Family Skeletons: A Spunky Missouri Genealogist Traces A Family's Roots...And Digs Up A Deadly Secret (12 page)

I knocked on the door, louder than I had intended. A slender man, about fifty-five, answered the door, barely glancing up from his papers. He was balding, and had a pen stuck behind his ear and his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows.

It was, of course, awkward when he finally looked up and realized he had no idea who I was.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I'm trying to locate John Murphy.”

“I'm John Murphy. Who are you? I don't take appointments this late. Call tomorrow. The office opens at nine. I'm going to have to talk to security about letting people up here.”

“I saw no security.”

That got his attention.

“There was nobody at the desk,” I said.

He was about ready to shut the door on me when I found my voice again. “I'm Torie O'Shea. I'm the one that found Norah's body. I had hoped that I could speak with you for a moment.”

Tears welled in his eyes. “Of course. What about?”

I had the distinct feeling that he would rather discuss this somewhere else, but he led me to his desk. He sat down and motioned me to take a seat. His desk was a nice cherry wood. He had a huge swivel chair that rose way above his head in the back. Windows covered one wall, and awards of some sort covered another. No artwork, no photographs. Not even one of Norah.

He couldn't decide what to do with his hands. Strong masculine hands kept swiping at a nonexistent hair on his forehead.

“I'll be honest with you. Your name is on the top of the list of possible suspects in her death.”

“Because I have no real alibi for Thursday and Friday?” he asked.

“That's one reason,” I said. “But lack of alibi isn't the most damaging. I'd say the life insurance policy on Norah is the most convicting piece of information. I mean, it was supposedly to bury her with. Not only do you not bury her with it, you don't even show up at the funeral.”

He looked away, and when he looked back at me, all I could see was pain. A tear ran down his face. He showed more grief than any of her children had thus far. “God,” he said. A sob escaped him. “I didn't know. I didn't know. Rita and Jeff called me after it was over,” he said, trying to recover himself. He rubbed his eyes. “I didn't even know she was dead,” he said finally.

“Why would they do that?”

“Because Norah wanted specific things for her funeral, and her children disagreed.”

“Like what?”

“Basically,
where
she wanted to be buried,” he said. “She said she wanted to be buried down south. I think it was the place her mother had told her that her father was from.”

“And they disagreed with that?”

“Severely. They thought it was a disgrace, that she was acting like a child over a man she'd never met.”

“Had she planned on dying soon? I mean, what brought the subject up?”

He rubbed his eyes again, thinking back. “She said that the conversation came up and that she and Jeff had a huge fight over it. So she asked if I would see to everything if she provided the money for it. I said yes, and since I have no children, I asked her if she would do the same for me.”

Sounded logical.

“How long were you and Norah together?” I asked.

“Years.”

“Why didn't you get married?”

“She wouldn't.”

“Why not live together?”

His eyes betrayed him that time. Something, I'm not sure what, lingered there in his mind.

“There were reasons.”

I had stepped on sacred ground again. I can take hint. “Where were you Friday?”

“You know, I never did see any identification,” he said.

“For me? Oh, I'm not a cop,” I said. I laughed inwardly that he thought I was the police. I hadn't told him either way. All I had said was that I was the one that found the body. He assumed I was a cop.

“I think I've answered all the questions that I care to answer.”

“Fine, but let me tell you something. I saw the worst thing of my life on that Friday. I'm not just talking about any
body.
I'm talking about a human being that I had just seen the week before, alive. And there she was, butchered. Blood everywhere, and those eyes … they stared right through me,” I said. “It changed my life. And I suppose I've become a little obsessed about the whole thing.”

I noticed he blanched slightly at my description of the scene that Friday. “I will probably never sleep again without seeing those eyes,” I said. “Now, where were you Friday? You've already told the police you were out of town. Tell me where you really were or who you were with.”

He paused a moment. “I was with another woman,” he said brokenly. He sobbed, and I understood why. He was with another woman when his girlfriend was killed. His guilt would consume him.

“I won't give you her name,” he said.

“You don't have to unless you go to court or something,” I said, unsure of the legal territory.

“I've told you this for your conscience only,” he said. “To help you put it all to rest. I will deny it if the police get wind of it.”

I could live with that. I stood up to help myself out the door. “I'm very sorry,” I said. I was sorry that Norah was dead. I was sorry for his loss. But more than anything, I was sorry for what he would have to endure in the years to come, every time he looked in the mirror.

“Regardless of what you think, I loved her. With all my heart, I loved her.”

His words rang through my ears as I walked down the half-lit halls to the elevator. That whole conversation disturbed me more than I wanted to admit. The picture it painted of Norah Zumwalt's life was bleak. She couldn't even get buried the way she wanted.

Twenty-five minutes later, I pulled into the Old Mill Stream's crowded parking lot and smiled. Colette's fancy blue sports car was parked up front. Colette was exactly what I needed after all I had been through that day.

Twelve

I had thoroughly drowned myself in a frozen jumbo margarita, and had eaten enough of those damned little chips and salsa to make me puke.

Colette was in full dress tonight. The hair was everywhere, deliberately misplaced in perfect disorder. She wore all the gold her safe-deposit box could hold, and in her hand was a cigarette which burned more than she smoked. She always reminds me of some glamour-puss from the forties, her body language being the ultimate.

She'd probably kill me if she knew that I consider her Rubenesque. She is extremely full figured, possibly even on the heavy side, but it doesn't matter. She is just as gorgeous with all of it.

We are complete opposites. I couldn't smoke a cigarette without choking to death. And I wouldn't know what to do with that much hair if I had it. But we have a long history together, being friends since fifth grade.

We talked about everything. Her in-laws, my in-laws, her new patio, and my kids. Then out of nowhere she asked me how I had been dealing with “the body.”

“I suppose I'm dealing with it okay. I've been really moody. I guess I've been concentrating on why somebody would kill her instead of the fact that somebody actually killed her.”

“That is just too much,” she said.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“I mean, shit,” she said, as if that said it all. And in a way, I suppose, it did.

“Let me ask you something. Do you know anything about Zumwalt and Macklintock?” Colette knows almost everybody in St. Louis, and anybody she doesn't know, she knows somebody who does. She was born and raised in New Kassel, and when I first moved up here from Progress, she was the first person to befriend me. I fell in love with the town immediately. Colette hated it. She felt stifled. Needless to say, as soon as she graduated she went off to college in St. Louis, and she now lives in St. Louis County. She's a reporter for one of the local television stations. She isn't an anchorwoman and doesn't want to be. She likes being out on the street.

“What do you want to know?”

“I dunno,” I said, shrugging.

“Best damn lawyers money can buy. I hear there is nothing they can't get done. Legal or illegal.”

Great. Sheriff Brooke is messing with the Godfather. “I mean on a more personal level.”

“Macklintock is gay,” she said, anxious to get that piece of gossip in.

“Besides that,” I said. People's sexual preference bothers me in no way. I have never experienced the homophobia that seems to plague the Midwest.

“What do you mean ‘besides that'?” she asked, appalled. “It's very important when his lover works in the police department.”

“Well, that could prove to be interesting. Move on. What about Zumwalt?”

Colette looked toward the ceiling, as if flipping through her mental filing cabinet. She is truly amazing in her broad scope of knowledge. She knows all the legal junk. Got a question about taxes? Insurance? Call Colette. She's extremely levelheaded and calm about everything. I freak out over a parking ticket. Don't even ask how I reacted to jury duty.

Finally, she sighed. “He's sort of a weird one. The whole family was in counseling at one time.”

“No kidding?” I asked. This was, in my opinion, definitely interesting material. “How do you know this stuff?”

“I can't give out my sources. Why are you so interested? You normally don't care about St. Louis society things.”

“It's driving me nuts. I want to know everything about her and why somebody would kill her.”

“The snooping is my territory,” she said. “Well, I don't know a whole lot about him because he never leaves the house, except to work.” She thought about it a minute. “I think that there is more there than meets the eye. If you want my opinion.”

“I always want your opinion.”

I couldn't help but wonder if looking into this counseling bit would help me or not. It would be an intrusion, I reminded myself.

“Let's order some real food,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “What's it gonna be?”

“I can't help myself. I want the chicken fajitas.” Colette always brings out the worst in me.

“Good choice. So how's your sex life?” she asked finally.

“Fine. I think Rudy is concerned about me, though. He's so cute when he's concerned about me. I don't know, maybe it reminds me that he really does love me.”

“Why is he so concerned about you? 'Cause of finding the body?” she asked with a shiver.

“I think so. He's been pretty sweet about things that I think most men would have lost it over.”

“Like what?”

“Just me being an all-around bitch about things. So how's your sex life?”

Asking Colette about her sex life was like asking for a four-thousand-page dissertation that read like the Kama Sutra.

She smiled. “Have I got a story for you.” She settled back into her chair and prepared to tell me her story as only she could tell it.

*   *   *

After we finished our fajitas we headed for the late show. I didn't enjoy it very much because my conscience kept reminding me that I had actually eaten two dinners tonight. But about halfway through the movie I finally stopped beating myself up over it.

I arrived home at about two in the morning, wired. Movies do that to me. When I went to see
The Silence of the Lambs
with Colette, I was so wired that I talked the entire way home. She never got to say one word.

On top of it, I was broken out in hives for hours. I hate having a body that lets the entire world know when I'm upset. When I got married I had to wear a wedding dress that came up to my neck so that the hives wouldn't show.

I grabbed a Dr Pepper and headed upstairs. I sat at my desk, drinking my soda from the can. I usually get a glass, but I didn't want to make all of the noise with ice cubes and a glass.

I snooped through the box from Rita. I hadn't really looked at anything except the letters from Eugene Counts. Now it seemed I had some unspoken approval to poke through it. There were receipts, check stubs, coupons. Rita must have picked up everything on her mother's kitchen counter and thrown it in the box, too.

The quiet of the house made me settle down, and I decided I'd check through the box more thoroughly in the morning. I made my way to bed, snuggled up against Rudy, and surprisingly, was asleep in minutes.

It is not unusual for me to wake up several times in the night, even if it is just to roll over. But when I awoke at 3:46
A.M
., I had a gut feeling that something was wrong.

Momentarily, I felt panicked. My eyes wouldn't focus, due to lack of sleep and the tequila. I was afraid to move. Afraid that if the boogeyman stood at the foot of my bed, he would know I was awake. Finally, I was awake enough to realize I was being ridiculous, and I sat up in bed.

It was the last calm moment of the night.

A greenish glow came from my office. Amazingly, I found the guts to get up and go see what it was. The ominous glow came from straight ahead. I knew what it was before I had a coherent thought.

I stood in the doorway shaking, unable to move. My computer was on!

I hadn't had it on all day, so I know I didn't leave it on. Mom can't get up the steps, and my girls don't know how to turn it on. Rudy never touches the computer. Besides, he was asleep. Anyway, I don't think he would have left the foreboding message that was on the screen:

“This is a warning, Victory O'Shea. Next time will not be.”

Thirteen

The chickens squawked like mad, and that scared me even more. How close had I come to catching whoever this was in the act? All I could think of was ending up like Norah.

“Rudy,” I said. I ran into the bedroom and tripped over my shoes at the foot of the bed. “For God's sake, dial nine-one-one.”

“I don't know where your car keys are,” he mumbled.

“Rudy, wake up,” I said from the floor.