Free Sins of the Fathers by Patricia Sprinkle Page B

someone had once cared enough to pay for a marble stone. She stretched one hand through the railings to stroke it. “Who do you reckon she was?”
    Dr. Flo was busy flipping back a couple of pages in her notebook and comparing what was written there with the tombstone for Claude Gilbert. “This has to be Daddy’s father. The dates are exactly right. I wonder who the others were. Wouldn’t you think it was the same family, in spite of the difference in spelling?”
    “Most likely. I wonder who lies under that.” Katharine pointed to the fourth grave, which was nearest the marsh and marked by a waist-high marble obelisk on a small square base. Either it had sunk or the sand had blown against it, for it sat so deep that only the tops of letters were visible on its base.
    Dr. Flo went out of the fenced cemetery, circled it, stepped over the tabby wall, and bent to examine the obelisk. “I can’t read it, but I don’t think it’s either Guilbert”—Katharine noted with amusement that she had settled on the Geel-bear pronunciation—“or Bayard. The first letter is too spiky to be a g or a b. ” She stepped around the obelisk to check the far side, then gave a little cry of surprise. “Oh, my! Come look!”
    Her voice was so urgent, Katharine hurried to join her. With one slender forefinger, Dr. Flo traced a faint carving on the obelisk face that looked toward the marsh. As her finger moved around it, Katharine gasped.
    Dr. Flo stood up and brushed off her fingers. “I think we’ve found daddy’s pirate. Doesn’t that look like a skull and crossed bones to you?”

Chapter 8

    Katharine turned toward the gate. “Let’s dig a little and see if we can read the name.”
    She pulled the shovel from the back of the SUV with a quick “Thanks, Dad.”
    A man spoke behind her. “May I help you with that?”
    She jumped, feeling as guilty as if she’d been caught digging up endangered plants in a national park.
    “Burch Bayard, ma’am.” He lifted a Panama hat with a red band. “Didn’t mean to startle you.” She didn’t believe that for a moment. His eyes were lit with amusement, and if he hadn’t wanted to startle her he would have called before he approached. Still, his voice was all courtesy.
    She would have known without the introduction that he was the middle generation of Bayards. In him, the family’s good looks and breeding had reached their pinnacle. Everything from the logos on his white running shoes, yellow polo shirt, and khaki Bermuda shorts to his well-cut golden hair—falling casually from a side part to the tops of his ears—proclaimed him a wealthy man dressed for a casual day. Lines radiating from the corners of his blue eyes meant he either laughed a lot or was careless when he went out in the sun.
    “I’m Burch Bayard,” he repeated when she didn’t speak. “We must be some kind of cousins.” His drawl was soft and sweet. Low Country aristocracy.
    “I beg your pardon?” She was still befuddled by the suddenness of his arrival.
    He rested an elbow on her car, cocked his other hand at his waist, and smiled lazily down at her. “I can’t think of any other reason for your kinfolks to be buried in our cemetery, can you? My lawyer, Hayden Curtis, said you were coming down to look at the graves before you give permission to move them.”
    “Oh.” She glanced toward Dr. Flo, bent over the stones in the Gilbert plot. “They weren’t…” Before she could finish “…my kinfolks,” he was talking again.
    “I’m delighted to meet you. Always glad to claim a beautiful woman as my cousin, no matter how many times removed.”
    “I’m not—”
    The man suffered from an inability to shut up and listen. “This is my son Chase.” He draped one arm casually around the boy’s shoulders, a comfortable fit since the boy was so short. “A chip off the old block.” He gave Chase a light punch on the arm with his other fist. “I’m mighty proud of this boy. Makes good grades,