Killing Cousins (13 page)

Fraulein Krista's Speisehaus was a big building with exposed wood beams and a stuffed bear at the end of the bar. It was my favorite restaurant in town, not only because the food was fabulous, but because it just had a cool feel to it. Where else could one find adults running around in green velvet knickers and dresses? Sometimes I thought if I stayed in here long enough that, when I left, New Kassel would have turned into Bavaria.

I sat at a booth eating sauerkraut and wieners, relishing every moment that I had to myself. My mom and Colin had been home almost a week now. The kids were with their grandma in her new house in Wisteria and happy that things were back to seminormal. School would start in a few days and then, except for dealing with Matthew, I would have more time to myself. I had brought some of the journals and such to the restaurant to read.

Krista Dougherty, the owner of this fine establishment, walked up to my table, her smile bringing out her dimples. Ocean-blue eyes peered from beneath blond lashes. Her hair was equally blond, and there were freckles across her nose. She had to be the tallest woman in town. “Torie, how are you?”

“I'm doing good,” I said.

She sat down opposite me and folded her hands. She was used to me coming in here. She knew this was my retreat. Rudy and I went to most places in New Kassel together, but Krista's was the place where I went alone.

“I can't believe Wilma is dead,” she said. In the past week most of the town's small talk had centered around Wilma's death. It was as if nobody could accept it.

“She had become a permanent fixture, had she not?” I asked.

“I think I thought she was going to stay an old woman forever, and still be an old woman when I got to be an old woman,” she said.

“I know exactly what you mean.”

She was quiet a moment. “You want a raspberry tart?” she asked.

“Need you ask?”

“I'll be right back,” she said and disappeared into the kitchen.

I went back to reading the journals, which really were more of a glorified calendar. Catherine would write things like:
Performance 7:00
P.M.
Philadelphia, Penn.
Then under that she would write a few sentences summing up the performance.
Cold audience, had to work for every applause.
Or
Brought the house down. Saxophone player was on tonight!
Sometimes she would make a note of special guests. Famous people who would come to hear her and come backstage, that sort of thing. But, to my disappointment, nothing very personal.

I thought Krista had come back and sat in the booth across from me, but when I looked up it was my stepdad, the sheriff. I still have trouble deciding how to describe him. Was he the sheriff, my stepdad? Or my stepdad, the sheriff? Very confusing, and darn him anyway for making my life more complicated than it already was.

“Hi,” I said. “To what do I owe this visit?”

“We got the autopsy report back on the skeleton,” he said.

“Oh, yeah?” I asked. “Wait a minute. That was fast, wasn't it?”

“It's been a week. Not a lot of autopsies in Granite County,” he said.

“Why is that? Is it because our crime rate is so low?”

“Most of the people who die in Granite County are little old ladies or fat men who die of heart attacks,” he said. I looked surprised by his answer. “I'm serious. We're rural with a small population. And most people don't want to cut up Grandma or Grandpa unless there was foul play involved. Not that many mysterious deaths, regardless of what
you
think.”

“All right, all right. Don't get your shorts in a knot,” I said. “Sorry I asked.”

Krista came back with a raspberry tart for me and a big mug of black coffee for the sheriff. I have never understood how people can drink coffee in the summer. We both thanked her and she went back to work.

“Do you want to hear this or not?” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

“Some of the bones showed what they call vitrification,” he said.

“What's that?”

“Glassification.”

“Well, why didn't you just say that, smarty pants,” I said. I paused a second. “What is glassification?”

“It's when the bones are exposed to a significant amount of heat so that they sort of glassify. Like sand becomes glass when exposed to intense heat,” he said.

“Oh.” That explained nothing to me.

“The skull was expanded.”

“Expanded.”

“Yes,” he said.

“From the inside out?”

“Yes.”

“So, his brain was enlarged?”

“Yes.”

None of this made any sense.

“Also, on his wrist and his pelvic bone were what they think are burn marks. Where the baby was wearing something metal, which heated up and scarred the bone.”

“Like a baby bracelet and a diaper pin,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“So, what—did he die in a fire?”

“No,” Sheriff Brooke said. “It looks as though he was hit by lightning.”

I just sat there with my fork halfway up to my mouth. I blinked and blinked again. The nerve endings in my brain must not have been functioning or something, because I just wasn't getting what he said.

“When bodies are hit by lightning, they are exposed to intense heat. Heat you just can't imagine,” he said. “The brain literally heats up so quickly that it expands and forces itself out of the skull. If they are wearing metal, it will imprint itself on the bone. And glassification or vitrification will occur in the bones. I can think of nothing else that would do all of these things. The baby in the wall was hit by lightning.”

“But that makes no sense,” I said.

“Sure it does.”

“How did it get hit by lightning?” I think I had expected such a sinister fate to have befallen Byron that when the sheriff said it was a natural disaster it just took me by surprise.

“Think about it, Torie. It was storming that night. So severely that one of the guests wouldn't stay to have a drink and left early.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “That's right.”

“You said that you read somewhere that Byron was wearing a baby bracelet,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“I think it is Byron. In fact, I am so sure of it that I'm ready to announce it,” he said.

“Whoa, whoa, wait. Before you go announcing anything, just wait.”

“Why?” he asked, with a surprised look on his face.

“Because, whether that baby was hit by lightning or not, somebody still put him in that wall. Somebody still kidnapped him. And somebody killed Patrick Ward. I just wonder if it's a good idea to tip your hand just yet. You know, hitting people with that bit of news in an interview can get you a million-dollar reaction. If they already know that he's been found, they'll be prepared for it.”

“I agree, but there's one thing.”

“What?”

“The reporters already know that there's been a baby found. Whoever our suspects are, the culprit, if he or she is still alive, already knows he's been found,” Colin said.

I thought about that. “Yeah, you're right. But what did you mean if they're still alive?”

“It happened a long time ago. People do die, you know,” he said.

“Well, yeah. There's that.”

“Whatsa matter with you?” he asked. “You're a little slow today, Torie.”

“I think I was just so expecting Byron to have been intentionally murdered that I just can't get my brain to wrap around what you're saying. You've thrown me for a loop,” I said.

“Excuses, excuses,” he said and smiled.

“I can hit you now, can't I? You're related.”

He just gave me that look that said, oh, yeah, let's see you try it. I let it go. He could beat me up and I knew it.

“Wow,” I said and shook my head. “I don't know what to say.”

“Well, at least we know why there was never any demand for ransom. The baby died before they got a chance to ransom it,” he said.

“You know, people ransom children and still end up killing them. I mean, nobody knew that Byron was dead,” I said.

“So?”

“So, what was to keep the kidnappers from ransoming him anyway, and then delivering a dead baby?” I asked.

“Hmmm,” he said and took a sip of coffee. “What are you driving at?”

“I think, based on who the suspects were, that there was never any intention of ransoming Byron,” I said.

Cecily Finch Todd lived in a big beautiful house on Butler Hill Road in south St. Louis County. Butler Hill was just about as far south as one could get and still be in St. Louis County. About a mile or two later you cross the Meramec River and travel into Jefferson County.

I made a left onto the Butler Hill exit from Highway 55, crossed back over the highway and headed west. Passing the Schnucks Supermarket, the Burger King and the Taco Bell, I was immediately in a cozy neighborhood of one nice house after another. Within a minute I pulled into Cecily's driveway. I sat there for a moment thinking about what to say. Like her sister Aurora, she did not know I was coming and I hadn't a clue as to what to say to her. But I was banking on the fact that Aurora had probably phoned her to tell her about me. So, that might be a little chip in the ice that I was certain would greet me.

She answered the door wearing a pair of tweed pants and a blouse with pastel seashells printed on it. She was taller and older than her sister. There was a resemblance between them, but only a slight one. It was one of those resemblances where if you put the two together you'd see it, but otherwise nobody would have reason to suspect that they were siblings. It made me wonder what Byron would have looked like if he had made it to adulthood.

“If you're with the
National Enquirer, The Star,
or any of those other trashy grocery-store tabloids,” she said with much venom, “no comment!”

I was stunned at first, but then I had to giggle. “I don't mean to laugh, but I've said nearly those same words several times in the last week.”

Her eyes narrowed on me. “Why? Who are you?”

“I'm Torie O'Shea. I work for the Historical Society in New Kassel, and my mother's husband bought your mother's estate.”

“Oh,” she said. “My sister told me about you.”

“I was hoping she would.”

“The same goes for you. No comment,” she said and slammed the door.

Hmmm. Ever the optimist, I knocked on the door again. “Please, Mrs. Todd!” I banged on the door and hoped with all my heart that she wouldn't call the police and have me arrested. “Mrs. Todd. We've found your brother.”

After a moment she opened the door. She stared at me through the glass of her storm door, eyes meeting mine and sizing me up. She opened the storm door and held it open for me, signaling for me to enter.

Which I did, but not without my share of trepidation. People were crazy nowadays, you know. Big, heavy maroon drapes hung above the big picture window in the living room. On one end of the room hung a large gold mirror, with maroon and navy-blue flowers arranged above it. The carpet was the same navy blue. She did not offer me a seat.

“What do you mean, ‘We've' found your brother. Who's ‘we'?”

“My stepfather is also the sheriff of Granite County,” I said.

“Colin married your mother?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “You know him?”

“He went to school with my son. He spent many days in my basement and my backyard,” she said.

I just blinked at her. A side to the sheriff I didn't know. It seemed there were many, many sides. He was going to be the world's first octagon person.

“We lived in Wisteria until about 1960. Then we moved to St. Louis. Ten years later, we moved here,” she said.

“I did not know that he knew you that well. He never mentioned it,” I said.

“No. He probably wouldn't. It wouldn't be professional,” she said. “Colin was always like that. I knew he'd be in law enforcement, because he was always bugging the friends that he hung out with about obeying the rules and doing what was right.”

“Yeah, sounds like Colin,” I said.

“I read what the papers are saying about Byron, heard it on the news, and obviously had my share of reporters here hounding me. Phone calls at all hours. They haven't really come out and officially said that the baby was Byron,” she informed me.

“Oh,” I said. “I guess I sort of jumped the gun.” I wondered just how believable that actually sounded.

Her hand went to her throat, where she reached for a necklace that wasn't there. It was my bet that she normally wore a necklace of some sort that she fiddled with when she was nervous. “How do you know it's him?”

“Things in the autopsy,” I said, deliberately vague. “But, what I'm really here to talk to you about is your mother.”

“Why?”

“Because Sylvia Pershing has hired me to write a biography of her,” I said. “It will be issued by the Historical Society, published by one of the colleges. It's her goal to have a set of biographies on notable people of Granite County.”

“How is Sylvia?” she asked.

“Good,” I said.

“I was sad to hear the news about Wilma. She was a great lady. I can't tell you how many times she's baby-sat me or my sister,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “I think Wilma baby-sat every child in New Kassel at one time or another.”

“What is it you want to know?”

She still hadn't offered me a place to sit, nor had she made any motion to sit herself. I tried to remember some of the things I had mulled over in my mind to ask her. “Aurora mentioned that your mother became estranged from you sometime in the 1950s. That eventually you two had nothing more to do with her. What would make her behave that way?”

“She'd spent fifteen or more of her adult years trapped in a nightmare. She'd forgotten how to live in the real world. Or to take joy in the things that were here,” she said. “Only disappointment in the things that were not.”

“So Hector Castanza had nothing to do with it?”

“Who?” she asked. She turned a little white around the mouth, but otherwise she did a great job of pretending she didn't know who he was. But of course she didn't know that Sylvia had told me all about him, so she couldn't know that I knew that she knew darn good and well who Hector Castanza was. And to pretend that she didn't just made it all the more obvious.

“The man who tried to convince your mother he was Byron,” I said.

“There were so many of them,” she said.

“Yes, but your mother showered this one with gifts.”

“Oh,” she said. “It's been so long ago. I really don't want to talk about this.”

She put her hand on the doorknob and somehow I got the feeling that I wasn't going to get much more out of her. Something caught my eye behind her, and I tried to peer over her shoulder without looking as if I was being nosy. It was a curio cabinet filled with porcelain and crystal fairies. There was part of her mother with her after all.

“I'm sorry to bother you,” I said. “I am curious about one thing, Mrs. Todd.”

“What's that?”

“You haven't asked what the autopsy results were.”

“You already told me it was Byron.”

“Yes, but you didn't even ask what happened to him. Or how he was killed,” I said.

“Does it matter?” she asked. “He was taken from us a long time ago and it changed our lives. For the worse. I don't mean to sound cold, but I'm not sure that I really care after all this time. I mean, I wish he wasn't dead. I wish he had never been kidnapped. But I can't say that I want to know what happened to him.”

“Oh,” I said. I'm so brilliant with my elaborate ability to speak that I surprise even myself. Oh. What kind of reaction was that?

Cecily opened the door then and I knew if I didn't have something intelligent to say to her that I would never get the chance again. “How did you know he was dead? You don't seem surprised that he was found dead. It's just hard to understand how you wouldn't ask these questions.”

“My sister and I, and our father, realized a long time ago what our mother never realized,” she said. “That more than likely Byron was dead.”

“Why? It never occurred to you that somebody who wanted a child could have kidnapped him for their own?”

“No, it didn't.”

“Oh,” I said again.

“And after all these years, Mrs. O'Shea, I don't really think they'll ever be able to tell what happened to him. I don't even understand how they can say it's him without a doubt. I think the whole thing is preposterous. How can you identify a baby skeleton?”

“It's a matter of proximity, for one thing. He was found less than two miles from his home. The house that he was found in was under construction on the night of his disappearance. A diaper pin was found with him that matches the ones in his nursery,” I said.

“His nursery? I don't understand,” she said, reaching for that imaginary necklace again.

“The nursery is intact. I'm cataloging your mother's belongings for Colin. The diaper pins were in the third silver box from the left, on the silver tray,” I said. “And the one found with the skeleton matched.”

She said nothing.

“A fairy,” I said and pointed behind her to her own collection. “That is what was on each diaper pin.”

She swallowed.

“Your mother stated that she forgot to take off his bracelet, and there was a burn mark on his wrist bone that indicated he was wearing a bracelet when it happened,” I said.

“When what happened?” she asked.

“When he was struck by lightning,” I said.

“White as a ghost” were the perfect words to describe Cecily Finch Todd. White and pasty and visibly disturbed. “Good day, Mrs. O'Shea.”

“Good day, Mrs. Todd,” I said. “Don't hesitate to call me if there's something you need.”