Family Skeletons: A Spunky Missouri Genealogist Traces A Family's Roots...And Digs Up A Deadly Secret (11 page)

“What happened then?” I asked.

“Well you know the mill is burned out now, one whole wall is missing. But for a split second I thought I saw the mill the way it used to be. Whole, with all four of its walls. Well, Victory LeBreau stopped with her arms raised up over her head. She stopped and she looked right at me. She looked right into my soul.”

She paused in her story then. I had goosebumps the size of dimes all down my arms.

“And? What happened?” I asked.

“She began pounding on the window, shouting for help. They say she relives her inferno every night.”

“Yes, I have heard that,” I said.

“You must be from the same area.”

The woman was ninety-plus years and looked it. She had severe wrinkles and very white hair. But she was also alert, her voice strong, and her hands nimble. Between her and the Pershing sisters, I had the feeling that I was falling apart and wouldn't make it to forty.

“I'm from Progress, originally,” I said. “My great-grandfather helped to build the Pine Branch church, and my grandparents lived there for many years. Have you heard of the Frioux family?”

“Yes. Claude had a daughter about eight years older than me. She was the prettiest thing I've ever seen. Always wanted to look like her.”

“Felicity Frioux?”

“Yes.”

“That was my grandmother,” I said, suddenly somber and forgetting the real reason I'd come here.

“How nice,” she said. “Do you crochet?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I am all thumbs at that sort of thing.”

She gestured at her hospital bed as she said, “Do you quilt?”

A gorgeous Lone Star quilt graced her bed. The Lone Star is made up of small diamonds pieced together in larger diamond sections that eventually make up the star. This one was done in different shades of mauve and pink. How out of place it looked in this sterile room, and on a hospital bed.

“Not unless collecting them counts,” I answered her. “I have several quilt tops my grandmother left me.”

“Well, you'd best get them quilted,” she answered. “I made that one just before I came here. My hip is bad. I can't get around by myself.”

Several seconds ticked by as I thought about how bizarre it was that this woman would know who my grandmother was. It is a small world.

“Mrs. Ortlander,” I began, “the reason I'm here is because I am tracing the family tree of Eugene Counts. Does that name mean anything to you?”

“Counts,” she repeated. “Oh, Genie boy,” she stated. “Yes. He and my son were great friends. Michael was very happy when he found out they were in the same platoon. It was like a miracle to actually find somebody that you knew.”

“Your son died in the war?” I asked, reconfirming a fact that I already knew, and being thrilled that I had found the correct Ortlander family.

She never answered me; instead, she put her crochet work down. “In that top drawer is an album. Let me show him to you,” she said. “He was my only son. I have three daughters, but he was my only son.”

I did as she told me to. Never missing a beat, she went right on talking. “Genie boy was the only survivor.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, skin prickling.

“Germans circled them in a valley and all were lost. It was a gruesome, bloody battle. Genie boy was taken to a camp.”

A Nazi POW camp. In my opinion that could change any man. It would leave him a skeleton of who he was.

“Don't know what happened to him after that.… I asked specifically…” she said.

“Asked what?”

“What happened to Michael. I wanted to know if it was a bullet or a mine. You know, did he suffer?”

“Did they tell you?”

“Walt spent many years tracking that down,” she said after a pause. “We got his body way too late to view it, so we didn't know. Finally, when he found out … I wished I had never asked.”

“What happened?” I hoped that she would tell me, even though it was a very personal question.

“His throat was cut from ear to ear,” she said, and made a swooping motion that covered the entire throat.

“God, how horrible,” was all I managed.

She had turned the photo album around to me, and one slender, age-spotted finger pointed out her son in his service photo. His hat was cocked to one side, he had blondish hair, and even though the photo was in black and white, I could determine that he had one blue eye and one brown eye. It was very striking.

“Why do you think Eugene survived?” I asked.

“I don't know.”

“Your son was very handsome,” I finally said. I didn't know what else to say to her, and she had seemed to run out of things to say to me. The awkwardness that arises when one has run out of things to say is very blatant. And embarrassing.

“I should probably be going,” I said. “Thank you for your time.”

Rising, I walked to the bed and touched her quilt. “It is truly magnificent,” I said. “Just beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

She had been so peaceful when I arrived. Now there was sadness in her eyes and she worked her left hand in a nervous twitch. I wondered when the last time was that she had thought about her son's death. Had I brought up something that she had succeeded in burying? He was her only son—it would probably never be buried.

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Ortlander. About your son.”

Suddenly, her face went blank and she looked at me in the oddest way. “Whatever for?” she asked.

“His suffering,” I answered.

“He didn't suffer. Oh, he's not dead. I saw him once, after the war. They lied to me,” she said. “They lied.”

Eleven

Florence Ortlander's last words haunted me for days. I realized that she was probably in the nursing home for mental reasons and not just her hip. First the ghost story and then seeing her son supposedly alive. It was too much. I assumed it became easier for her to accept that her son had somehow lived and that she had been lied to.

Today I decided to go to my local library in New Kassel, and read through some microfilm that I had ordered. My mother's sister was the librarian there, and it had been a few weeks since I'd seen her.

I didn't take River Point Road like I normally would, because of all the sandbags. And the tourists. To have a flood is big tourism. So I went down Birne Street instead.

I turned into the parking lot and sat in the car for a minute. Something had been bugging me for several days now. It had nothing to do with Harold Zumwalt, or John Murphy, or Norah's father. It was her children.

I realize that not all children have a loving relationship with their parents. I happened to have a good relationship with my mother. And as much as my father was an old grouch and a genuine pain in the butt, I loved him just the same.

So the thing that bothered me was Rita and Jeff. Her children seemed so aloof, so removed from the horror of Norah's death. Their mother was not only dead, but murdered. They seemed saddened.

Saddened. Somehow that just didn't cut it.

I grabbed my briefcase and got out of the car. The building is small and sandy-colored, with windows that go from floor to ceiling. It houses the only microfilm reader in the entire county.

Aunt Bethany Crookshank stood behind the counter checking out a book for a little boy. She wore a pink linen jacket with an ecru blouse and skirt. The jacket brought out the pink in her cheeks and made her look remarkably young. I think some of it had to do with her state of mind. She thinks young. Younger than I do sometimes, and she is fifty-seven.

My mother is the youngest of four sisters. Emily Branham Wallace is the oldest, and owns the dairy farm out on New Kassel Outer Road. Then comes Aunt Bethany. Aunt Millicent Branham Petrovich lives in West Virginia, and then comes my mother, Jalena Branham Keith. Of the four, Aunt Bethany is probably the closest to being my soulmate. She is my companion on my many genealogical hunts, and I will be forever indebted to her for the knowledge that she bequeathed to me. And I can think of nobody I would rather traipse through a cemetery with, and that says a lot about a person.

“How are you doing?” she asked. She resembles my mother more than the other two sisters, except she is the only blond in the family. Aunt Bethany is short and trim, very classy.

“I'm all right,” I said.

“Well, the microfilm reader is where it always is,” she said as she pointed to the back of the room. “What are you looking for?”

“I'm not sure exactly. I'm hoping to find an obituary or announcement of some sort from the war.”

“That would explain the 1942 newspapers that you ordered,” she said. Aunt Bethany went about her business and I began my search through the newspapers from Partut and Ste. Genevieve Counties. The machine was one of those crank kind, and I cranked and cranked, stopping every now and then to see where I was on the film roll. I came upon some news about the war, and some bad weather. The usual things. An advertisement for women's shoes.

Those basic black pumps have come full circle.

Murdered. The word caught my attention immediately. Since discovering Norah's body I had found myself reading the gory details of the newspapers a lot more than I ever used to. In this article a young woman by the name of Gwen Geise had been murdered. I skimmed the article until I came to the method of murder. It felt like the back of my head suddenly met the front of my head.

Gwen Geise's throat had been sliced from ear to ear.

There were no other details about the murder other than the location of the body. It was an old paper and I didn't really expect there to be too many details.

The palms of my hands began to sweat.
From ear to ear.
Michael Ortlander had been murdered in the same fashion, with a slice from ear to ear. I'm sure there was more than one person in the world that killed people by slicing their throats.

But when I began to add things up, it did seem curious. I checked the date on the article. Early 1942. What if Eugene killed this woman and Michael Ortlander? But why? It was quite a coincidence that a woman from the same area as Eugene, and a friend in his platoon would be murdered in the same manner. But coincidences do happen. After all, Florence Ortlander knew who my grandmother was.

So why did this bother me so much?

I grabbed my briefcase and left the microfilm reader on. “Aunt Bethany?” I called out. “I've got to go. Sorry to rush out on you.”

“No problem,” I heard her say.

*   *   *

When I got home the phone was ringing off of the hook. Mother had gone to visit Grandma in Wisteria with Aunt Emily. However, Rudy was home, and I couldn't figure out why he hadn't answered it.

I grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

“Hello, Torie. It's Rita.”

I was surprised to hear her voice. I couldn't think of a single reason that she would be calling, and neither could she. We spent two or three minutes in conversation without saying anything. I think she tried to pass off the phone call as a social call. You know, the just-wondering-what-you're-up-to type of call.

Well if Sheriff Brooke said anything to me for what I was about to ask her, I could always say she called me first.

“How come John Murphy didn't come to your mother's funeral?” I asked.

“Ask him,” she said.

“Sheriff Brooke did ask him. He said he wasn't informed that she had died until she was already buried.”

Silence hung on the other line. She was either shocked or trying to decide how to answer. What was the big deal? Why were people lying about John Murphy?

Rudy came through the kitchen then, looking perplexed. “Have you seen my watch?” he whispered.

“What?” I couldn't understand him. The whole time Rita kept talking. I gave him a dirty look, meaning to please wait.

“Jeff and I felt he had no business being there,” she repeated. She thought the ‘what' had been spoken to her.

“Why?” I asked.

“Where is my watch?” Rudy asked again.

“Rita, just a minute.” I put my hand over the phone. “I don't know where your watch is. I don't wear it. Why should I know where it is? Or had you never thought of that novel idea?”

“Jeez,” he said, and headed for the steps.

All right, don't say it. Yes, I was hateful. But I just knew Rita was ready to spill the beans. I could feel it. “Rita, thanks for holding. We had a domestic crisis. What were you saying?”

“I really don't want to get into all of this. I just wanted to call and see how the family tree was coming. I apologize, Torie, but it's really none of your business.”

I hate it when people tell me that something is not any of my business. It makes me wonder
why
it's not any of my business. And then I want to know that much more what it is I'm not supposed to know.

Is nobody else inquisitive by nature?

“What if John Murphy tells me?” I asked.

“He has that right, of course.”

“Where can I find him?”

“Probably at his office,” she said. “He works late, all the time.”

“Thanks,” I said. Then we exchanged our good-byes.

I couldn't leave that lie. Before I could even get upstairs, the phone rang again. This time it was Colette, a friend of mine. Did I want to have dinner? Sure, what the heck?

*   *   *

John Murphy was in his office, just as Rita had said. It was in a modern five-story building with no real security. Most everybody had gone home; only a few lights were left on in the building, and even fewer still on the second floor, where Mr. Murphy was.

I'm not afraid of the dark, but something about hearing one's shoes clicking in a half-lit hallway … gives me the creeps. I felt as though I had eyes boring into my back, but every glance I gave over my shoulder assured me that I was wrong. Shivering, I tried to shake the eerie feeling, knowing that I was being ridiculous. I had probably seen too many
X-Files
episodes.