Family Skeletons: A Spunky Missouri Genealogist Traces A Family's Roots...And Digs Up A Deadly Secret Read Online Free PDF

eyes peered from behind metal framed glasses.
    â€œPlease, call nine-one-one. It’s Norah. She’s … dead.”
    Finally, she opened the door and let me in. I felt terribly guilty bringing this to her house on this otherwise beautiful day. She started to shake, and then cry. We were now in hysterics together.
    She managed to get up and get me a glass of water while I dialed 911. I then ran to the bathroom and everything that I’d just drunk came up as well.
    I ran some water in the bathroom sink and splashed it on my face and over my short hair. The face in the mirror didn’t seem to be mine. My skin was normally green. Mother says it’s olive. I say it’s green, and it looked more so now. Actually, as unjust as it was, I looked just like my father. Put a dress on my dad and that’s me. But as I stared into the mirror in this stranger’s home, the face looking back at me seemed more the stranger than did the little old lady.
    My intestines felt like they were doing the rumba, and I shook from head to toe. Overall, though, I thought I held together fairly well. Then I began to cry uncontrollably. I hadn’t even known her. Not really. But the memory of what someone had done to her brought the tears on like a monsoon. I was angry, and what’s worse, I felt helpless. Helplessness is not something I like to feel.
    I heard the doorbell ring a few minutes later. It was Sheriff Brooke. Just what I needed. Sheriff Brooke and I go back a long way. He arrested me once. Yes, I confess. I have a record. I was speeding through town in my husband’s GMC truck, and I argued with the sheriff over the ticket that he tried to give me. Then I resisted arrest. When he realized that I had been trying to get Charity Bergermeister to the hospital before she had her twins, he gave us an escort. Once we were at the hospital, he arrested me.
    Anyway, we have never got along since then; we just sort of tolerate each other.
    â€œHello, Torie.”
    â€œSheriff Brooke.”
    He sat down in the chair opposite me. The furniture looked like something out of 1962, in your average brown. White lace doilies were poised just perfectly over the backs of the chairs and the couch. The little old lady sat perched in her rocking chair, waiting to listen to every word we said.
    Brooke was off duty, and so he had no uniform. His eyes were blue, his hair sandy. He looked like a man to be reckoned with, and as much as I hate to admit it, he was a man to be reckoned with. His shoulders were very broad for his height. He was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved T-shirt with a camel on it. It was the camel that advertises the Camel cigarettes. The camel wore sunglasses and had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Funny how that is what grabbed my attention.
    The shirt suited Sheriff Brooke, I decided. I had often wondered if his mother secretly called him “Bubba.”
    â€œSo, you found the body?” he asked.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhat made you come all the way out here?”
    â€œIt’s only ten minutes away. It’s still in your jurisdiction,” I said. “I was worried about her. She didn’t show up for work. Or even call in sick.” I rubbed my eyes. “She was supposed to call me back last night and didn’t. I was worried that she might be seriously ill.”
    â€œHow well did you know her?”
    â€œNot real well. She was a shop owner. I’ve talked to her a few times at council meetings. That sort of thing,” I answered. I felt like a robot on autopilot. The answers to his questions were just rolling out of my mouth without my giving them much thought.
    â€œSo, why would you be so concerned about somebody that you barely know?”
    Did he think I was a suspect? “She recently came to the Gaheimer House to ask me to trace her family tree. Or at least part of it anyway.”
    â€œDid you touch anything?” he asked.
    â€œJust the front