by Leslie Meier
“That would be great,” said Lucy, taking a seat at the faux wood kitchen table. The wall behind the table was covered with framed studio photos of children and grandchildren, and the refrigerator displayed snapshots and samples of childish art work. “I thought I knew everybody in town but…”
“We moved here about six weeks ago,” said the woman, opening the refrigerator. “I’m Millie Monroe. My husband got transferred. He’s a regional manager for Northeast Bank.”
Lucy knew Northeast Bank had recently bought several smaller regional banks. A lot of local people resented the change. “He’s got a tough row to hoe,” said Lucy, accepting a tall glass of iced tea.
Millie shrugged. “He’s due to retire soon, anyway. Sugar?”
“No, thanks. This is great.” Lucy took a sip and put down her glass. “I’m working on a story about the homeless man and I wondered if you might have seen anything unusual?”
“Well, I think getting your supper out of a Dumpster is pretty unusual,” said Millie. “I was horrified. It really upset me. Nobody should have to live like that. But by the time the police got here he was gone.” She took a swallow of tea and turned to Lucy. “The officer told me there was nothing he could do. They said he wasn’t breaking any laws and it wasn’t a matter for the police.” She stirred her tea. “I couldn’t believe it. I told them he was obviously mentally ill and ought to be in a hospital or something but they said there was no reason to think he was crazy and if he wanted to live like that it was his choice. As if anyone would choose to eat garbage!”
“Did you see him after that?”
“Every day.” She stared out the window. “I found it very upsetting.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“I tried. I went out and called to him, asked him if he’d like a sandwich or a piece of pie, but he took one look at me and ran off.” She sighed. “Then I heard he drowned in the harbor. The poor man. I just hate to think of him all alone like that. He must’ve had a family somewhere, probably missing him and worrying about him.”
Lucy’s eyes wandered over the photo collection. “I keep wondering why he came to Tinker’s Cove. It seems a funny sort of place for a homeless person.”
“What will happen? Will they have a funeral for him?”
“Maybe your church could organize something,” suggested Lucy. “Otherwise, I think the medical examiner keeps the body for a year or so and then it’s buried in some sort of potter’s field.”
“I’ll do that,” said Millie. “I’ll call the pastor right away.”
“Well, thanks for your time—and the tea,” said Lucy. “I’ve got to be going.”
“Good luck with your story. I hope you find out who he was.”
At the IGA, Dot Kirwan wasn’t much help, either. “It was all we could talk about when we first noticed him,” she said. “It was disgusting, seeing him rooting through the trash like that. So the deli guy, Skip, started setting stuff aside for him, things like unsold pizza slices and leftover salad bar and sandwiches, things like that. Dented cans of juice and soda, I mean, there’s a lot of food here that gets thrown out anyway. Instead of tossing it in the bin, Skip would put it on a tray that he set out on a chair.”
“Did the homeless man take it?”
“Yeah, at least I think he did. You better talk to Skip.”
Lucy definitely planned to do that but first she wanted to ask Dot about Tommy. She remembered him saying he worked as a bagger at the store.
“Before I head back to the deli I want to ask you about Tommy Stanton.”
Dot shook her head, setting the wattles under her chin aquiver. “That poor boy.”
“What was he like when he worked here?”
“He was a real good worker. Had a lot of get up and go. You didn’t have to tell him every little thing, like some of the other kids who work here, if you know what I mean.”
“I know,” said Lucy, thinking of the tactics her own kids used to avoid chores. Toby was a master of the slow-down while Elizabeth preferred a more aggressive, confrontational approach that featured shifting disagreeable tasks to her younger siblings as in “Why do I always have to do the dishes and Sara never does?”
“Did he ever talk about his family?” asked Lucy.
“No. He was real quiet. I used to try to get him to talk. I’d ask him about football and school but he’d just say things were okay. That was his favorite phrase. Everything was okay.”
“But they weren’t,” said Lucy. Nothing in Tommy’s life had been okay. Not his family, not football, nothing.”
“I know,” said Dot, looking grief-stricken. “I should’ve tried harder to get him to open up.”
“Don’t blame yourself. I tried, too, but he kept it all inside.”
Dot glanced at the clock that hung in the front of the store. “If you’re going to talk to Skip you better hustle. His shift is up in five minutes and, believe me, he doesn’t stick around.”
“Thanks,” she said, heading for the deli counter in the rear of the store.
Lucy knew Skip; he’d sliced up many pounds of cold cuts for her through the years. He was a big, cheerful man who always had a smile for his customers.
“What can I get you today?” he asked, adjusting his white cap and snapping his rubber gloves.
“I just want some information,” said Lucy, “about that homeless guy. Dot tells me you were putting food out for him.”
“Just stuff that was going to go into the Dumpster anyway. I figured I’d save him the trouble of diving for it.”
“Did you ever talk to him?”
Skip shook his head. “I hardly ever saw him and then it was only his back. He was like one of those feral cats. You can put food out for them and they’ll eat it but if you try to pet them, off they go. He was just like that.”
Lucy thought it was an apt comparison. She figured Skip was talking from experience. “That was a nice thing you did. The lady in the house behind also tried to give him food.” She looked at the rows of meats and cheeses in the display case. “What a shame.”
“Yeah,” said Skip.
“How’d the investigating go?” asked Phyllis, when she returned to the office.
“It’s just tragic,” said Lucy, slumping into her chair. “So many people tried to help him. The lady in the house behind the IGA put out food for him, so did Skip. He’d take what they left but if they tried to talk to him he ran away.”
“Crazy.”
“Maybe,” admitted Lucy. “But I still think he came here for a reason.”
Phyllis slapped a stack of dummies on her desk. “This is the fall home and garden supplement. Ted wants you to check it for typos.”
“Today?”
“Yeah.” Phyllis was sympathetic. “It goes to press tomorrow.”
Lucy sat down at her desk and reached for the phone. She’d promised Willie that she would pick up the girls today but faced with the entire home and garden supplement there was no way she could do it.
As she expected, Willie wasn’t pleased. “This is so typical,” she fumed.
“Well, it was sprung on me at the last minute. I’d really appreciate it if you could get them today. I’ll pick them up tomorrow and Wednesday.”
“I guess that will be all right,” she said, adding a big sigh.
Lucy didn’t get home until almost eight, long after Bill and the girls ate dinner. But she was greeted by Libby, who was a bit unsteady on her feet but wagged her tail as enthusiastically as ever.
“What did the vet say?” she asked Bill, who was filling her bowl with water.
“She’s gonna be fine. But she can only go out on the leash, no exercise, for two weeks. And we have to check her incision for swelling and redness every day.”
Lucy stroked the dog’s silky ears. “What did you eat, you silly girl?”
“This,” said Bill, producing a bit of plastic.
Lucy took it from him and turned it over, studying it. It seemed to be a rather old Massachu
setts driver’s license, from the days before holograms and digital photos, when they simply laminated a cardboard license with plastic. The name was gone, but the photo was still quite clear. In fact, Lucy realized, the face on the license looked a lot like Tommy Stanton. But it couldn’t be him, because his license would be a freshly minted Maine license with a black electromagnetic strip on the back. Then she remembered the wallet and felt for a moment as if Bill had slipped an ice cube down her back. The face looking up at her through the cloudy plastic was the face of the homeless man. A man who bore a very strong resemblance to Tommy Stanton.
Chapter 16
As she studied the tattered bit of plastic and cardboard Lucy’s thoughts suddenly came into focus. She’d suspected all along that the homeless man was connected with Mimi and his strong resemblance to Tommy certainly seemed to confirm it. It also served to deny Fred’s assertion that Mimi had no family. She did have a family, but not, perhaps, a family she wanted to acknowledge. Perhaps a very troubled family, if the homeless man was any indication. A family that both Mimi and the homeless man had left behind.
Lucy carried the card over to the kitchen sink and held it under the bright down-light there, but the name and address remained illegible. The license number, however, was faintly discernible and Lucy eagerly wrote it down. First thing tomorrow she’d call the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles and get the man’s identity. She would finally fill in the who in her story.
“Why exactly do you want this information?” inquired the voice on the other end of the line, a voice with a strong Boston accent.
“Like I said,” Lucy began, for the umpteenth time, “I’m a reporter with the Pennysaver newspaper in Tinker’s Cove, Maine. A homeless man was recently found dead here and I’m trying to identify him from a fragment of his driver’s license. All I have is the number and his photo.”
“What happened to the card?” asked the voice, pronouncing card without the r. Cahd.
“Actually, my dog ate it.”
“They’re plastic. That shouldn’t hurt it.”
Lucy rolled her eyes and leaned her elbows on her desk. There was no point in losing patience with the clerk, not if she wanted her help. All she could do was hope to interest her in the story. “It’s one of the old paper ones with a laminated coating.”
“Really? That’s before my time.”
“The dog’s teeth did some damage.”
“My dog ate my wedding ring but she pooped it out.” The voice paused. “I made my husband buy me a new one.”
“Good thinking,” said Lucy. “Actually, it made my dog sick and she had to have an operation.”
“Is she okay?”
“Yeah. She’s recovering nicely, but after all we’ve been through it would be great if you could help me identify this guy. Like I said, the license is all we have to go on.”
“Sorry. I can’t divulge that information.”
“Why not?”
“We only give information like that to law enforcement. It’s a privacy issue.”
“The guy is dead.”
“It’s department policy. I’d get in big trouble.”
Lucy didn’t want Little Miss Boston to get into trouble. “Okay, just one more question. Do you actually have the information from such an old driver’s license on file somewhere?”
“I dunno.”
“Well, thanks for your help.” Why did she keep saying this to people who didn’t help her at all?
“No problem. It was nice talking to you. I hope the dog’s okay.”
Lucy got the last word. “Have a nice day,” she said.
“That didn’t sound as if you meant it,” said Phyllis, whose long nails, painted magenta today with a scattering of glitter to match her harlequin reading glasses, were clicking against the keyboard.
“I didn’t,” grumbled Lucy. “It was classic passive-aggressive behavior. I wanted to wring her unhelpful little neck.”
“So much hostility and so early in the morning, too,” clucked Phyllis. “You should try to have a more positive attitude.”
“That’s what my exercise coach says,” muttered Lucy, reaching for the phone. Seeing Phyllis’s eyebrows shoot up she offered a quick explanation. “Fun and Fitness with Debbie every morning.”
Amazingly, Barney was actually at his desk in the police station. Lucy had seen it, a cluttered monument to disorganization, and understood why he tried to avoid it.
“Cruiser’s in the shop,” he explained. “Brake linings.” He sighed a long sigh. “I’m catching up on paperwork.”
“I’m sorry,” said Lucy. “Would you like a diversion?”
“Not if it will get me into trouble.”
“No trouble at all. I just want you to run a Massachusetts driver’s license for me. I think it belongs to the homeless guy. In fact, I’ll even give it to you and you can get credit for identifying him.”
“So who is he?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t know. All that’s left is his photo and the number. No name or address.”
“Where’d you find it?”
“In the woods. The dog actually found it, in an old wallet. She ate most of the wallet and the license, too. She had to have surgery.”
“Gee, that’s quite a story. But how do you know it belonged to the homeless guy?”
“Trust me. I’ve got a real strong hunch.”
“Okay, come on down,” said Barney.
He was chatting with the dispatcher when Lucy got to the station and promptly escorted her into an interview room. “It’s more private here,” he said.
“And neater,” observed Lucy.
“Yeah. So let me see it.”
Lucy produced the license and Barney leaned over it. “He looks a lot like Tommy Stanton,” Barney said.
“I know. I think they’re related. I think he came to town because of Mimi.”
“So you think whoever killed Mimi also killed him? That it wasn’t an accident?”
“Well, I’ve been talking to people who saw him around town and nobody mentioned he was ever drunk, and there was no sign of liquor in his little campsite in the woods.”
“You can show me where it is?”
“Sure. So how about getting his name and address?”
Barney picked up the phone and within minutes he was copying the information in his big block letters: Thomas Preston O’Toole with an address in Jamaica Plain. “The license expired in 1985,” he said, sliding the paper across the table to her.
“Mimi named her sons after him,” said Lucy. “Who do you think he was? A brother?”
“The age is right. He was about forty. She was a little older.”
“I wonder what happened, what split them apart?”
“I can run a records check,” offered Barney, just as his name was called on the station intercom. “I gotta go,” he said, “I’ll call you later.”
Lucy felt exhilarated, and slightly frantic, as she hurried back to the Pennysaver office. It was exciting when a story began to gel and she found the pressure both exhilarating and scary. But it was already Tuesday. Could she pull it all together by noon tomorrow?
Google was no help at all. There were no matches for Thomas Preston O’Toole, no matches for Preston O’Toole and 4,830 matches for Thomas Preston, most of which seemed to be random notations that included the name Thomas.
“Lucy, what exactly are you doing?” demanded Ted, who had been watching her scroll through the listings for some time.
“I Googled the homeless guy, but I’m not finding anything.”
“Uh, that’s a surprise,” he said, rolling his eyes. “He was homeless, that means he wasn’t connected to society, right?”
“Well, everybody’s in Google, right? Even me. And he might have been somebody important before he became homeless. Or he might have been named after a famous relative.”
“I think you’d be better off with a criminal records check,” said Ted.
“Barney ran one for
me. It came up empty.”
“Call the parish priest,” advised Phyllis, oracle-like from her spot behind the reception counter.
“What?” Lucy was puzzled.
“O’Toole is an Irish name and Jamaica Plain is in Boston, that means he’s most likely Boston Irish. They’re usually faithful churchgoers. I bet the parish church has some information, baptism, first communion, stuff like that.”
Lucy remembered Mimi’s funeral service at the Catholic church, and the fact that O’Toole had attended it. “That’s a good idea,” she said, casting a questioning look in Ted’s direction. “Just one phone call?”
“Just one,” said Ted. “Then you can follow up for next week’s edition. Right now, I need you to get the movie listings.”
“I’m on it, Chief,” said Lucy, doing a quick Google search for Catholic churches in Jamaica Plain and turning up St. Thomas Church. A call to the office, however, only yielded the information that the secretary was new to the area and hardly knew anyone and the priest was away on his annual retreat. Unfortunately, only Father Montoya could authorize the release of official church information.
“There is someone you might try,” she said. “Father Keenan retired a few years ago and he was here for years.”
“Where is he now?” asked Lucy.
“His health isn’t good. He’s at a retirement home for clergy in New Hampshire.”
Lucy perked up when she heard the address; it was only about a couple of hours drive away. She could go later in the week, after deadline. “Thanks so much,” she said.
“Movies,” muttered Ted. “We need the movie listings.”
Lucy was a little nervous going to breakfast with the girls on Thursday morning. She hadn’t seen Sue since the Labor Day cookout and was worried she was angry with her. But when she approached the usual table in Jake’s Donut Shop, Sue’s smile was as friendly as ever.
“Hi, guys,” said Lucy, taking her seat. “You won’t believe what happened to me,” she began, eager to tell them all about her adventures with Libby.
