The Skeleton Box sl-3

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The Skeleton Box sl-3 Page 14

by Bryan Gruley


  “Tell me, buddy,” I said. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “When?”

  “When you let this Breck guy cut your balls off and take over?”

  I didn’t mean to embarrass Tatch, but his pause told me I probably had.

  “Shit, you know. We were living on fumes out there. Mr. Breck came with cash. I couldn’t look at another can of SpaghettiOs.”

  “So, was it him at my mom’s?”

  “He was at the camp Sunday night. Everybody said so.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Shit, I don’t know. I wish to heck Mr. Breck would’ve just picked up.”

  “You want me to call Terence?”

  Terence Flapp was a local lawyer who knew Tatch only too well.

  “You sure about what you said about Tex? He ain’t going to let him play?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “That’s bullshit, man. Yeah, call Terence.”

  “How’s the digging going?”

  “Oh, don’t get me start-Hey, wait-”

  The call ended. I dialed Flapp and left a message.

  As I walked up to the press conference, I heard Whistler asking whether the sheriff would confirm Channel Eight’s report about Father Nilus Moreau. His question surely annoyed the hell out of Tawny Jane, who was standing in the semicircle of reporters, photographers, and cameramen gathered around the lectern, kept at a distance by Catledge and Darlene.

  Dingus peered over the half-moon glasses perched on his tulip bulb of a nose. “I have no comment on that report, sir,” he said in his Finnish lilt. “I can tell you, however, that the department has conducted administrative discipline on certain personnel.”

  “Deputy Frank D’Alessio?” Whistler said.

  “Next question.”

  “So,” Whistler persisted, “you cannot confirm the Channel Eight report, and we should regard it as inaccurate? Is that what you’re saying?”

  I glanced at Tawny Jane. She kept her eyes on Dingus, pointedly ignoring Whistler’s insult so as to assure the rest of us that her scoop was good.

  Dingus ignored Whistler and pointed at Chester Pavich, a young reporter from Petoskey. With shirttails flying out from beneath his corduroy jacket, Pavich always looked like he was in a hurry, which could’ve meant that he had ambition and was going places, or that he was struggling to keep up and doomed forever to chase chicken-dinner news at dinky papers up north. Both were familiar to me.

  He asked, “Is the man you’ve arrested considered a suspect in the murder of Paula Bontrager?”

  Phyllis, I thought, and then, Doomed.

  “As I said,” Dingus said, “we have in custody a person of interest.”

  “Hold on.” It was Tawny Jane, her microphone thrust forward like a sword. “Sheriff Aho, would you tell Channel Eight’s viewers whether charges will be filed?”

  “Ma’am,” Dingus said without looking at her, “as a deliberative police force, we need to investigate first, charge second, if we charge at all. Operating on rumors and speculation would be a poor use of taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars.”

  Tawny Jane hated to be called ma’am, and Dingus knew it. “Well then,” she said, “what other than rumors and speculation are the basis of this arrest?”

  “We had an anonymous tip and, upon further investigation, it turned out to be more than a rumor. That’s all I can say for now.”

  I heard a car passing and looked behind me. A Jeep slowed almost to a stop before moving along. Breck. I pictured him gathering the adults and children at the camp, fixing them with his cross-eyed stare, telling them the townspeople were determined to stop them from living their lives, from practicing their faith, and now had captured one of their own to demonstrate their power and instill fear.

  Tawny Jane furrowed her penciled-in brows and cocked her head just so. “Sheriff Aho, isn’t this just a reaction to your opponent’s charges that you haven’t responded aggressively to the recent break-ins? To the point that now a murder has occurred?”

  “Excuse me, Sheriff,” Whistler interrupted. Tawny Jane looked at him as if she might shove her mike up his ass. “Your opponent has told the Pilot you may not have the right person in custody. Would you like to comment on that?”

  Dingus’s face turned redder than a goal light. “I would not.”

  “So do you or don’t you believe you’ve arrested the Bingo Night Burglar?”

  Tawny Jane jumped in. “Will you tell our viewers that your investigation has nothing to do with a certain Father Nilus Moreau?”

  I looked at Darlene. She must have had enough of the back-and-forth-I certainly had-but her face remained expressionless. I thought of her waking that morning and remembering, in an instant, that her mother was gone. Or maybe she hadn’t slept, maybe not since the night of the break-in, as the creases beneath her eyes suggested. She was tougher than me, tougher than anyone I knew, to stand there next to Dingus without losing it, without coming close, in front of all the professional voyeurs. Her mother would have been proud. I sure was.

  “I cannot and will not comment on speculation,” Dingus said.

  “Will you be giving us regular updates?” Pavich asked.

  Dingus pursed his lips, pressed his hands together, and forced a smile. “The Pine County Sheriff’s Department is nothing if not transparent,” he said. “But we hope that all of the God-fearing people of Pine County will remain calm and rational as we sift through the evidence.”

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “Thank you.”

  Darlene and Catledge followed Dingus back inside.

  “Where’d you find him?” Tawny Jane asked me as Whistler shuffled off to his Toronado. He’d whispered that he was going to put a story online and I should delay Channel Eight.

  “He’s quite a character,” I said.

  “You were awfully quiet today.”

  Generally, I didn’t say much at press conferences. It gave lousy reporters an edge if decent ones were asking questions. But I said, “It was more fun to watch you and Luke go at it.”

  “Is that supposed to be funny?”

  “No,” I said, then realized she was referring to “go at it,” and said, “Sorry.”

  She pulled her hair back with the hand holding her microphone, revealing silver wisps along her neck. Seeing Tawny Jane Reese up close always made me think, man, she must have knocked them dead when she was twenty-five, how did she get stuck up here? I had heard that she still stayed late at the station to make tapes she sent to stations in every major market in the country, hoping someone would notice.

  Whistler’s car pulled away.

  “Forget it,” she said. “How’s your mom?”

  “OK.”

  “It’s one heck of a story.”

  “Yeah. Nice scoop last night, by the way.”

  I was thinking I’d try to scoop her back with what I’d learned about Nilus’s serial womanizing, as soon as I figured out what it meant.

  She shifted her Channel Eight equipment bag from one shoulder to the other. “I don’t know what it’s got to do with anything, but I’ll take it. It’s been getting a lot of Web traffic.”

  “Really? I never keep track of that stuff.”

  “Maybe because your job is safe.”

  “No safer than yours.”

  “Really? Do they want to make you the weather bitch?”

  “Huh?”

  “They want me to do the weather, Gus.”

  “You mean like-”

  “Yes. They want me to give up news and become the weather bitch. You know, smiling and waving my arms around like a goddamn cheerleader.”

  “Jesus. Why?”

  “I don’t know. My numbers are down, they have new bimbos to try out, they want to yank my salary back to poverty level. Depends what time of day you ask. Either I beat everybody on this story or I’m going to have to get new boobs.”

  She wasn’t kidding. No wonder she was sleeping with the co
mpetition.

  “Sorry about that, T.J.”

  “You know,” she said, “when you came back here a few years ago, I figured you were going to make a quick stop, get your shit together, and get out of Dodge.”

  “I probably thought that, too. But here I am.”

  “Yeah, well, I am not going to be the weather bitch.” She stuffed the microphone in her bag. “See you in the trenches.”

  FIFTEEN

  My mother picked up as I was parking on Main in front of the Pilot.

  “Is that you, Gussy?” she said.

  “Are you at my place?” I said.

  “I am. Why are all these boxes here? There’s nowhere to sit.”

  On the floor and the sofa in my living room were four or five boxes I hadn’t gotten around to unpacking. “Sorry,” I said. “I’ll be there in a little while.”

  “You’re not going to throw away your old report cards, are you?”

  The old hockey tape box on the sofa was filled with junk from my boyhood that Mom had salvaged. “I’ll look through it soon,” I said. “I’ve been kind of busy.”

  Mom told me about her day as I went inside. She and Millie had had a nice late breakfast in an empty Audrey’s Diner and done some shopping and then gone back to Millie’s and played cribbage and talked.

  “When’s the funeral?” I said.

  “Pardon me?”

  “You said you were going to Murray and Murray to see about arrangements.”

  “Oh, yes. Millie called over there. They said Darlene was handling it.”

  I couldn’t imagine how. “I thought you were helping.”

  “Dingus arrested the Edwards boy?” She was changing the subject. “Whatever for?”

  “I’m looking into it,” I said.

  Neat stacks of mail crowded the Pilot ’s L-shaped front counter. The baskets and bouquets were standing on the floor in the corner. Whistler must have tidied up.

  “Can you imagine what Bernice would think?”

  If she were around, Tatch’s mom would have been at the press conference shouting biblical quotes. “I’ll get to the bottom of it,” I said.

  “Good,” Mom said. “Tonight we have to go somewhere.”

  The door swung open and the postman dropped a bundle of mail bound with rubber bands at my feet. “Do you need something at the store?” I said.

  “No. As soon as it’s dark, we have to go. Before someone else gets there.”

  “Someone else gets where?” I said, but Mom had hung up. “Everything’s a mystery,” I said to myself, shaking my head. I turned off my phone and picked up the bundle of mail. “Luke?” I called out. There was no answer.

  A turquoise sweater, fuzzy with lint, one button missing, was draped over the back of the stool facing Mrs. B’s computer. I set the bundle on the chair and idly punched the space bar on her keyboard. The screen stayed black.

  Mrs. B had stood there greeting customers, trading gossip, taking classifieds, paying the weekly bills until Media North automated the ads and bills and Philo asked me if the Pilot really needed Mrs. B anymore, if we shouldn’t just stand a placard on the counter with a list of phone numbers that visitors could call for their needs. “And who exactly will explain to Mrs. Evangelista why we moved the crossword from A2 to A8 and have her go back out the door smiling?” I had said.

  Philo never brought it up again.

  Next to Mrs. B’s computer stood three photographs in fake wooden frames she probably had bought off the dollar shelf at the drugstore. One was of Darlene, looking solemn on the day of her graduation from police academy, her hair in a bun, her deputy’s hat cradled in the crook of an elbow. Another showed her as a girl crouched inside an inner tube on a boat dock and throwing her pigtailed head back to laugh as her father tickled her from behind.

  The last photo was of Mrs. B with my mother and Soupy’s mom. The frame was etched all around with the words “friends” and “forever.” The women were standing with their arms around one another, my mother at the center, in front of a minivan. I tilted the picture to see their faces better in the shadows. They were all smiling.

  I had taken that picture.

  It was a Friday in July and I had taken a long weekend off from the Times to come north and see Mom and relax by the lake. I was sitting down the bluff on her dock with the Pilot and a cup of coffee when I heard a woman’s shriek and then another. I dropped the paper and ran up to see Mrs. Campbell, all two-hundred-some pounds of her, lying on her back next to a minivan in Mom’s driveway. She was laughing. Mom and Mrs. B were doubled over laughing. “Curly, Curly, Curly,” Mrs. B kept saying between gasps of laughter, using Mrs. Campbell’s nickname.

  “What’s going on?” I said, and all of them laughed even harder. Mrs. Campbell got to one knee. She had a wicker purse the size of an Easter basket looped around one arm. Tears glistened on her plump cheeks. Mom and Mrs. B helped her to her feet. They’d been trying, without success, to lift her into the minivan. “Dear lord, Louise,” Mom said. “If we don’t get you in that van, you’re never going to win that million dollars you promised Angus.” That brought more peals of laughter. I shook my head and was starting back down to the lake when they asked me to snap a photo.

  They had been friends for as long as I could remember. Mrs. Campbell would refer to them as the Three Musketeers and Mom would say, on cue, “Oh no, dear, we are definitely the Three Stooges.” Mrs. Campbell was Curly, Mrs. B was Larry, and my mother, of course, was Moe.

  Sometime after Soupy’s dad died, July 4, 1997, something happened between them that Mom chose not to speak of, at least not with me. Suddenly they no longer were an inseparable trio. Mom still did things with Mrs. B, and Mrs. B with Mrs. Campbell, but Moe and Curly no longer spoke. Thanksgiving at our house that year was quiet, with too much room around the table in Mom’s dining room. I missed Mrs. Campbell’s creamed onions and cinnamon chocolate cake.

  When I asked Mom why Soupy and his mother hadn’t come, she told me she’d simply decided to have a smaller dinner and, as was her practiced habit, avoided further discussion. Darlene and I weren’t really talking at the time, so I didn’t bother asking her, but I did query Soupy, who shrugged and said, “Hell, I don’t know. Chick weirdness. Even when they get old, that shit never stops. They’ll get over it.”

  They never did, as far as I could tell. When Mrs. Campbell died the next year, Mom made a brief appearance at the wake but didn’t attend the funeral Mass. “You know I don’t go to church,” she told me.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I said. “What about Soupy?”

  “It’s none of Alden’s business,” she said.

  “What is none of his business?”

  “It’s none of yours either. I saw Alden at the funeral home. He doesn’t expect to see me at church, but that shouldn’t stop you.”

  Now I picked up the photograph from Mrs. B’s counter. I looked at the smiles the women wore, lacking any trace of vanity or goofy self-consciousness, unlike the smiles men plastered on for photographs. How sad, I thought, that only my mother now remained, that she might never smile so purely again.

  I put the photograph back.

  I picked up the mail bundle and the rubber band snapped in my hand, the mail spilling across the floor. “Shit,” I said, bending to pick it up.

  There were two manila envelopes from adult education at Kepshire Community College; a narrow cardboard box, probably containing a pen in the shape of a baseball bat, from the Detroit Tigers Fan Club of Antrim County; and fifteen or sixteen white envelopes of varying sizes. I riffled through those. One said “Attorney Discipline Board, State of Michigan.” Was some local lawyer in trouble? I slipped it out of the stack.

  It was addressed to Lucas B. Whistler.

  If I had thought about it for more than five seconds, I probably would have set it on the counter or on Whistler’s desk. I told myself it was also addressed to the Pine County Pilot, of which I was an official representative. Nowhere was it marked “Pers
onal and Confidential.” I remembered the conversation I’d had with Philo about expenses.

  I tore the envelope open. I flicked on a desk lamp next to Mrs. B’s computer and scanned the page in my hand. It was dated the prior Friday.

  Beneath Whistler’s address it said: “RE: Case No. B-MI-8675309-01. Wayland E. Breck.”

  I looked over my shoulder through the newsroom door at Whistler’s desk. At Enright’s, I’d asked Whistler if he knew Breck. Nope, he had said.

  The letter didn’t say much: “This is to acknowledge receipt of your February 23, 2000, request for additional information regarding Case No. B-MI-8675309-01. We will evaluate your request and reply as promptly as required by law. Please be advised that, due to staffing shortages necessitated by budget reductions, our backlogs are currently running longer than usual.”

  That was all.

  I put the letter back in the torn envelope and stood there thinking. Twilight was falling on Main Street. The dim glow from Enright’s glimmered on the Pilot ’s front window.

  Whistler had known Breck, or had known about him, before I had. For some reason he’d kept that from me. I took out my cell phone to dial Whistler, then changed my mind.

  I went back to my desk and slid the letter beneath some file folders in a drawer. I wanted to know more about Breck; more about his grandfather; more about Nilus and his women; more about who was behind Eagan, MacDonald amp; Browne’s stealthy efforts to buy up the land above the northeastern corner of the lake; and if and how it was all connected. I thought I might make a quick run downstate. And I would not tell Whistler.

  I made a mental note to call Millie Bontrager after dinner and ask if she could stay with Mom the next day. Then I sat down at my computer and called up the last e-mail from Joanie McCarthy. I hit Reply and typed:

  Joanie,

  Good to hear from you. Mom’s as OK as can be expected. Thanks for asking. I hear you’re kicking some butt down there. That’s great-but no surprise. Matter of fact, I might be able to use your help. Call me asap.

  My pickup truck fishtailed on the slippery washboard of Trimble Trail, an ignored gravel road that meandered through the low hills south of the lake.

 

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