Starvation lake sl-1

by Bryan Gruley

  “Poor old Leo.”

  “Hoo-hah, I’ll bet Leo’s the one what killed Blackburn.”

  “Blackburn wasn’t killed. He’s in the lake. This is all a conspiracy cooked up by the sheriff to make sure he gets reelected.”

  “If Teddy dies, God forbid, we got a double murder in Starvation Lake.”

  “Ain’t no double murder if one of them happened ten years ago, Elvis.”

  “Far as I’m concerned,” Elvis said. “But like I said, you wouldn’t know a thing from reading our local paper. Looks like another one got behind you, Gus.”

  It was all I could do to keep from screaming.

  “The presses run at seven p.m., Elvis,” I said.

  The blue-and-white cap perched on his head read Pekoe Hardened Tools. “I hear other papers actually stop the presses and start them up again when they have big news, like maybe a double murder,” he said. “But maybe you just don’t want your drinking buddies looking bad, huh?”

  “Elvis!” Audrey shouted it from behind the counter. “Keep harassing my customers and you can have McMuffins for breakfast.” She pointed at the TV. The weather turtle was predicting a snowstorm. “And I don’t want to see that thing in my place tomorrow, I don’t care how big the so-called news is.”

  Somebody turned it off.

  I turned to face Audrey. She was wearing a sky-blue apron and her hair was pulled back in a tidy bun. As she picked up two platters of eggs, bacon, and fried potatoes, she said to me, “You know what you want, honey?”

  “Cinnamon bun, warm, and a coffee to go.”

  A Pilot rested on the stool two down from me. My eyes wandered past it to the autographed photo of Gordie Howe. He was winding up to shoot on a goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens. The goalie was still on his feet, probably backing into the cage. I wondered for the hundredth time if he’d made the save.

  Audrey returned with my bun and coffee. “Audrey?” I said. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure, honey.”

  I leaned closer so no one else would hear me. “You know Barbara Lampley? Dingus’s ex-wife?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “She was still with Dingus when Coach died, right?”

  Audrey scrunched up her face. “I can’t recall, exactly. Why?”

  “I thought maybe she’d remember something from back then. Maybe not.”

  Audrey glanced over at Elvis, then back at me. She didn’t tell many tales, certainly not with Elvis within earshot. But her look told me enough.

  “Does she work over at Sandy Cove?” I said.

  Audrey nodded yes.

  “At the IGA? Think it’d be worth my trip?”

  “She’s at Glen’s now, dear. And yes, my guess is, it would be worth it. Be careful in the snow.”

  I stopped for a minute at the Pilot on the way to my truck. Tillie had called and said she’d be late. Joanie was going to the clerk’s office to check on Blackburn’s old property records, then to Soupy’s arraignment. I reminded her to keep working the Canada angle and see what else she could find out about Leo’s computer. When my phone started ringing, I figured it had to be Trenton and headed out.

  In the parking lot I spotted Tatch trudging past and shouted at him. He heard me through his sweatshirt hood and veered in my direction, hands jammed in his jeans pockets. His name was Roy Edwards, but Soupy had long ago dubbed him Tatch, short for attachment, as in vacuum cleaner attachment that sucks pucks into the net. Although he worked for Soupy at the marina, he tended goal for Boynton’s Land Sharks and had skated the length of the rink to join the melee the night before.

  “Hear anything on Teddy?” I said.

  “Ain’t woke up yet’s all I know.” A tiny circular scar pocked his forehead, the lingering imprint of a goalie mask screw that had been pressed into his head by a Loob slapshot. “Total drag about Leo, man.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what the hell are the cops thinking, taking Soup in? Seems to me, Leo kills himself, case closed, he whacked Jack.”

  I reached through my truck window and cranked the ignition.

  “Maybe the cops figure Soup done it to Jack because he damn near killed Ted,” Tatch continued. “But, hell, Soupy could barely kill a flea. Too drunk.” Tatch mustered a chuckle. “Him and Teddy don’t get along so well, but shit, you don’t need to half kill someone. Man, did you see that? He wound up on him like Babe Ruth.”

  “Did you see Soupy yesterday?” I said. “Did he say anything?”

  “Funny.” Tatch scratched at the silver whiskers on his neck. “Before a game, Soup’s usually giving me all sorts of shit about how he’s going to light me up. But yesterday he didn’t say nothing. Hell, he barely come out of his office. I asked him if he wanted to go over to Enright’s for a burger and he said, naw, he had to go to the rink and then he had the zoning thing.”

  “He went to the rink during the day?”

  “Said he had to check in on Leo.”

  “For what?”

  “You know, some damn superstition.”

  Soupy had Leo sharpen his skates every Monday, whether they needed it or not.

  “About when did he go over?”

  “I guess about one or so. This some sort of interview?”

  “No. I was over there myself about then and wondered why I didn’t see him.” So Soupy had discovered Leo gone, then apparently changed his mind about going to the zoning board. I got into my truck. “I’ll see you around.”

  “Yeah, better get to work,” Tatch said. “Looks like I’m the boss today.”

  Glen’s Supermarket anchored a strip mall along the highway a mile from downtown Sandy Cove. I parked next to a beeping dump truck. Barbara Lampley was working the register in the cash-out lane next to the bakery. I waited in line behind a woman unloading a cart full of groceries. Her little boy sat in the cart gnawing on a glazed doughnut.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi there,” I said.

  “Hi.”

  “Sir?” Barbara Lampley said. “The express lane is open.”

  “That’s OK,” I said.

  I waited while Barbara Lampley shared a laugh with the woman in front of me, who was telling how her husband had nearly sliced off his arm while using a chain saw to cut an old sofa in half so it would fit it in the back of his pickup. Barbara Lampley had a big, throaty laugh that I was sure they could hear at the other end of the store. She was tall and big-boned in her creamy yellow Glen’s smock, with a fresh, childlike face barely betrayed by the spidery crinkles at the corners of her eyes and the silver wisps in her chestnut hair. I could see why Dingus, and maybe Blackburn, had fallen for her. I wasn’t interested in her affair with Blackburn so much as how Dingus might have reacted. It wasn’t the easiest thing to ask about, but I had nothing to lose.

  When the mother and her boy left, I grabbed two Snickers bars and set them on the conveyor belt. Barbara Lampley watched the candy bars feed toward her. “That do it?” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. I looked around and saw no one was behind me. “You’re Barbara Lampley, right?”

  “Yes?”

  She smiled while the rest of her tried to remember whether she should recognize me. I’d never gotten used to confronting people cold, especially people who’d never had their names in a newspaper and didn’t care if they ever did.

  “Gus Carpenter,” I said, offering my hand, which she took. “I’m with the Pilot. ”

  “The newspaper? Oh.”

  “Sorry, ma’am, I won’t take much of your time. I’m working on a story-”

  “Wait. You’re Bea and Rudy’s boy.”

  It felt strange but good to hear my father’s name again. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “How is your mother? I haven’t seen her in ages.”

  “She’s good, thanks.”

  “We used to go to bingo together. That woman can talk, I’ll tell you. I used to think she was trying to distract me from my bingo cards, but she’s just your basic gabber. I mean in a g
ood way. She’s so nice.”

  “Yes, she is, ma’am.”

  She finished ringing me up and handed me the candy bars in a small brown paper bag. “Give your mother my love, won’t you?”

  “I will.”

  I stood there holding the bag.

  “Is there something else, um-?”

  “Gus. Yes, ma’am, actually, I’m working on a follow-up story to the arrest last night-”

  “And you want to ask me about Jack Blackburn.”

  “Well, not exactly, ma’am, I-”

  “Please call me Barbara, Gus. I’m not that old yet. You obviously know I knew Jack, and Leo. Not very well, it turns out, but if that’s what you’re looking for, I don’t know that I can help you very much.” She gave a little laugh and put a hand to her breast. “I’m not a suspect, am I?”

  I almost laughed myself. “No. No, ma’am-that is, Barbara-not that I know of. I was actually hoping to ask a couple of questions about Sheriff Aho.”

  Her voice softened then. “What is it you want to know?”

  I looked around the store. I didn’t want to interview her there. “I wondered, do you think we could-?”

  “Never mind,” she said. She turned around and shouted down the row of cash-out lanes, “Bert, I’m going out for a few.” She set a This Lane Closed sign on the conveyor belt and told me, “This way.”

  At Mariner Mike’s, the submarine sandwich shop next door, Barbara Lampley pointed me to a booth and asked what I wanted.

  “Just coffee,” I said. “I’ll get it.”

  She ignored me and walked briskly behind the counter, where she told the teenage girl working there, “Hello, dear,” before she poured a coffee and a Diet Coke. She carried the drinks back to the booth.

  “You must be a regular,” I said.

  “Pretty much. I own the place.”

  “No kidding?” I pulled a notebook out of my back pocket and set it on the table. I had to make it obvious now or risk unsettling her after she started talking. Barbara gave it a glance and continued.

  “Yeah. Dingus and I had some land that I got in the divorce. Turned out there was a whole bunch of natural gas beneath it. I sold the mineral rights and took the cash and put it all down on this place.”

  “But you still work at Glen’s?”

  “Just a few hours, Tuesdays and Thursdays. I worked there a long time before I got this place and I liked it. Anyway, I just can’t be in here all day.” She leaned in like she was divulging a secret. “I never thought I’d learn to hate the smell of Italian dressing.” She laughed her big laugh again.

  “Hey, I love Italian dressing,” I said. I reached for the notebook with one hand and took a pen out with the other. “Do you mind?”

  “You won’t say anything bad about me?”

  I really didn’t know, but I said, “I doubt it.”

  “You’re Bea’s boy. I’m sure you’ll be nice.”

  “Can you spell your name?”

  “Are you going to put my name in the paper?”

  “I might.”

  She thought about it for a few seconds, then spelled her name. I wrote it and the date at the top of the first page in my notebook. “So,” I said, “just so I understand, you were living where when Blackburn died?”

  “I was in Starvation, but that’s not what you want to know. You want to know whether I was still married to Dingus then, and the answer is yes, barely.”

  “Barely?”

  “Feel free to come to the point, Gus.”

  “Yes, ma’am. For some reason, I’d thought maybe you divorced earlier.”

  “Barbara, please. You thought we split before Jack died, because Jack and I, we had this, this relationship.” She stopped and drew on the straw in her drink. She sat up straight. “Good Lord, I sound like I’m on Oprah. Jack and I had been fooling around. Everyone knew that. You probably knew it.”

  “I was living downstate then.”

  “Why am I talking to you about this?”

  “I’m sorry. I was just trying to get a time frame.”

  She gave me a dismissive little wave. “You want to know what’s really silly? This is going to sound like bull, but you’ll just have to take my word.”

  “OK.”

  “Everyone thought we were fooling around, if you know what-well, of course you know what I mean-but we never actually did fool around. You see, Jack…” She fixed her gaze on the ceiling for a second. “Oh, good Lord,” she said. “Why am I telling you this? Jack’s idea of fooling around…”

  I was leaning into the table for the end of her sentence, telling myself to keep my mouth shut and let her talk. Nor did I dare turn the page in my notebook lest I remind her that all of Starvation Lake was listening. Again, I felt like I was hearing about a stranger, a man I’d never known. Barbara seemed as frustrated as I was.

  She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I can’t tell you that. That’ll just have to do. We didn’t really fool around, per se, OK?”

  “Sure.” I turned the notebook page.

  “He had plenty of girlfriends. Jack could be a very charming man, but-well, let’s just say he was a very complicated man.”

  “Can I ask how you got to know him?”

  “You just did. Back then, I worked at the IGA in Starvation. He always seemed to come in when there was no one around, and Dingus was always working nights, and I was going out of my mind with boredom. We’d talk. One time-oh, God-I was the only one there and he opened two bottles of beer and we sat there drinking and talking.” She looked past me out the window toward the parking lot. “It was one of those things, you know, my midlife crisis? Women can have them, too, you know.” She looked to me like she was in her early to mid-fifties, which would’ve made her about forty when she and Blackburn had their dalliance, or whatever it was.

  “And all this happened when?” I said.

  Instead of answering she said simply, “Dingus,” punctuating it with an exasperated sigh. “He just gave up. I thought he was a man’s man, too, but he just gave up.” She reached across the table and grasped my free hand. “Don’t ever do that, young man. Everyone goes through a stupid period in their lives. Hopefully only one. You have to hang in there with them.”

  “So you were actually with Dingus when Blackburn died?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m sorry, I’m rambling.” She let go of my hand. “Dingus and I got married in 1978. He joined the department right before our wedding, and he just loved his job, just loved it. Jack and I had our little whatever you want to call it beginning in eighty-five or so, and it lasted about a year, no more. And, yes, before you ask, I actually left Dingus for a while, but just a couple of weeks, and then I didn’t really stay with Jack, only for a few days, and I didn’t really stay with him, if you know what I mean. It was weird, anyway, with those little houses and the boys around.”

  The billets. His players. His hockey.

  I stopped writing. “Why are you telling me this?”

  She looked at the table and decided not to answer. “I went back to Dingus eventually, for a little while. Things seemed to get better at first, and I thought we’d be OK, and then Jack died.”

  I must have looked confused then. Barbara said, “Gus, I know what you’re thinking, but Jack’s dying didn’t help Dingus a bit. It might have been better if the sheriff had let Dingus do his job, but he didn’t, so Dingus just never got over the whole thing, despite Jack’s being dead and gone- especially because he was dead and gone.”

  “The sheriff?”

  “Jerry Spardell. What a dope. He had to have his blessed cruiser. I’m sorry-do you want anything to eat?”

  “No, I’m fine, thanks. What about Dingus? Are you saying the Blackburn case bothered him? Kept him up nights?”

  “Oh, yes,” Barbara said. She leaned in closer and whispered. “When he came home that morning Jack died, the first thing he said was, ‘Leo is lying like a rug.’” She imitated the lilt of Dingus’s voice, affectionately, not mocking. S
he sat up straight again. “God,” she said. “I’ve never told anyone that.”

  I told her about Leo.

  “Gracious,” she said. “They were such a strange pair, he and Jack. I used to tell Dingus, like an old married couple. I mean, Leo, the only woman he was ever with was his silly ice machine. What did he call it? Agnes?”

  “Ethel.”

  “Oh, of course, Ethel. How ridiculous can you get? I swear that man was jealous of me. Jack would make all these sneaky arrangements to meet me, and it was like he was more worried about Leo finding out than Dingus.” She shook her head and laughed. “What an idiot I was.”

  “What was it Leo lied about?”

  “I don’t remember exactly. Dingus may not have told me. He may have just had a feeling.” She stared into her paper cup as if the answer might be there. “Didn’t Dingus go to your house that night?”

  “My mother’s house. Yes. That’s where Leo went to call the police.”

  Barbara screwed up her face as if she were trying to remember. “I think that may have been it. Your mother told him something. Oh, God, Gus, please don’t tell your mother I told you that.”

  “Don’t worry. So what did Dingus do?”

  “Not much. Spardell wouldn’t let him.”

  “The sheriff didn’t want to solve a murder?”

  “Oh, no, there was no murder to solve. Not in Jerry Spardell’s Starvation Lake. We hadn’t had a murder here in a million years, and Spardell-who had a pretty tough election that year, as I recall-wasn’t about to have one on his watch. He told Dingus he believed Leo. After all, they used to play poker Friday nights, and what better bona fides are there than that?”

  “And that was it?”

  “No, actually, it wasn’t. Dingus wanted to drag the lake as soon as the ice was gone. But Spardell wouldn’t let him. He had to have his cruiser.”

  “What cruiser?”

  “Spardell liked to have a brand-new patrol boat every few years. He had one locked into the budget that year, and he went down to Detroit for the boat show and picked out the model and the town council was just about to approve the purchase when Dingus says he wants to drag the lake.”