Killing Cousins

by Rett MacPherson

  Just the thought that I would be helping him to retire made me much more agreeable. “Okay…”

  “Well, I put a bid in on this one estate. It was a doozy. Do you know who Catherine Finch was?” he asked. He was holding a clear plastic cup filled with beer in his left hand and fixing his boutonniere with his right.

  “You got that estate?” I asked, impressed.

  “What a coincidence,” Colette added.

  “Coincidence?” the sheriff asked. “What do you mean by that?”

  “My next project for the Historical Society is writing a biography of her,” I said.

  He looked a little uneasy but went ahead with what he was going to say. “Yes. Well, evidently she was a famous singer back in the twenties,” he said and smiled. “She’s been dead for five years, but her estate has been held up in court this whole time. Just the fact that some of the objects were hers should bring in huge money when I resell them.”

  See, that’s the problem with the antique business. How could he resell them? I couldn’t bring myself to do it. When I buy something, it gets incorporated into my family heirlooms. How can people sell antiques? Everything old should be kept. “What do you need me to do?” I asked.

  “I need you to go in and start throwing out the junk and cataloging the good stuff. You know…you can throw out her toaster and her toothbrush, for crying out loud.”

  “Why can’t this wait for you to get back?” I asked. It sounded to me as if he just wanted somebody else to do the dirty work for him. I did realize that getting into her house and having access to her personal belongings would give me an immense edge in writing her biography. But if I didn’t put up some sort of fight, Colin would worry about me.

  “Because I didn’t buy the house. Only the stuff inside. The house and the land is to be sold and split between her heirs, and they had to fight five years just to get that. No personal item of hers is to go to her heirs. Anyway, I think the house already has a buyer. Somebody here in town. They want it as soon as possible. How was I to know this was going to happen just as I was going to Alaska?”

  “Yeah, right. You planned this,” I said with a smile.

  “Torie,” he said plainly.

  “Of course, I’ll do it,” I said and held my hands up.

  “Great. If you could just throw out the junk and try to put everything in one room. Have Rudy move the furniture for you. And catalog it as you go,” he said.

  “Yes, I can do that,” I said. “I can take the kids with me.”

  A grave look crossed his face. “Don’t let Mary climb on anything.”

  “I won’t.” As if that were the most preposterous notion in the world.

  “I’ll give the key and directions to Rudy, since he has pockets. And thanks,” he said. “I appreciate this.”

  Hey, what are stepdaughters for, right? “I don’t need directions. I know exactly where it is.”

  “This biography…” he started.

  I could tell by the look on his face that somehow he thought my writing a biography of Catherine Finch would interfere with his estate. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, I thought the two tasks would aid each other. I was itching to get started.

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing,” he said. He walked away to find my mother, and then the music started up.

  Colette placed her hand on my shoulder and started walking me toward the dance floor. “You know, you’ve got what, ten or fifteen years before Rachel gets married? This may be the last time you get to dance at a family member’s wedding for a long time.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Maybe they’ll play some Village People,” she said, smiling.

  “I’m more in the mood for Rage Against the Machine.”

  But there would be no Rage Against the Machine. The DJ started up with “Devil in a Blue Dress.” Colette smiled from ear to ear, showing all of her pearly whites, and said, “It’s not Rage Against the Machine.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh, like that’s a surprise.”

  “So,” she said as she grabbed my hands and yanked me hard. “Let’s boogie!”

  Two

  “It was a good time,” Rudy said in the car on the way home.

  It would only take two or three minutes to get home, we lived just a few blocks from the KC Hall. Which was good, since it was one in the morning. I smelled dampness in the air, which happens a lot when you live right next to a river. But this smelled like rain in the distance. The storm would cover miles before reaching us. “Yes, it was,” I said. “A beautiful wedding and a happy reception.”

  “I want somebody else to get married soon,” Mary said. “That was fun.”

  “Well, we’ll see if we can’t get somebody to get married just so you can have a party,” Rudy said. He took something out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Here’s the key for the Finch house.”

  “Did you buy a birdhouse, Mom?” Rachel asked from the backseat. Rachel, who usually acted much older than her almost ten years, could still ask some pretty childish questions. And it never ceased to amaze me how she could hear the smallest details of a conversation that had nothing to do with her—in another room, even—and yet failed to hear me when I told her to take out the trash.

  “No, Rachel. The Finch house is the Catherine Finch house. Not a house for finches.”

  “Who’s Catherine Finch?” she asked.

  “An old woman who used to live in that big mansion just south of town.”

  “Oh, with that big rock fence all around it?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Why do you have the keys?”

  “Because I have to go in and separate her things for your new grandpa to sell,” I said. “She died and he bought her estate.”

  “Oh.” She was quiet a beat. “You mean you’re going to go into that big empty house and go through a dead lady’s stuff?”

  I hadn’t thought of it that way. Rudy turned into the drive of our own story-and-a-half brick house. “Yeah,” I said. “That’s exactly what I’m going to have to do. I was going to take you guys with me.”

  “No way,” Rachel said. “Take Mary. Maybe a ghost will eat her.”

  “Nuh-uh,” Mary chimed in. “Ghosts can’t eat people.”

  “Nobody is going to eat anybody,” I said, as Rudy turned off the car. “We’re home. Don’t leave anything in the car.”

  “I’ll get Matthew,” Rudy said. I had forgotten how with a baby it took twenty extra minutes just to get in the house and an extra half hour just to leave it. Just packing a diaper bag took more time than I was willing to give up in a day. So I packed it on Sundays and just replaced whatever I used from it throughout the week.

  “You think your mom will enjoy Alaska?” Rudy asked as I unlocked the front door.

  “She hates bears.”

  “And snow.”

  “It’s August. There probably isn’t any snow. I’m sure she’ll have a good time just because she’s with Colin. And, you know, that’s really all that matters,” I said as I felt around for the light switch. I found it, flipped it on and, as I entered my empty house, I was hit full force with the fact that I would never come home to my mother in my house again. I stopped for a second, allowing myself a moment of selfishness.

  I walked into the kitchen, threw the diaper bag on the kitchen table, and reached for a glass from the cabinet to get a drink. I poured myself a glass of milk and turned around to find something sitting on top of my stove. I walked over and found a pan of my mother’s apricot bars covered with Saran Wrap with a note placed on top of the pan. The note read: “So you won’t miss me too much. Love, Mom.”

  Apricot bars. My favorite. Oatmeal and brown sugar with lots of butter baked in and apricot preserves in the middle! Mmm mmm. I hadn’t had any of these since last year at Christmas. A tear came to my eye as I tore off the Saran Wrap and devoured one of the scrumptious bars in reflective silence.

  Rudy came into the kitchen with a satisfied loo
k on his face. “Matthew is sound asleep. Carrying him in didn’t wake him up, nor did the girls yakking and making noise. Hey, what are you eating?”

  “Apricot bars. My mom is the greatest,” I said, swallowing the last bite.

  “Ooooh, she made apricot bars? You are so spoiled it isn’t funny,” he said as he grabbed one for himself and started eating it. “So now what were you telling Rachel about the Finch estate?”

  I took a drink of milk, happy that he had changed the subject from my spoiled rottenness. “Well, if you can believe it, Colin won the bid on it. The problem is that the house has already been sold; he only gets the goodies inside. And evidently the buyer wants it cleared out fairly quickly, which Colin can’t do if he’s in Alaska. The good thing is, Sylvia came up to me and asked me to write a small biography on Catherine Finch. She’s wanting to write individual volumes on the famous people of our county and some of the landmark places to deposit in libraries. A small press, small print run, so I can sort of kill two birds with one stone.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “I mean, I’m going to be all alone in the woman’s house. How many biographers get complete solitary access to the house and belongings of their subjects? Not too many. This should help me a lot,” I explained.

  “Huh,” was all he said and reached for another apricot bar. “Is Sylvia paying you extra for this biography, or is she just going to pay you a weekly salary?”

  “Probably just my usual weekly salary,” I said.

  “How many famous people came from Granite County?” he asked. “I didn’t even know who Catherine Finch was until she died.”

  “I dunno. Let’s see…there’s that one actor who was always in all those bad B horror movies.”

  “Oh, him,” Rudy said and smiled. “Yeah, I forgot all about him.”

  “Don’t give me any crap,” I said, eyeing the apricot bars, trying to decide if I wanted another one. Well, of course, I wanted another one. I just knew I shouldn’t have another one. “I can’t remember his name right now. Oh, and Judge Vogt.”

  “Oh yeah, forgot about him.”

  “And…and…Hope Danvers.”

  “The governor? She’s from Granite County?”

  “Yes, and I just saw a sign earlier this week that she’s going to run for senator.”

  “Huh. Well, I’ll be. Anybody else?” Rudy asked.

  “Yeah, but I can’t remember who they are. One became a famous architect. And then there was this woman…Eve something-or-other; she moved to London and became a writer.”

  “All from little old Granite County. Who would have thought it?”

  I decided to eat another apricot bar after all and hoped that Rudy wouldn’t notice. “I can’t help but wonder who bought the house. You know—Catherine Finch’s house? Why are they in such a hurry?”

  “Oh, Bill bought the house.”

  I knew my face must have changed colors. “Bill. Bill Castlereagh? Our Bill? Bill, the mayor of New Kassel, whose yard backs up to ours? That Bill?”

  “Yeah. Why do you sound so shocked?”

  “Well…well…I guess for one reason, I didn’t realize Bill had that kind of money that he could just go and buy…Have you seen the Finch estate, Rudy? It’s not a house—I mean, it’s an estate. It’s huge. It’s three stories. The rock fence must travel a good mile. I don’t really know how much land goes with it. There are outbuildings…I mean…come to think of it, I don’t know how Colin could have afforded to beat everybody else’s bid for the contents of the estate.”

  “Maybe he made really good investments,” Rudy said. “It’s not that hard, if you invest young, to get a good payoff in your forties. And he’s never had a wife or kids or anything to spend his money on. He just puts that sheriff’s check in the bank, and one day, boom, he’s got a nice little nest egg.”

  “I guess so,” I said, setting my glass in the sink, wondering why that strategy hadn’t worked for us.

  “Don’t go getting all snoopy on my father-in-law,” he said. “By the way, I have two now. Do I have to go fishing with both of them?”

  “Oh, like anybody is twisting your arm to make you go fishing,” I said.

  Rudy laughed and leaned forward and kissed me.

  “Why would Bill buy the Finch house? Why would he want to, and how could he afford to?” I asked.

  “That’s it. I kiss you and you ask about how Bill can or can’t afford…Why do you think of Bill when I kiss you?” he asked.

  “I was thinking of Bill before you kissed me,” I said. Rudy had never learned that my mind never stops thinking. It never winds down. You ask a guy what he’s thinking about when he’s staring off into the distance, and if he says nothing, then that is exactly what he is thinking about. If you ask a woman and she says nothing, she’s lying. “How do you know that Bill bought the house? Who did you hear it from?”

  “Lord, I hate it when you interrogate me. I always feel like I’m snitching on my friends,” he said.

  “You are snitching on your friends. So which one of your friends did you hear it from?” I asked.

  “What if I don’t feel like telling you?” he said and put his hand on his hip.

  “Fine. Good night. I’m going out to the Finch house early tomorrow.” I headed up the steps to our bedroom.

  “That’s it? Fine? You just give up?” he asked, following me. “That’s not like you. Are you feeling okay?”

  “I’ll find out sooner or later. If you want to play that way, I can go along,” I said, sounding more peeved than I really was. In fact, I knew I could find out with no trouble at all, so if Rudy didn’t want to tell me it wasn’t that big of a deal. It was just fun to play along.

  “It was Chuck. Chuck said that he’d heard from Elmer that the mayor had bought the Finch estate because of some project he had planned.”

  We reached the top of the steps. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me. Besides, if it went through that many people, it might not be that reliable.”

  “Chuck doesn’t lie.”

  “Unless it’s about his ex-wife,” I said. “Whom he hates with a passion.”

  “He has reason,” Rudy said, getting undressed.

  “Well, whatever. I’m just saying that by the time the story gets through the fourth or fifth person, there’s usually only a grain of truth left to it. I’ll find out on my own,” I said.

  “Sometimes I don’t know about you,” he said, rolling his eyes.

  “Yeah, well, hush up and come over here and undo my buttons on this godforsaken peach fluffy thing my mother calls a dress,” I said.

  Rudy came over and stood behind me for a minute. “There are no buttons on this dress.”

  “I know,” I said and turned around and kissed him.

  Three

  Sunday morning broke with brilliant sunshine and a barge creeping up Old Man River. I rolled out of bed, took a shower, made breakfast—even though I was reminded by my children that my pancakes were not as good as my mother’s and my eggs were too done—and got the kids dressed. Then I returned to my gingham blue bedroom upstairs and to my computer. Rachel and Mary went outside to ride their bikes, and Rudy and Matthew were downstairs watching the pre-pre-game show to some sporting event.

  I had recently broken down and jumped on the information highway. I now understood the addiction to the Internet. It was incredibly convenient, and I could e-mail all of my scattered family for nothing, rather than pay the long-distance phone bills. Being the researcher that I am, I found the endless access to information (on any number of subjects) just too enticing to ignore. While doing research, I’d connected with people from branches of my family tree that I’d never even known existed. One man even sent me a scanned photograph of one of my great-great-grandparents whom I’d never seen a photograph of before. Amazing. And I had no idea at all how any of it actually worked. I just pressed this button and that button, and that’s all I needed to know.

  And yet there was still a part
of me that really liked the personal touch of the handwritten letter, something that could be kept forever.

  I logged on and that stupid voice declared, “You’ve got mail.” I could see the little flag. I knew I had mail without the moronic voice telling me so. I looked to see whom it was from. Colette sent a Web address on postpartum depression to check out. I deleted it. My cousin in Colorado sent me an e-mail telling me all about her eighteen hours of labor. Luckily, Matthew had only taken about six hours to bring into the world. A friend of Rudy’s sent something, and there was a note from Rudy’s sister. As much as I have become accustomed to the Internet, since most of these people lived within a few miles, I had to ask myself the question: Doesn’t anybody use the damn phone anymore?

  I went to Google and typed in “Catherine Finch.” Of course there were sites that weren’t for my Catherine Finch, so I typed “singer” after her name. It brought up a few different Web sites, and I printed out the relevant pages. I didn’t really have time to stop and read them right now. I would do it later. While the pages were printing, I got my camera together and found my notebook and pen. Once I had printed out what looked like about forty pages’ worth of information from several different sites, I logged off, turned off the computer and went downstairs.

  I grabbed my keys, slipped on the sandals that were sitting by the door, and kissed Rudy and Matthew each on the head.

  “What about dinner?” Rudy asked before I made it out the door.

  “What about it?”

  “What are we having? Should I lay something out?”

  “We’ll go to Chuck’s for pizza.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  Before I could make it out of New Kassel on this postcard-perfect August day, Eleanore Murdoch stopped me in the middle of the road, as she had a habit of doing. She just walked out into the middle of the road and then waited for me to roll down the driver’s-side window.

  “You know, Eleanore, I have an office in this town. A home, a telephone and e-mail. Why must you insist on stopping me in the middle of the road?”