Blood Relations Page 6

“Oh, yeah, makes me feel wonderful.”

  Nine

  The swirls in the plaster of my office walls were fascinating as hell. I’d probably been staring at them for half an hour already, and it seemed like only a few minutes. I shifted my gaze to the appliquéd Rose of Sharon quilt hanging on the wall by the window. The quilt was soothing to look at, all done in different shades of pink.

  There was a knock at the door, and for a moment my stomach lurched, as I thought it might be Stephanie Connelly once again. But the way I had behaved toward her, she would probably never show her face in this town again. Which I can’t say bothered me all that much. For my own sanity, I thought it would be best if I never saw her again. I was in denial. And I intended to stay in denial for as long as I possibly could.

  “Come in,” I said.

  The door opened and in walked my best friend. “Collette! Oh my gosh, what are you doing here?” I stood and gave her a hug and was immediately enveloped in a cloud of her perfume. The fragrance was a little strong and a little musky for my tastes, but that was Collette for you. She was worth navigating my way through a cloud of perfume for.

  “I’m here for the story,” she said. Collette is a reporter up in St. Louis. We’d been raised together, gone to school together, but she couldn’t wait to leave New Kassel and find her destiny in the big city. All I had wanted to do was bury myself in the past and become a fixture of New Kassel, like Sylvia had. I loved to travel and see things, but I had no desire to live anywhere else than where all of my family and friends were. It’s the people who make a place home, not the buildings or the scenery. And my home was New Kassel.

  “The story,” I said.

  Collette rolled her eyes. She is a full-figured gal, with big hair and lots of gold jewelry, and about the most magnetic personality I’ve ever encountered. “You know, The Phantom,” she said. “The Huntleigh heiress. The whole thing.”

  “Oh Lord. You’re kidding.”

  “No,” she said, and sat on the edge of my desk. She picked up my page-a-day calendar and flipped the pages across her face, causing her hair to billow. “I’m here for the big scoop.”

  “Was this your idea or your editor’s?”

  “My editor’s,” she said. “You know I don’t come to New Kassel anymore unless I have to.”

  Which was the truth. If I didn’t live here, she’d probably never set foot in this town again. As it was, when we went out, I usually just met her somewhere up in the city.

  “Ole baldy, my boss, said that since I was a hometown girl, I would have the ‘inside’ scoop,” she said. “Dipshit. I don’t know what goes on in this town.” Why would he think I would know anything about what goes on here? He sees me almost every day. I’m always on assignment. When would I have time to learn what’s going on in New Kassel?”

  True.

  “And why would I care? I stopped caring a long time ago about what went on in this town.”

  True again.

  “So, I was wondering if I could bunk at your place while I’m here,” she said. “Now if you don’t want me to, just say so, ’cause you’re not gonna hurt my feelings. I can get a room at the Murdoch.”

  “Well, no, you can’t get a room at the Murdoch, because Eleanore is booked.”

  “You’re kidding,” she said.

  “Thanks to The Phantom.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” she said. “I can stay over in Wisteria. It’s not like it’s far away. I can be here in five minutes.”

  “You can stay with us,” I said. “It’s not a problem.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. I’ll just stick Mary in bed with Matthew and you can have her bed. Of course, you’ll have to deal with Rachel primping until all hours of the night,” I said. “She’s really into this brushing your hair a hundred times and all that before going to sleep.”

  “Well, all right,” she said. “We can primp together, because I’ve been brushing my hair a hundred times before bed since I was eight.”

  “Really?” I brush my hair when I get out of bed, and then again if I’m going somewhere. And Rudy rarely ever brushes his hair, but that’s because he thinks the less he brushes his hair, the less likely that it will fall out.

  “I’m cooking dinner,” she said. “I insist.”

  “Fine with me. Like you’ll hear a mother of three complain when somebody else insists upon cooking,” I said. I’ve always blamed the fact that I hate to cook on my kids, but it isn’t really the kids. I hate to cook, period. Actually, I hate cleaning up more than anything else.

  * * *

  “Don’t you have any Vidalia onions?” Collette asked an hour later. She had changed from her Liz Claiborne suit to jeans and a sweatshirt. The red-gold hair that usually hits the middle of her back was now piled up on top of her head. All of her gold rings were sitting in a cup on my table, resembling the treasure on a pirate ship.

  “No, just plain old yellow,” I said.

  “I guess that’ll do,” she replied. “Garlic?”

  I went to the fridge and handed her a jar of the precrushed garlic in oil. She looked at it as if it were a pile of cow manure. “Please, Torie. Fresh garlic. You don’t have fresh garlic?”

  “No, ’fraid not.”

  “How do you keep Rudy here? I mean, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, girl. You’re just pushing him out the door to find love in another’s arms. I bet you cook Hamburger Helper, too, don’t you? No, don’t answer that question. I don’t want to know. No fresh garlic,” she said, still disbelieving.

  I folded my arms and leaned up against the countertop. “I thought you always said the way to a man’s heart was through his—”

  “Mom!” a voice screeched from the kitchen door. It was my middle child. My wild child. The child with as much personality as an amusement park and as much energy as a roller coaster. “Matthew keeps hitting me with his T. rex, and I’m about tired of it.”

  “Mary,” I said, “tell him you’re not going to play with him anymore if he keeps hitting you.”

  “I’m not playing with him,” she said, her green eyes sparkling. “I am sitting on my bed, minding my own business, reading a book, and he just whopped me upside the head.”

  “Well then, that’s his problem. He wants you to play with him.”

  “No!” she exclaimed. “I’ll just go outside and read.”

  She turned and disappeared down the hallway, then came back dressed in her winter coat and slippers, her book in her hand. “I’ll just go out on the porch and read.”

  “It’s twenty degrees outside,” I said.

  “I don’t care,” she snapped. “It’s better than having to put up with him!”

  The door slammed behind her as she headed out to the back porch. Collette looked at me and then laughed.

  “I give her ten minutes,” I said.

  “God, were we like that?”

  “Yup,” I said.

  “Except you never had any siblings to fight with,” she said. “I had my sister, who hated my guts. We got over that, though. Funny how that works.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. I never had any siblings,” I said. My voice trailed off as I reached for a pan from underneath the stove.

  “Oooh, I detect a shift in mood here,” Collette said.

  “Hmm? Oh, no, I’m fine,” I said.

  “No, having Hugh Jackman lick your toes is fine, darling. What you are is … distracted.”

  “Right,” I said laughing. “I’m fine.”

  She said nothing and went about chopping up my inferior yellow onion. Collette is really good about letting me come to her with things, rather than prying. I can’t say that I’m as good a friend. I usually pry everything from her. Patience is not one of my virtues. “So, tell me what you know about the wreck,” she said, changing the subject.

  “Well, funny you should ask. In between tours, I managed to get some reading done, although not nearly enough.”

  “Yeah? And?”<
br />
  “Well, I think she might have been loaded flat. I’ve got a call into one of the historical societies down in Arkansas,” I said. “I want to see if they’ve got a picture of The Phantom as she left port. We might get lucky.”

  “What good will that do?”

  “Show if she was loaded flat. She may have had too many people on board, so that when the captain flanked her, which the eyewitnesses said he did, the water would have swept up on the deck, probably knocking people off into the river right then and there. Then it would have been just a matter of her turning on her side and going under.”

  “So … where’s the mystery in that?”

  “There isn’t one. Except why a seasoned pilot of a steamer would flank his ship that hard, knowing he was loaded flat. That doesn’t make sense.”

  “What do you know about the pilot?”

  “Not a lot,” I said. “That’s one of the things I planned on reading about tomorrow.”

  “And Jessica Huntleigh?”

  “You know, I don’t really know that much. I’m going to ask Sylvia some questions about her when I get a chance.”

  “What about … you know, the diamonds?” she asked, stirring the pasta sauce.

  “I’m going to read the eyewitness accounts over, too. Jacob Lahrs—”

  “Who?”

  “The college professor who’s down there digging right now. He claims that the whole diamond myth came from one source only. I can check that out tomorrow, too.”

  “One source?” she asked, surprised. “Isn’t that sometimes how things get started? So, what’s the scoop on Jacob Lahrs?”

  “Supposedly, he’s the great-grandson of the captain.”

  “You’re joking,” she said.

  “Nope.”

  “Huh,” she said. “When can I get down there to see the wreckage?”

  “Tomorrow, if you want.”

  “Think you could get me an interview with Lahrs?”

  “Most likely.”

  “Great. And can I have access to all of your papers on the subject?”

  I hesitated a moment.

  “What?”

  “I’m not going to tell you how to write your article or anything, but … Well, this whole diamond thing, could you play it down a little?”

  She gave me an incredulous look. “And compromise good journalism?”

  “Collette,” I said. “It could do a lot of damage.”

  “I know, I know,” she said. “Tell you what. If there’s nothing to it—I mean if there is nothing to corroborate the eyewitness’s story—then I’ll just give it a two-sentence pass. All right? But if there is something to it, then I’m going to have to devote a little more column space to it than that.”

  My silence seemed more judgmental than I meant it to be.

  “It’s my job,” she said. “I’m not going to exploit the town.”

  “No, I know that,” I said. “I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.”

  The front door opened in the other room. “What smells good?” Rudy yelled.

  Collette winked at me. “Now let’s see if we can’t get this husband of yours to stick around awhile. No fresh garlic,” she muttered.

  Ten

  Saturday night in New Kassel isn’t exactly like Saturday night on the Landing in downtown St. Louis, or in the Loop, for that matter. No, Saturday night in New Kassel consists of bowling, families eating out, gathering at the Corner Bar, bingo at the KC Hall, or just hanging out at Chuck’s. For a bit of a wild time, one can wander over to Wisteria or make the journey up to St. Louis. Of course, there’s loads of fine dining here. And in certain seasons, we often have a Blue Grass Festival, hay rides, that sort of thing. But not in the middle of January, when it’s colder than in the Yukon.

  Collette was used to going out on Saturday nights, so I accompanied her to the Corner Bar. That was as crazy as she would get tonight. Even though she was just going out to have a beer in a dead-end town, she still had to dress up. She had changed into a pair of those low-rider jeans and a sparkly sweater. She had put on heels, more makeup and, yes, more perfume.

  The Corner Bar is, well, your typical neighborhood bar. Nothing fancy about it. It is located on the corner—thus the name—of Jefferson and Western Road. Even the door opens directly onto the corner. Once inside, I had to adjust my eyes to see through all the smoke. The only lights on in the place were the lights behind the bar, advertising different beers, and candles on the tables. My dad once said that the reason the lights are so low in a bar is so that you won’t realize, until the next morning, what an ugly woman you’d picked up. He was half-joking when he said it, but looking around the bar, I had to wonder if maybe there wasn’t some truth to his philosophy.

  The bar was directly to our right, some booths were to our left, and toward the back were the pool tables and shuffle board. A Bob Seger song played from the jukebox. “You’ll Accomp’ny Me,” I believe. I shook off the cold as we entered the bar, along with some of the snow that had started to fall. I waved to the owner, Hiram Gernsheim, who was standing behind the bar and laughing it up with a couple of regulars. He waved back, looking a little surprised, because this was not my normal hangout.

  We sat down in a booth, and before our coats were even off, Hiram was standing at our table. “Hey, Torie. What brings you in from the cold?”

  I pointed to Collette. “You remember Collette,” I said.

  He looked at her a moment and then recognition hit. “Lordy, I haven’t seen you since you was right out of school. Whatcha been up to, girl?”

  “Just working,” she said. “Seems like that’s all I ever do.”

  “I hear that,” he said. “Can I get you ladies something to drink?”

  “I’ll have a Bud Light,” she said.

  “Jeez, Collette, I figured you’d have found a different beer by now,” I said.

  “What’s wrong with Bud Light?” she asked.

  “It’s just so … Yuppie. And it gives you the farts,” I added.

  Hiram laughed and wiped his hands on his bar rag.

  “I’ll have … an amber bock,” I said. “Schlafleys.”

  “Sure thing,” he said, and walked away.

  “I can’t believe you grew up in a German—that’s German—town and you drink Bud Light,” I said.

  “Well, you didn’t have fresh garlic,” she snapped.

  “True,” I said. “I guess we’re even.”

  We were halfway through our beers, talking and catching up on things, when I noticed Collette was no longer listening to me. Her eyes had wandered toward the door, which I couldn’t see because my back was to it. She made eye contact with me a few times and she’d say “Uh-huh” every now and then, but she was obviously deeply studying something or somebody other than me.

  “And then,” I said, “the baboons came down and ate all the ice cream that the aliens had left.”

  “Don’t you hate when that happens?” she said.

  “Colette,” I said, giggling. “Yoo-hoo. Earth to Collette.”

  She snapped to then and blushed all the way down her neck. “Okay, I’m sorry,” she said. “But that guy has a seriously cute butt.”

  I turned around in my seat to see who was the owner of the seriously cute butt. It was Jacob Lahrs. He was laughing and drinking. It looked as if he was celebrating something with his assistant, Jeremiah Ketchum, and his student, Danny Jones. Funny, I hadn’t noticed Jacob Lahrs’s seriously cute butt when I met him the other day. Maybe it was the angle at which Collette was sitting. Or maybe it was because I was married—one sort of conditions oneself not to look at the dessert one can’t have.

  “That’s Jacob Lahrs,” I said to her, smiling.

  “Jacob Lahrs … the professor?” she asked, eyes twinkling.

  “Yup. You want that interview?”

  “Oh, do I ever,” Collette said, grinning widely.

  “Come on,” I said, and motioned her over. We got out of the booth and walked over to the three
men standing at the end of the bar. “Professor Lahrs!” I called.

  He turned around and smiled when he saw me. He was wearing a black turtleneck and had pushed the sleeves up to his elbows. “Mrs. O’Shea,” he said. “Never expected to see you in here.”

  “Yeah, well … My friend comes down from the city and I get all wild. Go figure. This is my friend Collette,” I said.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said.

  She purred back some response, and I just knew I was about to watch the master at work. Collette loves men. Lots of men.

  “Call me Jacob,” he said. “What brings you here, Mrs. O’Shea?”

  “We just came out for a beer. Collette is a reporter,” I told him. “And she was hoping to get an interview with you.”

  “Oh, you can’t interview me tonight,” he said, all serious.

  “Why not?” she asked, batting her eyes.

  “Never do interviews when you’re under the influence, because you never know what you may say. I once promised a woman my grandmother’s antique clock after having seven too many Bloody Marys. My grandmother was not happy, and neither was the woman. Especially since she’d had such an … uninhibited time the night before.”

  He winked at Collette, and I nearly puked.

  I looked at Danny Jones, who was entirely too young to be drinking. In Missouri, a person has to be twenty-one to drink, and if Danny Jones was even twenty, I’d eat my hat. I took his glass from him and sniffed it. He looked a little shocked at first, but then he smiled at me. “It’s just Pepsi,” he said.

  “Good. I’d hate to see Hiram lose his liquor license because of you.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, placing his hand across his heart. “I didn’t even try to get liquor.”

  “So, what’s the celebration all about?”

  “Celebration?” Jeremiah Ketchum asked.

  “You all seem like you’re celebrating.”

  “Oh, nothing,” Jeremiah replied.

  “Now Jeremiah,” Jacob said, chastising him. “We can tell Mrs. O’Shea. I think I may have discovered how The Phantom sank.”

  “The captain flanked when he shouldn’t have,” I said. “That’s how the boat sank.”