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“You still call it the Sears Tower, don’t you?”
I can’t help but smile. “Fair point.”
“Then it changed hands for about ten years until it was sold to the Fredericksons.”
“The Kinsleys still around here? Maybe they know something we don’t.”
Constance chuckles. “No, it was never a permanent residence, which is how it’s fallen into relative disrepair, at least on the outside.” She pins a couple articles up with images dating as far back as the forties to as new as the nineties. “It’s been used as a vacation home, a boarding house for veterans down on their luck, and, at least in the eighties and nineties, a hermitage for two unmarried sisters from the Kinsley family.”
She pins another article to the board and doesn’t speak, so I sidle up to her to get a look.
Wilhelm House Ownership Verdict: A Waste of Our Time
“So the ownership was contested?”
She situates her hands on her hips. “Several times, but that time was Hanna Chrisman. She was always pretty batty about the whole thing.”
“Several times? Really?”
“It’s a beautiful mansion in an idyllic spot. After the consternation around the hand-off with Cornelius, it’s only natural people seem to be unhappy with the outcome.”
“But surely, a hundred years later?—”
“Things don’t move so fast here,” Constance cuts me off. “We have a lot of time to hold grudges, I guess.”
She moves away from me to another box that hasn’t been opened. Her chestnut hair waterfalls over her face.
“Well, this corroborates what you were suggesting about sabotage.”
“I don’t suggest things unless I have a basis of truth, McEvoy,” Constance says, shuffling through a few folders.
Of course she doesn’t. She’s a professional. Deals with facts and figures, with truths that have been laid out in front of her. “Could you get me a list of people who have contested the ownership? Or might have reason to?”
Constance nods. “I could do that.”
“Good, thank you. I could do some interviews.”
“I could help.”
I shoot a look at Constance, more wide-eyed than I’d like to be. Sometimes my penchant for keeping control is impossible to keep under wraps.
She tilts her head to the side shyly. “If you want, that is.”
It’s a shame that Constance’s talents are wasted here in Horace. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful that she’s helping me with the case. But I have an itching feeling that all her focus, all her zeal for work like this would be better utilized on a bigger stage. Somewhere she can really show what she’s made of.
“Do you miss it?” I ask.
Constance furrows her brow. “Miss what?”
“You know.” I widen my arms and say in an announcer voice, “The great unknown!”
“I don’t follow.”
Right. Be direct. Objective. “Your work before you moved back to Horace, I mean.”
“Oh… I see.” Constance pauses, looking off, deep in thought.
“I mean, I know you didn’t have a choice. With your dad and everything. Honorable of you to come back.”
