Thicker than Water

by Rett MacPherson

  “Who did he tell?”

  “He told Virgie Burgermeister, for one. The mayor, for another.”

  “Oh, this just gets better and better.”

  “Claims he even told Duran.”

  “Great.”

  “I also talked to Virgie and Harold about the restraining order.”

  “And?”

  “It seems as though Harold did lunge at Sylvia and try to punch her. She insulted his mother. He flat-out said, let me quote here, ‘Ain’t nobody insults my mama.’ So there you have it.”

  “Dead end.”

  “Not necessarily,” he said, “but nothing that I can arrest anybody for.”

  Somehow none of this made me feel any better. I banged my head on my desk and then took a drink of my soda.

  Colin said, “However, we did get a good footprint from under the tree in your front yard.”

  “Of?”

  “I think it’s our perp.”

  “Cool.”

  “Yeah, now we just have to compare it to, oh, a thousand or so feet.”

  “Well, you’ll have plenty to keep you busy.”

  “Right,” he said. “What’s going on with you?”

  “Oh, nothing,” I said.

  “I’ll check in later. Call me if you find anything.”

  “I will.”

  He hung up, and I went back to searching through the pile on my desk. Bill was also remotely related to Eleanore. Actually, it was through Eleanore’s husband, Oscar. Oscar Murdoch, according to his charts—and I knew it was true—was related to Helen Wickland’s mother, Constance Trotter. I glanced at Helen’s five-generation chart. Helen was born in 1957 as Helen Renee Trotter. Her mother had been only fifteen years old and unmarried. Helen had mentioned this to me before in passing, and I never felt comfortable inquiring further since she had not volunteered any more about it. Not that a person’s reluctance to talk ever stopped me from enquiring before, but Helen was a friend and it seemed to make her uncomfortable, so I didn’t push it. Constance Trotter was the daughter of William Trotter and …

  I nearly knocked over my soda can.

  William Trotter had been married to one Mildred Blaine O’Shaughnessy.

  I’ll be a son-of-a-gun. Mildred O’Shaughnessy was born in New York City in 1924. Married William Trotter in 1940 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. According to Helen’s charts, William died in 1943, one year after Constance was born. So a young and widowed Millie O’Shaughnessy Trotter moved to New Kassel, Missouri, where Sylvia just happened to live.

  I searched the file cabinet of my mind, trying to remember if Sylvia or Wilma or anybody had ever mentioned a connection to Helen’s family. I came up blank. Helen had had the same relationship with Sylvia that half the town had—cordial and superficial.

  Could it be that Sylvia just happened to have some of the Trotter family things to put in a collection? A lot of people donated one-of-a-kind heirloom letters and diaries to the historical society because they didn’t necessarily want the items but knew they were of historical importance. Could that be how Sylvia got the postcard? But that wouldn’t explain the letter written to Sylvia by Father Kincaid. He had been speaking of Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, who must have been Mildred’s mother. So no, these were Sylvia’s letters, not a donation. But I still didn’t understand.

  And what did any of it have to do with me?

  I suppose everything didn’t have to be about me.

  I scanned the chart. Mildred’s parents were down as Theodora Wentz of Albany, New York, who died in New York City in 1927, and Robert O’Shaughnessy from County Kerry in Ireland, who died in 1926. Millie had indeed been an orphan.

  I walked down to Sylvia’s old office and pulled a few books off the shelf. Old yearbooks. As far as I knew, Sylvia had lived her entire life right here in this little corner of eastern Missouri. Most of her professional life had been here, too. The only place she could have become acquainted with somebody who lived and died in New York would have been in school—if not in college, then in high school or grade school, although that was less likely.

  I thumbed through Sylvia’s college books and found what I was looking for. Theodora Wentz had attended college with Sylvia Pershing.

  “Hey, Miller!”

  “Yeah?” he called from the kitchen.

  “I’m going over to Helen’s house,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Sure thing,” he said.

  I walked across the street and down a block or so until I came to Helen’s house. I knocked on the door, and she answered within a few seconds, holding a pot holder and a very large burnt duck on a fork. “Want some dinner?” she asked.

  “No, thank you,” I said. “I was wondering if I could speak with you?”

  “Certainly,” she said. “Come on in. Let me just get rid of this dead bird.”

  I stepped inside Helen’s living room and had to laugh as I saw the black smoke pouring from the kitchen. The fire alarm blared from somewhere down the hall, and her husband was running around fanning the ceiling with a towel. “She insists on these exotic dishes,” he said.

  I laughed, and she returned from the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel. “What can I do for you?”

  I pulled the postcard out and handed it to her.

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “That’s my grandmother. Where did you get this?”

  “Turn it over,” I said.

  She turned it over and read the single line: I think you have forgotten your promise. Her eyebrows knit together in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s addressed to Sylvia.”

  The color drained from her face then, as she slowly handed the card back to me.

  “Look, Helen,” I said. “I have never pushed you about … your mother or any of the rest of your family history.”

  “My mother was fifteen when she had me. She didn’t happen to get a good look at my father. It was kind of dark,” she said.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  She crossed her arms. “What is it you want?”

  “What was the promise, Helen?”

  She shrugged.

  “Surely you’ve heard stories. You’ve asked questions.”

  “Believe it or not, Torie, not everybody talks about their past. Not everybody is descended from Charlemagne and is a Daughter of the American Revolution.”

  “Look, I’ve got my share of horse thieves and murderers,” I said. “Don’t get defensive.”

  “Yes, but your parents are perfect,” she said.

  “Oh, right. Have I introduced you to my sister? My half sister who was born while my parents were still married?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t give me that crap, Helen. What was the promise?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Because … because I just do. I care. I can’t help it. Just when I think I have Sylvia figured out, she morphs on me. She’s like that Odo guy on Deep Space Nine.”

  “So this is to make you feel better?” she asked. I was a bit taken aback by the venom. Helen and I had been friends for years. Of course, her reluctance to stick up for me at the historical society meeting had floored me, too.

  “Are you … Helen, are you upset that Sylvia left me everything?” The bottom fell out of my stomach as I suddenly realized that Helen had been acting strange lately.

  A tear ran down her cheek.

  Oh, dear Lord! Was it Helen who had beaten me with a baseball bat during the Strawberry Festival? Could she have thrown the rocks at my house? But why?

  “Helen, we’ve been friends a long time,” I said. “Please, tell me what the promise was.”

  “My great-grandmother found out in the spring of 1926 that she had consumption. Her husband had recently died, but I’m not sure from what,” Helen said. “She wrote to Sylvia—I’m still not real clear how they knew each other—but she wrote to Sylvia and asked if she would take care of her daughter if she died. Her daughter, Millie, was my grandmother.”
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  I closed my eyes as the tears came to the edge.

  “According to my mother, Sylvia had agreed, but then a family in Philadelphia said they would take her. Sylvia thought that would be better, since she wasn’t married. She thought my grandmother would be better off with a mother and a father, instead of just her.”

  “Can you blame her for that?” I asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “So how did your grandma end up here?”

  “The couple that took her in Philadelphia died in a fire, just six months later. The nuns at the orphanage contacted Sylvia. This time, she was more reluctant,” Helen said and swiped at a tear. “I don’t know if she suddenly realized that she’d make a shitty parent or if she just didn’t want to be bothered.”

  “But how did Millie end up in Iowa?” I asked.

  Helen looked taken aback at first. Then she smiled. “You really are good at your job.”

  “I can fill in the where and the when. It’s the why that gives me the most trouble. Unless somebody from the past decides to speak,” I said.

  “One of the priests found her a home in Iowa, and according to my grandmother he came with her to Iowa on the train. But when they got there, the family had recently given birth to twins. They decided they couldn’t afford another mouth,” Helen said, “so my grandmother was stuck.”

  Thus the last-ditch effort to contact Sylvia. “I think you have forgotten your promise,” I whispered. The tears spilled down my face. How could she have done this? How could Sylvia have turned this child out into the cold?

  “I don’t know exactly what happened, but my grandmother ran away. Somewhere in the next several years she met my grandfather and they got married. But bad luck seemed to follow Millie: He died a few years later, just after my mother was born. By that point, she was pregnant again. Millie was desperate to take care of her children, so she came to New Kassel,” Helen said. “I don’t know if she thought Sylvia would welcome her and take her in or what.”

  “So what happened?”

  “As far as I know, Sylvia never acknowledged who she was. I’m not even sure if my grandmother told her who she was. She was Mildred Trotter then, not Millie O’Shaughnessy.”

  “Oh, my God,” I said.

  “Sylvia did give her a job, though,” Helen said. “My grandmother became Sylvia’s laundress.”

  I cupped my mouth with my hand as more tears spilled over. “Ms. Trotter. Of course, I remember her.”

  “But I suppose the trend was set for my family by that point.”

  “Oh, Helen,” I said.

  “Save your tears, Torie,” she said. “I’m long over it.”

  “But the Gaheimer House … the money. It should all be yours,” I said.

  “I suppose, technically, if Sylvia had raised my grandmother. Yes, it would be mine and my brother’s. But she didn’t raise her. And she gave her nothing.”

  My knees were actually weak from Helen’s words. My chest burned from trying not to cry. I don’t know why I tried so hard; the tears were still streaming down my face no matter what I did.

  “I hate to be the one to shatter your illusion of the great Sylvia,” Helen said. “But you asked.”

  “Thank you. I … I have to go,” I said. “I’ll talk to you later, Helen.”

  I all but ran from her house, wiping at tears and gasping for air. I fumbled in my pocket and pulled out my cell phone. I dialed Colin’s number in the dark—thank God for speed dial—and waited for him to answer. “Colin, it’s me, Torie.”

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  I sobbed and wiped my face. “I … I think it might be Helen,” I said. “I think she might be the one who’s been trying to … hurt me.”

  “Torie, are you all right?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said. Okay, my heart was broken and I would never be the same again, but I wasn’t bleeding to death. “Look, I just came from her house. It’s a long story. But maybe you could get some fibers from her. Check her shoes. She’s got a reason, Colin. She has a damn good reason for wanting revenge.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” he said. “Do you need me to come get you?”

  “No,” I said. I hung up the phone and fumbled my way to the Gaheimer House. “Miller?” I said as I entered the house.

  Surprisingly, he wasn’t there. I found a note on the table saying he had to go because of an accident on 55. I set the alarm, shut the door, and sat down on the step and cried some more. I wondered if the world would ever be right again. I could understand Sylvia not wanting to take in a child, especially if she thought she would not be a good parent. But to promise somebody she’d take care of her child and then renege? I couldn’t make it right in my mind. No matter how I looked at it, I could not forgive Sylvia for this.

  Then it started to rain.

  A car pulled up in front of the house, and Duran opened the door. “My God, Torie. What’s the matter? Are you all right?”

  “Wh-what are you doing here?”

  “I was just coming from Chuck’s. Leigh felt like pizza. I couldn’t say no to her,” he said.

  “Oh, that’s nice.”

  “Are you okay? Why are you crying?”

  “I just … Can you take me home?”

  “Of course,” he said. He came over to the porch and gave me his hand to take, which I gladly did. I walked toward his car in a complete daze.

  He opened the door. I got in, wiped my face on my sleeve, and vowed never to cry another tear over Sylvia Pershing as long as I lived.

  Thirty

  “So why are you so upset?” Duran asked.

  “Long story,” I said. I glanced into the backseat at the pizza from Chuck’s and my stomach rumbled. Even if I’m not hungry, pizza from Velasco’s will make my mouth water and my stomach rumble.

  “Am I taking you to Wisteria?”

  “Yeah, my mom’s house. Or, well, Colin’s house. However you look at it,” I said.

  “Is it weird having him for a stepfather?”

  “Unfair is more like it. Not weird.”

  He laughed. My nose continued to run. “Hey, have you got a tissue?”

  “In the glove box.”

  I opened the glove box and found a tiny package of tissues. I hated to use them, since there were so few left, but I’d already wiped tears all over my sleeves; I wasn’t about to wipe snot, too. My fingers fumbled and I dropped the Kleenex on the floor. I reached down to pick it up.

  In the dark I felt around. My hand brushed something round and hard.

  A baseball bat.

  I had not been able to find Sylvia’s bat since the day I was attacked.

  Calm down. Think. Duran was a jock. He probably played softball in a league or something. For God’s sake, this was Deputy Duran we were talking about.

  “Hey, can you turn on the light?” I said. “I dropped the Kleenex and can’t find it.”

  He flipped on the overhead light, filling the car with that odd yellowish glow, and I leaned my head between my knees and looked at the end of the bat poking out from under the seat. Scribbled in marker was the year 1985.

  This was Sylvia’s baseball bat.

  Suddenly my mind started replaying the events of the past week. Things began crowding into my head.

  “Did you find them?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said and grabbed the tissues.

  He flipped off the light. “So why are you so upset?”

  “Oh, it’s just difficult when you find out that the people you love aren’t who they claim to be.”

  He made a clicking sound with his teeth. “Don’t I know it.”

  A box social where there was a consensus that you should be removed from power. Edwin and Leigh Duran attended the Methodist church. What were the odds they attended the box social?

  “So, you and Leigh do much with your church?” Only after I said it did I think that it might have sounded like it came out of left field. Maybe he wouldn’t notice.

 
“Yeah, every now and then.”

  “Where do you go?”

  “The Methodist church.”

  “Oh, I heard they had a box social not too long ago.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We went to that. It was nice.”

  He’s been short on cash. Colin’s words echoed hollowly in my head, as if the world had no bass, only treble. Duran needed money. I now had money. Lots of money.

  Who was sitting right next to Eleanore Murdoch during the historical society meeting that turned into a witch hunt? Leigh Duran. Sitting there telling Eleanore what to say, whom to elect. What’s more, who had been nominated for president and didn’t win? Leigh Duran.

  Hell, he even told Duran. Danny Eisenbach had told Duran that I had hired a private investigator.

  It made my head hurt to think about it. Who had access? Who was so careful not to leave any fingerprints or footprints in the secret stairway? Somebody who would have thought of it. Quite a few people might think not to leave fingerprints, but almost nobody would think about footprints! Unless it was somebody who was trained to think about it.

  I used to do favors for her all the time.

  Somebody who thought Sylvia owed him. For whatever reason his twisted little mind had come up with, Duran thought he was owed something by Sylvia. But I could not figure out how he thought he would actually get it, even if I were out of the picture.

  I tried to keep my breathing regular as I sat in the seat next to him. All I had to do was get to my mother’s house and I could call Colin, and everything would be fine. Duran had no reason whatsoever to think that I suspected him of anything.

  Wait, stop. What was I thinking? Was I really so paranoid that now I thought anybody and everybody was out to get me? Was Duran really capable of this?

  He did have the baseball bat in his car.

  True, but maybe he wanted a souvenir of Sylvia and didn’t have the nerve to come right out and ask for one. So he took it. He took it; that didn’t mean that he used it.

  And I had to remind myself that he could have killed me. He could have killed Mike Walker. But he didn’t. What was it Colin had said? Mike had been attacked by somebody who couldn’t quite follow through with murder.

  “You’re awfully quiet,” Duran said.