Regarding Anna (32 page)

Revoked

My body went numb. I wanted to ask Tymon to repeat what he had just told me but was unable to speak.

“Breathe, Gracie.”

I hadn’t realized I wasn’t breathing.

“That’s hard to believe, Tymon. But you said Henry was drinking, so how can we...”

“Henry wasn’t crazy drunk when he told me that. And my experience with people and alcohol is that it doesn’t create thoughts, it just brings them out.”

The notion that someone—someone I knew, for Pete’s sake—had done something that resulted in my parents’ deaths was incomprehensible.

“What did he do?”

“Now bear with me. It’s a bit of a long story. We know Henry left the boardinghouse the same day O’Gowan died—Minnie told us that. And we know from the bartender at Jake’s and others that Henry started flashing money around about that same time, so I figure he broke into O’Gowan’s room at some point after his death, stole whatever cash he could find, and fled.”

“What a creep.”

“This next part, I think, will surprise you. Apparently, right after O’Gowan died, Berghorn was arrested and went to prison.”

“Prison! For what?”

“Henry said embezzlement and a bunch of other stuff.”

“Holy...”

“I know. Meanwhile, from prison, Elmer is hounding Henry to locate Al, the boarder who had the room over Anna’s bedroom.”

“Why?”

“Al left the boardinghouse right after Anna was killed—the next day, in fact. And Henry had told Elmer at some point that he had seen Al and O’Gowan talking with each other on more than one occasion. And since O’Gowan was such a recluse, Elmer thought it odd that he would be talking to Al. He thought maybe Al had found out about O’Gowan’s money and had somehow gotten his hands on it after O’Gowan died.”

“Whose mind works like that?”

“Berghorn’s, apparently. Anyway, as Henry put it, ‘He wasn’t the boss of me, and he was in prison, so he couldn’t see what I was doin’ or not doin’.’ So without putting much effort into it, Henry kept an eye out for Al, and…what do you know? One day, he sees him coming out of your house on Ferdinand Street.”

“My house?”

“Your house.”

“So Al knew my parents.”

“It looks that way.”

“So what year was this?”

“He didn’t say, but I got the impression it wasn’t long after O’Gowan’s death.”

“He died in June 1943. I was just a year old.”

“Okay. So to appease Elmer, Henry said he just made something up about keeping a watchful eye on Al and every once in a while seeing his car at the Ferdinand address. And he does this periodically throughout Elmer’s prison sentence.”

“So then Elmer gets out of prison—”

“How long was he in prison?”

“I don’t think Henry said. Anyway, he gets out and sets up this law practice—”

“How did he do that with a criminal record?”

“I don’t know, but we both know he did. Well, he couldn’t make enough to properly take care of his son, and he couldn’t stop thinking about O’Gowan’s winnings even after all that time.”

“Okay, so stop there for a minute. You’re saying Elmer was obsessed over O’Gowan’s money so he could provide for his son?”

“According to Henry.”

“Naomi told me his son was ill. Did Henry give you the impression that Elmer’s son had a long-term illness?”

“No, he didn’t say that.”

“Did he say that’s why Elmer went to prison? The embezzlement and other stuff, did he take those risks for his son?”

“You ask good questions. I don’t know.”

The thought of Elmer doing it all for his son was no justification for it, but it sure made me think about him as a man. What that meant to me was that his bad behavior wasn’t an indication of his character. It was an indication of his situation—a situation so dire that it blinded him to ethical concerns.

“I’m sorry. Please continue.”

“Would you like to take a break?”

“No, I’m good.”

“So Elmer tells Henry to show him the house on Ferdinand where Al keeps going, and he gets it into his head that whoever lives there may have a connection to the money.”

“That seems so far-fetched.”

“I thought so too. So he digs into your parents’ business and finds out they have this nice home with a very small mortgage, a new car, and some other things all on your father’s wages at the Soo Line Railroad. He becomes convinced your father somehow benefited from O’Gowan’s fortune.”

“So he kills them?”

“Hold on. I’ll get to that.”

“It’s hard to hold on when—”

“I know. I know. So Elmer wants to search the house, but of course he can’t do it when there are people living there, so he gets this harebrained idea to force them out long enough for him to snoop around. It was winter, according to Henry, and really cold.”

I was unable to hold back the tears—it was like being confronted with their deaths all over again.

“March 18,” I said through my blubbering. “Extremely cold…sub-zero.”

“So his plan was to cut off their gas line so they would have no heat, forcing them out of their house until the gas company could find the problem and fix it.”

“But why did he have to kill them?” I cried.

“According to Henry, he didn’t intend to. He just wanted to force them out long enough for him to search the house.”

“But that’s crazy!”

“I know that, and you know that, but my impression from Henry was that Elmer was a desperate man. Desperate men don’t think logically.”

“Go on.”

“Whatever he did caused carbon monoxide to back up into the basement, where apparently they were at the time. And they were overcome by it.”

I struggled to speak. “Had he picked another time, I would have been in the house too.”

“I know, sweetie.”

“So did the rotten...did he get what he was looking for?”

“He didn’t get O’Gowan’s money, of course we know that, but according to Henry, he fraudulently got access to one or more of their bank accounts and then further took advantage of their deaths by buying the house.”

I shook my head in disbelief.

“How could he do that and still sleep at night?”

“Desperation is like an addictive drug—it controls your brain, your thinking. Nothing else matters.”

I closed my eyes and tried to make sense of it all.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I nodded with my eyes still closed.

“So let me try to recap here,” I finally said. “Henry finds out O’Gowan has a stash of money and tells his cousin Elmer about it. Elmer concocts a plan to rob O’Gowan, but before he can implement the plan, O’Gowan dies unexpectedly. Henry steals whatever he can from O’Gowan’s room and flees. They both know O’Gowan won a lot more than that in the sweepstakes, but Elmer can’t do much about it because he’s been hauled off to prison.

“Then Elmer gets out of prison and—thanks to Henry—thinks there’s some connection between Anna’s boardinghouse lover Al and my father, which by some convoluted logic makes him think there’s a connection between O’Gowan’s money and my father. So he can search our house, Elmer tries to force my parents out of it by cutting off the heat in freezing weather but bungles that and kills them. And like that wasn’t bad enough, he then takes advantage of this heinous act and buys our house—probably at a low price—and steals from my parents’ bank accounts.”

“That’s pretty much how I understand it...at least according to Henry, and I found him to be quite believable.”

“Right. He’s not smart enough to make this kind of stuff up. You know that’s probably why I was rushed out of that house afterward—because Berghorn was pushing to buy it. And I know from Naomi that he has connections with North Community Bank where my parents had a mortgage. He probably paid someone off to get me out of there as quickly as possible.”

“There are no words to—”

“Wait a minute!”

“What?”

“I don’t have it anymore because Berghorn stole it from me, but I found a statement from North Community Bank among my parents’ things. The name on the account had been torn off, but I’ll bet that was the account Berghorn stole from. If that was a current statement, there was close to $8,000 in that account. And there were two other bank accounts, one in San Diego and one in Mexico.”

“How much was in those?”

“I don’t remember now. That lousy...”

“So then Berghorn found you—”

“Thinking either I had O’Gowan’s money or I could lead him to it.”

Tymon didn’t respond.

I couldn’t stop shaking my head. This kind of thing didn’t happen to ordinary people.

“Elmer killed my parents.” My emotions completely took over again, and before I could do anything about it, I was crying uncontrollably. Tymon rushed over to me, placed his strong hands on my forearms, and lifted me up from the chair.

“Let’s go inside, Gracie.”

Once inside, I got hold of myself, and my grief quickly changed to anger.

“That son-of-a-bitch can’t get away with this!” I pounded the side of my fist on the kitchen counter, causing Tymon to jump and me to wince in pain.

Tymon led me to one of the kitchen chairs, put a pot of water on the stove for tea, and then joined me.

“What kind of person does that?” I asked.

“One desperate for money?”

I got up and grabbed a piece of paper and pencil from the kitchen drawer.

“What are you doing?”

“Wait here a minute.” I went upstairs to retrieve the envelopes that contained all my important papers and notes related to Anna and my parents.

“I’m creating a timeline. I need to understand this better,” I told him when I returned.

When I was finished, I read him the following:

I glanced up at Tymon, who was intently staring at me.

“I wonder how much time Berghorn had after O’Gowan died and before he went to prison,” I said. “Why didn’t he break into the boardinghouse to look for the money?”

“Sorry. I forgot that part. Berghorn had told Henry to break into the boardinghouse and look for the money, but I’m not sure if it was before or after he went to prison. Anyway, Henry was content with what he had already stolen and gotten away with, so he lied to Elmer and told him that he broke in, searched every inch of the place, and didn’t find anything.”

I didn’t respond.

“You’ve got that look on your face. What are you thinking?” he asked.

“I don’t know yet. But one way or another, Elmer Berghorn is going to pay. And Tymon?

“Yes.”

“Today is my birthday.”

* * *

At three A.M., as I lay in bed wide awake, all I could think about was how Elmer had reeled me in like a fish getting me to sublet from him and then held me captive until he had no more use for me. And I’d been oblivious to every bit of it.
Well, Mr. Berghorn, you will pay for everything you’ve done...if it’s the last thing I ever do.

If it hadn’t been for Berghorn, my parents would have still been alive.

I would’ve had no reason to think they were anything
but
my parents.

I would’ve had a job as an interior decorator that I loved.

I wouldn’t have been sitting on almost $250,000 that wasn’t mine.

I would’ve had a normal life for a twenty-three-year-old.

Now I was agitated and, knowing I’d never fall back asleep, I got up and dressed and headed for the kitchen.

The second I opened my bedroom door, the tantalizing smell of something chocolate wafted in. Tymon had his back to me and was taking something off the window sill when I entered the kitchen. When he turned around and saw me, he almost dropped the pan.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I live here...remember?”

“Now you’ve spoiled the surprise.”

“What surprise?” I asked.

“Just promise me you’ll act surprised after dinner this evening.”

“You baked me a birthday cake?”

“What are you doing up so early? I still have to frost this thing.”

“Want some help?”

“Well, if you’re not going to leave, then yes, you may as well help me.”

I stared at him while he iced the cake, something I’d never seen a man do before. I don’t think my father had ever set foot in our kitchen. Tymon wasn’t half bad at it.

“You don’t seem to be helping,” he said.

“You don’t seem to need it. So where did you get cake ingredients? I know it wasn’t from this kitchen.”

“There’s a little all-night grocer in Edgewater.”

“You’d better stop doing nice things for me, or I won’t let you leave.”

He laughed. “I dropped off my rent check the other day, and the landlady told me she thought maybe I’d skipped out on her.”

“I can imag—”

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I just remembered something.” I jumped out of my chair. “I’ll be right back.”

I returned with the receipt in my hand.

“This.” I waved it in the air.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a receipt for a basement build-out in our house that I found after my parents died. Do you know what that is?”

He took the receipt from me.

“Doesn’t say much more than that,” he said. “
Material and labor $278.15. May 5, 1943.
”

“That was a few months after Anna was killed. She died on January 23.”

Tymon’s eyebrows arched. “Basement build-out. The only thing I can think of is—”

“It’s a room.”

“What?”

“A room. Like the one downstairs.” I felt the adrenaline pumping through my veins. “I’ll bet they had a room built in their basement like the one downstairs.”

“Wouldn’t you have seen it growing up?”