Family Skeletons: A Spunky Missouri Genealogist Traces A Family's Roots...And Digs Up A Deadly Secret

by Rett MacPherson

  I think the sheriff was simply thinking out loud to himself, rather than asking me directly, but I decided to answer him just in case. “Normally, I might agree with your line of thinking. But Eugene Counts didn’t even know about Norah. He did not know that he had a child,” I answered.

  “How do we know he didn’t?” he asked with a “let’s get ’em” look.

  “Is that it? Case closed? A man doesn’t come home to his family after the war and that makes him a butcher of his own daughter?” I was furious with him, even though I secretly thought back to the newspaper ad that Norah had placed. Could he have seen it? Could he have known that she existed? But so what if he had seen the ad? Why kill her?

  Something in me wanted to find an excuse for Eugene.

  “What if he had a reason? Like some illegal reason. He didn’t want anybody to know where he was, and she found out?” Sheriff Brooke asked.

  “Then why move back to Missouri at all? Why not stay in Europe? Why not Florida or Arizona, where it’s warm all the time?” I argued.

  He looked at me as if I were the stupidest thing to walk on two feet.

  “What about the ex-husband?” I asked.

  “He’s clean,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “What you mean to say is, he is an untouchable,” I said as I started the engine. I slammed the car into reverse and then forward again once we were out in the street. I enjoyed watching his head snap back and forth.

  “I’m not stupid,” I said at the stop sign. “I’m very aware of who Zumwalt is.”

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Harold Zumwalt, of Zumwalt and Macklintock. A big-shot law firm, and I’m guessing you’ve been told to lay off.”

  The cars behind me had lined up, waiting for me to go. They were honking, so I obliged them. I gunned the car and watched Sheriff Brooke’s head snap back on the headrest once again.

  Grabbing the steering wheel, he pulled the car over to the shoulder. “You do that one more time,” he said with an eerie calmness, “and I will write you a list of citations as long as the Gettysburg Address.”

  “We know how you love to write citations that aren’t earned,” I snapped back.

  “What made you say that?”

  “Don’t pretend that you don’t remember giving me that ticket and throwing me in jail. Everything is so cut-and-dried to you.”

  “Not that, the other.”

  “What?”

  “About laying off of Zumwalt.”

  “A hunch,” I said.

  He glanced out the passenger window. His jaw worked nervously as he rubbed his thumb across his eyebrow. He pulled a piece of chewing gum out of his pants pocket. He must be trying to quit smoking, I decided.

  “I wasn’t told to lay off,” he said, aggravated. “But I did receive a very nasty phone call from his lawyers, stating that he had an alibi for the day and night before. And not to push things any further.”

  “Why would they do that?” I asked.

  “That doesn’t matter. It’s the fact that Zumwalt’s name arouses many different people from many walks of life. I have to be careful with him until I can prove something beyond a doubt.”

  “So the part about him being a hermit isn’t exactly the truth, is it?”

  “Actually, he is a recluse socially. He never goes out any more than necessary, unless it is job related.”

  I was suddenly hit with hunger pains, and my stomach growled on cue. I was happy that Sheriff Brooke had shared information from the case with me. I wasn’t stupid though. I knew that there were all sorts of tidbits that I would never be made privy to. I also knew that the little bit of information that he’d just told me wasn’t something “top secret” or desperately important to catching a killer. “What reason would he have to kill her?” I asked finally.

  He thought a moment and then answered. “None.”

  I doubted that, but I left it alone anyway. Beggars can’t be choosers, and if he didn’t want to elaborate on his thoughts where Zumwalt was concerned, I certainly couldn’t force him. Mr. Zumwalt was indeed a powerful man with long arms.

  In ten minutes, we were on Highway 44 and on our way home.

  Eight

  I stood on the small swell of the River Point Road levee. The Mississippi had doubled in size in the past two weeks. We were in big trouble.

  “I’ve never seen it quite this high,” a voice said.

  I glanced over my shoulder to see Chuck Velasco leaning on his shovel. He is a good old boy, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. He wears cowboy boots, always. I’ve never seen him in a pair of tennis shoes. He had on Levi’s and a muscle shirt. I, on the other hand, was dressed in tennis shoes and shorts, and a T-shirt that advertised a local radio station. Chuck is about thirty-five, with reddish hair and brown eyes. He is the owner of Velasco’s Pizza, and we’ve known each other since we were kids.

  “Can’t say that I have either,” I said.

  Shovels pierced the piles of sand directly behind me. The swish sound that they made seemed to flood my ears. See, we in the community of New Kassel were in particularly irritated moods. We had a lot to lose if the levee broke. Not just our homes, but our livelihoods. Our entire town was a commodity.

  We didn’t have a whole lot of breathing room either. My home, half a dozen others, the Murdoch Inn, the Birk/Zeis Home, Ye Olde Train Depot, and the Old Mill Stream were separated from the waters of the Mississippi by River Point Road and the levee.

  And so we sandbagged. Sheriff Brooke sandbagged just two feet away from me.

  “Where’s Rudy?” Chuck asked me.

  “He’s down at Ye Olde Train Depot, bagging his heart away,” I said.

  “Well, let’s give some of these people a break,” Chuck said.

  Sylvia and Wilma were foremen of the sandbagging project. They stood close by on the porch of the Murdoch Inn.

  Chuck filled the bags with sand, and I carried them over to the sandbag wall and piled them on. An hour later we switched. I filled and he carried. The blisters on my feet were burning, but not nearly as much as the blisters on my hands. My neck was tense, and I felt like the Hunchback of Notre Dame from being in a bent position too long.

  “I sure am glad my house is on a hill,” I said to Chuck.

  “Yeah. You probably won’t have to bag there at all. If the water gets up that high, I’m building me an ark.”

  “Victory!” Sylvia yelled. “Don’t fill the bags too full.”

  “Yes, Sylvia.” Why did it seem like those were the two words I spoke the most?

  “If that old biddy doesn’t shut up I’m going to shove a sandbag right up—”

  “Chuck,” I said. “No need in getting violent.”

  Chuck is about the nicest guy in the whole town, except when it comes to Sylvia Pershing. He, like many of the townspeople, has no patience or tolerance for her. It always seems as if I am interceding on her behalf.

  “She really gripes me,” Chuck said as he glared at Sylvia standing on the porch of the Murdoch Inn.

  “If it weren’t for Sylvia Pershing, this town would be just a sorry river town, with no commerce whatsoever and nothing to be proud of,” I said.

  “Humph,” he responded as he carried off a bag and placed it on top of the others. There were at least fifteen other baggers at the Murdoch Inn. They were all moaning as well. Chuck came walking back. “What makes her be such a sourpuss? Wilma isn’t like that.”

  “Well,” I said as I pushed my shovel into the sand pile, “I’m not sure. But she is pretty much single-handedly responsible for this town. She took her own money and restored all of these buildings. I can even remember her giving loans to people to start businesses in them.”

  He shrugged as I filled the bag he held open. “But the really great part is, she didn’t charge anybody interest on those loans. All you had to do was pay her back, exactly what you borrowed. And I can name at least seven people that she helped in that way,” I said. I stopped to lean on my
shovel and wipe the sweat from my brow on my T-shirt.

  The baggers got rather quiet and stopped shoveling. I turned around and saw why. Deputy Newsome was headed, as determined as he could possibly look, toward the sheriff.

  I glanced up at the porch of the Murdoch Inn. It is the only bed-and-breakfast in the town, and one of the most gorgeous buildings. Only about a hundred years old, it was built in the early 1890s, with two turrets and a wraparound porch that is adorned with latticework and spiral decorations. It is white with two stories, and an attic that houses the two most adorable rooms in the whole building.

  However, all I could see at the moment was Sylvia’s glare as she watched Sheriff Brooke put down his shovel and prepare to speak with his deputy.

  It had been a week since Brooke and I visited with Louise Shenk, and I’d done nothing with the photos or information she’d given me. I had heard through the grapevine that the sheriff had a few other important things to do and that he’d put Deputy Newsome on the case doing his footwork. I wondered when Sheriff Brooke was going to visit Eugene Counts and if he would take me along. Probably not, I thought to myself. If I wanted to talk to Eugene, I’d have to go by myself.

  “Hello, Colin,” Deputy Newsome said.

  “What is it, Newsome?” the sheriff said with a nod.

  “I got some news for you,” Newsome said.

  The sheriff looked around and saw Sylvia giving him the evil eye, and decided that Newsome could tell him what he wanted right there. I must admit that I was relieved at this, because I was hoping to overhear a bit of it.

  Everybody else went back to what they were doing, and Sylvia came off the porch to stand at the foot of the steps, hoping to get within hearing distance as well. Is this where I was headed? Someday would I take over Sylvia’s throne? I’d have to work on the scowl.

  “Zumwalt had a seven-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar life insurance policy on Norah,” the deputy said to the sheriff.

  I dropped the shovel, then tried desperately to recover it and pretend as though I’d dropped it from fatigue only. Sheriff Brooke gave me a funny look, but said nothing. It was incomprehensible. Could it be that simple? Could Zumwalt have killed her for the insurance money?

  “Before or after?” Sheriff Brooke asked as I picked up the shovel.

  “Before or after what?” Deputy Newsome asked.

  “The divorce. When was the policy taken out?” the sheriff asked.

  “Years before the divorce,” Newsome answered. He sounded disappointed.

  “He could have been biding his time. You know, so nobody would get suspicious,” Brooke said.

  “Oh, and the information on John Murphy,” Newsome stated.

  “Yeah?”

  I was about ready to say “Yeah?” along with the sheriff. I hate it when people dangle their sentences like that.

  “He’s some sort of broker or something. I don’t know anything about those types of jobs,” the deputy said, annoyed. “But the really interesting thing is, he doesn’t have an alibi for the last two days of the week when Norah was killed. He got back in town on Wednesday from a business trip and wasn’t seen again until Saturday morning at his golf course. But something else—he and Norah both had life insurance policies on each other.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right. The only problem is that they aren’t worth very much. I can’t believe a man like John Murphy would kill Norah for fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Victory! Get moving!” Sylvia yelled.

  I jumped. I had forgotten that I was supposed to be filling the bag with sand, so involved was I in what Deputy Newsome was saying to the sheriff.

  “Right, okay,” I said, and complied. I wondered what he meant when he said a man like John Murphy.

  Deputy Newsome sighed. “He’s a regular average guy who makes a comfortable living,” he stated. It was as if he’d heard me. “He happens to be an upstanding citizen. Not even a traffic violation. What I’m trying to say is, I could see this guy snapping for some reason and killing Norah. But not for fifty thousand dollars. It would have to have been personal.”

  “Maybe he was in debt with the wrong kind of people, and the only way he could think to get the money was from the insurance policies.”

  The sheriff hoisted a bag onto his shoulder and carried it over to the rapidly growing wall. The deputy followed him, and I had no idea what they said to each other for at least a minute. When the sheriff returned to his pile of sand, Deputy Newsome said, “If he’s in debt, it’s the kind that’s off the record. His credit history is better than mine.”

  “Why have the insurance policies at all?” the sheriff asked.

  “He says that whoever died first, between them, was to use the money to bury the other one in the fashion that they had already discussed. The policies didn’t need to be very large just for that.” He swiped at the fast-accumulating sweat on his brow. “Seems that her kids didn’t want to conform to her burial wishes, and he had no children.”

  Sheriff Brooke looked up suddenly and waved over my shoulder. I turned around to see Rudy walking up behind me, exhausted and just as sweaty as I was. Rudy waved back.

  “So the money was just to bury each other with?” Brooke asked.

  “Looks like it. At least that’s the story that John Murphy is telling me.”

  “Then why wasn’t he at the funeral? Not only does he not take control of her funeral arrangements, he doesn’t even show up at the funeral.”

  Exactly what I had been thinking.

  Rudy kissed me on the cheek. He tried not to get too close. His sweat glands were working overtime. Missouri is one of the muggiest places in the United States. Nobody can visit here in the summer and not sweat buckets.

  “I asked him that, too,” the deputy said. “He claims—this is the part that is too hard to believe—he claims that he was not informed of Norah’s death until everything was done and over with.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  They both looked over at me, now aware of my eavesdropping.

  “Wow, it sure is hot,” I said, trying to recover. I don’t think it worked.

  The sheriff looked me right in the eye then and asked, “Anything new on the family-tree side of things?”

  “Hmm? Oh, no. Not yet,” I said, my mind elsewhere.

  “Well, I think I might do some off-the-record digging on Mr. Zumwalt,” he said as he turned back to Deputy Newsome. He lowered his voice a bit. “I think he is my best target at the moment.”

  “All right,” Newsome said. “I’m gonna send some people over from Wisteria to help you guys sandbag.”

  “You do that,” the sheriff said.

  “I’m exhausted,” I said to Rudy. “Let’s go home and take a shower.”

  “Sounds heavenly,” Rudy said to me.

  “See ya later, Chuck. I’m going home.”

  Chuck smiled and nodded his head. At the last minute he added, “Rudy, come down and get a beer later.”

  Rudy nodded affirmative to him and I handed my shovel over to somebody on the sidelines who was refreshed. I had thought that there was a point when I was so exhausted that my mind would stop reeling. Evidently I hadn’t reached it yet, because I kept wondering about the question the sheriff had asked me: Anything new on the family-tree side of things?

  Nine

  I felt very accomplished. The chicken coop was finished. We had put a twelve-foot-high fence around the wooden building, leaving the chickens a nice courtyard to do whatever it is chickens do. We had sandbagged until I thought we would drop, and for now, the river was being held. I had even finished the marriage records that I’d been working on for Sylvia.

  I was standing in my office at home, staring at the box that Rita had given me. It contained, among other things, the letters from Eugene Counts. Since Louise had mentioned that he had a friend in the service, the letters took on new meaning. I began to scour them, looking for new names.

  Two hours later, my eyes were crossed and m
y neck was stiff, but I had found several references to a private named Mike Ortlander. I jotted the name on the cover of her file, in big black letters, so that I could do some checking on him later.

  Right now I smelled something cooking downstairs and I just had to go see what it was. If my nose was correct it was German chocolate cake.

  I passed the kitchen and noticed a Jane Austen novel on the table. Mother was reading nineteenth-century literature. This could mean only one thing: She was disturbed.

  The photos from Louise Shenk were on the table as well. I had debated taking them over to Rita, but somehow couldn’t part with them just yet.

  “Mom,” Rachel said. “Will you read me a story?”

  I started to say no, and realized that I had told the girls no on several occasions recently. The marriage records, the chicken coop, sandbagging, all had taken my time away from them. They wanted Mommy to pay special attention to them and it made me feel good.

  “Certainly. Get your sister, and bring me a really good book.”

  “Which one?” she asked, eyes all lit up.

  “You pick.”

  I cut three small pieces of cake and poured three large glasses of milk. Mary came running into the kitchen.

  “I want some cake, Mommy. Mommy, I want some cake,” she said.

  “Don’t worry. One of these pieces has your name on it.”

  She smiled from ear to ear. It’s a contagious smile. I can never be in the same room with her when she smiles, and not smile myself.

  Rachel came back in the kitchen, out of breath. “Here,” she said, and handed me the book. The Secret Garden. I should have known. It was the old standby, and even Mary would sit and listen, completely enthralled.

  “I’ll read it as soon as we have our snack. Then you have to go to bed.”

  I received crestfallen faces and a huge sad sigh. Children know that they have to go to bed every night, so I never have been able to understand why they are so upset when they find out that they have to go to bed.

  “Where’s Dad?” Rachel said.

  “Bowling. He should be home in a few minutes.”

  Mother came into the kitchen then. She had paint splatters on her face, which was a good indication that she had been out on the porch creating her latest masterpiece. She began painting a few years back, and was quite good at it. Sometimes, though, the canvas ends up in the trash can. I’ve told her that a temper tantrum is the true sign of genius. She just glares at me.