A Comedy of Heirs (3 page)

Goosebumps traveled down my arms and back. How could this be? My great-grandpa Keith died in a hunting accident.
Everybody
knew that.

I took a sip of my tea and tried to remember how I knew that. I received Nathaniel Keith's death certificate back in the eighties. The cause of death said gunshot wound. I remember that clearly because for a moment I was stunned. Who did I call? Who had I called the first time and asked how Great-Grandpa Keith died?

Who had told me the lie?

It wasn't my father, although I do know that I discussed this “hunting accident” with more than one person in the family and with my father on occasion. I think it was Aunt Ruth that I called first and she had said, yes, he died of a gunshot wound during a hunting accident. I never questioned her story. Why would I? She was my aunt. I never expected her to lie to me. It never occurred to me that the man was murdered and that she'd
need
to lie to me. But why would she need to lie to me? Why the secrecy? Why hadn't this information been part of our family folklore? Why had all my aunts and uncles, and my father included, gone along with her story?

I couldn't help but wonder, sitting there in my favorite restaurant, did Aunt Ruth actually lie to me or was this what she was told too? She would have been twenty-four years old when this happened. Was it possible that she didn't know the truth?

I drank the last of my tea and browsed through the other articles. The last one said that six months later the case was closed unsolved.

This was not possible. Maybe somebody was playing a really ugly prank. I would, first chance, go and look at the original newspapers. There was always the chance that for whatever sick reason I couldn't even dream of coming up with, somebody made these up to look real. That had to be what it was, even though any logical reason escaped me. I didn't have enemies. Not like this anyway. Eleanore Murdoch liked to get the best of me whenever she could, but she wouldn't stoop to something like this. The coincidence of the timing of this “present” did not escape me. My dad's entire family would be here sometime this week.

I scrounged around in my change purse for a couple of bucks in change and set it on the table next to the salt and pepper shakers.

I sat there for a minute unable to move. If these articles were real, this was a betrayal unlike any I had ever known. To suddenly realize that I'd been lied to by the people I loved and trusted was too much to comprehend. Maybe they figured that it was none of my business, and who's to say they aren't correct, but to out and out lie to me when I asked how the man died?

First I would find out if the articles were genuine and then I'd ask my father about it. Maybe I'd ask my mother what to do, since my father could get really riled up about things. I looked at my watch. Three-fifteen. Rachel and Mary would be home in about fifteen minutes. I got up and left Fräulein Krista's with the manila envelope clutched to my breast.

Three

About thirty people wandered in and out of the rooms of my house. It was Monday, the official kick-off day, and the people who were here today would help me decorate our Christmas tree. Just as soon as Uncle Jed, my father and Uncle Melvin got back with the Christmas tree. Poor Rudy couldn't go with them to chop down a tree because he was outside braving the cold, barbecuing.

Rachel sat in a green velvet dress on the corner of the piano bench separating the red Christmas bulbs from the blue ones. She felt that this was important. She looked up at me and smiled automatically, changing the features on her serious face. When had she turned eight? I mean, I knew
when
her birthday was, but jeez, suddenly she was so grown up. Now she was the one pulling her hair back and putting it in the bows she wanted to wear and the style she wanted. It was the first of several things that I used to do for her that would continue to slip away from me.

The doorbell rang and I set the lights down that I had been trying to untangle for half an hour and went to the door. Sheriff Colin Brooke towered in my doorway. I always had to refrain myself from calling him Bubba. He was a large man, early forties. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “You're not related to me.”

“Thank goodness,” he said. He doesn't like me much. But that's all right, I don't like him much either. We tolerate each other for my mother's sake. The reason for that is because we both love her. Of course in different ways, but it's the love for her that keeps the sheriff and me from really tearing into each other. We'd called a truce about a year ago. I'd admitted that he wasn't an ax murderer or anything like that. I guess one can call that a truce.

“Are you going to ask me in?” he asked.

“Are you going to tell me why you're here?” I said.

“Torie, you know I'm here to see your mother,” he said.

“I know,” I said and let him in the house. “I just like to make you say it.”

He took his hat off as soon as he entered the house. He was in official uniform today, which is a rarity. Even when he's on duty sometimes, he's in jeans and a T-shirt. He looked around the living room, amazed at all the people.

“She's in the kitchen,” I said, above Aunt Charlotte's voice, who was telling the story about the outhouse again. It was a funny story but by the sixth time you've heard it, it's not funny anymore. I led him to the kitchen, basically because I was thirsty and wanted something to drink.

I walked in. “Mom, the sheriff's here,” I said and went to the refrigerator. I kept my back to them and got out a can of Dr Pepper, trying not to look their way because they always gawked at each other the first ten minutes that they saw each other. Made me want to barf. Did I mention the sheriff is about ten years younger than my mother?

I turned around just in time to see the sheriff kiss her lightly on the lips. “Oh yuk, you guys,” I said.

“What?” my mother asked. “You and Rudy kiss all the time.”

“I know that,” I said. “That's different. You're my
mother.
” Just when I thought I was okay with this relationship something like this would happen and I'd get irritated all over again. I think it was because I couldn't get my way. I couldn't convince her early on that the sheriff was a jerk. He arrested me once and she didn't seem to give a darn. That irked me no end. God, was I really just stomping my foot and acting like a teenager?

I thought of something else quickly, before my little voice had a chance to answer that question. “So,” I said. “You coming to the big dinner next Saturday?”

“I don't think so,” the sheriff said.

“We're renting out the KC hall,” I said.

“Colin and I have tickets to go see the
Nutcracker
at the Fox,” Mom said.

Sheriff Brooke seeing the
Nutcracker?
The only nutcracker he was familiar with was the one that sat in the bowl on his coffee table. “You mean you're not going to be there either?” I asked my mother, incredulous.

“We had the tickets long before we knew what day the big dinner was on,” she explained.

“But, but you
always
come to the reunion dinners,” I said.

Just then my younger daughter, Mary, came walking in with a stream of Christmas lights trailing behind her. She was a full-grown kindergartener now. Her little round face was serious, her eyebrows knit together. “They won't turn on, Mommy,” she said.

“Are they plugged in?” I asked.

She nodded her head yes but answered, “No.”

I sat down in the kitchen chair and took the strand from her. “Are they plugged in or aren't they?” I asked, trying to shake off the irritation I had just felt with my mother.

“They were. And they didn't work,” she said. “Now they aren't.”

“Well, have Rachel plug them back in for you and you have to go down each light bulb and tighten them up. If there's one loose, the whole strand goes out,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. She looked over to my mom and the sheriff. She waved. “Hi, Sheriff,” she said. He waved back and she left the room.

I had forgotten where the conversation had been interrupted and took a second to remember. “Mom, you always come to the reunion dinner.”

“You know,” she began. “It's not my family. I've been divorced from that family a long time. It won't hurt me to miss one dinner.”

“You are not divorced from the family. You are divorced from my father. His family has never considered you anything but family,” I explained. I didn't have to explain. She knew this. “If anything they would get rid of my father and keep you.”

“Victory,” she said in that tone. I hate that tone. I had my own tone that I used with my daughters and they probably hated it as much as I hated the one that my mother used with me. It was just the same as saying, Hang it up, you've lost the argument.

“Well, that's fine,” I said. “You don't have to go. I just thought that you'd be there. Because you're always there, but that's okay that you won't be.”

I felt sick to my stomach. I wasn't sure why. I couldn't remember eating anything unusual today, but suddenly I felt a little queasy. I popped open the tab on my Dr Pepper and took a drink. I didn't normally drink out of the can, but I wanted out of the kitchen and didn't want to spend any more time getting a glass and ice. “I'm going to go outside and see if Rudy needs anything. Like a parka,” I said.

As I went out the door I was nearly run over by my twin cousins. We called them the Doublemint twins because they were seven-year-old girls with perfect white teeth, perfect blond hair and enormous blue eyes. Their names were Kristen and Kimberly Brite. They were just too cute not to be made fun of.

They ran around me in a flurry, giggling, then I was nearly knocked over by the three boy cousins who had been chasing them. Finally, I stood alone on my doorstep, my husband Rudy within a hundred feet of me. My sanctuary. My hero.

“Hi,” I said and walked over quickly. “You need anything out here?”

“I don't think so,” he said. “It's
brr
cold, though.”

“Yeah,” I said and looked up at the sky. “If only it would snow.”

Rudy growled.

“What?” I asked.

“You're like the only grownup that actually
wants
it to snow,” he said.

“Nuh uh, Wilma loves it when it snows. She's a grown-up.”

He looked at me with skepticism evident on his long face. All of us in New Kassel were beginning to wonder if maybe Wilma wasn't slipping into senility in the past year or so. She'd started forgetting things, like putting her hair up in braids.

“Be sure to take Fritz in with you when you go,” he said and pointed to our wiener dog, that lay under the beat-up picnic table. “He's been out here awhile.”

“All the people are scaring him,” I said.

“Yeah, you had to know that was going to happen.”

I nodded my head and hugged myself to ward off the cold. I glanced around my backyard imagining what the swingset and everything would look like with snow on it. It's not like it hadn't snowed before, but it had been a whole year! The chicken coop was exceptionally quiet today. Rudy had run electricity into the coop and we kept a light on in there so that it wouldn't get too cold.

“Are you all right?” Rudy asked.

I looked at him, questioning. This was one of the reasons I loved my husband. One of the many. He instinctively knew that there was either something wrong with me or something was bothering me. All I had to do was give a look.

“I'm fine,” I said.

“You look really tired.”

“I am tired,” I said. “I think I might have mono.”

“Mono? Why would you think that?” he asked and lifted the lid on the gas grill. The smell of chicken grilled in Rudy's special seasonings wafted up and out into the neighborhood. Maybe that's why the chickens in the chicken coop were exceptionally quiet. We didn't slaughter our chickens, they were for eggs. And because I have this thing for all creatures furry, fuzzy or feathery. We bought the chicken from the grocery store. Still, I couldn't help but wonder if the chickens could tell what it was we were cooking.

“I don't know. Mono was going around at the school. Maybe I drank out of a water fountain that somebody else drank out of.”

“Do you feel bad?”

“Well, sort of. I'm tired and I feel just real out of sorts. I think I'll go to the doctor tomorrow,” I said. “I'm going to go by the library, too.”

Rudy smiled at me, his brown eyes crinkling in the corners. “The library? There are no doctors at the library.” He turned each piece of chicken over one by one with absolute precision.

“I know,” I said and smiled back. “I got some newspaper articles sent to me and I'm not so sure they're authentic. So I want to go look them up at the library and make sure they're real before I say anything to anybody.”

Rudy's face drew serious and he stopped turning the chicken. “You? Victory Keith O'Shea. You are actually waiting for proof of something before blazing away with both barrels cocked? You do need to see a doctor,” he said. “You're not acting like yourself at all.”

“Ha ha ha, you're just so funny,” I said. I couldn't help but laugh though, because he was right. But this was very different. This dealt with my father and his family personally. I really did have to be careful and walk on eggs.

“Come on, Fritz,” I said and snapped my fingers. He jumped right up and came over to me. I turned to walk back in the house and saw my cousin Jolene Liebowsky walk out my back door. She was Aunt Sissy's youngest daughter. Jolene was tall with long silky black hair and a huge belly. I ran over to her, “My God, Jolene, when did you get married?” I asked her and placed my hands on her obvious third-trimester tummy.