Stalking Throckmorton

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2Chris Throckmorton turned on the air conditioner in his car on a sweltering Friday. Mid-September in Wisconsin wasn’t supposed to be eighty-six degrees and humid. An accountant, he’d shed his suit coat and tie at the end of his meeting for a client at the Federal Trust and Savings. In his early thirties, he hated wearing suits. He’d take business casual any day.

Throckmorton was one inch shy of six feet, lean, and almost rangy. His medium-length brown hair was beginning to recede, but that was covered by a comb-over. There was nothing remarkable about his face. In college, girls found it so forgettable he’d considered growing a beard but never got around to it. He hoped the glasses he’d had to get recently added a little interest to his appearance.

Turning west off Losey Boulevard onto Cass Street, he headed toward the Mississippi and an older part of La Crosse. The dappled shade from the maple and oak trees lining the residential street was welcome but made it more difficult to make out the house numbers, as block by block, the houses became older, grander, and set further from the street. His jaw dropped when he came to the Kessler house. House? It’s a mansion.

He checked his notes to make sure he hadn’t made a mistake, turned into the drive, and drove the two hundred feet to the house. Years ago, his mother had mentioned distant cousins in La Crosse who’d done well in lumber until the white pine ran out in the 1920s. She hadn’t exaggerated, but it appeared that the family fortune had gone the way of the pine. The house, a great Victorian pile of red brick, needed tuck-pointing, the woodwork needed paint, and the grounds looked like the gardener had been AWOL for a decade.

Granite steps led him up to a veranda and the front door. He rang the doorbell and waited. Adele Kessler had sounded elderly on the phone. It could take her a while to answer the door in a house this size.

They’d identified each other as fifth cousins through Ancestry DNA, and she’d invited him to drop by at two o’clock. The visit was convenient for him—he was in La Crosse for the meeting, and he’d never met any relatives of his mother’s.

He rang the bell again. A car drove up as he waited, and a middle-aged woman dressed in shorts, a white blouse, and carrying grocery bags got out and approached him. “Adele’s not answering the bell?”

“Not for the last five minutes,” Throckmorton said. “She asked me to drop by this afternoon.”

“Oh dear. She tends to nod off after lunch. I’m Eleanor. I shop for Adele, do a little cleaning, help her with the laundry. Here, hold these.” She handed him the grocery bags, searched her purse, and brought out a key. “I usually go in the back door—closer to the kitchen—but I saw you here.” She opened the door, screamed, and dropped her purse.

Throckmorton peered over her shoulder. He gasped, pulled out his phone, and dialed 911. Judging from the shape of her body on the floor, Adele would never answer a door again.