Wilmington, NC 04 - Murder At Wrightsville Beach

oblivion and sent my great-grandmother Marty into declining health. She died within a year after William's death. And the shock of the discovery made Uncle J.C. the way he is. You know, difficult, mercurial. One moment he's flattering you to death, the next he's speaking to you contemptuously as if you were an idiot."
    "Can you imagine?" Melanie said. "The Lauders have sure had their share of troubles."
    "Well, mother and I have made good. Now it's J.C.'s turn. And I agree with Melanie, he deserves it."
    "Who deserves what?" a voice asked.
    I looked up guiltily to see J.C.
    Kelly giggled. Melanie, who is never at a loss for words in any social situation, said, "You deserve the adoration you are receiving, J.C. Come, sit with us."
    "How can I refuse a chance to be seen with three beautiful ladies. Kelly, sweetheart, how are you darlin '?" He pecked her on the cheek then sat down in the fourth chair.
    "Now what have you girls been up to?" His brown eyes surveyed us suspiciously.
    "We were just discussing the work on the house," Kelly said, flustered. "It's going to be beautiful. Ashley's having the nineteen-twenties furniture refinished and reupholstered."
    J.C. turned his piercing gaze on me. "Now is that a fact? We'll just have to throw a big party when the house is restored, now won't we?"
    "Maybe we can get the house on the Olde Wilmington by Candlelight tour this year," Kelly said excitedly. "What do you think, Ashley? Can you put a word in the right ears?"
    "I'll certainly try. And we'll be finished by then."
    Kelly leaned across the table. "Uncle J.C., we found some of your early drawings in a portfolio in your mother's room."
    J.C. was thoughtful for a moment. "Is that so. Why I'd like to see them, darlin '. I'm so old I can't even remember any drawings that are not in my possession. Where'd you say you found them?"
    "They were in great-grandma's pattern box," Kelly said brightly. "Ashley's keeping some boxes for me because she has the room and I don't."
    "Well, at your convenience, then, Ashley. I'd better run, girls. They're waiting for me. See ya'll later."
    We finished lunch then strolled through the museum to the gallery where J.C.'s paintings were on display. He was in the middle of an interview with two television journalists and their cameramen. J.C. stood before one of his paintings as he answered their questions. "I began painting seriously when I was fourteen, although I'd dappled in drawing and watercolors as a child."
    J.C. Lauder was often compared to Andrew Wyeth. They were both American Contemporary Realists. They had painted at about the same period, the late forties and fifties especially, and then continued to work throughout their lifetimes, although Wyeth had been born twenty years earlier than J.C.
    Their subject matter was similar -- weathered barns, farmhouses, people who made a living off the land -- but Wyeth's paintings portrayed the cold northern climate of Pennsylvania with snow covered ridges and leafless trees, while J.C.'s paintings depicted the warm southern light that Howell was so enamored with.
    Our own North Carolina Museum of Art owned an Andrew Wyeth painting that I always paused to examine when I visited the museum in Raleigh. Called Winter 1946 you could almost count the blades of frozen grass on the hillside in the picture.
    I wandered around the gallery as the press conference continued. There was a painting of a dairy barn and I felt jolted. Had this been the barn where J.C.'s older brother William had committed suicide, where J.C. himself and his older sister Peggy had found him?
    There were several portraits of a young woman, fresh and smiling, with lovely brown hair and warm brown eyes. "My grandmother Peggy," Kelly said at my side.
    "She looks so happy," I said, surprised.
    "I think those were done before the troubles," Kelly replied.
    I considered how that might have been, mulling it over.

14

    Wednesday morning was hot and muggy and I hated leaving the beach where there was a breeze off the ocean. In town, steam seemed to rise from the pavement. I pulled up in front of the Lauder house at about eight to find that Willie Hudson, our elderly general contractor, had already assigned a crew of brick masons to the project. How pleased the neighbors must have been to awake to a construction crew on their street.
    The brick masons had erected scaffolding across the front of the house. All the windows in the house had been pried open, and someone looked down at me from