A Comedy of Heirs (10 page)

“Well, sir, none of us knew about it. None of my generation. The great-grandkids. And, to be honest, we've been lied to about it all of our lives,” I said. “But, I was tracing the family tree and came upon his death certificate … and then the newspaper articles.”

Hubert smiled slightly then. “I knew it. It always comes back around. Can't do nothing in this world that it doesn't come back around in one form or another.”

I looked at Roger, who hung on his father's words. “Dad moved up here to the city a few years after that case,” Roger said to me when he felt me looking at him. “In 1955. My brother lives in Chicago and Momma died a few years back.”

“What do you want to know?” Hubert said. “Maybe you can get to the bottom of it.”

“Why would I be able to get to the bottom of it?” I asked.

“Because they all know who did it. And none of them are talking. We didn't have the technology back then like we do now. We found a shotgun in Pine Branch creek, but who's to say who it belonged to.”

The sheriff, who had been quiet and noncommittal this whole time, nodded to me to go ahead and ask whatever it was I wanted to know. I took a deep breath.

“What was the motive?” I asked.

“There was three or four good motives. One was the property. There was lotsa talk then about turning that area into a resort. Making a manmade lake with fish and stuff…” He rubbed his gums together again. “He was one of the few that didn't want to sell. Lotta people around there that'd been farmers all their life, poor farmers doing backbreaking work, were ready to sell and get out. Nate Keith wouldn't have nothing to do with it. Said his daddy had earned it with blood he'd shed for the Union and he wasn't a-going to sell it.”

“So was it the pressure to sell that was the motive or the fact that his children wanted their hands on it so they could sell it that was the motive?”

“Both,” he said. “Had bad things happening to him in the years before he was killed. Barn burned, had to build a new one. Somebody set fire to a tree in his front yard, pigs were poisoned. That sorta thing. But, I also know that John and Granville and their sisters Lea and Sara were wanting their daddy to sell. They wanted out of Pine Branch.”

“John?” I asked. “My grandfather? You sure you got the right son?” My grandfather never gave an indication in all his born days that he wanted out of Pine Branch. He was a country boy, loved the land he had and only left it once that I remember hearing about. That was a vacation to Florida. My grandmother had to threaten to divorce him to get him to do that.

“Oh, yeah,” Hubert said and took a deep breath that was agonizing for me to watch. “Back then John was a different man. He wanted to go to Canada and live in the mountains, but couldn't never get the money to go up there and buy the ranch he wanted. He was also one of the best fiddle players in the country and I think he wanted to have a shot at playing places where he could make more money. And Lea, well, Lea just wanted out. She always thought she's better than everybody else.”

Hubert gave his son a look, and Roger went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water. Hubert took a long drink, a little of it dribbling on his chin. He swiped at it with the back of his hand.

“So it could have been his neighbors or his kids,” I stated.

“Or his grandkids,” he said and nodded. “I don't think that was really the motive for killing him. People hated him for plenty of other reasons. There were other motives.”

“What happened to the land?” Sheriff Brooke asked. “The resort they were going to build?”

“Found out that southeast Missouri is riddled with caves underneath it. They run all over and everywhere. Tons of sinkholes down there. Well, they couldn't make a manmade lake. They tried it on a smaller scale to see what would happen. A few days would go by and the lake would drain down into the caves. Come back there'd be dead fish in the bottom of the lake and mud. No water. No resort.”

The sheriff shook his head as if that meant something to him.

“What were the other motives?” I asked.

“Nate Keith was a no-account jerk, I'll just say it plainly. Had giving and loving kids, a great wife and he was no good. He nailed any woman that wasn't hairier than he was.” I had to choke back a laugh at his choice of words. “Della Ruth coulda got fed up.”

“At sixty-eight? My great-grandmother would have been sixty-eight years old in 1948. You think she would have cared by then?” I asked.

“I always thought Della Ruth had an agenda of her own,” he stated and looked me in the eye. He didn't give me a chance to ask him just what he meant by that remark. “He was mean and his boys didn't like him none too much and his grandkids were afraid of him.”

“So this could have been a crime of passion, you're saying.”

“Anybody shoot a man on his own front porch and let him bleed to death, it's a crime of passion. Man lay out there for hours before he died. They can say they didn't hear anything all they want. He had to be out there begging for help. Nobody let him in.”

I took a deep breath. A shiver ran along my spine and settled deep into my bones. I couldn't skirt around the fact that with every word the man said, it didn't look good for my beloved aunts, uncles and grandparents. Could I really have a murderer this close to me? I mean, I knew that I had a murderer way back there in the 1700s. My family tree had everything from horse theives to royalty. This was different. “What other motives? Are there any others?”

“When Nate was a boy, he and a couple of the neighborhood boys went swimming in the swimming hole,” he said. “One of the boys drowned and died. It was always rumored that it was Nate's fault. The drowned boy's brothers swore they'd get him back for it.”

“He was seventy-two years old!” I said. “You think they waited, what, sixty-five years for vengeance?”

“Never said they waited sixty-five years, Ms. O'Shea. That coulda been the final straw. You really don't know that much about your family, do you?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked. My hackles were raised and the sheriff could tell it. He placed a hand on my arm to tell me to calm down. How dare Hubert tell me that I didn't know that much about my family! I knew more than anybody else did. I knew more than any of my generation. I'd worked long and hard to make sure that I knew everything I could find out about my family.

Hubert ground his gums together and then smiled at me. “This was my only unsolved case, Ms. O'Shea. In all my years in law enforcement. All because a family decided to protect somebody.”

“So you're saying that you think it was a member of my family and not the surrounding property owners or the boy's family from the swimming accident?”

“One and the same, Ms. O'Shea. One and the same.”

Twelve

Man oh man, why didn't I ever listen to my father?

It was about four hours after I'd left Mr. McCarthy's house in southwest St. Louis. I sat in my office at the Gaheimer House, for no other reason than I just had to get away from my family. All of them. I'd dropped the sheriff off at his car at McDonald's, came straight to the Gaheimer House, called Rudy and sat down at my desk.

I really wanted to crawl in a hole and stay there. I'd just had to know the details of Nathaniel Keith's death and now that I did, I wished I didn't. And yet, that's not entirely true either. I've always had this burning desire to know everything.
Everything.
I can't stand not to know something. It drives me crazy. My mother says that I'm just nosy. Whatever it is, I can't control it any more than I can control blinking. I can for a while but then I just have to give in.

Well, this time instead of gleaning satisfaction for myself, my nosiness has only made me more miserable. I walked out of my office and to the soda machine in the hall. I put in my fifty cents, pushed Dr Pepper and nothing happened. The temporarily-out-of-stock button flashed on my choice of beverage. The Coke and 7-Up and all the caffeine- and sugar-free junk was all in stock. Not my Dr Pepper. I punched the Dr Pepper button with my fist in case it needed stronger coercing. It didn't work. I pushed the Change button but it wouldn't give me my change. No change. No soda. I could get more change. I'd just do without.

I walked back in to my office and contemplated screaming, but then thought better of it. I paced back and forth across what floor that there was in my office and pondered just what I was going to do with the information that Mr. McCarthy had just given me. I could forget about it, or I could pursue it. Easy as that. I could smile and spread the hunting accident story to my children and their children as if I didn't know any better. Or I could try and find information on the swimming incident and maybe interview some of Granville's kids or Lea's kids. How did I know that they'd tell me what I need to know?

I didn't even know that if I pushed my father, he would finally tell me that, yes, he knew the true story as to how his grandfather had died.

I was tired of pacing so I grabbed my coat off the coat rack and headed down the hall and through the ballroom. The Christmas tree that Sylvia had decorated was absolutely gorgeous. She had bought a real tree and decorated it with small, homemade candles, a seventy-year-old chain of beads, glass ornaments ranging from the 1930s to the 1940s, ribbons and various ornaments. Even though the candles weren't lit, it looked majestic strategically placed in front of the large picture window in the ballroom. Sylvia had tried to keep the ribbons that perched on the upturned branches within the green and purple color scheme of the ballroom. She had beauty in her heart, she just usually never let you see it.

I turned off the lights, locked the door, set the alarm and stepped outside. I decided almost instantly that I didn't want to drive home. My house is only a few blocks from the Gaheimer House and Rudy's van was at the house in case of an emergency. The night was cold, but the air was heavy. I wanted to walk. I was struck by how quiet the town was. By how quiet the world was.

I would have to tell my mother about the fact that I was pregnant within the next few days, because she and the sheriff would not be at the big dinner on Sunday when we planned to tell everybody else. I honestly didn't know what her reaction would be.

I was so deep in thought that it took me a few minutes before I realized that it was snowing. I looked up at the sky and big fat wet flakes were falling to the ground. My heart skipped a beat. It was snowing.
It was snowing!
Real snow. Not just a dusting. These were big heavy flakes and they were sticking to the ground and accumulating fast. Aunt Sissy had brought that Minnesota snow with her after all.

I couldn't help but walk a little faster and when I arrived home I walked in the front door with a rush of cold air and announced at the top of my voice, “It's snowing! Everybody outside!”

Rudy sat in his easy chair all comfortable and warm with his feet propped up watching a
Seinfeld
rerun or something like that. Aunt Sissy sat on the floor doing her yoga, my cousin Damon and his wife, Tillie, and their son two daughters were all in the kitchen talking with my mother.

Disappointment filled my heart when nobody leapt up to go outside.

“What's the matter with you people? Get up, get on your coats, mittens, gloves, hats, scarves, whatever you've got. Outside!” I yelled.

Aunt Sissy opened one eye from her yoga and then uncrossed her legs and stood up. “Well, come on everybody,” she said. “Let's do as she says. Rudy turn that idiot box off and get your shoes on.”

Rudy looked at her with a pained expression but he finally sat up. I walked into the kitchen. “Hi, Mom. Where's Dad?” I only asked because I saw his beat-up truck sitting out in front of my house so that I knew that he was here.

“Downstairs with Jed,” she said.

“Men can find more things to do in a basement than anybody I know,” I said. “Rudy!” I yelled. “Wake up Mary and Rachel, we're going outside!” Damon smiled at me with that mischievous look he gets in his eyes when he knows I'm up to something and he wants in on it. “Now, Rudy, not in two hours.”

Finally I heard the squeak from the spring in his chair and knew that he was up on his feet. Rachel broke the spring when she was two years old from jumping up and down on the chair. I was upset with her at the time, but I've since thought about giving her a reward for doing it. It's one of the ways I can tell if Rudy's still lounging or doing what I asked him to do. See, sometimes bad things turn out to be good things later—you just have to wait for it to happen.

I opened the basement door and yelled down. “Dad, it's snowing! Get your scrawny butt outside right now, or you're a good-for-nothing wuss. Come on, snowball fight now. I challenge you.”

It was quiet at first. Then I heard him say, “Do I get to pick who I want on my team?”

“As long as I get Aunt Sissy, I don't care if you take all of New Kassel,” I said and walked back up the steps. Tradition. Dad and I had a tradition that went back as far as I could remember. Every year we had one massive, all-encompassing, no-holding-back, test-of-skill-and-natural-instincts snowball fight. And he almost always won.

Not tonight. I felt lucky.

“Come on, Mom. You can come out on the porch and watch,” I said.

She didn't hesitate one bit. She unlocked her wheels, went to get her heavy-duty poncho and headed out onto the porch.

By the time we all made it outside the snow was falling faster and heavier. At least three inches covered the ground. I let out a whoop of joy and pent-up energy. “Aunt Sissy, you're with me.”

My dad took three large steps toward me, put his thumbs in his belt loop and stopped. He nodded.

I took three steps toward him, put my hands in my pockets and nodded. “I've got Sissy,” I said.