A Comedy of Heirs (6 page)

I just looked at my father with a really confused look on my face, I know, because I was really confused.

“See you tomorrow,” he said. “And if you see Aunt Ruth, don't mention this.”

“Why?”

“Because she gets really upset over things. She's convinced herself that she's Donna Reed. Don't go making her think otherwise,” he advised me.

“Okay,” I said. “Good night, Dad.”

“Good night, Torie.”

He shut the door and left me to wrestle with my own conscience about what to do. If I found out who murdered Nathaniel Ulysses Keith, I didn't necessarily have to tell anybody, right? Besides, somebody wanted me to know about it. It had to be a family member. I decided that before I went to bed I would make a list of all the family I had that lived in St. Louis. That was where the postmark was from on the envelope. I needed an ally in this.

Seven

The next day I was driving down River Point Road and was going to make a right down by the Old Mill Stream restaurant and head out of town. I was on my way to see the sheriff. On my own accord, without being coerced. I did want something from him, though.

The radio said that there would be snow tonight for sure, and I felt my heart give a little leap.
Snow.
I couldn't wait and I hoped with all my heart that this wasn't another false alarm. Just as I was daydreaming about playing in the snow with all of my cousins, as I used to do when I was a kid, this large figure stepped out in front of me. I slammed on the brakes. Luckily I was doing but twenty miles an hour.

Eleanore Murdoch stood in front of my car with her hands on her hips, her big plastic Christmas tree earrings swaying in the wind. A green crocheted hat was pulled down to her eyebrows, making her look like one of those craft dolls with the big eyes and no hair under the hat. She was a very top-heavy woman and her brown wool cloak resembled a small tent.

My purse, notebook and envelope that were sitting on the seat next to me went flying into the floorboard when I'd slammed on the brakes. I honked my horn at her for no other reason than being just fuming angry.

I rolled down my window as she headed for my side of the car. “What in blazes is wrong with you, woman?”

“I wanted to talk with you,” she said with her nose raised in the air. Eleanore was
the
town gossip. She and her husband, Oscar, owned the bed and breakfast in town, called the Murdoch Inn. She was booked this week with lots of my family. She also had a small, one-page article in the
New Kassel Gazette,
and thought she was the up-and-coming star of journalism. She was also a snoop. Of course, so was I, but I didn't seem to be so blasted annoying with it.

“Can't you call me or knock on my door?” I asked. “Do you have to run out in front of my car? I could have hit you!” The damage would have most likely been to my car, but I kept that part to myself.

“I wanted to talk with you right now this minute,” she said. “It couldn't wait. I saw you coming down the street and decided to flag you down.”

“What is it?” I asked, checking my temper.

“It's your cousins.”

“Which ones, Eleanore?”

“You know,” she said and looked around self-consciously.

“I have twenty first cousins and forty-three first cousins once removed with four new ones on the way. I can't even begin to tell you how many second cousins I have. Which of the masses are you referring to?” I asked.

“You don't have to get snotty, Torie,” she said.

“You don't have to be so vague, Eleanore.”

“I am speaking of Larry Keith and his … his …
friend,
” she said finally.

“You mean Tommy?”

“Yes,” she said. The end of her nose was beginning to turn red from the cold and she had started the “cold dance,” rocking back and forth to try and stay warm.

“What about them?” I asked and threw the car into park. I knew what about them. They were gay.

“I think,” she began and then stopped. Was Eleanore actually showing some finesse? “I think there is something not right with them.”

“How so?” I asked.

“I think … I think that they are, you know,” she said and then leaned into my window and whispered, “gay.”

“Oh, that,” I said.

She gasped and straightened herself up quickly. “You mean they
are?
”

“Yes,” I said. “What's the problem?”

“I can't have gay people in my bed and breakfast,” she said haughtily.

“Why not?” I asked. “Are you getting complaints about public displays of affection?”

“Well, no,” she said.

“Are they carrying around banners trying to persuade people to join them?”

“Of course not.”

“Then what's the problem?” I asked.

“Well, you can tell that they are, you know, gay. And what will that do for my business?” she asked.

“It will do wonders for your business,” I said. “The only people in the bed and breakfast this week are my family anyway, and we all know that they are gay. Just leave them be, Eleanore, and they won't bother you.”

“I didn't say they were bothering me,” Eleanore said, suddenly dignified. “I'm an open-minded individual, after all. I just thought it might be bad for business.”

I gave her the you-should-be-ashamed-of-yourself look. “If somebody starts tearing up furniture or being noisy, call me,” I said. “And I'll do something about it.”

A car came up behind me on the road and honked. After all, I was in the middle of the road in my huge station wagon. I waved them on around me and they went around. It was Tobias Thorley, our accordion player. He waved as he went by and Eleanore and I waved back.

“If all they are doing is just
looking
gay, I can't do anything about that, and won't do anything about that,” I said. I put my car back in drive but held the breaks on still. “Is there anything else?” I asked. Eleanore looked at me as if I was speaking Martian. “Look, Eleanore, Larry is my cousin. I played with him as a kid. I love him. He's not hurting anybody.”

She just looked at me. As I drove away I yelled out the window, “When my cousin Danielle checks in, her husband is full-blooded Indian,” I yelled. “Just in case you got something against Indians.”

I left her standing in the middle of the street, my temples throbbing. I looked in the rearview mirror and her hands were back on her hips. I was happy with myself the way I handled that, but knew that it was wasted on her. Instead of her realizing how petty she was being, she was now probably worrying over when the Indian would arrive.

I headed out of town on New Kassel Outer Road. It was a two-lane blacktop that wound around the small undulating hills that made up the landscape between New Kassel and Wisteria. The trees were bare, the sky a gray swish of an artist's brush and everything was asleep for the winter.

I passed my Aunt Emily's farm—she was my mother's sister—and then passed the intersection for Highway P. New Kassel Outer Road became Main Street once I was in Wisteria. I was accosted with signs for every fast food place imaginable. Wisteria is a small town by the country's standards, but it was the largest town within ten miles so it had all the fast food places that you wouldn't find until you got up to Arnold.

I passed by Rally's, Burger King, Long John Silver's and then finally came to the stoplight in the middle of all of this food heaven. I turned left up a hill and stopped my car in front of the Sheriff's Department.

As soon as I was out of the car, the biting wind struck me square in the face. It must have dropped ten degrees in the last two hours. I ran into the office and found the sheriff sitting back in his chair with his feet up on the desk, reading a magazine.

Awards and such in thin black frames hung as crooked as a dog's hind leg on the wall behind him. The one thing in the office that was in a really nice frame and hanging completely straight was a big 18 × 24-inch picture of all the NFL football helmets.

As soon as he saw me he removed his feet from the desk as if a spider had just crawled across his leg. “Torie,” he said.

“Sheriff Brooke,” I said and walked over to him holding the manila envelope under my arm. I unbuttoned my coat and threw my hat on the top of his desk. It landed right next to a picture of him and my mother taken at last year's Octoberfest. “Working hard?”

“I was just finishing up paperwork and stuff. My lunch hour,” he said.

“Oh,” I said.

“Got two deputies out in cars today and one is on vacation.”

“Oh,” I said again. “I was wondering if you could help me out on a little project.”

A blank look crossed his face and I knew that I was going to have to fight him to get him to do what I wanted. That expression was complete mental shutdown, no breaking through it, he wasn't listening to me at all. He leaned back in his chair again. “What?”

I handed him the envelope. He didn't open it, he just looked at me.

“I received this a few days ago with no return address. No signature on the letter. I went to the library to make sure they were authentic and they are,” I explained slowly.

Now he opened the envelope and pulled the contents out. He scanned quickly, reading only the headlines. “What's this about?”

“The man shot to death on the front porch is my great-grandfather, Nathaniel Keith,” I said.

“Oh, great,” he said and rubbed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Don't start until you hear me out,” I said.

The sheriff threw his hands up in surrender. “I'm listening.”

“The articles say that it was unsolved, no real suspects, all that good stuff,” I said.

“But you know different?”

“No. I have no clue as to what happened. The problem I have with this is that we were all told he died in a hunting accident,” I said. “It just bugs me that somebody thought there was something worth hiding enough to make up a lie for their children.”

“I can see how that would bother you,” he said.

I looked at him surprised. He never agreed with me. But if he did he wouldn't usually say so. Not out loud, at least. His blue eyes showed no emotion other than irritation, but at least he had agreed that he understood.

“Thank you,” I said. “It also bothers me that somebody, who I am fairly safe in saying is a family member, brought this to my attention, but didn't want me to know who they were.”

The sheriff shrugged. He got up and poured himself a cup of coffee from the automatic coffee maker in the corner of the room. The phone rang. “Just a minute, Torie,” he said. “Dispatcher is out for lunch.”

He picked up the phone and I looked outside watching the traffic go up and down Main Street. I could see the bags and packages in people's cars. There were only about fifteen days left to shop.

“Well, Tobias, I don't know what to tell you. Just calm down, that cat will come down when it gets hungry enough,” he said. “I can't leave my office to come and get a cat off of your roof. No, no, Tobias, I have other things to do. Well, if you want to take a hose to it, that's your business. Hope you can live with yourself, though, since it's about twenty degrees outside.” He slammed the phone down and cussed at it.

“So, what do you want me to do about this?” Sheriff Brooke asked.

“I was wondering if you could find the investigating officer of the crime—”

“Oh no,” he said. “No.”

“I just want to know, if he's alive that is, if he would just talk to me about it. If he won't talk to me, talk to you. I know that there was evidence and things kept out of the papers, there always is. That's it. He's got to be retired if he's still alive, and the case is long closed. What can it hurt?” I asked.

“Does your father know?” he asked.

“Yeah, I talked to him about it last night. I think he wants me to find out who it is as long as I don't find out who it is.”

“Huh?” he asked.

“I think he's afraid I might find out it's one of his brothers or sisters or his parents or something.”

“He could be right,” Sheriff Brooke said. “You willing to take that risk?”

“I'm not saying I want this case solved, I would just like to know more about it, and why we were fed a huge lie about it,” I said. “That's all.”

Sheriff Brooke took a drink of his coffee and looked at me blankly. He was waiting for me to say something else.

“I just want to know who the suspects were.”

Still the blank expression.

“And the motive. Why would somebody kill my great-grandfather?”

He took another drink of coffee.

“Please,” I said.

“I'll see what I can do,” he said like magic. “I'm sure it won't hurt to just talk to him about it. He may be dead,” he said.

“I realize that, and if he is, well … I'm not sure what I'll do then.” I tried hard not to let him see how happy I was that he was going to at least try to find the guy. “His name is Hubert McCarthy,” I added and pointed to the papers.

The sheriff took the papers over to his copy machine and made copies of everything and then handed them back to me. “I am not going to investigate this,” he said. “I'm just going to take you to talk to him if he is willing. That's it. I've got other things to do.”

“That's fine,” I said. “Actually, that's wonderful.”

I put my hat back on my head and buttoned my coat. It was a little strange that I didn't have to beg, plead and do a polka for him to grant me this one little wish. Why was he being so nice to me?

“Thank you,” I said. “Very much.”

He just nodded to me and I left. As I stepped outside I felt something wet on my face. I looked up at my car and saw tiny snowflakes blowing on the hood. The sheriff was going to find Hubert McCarthy for me and it was snowing. It almost made me forget that I still had to tell my husband about that blue stick at the doctor's office.