Maybe it’s Harold, Jeff—oh hell, it could even be Rita for that matter.… Sheriff Brooke’s words rang through my ears. Maybe they don’t want you uncovering their family skeletons.
I reached for the phone and dialed 911, but never got to speak to the operator, who had come on the line. Something fell downstairs. I wasn’t sure what it was—it sounded like a thud. Whoever had locked my chickens up was still there. In the house.
I was scared. I don’t own a gun. Even my butcher knives are dull. I had no real way to protect myself. And a terrible thought wormed its way into my mind.… What if the reason Rudy couldn’t be found was because somebody had got to him?
I heard the noise again. As far as I could figure, I had three choices: I could wait upstairs and hope the police got there first. I could confront whatever it was downstairs and try to get out the door. Or I could jump out the window and hope that the paramedics would find me.
I wasn’t brave enough for any of the above suggestions, so I opted to hide in the closet.
It was really quite an eye-opening experience being in the closet, trying to disappear into the floor. Ouch! What was I sitting on? It was Rudy’s watch that had been missing for several weeks. My claustrophobia was about to get the best of me when I heard something coming from the office. It was unmistakably a person, walking toward the closet. Of course, if I were a killer, the first place I’d look would be under the bed or in the closet. I’d have to do better next time. If there was a next time.
My palms were sweaty and my mouth was dry. I thought I might pee in my pants as well. What is it about fear that makes your bodily fluids go crazy?
“Torie?”
Shit.
The closet door swung open, and there stood Rudy, Rachel, and Mary all looking down at me like I had horns growing out of my head.
“Look, honey,” I said. “I found your watch.”
Seventeen
I must admit, I felt pretty ridiculous when I realized that I had called the police for a coop of spastic chickens. You should have heard me trying to explain it to Deputy Newsome.
“Well, sir. See, I have this chicken coop and all of the chickens were inside of it.”
His young face lit up as he said, “Why didn’t you just let them out?”
It took a while, but he finally realized that I was getting at the fact that nobody here had done it. There must have been some strong vibes emanating from Rudy and me, because Deputy Newsome took down his information quickly and was out the door.
Rudy glared at me. I hate it when he glares at me. I always feel guilty, even when I haven’t done anything wrong.
“I can’t believe you,” he said.
“What can’t you believe?” I asked. I was the picture of innocence.
“For Pete’s sake, Torie. You were hiding in the closet!”
“I know. I have terrible claustrophobia. Don’t you feel the least bit sorry for me?”
“No! This is not like you to overreact like this.”
“Overreact? Somebody locked the chickens in the coop,” I said.
“You don’t know that. How do you know that it wasn’t a teenager playing a prank?”
“Because it wasn’t,” I said. “Rudy, don’t you feel any sympathy for what I went through today? You know, it’s not every day that a watch tries to give me an enema! It was very traumatic, I assure you. And just where the hell were you?”
“Oh, now you’re going to try and switch the blame to me?” he asked. His cheeks were slowly turning red with every sentence.
“Well? If you’d been here—besides, nobody has seen hide nor hair of you in almost four hours!”
“I was buying you an anniversary present,” he stated.
“Oh.”
“And why don’t you tell me why I spent all that money on an alarm system and it wasn’t even activated?” he asked.
“What did you get me? Flowers?”
“Did you show your mother how to turn on the alarm? What am I thinking?” he said aloud. “Jalena can’t even retrieve the messages off of the answering machine.”
“Jewelry?”
“I bought you tickets to the symphony,” he said, defeated.
I gasped. “What? You hate the symphony. What are we going to hear? Mozart? Chopin?”
A crooked smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Rachmaninoff,” he said.
“The Rhapsody?” I said, stunned.
“Yup. Did I do good?” he asked.
“Oh my god, I don’t believe it! Honey, you’re the best,” I said, and then kissed him.
“I know,” he said. He looked genuinely pleased with himself and terribly smug. “Now, don’t you feel the least bit of sympathy for me? I come home with a great surprise for you and you’re hiding in the bedroom closet, claiming some deranged psychopath has locked up all your chickens.”
He has such a way of putting things that makes me feel so ridiculous.
I did what he wanted me to do. I apologized for my behavior and told him he was right. But in my mind I knew better. Somebody had locked my chickens in the coop. And I thought it was one of the members of the Zumwalt family.
I decided that I would go see Jeff Zumwalt. It was very late in the evening, but I didn’t care. It was stupid of me to go there, because there was the chance that Rudy was right and nobody had done anything to my chickens on purpose. But I couldn’t forget that my other break-in had been very real. I needed to let the Zumwalts know that they could not intimidate me—although I was beginning to feel slightly intimidated.
Jeff looked shocked when he answered the door. Every time I saw him, his perfect good looks always caught me off guard.
“Mrs. O’Shea?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“To what do I owe this visit?”
He didn’t invite me in, which was just as well.
“Sheriff Brooke seems to think that a member of your illustrious family is trying to frighten me because I’ve uncovered a few things in your family that are less than ideal.”
“You don’t say?”
“Well, if you’re innocent of this, I apologize, of course. And I’m not threatening you in any way. I just want you to know that anything your father has told me will not ever get out. It will not make it to the papers or the evening news.”
“My father?”
“Yeah, he invited me—”
“Stay away from my father,” he snapped. A slight but dangerously maniacal look played across his face, and then it was gone. “You have no business messing in my family. I’ve been more than patient with you. I had no idea that a stupid family tree was supposed to be so thorough.”
“Fine.”
As I turned to leave, he said one more thing. “It’s interesting the way you completely overlook the obvious.”
I started to explain to him how my mother had taught me that the obvious isn’t always the answer, but I knew I’d be wasting my breath, so I asked what he wanted me to ask. “And what am I overlooking?”
“John Murphy.”
“I’m not going to get into all of this here and now. I’m calling a truce, Jeff. Leave me and my family alone, and I’ll leave yours alone.”
Turning my back on him was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done because I thought he could kill me with the stare that he gave me. But I felt better. If Jeff had been trying to scare me because of finding the carefully hidden skeletons in their closets, I felt he would quit now. He had nothing to gain by keeping it up.
* * *
The next morning my mother tore into me for going to Jeff Zumwalt’s house. I hadn’t been scolded this good since I hid Nana’s false teeth when I was in the eighth grade. Of course, it was the fact that I had hid them in the kitty-litter box that really got me into trouble. There could have been a few other times since then that she tore into me fairly good, but certainly not with such urgency as she did now.
“Don’t you watch the news? Crazies are burying people in their backyards, and the p
eople are never heard from again. Don’t you ever listen to the speeches that you give your children? You should not have gone alone, especially.”
The telephone rang, and I was delighted to answer it.
“Torie, it’s me, Colin.”
“Yes.” I prepared myself to listen to his speeches as well, until I realized that he didn’t know that I had gone to Jeff’s house the night before.
“Any more incidents since last night?”
“No.” Sheriff Brooke was one of the few people who believed that two dozen chickens all being in the chicken coop at the same time was too much of a coincidence.
“Well, I got the file on the Gwen Geise case.”
“And?”
“Meet me at Velasco’s in about two hours,” he said, and hung up the phone.
I wanted to see Rita today. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to her since I had lunch with her father, and I felt I should speak to her before Jeff did.
And no, nothing my mother said did any good. I will have to remember this when my children get older.
I changed into my blue sundress and brown sandals and decided that I’d go by and see Rita after I’d met with Sheriff Brooke. But I had one stop to make before going to see either one of them.
* * *
It was a long shot. But Sheriff Brooke had told me that Cora Landing was a beautician. I spent an hour on the phone, calling every beauty shop in the phone book for St. Louis and St. Louis County, asking to have an appointment made with Cora. I finally hit the jackpot, at a place called Heads R Us.
When I entered the salon in south county, an older woman smiled at me over a pair of scissors and let me know that she’d be right with me. The salon was decorated in pink and green, and giant plastic scissors separated each workstation. It also stunk from the perm solution, and my eyes began to water.
I told the woman I wanted to see Cora and she went to get her for me.
There were only three girls working, and judging by their ages, I picked out the one that I thought was Cora. I was dead wrong. I expected it to be the fortyish woman, with stylish hair and fingernails the color of watermelon.
Instead, Cora Landing was younger than I was, and a hell of a lot better looking, too. I was tempted to ask her if she was a Playboy model. When John Murphy cheated, at least he did it with style. She walked up to the counter, looking at my hair. I assumed she was deciding what kind of cut she’d like to give me.
“Did you have an appointment?” she asked me.
“No. Are you Cora?”
“Yes.”
“I was wondering if there was someplace that we could talk?” I asked, watching her look at me with surprise.
“Why?” she asked. Sparkling green eyes watched me cautiously. She had tons of blond hair, most likely the result of one of those painful little caps that you pull your hair through. Shiny red lipstick was applied generously, and she was about a foot taller than I.
“I’m a friend of John Murphy.”
“Oh, Jesus, are you a cop?”
“No. I was also a friend of Norah’s. If you refuse to speak to me, fine. I’ll understand. But I really only need about two minutes of your time.”
She hesitated before answering. Glancing over her shoulder she said, “As long as I can smoke.”
“Sure.”
“Cheryl! I’m goin’ for a smoke,” she yelled at her boss.
We stepped outside, and the dismal gray clouds separated long enough to give us a few minutes of much needed sunshine. “Okay, make it quick,” she announced.
“Were you with John Murphy the morning that Norah was killed?”
“I already told the cops that I wasn’t,” she said as she puffed on her cigarette.
“Who was?”
“How should I know?”
“Why did you meet with Norah the night before she was killed?”
“She called me. Said she knew about John and me, and she wanted to talk. First I thought, I don’t need this shit. But then she said she’d come to work and camp on the doorstep if I didn’t see her. So I figured, what the hell?” she said. She finished one cigarette and started another.
“And?”
“When she got to my house, all she asked me about was the other other woman that he was seeing. I said, ‘Well, shit, lady.’ I didn’t know that he was doin’ anybody else but me and her.”
“What did she say to that?”
“Nothing really. She just kept asking me if I knew what kind of car that she drove. What she looked like. Had I ever seen her before. Maybe at John’s office? Those kinds of things.”
Why would Norah be so obsessed about another “other woman” if she wasn’t obsessed with Cora? If she was worried about being able to compete with them, Cora would be the one to be jealous of.
“Did she seem upset about you and John?”
“She didn’t ask me or beg me to stay away from him, if that’s what you’re drivin’ at. I tell you, this is not what I bargained for.”
“What do you mean?”
“This guy tipped me off one night about John. Said he knew him and that the guy was hurting real bad. You know, he could use a lady friend.”
“Where were you when this happened?” I asked.
“At a bar. Don’t ask me which one ’cause I done forgot. Anyway, so I figure, he’s a nice-looking guy. So I go over, start talking to him. We hit it off. I mean, I really liked him,” she said, inhaling. “Next thing I know, I get a call from Norah asking me to meet with her. She’s dead the next day,” she said. She let out the smoke that she had been holding. It curled around her head, resembling a sort of laurel wreath. “I mean, freaky shit,” she said, shivering.
The woman definitely had a way with words.
“How long had you been seeing John when Norah contacted you?” I asked. I had no specific game plan to my inquiry. I just thought if I could keep Cora talking, eventually she’d hit on something that I needed.
“A few weeks.”
“I’m just a bit confused. How do you suppose that Norah knew about you?”
“Woman knows when her man’s cheatin’.”
“Well, yes. Normally, I’d agree with you. But rarely does a woman know her name and phone number and place of business. How did Norah find you? How did she know who you were?”
I could tell that the thought had never entered her mind before now. She seemed genuinely puzzled by the whole thing.
“Maybe she found my name and number in John’s things and just assumed the rest,” she said.
It was possible. But Norah had not lived with John nor worked with him. I couldn’t help but wonder just how much access she would have had to his personal things, and wonder also at the large coincidence in finding Cora’s name and number. John didn’t seem like the type to be that messy or careless.
“What was the last thing that Norah said to you?”
“Thank you for your time.”
“Do you think she knew who the other woman was?” I asked.
“Yes. Why else would she be so interested in her?” She threw her cigarette butt on the ground and smashed it with her navy blue heels.
“And you have no idea who the mystery lady was?” I asked.
“The only thing I can think of was one evening when I was at John’s office, a woman drove up in a red car all mad about something.”
“Was it Norah?” She nodded negative. “How do you know that the woman was angry?” I asked.
“She damned near ran over us. Came out of nowhere like she was waiting in the parking lot the whole time.”
“Did you get a good look at her? Could you describe her to me?” I asked persistently.
“No. She called John a bunch of names and took off. He ran after her, she stopped, they screamed at each other, she took off again.”
“Did he explain who she was to you?”
“Didn’t ask, he didn’t explain.” She looked around nervously. “Look, my cig is smoked. I need to go back to work.”
“Sure thing,” I said. “And thank you very much. It means a lot to me.”
“Yeah, whatever,” she said. She headed back toward the building.
“By the way,” I said. “Do you really play bridge?” I asked her. I found it very difficult to imagine Miss July sitting around playing bridge on Fridays.
“Love it.”
* * *
Sheriff Brooke sat in a booth in the corner of Velasco’s. He was off duty. At least, I assumed that he was because he wasn’t in uniform and he was drinking a beer. It was one of those dark beers that look more like beef broth than a brew.
I sat down across from him, and he pushed the file toward me. That action alone sparked my imagination. I felt as if I were in a spy movie, and couldn’t help but glance around the dining room looking for a man in a trench coat and sunglasses and holding a newspaper.
“You can either stomach through the grotesque details and photographs, or let me summarize them for you.”
Staring at the yellowed folder, I flashed back to the day I found Norah Zumwalt. Since finding her, I’ve had a terrible aversion to red.
“You do the honors,” I said, pushing the folder back at him.
Just then, Kurt Emery came to our table. Kurt is African American, and attending Washington University Medical School. He’s about twenty-four and works at Velasco’s half of his life so that he can go to Washington University the other half. He was dressed in jeans and a shirt that said, “Just Too Sexy.”
Velasco’s is a jeans and T-shirt type of place.
He pulled up a chair from an empty table and straddled it. “What can I get for you today, Torie?”
“Kurt, you know the sheriff?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. He nodded at Sheriff Brooke, who nodded back.
“I hear that Sylvia is having heart failure over the museum,” Kurt said to me.
“Why?” I asked. I suddenly realized that I hadn’t talked to Sylvia or Wilma in quite a few days.
“Something about she wanted to do a display of original documents that concerned the different founding families of New Kassel, for the museum opening.”
“So? What’s the problem?”
Family Skeletons: A Spunky Missouri Genealogist Traces A Family's Roots...And Digs Up A Deadly Secret Page 14