I was just pulling out of the Topsail gate when my newest burner-phone rang; it was Frank’s number … that was quick. “Hello, Frank. What can I do for you?” I knew, because he was calling the phone that I’d bought at Kinney’s yesterday afternoon, instead of the one I’d been using for an unusually long three months.
“What the hell are you doing poking into the Crocker thing?” He, or someone, had made a leap, because my flier had specifically not mentioned the Crockers, so that I could gauge the signal strength of any response (from an informational echolocation standpoint); this therefore represented a strong return, both in terms of specificity and speed (since I’d only sent the emails/FB stuff this morning, and posted the fliers 107 minutes ago).
“I can tell you all about it when we meet for lunch at … Mountain Mist, say 1:15, if you can hold out that long,” I suggested.
“Sounds good, Tyler. I’ll see you then, and don’t stick your nose in, anywhere, or piss anybody off between now and then.”
“No promises, Frank. You never can tell where a favor for a friend is going to lead.” This would likely get him sputtering, as he has been pushing me lately to abandon my consulting detective hobby. He had no idea how rough it had gotten in the past, but he and his wife Meg think of me as a gifted toddler who wandered into a big kids’ pickup game, in which I don’t entirely understand the rules. They’re not entirely wrong, but I have found that I enjoy the game, regardless (or perhaps because) of the challenges/risks inherent in playing this sort of game.
“Dammit Tyler ….” Frank began.
“I’ll see you at Mountain Mist (a soft ice cream place and hot-dog stand by the water in Saranac Lake, that is loved by locals and summer-people alike).” I cut in, and then hung up. I made the right hand turn opposite the road leading out to Floodwood, and headed down to the Upper Saranac Lake boat launch, on a hunch. All of the fliers I had put up 109 minutes ago, had been torn down (little white corners, flags, remained of each); seeing that they had had such a strong response, I replaced them, and then headed into town, turning onto Forest Home Road just past the fish hatchery in Lake Clear, to take advantage of the twists and turns and car in my hands to do some driving/thinking/meditation.
Mountain Mist, Lake Flower, 7/15/2013, 1:38 p.m.
I took the stairs up to SmartPig two at a time, took a pair of Cokes out of the Coke-fridge, and rubbed Hope’s belly while my computer woke up. The pictures that Anthony had taken of Deirdre Crocker were waiting in my email inbox, and, as always, I was astounded at the quality of the pictures a phone can take. I saved the email to a “Topsail” file, opened it on my iPad’s gmail app, and saved each of the pictures to my photo gallery (so that I could access them on the road, and hopefully down at the museum, if my contact got back in touch with me). By the time I had finished my first Coke, Hope was waiting over by the door, leash in her mouth; I picked up the second Coke, and we went out for a walk.
Frank works for the Saranac Lake Police Department, and for him to have been pulled into this so fast must mean that someone knows/thinks/fears something, but also (as the sudden appearance of Barry’s cottage-sized shadow next to me would seem to indicate) that things might begin to move in unanticipated directions. Time and again in my investigations I had been surprised that people did not act and react in logical ways to the stimuli that life, or I, threw in their paths. It was something that I struggled with, and tried to overcome through reading (which was generally my answer to every problem, somewhat like the hammer/nail saying about problem-solving).
“Feels like the ice might be cracking. Not going out yet, but those deep sounds that tell you something is gonna happen.” Barry is normally more straightforward in his manner of speaking, not given to figurative language, so I looked over at him as we walked down the hill on Broadway, towards the river. He moved out of the way of people who couldn’t see, or run into, him, probably for my sake.
“Frank Gibson looks like a cartoon cop, all fat and bald and dumb, but he ain’t. He’s fat and bald, all right, just not dumb. He knows things and people and this place like you never will. Using him right is important. You don’t want to blow it, and piss him off. He could shut you down on this, and all your stupid games along with it.” Barry considered my investigations games because I didn’t normally get paid for them; he might be right, and that might be how/why I like it.
“I’m not interested in using him, Barry. He and Meg are people that I care about,” I countered. I was pretending to talk to Hope, to avoid being recognized (as opposed to being ‘taken for’) crazy, but Hope could tell by my tone that I wasn’t speaking to her, and she refused to look back at me, sulking.
“Yah, whatever. You’re still gonna ask him about the car accident in the summer of 1957, right? Just do it careful, subtle.” If I could smile for real, now would be one of the times that I might … being schooled on subtlety by the ghost of a dead leg-breaker and murderer, who had to turn sideways to get his shoulders through doors.
I had been planning on reaching out to Frank at some point for some background on Dee’s accident, and Barry was right, this might be the perfect chance. It was likely a dead end. It was reasonable to assume that everything would be; Deirdre Crocker had likely been dead for 54.85 years, and just well-hidden, like …
“Yeah, I was just thinking about that,” said Barry. He knows everything that I do, but ordinarily doesn’t read my mind during a conversation; it was slightly more unnerving than just talking with a ghost, not much, but a little. “Even money they don’t find me and Justin for fifty years, or fuckin’ ever. She could be down a hole somewhere, in a foundation, somethin’.”
“True, Barry, but assuming/admitting that doesn’t give me anything useful to do.” I paused here, feeling on the edge of something massive, but it slipped away as Hope began barking.
Hope is generally not a friendly beast, hating men and women and cats and dogs equally (her life before she showed up at the TLAS was rough, and she has the physical and psychological scarring to prove it), but she generally keeps her hate to herself, disliking everyone but me quietly and from a distance. The exception to that rule was, strangely, Irish Setters; she hated them with a passion that was … disturbing. She now was shrieking and pulling and snapping and jumping, trying to get at the setter across the street from us, walking up, and into, the little park in the middle of town; the worst thing was that the setter couldn’t have been less interested (much less scared). It glanced our way once, and just kept going, completely bored by Hope’s slavering animosity. By the time we’d gotten far enough away from each other for Hope to rationalize calming down (with me assuring her that she had scared the big nasty dog off), Barry had vanished, taking with him the intuitive leap that I had been on the verge of making a minute earlier. We walked down to the firehouse, I waved at Smokey, the Dalmatian who lives at the firehouse, sleeping on the couch that backed up to the big picture window upstairs (Hope hated Smokey, but not enough to bark or even growl, just the generic hate that everyone not me or Dorothy evoked in her); then we turned around and headed home via Olive, Sumner, and Dorsey streets, to mix things up a bit (and hopefully avoid the Irish Setter on our way home).
I took Hope back and inhaled a few more Cokes and three cans of vienna sausages, giving Hope the juice and one ‘sausage’ from each can. Dot would be furious if she saw me giving Hope the cans (she worried that Hope would cut her tongue on the edges), but Hope liked it better that way, and was always careful, almost delicate, in cleaning out the cans.
By that time, I needed to head out for my date with Frank at Mountain Mist, and Hope was exhausted. I rubbed her belly, told her that she was a brave and good dog, and that I loved her, and went to see Frank.
I got there seven minutes early, pulling in to park at Fogarty’s Marina (leaving the parking spots right in front of Mountain Mist for the summer people) and wasn’t surprised to see Frank sitting on the hood of his cruiser, waiting for my Element to pull into the lot. I climbed up
and out of the Porsche and saw Frank do an actual double-take as he finally noticed me.
“Tyler, tell me you didn’t steal Mike Crocker’s toy,” he said with a smile on his mouth, and in his voice, but missing from his eyes.
“Nope, Mrs. Crocker arranged for me to borrow it while I’m checking something out for her.” Since he already knew, there was no point in pretending. He knew a bit about how I worked my consulting detective gig, and guessed a good deal more; while he didn't/couldn’t approve, he thought/believed that I did more good than harm (a belief which I tried to maintain in him, although I didn’t always believe it myself).
“It sure beats that cargo container you normally drive. Watch yourself going through Tupper. They like a Porsche,” he said with a smile. Tupper Lake, the westernmost of the Tri-Lakes towns, was famous for speed traps. I had been pulled over, but not ticketed, for 37 mph in a 35 mph zone; at first I had assumed that the officer was joking, but he was totally serious, and if there had been anything in my driving history I’m certain that he would have written the ticket.
“Let’s grab some lunch, and then we can talk.” Meg, his wife, insists that it’s a low blood-sugar thing, but Frank is universally in a better mood after eating, and my assumption was that if I could stuff a big lunch into him, he’d be easier to deal with than he might otherwise be.
I ordered four chili dogs, fries, onion rings, and two large cups of Pepsi (blech); he raised his eyes at the last bit, but I told him that I could suffer through inferior cola beverages if it was to support a local business. I paid, and when he raised his eyebrows, I assured him that he could pay for the ice cream we’d get after lunch. We found an empty picnic table, and sat down. We let each other eat in relative quiet, cleared our refuse, and moved to the shady bench a bit away from the water to get a little more privacy for our talk.
“So, the old lady asked you to find her daughter?” he asked, keeping a straight-face, but just barely.
“She didn’t say it, but I got the feeling that she’s known Deirdre’s been dead for decades, Frank. She just wants to know what happened … maybe why. What if Austin (his and Meg’s son, soon to be entering his senior year at SLHS) vanished one day, wouldn’t you do anything … everything … to find out what happened, even if you couldn’t help him … just so you would know?” He nodded.
“Yup, sure. I get that, I really do. And I don’t begrudge her, or you looking, but it’s going to make waves. It was sort of a big deal a million years ago (54.85, I thought, but didn’t say), I can remember my dad and granpa talking about it in a general way. A huge fuss in the papers, lots of staties, guys in suits from Albany, even someone from the FBI; it built a wall between locals and summer people, bad feelings that stuck around for years after.” I started to see why someone had taken down my fliers.
“So you got a call today from …?” I prompted.
“Dougie Preston, been working as caretaker at one or another of the camps on Upper Saranac since he was fourteen. Good guy. He and my dad went to school together, and I shot my first deer up at his camp near Dexter Lake. He’s got nothing against you or the Crockers, but he’s worried about someone picking at an old scar.”
“I’m not great with metaphors, Frank, but sometimes you need to go back in under old scars to fix an old break or repair the tissue or squeeze out some pus and a splinter. I’m going to talk with a few people, look at some pictures, do some research here and down in Blue Mountain Lake (the museum was implied, as the rest of Blue Mountain Lake consisted of a wide spot in the road, where it splits to bring people to Raquette Lake and Indian Lake, more tiny towns by big lakes). See if I can turn anything up. No FBI, no suits from Albany, no newspapers … just me.”
“That’s what I thought, and that’s what I’ll tell old Dougie, but I just wanted to make sure. Take your time, have fun with the car, but try not to piss off either the locals or the summer-folk; things work better when we’re all one big happy family (with rich relatives from out of town, I added, to myself, who pay for schools and police departments).”
“Speaking of that (we weren’t, but it was close), there is one thing that I could use your help on. Just the one, I promise.” I looked at him. The truth was that he owed me, from the big mess of last year; it had ended with me shot, and him getting a commendation (although the two were not directly related). I didn’t want/plan to call it in (as I might need him on something bigger or trickier at some point in the future), but I could see that I wouldn’t need to.
“What?” he asked.
“Deirdre Crocker was in a car accident somewhere out near the Wawbeek (it was gone now, but that wouldn’t matter to locals giving directions for another 30 years) with another young girl at some point during the Woodsmen’s Days in the summer of 1957. I’d like to get as much about the accident and the other girl as you can find without making you uncomfortable.”
“Easy. Done. I can probably have it for you in a day, two if I have to dig. Now, black-raspberry and vanilla twist is yours, right? A small?”
“Large, you cheapskate, and make it a dip-top just for trying to skate on your end of the lunch.”
We ate our cones down by the water, watching boats/boaters paddle and motor by, and eventually sharing bits of cone with the ducks who summered at Mountain Mist. A serious-looking mother in capris pants and fancy shoes gave us disapproving glares (I know that it’s not nutritious fare for the ducks, but they really like the cones, and I enjoy watching ducks race around after them), even Frank in his uniform; he mumbled a low “Sorry Ma’am” and tromped back to his cruiser, waving at me over his shoulder as he climbed in.
I was feeling great about the lunch and talk and ducks until I saw Barry waiting for me over by the Porsche. The quacky distractions must have dulled my perceptions, and now I would have to figure out what was bothering Barry/me.
Green Island, Upper Saranac Lake, 7/15/2013, 7:16 p.m.
“It’s not gonna work Tyler, so don’t you even fucking try,” Barry said, apparently reading my mind.
“What’s not going to work? Finding Dee Crocker, switching Hope’s dog food to the senior formula, finally getting behind the scenes at the museum in Blue Mountain Lake for some research, fitting more Cokes in the Coke-fridge using the new stacking plan I dreamt of last night … what?”
“Driving away before we talk. If you get in this silly car, I’ll have to try and get in also, and it will ruin the illusion. We both know that I could never fit in a size-two like that car. So I suggest that you lean on the hood for a minute and listen before you knock off for the day; yes, I know you’re planning on bandit camping on the lake, so you can get a feel for all’a the big camps near the Crockers.”
“Great camps, Barry, they call them great camps; and that’s working, by the way.”
“Yah. Anyway, hold your hand up by your ear so that guy behind you doesn’t have you carted off to Arkham.” I had wondered about this reference the first few times Barry used it in this context, and eventually decided two things: that he must have mentioned it in one of our few actual conversations, and that he was referring to the DC comic universe rather than H.P. Lovecraft’s stories. I held my hand up though, mimicking a cell-phone conversation (hopefully well enough that nobody would notice that I didn’t have a phone in my hand).
“Your date with Deputy Dawg seemed to go well, but it sounds like he’s gonna blow what little cover you left yourself on those fliers when he talks with his pappy’s friend about you. You’re not as low profile around here as you once were, Tyler. People know who you are, and they know what you do. Not exactly, but everyone in the Tri-Lakes is related or dated (that sounded like a rehearsed saying, but it was also mostly true), and you’ve helped and pissed off enough folks that people know. Gibson will tell ‘Dougie’ (said with a smirk, which is a facial expression that I haven’t bothered trying to learn/mimic yet), and he’ll tell everyone he knows with thumbs inside of an hour. Those old-timers, caretakers and guides, they’re the worst gossips on
the planet.”
“So … at this point there’s nothing productive I can do about Frank or ‘Dougie,’ and I’m not interested in not following through with this, so where does that leave me/us?”
“Exactly where you were a couple of minutes ago, but maybe a bit smarter and better prepared. That spiderweb camping (Barry enjoys mocking my hammock-camping) you like is prolly a good idea, but sleep somewhere new every night, and don’t be seen going there if you can help it. You’re exposed and trapped when you go to your office, or home, or whatever the fuck it is; the door-bar is good, but I coulda gotten in through that, either talking or with my boot. What you need is some portable form of weapon that can even the playing field between a puny guy like you, and any hoods that want to stop you pokin’ your nose where you shouldn’t; if only there was something like that so regular, decent folk could get to defend themselves from guys like me and Justin.”
“No guns!” I said, too loudly for my faux cellphone conversation, and I could feel attention shift towards me for a second.
Barry smiled at me and said, “No Capes!” He had been a fan of “The Incredibles,” and liked to quote it at me from time to time (I’d been forced to watch it one night with Dot and Lisa last fall, and when the phrase came up one time, I paled … so now he quoted it whenever possible).
“I think you’re whacked, not wanting a gun. You never would have gotten the drop on me and Justin last year without one, and we’da dropped you in that fuckin’ pit in the woods, instead of the other way around; but you’re the one who can touch and buy stuff, so you win. I still think you should get something to protect yourself, though; just sayin’ is all.”
Caretakers (Tyler Cunningham) Page 9
