Killing Cousins (8 page)

A rap at our front door sent me into a mild panic. Mostly because it was only eight o'clock in the morning on Monday and Rudy had already left for work. Matthew was on the kitchen table in his pumpkin seat, and the girls were putting on their shoes. Phone calls and knocks at the door at unusual times always made my heart flutter just for a second.

I answered the door with a dish towel thrown over my shoulder and no shoes on. A man of extreme height, with graying hair and severe black eyes, stood on the step. It made me wish that I had at least checked through the peephole before opening the door because now he had the upper hand. But that's living in a small town for you. You never expect the person on the other side of the door to be a stranger.

“Mrs. O'Shea?” he asked.

A stranger who knew who I was, no less.

“You are?” I asked.

He produced a business card from inside the breast pocket of his blue suit. It was at least ninety degrees at eight o'clock in the morning and he was dressed in a suit. Yet I could not see a single trace of sweat. I hate people like that. I sweat big-time. It's so unladylike, but I can't help it.

The card read “David Newton” and included an address, a phone number and an e-mail address. But no title. So, basically, it still didn't tell me anything. Before I could ask the question ready to spill from my lips, Mr. Newton finally spoke up.

“I'm an antique dealer,” he said.

“Sure you are,” I said and handed him back his card.

He looked taken aback and cleared his throat. I'm sorry, but all of the antique dealers I know are broke. He put out his hand, which I shook cautiously. “I am David Newton and I assure you I am an antique dealer.”

“Then why doesn't your card say that?”

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“Nope.”

He laughed nervously and stuck his hands in his pant pockets. “I understand that your stepfather is handling the Finch estate?”

“You are mistaken,” I said and started to shut the door.

“Norah's Antiques is not owned by your stepfather?”

“Norah's Antiques is owned by my stepfather.”

“Then he is handling her estate.”

“No, he bought her estate. He owns it. There's no handling it,” I said. “What do you want, Mr. Newton?”

“I deal in very rare pieces, Mrs. O'Shea,” he said. He looked past me into my house. “Are you sure I couldn't come in for just a moment?”

“Nope,” I said. “And next time, please visit me at my office.”

“Please,” he said. “I'm looking for a piece…it is said that the last owner of it was Catherine Finch. I would be willing to pay top dollar to your stepfather if he would consider selling it to me.”

Tobias Thorley drove up the street and honked at me. I waved to him. Mr. Newton looked around, confused. I guessed he wasn't used to neighborly people.

“What piece would that be?” I asked.

“Well, there are two, actually.”

“What are they, Mr. Newton?”

“There's a necklace, it's a scalloped piece with a rather large pearl in the shape of a teardrop. The necklace itself wouldn't be worth that much on its own, if it weren't for its pedigree. It was owned by Alexandra Romanov. The necklace is worth a
mint,”
he said.

I was lost in thought for a moment. It had never occurred to me that Catherine Finch would have had things in her home that would be priceless or have historical significance. It made me wonder a moment if Colin was indeed smart enough to know what he had. If Mr. Newton hadn't shown up here today and brought my attention to the piece, would Colin have sold it to some unknowing tourist for a hundred bucks? Or, worse, would he have sold it for a hundred bucks to some scalping dealer who would have turned around and sold it for thousands? That seemed much worse.

“Mrs. O'Shea?” Mr. Newton asked. “Have you seen the piece of which I speak?”

“No, I haven't.” It was the truth. I had not made it to Catherine's bedroom or office. I had only cataloged the first floor.

Mr. Newton handed me back his card. “Would you give this to Mr. Brooke—”

“Sheriff Brooke,” I corrected.

“Sheriff Brooke, and tell him that I will pay him the highest price, if he would sell it to me. I specialize in royal pieces,” he said.

I took the card and looked into his eyes. “What was the other piece?”

“Hmm?”

“The other piece that you were interested in?”

“Oh, a piece of music. Sheet music. It was a piece written for Catherine by Henry Stoddard, although I don't think she ever recorded it. The music is in Stoddard's handwriting. Stoddard was my uncle, so it has a personal meaning.”

That probably didn't mean that he wouldn't be willing to sell it, though. “All right,” I said. “I'll tell him.”

“I appreciate that, Mrs. O'Shea,” he said. He nodded his head and sort of clicked his heels together. I guess that was his way of saying good-bye to me, but it reminded me of Hitler or Colonel Klink, so I chuckled. I sort of waved as he walked down my steps to his car. As he got to the edge of the sidewalk I remembered something I had wanted to ask him.

“Mr. Newton,” I said.

“Yes?”

“How did you find me?” I asked. He looked at me as if he didn't know what I meant. “How did you know that I was cataloging the estate for Sheriff Brooke?”

“I didn't,” he said. “When I went by Norah's Antiques, the young woman working there, Bridget's her name, said that he was on holiday and that his stepdaughter was the only person in town who would have contact with Mr…. I mean Sheriff Brooke before he got back. She told me where you lived.”

Another drawback of a small town. Everybody thinks that everybody else has friendly intentions. Mr. Newton probably did have friendly intentions. He probably did just want to buy a necklace. But he could have been a serial killer, for all Bridget knew. I turned back into my house, shut the door and set Mr. Newton's card on the top of the piano.

The phone rang. First a knock and now a ring. I answered the phone in the kitchen on the second ring. It was Deputy Duran, sounding chipper and wide awake. He probably started his shift at six in the morning.

“Torie,” he said.

“Yes?”

“The autopsy is back.”

I was a little surprised to see Deputy Duran calling me over the autopsy after yesterday's fiasco. “And?”

“It was murder.”

Shock kept me from forming any coherent sentence. I was sure that I had misunderstood what he'd said. How could it have been murder? Why would it have been murder? “What…I uh…How?”

“Evidently, whomever he had seen earlier in the day poisoned his clam chowder.”

“I still don't understand.”

“Sometime on Thursday, Mr. Ward ate a bowl of clam chowder and it was poisoned. A slow-working poison,” Duran said.

“So, then do you think he just wandered into the Yates house because he was starting to feel bad, or hallucinating? Or do you think he was headed there for a purpose and just happened to die in there rather than somewhere else, like behind the wheel of his car?” I asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine. We're going to go over the crime scene one more time and then demolition is going to go ahead before Mayor Castlereagh has a stroke,” he said. “So, I just wanted to let you know that the house is coming down sometime today.”

“All right,” I said.

“Oh, and Torie?”

“Yeah.”

“About yesterday. I hope that you understand. About the Finch file.”

“Yes, I understand. In fact, after sleeping on it, I've come to the conclusion that you've probably saved me from doing something that would have caused me great humiliation.” My cheeks grew hot just from the thought of it.

He laughed and that made me feel good.

“Can I ask a favor, though?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said.

“Can you not tell Colin? Please?”

“Sure thing.”

“I plan on asking him if I can read the file when he gets back.”

“Okay, well, I'll talk to you later then,” Duran said.

“See ya, Edwin.”

“Victory?”

I looked up from my desk to see Sylvia standing in my office doorway. She looked pale today, in a beige double-knit pantsuit that was probably made when I was in the first grade. “Yes?”

“Have you gotten any work done on the biography?”

“Well,” I said, looking toward my children playing Pictionary in the corner. I didn't want to lie with them in the room. “I haven't actually written anything, but I'm making tons of notes and I have done an outline.”

“Good,” she said. A tremor caused by age had taken hold of Sylvia in the past few years. She always looked as if she was shivering. She gazed at me just a minute too long and I knew that there was something wrong. Sylvia usually barked her orders or reprimanded me and moved on. If she lingered there was something that she wasn't saying.

“Sylvia? Is there something you want to tell me?”

“I'm sure it's nothing.”

“What?”

“It's Wilma. She's in the hospital.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “Why? Is she all right?”

“She thought the kitchen chair was the toilet,” she said. “This morning, she mistook the kitchen chair for the toilet.”

That was hardly something to put somebody in the hospital for. When I was eight years old, my parents were having a dinner party. I was fast asleep and got up and peed in the kitchen trash can. They didn't put me in the hospital for that. “What else, Sylvia? Surely there is more to it.”

“Then she couldn't remember who I was,” she said. Her voice cracked, giving away more emotion than I would guess she wanted to. “And she didn't know who she was…so I called the doctor. He said to take her to the hospital.”

For the life of me I couldn't figure out why she hadn't told me this right away. But that's Sylvia for you. If she had told me as soon as she saw me, she would probably have been too emotional. Asking me about the biography gave her a chance to even out her emotions.

“I was wondering if you could go by and see her. We have no family. Except for each other,” Sylvia said.

And that pretty much said it all. Sylvia was all Wilma had, but, more important at the moment, Wilma was all Sylvia had.

“I don't want her to get too lonely. I can't stay there all the time, you know. Could you go by with the kids this afternoon? She's at Wisteria General. She loves your children,” she said.

“Well, of course. My gosh, Sylvia. You don't even have to ask. Have you called Father Bingham? I'm sure he'll send the nuns over to visit as well. Everybody in New Kassel loves Wilma. She won't be alone.”

“Would you call him for me?”

“Sure,” I said.

With that Sylvia walked away. She and Wilma were all that was left of their family. They had had an older brother who was long dead, and he had had two children who were both dead now too. I suppose he had had grandchildren, but I didn't think that they lived anywhere in Missouri, much less New Kassel.

I wasted no time in phoning Father Bingham, who in turn was as surprised as I was and said he'd be right over. I rounded up my kids and headed out to Wisteria General.

Hospitals can be places of great joy but also so depressing that you feel your spirit sink to your toes as soon as you enter the building. It just depends on your reason for being there. A birth or a surgery that saves a life, and you think the hospital is the greatest place ever. But that same building can turn into a dark vortex, sucking the life right out of you if you're not there for a happy event.

Wilma lay in a hospital bed with one of those generic blue-mint gowns on, looking totally out of place and devoid of identity. I knew it was Wilma but it wasn't Wilma. I left Rachel in charge of Mary and Matthew in the waiting room, something I shouldn't have done because Mary will push her older sister to the limit of adolescent patience, but what else was I to do? They wouldn't let the kids come back to the room. It wasn't officially visiting hours.

I reached out to touch Wilma's arm and she jumped before I even made contact. She opened her eyes and looked around the room, finally resting her questioning gaze on to me. Her hair was down, long and silver, wrapping itself around oxygen tubes and IV lines.

“Wilma?” I asked.

“Did you bring me something to drink?” she asked.

She thought I was a nurse.

“Wilma, do you know who I am?”

Her blank stare answered the question for me. Tears welled up in my eyes and a lump instantly grew in the back of my throat. She was afraid, I could tell. She wasn't afraid because she didn't know me. She was afraid because somehow she knew she should have known me and didn't.

“It's Torie,” I said.

“Torie,” she repeated in a voice so quiet I had to strain to hear it.

Just then the nurse came in, bringing her one of those combination plastic-Styrofoam pitchers of water and a cup. She smiled at me and I tried to smile back, but I'm sure the tears glistened in my eyes. “Has the doctor talked to Sylvia yet?” I asked the nurse.

“Sylvia?” she asked.

“Her sister.”

“I believe so,” she said.

“And? What's the prognosis?”

“Are you family?” she asked.

I looked to Wilma, whose skin was so paper-thin that her purple veins looked as if there were no skin to cover them. Her hands were folded on her stomach. She always had her hands folded. “Yes,” I said. I had known her my entire life. My mother has a photograph of me sitting on her lap during the bicentennial celebration in New Kassel. And I still have the first embroidered pot-holder that I made when I was six, the result of Wilma's kind and loving determination to try to find a trace of girl in me. Yes, she was family.

“I'll send the doctor in,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said.

After about ten minutes of watching Wilma doze in and out of consciousness, the doctor finally came in. He looked at me and smiled, his teeth extremely white against his dark Indian skin. He extended a hand and told me his name, which I couldn't have spelled, let alone pronounced.

“I'm Torie O'Shea,” I said.

“Wilma, unfortunately, doesn't have a whole lot of time left,” he said.

My heart sank. The news shocked me more than if somebody had told me that John Wayne had been a Communist. Why? Lord, the woman was in her nineties. How much time
could
she possibly have?

A vision flashed in front of me of Sylvia all alone in that big house.
Older people have a tendency to give up once they lose their closest relations.
I had read that somewhere.

“She is very weak and her heart is old and tired. I'm afraid that the heart is not getting a proper supply of blood to her brain.”

“Has she had a stroke?” I asked.

“No, no. She simply isn't getting enough oxygen. She can't remember things very well and she is a danger to herself. However, most often at times like these, the patients will start to experience ministrokes and heart attacks until they pass away.”

Pass away. Wilma? No way. My eyes filled with tears, I looked away from him to Wilma, lying there oblivious to the fact that two people were discussing her death right in front of her. “But…”

“She is very old, ma'am. She has lived a long and good life.”

“Yes, but…” I couldn't speak. What did I expect? Did I expect her to live to be a hundred? What then? A hundred and ten? A hundred and twenty? I looked back to the doctor and tried to smile. “Thank you, Doctor.”

I walked swiftly by him out to the waiting room, where I gave a whistle and Rachel and Mary stood up to meet me. Rachel took one look at me and the color drained from her face. “Mom, are you okay?”

“Why are you crying, Mommy?” Mary asked.

“Wilma is very sick,” I said to them as I unlocked Matthew's stroller.

“Where are we going?” Rachel asked.

“Home,” I said. “We need to go home and make some phone calls. I need to find a baby-sitter for you so that I can come back. I…I need to talk to Sylvia.”

“Is Wilma gonna die?” Mary asked.

“She's very sick” was all I could say.