Stamped Out

by Terri Thayer

  Lyle leaned into April, keeping his voice low. His features were oversized, like his hands. He said, “By the way, I dropped off some invoices at the barn earlier.”

  April looked at him in surprise. “You were in the barn?”

  “Well, yeah. That’s the way your father and I work. He likes stuff put right on his desk. In the special place.”

  She laughed. That did sound like her dad. She’d have to talk to him. That system had to change now that she was living there. She couldn’t have strange men dropping in without notice.

  “Okay, I’ll make sure he gets them. I’d like to talk to you about the Castle job and what you remember about Frankie Imperiale.”

  “That’s a shame, ain’t it? They sure it’s him?”

  April shrugged. “It’s not official.”

  “There are only a few dentists in Aldenville,” Curly said. “They just got lucky that he’d had his dental work done here.”

  April nodded. That was true. Many people went into Wilkes-Barre for their doctor’s appointments. Someone like Frankie, with a hardscrabble upbringing, was lucky to have had any dental work done.

  “How well did you know Frankie?” April asked.

  “I barely remember working with him,” Lyle said. “That would have been way back, at the first Castle job. He was an apprentice.”

  Yet Ed didn’t remember him. April tried to think of something else to ask him.

  Lyle looked at the diminishing line at the buffet table. “I’m going to get some food. Do you want something?” he asked her politely.

  “Thanks, I already ate.”

  April tried to spot the other elderly man she’d seen with Curly at the Castle yesterday. “Where’s Mo?” she asked.

  “Not here.” Curly leaned in and whispered. His breath was stale and smelled like old socks. “He couldn’t take it. He lives at that damned nursing home. He had a bad afternoon, and they gave him something to sleep. “He was agitated.”

  Tammy wasn’t the only one who couldn’t face a funeral.

  “Can you get me some cookies? I need to rest my dogs a bit.” Curly headed to a line of chairs set up under the high windows.

  As she approached the dessert table, April heard the Buchert Construction name and slowed near a group of mourners that were gathered around the cookies. They were talking about Frankie. She inched closer, picking up a small paper plate. She put a pizzelle on her plate. She vacillated between cream puffs and snickerdoodles. Did Curly have to worry about trans fat? She decided it was too late for him. He might as well enjoy the turtle brownies. She made her choices slowly so she could listen.

  A bosomy woman clucked, “Poor Rita Imperiale. All those years. Never knowing where her son was. Thinking he’d abandoned her.”

  “He was always trouble,” said an elderly woman with a face the color and texture of a well-used paper grocery bag.

  The first woman leaned into the group. April strained to hear. “Her only child. She never told anyone who his father was.”

  The group of women resorted to murmurs, and April backed off, now putting cookies randomly on Curly’s plate. She’d left home, too, left her mother alone. She’d always been in touch with her parents, though. Still, there had been long stretches of time during college and when she was getting her career off the ground that the phone calls home had been scarce. She looked over at her mom, now walking with Clive, introducing him to the priest, and wondered if she had needed more from April.

  April dropped off the plate of cookies with Curly and then searched out Lyle. She found him eating at a banquet table, and sat down in the empty chair next to him.

  “Do you think Yost has it in for my dad? Some kind of personal vendetta?”

  Lyle looked thoughtful, his mouth moving as he chewed potato salad. “He’s always after us to have the proper permits, making sure our tools are locked up every night. I don’t think he checks up on every contractor like he does us.”

  “Did you? Have the right permits for the Castle?”

  Lyle’s eyes flashed with anger. “You heard me. I talked to the borough yesterday morning. The code enforcement officer said I was cleared.”

  “Okay, okay,” April said. “I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on.”

  Lyle shook his head. “Used to be a man’s word was good enough. When George was the code enforcement officer, Yost and George were tight as thieves. There would have been no questions.”

  All she’d done was make Lyle mad at her. April excused herself.

  April mingled, listening to conversations that ranged from the deer population to road construction and back again. Frankie and George, the dead men, seemed to have been forgotten.

  Why was Frankie so forgettable? She wanted to know what Frankie Imperiale looked like. The men her father hired back then often came to their house in the mornings for Bonnie’s sticky buns and coffee. Maybe she’d remember him if she saw his face. She might remember who his friends were.

  According to Curly, he was a local boy. If that was the case, she knew right where to look. She made her way through the crowd and past the kitchen, using the back hall that led to Deana’s place.

  April turned into Mark’s study. Just as she’d remembered, every high school yearbook for the past twenty years was lined up at the bottom of the bookshelves. He had the remainder, dating back to when Mr. Hudock started high school, in storage.

  She counted back on her fingers. Rocky’s graduation party was held June 13, 1993. Frankie would have been a few years out of school by then, working for her dad. She pulled down the 1990 yearbook and thumbed through. She started in the senior section and scanned the color pictures of boys and girls, with the hairstyles and clothes as anachronistic as if they’d been photographed a hundred years ago.

  Nothing in 1990. She pulled down 1991.

  Hancock, Huddleston, Imperiale. There was Frankie’s name, but next to it was only gray splotch. No photo available. Darn. She tapped her teeth with her fingernail. He had to be somewhere in the yearbook. Maybe he’d been involved in sports. April looked through the team photos with no results. Nothing in clubs. Maybe he’d been voted class clown. Or most likely to end up dead in a Castle ruin. Nothing. Frankie hadn’t been the extracurricular type.

  She did see a picture of a cheerleading Tammy, smiling, lithe and beautiful, without the worry lines that were now such a prominent feature of her face. Her high, pert ponytail was a bright yellow. It looked so unlike the mousy bob she currently wore. April felt like a voyeur. It was obscene, seeing this pretty girl with such hope and promise, before life dealt her its nasty blows. She wondered what kinds of events had led Tammy to the frown lines and gray hair.

  Flipping further through the pages, April saw a familiar face. A group of students were standing around an old car. The teacher was Mo. She read the caption. “The twenty-five-year-old Valiant was completely restored in Automotive Shop by Joe Keener, Barney Zimmerman and Frank Imperiale. The project was underwritten by Weber Insurance.”

  She pulled the book closer. Frankie’s face was tiny, and she couldn’t make out his features. According to the caption, he was the one with the grin and the mullet. But the more important thing was that Mo and George had known Frankie. She’d find out more from Mo.

  It looked as if a trip to the nursing home was in her future. She swallowed a bit of guilt about using poor George that way, but she needed to get her dad out of Yost’s jail.

  The door to the study opened. Deana stuck her head in. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine why the light was on in here. Mark’s downstairs with George’s family.”

  April pointed to the pile of yearbooks. “I see you’ve kept up your father’s tradition.”

  Deana smiled fondly. “Can you believe my dad? He still buys them and has a fit if they’re not on display when he comes home from Florida. Mark says this room will belong to my dad until the day he dies.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” April said. Before she caught
herself, she had the thought that it would be nice to have a space in her mother’s home that she could call her own.

  Deana said, “I’m glad we have a few minutes to catch up. How are you holding up?”

  April rubbed a hand across her forehead. “Dads. Can’t live with ’em, can’t kill ’em. You know my father is being questioned by the police?”

  Deana shook her head, her brown eyes troubled. She leaned into her friend. “When did that happen?”

  “Late this afternoon,” April said, pointing to the high school yearbook picture. “Since Frankie Imperiale worked on the Castle job site, they wanted to talk to Dad.”

  “That’s him?” Deana said, taking the book from her hands and studying the picture. April wondered if Deana could see the underlying structure of the skull that she’d seen yesterday come tumbling out of the rubble. She shook her head to rid herself of the image of Frankie’s head without the flesh and muscle that made the man who he was.

  “Is Ed okay?” Deana asked, looking at her friend.

  April shrugged her shoulders. Tears popped into her eyes. Her best friend had to be exhausted after a long day of caring for others, but she was serene and sincerely concerned about April. April fought back the tears. “I need to figure out what happened that night at the Castle. Everything seems to track back to that night.”

  “The night of Rocky’s graduation party?”

  April nodded. “Exactly. And the night Jesse was born.”

  Deana was thoughtful. “What does Jesse have to do with it?”

  “I’m not sure except that Frankie is his father.”

  Deana’s eyes widened. “Are you sure? That seems like a very unlikely match up. How did they even meet?”

  Deana’s attention drifted as they heard footsteps outside, and she moved to the door, listening. Someone was heading for this room. April drew her friend back a step, just as the door was flung open.

  “There you are,” Tammy said, her eyes wide and brimming with tears. April shrank into the room, but Tammy made a beeline to Deana, gripping her upper arms.

  “I want you to help me. You can help me. Please,” she said, her voice clogged with tears.

  Deana gently extricated herself from Tammy’s grasp. Deana had plenty of experience with grieving people. April was impressed anew at her quiet strength.

  “What can I do for you, Tammy?” Deana’s professional voice was soothing.

  Tammy drew in a breath. Deana guided her to the couch that they’d sat on last night watching the late news, and squatted on the floor next to her. She put her hands on the woman’s knees, as much to ground her as anything else.

  “You’ve got to find out what killed George,” Tammy said. “Please, Deana, I know you can find out how he died.”

  “Tammy, honey,” Deana said, “he was an old man. You’ve got to let him go. He had a full life.”

  Tammy’s shoulders heaved as she let the tears flow. She looked up to the door. April got the hint and closed it. Whatever Tammy wanted to say was private.

  “Deana, you saw him. Did he look like he’d been killed? You can’t believe what people are saying. I heard someone say he’d been smothered with his pillow or given an overdose of insulin. Can you find out?”

  Deana shook her head. “That would be impossible to determine without an autopsy. His family didn’t want one. George was very specific in his instructions that his body remain intact. End of story.”

  Tammy had buried her face in her hands, and her next words were barely audible. “The nursing home is a good place. We do the best we can.”

  “It’s true,” Deana said. “I testified to that with the last investigation. Forever Friends takes good care of their clients.”

  Tammy wailed, “If the nursing home gets a bad rap, it could close and I’ll be out of a job. All a place like that has is its reputation. After what happened last winter, we’re just starting to fill up again. If people think we’re killing our patients . . .”

  Deana said softly, “No one thinks you’re killing people, Tammy. Slow down.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” Tammy cried.

  Why was Tammy so upset? Did she know more about George’s death than she was saying?

  “Can’t you do something?” Tammy said.

  “Definitely not,” Deana replied. “I have a position of trust in this community. I can’t afford the hint of impropriety. I cannot get involved. This is my livelihood you’re talking about. Mark’s work. My family’s business.” Deana’s eyes were stormy. April hadn’t seen Deana’s wrath in a long time.

  A beeper went off on Deana’s watch. “It’s time for the family’s final moments with George. I’ve got to go.”

  Tammy was crying gently now. “Can I stay up here for a moment? I don’t want Lyle to see me like this. He’s not happy that I’m so upset about George. Says I’m a worry-wart.”

  April said, “I’ll stay with her, Deana. Go do what you have to do.”

  Deana shot April a worried look.

  “It’ll be fine,” April said, her hand on Tammy’s shoulder. She kneaded her muscles. Deana left the room.

  “This could come back on your dad, you know. George was at the Castle the day before he died, April,” Tammy said. “He might have hurt himself over there. Sometimes injuries don’t show up until later. They do their damage internally, and then the person dies in his sleep. The Castle is just as much at fault as the nursing home is. More.”

  April wondered about the two deaths since she’d returned to Aldenville. Both were connected to the Castle in some way. Both were connected to her father. What if George’s death hadn’t been natural?

  She didn’t want to entertain the possibility. “Yost was investigating that possibility. But he didn’t find anything.”

  “That’s only because Frankie’s skull distracted him. That Castle was a mess. There were hazards everywhere. Lyle said he twisted his ankle in a hole. An old man like George, he could have easily gotten hurt.”

  Why was George there on Tuesday? The old men liked to watch the work crews, but no one was working that day. Only Lyle, double-checking his dynamite charges. April had a thought. “How did you get here, Tammy?”

  “Lyle,” she said.

  But Lyle’d said she was home with a migraine. April’s thought was cut short by Tammy.

  “Come to the nursing home tomorrow,” Tammy said, clutching her arm. “I’ll show you around. You can see for yourself what a reputable place it is. I’m on in the afternoon. Wait until we get through lunches, say, after two.”

  Mo was at the nursing home. This would be a good opportunity to talk to him.

  “I’ll come over, Tammy,” April said.

  “Thanks, April. You’ll see,” Tammy said, tears leaving red streaks on her splotchy face. April felt a twinge of guilt using Tammy’s vulnerability to get into the nursing home. But to keep her father from going to jail she needed to know what George knew about the graduation night party, and Mo was the only one who knew that now.

  CHAPTER 14

  The next morning, Friday, April woke up later than she’d intended. She felt dry-mouthed and achy, as though she’d spent the night drinking cosmopolitans instead of going to a wake. She was emotionally hung over. The stress of the week had left her feeling wrung out.

  She lay in bed trying to figure out what she’d learned last night. She’d seen Frankie’s picture but didn’t remember him. Tammy was afraid that she was being blamed for killing people at the nursing home. Curly, Mo and George had had one last lunch at the diner before George went back to the home and died. Frankie had not been a nice guy, at least according to Suzi and the other stampers.

  In the shower, April remembered with a start that she had to get to Mirabella and meet Rocky before she could do anything else. She’d nearly forgotten. She needed to salvage this job for Retro Reproductions.

  Before leaving she listened to a short message from Vince that had come while she was in the shower. He told her that Ed wa
s still being held. He’d spent the night in the holding cell of the jail on Main Street. Vince was going to work. He’d be on the Heights job today if she needed to reach him.

  She looked up the number for the local police and called. A secretary answered, informing April that Ed could not receive calls, but he would be able to use the phone later in the day. April left a message with her, telling her dad she loved him and to call her.

  April flipped on the radio, ate cereal with one hand and drew with the other. She listened for mention of the Castle story or something about the skull or the bullet, but none came.

  She crumpled the napkin she’d doodled on and put her cereal dish in the sink. She’d been drawing dark images. At the stamping party, Piper had created a page about her son going to jail. She understood that impulse now. April found herself drawing bars and gloomy corners. Ed in jail. Whatever she didn’t want to think about came through in her sketch pages. She reminded herself he wasn’t in jail. He was in the local pokey. There was a huge difference. That was a good thing. But she couldn’t get rid of the nagging feeling that Yost wasn’t finished with him yet.

  The ring of the phone brought her back to reality. It was Rocky. “I just saw Aunt Barbara leave. Ready to go?”

  April glanced up. The clock on the microwave read 9:04. “I’m on my way,” she said.

  Once outside, she slid the big barn door smoothly on the track, locking it with the key Ed had left. But she didn’t make it to her car. An unfamiliar blue pickup rattled up the drive, blocking her in. She scowled. She was going to be late. Would Rocky wait for her?

  She shielded her eyes and recognized Lyle after he rolled down his window and leaned out. This wasn’t the muscle car that he’d been driving when he dropped off Tammy the other night. This was a brand-new four-passenger truck, with fancy wheel covers and shiny tailpipes. The huge tires meant it stood four feet off the ground.

  He was holding a folder. “Time cards. It’s Friday. Your dad’s day to do the payroll.”