Blood Relations

by Rett MacPherson

  “I forgot to tell you. He was out that night. He nearly ran over me and Collette, and he was riding his bicycle like a bat out of hell. As if he’d seen something he shouldn’t have,” I said.

  Instead of answering me, he yelled at Tony, who had just rolled the ball in the gutter. “Aw, what was that? You bowl any worse, I’m gonna have to arrest you!” he yelled.

  “Colin,” I said. “Did you hear me?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll check into it.”

  Twenty-three

  On Thursday, I decided to go visit Danny Jones. He had appeared fairly levelheaded, and so I thought maybe he could give me some insight into the relationship between Jeremiah Ketchum and Jacob Lahrs. I was, of course, judging that solely on the fact that he hadn’t tried to get liquor illegally that night at the Corner Bar. What can I say? It made a good impression on me.

  He attended the Granite County junior college, which was about a half hour south of New Kassel. I did my morning tour at the Gaheimer House—yes, my foot was feeling much better—and told Sylvia I would be back for the one at two o’clock that afternoon.

  It hadn’t warmed up enough to melt all of the snow yet. But it was off the roads and the sky was a deep azure, in stark comparison with the snow white of the ground. The green of the conifers peeked out from under the heavy snow, reminding us all that eventually everything would return to green.

  I enjoyed the ride down to Granite County Community College. I passed through several towns that were no more than a four-way intersection with maybe a gas station, a church, and a grocery store on the corner. All were little hamlets, whose names might appear on one of the more comprehensive gazetteers but not on an average map.

  Just before arriving in the town of Rosefield, I spotted a dairy farm off to the right, dotting the landscape with its black-and-white cows. As I came around the bend, a valley sprang forth; in it lay Murphyville and Granite County CC. It was a perfect little dell, like something the Teletubbies would visit. I passed through three stoplights, made a left, and parked the car.

  The secretary at the administration building wouldn’t give me any information about what class Danny Jones was in, saying that was against the rules. But Colin had let it slip that on Thursdays Mr. Jones only put in a half day, so I was just going to find his car and wait by it. Not a difficult thing to do, since I had casually asked Colin what sort of car Danny Jones drove, and he’d told me he owned an old beat-up Chevette. They don’t even make Chevettes anymore. It was probably his mother’s old car, from when she was in college.

  I drove up and down the lanes until I found a white Chevette, decorated with an unbelievable amount of both rust and bumper stickers. The stickers held eloquent phrases: MEAN PEOPLE SUCK; MY OTHER CAR IS A BMW; and, my favorite, JESUS IS COMING. LOOK BUSY. There were several other bumper stickers pertaining to bands that I had only a peripheral knowledge of. In other words, I knew they existed, but I wouldn’t know their music if I heard it: Insane Clown Posse, Limp Bizkit, and Alien Ant Farm. Maybe he wasn’t so levelheaded after all.

  I got out of my car and circled his, peeking in the windows for no other reason than that I’m nosy. You find out a lot about a person by what the inside of his car looks like. With mine, you know I have kids, because of the car seat, the forty-odd Barbie shoes—none of which match, by the way—and the mess of school papers. One could tell I had a dog, too, by the nose smudges on the passenger-side window. I know, it’s terrible, but I guess my car-cleaning fairies are always on strike.

  What Danny Jones’ car said to me was that he was young, single, and considered himself hip and cool—and that he used his car as a laundry basket. The guitar picks in the little coin holder told me he was a musician, and a serious one, too, judging by the Rolling Stone and Guitar magazines and the catalog for Danelectro that I found on his passenger seat. He preferred Taco Bell to McDonald’s, but he had a definite thing for shakes from Steak-n-Shake. I learned all that just from peeking into his car windows.

  Mardi Gras beads hung from the rearview mirror. Studying his dash, I saw old parking stubs for concert events, a melted, half-eaten Snickers bar, and lots of dust bunnies.

  “It’s not for sale,” a voice said.

  I jumped and squealed.

  When my heart had calmed down enough that I didn’t feel as if it were going to run away, I managed a smile. “Mr. Jones, you scared the bejesus out of me.”

  “I see that,” he said. “You down here just scoping out the shittiest cars in the parking lot, or did you want something with me in particular?”

  I took a deep breath and swallowed. “I, uh … I came by to speak to you.”

  “What about?”

  “Mr. Ketchum said some fairly unusual things about Jacob Lahrs, and I just wanted a second opinion.”

  “What do you care?”

  “Uh … Collette. My friend Collette is doing a story, and I told her I’d help her out by doing some interviews. We just want to profile what type of person Jacob Lahrs was.” That sounded good, I thought.

  “Professor Lahrs was great,” he said, setting his books on the hood of his car. “He was my favorite teacher.”

  “Mr. Ketchum said something about Jacob having a substance-abuse problem.”

  Danny smiled and fished around in his huge pockets, which were situated on the sides of pants that were two sizes too large. He found his keys and held them in his hand. “Professor Lahrs loved to party. He liked to drink. But I never saw him drunk in class or under the influence of anything harsher than alcohol.”

  “Why do you think Mr. Ketchum would say otherwise?”

  Danny looked around the parking lot, his dark eyes landing on nothing in particular. He shrugged then. “I think … I think Mr. Ketchum was jealous.”

  “Of Jacob Lahrs?” I asked. “Why?”

  “He’s an old fart, you know. He is in his forties, and here Professor Lahrs had this really cool thing that was gonna get him out of the community college before he turned thirty, and Mr. Ketchum would still be here.”

  “What’s so bad about teaching at a junior college?” I asked, ignoring the “old fart” comment about a man in his forties. I mean, I’m not forty yet, but it isn’t too far off.

  “Nothing’s wrong with it,” Danny said. “But if you want to be something else and this is what you’re settling for, it can be a bitter pill.”

  I said nothing, so he went on.

  “Being president would suck if you wanted to be king,” he said.

  “In other words, having to settle was the problem.”

  “Exactly. From what I understand, they both had settled for something they didn’t want. Only Jacob was getting ready to do something about it.”

  “How much do you know about what they were working on?”

  “All three of us were working on the same thing,” he said, correcting me. “I get the feeling you know what it was.”

  “It wasn’t how the wreck happened, was it? Were you guys going to blow the lid off of the Huntleigh mystery and retire on your laurels?”

  Danny Jones looked at his feet. “Yeah, well. That’s all over now,” he said, grabbing his books off the hood of the car.

  “Why?”

  “Because we still don’t know where the diamonds are. Jacob had an idea of where they were, but evidently it was a semipublic place and he couldn’t just go and get them without some hard evidence.”

  He unlocked his car door then, but I stopped him. “Wait,” I said. My head was spinning. Jacob Lahrs didn’t know where the diamonds were? What did he mean by that? That could only mean one thing. That William Wade had never retrieved the diamonds. They really had been missing all this time, and they still were.

  “I have to get to work, Mrs. O’Shea,” he said.

  “Of course, the letter mentioned about them not having to worry about the future. He was going back for the diamonds, but he died before he could.”

  “Mrs. O’Shea?” Danny asked, a puzzled look crossing his f
ace.

  I hadn’t realized I had been speaking out loud.

  “Just one more question,” I asked, ignoring him. “What were you guys celebrating that night at the Corner Bar?”

  He hesitated a moment. “On a dive, Jacob found the case the diamonds were supposed to have been in. The case was shut but not locked. They were all gone. Not one single diamond left in a closed case. It confirmed to Jacob that somebody had taken the diamonds off the boat before the wreck.”

  I thought about that a moment as Danny Jones opened his car door. It was clear that he thought I knew more than I did, so I just played along.

  “That’s it? That’s what the celebration was about?”

  “More or less,” he said. “He’d also found a few personal items that had belonged to his great-grandparents.”

  “Eli Thibeau and Jessica Huntleigh.”

  An admiring smile crossed his face. “The rumors about you are true,” he said. “Jacob said more than once that if you weren’t so anal, he’d bring you on board.”

  “‘Anal’?” I asked. “I am not anal.”

  “I have to go, Mrs. O’Shea.”

  “Sure,” I said, thinking about what he’d said. “Hey, where do you work?”

  “Camelot, the music store,” he said.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Wisteria,” he replied.

  “Have a good day,” I said.

  He shut the door, started the car, and pulled out of the parking lot. I got in my car, fairly satisfied with the way the interview had gone. Well, except for when he’d called me anal.

  Twenty-four

  Later that evening, I was sitting at the kitchen table, peeling an orange and mulling over the things that Danny Jones had told me, when Rudy walked into the kitchen from the garage.

  “Honey, do you think I’m anal-retentive?” I asked as Rudy got himself a glass of milk out of the refrigerator.

  “You’re entirely too much of a slob to be anal,” he said without even thinking. He turned around and smiled at me.

  “Jerk,” I said, tossing an orange peel at him. “I’m being serious.”

  “So was I. Hey, don’t hit me. Okay, maybe you are. I’m not sure how you want me to answer this question.”

  “Just tell me what you think,” I said.

  “Oh, so you want my opinion. I thought you wanted one of those ‘Tell me what I want to hear or you’re dead’ type of answers. I didn’t know you wanted a real answer.” While he thought a moment, I was entertaining ways to mutilate his body without getting caught. Finally, he gave a big sigh. “All right. Do you realize that you buy a bag of ChexMix and eat only the corn Chex? And you buy a bag of Gardetto’s and eat only the pretzels. You leave the rest of the stuff for us to eat. There’s something wrong with that.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not anal. That’s neurotic.”

  “Can I quote you on that?” he asked.

  I whizzed another orange peel at him. “Hey, hey, watch the milk,” Rudy said.

  He came over and sat down at the table with me, brave man that he was. His brown eyes were warm and caring, even if they were twinkling with mischief. It was amazing how a decade and a half of marriage had not diminished his cuteness. Okay, there were times I could throw more than an orange peel at him, and this might end up being one of them, but it was as if the cute things got cuter and the irritating things got more irritating. Which was good, because if there wasn’t that balance, I’d probably have tossed him out the window by now.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you ask if you’re anal?”

  I said nothing.

  “What—did somebody say you were anal?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  A smile broke across his face, causing those appealing little crinkles to form at the corners of his eyes. Of course, on women, those are considered crow’s-feet, and not desired in the least. On men, they are quite attractive. Why does it seem as though Mother Nature has it in for women?

  “You’re lying,” he said. “I can tell by the way the corner of your mouth twitched.”

  That’s the other thing about being married for years—your spouse learns all of your secrets.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks,” I said, although not really believing it. “Unless more than one person thinks it, and then there’s power in numbers to consider.”

  “Well, let’s see,” Rudy said. He stole a slice of my orange and made an exaggerated expression of concentration. “No, I’d go more with OCD than with anal.”

  “Are you saying I’m obsessive-compulsive?”

  “You check the stove three times before we leave the house.”

  “So? It might be on.”

  “But after you’ve checked it once, you know it’s not on.”

  “But somebody could have accidentally bumped it,” I said.

  “Okay, you double-check all the seals on the food you get from the store.”

  “That’s just common sense.”

  He gave me that “Get real” look. But I was holding my ground on this one.

  “If I’m an hour late from anywhere, you’re convinced I’m dead.”

  “Again that’s neurotic, not obsessive-compulsive.”

  “All right, you check your food at the restaurant for spit from the cooks. You won’t sit on a public toilet without putting down a paper cover; nor will you open the rest room door without a paper towel, because somebody else may have opened it without washing her hands!”

  “That’s just germ-conscious. With germs, you have to be on the offensive,” I said.

  He threw his head back and laughed. “Honey, you may not be anal, but you’re not normal, either.”

  I pouted a little, my lower lip protruding.

  “It’s all right,” Rudy said, smiling brilliantly. “You’re my little neurotic, obsessive-compulsive, slightly anal-retentive angel.”

  I banged my head on the table. The phone rang, interrupting my thoroughly depressing conversation with Rudy. He answered it.

  “Torie, it’s Colin,” he said.

  I held my hand out for him to place the phone in it, not taking my head off the table. “What?” I asked.

  “Well, hello to you, too,” Colin said.

  “Just get to the point,” I said.

  “Justin McKinney did see something that Sunday night,” he said.

  I sat up, noticing that I now had orange pulp in the bangs of my hair. “What did he see?”

  “Well, actually, he heard something. He heard two guys fighting and then one of them calling out in pain. Then he turned on his bike and got out of there,” he said.

  “Did he hear what they were arguing about? Could he recognize the voices?” I asked.

  “He heard one say something like ‘You’re not going to get all the credit.’ And then the other said ‘I worked my ass off on this project,’ yada yada yada. Justin was pretty sure both were men’s voices. So I think we can probably safely say that whoever killed Professor Lahrs was a male.”

  “Jeremiah Ketchum?” I asked.

  “I’m going to check into who else was helping with the project, someone who maybe never made an appearance in New Kassel,” the sheriff said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I immediately assumed that the argument was with Jeremiah Ketchum or Danny Jones, but thinking about it, I’m not sure,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because their cars were at the Murdoch Inn through the whole ordeal. That still leaves the question of how they could have left the crime scene and gotten back into the Murdoch Inn by the time you found the body and I came around asking questions. Plus, they had fairly tight alibis,” he said. “I’m not saying it’s not either one of them, but I’m going to look into some other people who may have had a motive.”

  “Speaking of cars,” I said.

  “Yes? You going to tell me how your visit with Danny Jones went?” he asked.


  “How did you know I went to see Danny Jones?” I asked.

  “I’m not the sheriff for nothing, you know.”

  I thought about that a minute and had a vision of the sheriff following me around, snooping on me. Disturbing, to say the least.

  “Uh … it went fine, but I learned something interesting.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “Danny Jones’s car is dirtier than mine,” I said. Rudy gave me an exasperated look.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “What else?”

  “Well, he really played down Jacob Lahrs’s chemical dependency, and he claimed Jeremiah was just jealous. Oh, jeez, I almost forgot—the three of them found the diamond case in the wreckage, with the lid shut and the diamonds gone,” I said.

  “Which means what, exactly?”

  “Well, at first I thought that William and Maria Wade had made off with the diamonds and lived happily ever after with them. But now I don’t think so. I don’t think William ever got a chance to get the diamonds, for whatever reason. Danny seemed to think that finding the case empty meant the diamonds made it off the boat and that Jacob knew where they were hidden, but because it was a fairly public place, he couldn’t just go and get them.”

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  I looked over at Rudy and shrugged. “It’s possible,” I said. “Was there anything in any of the documents that Jeremiah had that gave away the secret location?”

  “Not that I could determine,” he said.

  “By the way, how’s the ex-wife thing coming? You know, you mentioned that Jacob had an ex-wife.”

  “Haven’t had time to talk with her.”

  “It might be important.”

  “Torie, I’ll get to her,” he said. “I’ve been doing other things, like checking up on forensics and fighting the rest of the crime in Granite County.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “Don’t be so crabby.”

  “We’ll see you guys tomorrow night.”

  “Huh? Oh yeah, dinner. Okay, see you then.”

  THE NEW KASSEL GAZETTE

  The News You Might Miss

  By