Thicker than Water (24 page)

Twenty-Nine

I went back to the Gaheimer House to find that Rudy had eaten two of the three sandwiches. Helen had gone home. Deputy Miller was in the kitchen, watching the news on Sylvia's old black-and-white television.

“I can't believe you ate two sandwiches,” I said.

“I saved you one.”

“Yes, but—” I sighed. Like it mattered. “Why don't you go on back to my mother's? I'm sure she's got something wonderful cooked.”

“Why? What are you going to do?”

“I've got some digging to do,” I said. “I have to find a connection between Sylvia and an unhappy resident of New Kassel.”

“Just walk down the street,” he said. “Any street.”

“No, there's something I'm missing.”

“Torie,” Rudy said, “you could spend every night for the next two years digging through the papers in this house and still not find what you're looking for. More than likely it'll be an accidental thing.”

“I know, but I have to try.”

He rolled his eyes and sighed with exasperation. Yes, I know, being married to me is a trial. He leaned in and kissed me. “My mother will be back tomorrow.”

“Is she going to stay with us at my mother's?”

“Maybe.”

“Oh,” I said. See how good I was being? I could have said something really nasty, but I refrained.

“You haven't gone back on your whole ‘I was a jerk' thing, have you?”

“No, no,” I said. “I was a jerk. I intend to apologize.”

“Okay, call me when you're finished here and I'll come get you.”

“Well, I might just stay until Miller goes home. I'll ride into Wisteria with him.”

“All right. See you then.”

“Oh, but go by and check on the chickens. I've got horrible visions of
Chicken Run
flashing through my head.”

He kissed me through laughter and then left for my mother's house in Wisteria. I fetched myself a Dr Pepper and sat down at my desk. The first thing I was going to do was check every reference I had for Mayor Castlereagh and his family. I hauled out all the family history charts and files that Sylvia had spent a lifetime collecting on the residents of this town. I had compiled a great deal of data in the computer, but not all of it, so I grabbed the paper files. I'd have to do this the old-fashioned way.

The mayor had been born one William Jarvis Castlereagh in July 1949. Bill was the middle child of three boys. His father and grandfather were born here. His mother was from Kansas. He was the father of four children. One of them arrived seven months after the date of his wedding, but Karri was born premature, not conceived prematurely. At least that is the story Mrs. Castlereagh tells everybody within ten minutes of meeting them. Okay, so they didn't wait until their honeymoon. That was hardly a crime and definitely had nothing to do with me.

Yada, yada, yada. Nothing. The only things I could find that were the least bit out of the ordinary were some probate records, and the only reason they were out of the ordinary was that I hadn't known about them.

He and his wife had already bought and paid for their cemetery plots in the Santa Lucia Cemetery. Two rows over from Sylvia. I suppose it wasn't all that odd for somebody fairly young to have already purchased a burial plot, but it weirded me out. I personally wouldn't want to make that kind of decision early on. What if I changed my mind? What if that nice peaceful cemetery became surrounded by factories and such thirty years from now? I might not want to spend eternity next to a smokestack. Not that it matters. I worry about the stupidest things.

Well, that was all I could find in our genealogical files. That didn't mean there wasn't anything to be found among Sylvia's personal papers. I flipped through some of the records and found Eleanore's family charts. I always forgot that she and Chuck Velasco were second cousins. Something I'm sure Chuck would love to forget as well.

The phone rang, and I answered it. It was Colin. “Hey, I talked with Danny Eisenbach. It appears as though he told at least four people about Mike Walker.”

“Great.”

“Within an hour, half the town could have known about your private investigator.”

“Who did he tell?”

“He told Virgie Burgermeister, for one. The mayor, for another.”

“Oh, this just gets better and better.”

“Claims he even told Duran.”

“Great.”

“I also talked to Virgie and Harold about the restraining order.”

“And?”

“It seems as though Harold did lunge at Sylvia and try to punch her. She insulted his mother. He flat-out said, let me quote here, ‘Ain't nobody insults my mama.' So there you have it.”

“Dead end.”

“Not necessarily,” he said, “but nothing that I can arrest anybody for.”

Somehow none of this made me feel any better. I banged my head on my desk and then took a drink of my soda.

Colin said, “However, we did get a good footprint from under the tree in your front yard.”

“Of?”

“I think it's our perp.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah, now we just have to compare it to, oh, a thousand or so feet.”

“Well, you'll have plenty to keep you busy.”

“Right,” he said. “What's going on with you?”

“Oh, nothing,” I said.

“I'll check in later. Call me if you find anything.”

“I will.”

He hung up, and I went back to searching through the pile on my desk. Bill was also remotely related to Eleanore. Actually, it was through Eleanore's husband, Oscar. Oscar Murdoch, according to his charts—and I knew it was true—was related to Helen Wickland's mother, Constance Trotter. I glanced at Helen's five-generation chart. Helen was born in 1957 as Helen Renee Trotter. Her mother had been only fifteen years old and unmarried. Helen had mentioned this to me before in passing, and I never felt comfortable inquiring further since she had not volunteered any more about it. Not that a person's reluctance to talk ever stopped me from enquiring before, but Helen was a friend and it seemed to make her uncomfortable, so I didn't push it. Constance Trotter was the daughter of William Trotter and …

I nearly knocked over my soda can.

William Trotter had been married to one Mildred Blaine O'Shaughnessy.

I'll be a son-of-a-gun. Mildred O'Shaughnessy was born in New York City in 1924. Married William Trotter in 1940 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. According to Helen's charts, William died in 1943, one year after Constance was born. So a young and widowed Millie O'Shaughnessy Trotter moved to New Kassel, Missouri, where Sylvia just happened to live.

I searched the file cabinet of my mind, trying to remember if Sylvia or Wilma or anybody had ever mentioned a connection to Helen's family. I came up blank. Helen had had the same relationship with Sylvia that half the town had—cordial and superficial.

Could it be that Sylvia just happened to have some of the Trotter family things to put in a collection? A lot of people donated one-of-a-kind heirloom letters and diaries to the historical society because they didn't necessarily want the items but knew they were of historical importance. Could that be how Sylvia got the postcard? But that wouldn't explain the letter written to Sylvia by Father Kincaid. He had been speaking of Mrs. O'Shaughnessy, who must have been Mildred's mother. So no, these were Sylvia's letters, not a donation. But I still didn't understand.

And what did any of it have to do with me?

I suppose everything didn't have to be about me.

I scanned the chart. Mildred's parents were down as Theodora Wentz of Albany, New York, who died in New York City in 1927, and Robert O'Shaughnessy from County Kerry in Ireland, who died in 1926. Millie had indeed been an orphan.

I walked down to Sylvia's old office and pulled a few books off the shelf. Old yearbooks. As far as I knew, Sylvia had lived her entire life right here in this little corner of eastern Missouri. Most of her professional life had been here, too. The only place she could have become acquainted with somebody who lived and died in New York would have been in school—if not in college, then in high school or grade school, although that was less likely.

I thumbed through Sylvia's college books and found what I was looking for. Theodora Wentz had attended college with Sylvia Pershing.

“Hey, Miller!”

“Yeah?” he called from the kitchen.

“I'm going over to Helen's house,” I said. “I'll be right back.”

“Sure thing,” he said.

I walked across the street and down a block or so until I came to Helen's house. I knocked on the door, and she answered within a few seconds, holding a pot holder and a very large burnt duck on a fork. “Want some dinner?” she asked.

“No, thank you,” I said. “I was wondering if I could speak with you?”

“Certainly,” she said. “Come on in. Let me just get rid of this dead bird.”

I stepped inside Helen's living room and had to laugh as I saw the black smoke pouring from the kitchen. The fire alarm blared from somewhere down the hall, and her husband was running around fanning the ceiling with a towel. “She insists on these exotic dishes,” he said.

I laughed, and she returned from the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel. “What can I do for you?”

I pulled the postcard out and handed it to her.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “That's my grandmother. Where did you get this?”

“Turn it over,” I said.

She turned it over and read the single line:
I think you have forgotten your promise
. Her eyebrows knit together in confusion. “I don't understand.”

“It's addressed to Sylvia.”

The color drained from her face then, as she slowly handed the card back to me.

“Look, Helen,” I said. “I have never pushed you about … your mother or any of the rest of your family history.”

“My mother was fifteen when she had me. She didn't happen to get a good look at my father. It was kind of dark,” she said.

“I'm so sorry,” I said.

She crossed her arms. “What is it you want?”

“What was the promise, Helen?”

She shrugged.

“Surely you've heard stories. You've asked questions.”

“Believe it or not, Torie, not everybody talks about their past. Not everybody is descended from Charlemagne and is a Daughter of the American Revolution.”

“Look, I've got my share of horse thieves and murderers,” I said. “Don't get defensive.”

“Yes, but your parents are perfect,” she said.

“Oh, right. Have I introduced you to my sister? My half sister who was born while my parents were still married?”

She rolled her eyes.

“Don't give me that crap, Helen. What was the promise?”

“Why do you care?”

“Because … because I just do. I care. I can't help it. Just when I think I have Sylvia figured out, she morphs on me. She's like that Odo guy on
Deep Space Nine
.”

“So this is to make you feel better?” she asked. I was a bit taken aback by the venom. Helen and I had been friends for years. Of course, her reluctance to stick up for me at the historical society meeting had floored me, too.

“Are you … Helen, are you upset that Sylvia left me everything?” The bottom fell out of my stomach as I suddenly realized that Helen had been acting strange lately.

A tear ran down her cheek.

Oh, dear Lord! Was it Helen who had beaten me with a baseball bat during the Strawberry Festival? Could she have thrown the rocks at my house? But why?

“Helen, we've been friends a long time,” I said. “Please, tell me what the promise was.”

“My great-grandmother found out in the spring of 1926 that she had consumption. Her husband had recently died, but I'm not sure from what,” Helen said. “She wrote to Sylvia—I'm still not real clear how they knew each other—but she wrote to Sylvia and asked if she would take care of her daughter if she died. Her daughter, Millie, was my grandmother.”

I closed my eyes as the tears came to the edge.

“According to my mother, Sylvia had agreed, but then a family in Philadelphia said they would take her. Sylvia thought that would be better, since she wasn't married. She thought my grandmother would be better off with a mother and a father, instead of just her.”

“Can you blame her for that?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“So how did your grandma end up here?”

“The couple that took her in Philadelphia died in a fire, just six months later. The nuns at the orphanage contacted Sylvia. This time, she was more reluctant,” Helen said and swiped at a tear. “I don't know if she suddenly realized that she'd make a shitty parent or if she just didn't want to be bothered.”

“But how did Millie end up in Iowa?” I asked.

Helen looked taken aback at first. Then she smiled. “You really are good at your job.”

“I can fill in the where and the when. It's the why that gives me the most trouble. Unless somebody from the past decides to speak,” I said.

“One of the priests found her a home in Iowa, and according to my grandmother he came with her to Iowa on the train. But when they got there, the family had recently given birth to twins. They decided they couldn't afford another mouth,” Helen said, “so my grandmother was stuck.”

Thus the last-ditch effort to contact Sylvia. “I think you have forgotten your promise,” I whispered. The tears spilled down my face. How could she have done this? How could Sylvia have turned this child out into the cold?

“I don't know exactly what happened, but my grandmother ran away. Somewhere in the next several years she met my grandfather and they got married. But bad luck seemed to follow Millie: He died a few years later, just after my mother was born. By that point, she was pregnant again. Millie was desperate to take care of her children, so she came to New Kassel,” Helen said. “I don't know if she thought Sylvia would welcome her and take her in or what.”