Killing Cousins (19 page)

It was early Sunday morning and the sun was just above the tree line as I drove down the outer road toward Wisteria. It was the last day of the Pickin' and Grinnin' Festival, and if I didn't get out to see the sheriff early I wouldn't get to see him at all, because I had to work at the festival today.

A misty low-lying fog snuggled close to the fields, with the trees and hills in perfect clarity. We often had fog in this part of the country because we were so close to the river.

Eventually, I pulled in front of the sheriff's station and went inside. A dampness clung to my skin, making me think that today was going to be even more humid than the weatherman had predicted. Deputy Miller nodded to me as I entered. “Good mornin', Torie. What brings you out so early on a Sunday?”

“I need to see Colin,” I said.

“He'll be right out,” he said. I nodded that I understood and watched out the window as the sleepy town of Wisteria slowly woke up. A rusty fifty-year-old truck clanked down the street, a station wagon met it the other way. And so I watched as the townsfolk made their way to church or breakfast or wherever until the sheriff came out of the back room.

“Hey,” he said. “Want some coffee?”

“No, thanks. You know I don't drink coffee,” I said.

“Oh, yeah. Want some…I don't have anything else,” he said. “Guess you can never work here.”

“I need to talk to you,” I said.

“What about?” he asked. He noted the seriousness in my voice, and the smile fell from his face. Smile? Had he actually smiled when he saw me?

“The estate,” I said and cut my eyes around to Deputy Miller, who was very much paying attention to what we were saying. I smiled at Deputy Miller and then looked back to Colin.

“Oh, sure,” he said. “Come on back.”

He led me to the makeshift kitchen with its two hot plates, microwave, half-size refrigerator and metal table with two chairs. He pointed to one of the chairs. “Have a seat.”

I was sure there was an interrogation room somewhere, but I was assuming he didn't want it spread around that I was in the interrogation room. As it was, I had been asked by several people what exactly it was that I had been doing in Bertha. Seems the sheriff's employees might be loyal, but they still liked to gossip. I mean it's not every day the sheriff throws somebody in jail. I guess they couldn't help themselves.

“What's up?” he asked.

“I need to look at the file again.”

He sat there for a minute and then crossed his arms. He didn't lean back in his chair, which was so common for him to do. Probably because he knew it wouldn't hold his weight and he'd end up on the floor. “What for?”

“I only had a few hours with it before. In order for me to actually look at each page, I just skimmed some of them. I'd stop and read when it looked pertinent,” I said.

“So what?”

“Have you read the file?”

“Most of it,” he said.

“There's something not adding up,” I said.

“We know what happened to Byron. What's not adding up?”

“The blanket, for one thing. And who killed Patrick Ward, for the other. What came in on Hugh Danvers's alibi, anyway?”

“He was in Springfield, Missouri, campaigning for his sister. Solid alibi,” he said. “He couldn't have killed Patrick.”

“How can all of the cousins have solid alibis? Somebody had to have killed him, right?” I asked.

“Maybe because of the connection to Byron, we've been assuming he was killed over Byron. Maybe he had other enemies and his death is not related to the Finch case in the least,” he said. “It could be that simple.”

The kitchen sink dripped, making a
bloink
sound every thirty seconds or so. The sheriff's department was in serious need of taxpayer money. The indoor-outdoor carpet was worn through to the concrete floor in several areas. “It could be that simple,” I repeated. But I doubted it.

After a moment or two of reflective silence, the sheriff finally spoke up. “What is it you're hoping to find, Torie? You think there's something in that file that's going to say, ‘In the future, this is the person who's going to poison Patrick'? I'll let you look at it, Torie. But I'm not sure what good it's going to do,” he said.

“I need to know who was in the house the morning after. I think whoever was in the house the morning after may have witnessed something between the kids,” I said.

Colin stopped for a moment. “In other words, you think this person, whoever it was, knew from the get-go that the kids did it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I'm not sure how, years later, that will help us with who killed Patrick, but I guess it depends on who it was.”

“Okay,” he said. “Sit tight. I'll go get the file.”

The sheriff put me in his private office and shut the door. An antique frame holding a photograph of my mother graced his desk. It was a sweet picture of my mother seated on the deck of a boat, a beautiful red-orange sunset behind her. I assumed it had been taken on their honeymoon. I was surprised to find, right next to it, a photograph of my kids taken at his wedding. My kids' picture sat on the sheriff's desk. I'm not sure how I felt about that.

Just when I thought I had him figured out, he'd surprise me.

Of course, I noticed that there was no photograph of
me
anywhere. Maybe he was saving that for the
WANTED
poster.

“Here,” the sheriff said, coming back into the room. “I might be able to help you with this. I know what to look for.”

“Okay,” I said. I wasn't going to argue because I did have to work the festival today, and I knew I could be here for hours scouring the papers in that box.

A few minutes later, Colin sat back in his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Well, I think I've found what you're looking for. But, it's not going to do you much good. Everybody on this list is dead, except Sylvia.”

“Everybody?”

“Everybody except Sylvia and the cousins, of course.”

“Let me see,” I said and held out my hand.

“See,” he said and pointed to a list of names. Sheriff Kolbe had written down the names of everybody who had been in attendance every time he went out to the Finch house to interview people or ask questions. Walter Finch's mother had arrived at mid-morning to comfort her son and daughter-in-law. She, of course, was long dead. Catherine, Walter, Wilma, Virgie and Ruth—they were all dead. The only one who wasn't was Sylvia.

And Sylvia had told Elmer that Patrick was coming into town.

“Torie? What's the matter?” Colin asked. “All the color just drained from your face.”

The room grew suddenly hot, and Colin's voice seemed to trail off in a tunnel somewhere. A prickly feeling crawled up my neck and my throat turned into cotton. I swallowed hard. “Um…you know what? I think I was wrong. I'll talk to you later, Colin. Thanks a lot.”

I left his office without hesitation. I didn't give him a chance to ask me anything further. When I made it to the front desk, I waved to Deputy Miller on the way out the door and never looked back.

I entered the Gaheimer house with both trepidation and determination. There was a certain amount of confusion reeling within me. I only hoped that I could see the truth. As I stood in the middle of the ballroom, with its glistening marble floor and the sky-blue-painted ceiling, I heard voices coming from the stairs. The tour was ending and Helen Wickland was at the head of the group of tourists.

“Thank you,” she said. “This concludes our tour. Have a great time in New Kassel. Enjoy the festival.”

With that, the dozen or so people exited the Gaheimer house and Helen shut the door behind them. She turned and jumped when she saw me. “Lord, when did you get here?”

“Just now,” I answered. “Where's Sylvia?”

“Upstairs. Last time I saw her she was changing the bedding in one of the guest rooms. Not that anybody ever actually sleeps in any of these beds. Why does she change the bedding so often?” Helen asked and rolled her eyes.

I truly didn't know the answers to the questions about Sylvia, although I probably knew more about her than anybody else in town. But it was still just the tip of the iceberg. “Habit,” I said. “When's the next tour?”

“Forty-five minutes,” she said, glancing at her watch.

“I need to talk to Sylvia,” I said. “I'll see you later.”

I went upstairs, as I have done a thousand times. The ninth step creaked, just as it had a thousand times. But somehow, this trip was different from the other thousand times. I could just chalk it up to being older and wiser, but there was more to it than that. I was afraid. I was actually afraid to go up the steps.

“Sylvia?” I called out.

“In here,” she said.

I reached the landing and took a deep breath. She was in what we called the brown room. I knew this because it was Sunday. And every Sunday morning after the first tour, she began to change the bedding. And she always began in the brown room, worked her way down the hall and finished up in Mr. Gaheimer's old room. As sure as the sun came up, this was her routine. Maybe there was security in doing familiar things. Or maybe her character was just so unbendable that even the smallest of details had to be done in a certain way. And in her mind, her way was the right way. It always had been. Ever since I could remember.

“Sylvia,” I said.

She pulled the earth-tone-colored Log Cabin quilt up to the head of the bed and put the pillows on top of it. Then she put the ivory crocheted shams on top of the pillows.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Aren't you working the festival today?”

“Yes,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”

“About what?” she asked.

“About Wilma,” I said.

“What about her?” she asked, raising her chin a notch.

“You didn't tell me that Wilma was there that morning,” I said. “She came with you when Catherine called. Didn't she?”

“What are you talking about?” she asked. She picked up the old linens and set them on the edge of the bed.

“The morning that Catherine Finch called you and told you that Byron had been kidnapped in the middle of the night. She asked you to come, and Wilma went with you. Didn't she?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “What of it?”

“What did she do while you were there? Did she stay with you?”

“No,” she said. “She went to find the children. Wilma always had a soft spot for children. All children.”

I ran my hand along the top of the cedar chest at the foot of the bed. “So…when she got there, she went to comfort the six cousins,” I stated. “The six children.”

“Yes,” she said. “Can this wait until some other time?”

“No,” I said. “It can't. Did she ever talk to you about what the children told her?”

“You're assuming they told her something?” Sylvia asked.

“Sylvia, the cousins took Byron out into the woods that night. He was killed by the storm and they got afraid. They hid him in the wall of the Yates house,” I said. “I need to know if Wilma mentioned this to you.”

“Yes,” she said and looked out the window. Just like that. Yes.

“So you knew all along,” I said. She said nothing. “Sylvia! You knew all along! Didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“All this time you knew that Byron was in that wall? You let Catherine suffer like that?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Sylvia,” I said. A sob escaped from my lips and it surprised me. I hadn't realized I was so emotional about the whole thing. A tear rolled down my cheek and I swiped at it, hoping that she wouldn't notice. Sylvia hated tears. They were a sign of weakness. “How could you?”

Sylvia steadied herself and sat down on the edge of the bed. “My sister pleaded with me. She convinced me that the children's lives would be ruined if we told,” she said with a shaky voice. “And she was right. Catherine was my best friend. But once Byron was born, nobody else existed. Not even her two daughters. It was as if they were just the practice run for the real child. If she had found out what her daughters had done, she would have never forgiven them. Never. Aurora and Cecily were right to keep it from her.”

“You don't mean that,” I said. “Surely not.”

“Oh, I do,” she said. She reached over to the table and straightened a vase full of fresh flowers. It didn't need straightening.

“So…the blanket. Did Wilma find it and hide it?”

“Yes,” she said. “Wilma told me the only thing that could link those kids to the disappearance of Byron was the blanket. She hid it somewhere in the house and said that she wasn't worried about Catherine finding it because Catherine wasn't the one who cleaned the house. She'd meant to go back at a later date and remove it, but she could never get a chance to be upstairs without Catherine being with her.”

“It just makes no sense,” I said.

“My sister was very protective of children,” she snapped at me. “It was an accident.”

“Yes, but poor Catherine…”

“There was nothing poor about Catherine. It was a shame that she lost her son. We thought it would be even more of a shame if her children lost her.”

“Yes, but they did lose her. They lost her anyway,” I said. “Her suspicions pushed them away.”

“But at least they were adults by then. They at least got to be raised in a somewhat normal house,” she said.

I swiped at another tear and noticed that my hands were shaking. I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. “Sylvia? Did Patrick Ward come to visit you the night of his…the night he died?” I asked. I asked the question a little louder than I intended, but I was so afraid that I wouldn't be able to speak the sentence at all that I overcompensated.

“Do you realize what you're asking me?” she asked. She folded her hands in her lap and looked up at me. “I will not lie to you. How badly do you want to know this answer?”

“But—but it makes no sense, Sylvia,” I said. I fell to my knees and buried my head in her lap. I sobbed like a child. “Why kill Patrick Ward after all these years?”

“I didn't,” she said simply. “I don't know what my sister did.”

Still the tears came. “Did you see Patrick Ward that night or not?”

“Yes.”

“And Wilma?”

“Yes. She saw him.”

Sylvia handed me a handkerchief. I don't know where she produced it from. She was like that. No pockets, no purse, and yet here was a handkerchief. I wiped my nose and my eyes. “Explain it to me,” I said. “I don't understand.”

“I don't know,” Sylvia said. “I'm assuming we'll never know. My sister was not herself. She was becoming absentminded, forgetful. Even reckless, in a sense. She was very ill.”

She laid an aged and gnarled hand on mine. It was the simplest of gestures, but from Sylvia it meant the world. It was all I could do not to break down again.

“I think she forgot that all this time had passed. Patrick came here to tell us that he was tired of living with the secret. That his conscience had bothered him too long. He wanted people to know the truth,” she said.

“So he didn't come here to remove the body so that when the building came down it wouldn't be found?” I asked. “Governor Danvers—”

“On the contrary. He didn't know the building had been slated for destruction. He said that if Hope Danvers wanted to go all the way with her career that there were things she needed to answer for. The people needed to know the truth about everything in her life.”

“He was going to expose her?”

“He was going to expose all of them, and make them all answer for what they did,” she said. “Wilma didn't realize that he was an old man now, too. She kept saying that the children needed to be protected. We had to protect the children. In some ways, I think Wilma was as traumatized by what happened to Byron as the children were.”

Wilma had thought the children were in danger. In her delusional state, she had thought she was still protecting the children. Only, the children were adults now, with grandchildren of their own.

“Why didn't you tell Patrick that the building was slated for destruction?” I asked.

“You know Bill, he talks and talks,” she said. Her voice trailed off and she looked to the window. “I really didn't think he'd ever get it done. I, too, was ready for the truth to be out.”

I waited for her to say something else. Eventually she swallowed hard and finished what she was telling me. “It never occurred to me that Wilma would do something…dangerous.”

“What happened?” I asked. “Tell me what happened after he told you both what he was going to do.”

“Wilma asked him to stay for dinner and I went upstairs to watch television.
The Thin Man
was on one of the cable stations. I wanted to watch it. I'd already eaten a sandwich, so I wasn't that hungry. When I came down to eat, Wilma had washed up the dishes. There were no leftovers,” she said. “I thought nothing of it—until Patrick was found dead.”

“So you don't really know if she poisoned him or not,” I said.

“No,” she said. “I don't know for sure. But I—”

“But nothing,” I said. “You don't know for sure and there's no way to prove it, now. We can never know.”

“But I
know
.”

I was willing to say that it was a question that there could never be an answer to. At least in my mind. Even if Wilma had poisoned him, she didn't know what she was doing. And she thought she was protecting the children. It seemed to be the thing she lived for.

“How did you know?” Sylvia asked.

“I found the blanket,” I said. I was pretty sure that Sylvia had read that in the paper. But there was no way for her to have known that, for me, that fingered either her or Wilma.

Sylvia gave a crooked smile.

I went on. “I knew none of the six cousins had hidden it. I knew Walter wouldn't have hidden it. He would have said something. The two servants would have had ample time to throw it away, and nothing they did would have been questioned. I knew Catherine hadn't hidden it, because she genuinely thought Hector Castanza was Byron. How could she have thought that if she'd had proof that Byron fell victim to a horrible disaster that night? That only left you, that I knew of. But then Elmer said ‘the Pershings' when he was talking to me about his father and the case. Lanna had said that the only people Patrick was still in contact with were his family, Elmer Kolbe and ‘the Pershings.' Then Colin showed me a list of people who were present and accounted for the morning after Byron's disappearance, and Wilma was on the list,” I said. “I knew what children meant to Wilma…I sort of figured she was the one who hid the blanket.”

“What are you going to do?” Sylvia asked after a long pause.

I found that after several moments of contemplating that question, I could not answer it.