A Comedy of Heirs (17 page)

I walked up on the front porch, noting that her porch furniture was clean and that she had two quilts draped over the swing and the chair. A colorful bird house was about two feet from the porch in the yard, painted to look like a miniature of its owner's house. The door opened before I could knock.

“Torie O'Shea,” the woman said. “Come in, come in.”

I walked into her house and was immediately bowled over by the heavy scent of a real Christmas tree. It stood right next to the door in front of the picture window and it was decorated with mauve and pink ribbons, bows and clear glass ornaments.

“I'm Naomi,” she said. “Have a seat, I'll be right back.”

A blue Victorian love seat, with clawed feet and curvy scrolls on the arms, was the nearest thing I could find, so I sat on it. I worried about whether I was supposed to sit on it, because it didn't look like sittable furniture, if you know what I mean.

Naomi came back in rolling an actual real live tea cart and she poured me a cup of tea from ancient bone china with pink roses on it. “One lump or two?” she asked.

I'd never been asked that before. “Probably three, if you don't mind. I like my tea sweet.” She smiled and obliged me with three lumps of sugar. I tasted it and realized that if I were alone, I would have probably taken four lumps. I'm just not a lady, I suppose.

She sat down and I finally got a good look at her. She had been flitting around so much that I could barely get a look at her. She was a big-boned woman, about five seven, with blue hair and a hump on her back. She was at least eighty, probably older. Her sharp brown eyes were clear and I was surprised when I realized that she did not wear glasses.

She crossed her hands and smiled at me. “John Robert in the flesh.”

“Excuse me, but I'm really confused.”

“Well, you look like him. I only saw him once, but I've got pictures. You can have them if you like.”

“Wait, you have pictures of my grandfather?” I asked.

“Yes, ma'am,” she said.

“Why?” I asked.

“What I'm about to tell you, you may not like, you may not take to—shoot, you may not even believe—but I swear to you that it's all the truth,” she said.

“What do you know about the drowning?” I asked.

“Oh, I'll tell you about the drowning, if you want me to,” she said. “But you're going to be much more interested in the other things I have to tell you.”

For the first time in my life, I wasn't so sure that I actually wanted to know something. It was a first. I could feel the earth actually slow on its axis. I almost told her to never mind, that I really must get going, but then the nosiness in me rallied and I found myself perched on her love seat waiting in anticipation. I know, I know, curiosity killed the cat.

“Bradley Ferguson was the father of John Robert Keith, your grandfather,” she stated triumphantly. She'd been waiting forever to speak these words to somebody and her moment had finally come. You could see it written all over her face. The smile crossed her face with pure joy and sparkles flew from her eyes.

Oh, brother.

“I'm sorry,” I said. The teacup and saucer that I held began clanking together. “What did you just say?”

“Bradley Ferguson was the real father of John Robert Keith, not that good-for-nothing, cow-licking, woman-beating, horse-thieving Nathaniel Ulysses Keith!” she said.

“You have no proof of this,” I said.

“Oh yes, I do,” she said and smiled even bigger.

Okay, for the sake of argument, let's say she did have proof. “Why? Why would you just suddenly tell me? Why not one of John Robert's children?”

“You think they're gonna listen to me? Oh, Felicity might, but there is no talking any sense to the likes of Ruth, or Isaac for that matter. Besides, I don't really think any of them give two hoots,” she said.

“Why would I give two hoots?”

“You're a genealogist,” she said. “A historian. It's in your blood, you hunt down the truth with your very fiber. Just like me. Just like all of us.”

What was that? The genealogist pride song or something? My breathing came in little ragged spurts now and I thought I might actually swoon. I'd never swooned before.

“What did you find?” Naomi asked me. “You found something or you wouldn't have been down here researching the swimming accident and the life of Bradley Ferguson. What did you find?”

“I found … I found two pictures of him, tucked and hidden in a box of cards that had belonged to my great-grandmother. And … two letters,” I said with dawning realization. “And a poem. A proposal, actually.”

“Oh,” she said and placed her hand on her chest. “Della Ruth was the love of his life. The great tragedy of his life.”

“Why didn't my great-grandmother just marry him? Why did she marry Nate Keith in the first place?” I asked.

“She couldn't marry Bradley. He went off to college at seventeen and Della Ruth was but fourteen years old. They were neighbors, friends, but neither one knew that there would be much more. When he came home from college, Della Ruth was married to Nate already and had given birth to Granville and Lea,” she said.

“You mean that they were lovers? They had an affair?”

“Yes, and John Robert was the fruit of that affair,” she said. “When Bradley found out that Della Ruth was pregnant with his child, he begged her to marry him. He begged her to leave Nate and come with him, that they'd go off around the world together.”

I just stared at Naomi. “Forgive me,” I said. “You are Bradley's widow?”

“Yes,” she said. “Never a finer man in the world.”

“So, aren't you being awfully generous about your husband's great love of his life and all that?” I asked.

“I used to be insanely jealous of Della Ruth. Insanely. One day I realized that if Bradley felt about Della half of what I felt for him … I don't know. I suddenly felt sorry for them and I quit being jealous. Plus, I knew that Bradley loved me. He really did. And time had numbed him a little toward Della. And I shared a bunch of memories with him that she would never have.”

“Oh,” I said. There were tons of things I should ask, but I'll be darned if I could think of any of them.

“Some say that Nate found out about John Robert not being his,” Naomi said.

“What do you know about his murder?” I asked.

“A blessed event, if you ask me,” Naomi said. “Imagine him getting all fired up about John Robert not being his, when half the county knew that he had at least three illegitimate children of his own. One was born just two years before he died. But to protect that person's privacy, I'm not going to tell you who it is.”

That irritated me slightly. How dare she tell me that she knew who that baby, my relative, was, then not tell me. “So how did he find out?”

“Bradley told me that he wanted to leave John Robert something in his will. So he went out to talk to Della Ruth about it, she told him not to, because if he died anytime soon, she'd have to explain to Nate why all this money had been left to John Robert. Nate Keith was dead three days later.”

“Did Bradley leave John Robert anything in his will?”

“No. He went by Della Ruth's wishes.”

“Do you think that Bradley killed him?” I asked.

“If he'd a been smart, Bradley would have killed him when he first found out that Della was pregnant with John Robert, but I don't think Bradley had it in him,” Naomi said. “But then again, maybe he did.”

“Yes, but then he wouldn't have been free to marry you later,” I said.

“This is true. We never had any children,” she said. “That's part of the reason I was so excited to see you. You are his living descendant. You are all that is left of him.”

“Oh well, that's not quite true. John Robert had seven children, and tons of grandkids and great-grandkids. There's plenty left of him,” I said. Without realizing it, I'd just admitted believing her story.

“True,” she said. “You look like them. The Fergusons.”

“I know I look like my father.”

“Who looked like his father.” She got up and picked up a box that was sitting on a round corner table with a large lace doily on it. She handed me the box and then sat back down with a moan. “Oh, arthritis in my hip.”

I opened the box and it was full of pictures. Right off the bat I recognized a photograph of my grandfather. I looked to Naomi for an explanation.

“Della Ruth wouldn't have anything to do with Bradley after John Robert was born,” she said. “She wouldn't talk to him, see him, nothing. If she saw him on the street, she ignored him. For one thing, if Nate Keith had found out … she'd have been dead. But the one thing she did do was send Bradley photographs. She entered a drawing and won one of those cheap cameras. Every year at Christmas she sent Bradley an envelope with three or four pictures of John Robert from the previous year. That's all of them in there,” she said and pointed to the photographs now nestled in my lap.

“So … Bradley goes out to talk to Della Ruth and three days later Nate Keith is dead. You really believe that Nate found out?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Do you think John Robert knew the true identity of his father?”

“I think so, but I could never be sure,” Naomi said. “He came to see me a few years after Bradley died. Said he just wanted to see how I was getting along without my husband. I tell you, it took everything I had not to say something. I think he suspected, though.”

“And how did Bradley die?” I asked.

“On a safari in Africa. He was hunting a lion. The gun misfired,” she said and hung her head in a moment of silence.

“Who do you think killed Nate Keith?” I asked.

“I always suspected Della Ruth myself.”

I know the look on my face must have been pure shock. Of all the scenarios I had imagined, Della Ruth was never the one that I truly suspected. Even though Hubert McCarthy had alluded to it.

“God would have opened the gates of heaven personally for her,” Naomi said. “Nate Keith was a horrid man.”

“And the swimming accident?” I asked. I hadn't even been able to read the particulars on it yet. “He all but killed Bradley's brother. Everybody knew that. The barn burning? The poisoned pigs?”

“Think the barn burned at the hands of some local farmers, because Nate dumped lime in their water supply. The poisoned pigs, I believe, was the father of a girl Nate got pregnant. Can't prove any of that, but I believe that's what happened.”

My head hurt.

I fumbled through the pictures, quickly, just to get a peek at them. One picture caught my interest and I wasn't sure why right away. I stared at it and stared at it.

“What is it?” Naomi asked.

“Not sure,” I said. “In this picture here, I think I recognize the man with my grandfather, but I can't figure out who it is.”

“Let me see,” she said. I handed it to her and she squinted a little and then reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out reading glasses. I smiled at the fact that she was a little vain over her glasses. “Oh, that's Hubert McCarthy. He and John Robert were best friends.”

That time, I nearly dropped the china teacup and saucer.

Twenty-three

I drove home in sort of a stupor. Was it really possible that Bradley Ferguson was the father of John Robert, my grandfather? If so, that meant that he was my great-grandfather instead of Nate Keith. Which meant that about three years of genealogical research of the Keith line of my family tree just blew out the window! That thought made my head hurt.

I also had to struggle with the choice of telling everybody or not. Some people in my family wouldn't be too thrilled to learn this. Others wouldn't care, really. Nate Keith was just a name on a chart to most of them, so what difference would it make if I slipped in the name Bradley Ferguson? I wasn't entirely convinced that Bradley was the father of my grandfather. I couldn't explain how Naomi got all those pictures of him, though. Or how she knew so much.

I pulled into my driveway and gathered the papers that the librarian had found for me. I walked inside and found my cousin Joanie seated on the couch next to Aunt Sissy. Joanie was Uncle Jed's middle child and was the glue that kept her siblings together. Her large brown eyes were red and swollen. It was obvious she had been crying.

“Hi, Joanie,” I said and walked over and gave her a hug. “I am so sorry about your father.”

“It's okay,” she said. Sweet and mild mannered were Joanie's strong points. She was always about fifteen pounds overweight, a young-looking forty-four, with the most adorable dimples in the world. Her sweetness was genuine. “He was seventy-eight, and with the way he drank and stuff, I'm surprised he wasn't dead years ago. I consider myself lucky I had him this long.”

“It's still tough, though,” I said. I felt the back of my throat constrict and quickly thought of something else. “How is everybody else?”

“They're fine. My daughter Allison is the youngest of his grand-kids, and she's the most shook up.”

“Aunt Sissy,” I said, “have you seen Rudy?”

“He's out back playing with the kids in the snow.”

“And the sheriff? Has he been by here?”

“Not yet,” she said.

I glanced at my watch. It was two o'clock. The autopsy was at three and he'd be by afterward. I probably had two hours before he showed up. “I'm going to be up in my office for a while. I've got tons of stuff to catch up on.”

Aunt Sissy nodded.

“Joanie, have you made any plans yet?” I asked before leaving the living room.

“I think the funeral will be Monday,” she said. “And if it's all right with you, I think we would like to have the big dinner at the KC hall, after the funeral on Monday. I know it was supposed to be on Sunday, but everybody is taking the extra day off from work for the funeral anyway.”