at my Peace roses."

"Where are you going now?" I asked Sister.

"To get Tiffany at the Buick place. Her car broke down. Incidentally, Trinity Buckalew never called last night. Have you heard from her?"

"While ago. She said Georgiana Peach is just the same, and she's going over to her apartment to stay. It's close to the hospital."

"Looks like she'd have called."

"Maybe she did and you were too busy in the hot tub."

"Jackass!" Sister hit the up button on the window. I got my hand out just in time.

"Marry him!" Mitzi yelled to the departing car, her hands cupped around her mouth. "Lord, Patricia Anne," she turned to me, "the second richest man in Alabama, ninety years old with a bad heart? Lord!"

"Go figure." I took my casserole and my dog home.

After I did a minimum of housework, which consisted of making up the bed and zapping the most obvious dust bunnies with the Dustbuster, I sat down at the kitchen table and stared at the computer. I needed to know what was in it. Therefore, I would turn it on and retrieve the information I needed. I would not be intimidated by this little black box. Fred and his male's superior ability with machines. What bullshit! I turned on the power and watched the screen light up.

What I was looking for was multiple listings of any one name, such as Camille's three. Following Philip's instructions, I zoomed right to the directory and found several. One was listed as Jasper Arnold, Jasper N. Arnold, and Jasper Newton Arnold. Two generations back, I discovered that Jasper's grandfather, Clifford, was unlisted on one chart; was a fanner in Tatnall County, Georgia, where he died, on the second chart; and on the third, was a counterfeiter who died in At-more Prison in Alabama. Three listings for Lacy Blake and Sutler Rowe provided the same disparity. An ancestor who might have been an embarrassment was washed clean.

"Okay, Meg," I said to the computer. "What's going on here?"

I got a pencil and paper and copied down the names and dates of the charts that had been changed. It didn't take a professional genealogist to recognize the snake in the woodpile here. But had this snake been the cause of Meg Bryan's death? Or Judge Haskins's murder?

While I was in the shower, I thought about the obvious advantages of changing a name on a family tree. General Sherman's name on the Johnson lineage chart had kept Camille Atchison out of an organization she felt passionately about belonging to. But if General William Tecumseh Sherman became William Thomas Sherman, a Georgia farmer wounded in service to the Confederacy, could Camille take the revised pedigree chart and say, "Big mistake. Clean slate," and be admitted? How much proof would she have to come up with?

And then there was the flip side of the coin. If a family tree could have rotten apples plucked off, it could also have some grafted on. And how much would a person to whom ancestry was a matter of pride pay to have a Benedict Arnold expurgated from his pedigree chart? And would he keep paying? This could be a field ripe for blackmail.

I poured shampoo into my hand. Surely this wasn't what Meg Bryan was doing. Or was it? She had given the chart with General Sherman's name on it to Camille Atchison. Camille said she had had it "straightened out," obviously with the "farmer in Georgia" version. I lathered my hair with the special shampoo I use for curly hair. Some ancestor had forwarded his genes for curly strawberry-blond hair (now mostly gray), along with a million freckles, to me. Another had bequeathed straight brown hair (now curly strawberry-blond) and olive skin to Mary Alice. So what? I stood under the cascading warm water and realized that knowing who these progenitors were would never be the passion for me that it was to the people in Meg's computer.

And then I thought of the boy who fell from the cliff and was hanged by his hair. The stories. Now those I could get hooked on. All the stories of the world are found in each family. A walk through any cemetery is a walk through the world.

"Records for Mount Olive?" the librarian in the Southern History Department at the Birmingham Pub-

lie Library said. "We've got some. But your best bet would be over at the courthouse."

"This man was a Baptist minister," I said, "in the late 1800s."

"The Alabama Baptist Convention has very complete records, too," she said. "I think they're at Sam-ford University." She got up from the same desk, I swear, where I had sat forty years earlier clipping newspaper stories for Miss Boxx, who still appeared occasionally in my anxiety dreams. "Our records are back here."

I followed her to the back of the room. Her skirt, I figured, was one-fifth as long as mine had been forty years ago.

"What is it you want, exactly?"

"I'm trying to find out all I can about a man named Clovis Reed Johnson and his wife, Elizabeth."

"Were they born in Jefferson County?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "He might have been. I doubt she was."

"Well, like I say, most of the Jefferson County records are over at the courthouse. If you don't find anything here, that's where you need to look."

"Thanks." I put my purse and notebook on a table as the woman walked off. In her green miniskirt and matching tights, she would have been at home in Sherwood Forest. Miss Boxx, the ultimate librarian and founder of the Southern History Department, scowled down at her from her portrait on the wall.

It didn't take me long to realize that the woman was right about the records. I found a 1900 census list that had Clovis R. Johnson and Mary C. Johnson listed with four children ranging in age from six to eighteen. Had Elizabeth died? Probably. There certainly wouldn't have been a divorce.