Blood Relations (24 page)

I remembered Danny Jones's words:
Jacob said more than once that if you weren't so anal, he'd bring you aboard.

Collette and Mrs. Lahrs looked at me, waiting for my next words.

“I think he wanted me to know. I think a part of him wanted me on board his project. And if he had lived long enough, he might have actually asked for my assistance.”

She was quiet a moment. I had no idea if any of what I'd just said was true. There was no way I would ever know if Jacob had given me that piece of information for a reason. It was pure speculation. But I'd felt on more than one occasion that it seemed odd for him to have told me that Eli Thibeau was his great-grandfather, knowing I could find out the truth. If it helped Tamara Lahrs open up to us, it was worth the slight deception.

Tamara stood and went to the bookcase behind her. She pulled out a photo album and opened it. “This was my mother. You can tell by the photograph that she was Jessica Huntleigh,” she said.

Collette nearly jumped into my lap to get a better look. Tamara handed me the album, pointing to a good-quality studio portrait, probably taken in the late twenties. It was Jessica Huntleigh all right. “Oh my Lord,” I said.

There were other pictures of Jessica through the years, with her two children and without them. Some of them were taken from a distance or with poor lighting, so it was difficult to see the resemblance. But there was no denying the studio picture. I wondered if she'd had the picture taken as some sort of private declaration.

“She is buried at Shepherd of the Hills, off of old Highway M, under the name Maria Wade,” she said.

“It's all true,” Collette said to me. “Everything we suspected.”

Tamara Lahrs looked at me questioningly. “We did quite a bit of research before coming here. We had our suspicions about Jessica Huntleigh,” I said. “Did your mother ever try to contact her family once Eli died?”

Tamara nodded her head. “During the Depression. When things got so bad, she felt she had no choice but to try to contact them. She did it for me and my brother. She thought … they could help out—financially.”

“And what happened?” I asked.

“At first, they didn't believe it was really her. After ten years, it was too much, even for her mother to believe. But she sent them photographs and told them things in letters that only she could have known. Her mother believed her, eventually. But there was no happy reunion.” There was a sadness in Mrs. Lahrs's voice. “Her mother told her that if she could help us, she would. Simply because Jessica was her daughter. But she told my mother that if the reasons were true about why she had faked her death, the family could never fully welcome her back. She would disgrace them all. Not that it mattered.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Evidently, by that point, her father had lost most everything in the stock market crash of 1929. He still had his land, but nobody was buying. Her family could not help her,” she said.

“But … aren't the Huntleighs a wealthy family now?”

“Yes,” she said. “The family moved to Europe, where they had a château and land and a house full of antiques and gold. My grandfather was a shrewd man. He found a way to rebuild his empire. And then they came back to the States.”

“That must have been so devastating to your mother,” I said.

“She killed herself,” Tamara said, as calmly as if she were noting the weather outside.

“She what?” I asked.

“After my brother and I were safely married, she locked herself in her room and just stopped living. She willed herself to die.”

“Oh, Mrs. Lahrs,” I said. “She was probably ill and just never told you.”

“No,” Tamara said. “She went to bed and only got up to go to the bathroom and answer the door. She stopped eating. It took her two months to die.”

My mother's words came back to haunt me:
and you could greatly upset her.
I firmly believe we never give our mothers enough credit. How often do we just dismiss what they say, only to find out that they know what they're talking about? I wondered then if my children would ever discover how brilliant I am.

“Mrs. Lahrs, I am so sorry,” I said. “I didn't know.”

“My mother led a life more tragic than a Shakespearean character,” she said.

Wealthy girl gives up everything to be with the man she loves, penniless steamboat captain, who dies, leaving her destitute. Then her family refuses to help her, and she wills herself to die. Yup, tragedy on the grandest scale.

“When did you discover the truth?” Collette asked.

“During the Depression, Mother told me that her family had lots of money. I had asked my mother on several occasions how come we didn't have any grandparents. She told me that my father's parents were dead, and that hers lived far away and didn't speak to her anymore. But she never once hinted that her parents were the Huntleighs,” she said. “I didn't find out they were the Huntleighs until after she was dead.”

“How did you find out?” I asked.

“The same way you did,” she replied, leaning back in her chair. “After she was dead, I suddenly wanted to know everything about her. Funny how I didn't think to ask what school she'd attended. What her mother's maiden name was. Just didn't seem important until I couldn't ask it.”

“I've heard that more than once from my clients,” I said.

“I started going through Mom's papers and such. She had no birth certificate. No diploma. Nothing prior to her marriage to my father. Then I noticed the same thing about my father. There was nothing. No photographs of either of them before 1919, no papers, nothing. Of course, the 1910 census wasn't available to see back then, so I couldn't check their whereabouts. I'm not even sure it would have occurred to me then anyway.”

“How did you find out, then?” I asked.

“Well, what my mother did have were newspaper cuttings about this family in New York, the Huntleighs. Tamara and Chester Huntleigh. She must have had four dozen clippings, with pictures. I immediately thought that these must be the ‘wealthy' parents she had spoken of. And the resemblance between my mother and my grandmother was profound. And of course the name—Tamara,” she added.

Collette and I exchanged wondrous glances.

“It was enough for me,” she said. “So I began researching what had happened to Jessica Huntleigh. One of the papers had an article about the sinking of
The Phantom,
and showed a photograph of the Huntleigh heiress. It was my mother.”

“So when did you realize that Eli Thibeau was really your father? That he had become William Wade?” I asked.

“I didn't. It was my grandson Jacob who figured that out. I had no clue why my mother had chosen to walk away from her life of comfort,” she said. “She had quite a few letters from my father, William Wade. And he spoke of certain things in them, like ‘the diamonds' and ‘the wreck.' A place called New Kassel. But he never once hinted in those letters that he'd been on board the ship, too. Only once did he mention that he had been the captain of a boat that had already sunk.”

“So how did Jacob figure it out?” I asked. “Did you tell him you thought your mother and Jessica Huntleigh were the same person?”

“Not at first,” she said. “He started asking questions about our family history for a school project he had to do. He was about eighteen at the time. So I did the usual thing. I was elusive and tried to fend off his questions by saying things like ‘What do you want to know that stuff for?' Then I realized I was doing exactly what my mother had done to me. I was keeping his history from him. So I finally told him what I suspected. I'd never told anybody else, though.”

“What was his reaction?” Collette asked. We both had been hanging on every word she said. Her story was so sad, so tragic, we couldn't help it.

“He became obsessed. He asked for all the research I had, which wasn't much. He wanted all the documents pertaining to my parents, and then he went about trying to prove that Maria Wade was Jessica Huntleigh.”

She looked out the window a moment, as if everything was playing before her eyes in the here and now.

“Jacob began researching
The Phantom,
” she said. “He found a photograph of the captain, Eli Thibeau, and noticed a marked resemblance to the few photographs I had of my father, William Wade. He was convinced they were one and the same.”

I knew what came next. “By this point, the census records were available for 1910 and 1920,” I said.

“Jacob realized that William Wade didn't exist before the 1920 census,” she said. “It all fell into place.”

“But what about the diamonds?” I asked. “I know that in one letter your father wrote to your mother, he mentioned that they didn't have to worry about the future. I'm assuming now that he meant the diamonds, but when I first read the letter, I wasn't sure. Why did your father have to hide them? Why didn't he and Jessica take them with them when the steamboat sank?”

“What Jacob gleaned from the personal letters was that my father and mother couldn't carry the diamonds with them because they were very bulky. And they were afraid that if they were stopped and the diamonds were found on them, it would all blow up in their faces. So they buried them. But when Dad went back to get them, there was an investigator looking for the diamonds, as well. So Dad was going to go back for them after everything had cooled down. Only he died without ever having a chance to get back home and tell my mother where they were,” Tamara said.

“That's terrible,” Collette said.

If I had had access to all of the documents and letters, I might have been able to figure that out days ago. But I had only gotten a peek at just that one letter. It all made sense now, though.

“So how did Jacob find out exactly where they were?” I asked.

“I guess the same way you did,” she replied.

I know the shock must have registered all the way to my toes. “How do you know that I found the diamonds?”

“Channel 6 news had a tape of you and the Granite County sheriff uncovering the diamonds. You were there, too,” she said, pointing at Collette.

“Oh, great,” Collette said. “He beat me to it.”

“Yeah, but he doesn't have the same info you do,” I said. “Don't panic.”

“What about Matilda O'Brien?” I asked. “She knew that your mother switched boats in Memphis to be with Eli, or William, or however you want to refer to him. She had to have known, because there was nothing wrong with the
Louisiana Purchase.
Why did she cover for your mother?”

“I called and asked her that about ten years ago, shortly before she died.”

“You did?” Collette asked. I'll admit, I was equally surprised at the gutsy move.

“Well, at first she wouldn't speak to me because she didn't believe who I was. See, she, too, thought my mother had drowned when the steamboat sank. She saw no reason in soiling my mother's good name. The scandal would have been disastrous. So Matilda O'Brien never told anybody. She's the one that made up the story that the
Louisiana Purchase
had broken down. She had to come up with some reason why the two of them had switched boats.”

Collette rubbed her forehead and took a deep breath. “May I have a glass of water?” she asked.

“Of course,” said Mrs. Lahrs.

“So how did your father die?” I asked her as she stood up.

“He was still a steamboat captain at that point, although he was going by the name William Wade. I think somebody recognized him. One of the deckhands said that there was a struggle and that my father fell into the paddle wheel.”

What could I say to that? I mumbled a completely inadequate “Sorry,” then looked around the room like an idiot. “While you're getting her a drink, I'd like to use your bathroom. Is that all right?”

“Sure, it's down the hall to the right.”

I handed Collette the photo album that I'd been clutching and headed down the long hallway to the bathroom. On the way back, I stopped to look at the photographs hanging on the wall. Tamara Lahrs didn't have an abundance of pictures, but the few she had spoke a thousand words. Four eight-by-tens hung in a row in matching oak frames. The subject of each photograph was a family group, a mom, a dad, and various children. I guessed them to be the families of her four children. One child had six kids, two had three, and the first one had only one child. I studied them, trying to find a boy who resembled Jacob Lahrs. It looked as if he was in one of the middle groupings, and that he had two sisters. The eyes were the same.

Tamara Lahrs came to the end of the hallway and smiled. “My children,” she said.

“Which one is Jacob?” I asked.

“That one,” she said, pointing to the boy I had picked out. “He spent two years in the marines. His father had been in the service, so I think he felt pressured to join.”

I smiled at her and then studied the other groupings. As I looked at the first photograph, a chill danced down my spine. It was the photograph of the family with the one child. A little girl.

“Who is that?” I managed to ask.

“That's my daughter by my first husband,” she said.

“Your first husband,” I snapped. My mind reeled. What was his name? I knew it. It was on the tip of my tongue. The bomber pilot who had died in the war. I had forgotten all about him. “Thatcher. Robert Thatcher.”

She looked taken aback at first. “How did you know that?” she asked.

“As I said before, we did a lot of research,” I said. It's disturbing to some people just how easily and how much I can find out about their families without their help.

“Yes, that's my daughter Julia.”

Mother: Julia Anne Thatcher.

My knees wobbled and I felt sick to my stomach. “And this?” I asked, pointing to the little girl in the picture. I knew who it was. I knew the face. I'd seen it just a week ago in a bunch of photographs.