Family Skeletons: A Spunky Missouri Genealogist Traces A Family's Roots...And Digs Up A Deadly Secret

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Family Skeletons: A Spunky Missouri Genealogist Traces A Family's Roots...And Digs Up A Deadly Secret Page 8

by Rett MacPherson


  “Did you check out the names?” she asked.

  “What names?”

  “On the picture,” she answered, pointing to the photographs from Louise Shenk on the table. One photo was of Eugene Counts as a small boy, standing by the outhouse, with no shoes, holding something in his hands. Another was a typical mid-western country-school photo with all fifteen students and the teacher lined up on the schoolhouse steps. He was about thirteen, so it was about 1936. Another photo was of his parents sitting in the front yard, and yet another of the whole family down by the creek, the boys in just their underwear, holding makeshift fishing poles, while the girls waded in the water with their dresses tied between their knees. The last two photos had been sent from Europe during the war.

  I was touched when I realized that Louise had given such a wonderful collection to Rita. Each part of Eugene Count’s life was represented in those few photographs.

  The war photos were classic war photos. About ten men stood half-dressed in front of army tents. Each had his dog tags hanging on his sweaty chest, and some had cigarettes in their mouths. They were probably the closest of buddies that looked after each other and saved each other’s lives a thousand times. They probably even had a secret handshake.

  The last photo was of Eugene and another man. They were sitting on top of a tank, but it was a fairly close-up photo.

  “Right there.” Mom pointed.

  I looked at her, dumbfounded. When I looked at the photo, I saw two faces. Somehow my mother saw two names that had been sewn on their shirts. One read E. COUNTS, and the other simply said ORTLANDER.

  I could hit her when she does stuff like that. She always makes me feel completely inadequate in the brain department for not catching the same thing she did.

  “Ortlander,” I said. “This is the same guy that Eugene speaks of in his letters to Viola,” I said. “This has got to be the friend that Louise was talking about.”

  “Probably,” she said.

  “I love you, Mom.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “What’s all of this loving stuff?” Rudy asked from behind me. He had just come in the door with his bowling bag in one hand and daisies in the other hand.

  “Can I get in on this?” he asked. He kissed me on the lips and handed me the flowers.

  “Certainly,” I said. I kissed him back, rather enthusiastically.

  “Yuck,” Rachel said.

  “Yuck,” Mary echoed her big sister.

  NEW KASSEL GAZETTE

  THE NEWS YOU MIGHT MISS

  by Eleanore Murdoch

  Thank you, all you sandbaggers! God bless your generous souls! You’ve saved our inn, for now.

  And a special thank you to Wilma Pershing for that terribly stinky, but very effective, conglomeration of stuff that I put on Oscar’s back. It worked!

  Also, Tobias Thorley would like to thank whoever it was that returned his statue of Abraham Lincoln. He is very glad that he appealed to your conscience, because he was going to resort to violence next.

  Father Bingham said that church attendance is down. He knows that nobody here in New Kassel is without sin, and he urges you to come and spill your guts to him. He’s reading the National Enquirer in the confessional, if that gives you any idea of what business is like. He would especially like to speak to the couple that he saw on the wharf last Friday night.

  I just have one thing to say to that: What was Father Bingham doing on the wharf on Friday night?

  Oh, and congratulations to Rudy O’Shea for finally getting your chicken coop finished.

  Until next time.

  Eleanore

  Ten

  I wanted to see Eugene Counts. I could think of no reason other than that I was nosy as hell, and I hoped that he would spill his guts and tell me just why he had never contacted his family. I wanted to know the answer to that more than anything. Why come back to Missouri and spend the majority of your life without contacting your own mother? I also wanted to know if he knew that Viola was pregnant when he marched off to war. I wanted to see his face when I asked these questions, but something told me to wait. I didn’t think he would appreciate being told he had a daughter by the woman he abandoned, if in fact he didn’t already know it. The nagging notion of him being a psychopathic killer kept me at bay somewhat, too.

  So I checked the directories for 1939, for Ortlanders. I found a Walt Ortlander, who lived in Pine Branch, the same place that the Counts family had lived. In 1946, there was no listing for a Michael Ortlander and I could only presume that Louise had been correct when she said that Eugene’s friend had died in the service. There was also no listing for Eugene Counts. He must have still been in Europe or living elsewhere.

  I called information and there was no Walt Ortlander listed for this year. He’d probably be dead by now. I was striking out. But there was a listing for a Florence Ortlander in the Hill Top Nursing Home in Progress. I would almost bet that she was Michael’s mother. I called the Hill Top Nursing Home and told them that I was a friend of the family and had lost contact with the Ortlanders, and asked if the Florence Ortlander that they had in residence was the wife of Walt. Yes, she was.

  I was in the car and headed to Progress in nothing flat. Progress was located about nine or ten miles west of Pine Branch, thus putting it in Partut County.

  The dirt roads weren’t dusty. The rains had seen to that problem. I felt the tension leave my body the farther into the country that I drove. People consider New Kassel in the country, but it’s a town. Wisteria, Meyersville, Vitzland, they are all towns, but they are connected by just two- or four-lane roads and cornfields. I suppose to a real city dweller that is the country.

  But on the drive to Progress there were no skyscrapers to interfere with sky and earth, and the smell of cow manure floated heavily through the air. Aaah! It was good to be alive.

  It took so little to make me happy.

  Why did I bother with this? I couldn’t help but think that somewhere, hidden in all of Norah’s family skeletons, I might be able to find something that would help the sheriff out. He wouldn’t be looking in the same places I’d be looking. And I wanted justice done to the monster that left Norah in the shape that I found her in.

  In all probability, though, Harold Zumwalt killed Norah. Money was about as good a motive as any. There was always the possibility that Eugene Counts had killed his own daughter. But why? It lacked motive.

  So why did I care about Michael Ortlander? I suppose I was going to go talk with Florence for other reasons. I wanted to know what had changed Eugene Counts. To me, that was more important right now than anything else. I felt as if I somehow owed Norah that much.

  I couldn’t help but feel as if I were missing something in all of this. If Zumwalt was going to kill his ex-wife for the insurance money, why so violently? There were a thousand other ways to do it.

  Her murder had been an act of passion.

  Saying a silent prayer that I would never know what drove people to do things like that, I pulled off the interstate at the Progress exit. It had taken me forty minutes to get to Progress, but the time flew by thanks to my mind, which would not stop analyzing everything. I made a few turns and then turned into the nursing-home drive. I knew it well. I’d driven by it many times, and my great-grandmother had been here her last six months.

  The woman behind the counter was Doris, and I could tell by looking that she could tell me all of the bedpan bylaws and codes, in complete detail and numerical order.

  I hadn’t exactly dressed for a visit. I was in my black Reeboks, blue jeans, and St. Louis Blues hockey jersey, with Brendan Shanahan’s name and player number. Number nineteen. Hopefully Mrs. Ortlander would be a hockey fan.

  Doris decided to pretend as though she couldn’t see me. There is nothing more aggravating than to stand at a counter and be ignored. Doris knew I was standing there, but she was determined to make me say “Excuse me” in that meek little voice that throws you right back to second grade. I
was just as determined not to say it. Why should I? What other reason could I possibly have for standing at her counter, other than that I needed her assistance?

  I rolled my eyes, shifted my feet, and sighed as loudly as I could sigh, at least thirteen times. She finally looked up and with this droll attitude said, “Yes?”

  I waited. I was half-inclined to make her wait for my request as she had made me wait for her assistance.

  “What room is Florence Ortlander in, please?” I asked.

  “Are you a relative?”

  I didn’t have to be a relative to see her—I knew that much. Doris was just being nosy. “I’m her niece,” I said.

  “She never mentioned you,” she said, unimpressed.

  Her eyes were hazel, although I could hardly tell for all of the makeup she wore. She was about fifty, and her hair looked like it had been teased back in 1965, and hadn’t been brushed since then.

  “She’s around the corner, room one-seventeen,” she said. She eyed me suspiciously.

  “Thank you.”

  Rounding the corner, I became acutely aware of the smells of alcohol and pine cleaner. And urine. How come elderly people can live at home and you never smell those things? As soon as they go to a nursing home, the cherry pie, facial powder, and mothballs get replaced with urine and pine cleaner. It was sad and it made me nervous to meet Mrs. Ortlander. I hadn’t thought of what kind of shape she would be in.

  Luckily, Florence Ortlander was sitting in a chair crocheting, and other than being obviously well into her years, was the picture of health. I noticed the popcorn stitch immediately, as Mom uses it often. She glanced up and didn’t seem the least bit concerned that a stranger had come to see her. She was small, with rosy cheeks and the clearest blue eyes I believed I had ever seen.

  “Mrs. Ortlander, my name is Victory O’Shea,” I said.

  “Nice to meet you. Have a seat,” she said.

  I sat in the seat on the opposite side of the round table that she was sitting at. Before I could say anything else to her, she picked up the conversation.

  “Where did you get a name like Victory?” she asked.

  I hate answering that question. “Two reasons. One, I was a victory. My mother was told she’d never have children. She was victorious. Two, I was also named after a ghost.” Most people are named after grandmothers or maiden aunts; I was named after a ghost.

  “Victory LeBreau.”

  “Yes,” I said, amazed. “The woman who burned to death in the old mill.”

  “I grew up in Avon. Moved to Pine Branch in the early thirties. Everybody knows the story of the ghost that haunts the mill very well. I saw her once, you know. I was about sixteen years old,” she said. “I was coming home from a dance at the church. It was dark already, and me and my sister were going to get the tanning of our lives for being so late.”

  I was totally engrossed in what Mrs. Ortlander said. It didn’t seem the least bit odd for her to talk to me as if she’d known me her entire life. That’s how natural this story flowed out of her.

  “Well, we came up on the bridge and Trula stopped in her tracks. She didn’t have to tell me what was wrong, I could feel the gooseflesh on her arm. Then I heard it. The sobbing of a woman in the distance. It was a woeful cry. Then I heard her screaming, ‘No! No!’ Then we saw her. She flung herself at the window of the mill. Second floor, third window from the left. I’ll never forget it.”

  “What happened then?” I asked.

  “Well you know the mill is burned out now, one whole wall is missing. But for a split second I thought I saw the mill the way it used to be. Whole, with all four of its walls. Well, Victory LeBreau stopped with her arms raised up over her head. She stopped and she looked right at me. She looked right into my soul.”

  She paused in her story then. I had goosebumps the size of dimes all down my arms.

  “And? What happened?” I asked.

  “She began pounding on the window, shouting for help. They say she relives her inferno every night.”

  “Yes, I have heard that,” I said.

  “You must be from the same area.”

  The woman was ninety-plus years and looked it. She had severe wrinkles and very white hair. But she was also alert, her voice strong, and her hands nimble. Between her and the Pershing sisters, I had the feeling that I was falling apart and wouldn’t make it to forty.

  “I’m from Progress, originally,” I said. “My great-grandfather helped to build the Pine Branch church, and my grandparents lived there for many years. Have you heard of the Frioux family?”

  “Yes. Claude had a daughter about eight years older than me. She was the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. Always wanted to look like her.”

  “Felicity Frioux?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was my grandmother,” I said, suddenly somber and forgetting the real reason I’d come here.

  “How nice,” she said. “Do you crochet?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I am all thumbs at that sort of thing.”

  She gestured at her hospital bed as she said, “Do you quilt?”

  A gorgeous Lone Star quilt graced her bed. The Lone Star is made up of small diamonds pieced together in larger diamond sections that eventually make up the star. This one was done in different shades of mauve and pink. How out of place it looked in this sterile room, and on a hospital bed.

  “Not unless collecting them counts,” I answered her. “I have several quilt tops my grandmother left me.”

  “Well, you’d best get them quilted,” she answered. “I made that one just before I came here. My hip is bad. I can’t get around by myself.”

  Several seconds ticked by as I thought about how bizarre it was that this woman would know who my grandmother was. It is a small world.

  “Mrs. Ortlander,” I began, “the reason I’m here is because I am tracing the family tree of Eugene Counts. Does that name mean anything to you?”

  “Counts,” she repeated. “Oh, Genie boy,” she stated. “Yes. He and my son were great friends. Michael was very happy when he found out they were in the same platoon. It was like a miracle to actually find somebody that you knew.”

  “Your son died in the war?” I asked, reconfirming a fact that I already knew, and being thrilled that I had found the correct Ortlander family.

  She never answered me; instead, she put her crochet work down. “In that top drawer is an album. Let me show him to you,” she said. “He was my only son. I have three daughters, but he was my only son.”

  I did as she told me to. Never missing a beat, she went right on talking. “Genie boy was the only survivor.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, skin prickling.

  “Germans circled them in a valley and all were lost. It was a gruesome, bloody battle. Genie boy was taken to a camp.”

  A Nazi POW camp. In my opinion that could change any man. It would leave him a skeleton of who he was.

  “Don’t know what happened to him after that.… I asked specifically…” she said.

  “Asked what?”

  “What happened to Michael. I wanted to know if it was a bullet or a mine. You know, did he suffer?”

  “Did they tell you?”

  “Walt spent many years tracking that down,” she said after a pause. “We got his body way too late to view it, so we didn’t know. Finally, when he found out … I wished I had never asked.”

  “What happened?” I hoped that she would tell me, even though it was a very personal question.

  “His throat was cut from ear to ear,” she said, and made a swooping motion that covered the entire throat.

  “God, how horrible,” was all I managed.

  She had turned the photo album around to me, and one slender, age-spotted finger pointed out her son in his service photo. His hat was cocked to one side, he had blondish hair, and even though the photo was in black and white, I could determine that he had one blue eye and one brown eye. It was very striking.

  “Why do
you think Eugene survived?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Your son was very handsome,” I finally said. I didn’t know what else to say to her, and she had seemed to run out of things to say to me. The awkwardness that arises when one has run out of things to say is very blatant. And embarrassing.

  “I should probably be going,” I said. “Thank you for your time.”

  Rising, I walked to the bed and touched her quilt. “It is truly magnificent,” I said. “Just beautiful.”

  “Thank you.”

  She had been so peaceful when I arrived. Now there was sadness in her eyes and she worked her left hand in a nervous twitch. I wondered when the last time was that she had thought about her son’s death. Had I brought up something that she had succeeded in burying? He was her only son—it would probably never be buried.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ortlander. About your son.”

  Suddenly, her face went blank and she looked at me in the oddest way. “Whatever for?” she asked.

  “His suffering,” I answered.

  “He didn’t suffer. Oh, he’s not dead. I saw him once, after the war. They lied to me,” she said. “They lied.”

  Eleven

  Florence Ortlander’s last words haunted me for days. I realized that she was probably in the nursing home for mental reasons and not just her hip. First the ghost story and then seeing her son supposedly alive. It was too much. I assumed it became easier for her to accept that her son had somehow lived and that she had been lied to.

  Today I decided to go to my local library in New Kassel, and read through some microfilm that I had ordered. My mother’s sister was the librarian there, and it had been a few weeks since I’d seen her.

  I didn’t take River Point Road like I normally would, because of all the sandbags. And the tourists. To have a flood is big tourism. So I went down Birne Street instead.

 

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