Thicker than Water

by Rett MacPherson

  Mr. Rossini held his hands up in surrender. “Just trying to find out how a college dropout manages to put herself in a very lucrative situation.”

  “I didn’t put myself anywhere, Mr. Rossini, but I’m going to put my foot somewhere if you don’t get out of this house, now.”

  He smiled, and the faintest touch of pink shaded his ears. With no further ado, he left my mother’s house, and I hobbled to the kitchen to find my pain pills. I’d better take two.

  At that point my mother wheeled in, and I put the extra pill back in the bottle. Funny how the very presence of your mother can make you do the right thing.

  “Who was that?”

  “Journalist.”

  “Oh.”

  “Works at the same paper as Collette, so I may have some words with her,” I said.

  “Interview didn’t go well?” she asked.

  “Not really,” I said. “Look, I’m going home now. I need a shower, and I need to brush my damn teeth.”

  THE NEW KASSEL GAZETTE

  The News You Might Miss

  by Eleanore Murdoch

  Tragedy has hit the Strawberry Festival!

  What is our town coming to when one of its best known citizens is struck down, right there on the street, with a vile and evil instrument of terror! Everybody lock your doors. Bring your dogs in at night. I haven’t seen this level of terror in the folks of New Kassel since the body was discovered on the banks of the Mississippi! Where are our brave law enforcement officers?

  Tobias said to tell whoever dumped the horse manure in his backyard, thank you.

  The winner of the Pierre’s Bakery raffle was none other than Jalena Brooke. I don’t think that’s quite fair since she no longer lives in New Kassel. She moved to Wisteria to be with her new husband. But, regardless, she has won a month’s supply of bagels!

  Until next time,

  Eleanore

  Twelve

  I wasted the entire day lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling. I stared at the ceiling for a solid six hours. Sometimes it was fuzzier than other times, and sometimes I drifted off to sleep, but always I woke up and resumed my state of stupor watching a ceiling that was never going to change. At least not quickly enough for me to see.

  Rudy had left a note saying his mother had Matthew for the day, and I was actually grateful for that in my present state. By the time the girls came in from school around three, it was a good thing, because I think I was actually beginning to warp the ceiling with my gaze.

  “Mom?” Rachel asked as she came up the stairs.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” Mothers lie. Don’t ever think they don’t.

  “Does it hurt?” She sat on the edge of my bed. There was real concern in those deep dark brown eyes.

  “Yes.”

  “Man, that was freaky. Like, one minute you were there taking pictures and the next minute you were on the ground being trampled.”

  “You see anything?” I asked.

  “No, Dad barfed and I was busy watching him.”

  “Oh.”

  “I got an A on my science test today.”

  “Way cool,” I said. “Hey, you guys wanna go get some pizza?”

  “Shouldn’t we wait for Dad and Grandma O?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I meant when they got home. I don’t feel much like cooking.”

  “Grandma would probably cook for you.”

  “She’s going to be here awhile,” I said. “May as well not burn her out in the first week.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Where’s Mary?”

  “Downstairs,” Rachel said. “She’s got a black eye.”

  A black eye. Just so casual. You had to love teenagers. They could be absolutely manic over the most minor things and so nonchalant over serious matters. “And she got this how?”

  “She walked under the monkey bars and somebody kicked her in the face.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, at least it wasn’t anything deliberate. I figured she’d be up here showing it off.”

  “Somebody told her to put meat on it, and so she’s downstairs opening the bologna,” Rachel said.

  “Great.”

  * * *

  Velasco’s Pizza is probably one of my favorite places in the world, with its 1950s decor and red vinyl seats and the best pizza in three different styles: Chicago, New York, and St. Louis. And the owner, Chuck Velasco—Rudy’s best friend—is one of my favorite people. My mother-in-law had lifted her nose to an angle I didn’t think was humanly possible when I had announced we were going out for pizza, and she didn’t lower that nose once we got to Velasco’s. In fact, Mrs. O’Shea wiped the seat with her hanky before she sat down, managing to keep that nose in the air the whole time.

  “Hey, loser,” Chuck said and slapped Rudy on the back.

  “Hey, I would have won if I hadn’t eaten all those pancakes for breakfast,” Rudy said.

  “Cry me a river,” Chuck said. “What’s it gonna be tonight?”

  We ordered our pizza, Mrs. O’Shea ordered a salad and a beer, and we fell into a nice familial conversation about the dangers of walking under the monkey bars on a playground and how it was similar to walking behind somebody on a swing. Mary was actually quite proud of her badge of courage, as if she had gone through some rite of passage. Our conversation didn’t last long, though, since I was approached by three different people who wanted to talk to me. One person paid me his rent, so that was fairly easy, except it seemed to me that everybody in the parlor stopped and stared as the check changed hands. One person asked if we could get the roof fixed in the house she was living in—since we now owned it—and another wanted to know if I could give her a job.

  When our food arrived, Mrs. O’Shea bowed her head, made the sign of the cross and, stared at us. The five of us looked at each other, and Rudy made the sign of the cross and, as the girls giggled, proceeded to say grace. There would be talk in the gossip column tomorrow that the O’Shea family had said grace in public.

  “So, Torie, I realize you’re not Catholic,” Mrs. O’Shea said, “but you shouldn’t keep your husband and children from going to church.”

  There are times when I should be given an award for not acting on every impulse that comes into my head. If I did, her lips would now be sewn shut with baling wire, and the fact that they were still free to flap about and insult me was a shining example of what a great person I was.

  “Mom,” Rudy began.

  “Don’t ‘Mom’ me,” Mrs. O’Shea said. “You haven’t been to church since you got married.”

  “This has nothing to do with me,” I said. “Rudy can get up and go to church any time he wants.”

  Mrs. O’Shea rolled her eyes and waved a hand at me.

  “Rudy,” I said, turning to him, “do I keep you from going to church?”

  “No,” he said. “In fact, you’ve encouraged me, and I just don’t ever seem to go.”

  “There,” I said and looked back to Mrs. O’Shea.

  She just ate her salad in silence with tiny bites, ever so ladylike. I stared at her the whole time she ate, waiting for her to acknowledge what Rudy had said. She never did. Instead, she downed her beer in three large swigs, the complete opposite of the way she had eaten the salad. “Did you hear him?” I asked.

  “Torie,” Rudy said and laid a hand on my arm.

  “The fact is, Torie,” she said, “my son was a perfectly good Catholic boy until he met you. So there’s the evidence.”

  I should have probably just shut up and thought about cute fat puppies, but I couldn’t. “I would like to know one thing,” I said.

  Rudy covered his eyes and shook his head. Mary smiled and came to attention.

  “Why is it that I get blamed for anything Rudy does that you don’t approve of? It never once occurred to you that maybe this is the real Rudy O’Shea, and now that he’s a free man, out of the chokehold of his mother, he can be who he reall
y is. I don’t hold a knife to his throat over anything, Mrs. O’Shea. Never have.”

  At that moment I felt like I was trapped in some horrible Monday Night Movie, as Mrs. O’Shea leveled a gaze on me that would have ripped me apart if I hadn’t been prepared for it. The venom was palpable, and the air seemed to grow ten degrees hotter in ten seconds flat. Even Matthew had grown still.

  “Torie,” Rudy said again.

  “What?” I said. “Why is it so hard for you to just tell her the way you feel about things? I do. It’s really easy. Here, let me show you—”

  “You may leave this table at any time,” Mrs. O’Shea said in a cold and steely voice.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “I’ll not tolerate—”

  “You don’t have the right to tolerate or not tolerate. Who do you think you are?” I said.

  “Mom,” Rachel said.

  “What?”

  “People are staring.”

  Sure enough, I had been yelling and didn’t even realize it. The entire restaurant was staring at our table. I had managed to make myself look like an ass, even when I was right. You know, when I think about it, that’s what Mrs. O’Shea did best. She always made me look bad when she was in the wrong. That was a true artist.

  I went about cutting up my pizza with such fury that I knew there were knife marks left on the plate. I ate in silence—chewing my food as if I had an outboard motor attached to my jaws—and looked at no one.

  “I have a volleyball game tomorrow,” Rachel said.

  “I know,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

  More silence.

  Just then my sister burst through the front door of the pizza parlor. She glanced around the room, and when she found me she ran over to the table. “Oh, thank heavens you’re here,” she said.

  How do people always know where I am?

  “What?” I said. “Are you all right? Is the baby okay?”

  “No,” she said. “And yes.”

  “What, then?”

  “You need to come over to the Gaheimer House right away.”

  Thirteen

  “The Gaheimer House is haunted,” Stephanie said, breathless, as we jogged along the sidewalk of River Pointe Road.

  “Steph, stop running, you’re going to hurt the baby,” I said. Not to mention my whole body still ached from yesterday. In fact, I think it hurt worse than yesterday, and I could barely keep up with her.

  “Please, Torie,” she said. “I’m fine. I walk four miles every day.”

  “You do?” I asked. “On purpose?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You walk more than that.”

  “True,” I said. Unless I had the kids with me or I was bringing home groceries, I usually walked everywhere I went. The benefits of living in a small, self-contained town. “Wait, did you say the house was haunted?”

  “Yes,” she said as we arrived in front of the Gaheimer House.

  “You dragged me out of dinner with my … my mother-in-law to tell me the Gaheimer House was haunted?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, I love you!” I said and flung my arms around her. “You are so ingenious. I would have never thought of it.”

  “Torie,” she said, “I’m dead serious. In fact, I am so dead serious that I am not going back in the house alone ever again.”

  I stared at her long and hard. She wasn’t flighty, nor was she the type to be rash or jump to conclusions, and I saw no traces of humor on her face. I looked at the house, and chills danced down my spine. I didn’t think for one minute that the house was haunted. What I did think was that Stephanie had heard something while she was alone in the house. Just like I had. Just like Sylvia had.

  “Did you call the sheriff?”

  “Not for a ghost, and the last time I checked Spooky Fox Mulder had hung up his supernatural phenomena badge, so that leaves you,” she said.

  “Steph, there are no such things as ghosts,” I said.

  “I know that,” she said, “but you might want to tell that to the ghost in that house.”

  I took my cell phone out of my purse, dialed the sheriff’s station, and got Deputy Duran. “This is Torie O’Shea.”

  “Oh, hi, Mrs. O’Shea.”

  Mrs. O’Shea? Nobody calls me Mrs. O’Shea. Everybody in this town has known me forever and a day. “Uh … yeah, listen, we’ve got a problem at the Gaheimer House,” I said. “I think there’s an intruder or a prowler or something. Can you send somebody to check it out?”

  “Newsome is a few blocks over. I’ll send him.”

  “All right,” I said and hung up. “Newsome’s coming. We stay outside until he gets here.”

  “You don’t have to convince me,” she said and crossed her arms.

  While we were waiting, the buildings on the opposite side of the street began to glow with the orange of the setting sun, and I couldn’t help but think how brave this prowler was. This was two or three times now that somebody had heard something in the Gaheimer House in broad daylight.

  Mayor Castlereagh pulled up then but didn’t turn off his engine—which was good, because that meant I only had to tolerate him for a few minutes. “Whatsa matter, Torie? You get locked out of your new mansion?” he asked from the window of his car. He was a short, pudgy man with a shiny head and a burning hatred for little old me.

  “No,” I said. “Thanks for your concern.”

  “Hear you’re moving,” he said. “Finally get rid of those damn chickens.”

  “You’re moving?” Stephanie asked me.

  “No, I’m not moving,” I said. “In fact, if I were, I wouldn’t now just because he wants me to.”

  “I told you,” he said. “I told you I’d get rid of those chickens one way or another. You know, your mother-in-law agrees with me.”

  “Oh, well, then that settles it, doesn’t it?” I said. “When two great minds get together and pass judgment on a bunch of chickens, they must be right.”

  “Don’t push me, Torie.”

  “You know, your term’s gonna end soon,” I said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That means you won’t be mayor forever.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “No, I’m telling you that maybe somebody worthy will run against you next year and you can finally retire and bowl all day. Oops, you do that now,” I said and covered my mouth.

  He was about to say something more when Deputy Newsome pulled up in his patrol car and stepped out. The mayor drove away, and Stephanie looked at me as if seeing a new person. “Sorry, I’m in a really bad mood,” I said.

  “Does everybody hate you?” she asked.

  “No, just the mayor and my mother-in-law. Well, and maybe Eleanore, but only sometimes. No, actually, now that I think about it, I think it’s just the mayor and my mother-in-law,” I said.

  “And your stepfather,” she said.

  “No, Colin doesn’t hate me. He hates some of the things that I do. There’s a difference,” I said. “Which I’ve learned in the past few years.”

  “Ahh,” she said as if she totally understood. Maybe she did.

  “Oh, and by the way, don’t ever tell a reporter where I am,” I said.

  “Oh, it didn’t go well?”

  “No. The guy was a total jerk.”

  “I’ll remember that,” she said.

  Deputy Newsome walked up next to us on the sidewalk. “What’s the problem?” he said.

  “I think the house is haunted,” Stephanie said.

  “Well, I ain’t no Ghostbuster,” he said and laughed at his own joke.

  “I think she heard a prowler,” I said.

  “That I can check out,” he said. “You ladies stay out here.”

  “I heard it upstairs!” Stephanie called out after him. That’s exactly where I had heard it, too. In Sylvia’s room.

  Stephanie and I talked a few minutes about some of the things she had found during my day of lying in bed and staring at the ceiling.
After about ten minutes, Deputy Newsome stepped out and onto the sidewalk. “I didn’t find anything,” he said.

  “How can that be?” Stephanie asked.

  “He or she could have easily left while you ran to get me,” I said.

  “What’s more, I see no evidence that anybody was even in the house,” Newsome said. “I mean, nothing was out of place upstairs at all. Not like anybody was looking for anything.”

  “This makes no sense,” Stephanie said. “This isn’t the first time I’ve heard something.”

  “Look, I heard something upstairs the other day, too. And Sylvia, well, we know Sylvia heard something the night before she died,” I said. “What can we do about this?”

  Newsome shrugged.

  “Have you noticed anything missing?” Deputy Newsome asked.

  “No,” Stephanie said. Looking to me she raised her eyebrows. “Have you? You’d know better than I.”

  I thought for a moment. I had given some things away already, and the place was certainly in disarray what with all the boxes and everything. “Maybe a few things, but nothing of any value.”

  “Like what?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m not even sure now that I’ve said it. I mean, look at the place,” I said.

  He glanced around and wrote something down on his notepad.

  “Um … a ring,” I said. “It was my favorite of her rings and I haven’t seen it in awhile. But really, it’s not worth anything. So, it’s probably here somewhere.”

  Newsome wrote a few words again. Finally, I waved my hand in the air. “No, now that I think of it, I really don’t think anything is missing. I’m sure it’s here somewhere.”

  “You need to make sure you’re locking the doors once you’re inside and set the alarm. I know it’s a pain in the butt to mess with the alarm every time you go in and out, but you’re just going to have to remember to set it when you’re inside. That’s all I can tell you,” he said. “Or maybe I can get the sheriff to post a watch for a couple of days. We’re not busy. Not until the weekend for the second half of the festival.”

  “All right,” I said. I worked my lower lip between my teeth, wondering, although what I was wondering wasn’t quite fully formed yet. It was just this vague ghost of an image swimming around in my head. Whatever it was, it made me uncomfortable.