Killing Cousins (15 page)

The Murdoch Inn was our official anti-casino headquarters. Eleanore, Helen Wickland, Charity Burgermeister and I were attending to our various duties in our effort to stop the riverboat casino from anchoring in our town. I was busy stuffing envelopes with our “Vote No Proposition 7” pamphlets when the mayor came bursting in. He wore black-red-and-white-checked golfing pants, a white polo shirt and polished white shoes. He looked like a dork, but then, the mayor always looked like a dork.

“You can cease and desist,” the mayor announced.

“What the heck are you talking about, Bill?” Eleanore asked.

“I'm just here to tell you,” he said, rocking up on the balls of his feet, “that the governor is here to back me up on the riverboat gambling issue.”

“What?” Helen asked.

“She is having a press conference this afternoon from the proposed site for the casino, and she is going to blow you all out of the water,” he said.

“Bill,” I said, “I remember your acceptance speech when you became mayor. And I believe that your words were, ‘I am mayor of New Kassel second. I am a citizen first.' Have you forgotten that?”

“No,” he said.

“Then why are you behaving like a horse's butt? You know the casino will kill this town,” I said.

“And what's more,” Helen added, “we don't care what Governor Danvers says. She has never, not once, in all her years in public service, offered to help this town. This is where she was born and raised, and she hates it. She's ashamed of it. Why would we care what she thinks?”

The mayor clearly looked perplexed. He had not gotten the reaction from us that he had hoped to achieve. Just then the clamor of cars and tubas could be heard from outside.

“That's the governor,” he said and ran outside.

We all followed him out onto the porch of the Murdoch Inn. A procession of cars drove through the bend on the way to River Point Road, and ultimately to where the Yates house once stood. Tobias had managed to get most of the Kassel Players together to welcome the governor with their ensemble of brass parade music.

“How come nobody knew she was coming?” Helen asked.

“I invited her last week,” Bill said. “She phoned this morning that she was coming. Tobias was pretty ticked about the short notice. Three trumpet players couldn't get off from work and a trombone player is on vacation.”

Helen, Eleanore, Charity and I stood on the porch with our arms folded and wearing scowls. It was a beautiful day, a green-air day. The storm had come in last night, cleaned out all the junk in the air, cooled it off by about ten degrees and sucked up the humidity. It wouldn't last, I knew, but it should make for an ideal weekend for the Pickin' and Grinnin' Festival.

Right behind the governor's car and her entourage, were the television crews. Two of them. As if they hadn't been here enough in the past few weeks, what with the discovery of Byron Lee Finch and the whole gambling issue in general.

The four of us made our way on foot down the road to where the Yates house had once stood. The mayor had arrived before us, and I made a mental note that his short legs could move much faster than I ever thought possible.

The sheriff pulled up in his squad car, barely came to a stop, jumped out and made his way directly to me. He looked mean, and ticked, and the sunglasses only helped to perpetuate that image.

“Hi, Dad,” I said.

“Ha, ha,” he said. “What the hell is going on?”

“The mayor invited the governor to speak on behalf of the riverboat gambling, and she accepted,” I said.

“He didn't call me or anything. He knows I have to get extra security in here,” he said. His nostrils flared when he spoke, so I assumed that he was pretty peeved. “Hang on. I'll be right back.”

He went over to the squad car, used the radio and came back. He had called in the deputies. When he came back he took his sunglasses off and looked down at me. “What is she? Nuts?”

“Who? Governor Danvers?”

“Yeah, that's who. She's making an appearance right where they found her cousin,” he said.

“Both cousins,” I corrected.

“Yeah, both cousins.”

“Maybe that's her point,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe she's trying to throw people off. Why would she show up here unless it's just to prove she has nothing to hide?”

“Yeah,” he said. “And maybe she really does have nothing to hide.”

“I doubt that seriously.”

“That woman is the ass part of a jack-ass,” Helen said.

“Which is the biggest part,” Charity added.

“Do you feel that strongly about her?” I asked. They ignored me.

“The nerve of her,” Eleanore said. “She has never cared one aorta about this town.”

“That's iota, Eleanore. Iota.” If she didn't learn to speak, I was going to kill her.

“Showing up here like she's all sincere about the welfare of New Kassel. The Mississippi could swallow us whole and she wouldn't even blink,” Eleanore said.

“Shh, she's getting ready to speak,” I said.

“More like bark,” Helen said.

Then I remembered something. Hope Danvers's brother, Hugh, had been Helen's Aunt Ivy's second husband. The Danverses had not been cordial to Helen's family. So some of this was personal, although, I imagined, not all of it, because Charity and Eleanore had never had a Danvers as a second husband in their family, and they didn't like the governor much either. Just for the record, Helen's Aunt Ivy had had two more husbands after Hugh.

“Ladies and gentlemen of New Kassel,” Mayor Castlereagh said into a microphone, which echoed out of a portable amplifier. “It is my pleasure to introduce Governor Hope Danvers.”

A crowd had formed. People had actually just stepped out of their shops, shut the doors and walked on over. In the distance I saw Sylvia making her way toward us as well. She walks all over this town. She never drives anywhere, unless I take her or she takes a cab from Wisteria.

“It is my pleasure to speak here today on this picture-perfect September day,” the governor began. Hope Danvers was sixty-nine or seventy years old, with short salt-and-pepper hair and long legs. She wore a pink suit that fit snugly on her nearly curveless body. It was bizarre, but she appeared both feminine and masculine.

Three aides or bodyguards stood next to her, ready to move in if things got ugly. I think this was an ordinary precaution and not just for the benefit of little old New Kassel. All three wore dark sunglasses so that nobody could tell in what direction they were looking. Well, that and it was sunny.

“New Kassel is my hometown,” the governor said, with arms open wide. “I grew up in a house on New Bavaria, my brother Hugh and I. This town hasn't changed at all since I left it. And we're going to change all of that. You and I together.”

Oh, brother.

“New Kassel is in desperate need of new blood. A shot in the arm. The school building is the same, the Knights of Columbus Hall is the same. There have been no new sidewalks, or new roads paved. But, with the riverboat casino, we can bring much-needed revenue to this town.”

“Yeah, and ruin it!” Elmer Kolbe yelled out from somewhere to my left. Elmer was the fire chief and did some security work at the Gaheimer house with me. I've known him all my life, and would recognize his voice anywhere.

“We don't want a bunch of drunks and sinners stumbling through our streets at midnight!” Charity called out.

I leaned over and whispered. “Hey, Charity, when did you get all fire and brimstone on me?”

“Shh,” she said and grinned.

“I want to know why the governor would waste her time meddling in the issues of a small town like this?” a pressman asked.

“We realize it is an election year, but come on!” Helen yelled.

To Governor Danvers's credit she smiled, took a deep breath and spoke in a calm and easy manner. “This is my hometown. When Bill called me and told me the situation that he was in, my heart went out to him. Here is a decent and honest, hardworking mayor trying to bring revenue to his stagnant town. The opposition was tough, he said. I felt honor-bound to come to his aid. It's one of the perks of being in a position of power. Being able to help my friends when they need me.”

“Ah, pooh!” somebody said.

“Please, voters. Vote yes for Proposition Seven. It will turn this town around in nothing flat. You'll have the money for air-conditioning in your school. Sheila won't have to keep the school bus held together with her bobby pins and rubber bands anymore. How about a big public parking lot for the tourists?” she went on.

“There won't be any tourists when you get finished with this town. Just gamblers,” Charity said.

Eleanore got ready to say something and I put my hand on her arm to keep her quiet. So far, the townspeople were winning this showdown, and I didn't want Eleanore to open her mouth and change all that.

“What about the ethics of gambling, Governor?” another pressman asked. “There are moral issues here.”

“Riverboat gambling is a completely honest and legal way to bring revenue to a town. What stand do you think the governor of Nevada takes? He wouldn't have a state to govern if it weren't for Las Vegas,” she continued. “Already in the years since riverboat gambling has been legalized, Saint Charles and downtown Saint Louis have seen an amazing increase in profits. A revitalization of what made them great to begin with. We can make small-town Missouri a hotbed of activity and profits, too.”

My father says that all politicians should be strung by their toes just for good measure.

“No, thank you!” Elmer yelled out. “Do it somewhere else.”

“Shh,” somebody in the crowd said. “Let the governor speak.”

“If you pass up the chance to bring jobs and profits to your hometown, you will regret it. There are people in this town who drive almost an hour one way to their jobs, because there aren't enough jobs in New Kassel, and definitely not jobs that would pay them decent wages. With the riverboat, those people could have jobs right here in their hometown. When Bill opens up his hotel, there will be more jobs to fill, and more visitors who will spend money in our restaurants and our shops. As it stands now, the Murdoch Inn is perpetually half empty.”

“It is not!” Eleanore yelled.

I grabbed her arm.

“Well, it's not,” she said to me. “I only have two vacant rooms right now.”

I knew and Eleanore knew that our town was doing just fine. And most of us here did. But the governor had now painted a half-empty Murdoch Inn in some of the townspeople's minds, and it would take a lot to make that vision disappear.

Wait a minute. What hotel was the mayor going to build?

“What hotel?” I yelled.

Red creeped across the top of Bill Castlereagh's head. He looked at the ground nervously, and then out at the Mississippi River. I imagined that he wanted to go jump in it right about now. It was obvious that he wasn't prepared to talk about it.

“Tell them about your plans, Bill,” Hope Danvers said.

“Well,” he stammered. “As some of you know, I've bought the house that once belonged to Catherine Finch. It is my plan to turn it into a grand hotel.”

It was also clear that Hope Danvers hadn't known that Bill was going to renovate a building already there. She seemed shocked by the news. Or maybe it was by the mention of Catherine Finch. Or maybe it was the mention of the house where her cousin had disappeared sixty-two years ago. Yeah, that could be it.

The crowd murmured and mumbled. The Finch house would make a perfect hotel. It was large, it had more rooms than any other building within fifty miles, and it was beautiful. As of right now, we couldn't fill it, though. So the mayor was counting on the riverboat to fill up his new hotel.

I knew all along he had a personal stake in all this. I just knew it.

“Speaking of Catherine Finch,” a reporter said, “Governor Danvers, what do you make of the authorities' finding the body of your cousin sixty-something years later?”

“I…I think it is a wonderful thing that his whereabouts all these years are now known. All of this can now be put to rest. I only wish my Aunt Catherine were alive to see it,” she said. Good recovery. Or was it? Certainly she had to have known that the subject of Byron would come up today. She was standing in the very spot where he was found. She had to have known it.

In fact, I'd say she had been banking on it. This way she could play the bereaved cousin and cast off any doubts of her involvement that the public may have had. But the first part of the day didn't seem to have gone the way she and the mayor had intended.

Neither would the second part, if I could help it. The subject had been broached; I couldn't let the ball drop.

I walked through the crowd, leaving the sheriff and the gang to wonder behind me. I walked up to a cameraman and tapped him on the shoulder. I pointed to his badge, which he wore around his neck. “Can I borrow that for a minute?” I asked.

“No,” he said, appalled. “You think I'm crazy?”

“I guarantee you great footage,” I said. “If you let me use your press badge, I promise you a show you won't regret.”

He just stared at me.

“Think about it: only you and one other station are going to have footage that the whole state will want,” I said, pointing to the only other cameraman in the crowd. “If you'll just let me borrow that badge. Please?”

He looked around, unsure of what to do. His anchorwoman had her back to us, a few rows up. “I'm not going to do anything bad. It will all be within journalistic rights. Scout's honor,” I said and held up three fingers. I had never been a scout, so I don't know if I was supposed to hold up two or three fingers. Evidently, he had never been a scout either.

“All right,” he said and took it off and handed it to me. “But it better be good.”