Naomi looked startled. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Don’t play the innocent bingo lady, Naomi. You drugged the tea. I saw the bottle in the kitchen,” I said.
Her face changed quickly, to surprise and then slight fear. She wasn’t sure just what I was going to do. I must admit I didn’t either. The gun was heavy in my hand, and grew heavier with each second. “Do you have anything that will make him throw up?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you have any ipecac or anything like that?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
I was afraid to leave the sheriff, but at the same time, I had to do something. I walked across the room to where her phone sat on a table, the gun on her the whole time. I picked up the phone and dialed 911. I explained that there was a drug overdose at this address, and then they were on their way.
I walked back over to the sheriff. I slapped him on the face. “Sheriff, you need to throw up,” I said. His breathing was labored and slow. “Sheriff, come on. Stick your finger down your throat or something. You have got to throw up. It’s sleeping pills, just throw up.”
A sob escaped me. Crap. I couldn’t stand here and cry. “Why, Naomi? Why?” I asked through tears.
I walked into her kitchen backward, with my eyes on her as much as possible, wiping my face occasionally with my left hand. I opened her drawers until I found the silverware drawer. I pulled a spoon out and walked back in, with the gun still held on her. I didn’t really think that was necessary. She wasn’t going to do anything.
“How did you get Hubert’s pictures?” I asked. I set the gun down on the couch next to the sheriff, and inches from my knee. I pulled the sheriff’s head back, opened his mouth and stuck the spoon back into his mouth, to tickle his gag reflex. He coughed a little and his head came forward, but he didn’t throw up. He was a little more alert, though, so I tried it again. This time he lurched forward, spewing vomit all over Naomi’s wonderful mauve rug and her delicate little tea cart.
I picked the gun up and went back to holding it on her. I heard the sirens in the distance and breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain this to the paramedics, but it didn’t matter. They would get here in time to save the sheriff. I hoped.
“How did you get Hubert’s pictures?” I asked, louder and more forceful.
“I broke into his house years and years ago to find what he had on the case. All I could find were photographs and personal things. I just took what I could find,” she said. “I was interrupted.”
“So, you killed Nate Keith,” I said. “Why?”
“He wasn’t supposed to die,” she said. “I had no intention of killing Nate Keith. It was Della Ruth that I was after.”
All this time, I’d tried to figure out the motives and such for killing Nate Keith and it never occurred to me that he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That the victim was supposed to be somebody else. He was so mean and good for nothing, I assumed the killer got the intended person.
“Della Ruth,” I declared, amazed. “You … you were jealous.”
“Bradley never got over her. Never.”
“It had been decades since they’d been together, Naomi. Jesus.”
“Della Ruth had finally decided to leave Nate Keith. After all those years. Sixty-something years old and she finally decides she’s had enough. Idiot woman.”
“So Bradley was right there. He was going to be there for her, wasn’t he?” I asked.
“I don’t really know. I couldn’t take a chance on it. I couldn’t lose him to her. I’d just gotten used to having what remnants she’d left of him. She wasn’t going to get those, too,” she said. “Turns out, after Nate was killed, Della Ruth told Bradley to go on about his business, that it had been too many years. I didn’t need to kill her after all.”
“So that is why Della Ruth sat there with the gun. She really was protecting everybody,” I said to nobody in particular.
“I don’t know what Della Ruth did in the house. I didn’t mean for the gun to go off and kill Nate. I was saving it for Della Ruth. Once I did it, I got scared and then I noticed that the place was crawling with people. Somebody in the barn and out with the chickens. I had to get out of there fast.”
“Did Bradley know?” I asked.
Naomi glared at me.
“Did Bradley know that you killed Nate Keith? Did he know that you went there to kill Della?” I asked. “I bet you were in a panic when you realized that you’d killed the only person that had ever stood in the way of Della Ruth and Bradley being together in the first place. How fortunate for you that Della Ruth just wasn’t interested anymore.”
“You’ll never prove this to anybody,” she said. “You can’t. I’ll deny every word.”
“No, but they can get you for attempted murder of me and the sheriff,” I said. I didn’t know if they could or not. She was ancient, after all.
“Why invite me here and why tell me all of this horse manure about Bradley being John Robert’s father? It is horse manure, isn’t it?”
“Della Ruth was already pregnant and didn’t know it when she and Bradley had their affair. John was Nate Keith’s. But Bradley didn’t care. He proposed anyway and told her she could come and live with him with all of her children. She wouldn’t. Because she was pregnant. I think if she hadn’t been pregnant, she might have done it.”
“Why did you invite me here?” I asked.
“If you were snooping around about Bradley and Nate Keith and everything, I wanted to know how much you knew and if you were actually looking for information on his murder. You would have gotten around to me anyway. I thought I’d look like less of a suspect if I contacted you first,” she explained.
The sirens were loud now, right outside the house. The sheriff was moaning and rocking back and forth on the couch. “Why did you give me those pictures? It was the only thing that linked you to suspicious behavior?”
She shrugged her shoulders a little. She shook slightly, I assumed from fear. “I wanted to destroy whatever you thought John Robert and his parents were. I wanted you to believe that he was conceived in an affair. I wanted you to think badly of Della Ruth.” The pictures, in her mind, would “prove” her little story of Della Ruth sending them to John Robert’s supposedly real father.
The door burst open and in came the paramedics and the local police. Immediately, their guns came out of the holsters and shouts of “Freeze!” and “Put the gun down!” came from all directions.
I immediately threw the gun on the floor. “It’s the sheriff’s gun. This woman drugged our tea,” I said. To which they all looked at me as though I was nuts.
Thirty-five
The next day the sheriff was still in the hospital, recuperating. He would be fine, although probably a little ticked at me. I made him throw up early enough and the paramedics got to him soon enough, so he was okay. Not to mention that the doctors said that the amount he drank probably wouldn’t have killed him, but he’d have been out for a long time. I’m not sure what Naomi was thinking. Maybe she was going to hack us up or something, while we were unconscious. Who knows? Maybe she just panicked.
I missed my Uncle Jedidiah’s funeral because I was in a police station filling out reports. That was okay, though, I’d said my goodbyes already. He would be sorely missed.
Right now his entire family was at the Knights of Columbus Hall in beautiful downtown New Kassel, eating to our hearts’ content. This was definitely the type of party that I wanted when the time came for me. Laughing, food, music and young children—the next generation.
Dad and his brother, Melvin, had brought their guitars and equipment and were set up in the front, by the roasted pig, and a cousin filled in on the drums and another cousin filled in on bass and everybody took turns singing and it was just like every gettogether I could ever remember at my grandparents’ house. Music and food. Food and music. If you took away the music from this family, you mi
ght as well take away the food.
“So, your mother is getting married,” Aunt Sissy said.
I was heavily in a daze watching my father, as I’d watched him at least a thousand times before. “Yes,” I said. “She and the sheriff are supposed to get married in August.”
“And when is your baby due?” she asked.
“August,” I said. “Ought to be an interesting summer, considering my grandmother and I are making a trip to West Virginia in July,” I said.
“Oh Jeez,” she said. “Are you happy for your mother?”
“Yes,” I said. “Anytime a person finds love, be happy for them.”
“Thought you and the sheriff were sworn enemies,” Aunt Sissy said.
“No. I think we’re building respect for each other,” I said. “You can’t make a guy puke all over a little old lady’s house and not bond. You know?”
“Yeah,” she said. “That’ll do it.”
“He makes my mom happy,” I said.
Aunt Ruth came over and joined us. “What are you girls talking about? How handsome my brothers look up there playing music?” she asked. I wanted to hit her. She always hated the fact that they played music. That they were “musicians.” They were the white trash of the family, she always said. If, however, they had chosen classical music, that would have been different.
“Actually, Aunt Ruth, I know that you told me never to speak of this again, but I have to tell you this,” I said.
“Torie. I don’t want to hear anything on the subject!”
“No. I wanted you to know that you were right. Della Ruth was protecting everybody and herself that day when she sat there with the gun,” I said.
“Torie,” Aunt Ruth pleaded.
“No, now listen. She was the intended victim. Naomi Cordieu went there to kill Della Ruth, not Nate Keith,” I said.
“Why?” Aunt Sissy asked.
“A man. Naomi’s husband, or he might have just been a fiancé then, I’m not sure, was in love with Della Ruth. He had been since they were kids,” I said. “It seems that Della Ruth was actually considering leaving Nate Keith. Naomi couldn’t take the chance on Bradley running off to be with Della Ruth, so she went there to kill her. She killed Nate instead and when she realized what she had done, she ran off.”
“And Bradley,” Aunt Sissy said. “Did he ever know what happened? The truth of it? I knew him. And Naomi. All of us were from the same small town. You know everybody’s business in a small town.”
“Yes,” I said. “I think Bradley either knew it or found out later or maybe she confessed it to him. Strangely enough he died very mysteriously in Africa just two years later. My personal opinion is that Naomi killed him, too. Although I can never prove that.”
Aunt Sissy rubbed my back affectionately and smiled, a tear catching in the corner of her eye.
“Well,” Aunt Ruth said. And that was all she said.
I looked across the room and saw Rudy dancing with our two daughters. He had Mary up on his shoulders and Rachel standing on his feet as he danced around, all of them laughing and smiling.
“How lucky I am,” I said.
Aunt Sissy smiled wide. “Yes, you are lucky.”
Somehow, my life had come back to being normal. Everybody would leave for their cities and homes tonight. I’d solved the burning question of who killed Nate Keith. My father and I had reached a certain level of understanding, I think. My mother was happy and getting married, even though I hadn’t really faced the thought of life without her in my house. I was in denial, I admit. I was healthy and pregnant and happy about it. The sheriff owed me big time! And tomorrow, Sylvia would get to yell at me about how she was going to have to alter all those dresses for my soon-to-be-rounded figure. Well, more rounded than it already was.
I was content. For now.
ALSO BY RETT MACPHERSON
A Veiled Antiquity
Family Skeletons
A COMEDY OF HEIRS. Copyright © 1999 by Lauretta Allen. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
First Edition: August 1999
eISBN 9781466888838
First eBook edition: December 2014
A Comedy of Heirs Page 20