by Kasi Blake
Chapter 16
A flurry of trepidation skittered through my chest as Jason drove us down the long, rutted drive which led to the Blackstone National Golf Course. The flag at one of the tees fluttered hard in the wind, and I knew it was barely above 40°F out there. I hugged my black coat tighter around my shoulders. I was glad Jason was here with me. The entire situation with Charles had been building for so many days that it felt as if a blizzard were bearing down on us.
The building stretched out before us, low, white, with the pro shop entrance on the lower level and the more formal main entrance on the upper. We parked the car and then headed around toward the front doors. Once through the short lobby we reached a pair of staircases which descended into the main hall area.
The empty room was set up for the turkey shoot dinner, with long rows of tables covered with white cloth. A fire blazed merrily in the fieldstone fireplace, a wreath of ivy centered high above it. One table to the side held several sets of golf clubs being auctioned off.
We moved to the left, into the bar area. A lone young woman sat at one of the six high, round tables, watching football on the TV and eating a small lunch. After a minute or so she looked around and smiled.
I was half-afraid she would not serve us. “Lunch for two?” I asked.
“Yes, certainly; sit anywhere,” she motioned with a wave of her hand. We took a small round table by the large glass windows overlooking the course. The grass was a vibrant emerald against the soft blue of the sky. I settled into my high cherry-wood chair, keeping my coat on. The room was chill; undoubtedly the course building wasn’t made to withstand the brutal cold of winter. The expectation would be that, by then, they would have shut down for the season.
The menu was a single page print-out with a collection of casual fare on it. I decided on a Cobb Salad, while Jason got a bowl of chili. I glanced at my watch, and then we settled in to wait.
It was only a few minutes later when a heavy-set man in a forest green collared shirt ambled into the room. His face was lined; his short hair was brown peppered with grey. He walked up to the bar and waved a hand. “Captain and ginger,” he called out to the waitress.
Her black pony-tail shook in apology. “We’re all out.”
His face tinted red. “What? But -”
She shrugged her shoulders. “We have Blackheart,” she offered.
The sharp downturn at the corners of his mouth showed his lack of enthusiasm for this, but he nodded. She placed the drink before him, then headed over into the kitchen.
I glanced at Jason before raising my voice to be heard over the TV. “Charles, why don’t you come join us? The next round is on me.”
His face lit up in delight and he took the few steps to our table in a slow, rolling gait. “I would be happy to,” he agreed, settling himself down on the seat. “Here for the turkey shoot, then? I’m up in about a half hour. Do we know each other from the Chamber of Commerce?”
I put out my hand. “I’m Morgan Warren and this here is my friend Jason. We were just having dinner with Richard last week over at Pleasant Valley.”
He perked up a bit. “Pleasant Valley, now there’s a course,” he grinned. “That ninth hole is a lot of fun. Great restaurant there, too.” He glanced back toward the bar with a snap in his eyes. “They always have Captain, when Richard invites me out there.”
“I’m sure they do,” I soothed him. “My lunch there was a lovely afternoon. Richard and I had a great time talking about what his childhood was like.”
The waitress came bustling over with the chili and salad. The chef had ringed the edge of the salad plate with jalapeno circles, interspersed with cucumber wheels topped with cherry tomatoes. He had even sliced the bottom off of each cherry tomato so it sat sturdily in place.
The waitress looked over at Charles. “Something for you?”
I waved a hand toward Charles. “Put it on our tab. After all, you’re a friend of a friend.”
He brightened and looked at Jason’s chili. “I’ll have some chili as well,” he agreed. When the waitress had gone, he confided, “Not as spicy as one might hope, but still, it’s tasty and warm.” He glanced out the window at the course laid out before us, shivering slightly. “It’s going to be a cold one out there today.”
The waitress was back in a moment with Charles’s chili, and for a few minutes we were all eating, Charles taking regular, long drinks of his cocktail. The furrows in his brow began to relax. I eased us into the topic.
“So Richard tells me that you hung out with his crowd – with John and Sam – in high school,” I noted.
He nodded, taking a nacho to scoop a dollop of chili from the bowl. “Yeah, he was always lording over us,” he agreed. “All that silly hobbit stuff. As if we were going to have a grand adventure or something.”
“And there was Eileen too,” I added.
He glanced up at that; his brows came together as if he were sorting out a problem in his head. At last awareness came into his eyes and his hand froze part-way to the bowl. “Wait, are you the woman who has been calling me?”
“I just want to hear about what high school was like,” I soothed him, keeping my voice even. “Sam and Richard have already told me all about it.”
He blew his breath out at that, shaking his head. “I’m sure they did,” he grumbled, taking a long pull on his drink. The ice cubes rattled emptily within the glass, and the waitress promptly came over with a refill.
He looked morosely at his chili before taking another bite. “I bet each told you how Eileen was passionately in love with him, ready to run off with him at a moment’s notice, and it was someone else’s fault that she died,” he groused.
My eyes lit up with interest. I leaned forward, careful not to pressure him. “You seem to be the only one who cares about Eileen,” I commiserated. “The others barely seemed concerned at all.”
“Of course they weren’t,” he scoffed, finishing off half his glass in one long swallow. “They had their plans and dreams. She was just arm-candy to them - a trophy to show off and discard. But she wasn’t like that.”
“Of course she wasn’t,” I encouraged.
His eyes unfocused. “She was a rational woman,” he remembered, his fingers running along the edge of his glass. “She was so unlike the other flittering butterflies at our school. When she said she’d be somewhere, she was there. When she made plans, she followed them through.” The corners of his lips turned up in a smile. “You should have seen how she kept her bank accounts. They were as neat as any accountant I’d ever met.”
“So she banked with your family?”
He nodded, stirring his chili absently. “About a week before the accident she came in to withdraw all her funds. I remember how upset I was. Had we done something to make her lose faith in us? But she was the gentlest of souls. She explained that she was preparing to go away and she needed to have the funds in cash to be able to make the trip smoothly.”
I raised a brow. “Where was she going?”
A soft smile traced his lips. “Hollywood of course. We were coming up on graduation and she was making her plans. She knew exactly what story she wanted to work on, too – the story of Helen Keller. How a woman who was blind and deaf could reconnect with the world and inspire others.” His cheeks tinged with pink. “I told her she would be fantastic.”
I glanced at Jason before looking back at Charles. “Did the others know?”
He gave a quick shake of his head.
“It was our secret. She understood what it was to rely on someone and to be relied on. I was the only one who knew, the only one she could trust.”
“So then the party on the beach was a farewell celebration of sorts?”
He nodded, his gaze again looking off into the distance. “Yes, and only she and I knew about it. It was a special connection between us. She promised me she’d write often, once she got herself settled into Hollywood. I could see it all, as if she were taking the first step onto a golden cobblestone path. She would
become a star, of course. I would go out to visit her. As her talents expanded, I would manage her finances. Take care of the business side.”
“She must have trusted you immensely,” I murmured.
He nodded his head eagerly.
“So then she wanted to head out in the canoe?”
He took a sip of his drink. “Yes. She wanted one last trip on the lake, to soak it in before she left. She wanted to spend one last evening surrounded by the scenery she loved so much.”
His eyes darkened for a moment. “And of course John, that grab-every-girl dandy, jumped up immediately and told her she would ride in his canoe. Richard was in the water a second after them, insisting he would take her instead. That left me to wait for Sam to get his rear end up off the sand and over to our canoe. The man had no stamina at all! He was huffing and puffing just to try to catch up. By the time we were out in the center, John and Richard were already at it. They practically had her by each arm trying to pull her in half. I shouted at them to stop it, to stop it! She just wanted some peace and quiet!”
He fell back in his seat, his shoulders slumping. I took a drink of my water, waiting, letting him share his story in his own time.
At last he began speaking again, his voice rough. “When she went in, she gave a heart-wrenching cry. I still hear it at night when I lay awake, staring at the ceiling. And then she was gone. There was the hollering of the others as they went in, the splashing of the canoes overturning, but there was not another sound from her lips.”
A thought came to mind, but I waited a long moment, allowing Charles to work through his memories before giving it voice.
“Did they ever find her money?”
“What?” he asked, baffled, looking up, seeing me as if coming back from a long way off. His gaze became more focused. “You know, I never thought about that. No, I never heard of that, and her parents were in the bank back and forth after that time for the insurance settlement and such. I would have noticed it with the paperwork we were doing.”
“How much was it?”
“About two thousand dollars,” he stated. “She worked hard, holding down an after-school job during the school year and then moving to full time in the summer. She was a waitress at the Blue Jay, and with her dependability and good service she made great tips.”
I imagined the tips were probably due to other assets she possessed, but thought it wise to keep silent.
His brow wrinkled in consideration. “That’s over eleven thousand dollars, in today’s money,” he added. “Quite enough for someone to get their start in life.”
I nodded, my mind tucking away the information. This could add an entirely new motive to the mix. If I could keep Charles talking, he might have yet more details for us.
“A tragic night,” I sighed. “If only Eileen had decided to stay on shore, how differently things might have turned out.”
He gave his head a sharp shake. “Eileen had every right to take a last trip around that lake,” he insisted. “She loved it there. She spent every free moment she could in the summer down at Marion’s Camp, enjoying the beach.” His eyes darkened. “No, it was John and Richard who caused her death. Their jealousy and need to possess her killed her. You should have seen them dragging at her arms. Each wanted to own her. They never understood her at all.”
The waitress came by to gather up our empty plates and he glanced up at the clock. “Tee time for me,” he stated, climbing to his feet. He looked between the two of us. “Well, I hope I have been some help for your project. She deserves to be remembered.”
“I will make sure to include all your insights in the story.” I pursed my lips for a moment. “Is it all right if I share the news about her desire to go to Hollywood?”
He nodded sharply. “Absolutely. It would serve those two right, for them to realize she was about to leave them behind. She was going to stream across the sky like Halley’s Comet, and the world would have marveled at her talents.”
I met his gaze. “I’m sure she would have been celebrated as a leading actress.”
His shoulders slumped, and then he turned, heading out to the main hall.
The bar area settled back down into a silence, with only the running patter of the TV providing background noise. For some reason my eyes settled on a whitewashed wood sign hanging on one of the walls – “cold beer.” It could have been there twenty years ago, or sixty. So much in life stayed the same, while humans hurried through it, so sure that their presence made a difference or held enormous importance.
Jason looked over to me, his dark eyes steady. “What do you think? Was he evading us because the missing money is the key?”
I tapped my finger to my lips for a moment. “It could be. On the other hand, it could be that the other boys really did not know that she was about to leave them forever. Did they somehow find out that evening, and the news stirred them into a frenzy?”
Jason put out a hand to me, drawing me to my feet. “So what’s our next step?”
I smiled at him as we made our way out to the main hall and then over toward the pro shop. “I think we should have another visit with John’s good friend Adam and powwow with him. He knew John best. He had heard John’s stories many times over the years. Maybe once we catch him up on what we’ve heard, something will stand out.”
Jason nodded, drawing to a stop. I glanced over, then smiled. A thirty percent off sign had caught his eye. “Need a new shirt?” I asked.
He shrugged with a wink, moving over to riffle through the options. “A good deal is always to be appreciated,” he pointed out. He looked over at me. “Maybe we should include John’s son, Jeff, in tomorrow’s meeting as well. I know his father didn’t share much with him about this event, but you never know what might jog loose a memory.”
“That makes sense,” I agreed, coming up alongside him. “So you’ll be there?”
“Where you are, there I will be,” he murmured, his voice dropping. The sense of it wrapped snugly around me, the most comforting of quilts on an evening glistening with snow.
