Family Skeletons: A Spunky Missouri Genealogist Traces A Family's Roots...And Digs Up A Deadly Secret (3 page)

“Morning, Mom. Thanks for getting Rachel ready for school.”

“That's okay. I knew you were really tired from all the work you've been doing with the festival.”

“Yeah, and I've still got today through Saturday to go.”

She seemed to be deep in her own thoughts. I've always thought my mother resembled the Madonna. A Raphaelite version of Madonna, not the version on MTV. She had an oval-shaped face with a small bow mouth and aquiline nose. Her skin was smooth and creamy, and I am completely jealous. Her dark hair was now turning gray and no matter what inner struggle she was dealing with she always seemed calm and in complete control. Just how I would imagine the Virgin Mary. Wonder what Freud would have to say about that?

I left her alone to drink her coffee, grabbed a Dr Pepper, and walked Rachel out to catch the bus. She wore her green-and-red dress with the cows on it. As the bus approached, she looked up at me with serious black eyes and said, “Mom, do you know what the worst part about not having arms is?”

“No, what?”

“All the clothes have sleeves.”

In her innocence she couldn't see the much more devastating things in life that a serious disability would cause. To her it was what to do with sleeves. I crouched down next to her and gave her a big hug.

“I think the saddest part would be not being able to hug my children,” I said.

Enlightenment dawned on her just as her bus pulled up. I could see the full implications of what I'd just said play in those dark eyes of hers. She waved then. “Bye, Mom. See you tonight.”

I waved and watched the bus until it was completely down the street, then went back inside and headed upstairs to my office. Passing Rudy on the way up, I stopped and gave him a kiss.

I sat down at my desk and dialed the number for the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis.

“Defense Department,” a woman said.

“Howard Braukman, please.”

I waited a few minutes for Howard to come on the line. Howard used to be a neighbor when I was a kid in Progress, Missouri. I thought he could save me some footwork on Norah's family tree. While I waited, I took a folder from the middle left-hand drawer and wrote in black magic marker, Counts/Pritcher Client: Norah Zumwalt.

“Braukman,” a voice said.

“Howie, are you still trying to sound like a boot camp sergeant? It just doesn't fit you.” He was actually sort of cute. It had been at least six months since I'd seen Howie at an anniversary dinner for his parents. Then I saw him again three weeks later, when his mother died. He wore Coke-bottle glasses and had white blond hair. There was something so insecure about him that you couldn't help but befriend him.

“Hi, Torie. How's your mom?”

“Fine.” Everybody always asks about my mother first. “Listen, I have a client whose father served in World War II.”

“You'll have to have her fill out a form. You know that,” he said.

‘Yes, I know. The NA13075 and the NA13055. Send them to me, and I'll have her fill them out. But could you do me a big favor?”

“No.”

“Come on. You owe me,” I said, teasing.

“What do you want?”

“Could you just take a peek and tell me when he died?”

“Absolutely not. Torie, I could get in big trouble.”

I waited a few seconds, thinking of what I could do to persuade him. “I could always tell your mother about Henrietta Pierce.”

He was silent for a few moments.

“You know I have done lots of favors for you, Howie. Kept lots of secrets.”

“This is blackmail.”

“I know. Look, I just want to know when he died. The woman doesn't know when her own father died.”

“Shit.”

“Cuss all you want. But you'll do it? You'll look?”

“It may take me a few days. I do have real work I have to do.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I suppose I can still keep your secrets quiet.” I am just too ornery for my own good.

He didn't say good-bye. He just took down the important information on Eugene Counts and hung up. I really didn't have anything horrible that I was hanging over his head. Henrietta Pierce was his “baby” sitter when he was younger. I walked in on them once when … well, let's just say they gave a whole new meaning to the words “finger painting.” Anyway, I would never really tell his mother. Heck, she probably already knew. Mothers have ways of knowing those types of things. And I learned a long time ago that I didn't really have to threaten him to get favors from him. But he liked to create the illusion that he was being coerced into doing me favors.

I glanced down at the photograph of Eugene Counts. From his letters, I did not get the impression that he was the type to forget all about his “dearest Viola” and stay abroad with
ma cherie.
His letters professed his love for her over and over, and that he wished that he could see his hometown of St. Mary's again. I wondered what he was thinking at the time the photo was taken. Too bad the camera couldn't freeze his thoughts as well as his image.

*   *   *

It was Thursday before anything earthshaking happened. I was in the office at the Gaheimer House when the phone rang. I had just finished a tour and was still in the vintage clothing.

“New Kassel Historical Society, Victory O'Shea speaking.”

“Hi, it's Howie. I mean Howard,” he corrected.

“Oh, great. Whatcha got?” I grabbed a pen and tore a piece of paper off of a scratch pad. I suppose I was too excited that he was getting back to me to wonder why he was calling me at my office.

“He's a live one.”

“What?” I said. I searched for the chair behind me with my free hand. I found it and sat down, dress and all.

“He didn't die in the service.”

“I can't believe it,” I said, a rush of excitement bubbling up. I could just see visions of Norah Zumwalt and an ancient Eugene Counts running, arms open to embrace each other, reunited after fifty years. I am such a romantic.

“This is great,” I said.

“Yeah. Remember that fire back in seventy-three?” Howie asked.

“Well, I was about ten years old, but I know about it.”

“Wiped out over half of our army records up to 1959. But they reconstructed the files for the veterans still alive so they can still get their pensions.”

“Terrific. You got an address?” I said, still amazed that the man was alive.

“You said all you wanted to know was if he was dead or alive.

“Jesus, Howie. Have some compassion. I get to tell this woman that her father whom she has never met is alive. But sorry, Howie wouldn't give me an address.”

Before I could threaten him with any long-lost secret, his strained voice said, “Eleven-oh-nine West Second Street. Vitzland.”

“You gotta be kidding me. That's just down the highway about twenty miles.” I wrote it down as quickly as I could. “Anyone else? What's his mother's name?”

“Torie!”

“Last thing.”

“Edith.”

“Thanks. We're even.”

“We better be,” he said as he hung up the phone.

Wow. He was alive. I had done several lineages before, but this was the first time I really had something exciting to report to a client, something that would make a difference. I dialed Norah's antique shop immediately. No answer. She must have closed down again. I decided I would try her at her home and realized that I didn't have that number with me. I'd call her from my house.

Which I did. No answer there either. Rachel came home, followed by Rudy. I fixed dinner, and we ate. All through dinner I found myself anticipating the moment that I could actually give Norah the good news. Finally, the girls were in bed, and I sat down at the kitchen table to try and call Norah one more time. As I dialed her number, Mom set a spice cake on the table. I immediately devoured a piece.

Mom always has fattening things like that lurking around every nook and cranny. And I feel that I should give them my undivided attention. I consider myself fairly strong willed, but we all have our limits. Some more than others.

The receiver picked up.

“Norah … hi. Torie O'Shea.”

“Oh, Torie, hello,” she said, a little surprised.

My mother came in the kitchen then and gave me a dirty look at the huge chunk that was missing out of the once whole cake. She knew I was the guilty party because I had icing on my upper lip. I tried to lick it off, but I was too late. She laid an open
St. Louis Post Dispatch
on the table and rolled her chair past me to the porch.

“Norah, I've got great news. I'm not anywhere near finished with your family tree. Truth is, I've barely got started. I mean, I've ordered some death certificates, marriage records, you know, standard things. Listen, your father … he's alive.”

“Yes … oh, just a minute. Somebody is at the door.” She put the phone down. I heard muffled voices in the background as she answered the door.

Mother came back in the room and frowned even more because this time I had got caught with the cake in front of me. Yes, I was eating another piece of cake as I read the open newspaper. Something caught my eye, and I barely noticed that Norah had come back on the line.

“Can I call you back?” she asked me.

“Well, okay,” I said, befuddled. Norah hadn't even given me a chance to say good-bye. That was not exactly the reaction that I had expected. I stared at the phone as if it were the phone's fault.

“Something wrong?” Mom asked me.

Yes. Something was wrong, but I didn't know what.

I studied the words in the newspaper that had caught my attention while I was on the phone. They were circled in red ink, and said: “Wanted: Eugene Counts. Your daughter is trying to find you … Norah Z. Reward!!!” The notice was followed by the number assigned to it by the newspaper.

“Hello,” Mom said.

“Did you circle this?” I asked.

“Yes. Isn't that the same name on the file you had down here this morning? I remember the name. Wonder why she did that?”

“Did what?”

“Take an ad out in the personals. If she thought he was dead, I mean.”

Mother at least had the decency to blush, making her perfect, creamy skin radiate.

“Were you reading my files, Mother?” I asked with a half smile.

“You shouldn't leave them lying around,” she said. I thought the same thing about all of her fattening goodies, but she didn't listen to me. “You doing the grocery shopping tomorrow?” she asked me, all innocence.

“You nosy rosie!” I swatted her with the newspaper. “Maybe I will,” I said, shoving a big piece of cake in my mouth. She looked appropriately horrified.

“How are your children supposed to learn anything if you show no self-control?” she asked me.

“Why do you make the stuff if you don't want me to eat it? I mean, you go to all the trouble to bake it, you set it out on your pretty china plates, and then I'm not supposed to touch it? Jeez, that's cruel and inhumane punishment. Even Job couldn't pass on that temptation.”

“I don't care if you eat your share. But it would be polite if you didn't eat everybody else's.”

I sputtered. She stammered and rolled out of the kitchen, leaving me to contemplate just why Norah would put an ad in the personals if she thought her father was dead. The ad had to have been placed before I found out that he was alive. Had she known he was alive, or was she just taking a stab in the dark?

No matter which way I mulled it in my mind, it still rested uneasy.

Three

Norah had not called me back. Not that night and not the following morning. I waited until after lunch and then called her house. The line was busy. I dialed her antique shop, and after the third ring a very irritated woman answered the phone.

“Betty,” was all she said.

“Hello?”

“Norah, is that you?” she asked.

“No. This is Victory O'Shea. I'm looking for Norah. She's not there?”

“Oughta give you a prize,” she said.

“Do you know where she is?” I asked.

“No,” she said. Her voice was deep and rough, as if she'd smoked three packs of cigarettes a day for twenty years. “She was supposed to be in at one and didn't show. She didn't even bother to call. I'm sitting down here without anyone to help me. And I know I can just kiss a lunch break good-bye.”

“When did you talk to her last?”

“I don't know. Are you a customer or a friend of hers?” she asked.

I found that question somewhat frightening. To think this woman had been speaking to me this way and thought I was a customer. I forget there are people like her.

“Friend,” I finally answered.

“Well, you tell her I'm ticked. I don't know how to do the cash drop at the end of the night.”

“Sure, okay,” I said, and hung up the phone.

Call it overreacting, but I was worried. I hopped in my station wagon and headed out Stuckmeyer Road to Wisteria. The town of Wisteria is located southwest of New Kassel, and has a population of about four thousand. Norah had lived there for a number of years.

Before Norah came to the Gaheimer House that day, my only thoughts of her were that she was antisocial. I didn't really concern myself with her all that much. Now, it was amazing all the things that I knew about her. She had two children. She was divorced. I even had her exact address, thanks to the form that she had filled out.

My car moved at a snail's pace, thanks to the road construction. Big yellow vehicles were strewn all over the sides of Stuckmeyer Road. Construction people walked out in front of moving traffic without giving it a second thought. I don't know if they did it because they knew we would stop or because they had become oblivious of the traffic.

A huge man who resembled a grizzly bear stood with a sign that said, Slow. No duh, I thought. He waved my side of the traffic on, while the other side had to stop and wait. They had taken a four-lane road down to two lanes.