Thicker than Water Read online

  “At any rate, I don’t think he’ll be back tonight,” Newsome said.

  “I’m not going back in there,” Stephanie said. “Not tonight.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. I reached out and squeezed her hand. “You go on home.”

  “I’ll be back tomorrow. Will you be here?” she said.

  “Yeah, I’ll be here,” I said.

  “I’ll walk her to her car,” Newsome said to me, which I was relieved to hear.

  The two left me standing on the sidewalk trying to decide what to do next. I looked up at the redbrick building and thought, I can’t let it scare me. The Gaheimer House was mine now, and I had to make sure that it was treated with respect and taken care of, just as Sylvia had, or all of Sylvia’s hard work and dreams would come crashing down. There was no such thing as a ghost, and Newsome had said the prowler—if there had been one—was gone. I placed my hand on the doorknob and opened the door. When I stepped up the high front step my back seized, and I took a deep breath to try to quell the pain.

  Then it hit me. The incoherent mix of thoughts I’d had earlier suddenly jelled. What if the person who attacked me at the Strawberry Festival had picked me on purpose? What if it hadn’t been a random assault? What if it had been the same person who kept appearing and making ghost noises in Sylvia’s bedroom? And what if Sylvia’s attack in 1972 was somehow connected? I was probably reaching on that last one.

  I looked back over my shoulder as the river slipped into the dark purple glove of dusk. Was the attacker watching right now? Was he hiding across the street behind the shops?

  I shut the door and set the alarm.

  Then I made my way to my office, looking over my shoulder the whole way. I rifled through my desk until I found the name of the private investigator Sylvia had hired. Michael J. Walker. I picked up the phone and dialed the number. I got a recording. I left my name and all my phone numbers and told him to call me right away, that it was urgent.

  Then I decided that I wouldn’t get any work done in this house this evening, so I grabbed a few boxes of things and headed out. By the time I made it to the front door, I had to stop to catch my breath. It felt like somebody had pulled all my tendons out of my joints, and all I had done was carry a few boxes a few dozen feet. My cell phone rang just as I picked up the boxes again. I set the boxes down and answered it. It was Rudy.

  “Is everything all right? Was there a break-in?” he asked.

  “Not sure,” I said. “We think somebody’s been in the house, but everything seems to be in order. Are you still at Velasco’s?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Can you come by and give me a ride home? I’ve got some boxes of pictures I want to work on, and I don’t want to carry them all the way home.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”

  Fourteen

  At home, I read Matthew a bedtime story—one with dinosaurs, of course—and helped Mary with her math homework, which was sort of like the blind leading the blind. Rachel flung history questions at me the whole time I was helping Mary with her math. “What prince of England died on board the White Ship in 1120?”

  “Oh, um…” I snapped my fingers. “William. Son of Henry the First.”

  “Oh, you answered my second question, too,” she said. “And who did Henry the First kill—it is rumored—to get the crown of England?” Rachel read aloud from her history book.

  “His brother. Also a William. You know, these answers are probably in your book,” I said.

  “He killed his own brother and got to become king?” she asked, ignoring me. “So, like, I could kill Mary and become president?”

  “No,” I said. “And they can’t prove that he killed his brother. It’s just awfully mysterious that his brother was hunting and was shot by a stray arrow and Henry just happened to be hunting in the same forest at the same time and oops! Now Henry is king of England. But, you know, Henry lost his only male heir later when the White Ship went down, so you have to wonder.”

  “Wonder what?” she asked.

  “Well, all bad deeds eventually get punished, in some form or other. If King Henry did kill his brother to steal the crown of England, then you have to wonder if Henry sort of got his payback when his son went down with the White Ship. If he had never become king, his son would probably have never been in that position. So you could say he set his own son’s fate by taking what wasn’t his to take.”

  Rachel stared at me. “Mom, your mind is wicked.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “No, Mom,” Rachel said and wrote furiously. “I mean you’re brilliant.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Wicked as in good. I gotcha.”

  “Of course, that’s just one way of looking at it. But you know what they say: Whatever we do comes back to us twofold.”

  “Mom,” said Mary, “just who is ‘they’ when people say ‘you know what they say’?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said and scratched my head.

  “Mom,” Mary said, “what is eight times seven?”

  I counted on my fingers. “Fifty-four.”

  “Fifty-six!” Rachel said.

  “Oh, sorry,” I said.

  “Okay, so who inherited the title from Henry the First, and how did this affect England?” Rachel asked.

  “Well, his daughter, Matilda, actually inherited the title, but not for very long. The king’s nephew Stephen—who was also supposed to sail on the White Ship but got off at the last minute—made a claim on the throne, and this was bad for England because total anarchy ensued. Most of the nobility weren’t ready to follow a woman, but some were, so you had this big disagreement and so forth.”

  “You know all of that without even looking at my book?” she said.

  “History is my thing,” I said and shrugged. It’s totally useless in the everyday world, by the way.

  “Mom,” Mary asked, “what is forty-three divided by four?”

  “Uh … where’s that calculator?”

  “What nationality by blood was King Henry the First?”

  “French.”

  “So the king of England was French?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Long story. Later the kings of England would be German.”

  Rachel rolled her eyes.

  “Mom, what is forty-three divided by four?”

  “I’m working on it,” I said, punching numbers on the calculator. “Oh, you figure it out. It’s your homework.”

  When homework was finished, I retired to my bedroom upstairs while Rudy and his mother watched some sitcom reruns. I had to laugh, because she had refused to let the television land on ESPN since she’d been here. Maybe Rudy was having to suffer after all.

  Safe in my blue-gingham bedroom, I tore into the boxes that I’d brought from the Gaheimer House. I tried to make piles as I went through the photographs. One pile was for photographs of places: buildings, businesses, etc. Those could be used in the future for special displays and even publications with historical content. I found an excellent photograph of the Murdoch Inn back before it was the Murdoch Inn, when it was owned by the Queen family. In another pile I put photographs of people I knew, like Sylvia and Wilma, or even people who had died before I was ever born, if I knew of them or knew their families. Another pile was for people about whom I didn’t have a clue.

  I was extremely excited by the pile of “places” pictures. There were some absolute gems in that pile. In fact, I was getting ideas for their use with every photograph I picked up. It was the pile of “unknowns” that interested me the most, though. All the pictures had been written on, but I still didn’t know who they were. I believed one was Sylvia’s mother, since she looked just like Sylvia had when she was a young woman and it was taken around the 1890s, but I’d have to check Sylvia’s family tree to match up the name. Some people in the pictures had the last name Pershing, so obviously they were Sylvia’s paternal relatives.

  My heart stopped as I came to a photograph of a little girl
. I rummaged through my drawers for my magnifying glass. I found it, placed the picture as close to my desk lamp as possible, and looked at it under the magnifier.

  It was the same little girl whose face had been haunting me for the past few weeks.

  I flipped the photograph over with my eyes shut, hoping there would be a name on the back of it. When I opened my eyes, sure enough, written in somebody’s loopy penmanship were the words Millie O’Shaughnessy.

  There was no year given, but she looked to be about a year younger than she was in the train-station postcard photograph. That would make it 1920s or early ’30s.

  “So, little Millie O’Shaughnessy. Who are you?”

  Just then my phone rang. The caller ID read WALKER, MICHAEL J.

  Fifteen

  “Hello?”

  “May I speak to Torie O’Shea?” the voice said.

  “This is she,” I said.

  “This is Mike Walker. You left a message for me.”

  “Mr. Walker, I’d like to hire your services,” I said.

  “I charge twenty dollars an hour, plus expenses,” he said.

  “Fine.” Boy, he didn’t mess around. He got right down to business.

  “Can I meet with you?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “When is convenient for you?”

  I looked at the clock on my desk. Eight-forty. “If you’re not too far from me I can meet you this evening,” I said.

  “This isn’t a cheating husband case, is it?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Because those suck. I always get depressed when I do those.”

  “No, it’s not a cheating husband case,” I said.

  “All right,” he said. “I live in Crestwood. Know where that is?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’ll take me forty-five minutes to get there.”

  “Well, then, how about we meet somewhere central?” he said. “You pick.”

  “Meet me at Frailey’s Bar and Grill on Butler Hill in South County,” I said.

  “That right there at 55, by the Schnucks?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

  I put on a pair of good jeans instead of the holey ones I had been wearing, pulled my hair up in a ponytail, grabbed my purse, and ran down the stairs. Rudy and his mother were both snoring in front of the television, which they both would deny later.

  I tapped Rudy on the shoulder, and he jerked awake. “What? Where are you going?”

  “I’ve got my phone with me,” I said. “I’m going up to Frailey’s in South County.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m going to meet … a client.”

  “A what?” He rubbed his eyes.

  “I’ll be back in about an hour,” I said and headed for the door.

  “Who the hell wants their family tree traced at this hour?” he asked.

  I just smiled and shut the door.

  I drove up Highway 55 with the radio on, wondering exactly what it was I would say to Mr. Walker. I hadn’t expected him to call tonight, so I hadn’t rehearsed my speech. After about ten minutes on the road, I passed the exits for Imperial, Richardson Road, and Highway 141 in Arnold—with that ugly green water tower—then got into the right-hand lane, because my exit was coming up. Meramec Bottom Road passed, and I put my blinker on as the sign for Butler Hill came up over the road. I made a left and crossed back under the highway to the plaza with the giant Schnucks supermarket and Frailey’s Bar and Grill. I had made it in twenty-five minutes. I jogged up to the front door.

  Having eaten here, I can tell you it is the food that sets Frailey’s apart from the other sports bars, not the décor. The inside of Frailey’s is like every other sports bar in the Midwest. Sports paraphernalia hung from the walls. What looked like ten televisions hung from the ceiling, all with different sports events on. Poor Rudy. Stuck at home watching sitcoms. The hostess greeted me, and I told her I was meeting somebody.

  “Will you need a table?” she asked. That translated into “We’re getting ready to close the kitchen.”

  “No, we’ll sit at the bar,” I said.

  Her face brightened a bit at that. I didn’t blame her; who wanted to be stuck at work because of one customer who came in ten minutes before the kitchen closed and then took two hours to eat?

  “I’m just going to stand here and wait for someone,” I said.

  “Sure,” she said.

  Within two minutes a man walked in. He looked to be about thirty and was wearing a Rams sweatshirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. “Hey!” he said. “Are you Torie? I’m Mike Walker.” He stuck his hand out for me to shake, which I did. He seemed very … young. A worn and disgusting toothpick hung out of his mouth as he smiled a bright, winning smile.

  “Yes, I’m Torie,” I said.

  “Come on, I’ll buy you a beer,” he offered.

  “No thanks,” I said. “I’m driving.”

  “Oh.” He looked totally rejected.

  “You can buy me a Dr Pepper,” I said.

  “Well, all right,” he said and waved his hand in the direction of the bar.

  We sat down and he ordered a beer for himself and a Dr Pepper for me. He paid the bartender, handed me my soda, and smiled. “So, what can I do for you and how did you hear of me?”

  “Sylvia Pershing,” I said.

  He choked on his beer and sputtered a bit. I really had to learn not to speak when people were drinking. One of these days, somebody was going to choke and die and it would be all my fault.

  “Ms. Pershing recommended me?” he asked.

  “You could say that,” I said.

  “Well … I wasn’t aware the old bat liked my services well enough to recommend me to anybody,” he said.

  “Really?” I asked and took a drink of my soda. Fountain Dr Pepper just wasn’t the same as canned Dr Pepper. But it was better than water.

  “She didn’t tell you that she fired me?” he asked.

  “She … she fired you?” I couldn’t hide my surprise, unfortunately.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “No, she didn’t tell me that. How long ago did she fire you?” I asked.

  “About six weeks ago.”

  “What was her reason for letting you go?” I asked.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” he said. “Let me see if I can get this right. I’m a … spoiled, lazy mama’s boy who couldn’t find my own hand if it was inserted in my—”

  “I get the picture,” I said and held a hand up. Well, he certainly had met and worked for Sylvia. There was no way he could have nailed her that well without having met her. I cleared my throat. “What exactly was it you failed to find for her?”

  He took a drink of his beer and eyed me cautiously. “I’m not sure I should discuss that with you.”

  “Well, here’s the deal, Mr. Walker—”

  “Call me Mike.”

  “Mike,” I said. “Sylvia is dead.”

  He choked on his beer yet again. I was beginning to develop a complex about it. “D-dead? As in, she’s…”

  “The opposite of living,” I said. “That’s right. Not breathing. In the ground.”

  “Well, isn’t that something?” he said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I don’t discuss my clients.”

  “Well, I’m your client now,” I said. “And what I’m hiring you for is to tell me everything Sylvia hired you for.”

  “Sheez,” he said and laughed. Then he caught the expression on my face and stopped short. “You’re serious.”

  “Totally,” I said.

  “Aw, man,” he said. “I just don’t think it’s right. You know, client confidentiality and all that.”

  “You’re not a priest or a doctor,” I said. “And I’m paying you.”

  He stared at the clock on the wall.

  “In advance.”

  His eyes cut around, and the rest of his fa
ce eventually followed. “How much up front?”

  “Four hundred dollars,” I said.

  “Make it five and I’ll tell you what you want to know. I mean, she is dead, after all.”

  Nice to know he had scruples. “Five it is.”

  “I’m going to need another beer,” he said and raised his hand to the bartender. Once his beer had arrived he set about telling me what I wanted to know. He somehow managed to speak and drink and still keep the toothpick safely in his mouth. “All right, about a year ago I get this phone call from this lady, this older-than-the-hills lady, and she says she needs a PI. I tell her my fees and she says she’ll call me back. I figured I’d never hear from her again. But about a week later I got another phone call and I knew it was her, because, you know, she sounded older than anybody on the planet. She said she wanted me to come down to her place, so I went. It was big old ugly brick building in that depressed little area down in Granite County.”

  “It is not depressed,” I said.

  “Whatever,” he said and shrugged. “So I go down there, and sure enough, Methuselah’s wife answered the door. She took me out on the back porch because she didn’t want her assistant to hear the conversation. Evidently, her assistant was this real nosy type that gets her panties in a wad over everything, and so I went out on the porch and had tea with this old lady.”

  “And?” I said. I tried very hard not to let it register on my face that I was the assistant he was referring to.

  “She told me she thought somebody was trying to kill her and she wanted me to find out who it was,” he said. “I told her, ‘Look, why would anybody want to kill somebody as old as you? They only have to wait a few years and you’ll be gone anyway.’ I thought she’d get real offended by that. Sometimes I just say things without thinking, and that was one of those times, but you know, she didn’t get upset. She agreed with me that she was very old and that she would probably be dead soon anyway, but she couldn’t help feeling like somebody was trying to kill her. And the funny thing was that she didn’t really seem to be scared or worried about it. She just wanted to know who it was.”