Wilmington, NC 04 - Murder At Wrightsville Beach

being interned in the U.S. fascinates me. Do you remember them?"
    J.C. glared at him. "Maybe the subject fascinates you, Ballantine, but it doesn't fascinate me. You weren't here. You didn't have to encounter those lousy Krauts every day when you were a kid. So yes, I remember them. I remember them too well and I'd just as soon forget!"
    We were all silent after that. Poor Melanie, she had been planning this cookout for weeks, ever since she knew that Kelly was coming from New York. As a party it was a bust!
    I tried to salvage the situation. "I'm really looking forward to restoring your family's house," I told J.C. "It's a fine example of Georgian Revival architecture from the nineteen-twenties. Those houses were built to last, large and gracious."
    J.C. pushed back his chair and got up. "You're wasting your time. Damned house ought to be leveled." He took a few steps, then stopped at Melanie's chair and quickly smiled, instantly Mr. Charm again. "Thanks for the dessert, sweet lips, I've got to run."
    "I'll walk you down," she said and left with him.
    I stood up too and loaded a tray with the coffee things. "Party's over for me too," I called from the sliding glass door. "I've got an early morning. Night, ya'll ." I carried the tray into the house and left it for morning.
    Party's over, I thought, and wished it had never begun. So the police suspected Gordon Cushman, I mused, as I descended the stairs to my room. He said he'd been helping Val hang the paintings, but Jon had told me there'd been a rift between Val and Cushman. And what had happened to Cecily Cushman's estate? She'd been a big true-crime writer, even had movies made from her books, and made plenty of money. As the detectives say, "follow the money," but follow it where? I wanted to know.

6

    Because of its unique architectural significance, the Carolina Heights Historic District is listed in the National Register of Historical Places. The boundaries are Market Street on the south, Rankin Street on the north, with Thirteenth and Nineteenth streets forming the west and east borders. Victorian-era Oakdale Cemetery, the final resting place for four hundred unknown confederate soldiers and countless yellow fever victims, lay to the north of Carolina Heights.
    I parked my van on Grace Street in front of the Lauder family residence. The neighborhood was particularly lovely in summer. Shafts of sunlight filtered through over-arching old oaks, spotlighting lilies and peonies and showy front yards. The wide avenue was flanked by sidewalks. Under the watchful eyes of their mother, two little tykes in crash helmets were tearing along on their bikes as fast as their training-wheels would allow them.
    It was a cozy residential neighborhood where young families raised children and seniors took their ease on screened side porches. Every summer there was a block party when the streets were closed to traffic. A nice place to live.
    As I waited for Kelly to arrive, I drank in the gracious architectural details of the homes that had been built in the early nineteen hundreds for Wilmington's upper class. Atlantic Coast Line Railroad executives had lived here back in the glory days of the railroad. The pace was slow then and dignified, allowing many of them the luxury of driving home for lunch and a quick nap before returning to their offices.
    The architectural styles were Dutch Colonial Revival, Colonial Revival, Classical Revival. And there were Craftsman bungalows too, square and squat with their deep, shady front porches.
    Where was Kelly? I wondered, checking my watch. I gazed across the curb to the Lauder residence. It was a gracefully proportioned brick home in the Georgian Revival style. The core of the house was four-square, rising two stories under a blue-gray slate pitched roof with dormers. On the first floor two flat-roofed wings had been added on either side. The left wing housed a glass-enclosed sun porch, the right wing -- its mirror image in size and shape -- was a screened porch.
    Kelly pulled up in a rental car, tooted and waved. She parked at the curb behind my van. The property had a driveway that ran alongside the house to a detached garage at the back, but as I stepped out of the van I saw why Kelly had avoided it. The concrete was crumbling in many places and tree roots had heaved up whole slabs. On the other side of the driveway lay the remnants of a clay tennis court, overgrown with grasses. If this was any indication of how the house had been