by Kathi Daley
Oh god. I held my breath as she ripped open the envelope and pulled out a stack of papers. On the top was a copy of the driver’s license provided to the woman who owned the apartment building by the man who was accompanying the pregnant woman who’d been shot and killed shortly after giving birth. The photo on the license was that of a young Grant Thomas. The name on the license, however, was Grant Tucker.
Chapter 18
Holy sh… Did this woman just tell me that her father and my father were the same person? Did she also just tell me that she thought our father killed the man she’d hired to find him? I felt like I should say something, anything, but my mind refused to form a coherent sentence, so I simply mumbled something about giving her some privacy, turned, and walked away.
The only good thing about learning what I’d learned when and how I’d learned it was that Star Moonwalker’s certified letter was my last stop of the day. I almost run back to my Jeep, loaded Tilly inside, and then headed to the post office to drop off my now empty bag. Margie informed me that she’d received approval for my days off next week. I’m pretty sure I responded. I just hope my response was in the form of a thank you. I headed home to change my clothes and try to get a grip on my emotions. Tony had already left for the haunted house, which I knew he planned to do, but that was okay. I really did need a minute to pull myself together.
Now that I’d had a moment to think, I really did have so many questions, including the question of how and when this had happened. Star said something about all this occurring forty years ago. That would mean she was left at the church before my dad even met and started dating my mom. I supposed that made me feel somewhat better than I would have felt if Star had been the product of an affair between my dad and this other woman. But Star also indicated that she thought the man who’d dropped her at the church had killed the PI she’d paid to track the man down. Was that true? Had my father actually killed Denton in order to keep his secret? And if he had killed Denton, was Star in danger as well?
I looked at Tilly. “This can’t be real. I’m dreaming. Right?”
“Ruff,” she barked.
There really had to be another explanation. Yes, it did appear on the surface that my father and Star’s father were one and the same, and I had no reason to believe she’d lied about the fact that the man Denton had tracked down may have ended up killing him, but maybe she was simply wrong. I knew that my dad had a lot of people after him. Maybe Denton was being tracked by whoever had been tracking Dad, in addition to Tony and I of course, and it was these men, the men who’d tried to convince us they were CIA, who had killed the PI who’d discovered more than he should have.
“Okay, Tess this is not the time to lose it,” I said aloud as I gathered my stuff for the evening. “I’m sure there is a rational explanation for all of this. I don’t know what this explanation is offhand, but I know there must be one.” I took several deep breaths. “Right now, you have a haunted house to get to. It’s important that you are there. People are counting on you. When it’s over, you can talk to Tony about this. He’ll know what to do. Tony always knows what to do.”
I forced my legs to climb the stairs, where I changed into jeans and a sweatshirt. I pulled on tennis shoes, called to Titan, and took both dogs for a quick walk since I wasn’t sure how long Tony had been at the haunted house. Once both dogs had done their business, I fed all the animals, and then as calmly as I could, I drove to the haunted house. How on earth was I going to get through this night without blabbing everything I knew to Mike and Bree? “Just breathe,” I said aloud. I tried to do just that but ended up coughing rather than breathing.
“Are you okay?” Bree asked, after approaching my Jeep from the side. She must have seen me drive up and had come over to greet me.
“I’m fine. I just swallowed wrong. How is everything going so far?”
Bree answered. “Things are going fine. There is a tiny problem with the electrical breaker on the first floor, but Tony is fixing it. I’m sure it will be fine.” She looked at me more intently. “Are you sure you are feeling okay? You look sort of off.”
“I’m fine. It’s just been a long day. But it is the weekend now, and I managed to get two days off at the end of next week, so I’m all good. Let’s go and see if Tony needs any help.”
Fortunately, the night went off without a hitch. We had even more visitors than we’d had last weekend, but with the extra tours, we’d been able to accommodate everyone. The ticket sales were being deposited directly into an account Brady had set up for the expansion, so I didn’t have an actual number to assign to the ticket sales, but I was pretty sure that we’d made a lot more than our original projections called for. Brady had worked the ticket desk this evening, and every time I checked in with him, he had a group of locals who were asking about what they could do to help with the project.
Once the haunted house was closed for the day, Tony and I, along with a group of volunteers, cleaned up and locked up before we all went our separate ways.
“I have news.” Tony and I said aloud at exactly the same time after we arrived back at the cabin.
“Go ahead,” Tony offered.
“No. Mine is complicated. You go first,” I countered.
“Okay,” Tony agreed. “My buddy from DC called today. He’s had a little more time to look at the skeleton, and he told me he found a nick on one of the ribs on the left side of the body which he believes resulted from a stab wound to the chest. Most likely, the stab wound that killed our skeleton.”
“I guess I was half expecting that the guy died from a stab wound. I’m not sure why. Anything else?”
“He believes the victim in the secret room was a young man who was probably in his twenties when he died.”
I raised a brow. “That eliminates Edward Vandenberg as the victim.”
“It does. After taking a closer look at things, it seems likely that someone other than Edward was in the sealed secret room.”
“Okay, who? As far as I know, Ethel was an only child. Her mother would have been dead by the time the skeleton was encased in the secret room, so it stands to reason that Ethel or her father put the guy there.” I paused to consider this. “I know we’ve speculated as to the date the room was added to the house, but is there a way to really narrow this down? It seems if we are going to figure out who was in the room, we need to figure out when he was put there.”
“The coroner mentioned that the body could have been in the sealed secret room as early as the thirties, but I did some research and found out that the type of drywall used to construct the room wasn’t widely available until World War II. So I’m going to go out on a limb and say the skeleton we found in the room has only been there since the mid- to late-nineteen-forties. Ethel would have been in her thirties by this point, so it seems to me that either Ethel or her father could have been responsible for the man’s murder.”
I let the dogs out and then stood with Tony on the porch and waited for them to do their thing. “We have unconfirmed intel that Ethel had been living alone in the house for a good part of her adult life, although we should keep in mind that while a lot of people have been tossing around a lot of general comments, no one seems to know with any degree of certainty exactly what happened or exactly when it happened. Do we know anything else about the skeleton that could point us to an identity?” I asked. “Other than the fact he was probably in his twenties when he died, was of average height, most likely died of a stab wound to the chest, and seemed to have consumed a less than adequate diet.”
“My friend from DC did say that the skeleton showed signs of damage to his back, even though the victim was young. He suspected that he engaged in an activity that required a lot of bending and lifting.”
“Like working for a lumber mill.”
Tony nodded. “That would fit the bill. I found out that Edward Vandenberg only worked in the lumber industry for a short time. He opened his small mill in the twenties, but by the time the Westons and the W
ades took over the lumber industry in the early forties, he’d shut down operations. If our victim was murdered in the forties or later as we now suspect, then he would have been working for Weston and Wade rather than Vandenberg when he died.”
“If this guy was some random lumber worker, the odds of us ever identifying him are slim to none,” I said.
“I agree. Unless we can find something, a news article perhaps, that mentions a young male living at the Vandenberg house who later went missing. Perhaps a groundskeeper or a stable hand.” Tony looked at me. “So you said you had news?”
I blew out a breath. “Yeah. Mine is pretty heavy, so maybe we should pour ourselves a glass of wine first.”
Tony looked uncertain. “Okay. A glass of wine sounds nice. Would you like me to build a fire while you pour the wine?”
I hesitated. “Actually, I think we are going to need the computers at your place. Maybe we should pack everyone up and head in that direction. I’ll fill you in on the way.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Honestly, I’m really not sure.”
I really hadn’t meant to freak Tony out, and then make him wait for an explanation, but that is exactly what I’d ended up doing. He never said a word after I began to recant my conversation with Star, but I could see that his mind was working a million miles a minute. By the time I’d gotten to the part where Denton had died, most likely as a result of his search for the man I was convinced was my father, Tony’s smile had turned into a deep scowling frown.
“Do you really think your father killed this man?” Tony asked.
“I don’t know. I hope not, but maybe. If there is one thing that I’ve learned over the past two years, it is that the man I thought was my father never really existed.”
I sort of thought that Tony would make a comment about knowing the man beneath the exterior in my heart, but he didn’t. I guess he had the same doubts I did.
“What should we do?” I asked after a moment.
“What do you want to do?”
I leaned my head back against the headrest and closed my eyes. God, I was tired. “I don’t know. If my dad is a killer, I don’t want to know the truth, but there is a part of me that needs to know. It occurred to me that we should track him down and ask him. Not that he is an easy man to track down, but we have gotten close to him in the past. I have no reason to think we couldn’t again. Of course, he did ask us to stop looking for him. He did say that not only did our search put him in danger, but it also put Mom, Mike, and me in danger as well. I remember the guys who showed up at your house, and I remember the men who pulled Mike aside at dinner. I’m sure Dad was not exaggerating about the danger,” I blew out a breath, “but does that mean I do nothing? Does that mean I find out that not only might I have a sister but also that she might be putting herself in danger by looking for the same man you and I had been tracking before we decided it was too dangerous to continue?”
“How well do you know Star?” Tony asked.
“Not well at all. Certainly not well enough to simply pull her aside and warn her to back off.”
Tony slowly pulled onto the drive leading to his house. In spite of the angst I was bogged down in, I smiled when I noticed the orange lights he’d hung in the trees. I knew he’d hung them for me after I’d admired the ones in town.
“I guess we could start by looking into Star’s background,” Tony suggested. “It seems it might be a good idea to check out the story she told you. It could be that the story provided by her PI was less than factual, and even if it is based in fact, it is possible that some of the facts could have been made up or exaggerated. If it turns out that the PI did provide her with good intel, and it really does look as if this woman is your sister, then we can decide to dig deeper. There is no reason to disturb the hornet’s nest until we know for certain what we are dealing with.”
“Okay,” I said as Tony pulled the truck to a stop. “That’s a good idea. We’ll start with Star, and then see where we end up.”
Once we unloaded the animals, I set about getting them settled while Tony started a fire. His command center was located in his basement, which was functional but lacking in warmth or personality. He figured he could start our search on his laptop, which he brought to the table near the fireplace, and then if we needed more computing power at some point, we could move downstairs.
I poured us each a glass of wine while Tony logged onto his computer. I knew from experience that the only way I could help was by sitting quietly and waiting for him to do what he needed to do. After a few minutes, he began to speak.
“Star Moonwalker was adopted by Sonny and Dharma Moonwalker in nineteen seventy-nine.”
“So before Mom and Dad married and a year before Grant Thomas first showed up.”
“Correct. Star told you that the man she believed to be her father had a driver’s license with the name Grant Tucker. After Star’s mother was shot, he must have given up the name Grant Tucker and taken on the name Grant Thomas, which is the name he was using when he met your mother.”
“We know that the gang at the lake he visited every year around Thanksgiving called my dad Tuck.” I rubbed my hands up and down my arms, which had suddenly become covered in goosebumps. “I guess he’d been going to the lake while he’d been using the name Tucker.”
“It looks that way.”
I leaned back and groaned. “Who was this man?”
Tony reached out and grasped my hand. “Do you want to continue?”
I nodded.
Tony returned to his keyboard. “I’m looking at the history of Star’s parents. It looks as if her adoptive mother was born as Sarah Rutherford and her adoptive father was born as Link Denmore. They met while attending college at UC Berkeley, and both seemed to embrace the hippie revival movement. When they married, they legally changed their names to Sonny and Dharma Moonwalker. After college, they moved first to Denver and then to Missoula. They adopted Star in nineteen seventy-nine and gave her their new last name, Moonwalker.”
“I always thought her name was an alias, but apparently, I was wrong about that. What else does it say?”
“It appears the family moved to Sand Point, Idaho for a while and then back to Montana just before the mom getting sick. She died eight years ago from complications due to cancer. Sonny was killed in an auto accident five years ago. Star moved to White Eagle and opened her antique store three years ago.”
“She told me she hired Denton four years ago. He found a trail leading to the church where Star was abandoned shortly after. The rest of what she’s learned came to her over time.”
Tony sat back in his chair. He paused and then began to speak. “So it looks like that at some point in the late seventies, Grant Tucker moved to Wyoming and met Star’s mother. Or perhaps he already knew the woman who was shot, and they came to Wyoming together. At this point, we don’t know if they were legally wed, but it does look as if the woman with Grant was pregnant, and I would suspect that either Grant was the father of the baby, or someone else was the father and Grant was helping the woman for some reason. They rented an apartment in Buffalo, Wyoming where Star’s mother gave birth to her. Shortly after she gave birth, she was shot and killed, and at some point, Grant took the baby to a church in Great Falls, Montana. He left her with a nun with instructions to find the baby a good home. Sonny and Dharma were living in Kalispell at this point. I guess they must have moved from Missoula. Anyway, based on what we’ve found, they were chosen as Star’s adoptive parents. I’m still sort of unclear on this, but it does appear, based on what you’ve said, that Star grew up in a happy family situation. After her adoptive parents both died, she decided to look for her birth parents and hired a PI named Sam Denton.”
“That all sounds right to me.”
“Meanwhile, at some point, after he dropped the baby off at the church, Grant Tucker disappeared and reemerged as Grant Thomas. He met your mother, they married, and first Mike and then you were born. Twelve years af
ter the birth of his youngest child, he faked his own death and disappeared. We still have a lot of blanks to fill in to get us from that point until now, but we do know that he is still alive, still on the run, and assumedly using yet another name. Somehow, this PI managed to put things together, and he ended up dead. Star suspects it was Grant Tucker who killed him.”
I got up and began pacing around the room. “Star told me that she told Denton not to look for her father after she found out about her mother’s death. She said she thanked him, paid him off, and sent him on his way. But then someone else hired the same PI to find proof that a man who had been living under an alias for years and everyone believed to be dead was actually alive. That man turned out to be Grant Thomas, and in my mind, that somehow put Denton in a position where he needed to be eliminated. I have to wonder who it was that hired Denton to find my dad in the first place.”
“I don’t know,” Tony turned back to his screen. “I’ll see if I can find out, but it isn’t going to be easy. No one who would hire a PI to find a dead man is going to be the typical PI customer. In fact, given the fact that Denton was hired for such a task, indicates to me that there is more going on than we suspect.”
“I guess at this point find out what you can about Sam Denton. Somewhere in the middle of all these confusing yet surprisingly interconnected facts, lies the truth about what really happened and who is responsible for killing him.” I grabbed an apple from the bowl and then sat back down. “Do you think Star is in danger?”
“Maybe,” Tony answered. “She did just receive a file that has information about your father that he might not want someone having.”
“Should we warn her?”
Tony paused and looked at me. “I’m not sure. Part of me thinks that telling her everything that is going on will only make her more of a target, and part of me feels that she is already a target and someone should warn her to get out of town.” Tony drummed his fingers on the table. “Did it seem as if she was planning to continue to look for her father?”