Killing Cousins

by Rett MacPherson

  I bent down and moved the panel and inside was a dark square. I wasn’t about to put my hand down in the hole without being able to see what was in it. Whatever it was, it didn’t go all the way down to the second floor because there was no light coming from it. I ran down to the piano room, where I had noticed candles on the mantel earlier. I picked one up, lit it with one of the umpteen matchbooks in a large fishbowl, and walked back up the steps and down the hall to the hole in the floor.

  Silly, I know. I should have been leaving to go home. But, curiosity killed the cat. Someday some wise man will change that to say, curiosity killed Torie O’Shea.

  I held the candle over the square in the floor and nothing with lots of legs crawled out. Still…I firmly believed that things with more legs than I have also have a high intelligence and live to scare the living daylights out of me. So, as soon as I stuck my hand in that dark recess, something with lots of legs would crawl up my arm and I would have a heart attack and be dead, and nobody would find me for hours, maybe days.

  I banged on the floor around the hole, trying to scare whatever was in there to come out. Finally, when the storm was getting louder and I knew I couldn’t wait much longer, I just plunged my hand down in there and felt around. I squealed at first, just because I felt something. I would have squealed if it were a rock, just because it was something in the dark. But this was soft. I pulled it out.

  I carried it out of the nursery where I could see it in the hallway light.

  It was a baby blanket.

  A baby blanket with blue embroidered initials, BLF.

  A baby blanket with scorched edges.

  A loud clap of thunder shook the house, and I was plunged into darkness. Thank goodness I had the candle. Rain pelted against the windows and the roof, and I was cussing myself silently for not having left sooner. I headed down the hallway to the steps, walking slowly in part because candlelight does not throw light very far and in part because if I moved too swiftly the candle would go out.

  And then I heard it. Footsteps on the stairs.

  Don’t panic, O’Shea. I ran into one of the bedrooms and looked out into the driveway. There was no car. So whoever it was had come on foot and that was not a good sign.

  Maybe it was just a homeless person who wanted shelter from the storm. I could hardly hear anything because of all of the rain and thunder. But as I stood on the balcony I could see a flashlight moving against the walls every now and then, as if someone was ducking in and out of rooms. Maybe it was just lightning.

  Just as I was about to panic, I remembered the servants’ stairs. I went as quickly as I could down the hallway to the other end, opened the door to the servants’ stairs, and descended them like there was no tomorrow. The servants’ stairs would come out in the kitchen on the first floor and then I could just jump out the back door and to my car and safety.

  When I reached the bottom of the servants’ stairs, whoever was in the house reached the bottom of the front stairs because I could see the flashlight. It’s at moments like these when your mind just sort of shuts down and goes on automatic pilot, and only in hindsight can you see that what you did was not such a great idea. I grabbed a frying pan out of one of the boxes in the middle of the room, extinguished the candle and set it next to Byron’s baby blanket on the table.

  I tried to disappear into the wall of the kitchen quickly because I could see the flashlight moving on the walls of the dining area and it was getting closer and closer. I gripped the frying pan, my hands sweating and slippery. As the stranger came into the kitchen area with his flashlight blinding me, I smacked him on the side of his head.

  He in turn stepped on my foot, elbowed my chin and conked me on the head with his flashlight. “Ouch!” he cried.

  “Ouch!” I screamed.

  My fear subsided quickly for two reasons. First, pain will make you forget most things; and second, I recognized the voice. He shone the flashlight into my face and I heard the voice in the dark say, “Torie?”

  I tried to shield my eyes against the flashlight, but I was too busy hopping on one foot, rubbing my chin with one hand and rubbing my head with the frying pan all at the same time. “Edwin?”

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’m…I work here. What the hell are you doing?”

  “I came to get you because of the storm.”

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  “Rudy called me and said that he was worried about you because you were later than usual, and the storm was coming up and he wasn’t sure if you’d try to come home in it, or if you’d have your nose stuck in a corner somewhere and not even know it was storming. God, I could have shot you, you idiot!”

  Rudy had been right. If the wind hadn’t knocked over Byron’s picture I probably wouldn’t have known that the storm was about to hit, until it actually hit. It’s really disturbing to think my husband knows me that well. Funny, I don’t seem to mind when he knows me well enough to know what I want for dinner or what my favorite flowers are.

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, where’s your car?”

  “I couldn’t get in the gate. I left the car at the gate and climbed over it,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, why didn’t you call out my name?”

  “I did when I first came in. I guess you didn’t hear me.”

  “Oh,” I said again.

  “So, why didn’t you just say, ‘Who’s there’?” he asked. “God, my head hurts.”

  “Because,” I said. “Don’t you ever watch movies? If I called out ‘Who’s there?’ then you’d know I was here.”

  “Yeah, and do you have a point or did you hit my head so hard that I’m not hearing everything that you say?”

  “If you were a bad guy then you’d know I was here,” I said. “My head hurts, too. And my toes and my chin.”

  “We should go,” he said. “We both are in desperate need of ice. Feel my head.”

  I reached up and felt his head. A lump the size of an egg had risen almost instantly on the side of it, right above his rather large ear.

  “And I’m seeing stars in the dark,” he said.

  “You want me to drive?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I think you better.”

  “Okay, just let me get something,” I said. I ran over to the table and grabbed Byron’s blanket. Then I felt around on the kitchen counter for my purse, which had my keys, found it and headed for the door.

  Edwin didn’t follow. “Deputy? Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” he said from somewhere in the dark.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “I think I’m on the floor,” he said.

  “Do you have a radio in your car?”

  Twenty-Eight

  The emergency room of Wisteria General was no happier a place than the waiting room had been. Still that drab tan color. I was flipping through a very beat-up issue of Field & Stream magazine, because the timid high school student waiting for results of her mother’s X-rays had the only People magazine. Call me shallow, but I’m much more interested in reading about the love lives of the rich and famous than reading about the love life of a fish. I just can’t help it.

  Sheriff Brooke casually made his way down the hall and to my chair. I put the magazine down. “Well? How’s Duran?”

  “I just want to know one thing,” the sheriff said.

  “What?” I asked, exasperated.

  “Why aren’t you on our bowling team if you’ve got an arm like that? You gave the poor man a concussion.”

  I swallowed. “I did?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I think it was more the density of the frying pan than it was my arm.”

  He just glared at me.

  “In fact, I’m sure of it. Because without a frying pan I’ve never given anything a concussion. Honest.”

  Again he just stared and never blinked.

  “What?” I asked. “What? I thought he was an intruder or something. It wa
s self-defense. You should teach him that if he calls out somebody’s name and they don’t answer, he should try again. I didn’t hear him call out my name. But if he would have kept on calling out my name all the way up the steps, I would have eventually heard him. I’m trying desperately to defend myself here. Give me a break.”

  “How’s your toe?” he asked.

  “Purple, thank you very much. Although it’s not broken.”

  “Call your mother. She’s worried sick.”

  “Right,” I said. I sat there a minute thinking about the blanket I’d found, and just what the implications were. “I think Aurora and Cecily, and their cousins, know what happened to Byron Lee Finch.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked and sat down in a brown vinyl chair across from me.

  “I found Byron’s baby blanket hidden in a panel in the floor. The same blanket that Catherine said was missing with Byron. And it was scorched.”

  “That makes no sense. Why keep an incriminating piece of evidence like that in the house?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that they were kids. The oldest one of the six couldn’t have been more than twelve. Maybe they didn’t realize they had it with them until they were home, and then they panicked. I don’t know,” I said. “But I think it seriously lends credibility to the theory that somebody in that house was responsible for what happened to Byron, and somebody in the house knew that he was dead.”

  “So…we’re talking Aurora, Cecily, Hugh, Hope, Patrick and Lanna, the two servants, and then Byron’s parents, Catherine and Walter.”

  “That’s who was in the house. But I think it’s one or more of the six cousins.”

  “Byron only had four cousins,” he said, confused.

  “I meant, the six kids, including Aurora and Cecily. They were cousins to the Danverses and the Wards. That’s what I mean. The six cousins.”

  “Okay,” he said and stretched. He put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling for a moment. “Why? Why would the six of them kidnap him?”

  “Maybe they didn’t,” I said.

  “You just said that they did.”

  “No, I didn’t. I think the cousins know what happened, and might have been responsible, but I never said they kidnapped him.”

  He tapped his foot and then suddenly stopped. “You think it was an accident.”

  “Exactly. I think, for whatever reason, the six kids took Byron and went somewhere in the middle of the night. They probably had it planned the whole day. The seven of them would sneak off in the middle of the night, for whatever reason. You know how kids are. Maybe they had a tree house or something. A private, cousins-only club.”

  “Only they didn’t count on the storm.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. They took Byron out into the night and the storm came up. I can only imagine what happened after that. I mean, obviously, somehow he got hit by lightning. And there’s another thing. Sylvia, who was Catherine Finch’s best friend, said that impostors plagued Catherine’s life forever. People pretending that they were Byron.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “One in particular seemed to be perfect. He bore a striking resemblance to Catherine’s brother, Louis. Catherine was convinced that he was Byron. But Aurora and Cecily knew that he wasn’t.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said, just as the intercom blared a request for a doctor in room four.

  “Catherine felt that the only way Aurora and Cecily could be absolutely sure that this impostor wasn’t their brother was because they knew what really happened to Byron,” I said.

  “And that the knowledge wasn’t good. In other words, they knew their brother was dead,” the sheriff said.

  “Yeah, pretty much,” I said. “Obviously, I would be suspicious of anybody who came around twenty-five years later and pretended to be my long-lost son or brother or whatever. And that wouldn’t mean that I would have had something to do with his disappearance. But, at the same time, Catherine’s deduction does sort of make sense.”

  “I agree. On both counts,” he said.

  Marriage made him a much more agreeable sheriff.

  “I’m curious,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Do you realize who one of the cousins is?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Hope. It’s Hope Danvers. Governor Hope Danvers.”

  “Oh, wow,” I said, sitting back in my chair. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “It hadn’t occurred to me until talking to you just now,” he said. “But, let’s say the six cousins knew what happened to Byron. So they all know he’s in the wall.”

  “They might have even put him there,” I added.

  “Right. So, let’s say for whatever reason Patrick Ward decides to blow the whistle. One of them finds out.”

  “And poisons him before he actually gets a chance to expose Byron’s whereabouts,” I said.

  “And they probably didn’t count on him actually making it to the Yates house, either. Because obviously somebody might make the connection between him and Byron,” he said. “Providing, of course, that it could be proved that it was Byron.”

  “I’m following you,” I said.

  “So, one of them has a lot to lose. Hope Danvers. She panicked because she’s getting ready to run for senator. She doesn’t want any marks on her name,” he said.

  “Yeah, but gosh. They were just kids,” I said. “Would that make a difference with voters?”

  “It could,” he said.

  “I could see, if there were evil intentions, how that might deter voters.”

  “The simple fact that she hid it and never told the truth would sort of cast a shadow on her character in general,” he said.

  “I suppose. But I’m still not sure that would be enough. I mean, so far there’s nothing to indicate the children had any sort of vicious intent when they took Byron. No devil-worshipping or anything.”

  “So far,” the sheriff echoed. “Of course, there is Patrick Ward’s murder.”

  Twenty-Nine

  The Murdoch Inn was our official anti-casino headquarters. Eleanore, Helen Wickland, Charity Burgermeister and I were attending to our various duties in our effort to stop the riverboat casino from anchoring in our town. I was busy stuffing envelopes with our “Vote No Proposition 7” pamphlets when the mayor came bursting in. He wore black-red-and-white-checked golfing pants, a white polo shirt and polished white shoes. He looked like a dork, but then, the mayor always looked like a dork.

  “You can cease and desist,” the mayor announced.

  “What the heck are you talking about, Bill?” Eleanore asked.

  “I’m just here to tell you,” he said, rocking up on the balls of his feet, “that the governor is here to back me up on the riverboat gambling issue.”

  “What?” Helen asked.

  “She is having a press conference this afternoon from the proposed site for the casino, and she is going to blow you all out of the water,” he said.

  “Bill,” I said, “I remember your acceptance speech when you became mayor. And I believe that your words were, ‘I am mayor of New Kassel second. I am a citizen first.’ Have you forgotten that?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Then why are you behaving like a horse’s butt? You know the casino will kill this town,” I said.

  “And what’s more,” Helen added, “we don’t care what Governor Danvers says. She has never, not once, in all her years in public service, offered to help this town. This is where she was born and raised, and she hates it. She’s ashamed of it. Why would we care what she thinks?”

  The mayor clearly looked perplexed. He had not gotten the reaction from us that he had hoped to achieve. Just then the clamor of cars and tubas could be heard from outside.

  “That’s the governor,” he said and ran outside.

  We all followed him out onto the porch of the Murdoch Inn. A procession of cars drove through the bend on the way to River Point Road, and
ultimately to where the Yates house once stood. Tobias had managed to get most of the Kassel Players together to welcome the governor with their ensemble of brass parade music.

  “How come nobody knew she was coming?” Helen asked.

  “I invited her last week,” Bill said. “She phoned this morning that she was coming. Tobias was pretty ticked about the short notice. Three trumpet players couldn’t get off from work and a trombone player is on vacation.”

  Helen, Eleanore, Charity and I stood on the porch with our arms folded and wearing scowls. It was a beautiful day, a green-air day. The storm had come in last night, cleaned out all the junk in the air, cooled it off by about ten degrees and sucked up the humidity. It wouldn’t last, I knew, but it should make for an ideal weekend for the Pickin’ and Grinnin’ Festival.

  Right behind the governor’s car and her entourage, were the television crews. Two of them. As if they hadn’t been here enough in the past few weeks, what with the discovery of Byron Lee Finch and the whole gambling issue in general.

  The four of us made our way on foot down the road to where the Yates house had once stood. The mayor had arrived before us, and I made a mental note that his short legs could move much faster than I ever thought possible.

  The sheriff pulled up in his squad car, barely came to a stop, jumped out and made his way directly to me. He looked mean, and ticked, and the sunglasses only helped to perpetuate that image.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said.

  “Ha, ha,” he said. “What the hell is going on?”

  “The mayor invited the governor to speak on behalf of the riverboat gambling, and she accepted,” I said.

  “He didn’t call me or anything. He knows I have to get extra security in here,” he said. His nostrils flared when he spoke, so I assumed that he was pretty peeved. “Hang on. I’ll be right back.”

  He went over to the squad car, used the radio and came back. He had called in the deputies. When he came back he took his sunglasses off and looked down at me. “What is she? Nuts?”