by Etta Faire
“I’d like to know as much about this night as you can remember,” I said.
He put his magnifying glass over the article. “I know that boat,” he said, voice loud and perky. I shushed him. “Bill Donovan’s Vanderflint 300.” He pointed at the paper. “That was a beaut of a yacht. I serviced it myself.”
“So he took it here for repairs?” I asked quickly, trying to get as much information as I could in as little time as possible.
“All the time. Well, when it needed something.” He smiled at the fluorescent lights above our heads. “We were the only shop on the lake back then. Still the best. Serviced everything but the government vessels. They had their own people.”
“What about right after the accident in 1957? Did he take it here around that time? July of 1957. And did you know the Linders? What about them?”
“Out!” his son said, pointing at me, even though I clearly had nothing to do with the flip flop smacking his cheek right now. Still, I didn’t argue the point, just went for the door.
“I’ll never know how you made this mess, but I ought to call the police.”
“I’m sure you have cameras. If you call the police, I want to see the recordings. I didn’t have anything to do with this mess, and you know it.” I motioned around the store on my way out. “This place is obviously haunted, by a ghost… who probably likes expensive sandals and hates being called a bum.”
I left. I hadn’t found out much, but it was at least a start. The weird fishermen statues watched my every move as I made my way out to my car.
Once I got in, I looked up the Vanderflint 300 on my cell phone while my car warmed up.
“That was fun,” Jackson said by my side. “We should do that more often.”
I nodded even though I was more interested in the yachting article I’d just found.
The Vanderbilt 300 was the epitome of sailing luxury when it arrived on the scene in 1955. Owners could accommodate up to six guests comfortably with two cabins below and a lounge area that converted into a bed.
“Two,” I said to the ghost who was still reminiscing about that time when he trashed a quaint souvenir shop on the lake, like it was already a part of his glory days. “There were only two cabins below. Just like I thought. Nettie and Gloria checked both of them before hiding in the master suite. So I can conclusively say Mr. Linder was not on board that yacht. I never saw him.”
“At least not alive,” Jackson chimed in from the passenger’s seat.
He had a point. And there had been a very large splash just before we interrupted the party.
Chapter 11
Strange
Mildred smacked her gums a lot during our conversation the next morning when I finally got in touch with her from my landline at Gate House. I didn’t know what the sound was at first. I thought she might’ve been kissing the phone.
I told her I’d uncovered stuff about the accident that made me know for sure it wasn’t an accident. She smacked her gums.
I told her I knew she’d been chaperoning the dance with Mrs. Nebitt and I wanted information about it. More smacking. At least I knew the woman was alive and hadn’t keeled over from the conversation. She sure wasn’t saying too much. Parker had been right.
“How did you know I was a chaperone?” she finally asked, suspiciously.
Mildred was one of the few people in life I could tell the truth to. A couple months ago, when I took a bunch of self-published books from her garage to paste in retractions about a suicide that was really a murder, Mildred told me she knew I was different, and that I was helping a ghost.
“Parker told me,” I replied. “But I’m also helping one of the ghosts from the accident. Gloria Thomas. Gloria told me she saw you there in a cute pink dress.” That was only sort of a lie. I didn’t mention the part where I knew what she was wearing firsthand because I had channeled with the ghost to relive her memories. Some things crossed the line of what was considered acceptably crazy.
“I wasn’t wearing pink. I hate pink,” she said.
She had been. She just wasn’t remembering right.
I continued. “If you can, I’d like a list of as many people as you can remember who were there that night. And if you still keep in contact with any of them, I’d love to get their story. I’m also trying to find out more about the Linders. Did you know them?”
There was a long pause before she answered. “I only kind of knew the Linders. They were nice enough, I guess. They kind of thought they owned the town, though. Them and the Donovans. Rich, and spoiled, and strange. I knew Eric better than Freddie. But neither very well. The rich stayed with the rich, you know? Strange family.”
“You keep saying strange. How strange?”
Gum smacking followed.
I took a deep breath. “It would really help if you could be more specific. Strange as in ‘eats a little paste’ or strange as in ‘hides in the bushes so they can ambush cats to shave for fur quilts.’”
“Let’s just say it wasn’t the good kind of strange.”
I did not know which of my examples was the good kind.
She lowered her voice. “You know my dad was the caretaker at the country club, right? Well, one time, when I was around ten, I walked in on Eric and his brother outside one of the caretaker’s sheds.” She paused to smack her gums. “Eric was chasing his little brother around with a saw. Thing was, Eric didn’t seem angry. He was just laughing, saying the punishment needed to fit the crime and he was simply and matter-of-factly going to chop Freddie to pieces. I think Freddie tore up one of Eric’s baseball cards or something. They were always doing strange stuff like that.”
“I was hoping for paste eating,” I said.
“My dad made sure all the sheds were locked after that.” Mildred paused for a second. “You know what?” she finally said. “If I find my old diary from that year, I can get back to you about who was there that night. I guess I can give you a list of people to contact.”
I salivated a little, knowing she had a diary from that year. Every part of me needed to see it, but I also knew if I asked for something so bold, she might shy away from even giving me the list of names.
I tried to choose my words wisely. “Is there any way you could, maybe, take some photos of those diary entries for me?” I asked. “You could omit anything too personal or painful,” I added.
A full 20 seconds of periodical smacking followed.
“Mildred, you weren’t the one who killed those people. You know that, right?”
“Of course I do, but it still tears me apart, even now.” She paused. “Debbie and I didn’t talk for years after that night.”
“Years?” I repeated.
I needed to see those diary pages.
Chapter 12
Warts and all
Five parking spaces. That’s all there were in the Landover County Public Library’s lot. Still, I never had any problems finding one. Sitting in my car the next day, I watched Mrs. Nebitt watching me. I didn’t even motion for her to open the door. I knew she wasn’t about to let me in even one minute early. Our friendship only went so far, and that woman was a rule-follower. I used the time to text Justin. We hadn’t spoken in days. I honestly wasn’t sure what to say.
Hey, just wanted to see how things were going. Give me a call when you can!
I regretted it as soon as I hit send. It screamed needy and desperate, especially with that stupid exclamation point at the end. What was I thinking?
I quickly scrolled over to Facebook before I obsessed any more about the intricacies of punctuation, and looked to see if I could find June Marie Thomas. There were three of them. I clicked on the first one. A young blonde in a bikini taking tequila shots in the Bahamas. I moved on to the second. June Thomas Gilman. The woman didn’t have a photo, but she lived in Glendale, CA. I decided to take a chance and sent her a private message:
Not sure you’re the June Thomas I’m looking for. If you used to have a sister named Gloria, please get back to me.
Thanks!
Once again, I agonized over the exclamation point a full minute after sending the message. At least I hadn’t mentioned what I wanted to talk about. I’ve found that revealing my crazy had to be done delicately in life, a lot like how they say frogs should be boiled. Apparently, frogs don’t realize they’re dying if you start out with cold water and slowly boil it. Not that I boil a lot of frogs. But the point is, that’s the way revealing my crazy had to be done. Just a smidgen at a time, so people wouldn’t realize I was boiling them.
At exactly 9:30, Mrs. Nebitt waddled over to the front of the library in her coat and boots, and unlocked the glass door. And I could only picture the young woman from the channeling, with her horn-rimmed glasses and hair in short puffy curls. I smiled at her when I came inside, staring at her, still picturing it.
“Is there something wrong today?” she asked, pursing her lips.
The library’s heat rattled on above us. Strange to think that just a few days ago in my channeling, it had been summer and this library had been in its planning phases. “I was just wondering if the library had any puppets I could use for the story time I’m doing next week.”
“Puppets?” she asked in such a startled tone I wondered if I’d accidentally asked for severed heads.
“Parker Blueberg says there should be puppets at story time.”
“Then Parker Blueberg should bring puppets to his story time. We do not have the funds for puppets. We are a library. We have money for books, and microfilm, and that’s about all.”
I could tell by her gigantic, yellowing computer monitor that she was probably telling the truth about that one. “I’ll see what I can scrounge up on my own. I think old socks still work as puppets, right?”
She didn’t answer. “I posted story time on the online calendar for Monday. Should I mention the old socks you’ll be dazzling us with?”
I ignored her sarcasm, and decided to get started on my research. Like usual, she followed me to the periodicals section because she didn’t trust anyone but trained professionals with degrees in library science to do research correctly. I turned to her. “I heard you and Mildred didn’t talk for years after the night of the boating accident.”
Her jaw moved back and forth under her saggy skin, and her brow furrowed. “Why on earth did you just ask me that? That came out of nowhere.”
Perhaps I was boiling my frog too quickly here.
“It just came up when I talked to Mildred.” I laughed like something was funny. “I mean, I know I shouldn’t pry…”
“Then it begs the question, why are you prying?”
“Come on, Mrs. Nebitt. You know I’m writing a book and I’m doing a chapter on the boating accident. You have a little part in that history. And I think it’s important to know what happened, warts and all.”
“Enjoy your warts,” she said, stopping at the huge, metal microfilm drawers. She tapped the cabinet and turned around. And I could hardly believe it. She walked right back to her computer and clacked away at her keyboard, like she was suddenly way too busy to care about the welfare of this library.
“I sure hope I don’t mess things up over here,” I yelled. She didn’t even shush me. Must’ve had her hearing aid turned down again.
I rummaged loudly through the drawer like I was tearing it apart, eventually pulling out a few boxes. I looked over at the woman behind the desk. She wasn’t even watching me. Good. That meant I didn’t need to follow her “one box at a time” rule.
I pulled out boxes from 1955, 1956, and the last part of 1957. Carrying three at a time so she might not notice, I brought them to my desk and hid them under the big purse I’d begun carrying to hold all my research. I had ten microfilm boxes, a record at this library. I was sure.
I scanned through one from 1956 first, looking for anything that seemed strange or relevant. I spotted the couple I was searching for first in an article in the society section. Dwight Linder was a tall, thin man with greasy dark hair and glasses. His wife had the kind of perfectly plucked eyebrows and straight-out-of-vogue makeup that made me want to dig the woman up and ask her how she pulled the look off. She looked professionally cute in every photo. I looked down at my sweatshirt. I needed to step it up.
There were lots of photos of the Linders, with the Donovans, with the Petertons, by themselves, all at fancy-smancy fundraisers and campaign parties, such beautiful people, smiling over their champagne glasses. Apparently, Mr. Linder had been a real estate investor and a financial planner, his wife a philanthropist. The Donovans and the Linders looked like they’d been good friends.
It just seemed impossible that the loud splash I heard that night was Bill Donovan enlisting a group of teenagers to help him dump his good friend’s body over the side of a boat. I could totally see him paying a couple of strangers to do that, but lugging dead friends around himself seemed way out of character.
They had to be staging the deaths. It was the only thing that made sense. After searching the rest of the reel and finding nothing, I rewound the microfilm from 1956 and carefully placed it back in its container, craning my neck to see the front desk again. Mrs. Nebitt was still busy pretending to be busy.
I set up one of the reels from 1957, several months before the accident, and continued my search with the society pages. I was hoping to see if Bill Donovan looked at all upset with his friend, Dwight. I couldn’t find even one photo of the Linders in the society section. There were a couple of the Donovans, but the parties didn’t seem nearly as full or swanky.
“Exactly how many boxes do you have there?” a stern voice said by my side, making me jump into the heavy peppermint breath that was already smacking my neck.
I screamed.
Mrs. Nebitt shushed me. Her usual scowl had the undertones of suspicion and disappointment this time. She snatched my purse off the table and the hidden stack of about six boxes toppled over.
“This is why this section needs to be supervised,” she said, making a tsk-ing noise while scooping up three of the boxes. She waddled over to the cabinets with them.
“I was going to put them back when I was done,” I called after her.
She shushed me again without turning around. I got the feeling I was about to be the first person on record to ever get kicked out of a library for quietly doing research.
“I’m mostly interested in the Linders, and their drowning,” I said when she came back and looked like she was going to continue her lecture. It worked. She opened her mouth like she was prepared to scold me about the boxes then waddled away without saying a word.
I opened the box labeled Landover Gazette July - September 1957 while Mrs. Nebitt straightened up the metal cabinet. I’d already checked through this reel, but I must’ve missed the part where the remains had been found.
The only article I found about their deaths was when the search officially ended. It basically assumed they were dead. No bodies. No proof.
The search for one of Landover’s most famous residents and his son was called off yesterday after more than three weeks. Dwight Lender, 48, and his 18-year-old son, Frederick, were last seen on July 20 on a boat owned by family friend and business partner, Bill Donovan.
Dwight Linder, a financial planner at Feldman Martin, was also a volunteer fireman for the county of Landover and a deacon at Potter Grove Methodist. However, Mr. Linder was probably best known for his grandparents’ pioneering efforts to bring Landover Country Club to completion in the early 1900s.
“This is a deep lake with lots of rocks and weeds,” a spokesperson for the Landover County Medical Examiner said. “It’s common for bodies not to resurface right away. The lungs compress and the person sinks, but as decomposition sets in, it could fill with enough gas to resurface again.”
“It’s probably also common for a body not to surface if the person is wearing a pair of cement shoes,” I thought as I scanned the gruesome article detailing the logistics of bodies decomposing.
The last part of the article broke my
heart.
Frederick Linder was headed to Yale University where he planned to follow in his father’s footsteps to become a financial planner and a real estate mogul.
He, like Gloria and Nettie, had been robbed of that if he really was dead. And none of it was their fault. I looked up. Mrs. Nebitt was still standing by the cabinets.
“Whatever happened to the Linders? Mrs. Linder and Eric? Did you know them?”
My phone dinged loudly from my purse, and she glared at me, but I could tell there was relief behind the glare. I’d given her an excuse not to talk about the accident.
I turned down my phone’s volume and checked to see if it was Justin who’d texted me back. It had been June.
Yes, I am that June. How do I know you?
I just about fell out of my seat. Here she was. A real, live connection to Gloria, and easier to find than I thought. Thank you, Facebook.
I quickly messaged her back: I am writing a story on the boating accident from 1957. I have reason to believe it wasn’t an accident and that information has been covered up. I would like to get the family’s perspective. Could we talk sometime?
I left her both my numbers then waited for her to call me. Nothing. After a minute of me staring at a blank phone, cursing in my mother’s voice that nobody had common-courtesy phone etiquette anymore, I texted Justin.
We need to talk about our relationship.
I sat with my finger over the send button for probably a good 30 seconds before saying “screw it” to myself and sending it off. He replied almost immediately.
