The next entry came six months later.
Essie Mae was delivered of a girl this morning. One glimpse of that angelic little face, and I was lost. The child is the innocent in all this, and I will not visit the sins of her father and mother upon her. She is so like a little angel that I have decided that shall be her name. It should have a French sound, however, so her name will be An’gel. An’gel Ducote. Dick will not dare argue with me over this. He of course will be disappointed that my An’gel is not a boy, but perhaps the Lord has decided to repay him in this way for his perfidy.
I was so absorbed in my reading that I completely forgot my napping cat. Diesel took care of that by butting the back of my head several times to get my attention. I took a minute to reassure him that he was still wonderful and that I adored him, and he purred in satisfaction. When he’d had enough he went back to napping, and I returned to the journal.
From that point on I skimmed even more rapidly, searching for mention of a second child. Cecilia grew reconciled to the presence of Essie Mae in the household, and everyone within the house and without apparently accepted An’gel without question as the child of Cecilia and Richard. At first Dick had little to do with his daughter, severely disappointed that she wasn’t a son. Eventually the child won him over, however.
I was rather glad to read that. I would have hated to think that Miss An’gel wasn’t cherished by her father.
When An’gel was a year old, Cecilia began to long for another child. Richard continued to refuse to risk her health and at last confided in her that the doctor had said another pregnancy might kill her. She battled with her emotions in the pages of her journal, but she finally resolved to ask Dick to father another child with Essie Mae.
That shocked me, but I could understand Cecilia’s longing for another baby. At least, as she reasoned to herself, a second child would be a full sibling to little An’gel. Richard readily agreed to the scheme, but Essie Mae took more persuading. She soon consented, however, and within two months was with child again.
They followed the same procedure as before. Away Cecilia and Essie Mae went to the mountains of North Carolina, and six months later came home with another baby, again a daughter, this time named Richelle after her father. I knew that at some point Richelle became Dickce, a nickname formed from the names of her legal parents, Dick and Cecilia (often called Kitce by Dick, I discovered, Kit for Katherine and Ce for Cecilia).
I had a slight headache now from reading the cramped handwriting, and I set the book aside even though there were more pages left to read. I wanted to consider the implications of the true relationship between Vera Cassity and the Ducote sisters.
Being a distant cousin was one thing. Being a full sister or a half sister—especially if Vera had been able to prove the relationship—was quite another.
If she were their full sister, Vera might have some claim to her father’s estate—worth millions, if rumors about the Ducote fortune were accurate.
That was not a crazy motive for murder.
TWENTY-NINE
Slow down, Charlie, I told myself. Vera was the half sister of An’gel and Dickce, but only half, and it was because they shared the same mother. As far as I knew, Vera’s father was Jedediah Hobson, not Richard Ducote, and I couldn’t see Richard Ducote allowing a child of his to be passed off as the child of another man.
There was a simple way to settle this. I knew Richard Ducote died in an accident while Miss An’gel and Miss Dicke were very young. If his death occurred long enough before Vera was born, that would settle the issue. All I had to do was find out the exact dates of Richard Ducote’s death and Vera Hobson’s birth.
The former was simple enough. The archives kept a file of information about notable citizens of Athena, and the Ducote family figured prominently in it. Digitized a couple of years ago, it was accessible via computer.
In less than five minutes I had the information I needed. Richard Ducote died in a hunting accident seventy-five years ago, when Miss An’gel would have been about nine and Miss Dickce seven. I also checked Cecilia’s death date. She outlived Richard by nearly forty years. I recalled someone telling me that Vera’s mother died when Vera was about thirty, and that meant that Cecilia had outlived Essie Mae, more than likely.
Now to find out exactly when Vera was born. I checked an online genealogical database but that yielded no results.
That meant I would have to go to the courthouse and check the public records. As long as I was going to do that, I reckoned I might as well look up Richard Ducote’s will. It would be interesting to see whether there was any provision for Essie Mae. Come to think of it, I should also check for wills for Cecilia and Essie Mae. I remembered that Vera had inherited money from her mother, money that Essie Mae in her turn had allegedly inherited from a relative. Could the money have come from the Ducote estate?
My head ached from trying to sort out who died when and the possible implications of wills and inheritances. I’d better get down to the courthouse as soon as possible.
I checked the time. Too late to go today; it was already seventeen minutes after five. The courthouse would have to wait until tomorrow morning.
“Come on, Diesel, let’s go home.” I shut down the computer, put the journal away in my desk and locked it, thought about it a moment, unlocked the desk, and pulled the journal back out. Maybe I should take it home with me to finish reading tonight.
No, that wouldn’t be right. Materials from the Ducote Collection were not supposed to leave the archives. Back into the drawer went the journal again, and this time it stayed there.
Diesel, impatient to be on the way, meowed loudly at me. He was already by the door, and I didn’t linger.
On the walk home my head buzzed with questions. A new one that occurred to me was whether I should share the revelations from Cecilia Ducote’s journal with Kanesha. If one of the Ducote sisters did turn out to be the killer, then the information about the relationship with Vera would have to come out.
But if they were both innocent, there was no point in anyone else knowing the story. It was a private family matter, and I felt guilty enough as it was for having pried into it myself.
I couldn’t share this with Kanesha yet. If I found some proof that either Miss An’gel or Miss Dickce pushed Vera down those stairs, I would have to. But until then I would keep quiet about what I’d learned.
That one decision made, I felt better. Diesel and I turned into the driveway and headed for the back door. I let him open the door, and while he did, I pulled my ringing cell phone from my pocket.
Kanesha. That was eerie. I had just been thinking about her, and now she was calling. I stepped into the empty kitchen as I answered.
“I’m about five minutes away from there. Okay if I stop by?” she said after barely giving me time to say hello.
“Sure, come on by.”
I had just enough time to shed my coat and read a hastily scrawled note from Laura, informing me that everyone would be out for dinner tonight and I was on my own, when the doorbell rang.
“Thought it would be good to check in with you, share information,” Kanesha said without preamble the moment I opened the door.
I stood aside for her to enter and then followed her into the kitchen where Diesel was waiting. He meowed loudly three times, and I understood the message.
“Please have a seat, and I’ll be back in a minute,” I said with an apologetic smile. “His Majesty has informed me that the Royal Food Bowl is empty and in need of filling.”
Kanesha scowled as she pulled out a chair and sat.