Killing Cousins (12 page)

I cleared the piles off my desk, which took at least fifteen minutes, and then sat down in my chair to read. Between my feet sat the box containing the original sheriff's investigation reports. I pulled the stack out, sat it on my desk and began to read.

On the night of September 6, 1938, Byron Lee Finch was put to bed at seven-thirty in the evening. His mother rocked him to sleep, laid him in the crib and went back downstairs to attend to her company. At about ten-forty she checked on him and the other children and went to bed. She woke at about four in the morning after having a nightmare that Byron had been murdered, went to his bedroom and found him gone.

The people present and accounted for that night were Catherine, her husband Walter, and their other two children, Cecily and Aurora. Catherine's sister Tamara Danvers and her two children, Hope and Hugh, had been over for dinner, along with Catherine's brother, Louis Ward, his wife, Anna, and their two children, Patrick and Lanna. The ages of the children ranged from six to twelve.

So, Patrick Ward had been there the night that Byron disappeared, and now he had turned up dead in the rubble of the house where Byron was found more than half a century later.

There were two servants who were live-ins, and two business associates of Walter's, who left before 8
P.M
. on that night. So Byron was still in his bed when the business associates left for the night. Louis and Anna said that they left about nine-thirty. Tamara Danvers left at 10
P.M
. However, the four cousins—Hope Danvers, Hugh Danvers, Patrick Ward and Lanna Ward—stayed for a sleep-over.

So, that meant that during the time between ten-forty, when Catherine last checked on Byron, and four in the morning, when she awoke from her nightmare to find him gone, the only people in the house were the two servants, the four cousins, Catherine, Walter, Cecily and Aurora.

The only other person with a key to the house was Sylvia Pershing.

Sylvia Pershing?

I read the report again. “Sylvia Pershing had a key to the house because she was Catherine Finch's best friend. In case of an emergency, Sylvia was the one allowed into the house.” Those were the words written by Sheriff Kolbe.

I couldn't quite wrap my mind around that. Sylvia knew all of this, obviously. Why hadn't she said anything to me when she asked me to write the biography? Maybe she was waiting to see if I was a good enough researcher to find out on my own. The report went on to say that when Miss Pershing was interviewed, she stated that she was the first person to arrive at the Finch estate when it was discovered that the baby was missing.

My head hurt.

The report continued in the sort of stilted prose used in official forms that other people will read. It stated that the items Catherine found missing were the clothes Byron was wearing when he went to bed. A diaper, a cotton nightgown and booties. A blanket was also missing, as well as his baby bracelet, which she had forgotten to take off him when she put him to bed.

There was no forced entry. The windows were all locked from the inside because there was a terrible storm that night. Nobody knew how the perp got in or got out. There were no tire prints or marks made on the house by a ladder. No broken foliage around the windows. Nothing. It made Sheriff Roger Kolbe note that most likely the baby had been kidnapped by somebody in the house.

I remembered Sheriff Kolbe. He had been an old man when I was a little girl. He was the father of our current fire chief, Elmer Kolbe. I made a mental note to go and speak with Elmer about this. Maybe his father had suspected things that he never put down in the report. Maybe he had talked about it with his family. Especially once the FBI came in and took over; then Roger Kolbe might have felt more comfortable talking about it with people. You never knew.

It was also Sheriff Kolbe's opinion that the baby was simply carried out the front door, down the sidewalk and the driveway, and then into the night. It was the only explanation he could come up with. After the kidnapping the family waited by the phone for days. The days turned into weeks. There was never any ransom request for little Byron. Sheriff Kolbe also made a note that he thought Byron was dead already. He wrote that Byron either died for some unforeseen reason and the kidnappers had no baby to ransom, or that the kidnapping was a crime far more devious than that.

Sheriff Kolbe, like me, had thought maybe Byron had been taken by somebody who just wanted a baby and couldn't have one of her own. Which could only be one of the two house servants. Or Sylvia, I reminded myself, since she had a key.

He had a second theory: Cecily or Aurora had killed the baby brother out of jealousy and disposed of the body, since it was no secret that the boy was the favorite child of both Walter and Catherine.

Oh, I did not want to go there. I didn't even want to think about it.

The two associates of Walter Finch were interviewed several times. Both said that it was an uneventful evening. There were no arguments, no tension among the visitors. They had a nice dinner and talked business with Walter for half an hour while Catherine and her siblings talked in the downstairs living room. The children played, running through the house. Everybody had a relaxed evening. Both associates basically had similar accounts. It was an uneventful but pleasant evening. One of the associates said he decided not to stay for drinks because there was a storm coming and he didn't want to drive home under the influence during a storm. The other associate left right away because his wife was pregnant and due to give birth anytime.

And then the FBI came into the picture, and the investigation was turned over to them. There was an awful lot of paperwork basically to sum up that everybody except the people sleeping in the house had alibis.

It was noon. My time was up.

The Santa Lucia Catholic Church was located at Jefferson and New Bavaria Boulevard. The exterior was white sandstone with arched stained-glass windows, evenly distributed down both sides of the church, that depicted scenes from the Bible. The wooden benches had been hand-carved by the first German immigrants to this town over two hundred years ago. I've never understood how a German town in predominantly German Missouri had a church with a Spanish name.

New Kassel had remained mostly German until the Irish influx of the mid-1850s. Then New Kassel had been shaken up just a bit. And, of course, the twentieth century brought people from other areas. My parents were some of them. My dad was from southeast Missouri, my mother from West Virginia. They met in St. Louis and somehow ended up in New Kassel in the 1960s. But the town was still largely full of originals, people whose families had been in the New Kassel area since before 1900.

In St. Louis, it was the other way around. The French had settled it, but by the middle of the 1800s scarcely a French name could be found. It had been taken over by German and Irish immigrants. Later came the Italians. Even now, it's one of the leading destinations for the newest immigrant, the Bosnians.

But New Kassel, except for the Irish invasion, seemed to be lost in a vortex somewhere. Nothing ever changed much. Which is part of its charm. The whole riverboat casino thing seemed just too tasteless and tacky to me.

I was deep in my thoughts about the tackiness of a casino when somebody sat next to me in the back pew. I like sitting back there because then I can see the whole church. Santa Lucia is very soothing. Even with Wilma's casket sitting directly under the giant crucifix, it was still comforting and warming. I looked over to see who had sat down next to me. It was Sylvia.

I had just given my memorial speech at the funeral home. It wasn't as difficult as I had thought it would be to get through it. I just sort of focused on odd things: Eleanore's big yellow hat, the spokes in my mother's wheelchair, Helen Wickland's tapping foot in the front row. And before I knew it, I was finished.

“Where's Rudy?” she asked.

“Parking the car,” I said.

“You're early,” she declared.

“I walked straight over here after the wake,” I said. “I wanted to walk. Besides, everybody else stood and milled around.”

“The things you said about Wilma,” Sylvia said. “They…they were perfect.”

A compliment. From Sylvia. I braced myself for an earthquake.

I guess I shouldn't be so snotty. She was allowed to be sentimental at her sister's funeral. It was just so out of character. Chuck Velasco entered to our right, dressed in his best suit and tie. He genuflected and sat in a pew about ten rows in front of us. Chuck cleans up well.

“The things I said about Wilma were all true,” I said.

More people came in. The mayor and his wife sat up front. Tobias Thorley sat way over to the right. I saw his son come in a few seconds later, with his latest “woman,” and sit next to Tobias. There had been so many people over at the funeral home that I had to wonder who was working the shops.

Finally, I scooted over closer to Sylvia. “You know, you never mentioned that you were good friends with Catherine Finch,” I said.

Sylvia didn't even turn her head toward me. She gave me a sideways glance. Had I impressed her or ticked her off? With Sylvia it was hard to tell.

“How did you find out?” she asked.

“Why didn't you tell me? I mean, you asked me to write a biography of one of Granite County's most interesting characters, and who but one of her best friends could give me the kind of inside information I need? Her children can't. As you must obviously know. Because they haven't interacted with her since the mid 1950s. Who else could tell me?”

She said nothing.

“Or was this a test? Did you just want to see if I was good enough to find out on my own?” I asked.

Still nothing. I shifted in the pew.

“I can't tell you very much about the later Catherine, either. I hadn't spoken to her in nearly thirty years,” Sylvia said at last.

“Why?”

She was quiet a moment, fiddling with the seam in her black pant leg. “Hector Castanza” was all she said.

“What?” I asked. “Who's that?”

“An impostor.”

“What do you mean, an impostor?”

“Sometime in the late fifties, Hector Castanza was one of many young men who came to Catherine claiming he was her son Byron. He claimed he had been raised by a gypsy woman who ‘bought' him from somebody in exchange for a gypsy cure,” she said. “It was preposterous. Everybody knew that he wasn't Byron.”

“Everybody except Catherine,” I said.

Sylvia nodded her head. “Hector Castanza, as luck would have it, bore a striking resemblance to Catherine's brother, Louis. He'd done his homework on the kidnapping and on Catherine in general. He convinced her he was her son.”

“But you knew differently,” I coaxed.

“I tried for years to convince her he wasn't Byron. For years their relationship grew. She invited him to all of the family functions, bought him a new car. Showered him with gifts. And if her daughters didn't accept him as their brother, she was prepared to write them off,” Sylvia said.

The church was beginning to fill up and I knew that there were only a few minutes left to our conversation. Soon there would be too many people for us to talk comfortably, and Father Bingham would begin the funeral mass.

“So that's why her children became estranged? Because they didn't believe Hector was their brother?”

“It wasn't quite that simple,” Sylvia said with her head down. Boy, that seam in her pants must have been exceptionally fascinating.

“What do you mean?”

“Catherine and I had many arguments over this. Many. Finally, after about three years, I had Hector investigated,” she said.

I winced. That was a pretty bold step.

“You don't understand. He had infiltrated every part of their life. The girls were beginning to feel alienated. Catherine tried to make up for all the birthdays and Christmases he missed. It was a pitiful sight,” she said. “So, I had him investigated. It turned out that he was a used car salesman from Atlanta, Georgia, named Mario Finkleman. His mother was a retired prostitute who had orchestrated the whole thing. His mother had been the benefactor of many of the expensive gifts that Catherine had bestowed upon him.”

“Oh my gosh,” I said. “How awful.”

“Yes,” she said.

“So…I don't understand. Did Catherine never forgive you because you had him investigated?” I asked.

“I think it was two things, really. What she never forgave me for was destroying her fantasy. In Hector, she had found her son. But I think what drove us apart more was that she suspected I knew what really happened to Byron,” Sylvia said.

I sat there a minute, unsure if I should say what I really wanted to say. Finally, I just decided, what the heck? Sylvia was always blunt with me. Turnabout was fair play. “Well, did you?”

She smiled a wry and wrinkled smile, but did not answer me. So I tried a different approach. “What happened with her children? Why did she detach herself from them?”

“The exact same reason. In Catherine's mind, since she was so thoroughly convinced that Hector was Byron, she believed that the only way Cecily and Aurora could be as thoroughly convinced that he wasn't Byron was if they knew what really happened to him,” Sylvia said.

“Everybody became a suspect,” I said.

“No,” Sylvia said. “Catherine knew what the investigators were saying. Byron's disappearance was linked to somebody in that house that night. Or me. Since I had a key. So here were three suspects who were sure that Hector wasn't Byron. She couldn't understand how we could be that positive about something unless we knew what had really happened.”

“Do you think the girls knew what happened to Byron?” I asked.

She didn't answer.

“Is that why she left them nothing in her will?”

“Yes.”

“Sylvia. Did you know what really happened to Byron?”

“I knew without a doubt that Hector was not Byron. Of nothing else could I be sure,” she said. Her body seemed to fold up and say that was it. She was finished discussing this.

Father Bingham made his entrance into the church and we all stood. Rudy and the kids sneaked in just as the whole congregation was rising. He waved to me from the back door. I don't think there was a place for them to sit.

Sylvia took this last moment to add something. She turned to me, eyes milky with age. “How did you find out that I was Catherine's best friend?”

“I'm the best genealogist west of the Mississippi,” I said with a smile.

“I think that goes beyond genealogy,” she answered.

Father Bingham made the motion for all of us to sit and we did. He started by saying, “Today we bury one of New Kassel's most loved residents. I think I can safely say that she probably saw ninety percent of us grow up from childhood. I can only imagine the secrets about this town that she knew. I find that the saddest part when somebody dies. The fact that the rest of us left alive will never know all that they knew.”

I fished for my Kleenex in my purse as the tears rolled down my cheeks.