The helpful thing was the person filming at the time didn’t just record plays on the field. Well, he did, but that had been covered by another cameraman. This film had been done for posterity, North had been told. During Ruggles’s last three years at Draven, when it was clear he was the greatest player the university would likely ever have, every game that Ruggles had played in was recorded completely. Time in the game, time on the sidelines, shots of the crowd. North could not have hoped for a better treasure trove of information.
He watched Ruggles with interest before and during the game. He was restless, walking the sidelines, his helmet off, and looking up at the stands. North saw him talk to no one.
But when he went into the game, the man strapped on his helmet, hustled to the huddle, got the play, and settled into his three-point stance; when the ball was hiked, the man went to war.
Even when the ball wasn’t handed off or passed to him, Ruggles made an impact. Four times North watched as pass rushers broke past the O-line—one time due to an error in technique by his own father, Peter North, at right guard. And each time, Ruggles stepped up and leveled the far-larger men at the last moment, giving his QB time to pass the ball or escape danger.
North wound the film back to the beginning of the fourth quarter and then let it roll. He sat back, sipped on a cup of hot tea, and watched with increasing focus. He looked on as Ed Belichek, his arm dangling, talked to Herman Bowles. A couple of minutes after that, a helmeted Belichek, his battle-worn number 68 jersey hanging loosely on him, hustled off the field to take care of his stinger. North observed him all the way to the tunnel. And then, he was gone.
The game continued and the O-line, minus its starting left tackle, was surprisingly good. Or perhaps it was just Ruggles who made them look good.
North watched his father, the big number 50 stretched tightly across his broad shoulders, as he pancaked a defensive tackle before going on to flatten a linebacker, allowing Ruggles to move up the crease for forty yards where a half-dozen Howling Cougars, straining mightily, were required to bring down the running back.
North’s father had taught his son the proper technique of a lineman when North had started playing Pop Warner ball as a kid. The balance of the weight, back in the heels for more control but not far enough back to sacrifice explosive thrust. The eyes that never stopped moving. The use of the hands to engage and then disengage defensive linemen. How to pivot to get out in space to confront the edge rushers, how to keep your center of gravity low so a bull rush technique could not work.
These were all things that North had used in his playing time, though he preferred defense to offense. He was not as big as his six-foot-five father, and he certainly didn’t have the huge bulk of Ed Belichek.
He went through the film three more times and saw nothing that would provide him with a clue.
In despair, he turned off the machine, left the room, walked fast, and a few minutes later knocked on a door of an apartment a block off campus.
It was late, and Molly McIntyre answered her door looking sleepy and dressed in a short men’s T-shirt and nothing else. North had never seen her thighs before, and he noted how very shapely they were. Her tousled hair was particularly attractive, he thought.
“Merl, what are you doing here?”
“I, uh, I just needed someone to talk to.”
She glanced over his shoulder before saying, “You better come in then.”
They settled on a small couch in the front room. McIntyre had put on a short pink terrycloth robe and sat next to him looking expectant.
“Would you like something to drink?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No, I’m good. I had some hot tea earlier.”
She almost laughed. “Hot tea was not what I was offering.”
“Oh, right, no, I’m fine, thanks.”
He explained to her about his film session and not finding out anything new or helpful.
“Well, you need to give it time, Merl. You’re so smart that something will occur to you.”
“But nothing really has. And I’ve been focusing on this for a long time now. If it were a science project I would have solved it by now.”
She turned to face him, her bare knees touching his jeans. She took his hand. “But this isn’t a science experiment. This has to do with people, some living, some dead. People are not like science, Merl. In many ways science is predictable. You do a and b and you get c. But not with people. They do crazy shit. They are not predictable. That’s what makes them human.”
“What you say makes perfect sense. Can I share something with you?”
“Sure.”
“And you won’t think I’m crazy?”
She grinned. “Well, I can’t promise that, but I can say that you are the last person in the world that I would think might be crazy.”
North proceeded to tell her about what he had seen in the tunnel: Someone, perhaps Herschel Ruggles, rushing past him into oblivion.
As he spoke, her amused look slowly dissipated until she looked thoroughly worried.
She patted his hand. “I think maybe you might be focusing on this too much. It might be doing something to you.”
“Making me see things, you mean?”
She looked at him with an uncomfortable expression. “Well, maybe. It can happen. You can want something so bad that…” She glanced down the hallway, presumably in the direction of her bedroom. But North did not seem to make the connection.
“I do have a gown. And I had a wig.”
“What?” she said, looking a bit more worried now.
He quickly explained about finding the gown and wig.
“So you think Daughtry was killed because she knew something about that wig?” she said. “About where it came from?”
North didn’t answer. He was staring down at some photos on the coffee table.
“What are those?” he asked.
“Oh, these are pictures I’m thinking about using for the anniversary edition.”
He picked up one. “Is this the tunnel we use to go under the stadium?”
“What, no. Oh, I see what you mean. I never noticed that before. No, it’s actually an interior shot of the Draven mansion.”
“The Draven mansion? Where did you get it?”
“From the historical society. When the place was first built Draven allowed them to come in and take pictures. It’s actually kind of creepy. It looks like a mine shaft.”
“It also looks like the tunnel into the stadium,” North said, suddenly looking energized. “Molly, can you go with me somewhere?”
“What, now?”
“No, tomorrow night. I have a little experiment I’d like to conduct, and your help would be invaluable. But I need to explain things and get some things ready.”
“Sure, okay.”
And North proceeded to explain to her what she needed to know.
And the longer he talked, the more McIntyre’s jaw dropped.
Chapter 16
SHE HADN’T ATTENDED a Mighty Johns game since the Ruggles era.
North had checked to make sure. He was approaching this puzzle scientifically now, which meant he had to find and record the facts.
He couldn’t determine if she had been at “the” game, yet he thought it likely that she had. She had been widowed for nearly forty years now and had never—North had learned with the aid of McIntyre and her valuable research—contemplated remarriage.
And McIntyre was in the car next to him heading to perform North’s experiment.
She had dressed up for the occasion, wearing a dark skirt, white blouse, and lavender sweater, and she’d had her hair done. North had on a jacket and slacks and a pressed white shirt. McIntyre had fussed over his collar and shirt until they were right.
“Quite spiffy,” she said. “You clean up very well.”
It had been McIntyre who had arranged this meeting with the woman. McIntyre had interviewed her briefly for the upcoming anniversary yearbook edition.
The house stood on a hill that had been created by fill dirt from one of her husband’s vast tract projects; it had settled some as the combination of gravity and the sheer weight of millions of tons of displaced and compacted earth sought lower ground. The house itself was built of stone—what else could it be, thought North, considering the career and sensibilities of its creator? It had been quarried nearby, from another of the man’s sedimentary assets. She reportedly lived there alone but for the presence of day servants who cooked the meals, kept the dust and weeds at bay, and laundered the clothes of the shrunken, elderly woman who was their long-time mistress. Yet at night she was completely alone—and preferred it that way, North had been told.
Using McIntyre as a referral made it easier for North to get in to see her. He had called and she had called back—or a representative had, at least. An appointment had been arranged, and now North and McIntyre made the drive up the coiling black asphalt road, and waited for the electronically controlled iron gates with the initials JMD in heavy iron scroll to open and allow them in.
North knocked at the enormous wooden door that had been stained coal black in an apparent tip of the hat to the long-dead man. A woman answered, obviously a maid, judging from her clothing. She led North and McIntyre down passageways of great length with exquisite architectural detailing, and stylishly crowded with antiques, paintings, and other objects of obvious taste and cost. They did not impress North at all, for he had grown up in similar surroundings.
However, McIntyre, who obviously had grown up in far less affluent circumstances, gazed around in abject wonder at everything. But then she shivered and hugged herself. “Not a very warm environment,” she observed.
“I thought you’d already been here, to interview her.”
“No, we spoke over the phone. This is all new to me. I’ve only seen this place in photographs.”
The room they were led to was baronial in size. A fire belched and lurched in a cavernous opening that was fully large enough to hold the Mighty Johns starting offensive eleven with room to spare. In the center of the room were three chairs arranged facing one another.
In one, she sat.
North and McIntyre took the other two. North eased his bulk down as the fire cracked and popped across from him. McIntyre primly crossed her legs and tugged her skirt over her knees, while swiping a hand nervously through her hair.
The wind pressed against the elongated windows, where the last of the sun’s jolly fingertips were sliding away to be replaced by the melancholic ink smudges of dusk. William Faulkner would have been quite comfortable here sipping his favorite libation in these depressingly Gothic confines, thought North, who was surprisingly well read in the literary sense for a scientist. Erskine Caldwell, on the other hand, North mused, would have fled for his scrawny life.
North took a moment to set down the bag that he had brought with him and looked across at the woman, as she stared back at him.
Gloria Peyton Draven was now seventy-five years old, and most people who knew her would say that time had not been kind to the woman from the age of forty on. That was often the case with those possessed of an unassailable beauty during their youth; what way was there to go but down, at least from the shallow heights of physical beauty? An odd wrinkle springing up here or there, the softening of the jawline, the deepening, by millimeters, of the eye sockets, the thinning of lips and skin, the collapse of once-proud cheekbones, was, collectively, all that was needed to rupture the ship, sending the bow to the waves’ trough, and lifting the propeller to kiss the air, where neither was designed to survive for long.
On the surface Gloria Draven was just that, a bitter shipwreck of vainglorious proportion, rare enough to be noticed yet just common enough not to be pitied. Below the skin, though, North sensed something far more substantial than a former beauty hollowed by time. He sensed intelligence. And he sensed principles.
“Mrs. Draven, it’s Molly McIntyre. We spoke over the phone about the university’s anniversary yearbook edition.”
To this Draven merely nodded, her gaze fixed on North.
“And I’m Merlin North,” he began quietly yet firmly, deciding it was best to feel the woman out a bit, but not be too timid about it.
“I know.” Her voice was not quite velvet and not quite suede, perhaps leather, North thought, not really understanding why he was using that type of textured comparison. And yet Draven did seem tactile somehow, tempting one to finger her arm, or pat her back just to see.
“Probably from Jimmy Swift and me breaking Herschel Ruggles’s record.”
“I care nothing for football and never did. I know who you are because I know who you are,” she added testily.
North looked at her strangely for a moment and then decided not to pursue this odd statement. He had other matters of importance to discuss with her and did not want to squander this opportunity over a possibly irrelevant matter. He thought best how to ask his next question. There was really no delicate way around it.
“But you did care for Herschel Ruggles, didn’t you?”
She trembled, only slightly, but North noticed it. When McIntyre had said Ruggles had traveled all the way up the ladder on his adulterous rounds with promiscuous wives, North figured Draven would be the one to reside at the very top. When he had seen her in the photograph wearing the blue gown and standing with Ruggles, he had become sure of it. And then there was the matter of the wig.
“I knew him,” she said in a husky voice that spoke of age, experience, and, perhaps most of all, sorrow.
“I think you probably knew him better than most. In fact, I think you knew who he really was.”
McIntyre glanced at North, her look slightly panicked.
Draven’s thin, pale lips curled back revealing small, yellowed teeth. The image was that of a dog, fangs bared, protecting its home and hearth, ready to attack, or at least putting on a good show of so doing. The threat was often as effective as the act itself.
“You’re a very young man who has really experienced nothing of the world. I’m speaking of its vast generosity, and its depthless, aching cruelty. Do you really feel qualified to make judgments about someone who has seen far more of both than she ever wanted to in this life or any other?” She glanced at McIntyre. “And you?”
McIntyre stammered, “I…I uh, we just came, that is, Merl wanted—”
Draven silenced her by merely looking away and settled her gaze back on North.
He said, “What I’m trying to do is lay to rest, once and for all, exactly what happened to Herschel Ruggles when he ran into that tunnel. Some people think he disappeared on purpose, that he was in some kind of trouble. Maybe with a woman.” He fell silent and waited.
“And do you believe that?” asked the old woman.
“More to the point, do you?”
She dismissed him and his question with a quick stroke of her small hand. “I’m too old to play these silly games,” said she.
“So am I,” replied North.
This got her attention. “Why are you really here?”
In answer he held up the bag. “Do you have a room that Molly could use?”
“Use for what?” she said, looking startled.
“You’ll see, I promise.”
Draven slowly pointed to her left, at a door there.
North handed the bag to McIntyre and nodded. She quickly headed to the door and entered the room behind it.
While she was gone Draven folded her hands in her lap. “You are a most inquisitive young man, I understand.”
“I’m a scientist. It comes with the territory.”
“Oh, I see. Quite impressive.” She did not look impressed at all.
“I’ve been looking into things because I wanted to know the truth.”
“And why is that so important?” she asked.
“What could be more important?”
“I can think of lots of things, but I doubt any of them would persuade you.”
; “Have you always lived here?” he asked.
“For as long as my memory goes back. No, that’s not so. I remember before I wed, I lived in a walkup in Brooklyn. It was very nice. Nothing like this tomb. It had life, it had purpose.”
“If you feel that way, why do you stay here, then?”
“Do you understand penance?” Draven said.
“I know what it means. I don’t know what it means in the context of you.”
“I stay here as my penance, young man.”
“And what did you do to have to serve that penance?”
“None of your business,” she replied. “None at all.”
Then the door opened, and they both turned to look.
Chapter 17
DRAVEN GASPED.
McIntyre had come out wearing both a wig and the gown. She was turned away from them, as North had instructed, so that Draven could only see her from the back.
“You recognize the gown?” asked North.
Draven slowly nodded. “Where did you find it? You must tell me that.”
“It’s yours?”
Again a nod, her lips moved erratically, yet no words came.
“I found it in a very special room underneath the stadium. I also found a wig. The one that Molly is wearing.”
It was not the wig, of course, but a reasonable facsimile that he had bought and which McIntyre had helped him fashion in the style of forty years prior.
McIntyre rejoined them, sitting down next to North.
“Do you recognize this?” asked North, pointing to the wig McIntyre had on.
“No, I’ve never worn a wig.”
“I understand that. I didn’t mean do you recognize the wig, I meant do you recognize the hairstyle?” He pulled from his pocket the news clipping with the photo showing Ruggles, Draven, and her husband at the awards banquet. He passed it over to her. She looked at the picture and then at the wig.
The Final Play Page 8
