A Reel Catch

by Lorraine Bartlett

  “Yeah.” Tori peeled the paper from the apple strudel muffin, set it on a plate and in the microwave and set the timer for thirty seconds. “I’ve been thinking….”

  “About what?” Kathy asked.

  “Well, there was nothing online about Charlie Marks’s disappearance, but what if the Times of Ward County ran a piece?”

  “How would you look it up?”

  “Their office isn’t that far from the high school. I could stop by and see if they have old files they’d let me look at,” she suggested as she poured herself a cup of joe.

  “It’s an idea,” Kathy agreed.

  The microwave went ding, and Tori withdrew her muffin. She didn’t bother to sit to eat her breakfast, standing over the sink so the crumbs would fall in it and not on her. She gulped her coffee. “I need to get going.”

  “What are you going to do for your lunch?”

  Tori headed for the fridge, opened the freezer door, and grabbed another muffin. “This will do.”

  Kathy shook her head. They really needed to eat some healthy food. At least the muffin had fruit in it.

  “Don’t forget to give Noreen a call this morning,” Tori encouraged her.

  “Oh, yeah—I’m real eager to do that.”

  “Kath!” Tori said sternly.

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Gotta go,” Tori said.

  “Okay. See you later,” Kathy said as Tori grabbed her purse, lunch, and jacket and rushed out the door. Kathy sat down again with her unfinished breakfast and listened as she heard Tori’s truck take off. It was just after six in the morning—a little too early to start painting. But not too early to start decorating the other rooms at the inn, or at least taking a look at what she’d collected to decorate them.

  But first, more coffee!

  Kathy had stowed several large totes full of treasures in Swans Nest’s east bedroom. It wasn’t the largest room in the inn, but it did have the biggest closet. She set the top tote on the unmade queen-size bed and was about to start sorting through the linens and knick-knacks when she heard the front door slam. “Kath!” Anissa yelled.

  “Upstairs.”

  Kathy pulled out a white cotton dresser scarf embroidered with bluebirds and flowers and was admiring the workmanship when Anissa joined her.

  “Hey, that’s pretty. My great grandma used to make those kinds of things. I’ve got a few of them. I ought to take them out and enjoy them.”

  “I love vintage linens. Think of the time and effort it took to embellish a plain piece of cloth and make it pretty.”

  Anissa nodded. “My mother hates this kind of stuff, which is why I’ve got it all.” She sighed. “She likes everything modern and stark. She’d probably break out in hives if she stayed here.” Which was pretty much what the vandals had said.

  “Well don’t jinx my next guests—which will be you and Tori,” she reminded her friend. “But the thing is, you appreciate your great grandma’s work and think how happy that would have made her.”

  “I was only five when she died but I still remember her,” Anissa said fondly.

  “And there’s part of her left behind in you and her linens. But that’s not what you came over to tell me.”

  “Besides, where’s Tori?”

  “Working—thank goodness. And your story is?”

  “My window job has been postponed because they came in the wrong size—not my mistake. The owner ordered them himself because he thought I might jack up the price. The short of it is, I’m yours for the day.”

  “The list of things for you to do should only take you about an hour to finish.”

  “I came to help you paint.”

  Kathy shook her head. “I can’t afford to pay you for stuff I can do myself.”

  “And who said you have to pay me?”

  “I do.”

  Anissa shook her head. “I want to stay in that room during the dry run, which is supposed to happen tomorrow night.”

  “Or Saturday,” Kathy interjected.

  “Or Saturday. Let’s get it all prettied up. If we start now, we can get a second coat in after lunch, put the furniture back in place, and have it looking spectacular again before Tori gets home from work.”

  “It would be fun to surprise her.”

  Anissa smiled. “Then let’s get to it.”

  Tori was happy that her last class of the day was just after one, but the back-to-back classes with recalcitrant teens had been brutal. The sunny day gave the kids spring fever, and they barely paid attention to her as their gazes kept being drawn to the windows. But spring in Western New York is fickle. While the temps were warm that day, it could just as easily snow tomorrow.

  It didn’t take long for Tori to drive to the offices of the Times of Ward County, which was housed in a shabby brick building in the county seat. She parked on the street and entered the newspaper’s front office, which wasn’t much more than a reception desk with a fifty-something woman seated in front of a computer.

  Tori walked up to the counter. “Hi. I was wondering if you have back issues of the newspaper available to look at.”

  The woman tossed her head in the direction of the counter. “There’s last week’s issue. That’ll be a buck.”

  “Um, I was thinking of some much older issues.”

  The woman looked up from her keyboard. “How old are we talking?”

  “Twenty-five years or so?”

  The woman looked at her skeptically.

  “I’m a teacher at the Warton-Erie High School,” Tori said, which was technically true for that day—and lots of others, too. “I wanted to look up some information on a former student.”

  The woman’s gaze didn’t falter.

  “I found some material in old issues of the school’s yearbook, but I wondered if you might have more information on him.”

  The woman sighed. “We have bound issues by year. What were you looking for?”

  Tori gave her a range.

  “This isn’t something we ordinarily do.”

  Tori dipped her head and did her best to look desolate.

  “But…I guess I could let you have a look at them.”

  Tori brightened. “I’d be so grateful if you could.”

  The woman got up from her chair and went through a doorway into the back room.

  Tori stood in the reception area, waiting and waiting for a good four or five minutes before the woman reappeared.

  “I had to dig through the file cabinets to find the years you wanted.”

  “I really appreciate it,” Tori said.

  “Do you have a subscription to the paper?”

  “Uh, no. But I sometimes buy it at Tom’s Grocery Store in Warton,” Tori fibbed.

  “A subscription will save you forty percent off the list price.” She gave Tori the bad news and, feeling guilty, Tori found herself surrendering her credit card. If nothing, else, she could at least leave copies of the rag hanging around the bait shop. Maybe her customers would like to read them while waiting in line to be helped. That is … should there actually be lines of customers come summer.

  After the transaction was completed, the receptionist— Ellie, by her nametag—left Tori to leaf through the fifty-two issues bound in one thin volume. It didn’t take long to find the five-paragraph story she was looking for.

  The Ward County Sheriff’s Department reported the arrest on Saturday (4/21) at 11:18 p.m. of two Ward County men for committing assault against a third.

  Paul M. Darcy, age 21, of Frederick Street, and Ronald T. Collins, age 20, of Lucky Avenue, were arrested following a fight at The Jolly Roger in Lotus Point.

  It is alleged that Darcy and Collins confronted Charles Marks, age 22, accusing him of sexually assaulting a mutual friend. A fight broke out in the bar’s parking lot and deputies were called. Marks was taken to Lakeside Hospital for treatment.

  Paul Darcy and Ronald Collins were taken into custody and transported to the Ward County Sheriff’s Department for process
ing. The men were arraigned in the Town of Lotus Court and remanded to the Ward County Jail in lieu of $1,000.

  Darcy and Collins will appear in the Lotus Town Court at a later date and time to answer the charges.

  The story pretty much corroborated what Don had told her the night before. She flipped through more pages until she came to a related story.

  On Wednesday, State Police questioned Paul M. Darcy, age 21, of Frederick Street, and Ronald T. Collins, age 20, of Lucky Avenue, in the disappearance of Charles Marks, age 22.

  Darcy and Collins allegedly assaulted Marks on 4/21 at a Lotus Point bar. Marks was treated at Lakeside Hospital and released. He disappeared three days later after his bedroom was apparently ransacked.

  Darcy and Collins were the chief subjects in the disappearance, but were released when it was determined there was no physical evidence to indicate that they had been present in the Marks home.

  It wasn’t an exoneration but came pretty close to one. Tori leafed through the rest of the tome but there didn’t appear to be any follow up stories. Taking out her cell phone, Tori took a few photos of both articles to show Kathy later. She closed the book.

  “I don’t suppose you have a story in the current issue about the murder of Charles Marks, who was also known as Mark Charles?”

  Ellie merely smiled. “You’ll have to read our next issue, which should arrive in your mailbox on Friday.”

  18

  Ellie’s remark about the mailbox reminded Tori that she was expecting her Amazon package to arrive that day and wanted to intercept it before Kathy did, just in case Kath wanted to see what she’d bought. But Kathy wasn’t there—probably over at Swans Nest—and so Tori unpacked her tools and examined them. She couldn’t wait to start work on her first piece of broken-china jewelry, but first she thought she ought to cross the road to see if Kathy needed help with painting her guestroom.

  After squirreling away the tools and the faux orchid, which had also been delivered, Tori changed her clothes and headed over to Swans Nest, not at all surprised to see Anissa’s truck parked out front. Taking out her key, she opened the door. “Anybody home?”

  “Upstairs,” Anissa hollered.

  Tori climbed the stairs and headed straight for The Floral Room, pausing at the door, taking in the glowing lamps, the bed piled high with lacy pillows, the furniture all back in place, with floral pictures on the walls. “Oh my God, it’s finished—and it’s gorgeous! How did you manage to pull it off since just this morning?”

  Kathy giggled. “Teamwork. What do you think?”

  “It’s just as pretty as before the trouble. Even the border looks good.”

  “Yeah, I might not be in a hurry to change it,” Kathy said with pride. “You’re late getting in. Did you go to the newspaper?”

  “Yeah, and forty bucks later, I got to read the old stories about the fight at the Jolly Roger Bar.”

  “Say what?” Anissa asked.

  Tori explained.

  “I’m not sure about the hint that there might be something potentially explosive in Friday’s issue. I mean, the receptionist could have just been giving me a line of bull,” Tori said.

  “Or she could be telling the truth,” Anissa said.

  “We haven’t heard anything else from the Rochester news,” Tori said.

  “We’re not exactly tuned into what happens back there,” Kathy pointed out. “We don’t watch much TV, and we don’t read the Rochester paper. And anyway, Mark Charles’s death won’t mean a thing to anybody in the city.”

  “You’re probably right,” Tori admitted.

  “What could be potentially explosive?” Anissa asked.

  “The cause of death?” Tori suggested.

  “Maybe,” Kathy agreed. “But even if they announce it, the body was so decomposed, are they ever likely to determine the circumstances of his death?”

  Tori shrugged. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

  Dinner was decidedly makeshift—again. “When are we ever going to go grocery shopping?” Kathy asked, rinsing what had been her dinner plate. Ha! She’d prepared boiled corn, toasted bread heels (fresh from the freezer) and oven-browned French fries. Talk about a carb-heavy dinner. And except for yet more breakfast muffins, the freezer was devoid of any other meal potential. The fridge contained milk for coffee and tea, some limp celery, and half a carton of eggs. No doubt about it, the women were on the verge of potential starvation.

  “We’ll go to the store tomorrow,” Tori said.

  “If we don’t have other things to do.”

  “Which reminds me,” Tori said. “Did you call Noreen today.”

  “Noreen?” Kathy asked, as though she’d never heard the name before.

  “Yeah, our friend across the road. The one you’re supposed to be inviting to lunch tomorrow.”

  “Lunch. With no food.”

  “That’s why we need to go grocery shopping,” Tori reminded her friend.

  “Yeah,” Kathy admitted, and finished loading the dishwasher, “but I will.”

  “In the meantime, wanna hear about my latest money-making idea?”

  “Tell all,” Kathy encouraged.

  “First, what happened to those dishes we found at Mark Charles’s cabin?”

  “They’re in unit three of The Lotus Lodge, why?”

  “Hang on,” Tori said, grabbed her keys from the hook by the door, and disappeared. A couple of minutes later, she returned with the saggy box full of chipped china. Truth be told, most of it was pottery, but the floral motifs were pretty—and from the nineteen thirties, forties, and fifties.

  “What are you going to do with them?” Kathy asked.

  “Remember that necklace Tammy at the hardware store wore that I admired?”

  “Yeah.” Then Kathy made a face. “You’re going to make pendants from broken pottery?”

  “Yeah, and sell them in the shop—maybe on Etsy. Who knows? I could be the next broken jewelry queen of Ward County.”

  “Talk about delusions of grandeur,” Kathy muttered.

  “Oh, shut up. If nothing else, it’ll be something to do while I sit in the bait shop over the summer. I can offer them for sale on site, and if I make too many to sell here, then maybe I’ll try online. I only invested about fifty bucks so far—that’s not a lot to lose if it doesn’t pan out.”

  “You’re right.” Kathy picked up one of the plates. “And some of these designs are pretty darn cute.” She traced her finger around the pattern of little blue flowers on the rim of the plate. “I wouldn’t mind having a pendant made from these little guys.”

  “Maybe you could offer them at Swans Nest, too.”

  Kathy opened her mouth—but didn’t speak.

  “But only if you liked them. We’re only dealing with theory right now.”

  “Okay,” Kathy said cautiously.

  Tori picked up the crimpers she needed to cut the plates into pedant-sized pieces. “Hmm. I wonder if I should wear eye protection when I play with these things.”

  “Definitely,” Kathy agreed.

  “In the meantime, make that call,” Tori advised.

  “Oh, all right,” Kathy groused. She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and hesitated. She could just send Noreen a text message. She’d done that many times during the past year, but an invitation to a somewhat formal lunch deserved a call—if not a face-to-face request for her presence. She wasn’t up to walking across the road and asking. Kathy wasn’t sure she could bear an in-person rejection.

  Opening her phone’s contact list, Kathy glanced at it and then tapped Noreen’s name. It rang twice. “Hey, Kath, what’s up?” Noreen asked, but her voice was flat—not the funny, sassy tone Kathy was used to hearing.

  “Hey, Noreen. What are you doing for lunch tomorrow?”

  “Lunch?” Noreen sounded wary.

  “Yeah, I’m experimenting with some recipes that I want to serve to my brides either at showers or weddings and I thought you might enjoy trying the
m out. If Tori doesn’t have to work, she and I thought you might like to join us.”

  “Well, I ….” There was a long pause before Noreen spoke again. “It sounds very nice.”

  “Great. Come over to Swans Nest tomorrow around noon and we’ll chow down. There might even be a mimosa or two—or more—served.”

  “Then how can I say no?” Noreen asked.

  “Wonderful.”

  “Kath,” Noreen started, but then there was another long pause. Kathy listened—sure another apology was on the way, but then Noreen simply said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Great. Looking forward to it. Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  The connection was broken.

  Kathy put her phone away.

  “So?” Tori asked.

  “She said she’d come.”

  “And?”

  Kathy shrugged. “I have a feeling it’ll either be a time of catharsis—or the end of our friendship.”

  Tori scowled. “Don’t be so melodramatic.”

  “I’m worried. I value Noreen’s friendship. I sure as hell hope that crap from the past—a situation that has nothing to do with either of us—won’t threaten it.”

  “Yeah,” Tori agreed. “Me, too.”

  The two friends looked at each other for long moments. It was Tori who spoke first, her eyes widened with anticipation. “So, what are you going to make for lunch?”

  19

  Despite the financial loss, Tori was actually glad when the phone didn’t wake her at way-too-early o’clock the next morning. The day offered much more interesting opportunities. She got up and wandered into the kitchen to find three happy cats eating their breakfast, a fresh pot of tea under its knitted cozy, and Kathy perusing a folder of recipes she’d clipped or had copied out of books.

  “You’re just in time. What kind of muffin do you want this morning?”

  Tori sighed. “No offense, Kath, but I’m getting really tired of muffins.”

  “Yeah, me, too, but someone’s got to eat my test results, and I’ve narrowed it down to ten recipes, so they’re coming off my experimentation repertoire.”