Family Skeletons: A Spunky Missouri Genealogist Traces A Family's Roots...And Digs Up A Deadly Secret (20 page)

I opened the drawer and inside were files, with no headers, but neat, as all of Sylvia's records are.

Every file seemed to pertain to Hermann Gaheimer or the Gaheimer family in some way. One file even contained old photographs, one of which I recognized as being of Hermann Gaheimer.

Then I found it.

I, Hermann Gaheimer, being of sound body and mind, do hereby declare this, my last will and testament.

Cool. This would make a great display under glass at the museum. My eyes flicked down the page, and my heart caught in my throat.

I do hereby bequeath all of my worldly possessions, and the sum of one million, six hundred forty dollars, to my beloved Sylvia Pershing.

Holy cow. I dropped the piece of paper back into the file and slammed the drawer shut so fast, I barely got my hand out of the damn drawer. Sylvia Pershing! He left everything to Sylvia. Why the hell would he do that? What was it I was saying a while back about Sylvia couldn't possibly have known him that well?

Jesus, what had I found?

Just then I heard the door shut upstairs and couldn't believe my misfortune that one of the Pershing sisters, if not both, had come to work this early.

“Victory!” Sylvia shrilled. “Victory, are you here? If you don't answer, I'm going to get my gun and shoot whoever is driving your car, pretending to be you.”

“Yes, Sylvia. I'm down here.”

She descended the steps with more agility than I could muster. Her silver gaze scraped me from head to toe. “Whatever are you doing down here?”

Could she tell that I knew something that I wasn't supposed to know? Because it seemed like she knew what I was thinking.

“Uh, the flood. I thought I'd do a display under glass of the flood, and I wanted to tie in a flood from before, only I didn't know what year there was a flood before, or even if there was one. A flood, I mean. Was there one? I wonder. I mean you would know, wouldn't you? Being so old and everything. Not that I think you're terribly old. Just partially old.”

“Victory, are you all right?” she asked me.

“Of course, never been better. Why do you ask?”

“Because you're acting like you're on some of those street drugs that I saw on
20/20
the other night.”

“Huh, fancy that.”

Her perusal of me became more intense. If I didn't get out of the basement soon, I would die.

“Victory, are you pregnant?”

“God, no,” I said, giggling. “I mean, not that I couldn't be, because I could be. But rather that I'm not, because I know I'm not. At least, the last time I checked I wasn't.”

“Nineteen forty-two,” she said. “That was the last big flood. The mill and the Birk/Zeis Home had four feet of water in them. And the Murdoch Inn, which was a private residence I believe in 1942, had about the same. We didn't have a levee back then,” she said, and headed back up the steps.

She stopped, looking at the filing cabinet on the other side of the room for what seemed like an eternity. It was as if she suddenly remembered that she had left it open or unlocked. And now it was shut. I finally got the guts to look her in the eye. She did not say a word, but rather communicated in silence.

The problem was, I was not certain what those silver eyes were trying to say to me.

Nineteen

It is impossible to sleep when a jam session is going on on the first floor of your home. At least, if you're over thirty. My children didn't seem to be the least bit deterred from their sleep and were actually snoring. Rudy had found that if he took his pillow and blanket out to the back porch he could get a few winks.

My father and his musical companions had pounded out six different versions of “Waltz across Texas.” I was getting no sleep at all and couldn't see any in the near future. So if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Which is what I always did as a child anyway. I pulled on my sweats and headed downstairs.

What the heck, I'd even have a beer.

Dad was situated on a kitchen chair that he had pulled into the living room, playing the guitar. I remember when I was a child, when Dad would sit on the couch and play, I would lie on his lap, between him and the guitar and feel the vibrations of the instrument. Eventually I would go to sleep. It is one of my most cherished memories.

Dad had his faults, but he had a good side, too. His bad side was that he liked to chase women, even when he was married. When he wasn't chasing women, he would disappear without a word, only to return in a week. He had usually been at a jam session. If he was home, he was having a jam session. Am I repeating myself here?

He's also a slob. I washed his coffee cup one time, quite by accident, and I had a crazed lunatic on my hands. I actually thought he was going to cry, because now it would take six months to get that much grime back in his mug. In the meantime, his coffee just wouldn't taste the same.

The good side of Dad was that he was a damn good musician. Could have been professional, but why he didn't would take up more time than I have to explain it. Let it suffice to say that it was his own doing.

He always provided for us. He has a wicked sense of humor and always taught me to be true to myself because I was who I had to face every morning in the mirror.

His brother, Uncle Melvin, played lead guitar. Uncle Melvin was the heartthrob of the family. In his younger days he had sandy brown hair that lay in perfect waves and ocean green eyes. No matter how much he ages, he will always have those gorgeous eyes.

Bob Gussey was nearly four hundred pounds and played the drums. I can never figure out how that little drummer's stool actually holds him. Pete Ramey played the bass. He was your suit-and-tie kind of guy with a needle nose that my grandmother could quilt with. Josh Rizzoni was on violin and occasional piano. He had—are you ready?—twelve children. He wasn't sure if they were all his, but he loved them all just the same.

All they were missing was a slightly woozy female with a halfway decent alto voice. Tonight, I filled the position for them.

I have no idea how many Patsy Cline songs I managed to butcher. I stopped counting at four. But I know I did a respectable version of Dinah Washington's “What a Difference a Day Makes.”

Rudy stumbled in sometime around 3
A.M
., long enough to be dutifully ashamed and embarrassed for me. I'd let him carry the brunt of shame because I was having entirely too much fun. I'd even brought my own lampshade. I was having so much fun, I wasn't thinking about Norah or Sylvia, none of it. I also wasn't keeping track of how many beers that I was drinking, which is dangerous because two will make me forget my name.

It was in this diversionary frolic that I lost myself completely. Until I heard it.

I was leaned over the arm of the couch watching the hair on Uncle Melvin grow, and listening to my dad moan out the words to a George Jones song. Something about a woman and a Corvette. Something like a man was complimenting another man on his car, and he really meant the woman in the front seat. A woman. A Corvette. Red Corvette. Red. Red. Red. Rita Schmidt.

I don't know why I hadn't made the connection before. It took the words of that song to bring it together in my properly pickled brain. Rita drove a red sports car. Cora had said that a woman in a red car had almost run them over in the parking lot.

I sat up on the couch as straight as I could without pitching myself forward. Rita was having an affair with her mother's boyfriend. I'd bet on it. That would certainly explain Norah's obvious obsession with confirming the identity of the other woman. I had a definite feeling that she knew who it was. She knew it was her daughter. It all made sense.

Oh God, how awful for Norah.

Oh God, my poor head.

*   *   *

If a human being has ever had a hangover, it must be pure stupidity that makes her repeat the act. Or else she figures, Oh, it won't happen to me.

Well, it happened.

It took me a half an hour that morning just to figure out why I was on my couch. Another half an hour went by before I realized how come there were so many ugly old men in the living room with me.

But it was nearly two o'clock in the afternoon before I remembered what it was that the George Jones song had triggered in my head the night before. Now things were starting to look very peculiar. I could not ignore the possibility that Michael Ortlander had murdered Norah. But if I was right about Rita and John, it certainly threw a new twist on things. Suddenly, the absence of an alibi really seemed condemning where John Murphy was concerned. Could Norah have confronted him about his affair with Rita and a fight evolved? Could John have gone nuts as a result of this argument and killed her? Could Rita have gone a little crazy when her mother found out? No, Rita had an alibi, I reminded myself.

I managed to eat a little something. Three pieces of plain bread and a glass of milk. Everybody has his magic cure-all for a hangover. Mine is bread and milk. I've only had to use it three or four times in my life. I must have been sitting at the kitchen table for half of the day. Mom came into the kitchen and opened the blinds, and even though the sky was gray and overcast, my pupils dilated, sending an incredible pain through my head.

“Aargh,” I said.

“I can't believe you got drunk,” Mom said in her best parental voice.

“I only had four beers. I don't remember intentionally setting out to get drunk,” I said. “It just sort of happened. I got all caught up in the music.”

“Now you know why I divorced your father.”

Just then the guys in the living room picked up their instruments and started playing music all over again. How could they keep finding songs they hadn't already played? It was Saturday; this would go on until Sunday night, at least.

“That was the other reason,” Mom added with a nod of her head toward the living room.

“Thank God Rudy doesn't play an instrument. I'm going to have him take the girls to his parents' house for the rest of the day. They have to be tired of hearing that,” I said. “And the next time Dad calls and wants to borrow my house, make up an excuse. Tell him … the chickens are allergic to it or something.”

“Won't have to. Bill called this morning and wasn't happy.”

“Oh, it never occurred to me that he could hear the music that well. I mean, he is a couple of acres away.”

“Well, he did. Also, Rita called. She said that she would be home today if you wanted to come by.”

I said nothing for the longest time. I was too busy trying to figure out what it was that I was going to say to her. I'd been trying to get an appointment with her for a few days because I had wanted to talk with her since I'd seen her father. But now I suspected she was the one that John Murphy had been having the affair with. How could I bring up the subject without actually accusing her? And if I was wrong?

“You do want to see her, don't you?” Mom asked.

“You better believe it,” I said. “I just don't know what to say to her,” I said, swallowing hard at the bile rising in my throat.

“Instead of trying all of these concoctions not to throw up,” she said, “why don't you just stick your finger down your throat and get it over with. Get the poison out of your system. You'll feel better. Just confront it,” she said.

Why are mothers always trying to get the poison out of your system? If all the things in the world that supposedly caused poison in your system did actually exist, the human race would have died centuries ago.

“Works that way with people, too,” she said. “Sometimes it's better if you just get the poison out, up front.”

I hate it when my mother gets philosophical.

“Also, Wilma called.”

“Wilma?” I asked apprehensively.

“She said to tell you that one of Norah's employees is Fern Kennard. She lives in those apartments off of Hanover and the outer road.”

“Oh,” I said. I had forgotten that I had asked Wilma and Sylvia if they knew any of Norah's employees. “Great.”

“Is something wrong?” my mother asked.

“No.”

I started to say something and decided not to. When I had managed to change my clothes and brush my teeth, I made my way though the amplifiers, instruments, and musicians to the front door. Taking a deep breath, I made it to my car.

Starting the car, I found a radio station that played some good solid rock and roll. As much fun as I'd had, I'd listened to entirely too much crying-in-your-beer music. It's just too bad that I didn't do more crying in my beer than drinking it.

George Thorogood and the Destroyers pounded out the harsh chords to “Bad to the Bone.” I sighed with relief.

I pulled into the parking lot of the Royal Court Apartments minutes later. The complex was clean and neat, with two stories. The tenants of Royal Court had access to a swimming pool and game room, and dinky apartments with one or two bedrooms, for four hundred bucks a month.

I had no idea which one Fern lived in, so I checked the names on the boxes in each building and I finally found an F. Kennard, number 23B. I headed to her apartment and hoped that I didn't look as rough as I felt. I hadn't put on any makeup, but at least I'd brushed my hair. I was wearing a pair of navy blue shorts and a plain, dark green shirt with white tennis shoes. No socks. I usually wear socks, but I didn't want to mess with them.

I rang the bell. Fern answered in seconds. When I saw her, I knew I had seen her around town. She was about sixty, with gray hair and eyeglasses from the 1960s. They weren't very thick, and pointed up on the ends.

“Ms. Kennard,” I said in my most professional tone. “I was wondering if I could speak to you about Norah Zumwalt.”

“Are you a cop?”

“No.”

“A private dick?”

“A what?” I asked. Then, realizing that a private dick wasn't a venereal disease, but a private investigator, I answered, “No, just a friend. I'm Victory O'Shea.” I extended a hand, which she took and shook graciously.