Summer People

by Aaron Stander

  “Was there much left?”

  “Actually there was. A substantial amount of money had built up over the years. And although excess funds had always been invested very prudently, over time they developed into a very tidy bundle, very tidy, indeed.”

  “So she got the full value of the two?”

  “Yes, and interestingly enough, she put most of it into our money market accounts, the remainder into one of our savings accounts.”

  “And the property,” Ray asked, “did she sell or is she in the process of selling the property?”

  “Actually, there are two pieces of property. First, there is the cabin on the trout stream that we talked about from the Kagan estate. Then there was the home Joe owned just south of the village, you know about that, too. We had nothing to do with that one. It was pretty tumbled down, and he hadn’t paid taxes on it for years. She was planning on selling that one. She asked me to suggest a realtor to handle it, and I gave her several names. To my surprise, she wanted to keep the cabin. I mentioned that under the terms of the Hagan trust we were to provide a minimum level of maintenance—you know, keep the roof covered, keep the place painted, not much more. But the little bridge and much of the road, both on his property, got washed away when that old power company dam collapsed in 1984. We asked Joe if he wanted us to have the road and bridge repaired, but he said he was just as happy to leave things as they were. He thought it would help keep vandals away from the place. It is probably one of the most remote places in the area, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Ray. “It’s bordered on one side by the National Park and a State Forest on the other. And there are no other trails into that area. And I think by now even all the old logging roads are grown over. It’s mostly cedar swamps back there, and that part of the river is narrow and overgrown. I wonder why she would want a place like that, given how remote it is.”

  “I was surprised about that myself. I asked her, and she said that she had many good memories from the summers that she spent there. She also said she did a lot of wilderness camping, and its remoteness suited her just fine.”

  “Do you think she is in the area now?”

  “Don’t know. I think she was going back to Phoenix. Do you want me to get her address and phone for you?”

  “Please.”

  Clopton lifted his phone and asked his secretary to get the information. “I’ve rambled on quite a bit. Is this the kind of information you’re looking for?”

  “Well, you’ve given me some background information that might help a lot in solving a crime.”

  “Can I inquire what the crime is?”

  “Unfortunately, it’s too early to talk about it. But I promise you this, as soon as it’s solved, I’ll come back and give you all the details.”

  “I would like that a lot. I love a good mystery. Meg will have that phone number and address typed and ready for you.”

  47

  Ray found Lisa sitting on the deck reading in the late afternoon sun, a sail bag slouched against the cottage wall giving a hint of the afternoon activities. He startled her when he announced, “You summer people really know how to get good tans. I wish I had time to lay out all day.”

  “Oh Ray,” Lisa said dramatically, “you’re an Adonis already. You don’t need a great tan.”

  “Sarcastic woman,” he threw back with a smile. “Where’s Marc?”

  “He just ran to the store to get a couple of basics. We were down to our last bottle of Muscadet,” she offered, knowing her comment would elicit a response.

  “If you summer people ever run out of baguettes, goat cheese, or white wine, you’ll starve to death.”

  “Now Ray, that’s unfair. I must have Grape Nuts, too. Can’t start the day without them.”

  “Better unload my Consolidated Croissant, you’re probably on the forefront of a culinary trend. I guess I shouldn’t kid you so much. You and Marc have been around so long you’re almost natives.”

  “Yes,” added Lisa, “and we’re unemployed, and soon we will be registered voters. You don’t get much more local than that. We haven’t seen you for a few days. Anything new in your investigation?”

  “A lot has happened, you will be…”

  “Wait,” interrupted Lisa. “I hear Marc. Let me get him so you don’t have to tell your story twice.”

  Lisa disappeared through the front door and reappeared in a few minutes with a bottle of wine and glasses. Marc followed with a carafe of coffee and a mug; he set both in front of Ray. Lisa went into the house again and returned with a tray on which she had arranged plates, napkins, knives, a basket with chunks of bread, a bowl with grapes, and a plate with a cylindrical piece of cheese.

  “French or domestic?” said Ray pointing to the cheese.

  “French,” responded Lisa with a broad smile. “I know it’s your favorite.”

  “I hear you have some interesting new stuff,” said Marc.

  “I was just starting to tell Lisa,” Ray responded. “Let me give them to you in chronological order. When we last talked,” Ray paused, “Lisa prodded me to find someone who might remember something relating to those events. I did some checking; the only deputy from that time still living is Floyd Durfee. Well, I went over to see him. He’s eighty-eight and lives in this awful rest home.”

  “Is he still okay mentally?” asked Lisa.

  “He hasn’t lost very much, including all of his old prejudices,” said Ray without explaining. “And he told me something that’s quite useful.”

  “What’s that?” Marc prodded.

  “He recollected that Orville once brought in some boys, summer kids. Old Miss Vanderdyke, she taught English and history at Cedar Run High for damn close to fifty years, called Orville. One of her students, a girl she had taken special interest in, said she’d been gang raped.”

  “Were the boys charged?” asked Lisa.

  “He doesn’t think so. He can’t recall any names, but he thinks four were involved.”

  “How about the teacher?” asked Lisa.

  “Miss Vanderdyke, she’s long dead. But Floyd recollects that Orville cut a deal with the parents and a cash payment was made. Orville was a bit of a do-gooder in his own peculiar way.”

  “Explain.”

  “He apparently intimidated the parents into laying a large amount of cash on the father of the girl as a way of insuring that there would be no further investigation….”

  “You’re kidding,” said Lisa, her indignation rising.

  “No kidding, and it gets worse. But Lisa, don’t kill the messenger. He put the money in a trust for the girl’s father.”

  “In trust for the father. Why the hell did he do that?”

  “I said Orville was peculiar, didn’t I? This was probably his idea of justice and social welfare. He was able to get money out of the rich downstaters and give it to locals who needed it—the Robin Hood syndrome….”

  “But why a trust?” Lisa insisted.

  “Well, he knew the father was a drunk. So Orville had a trust set up that would give the father only a few dollars a day.”

  “I take it his concern for justice and social welfare didn’t extend to the victim of the rape.”

  “You’re right. Orville probably believed that all rapes are the fault of the woman. I’m sure he didn’t give her a second thought.”

  “You have been careful not to mention the name of the victim,” interjected Marc.

  “You’ll have the name later. I don’t want to get ahead of my story.”

  “How about the trust?” asked Marc, “do you think there is any truth to that story?”

  “Well, that’s the next thing I checked out. I stopped off at the bank first thing Monday. The kid who manages the place was no help, so I went in to the main branch and talked to Hugh Clopton. Did you ever meet him?”

  “He was a friend of my grandfather,” said Lisa, calming with the change of topic. “We used to visit him at his office every time we went to town. And my grandfather a
nd Clopton would often go fly-fishing. I bet his office hasn’t changed a bit.”

  “Not a bit, not a bit from when I was a kid. Only he insisted I call him Hugh this time, made me feel uncomfortable as hell. It’s nice to keep some adults out there, if you get my meaning.”

  They nodded.

  “So I asked him about the trust. Clopton…Hugh…has got to be over ninety, but he could remember almost every detail. There were two trusts, actually. First one was set up years before by a Buster Kagan, an old professional golfer who was big in the thirties. His trust was to pay the taxes on a piece of property he had given to the girl’s father. The second one was set up by Orville.”

  “Did he know the source of the money?”

  “No. But listen to this. He said that Orville brought him four checks—not from local banks. And Clopton set up the trust to pay out earnings on a daily basis. The principal couldn’t be touched until after the death of this man. Then the trust was to be dissolved and whatever was left was to be paid to his heirs.”

  “Well, that was white of him. Now that this woman, this victim, is in her forties, she can get therapy to help her deal with being raped when she was a teenager. Did Hugh give you any names?” she pressed.

  “For the boys, no. Said the checks were from down state or out-of-state and he doesn’t remember any names. But he did give me the name and address of the only living child of the person who benefited from the trust and….”

  “And?” they both asked.

  “And I’ll get to that in a minute. So I had a name, address, and phone number. But what was I going to do, call her up and ask her if she was offing some boys who raped her twenty-some years earlier? But I dialed the number anyway, and got one of those recordings that said the number was no longer in service. So I do some fishing, call the Phoenix P.D. and ask for the detective division. I get this clerk on the phone who’s convinced that I want to file a missing person report. Finally I convince her to let me talk to a detective. I get this detective on the line, tell him who I am and that I’m trying to locate this person, but I can’t reach her because her phone seems to be out of order or disconnected. He tells me in a bored voice that he’ll do some checking and get back to me if he finds anything. To be frank, I thought that was the last of it, never expected to hear from him.”

  “But you did?”

  “No, not from him, but a woman, a Lieutenant Martinez. She wanted to know why I was looking for this person, and I tell her that the name came up during a murder investigation, and I was hoping to question her. Martinez turned out to be real helpful…” “So who is she?” asked Marc.

  “Slow down, let me tell my story. Turns out Martinez has known this woman for a number of years and was almost too willing to share everything that she knew. The two met when Martinez worked on a police/school task force on drugs and alcohol. The woman was a school social worker. She said the woman was a single mother and that her daughter had died in a tragic accident, and after her life really fell apart.”

  “How did the daughter die?” asked Lisa.

  “I’m just getting to that. She was in her junior year at Arizona State. During a fraternity party, she somehow ends up with three of the brothers in an upstairs bedroom. The boys were drunk, and they attempted a gang rape. Well, more than attempted. It came out in later testimony that two of them were holding her down and the third one was pulling off her clothes when she fought her way free. But in the ensuing struggle she crashed through a window and broke her neck when she hit the ground.”

  “Accident!” exclaimed Lisa incredulously. “What was the accident?”

  “Her falling from the window. They didn’t mean that to happen.”

  “What the hell did they mean to happen?” she asked.

  Marc sat back and watched. He could feel Lisa’s rage.

  “Lisa, I’m just reporting what she said.” Ray continued in a conciliatory tone. “Anyway, Martinez said the girl was known as a top-quality kid—bright, attractive, a really nice girl. During the initial questioning, two of the boys told a similar story. Martinez thought the story was probably fairly close to the truth. In separate statements they said she had dated one of their brothers during her freshman year, and this guy had bragged that she was the best fuck on campus. That night during the course of a large drunken party they decided to find out.”

  “And the third kid’s story?” asked Marc.

  “The third kid had an entirely different story. He said the girl was a known nympho who would regularly come by and screw several of the brothers. And the night of her death that’s what happened. He also said her falling out of the window was an accident. She was just drunk and wild. His family got a big-time, criminal attorney from San Francisco to run the defense. After this attorney talked to the other boys, they changed their stories. They said that they were confused and that their statements reflected the words of their interrogators, not theirs. They also contended they had not been read their rights at the time they were arrested. And they didn’t know what they were signing.”

  “Bastards,” voiced Lisa.

  “Hold on, it gets worse. The attorney builds his whole defense on the notion that this girl was known to be easy and had engaged in sex with other members of the fraternity. In his opening statement he argued that no rape had taken place, and her death was the result of her reckless nature. Her mother had to listen to all of this. Martinez went on to say that this was an incredibly cruel and inaccurate portrayal. She also said that in recent years several members of this fraternity had been involved in date-rape cases, and the brothers seemed to thrive on the reputation.

  “So,” Ray paused and looked out at the lake for a moment,

  “sometime while the defense was presenting their case, she lost it. She started yelling that she would kill them all. Martinez said it took several officers to finally restrain her and get her out of the courtroom. She was hospitalized two or three months. But even after she was released she wasn’t able to get her life under control. She started drinking. Martinez said her friends got her to enroll in several substance abuse programs, but nothing worked. Eventually she lost her job and dropped from view sometime during the fall or winter. Martinez was very concerned about her and had tried, without luck, to track her down.”

  “The boys,” asked Lisa. “Were they convicted?”

  “Well, Martinez said that the defense team did a brilliant job. They tore a young prosecutor apart—it wasn’t a fair match. She said that if the jury had seen the brutally beaten body, they wouldn’t have believed any of the story. But they didn’t. And even though the case became a cause célèbre with the University’s women’s groups, the boys were found innocent. The father who put up the money for the defense was quoted in the press as saying that he was glad that his son was free of a felony conviction because he wants to become a lawyer.”

  “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding,” said Lisa.

  “The system failed,” said Ray. “But it seems justice prevailed in the end.”

  “How?” asked Lisa incredulously.

  “Well, there is a footnote to the story. Martinez said that afte the boys got off, their fraternity decided to throw a big acquittal party. It was really sick. They even had T-shirts made up with the Sigma-whatever Fraternity Spring Acquittal Party printed on them for the brothers and their dates to wear. Anyway, the three boys were leading a procession out to the hall they had rented for the party. They were in a Jeep and the driver lost control on a curve and flipped it. The driver was dead at the scene, a second boy died later, and the only survivor is a paraplegic.”

  The three of them sat in silence for a while, looking out at the water. Finally Lisa said, “It’s a horrible, sad story—the whole thing. But Ray, who is the woman? You’re going to tell us, aren’t you?”

  “Why not? The woman is Prudence Reed. She now has a hyphenated name, Prudence Reed-Murphy.”

  No one said anything for several minutes. Finally Marc asked, “What do you do now?�
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  “First I need to find out if she’s still in the area. But as you know, I don’t have a case; all I have is a possible motive.”

  “And you don’t have any evidence that connects these three, or possibly four boys—men—to Prudence’s rape, do you?” Lisa asked.

  “No, only that they are about the right age, and I might be able to develop evidence that they knew one another during those years,” said Ray.

  “You only have one murder, Randy Holden. And there you don’t have a weapon. The other two look like accidents. You don’t have any hard evidence that foul play was involved in those deaths?” Lisa said.

  “Well, no. But I have some theories….”

  “So what are your theories?” Lisa insisted.

  “Well with Robert Arden, that’s the one who drowned, Prudence could have enticed him out in a canoe and then capsized him with a power boat.”

  “But you don’t know that she had access to a power boat, do you?” she pressed.

  “No, but you wouldn’t have to check very many docks to find one with the keys. You know that’s true. And we don’t know who she might be in contact with; she might have been able to get a boat.”

  “That’s still a long reach. Do you have anything else?” she asked.

  “Well, a little more. A couple of days after Roger Grimstock died, a farmer in Aral complained that he was sure that someone had been joy riding in his snowplow or at least stealing gas.”

  “Snowplow,” said Marc incredulously.

  “Well, it’s not really a snow plow. It’s an old pickup truck with a snowplow attached to the front end. He has another newer truck; he just uses this one for snow so he doesn’t have to take the blade off. Anyway, he called and said someone had used his truck. I stopped by and talked with him, an old guy, must be in his eighties. He said the truck, it was parked behind the barn, had been moved and some gas was burned or stolen. He said he always topped off the tank. But when he started the truck, about a quarter of the tank was gone.”

  “That’s all?” asked Marc.