09 Dead Man Running, page 3
Small towns. Gotta love them.
“Oh, I get it,” I said. “You come to the rescue and save the mayor. This way, when the people go to the polls, they’ll remember that you, the sheriff, are the protector and caretaker, and that the mayor needs saving. That’s brilliant, Colin. And you did this knowing that I’d be nosy enough to catch the guy and call it in. You’re a piece of work, I’ll tell you that.”
I hung up the phone, pulled on some clean clothes, and ran a brush through my hair. The phone rang again, and I picked it up.
“Hello?”
I heard Rachel’s voice on the other end saying, “Hello?”
“I got it, Rache.”
“God,” she said. “I have got to get my own line.” She slammed the phone down, and then I heard a crackly old voice.
“It’s your grandmother,” my grandmother said.
“Oh, hi, Gert. Whatcha need?”
“I was wondering if you could go to Sears and Roebuck for me. I need a new blender.”
I didn’t bother to explain to her that our local Sears no longer had “Roebuck” in its name. I simply said that I would go and get her a new blender.
“Oh, great,” she said. “New dentures are making it hard to chew.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll grab it for you tomorrow.”
The phone rang again as soon it dropped into the cradle. I picked it up before it even finished its first ring. “Hello?”
“Torie, I swear to you, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Colin said.
“Really?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Oh, great,” I said.
“What?”
“Then I need to go over and talk to Mrs. Castlereagh.” I hung up on my stepfather for the third time, shoved my feet into my shoes, and headed over to the mayor’s house.
The few times I have ever knocked on the mayor’s front door have been either to tell him something dreadful—like smoke was coming from his roof—or to take my kids trick-or-treating. Halloween was still a few weeks off, so when Mrs. Castlereagh answered the door, it was understandable that she had a worried expression on her face.
“Torie?” she said.
“Hi,” I said. “I hate to bother you—I know it’s the dinner hour and all—but, um, Mary was just out back feeding the chickens and, well, you know how kids are. She was climbing on the chicken house and saw a man hiding in your backyard.”
Mrs. Castlereagh smiled. She has a generous smile, one that spreads easily across her face, causing adorable wrinkles to form on the bridge of her nose. If she hadn’t been married to the mayor, I would have liked her. Well, I still like her, but I don’t go out of my way to be cozy with her. Conflict of interest.
“I know that sounds weird,” I said, “but I was wondering if you happened to see the guy.”
“It was probably just one of the neighborhood kids,” she said. “Sometimes they use our backyard as a shortcut to the river.”
The neighborhood kids couldn’t use our yard as a shortcut because we had a big privacy fence. Not that I wanted the privacy fence. That was one of the things I was looking forward to about the new house: I wouldn’t have the blasted fence. We had to put it up because the mayor made such a huge fuss over being able to see the chickens from his back door. Now, honestly, there is nothing legal he could have done to us. He had tried passing a city ordinance against any “kept animal” in the backyard, but then his buddy, Alderman Tony Rivera, would have had to find a new home for his two pit-bull guard dogs. Alderman Rivera asked me politely to please put up a damn privacy fence, and so I did.
“Well, Mrs. Castlereagh,” I said, “I’d like to think it was just a bunch of kids, but then I myself saw the guy get into a car and speed away.”
A confused expression crossed her face. “I don’t understand. What did he look like?”
“Well, he was just sort of average looking. It all happened so fast. Dark suit, shiny shoes, black hair. He got into a dark car. I mean, it looked like he was spying on you guys. You think this has something to do with the mayor’s race? Maybe a reporter?” I asked.
Mrs. Castlereagh stared at me blankly.
“Mrs. Castlereagh?”
“A … mistake,” she said. “Has to be.”
It looked as though she had turned into a black-and-white photograph right before my eyes. All the color drained from her face, and it was an unsettling thing to witness. It was as if she didn’t even see me. “Mrs. Castlereagh?” I said, a little louder.
“Um, thanks, Torie.”
“Hey, wait. Do you want me to call Colin?”
“No!” she said. “I mean, no, thank you.”
“Is Bill home?” I asked.
“Not yet. Thank you again, Torie.”
With that, she slammed the door in my face. I stood there for a second, scratching my head and trying to figure out what all that was about. Mrs. Castlereagh had looked downright distraught. Of course, being married to Bill was enough to make her permanently distraught, but this was different.
I shrugged and headed back to my house. I glanced out at the massive Mississippi River. My house was located across the road and a set of railroad tracks from the river. I would miss it when I moved. It was so soothing to be able to stand on my front porch and watch the tugboats and barges creeping up and down the water. Late at night, if I couldn’t sleep, the lights from the tugboats would dance through my window and across the walls. It was oddly comforting.
No more lights. No more moaning from the boats. Change was really hard to get used to.
Just as I was about to go in the house, Colin pulled up in his squad car. He jumped out but left the engine running. “Well?” he asked. “Did you talk to Mrs. Castlereagh?”
“Yeah,” I said. He took the front steps two at a time—not so much because he was in a hurry as because it was nearly anatomically impossible for him to take them any other way. “She seemed a little freaked out by it but thought it was probably just somebody using the yard as a shortcut to the river.”
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I dunno. Man in a dark suit gets into a dark car and stares up at my house because he saw me seeing him. I’d say that doesn’t sound like somebody using a backyard as a shortcut to the river. I mean, the guy never even looked at the river.”
“Well, we do get some city people who come down just to look at the boats and such,” he said.
“Right,” I said, “but like I just said, this guy never looked at the river. He was too busy staring at my house.”
Colin looked anxious. “You think this has something to do with the mayor’s race?”
“I dunno. I think he could have been a reporter or something, but if he was, he wasn’t from around here.”
“Well, I guess I’ll go on over and talk to Mrs. Castlereagh,” he said. “You didn’t happen to get plate numbers, did you?”
“No,” I said. “Sorry.”
Colin got back in his car and turned it off, then walked over to the mayor’s house. I stood and watched as Mrs. Castlereagh answered the front door. Then I went back in the house and realized that nobody had been watching the food that I’d gone off and left in the oven. I saw Rudy waving a towel around the smoke-filled kitchen and looking about frantically for a pot holder.
We’d be eating out tonight.
Three
The next day I was hard at work in my office when the phone rang. I picked it up without taking my eyes away from the two-hundred-year-old baptismal records that I’d been poring over. My half sister, Stephanie, was on the line. “Hey,” she said.
“How are you feeling?” I asked. Stephanie had just had her second child, a boy, about six weeks ago. My nephew, Jimmy, had managed to steal my heart within the first five seconds I’d seen him.
“I feel good,” she said. “I’m ready to come back to work.”
“Well, good,” I said. “When do you start teaching?”
“No,” she said, “I mean with you.”
Stephanie is the secretary for the historical society, but that’s never been what you’d call a real job. She had helped me go through all of Sylvia’s things after she had died. I had no idea she wanted to come to work for me full-time. I tried to think fast; I couldn’t hesitate too long, because I didn’t want her to think I didn’t want her. After all, we’d only been sisters for a few years. She was the child of an affair that my father had in his younger days. I never knew she existed until she waltzed into my office and declared her lineage. You have to give her credit for being spunky. We get along great, and I’m extremely happy that she’s now a part of my life, but we’re still in that sort of “polite” phase. I couldn’t be as blunt with her as I was with other people, because I was worried she’d think I didn’t want her around anymore. Which was completely untrue.
“Here?” I asked. “At the Gaheimer House?”
“Well, I wasn’t sure if you had room for me on the payroll, but I could help give the tours and free up your time for the other stuff. Whatever that is exactly.”
Nobody really knew what my job entailed. Not even me, most of the time.
“Well, sure,” I said. Sylvia had left me a fortune, so of course I had room on the payroll. I couldn’t really say no. “You can help do the tours, and I need somebody to clean the silver and the chandeliers on a regular basis. I can lose two days a month just doing that.”
“That’s great,” she said. “Can I bring Jimmy?”
Jimmy was probably the reason she most wanted to work for me. How many other jobs would allow you to bring your baby with you? I used to bring Matthew with me all the time and still do on occasion.
“Of course,” I said. “But are you sure you want to give up teaching for this?”
“I’m positive,” she said.
“Okay, well, come on in tomorrow.”
“I will,” she said.
“Great. In fact, I’ve already got a job in mind for you,” I said.
“What’s that?” she asked cautiously.
“I want you to contact a few insurance agents and have somebody come out and tell me what we have to do to the tunnel so we can give tours in it,” I said. Last year, right after Sylvia died, I discovered a tunnel that had been part of the Underground Railroad that ran beneath the Gaheimer House. I’d been trying to figure out a way to be able to give a tour of it without our insurance going through the roof.
“Sounds great. I’ll get right on it,” she said.
We hung up, and I began entering the church records for Santa Lucia Catholic Church in the computer. The records were on loan to me from Father Bingham. I would type them into a readable format and then give them back to him. Later, I’d publish them on a small print run and distribute them through some local libraries. The best part was, I’d have them in the computer so I could run a word search on them. I planned on doing this for all the Granite County churches eventually, not just the ones in New Kassel. I figured once I got the Catholic churches out of the way, the others would be a breeze, because nobody kept records like the Catholics. Except the Mormons.
The phone rang again. “Hello?”
“Have you seen his Web page?” Colin asked.
“Good morning to you, too.”
“Oh, yeah. Good morning.”
“How’s my mother?” I asked.
“Wants you to come for dinner tonight. So act surprised when she calls.”
“All right,” I said.
“Have you seen Bill’s Web page?”
“No,” I said. “I haven’t. When did it go up?”
“Last month! That weasel has had a Web page for a whole month.”
“Is he a weasel because he has a Web page or because you didn’t think of it?” I asked.
“People can’t seriously think he’s better for the job of mayor than I am, can they?”
“I don’t discuss politics,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Fastest way to lose a friend or gain an enemy. And with you, things are too precarious to begin with.”
“Oh, like you care.”
“Is that all you wanted, to tell me about the Web page?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Okay, I’ll check it out. Oh, hey, what did Mrs. Castlereagh have to say?”
“Same thing she said to you, but she looked worried,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too,” I said. “I need to go, Colin. I have to go by and check on the float for the historical society before lunch. I’ve got some other appointments later in the day, and I won’t be able to get by the warehouse any other time.”
“Right. See you tonight.”
No sooner had I hung up the phone than my mother called. I was never going to get those records transcribed at this rate. “Hello?”
“It’s your mother.”
“Hey, I’m on my way out the door. Whatcha need?” I asked.
“I just wanted to know if you and Rudy and the kids would like to come for dinner tonight.”
A vision came to me of Rudy dancing around a smoky kitchen looking for a pot holder and waving a towel around. “We’d love to,” I said.
I heard the front door open and shut, and I put my hand over the receiver. “I’m in the office!” I called out. Mom was droning on about what she was fixing for dinner. Little did she know, I didn’t really care what it was that she was cooking, only that she was cooking. My mother is the greatest cook in three counties and I … am not. That’s all I’ll say on the subject.
“Hey, Elmer,” I said as our fire chief came into my office. He’s also the treasurer of the historical society and sometimes provides security for the Gaheimer House during festival weekends.
“All right, Mom. I’ve gotta go. I’ll see you tonight.”
“Six o’clock,” she said.
“We’ll be there.”
I hung up the phone, and Elmer took the chair across from me. “Hiya, Torie. I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”
“Sure,” I said. I have no idea why the word “sure” just flies out of my mouth before I even think about what I’m agreeing to, but it does.
“Sam Hill over at the Gazette wants to know if you’ll do family trees on the two candidates for mayor.” Elmer is older than dirt. Well, there is some dirt older than Elmer, but he’s older than most of it. He’s been claiming he’s going to retire every year for more years than I even want to think about, but when it comes right down to it, since there is rarely a need for the fire department in New Kassel, he says his job is too easy to quit.
“Why?” I asked.
“He wants to do a historical piece on the two candidates. A biographical sketch, but he wants to do it with the angle of whose family has been the most influential in the town,” he said.
“Well, hands down, Elmer, Bill’s family would have to be. I think his father was born here, and Colin was born and raised in Wisteria,” I said.
“Wisteria’s only five miles down the road. I think he’s trying to get a feel for what their forefathers brought to the community,” he said. “Can you get him a family tree on both of them or not?”
“Sure. Bill’s is on file. I’ll have to ask Colin about his. I mean, I know part of it. His family married into Sylvia’s years ago, but he wasn’t actually related to her. You know what, though? I’m not real comfortable with this, Elmer.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because the son of horse thieves and whores can still be a better man than the son of kings,” I said. “I don’t really think their family trees have anything to do with which one would be better as mayor. Now, if he wants me to go through the newspapers and find articles that show who’s done the most for the community, based on their proven records, I’d be happy to do that.”
“Torie,” he said, “I just need to know if you can get me a copy of the family trees or not.”
“It’s public access,” I said. “Of course. That’s why we collected the family trees in the first place.”
“Good,” he said. “I’ll tell him. Did you get a new cell phone yet?”
“Yes,” I said. “I did.” The last cell phone I had sort of got thrown away by a deranged deputy who was trying to kill me. Not too many people could make that statement and be telling the truth. I wrote down the number and handed it to Elmer.
He left my office, and I pulled up Bill’s family tree on the computer and printed it out. I could stop by Sam’s office and give it to him on my way over to the warehouse to check on the float—and let Sam know that I didn’t like what he was doing with this information. I shut off the computer, grabbed the papers from the printer, and locked up the Gaheimer House.
I had to drive my car, instead of walking, because the warehouse was located a little south of town, in the “industrial” section, next to the river. I stopped by the office of the New Kassel Gazette and went inside. The receptionist was new. I didn’t recognize her, so she was probably new to the area as well. It’s pretty rare that I don’t recognize somebody local. Her nameplate read KAREN FRANKE.
“Can I help you?” she said.
“Hi. Can I see Sam Hill?”
“Sure,” she said. She buzzed him and told him he had a visitor. Then she actually drew directions to his office on a notepad.
“Are you new?”
“Uh-huh,” she said and smiled and handed me the map.
“Are you from around here?” I can’t tell you how ridiculous the map was, since the Gazette has one editor and three on-staff writers. Most of the rest of the columns are written by the townsfolk.
“Sorta. I’m from Meyersville,” she said.
“Welcome,” I said. I followed her little map back to Sam’s office. Sam was on the phone when I knocked, but he waved me in anyway. I went in as he threw a wadded piece of paper at the trash can and missed. He leaned back and put his feet up on his desk.
His office has one wall of windows, looking out on the town and the river, which is barely visible in the distance through the buildings. One wall holds copies of articles he’d written. The other wall is covered in pictures of his kids, mostly pictures of them playing their various sports. He’s convinced he has a future NBA star on his hands; his fifteen-year-old is already six-foot-three and wears a size thirteen shoe.
