Thicker than Water (25 page)

“So what happened?”

“As far as I know, Sylvia never acknowledged who she was. I'm not even sure if my grandmother told her who she was. She was Mildred Trotter then, not Millie O'Shaughnessy.”

“Oh, my God,” I said.

“Sylvia did give her a job, though,” Helen said. “My grandmother became Sylvia's laundress.”

I cupped my mouth with my hand as more tears spilled over. “Ms. Trotter. Of course, I remember her.”

“But I suppose the trend was set for my family by that point.”

“Oh, Helen,” I said.

“Save your tears, Torie,” she said. “I'm long over it.”

“But the Gaheimer House … the money. It should all be yours,” I said.

“I suppose, technically, if Sylvia had raised my grandmother. Yes, it would be mine and my brother's. But she didn't raise her. And she gave her nothing.”

My knees were actually weak from Helen's words. My chest burned from trying not to cry. I don't know why I tried so hard; the tears were still streaming down my face no matter what I did.

“I hate to be the one to shatter your illusion of the great Sylvia,” Helen said. “But you asked.”

“Thank you. I … I have to go,” I said. “I'll talk to you later, Helen.”

I all but ran from her house, wiping at tears and gasping for air. I fumbled in my pocket and pulled out my cell phone. I dialed Colin's number in the dark—thank God for speed dial—and waited for him to answer. “Colin, it's me, Torie.”

“What's the matter?” he asked.

I sobbed and wiped my face. “I … I think it might be Helen,” I said. “I think she might be the one who's been trying to … hurt me.”

“Torie, are you all right?” he asked.

“I'm fine,” I said. Okay, my heart was broken and I would never be the same again, but I wasn't bleeding to death. “Look, I just came from her house. It's a long story. But maybe you could get some fibers from her. Check her shoes. She's got a reason, Colin. She has a damn good reason for wanting revenge.”

“I'll get right on it,” he said. “Do you need me to come get you?”

“No,” I said. I hung up the phone and fumbled my way to the Gaheimer House. “Miller?” I said as I entered the house.

Surprisingly, he wasn't there. I found a note on the table saying he had to go because of an accident on 55. I set the alarm, shut the door, and sat down on the step and cried some more. I wondered if the world would ever be right again. I could understand Sylvia not wanting to take in a child, especially if she thought she would not be a good parent. But to promise somebody she'd take care of her child and then renege? I couldn't make it right in my mind. No matter how I looked at it, I could not forgive Sylvia for this.

Then it started to rain.

A car pulled up in front of the house, and Duran opened the door. “My God, Torie. What's the matter? Are you all right?”

“Wh-what are you doing here?”

“I was just coming from Chuck's. Leigh felt like pizza. I couldn't say no to her,” he said.

“Oh, that's nice.”

“Are you okay? Why are you crying?”

“I just … Can you take me home?”

“Of course,” he said. He came over to the porch and gave me his hand to take, which I gladly did. I walked toward his car in a complete daze.

He opened the door. I got in, wiped my face on my sleeve, and vowed never to cry another tear over Sylvia Pershing as long as I lived.

Thirty

“So why are you so upset?” Duran asked.

“Long story,” I said. I glanced into the backseat at the pizza from Chuck's and my stomach rumbled. Even if I'm not hungry, pizza from Velasco's will make my mouth water and my stomach rumble.

“Am I taking you to Wisteria?”

“Yeah, my mom's house. Or, well, Colin's house. However you look at it,” I said.

“Is it weird having him for a stepfather?”

“Unfair is more like it. Not weird.”

He laughed. My nose continued to run. “Hey, have you got a tissue?”

“In the glove box.”

I opened the glove box and found a tiny package of tissues. I hated to use them, since there were so few left, but I'd already wiped tears all over my sleeves; I wasn't about to wipe snot, too. My fingers fumbled and I dropped the Kleenex on the floor. I reached down to pick it up.

In the dark I felt around. My hand brushed something round and hard.

A baseball bat.

I had not been able to find Sylvia's bat since the day I was attacked.

Calm down. Think. Duran was a jock. He probably played softball in a league or something. For God's sake, this was Deputy Duran we were talking about.

“Hey, can you turn on the light?” I said. “I dropped the Kleenex and can't find it.”

He flipped on the overhead light, filling the car with that odd yellowish glow, and I leaned my head between my knees and looked at the end of the bat poking out from under the seat. Scribbled in marker was the year 1985.

This was Sylvia's baseball bat.

Suddenly my mind started replaying the events of the past week. Things began crowding into my head.

“Did you find them?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said and grabbed the tissues.

He flipped off the light. “So why are you so upset?”

“Oh, it's just difficult when you find out that the people you love aren't who they claim to be.”

He made a clicking sound with his teeth. “Don't I know it.”

A box social where there was a consensus that you should be removed from power
. Edwin and Leigh Duran attended the Methodist church. What were the odds they attended the box social?

“So, you and Leigh do much with your church?” Only after I said it did I think that it might have sounded like it came out of left field. Maybe he wouldn't notice.

“Yeah, every now and then.”

“Where do you go?”

“The Methodist church.”

“Oh, I heard they had a box social not too long ago.”

“Yeah,” he said. “We went to that. It was nice.”

He's been short on cash
. Colin's words echoed hollowly in my head, as if the world had no bass, only treble. Duran needed money. I now had money. Lots of money.

Who was sitting right next to Eleanore Murdoch during the historical society meeting that turned into a witch hunt? Leigh Duran. Sitting there telling Eleanore what to say, whom to elect. What's more, who had been nominated for president and didn't win? Leigh Duran.

Hell, he even told Duran
. Danny Eisenbach had told Duran that I had hired a private investigator.

It made my head hurt to think about it. Who had access? Who was so careful not to leave any fingerprints or footprints in the secret stairway? Somebody who would have thought of it. Quite a few people might think not to leave fingerprints, but almost nobody would think about footprints! Unless it was somebody who was trained to think about it.

I used to do favors for her all the time
.

Somebody who thought Sylvia owed him. For whatever reason his twisted little mind had come up with, Duran thought he was owed something by Sylvia. But I could not figure out how he thought he would actually get it, even if I were out of the picture.

I tried to keep my breathing regular as I sat in the seat next to him. All I had to do was get to my mother's house and I could call Colin, and everything would be fine. Duran had no reason whatsoever to think that I suspected him of anything.

Wait, stop. What was I thinking? Was I really so paranoid that now I thought anybody and everybody was out to get me? Was Duran really capable of this?

He did have the baseball bat in his car.

True, but maybe he wanted a souvenir of Sylvia and didn't have the nerve to come right out and ask for one. So he took it. He took it; that didn't mean that he used it.

And I had to remind myself that he could have killed me. He could have killed Mike Walker. But he didn't. What was it Colin had said? Mike had been attacked by somebody who couldn't quite follow through with murder.

“You're awfully quiet,” Duran said.

“I'm really exhausted. And I'm really upset,” I said. “Don't take it personally.”

“My wife gets real quiet when she's upset,” he said. “I think it sort of runs in her family.”

“What is Leigh's maiden name?” I asked. The very first question every respectable genealogist would ask somebody. The maiden name—the surname—told you a lot about a person. It told you ethnicity. Sometimes you could figure out what region a woman came from just by her maiden name. Sometimes you could even get an idea of religion. Like O'Shea, for example. It said that Rudy was Irish, and either Catholic or Protestant. I would automatically know to scratch Muslim off the list with a name like that.

“Franklin,” he said. “And as far as I know, she's not related to old Ben.” He laughed at his own joke.

Franklin. Franklin. I ran the name through my mental file. Was there anybody I knew named Franklin? Did it matter? Not really. I was simply trying to keep him talking long enough to get me home without him realizing I had discovered the bat.

Just then my phone rang. I nearly screamed and jumped off of the seat as I scrambled in my pocket for it. “Hello?”

“Torie, it's Colin.”

“Hi, Colin,” I said. I smiled and made sure I said it loud enough that Deputy Duran could hear it. In a flash, I had figured it out. One of Sylvia's nieces had married a Franklin. Julie. Julie Pershing had married Steve Franklin! Could it be that Leigh Franklin Duran was Sylvia's great-great-niece? Had it even occurred to Colin to check out Sylvia's great-great-nieces and -nephews—the third generation—or had he only checked attitudes and alibis for the second? I wasn't so sure I would have thought of it.

And Leigh Duran had just attempted suicide. What if this had nothing to do with the money and had everything to do with revenge?

“I've got a team that's going to collect fibers and stuff from Helen in just a few minutes.”

“All right,” I said.

“But I need to ask you something.”

“What?”

“The night after the historical society meeting…”

“Yeah?” I said. The palms of my hands were sweating so badly that I nearly dropped the phone. I swallowed hard.

“Did you ask Duran to come by and check out the house?”

“Mmmm, I don't think so. Not the night after. Why?”

“Well, Mike Walker came to,” he said. “I had checked Mr. Walker's logs before but didn't think much of it, but when I questioned him over the phone, he said that the only person who went in or out of the Gaheimer House during nonbusiness hours was Duran. So I was wondering if maybe you'd asked him to do some moonlighting that I didn't know about.”

“No,” I said. “I could ask him, though.”

Dead silence on the line.

“Are you with Duran?” he asked.

“Yes, he's driving me home.”

Come on, Colin, quit being such a twit.

“Is everything all right?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Torie, are you in danger?”

“Not yet, you moron.”

Duran turned and laughed at me. He probably was wishing that he could call his boss a moron and get by with it. I laughed right along with him and pretended everything was just fine.

“You've found something that already brought you to this conclusion,” he said.

“Give the man a prize.”

“All right, ask Duran what he did with the files on the Jenkins case.”

“Huh?”

“You said you could ask him. He's going to want to know what I want you to ask him. So ask him about the Jenkins file so he doesn't get suspicious.”

I relayed the message.

“On my desk,” Duran answered.

“On his desk,” I said.

“I'm just going to stay on the phone with you until he pulls into my driveway and you're safe and sound,” he said.

Oh, wonderful. What if Bat Boy decided to pull over and kill me? What was I supposed to do, cell phone him to death? “All right,” I said. “Boy, it's dark on the Outer Road.”

“Outer Road. Got it. I'll have Miller find you guys and tail you,” Colin said.

“Sure, whatever.” I could hear Colin speaking into his radio, giving orders to find and follow a blue Buick Century headed west on the Outer Road.

Just then a cat ran out into the middle of the road and Duran slammed on his brakes. When he did, the baseball bat shot forward and in between my feet. He flipped the overhead light on, I'm assuming to see if everything was all right. I watched in slow motion as his gaze fell between my feet and landed on the baseball bat. I looked down and then up to meet his eyes, and he knew that I knew.

“Shit,” I said.

“Torie? Are you compromised?” Colin's voice came across that thin lifeline that was my cell phone.

“And how,” I said into the phone.

“It's not what you think,” Duran said. “I … I found it and I didn't think it would hurt, you know, to take it out of the house.”

“Oh, shit,” Colin said as he heard what Duran was saying. “Torie, you need to get out of that car.”

At that moment Duran must have realized that I suspected him of a whole lot more than just swiping a bat from Sylvia's house. He opened his door, grabbed my phone, and threw it out into the night. I reached for my seat belt, but he grabbed my hair in his fist. His wristwatch snagged my hair and I cried out, but I managed to unlock the seat belt. I didn't think he would have heard it click, since I had been screaming at that moment. “Think, Edwin. Colin knows I'm with you! Think about what you're doing!”

“Shit!” he yelled. “It wasn't suppposed to happen like this. You just couldn't give up and leave town, could you?”

“Edwin, calm down,” I said. My hands were up in the air. See? Total surrender. No threat whatsoever. If only I could make him believe that. If he thought for one minute I was any kind of threat, there was no telling what he would do. He was a desperate man. He was caught and he knew it. Now he had to make a choice. He either had to leave it be and let me out of the car—and face some jail time, not to mention losing his job—or he had to take it to the next level. By the look on his face, he was contemplating his fate.