A Comedy of Heirs

by Rett MacPherson

  “I don’t see how he could. If he really drilled them, and kept going back and going back, like a good detective would have … you know what that would have done to his friendship,” the sheriff said. “Because, if I were a father and was worried about one of my sons being carted off to jail because of killing an—”

  “An evil man that deserved it,” I finished for him.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “That’s what you were going to say. Are you telling me, Sheriff, that there is a type of murder that you wouldn’t pursue?”

  He rubbed his eyes and thought about it for a moment. “No,” he said. “What I’m saying is, if I were a father and it were one of my children … I don’t know what I’ve would have done. Protect them, most likely. Especially if it was a self-defense. If it were just coldblooded murder, child or not, I’d turn him in.”

  I stared at him for a moment. It took a lot for him to say that, because he was basically saying that there was a circumstance when he would break the law. And being a sheriff, that was saying a heck of a lot.

  “It’s obvious the man was a monster,” he said.

  “Well, the thing I noticed,” I said, “was that Hubert never once said that he and my grandfather were still friends later, after the murder. He said over and over they were best friends. Maybe that’s exactly what happened. Maybe he did do his job, and my grandfather told him to take a hike. In all my years at my grandparents’ house when I was a child, I never heard Hubert McCarthy’s name mentioned. I never saw his face. And I met a lot of the old-time friends of my grandparents. And I hung on every word the adults talked about. I don’t think their friendship made it through the investigation.”

  “Either that or…”

  The sheriff hesitated a little too much. He wanted me to answer for him, but he was not my mother and I couldn’t play those little mind games with him. “Or what?”

  “You ever think maybe Hubert McCarthy killed Nate Keith?”

  I was silent for a long while. A couple of blocks at least. We passed the Nationals grocery store on our right and then the sheriff got on to southbound Highway 55.

  “Not really,” I said. “I had thought that maybe he knew who it was and just pretended to investigate the murder. But for him to actually be the killer. No, I never thought of that. What reason would he have had?”

  “Who knows? Maybe he just happened to be out there that day and maybe Nate started in abusing John, your grandfather, and maybe Hubert just snapped,” the sheriff said. “Tired of seeing his best friend treated like that, and then realized he could cover it up by doing the preliminaries to an investigation and calling it unsolved.”

  “Well, it’s a nice thought,” I said.

  “Why?” he asked me.

  “Because he’s like the first real suspect that isn’t blood related to me. I think.” If Naomi was right, Bradley would have definitely been related.

  “I understand,” the sheriff said. “You’re really down.”

  “Part of it is hormones,” I said. “But, yeah. I’m down. My uncle is dead, my father has lied to me, and my great-grandfather was either a monster or a murderer.”

  The sheriff just looked at me oddly, because he didn’t know what I knew about Bradley Ferguson. About all the things Naomi Cordieu had told me. “Can you check something else for me?” I asked. The sheriff didn’t answer so I went on. “Check on Bradley Ferguson. He would have died in Africa on a safari around 1950. He’s buried down in Pine Branch.”

  “Why?” Sheriff Brooke said.

  “Just check to see if there was an autopsy or anything out of the ordinary about his death. Supposedly the gun misfired. He was hunting lions.”

  The sheriff nodded to me. I sighed heavily. I was miserable. There didn’t seem a way to make me feel better. Well, there was one way.

  Twenty-six

  I knocked on the door to my father’s two-bedroom flat in south St. Louis. I stood there with my knees knocking partly from the cold and partly from the fear of confronting the man who’d dished out the majority of my groundings and punishments as a child. They were just normal childhood punishments, but he ruled with an iron fist when I was younger and the thoughs of me confronting him over something this big … Well, I was suddenly ten years old standing on his porch.

  I’d gone home and tucked the kids into bed and kissed my husband, who said something about missing me of late. He really is an angel, when you think of the things he puts up with. When I get involved in something, I throw myself into it. There doesn’t have to be a murder for me to get lost in what I’ve just discovered. And he just rides the tide, making his own dinner or whatever, until I’ve satisfied myself with whatever it is.

  After I apologized to him profusely, with lots of promises of staying home all week next week, I hopped in my car and drove back up here to the city.

  My father answered the door and gave me a look of surprise which soon turned to satisfaction. He’d been expecting me. Maybe not tonight, but he’d been expecting me, eventually.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said. “Can I talk to you?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. “Come in.”

  He motioned me into his flat and offered me a seat in the front room. The front room was the music room, with all of his instruments and recording equipment. Some of his old violins and stuff that he collected he had mounted on the wall, along with a big 11 × 14-inch photograph of my two daughters that I’d had made one year as his Christmas present. My mother got one, too.

  The house was smoky—that was no surprise—and stuffy warm. He had the old radiator heat and there was no regulating it. Let’s just say he was never cold in the winter. The coffee table was covered with coffee rings, and two ashtrays that were heaping full.

  “Want something to drink?” he asked.

  “Water is fine,” I said.

  He went to get me a glass of water and I saw that he had his photo album out, and it was turned to a page with a few pictures of Uncle Jed on it. When he came back in, I noticed his eyes were a little puffy. He handed me the glass.

  “I’m gonna bury a brother tomorrow,” he said.

  “I know. It’s awful and I feel so bad.”

  “It sucks. That’s all there is to it. How can you have the Keith clan without Jed?”

  “Dad, can we change the subject?” I said. “I don’t want to break down. The state I’m in I don’t know if I could stop.”

  “Sure,” he said and sat down on the couch. I sat down in a chair directly across the room from him.

  Where to start? “Um, I hope you didn’t hear it through the grapevine. I’m pregnant.”

  “Oh, no kidding,” he said and smiled. “That’s great, kid. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks,” I said. There was no way I could bring up this subject without just stubbing my toe on it and saying it.

  But he knew it. He knew why I was there. He was just waiting for me to say something. He picked up one of his acoustic guitars and started strumming some old Jerry Reed song.

  “You sent me those newspaper articles. Why?”

  He raised one eyebrow as if surprised that I finally had the guts to say what it was that was on my mind. “What makes you so sure?”

  “The handwriting is a pretty good match, and the librarian that you asked to photocopy the stuff for you said a male between forty-five and fifty-five You’re fifty-eight,” I said. “Why?”

  “I thought you should know. Everybody should know.”

  “Then why didn’t you just tell everybody?”

  The plucking of guitar strings abruptly stopped and he sat forward on his couch. He wore a gray work sweatshirt that made his skin look a little gray, too. His red hat was lying on the back of the couch. He looked tired and, I hate to say it, old. Not ancient. Just weathered.

  “You don’t understand,” he said.

  “Who killed Nate Keith?” I asked him.

  He said nothing.

  “Look, you gave me this information for a re
ason. You either wanted me to pursue it and find out who it was quietly or you wanted me to bring everything to light for you. Now answer me.”

  He still said nothing.

  “I’ve talked to Sissy. She said you were in the barn. She also said that Della Ruth wouldn’t let anybody out on the porch until Nate was dead. I’ve spoken to Hubert McCarthy,” I said. With that, both of my father’s eyebrows went up. “And Naomi Cordieu. I’ve found more things out that I’m not real sure I wanted to know. Now answer me. Who killed Nate Keith?”

  “I don’t know,” he said finally.

  I stood up abruptly and paced across his living room floor. “How can you not know?”

  “I was in the barn getting Daisy ready to milk. I heard a commotion. Some yelling and stuff. I knew that Grandma and Grandpa were fighting. Jed was there. Then I heard the gunshot and I froze.” He seemed rather aloof about his whole retelling. Not terrorized like Aunt Sissy had been. I think it was because he’d pushed it away for so long that he’d forgotten it had really happened. “It took me a while but I finally managed to get my legs to walk over to the door and I saw Grandpa lying on the porch. I heard more commotion and footsteps, running.”

  “You didn’t go check on him?” I asked.

  “No. I was afraid the killer was still there and I didn’t want to be shot, too. And I was eight years old. I was too afraid to go to the porch. I didn’t want to see what I knew I’d see,” he said.

  “This is amazing,” I said, still pacing across his front room. My boots clicked on his hardwood floor.

  “What do you mean, amazing?”

  “I just can’t believe that this has been in my family’s past all of this time and nobody even so much as gave a hint! My father witnessed a murder—his own grandfather—and I knew nothing about it,” I said. “It just scares me. What are people hiding every day? The lady at the grocery store, the librarian, the mayor? How could you keep this from me?”

  He went back to plucking his guitar.

  “How long did you stay in the barn?” I asked, my blood pressure rising with every question.

  “About half an hour.”

  “It took him four hours to die. Where were you for the remaining three and a half hours?” I asked.

  “Jed had been in the smokehouse. I think he hid out in there for a while like I did, because he didn’t want to get shot himself. When it was evident that the killer had left, he came and got me. He knew I was out there,” Dad said. “The two of us walked to town.”

  “You walked all the way to town? Nine miles. Why didn’t you go to a neighbor’s house and borrow a car? Or a horse? Where was Jed’s car?” I asked.

  “Dana had dropped him off and gone back to town to shop,” Dad said. “Not that many of our neighbors had cars. This was 1948 in dirt-poor rural Missouri. Besides, Jed told me he didn’t want to involve any of the neighbors. Said we wouldn’t appreciate any of our neighbors mixing us up in something ugly like this, and he wasn’t going to do it to them.”

  “Wasn’t anybody concerned about saving the man’s life?” I asked, my voice raised just a little too loud.

  My father stopped playing his guitar once again and looked me straight in the eyes. “No,” he said simply. “Couldn’t of anyway. Gunshot. Gut wound. He was as good as dead as soon as he was shot.”

  “So you walked to town,” I said, frustrated.

  “Yeah, and we went straight to Hubert McCarthy, who drove us back out to the house,” he said.

  “How do you know Jed didn’t do it?” I asked.

  “Because he said he didn’t do it,” Dad answered.

  “Yes, but how do you really know? He could have lied to you.”

  “He was my brother. If he said he didn’t do it, I believed him,” Dad said.

  “So tell me, Dad. How do I find out who did do it? Who saw it?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure if she saw the whole thing or not, but when I peeked out of the barn doors at the house, your aunt Ruth was looking out the window in the house. She might have seen who it was,” he said.

  “Great,” I said. “Aunt Ruth. The one person who wouldn’t tell me even if she wanted to just for spite.” There was a lesson here about burning one’s bridges. I’d think about it more when my head wasn’t hurting so bad and I wasn’t on a personal quest.

  “And there was nobody else outside? Hubert said something about one of Granville’s daughters or something?”

  “Dolly. I think she was in the chicken coop.”

  “How old was she?” I asked.

  “About sixteen,” he said. Old enough to hold a shotgun, I thought.

  “And her story?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “She died that winter of typhoid. She never spoke of it, and none of us ever asked her.”

  “So, you sent me the articles because you didn’t want to be the one to break the silence.”

  He said nothing.

  “You lied to me when I asked you about them. Thanks for dumping this into my lap, Dad. Thanks for letting your daughter have the responsibility of deciding whether or not to tell the family.”

  “I didn’t dump anything,” he said.

  “Yes you did. You knew I wouldn’t be able to leave it alone. You knew,” I said. I walked toward his front door.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked, standing.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m going to try to find out who did it by every means possible, except involving Aunt Ruth. If I can’t do it any other way, then I’ll have to ask her.”

  “No, I mean about telling everybody?”

  “I don’t know, Dad. It’s a lot more complicated than that. I’m not even sure Nate Keith was the father of John Robert. Do I want all the family to know that, too? I’m not sure. It’s a huge responsibility telling people ugly things—a responsibility you so cleverly avoided.”

  Twenty-seven

  The next day I went to Velasco’s Pizza for lunch.

  I needed to be away from my family. All of my family. Except Mary and Rachel, whom I had brought along. I couldn’t handle another cousin, aunt, uncle or anything. My children and I were enjoying a pepperoni and mushroom pizza, thin crust with extra cheese and a big pitcher of soda.

  “So anyway,” Rachel said. “So, like Buffy comes out and stakes this vampire, like she usually does, but she’s wearing this really cool black dress.”

  “What was the vampire wearing?” I asked.

  “Huh?” she asked. Her large dark eyes rolled heavenward. “Who cares what the vamps are wearing, unless it’s Drusilla. You should have seen this dress, Mom. I want one just like it.”

  My soon-to-be nine-year-old was acting entirely too old for my own good. I wasn’t upset about her choice of TV material. When I was her age, I couldn’t wait to watch Nightstalker. It’s a universal thing, I guess. I was a little perturbed by the fact that she was more concerned over what the slayer was wearing than the fact that she was slaying at all. It made her come across as fourteen and unconcerned with the world, unless it was fashion-based. At her age, she was supposed to still be human and caring about living things. Or undead things, as the case may be.

  “Mom,” Mary interrupted, “do you think Santa will bring me a Tigger sleeping bag or Mulan?”

  “Why do you need a sleeping bag, Mary?” I asked. “It’s not like we go camping that often.”

  “’Cause they’re cool,” she said. My five-year-old just said cool. This lunch was depressing me. “Besides, I don’t hafta go camping to sleep in it. I can sleep in it in my bedroom. On the floor.”

  “You have a bed,” I answered.

  “So,” she said and gave me this look that said I was totally stupid.

  “You’ll just have to put it on your list,” I said. “With all the other two hundred items.”

  She smiled, her green eyes dancing at the thought of adding another object to her list. It didn’t bother me too much, because so far on Christmas mornings, she’s been thrilled with wha
t she gets and forgets what she asked for in the first place.

  “Hi, Sheriff!” Rachel said and waved across the room. I turned around and saw the sheriff walking over toward my table with a file folder in his hand. He stopped at my table and ruffled each girl’s hair, which infuriated Rachel to death. That was all right. She needed some infuriation.

  “What’s up?” I asked him.

  “Got a minute?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” I told Rachel to scoot down so that he could sit next to her and across from me.

  “I’ve read through the file,” he said. “Most of it is just his personal notes jotted here and there. There are a few snapshots of the house, the porch and all that in relation to the barn, the smokehouse and the chicken coop. There’s a photograph of the porch with…” The sheriff glanced over at the kids. “Not a person, but a puddle,” lowering his voice.

  “Gotcha,” I said.

  “A puddle of what?” Rachel asked.

  “Nothing, Rachel,” I said.

  “He’s got everybody down on the date that he interviewed them, and why he thought they were suspect. Let me just tell you that Nate Keith was just awful. And his actions had long-reaching repercussions. One man killed himself after he found out that his youngest son really belonged to Nate. He might have been a monster, but the women seemed to be very … attracted to him.”

  “Great,” I said.

  “And that’s pretty much it,” he said and handed it to me. “Nothing you can’t see and I didn’t take anything out of it.”

  “A puddle of what?” Rachel asked again, more demanding this time.

  “The way I see it, half the county had a reason for killing him,” I said, ignoring her.

  “Kill who Mom?”

  “Yeah, but only one of them actually did it,” he said.

  “Yes, and about a hundred people benefited from it.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” he said.

  “Want some pizza?” I asked.

  “No, I can’t stay. Jalena and I are going to go see about renting the KC hall for our reception,” he said.