Reunion at Red Paint Bay

by George Harrar

  It was an accident. That would be clear to everyone if he turned himself in, explained the situation, how one thing led to another. But if he had done nothing wrong, why hadn’t he called the police when Paul failed to surface in the water? Why leave the scene, go home, change clothes, act as if nothing had happened? There was the sure sign that something had happened—acting as if it had not.

  When Simon pulled into his customary parking space at the side of the Register Building facing the red brick wall, he didn’t turn off the engine immediately. He sat for a moment tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, contemplating the circumstances he suddenly found himself in. He was an unrepentant rapist, according to Amy. He was the reason a woman committed suicide, according to Paul Walker. And, quite likely, he had taken another man’s life, according to his own observation. Some problems had conceivable solutions. These problems seemed locked in place around him, no resolution possible. You couldn’t change death back to life. Perhaps you could escape, though. He could back out of the parking space and drive out of Red Paint, out of Maine, out of his life, at least for a while. Amy would probably appreciate some time off from him. The Register—it could go on without him. He imagined the headline—Editor Seen Leaving Town. Not Fleeing, a concession to the fact that he did still own the paper.

  The newsroom was unusually alive with activity when he finally entered the front door. Leaving town sounded adventurous, but he wasn’t the type to run away. He turned toward his desk and Joe Armin materialized in front of him as he often did, as if transmitted from some other place and re-forming himself in the air. “Hey boss, big news,” he said. “I heard it on the scanner—the police are over at the bay looking for a missing person.”

  Simon continued to his desk with deliberate speed, dropped his briefcase on the floor and picked through the mail neatly piled for him, as he would normally do. “Who’s missing?”

  “Some guy who was staying at the inn. They think he may have fallen into the bay and drowned.”

  Fallen into the bay, not pushed or punched. Simon slid his finger under the flap of an envelope and opened it. “Why do the police think somebody fell into the bay?”

  “Yesterday afternoon the guy made a seven o’clock dinner reservation and said he was going down to the bay. But he didn’t show up. They didn’t think much of it except that this morning Ken McBride, he’s the—”

  “I know Ken, Joe.”

  “Oh yeah, right, well he found the guy’s shoes and socks on the dock, so they figure maybe he was walking along there barefoot and fell in. I guess he was known for being kind of dizzy. I was going to head over there, check it out. That okay?”

  It had to be okay. A reporter would naturally follow up on the possibility of a man staying at the Bayswater Inn disappearing, perhaps drowning. “Of course,” Simon said. “Go get the story.”

  He assumed the body would be found. Red Paint Bay was no more than ten feet deep at the end of the dock, and the current there was weak. A person falling in wouldn’t drift far away. As he sipped his morning coffee and scanned the out-of-town dailies, Simon tried to work out the likely sequence of events. A body would be found and identified by Ken McBride as Paul Chambers, a guest at Bayswater Inn. The evidence would point to the simple drowning of a clumsy man (the impact of small trauma to the chin would go unnoticed). An investigation would be launched into who exactly Paul Chambers was and why he was in Red Paint. The Register would run his picture with the caption Do You Know This Man? Someone, a former classmate or close friend, if he had any, would probably recognize him despite his changed appearance. They would say that he was Paul Walker. People would remember his being at the reunion and wonder why, since he was the year behind. Amy, feeling freed from privacy laws by her patient’s death, would perhaps come forward to state that she had seen him professionally several times. It was unclear to Simon whether she would say more.

  He decided to eat at Red’s, his usual Friday routine, and sit at his customary spot, the red-cushioned stool at the far end of the counter. It was late for lunch in Red Paint, past one, so there were only a few customers sprinkled throughout the L-shaped diner. The waitress, Red’s wife, had plenty of time to lean back against the frappé machine and catch Simon up on local gossip. “Old man Rhodes,” she said, “he’s on his last breaths. Doris said they’ll probably put him out of his misery this weekend. It’s their seventieth anniversary on Saturday. She’s had her mind set on them reaching that for years, like it’s some kind of record.” Simon considered sending Ron over for an anniversary picture, but what would it show—a feeble old man wearing an oxygen mask and his equally old wife goading him to stay alive a little longer? People didn’t want to see that. “Lenore Jenks,” Red’s wife said as she picked up the glass salt and pepper shakers in front of him to inspect their levels, “did you hear about her?”

  “Can’t say as I have.” Simon scanned the menu, three pages full of fried clams and calamari, mushroom caps and mushroom burgers, pastas, curries, soups, beef and chops. Red was a versatile cook. But he couldn’t spell. Simon found new mistakes every meal—the spacy chicken salad, the mazzarella sticks, and eggplant parmagiana.

  “She says she knows what happened to that missing man out on the bay.”

  He kept his eyes on the menu, reading the nonsensical entrees, just casually interested in Lenore and what she saw. “What does she think happened?”

  “She says he didn’t just fall in on his own, he was pushed.”

  Simon thought it an appropriate time to look up, show a bit of journalistic curiosity. “How would she know that?”

  “She was out walking her dog just down from the pier and she heard two men arguing, then one pushed the other. That’s what she says.”

  Two men, that’s all she apparently saw, too far away to be identified by an old woman with undoubtedly bad eyesight. All just her wild speculation. “I assume she went to the police.”

  “Oh sure, but she’s always going over there with something she’s seen, like that UFO she said was hovering over the bay last month. Like nobody else would notice a flying saucer as big as a football field.”

  “That is crazy,” Simon said.

  “Lenore’s batty as hell, that’s why nobody believes her. I go visit with her twice a week, and the stories she tells. That woman could drive a saint to drink listening to her. Red says it’s my penance.”

  “Your penance?”

  “We all need to take on our fair share of suffering, and if it doesn’t come to you, you need to seek it out.”

  “That’s an interesting philosophy,” Simon said, and it surprised him, coming from Red’s wife. He wondered what he may have missed over the years only half-listening to her over lunch.

  “It’s not a philosophy,” she said, “it’s religion. I wouldn’t do it if it were just philosophy.” She reached down the counter for a water pitcher and filled his glass. “I better stop chatting before Red chews my head off. Know what you want?”

  What did he want? To reclaim his life from a month ago when he was just a small-town editor of a weekly newspaper in a corner of the country most people had never visited and didn’t care to. When he had a trusting wife who was smarter than he was, nicer than he was, and more honest, too. They had a high-energy boy who taxed their patience at every turn but whom they wouldn’t trade for a more compliant sort. A time when no one could think of him as a rapist or killer. Unfortunately, turning back the clock was not on the vast menu at Red’s Diner.

  “The chowder’s just made,” Red’s wife said, trying to prod him along. “You always like the chowder, Simon.”

  He didn’t feel like the milky peppery soup today. He didn’t really have the stomach for eating at all. But he knew it would be a mistake to start missing meals. He needed fuel to keep his mind sharp. He closed his eyes as he turned the page and when he opened them the first thing he saw was Mandarin Orange Salad. He closed the menu.

  “Number twelve.”

  “The mandari
n salad it is,” she said, “but we’re substituting apples today. The oranges spoiled. Nobody eats them.”

  “Fine, I’ll have the mandarin apple salad then.”

  She retreated through the kitchen door, and Simon’s gaze drifted toward the side window as a car pulled in, a cruiser. He turned back to the counter and cradled his water glass. He wished he had something else to do with his hands, breadsticks to eat, rolls to butter. He felt like he was in some old movie, a man on the run caught in a diner, the cops circling the place, guns drawn. It was a frightening feeling, being pursued, even if it was just a figment of his imagination. The door opened, jangling the bells, and he felt a brief rush of air sweep down the diner. His face flushed, the blood rushing to his brain, preparing him to be on guard.

  “Simon, how’s it going?”

  He looked up into the big smiling face of Tom Garrity, Red Paint’s longtime police chief. Tom always smiled, so a smile meant nothing. His blue uniform seemed crumpled, as if he routinely slept in it. The badge on his chest was abnormally shiny, like a child’s toy.

  “Hey, Tom, grab a seat.”

  Garrity slid his bulky leg over the adjoining stool and shifted until he was steady, his weight evenly distributed.

  “I didn’t know you dined at Red’s,” Simon said, a little joke. Nobody dined at Red’s.

  “I stop in everywhere, you know. Can’t play favorites.” He waved at Red’s wife and made a pouring motion.

  She came down the aisle grabbing a pot of coffee and cup. “Can I get you some pie with this, Tommy?” Red’s wife was familiar with everyone. “Blueberry today.”

  “No thanks,” he said, patting his belly, “Peg’s got me on a diet.”

  He adjusted the gun on his hip, a purposeful move, Simon thought, but for what—to assert authority? He was probably just stopping in for coffee. Cops did that all the time. “So,” Garrity said, “how’s the news game?”

  “Actually it’s been pretty slow this summer, Tom. We could use a hot story.”

  “Maybe I have one for you. You know we’re looking for a man from over at the inn who seems to be missing.”

  “Yeah, I sent Joe Armin over to cover it. We’ll play the story up on page one if that helps, let people know to keep a lookout for him.”

  The chief sipped his coffee. “The man’s name is Paul Chambers. Know him by any chance?”

  “Chambers? I don’t recognize the name.”

  “No?”

  Simon didn’t like the pointed follow-up, as if the chief was offering him a second chance at telling the truth. What was he supposed to say, You know, there was a guy I knocked into the water at the dock—I wonder if it could be this Chambers fellow you’re looking for? “Why are you asking, Tom?”

  “He left a note in his room.” The chief patted his jacket where the paper apparently resided. “Mentions your name.”

  “Really? Can I take a look?” Simon put out his hand.

  Garrity looked at it. “Sorry.”

  Red’s wife arrived with the mandarin salad, a huge plate of greens, nuts, and apple. “Anything else I can bring you?”

  “This is plenty.”

  Garrity waited till she was out of earshot. The chief was always discreet. “Were you planning to meet anyone yesterday afternoon, Si?”

  He speared a piece of apple. “I meet a lot of people every day.”

  “How about this guy?” The chief pulled a picture from the same pocket that he had patted before. Simon wondered what other evidence might be hidden there. “The one in the middle,” Tom said, “with the mustache. That’s Paul Chambers.” There was Paul Walker, standing under the TWENTY-FIFTH REUNION banner, along with a half-dozen others, arms linked, like silly old friends. He was the only one not smiling.

  “If he was at the reunion I guess I saw him, that’s why he seems kind of familiar. But he’s not from our class, unless he’s really changed a lot, including his name.”

  “So you don’t recognize him?”

  Simon tilted the chief’s hand up a little to catch a better light on the picture. His brain sped through the options, running down side streets into dead ends, doubling back, trying to find the right way forward. It would be easier if he could figure out how much Garrity already knew. That would take some probing while still being evasive, what any journalist could do. “I don’t understand why you’re asking all these questions, Tom. What’s going on?”

  The chief pushed away his coffee, the cup still almost full. “We’re trying to piece together what this fellow was doing in Red Paint and where he is now. It would be a great help if you could tell us anything you know.”

  “Like I said, he looks familiar, but with that mustache and the way his hair is, I’m not sure.”

  “I’ve got kind of a puzzle here,” Garrity said. “The note he left in his room, that’s about the only lead we’ve got.”

  No mention of Lenore Jenks, Simon noted. Was the chief withholding that information? “I’d like to help, Tom. Maybe if you told me what the note says …”

  The chief thought a moment. “It says, ‘Simon Howe knows the truth.’ ”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Huh,” Simon said, “that’s pretty bizarre.” But not totally incriminating, if that really was all that Paul had written. Suggestive, certainly, hinting at a connection, but perhaps all just in his mind, a fantasy.

  “He left money in the envelope to pay for what he still owed for his stay,” the chief said, “so it seems he wasn’t planning to come back to the inn.”

  Simon picked through the thicket of greens to find more pieces of apple. It was the type of thing one did to appear unfazed during the course of a conversation, act interested in something else. “You figure he was planning to commit suicide?” A comment from the side of his mouth, chewing on the apple.

  “That’s one possibility. But his clothes are gone from his room. And we can’t locate his car.”

  “That is a puzzle,” Simon said, and he meant it. Why had Paul cleaned out his room and moved his car prior to coming to the dock?

  “So, any idea why he mentions you in the note?”

  “No,” Simon said, and he wondered how one should say that word, with what speed and sureness, what steadiness of gaze, how often to blink, the total expression that would make a lawman believe you. He would like to try again, with more confidence in his voice this time, no thinking necessary. “I guess the guy could have read my name on my column in the Register. I get crazy letters sometimes. But maybe you should talk to Amy. I didn’t want to mention this, for confidentiality reasons, you know, so I can’t really say that he was a patient of hers, but you should talk to her.”

  “He was a patient?”

  The tenses again, always revealing, always dangerous. “He is missing, right, and Amy said—” Here he hesitated, as if struggling with the ethics of the situation. “—I really shouldn’t be talking about him at all, you know. You’ve got me in a difficult position, Tom. All I can say is that Amy had a patient who gave her some trouble, on Monday I think it was. Said she called 911, so it should be in your log.”

  “I’ll check that,” the chief said as he turned his coffee mug halfway around. “And you’re saying you don’t know anything yourself about this guy?”

  Simon gave a little shake of his head, perhaps a no, perhaps just not answering. “Talk to Amy, Tom. Maybe she can help you.” Garrity stood up, took a couple of dollars from his pocket, and lay them on the counter. “You want me to run that picture for you next edition?” Simon said. “We can blow up his face, put it on page one.”

  Garrity hitched up his holster, which had slid below his belly. “I don’t figure that will help right now.”

  Why would he say that? Publicity always helped in missing person cases, unless the person wasn’t able to be found. Simon put out his hand. “Never know.”

  “That’s true, I guess.” The chief dropped the photo on the counter, face up.

 
; When Simon stepped outside into the parking lot at Red’s, the sun was shining brightly, as the morning weather forecast had promised, but with a few clouds hanging in the eastern sky, drifting inland, an uncommon direction for this time of year. The clouds were light on top and dark across the bottom, giving them the illusion of a solid object. He wondered if it was true what he had read, that a cumulous cloud could weigh as much as one hundred elephants. It was hard to look at clouds the same, knowing that one fact about them.

  He flipped open his cell phone and dialed Amy. The call immediately kicked over to her message, as usual. He could count on it, and he often did when he didn’t want to deal with her questions. “Hey Amy, it’s me. Listen, I was just talking to Tom Garrity about the guy missing at the lake. It seems like it might be that client of yours you were telling me about. Tom’s going to get in touch with you, I think, since I hinted that you were seeing the guy. I know you can’t really say anything for privacy reasons, right? I told Tom that. But he’ll probably still try to coax something out of you. He wants to find out where the guy is, and you don’t know that, so you can’t really help anyway. Okay, this is kind of a long message. Call me if we need to talk.”

  When he clicked off he wondered if he had been clear enough—don’t tell the police anything.

  Joe Armin reported in by phone. “They’re getting divers out to search the bay,” he said. “Apparently they’re checking on a report of someone falling off the dock Monday afternoon.”

  Falling off—still the phrasing of an accident. Apparently Lenore was not being believed.

  “Yeah,” Joe said in the excited tone of a young reporter on the scene, “a counselor over at the Boy Scout camp spotted him.”

  Simon’s hand stiffened on the phone. It amazed him, how hearing something threatening could instantly manifest in a physical reaction, the tightening of muscles. “How could he do that, Joe? You can’t see across the bay.”