Colton's Secret History

by Jennifer D. Bokal

  “Because,” said Bridgette, “I’ve known him my whole life.” Lifting her bag from the floor, she slipped the file inside. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  Bridgette walked back to the ground floor and started up the street toward her car but slowed her gait. Just like it had been when she arrived, the blue sedan was still parked at the curb. The same woman still sat in the driver’s seat and continued to watch the hardware store. The woman’s intense gaze left Bridgette feeling as if she’d been grabbed by an icy hand, and a shiver ran down her spine.

  * * *

  For the second time in a single morning, a knock on the store’s front door interrupted Luke’s pre-opening routine. He looked up. Standing on the sidewalk, Yvette Colton waved.

  Luke hustled to open the door. “Hey, stranger,” he said. “I haven’t seen you in months. Is there anything I can help you find?”

  “Do you still own all those rental properties?” she asked. “I know someone who needs a place temporarily—for a month or two.”

  “I sure do,” he said. “When would they need the place?”

  “Soon,” Yvette said. “Like today, if possible.”

  Today? Aside from the hardware store on the ground floor, Luke owned the whole building, including the two floors above. Over the years, he had renovated the space into four apartments, two on each level. “There’s one apartment open,” he said. “Right across the hall from me. You’re in luck, the last tenant moved out over the summer. It’s been freshly painted and comes fully furnished.”

  “Sounds perfect,” said Yvette. “Can we see it at lunchtime?”

  Luke paused. The noon hour was one of the busiest for the store. Did he really want to risk losing customers by closing down at lunch? Then again, filling the vacant apartment would help make ends meet. Moving to the counter, he found a set of keys along with a copy of a boilerplate lease he always used. Sliding the keys and lease toward Yvette, he asked, “Can you show the apartment? If your friend likes it, they can just sign and bring me this copy later today.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to meet the new renter?”

  “I’ve known you your whole life. If they come with your recommendation, then that’s good enough for me.” Yvette took the keys and paperwork while Luke continued, “Take the door to the left of the store. Second floor, apartment 2A. Only door on the right.”

  “Thanks, Luke. I’ll keep you posted.”

  Yvette pushed the door open, passing a newly retired homeowner as she left.

  “Glad to see that you’ve opened early,” said the older man. “The missus just told me that we have company coming for Thanksgiving. She gave me a honey-do list longer than my arm.”

  The store didn’t officially open for another half hour. Yet, Luke wasn’t going to quibble about time. The day had started, promising nothing but problems, and in short order it had turned around.

  “Show me that list,” said Luke to the customer. “Let’s see what you need.”

  He led the older man down the paint aisle and wondered about the possible tenant. Should he meet with whoever Yvette Colton brought to the apartment? After all they would be a renter, and his neighbor, as well.

  There were other thoughts that were harder to shake. It was impossible to see anyone from the Colton clan without thinking of his long-ago school buddy, Bridgette. Then again, Bridgette had been more than his friend. The summer between high school and college, she had been his first love—his first lover.

  At the time, he had hoped their relationship was more than a fleeting romance.

  He’d been wrong. Bridgette went to college. A few years later, he heard that she was getting married. Then later came the news that Bridgette had been widowed.

  As he explained all the choices for interior paint, Luke couldn’t help wondering what had happened to Bridgette Colton?

  * * *

  Bridgette knew the way to Ernest O’Rourke’s house by heart and had no need to use her GPS for directions. The brick ranch seemed smaller than she recalled. Then again, the last time she was here, Bridgette was a kid and so her perspective had changed. The trim around the door and windows were in need of a coat of paint, and a carpet of leaves covered the yard.

  She stepped from the car and slammed the door shut. After grabbing her bag from the back seat, she turned to the house.

  “Beautiful Bridgette Colton,” a voice boomed. Ernest stood on the threshold. Like the house, he was smaller than she remembered. This time, it wasn’t just her memory. The once robust foreman was stooped and shriveled. He continued, “I recognized you the minute you pulled onto the street.”

  “Hi, Ernest,” she said. “It’s good to see you.”

  “What did I do to get a visit from my favorite Colton?”

  While striding up the walkway, she said, “I should’ve called before stopping by, but your name came up with work.” She paused, not sure what to say next. Lifting her bag higher on her shoulder, she continued, “Here I am.”

  “You don’t need to call, you know that.” Turning for the house, he gestured for Bridgette to follow. “Come in. I’m happy to help you with whatever I can.”

  The welcome was more than Bridgette had hoped to get. Ernest led her to the kitchen and pointed to a round wooden table. “Have a seat. Can I pour you a cup of coffee? Do you want a cup of tea?”

  One professional rule that Bridgette kept as sacrosanct was to always accept any hospitality offered by a person involved in a study. Despite the fact that she wasn’t thirsty, she said, “A cup of tea would be nice.”

  Ernest filled a kettle with water from the tap and placed it on the stove. “Won’t take a minute to boil,” he said, sitting in a chair across from Bridgette. “How’s your mom and your dad?” he asked.

  The argument from earlier came to mind. “Good,” she lied. “Same as always.”

  “Now, you said that my name came up in connection with your job. How’d that happen?”

  Bridgette had set her bag on the floor, next to her feet. She reached for the folder and set it on the table. “I’m in Braxville to look into a cluster of cancer cases.”

  Ernest sat back in his seat hard, as if she’d kicked him in the gut. His face turned the color of used paste. “Esophageal cancer, I bet,” he said.

  Bridgette nodded just as the whistle on the teakettle let out a long, shrill blast. “Let me get that,” she said, rising to her feet. Mugs were already placed on the stove. A canister set lined the back of the counter. One of them said tea. It took her only a moment to prepare a cup for each of them.

  “Here you go,” she said, setting a steaming mug in front of Ernest.

  Wrapping his hands around the cup, he asked, “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course.”

  “I had cancer two decades ago. Why are people interested now?”

  Bridgette blew on the tea before taking a sip. “Cancer of all kinds is to be expected in any given community. When there are more cases than anticipated, it’s considered a cluster. The DOH has mapped out nearly a dozen cases in Braxville. You are in the first group, those from twenty years ago. There is another group that has formed more recently and that’s what makes us nervous.”

  “Why’s that?” Ernest asked, giving Bridgette time to collect her thoughts.

  “Simply put, it means there’s something causing everyone to get sick.”

  “You don’t say,” said Ernest. “We used to joke—Tom, Bill and me—that working with your dad was what gave us cancer.”

  Cup halfway to her mouth, Bridgette froze. “What’d you say?”

  “Back when I worked for your dad, two other guys on our crew got sick at the same time as me.”

  Setting her cup aside, Bridgette withdrew a pad of paper and a pen from her bag. “Bill? Tom?”

  “Bill Warner and Tom Cromwell.”

 
Bridgette wrote down the names. She had yet to commit all the men from the cluster to memory but knew that these names were already on the list. “Do you keep in touch with Bill and Tom?”

  “They both passed away.” Ernest stared at the cup in his hands and shook his head. “The cancer took Tom about eighteen years ago. Bill had a heart attack four years back. So, his death wasn’t cancer related. Then again, Bill was always sick after what he went through.” He took a sip of tea and set the cup back on the table.

  “It sounds like you knew both of the men well.”

  “We grew up together. Went to school from kindergarten to graduation. We hunted in the fall. Fished in the summer. I got them both jobs at Colton Construction.”

  Bridgette placed a hand on the older man’s arm. His skin was dry and paper-thin. “Can I ask you some questions? If not now, I can make an appointment and come back.”

  “I hope you come and visit an old man while you work in Braxville, but I have nothing else to do right now. Ask away.”

  Tapping her pen on the pad, Bridgette wondered what question was most pertinent. Her mother’s desire for a new washing machine with a filter came to mind. As did the report that plastic ends up in the river, where filaments were ingested by the fish. And then the fish eaten by humans. There was no scientific evidence linking the plastics to cancer, but it did bring up an interesting question. What else might be in the water?

  “Do you still fish a lot?”

  “Whenever I get the chance.”

  “You always catch something?”

  “I’d be a poor fisherman if I didn’t.”

  “How often do you eat what you catch?”

  “Never,” said Ernest. “I’m a catch-and-release kind of guy.”

  Still, it would be prudent to test the river’s water. She made a note.

  “Have you ever smoked, Ernest?”

  “As a teenager, sure. Everyone did.”

  “I have a few questions and I want you to think back to your life before you were diagnosed with cancer when answering.”

  “Got it.”

  Bridgette had a long-practiced set of questions she asked everyone involved in an investigation. She began by asking, “Did you ever drink excessive alcohol? Take drugs not prescribed by a doctor? Finally, how would you describe your exercise routine?”

  “Did I ever get drunk as a young man? Sure,” said Ernest with a shrug. “In fact, most every Friday we’d all go out and have one too many after work. Take drugs not prescribed a doctor—never. In fact, I didn’t go to the doctor regular-like before I got sick. Now, I have to go twice a year, whether I think I need to be there or not. And exercise? I can’t say I was ever a runner or a gym rat. I carried roofing tiles up and down ladders for a living, so I’d say that counts as being fit.”

  “I’d say you’re right,” said Bridgette, copying Ernest’s statement, word for word. Before she got a chance to ask her next question, her phone pinged with an incoming text. She glanced at the screen. It was from Yvette. Bridgette wasn’t about to interrupt an initial interview to reply to her sister. Silencing her phone, she returned to her list of questions for Ernest.

  By the time she was through, Bridgette had taken over ten pages of notes and drunk three cups of tea. Her first morning of working in Braxville was almost gone.

  After asking her last set of questions, Bridgette rose to her feet and placed her notepad and pen into her bag. “Thanks for taking the time to speak to me, Ernest. I appreciate it. Will you call if you think of anything else?”

  “Only if you promise to come out and visit again.”

  “Of course,” said Bridgette, giving the older man a hug.

  Walking back to her car, Bridgette fished her phone from her bag and read the text from Yvette. I found a place. Fully furnished. In downtown Braxville. I can show you today at lunch.

  Bridgette sent her sister a reply. You’re the best. Meet in 1 hour?

  Yvette replied with a thumbs-up emoji and an address on Main Street.

  With her problem of housing hopefully solved, she focused on what she’d learned from Ernest. There was something he said that bothered her more than she’d let on. Three of her father’s employees had esophageal cancer. She didn’t have time to do the math, but she knew the odds of that being a coincidence were pretty lousy. Could there really be a connection between the men who developed cancer and Colton Construction?

  Chapter 3

  Bridgette still had an hour until meeting her sister to look at the apartment. With time to spare, she drove to the offices of Colton Construction. Her father’s large white pickup was parked in a reserved place next to the front door. She maneuvered her car into a spot several rows back and turned off the engine.

  Walking to the front door, Bridgette couldn’t help but marvel at the business her father had built. When she was a child, it had been a family-run operation—dad and grandpa building houses. Decades earlier, the old office had been a single trailer—drafty in the winter and sweltering in the summer. Grandpa kept lollipops on hand in case any of the Colton kids stopped by.

  Now the offices had a metal roof of cobalt blue. The glass-and-brick building sat on the same dusty parcel of land at the edge of town, but now took up over 10,000 square feet. Behind the office were several outbuildings. The original trailer had been converted to a mail room. There was a warehouse as large as an airplane hangar. A garage held the fleet of construction equipment. The staff had grown, as well. What started as two men and a handful of full-time employees had grown to a full office staff, dozens of construction workers, plumbers and electricians. Her father had even hired a full-time architect and planned to expand by bringing a civil engineer onto the staff, as well.

  Business was definitely good for Colton Construction.

  Pulling open the front door, Bridgette couldn’t help wondering what her grandfather would think of all the progress. Would he be proud? Or would he not see the expansion as an improvement?

  A receptionist sat behind a large glass desk and looked up as Bridgette entered. “Can I help you?” the woman asked.

  How long had it been since she’d visited her father at work? Long enough that Colton Construction had a new receptionist. “I need to speak to Fitzpatrick Colton.”

  “Can I tell him what this is regarding?”

  “I’m Bridgette,” she said. “His daughter.”

  The woman blushed slightly. “Your father mentioned that you were back in town. It’s nice to meet you.”

  Bridgette smiled. “It’s nice to meet you, too. And my dad, is he available?”

  “You can go right on back.”

  After thanking the receptionist, Bridgette found the office.

  Her father sat behind a large wooden desk. He wore a quarter-zip sweater over a golf shirt. Pen tapping on his bottom lip, Bridgette’s dad leaned back in a leather desk chair. Her dad’s partner, Markus Dexter—otherwise known as Uncle Dex—wore a gray blazer and a pristine white shirt open at the collar. He was situated in an armchair across the desk from Fitz Colton. The two men looked up, glaring, as she entered.

  Bridgette had no idea what they’d been discussing, but the tension was palpable, almost a physical thing.

  Tripping to a stop, she paused on the threshold. “Morning, Daddy. I need your help. Is now a bad time?”

  “It’s never a bad time to see you,” said Dex, while rising to his feet. He placed a kiss on her cheek. “I’ll let you and your dad catch up. Fitz, we can talk later.”

  “See you at the bonfire on Friday,” said Bridgette.

  “I heard your mom is serving ribs,” said Dex. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  She waited until Dex was gone before dropping into the chair he had just vacated. “Is everything okay? You and Uncle Dex seemed upset.”

  Her father waved away her question. “There’s a pol
ice matter at a site we’re renovating for the city. It’s never good if the police are involved.”

  Bridgette recalled her sisters mentioning just such an issue this morning. She struggled with what, if anything, to say. In the end, she decided on discretion and said nothing. “I saw Ernest O’Rourke this morning.”

  A look passed over her father’s face. What had it been?

  Surprise? Sure, but there’d been more. What was it? Hurt? Anger?

  In the end, she decided it was a look of regret. It was gone as quickly as it came, and Bridgette wasn’t positive that she’d seen anything at all.

  “How’s Ernest these days?” her father asked. “I haven’t seen much of him since he retired a few years back.”

  “Did you know that he had esophageal cancer two decades ago?”

  “Sure,” said her dad. “It was awful. Your mother and I were torn up over his illness. He wasn’t able to work for a few months while getting treatment. Of course, Ernest is a tough old bird and he kicked the cancer in the nuts—excuse my language—and came back, good as new.”

  “He said that two other employees of Colton Construction had the same illness at roughly the same time.”

  Her father shook his head, “I don’t think so. I would’ve remembered something like that. Must be that Ernest is mistaken.”

  “He was really good friends with these men.” She removed the notebook from her bag, scanning her notes for the names. “Bill Warner and Tom Cromwell. Do you remember them?”

  “Can’t say that either of those names ring a bell for me,” said her father. “But that was a long time ago. People come and go in the construction business, you know that.”

  “Ernest said they grew up together and he was the one who got them both jobs.” She paused and chewed on her bottom lip. How could she ask her father the next question without being rude? She knew the answer—there was no way to bring up the subject without being impertinent. Then again, she was doing her job—her relationship with the company notwithstanding. “Any chance that the men were exposed to carcinogens on the job?”