Rip Your Heart Out

by Jeanne Glidewell

  "That'd work just fine. I'm looking forward to dining with you and Mr. Ripple tomorrow evening. I shall arrive promptly at six."

  There was a lot going through my mind as I walked outside to find Itsy. She was leaning against the railing of the porch at the entrance of the church, spewing a nasty stream of tobacco-laced saliva into the fragrant honeysuckle bush beside her. The departing congregation was giving her a wide berth, as if they'd just witnessed her being dunked in a baptismal vat of ricin.

  I was glad the priest was available to join us for dinner the following evening. I was a bit surprised he'd even accepted my invitation. I knew his commitment to serving the Lord involved a lot of interaction with his flock. It occurred to me then what Chase Cumberland had meant when he'd told me his "boss" didn't miss a single thing. God, the all-seeing creator, was the very powerful boss he'd referred to. I had to wonder what his boss thought about the religious leader's deceptiveness.

  That's no way for a priest to behave if he wants to be assured of a favored spot in heaven, I thought.

  It probably goes without saying, but that was the one and only time Itsy and I ever paid a visit to the Sacred Heart Church on Falmouth Street. On that evening, it would have more aptly been named "Foul Mouth Street".

  It wasn't until I was slipping into my pajamas about a half-an-hour later that it suddenly occurred to me why Itsy had never before attended a service at the catholic church. Unlike me, Mabel must have been wise enough not to invite her.

  Chapter 22

  When I pulled the truck over to the curb in front of Itsy's house, I thanked her again for accompanying me to the church service, and asked, "Got any notion what the Combs kids, and possibly Father Cumberland, might be looking for in Mabel's house? Do you know of anything she owned that might be worth the effort of scouring every nook and cranny?"

  "Damned right, I do!"

  Naturally, my interest was piqued. But then Itsy clammed up for such a long spell, I didn't think she was going to explain her emphatic response. I got the impression she had to give it considerable thought before replying. Fortunately, she finally decided to tell me the fascinating story. I turned the ignition off and listened in rapt attention, as Itsy must've done when Mabel had told her the story of her youth.

  "Mabel didn't have the easiest childhood in the world. Her daddy, Oliver Wright, was twenty-five when he met her sixteen-year-old mother, Ingrid Anderson, in Eugene, Oregon in 1938. They married three months later and Mabel's older sister, Rosalyn, was born the following year."

  "Is Rosalyn still alive?" I asked.

  "No. As I've said before, Rosalyn was attacked and killed by a shark while on a family vacation in 1996. But I haven't gotten to that part yet. Anyway, in early 1942, with Ingrid pregnant with Mabel, Oliver was drafted into the army to serve in the war. A draft-dodger, Oliver took the family and fled the country, hiding out in a remote area of the Australian outback. In early 1943, unable to feed his family of four, he headed out to do a little prospecting at the Ballarat Mine in Victoria where a major gold strike had occurred discovered in 1908."

  "Did he find gold?"

  "Yes. He hit a major gold vein that had somehow remained undiscovered. It was the mother lode, as her daddy put it. Oliver Wright became a wealthy man overnight. But he was a bit of a scoundrel, too, and he left a chunk of it in the Central Australian brothels. On August 14, 1945, the Japanese surrendered to the Allies, ending World War II, and Oliver took what was left of the gold nuggets he'd discovered home to Ingrid and their daughters. He also took home a bacterial infection called syphilis."

  "Goodness gracious! Did it kill him?"

  Itsy sighed. "If you'd quit interrupting me, Rapella, I'll tell you."

  "Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Go on."

  "No, the syphilis didn't kill Oliver, but he was generous enough to share the disease with his wife."

  "Oh, no! Did she–?"

  Itsy shot me a look that shut me up mid-sentence. "Their third daughter, Bella, was born in 1947 and Ingrid passed away from complications of syphilis the following year when Mabel was six."

  "Did Ingrid pass the disease on to Bella?"

  "No, thank God. Somehow Bella was unaffected by it."

  "No thanks to Oliver. That slimy no-good bast–"

  "So," Itsy drew the two letter word out for a dramatically long time to shut me up. "As Oliver got sicker and weaker from the disease, he depended on Mabel to take care of the cooking and the household chores, as well as watching over her younger sister."

  "What about Mabel's older sister, Rosalyn?"

  "I'm getting there, I'm getting there. Have patience, girl." Itsy shook a finger at me good-naturedly before continuing with the story. "Rosalyn was Oliver's go-to daughter until she ran away from home at thirteen. She got knocked up at fifteen, and she and her husband moved here to the states and bought–"

  "Mabel's house, right?"

  "No, of course not. They couldn't afford something that grand. They were both still kids themselves and had a bun baking in the oven besides. They scratched you-know-what with the chickens and were able to scrounge up enough to rent a small home on the wrong side of the tracks in Yakima."

  "Oh, that's where Adelaide lives."

  "Yeah, that's right. So, anyway, Rosalyn's daughter, Norma Jean was born in their tiny house in 1955 with the help of a midwife. The three got by with Rosalyn working two jobs and doing some tailoring jobs on the side. She knew her way around a Singer sewing machine, you see. When she figured out her lazy husband was nothing but a drunk and a bum, she dropped him like a bad habit and had to work even more hours altering clothes and doing odd jobs wherever she could find them. Rosalyn began to put a couple of dollars away each month and saved up until she could afford to take Norma Jean on a vacation to the coast. Unfortunately, that trip Rosalyn had dreamed about for several years, and pinched pennies to save for, ended in tragedy when she was nearly bitten in two by a great white off the coast of Newport, Oregon."

  "Holy moly! Did Norma Jean witness the attack?" This time Itsy didn't admonish me for interrupting. She could see how involved in the story I'd become. She appeared to be just as invested in the telling of it.

  "She not only witnessed it, she was standing next to her mother at the time and was knocked over by the shark. Norma Jean was rescued by a young man who'd seen the shark attack her mother. Rosalyn bled out before they even got her back to shore. Norma Jean was twelve at the time and a hot mess from that moment on, which was a tragedy in itself."

  "Oh, good Lord. What a story!" I wanted to hear more. "What happened to Norma Jean?"

  "I'll get to that in a minute. First I need to go back to Mabel's daddy."

  "Oh, of course." I tried to mask my impatience.

  "When Rosalyn left, Mabel had to take over as head housekeeper and a mother figure to little Bella. A few years later, Bella, at age six, was sent to an orphanage in West Virginia, of all places, because Oliver didn't want an extra mouth to feed. Especially when the devastating effects of the syphilis was beginning to take a toll on him. Like Ingrid, he probably would have died of the disease too had he not been shot in 1957 for cheating at poker. Mabel, fifteen by then, packed up her most precious belongings and, reluctantly, her daddy's stash of gold. According to Mabel, it was around a hundred pounds' worth, which in today's market is probably worth over two million. She then left Australia for America in hopes of tracking down her two sisters, and never looked back."

  "So what happened to Mabel next?" I had sat back in the truck seat and made myself comfortable as Itsy rambled on.

  "Mabel ended up in a boarding house in Eugene, Oregon. At nineteen, she married Jackson Trumbo, a commercial fisherman about twelve years older than her and moved to this area with her new husband. About a year later, Jack died when the fishing boat he was on capsized and sank during a horrific storm at sea."

  "Oh, my goodness. What a tragic story!"

  "Yeah, it was. They had a full load of fresh Dungeness crab in the hull w
hen the vessel went down. Do you know how much those things cost?"

  "Um, yes. But I was actually referring to the loss of Mabel's husband and the rest of the crew."

  "Well, yeah. There was that, too," Itsy replied. "But Mabel got a nice settlement out of it and bought the old Victorian, which at one time was a beauty to behold. As they say, 'all's well that ends well'."

  "If you say so. But, gracious sakes, what a life story! I'm amazed at how precisely you've committed Mabel's life story to memory."

  "In her later years, Mabel's memory slowly deteriorated. Along with everything else, she recited her life story on many, many occasions. Rather than embarrass her, I always acted as if it was the first time I'd heard it."

  "And you said you didn't care all that much for your neighbor. You're as bad a liar as the priest!" I smiled as I spoke, and Itsy chuckled.

  "Mabel was a really good person. We just disagreed on a lot of things."

  "I understand, Itsy. So, tell me. Did Mabel locate Rosalyn and Bella?"

  "Mabel never did discover what happened to Bella, and she only knew Rosalyn had relocated to the Oregon coast. That's why she and her husband moved to Oregon. But before Mabel could track Rosalyn down, she happened upon Rosalyn's obituary on a microfilm of the Yakima Herald-Republic that was on file at her local library. Mabel found Rosalyn's twelve-year old daughter in a state hospital in Yakima and formally adopted her, after finding out the girl's father wanted nothing to do with her. Mabel brought Norma Jean home and treated her as if she were her own offspring. Raised her right there in her own house until Norma Jean eventually got hitched to a loser named Roland Combs. Sydney and Adelaide were born soon after. Incidentally, Norma Jean and Roland's marriage crashed and burned after she caught him cheating on her with a much younger cocktail waitress. Tasman was seven at the time, and the twins were twelve."

  "How sad is that?" I asked rhetorically. It was beginning to seem as if there was nothing but bad luck dripping from every branch of Mabel's family tree, particularly when it came to marriage. I realized once again how fortunate I was to have found the love of my life so early in life. I never once regretted my decision to marry him in the half-century that followed.

  "Norma Jean did her best to raise her three kids properly and balance her struggles with her own personal demons for the next several years, before—poof!" Itsy stopped speaking abruptly, slapped her hands together as if wrapping up her story. "And the rest is history."

  I felt as if I'd been reading a thrilling novel, and when I reached the climax of the story, the rest of the pages had been ripped out of the book. "What? It might be history to you, but it's not to me. What's 'poof' mean? I want to know what you meant by 'several years, before—poof!' Where's Norma Jean now? Why wasn't she here helping Mabel? Why didn't she inherit the estate? Why are the Combs' kids in Mabel's will instead of their mother, Norma Jean?"

  "You sure have a lot of questions, Rapella. I ain't got all night, you know."

  I just stared at Itsy, who was fidgeting in the passenger seat as if she was running late for an important engagement. I knew she didn't have a hot date. Sadly for her, I was her hot date that evening. Was she having nicotine withdrawal, or had she just grown tired of reciting her neighbor's life story? Whatever had made her nip the spellbinding story in the bud, she wasn't getting away with it! "Well, it's your fault, Itsy! You got me all keyed up about the tragic tale of Mabel's family, and then just left me hanging like a cattle rustler from a dead man's noose. I want to know what happened to Norma Jean. So spill it!"

  "All right. All right," Itsy finally consented. "She died. Killed herself in Mabel's house, in fact. Shot herself in the chest in the drawing room. The bullet went right through her and embedded itself in the fireplace mantle. You'll see the bullet wedged in the mantelpiece if you look under the lace doily that's draped over it."

  "But why would she do such a thing?" My voice quivered in despair at the very thought of Sydney losing her mother to suicide.

  "Norma Jean was suffering from hallucinations, bouts of severe depression, and a couple of other mental disorders. The twins were fifteen, and Tasman only eleven, when Norma Jean put a bullet through her heart right in front of Mabel and her children. As I said, 'Poof!'"

  "Oh. My. God." I exclaimed, as if each word were a sentence in itself. "That's horrific!"

  "I told you Norma Jean was a hot mess from the moment her momma died."

  "Now I feel really bad for all three of the Combs kids. No matter how hard they try, it's something they'll never be able to 'unsee'."

  "Yeah, I know. Mabel took it really hard, too."

  "No doubt!" Then something hit me out of the blue. "Wait a minute, Itsy. Are you saying Mabel might've had some of that gold left when she died?"

  "I honestly don't know. She never said, and I didn't ask. I would assume she did because she thought it belonged to the devil, and blamed her mother's death on it. She believed that money truly is the root of all evil, and wanted nothing to do with it. I know she never spent any of it in all the time I lived next door to her," Itsy said. Then, as if to change the subject, she added, "It's all water under the bridge now, I reckon. The three kids moved in with Mabel after their mother's death, and lived in her house until they were grown and out on their own. However, I think it was in Mabel's final years, after having had kind of a falling out with them, even Sydney to a certain extent, she decided to donate the bulk of her estate to the cardiac center. Along with the house, which she'd already included in her will, she wanted to bequeath the rest of her estate to the center so there'd be funds to go toward its maintenance and upkeep for years to come. Unfortunately, it was too late to change her will. Mabel would turn over in her grave if she knew those three Combs kids were going to get their grubby hands on any of her money, especially that no-account boy who ain't got two brain cells left to keep each other company. She did have a soft spot in her heart for Sydney toward the end of her life, though. And for good reason. Sydney donated a lot of her time and effort to look after her."

  "Yes. Sydney's a very caring individual. But I'm curious about something you just said. Why was it too late for Mabel to change her will?"

  "You have to be of sound mind and body to alter a last will and testament, you know. By then, the Alzheimer's was already beginning to manifest itself in a significant enough way to render her unqualified to alter her will."

  "That's too bad. Alzheimer's is an awful, awful disease." Then something terrifying suddenly occurred to me. "Oh, my! So, you're saying there could still be two million dollars' worth of gold somewhere in her house?"

  "It's possible. At least the Combs kids seem to think so. They just don't know where it is if it is still on the premises. I can't say I disagree with Mabel's view about the gold being akin to an evil curse. But, if I'd been her, I'd have gotten over it and wallowed in the lap of luxury until the day the Good Lord called my spoiled ass home."

  I couldn't help laughing at Itsy's final comment. But the idea of having a treasure hidden somewhere inside the Heart Shack troubled me. I felt as if Rip and I were sitting on a ticking time bomb. I had no way of knowing who, and how many, knew of its existence and what those individuals might resort to in order to gain possession of it. The story answered one question, however. I now realized when I'd overheard Sydney say something to Adelaide that sounded like "wind the wold" during the bitter argument I witnessed between them at the hospital, she'd actually said "find the gold".

  The realization made me wonder if I'd misjudged Sydney. Perhaps she was just as determined to find the fortune as her siblings. But, then, could I honestly blame her? I wasn't certain how I'd have acted had I been in her shoes, so it was hard to judge her behavior. It was unfair to judge it, as well.

  I knew the trio could still be inside the house, hoping to find the treasure perhaps hidden within its walls.

  I said goodnight to Itsy and thanked her for sharing Mabel's life story with me. It'd certainly shed new light on my feelings for M
abel's great-nieces and nephew. I had a great deal of empathy for them and what they'd been through with the tragic loss of their mother. But much of that empathy got washed down the creek when I thought about their single-minded lust for the gold.

  The first thing I did after entering the house was walk into the drawing room and lift up the doily draped over the mantelpiece. When I eyed the hole from the bullet that had ended Norma Jean's life, I felt a sudden change in the atmosphere. It was as if the temperature in the room had suddenly decreased by fifteen degrees.

  I set down on the couch with my head in my hands, tears flowing, and my heart aching, for a woman I'd never met. Mabel had experienced a lot more heartache in her lifetime than any one person ever should, and I vowed to find out the truth behind her death. If it was at someone else's hands, I was going to do all I could to make sure the owner of those hands paid for their horrendous crime. Even if those hands belonged to Sydney, I told myself.

  I didn't have the heart to wake up Rip to tell him what I'd just learned from our next-door neighbor. I lay awake all night thinking about what that story might mean to the future of the temporary lodging facility and, more importantly, to the future of the couple currently occupying its master suite.

  * * *

  "You told me the two ladies didn't get along," Rip said after I reiterated Itsy's story the following morning as we lingered over breakfast. "How do you know she didn't make up that whole convoluted yarn?"

  "Well, I can't be positive, of course. Itsy is kind of an eccentric character, but she sure seemed sincere when she told the story, and she made it clear the two were closer than she cared to admit. I think the tale's legit. We could be sitting on a small fortune here, and I don't like it one bit!"

  "Don't worry, honey. I'll be here to protect you. I'm probably the only patient packing when he walks into the rehab facility for a therapy session. No one's safe anywhere these days."