Read Online Crooked House by Joe McKinney, Wayne Miller - Free Book Online

his crimes. Judge Gantz allowed Crook one week to put his affairs in order before starting his sentence. Friends of Dr. Crook said that he will almost certainly use that time to provide for the care and maintenance of his wife, Emily, and sons James Jr., five, and Waylon, three, who will continue to reside in Dr. Crook’s immense estate in Olmos Park.
    Friends of the Crook family said that Mrs. Crook has been in poor health these last two years . Dr. Marshall Evans, a close family friend and family doctor, stated that Mrs. Crook suffers from a temporary nervous depression, with a tendency toward hysterical tendencies brought on by the unfortunate events of her husband’s trial. He has recommended a rest cure, which she’ll be taking at the family home in Olmos Park...
     
    There was more, but the reference to the rest cure shocked Robert to the point he couldn’t read anymore. He was no great fan of Charlotte Perkins Gilman – though he’d taught her often enough in his American Short Fiction class – but he was familiar enough with her work to recognize the rest cure as the same horrible confinement suffered by the narrator of Gilman’s masterpiece “The Yellow Wallpaper.” He couldn’t suppress the shiver that ran down his spine at the thought of that poor woman, confined up there in that sitting room with her mounting psychosis and feelings of utter helplessness. What a hell she must have lived in that house. And what of her children, the two boys, James Jr. and Waylon? How must they have suffered to see their father stripped of his glory and their mother sinking into insanity?
    That fucking bitch . You build a home for them…
    And then they strangle your babies…
    He leaned back in his chair and let out the breath he’d been holding.
    Oh God, he thought . What sort of mess had he found his way into?
    It took some time before he could read on, but eventually he came to another article, this one dated April 5, 1930, mentioning in just four spare lines that the once palatial estate of Crook House had burned, killing Emily Crook and her two sons.
    A follow-up piece from January 8, 1931, stated that James Crook’s 48 month sentence had been probated due to his deteriorating physical and mental condition, brought on, the article’s author conjectured, by the recent death of the doctor’s wife and two sons in a house fire in San Antonio.
    The final reference he found to Crook was dated December 26, 1931, an obituary . Robert scanned the article, but was surprised to see that it made no mention of the cause of death. Something as salacious as the death of a former rumrunner should have been front-page material. But nothing in that vein was said. The article did mention the rebuilding of Crook House, but only in passing. Robert wondered if the emotional climate of the country at the time of Crook’s death had something to do with the way his death was reported in the papers. The Great Depression had set in to stay by that point. Maybe references to the fall of wealthy men, or to the destruction of families, hit a bit too close to the heart and hearth for most readers to endure. Maybe, he thought.
    Robert stood up and stretched . His back ached and his eyes were tired. It was then that he happened to glance at the clock on the wall behind him.
    Past eight!
    “Oh shit,” he said, and groaned aloud, wondering how in the hell seven hours had just slipped right by him.
    Sarah was going to be pissed.
    He logged off the machine , gathered his stuff, and hurried outside. It had gotten dark and the night air was cold, His breath misted in front of his face as he ran to the car. How in the hell was he going to explain this?
    He wasn’t sure he could.
     
    *
     
    When he got home he called out to Sarah from the entryway but got no answer. She was home though, he was pretty sure of that. The movers had come and gone, and they’d left her Buick. He frowned at the oil stain the heap had already managed to leave on the