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

by Rett MacPherson

  I turned into the parking lot and sat in the car for a minute. Something had been bugging me for several days now. It had nothing to do with Harold Zumwalt, or John Murphy, or Norah’s father. It was her children.

  I realize that not all children have a loving relationship with their parents. I happened to have a good relationship with my mother. And as much as my father was an old grouch and a genuine pain in the butt, I loved him just the same.

  So the thing that bothered me was Rita and Jeff. Her children seemed so aloof, so removed from the horror of Norah’s death. Their mother was not only dead, but murdered. They seemed saddened.

  Saddened. Somehow that just didn’t cut it.

  I grabbed my briefcase and got out of the car. The building is small and sandy-colored, with windows that go from floor to ceiling. It houses the only microfilm reader in the entire county.

  Aunt Bethany Crookshank stood behind the counter checking out a book for a little boy. She wore a pink linen jacket with an ecru blouse and skirt. The jacket brought out the pink in her cheeks and made her look remarkably young. I think some of it had to do with her state of mind. She thinks young. Younger than I do sometimes, and she is fifty-seven.

  My mother is the youngest of four sisters. Emily Branham Wallace is the oldest, and owns the dairy farm out on New Kassel Outer Road. Then comes Aunt Bethany. Aunt Millicent Branham Petrovich lives in West Virginia, and then comes my mother, Jalena Branham Keith. Of the four, Aunt Bethany is probably the closest to being my soulmate. She is my companion on my many genealogical hunts, and I will be forever indebted to her for the knowledge that she bequeathed to me. And I can think of nobody I would rather traipse through a cemetery with, and that says a lot about a person.

  “How are you doing?” she asked. She resembles my mother more than the other two sisters, except she is the only blond in the family. Aunt Bethany is short and trim, very classy.

  “I’m all right,” I said.

  “Well, the microfilm reader is where it always is,” she said as she pointed to the back of the room. “What are you looking for?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. I’m hoping to find an obituary or announcement of some sort from the war.”

  “That would explain the 1942 newspapers that you ordered,” she said. Aunt Bethany went about her business and I began my search through the newspapers from Partut and Ste. Genevieve Counties. The machine was one of those crank kind, and I cranked and cranked, stopping every now and then to see where I was on the film roll. I came upon some news about the war, and some bad weather. The usual things. An advertisement for women’s shoes.

  Those basic black pumps have come full circle.

  Murdered. The word caught my attention immediately. Since discovering Norah’s body I had found myself reading the gory details of the newspapers a lot more than I ever used to. In this article a young woman by the name of Gwen Geise had been murdered. I skimmed the article until I came to the method of murder. It felt like the back of my head suddenly met the front of my head.

  Gwen Geise’s throat had been sliced from ear to ear.

  There were no other details about the murder other than the location of the body. It was an old paper and I didn’t really expect there to be too many details.

  The palms of my hands began to sweat. From ear to ear. Michael Ortlander had been murdered in the same fashion, with a slice from ear to ear. I’m sure there was more than one person in the world that killed people by slicing their throats.

  But when I began to add things up, it did seem curious. I checked the date on the article. Early 1942. What if Eugene killed this woman and Michael Ortlander? But why? It was quite a coincidence that a woman from the same area as Eugene, and a friend in his platoon would be murdered in the same manner. But coincidences do happen. After all, Florence Ortlander knew who my grandmother was.

  So why did this bother me so much?

  I grabbed my briefcase and left the microfilm reader on. “Aunt Bethany?” I called out. “I’ve got to go. Sorry to rush out on you.”

  “No problem,” I heard her say.

  * * *

  When I got home the phone was ringing off of the hook. Mother had gone to visit Grandma in Wisteria with Aunt Emily. However, Rudy was home, and I couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t answered it.

  I grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Torie. It’s Rita.”

  I was surprised to hear her voice. I couldn’t think of a single reason that she would be calling, and neither could she. We spent two or three minutes in conversation without saying anything. I think she tried to pass off the phone call as a social call. You know, the just-wondering-what-you’re-up-to type of call.

  Well if Sheriff Brooke said anything to me for what I was about to ask her, I could always say she called me first.

  “How come John Murphy didn’t come to your mother’s funeral?” I asked.

  “Ask him,” she said.

  “Sheriff Brooke did ask him. He said he wasn’t informed that she had died until she was already buried.”

  Silence hung on the other line. She was either shocked or trying to decide how to answer. What was the big deal? Why were people lying about John Murphy?

  Rudy came through the kitchen then, looking perplexed. “Have you seen my watch?” he whispered.

  “What?” I couldn’t understand him. The whole time Rita kept talking. I gave him a dirty look, meaning to please wait.

  “Jeff and I felt he had no business being there,” she repeated. She thought the ‘what’ had been spoken to her.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Where is my watch?” Rudy asked again.

  “Rita, just a minute.” I put my hand over the phone. “I don’t know where your watch is. I don’t wear it. Why should I know where it is? Or had you never thought of that novel idea?”

  “Jeez,” he said, and headed for the steps.

  All right, don’t say it. Yes, I was hateful. But I just knew Rita was ready to spill the beans. I could feel it. “Rita, thanks for holding. We had a domestic crisis. What were you saying?”

  “I really don’t want to get into all of this. I just wanted to call and see how the family tree was coming. I apologize, Torie, but it’s really none of your business.”

  I hate it when people tell me that something is not any of my business. It makes me wonder why it’s not any of my business. And then I want to know that much more what it is I’m not supposed to know.

  Is nobody else inquisitive by nature?

  “What if John Murphy tells me?” I asked.

  “He has that right, of course.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “Probably at his office,” she said. “He works late, all the time.”

  “Thanks,” I said. Then we exchanged our good-byes.

  I couldn’t leave that lie. Before I could even get upstairs, the phone rang again. This time it was Colette, a friend of mine. Did I want to have dinner? Sure, what the heck?

  * * *

  John Murphy was in his office, just as Rita had said. It was in a modern five-story building with no real security. Most everybody had gone home; only a few lights were left on in the building, and even fewer still on the second floor, where Mr. Murphy was.

  I’m not afraid of the dark, but something about hearing one’s shoes clicking in a half-lit hallway … gives me the creeps. I felt as though I had eyes boring into my back, but every glance I gave over my shoulder assured me that I was wrong. Shivering, I tried to shake the eerie feeling, knowing that I was being ridiculous. I had probably seen too many X-Files episodes.

  I knocked on the door, louder than I had intended. A slender man, about fifty-five, answered the door, barely glancing up from his papers. He was balding, and had a pen stuck behind his ear and his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows.

  It was, of course, awkward when he finally looked up and realized he had no idea who I was.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “
I’m trying to locate John Murphy.”

  “I’m John Murphy. Who are you? I don’t take appointments this late. Call tomorrow. The office opens at nine. I’m going to have to talk to security about letting people up here.”

  “I saw no security.”

  That got his attention.

  “There was nobody at the desk,” I said.

  He was about ready to shut the door on me when I found my voice again. “I’m Torie O’Shea. I’m the one that found Norah’s body. I had hoped that I could speak with you for a moment.”

  Tears welled in his eyes. “Of course. What about?”

  I had the distinct feeling that he would rather discuss this somewhere else, but he led me to his desk. He sat down and motioned me to take a seat. His desk was a nice cherry wood. He had a huge swivel chair that rose way above his head in the back. Windows covered one wall, and awards of some sort covered another. No artwork, no photographs. Not even one of Norah.

  He couldn’t decide what to do with his hands. Strong masculine hands kept swiping at a nonexistent hair on his forehead.

  “I’ll be honest with you. Your name is on the top of the list of possible suspects in her death.”

  “Because I have no real alibi for Thursday and Friday?” he asked.

  “That’s one reason,” I said. “But lack of alibi isn’t the most damaging. I’d say the life insurance policy on Norah is the most convicting piece of information. I mean, it was supposedly to bury her with. Not only do you not bury her with it, you don’t even show up at the funeral.”

  He looked away, and when he looked back at me, all I could see was pain. A tear ran down his face. He showed more grief than any of her children had thus far. “God,” he said. A sob escaped him. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know. Rita and Jeff called me after it was over,” he said, trying to recover himself. He rubbed his eyes. “I didn’t even know she was dead,” he said finally.

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Because Norah wanted specific things for her funeral, and her children disagreed.”

  “Like what?”

  “Basically, where she wanted to be buried,” he said. “She said she wanted to be buried down south. I think it was the place her mother had told her that her father was from.”

  “And they disagreed with that?”

  “Severely. They thought it was a disgrace, that she was acting like a child over a man she’d never met.”

  “Had she planned on dying soon? I mean, what brought the subject up?”

  He rubbed his eyes again, thinking back. “She said that the conversation came up and that she and Jeff had a huge fight over it. So she asked if I would see to everything if she provided the money for it. I said yes, and since I have no children, I asked her if she would do the same for me.”

  Sounded logical.

  “How long were you and Norah together?” I asked.

  “Years.”

  “Why didn’t you get married?”

  “She wouldn’t.”

  “Why not live together?”

  His eyes betrayed him that time. Something, I’m not sure what, lingered there in his mind.

  “There were reasons.”

  I had stepped on sacred ground again. I can take hint. “Where were you Friday?”

  “You know, I never did see any identification,” he said.

  “For me? Oh, I’m not a cop,” I said. I laughed inwardly that he thought I was the police. I hadn’t told him either way. All I had said was that I was the one that found the body. He assumed I was a cop.

  “I think I’ve answered all the questions that I care to answer.”

  “Fine, but let me tell you something. I saw the worst thing of my life on that Friday. I’m not just talking about any body. I’m talking about a human being that I had just seen the week before, alive. And there she was, butchered. Blood everywhere, and those eyes … they stared right through me,” I said. “It changed my life. And I suppose I’ve become a little obsessed about the whole thing.”

  I noticed he blanched slightly at my description of the scene that Friday. “I will probably never sleep again without seeing those eyes,” I said. “Now, where were you Friday? You’ve already told the police you were out of town. Tell me where you really were or who you were with.”

  He paused a moment. “I was with another woman,” he said brokenly. He sobbed, and I understood why. He was with another woman when his girlfriend was killed. His guilt would consume him.

  “I won’t give you her name,” he said.

  “You don’t have to unless you go to court or something,” I said, unsure of the legal territory.

  “I’ve told you this for your conscience only,” he said. “To help you put it all to rest. I will deny it if the police get wind of it.”

  I could live with that. I stood up to help myself out the door. “I’m very sorry,” I said. I was sorry that Norah was dead. I was sorry for his loss. But more than anything, I was sorry for what he would have to endure in the years to come, every time he looked in the mirror.

  “Regardless of what you think, I loved her. With all my heart, I loved her.”

  His words rang through my ears as I walked down the half-lit halls to the elevator. That whole conversation disturbed me more than I wanted to admit. The picture it painted of Norah Zumwalt’s life was bleak. She couldn’t even get buried the way she wanted.

  Twenty-five minutes later, I pulled into the Old Mill Stream’s crowded parking lot and smiled. Colette’s fancy blue sports car was parked up front. Colette was exactly what I needed after all I had been through that day.

  Twelve

  I had thoroughly drowned myself in a frozen jumbo margarita, and had eaten enough of those damned little chips and salsa to make me puke.

  Colette was in full dress tonight. The hair was everywhere, deliberately misplaced in perfect disorder. She wore all the gold her safe-deposit box could hold, and in her hand was a cigarette which burned more than she smoked. She always reminds me of some glamour-puss from the forties, her body language being the ultimate.

  She’d probably kill me if she knew that I consider her Rubenesque. She is extremely full figured, possibly even on the heavy side, but it doesn’t matter. She is just as gorgeous with all of it.

  We are complete opposites. I couldn’t smoke a cigarette without choking to death. And I wouldn’t know what to do with that much hair if I had it. But we have a long history together, being friends since fifth grade.

  We talked about everything. Her in-laws, my in-laws, her new patio, and my kids. Then out of nowhere she asked me how I had been dealing with “the body.”

  “I suppose I’m dealing with it okay. I’ve been really moody. I guess I’ve been concentrating on why somebody would kill her instead of the fact that somebody actually killed her.”

  “That is just too much,” she said.

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “I mean, shit,” she said, as if that said it all. And in a way, I suppose, it did.

  “Let me ask you something. Do you know anything about Zumwalt and Macklintock?” Colette knows almost everybody in St. Louis, and anybody she doesn’t know, she knows somebody who does. She was born and raised in New Kassel, and when I first moved up here from Progress, she was the first person to befriend me. I fell in love with the town immediately. Colette hated it. She felt stifled. Needless to say, as soon as she graduated she went off to college in St. Louis, and she now lives in St. Louis County. She’s a reporter for one of the local television stations. She isn’t an anchorwoman and doesn’t want to be. She likes being out on the street.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I dunno,” I said, shrugging.

  “Best damn lawyers money can buy. I hear there is nothing they can’t get done. Legal or illegal.”

  Great. Sheriff Brooke is messing with the Godfather. “I mean on a more personal level.”

  “Macklintock is gay,” she said, anxious to get that piece of gossip in.
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  “Besides that,” I said. People’s sexual preference bothers me in no way. I have never experienced the homophobia that seems to plague the Midwest.

  “What do you mean ‘besides that’?” she asked, appalled. “It’s very important when his lover works in the police department.”

  “Well, that could prove to be interesting. Move on. What about Zumwalt?”

  Colette looked toward the ceiling, as if flipping through her mental filing cabinet. She is truly amazing in her broad scope of knowledge. She knows all the legal junk. Got a question about taxes? Insurance? Call Colette. She’s extremely levelheaded and calm about everything. I freak out over a parking ticket. Don’t even ask how I reacted to jury duty.

  Finally, she sighed. “He’s sort of a weird one. The whole family was in counseling at one time.”

  “No kidding?” I asked. This was, in my opinion, definitely interesting material. “How do you know this stuff?”

  “I can’t give out my sources. Why are you so interested? You normally don’t care about St. Louis society things.”

  “It’s driving me nuts. I want to know everything about her and why somebody would kill her.”

  “The snooping is my territory,” she said. “Well, I don’t know a whole lot about him because he never leaves the house, except to work.” She thought about it a minute. “I think that there is more there than meets the eye. If you want my opinion.”

  “I always want your opinion.”

  I couldn’t help but wonder if looking into this counseling bit would help me or not. It would be an intrusion, I reminded myself.

  “Let’s order some real food,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “What’s it gonna be?”

  “I can’t help myself. I want the chicken fajitas.” Colette always brings out the worst in me.

  “Good choice. So how’s your sex life?” she asked finally.

  “Fine. I think Rudy is concerned about me, though. He’s so cute when he’s concerned about me. I don’t know, maybe it reminds me that he really does love me.”

  “Why is he so concerned about you? ’Cause of finding the body?” she asked with a shiver.