Read Online Family Skeletons: A Spunky Missouri Genealogist Traces A Family's Roots...And Digs Up A Deadly Secret by Rett MacPherson - Free Book Online

I said. Ladue was one of the wealthiest parts of St. Louis County. A person could drop eight hundred thousand dollars on a home easily.
    â€œRita told me you were doing a family tree for her?” he asked.
    â€œI told you that the day … the day she was killed. You weren’t interested. Why now?” I asked, worried.
    He looked up at the stars and breathed deeply. It was a cleansing breath, I thought. One that came from the bottom of the lungs. I wondered what it must be like to have to deal with death, Norah’s kind of death, on any regular basis.
    â€œRita said something about Norah’s dad?”
    He finally got to the point he had been trying to make.
    â€œShe never met him. I found out that he was still alive; she thought he was dead. Why?”
    â€œSo she never talked to him?” he asked, discouraged.
    â€œI never got the chance to tell her where he was,” I said, unsure of where this was going.
    â€œHave you talked to him?” he asked.
    â€œNo. I didn’t know how he would react. I was going to ask his sister first. I figure if the guy has never bothered to even see if Viola was breathing, there may be a reason.”
    â€œCan I have his sister’s address?” he asked.
    â€œDo you think that’s wise?”
    â€œI don’t think that’s for you to say. This is my investigation. I want to talk to his sister.”
    â€œI just thought that you might really shake the woman up. She doesn’t even know Norah exists. So you’re going to go to her house and tell her she had a niece that’s been murdered, and her brother is a suspect, all in one visit. It just seems … cruel or something.”
    â€œI don’t give a damn how it seems,” he said. “Somebody butchered that woman, and I don’t know where to start.”
    â€œRandom,” I remember thinking out loud.
    â€œWhat?”
    It was early enough in the year that it still got chilly when the sun set. I hugged myself tightly. “What if it was random?”
    â€œThen I’m screwed. But I don’t believe it was. There was nothing missing, no sexual assault. No forced entry.” He again breathed deeply. “I’d say she was killed for a reason. Not random.”
    â€œWhat about fibers and such?” I asked.
    â€œAll kinds. We’ve got to have something to compare it to first,” he said. “Anybody that’s been in her house in the last few weeks will have left behind fibers and hairs anyway. I have to have a suspect first, and then compare fibers and hairs.”
    â€œWhat about John Murphy?” I asked, and was rather pleased with myself when it was clear he had no idea whom I was referring to.
    â€œSomething Rita said in passing to me at lunch the other day. She said that Norah had a boyfriend. One that she had been seeing for years, but had never married. I can’t believe you didn’t know about him,” I said.
    â€œWell, surprisingly, none of her neighbors knew she had a boyfriend. There was nothing in the house to indicate that there was a man that spent any amount of time there. And Jeff completely lied to me.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œI asked him if his mother was seeing anybody and he said no. I didn’t bother asking Rita, because why would Jeff lie to me?” His question seemed to bother him the more he thought about it. “I even checked everybody’s name that was on the register at the funeral.”
    Just then Mayor Castlereagh appeared over the top of the fencing, on a ladder. He pretended to be pruning a tree. At seven in the evening? It wasn’t even the season to prune anything. All I could see of him was his bald head. Finally, he waved. I waved back.
    Tomorrow everybody in town would know that Sheriff Colin Brooke had been in my backyard. Who am I kidding? They would know it two counties away. Small towns seem to breed gossip based on completely innocent