Blood Relations (13 page)

“Have they got you on painkillers?” Mom asked. She wheeled over to the refrigerator with Matthew on her lap and got out the juice for him.

“Just some large doses of ibuprofen,” I said. “And Amoxicillin four times a day.”

“So, you're feeling all right, then?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “It only hurts when I try to walk.”

“I've got an extra wheelchair in the basement if you want to borrow it,” she offered. She handed Matthew his cup of fresh juice. Juice, along with everything, is always better at Grandma's house.

“God no, I'd end up hurting myself worse. Plus breaking everything in the house,” I said. “No, I'll just hop from place to place, thank you very much.”

“Rudy said one of your chickens got out,” she said.

“Yeah, it's the same one over and over. I don't know how she's doing it. I wouldn't be that worried about it, except I'm afraid if the mayor finds her first, she's going to end up on his dinner table.”

“That's a legitimate worry,” Mom said.

“So … Colin,” I said. “Any ideas on a murder weapon?”

“Coroner hasn't said yet. But it's looking like something big and heavy.”

“Like a rock?”

“Exactly like a rock. The trauma area on the skull isn't small enough to be something like the butt of a gun or a hammer. It's a big area,” he said. “So I'm thinking whoever it was just picked up a big old rock and smashed him in the head.”

“Gee,” I said. “That doesn't sound too premeditated to me.”

“Still could have been,” he said. “The perp might have picked out the rock he was going to use the day before.”

“Any idea on suspects?”

“Well, everybody in town,” he said. “But if you want to know who had motive, we're not sure yet. Obviously, everybody in the Murdoch Inn is a suspect at this point. Those are the people who would have had access to him, and it's closest to the crime scene.”

“Boy, am I glad Collette was staying with me,” I said. “Otherwise, she'd be a murder suspect right now.”

“That's right,” he said.

“So what about the whereabouts of Jacob Lahrs's associates?”

“They say they were both in the inn the whole time. Jeremiah said he hadn't been anywhere all day, except to walk out for breakfast and lunch. They were waiting for Jacob to come back from the copier to go to dinner.”

“Were their cars there all day, too?”

“Newsome said that Jeremiah claims his car was there the whole day, while Danny said his had been at the inn since about noon.”

“Hmph” was all I said. I was about to ask the whereabouts of Bradley Chapel and his cameraman, when I noticed an old yellowed piece of paper sitting on the table, the edge of it tucked under the napkin holder. There is usually very little clutter in my mother's house. Don't get me wrong—she keeps everything: all of my report cards, half of the papers I did in elementary school, all the programs for every concert. But they are tucked away in plastic containers, and she knows what is in each one of them. So I wondered if the piece of paper was there for a reason. Then when I noticed my mother and Colin both looked at it and then at each other, I wondered even more about it.

“So … what's up?” I asked, forgetting all about Bradley Chapel and his cameraman. It was a really lame way to segue to a different topic, but I couldn't think of anything else.

“I gotta go get an oil change in the Festiva,” Colin said. “I'll talk to you guys later.” With that, he gave my mother a kiss and walked out of the kitchen and into the garage. It was weird watching my mother kiss the sheriff.

“Okay,” I said. “What's going on?”

“Your father called me,” she said.

Oh boy. Here we go.

“That's nothing unusual,” I said. “You guys talk all the time.”

Matthew decided to scoot down off of her lap then, and go watch the fish in the fish tank in the living room. She leveled a gaze on me that said in no uncertain terms she was in no mood to be jerked around. “So, he called you. What about it?”

She said nothing.

“Okay, I went to his house. I was very upset.”

“I know you're upset,” she said.

“Are you going to tell me I shouldn't have said those things to him? Mom, how would you feel? How
do
you feel about this?”

“I'm not surprised,” she said. “I think I knew he had a child out there somewhere, even before he did. I won't lie. When he first told me, it opened up the wound that he'd inflicted years ago when he had the affair. But I also made peace with it years ago, so I'm able to look beyond the hurt.”

“Well, good for you,” I said. Lord, I sounded like a snotty twelve-year-old.

“Victory,” she said in her best “Shame on you” voice.

“What?” I asked. “I'm glad you can move forward, Mother. That's great.”

“It took a lot of guts for him to call me,” she said.

“Well, at least he
told
you. I had to have some girl knock on my door and drop it on me like Nagasaki,” I said. “Do you have any idea how … how … stupid I felt? I didn't know if I should laugh, cry, apologize, or kick her out the door. I mean, I didn't know what to do.”

“Look, I know your father is a chicken. He's never done what he's supposed to when it comes to things like this,” she said. “He runs from confrontations. He runs from emotional encounters. He always has.”

“So that's it? Because he always has, I'm just supposed to let it go this time. And the next and the next, and he never learns, and he never has to do what's right! It's not fair,” I said. “I should have known. He should have told me.”

Having a dead body trap me in the snow had done very little to make me forget the pain of all of this, I was surprised to find out. “I can't believe you're taking his side,” I added.

“I'm not taking his side,” she said. “You misunderstand me. He didn't call me to plead his innocence. He called, first of all, to tell me about your sister, and, second, to tell me that you had gone to see him and what you had to say. But he really called me about Stephanie Connelly.”

I narrowed my gaze on her, suspicious. “What do you mean?”

“His concern is not whether or not you ever talk to him again,” she said. “For once, he's thinking of somebody else. He wants you to talk with your sister.”

I crossed my arms and looked around the room. Anything other than to have to look into my mother's eyes. “Why?” I asked the floor.

“Because she's your sister,” she said.

“So?”

“Stephanie very much wants to get to know you. She has no siblings, other than you. She's grown up with only one side of her family. She's missed knowing her grandparents, Torie. Your dad's parents are already gone. You had the pleasure of growing up with them. She didn't. You know what it was like to be loved by Grandma Keith. Stephanie doesn't. But it's not too late for her to meet her aunts and uncles and cousins.”

“Dad can introduce her to everybody just as well as I can.”

“Victory” was all she said.

“What if I don't want to get to know her? What if I don't want her just to waltz into my world and…”

“And what?” she asked.

I didn't answer. I just sat there with tears perched and ready to fall.

My mother reached across the table and picked up the yellowed piece of paper that I'd noticed sitting there earlier. She opened it and handed it to me. It was a letter I had written in the second grade, when I was eight years old. A letter to Santa. I could barely read the words through my tears.

Dear Santa,

I wold like a Sweet April playland for Christmas and the doll to go with it. And a Mister Patato Hed too. But most of all I wold like a sister. I ask you for a sister every year and I never get one. How come? I wold be vary nice to her and I wold love her and we wold be best frinds.

I have been vary good.

Love, Torie

I had dotted the
i
in my name with a heart.

I swiped at the tears that fell, feeling like a complete heel.

“Is there a reason that Stephanie has to pay for your father's sins?” my mother asked me in her solemn and peaceful voice.

“No,” I whispered.

“Then call her,” Mom said. “Meet her for lunch.”

Sixteen

I sat in my office at the Gaheimer House, tapping my pen on the desk and looking out my window. I had sent an e-mail to Stephanie Connelly and suggested that she meet me at Fraulein Krista's for lunch tomorrow. I could have called her, but then I would have had to talk to her. Call me strange, but I didn't want to say anything to her over the phone. I wanted to see her face when I talked to her for the first time. Well, other than the time I had been rude to her in my office. She'd sent an e-mail back almost within the hour and told me she would be there.

Now I had to be there.

“Torie,” a voice said.

I looked up to see Sylvia standing in my doorway. She walked in briskly and sat down in the chair across from my desk. Sylvia is the anti–little old woman. Her sister Wilma had been that greeting card–perfect old lady: round, plump, kindhearted, and a great cook, and I miss her more than words can say. Sylvia, on the other hand, is thin, gnarly, sharp as a tack, and grouchy as a bear with a thorn in its butt.

“What did you need?” she demanded.

I had asked her to stop by my office when she had a moment. “I wanted to ask you about the night of the wreck.
The Phantom.
”

“Sheriff Brooke thinks it has something to do with the death of Professor Lahrs?”

“Well, no, not really. Other than the fact that Professor Lahrs was in town investigating the wreckage, and his body was found draped over it. I mean, in that way it involves the wreckage, but I don't think in any other way,” I said.

“What do you want to know?”

“Well, first of all, I was hoping we could take some of the money from the River Heritage fund and maybe put up one of those plaques down by the river, telling about the wreck. But first I need to try to find out exactly what happened.”

She thought about it a moment. “I don't see why we couldn't put up a memorial of some sort. Several people lost their lives.”

“That's great, Sylvia. Thank you,” I said.

Sylvia and I have a love-hate relationship. I love her; she hates me. Well, not exactly. I respect her and, I guess, I sort of do love her because, since coming to work for her, I have learned that there is a lot more to Sylvia than being grouchy. I used to think she was cold and unfeeling, when in fact she has had a life full of tragedy. Hermann Gaheimer had been a man old enough to be her grandfather and she had had a torrid affair with him. When he died, he left her everything, including the Gaheimer House. I had often wondered why he had not left the house to his children, and then one day I discovered that he had been unable to have children. His wife, not knowing he was sterile, had become pregnant by her lover and tried to pass the kids off as his. What I found out was that at one time, Sylvia was warm, generous, and loving. But at some point in her life, she forgot how to live and love, and she shut herself up tighter than a clam.

As far as I am concerned, I think she hates the way I do things but respects the fact that I'm the only one in town who really gives a hoot about the probate records from 1852 to 1877. Who else would care? So in me, she has found a like-minded spirit. Even if I do infuriate her most of the time. It makes for a prickly relationship, one that I'm constantly redefining.

“Second, I'd like to know what you remember about the day of the wreck,” I said. She would have been about fourteen at the time, give or take a few years, because I don't know exactly how old Sylvia is. I have this recurring nightmare that someday when she dies, we'll find out that she was about 150 years old. I always wake up screaming from that nightmare.

She glanced at my desk, her eyes skimming over the files and photographs that I had lying out. She stood then and riffled through some things and found a photograph. “That's me,” she said. “And that's Wilma standing behind me. You can see her big white bow peeking out from behind her head. Mom had bought us identical bows for Easter the year before.”

I had not known that the girls in the picture were Sylvia and Wilma. How many times in the past few days had I looked at this photograph and had no idea it was my boss? It suddenly made me want to have Sylvia label every picture in the house. When she died, how would I identify the pictures? She had no children to recognize the people in the pictures. So unless she labeled them now, the identities of the people in all these old pictures would go with her. I made a mental note to spend a week having her go through pictures with me. Even her private collection.

“That's my brother,” she said, pointing to a boy of about seventeen.

In the distance, you could see the wreckage, but only because the photographer had stood at an advantageous place on the front porch of the Murdoch Inn. Although then, the Murdoch Inn had been owned by Alexander Queen and was a private residence. If the photographer had stood level with all the people, one would never have been able to see the actual wreckage behind them.

“So?” I asked. “What do you remember?”

“Lots of things,” she said. She sat back down, the photograph still in her hand. “I had been at the Queens' house,” she said. “Mrs. Queen was expecting, and I used to take them their groceries while she was bedfast. She paid me a nickel to pick up the groceries and deliver them to her, and put them away, too. If I didn't put them away, I didn't get the nickel. Sometimes she'd give me a cinnamon stick.”

I didn't interrupt her, even though it had very little to do with the wreckage. When Sylvia opens up about the past, it's a rare occurrence.