Killing Cousins (16 page)

I wasn't sure what he was planning on doing to me if I didn't produce quality stuff, but I didn't have the time really to contemplate it at the moment. I put his badge on around my neck and walked right up to the front row. “Governor Danvers,” I said. “Victory Keith here, from
New Kassel News
. How do you suppose that little Byron Finch managed to get out in the woods on the night he disappeared?”

“In the woods…” was all she said.

“He was hit hit by lightning. He had to be outside, somewhere.”

Governor Danvers turned white and her mouth dropped open. Funny, the news seemed to have the same effect on everybody. She tried to speak but nothing came out. She cleared her throat, but she just stood riveted in place. This time when she tried to speak, she had more success. “I'm sure I wouldn't know.”

“You were there the night that Byron disappeared.”

“I'm not here to discuss this. I'm here to discuss riverboat gambling in New Kassel.” Her voice broke and sounded as though she was about to cry. The crowd was now murmuring and restless.

“Governor, it is a known fact that you were there the night he disappeared.”

“Along with five other children,” she said justly.

“That's it? Just five children? Weren't there any adults in the house?”

“Yes, of course,” she said.

“Then why would you only mention the children, Governor?”

She shook from head to toe, with anger or fear, or possibly both. One thing was for certain—her glare never left me. I felt as if I were cooking under the intensity of it.

“Governor, you are aware that one of your other cousins, Patrick Ward, was found dead right here, where you're standing, just a few weeks ago?”

“A most unfortunate accident,” she said.

“Oh, a most unfortunate poisoning. A big helping of clam chowder, I believe,” I said. The murmur from the crowd grew louder. I had to raise my voice to be heard. “Governor, when was the last time you saw your cousin, Patrick Ward? And don't tell me it was the night of the disappearance of Byron Finch. He was there, too, I'm aware. But surely you've seen him since then.”

Hope Danvers stammered and stuttered. Not even the pinkness of her suit could manage to keep any color in her face. I went on. “The authorities now have enough evidence, Governor, that they believe some members of the family may actually have known the fate of poor little Byron all these years. You wouldn't be one of them? Would you?”

With that, Governor Hope Danvers walked off of the stage, ran to her limousine and drove off, leaving her aides in the rubble of what was once the Yates house. The crowd was humming and buzzing with excitement. The mayor was scowling at me, but what else was new?

I turned around and tossed the cameraman his press badge. “Was that good enough for you?” I asked. He just smiled at me and clutched the badge as I walked by him. The jaw of his anchorwoman was close to the ground.

I was feeling quite proud of myself and was happily accepting the greetings of my fellow New Kasselonians when the sheriff grabbed my arm with such fierceness that the pain shot all the way down to my hand. “Ouch! What is the matter with you, you big ogre?”

“That's Sheriff Big Ogre, to you. Get in the car!”

He all but threw me in the car and slammed the door. The whole car shook with the reverberation of it. Then he got in and slammed
his
door, and rattled my teeth all over again.

“What the
hell
was that?” he screamed. His face was as red as a tomato.

“That was journalistic magic,” I said, with my hands spread apart the way those cheesy magicians do.

“It has not been publicly released that Patrick Ward was poisoned by clam chowder,” he said. “Nor has it been publicly released that Byron Finch was hit by lightning.”

“But I thought—”

“No! No, Torie, that's the problem. You weren't thinking. Not one little bit!” he yelled and hit the steering wheel. “Dammit, anyway.”

“But…you had to have released…” I said, feeling my high ebb away from me.

“I don't have to do anything but die and pay taxes, and if you ever make me this angry again, I fear all I'll have left to do is pay taxes!”

“But you said you were going to release the info. It's all over the
National Enquirer,
for Pete's sake,” I stammered. “Eleanore gave me a copy.”

“No. What is in the papers is that the skeleton of Byron Lee Finch was found in a wall of an abandoned building in a small historic tourist town of eastern Missouri. End of story. That's what the papers say,” he said.

“Oh.” Well, in truth, I hadn't actually read the article in the
National Enquirer.

He turned the engine on and rammed it into gear and drove away. He backed into my driveway and then turned back the other direction, toward the outer road. “Where are we going?” I asked, as I saw Eleanore waving to me from the crowd.

“Don't speak to me,” he said.

“Well, if you don't want me speaking to you, then let me out of the car.”

“Shut up,” he said.

I shut up and watched the town disappear behind us as we made our way down the outer road. We were headed for Wisteria. He was taking me to my mother. I just knew it. He was going to take me to Mom and tell on me. Then she'd berate me, make me feel horrible, make me apologize to him and mortify me.

Instead, we pulled in front of the sheriff's station. Okay…

He got out, came over and opened my door, and once again grabbed my arm as tight as he could.

“What—”

“Shut up,” he said.

“But—”

“Shut up.”

I shut up as he led me into the office. I smiled at Newsome as I went in, tried to say something polite, but the sheriff tugged on me and cut me off in mid-sentence. And then I saw it. At the end of the hall was the jail cell.

“Oh, no, you don't!” I said.

But it was too late. He opened the cell door, threw me in, and locked the door.

“I'm claustrophobic!” I yelled.

He turned and walked away from me.

“Sheriff! Colin. Dad…”

“Hey! Are you gonna arrest me, or what?”

I'd been sitting inside the Wisteria jail cell for close to six hours. It was boring as heck in here, which was the point. The seat was as hard as a rock, and there weren't even any interesting mice to keep me from losing my mind. No, there was nothing. No phone call. No visitors. No food. And no rest room break. I'd been thinking about my slowly filling bladder for the past six hours. “Colin! If you don't let me pee, you're going to have a mess in here!”

I was past angry. I had been angry. Then I was embarrassed. Then I was laughing hysterically for about an hour. Then I started crying. Now I was angry again, only this time I was fuming. He hadn't spoken to me since he threw me in here, and that was against my constitutional rights.

I thought.

Hell, I didn't know. How would I know something like that? Why would I know something like that?

I grabbed ahold of the bars and tried to move them. “I need to peeeeeee!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

“Are you miserable enough?” Colin asked me. He had just appeared like magic while I had my eyes squeezed shut, shouting to the heavens.

“Yes,” I answered through clenched teeth.

“Good,” he said. He pulled up a chair and straddled it backward. He hung his hands over the edge and smiled at me. “Now you sit there and squirm while I talk.”

I didn't roll my eyes as I wanted to. I barely even breathed. I've never seen him so angry in my life.

“Here are the rules, Torie O'Shea. I like you, really I do. You're spunky, and I admire that. You're my stepdaughter now, and I don't want anything to interfere with my relationship with your mother.

I admire all that you do. You're an amazing woman. You're like this hound dog. You attack a project and you don't miss one little detail,” he said.

I must admit that this was not the berating I thought I would get.

“But if you ever, and I mean ever again, give away the details of an investigation, I will arrest you for interference. And I will press charges. I don't care whose daughter you are,” he said. His eyebrows twitched, hinting at just how angry he really was.

God, I felt so little.

“Do you understand what I am saying? I trust you with information because, Lord help me, you have become an invaluable assistant on certain investigations. But we had an agreement. Remember? I'd let you do your thing as long as you told me what you were doing and as long as you didn't endanger yourself or interfere,” he said. “What you did today with the governor was interference. No way around it.”

“I didn't know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn't know that it was still a secret,” I said in a small voice. “I would never had done it otherwise. I just wanted to see her squirm. You believe me, don't you? That I would never have intentionally in front of rolling television cameras done something like that?”

“Lord help me, but yes. I do believe you,” he said.

I squirmed myself, because quite frankly my bladder was about to explode. “So…am I like your official sidekick?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “There's nothing official about you. You are unofficially my unofficial sidekick. But I mean it. You ever do anything like that again and I will arrest you and press charges.”

“I totally understand,” I said.

He sat there for a minute looking at me. Then a big wide smile played across his face. “Oh, man, did you see her squirm?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Pretty cool, huh?”

“Don't push me,” he said, the smile instantly gone. He held up a finger. “Okay, here's the deal. I went and had a talk with the governor while you were getting to know Bertha a little better.”

“Bertha?”

“The jail cell,” he said, like I was stupid or something.

“Oh. Well?” I asked.

“Part of the reason I threw you in jail was because I didn't want you begging to come along,” he said.

“No fair,” I said.

“Shut up,” he said and pointed his finger at me. I shut my mouth. “I had to try and come up with a good reason for how a ‘journalist' got ahold of that information. It wasn't easy. I told her I had a leak in my department and that the guilty party had already been fired.”

“That's good,” I said. If he didn't let me use the rest room soon, I was going to scream.

“Let's just hope she doesn't start checking, because I haven't fired anybody in the department in two years,” he said.

“Oh.”

“But I think it worked. So then, as the investigating officer, I had to officially ask her questions about the night of the kidnapping and Patrick Ward,” he said.

“And?”

He stood up then and put his chair back to where he had gotten it. “She can prove that she didn't see him that entire week. Nor was there any clam chowder served at her house that week, either.”

“That makes no sense. She has the most to lose,” I said.

“Maybe,” he said. “What we think is enough for a motive may not be what somebody else thinks is.”

“I guess,” I said. “But her reaction. She knows something she's not telling us.”

“Probably,” he said. Colin started to walk away.

“Colin?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you gonna let me out of here?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah. Almost forgot,” he said, smiling. Oh, he just thought he was so funny. He pulled the key out and unlocked the jail. “You have to go by and see your mother before you go home. Rudy and the kids already ate dinner.”

“Great,” I said. “You called everybody and told them?”

“Didn't have to. Eleanore called Rudy and wanted to know where I had taken you,” he explained. “So Rudy called here looking for you.”

“And you told him what?”

“That you were in jail.”

“Uh,” I said, stomping my foot. “What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Let me know when you cut her loose,'” he said.

“He did not.”

“I swear,” he said, holding up one hand.

I arrived home late. Rudy and the kids were already in bed, but he had been a really nice husband and left me a plate of food in the microwave. Meat loaf, which he knew I wouldn't eat because I thought it was the grossest thing on the planet, broccoli, carrots, and yellow rice.

I zapped the food, watching the plate spin round and round, not really wanting to go upstairs and face Rudy. Today's escapade had to go on my list of dumbest things I've ever done. But I had just been so caught up in the moment. I guess that's how activists go a little too far with things sometimes, because they just get so caught up in what's going on that their judgment gets dulled.

On the table sat a small rectangular box, wrapped in silver paper and tied with a big pink bow. I stood there staring at it a minute, with the microwave whirring behind me, wondering what in the world I had done to deserve a present. It wasn't my birthday or anniversary. And I certainly hadn't been a model wife as of late. Well, for that feat I'd have to go back to the first year we were married, when I actually
believed
the part when the priest had said, “Obey your husband.” When my first labor pain hit with Rachel, I pretty much figured that from then on out that my days of obeying Rudy were over. I still honor him and respect him, and, of course, love him. But that obey stuff is sort of Elizabethan.

Eventually I walked over to the table, just as Fritz came running in, dragging his belly. He smelled the meat loaf in the microwave and knew that he was going to get a midnight snack. I looked down at the package, and there was a note under it. It read:

I opened the box and inside was a cellular phone. Wow, the internet and a cellular phone all in one year! And I still didn't have a remote control for the television.

This was a really cool gift, which, of course, made me feel worse about having been in a jail cell all afternoon. When the guys at Rudy's work sit around and talk about their wives tomorrow, he's probably the only one who can say that his wife spent the afternoon before in Bertha. Well, there's no probably about it.

The microwave dinged and I took the plate out. I put the chunk of meat loaf on one of Fritz's plates and set it on the floor. He was a happy dog. His belly seemed to get lower to the ground living with us. And one wouldn't think that his belly could get much lower, considering he's a wiener dog.

I was totally wound up and did not want to go upstairs. Rudy was going to be very upset, and he had every right to be. Of course, on the other hand, the only people in this world who ever get things done are the movers and shakers. The people who will go out on a limb and take a chance. So, I guess my guilt in today's events would have to be determined by which side of the line you are on. Are you a mover and a shaker? Then I made you proud. Are you the type to watch and not make waves? Then I embarrassed you to death. Actually, all of life is sort of like that. Relative. It's all relative. I bet Einstein had no idea that he was defining life with his theory of relativity. He just thought he was defining the movement of a train.

I couldn't stand it one more second. I was thinking entirely too philosophically, which always got me into trouble and usually depressed me to boot. I needed to do something. I supposed I could work on that signature quilt that I had started when I hosted the family reunion last year. But then I'd have to haul it all out, which wasn't a good thing to do since it was so late. Which meant that I wouldn't put it away and then Rudy would find it in the morning and have one more thing to be angry with me over.

I reread the note, and the part about Somebody Newton calling for me sort of stuck out. That poor guy was still waiting for Colin to call him back over that darn necklace. That was what I could do. I could go out to the Finch house and go through her jewelry, so that I could call this guy tomorrow and at least let him know if I even found it.

I had my trusty cellular phone with me now, and it was already charged. I wrote Rudy a note and told him I'd be back around two or three in the morning. The Finch house was only five minutes away. And how long could it take me to go through her jewelry? I'm a night person, anyway. I always work best between 10
P.M
. and one in the morning. Of course, it could be that I'd conditioned myself to do that because that was when the kids were in bed. Whatever the reason, it was when I did my best work.

I locked the door behind me and drove out to the Finch house. I will admit, going through all those tall weeds and flowers in the back garden to get to the back door was pretty creepy at midnight. I made it in the house and locked the door behind me. I flipped on a light, then another light in the main great room with the stained-glass window. Then I went upstairs to Catherine's bedroom.

The more I thought about being alone in the house at midnight, the more it bothered me. I'd been there this late before, but I'd stayed all evening. There was something different about coming into the house after the world had gone to sleep, rather than leaving while the world was still awake. It was as if I wasn't supposed to disrupt the house. I know that houses don't have souls or anything like that, but that was the feeling I got.

So I decided I would just dump Catherine's jewelry into a box and take it home to sift through it. I had just set the fourth jewelry box inside a big packing box when I heard it. A crash on the third floor. It was only when I was halfway up the stairs that I realized that Mary hadn't been here since I'd been here last, and there was no way she could have left a window open. Unless she'd opened more than one the last time she was here.

I couldn't find any open windows on the third floor. I checked all of them except the one in Byron's room, because I had shut that one the night before. I remembered doing it.

Just as I was getting ready to head downstairs, I turned back to look at the open doorway at the end of the hall that was Byron's room. The hallway seemed to get longer and narrower even though I hadn't moved.

This was silly. If somebody was going to break into this house, they sure as heck would pick a floor closer to the ground than this one. Colin must have been in here yesterday. I walked down to the end of the hall toward Byron's room.

Yeah, but why would Colin come here yesterday and open the window in Byron's room? That made no sense, either.

The world seemed to slow down. My legs became heavy as lead weights. Every step toward Byron's room was a calculated effort. Until I rounded the door and saw the window in Byron Lee's room wide open. Just as it had been yesterday. I didn't shut it. I didn't even go in the room. I turned and ran down the hall.

It made no sense. None of it. Nobody in his right mind would break in on the third floor when there were two floors below it. I'm not even sure if someone could find a ladder that would go up that high unless he was a professional painter. What were the chances of professional painters breaking into the Finch house? Nil.

Even if they would, why would they keep picking Byron's room? Why not some other room on the third floor? It made absolutely no sense. By the time I'd hit the second floor, something new assaulted my senses.

Music.

Somewhere on the second floor, Catherine Finch's old Victrola was playing “Monday Mornin' Blues.” One of Catherine's best-loved songs and biggest hits.

I stopped short on the steps. I had planned on going by and picking up the box of jewelry, but now I was frozen stiff on the stairs. Goose bumps traveled down my arms and legs, reaching all the way to my toes.

“My baby's leavin' on Monday. Goin' back to Caroline. Means come Monday mornin', I be losin' my mind.”
Catherine's husky and mournful voice echoed down the hallway to me. It seemed to wrap itself around me, embracing me from a place lost in history.

“Monday mornin' got no reason for livin'. Monday mornin' got no reason for carin'. Monday mornin' I be losin' my mind.”

I ran down the steps as fast as I could, through the great room, through the kitchen and out the back door, all the while feeling as if somebody was on my heels. I ran as best as I could through the overgrown garden, tripping once on my own shoelace. Finally I made it around to the front of the house where my car was.

I was grateful that I hadn't locked the door. Rudy was always drilling that into me. “Make sure you lock the car doors, Torie.” It was just so hard for me to get used to doing that. I grew up in New Kassel, for crying out loud. Nobody locked anything in New Kassel. Well, Tobias Thorley kept his liquor cabinet locked. But other than that…

Once I was in my car and my heart rate had come down under a hundred beats a minute, I pulled the cell phone out of my pocket and dialed the sheriff. Well, actually I dialed my mother's house. No matter what, it would be my mother's house and he just lived there. Silly, I know.

“Hello?” Colin answered.

“Colin, it's me, Torie,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I'm out at the Finch house.”

“Okay,” he said. “Why?”

“I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd come out and get some work done,” I said.

“So why are you calling me?” he said, the sleep evident in his voice.

Just then I noticed something. I got out of the car, with the cell phone held up to my ear. From where the driveway was positioned, I had a perfect view of the stained-glass window in the great room. In my effort to leave the house in record speed, I had left on all the lights. And looking at the stained-glass window from the outside, with the light behind it, I made a startling discovery.

“Torie?” he asked.

“I know why Byron Finch was in the woods that night.”