Starvation Lake

fourteen

The morning after Dingus surprised me in my apartment, I slept until eleven. Dinner at Mom’s wasn’t until twelve-thirty, so after showering and dressing I went down to the Pilot to square a few things away.

The newsroom was empty. I expected Joanie but left the ceiling lights off. I couldn’t bear the buzzing of those fluorescent lamps when I was alone. Instead I snapped on my desk lamp and proceeded to clear the mess on my desk, filling most of two garbage cans with old printouts, newspapers, and disposable coffee cups. I opened Saturday’s mail: lunch menus for the elementary school. A press release about promotions at a local insurance firm. A one-page announcement that the Starvation Lake Lions Club had named Emil J. “Bud” Popke as its Man of the Year. The Lions Club didn’t send a photograph of Popke. I didn’t know whether we had one, and Tillie didn’t like me messing around in the photo file cabinets, so I jotted her a note to make a photo assignment.

As I worked, I pondered: What was Teddy Boynton really after at Enright’s? What was on the napkin he pulled from his pocket? Why was Dingus being at once so solicitous and so evasive? Beneath it all I was dreading having to call my attorney downstate. My Detroit troubles were far from over.

I set the copies of the police report and the $25,000 receipt Dingus had given me next to my computer. I dialed Mom. Her answering machine came on, and I pressed the phone to my ear. My mother talked so fast that it often was hard to understand her recorded messages. But you had to listen because she constantly updated them for whatever was on her schedule: bingo, crochet, euchre, Meals on Wheels. Sometimes she actually called her own phone to find out where she was supposed to be. This morning she rattled off something about church and supper and meeting someone named either Felicia or Theresa at what sounded like the community center. “Mom,” I said after the beep, “I’m going to stop on the way over to start the Bonnie.”

For Monday’s Pilot, I’d gotten most of the stories and headlines ready on Friday and Saturday. All that remained were Joanie’s two Blackburn stories, which she had yet to file. Which reminded me: Joanie had also been at Enright’s. I guessed that she’d wanted to see the pictures of Blackburn and the Rats, and maybe chat up Francis a bit. But if she really was looking for people who knew Coach, why hadn’t she hung around until the playoff games were over and all the skaters came in?

Just before noon, I grabbed my jacket and walked up front to check the answering machine. One of the five messages was from Arthur Fleming, Boynton’s lawyer, left at 8:07 that morning. “Mr. Carpenter,” he said, “please call me at your earliest convenience so we can review the status of the article we discussed.” I went back to my desk for the document Fleming and Boynton had given me, but didn’t see it lying where I was sure I’d left it. I rummaged through the stack of papers next to my computer, checked my in-and out-boxes, pulled open a couple of drawers, but couldn’t find it. I looked under the desk and riffled through the stuff in the garbage cans. Still nothing. I decided I’d look later.

Half a mile from Mom’s, I swung my pickup truck left off Beach onto Horvath Road. My dad had bought property in the hills overlooking the lake’s southwestern end, not far from our house. Atop a short rise jutting from a copse of pines he built a one-car garage. There, he told my mother, he’d have the peace to pursue his hobby of rebuilding motors for go-carts, lawnmowers, and other gadgets. But most of his time he spent gazing out over the lake on a deck he built atop the garage. On summer evenings, he’d sit in a rocking chair with a beer and a cigar, timing sundown against what the weatherman had predicted.

He called it his tree house. It was a simple platform of two-by-eight planks ringed by two-by-four rails. In the rafters beneath it Dad built a closet with a door where he stowed cigars, a transistor radio, a miniature fridge, and some girlie magazines. He kept it locked, he said, because I was too young to be looking at those magazines. Sometimes he took me up on the deck, though, and we’d put the Tigers on the radio. I could still taste the potato-chip salt, the onion in the chip dip, the sweet orange pop washing it all down. Now and then Dad would joke with Mom that he was going to install a bumper-pool table and a wet bar and apply for a liquor license. Mom would say, “I’m sorry, I don’t think you can get a license if no girls are allowed.” Dad would wink and say, “Not worth the trouble then.”

The garage eventually became home to the last car he bought before he died. Dad had worked construction, installing drywall, so he drove a pickup truck. But he always talked about owning a Cadillac, if only just for Sunday drives to Lake Michigan. He set aside a little money every week for years. For a while he had a second job on weekend nights. I didn’t understand much about parents, but I knew Mom didn’t like him working Saturday nights and neither did I because that’s when we went to Dairy Queen and Mom never seemed to be in the mood without Dad around.

He was still short of affording a Caddy when his doctor told him about the cancer. When later tests confirmed his condition, he left the doctor’s office and drove straight to a car dealership in Grayling. He bought a used 1969 Pontiac Bonneville, gold with a cream vinyl roof, power windows, power seats, air conditioning, and a trunk the size of a swimming pool. When he brought it home, Mom took a look at it and her face tightened up as if she were going to cry. “Oh, Rudy,” was all she said. From my bedroom that night I overheard them in the kitchen, speaking in strained whispers. I couldn’t make out everything, but it seemed my mother wanted to understand why after all that hoping and saving Dad hadn’t gotten the Cadillac after all. My father kept saying something about an “investment.” I didn’t know what that was.

When I was old enough to drive, Mom wouldn’t let me take the Bonnie because she said it reminded her too much of Dad. But she couldn’t bring herself to get rid of it, either. We stored it in the garage beneath Dad’s tree house. Every six months or so, I’d go up and start the engine and let it run for a while, and once a year, I changed the oil and the spark plugs and updated the license plates. Even when I was living in Detroit, I made a point to drive up and service the Bonnie. If I forgot or procrastinated, Mom got on me, though she never ventured up there herself. Sometimes on summer evenings I’d clamber up the ladder to the tree house and lean against the railing.

Dad had cut a two-track road straight up to the garage through an archway of pines. I parked my truck on Horvath and trudged up the snow-covered two-track to the garage. Icicles the size of baseball bats hung from the eaves. I unlocked the side door and stepped inside. It smelled faintly of oil. A blast of cold smacked me in the face as I lifted the big garage door open.

The Bonnie started right up when I turned the key. The radio reception wasn’t good, but I could make out the voice of a news announcer from WJR, the Detroit station that carried Tiger and Red Wing games. I switched it off and pushed an eight-track tape into the player Dad had installed beneath the dashboard. Even though I never drove the Bonnie, as a teenager I’d liked to sit in it alone and listen to Dad’s music. My father loved rock and roll. His favorite was Bob Seger. Dad and his younger cousin, Eddie, had seen Seger and his band live at a club in Ann Arbor in 1968, two days before Eddie went off to army boot camp. For weeks the Seger show was all Dad could talk about. Then came word that a rocket had torn Eddie’s chopper from the sky over a jungle crawling with Vietcong. Dad got quiet after that. He took that second job. He found out about the cancer. Through it all, he played Seger on the record player in the house, over and over, the same record, the same song.

I pushed a button on the eight-track and played it: I just want a simple answer why it is I’ve got to die / I’m a simple-minded guy / two plus two is on my mind.

The bass throbbed, the guitar wailed, Seger howled. I turned it up and closed my eyes, recalling a summer Sunday afternoon before Eddie was killed, before the cancer, before Dad got quiet. Dad was working on our dock. I was playing army with Soupy and some other kids. I came running around the house wearing a plastic helmet and carrying a toy rifle. Dad was waiting by the birch tree. Sweat stuck his T-shirt to the skin at his collarbone. “Hey, Gus,” he said. “Want to play some ball?” I pulled up for just a second and said, “Not now.” Hurrying past him, I glimpsed just enough of the look on his face to wish I’d said yes. But I kept running. Every time I thought about it, I wished I could go back and tell him yes. Whenever I visited the Bonnie, I made myself think about it.

The song ended. I opened my eyes. “Two plus two is on my mind,” I said aloud, and I had a little laugh. Wind had dusted the hood of the Bonnie with snow. I turned off the car, brushed the snow off the hood with my sleeve, and closed up the garage.

As I pulled into Mom’s driveway, I saw her working in the kitchen of the little yellow house she and Dad had built when Starvation was not a vacation destination and a dry-waller and his wife could afford a hundred feet of lakefront property. She was making gravy when I walked in. I put my arm around her and pecked her on the cheek. The aroma of her perfume mixed with that of the pot roast simmering in onions. “Smells good,” I said.

She poked me in the ribs with her spoon handle. “Could you be sweet and get me a gravy boat? In the china cabinet, bottom shelf, back-left corner.”

She was talking too fast. “A what?”

“A gravy boat, dear. Gravy boat.”

In the living room I looked through the big glass sliding door at the still, white lake. I’d always thought the lake looked bigger and more dangerous in the winter. The china cabinet stood along a wall filled with photographs of Mom and Dad and me, and framed needlepoint designs Mom had made, including one of a goaltender in his ready crouch. I took the gravy boat into the kitchen. Mom hummed off-key as she worked. She was glad to have me home, despite the unpleasant circumstance of my return. She hadn’t asked much about it. But then she’d never wanted me to go to Detroit in the first place.

“You had a busy week,” she said as she ladled gravy from the steaming pan. “But, Gussy, how could you put that woman in your story? Here, let’s sit.” She set the gravy down on the kitchen table next to the platter heaped with beef and potatoes and carrots. She sat, as always, at the end near the kitchen and I sat to her right. Across from me a place was set, as always, for my father.

“What woman?” I said.

“Oh, you know, that whatshername, that nurse. Gloria. Gloria Lowinski.”

That was the nurse in Tillie’s Monica story. So somebody had actually read it. I speared a chunk of pot roast. “What about her?”

“Dear,” my mother said, as if it were obvious, “Gloria Lowinski is the biggest blabbermouth in town. She talks about her patients at Dr. Johnson’s office, for God’s sakes. She doesn’t need to be encouraged.”

“Who’s Dr. Johnson?”

Mom crooked an eyebrow at me as she spooned applesauce onto our plates. “A gynecologist, dear. Gloria is his nurse. I used to go there until, well, you don’t want to know, but suffice to say that Gloria’s lips were flapping and I finally had to switch to Dr. Schmidt in Kalkaska.”

“Oh.”

We ate quietly for a few minutes. I wanted to eat until I was too full and then go take a nap in the living room. I couldn’t, of course. I had a paper to get out. As I chewed I gazed across the table at my father’s setting. After Dad died, Coach Blackburn had sat there for Sunday dinners, until he stopped coming.

“So,” I said, “what do you think of the snowmobile thing?”

Either she didn’t hear me or she ignored me. “Are you still playing your season, honey?”

“It’s almost over.”

“You sound like you’re glad. It used to be I’d have to go out and drag you off the ice. Remember how your toes got frostbite? If you don’t like to play anymore, why do you play?”

“I do like to play, Mom.” Once I got myself to the rink and pulled my gear on and got on the ice, I usually did like to play, just like I once did. “I have a lot on my mind.”

“If you say so.”

“So what did you think about this snowmobile that washed up?”

“Not much, really.”

That wasn’t like my mother. “They say it’s Coach’s.”

“Well, I don’t see how that’s possible when Jack died right out there on the lake. I stood at that window and watched all those people gawking at the hole in the ice. Unless you believe those silly stories about tunnels under the lake.”

“Sometimes I wish I did.”

“How’s the roast? Good? I left it on too long.”

“It’s great. You know, I’ve had to deal with Dingus a bit. He’s kind of weird.”

“Oh, tell me about it. Dingus hasn’t been right for years. He never leaves that office. Does he have a bunk in there or something?”

“Didn’t notice. Has he always been this way?”

“You were still down in Detroit, son, but no, Dingus used to be out and about like anybody else when he was with Barbara. You’d see them at the Legion dances and at the Avalon, all over the place. Let’s face it, honey, Dingus isn’t the prettiest kitten in the litter, but he and Barbara made a very cute couple. He adored her.”

“I guess so. He still keeps her picture in his office.”

Mom shook her head. “Barbara. Now there’s another one. What that girl was thinking, I will never know. Don’t get me wrong, I love Barbara, I just-I never understood how she could just go off with somebody else.”

“Somebody else who?”

Mom stiffened a little; she knew she’d said too much.

“It doesn’t matter, dear.”

“Come on. Who’d she go off with?”

“She didn’t really-I mean she didn’t actually marry somebody else.”

“OK, but who?”

Mom started to get up. “I have cherry pie.”

“Sit down, Mom.”

She gave me one of those looks that said this was something I didn’t need to know. And then of course I knew.

“Whoa,” I said. “Coach?”

“Oh, my gosh, who cares? How did we get on this subject?”

“I knew Coach was the ladies’ man, all right, but I didn’t know about Barbara. Man, I missed all the fun when I was downstate. So Dingus divorced her?”

She sighed. “No, he didn’t divorce her. He wanted her back. She wanted Jack. But Jack wasn’t marrying anybody.”

“And where’s she now?”

“Last I heard, the IGA in Sandy Cove. Or maybe Kalkaska.”

“Wow. Just like that.” I scooped more potatoes onto my plate. “You dated Coach for a bit, Mom. What did you think?”

“No, I wouldn’t call it dating. We went to a show once or twice, dinner a couple of times. No big deal, really. Now, your friend Tillie, she actually dated dated him.”

I remembered seeing Tillie at a few of our games. She still had most of her beauty then. “Weren’t they just drinking buddies?” I said.

“Well, maybe so. Tillie is everyone’s drinking buddy, isn’t she?” Mom stood. “Would you like ice cream on your pie?”

“Sure.”

She went into the kitchen. I heard the microwave start, the freezer door open and shut, a fork clink. My mother was never this quiet. She came back and set the pie and a cup of coffee in front of me. “Thanks, Mom,” I said. I nodded at the chair across the table. “Remember when Coach used to come to dinner?”

“Of course. The man was a garbage disposal.”

“Do you remember how he always used to talk about coaching in Canada, how great the kids were up there?”

“Vaguely, dear. I never paid much attention to all that hockey stuff.”

Yes, she did, I thought. She was always asking whether the parents in Canada were as obnoxious as the ones in Michigan. “You don’t remember him saying anything about taking a year off from coaching, do you?”

“I remember him talking about all those championships he almost won.” Four fantastic years, I thought. “Your mother’s an old lady, Gussy. It’s all a blur now.”

I set my fork down. “Mom. I know we’ve never really talked about this.”

“About what?”

“About the night Coach died.”

I’d asked her only once before. It was the evening of Coach’s funeral. We were sitting in the back of the American Legion hall. Drunken former River Rats and their dads were toasting Coach at a microphone. At first Mom pretended she hadn’t heard my question. I asked again. She patted my knee. “Let’s listen, dear.” I persisted. “Didn’t you hear me?” she said. I thought she was going to cry. I let it go.

Now she said, “That was so long ago. Who cares?”

“It’s my job. His snowmobile washed up on the wrong lake.”

“I’m sure it’s all a misunderstanding and Dingus will clear it up.”

“No, it’s not a misunderstanding. Help me out here.”

She sipped her coffee. “It was bingo night. Or maybe bowling night-sweet Lord, my memory’s gone-I just remember I was sleeping like a baby, so I must’ve been out late. Leo must’ve been banging a while before I woke up.”

“He was at the slider?”

“No.” She waved toward the kitchen. “He came in the back door. I couldn’t make him out at first, because there was something bright shining in my eyes-the headlights on his snowmobile-and I was half asleep. Scared the devil out of me.”

If Leo really had come to the back door, then he would have come from the road behind the house. But why wouldn’t he have come directly from the scene of the accident and crossed the lake and come up the hill to the sliding door facing the lake?

“And he came in the house?”

“Yes. I remember he had liquor on his breath because it turned my stomach. And he was loud, which wasn’t like Leo. He said we had to call the police, call nine one one, Jack drowned in the lake. He kept saying-forgive my language, Lord-‘Goddamn Jack, Goddamn Jack,’ over and over, and he seemed so angry.” She looked at me uncertainly. “It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“What?”

“That he was angry.”

Why would she wonder about that now?

“Sure,” I said.

She pointed at the living room. “He came in here. I tried to make him sit down, but he just stood at the window like this”-she wrapped her arms around herself-“staring out at the lake until the police came. Dingus was with them. They went out to the lake.”

“Was he wet?”

“Who?”

“Leo. Was he wet? At least his shoulders and his head? Were there icicles in his hair?”

“Icicles? Why?”

“Because he just tried to pull Coach out of the lake.”

“Well then, I guess he must have. I don’t remember.”

“Did you give him a towel?”

“Are you interviewing me, son?”

“Mom. You were here. I just want to know.”

“What good is it going to do, Gussy?”

I finished the last of my pie. “God, that’s good,” I said. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, dear.”

“You know, I went back and reread the Pilot stories from back then. I didn’t see your name in there. How did you keep the reporters away?”

“I didn’t, dear. Henry Bridgman called and called and I think he even stopped by one night. But the police asked me to keep quiet because they were investigating. I did what I was told.”

“Dingus said to keep quiet?”

“Not Dingus. He was just a deputy. Sheriff Spardell.”

“And what about the towel?”

She looked into her coffee cup. “Gus, that was so long ago. Why would I be worrying about-”

A flurry of loud knocks came at the kitchen door. Mom turned. “Who could that be?”

Through the kitchen window I saw Joanie’s red Honda Civic parked on the road shoulder. “I’ll get it,” I said.

Joanie stood on the back porch in a hooded sweatshirt, her hands stuffed inside the belly pocket. I stepped outside. “Where’s your coat?” I said. “It’s freezing.”

“I knew it.”

“You knew what?”

“There’s a bullet hole.”

“What?”

“There’s a bullet hole in the snowmobile. That’s what the forensics were about. A bullet hole. Somebody shot Blackburn.”

I glanced to make sure Mom wasn’t standing behind me. “Keep it down,” I said. “How do you know?”

She hesitated just long enough to make me resent her for not trusting me. “A department source,” she said.

D’Alessio, I thought. Always working it. “OK. Good. Go back and start writing. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“This is huge.”

“Yep. Good work.”

I knew how she felt, knowing she had a juicy story. But I just felt empty and stupid, like I’d never known anything at all.

Inside, Mom was at the sink, scraping the roasting pan. “Sorry, Mom, duty calls,” I said. “Dinner was fantastic.”

She turned to hug me. She held the squeeze a little longer than usual. “I wish you could stay. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

As I started my truck, I thought, She remembered Leo’s liquor breath but not a towel because she didn’t give him a towel, because she didn’t need to.

I parked in front of the Pilot and crossed Main Street to Enright’s. Inside, Loob was washing mugs behind the bar while music videos played silently on the TV overhead.

“Dude,” Loob said. “Brewski?”

“Loob. No, listen-were you here all last night?”

“Came in around six-thirty.” He jammed the mugs one by one onto a soapy brush sticking up out of the sink, then rinsed them in milky water.

“Did you see my reporter in here? Joanie?”

“You mean pretty-not-skinny?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Yeah, she was here for a bit. Two Diet Cokes. Left me a quarter.”

“You talk to her?”

Loob held a glass up to a bar lamp, decided it was clean, and set it in the drainer. “I suppose.”

“Francis said she was asking questions.”

“She didn’t ask me no questions.” He dried his hands with a towel. “But she did give me a message.”

“For who?”

“Teddy.”

“Boynton?”

“No, Teddy Roosevelt. Man, goalies.”

“What was the message?”

He grinned. “Heard you took a little holiday on the ice last night, Gus. Ain’t you cured of that by now?”

“There is no cure. What was the message?”

“She wrote it on a napkin. But it’s none of my business, Gus.”

“Uh-huh.”

As the main bartender at Enright’s, Loob probably knew more secrets than anyone in town, except Audrey at the diner. The difference was, Audrey could keep them. Loob picked up the TV remote and changed the channel. The president appeared on the screen. He looked angry, wagging his finger. Loob shut it off. “Fugging joke,” he said.

“Yep. Can you tell me what Joanie wrote?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe an address and phone number.”

“ Her address and phone number?”

“How the hell would I know, Gus? Look, I got work to do.”

“Francis here?”

Loob cocked his head and pointed past the photograph of jubilant Soupy on the back wall. “In his office.”

As I started back, Loob called out, “Hey, Teddy banging her?”

“Not literally.”

“Augustus! To what do I owe the honor?”

Francis Dufresne looked up from the cluttered desk where he sat counting money and punching a calculator. Thick stacks of ones, fives, tens, twenties, and fifties were piled neatly alongside a metal lockbox.

“Just checking to make sure you’re in business.”

“Ho,” he said. “So long as Alden Campbell keeps drinking, I’ll be in business. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Sit down.”

His office was a converted closet that smelled of whiskey and disinfectant. I sat on some vodka cases stacked against the wall. Tacked behind his head was a dog-eared certificate that read, “Francis J. Dufresne, 1980 Northern Michigan Bartender of the Year.” Next to it hung a bulletin board checkered with receipts and invoices and old River Rats schedules. At the top was a calendar from First Fisherman’s Bank of Charlevoix, November 1986. A rendering on the calendar showed a woman in her Sunday best sitting with a grinning banker. Someone had penned crude quote bubbles over their heads. “I’ll bet you’d like to screw me,” the woman said, and the banker replied, “Sure would! No need to undress, though!”

Francis noticed me looking at it and smiled. “Some downstaters bought that old bank and then, guess what? No more free calendars.”

I pointed at the nameplate. “What’s the J for?”

“Not a thing, actually. Mother just fancied the sound of it. As if I was going to be somebody, ha!”

We talked about the weather and about the Rats losing again to the Pipefitters. Francis was kind enough not to bring up my distant past. Finally, he said, “What can I do you for?”

“Any chance you’re going to be at the zoning board meeting tomorrow?”

He grunted. “How is your mom?”

“She’s fine.”

He set one stack of bills down, punched a few numbers into the calculator, and picked up another stack. “I’ve been thinking about her. And you, Augustus. This must be a difficult time for the both of you. I know you and Jack had a bit of a falling-out.”

“He had his reasons.”

“We all got our reasons-or our rationalizations. Sometimes Jack just took it too far. He did with you, in my humble opinion, and I told him so. But he was a stubborn cuss. For Pete’s sake, it’s just a lousy hockey game. You were a damned fine goalie.”

“Thanks.” It sounded a little strange coming from the guy who made Coach his star pitchman, who used the town’s love of hockey to open its collective wallet. But it felt good anyway.

“You know,” he said, “it’s too bad your dad’s not around. Now there was a fine fellow, Rudy. I wish…well, you know. Can’t do anything about the past. He was a friend, you know. You were just a little guy. We used to go fishing now and then.”

My stomach rose and dipped. I had one sharp-as-a-knife memory of Dad’s fishing. I was four or five years old, standing on my toes, peering across the big round picnic table behind my grandfather’s house along the Hungry River. The table was covered with damp newspapers. Dad and Grandpa and Grandpa’s brothers were cleaning the perch and bluegill they’d caught while I was still sleeping. There were a pile of fish filets, another pile of fish guts and scales, a bunch of longneck bottles of Buckhorn beer, and a transistor radio tuned to Ernie Harwell broadcasting the Tiger game.

“Really?” I said.

“Yeah. Bowled with him, too, up to Mancelona. He had one beautiful hook, he did. And whenever he got a strike, he’d spin around on one foot and take his beer and hold it out in front of him like a toast and say, ‘How sweet it is,’ just like old Jackie Gleason on TV. ‘How sweet it is.’”

We both laughed.

“And then there was Jack,” Francis said. “Hell of a coach, no denying that. But like I say, sometimes he just took it too far. All that stuff about how losing is good for winning.” He stopped shuffling the bills and grinned. “I finally had to tell him, not in my business, Jack. Losing ain’t ever good in business.”

“So does that mean you’re going to the zoning board?”

“Ho-ho, OK, you got some questions. Tell you the truth, I haven’t really thought about it.” Sure he hadn’t. “I’m supposed to be up in Gaylord about the same time.”

“So Teddy’ll handle it?”

Francis resumed stacking the bills. “First let me ask you, are you going to be quoting me? You’re a friend, so I’d like to be candid, but it’s hard to be candid if you’re going to be quoting me in the paper.” He smiled. “Got too many dear friends to make into enemies, if you know what I mean.”

I was reluctant, but I knew where I could find him. “All right.”

“It’s not like I have a flock of secrets to set loose,” he said. “You’ve probably heard old Theodore and I aren’t, well, we aren’t working elbow to elbow as much anymore. I think the young fellow’s sort of feeling his oats. He doesn’t think he needs the old guy holding him back.”

“Holding him back from what?”

“Ha! Lots of questions bottled up in that one, Augustus.”

“Like?”

“Like”-he arched a bushy eyebrow-“does Mr. Boynton really want a new marina?”

“Why else would he be going to all this trouble?”

Francis chortled. “Well, I probably shouldn’t be saying these things, Augustus. But I trust you. So let me just give you one little thought. It’s something you probably wouldn’t know unless you’re in my business.”

“Please.”

“Well,” he said. “Do I really want to say this?” He sat thinking for a minute. Then he said, “OK. We are off the record. And I mean no disrespect. Theodore is a capable young man. To his credit, he’s built a few things. But mostly, he’s not a builder. No, he’s a bleeder. He bleeds things. Bleeds them dry.”

“Like what?”

“Remember that little strip mall he bought out by Estes Corner?”

“I thought you both worked on that.”

“I had a couple of dollars in it, but I was strictly silent. Theodore was the one who wanted to buy the thing. He said it had all sorts of potential, being at a crossroads, to scoop up traffic between Starvation and Sandy Cove. And at first he made like he was actually going to make some improvements and run the thing. But then he just bled it. Borrowed up to the keister, took the cash, put some in his pocket, and funneled the rest into his next victim, that duplex out on Morrissey. Then he bled that one, too.”

“The strip mall’s all boarded up.”

“Yes, sir, ’tis. And you know where the cash for that originally came from? The old Avalon cinema. And where’s that now? Boarded up. You see, son, Mr. Boynton is pretty good at the back-and-forth, at the negotiations. It’s all a game to him, and he likes games, especially ones he can win. But he’s not so keen on the actual running of things like stores and restaurants and movie theaters. Once he makes his deal, he wants to collect up his winnings and go home.”

“But he doesn’t have any winnings until he runs the things.”

“You and I agree on that, Augustus. But that’s not how Theodore sees it. That’s why he and I aren’t working so closely these days. He thinks I’m an old man with old-fashioned ideas, like owing everybody and their brother money is a bad idea, not a good one. Like keeping your money with the folks who made you what you are.”

“What do you mean, Francis? You’ve been in on the projects in Sandy Cove and other places, haven’t you?”

He leaned forward and wagged his finger in my face. “No, Augustus, see, this is where your paper hasn’t gotten the facts quite right. Not that I can really blame you, because how were you to know? But I’ll let you in on a little secret: Theodore and I have had some knockdown, drag-outs over these Sandy Cove projects, including that movie house we’re supposed to be fixing up. I think our money should stay right here”-he pointed downward for emphasis-“and not be going hither and yon just because there’s a few more dollars to be made, like we’re a couple of damn carpetbaggers.”

“Why don’t you just walk away then?”

“Well, it isn’t that simple when you’ve got all sorts of money tied up in the business, but I’m almost there. And that’ll be a good day for Starvation Lake.”

“What about the marina?”

Francis turned and began fitting the stacks of bills into the lockbox. “What about it? After the zoning board does Theodore’s will-and they will, trust me, if not tomorrow then soon enough, because they’re all so deathly afraid that Theodore and his lamebrained little lawyer might sue them-then I would be shocked, son, absolutely shocked, if a single piece of structural steel ever went up out there. Mark my words. Theodore has no desire to run a marina. That’s a big, big operation. Alden is not much better than Angus was at running his show, but at least it’s there.”

“What’s Teddy going to do if not build a marina?”

Francis snapped the lockbox shut. “Have you not listened to a word I said, son? He’ll bleed it, bleed it for all it’s worth. The minute he gets the zoning, his lender will release his first draw. Five million dollars, son. He’s going to run that down the street to First Financial here and pay off some of what he owes on his other properties. The condos on the north shore, that strip mall. He’s leveraged up to his neck. Why do you think he’s borrowing the marina money from a bank down in Saginaw? Because nobody here’ll touch him. Behind all the smiles and the handshakes, believe me, Mr. Boynton these days is a desperate man. One little thing goes wrong and all his debtors are going to come down on him like a shithouse of bricks.”

“Aren’t you in on the marina?”

“Well, yes and no. I have a sort of token investment presence, a few dollars, as a personal favor to Theodore, who’s been with me on many a transaction, after all. I’ll do everything I can to make sure he builds it. Maybe he’ll surprise me.”

As Francis talked, I thought of the deal Teddy had offered Soupy. If Francis was right, it would mean that Soupy would surrender his interest in the old marina in return for a potentially worthless stake in one that might never be built. Teddy would get a marina, all right, just not a new one. Soupy would be left high and dry. And if Teddy bled the old marina like Francis said he’d bled everything else, the town would be left high and dry too. I decided Francis probably didn’t know about the settlement. “I worry about Soupy,” I said.

“I’ll bet you do,” he said. “I worry, too. I knew his father. Alden’s not a bad boy, just a little immature.”

“That’s for sure.” Thinking of the marina reminded me of something. “I’ve got another kind of stupid question.”

“No stupid questions, son, just stupid answers.”

“Right. Did the town ever buy, or even consider buying, a ferryboat of any sort? Like, maybe to take people across the river? Seems crazy, I know.”

Francis chuckled. “Well, you’re not so far off. There was some idle talk way back, must have been the late sixties, before Jack showed up and we got things moving around here. But why do we need a ferry for the river? A child can swim it.”

True. Anyway, that marina receipt was from 1988. I stood to leave. “Thanks, Francis. You know, if you change your mind about being quoted-”

“Oh, no, don’t even think about it. I want to help you. You know what you know now and you’ll have to find ways to get it in your paper other than quoting your faithful barkeep. Maybe it’ll give you something to do besides dig up Jack Blackburn’s grave, God rest his soul.”

“I’m going to be busy.”

“Aren’t we all? This working stuff is never going to be popular.”

“You know,” I said, “I wasn’t around when Coach died. I just came in for the funeral. But maybe you know why they didn’t drag the lake. Seemed like the thing to do, don’t you think?”

Francis frowned. “Like I said, son, I really don’t like digging all of this up. The remains, you know, they never smell so good, if you know what I mean. But on this, well, hell, it’s been a long time, and I can’t say as I remember. Something to do with the budget, I think. The town council made that decision. You could probably look it up. Have you checked the minutes of the council meetings?”

“Have not.” I made a mental note to check in the morning. Because the county handled the town’s records, too, I’d have to deal with County Clerk Verna Clark, who still presided over the files like a sentry at the castle gate. I allowed myself a moment’s recollection of that night long ago in the closet, how Darlene’s eyes glinted in the dark.

Francis grabbed his phone. “Excuse me one moment,” he said.

I waited while he dialed. “And a good Sunday to you, my friend,” he said into the phone. “Just quickly now-that matter we spoke about the other night? Right. I need it taken care of first thing tomorrow. Thank you.”

He hung up. “Sorry,” he said. “My memory’s going so bad I have to do a thing as soon as it pops into my head or it’s gone for a month.”

“I appreciate your help. I know you’d rather we left this alone. You mind if I check in with you later?”

“I suppose not,” he said. “I guess we can’t leave the past buried, eh? I’ll admit it, between you and me, I’d like to know just what the heck happened to Jack too. You’re talking to Leo Redpath?”

“Trying to.”

“Well, keep me undercover and I’ll help you best I can.”

I was glad to hear that.