Lethal Lineage by Charlotte Hinger

percent of the stories.”
    “I can’t dig and pull weeds anymore. Could last year. Now my son in Wichita takes care of all my bills. My social security, everything, goes through some kind of a fancy on-line bank. But as long as I have my little house, I do OK.”
    It was a good arrangement, but I doubted it would last much longer. She was simply too frail to keep living by herself. Just months away from falls, missed steps, leaving pots on the stove too long.
    A fight loomed, and I had met Stuart Mavery. He was a conscientious man, a CPA. He understood the importance of keeping his mother in her own home in charge of her own beloved garden as long as possible. But the time was coming.
    I switched on the recorder.
    “I was born in Iowa. There was three of us girls and two boys.”
    I paused the tape, checked the spelling of names and listed them on my pad.
    “I was not the wild one. Gerta was.”
    The phone rang. I dealt with a couple of printing problems before we continued. It was close to noon and Edna’s ride would soon be here to pick her up and take her back to the house. She had finished high school, then married a farmer her parents had more or less selected for her.
    “I wanted to teach, but my parents thought I ought to grab Henry when I could. We had two children. A son and a daughter. They was just darling. Henry turned out to be…not the person we thought he was. Mean. Mean to his stock. Mean to me. And mean to the children.
    Shocked, I paused the tape. Her chin quivered and her mouth tightened. She clenched her teeth to keep her dentures from clicking.
    This was a clean-up story. One that persons told me behind the scenes. The kinds of stories that never made it into the books. County history articles and family stories were not intended to embarrass anyone and they were not supposed to get the historical society sued for libel either.
    “I did everything I could to keep my children happy. Made little treats, looked after their clothes. Once when they was just little, Oliver found a little nest of field mice. The mother mouse got plowed under and he took them home and Mary Claire tried to feed them with an eye dropper. I knew Henry would beat the boy half to death. He was that kind of man. Course we couldn’t keep the mice. No one in their right mind lets them get started.”
    I took notes, but I still did not turn on the tape. Tears streamed down her parchment cheeks. I reached for a box of Kleenexes and handed it to her.
    “Freezing is the easiest way to die. I read that in the
Reader’s Digest
.” She dabbed at her tears. “So I put each little mouse in a section of an ice cube tray and froze them. I thawed them out before the children came home from school and told the kids it was awful hard to keep wild things alive.”
    I laid down my pen. At the historical society, I hear my share of strange stories, but this one was right up there.
    “It saved the children from a beating. We gave them a nice little funeral before their dad got in from the field, and they didn’t have to think of their mother as a mouse murderer.”
    Just then the phone rang. The caller ID displayed Josie’s number. Edna’s ride knocked on the door and she struggled out of her seat. We weren’t finished and it was hard telling when I could lure her in again.
    “Josie, let me call you back.” I hung up and helped Edna into her coat.
    “I’m sorry we had to cut this short,” I said. “I’m free next week if you can come in then. Or shall I come to your house?”
    “No need. Nothing more to tell. I came to Kansas and married Archie, Stuart’s dad. He died fifteen years ago.” Her mouth quivered again. “I get up every morning and go to bed every night.”
    Her depression was worse than I thought. “Well, if there’s anything you want to add, let me know.” I said this knowing there was no way she could unless someone brought her in here again. Those hands, those poor old arthritic hands certainly couldn’t