“Literary.”
“What?” she asked.
“You mean, literary details.”
“Whatever. Get on with it,” she said.
“There is nothing to tell.”
She noted something on her paper. “It’s all true. Your mother is having an affair with Sheriff Colin Brooke,” she said, quite pleased with herself.
“She is not having an affair, Eleanore. She’s divorced. He’s divorced. They are two free people. Therefore it’s not an affair. She is … his friend.”
“Well, I can’t very well print friend in my column. It’s boring,” she replied.
“But it’s the truth.”
“Torie, Torie, Torie,” she said. “This is journalism. Nobody wants the truth. Or at least if they do, they want a stretched-out, barely recognizable facility of the truth.”
“That’s facsimile, Eleanor. Facsimile of the truth.”
She was focused as she went on like a detective reciting the facts. “On the night of August thirtieth, your mother was seen in the presence of one Sheriff Colin Brooke, leaving the movie theater.”
“She was?” I asked. Sheriff Brooke is about twelve years younger than my mother. I think that I’m open-minded enough to get past the fact that my mother is involved in a May/December relationship. But Sheriff Brooke actually arrested me one time. I suppose what really bothers me is that my mother doesn’t seem to have the least bit of loyalty where this issue is concerned. Of course, I could be overreacting and being slightly childish, as my mother has so delicately brought to my attention on several occasions.
“Yes,” Eleanore said. “They were seen leaving the theater, just after seeing the new Sean Connery flick.”
Sean Connery? That could only mean one thing. Mother had left the theater with a rapid pulse and labored breathing and not at all in her right state of mind. It would have been a perfect opportunity for the sheriff to take advantage of her.
“Eleanore, I don’t care what facts you have to corroborate your column. I want a retraction. No beating around the bush. What my mother does is her own affair. It’s not to be exploited like in the Enquirer. It makes it seem as though she is doing something wrong. If you want a job on Hard Copy, go get one. If you ever print anything about another member of my family that is less than complimentary, or less than the truth, I’ll…”
“You’ll what?”
I wasn’t sure what I could do. “I’ll start my own column,” I said.
“But, Torie. That’s not fair. If I can’t write about your family that will severely limit my subject matter. You’re related to half of the town.”
“I am not,” I defended myself.
“Yes, you are,” she whined and stomped her foot gently.
“Just drop it. I mean it. I want a retraction.”
Just then the doors of the Murdoch Inn burst open. A very distressed Tobias Thorley swept past the shocked patrons and into the office.
“Torie,” he said. “You’ve got to find the sheriff,” he said to me.
“Calm down, Mr. Thorley. What’s the problem?”
Tobias is our resident accordion player. Every German tourist town has to have an accordian player. And he is quite good. He’s about seventy years old, spare as a scarecrow, with a large hook nose and kind blue eyes. He also has a great pair of legs that I’ve seen on many occasions when he wears his Bavarian knicker outfit.
“It’s Marie Dijon,” he said. “Ransford Dooley just found her at the foot of her basement steps. She’s dead.”
* * *
Nothing like a death to get people out of their houses.
I’d called 911 from the Murdoch Inn. The sheriff’s office is located in Wisteria, which is about ten miles southwest of New Kassel. It serves the entire county, which is filled with tiny towns, Wisteria being the largest at a population of about four thousand.
I arrived at the home of Marie Dijon, on the corner of Hanover Road and Hermann Road. It was directly across from the firehouse, catty-corner to the New Kassel Cemetery, and next door to Pierre’s Bakery on one side and a private residence on the other. It was a story and a half brick home, of no real grandeur, but nice nonetheless.
The paramedics brought out Marie Dijon’s body covered with a sheet. They put the gurney into the back of an ambulance and shut the door. At least half of the population of New Kassel was crammed onto the streets trying to get a glimpse of what was going on, though everybody kept their distance.
Deputy Edwin Duran looked around, saw a friendly face in the crowd, which just happened to be mine, and walked over.
“Hey, Torie,” he said. “You workin’?”
“What?” I asked, confused. Then I remembered the clothes. “Oh, well, I just finished up and hadn’t changed my clothes yet.” I received no strange looks from the people in the crowd. They were used to seeing me like this.
“Who called this in?” he asked.
Why did he automatically think that I’d know who called this in? Of course I did, but that’s not the point. I suppose I have sort of developed a reputation of knowing everything that transpires in New Kassel.
“I did.”
“Did you find her?” he asked.
“No. Ransford Dooley found her. He’s really shook up. He’s over at the firehouse with Elmer.”
Edwin is a few years older than I am. That would put him at about thirty-five. He has a thin, dark mustache, with hair of the same color, piercing blue eyes, and large ears. He looks spiffy in his deputy’s uniform. I remember when he was the all-star quarterback for Meyersville High. New Kassel pounded them into the ground every time we played them.
“Is he ever going to retire?” Edwin said.
“Elmer? He’s been the fire chief forever. He says he’s going to retire but he never does.”
“He’s been saying it for about ten years now,” Edwin said with a smile.
“I know. Poor guy.”
Edwin glanced around at the crowd. “I swear,” he said as he shook his head. “You could put dancing midgets on hot pink rubber balls, breathing fire and nailing spikes up their noses, and it wouldn’t bring out the kind of crowd that one simple dead body brings.”
“True.” He was right. What more could I add to that? “So? What’s it look like?” I asked.
“What? The body? Oh, she just fell down the steps. Older people do that.”
“Marie Dijon was not that old,” I challenged.
“How old was she? I don’t know that much about her.”
“She just moved here about two years ago. I’d say she’s in her mid-fifties. That’s not incredibly old, you know.”
“People lose their balance all the time and fall. There was no forced entry, no sign of a struggle. She just fell down the steps. She was still in her nightclothes.”
“Where was she when Mr. Dooley found her?”
“All the way at the bottom. Her neck was all twisted around so that you could see her face even though she was on her stomach. Wasn’t pretty, I’ll tell you that.”
“Hmph,” was all I said. I thought for a moment. “Her nightclothes? Do you mean, pajamas, or pajamas with a housecoat and slippers?”
“She had on a housecoat, one slipper was on her foot and the other one was found about midway down the steps. Why?”
I didn’t get a chance to answer him. Just then Sheriff Colin Brooke pulled up in his yellow Festiva. The Lone Ranger rides again. He got out, took one quick look at me, and hit himself in the forehead with his open palm.
The sheriff is fortyish, has sandy hair and blue eyes. He gives the impression of being a big strapping boy. In fact he is about six feet. He rarely seems to be in uniform. I usually see him in jeans and T-shirt. He has muscular arms, and looks ticked off all the time. Well, at least around me he looks ticked off all the time. I don’t know what his problem is. After all, I did solve a case for him. One in which I lost a tooth and had to have a bridge put in.
“Torie, what the hell are you doing here?”<
br />
Edwin looked a little taken aback by the sheriff’s demeanor and decided to stick up for me. “Well, she called in the nine-one-one.”
Brooke stared at me for the longest time, and I knew what he was thinking before he even said it. Finally, when he could stand holding his tongue no longer, he said, “Please, tell me that you did not find this body.”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t.”
“Ransford Dooley found the body, Sheriff,” Edwin said.
“Where were you?” I asked. “We wanted you to come riding up on your gallant steed and save the city.”
“I was at your house,” he answered me. “Having lunch with your mother.”
I glanced around nervously and could see Eleanore Murdoch with her stupid notepad and her stupid pen standing on the edge of the pavement. Just what I needed. Surprisingly, almost every face that I found in the crowd was a native of New Kassel. I couldn’t see one tourist.
“You don’t have to announce it to the whole town,” I said.
“Hey, everybody!” he yelled, as if he were going to shout it to the town.
I didn’t find him amusing. I slugged him a good one just under his rib cage and he shut up, but not before having a really hearty laugh at my expense.
“Jerk,” I mumbled.
All the while, Edwin watched us, unsure of what to do. I wanted to tell him that the sheriff and I were basically teasing each other. Basically.
“Edwin,” he said. “Do not under any circumstances let Mrs. O’Shea know any of the details pertaining to the death of Ms. Dijon,” he said.
Edwin swallowed and looked at his feet.
“Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, of course.”
Too late now. But what the sheriff doesn’t know won’t hurt him. I decided to slip out of the circus quietly and walk home. From Marie’s house all I had to do to get home was walk a few blocks east on Hanover, hang a left on River Point Road, and a few houses later I would be home.
I was happy that I had decided to walk home because it gave me time to think. So far in all of this mess, I hadn’t thought about the one person who had lost her life on this day and that was Marie Dijon. I can’t say that I knew Marie intimately, but I knew her as well as you could know an acquaintance in a couple of years’ time. I had spoken to her on several occasions and I believe she was even at the opening of our museum this summer.
I did not know anything about her of a personal nature. She was not a native of New Kassel, and in a town where three-quarters of the population is native, the nonnatives stick out. I would go so far as to say that she was not from this region of the state at all, quite possibly not even Missouri.
I’d never seen a guest of any kind at her home and never heard her speak of a family member. That was the most tragic part of all, I thought. Nobody would mourn her passing.
Two
My husband, Rudy O’Shea, sat down on the edge of the bed and I studied him for a moment. He can be loud and obnoxious, but not nearly as much as I can be, so I try not to harp on it. He’s naive and a genuine all-around good guy. He’s only about five feet ten, which goes well with my five feet two, and he has chocolate brown eyes with a long face.
He’s Irish, even though I know there is German in his family tree. I started tracing his lineage and his mother ordered me to stop. Any blood that’s not Irish, they don’t claim. Especially any blood that isn’t Catholic Irish. Basically, my mother-in-law doesn’t claim me because I’m neither of the two.
Rudy can tell anybody anything they want to know about holy days, holy weeks, how many candles to light for what, and any tidbit of information about saints and martyrs, especially if it’s kind of gross. He can even name the popes in order.
But I’ll be damned if he can tell you where the Battle of Jericho was fought.
He’s not been to confession in several years and even longer since he went to church. I think the last time he went to confession was to confess that he hadn’t been to church. Anyway, his mother of course blames this on me, along with our children’s less-than-pure bloodline, of which I am wholeheartedly and completely innocent.
Rudy and I met in a hardware store, where I was working. I was standing on a ladder in the hardware aisle and he was buying a drill. He swears that he was so taken with my shapely legs that he didn’t realize he was walking straight into the ladder. He knocked it over and I crashed. Our first date was in the hospital when he wheeled me down to the cafeteria for chicken-fried steak, which I detest, but it was the thought that counted. He insisted on paying for it, because after all he was responsible for my broken leg. I think I fell in love with him at that moment.
This morning, he had accompanied me to the funeral of Marie Dijon.
“I can’t thank you enough for going to Marie’s funeral with me,” I said to Rudy. He took off his tie and placed it neatly on his chest of drawers, next to the 5×7 photograph of our two daughters.
“Well, I wish I hadn’t,” he declared.
“Why?”
“That was the weirdest funeral I’ve ever been to. Nobody cried,” he said.
“Well, none of us knew her that well. I’m sure we’re all sad to see her go, but I didn’t know her well enough to cry.”
“Yeah, but no family members cried,” he said.
“I didn’t see any family members. I only saw about six or seven people that I didn’t recognize. It was weird. And if you hadn’t gone with me, Bernice Thorley would have insisted that I attend the funeral luncheon.”
Rudy sat on the bed and pulled off his shoes. He reminded me of a child because he didn’t untie them first. Instead he pulled and yanked and tugged until the shoe came flying off. I could have told him to untie his shoes first, but after ten years of marriage if he wanted to keep his shoes tied when he took them off, so be it.
“What were you and Bernice Thorley discussing during the funeral, anyway?” he asked.
“I wasn’t talking,” I said. “I was listening. She went on and on about how unusual Marie’s will was.”
I took my right high-heeled shoe off with the help of my left foot, and then did the reverse with the left shoe. “How so?”
“Well, everything is to be auctioned. Only a citizen or business owner of New Kassel will be allowed to bid on it. No outsiders.”
I was sitting at my dressing table. I took off my small silver earrings and noticed that Rudy watched me from the other side of the room. “What?” I said.
“You should wear that dress more often,” he answered.
“It’s too short,” I said. “But I had nothing else in black.”
“I know it’s too short,” he said. He smiled like a schoolboy. “That’s why you should wear it more often.”
“Oh, no,” I said. I laughed and jumped up from the dressing table. “Rudy, I have to get to the Gaheimer House and get some work done, before Sylvia has a fit. And you know Sylvia having a fit is one of the scariest sights ever recorded by modern man.”
“The kids are with your grandmother,” he said with a mischievous grin. He came toward me, a growl starting low in his throat. When he gets like that, I may as well just give up. He grabbed me and kissed me on the neck, tickling my ribs in the process. I giggled and squirmed and he tickled all the more.
“Rudy! I mean it, I have to get some work … done. Stop it!” I yelled, but it did no good. All of my protestations turned into giggles and it’s damn hard to take somebody seriously when they’re giggling.
We landed on the bed, him on top. I wrestled a hand free and gave him some of his own medicine. I counted his ribs, up and down and up and down, until I thought he’d get sick from laughing. I love it when men are ticklish. It’s so unmacho.
“You have the most gorgeous green eyes, mademoiselle,” he said to me. I think he was trying to do a French accent, but somehow it sounded Hungarian. He jumped up off of the bed and took off running. I, of course, had to follow. He headed toward my office, which is the only other room upsta
irs, besides our bedroom and our bathroom. There we stood poised on the steps, him jabbing and I returning with jabs to his ribs. It was sort of like a sword fight without weapons. We circled each other, laughing.
I had the advantage. His back was to the steps.
“Okay, give up,” I said. “I have the advantage. You’ve got nowhere to go. No retreat.”
“Never!” he yelled. “Death first!” he shouted. He laughed wildly and pretended to lose his balance.
“If you think you’ll scare me, you’re sadly mistaken. I’ve been waiting for you to fall down a flight of stairs. That way I can be rid of you and it will be an accident,” I said through laughter. I was joking and he knew it. This was something we did on a fairly regular basis.
This time it triggered something. Instead of the usual finale where we collapse on the bed, almost too tired for the sex we were playing at in the first place, I stopped.
“What?” he said at my sudden soberness.
“I can be rid of you and it will be an accident,” I repeated, almost to myself. “It will look like an accident.”
“What?” he asked. He followed me as I headed back into the bedroom.
“I’m beginning to wonder if Marie Dijon’s death was really an accident.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” he yelled. “You ruined my afternoon roll in the hay for that?” He was truly exasperated.
“I’m serious. She could have been pushed down those steps and nobody would ever know the difference.”
“That includes you,” he said.
I stuck my tongue out at him. I hate it when Rudy scores a point. “Okay, let me rephrase that. Nobody would know the difference, because nobody was looking for it. If I told the sheriff…”
“What?” he asked. “That you and your husband were tickling each other to death when you suddenly decided that Marie could have been pushed. Why? Why would somebody push her?”
“I don’t know, but I just don’t like the thought of somebody’s life coming to an end because they tripped over their own house slipper or something.”
“So you’d rather they be murdered? Oh, now that’s a more comforting thought.”
Family Skeletons: A Spunky Missouri Genealogist Traces A Family's Roots...And Digs Up A Deadly Secret Page 19
