09 Dead Man Running, page 7
I made my way to the filing cabinets and opened up C. I found Bill’s file and decided to carry the whole thing up the stairs with me rather than peek at it and run.
Years ago, Sylvia had asked every resident of New Kassel to fill out a five-generation chart to put on file with the historical society. Of course, not everybody did that, but plenty did. She also ran an ad in the paper asking people to donate their knowledge of their own personal history, and a lot of people responded. Some people even donated old family letters, books, and Bibles. When we modernized our records, it was my job to transcribe them all into the computer. I had help occasionally, but for the most part I did it alone. Now, if anybody contacts the historical society and wants to know if we have information on a John Smith, I can check and say yes or no. I’ve received letters from many people thanking the historical society for filling in gaps on their family trees.
I locked the basement door and made my way back to my office. I looked at Bill’s handwritten charts. Bill had donated more than one five-generation chart. This was not unusual, especially for those who were serious about genealogy. I scanned all of his charts, just to see what I was dealing with. He definitely put his birthplace as New Kassel. He also put down New Kassel as his father’s and grandfather’s place of birth. He had a Mayflower ancestor. Alden. He also had a Civil War ancestor, a few Revolutionary War ancestors, a southern plantation owner ancestor, and two Native Americans. Both were from Algonquin tribes. Hmmm.
Well, this was actually pretty easy to solve. I went into the “library” room of the historical society. I call it a library, but we don’t allow people to check anything out. Anybody can come in, however, and copy or look through whatever we have on file. I pulled out the telephone directory for 1949, looking for Jarvis Castlereagh, Bill’s father. There was nobody with the last name Castlereagh living in New Kassel at all. I checked 1950, just to see if maybe they’d moved here right after Bill was born. Nope.
I took ten minutes and checked the telephone directories in order until I found a Castlereagh—1969. Castlereagh, William J.
In 1969? Why would he claim that he was born somewhere he wasn’t? And why would he put New Kassel down if he didn’t even move here until he was twenty years old? I checked the marriage indexes for the county. He was married in 1970, so he was single when he moved here. I checked the marriage indexes all the way back as far as I had them, and there was not another Castlereagh married in Granite County. Bill’s family never lived in Granite County.
It made no sense.
I picked up the phone and called Bill’s house. “Mrs. Castlereagh?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Hi,” I said. “It’s me, Torie.”
“Yes, Torie, what can I do for you?” she said. “Before you say anything, though, you tell that daughter of yours how very sorry I am that she had to see such a horrible thing today.”
“I will,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Poor thing. And she’s such a sweet girl, too.”
“Yes,” I said. “But I was actually calling about something else. Um, I was wondering if I could ask you a question.”
I knew better than to ask Bill anything, because, since I was doing the asking, I’d just get a stone wall. Bill wouldn’t take the time to tell me the sky was falling. “Look, one of the reporters asked me to print out a five-generation chart on Bill. He wants to do some sort of profile on the two mayoral candidates. Anyway, um, he was looking at your husband’s chart and noticed that Bill had put down that he was born here, along with his father and grandfather, and, well … there’s no record of him living in this town before 1969.”
There was dead silence on the other end of the line.
“I was wondering if he just got confused. I know those charts can be confusing as heck unless you’re a bona fide genealogist,” I said, trying to make it seem as though people did that sort of thing all of the time.
“Oh, uh …”
“Mrs. Castlereagh? Where was your husband born?”
“Really, Torie, I think this is highly unorthodox.”
“I’m just doing this as a favor to Sam. Would you like for me to get this right, or would you rather Sam print something wrong?”
“I’d like to know why this is anybody’s business?”
“Mrs. Castlereagh,” I said, “when you run for a public office, or hold a public office, nothing is private anymore. Your whole history, including your family history, should be available to those you serve. Now, Bill knows this. I need to get this straightened out before Sam prints something that could come back and bite Bill in the butt later.”
“I … I don’t know what city Bill was born in,” she said.
“What do you mean, you don’t know? How can you not know where your husband was born?” I asked, incredulous. “What did he put down on your marriage license?”
“New Kassel.”
“Didn’t he have to have a birth certificate?”
“Yes,” she said.
“What did it say?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “He just handed it over and that was that. I’ve never had to look at it for anything. In fact, I think it’s in the safe deposit box at the bank, along with all of our other important papers.”
“Look, I don’t really want to talk to Bill about this, because you know he’s just going to stonewall me. So why don’t you hang up, tell him somebody from the paper was trying to verify this, and call me right back with his answer,” I said.
Quiet again. “What do you want me to ask him?”
“Why he put New Kassel as his place of birth, and his father’s and grandfather’s place of birth, when there is no record of him or his ancestors ever living in this town prior to 1969. I’ll check the tax records in the meantime,” I said.
“You can do that?” she asked.
“This is America,” I said and hung up.
I checked the tax records. Nobody by the name Castlereagh ever owned land in this county, until Bill.
I clicked my ballpoint pen nervously, tapping it every now and then for a change of pace. I all but pounced on the phone when it rang. “Hello?”
“Torie, it’s me,” Mrs. Castlereagh said.
“Yes?” I said. “What did he have to say?”
“He said he must have just made a mistake. So, see? It was nothing,” she said. “I’ll talk to you later.”
With that she hung up. I called her right back. “Don’t hang up,” I said. “What do you mean, he made a mistake?”
“He said he thought his dad was born here, but evidently he wasn’t.”
“Okay, so I can buy that somebody could possibly not know where his parents were born,” I said. “But he has to know where he was born.”
I heard the phone rustle around, and then Bill was on the line. “Torie, it’s nothing. When I filled out that damn stupid chart, I thought it would make me more appealing to the voters if I was from their hometown. So I put down my family was from New Kassel.”
“Bill, you had to know eventually somebody would go, ‘Oh, hey, I don’t remember Bill being in our senior class, do you?’ I mean, come on. I’m not buying that for a minute.”
“I honestly didn’t think anybody was ever going to look, Torie. I just filled it out for the old bat because I was running for mayor, and how would that look if I didn’t donate to you-all’s little file?” he said.
“Bill, this makes no sense. Why didn’t you just put down the truth?”
“Because I don’t really know that much about my family. I wanted to appeal to the voters. Besides, we may not be from New Kassel, but we are from Granite County.”
“Bill, I checked the tax records.”
“So?”
“All right,” I said. I didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye. Bill hung up, and I was left staring at the phone. I went back to the library room and found the telephone directories for Wisteria. I went through them, year by year. No Castlereagh. Then I went through the ones I had for Meyersville. No Castlereagh. By the time I was finished it was nearly midnight. If Bill’s family ever lived in this county, they didn’t own land—which was possible. They also never had a phone—which, prior to 1949, would not have been that uncommon, but there were no Castlereaghs listed in any of those towns from 1949 to 1969, when they most likely would have had a phone. On the other hand, our esteemed mayor could have come from a family that was too poor to own a phone or land. There was only one way to find that out.
I’d have to check the index for the census records. If he thought I would just forget all about this, he didn’t know me very well.
I grabbed the mayor’s file from my desk, turned everything off, and went home. It occurred to me just as I stepped out onto the street that I hadn’t driven. Walking is no big deal normally, even at midnight, but there’d been way too many strangers running around our town lately.
Rudy would kill me if I called him and asked him to come get me. I took out my cell phone and dialed the house. Rudy answered, groggy. I could hear the TV in the background, which meant he was sitting in his recliner, most likely snoring to Everybody Loves Raymond.
“Hey, it’s me. I just want you to talk to me on the phone until I get to the house,” I said.
“Huh?”
“I’m walking. It’s midnight. Just stay on the line so I don’t get kidnapped or anything,” I said.
“How is that supposed to deter kidnappers?” he asked.
“Okay, fine. You win, come and get me,” I said.
There’s just a certain way you have to do things in a marriage. Rudy wouldn’t be angry with me if it was his idea.
Seven
I slept very little last night. In fact, I stared at the ceiling so long I thought my eyes were going to run out of fluid and stick to my eyelids. I had to be really careful with this thing with the mayor. I might be reading something where there wasn’t anything just because I dislike Bill Castlereagh, or there might really be something fishy going on.
The alarm went off at six, and I swear I hadn’t moved all night. I think I had lain on my back, arms crossed at my stomach, for the five short hours I’d been in bed. Rudy rolled over and wrapped a hairy arm around me and put his right leg over both of mine. He knew I couldn’t stand that. I’d wait twenty seconds and then put my legs on top of his. Hey, his legs weigh a great deal more than mine do.
Within a minute or two, he buried his nose in my neck and kissed me. “Good morning,” he said.
I reached over and twisted his hair around my fingers. “Good morning,” I said.
“Is it really Monday?” he asked.
“Afraid so,” I said.
He groaned, some pitiful sounding thing, and then squeezed me. “So that means I have to get up, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“Ugh.”
Actually, that was the most I’d heard Rudy say prior to a pound of caffeine in a long time. He dragged himself from the bed, and I watched as he disappeared into the bathroom, taking his pineapple-covered boxers with him. I managed to peel myself out of bed and go down and make everybody’s breakfast. I usually wait until the last minute to wake Matthew up. The morning just goes smoother that way.
Mary ate her Frosted Flakes with her hair in her eyes. She might look more like me, but when it comes to morning she is definitely more like her father. She isn’t even semihuman until she steps out of the car and onto school property, and I think that’s more from fear than anything else. Mary doesn’t like school all that much—unlike Rachel, who thrives on school. If she missed a day, the world would probably come to an end.
This morning, though, Rachel seemed quiet and reserved. She made her lunch without saying a word. In fact, she and Mary managed to get ready without saying anything to each other. This had never happened before in the history of … well, in the history of siblings. Period. Mary was supposed to yawn with her mouth full of cereal, and Rachel was supposed to call her a disgusting pig, at which point Mary was supposed to kick her under the table or pull her hair or spit the cereal out into the bowl. None of that happened. Mary didn’t call Rachel a priss butt for staring in the mirror or fixing her hair. Rachel never told Mary that she had breath worse than a corpse.
What was going on here?
Was I actually complaining?
I filed it for future use. If this carried on for more than a day or two, I’d take them both in for a brain scan to see if aliens had invaded their bodies.
I managed to get the girls to school and dropped Matthew off at my mother’s. Then, instead of going to the Gaheimer House, I went to the library. I dialed Steph’s number from my cell phone. “Hey, Steph, it’s Torie.”
“Hey,” she said.
“Just wanted to let you know you’ll need your key to get in the Gaheimer House. I probably won’t be there until about noon. Listen, the alarm code is the Battle of Hastings.”
“Okay,” she said, “1066. Not a problem.” We hung up.
That was the great thing about having a history teacher for a sister. She knew all the same major battle dates I did. That really is a cool thing, regardless of what you’re thinking.
I got on the highway going north, then merged onto Highway 270. When I arrived at the main branch of the St. Louis County Library—and yes, St. Louis City and St. Louis County are separate in almost all things except the words “St. Louis”—I parked my car and went in. All of the genealogical records were kept upstairs. I loaded the machine with the Soundex for the name Castlereagh for the year 1920. The Soundex is a coded index for last names, which is a good thing because after 1880 you no longer have to know what county your ancestors lived in, just the state and their last name.
I had brought the mayor’s charts with me, and I looked up the birth year of Jarvis Castlereagh: 1924. So he wouldn’t be in the 1920 Soundex, but his father, Chester Jarvis Castlereagh, would be. Since I already had the 1920 film in the machine, I went ahead and checked it. In fact, according to what Bill had claimed, Chester and his wife were married in 1918, so they should be listed in the 1920 Soundex as a family.
Sure enough, I found a Chester J. Castlereagh and wife, Isabel, listed in the 1920 Soundex for … St. Louis City. Not Granite County. Not even Jefferson County. He was living two or three counties away from where he should have been, according to Bill.
I checked the 1930 census, which is only available on the computer at the library, unless I wanted to pay a huge fee to access it from home. I found Chester and Isabel listed with four children, Jarvis being one of them, age six. Next I checked the index of marriages. Jarvis married a Lucy Stockwell in 1945 in the city of St. Louis. All of this matched what Bill had put on his five-generation chart except for the place. Why would he lie about where they were all born? Was it really just to appeal to voters?
That didn’t even make sense. He must have known people would look at his family tree, and he should have realized that someone would figure out that the information was false. New Kassel was full of old people who made elephants look forgetful. Could he really have known all of this information about his family but not have known where they were from?
I really don’t know that much about my family. That’s what he’d said. Then how could he have known he had a Mayflower ancestor and a Civil War ancestor? None of it made any sense.
I looked at Bill’s chart. He had written that his father died in 1953 and his mother in 1968. I’d check the Social Security death index online when I got home. How many Jarvis Castlereaghs could there be in the state of Missouri who died in 1953? The index would tell me what county he died in. It would at least give me a little more leverage when I confronted the mayor with this again. I noticed that Bill hadn’t put down what cemetery his parents were buried in. He didn’t know that, either? Or was it just an oversight?
I glanced at the clock. Two hours had gone by already. I made copies of everything I found and then went out to my car and headed home. I stopped in South St. Louis County on Lindbergh Boulevard. I pulled off, made a right, and went down a ways until I came to a little place called P’sghetti’s. The place has the best bread in the world. I ordered a turkey and Swiss with some chips and a water, and an order of cheese garlic bread on the side. Way too much food for me to eat. In fact, I’d end up taking home half of the sandwich, and Rudy would take it to work the next day. I ate in silence, mulling everything over in my head. When I was finished eating I wrapped up my leftovers and drove the rest of the way to New Kassel.
I arrived a little after twelve, stopped at home to put my sandwich in the refrigerator and call Stephanie to tell her I was going to be even later. Then I drove out to Wisteria to the sheriff’s office.
My stepfather’s office is sort of bland, a lot of indoor-outdoor carpeting and a giant poster of all the NFL helmets. I knocked on his door, and he said to enter. When I went in I came to an abrupt stop because Lou Counts was standing in his office. She looked pretty much like she had the night she’d been at his house. She seemed to stiffen as I walked in.
“Hi,” I said to her, and smiled. She just nodded. “Colin, um, I need to speak with you.”
An odd expression crossed his face. I wasn’t sure, but I got the feeling I was interrupting something or that he was embarrassed by my intrusion. For crying out loud, I’d knocked, which is more than I usually do.
“Sure,” he said. “What is it?”
My gaze flicked to Lou, who had her thumbs shoved down in her belt loops. “It’s … private,” I said.
“Would you excuse us, Lou?” he said.
“Certainly,” she said. “I’ll be right outside your door, if you should need me.”
What, like I could inflict harm on Colin? Jeez, if I could do that, I would have done it a long time ago.
Colin looked a bit peeved as Lou went out the door. He tossed a pen onto his desk. “What is it?” he asked again.
“Gosh,” I said. “No need to be friendly.”
“I’m working. Lou and I were going over her strategy for the polls.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, I just wanted to run this by you. It’s probably nothing, but Sam Hill had me bring in Bill’s family tree. Actually, he asked for yours, too, but I only have half of it. I need to get what I can from you on the other half.”
