Killing Cousins Read online

  “Well, Rudy, he asked,” I defended.

  “Yeah…but…”

  “I think you’re making a big mistake,” I said to the mayor quickly, before Rudy could say anything.

  “That’s nothing new. You always think I’m making a mistake,” he said.

  “Well, that’s because usually you are.”

  He didn’t get angry as I thought he would. Instead he just laughed. “It’s going to be voted on,” he said. “The Gaming Commission gave me the go-ahead. If people don’t think it’s a good idea, they won’t vote it in.”

  “Yes, but it shouldn’t even be on the ballot,” I said. “People have a habit of voting for things because it seems like a good idea and it’s going to bring money and jobs.”

  “There’s certainly nothing wrong with that,” he said.

  “Except they don’t know the consequences of the monster that they create,” I said.

  “If they don’t know the consequences, then how could you?”

  I hate it when people ask such logical questions that you can’t answer without looking like an idiot. “All I’m saying is people are misled by all the money and the promises. What they don’t realize is a casino will compromise the integrity of the town. We don’t want people stumbling around our streets at two in the morning after they’ve just lost a buttload of money and drunk enough to sink a ship. Even though we go to great lengths to ‘sell’ our town, it is still a community of homes and families. People live right next door to the shops and the restaurants, Bill. You know that.”

  “You’re just afraid of change,” he said.

  Well, yes, that was true, but it had nothing to do with this. “Didn’t you listen to anything I just said? If you came up with some other money-making gimmick that was geared for a historic town, I’d be all for it. A riverboat casino, with its flashy lights and music, and noisy people, does not fit our town. I don’t care how much money it makes.”

  “That’s the great thing about a democracy, Torie. The people of this town are going to vote on it, and for once…you have no control over it. You can’t bully and finagle, wiggle, or talk fast enough to get your way. If the town votes it in, you can’t do a blasted thing about it,” he said and smiled at me.

  Oooh, he looked so unbelievably smug.

  “Really,” I said. This was a challenge. He meant it as one, and I took it as one. “And just who is going to be out there campaigning for it?”

  He smiled.

  “And who do you think is going to campaign against it?” I asked.

  He just looked at me and so I smiled deliberately back at him. I got up out of my seat then, and motioned for everybody else to get up. We were finished eating. I was ready to leave. As I walked past the mayor’s booth, I leaned in toward him. “And who do you think, between the two of us, is the most liked and respected in this town?”

  The mayor’s face grew pale. “Yeah…my thoughts exactly,” I said.

  Six

  “The nerve of him!” I stammered as I threw the car into reverse. The pavement was still wet from the showers that we’d received a little while ago. My tires spun, which actually made me happy. The tires spinning made me feel as if I were actually doing something with my anger. I know, it was juvenile. “Can you believe him?”

  “Torie,” Rudy said. “When was the last time you had your hormones checked?”

  “Don’t talk to me about hormones,” I said through clenched teeth. I pulled out of the parking lot of Velasco’s Pizza and headed for home. “The man is insufferable. What’s more, he’s turning our chickens into cannibals!”

  “What’s a cannibal?” Rachel asked.

  “You are overreacting,” Rudy said. “Don’t give me that look, Torie. You know that you’re overreacting.”

  I stewed in silence awhile as I made a turn and drove down River Point Road. I stopped at the stop sign, with Ye Olde Train Depot, which was now a restaurant, on my right and the old abandoned Yates house farther up the road. I sat there for a minute breathing deliberately, trying to cool my jets. Finally, Mary’s tiny voice came from the backseat.

  “It’s a can of vegetables, silly.”

  “A cannibal is…is…oh, you tell her,” I said to Rudy.

  “I’m not telling her,” he said. “You’re the one who can’t hold your temper. Get yourself out of this one.”

  I sighed heavily and gave the car some gas. The speed limit in town is ten miles per hour, so I had to make myself obey the law. Because I really wanted to gun it and break the sound barrier. Of course, for me that would have probably been about thirty-five miles per hour. We were moving slowly up the road when something caught my eye at the Yates house. I slammed on my brakes without thinking that somebody could have been behind me. Thank goodness it was just us on the street. “Did you see that?”

  “See what?” Rudy asked.

  Seat belts came undone in the backseat as Mary and Rachel clambered to the window to see what I was talking about. “Get your seat belts back on.”

  “What?” Rachel asked. “What did you see?”

  “I think I saw a light,” I said. I rolled Rudy’s window down with the push of a button so that I could get a better view. The two-story house was basically a black silhouette with the moonlight sprinkling along the river behind it. The house had been abandoned for years, namely because when the river flooded, the Yates house always ended up with four feet of water in it, no matter how diligent our sandbagging efforts. No grass grew in the yard, and the paint had long ago curled and peeled off.

  “There’s no light. Nobody’s lived in there for years,” Rudy said.

  “Maybe it’s a ghost,” Rachel added.

  “It’s not a ghost,” I said. “No, Rudy, I saw something.”

  “So what? You want me to go in there armed with a supersonic pacifier and a couple of radioactive dirty diapers? Torie, let’s get home and we’ll call the authorities. Besides, it was probably just the light from a tugboat or a barge coming through the window.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Look, there it is again.”

  “I saw it,” Rachel said. “It’s a ghost.”

  “Mom, she’s trying to scare me,” Mary chimed in.

  Just then, blackness in the form of a man glided silently out of the house and along the edge of the river. “I knew it,” I said. “There was somebody in there. What is that in his hand?”

  I watched as the shadow picked up speed and ran along the river carrying something in his right hand. I could barely make it out in the moonlight but it was long and slender. The harassing sound of a car horn honked behind us, sending us all into adrenaline overtime. I think I actually squealed, and realized that I had once again stopped in the middle of the road. I gave my car some gas and headed for home, all the while trying to watch the person running along the railroad tracks until he disappeared behind the hill our house was on.

  “You get Matthew; I’m going to call Deputy Duran,” I said and ran for the door.

  Ten minutes later Deputy Duran’s squad car was stopped in front of the Yates house with its lights on and radio blaring. I drove my car down there to meet him because, quite frankly, I was too afraid to walk. I mean, what if the person came back?

  “Deputy,” I said. “Sorry to bother you.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. Edwin Duran was a few years older than I was and he had been the star quarterback for one of our rival Granite County teams, the Meyersville Lions. He was built like quarterbacks usually are, muscular, but his center of gravity was lower to the ground than with the big defensive players. He was a handsome guy for the most part, but he had huge ears and that always distracted me. “So, you and Rudy saw somebody inside with a flashlight?”

  “Well, I didn’t see the flashlight, I just saw a light coming from inside. I just assumed he had a flashlight,” I said with an odd sense of being watched. I looked around nervously and finally settled back on Edwin’s trusting eyes. “Then we saw somebody run out of the house and a
long the river. I’m not sure, but it looked like he was carrying a shovel or something with a long handle.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m gonna go inside and check it out, make sure that there’s nobody left in there, and then I’m gonna come back out and talk to you some more.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Did your mom and the boss make it to Alaska all right?”

  “Yes,” I said as he headed for the house. “They called this afternoon.”

  I got back in my station wagon and locked all of the doors and waited for Edwin to finish looking the house over. When he came out, he motioned for me. I fumbled with the lock and then got out of the car. “Well?”

  “I want you to come look at this. Tell me what you think,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said and headed inside with him.

  As soon as I entered the house, I wished I hadn’t. It stank of rotted wood and river sludge. And trust me when I say there’s no smell like it in the world. We stepped over a few boards on our way to the main wall in the living room, which faced to the west. The darkness was suffocating, and I just knew that there were more things crawling around with six or more legs than I cared to know about.

  “I know there’s a lot of damage to the house,” he said. “But this is different.”

  He shone his flashlight on a section of the wall that looked as though somebody had been hacking away at it. The other walls had cracks and peeling paint, but this was a concentrated area of fresh marks. “Could the perp have been carrying an ax?”

  “I…uh, I suppose so,” I said.

  “Because this…this is looking like somebody just went at it with a sharp object,” he said.

  “What does it mean?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said in the darkness. He shone his flashlight up on the water-stained ceiling. “Maybe he was trying to get a jump on the demolition.”

  “Demolition?” I asked as Deputy Duran led me back toward the door. “Are they finally going to tear down this place?”

  “Oh, yeah. What with the riverboat and all,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  We emerged from the claustrophobic house to the familiar street. I knew every street, every building, every light and every crack in this town. As a child I had explored it on long summer days until the sun set and I was exhausted. As an adult, I savored it. I didn’t wait for Edwin to answer. “What do you mean?” I asked again.

  “Well, if the riverboat goes through, this is where they’re going to put it,” he said.

  “What?!” I exclaimed. “But…but…it’s less than a half mile down the road from my house. I will be able to see it from my living room window. And…and hear it! My God, where will everybody park?”

  “Sorry, Torie. I’m just the messenger. If it means anything to you, I’m against it one hundred percent. We can only hope it won’t go through. But I heard from Elmer, who heard it from Sylvia, that Bill wanted to go ahead and have the building torn down so that it will make a good impression on people. You know…‘Oh, look at this big empty spot that we have. We can fill it with a riverboat and make lots of money.’ I think it’s lame, but Bill thinks it’s a great idea. They’re supposed to tear it down on Friday.”

  Oh, this was too much. My head was reeling. In fact, it was reeling so much, I felt like just hurling my pizza. What did it say that our beloved mayor was willing to leave an abandoned, dilapidated building sitting in view for ten years? The eyesore of all eyesores in this town. He didn’t want to spend the money for demolition because it was a hazard for our children. He didn’t want to spend the money to have it torn down because it was a deterrent for tourists. No. But he could tear it down to try and convince people that we needed to fill the space up with a gambling casino.

  “Torie?” Deputy Duran said.

  “Yeah?” I asked. I had been off on my mayor-hating tangent in my head and missed what the deputy had said to me.

  “I asked if you were all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “So, what are you going to do about tonight?”

  “About the prowler?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nothing much. I mean, I’ll sit out here and watch it tonight in case they come back. And I’ll make sure we patrol extra until Friday. But after that, I don’t have to worry about it, since that’s the day it’s supposed to be tore down,” he said as he put his hat on and headed for his car. “I mean, I am going to fill out a report, Torie. It’s not like I’m blowing it off.”

  “I know, Edwin. I wasn’t suggesting that you were,” I said.

  “Well, that look on your face. You look…disgusted.”

  “Oh, it’s not with you, Edwin. Don’t worry. It’s not with you.”

  Seven

  Monday and Tuesday came and went without incident. I did notice Deputy Duran parked on my street watching the Yates house on a few occasions, which made me feel good, but as far as I could tell, the perpetrator never came back. I busied myself with cleaning out the Finch house, but I had yet to make it to the second floor. On Wednesday I sat down to read the information that I had printed out from the Internet.

  Rachel and Mary were in the backyard on the swing set. Matthew was asleep in the Porta crib in the living room, with our dog Fritz lying under the crib snoozing in harmony with him. This wasn’t difficult for Fritz because he was a wiener dog, and he could lie under just about anything.

  I set my Dr Pepper on the coffee table and then spread the papers out on the sofa. Tucking my feet up under me, I pondered which one to read first. Some of the articles looked like “official” Web page types of things, while others looked more like fan pages. I picked up the article closest to me and began to read:

  Catherine Finch was born in September of 1904 in Granite County, Missouri. Her origins were humble but she married railroad tycoon Walter Finch in 1922. She embarked on a music career that came to a grinding halt in 1938 when her infant son was kidnapped in a scenario that played out much like the Lindbergh kidnapping.

  I put the page down. An uneasy feeling settled on me. I had forgotten about her baby. Actually, I really didn’t know that much about the child. I just remembered hearing, as all native New Kassel residents have heard in passing, about the singer in the valley whose baby had been kidnapped. When Sylvia had asked me to write the biography, I hadn’t realized that the singer in the valley with the kidnapped baby was Catherine Finch. I knew it, but I didn’t know it.

  I read on:

  It was the summer of 1938 when Catherine was awakened in the middle of the night by a garish nightmare of her infant son being murdered. Sheran to the nursery to find it empty. The baby’s bracelet and blanket were the only things Mrs. Finch found missing.

  Unfortunately, Catherine Finch, the woman with the voice of an angel, would never see her son again. There was no ransom demand. There were no threats. He had simply disappeared into the night. For years, Catherine was plagued by young men claiming to be her beloved Byron. For years, Catherine believed that one of the impostors was really her son, only to learn that he was the child of a gypsy and was indeed trying to scam her into leaving him her fortune. Catherine Finch never saw Byron Lee Finch again, nor did she ever sing in another public appearance or record any songs. Her career ended the night her son was stolen from his crib.

  I was creeped out beyond belief. I wouldn’t look at anything in that house the same way again. I would always look at it as the place where tragedy struck. I read the rest of the articles, which gave most of the same information that I’d just read, all the while instinctively looking up to check on Matthew. One article went into more detail on the type of music that Catherine had recorded and what some of her hit songs were. It seemed she was one of the few white women of the era to gain respect in the predominately black field of jazz.

  One article went on to say that she died in 1995 and the reason that she had never moved was so that if the kidnapper ever wanted to find her, he wouldn’t have any troubl
e. However, it also left an open door for all the reporters and impostors down through the years to harass her.

  A favorite pet peeve of the press was that Catherine believed in the forest spirits and things of the netherworld. This was something, judging by the articles, that the press would hound her over, trying to get her to give more specific quotes. Evidently, she realized her error and would never speak of it again or answer anything of that line of questioning. In effect, she became a recluse haunted by her missing son, living in a world that looked at her belief in the “netherworld” as something to criticize her for.

  I could not imagine what it must have been like to have had a wonderful career, gaining momentum with every record release, and then suddenly one day to find it was over because of an act of sabotage. And according to the articles, it wasn’t over necessarily because the public did not want to hear her music anymore; it was over because she simply could not go on.

  I heard the back door open and shut and knew the girls had come in for lunch. I gathered up the articles and put them on the coffee table and went in to make grilled cheese sandwiches with Doritos.

  I walked into the main-floor great room of the Finch house with that peculiar feeling of being watched. I had felt it Sunday evening when I was talking to Deputy Duran, and I felt it again now. My imagination, I knew, because there was nobody in the house except me, Matthew, Rachel and Mary.

  I stared at the big stained-glass window with the fairies at play in the trees and grass, and I thought instantly of the articles that told about Catherine believing in the forest spirits. That was a politically correct way of saying that she believed in fairies and brownies and gnomes and selkies and a number of other things. If I hadn’t read the article, I wouldn’t have given this window a second thought. I would have just written it off as an eccentric taste in art. Albeit a beautiful example of an eccentric taste in art. The twenties, when this house was built, were a time of art deco style of furnishing. That era was also a time when people with money were trying something new. Shedding all of that Victorian and Edwardian stuffiness. But now that I had read the article, I realized that this window actually had held some sort of meaning for Catherine.