Killing Cousins Read online

  “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.”

  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…”

  Thirty

  “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.