Thicker than Water

by Rett MacPherson

  “I’m really exhausted. And I’m really upset,” I said. “Don’t take it personally.”

  “My wife gets real quiet when she’s upset,” he said. “I think it sort of runs in her family.”

  “What is Leigh’s maiden name?” I asked. The very first question every respectable genealogist would ask somebody. The maiden name—the surname—told you a lot about a person. It told you ethnicity. Sometimes you could figure out what region a woman came from just by her maiden name. Sometimes you could even get an idea of religion. Like O’Shea, for example. It said that Rudy was Irish, and either Catholic or Protestant. I would automatically know to scratch Muslim off the list with a name like that.

  “Franklin,” he said. “And as far as I know, she’s not related to old Ben.” He laughed at his own joke.

  Franklin. Franklin. I ran the name through my mental file. Was there anybody I knew named Franklin? Did it matter? Not really. I was simply trying to keep him talking long enough to get me home without him realizing I had discovered the bat.

  Just then my phone rang. I nearly screamed and jumped off of the seat as I scrambled in my pocket for it. “Hello?”

  “Torie, it’s Colin.”

  “Hi, Colin,” I said. I smiled and made sure I said it loud enough that Deputy Duran could hear it. In a flash, I had figured it out. One of Sylvia’s nieces had married a Franklin. Julie. Julie Pershing had married Steve Franklin! Could it be that Leigh Franklin Duran was Sylvia’s great-great-niece? Had it even occurred to Colin to check out Sylvia’s great-great-nieces and -nephews—the third generation—or had he only checked attitudes and alibis for the second? I wasn’t so sure I would have thought of it.

  And Leigh Duran had just attempted suicide. What if this had nothing to do with the money and had everything to do with revenge?

  “I’ve got a team that’s going to collect fibers and stuff from Helen in just a few minutes.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “But I need to ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “The night after the historical society meeting…”

  “Yeah?” I said. The palms of my hands were sweating so badly that I nearly dropped the phone. I swallowed hard.

  “Did you ask Duran to come by and check out the house?”

  “Mmmm, I don’t think so. Not the night after. Why?”

  “Well, Mike Walker came to,” he said. “I had checked Mr. Walker’s logs before but didn’t think much of it, but when I questioned him over the phone, he said that the only person who went in or out of the Gaheimer House during nonbusiness hours was Duran. So I was wondering if maybe you’d asked him to do some moonlighting that I didn’t know about.”

  “No,” I said. “I could ask him, though.”

  Dead silence on the line.

  “Are you with Duran?” he asked.

  “Yes, he’s driving me home.”

  Come on, Colin, quit being such a twit.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Torie, are you in danger?”

  “Not yet, you moron.”

  Duran turned and laughed at me. He probably was wishing that he could call his boss a moron and get by with it. I laughed right along with him and pretended everything was just fine.

  “You’ve found something that already brought you to this conclusion,” he said.

  “Give the man a prize.”

  “All right, ask Duran what he did with the files on the Jenkins case.”

  “Huh?”

  “You said you could ask him. He’s going to want to know what I want you to ask him. So ask him about the Jenkins file so he doesn’t get suspicious.”

  I relayed the message.

  “On my desk,” Duran answered.

  “On his desk,” I said.

  “I’m just going to stay on the phone with you until he pulls into my driveway and you’re safe and sound,” he said.

  Oh, wonderful. What if Bat Boy decided to pull over and kill me? What was I supposed to do, cell phone him to death? “All right,” I said. “Boy, it’s dark on the Outer Road.”

  “Outer Road. Got it. I’ll have Miller find you guys and tail you,” Colin said.

  “Sure, whatever.” I could hear Colin speaking into his radio, giving orders to find and follow a blue Buick Century headed west on the Outer Road.

  Just then a cat ran out into the middle of the road and Duran slammed on his brakes. When he did, the baseball bat shot forward and in between my feet. He flipped the overhead light on, I’m assuming to see if everything was all right. I watched in slow motion as his gaze fell between my feet and landed on the baseball bat. I looked down and then up to meet his eyes, and he knew that I knew.

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Torie? Are you compromised?” Colin’s voice came across that thin lifeline that was my cell phone.

  “And how,” I said into the phone.

  “It’s not what you think,” Duran said. “I … I found it and I didn’t think it would hurt, you know, to take it out of the house.”

  “Oh, shit,” Colin said as he heard what Duran was saying. “Torie, you need to get out of that car.”

  At that moment Duran must have realized that I suspected him of a whole lot more than just swiping a bat from Sylvia’s house. He opened his door, grabbed my phone, and threw it out into the night. I reached for my seat belt, but he grabbed my hair in his fist. His wristwatch snagged my hair and I cried out, but I managed to unlock the seat belt. I didn’t think he would have heard it click, since I had been screaming at that moment. “Think, Edwin. Colin knows I’m with you! Think about what you’re doing!”

  “Shit!” he yelled. “It wasn’t suppposed to happen like this. You just couldn’t give up and leave town, could you?”

  “Edwin, calm down,” I said. My hands were up in the air. See? Total surrender. No threat whatsoever. If only I could make him believe that. If he thought for one minute I was any kind of threat, there was no telling what he would do. He was a desperate man. He was caught and he knew it. Now he had to make a choice. He either had to leave it be and let me out of the car—and face some jail time, not to mention losing his job—or he had to take it to the next level. By the look on his face, he was contemplating his fate.

  “If you kill me, you have to run. If you run, you lose everything anyway. You may as well let me go and face the music,” I said. He yanked my hair a little harder, and I bent my body with him to try to lessen the resistance on my scalp.

  “I can’t go to jail.”

  “Edwin, think about this!”

  “A cop in jail? I am thinking about it!”

  “Come on, Edwin,” I said. An unexpected sob escaped from my throat. My stomach burned with fear. Even my toes were numb. “I’ve got three kids to raise.”

  It’s funny how even at that moment all I could think of was my kids.

  “Get out of the car,” he said and let go of my hair. He reached down and pulled the bat out from under the seat.

  I nearly vomited right then and there. I squeezed my eyes shut. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. This could not be happening. I thought briefly about begging, literally getting down on my hands and knees and begging him to let me go. Then I got angry instead. Who did this twerp think he was?

  “Fine,” I said. I shoved the car door open and got out. I could hear the creek across the road. The creek that meandered through the woods and ran right by the fishing shack. By the entrance to the tunnel. “Come on, you sack of shit. Let’s get this over with.”

  Duran came around the front of the car. “What did you just say?”

  “I can’t stand people like you. Think you’re entitled to the whole damn world! When something doesn’t go your way, you run to your mama and cry, and then you take what isn’t yours.”

  “Sylvia should have left me something!”

  “Well, no, actually, last time I checked, your wife is the one who’
s related to Sylvia. Not you.”

  He clenched his teeth and gripped the handle of the bat like I’d seen Mark McGwire do a hundred times. “I’ve paid enough rent on that house, it should be mine by now! But no, Sylvia just kept holding on to it. I did favors for her any time she asked. Anytime she heard a noise, I’d stop by. ‘Is there anything else I can do for you, Sylvia? Can I get you anything, Sylvia?’ And still she took that damn rent check from me every month, all the while knowing I’d already paid for the house!” He slammed the bat into the headlight of his car. “I put up with that bitchy old woman, thinking she’d finally give me my house. And she never did.”

  “This is about a house, Duran? Jesus.” I felt his car with my hands as I backed up a few steps.

  “No, it’s not about the house. It’s about you. You getting everything my wife should have had. You strut around this town like an undeclared queen, you take and take from people, and then who gets the dough when the old lady kicks the bucket? Her living relatives? Not hardly,” he said and smashed his window. “Who is Sylvia’s confidant? My wife? No. Who gets the job in the pretty dresses? Is it Leigh? No. Who is the chairperson of the events committee? Who is president of the historical society? Who has three perfectly healthy children? You, you, you!” The baseball bat whizzed through the air as he smashed it into the hood of his car.

  “Edwin … it’s not like that.”

  “‘Oh, I just haven’t gotten used to the fact that I’m a landlady.’” He mimicked the words I had spoken to him in the Gaheimer House that day. “Like you weren’t planning to be queen of New Kassel from the very beginning. All the while, Leigh just kept waiting for her chance. Her chance at your scraps!”

  “God, Edwin, I didn’t know.”

  “Would it have mattered?”

  He took another step and I backed up three. When I reached the back of his car I turned and took off running across the road and into the woods. It was so dark I could barely see my hand in front of my face, but as long as I kept the creek to my right, I would get where I wanted to go. I didn’t look back. I assumed Duran was following me, but I wasn’t about to give up the millisecond it would take to look back over my shoulder and find out.

  A tree branch smacked me in the face and I veered off course, twisting my ankle in a rabbit hole. Within a few minutes I had come to the fishing shack and my own rabbit hole. Go on, Alice, Go down the hole.

  I pulled open the doors on the tunnel and ran down the stairs. My shoes were slick from running through the woods, and I slid down the stairs as if I were on a surfboard as I heard the doors bang shut behind me. I ended up on the floor, in utter and complete darkness.

  Don’t panic. I was trying to remain calm, but no matter what I said to myself, my breathing came in huge ragged gasps. I felt along the side for the wall of the tunnel. I found it and managed to stand. Okay, I was touching the wall. So I was standing. I knew up from down now. But I still couldn’t control my breathing. If I didn’t see light soon, I would burst.

  I ran along the tunnel, never letting my hand leave the wall. If I lost the wall, I would lose myself.

  Then I heard the bang of the doors above me.

  Duran had anticipated my destination. Well, at least I didn’t have to wonder if he was following me or not. The good news was that he seemed to be fumbling in the dark as much as I was. He had no flashlight. He probably had one in the car, but he hadn’t taken the time to get it before taking off after me. So he was as blind as I was. On the other hand, he knew the tunnel better than I did.

  There was only one thing I could think of to do. If he was using the walls to guide himself like I was, then I just had to figure out which side of the wall he would use. I was right handed, and yet I had used my left hand to feel my way through, I suppose so my right hand could be free. But how could I know Duran would do the same thing? How could I even know if he’d use the wall to guide him at all? I had to assume he would. It was pitch dark. There was no way anybody could make it through this tunnel without following the wall.

  I reached my right hand out and crossed over to the other side. Then I lay down on the floor of the tunnel, trying very hard not to think of the multilegged things that lived in here. Just please, God, no spiders! I could handle anything but spiders. I lay down, horizontal, as close to the wall as I could get, and hoped that when Duran went by he would miss me.

  I got lucky. He, too, was using the left side of the tunnel. I could hear him as he went by me, his feet scuffing along, his breathing uneven. Then I heard a swoosh sound as the bat came darting through the air. He must have been swinging the bat randomly, thinking that I might be standing next to him. He never thought that I’d be on the ground.

  When he was past me, I stood up slowly and headed back toward the entrance of the tunnel, back toward the fishing shack, feeling my way along the wall as I went. I reached the steps sooner than I thought I would and tripped up them. I hit my chin on a step as I landed, and stars burst into view.

  Well, I said I wanted light. I had light.

  I lay there on the steps a few seconds, simply because I could not move. The combination of the hit to my chin and the fact that I couldn’t tell up from down finally took its toll. I vomited all over the stairs and myself. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that Duran was going to hear all the noise I was making and turn around and come back for me.

  The next thing I knew, the door to the tunnel opened, a light whipped by my eyes, and what seemed like a giant hand reached in and pulled me out. “Torie?”

  It was Rudy.

  Rudy?

  “What are you doing here?” I said. I climbed up the stairs with his help and collapsed onto him. Fear engulfed me. If Duran came back, he’d kill us both. Then my children wouldn’t have any parents. I immediately began crying, sobs ripping from me as I clung to his shirt. I could barely stand up. My paralysis was due more to fear than anything else.

  Rudy flashed the light at the forest floor, and two very large feet came into view. I followed them to find my stepfather standing there looking pissed off and menacing beyond belief. “Where is the son-of-a-bitch?”

  “He went down … the … tunnel,” I managed. “He’s headed for the house.”

  Colin spoke into his radio. “Newsome. He’s headed your way.”

  Thirty-One

  Saturday. The Strawberry Festival. The band played onstage. Tobias Thorley stood on the corner in his knickers that were too big for his little wiry body, playing his accordion and smiling his big toothy grin. The smell of Kettle Korn wafted through the air, mixing with the aromas of funnel cakes and cotton candy. Laughter. Cheering. Cash registers ringing.

  I stood on the steps of the Gaheimer House, unable to move.

  “Torie?” Colin said. My mother was with him, looking peaceful and radiant in her new red blouse, smiling up from her position in the wheelchair. It was a hopeful smile. Hopeful of what, I wasn’t sure.

  My sister stepped out of the building and stood next to me.

  “What?” I said to Colin.

  “Have you heard anything I said?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “They found that sapphire ring you were asking about, along with some antiques and a few other items, at Duran’s house,” he said. He handed the ring to me. “Will you be okay?”

  After placing the ring on my finger, I hugged myself close. I wasn’t sure I would ever be okay. “How did Duran know about the tunnel?” I asked.

  “Helen told him.”

  My eyes cut around and met his for the first time in our conversation. “Helen knew about the tunnel?”

  “Her grandmother found it when she worked for Sylvia. Evidently, she told Helen about it, and Helen passed that knowledge on to a few people in a drinking game once. It was when she was very young.”

  I shrugged. I couldn’t believe I had never heard about the tunnel.

  “They, of course, didn’t know why the tunnel had been built. You figured that part out.”

&n
bsp; “Why didn’t Helen ever ask me about it?”

  “I guess she would have had to divulge a lot more to you if she had told you about the tunnel.”

  “So has Duran admitted to killing Sylvia?”

  “Torie, Sylvia died in her sleep. Duran said he never hurt her. He only tried to scare her a few times. A power thing. He got off on making the all-powerful Sylvia Pershing scared. He says he didn’t kill her,” he said.

  “And you believe him?” I asked.

  “The only way I can tell for certain is to exhume the body. Do you want to do that?”

  “No,” I said. “I guess not.”

  “She was old. She died. And apparently the assault that she endured back in the seventies was totally unrelated to this. Sylvia had enemies.”

  And how.

  Would I end up like that? Hated by everybody?

  I looked down at the ground. “Mom?”

  “Yeah?” There I went, doing what Mary did to me all the time. I couldn’t speak to her without saying, “Mom?” first.

  “The other day, when we were at Pierre’s, you gave me the funniest look when Sally Huber came up to the table. Why?”

  Mom looked away and then back at me. “How long have you known Sally Huber?”

  “Forever. We used to play in the sandbox together. I was with her when they found her dog dead by the river. We sat at the same table at prom. Why?”

  Mom smiled at me. Not a condescending smile, but not a happy smile, either. “Then why did you sit up straight, wipe your mouth, and act so professional when she came over to the table?”

  “I … I didn’t realize I did.”

  “Yes, you did. It’s because you own her house now. You’re her landlady. You expected her to treat you differently, so you treated her differently right off the bat. You didn’t give her a chance. You intimidated her,” she said. “I just thought it was funny. You know, Sylvia did the same thing.”

  The breath caught in my throat. I glanced at Stephanie.

  “I’ll see you at dinner,” Mom said. “Colin and I want to take you guys to Ye Olde Train Depot for dinner. Our treat.”

  “All right,” I said and looked down at the sapphire ring on my finger.