Starvation Lake

twenty

My alarm buzzed the next morning at five-thirty. I bolted up in my bed, startled and groggy. Then I remembered: I was supposed to go to Detroit for the meeting with Superior Motors and the Hanovers. “Oh, God,” I said, lying back on my pillow. The night flooded back: Soupy was in jail. Boynton was in the hospital. Leo was dead. My mother had cried herself out and then I let her go back to sleep. I heard a snowplow rumble past my window. The clock said 5:46. If I was going to Detroit, I had to get on the road.

But why, really? The Superior Motors lawyers didn’t care whether I showed up; they just wanted the name of my source, which I could supply easily enough over the phone, if I was so inclined. And I was beginning to think I was so inclined. What difference would it really make if I ratted out the sleazebag V? Joanie would be disappointed, but she’d be gone soon enough, chasing her career. Kerasopoulos wouldn’t be concerned in the least that I had burned a confidential source at another paper. He’d care a lot more if cops showed up at the Pilot to arrest me for stealing Superior voice mails. The pointy-headed gods of journalism would undoubtedly denounce me if the news from Starvation Lake ever reached them, but I couldn’t see how that would affect me in any tangible way. My career already had hit bottom. Giving up V’s real name would help the Hanovers nail down the settlement they wanted, which might actually succeed in getting some of those killer trucks fixed.

I walked into the kitchen and dialed my attorney. Outside, a few snowflakes wafted through the streetlamp glow. “Snowing like a bitch up here,” I told Scott Trenton’s answering machine. “Tell the lawyers I’m stuck but, listen, you wanted a show of good faith, so you can tell them”-I paused-“I’ll have a decision on the name by tomorrow at noon. I know they wanted it today, but they’ve got a few days yet before the judge rules. Anyway, I’ve given your advice some thought and, you know, you’re probably right.”

The Pilot was empty when I walked down just after seven. I was hungry for a bite at Audrey’s, but first I wanted to check on a couple of things.

Down in the basement I scanned paper after paper from 1988 and finally found what I was looking for. The story by Mildred Pratt, one of our blue-haired stringers, ran on the inside. It said the town council had decided against dredging the lake “due to budgetary constraints.” That was pretty much it. Mildred didn’t record the vote or supply any detail of the council’s discussion, assuming there was one. Normally Henry would’ve covered the council meeting, but the story ran in April, around the time Henry was usually on a golf vacation in Florida. The story told me nothing I didn’t already know. I had to get those meeting minutes.

I went back upstairs to see if we had a recent photo of Dingus. Morning light eked through the blinds and across the filing cabinets where Delbert Riddle kept the Pilot photos. I’d heard Tillie complain about Delbert’s filing system, but I had yet to experience it myself because she was always the one who retrieved photos. At first glance, it looked simple. Taped on the front of each of the four drawers in each cabinet was an index card marked with letters in alphabetical order. I opened the drawer marked “A-Am.” I found the file marked “Aho, Dingus” and laid it atop the cabinet.

Most of the folders were marked in the same simple way as Dingus’s file. But others, scattered throughout, were identified with a series of letters and numbers, such as one stuffed just behind Dingus’s file, marked Ai/0685/SL/W. I pulled it out and opened it. The first photo in a thick stack showed a beaming young woman in a wedding gown feeding a piece of cake to a man in a tuxedo. It was Dale and Sheila Ainsley. They owned the Dairy Queen. The stamp on the back said June 6, 1985. “I get it,” I said aloud. Delbert’s Ai/0685/SL/W signified Ainsley/June 1985/Starvation Lake/Wedding. So he was using the Pilot files to keep track of his freelance work. No surprise there. I slapped the file closed and stuck it back inside.

I spread Dingus’s file open. There were only three photos. One showed a much younger Dingus, without the handlebar, accepting a plaque for being Deputy of the Year in a grip-and-grin with then-sheriff Jerry Spardell. An ink stamp on the back showed it had been taken January 31, 1987. The others were simple mug shots, both more than five years old. I left the file open and walked over to Tillie’s desk to make out a photo assignment sheet. I figured Delbert could catch Dingus at the arraignment. As I jotted instructions down, I thought it also would be good to have some photos from the rink. I remembered the yellow tape strung around the Zamboni shed.

Then it hit me.

I hurried back to my desk and grabbed my coat off of my chair. In the pocket I found the three scraps of paper I’d removed from the inside of Leo’s cabinet in the Zam shed. I rushed back up

front and laid them next to Dingus’s photo file. Scratched in red ballpoint were the numbers and letters that had flummoxed me the day before: F/1280/SL/R4. F/1280/SL/R5. F/1280/SL/R6.

Now I thought I understood.

I opened the drawer marked Ep-Fe. In the middle of the drawer where the F files began sat two accordion folders. I pulled out the first one. It was stuffed with thin white cardboard boxes marked on one end with Delbert’s peculiar indexes. Opening a box marked F/0279/ SL/R1, I slipped out a reel of what looked to be 8-millimeter film. So the F stood for film, I thought. I opened another box, marked F/0279/SL/R4. It, too, contained a reel of film. The 0279 apparently referred to February 1979, when I was in high school and playing for the River Rats; the SL, again, signified Starvation Lake. As Joanie had told me, Delbert developed film for Blackburn. These had to be films of our practices.

But why would Leo scribble down just those three indexes and then hide them? None of the numbers on the boxes in the first accordion folder matched the ones on the scraps of paper. I pulled the drawer all the way out, put the first folder back inside, and peered into the others. The second folder contained nine similar boxes from 1980 and 1981. Three were marked with the same numbers and letters written on the scraps. I removed the entire folder, carried it back to my desk, and stashed it in a drawer. I put Dingus’s file back in the cabinet, then finished the photo assignment and dropped it in Tillie’s in-box before heading across the street.

The first person I saw when I walked into Audrey’s was me, a blurry image in my goalie gear on a small black-and-white TV someone had set up in the back. A dozen codgers clustered around, some still in overcoats and scarves, watching Dingus march Soupy out of the John D. Blackburn Memorial Ice Arena while Tawny Jane Reese narrated. Elvis spied me as I took a seat at the counter.

“Look who’s here,” he said. “An eyewitness to history, though you’d never know from reading his paper.”

All the gray heads turned my way. What was I thinking coming in here? “Morning, folks,” I said.

“Quite a night there, Gus,” one of them said.

“Soupy Campbell wouldn’t hurt a flea,” another said. “Ain’t no way he killed Jack Blackburn. Dingus is off his nut.”

“Poor old Leo.”

“Hoo-hah, I’ll bet Leo’s the one what killed Blackburn.”

“Blackburn wasn’t killed. He’s in the lake. This is all a conspiracy cooked up by the sheriff to make sure he gets reelected.”

“If Teddy dies, God forbid, we got a double murder in Starvation Lake.”

“Ain’t no double murder if one of them happened ten years ago, Elvis.”

“Far as I’m concerned,” Elvis said. “But like I said, you wouldn’t know a thing from reading our local paper. Looks like another one got behind you, Gus.”

It was all I could do to keep from screaming.

“The presses run at seven p.m., Elvis,” I said.

The blue-and-white cap perched on his head read Pekoe Hardened Tools. “I hear other papers actually stop the presses and start them up again when they have big news, like maybe a double murder,” he said. “But maybe you just don’t want your drinking buddies looking bad, huh?”

“Elvis!” Audrey shouted it from behind the counter. “Keep harassing my customers and you can have McMuffins for breakfast.” She pointed at the TV. The weather turtle was predicting a snowstorm. “And I don’t want to see that thing in my place tomorrow, I don’t care how big the so-called news is.”

Somebody turned it off.

I turned to face Audrey. She was wearing a sky-blue apron and her hair was pulled back in a tidy bun. As she picked up two platters of eggs, bacon, and fried potatoes, she said to me, “You know what you want, honey?”

“Cinnamon bun, warm, and a coffee to go.”

A Pilot rested on the stool two down from me. My eyes wandered past it to the autographed photo of Gordie Howe. He was winding up to shoot on a goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens. The goalie was still on his feet, probably backing into the cage. I wondered for the hundredth time if he’d made the save.

Audrey returned with my bun and coffee. “Audrey?” I said. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, honey.”

I leaned closer so no one else would hear me. “You know Barbara Lampley? Dingus’s ex-wife?”

“Mm-hm.”

“She was still with Dingus when Coach died, right?”

Audrey scrunched up her face. “I can’t recall, exactly. Why?”

“I thought maybe she’d remember something from back then. Maybe not.”

Audrey glanced over at Elvis, then back at me. She didn’t tell many tales, certainly not with Elvis within earshot. But her look told me enough.

“Does she work over at Sandy Cove?” I said.

Audrey nodded yes.

“At the IGA? Think it’d be worth my trip?”

“She’s at Glen’s now, dear. And yes, my guess is, it would be worth it. Be careful in the snow.”

I stopped for a minute at the Pilot on the way to my truck. Tillie had called and said she’d be late. Joanie was going to the clerk’s office to check on Blackburn’s old property records, then to Soupy’s arraignment. I reminded her to keep working the Canada angle and see what else she could find out about Leo’s computer. When my phone started ringing, I figured it had to be Trenton and headed out.

In the parking lot I spotted Tatch trudging past and shouted at him. He heard me through his sweatshirt hood and veered in my direction, hands jammed in his jeans pockets. His name was Roy Edwards, but Soupy had long ago dubbed him Tatch, short for attachment, as in vacuum cleaner attachment that sucks pucks into the net. Although he worked for Soupy at the marina, he tended goal for Boynton’s Land Sharks and had skated the length of the rink to join the melee the night before.

“Hear anything on Teddy?” I said.

“Ain’t woke up yet’s all I know.” A tiny circular scar pocked his forehead, the lingering imprint of a goalie mask screw that had been pressed into his head by a Loob slapshot. “Total drag about Leo, man.”

“Yeah.”

“So what the hell are the cops thinking, taking Soup in? Seems to me, Leo kills himself, case closed, he whacked Jack.”

I reached through my truck window and cranked the ignition.

“Maybe the cops figure Soup done it to Jack because he damn near killed Ted,” Tatch continued. “But, hell, Soupy could barely kill a flea. Too drunk.” Tatch mustered a chuckle. “Him and Teddy don’t get along so well, but shit, you don’t need to half kill someone. Man, did you see that? He wound up on him like Babe Ruth.”

“Did you see Soupy yesterday?” I said. “Did he say anything?”

“Funny.” Tatch scratched at the silver whiskers on his neck. “Before a game, Soup’s usually giving me all sorts of shit about how he’s going to light me up. But yesterday he didn’t say nothing. Hell, he barely come out of his office. I asked him if he wanted to go over to Enright’s for a burger and he said, naw, he had to go to the rink and then he had the zoning thing.”

“He went to the rink during the day?”

“Said he had to check in on Leo.”

“For what?”

“You know, some damn superstition.”

Soupy had Leo sharpen his skates every Monday, whether they needed it or not.

“About when did he go over?”

“I guess about one or so. This some sort of interview?”

“No. I was over there myself about then and wondered why I didn’t see him.” So Soupy had discovered Leo gone, then apparently changed his mind about going to the zoning board. I got into my truck. “I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah, better get to work,” Tatch said. “Looks like I’m the boss today.”

Glen’s Supermarket anchored a strip mall along the highway a mile from downtown Sandy Cove. I parked next to a beeping dump truck. Barbara Lampley was working the register in the cash-out lane next to the bakery. I waited in line behind a woman unloading a cart full of groceries. Her little boy sat in the cart gnawing on a glazed doughnut.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi there,” I said.

“Hi.”

“Sir?” Barbara Lampley said. “The express lane is open.”

“That’s OK,” I said.

I waited while Barbara Lampley shared a laugh with the woman in front of me, who was telling how her husband had nearly sliced off his arm while using a chain saw to cut an old sofa in half so it would fit it in the back of his pickup. Barbara Lampley had a big, throaty laugh that I was sure they could hear at the other end of the store. She was tall and big-boned in her creamy yellow Glen’s smock, with a fresh, childlike face barely betrayed by the spidery crinkles at the corners of her eyes and the silver wisps in her chestnut hair. I could see why Dingus, and maybe Blackburn, had fallen for her. I wasn’t interested in her affair with Blackburn so much as how Dingus might have reacted. It wasn’t the easiest thing to ask about, but I had nothing to lose.

When the mother and her boy left, I grabbed two Snickers bars and set them on the conveyor belt. Barbara Lampley watched the candy bars feed toward her. “That do it?” she said.

“Yes,” I said. I looked around and saw no one was behind me. “You’re Barbara Lampley, right?”

“Yes?”

She smiled while the rest of her tried to remember whether she should recognize me. I’d never gotten used to confronting people cold, especially people who’d never had their names in a newspaper and didn’t care if they ever did.

“Gus Carpenter,” I said, offering my hand, which she took. “I’m with the Pilot. ”

“The newspaper? Oh.”

“Sorry, ma’am, I won’t take much of your time. I’m working on a story-”

“Wait. You’re Bea and Rudy’s boy.”

It felt strange but good to hear my father’s name again. “Yes, ma’am.”

“How is your mother? I haven’t seen her in ages.”

“She’s good, thanks.”

“We used to go to bingo together. That woman can talk, I’ll tell you. I used to think she was trying to distract me from my bingo cards, but she’s just your basic gabber. I mean in a good way. She’s so nice.”

“Yes, she is, ma’am.”

She finished ringing me up and handed me the candy bars in a small brown paper bag. “Give your mother my love, won’t you?”

“I will.”

I stood there holding the bag.

“Is there something else, um-?”

“Gus. Yes, ma’am, actually, I’m working on a follow-up story to the arrest last night-”

“And you want to ask me about Jack Blackburn.”

“Well, not exactly, ma’am, I-”

“Please call me Barbara, Gus. I’m not that old yet. You obviously know I knew Jack, and Leo. Not very well, it turns out, but if that’s what you’re looking for, I don’t know that I can help you very much.” She gave a little laugh and put a hand to her breast. “I’m not a suspect, am I?”

I almost laughed myself. “No. No, ma’am-that is, Barbara-not that I know of. I was actually hoping to ask a couple of questions about Sheriff Aho.”

Her voice softened then. “What is it you want to know?”

I looked around the store. I didn’t want to interview her there. “I wondered, do you think we could-?”

“Never mind,” she said. She turned around and shouted down the row of cash-out lanes, “Bert, I’m going out for a few.” She set a This Lane Closed sign on the conveyor belt and told me, “This way.”

At Mariner Mike’s, the submarine sandwich shop next door, Barbara Lampley pointed me to a booth and asked what I wanted.

“Just coffee,” I said. “I’ll get it.”

She ignored me and walked briskly behind the counter, where she told the teenage girl working there, “Hello, dear,” before she poured a coffee and a Diet Coke. She carried the drinks back to the booth.

“You must be a regular,” I said.

“Pretty much. I own the place.”

“No kidding?” I pulled a notebook out of my back pocket and set it on the table. I had to make it obvious now or risk unsettling her after she started talking. Barbara gave it a glance and continued.

“Yeah. Dingus and I had some land that I got in the divorce. Turned out there was a whole bunch of natural gas beneath it. I sold the mineral rights and took the cash and put it all down on this place.”

“But you still work at Glen’s?”

“Just a few hours, Tuesdays and Thursdays. I worked there a long time before I got this place and I liked it. Anyway, I just can’t be in here all day.” She leaned in like she was divulging a secret. “I never thought I’d learn to hate the smell of Italian dressing.” She laughed her big laugh again.

“Hey, I love Italian dressing,” I said. I reached for the notebook with one hand and took a pen out with the other. “Do you mind?”

“You won’t say anything bad about me?”

I really didn’t know, but I said, “I doubt it.”

“You’re Bea’s boy. I’m sure you’ll be nice.”

“Can you spell your name?”

“Are you going to put my name in the paper?”

“I might.”

She thought about it for a few seconds, then spelled her name. I wrote it and the date at the top of the first page in my notebook. “So,” I said, “just so I understand, you were living where when Blackburn died?”

“I was in Starvation, but that’s not what you want to know. You want to know whether I was still married to Dingus then, and the answer is yes, barely.”

“Barely?”

“Feel free to come to the point, Gus.”

“Yes, ma’am. For some reason, I’d thought maybe you divorced earlier.”

“Barbara, please. You thought we split before Jack died, because Jack and I, we had this, this relationship.” She stopped and drew on the straw in her drink. She sat up straight. “Good Lord, I sound like I’m on Oprah. Jack and I had been fooling around. Everyone knew that. You probably knew it.”

“I was living downstate then.”

“Why am I talking to you about this?”

“I’m sorry. I was just trying to get a time frame.”

She gave me a dismissive little wave. “You want to know what’s really silly? This is going to sound like bull, but you’ll just have to take my word.”

“OK.”

“Everyone thought we were fooling around, if you know what-well, of course you know what I mean-but we never actually did fool around. You see, Jack…” She fixed her gaze on the ceiling for a second. “Oh, good Lord,” she said. “Why am I telling you this? Jack’s idea of fooling around…”

I was leaning into the table for the end of her sentence, telling myself to keep my mouth shut and let her talk. Nor did I dare turn the page in my notebook lest I remind her that all of Starvation Lake was listening. Again, I felt like I was hearing about a stranger, a man I’d never known. Barbara seemed as frustrated as I was.

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I can’t tell you that. That’ll just have to do. We didn’t really fool around, per se, OK?”

“Sure.” I turned the notebook page.

“He had plenty of girlfriends. Jack could be a very charming man, but-well, let’s just say he was a very complicated man.”

“Can I ask how you got to know him?”

“You just did. Back then, I worked at the IGA in Starvation. He always seemed to come in when there was no one around, and Dingus was always working nights, and I was going out of my mind with boredom. We’d talk. One time-oh, God-I was the only one there and he opened two bottles of beer and we sat there drinking and talking.” She looked past me out the window toward the parking lot. “It was one of those things, you know, my midlife crisis? Women can have them, too, you know.” She looked to me like she was in her early to mid-fifties, which would’ve made her about forty when she and Blackburn had their dalliance, or whatever it was.

“And all this happened when?” I said.

Instead of answering she said simply, “Dingus,” punctuating it with an exasperated sigh. “He just gave up. I thought he was a man’s man, too, but he just gave up.” She reached across the table and grasped my free hand. “Don’t ever do that, young man. Everyone goes through a stupid period in their lives. Hopefully only one. You have to hang in there with them.”

“So you were actually with Dingus when Blackburn died?”

“Yes, yes, I’m sorry, I’m rambling.” She let go of my hand. “Dingus and I got married in 1978. He joined the department right before our wedding, and he just loved his job, just loved it. Jack and I had our little whatever you want to call it beginning in eighty-five or so, and it lasted about a year, no more. And, yes, before you ask, I actually left Dingus for a while, but just a couple of weeks, and then I didn’t really stay with Jack, only for a few days, and I didn’t really stay with him, if you know what I mean. It was weird, anyway, with those little houses and the boys around.”

The billets. His players. His hockey.

I stopped writing. “Why are you telling me this?”

She looked at the table and decided not to answer. “I went back to Dingus eventually, for a little while. Things seemed to get better at first, and I thought we’d be OK, and then Jack died.”

I must have looked confused then. Barbara said, “Gus, I know what you’re thinking, but Jack’s dying didn’t help Dingus a bit. It might have been better if the sheriff had let Dingus do his job, but he didn’t, so Dingus just never got over the whole thing, despite Jack’s being dead and gone- especially because he was dead and gone.”

“The sheriff?”

“Jerry Spardell. What a dope. He had to have his blessed cruiser. I’m sorry-do you want anything to eat?”

“No, I’m fine, thanks. What about Dingus? Are you saying the Blackburn case bothered him? Kept him up nights?”

“Oh, yes,” Barbara said. She leaned in closer and whispered. “When he came home that morning Jack died, the first thing he said was, ‘Leo is lying like a rug.’” She imitated the lilt of Dingus’s voice, affectionately, not mocking. She sat up straight again. “God,” she said. “I’ve never told anyone that.”

I told her about Leo.

“Gracious,” she said. “They were such a strange pair, he and Jack. I used to tell Dingus, like an old married couple. I mean, Leo, the only woman he was ever with was his silly ice machine. What did he call it? Agnes?”

“Ethel.”

“Oh, of course, Ethel. How ridiculous can you get? I swear that man was jealous of me. Jack would make all these sneaky arrangements to meet me, and it was like he was more worried about Leo finding out than Dingus.” She shook her head and laughed. “What an idiot I was.”

“What was it Leo lied about?”

“I don’t remember exactly. Dingus may not have told me. He may have just had a feeling.” She stared into her paper cup as if the answer might be there. “Didn’t Dingus go to your house that night?”

“My mother’s house. Yes. That’s where Leo went to call the police.”

Barbara screwed up her face as if she were trying to remember. “I think that may have been it. Your mother told him something. Oh, God, Gus, please don’t tell your mother I told you that.”

“Don’t worry. So what did Dingus do?”

“Not much. Spardell wouldn’t let him.”

“The sheriff didn’t want to solve a murder?”

“Oh, no, there was no murder to solve. Not in Jerry Spardell’s Starvation Lake. We hadn’t had a murder here in a million years, and Spardell-who had a pretty tough election that year, as I recall-wasn’t about to have one on his watch. He told Dingus he believed Leo. After all, they used to play poker Friday nights, and what better bona fides are there than that?”

“And that was it?”

“No, actually, it wasn’t. Dingus wanted to drag the lake as soon as the ice was gone. But Spardell wouldn’t let him. He had to have his cruiser.”

“What cruiser?”

“Spardell liked to have a brand-new patrol boat every few years. He had one locked into the budget that year, and he went down to Detroit for the boat show and picked out the model and the town council was just about to approve the purchase when Dingus says he wants to drag the lake.”

“Wait. Why was the town council buying a boat for the county sheriff?”

“Oh, they were always fighting about that back then. Now nobody’s got any money for a new cruiser. Anyway, the sheriff’s department did all the policing on the lake, so they insisted that the town pay for the boat.”

“And any dredging would have cost Spardell his cruiser.”

“Exactly. So that ended that. No body, no weapon, no motive. No murder charge.”

And no wonder Dingus had shut down the press conference when Joanie suggested he was incompetent. And fell to his knees that night at Walleye Lake. All these years, he’d been forced to live with the memory of a man he’d despised, who wouldn’t really be gone until someone solved his demise. The snowmobile washing up onshore had given him another chance to bury Jack Blackburn properly. But in a way, first he had to exhume him.

“Did Dingus consider quitting?” I said.

“No. What would he do? Dingus loved putting that silly uniform on every day. He also thought Spardell might be out of there soon enough, and he’d be sheriff. Of course old Jerry hung on just about forever.”

“I guess I should talk to him. Where is he now?”

“St. Michael’s.” The cemetery. “Lung cancer.”

“Oh. When did you and Dingus divorce?”

“In 1990. I couldn’t live with Dingus and Jack.”

“You know,” I said, “he keeps a picture of you in his office.”

She tried, without success, not to look surprised. “How is he?” she said.

“OK, I guess. He’s certainly getting out more than usual.”

She laughed. “Is he going to figure it out this time?”

“I’m sure he will before I do.”

We sat there for a minute in silence. Then Barbara said, “I’ve heard people saying Dingus is just stirring the pot. Even though I haven’t talked to him in God knows how long, I know that simply isn’t true.”

“I believe you,” I said, and I did.

She walked me out to my truck. Barbara drew her arms around herself, shivering without a coat. “You seem like a nice man,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said. “I don’t know if you knew, but I played for Blackburn.”

“Hockey? Really? I never paid much attention. I’m sorry.” She looked inside Glen’s, then back at me. “Could I just say one more thing?”

“Sure.”

“Dingus is a better man than Jack Blackburn ever was. You can quote me on that.”

I wrote it down when I got in my truck.

Before going back to the Pilot, I went up to my apartment to call my attorney.

“Scott Trenton,” he answered.

“It’s Gus.”

I heard his chair creak. Then he said: “She called you a coward.”

“Excuse me?”

“Julia Hanover. She called you a coward. In front of everyone. ‘How can he just hide like this?’ she said. The Superior guys loved it.”

I looked out the window at the falling snow. “If it weren’t for me,” I said, “she wouldn’t even be in this position.”

“Don’t kid yourself, son. You don’t have a friend on either side of the courtroom anymore.”

“Reporters aren’t supposed to have friends.”

“Thanks for the totally useless information,” Trenton said. “Look. Those people are counting on you to help them get their settlement done now, before the appellate court rules.”

“Are you still going to be my lawyer?”

“With great reluctance. I’m sorry, Gus, but you ignore my calls, you blow off an absolutely crucial meeting, you don’t answer questions. If it wasn’t for that family, I’d be out of here, friend.”

“Sorry.”

“No, you’re not. But you will be if you don’t listen this time. I got your message, and I got you one more day. You have until noon tomorrow. Superior will seek a warrant for your arrest at one second after noon if they don’t have a name. They’re not screwing around, Gus.”

“Why do they care, Scott?”

“About the name? I have no idea. Maybe they think the guy leaked other sensitive stuff. Maybe they’re just messing with you. A bigger bunch of frigging pricks I have never met. They don’t even get along with one another.”

“How so?”

“The lawyers and the PR guys obviously aren’t on the same page. The lawyers seem pretty cocky about their chances for winning the appeal. But the PR guys want a settlement so they can have a big press conference and let the Hanovers tell the world what a wonderful frigging company Superior is.”

“Really?”

“Really. But get this-the big press conference could be as far it gets, because the PR guys are betting these class-action lawyers who have filed their own lawsuit out in Philly will come in and challenge the settlement because it isn’t enough.”

“Isn’t enough in attorney fees, you mean.”

“Precisely. It’s all about checks and balances. But mostly it’s about checks.”

“Those flacks must think they’re pretty clever.”

“Oh, yeah. Clever guys. Is it true what I’ve heard that a lot of PR types are former reporters? How does that happen?”

“It happens when a reporter wants to be able to buy a house and isn’t good-looking enough for TV.”

Trenton chuckled. “Not bad,” he said. “I’m due in court. Noon tomorrow, Gus. Any later and you’ll be wearing a baggy orange suit.”

Downstairs I found Tillie leaning against her counter, smoking, riveted by the TV. Over her shoulder I saw Tawny Jane Reese standing in front of the courthouse steps. “…arraignment of Alden ‘Soupy’ Campbell, charged with the murder ten years ago of revered hockey coach Jack Blackburn. Judge Horace Gallagher has rejected Channel Eight’s request to place a camera in the courtroom, but we’ll be bringing you updates throughout the day in this shocking…”

Behind her, a line of people waiting to enter snaked up one side of the stairs and clustered at the courthouse doors, where sheriff’s Deputy Skip Catledge stood guard. County workers in dingy red coveralls spread rock salt on the steps, barely keeping pace with the falling snow. A short man the shape of a beer keg, wearing a fedora and sunglasses, with two cameras slung around his neck, appeared on the top step, puffing on a fat cigar. It was Delbert.

“Did he kick and scream about having to shoot Dingus?” I said.

“You were in the photo file, weren’t you?” she said, ignoring my question. “Didn’t I tell you to stay out of there? You’ll just mess it up.”

“I was just checking on-”

“I’m the only one here who has taken the time to understand the very peculiar way that Delbert keeps those files organized. I would appreciate it if you would do your job and let me do mine.”

“Sorry,” I said. “So what do you think?”

“About what?”

“Do you think Soupy did it?” I really didn’t care what she thought; she’d been behaving strangely, and I was more interested in seeing whether the question would upset her. She took a long drag on her cigarette and then stubbed it out. “I wish it all would just go away,” she said.