Killing Cousins

by Rett MacPherson

  “Also, on his wrist and his pelvic bone were what they think are burn marks. Where the baby was wearing something metal, which heated up and scarred the bone.”

  “Like a baby bracelet and a diaper pin,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  “So, what—did he die in a fire?”

  “No,” Sheriff Brooke said. “It looks as though he was hit by lightning.”

  I just sat there with my fork halfway up to my mouth. I blinked and blinked again. The nerve endings in my brain must not have been functioning or something, because I just wasn’t getting what he said.

  “When bodies are hit by lightning, they are exposed to intense heat. Heat you just can’t imagine,” he said. “The brain literally heats up so quickly that it expands and forces itself out of the skull. If they are wearing metal, it will imprint itself on the bone. And glassification or vitrification will occur in the bones. I can think of nothing else that would do all of these things. The baby in the wall was hit by lightning.”

  “But that makes no sense,” I said.

  “Sure it does.”

  “How did it get hit by lightning?” I think I had expected such a sinister fate to have befallen Byron that when the sheriff said it was a natural disaster it just took me by surprise.

  “Think about it, Torie. It was storming that night. So severely that one of the guests wouldn’t stay to have a drink and left early.”

  “Oh my God,” I said. “That’s right.”

  “You said that you read somewhere that Byron was wearing a baby bracelet,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I think it is Byron. In fact, I am so sure of it that I’m ready to announce it,” he said.

  “Whoa, whoa, wait. Before you go announcing anything, just wait.”

  “Why?” he asked, with a surprised look on his face.

  “Because, whether that baby was hit by lightning or not, somebody still put him in that wall. Somebody still kidnapped him. And somebody killed Patrick Ward. I just wonder if it’s a good idea to tip your hand just yet. You know, hitting people with that bit of news in an interview can get you a million-dollar reaction. If they already know that he’s been found, they’ll be prepared for it.”

  “I agree, but there’s one thing.”

  “What?”

  “The reporters already know that there’s been a baby found. Whoever our suspects are, the culprit, if he or she is still alive, already knows he’s been found,” Colin said.

  I thought about that. “Yeah, you’re right. But what did you mean if they’re still alive?”

  “It happened a long time ago. People do die, you know,” he said.

  “Well, yeah. There’s that.”

  “Whatsa matter with you?” he asked. “You’re a little slow today, Torie.”

  “I think I was just so expecting Byron to have been intentionally murdered that I just can’t get my brain to wrap around what you’re saying. You’ve thrown me for a loop,” I said.

  “Excuses, excuses,” he said and smiled.

  “I can hit you now, can’t I? You’re related.”

  He just gave me that look that said, oh, yeah, let’s see you try it. I let it go. He could beat me up and I knew it.

  “Wow,” I said and shook my head. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Well, at least we know why there was never any demand for ransom. The baby died before they got a chance to ransom it,” he said.

  “You know, people ransom children and still end up killing them. I mean, nobody knew that Byron was dead,” I said.

  “So?”

  “So, what was to keep the kidnappers from ransoming him anyway, and then delivering a dead baby?” I asked.

  “Hmmm,” he said and took a sip of coffee. “What are you driving at?”

  “I think, based on who the suspects were, that there was never any intention of ransoming Byron,” I said.

  Twenty-Six

  Cecily Finch Todd lived in a big beautiful house on Butler Hill Road in south St. Louis County. Butler Hill was just about as far south as one could get and still be in St. Louis County. About a mile or two later you cross the Meramec River and travel into Jefferson County.

  I made a left onto the Butler Hill exit from Highway 55, crossed back over the highway and headed west. Passing the Schnucks Supermarket, the Burger King and the Taco Bell, I was immediately in a cozy neighborhood of one nice house after another. Within a minute I pulled into Cecily’s driveway. I sat there for a moment thinking about what to say. Like her sister Aurora, she did not know I was coming and I hadn’t a clue as to what to say to her. But I was banking on the fact that Aurora had probably phoned her to tell her about me. So, that might be a little chip in the ice that I was certain would greet me.

  She answered the door wearing a pair of tweed pants and a blouse with pastel seashells printed on it. She was taller and older than her sister. There was a resemblance between them, but only a slight one. It was one of those resemblances where if you put the two together you’d see it, but otherwise nobody would have reason to suspect that they were siblings. It made me wonder what Byron would have looked like if he had made it to adulthood.

  “If you’re with the National Enquirer, The Star, or any of those other trashy grocery-store tabloids,” she said with much venom, “no comment!”

  I was stunned at first, but then I had to giggle. “I don’t mean to laugh, but I’ve said nearly those same words several times in the last week.”

  Her eyes narrowed on me. “Why? Who are you?”

  “I’m Torie O’Shea. I work for the Historical Society in New Kassel, and my mother’s husband bought your mother’s estate.”

  “Oh,” she said. “My sister told me about you.”

  “I was hoping she would.”

  “The same goes for you. No comment,” she said and slammed the door.

  Hmmm. Ever the optimist, I knocked on the door again. “Please, Mrs. Todd!” I banged on the door and hoped with all my heart that she wouldn’t call the police and have me arrested. “Mrs. Todd. We’ve found your brother.”

  After a moment she opened the door. She stared at me through the glass of her storm door, eyes meeting mine and sizing me up. She opened the storm door and held it open for me, signaling for me to enter.

  Which I did, but not without my share of trepidation. People were crazy nowadays, you know. Big, heavy maroon drapes hung above the big picture window in the living room. On one end of the room hung a large gold mirror, with maroon and navy-blue flowers arranged above it. The carpet was the same navy blue. She did not offer me a seat.

  “What do you mean, ‘We’ve’ found your brother. Who’s ‘we’?”

  “My stepfather is also the sheriff of Granite County,” I said.

  “Colin married your mother?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “You know him?”

  “He went to school with my son. He spent many days in my basement and my backyard,” she said.

  I just blinked at her. A side to the sheriff I didn’t know. It seemed there were many, many sides. He was going to be the world’s first octagon person.

  “We lived in Wisteria until about 1960. Then we moved to St. Louis. Ten years later, we moved here,” she said.

  “I did not know that he knew you that well. He never mentioned it,” I said.

  “No. He probably wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be professional,” she said. “Colin was always like that. I knew he’d be in law enforcement, because he was always bugging the friends that he hung out with about obeying the rules and doing what was right.”

  “Yeah, sounds like Colin,” I said.

  “I read what the papers are saying about Byron, heard it on the news, and obviously had my share of reporters here hounding me. Phone calls at all hours. They haven’t really come out and officially said that the baby was Byron,” she informed me.

  “Oh,” I said. “I guess I sort of jumped the gun.” I wondered just how believable that actually sounded.r />
  Her hand went to her throat, where she reached for a necklace that wasn’t there. It was my bet that she normally wore a necklace of some sort that she fiddled with when she was nervous. “How do you know it’s him?”

  “Things in the autopsy,” I said, deliberately vague. “But, what I’m really here to talk to you about is your mother.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Sylvia Pershing has hired me to write a biography of her,” I said. “It will be issued by the Historical Society, published by one of the colleges. It’s her goal to have a set of biographies on notable people of Granite County.”

  “How is Sylvia?” she asked.

  “Good,” I said.

  “I was sad to hear the news about Wilma. She was a great lady. I can’t tell you how many times she’s baby-sat me or my sister,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I think Wilma baby-sat every child in New Kassel at one time or another.”

  “What is it you want to know?”

  She still hadn’t offered me a place to sit, nor had she made any motion to sit herself. I tried to remember some of the things I had mulled over in my mind to ask her. “Aurora mentioned that your mother became estranged from you sometime in the 1950s. That eventually you two had nothing more to do with her. What would make her behave that way?”

  “She’d spent fifteen or more of her adult years trapped in a nightmare. She’d forgotten how to live in the real world. Or to take joy in the things that were here,” she said. “Only disappointment in the things that were not.”

  “So Hector Castanza had nothing to do with it?”

  “Who?” she asked. She turned a little white around the mouth, but otherwise she did a great job of pretending she didn’t know who he was. But of course she didn’t know that Sylvia had told me all about him, so she couldn’t know that I knew that she knew darn good and well who Hector Castanza was. And to pretend that she didn’t just made it all the more obvious.

  “The man who tried to convince your mother he was Byron,” I said.

  “There were so many of them,” she said.

  “Yes, but your mother showered this one with gifts.”

  “Oh,” she said. “It’s been so long ago. I really don’t want to talk about this.”

  She put her hand on the doorknob and somehow I got the feeling that I wasn’t going to get much more out of her. Something caught my eye behind her, and I tried to peer over her shoulder without looking as if I was being nosy. It was a curio cabinet filled with porcelain and crystal fairies. There was part of her mother with her after all.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” I said. “I am curious about one thing, Mrs. Todd.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You haven’t asked what the autopsy results were.”

  “You already told me it was Byron.”

  “Yes, but you didn’t even ask what happened to him. Or how he was killed,” I said.

  “Does it matter?” she asked. “He was taken from us a long time ago and it changed our lives. For the worse. I don’t mean to sound cold, but I’m not sure that I really care after all this time. I mean, I wish he wasn’t dead. I wish he had never been kidnapped. But I can’t say that I want to know what happened to him.”

  “Oh,” I said. I’m so brilliant with my elaborate ability to speak that I surprise even myself. Oh. What kind of reaction was that?

  Cecily opened the door then and I knew if I didn’t have something intelligent to say to her that I would never get the chance again. “How did you know he was dead? You don’t seem surprised that he was found dead. It’s just hard to understand how you wouldn’t ask these questions.”

  “My sister and I, and our father, realized a long time ago what our mother never realized,” she said. “That more than likely Byron was dead.”

  “Why? It never occurred to you that somebody who wanted a child could have kidnapped him for their own?”

  “No, it didn’t.”

  “Oh,” I said again.

  “And after all these years, Mrs. O’Shea, I don’t really think they’ll ever be able to tell what happened to him. I don’t even understand how they can say it’s him without a doubt. I think the whole thing is preposterous. How can you identify a baby skeleton?”

  “It’s a matter of proximity, for one thing. He was found less than two miles from his home. The house that he was found in was under construction on the night of his disappearance. A diaper pin was found with him that matches the ones in his nursery,” I said.

  “His nursery? I don’t understand,” she said, reaching for that imaginary necklace again.

  “The nursery is intact. I’m cataloging your mother’s belongings for Colin. The diaper pins were in the third silver box from the left, on the silver tray,” I said. “And the one found with the skeleton matched.”

  She said nothing.

  “A fairy,” I said and pointed behind her to her own collection. “That is what was on each diaper pin.”

  She swallowed.

  “Your mother stated that she forgot to take off his bracelet, and there was a burn mark on his wrist bone that indicated he was wearing a bracelet when it happened,” I said.

  “When what happened?” she asked.

  “When he was struck by lightning,” I said.

  “White as a ghost” were the perfect words to describe Cecily Finch Todd. White and pasty and visibly disturbed. “Good day, Mrs. O’Shea.”

  “Good day, Mrs. Todd,” I said. “Don’t hesitate to call me if there’s something you need.”

  Twenty-Seven

  I let Cecily Finch Todd’s reaction to our conversation settle on me for a few days. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do about it. It almost seemed to me as if she had known Byron was hit by lightning—as if she knew, but never in a million years thought anybody would find out. Of course, that was just my opinion from watching her reaction. Maybe she had turned so white because it made her sick to think of her baby brother being hit by lightning. Really, it could go either way. And I had no reason to think that she knew other than that she had been in the house the night her brother disappeared.

  “In Catherine’s mind, since she was so thoroughly convinced that Hector was Byron, she believed that the only way Cecily and Aurora could be as thoroughly convinced that he wasn’t Byron was if they knew what really happened to him.” Sylvia’s words made sense in an odd sort of way.

  I was once again at the Finch estate, and I was now cataloging the second floor. I tagged the piano and documented it in the spiral notebook that I was keeping for Colin. There were quite a few pieces of large furniture that I made no attempt to move. I just tagged them and recorded them. It was late in the evening and I didn’t want to stop what I was doing because I had a great momentum going. As I got ready to leave what I had now dubbed as the piano room, I glanced at the photographs on the mantel of the fireplace. I picked up one of the empty boxes by the door and put all the photographs in it, intending to take them to Aurora Guelders as a sort of peace offering. It would also be an excuse to go there and see if I could get any sort of reaction to the lightning theory from her.

  I suppose it really was cruel of me. It was her brother, after all. But there was a part of me that believed that the sisters knew something. They knew something, I just couldn’t be sure of what.

  I was deep in thought and passing from room to room with the box in my hand when I heard a crash upstairs. I shrieked and nearly dropped the box of photographs. I stopped and listened for footsteps or any other indication of another human being in the house. I heard nothing.

  Then I remembered that Mary and Rachel had been here with me yesterday, and I just knew that Mary had gone back upstairs and probably left a window open. She seemed to be drawn to the nursery. I could hardly keep her out of it without threatening to take away all of her stuffed Tiggers. Which usually worked, but not until after she’d already gotten into something in the first place.

  I set the box down and went upstairs to
the third floor. I headed straight to the nursery because I just knew that was where Mary had been. Sure enough, the window was standing wide open and the wind flew in at a furious gust. It had knocked over a picture frame on the dresser. I picked it up and saw a clean crack running down the glass across the face of what I assumed to be Byron Lee Finch as a newborn.

  Lightning struck somewhere in the distance as a brief flash lit up the Illinois side of the Mississippi. The storm must have reached certain parts of Illinois before hitting us. Almost all our storms came from the southwest. Even so, long reaching arms of a curving storm could reach Illinois before certain parts of Missouri. The trees bent in the wind and the thunder boomed in the distance. It was still pretty far away.

  I decided to head home. Hopefully, I’d beat the storm.

  Before I could shut the window, another gust of wind came in and nearly knocked the mirror off the dresser. As it was, something fell and rolled across the floor. I shut the window quickly, cussing myself the whole time that I hadn’t shut it faster. Then I got down on all fours to look for whatever it was that the wind had knocked off the dresser.

  Funny how things look different from the floor. I noticed that the closet door wasn’t shut all the way. I crawled around on my hands and knees a bit longer until I was satisfied that whatever it was that had flown off the dresser had disappeared into that vortex that seems to exist. At least it exists in my house. It’s a dark place where somebody in another dimension finds the matches to my socks, the tape and all of my bookmarks that never seem to be in any of my books.

  I walked over and opened the closet door, which was actually more a storage area than a closet. It was only a few feet high and had a slanted roof. I realized that it was the entrance to the attic. Well, as much as I wanted to see what was in the attic, I sure as heck wasn’t going to do it on a night with a vicious storm brewing. We’d had several near misses with the weather lately. Storms that would brew up on the horizon but never actually hit us. I didn’t think we were going to be that lucky this time.

  As I turned around to leave, I noticed a panel that was loose on the floor just to the right of the door. Of course, I had to look at it closer. I know, I know. Torie O’Shea, confirmed nosy rosy. I’m sure I have some good qualities somewhere, I promise.