Unaccounted For

by Nan Willard Cappo

  But woke again when new voices started up near him.

  “That Tim Shoemaker’s widow?” a man asked from somewhere off to his right.

  Uncle Paulie’s rumbling voice replied, “Gloria, that’s right. And that’s their oldest boy right there.”

  Milo peered out from under his arm. The metal legs of a short beach chair were being worked into the edge of the sand about eight feet from him. Fatter, hairier legs appeared, and then paisley bathing trunks. The chair sank until its seat grazed the sand. The breeze blew the men’s words in Milo’s direction.

  “That was a terrible thing, Tim drowning,” the fat man said. “I was talking to him outside church just the week before. He knew I worked in Lansing, he was asking about the railroad money. It was in all the papers about then. I thought of him last week when I heard about the grants.” He lowered his voice a bit, but Milo had excellent hearing. “Keep this on the QT, Paulie. Wolverine’s on the short list to get the lion’s share of the money.”

  “How much are we talking?”

  “Maybe $300 million.”

  “Three hundred million!”

  “Shh! The committee chair owes Alf Farnon big-time. I heard he bankrolled half her re-election campaign.”

  “Detroit’ll be pissed.” Paulie chuckled.

  “No kidding. But at least the train will stop there,” the other man said. “If Farnon gets it routed through Valeene, just think of the jobs. Look what Cabela’s did for Dundee.”

  “High-speed railcars,” Paulie mused. “Who makes them now, Clyde?”

  “Nobody here. They mostly come from Europe or Japan. But Wolverine never made a fire engine before Farnon.”

  “And he made that work. Holy moley.”

  “Now remember—you didn’t hear it from me.”

  After a while Uncle Paulie said he could use a beer, and Milo heard the relieved creak of the sand chair as Clyde got up too. He was an usher from church. Milo hardly knew him without his long-handled collection basket. Thoughtfully, he watched him lumber after Uncle Paulie. Beachwear was not the best look for either of them.

  High-speed railcars. Milo closed his eyes. Vaguely he remembered his father talking about a train line being proposed last year, with the hub in Chicago. So many plans to help Michigan, and so little money to make them work. Apparently this one would get the money. His company would get it. What a great—

  His eyes popped open. He sat up. Was this “it”? Was this what Gordon Pearce thought would be a shame for Milo Shoemaker to wreck? How many other $300 million deals could there be?

  Milo couldn’t see how he could affect it one way or another. The grant award wouldn’t hinge on speedy data entry.

  On his cell phone Pearce had said, “He’s the guy’s son.” Milo had taken this to mean Pearce feared that Milo Shoemaker, like his father, was dishonest. But what if what Pearce feared was Milo telling someone about Tim’s fraud—so it got to the ears of the Awards Committee? Well. Milo could certainly understand that they wouldn’t want anyone in charge of grant money to hear even a whisper about embezzlement at Wolverine Motors.

  He lay back down. He hadn’t told his own mother that her husband was a thief. The railcar project was safe from Milo Shoemaker. Alf Farnon could count on that. Just like he could count on Milo—and Zaffer—to ferret out any gambling, robbing crooks at Wolverine Motors. Milo gave a faint grin. He’d once thought business was boring.

  Monday morning, Milo managed to get Leslie to send him on an errand. By 10 a.m. he’d found Zaffer at the far end of the main plant, scrubbing oil stains off the engine testing bay. Several stations away he saw the khaki coveralls of Zaffer’s boss, Harry Reinfelder.

  Zaffer looked up from the floor of the concrete pit. “How’s our little white-collar flunky? Come to see the real workers get dirty?”

  “Oops, over there, you missed a spot. Why are you cleaning this anyway? Engines drip oil. It’s just going to get filthy again.”

  “Ah, but not until after the fireworks,” Zaffer said. “On the Fourth of July Alf Farnon’s giving the board of directors and some Lansing big deals the tour of a lifetime. Down to the inside of Harry’s lunch-bucket, the way he tells it. It’s not gonna be Ben Zaffer who leaves dead bugs on the latest Scarlet Ghost.”

  “No Leonard Brothers Catering,” Milo told him. “I checked online, print directories, everywhere. Where’s the log?”

  As though on cue, Harry walked up. “No distracting the help, now,” he said genially. Harry was fatter than when he’d served in the Marines, and his bald head shone as though waxed, but even so Milo wouldn’t care to take him on. “After this he’s gotta chip gum off the sidewalk—don’t break his rhythm.”

  Zaffer hoisted himself out of the bay. “Hey, Harry. Do you ever lend these vans out to responsible employees? Besides me, I mean.”

  Harry scratched his thick, sunburned neck. “There’s not what you’d call a real policy on it. Mr. Farnon leaves it up to me. But sure, if someone asks me nicely and they aren’t a jerk, I might let them. As long as they bring it back full of gas.” He seemed to sense this was not just idle conversation. “You need a van, Shoemaker?”

  “No sir.” No time for a cover story; the truth was faster. “But I’d sure like to know who might have driven one last January. Somebody robbed our house, and my neighbor just told me a silver Ford v

  an was parked in our driveway that day.”

  “One of our vans?” Harry asked incredulously. “I don’t believe it.”

  “No, no, a catering van. Just like these, though.” He gestured toward a repair van parked next to the bay. “With a stick-on vinyl sign on each side, right about—” Milo stretched out both arms and framed the painted corporate logo—“here. A catering company that doesn’t exist.”

  “You don’t say.” Harry stared at him, then reached for a bulging blue binder labeled “Van Log.” His oil-stained index finger was running down the lined pages when the cell phone on his belt rang. “Reinfelder…of course it’s locked, where’s your key?...It doesn’t do you much good in your other purse, now does it? I’ll be right up.”

  He reached down a large Yale key from a glass-enclosed pegboard full of similar keys. “You look through this,” he said gruffly, and pushed the binder toward Milo. But he didn’t take his hand off it right away. “Had a little run-in with the IRS last spring. Paulie there sent me to your dad. Tim straightened it out, I didn’t have to pay those bastards any interest. And he didn’t charge me a nickel.” He turned and poked a dirty finger in Zaffer’s chest. “Put these back when he’s done and get to work, understand? I want to be able to eat off that bay.”

  “Thanks, Harry. If you wouldn’t mind not mentioning this to my uncle.…” Milo trailed off. Harry was out of earshot.

  Zaffer found the page for the first week in January. Van 1 had been in Arizona at a Rescue Vehicle Manufacturers’ Exhibit. Van 2 was up in Chicago doing a repair job for the fire department. Van 3 had been right here, as it was marked “In.”

  Van 4 was signed out for the whole week to—G. Pearce, Finance.

  Milo was staring at Zaffer when his own cell phone rang. Leslie’s voice was high and carrying. “Milo, where in the world are you? If I wanted those exception slips next Christmas I’d have sent J’azzmin.”

  ***

  Chapter 9

  For once Milo did not loiter in the stairwell hoping to run into Ellie, but texted Zaffer to meet him out at Mario’s Lunch Truck.

  He stayed quiet while they waited in line for Zaffer’s sandwich, but as soon as they were a safe distance from their fellow employees, the question he’d been pondering all morning burst from him. “Pearce had a van! What do you make of that?”

  Zaffer settled himself more comfortably on the lawn he’d mowed on Friday. “I asked Harry. Don’t worry, he won’t tell anyone. He says Pearce is slicker than slime but he’s a friend of Farnon’s, so Harry waives the No Jerks rule. Pearce borrows the vans to haul his boat from his summer cottage to storage
and back.”

  Zaffer unwrapped his meatball sub. The heady smell of onions and peppers made Milo look dubiously at his own peanut butter sandwich. “I checked the whole log,” Zaffer continued. “Pearce had a van out last spring and again last September. I don’t think he’s our robber, Shoe.”

  “Who moves their boat in January?”

  “Pearce, apparently. If that was the van the robbers used, they could have taken it while he was at the funeral. So I guess they could be from Wolverine—but it doesn’t mean Pearce was involved.”

  “We don’t know if he went to the funeral. I don’t remember half the people who were there.”

  “Fine, check that out. But I can’t see a VP from Wolverine Motors sneaking off to rob your house. Way too risky—think of the scandal! Although…” Zaffer took an enormous bite and chewed with fierce concentration, while Milo waited impatiently. “He could have been looking for some of that million your dad took. You know, protecting Wolverine. Kissing up to Farnon. ”

  Milo glanced at him sharply, but Zaffer did not appear to be mocking him. Why should he? There could be no resemblance between Gordon Pearce sucking up to the boss and Milo Shoemaker’s pure desire to be of service. To cover his momentary discomfort, Milo said, “If he thought he’d find money at our house then he’s no gambler. That million would have been long gone to pay off old debts, not finance future ones.”

  Zaffer’s phrase “protecting Wolverine” reminded him of something else. “Listen to what I heard at the lake after you left on Saturday.” Quickly Milo repeated what Clyde had told Uncle Paulie about the railcar grants.

  Zaffer whistled. “Three hundred million!” he said, just as Uncle Paulie had.

  “This must be the ‘it’ Pearce meant on the phone,” Milo concluded. “They don’t want the embezzling to get out, and I don’t blame them.” He shook his head and made a tsking sound. “Like I’d tell anyone.”

  “You told me.”

  “Someone who counts.”

  “Thanks.” Zaffer opened his bag of potato chips. “But Pearce said, ‘What if he’s a chip off the old block’—that sounds like he was afraid you might do the same thing your dad did.”

  “Yeah. Steal.”

  “Maybe. But stealing’s not the same thing as telling about stealing. Which one was he worried you’d do—steal, or tell people your dad stole?”

  “Hell, I don’t know.” Milo tore a crust from his sandwich and threw it behind the lunch truck. Sure enough, within seconds a furry, long-fingered paw snatched it up. The black-masked face examined the bread, then popped it in its mouth. “That is the biggest raccoon I ever saw. You think it eats ice cream?”

  “That thing would eat poop. Shoe, this could matter.”

  “Three hundred million. I’ll say it matters.”

  “Not that. What Pearce meant on the phone.”

  “What else could he have meant? You’re supposed to say, ‘Shoe, you’re amazing.’”

  “You’re something, all right.”

  Milo pushed Zaffer over on the grass. “I’m getting ice cream. And I’m giving yours to Fatso.”

  The hot, bright days slid by like diamonds after the dull coal-colored winter. How much of the glitter was due to the easy atmosphere in the Wolverine Payroll office, and how much to Milo’s occasional encounters with a certain copper-haired HR clerk, he did not analyze.

  He ran all of Payroll’s errands. To the copy shop in the basement, to Office Max for folders and clips more exotic than Wolverine’s standard supplies, to the executive offices on the seventh floor. Especially to the seventh floor—Leslie avoided Gordon Pearce like solitary confinement.

  Amber and J’azzmin endorsed this division of labor with enthusiasm and used their new free time to shop for shoes online. How could girls who hated walking be so obsessed with footgear? Though Milo was glad they were. Soon he’d explored almost every corner of the sprawling Wolverine complex, managing to stop during most errands at the long assembly floor in the main plant. One of the Margies, or Uncle Paulie, or Stubby or Fred, could be counted on to take a few minutes to show him what they were building in their skylighted shop. And sometimes he’d run into Ellie, who also seemed to prefer roaming the corporate campus to doing desk work.

  By now he’d learned a lot about Ellie Farnon. She’d turned nineteen in May, whereas Milo had been eighteen since March. Nine months was nothing, in the greater scheme of things. She claimed to be a great shot, which he might have dismissed as bragging—she wasn’t the modest sort—except she produced a membership card from her college pistol team. “Varsity,” she pointed out, in case he missed that. She loved cats and psychology, hated liars and road-hogs. This was her third summer at Wolverine. Milo would half-listen—he liked to hear her voice—while watching expressions flit across her mobile face, puzzling over the way sunlight through a picnic umbrella could turn hazel eyes from green to gold.

  The day after his and Zaffer’s discovery that Gordon Pearce had borrowed a Wolverine van in the same week of the Shoemaker house robbery, Milo had lunch with Ellie on the Living Roof. A brisk breeze ruffled the ground cover and sent dropped leaves from the potted shrubs scudding across the footpaths. It was 1:45. They were the only people still at the picnic tables. Ellie had eaten the meat from her sandwich and was busy shredding the roll into crumbs.

  “Something wrong?” Milo asked. “I just told you Jenny’s koala joke and you didn’t crack a smile.”

  “Sorry, I’m thinking how to leave early. I want to get to the cemetery before they lock the gates at five,” Ellie said. “It’s my mom’s birthday, but that’s none of Betty’s business.”

  Knowing how he disliked telling people about Tim’s death, Milo had never pressed Ellie about her mother’s. But she had brought it up. “How old were you when she died?”

  “Sixteen,” Ellie said readily. “She only lived six months after she was diagnosed.” The chemo treatments had barely slowed the cancer. “It spread to her lymph nodes like, instantly. My dad wouldn’t talk about it. Or he’d act like we’d had good news. I heard him tell my aunt how pleased the doctors were with the way Mom was responding to treatments.”

  “Maybe he was doing it for you.” In Milo’s experience, women tended to get hysterical. When his mother got upset it was best not to sympathize too quickly; to not even be there, if you could manage it. Whereas if Gloria had to keep herself together in front of strangers, she could. Milo bet he knew exactly why Alf Farnon would downplay bad news.

  “Hmph.” Ellie studied him. “That’s what my mother said. She never blamed him.” Farnon’s daughter still carried a grudge, Milo sensed. “So that’s my life so far. Mom gets cancer, dad and daughter soldier on. It could be worse. Think of those people in earthquakes whose families get squashed right in front of them.”

  This was Milo’s cue to say, “I’m sorry.” What he said was, “At least she didn’t kill herself. She’d have lived for you if she could.”

  “But…oh, Milo. Oh, dear. I didn’t know.” Ellie paused. Gently she asked, “Were there any signs…before? Did he leave a note?”

  “No.” Already he was kicking himself. “Trust me, we’ve thought. But he knew that road by the quarry. It couldn’t have been an accident.” Even if the insurance company thought so—they’d paid up without a murmur.

  Ellie waved her hand impatiently. “If he didn’t say anything, then you don’t know. I remember when it happened. That’s why I knew your name when you came in, because of how shook Daddy was when we heard it on the news—about them finding the car. He really liked your father. He’d been out in the fog that night himself, and he said he could see how someone could drive off the road. Anyway, didn’t the police say it was an accident?”

  Milo was so taken aback at this sudden brisk toughness he could barely thank Alf Farnon, silently, for being discreet enough to mislead his own daughter. “What else could they say? We didn’t want anyone to think suicide. My mother won’t admit it even now, but it’s what she belie
ves.”

  “You’re still angry.”

  “Oh, you think? When a guy takes the easy way out instead of sticking around for his family, they don’t need a note to know what it means. He didn’t love them enough to stay alive and fight.”

  “Fight what?” she asked.

  A gambling addiction. His wife leaving him. Fallout from stealing a million dollars from your father.

  He looked away, watching a red-winged blackbird hop along a footpath while he cursed the weakness that had tempted him to confide in this girl. Had he been trying to comfort her? Or himself? “I told you, we don’t know. Forget I brought this up. So tell me—how does the boss’s daughter sneak out of work early? In case I need tips.”

  “This is survivor’s guilt,” Ellie declared, ignoring his change of subject. “We read about it in psych class. You feel bad because you’re not dead, too. But it doesn’t help anything. And really, Milo—does it matter how he died? Dead is dead. Why torture yourself about what you’ll never know?”

  This stunned him. What was the use of being human, she might as well ask. Especially since Milo did know how his father had died. Ellie was the one in the dark here.

  “‘Dead is dead’? You think there’s no difference between suicide and an accident?” he asked.

  “There is, of course there is. But since you’ll never know which it was, why not decide it was an accident? An Act of God—that’s what fog is. Otherwise it’ll eat you up. Like it’s doing.”

  “Excuse me if I wonder whether I could have helped him. Maybe I should borrow your psych book, so I can read up on how to not think about that.” If this was what college did to your brain, he wouldn’t be missing much.

  She nodded maddeningly. “I know something you don’t know.” She paused, but he didn’t oblige her by asking what. She would tell him.

  She did. “Time passes.”

  “Get out! I didn’t think they taught that till graduate school.”

  “It does. At first you go from thinking you’ll jump off the nearest bridge if they ever let you on one by yourself. To wondering if you could do it, and how it would feel, falling. To driving over one and thinking, well, I won’t jump just this minute, not in this dress. And then one day you look over the bridge railing and it’s summer and warm and you think, wow, check out those sailboats. Against all that blue. If they’re not the most beautiful things.”