The Skeleton Box

THIRTEEN

My phone was ringing when I came through the back door to the Pilot newsroom. Only one person, my boss, called me on the line that was blinking. I grabbed it.

“Hey,” I said.

“I’ve been trying to call you,” Philo Beech said.

“I’ve been busy.”

Millie Bontrager had picked Mom up just as I was dragging myself out of bed. I’d hugged them both and told Mom I’d call her in the afternoon. Now I had a few things to do at the Pilot before I went to the drain commission meeting where Breck was supposed to make an appearance. I had a few questions to ask him about a murdered murderer who might have been his maternal grandfather.

“No, I’m sorry,” Philo said. “How’s your mother doing? It seems like every time I look at my computer, something else bad has happened over there.”

“Mom’s OK.”

Philo would have been standing at the fourth-floor window of his corner office in Traverse City, tall and gawky in a sleeveless argyle sweater, peering down on Front Street as he talked. Seven years my junior, he was enthralled with the idea that he was at corporate, with his own office and a shared secretary, after his promotion from the Pilot to Media North assistant vice president for news and innovation. As a reporter, he’d barely been able to cover a high school volleyball match. Now he was in charge of telling editors and reporters like me which stories to cover and how. It was actually the order of things at newspapers big and small. The guys who couldn’t skate or shoot or stickhandle often wound up running the hockey team.

I needed a fresh notebook for the drain commission meeting. We’d run out of the latest ration corporate had shipped, but Whistler hoarded them, so I walked over to his desk. I didn’t see any unused notebooks. But there on his calendar blotter sat the fat gold pinkie ring he was constantly taking on and off. His Toronado was parked out back, so I figured he was in the john.

“I hope they find whoever caused all this trouble,” Philo said. “And I hope everything works out for your mother, and for you.”

I cradled the phone on my shoulder and picked up Whistler’s ring. Its heft surprised me. Either Whistler had a thick pinkie or the ring had a lot of real gold in it. I rotated it in front of my eyes. Up close, it was far from perfect, closer to oval than round, with hairline streaks of scarlet and silver flecking the gold. Carved on the inside were four letters in uppercase italic: EJPW.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Interesting story on Channel Eight last night, eh? The Catholic Church?”

This was Philo’s way of asking me why the Pilot hadn’t had the story first.

“Tawny Jane may be out on a limb on that,” I said. “But we’re on it.”

Philo cleared his throat. It was time for the business part of the call. I heard the toilet flush in the john and set Whistler’s ring down on his blotter.

“This probably isn’t the best time, but there is something I-we-need to discuss.”

“Shoot.”

“The Media North board of directors, as you know, meets this afternoon.”

I didn’t know or care, but I said, “Yeah.” EJPW. Initials, I assumed. But for what? Whistler’s high school? An old girlfriend? An ex-wife? His ex, I recalled, was Barbara or Beverly something, so it wasn’t that ex.

“One item on the agenda,” Philo continued, “is a discussion of how to rationalize our print and Internet platforms.”

That got my attention. “Rationalize platforms? You mean shut the paper down?”

“Calm down, Gus. You’re jumping to conclusions again.”

“Our readers aren’t ready for point and click. They’re old, like three times your age. I know you find that hard to imagine, but technology’s not their thing. They still get freaked out by antilock brakes.”

“Nobody wants to close the paper.”

“It’s March, ads are in the shitter, so the bean counters get panicky, and the fastest way to fix things is to kill the dinosaur, whack the printing and delivery, all that bothersome expensive stuff, and just put the whole thing on the Internet. Then we’ll all get rich.”

“No, we won’t.”

Whistler came out of the john. “Morning,” he said.

I nodded at him. He went to his desk, put his ring on, fished his car keys out of his vest. He waved and started to leave, but I held up a finger for him to wait. He shrugged and sat on his desk.

“Damn right,” I told Philo. “Because Audrey’s Diner and Kepsel’s Ace Hardware and Sally’s Floral aren’t going to pay squat for Internet ads, are they?”

Philo sighed.

“So what’s the discussion about?”

I heard a chair squeak-Philo sitting-and then clacking on a computer. I sat at my desk. Whistler had left a page torn from a notebook on my keyboard. A bunch of names and numbers were scratched across the page in black pen. I set it aside and flicked on my computer. At the top of my e-mail queue were two from a former Pilot reporter now working at my old paper in Detroit, the Times. The tapping on Philo’s end stopped.

“Look,” he said. “We’re just trying to envision the best way to go forward. Ignoring the Web would be-”

“We’re not ignoring the Web. For Christ’s sake, it’s what got you your promotion. We posted twice yesterday and we’ll be posting more today.”

Whistler smiled and winked and gave me a thumbs-up. I gave it back.

“Please listen,” Philo said. “There’ll be a broad discussion of where we go with our online platform, how gradually or not we migrate content-”

“Can you speak in English?”

“Can you shut up?” He waited. So did I. He continued. “The board is going to talk about what we’re doing and how, what we ought to do about costs, whether we should start charging for the paper on the Internet.”

“Who the hell’s going to start paying for something they already get for free?”

I toggled to e-mail and opened the first of the two topping the queue. It had come in the night before: hey, stranger. got two tix for wings this sun v avs. leave the rat(s) race behind and come down. Will buy you a beer. Or three. We’ll have fun.

— j

Philo ignored my rhetorical question. “Well, Gus, I have to tell you that part of what got this whole discussion going was our CFO noticed some rather large and, frankly, rather disturbing cost spikes at your operation.”

Nothing good ever followed the word “frankly.”

“Here?” I said. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

I scoured my brain for what I’d recently put on my Media North credit card. All I could come up with was two beers and a basket of fried dill pickles at Enright’s for me and some real estate guy trying to unload the empty strip mall outside of town.

“There was that monitor your reporter destroyed,” Philo said.

“That was last year’s budget. Wait-I did buy a month’s worth of toilet paper the other day. But at least it was Costco.”

“This is no joke. Your costs are out of control. Long-distance calls. Copying and printing. And a consultant? In Grosse Pointe, for Pete’s sake? Who authorized that?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We have three credit-card charges totaling four hundred fifty dollars.”

“For what?”

“Hard to tell. All it said was ‘Information services.’ Some consulting firm.”

I looked at Whistler. He, too, had a Media North credit card. It wasn’t supposed to be used for anything but gas on long-distance trips and the occasional coffee or lunch with a source. Certainly nothing over fifty bucks.

“That’s got to be a mistake,” I said, lowering my voice so Whistler wouldn’t hear. “Hell, Luke used his own cell phone until the end of the year when he could’ve been using ours. It’s not like he’s trying to screw us. Someone probably got our credit card mixed up with somebody else’s.”

“Do you personally approve Pilot expense reports?” Philo said.

“Of course.”

That was technically true. My two employees-Whistler and, previously, Mrs. B-filed their infrequent reports online and zapped them to me. The supremely efficient paperless process required so many clicks and strokes to scrutinize each entry that I gave up and just approved the reports without looking. Which was even more efficient, as I saw it.

Philo waited. He knew I was full of shit. He knew all I cared about was writing stories.

“I’m worried about you,” he finally said.

“Why?”

“I know you’ve had a rough-a very rough-couple of days.”

“I hear a ‘but’ coming.”

“I fibbed before,” he said. “There is very serious consideration being given to putting the Pilot on the Internet only.”

“No shit.”

“No shit. They want to try it with one of our papers to see how it goes. Fuqua’s running the numbers now.”

Fuqua was Media North’s CFO. Fuckward, I called him. He had been hired away from a chain of fudge shops. He had never worked at a newspaper. Based on the memos he e-mailed about how to be more “smart” and “productive” about covering news, I had come to doubt that he had even read a newspaper.

“So the Pilot would be a pilot project, huh?”

“I hope not,” Philo said. “I actually don’t think it makes business sense, at least not yet. But you’re not helping me with four hundred fifty dollar bills.”

There was no use arguing.

“Understood,” I told Philo. “I will check into it.”

“I’m going to try to head this thing off for now,” he said. “But this train’s going to arrive sooner or later.”

“What was that all about?” Whistler said after I’d hung up.

“Bullshit,” I said. “Listen, I hate to ask, but did you put a bunch of charges on your credit card for some consultant or something?”

Whistler gave me a look. Great reporters never liked being questioned on such unimportant details as how much money they spent chasing stories. Nor did I. But things were different now. If the Pilot went online only, the bean counter Fuqua would shut the newsroom, sell the desks and chairs and copier, and make us work from home. Or, worse, Traverse City.

“I did,” Whistler said. “A guy downstate who helps me with Freedom of Information requests. I was going to put it on my Visa, but it was on some sort of frigging hold.”

Reporters, I thought. They could write story after story eviscerating a county board for running a budget deficit but couldn’t get their own bills paid on time.

“Goddamn, Luke,” I said. “You’ve got to be more careful. The budget hawks are circling.”

“Gotcha.”

“The scanner, too.” Media North had been on me about our utility bills. Whistler was always leaving the police scanner on overnight. “Just turn it off. Humor me.”

I felt like a mope saying it. How much electricity could a scanner use anyway?

“Sorry, boss,” he said.

I picked up the page of notes he’d left me. “Midland County? Around the thumb?”

“Somewhere over there. My archdiocese guy said to check that and the other.”

“Marquette County, in the U.P. According to his obit, Nilus was living up there when he died. What are these other numbers? Case files?”

“Yeah,” Whistler said. “Listen, I’m supposed to be at some little college in Roscommon talking about journalism careers. I’ll knock that out and be back on the case in a couple of hours, and we’ll lap those bastards at Channel Eight.”

He was sleeping with one of those “bastards,” I thought, but let it go. “What are you going to tell the kids?” I said.

He grinned. “Try blacksmithing.”

I heard his Toronado growl to life as I swiveled back to my computer and opened the second e-mail from the reporter at my old paper: hey, sorry for being so chipper in my earlier e. just heard about what’s going on up there. holy crap-bingo nights? is your mom ok? was that your neighbor? i’m trying to get my editor to send me up there. call me!

— joanie

Mobile 313 555 6758

I sat back in my chair. Did I really want Joanie McCarthy coming back to Starvation Lake? I couldn’t stop her. In my experience, nobody could stop Joanie from doing what she wanted to do. But I didn’t have to encourage her either.

I scribbled her number on my blotter, picked up the phone, and dialed the clerk’s office in Midland County. I had no idea what I was looking for, but hoped I might learn something about Father Nilus Moreau.

Frank D’Alessio was standing in front of the Echo Township Hall where the drain commission met when I parked on the snowy shoulder across the road. He wore a white shirt and red tie beneath a dark topcoat. He was shaking hands and handing out big sheets of paper that flapped in the morning breeze.

Campaigning again, Frankie? I thought. I rolled my window down to watch, thinking of the “anonymous” tip he must have given the cops about Tatch missing hockey the night of the break-in at Mom’s house.

“It’s right there, people, right there in black and white,” I heard him shout. He’d printed out copies of the online version of Channel Eight’s scoop on Nilus. Just what I needed. “Morning, Carol, Edgar… hey, Channel Eight’s on the case, but what’s our sheriff doing? Probably sitting in his office stuffing crullers in his face.”

I rolled up my window, opened the door, and walked up to the hall, a converted firehouse that sat in a clearing of pines. The glassed-in bulletin board on the front of the hall read “Pine County Drain Commission,” and just beneath it “Phyllis Bontrager, We Loved You,” and beneath that, “Go River Rats! Beat Pipefitters!”

“Frankie,” I said. “Don’t you have a shift coming up?”

“Took a leave of absence as of today… Morning, Mrs. Jargon, here you go… Unpaid leave, incidentally, in case you see fit to mention. By the way, good game last night. Damn glad you weren’t in the net.”

“Smart move, Frank. Insult the local paper.”

“Like you matter… Hey there, Mr. Bradley, how’s by you? Take two, they’re free.”

“Come on, Frank, you work there. Why don’t you bring the burglar in?”

“Man, they’ve shut me out completely. I can’t get Dingus to tell me what he wants in his coffee… Morning, Mrs. Baranowski.”

“They appear to have a lead.”

“Yeah, sure, maybe this priest came back from the dead and did it. That’s what they’re doing, chasing ghosts. Look, Carpie, you’re just sucking up to Dingus because you’re afraid if he gets booted, the love of your life will be out of here, too.”

“Mr. D’Alessio?”

Breck had come up from behind without a sound. He carried a brown satchel under his right arm.

D’Alessio stuck out his hand and Breck took it. “Yes sir, Frank D’Alessio, running for Pine County sheriff, nice to meet you.”

“Mr. Breck. May I?”

D’Alessio gave him a printout. Breck held it in front of his face. I watched his tiny eyes dart back and forth behind his wire-rims. He turned and offered me the sheet.

“Good morning, Mr. Carpenter. Have you seen this? Do you believe it to be true?”

I looked at Breck for some sign of what he thought about the Nilus story, whether it was familiar to him, but saw nothing. “I’m still reporting,” I said.

“I didn’t see it in your paper.”

“Nope.” I reached into the back pocket of my jeans for the notebook I had dug out from under my truck passenger seat. “Can I ask you a couple of questions?”

“Excuse me,” he said. “I have to prepare for the meeting.”

He walked to the hall, stopped, opened one of the double doors, stepped to one side, and, with a wave of his satchel, ushered two women inside.

“Who’s he?” D’Alessio said.

“The new guy at Tatch’s camp.”

“One of those Jesus people, huh? Why do you want to interview him?”

“You going inside?” I started walking. “Or you got another rally at the IGA?”

“Keep sucking up, pal.”

Pine County Drain Commission chairman Les Cronholm looked around the Echo Township Hall and reluctantly rapped his gavel.

“Do we have any public comment?” he said.

Breck set his satchel on the floor. “Thank you, Mr. Chairman.”

He had waited for nearly an hour, sitting on a wooden folding chair in the front row, satchel on the floor between his knees, while the commission passed a unanimous resolution commemorating Phyllis Bontrager as a model citizen who had given generously of her time to many a community cause. Chairman Cronholm, who owned a plumbing company now doing most of its business in Traverse City, told of the time he was sick for a week with the flu, and Mrs. B came to his house with a pot of his favorite meatball soup. As other commissioners offered their own fond tales, I thought they could as well have been talking about my mother.

The five commissioners sat at a long table behind pieces of white cardboard bearing their names. On the wall behind them hung a banner reading “Pine County Drain Commission: Fresh Ideas, Fresh Water.” Each of them wore a black armband over some form of River Rats apparel-a golf shirt, a sweatshirt, a button-down-and they passed a resolution commending the Rats for their “courageous” victory the night before. I thought “lucky” might have been a better word. They also debated, without deciding, whether to lower the water level in Walleye Lake, how to assess property owners for a new drainage district near the Hungry River, and, for the hundredth time, who should clean up the runoff mess left when Norbert Plastics vacated its plant in Starvation. Breck sat through it all without a trace of expression on his face.

Now he rose from his chair.

“Yes sir,” Cronholm said. “Can you identify yourself, please?”

“Mr. Breck, sir. I represent the taxpaying citizens who live on the Edwards parcels on the northeastern corner of the lake.”

Each of the thirty-odd citizens sitting in the neatly arranged rows of chairs turned to see Breck. They usually came less for commission business than for free coffee and a slice of pie baked by Chairman Cronholm’s wife, Cara. Today, they had a man they’d never seen before to go with their huckleberry pie. There was nothing like a stranger to get the attention of the people in Starvation.

“Maybe I heard wrong,” Cronholm said. “But I thought you just wanted to be citizens, without the taxpaying part.”

“We respectfully object to the recent increase in the assessment of the Edwards parcels, which we consider to be extortionate,” Breck said. “And we also believe, separately, that as a nonprofit faith organization we are quite possibly exempt from taxes altogether.”

“What did you say your name was, sir?”

“Mr. Breck.”

Cronholm fingered his gavel, irritated. “Your full name, please.”

“Breck, sir. Wayland Ezra Breck.”

Yes, I thought. He had to be Joseph Wayland’s grandson, named with his grandfather’s surname and a derivation of his grandmother’s given name.

“Thank you, Mr. Wayland Ezra Breck,” the chairman said. “‘Extortionate’ is a two-dollar word if I’ve ever heard one. You’re a lawyer then?”

“Yes sir.”

“Registered or whatever with the state bar?”

“Yes sir.”

“How can we help you?”

Breck wasted no time explaining. Soil samples taken from the ground beneath Tatch’s family’s land had shown evidence of contamination by sewage runoff. He reached into his satchel and produced an old plat map. He unfolded it and held it up with one hand while indicating certain parts of it with the other hand.

Here, he said, etching an imaginary circle, is land the county purchased years ago. And here, he said, waggling his finger in a portion of the circle, is where an old septic field lies underground. A septic field, unused for years, but now leaking into an area where twenty-some people, including five children, were living.

The commissioners mulled. Then Don Champagne took his River Rats cap off of his liver-spotted head and waved it dismissively in Breck’s direction.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Wayland, but I can’t get my head around this,” Champagne said.

“Mr. Breck, Commissioner. Get your head around what, please?”

“This so-called septic field. First of all, how the heck are you digging out there with the ground frozen up like rock?”

“The insulation of early snow. Elbow grease. Persistence. Teamwork. We’ve also been able to secure the use of a backhoe.”

“Impressive,” Champagne said. “So you can afford a backhoe to dig around looking for ways to sue somebody, but you can’t afford to pay your taxes?”

“This is about our fair share of taxes.”

“Maybe you can tell me why anyone in his right mind would allow a septic field to be installed on a ridge that slopes down toward the lake?” Champagne chuckled as he fitted his hat back on his head. “Just doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t know, Commissioner. Who in their right mind would let a man fond of young boys coach a boys’ hockey team?”

Silence fell over the room. Breck had spoken of something from the town’s past, something no one spoke of anymore. He knew more about us than we did about him.

Champagne glared. Cronholm rapped his gavel once. “All right, Mr. Breck, the commission would appreciate it if you would come directly to the point.”

“The point, Mr. Chairman, is this,” Breck said. “Your septic field is leaching poison into our property, contaminating our wells, and potentially compromising the health of our children. Yet you are trying to make us pay more to live on polluted soil that is obviously worth less now, not more. I would submit that that just doesn’t make sense.”

Commissioner June Jones leaned forward on her arms. “We are the drain commission,” she said. “We don’t do taxes. You should be talking to the tax assessment appeal board. I believe they meet on the third Thursday of each month.”

“Thank you, Commissioner. We have pursued that and been, to put it lightly, ignored.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Jones told Breck. “But I don’t know what you expect us to do.”

“We expect to be treated as God-fearing Christians who have done our fair share for this community, despite our increasing skepticism that your countless boards and commissions and councils and committees and subcommittees serve any purpose other than to give you all something to do besides shovel snow.”

“That’ll be quite enough,” Cronholm said.

“Lord, deliver us,” Champagne said. He turned to Cronholm. “Lester? We have bigger fish to fry.”

“Furthermore,” Breck continued, “while this board may be technically powerless to act on our tax predicament, each of you is related by blood or marriage or both to one or more members of the appeal board and/or the Pine County Commission, so I’ll appreciate your sparing me the pretense that you are helpless.”

Cronholm looked down one end of the table, then the other, staring the board into silence. Then he said, “Thank you, Mr. Breck. We will take your suggestions under advisement. Do we have any other public comment?”

I saw Verna Clark rise from her seat in the front row opposite Breck. She walked to one end of the commissioners’ table and handed a scrap of paper to Commissioner Jones. Jones nodded thanks and looked at the paper. She smiled before she passed it toward Cronholm.

Breck remained standing. “Excuse me, Mr. Chairman, but what do you plan to do and when can we expect to hear back from you?”

“You’ve had your say, Mr. Breck. Please sit down.”

“I gather from your attire that you all are fans of the local hockey team. Let me ask: do you think your team can win tomorrow night without the services of its best player?”

Tex? I thought. Was Breck saying Tex would not play?

“Lester,” Champagne said, “can you shut this guy’s mouth?”

“Excuse me,” Cronholm said. He took reading glasses from a breast pocket and peered through them at the note Verna had passed along. He looked over the top of his glasses at Verna and furrowed his brows. She nodded. Cronholm turned to Breck.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Breck, but your beef-and understand I’m not saying whether it’s legitimate or not-is not with the county.”

“You represent the county, sir, and-”

“Quiet, please.” Cronholm held the piece of paper up. “According to our very conscientious county clerk, as of last week, the county does not own that land anymore. It’s been purchased, along with several other parcels in the area. You’ll need to speak with the new owner about your septic problem.”

For a moment, Breck seemed unable to speak. Finally, he said, “Mr. Chairman, would you mind telling me who the buyer is?”

“Not at all. Looks like a legal firm: Eagan, MacDonald and Browne. Detroit.”

I had tangled with that firm during my time in Detroit. Eagan, MacDonald amp; Browne couldn’t have been buying the land for its own purposes; it had to be representing someone or something wishing to remain anonymous. I recalled, too, that Soupy had said a downstate law firm was interested in buying his parents’ house.

“Want me to spell it?” Cronholm said.

Breck pulled his wool cap onto the back of his head and picked up his satchel.

“That won’t be necessary,” he said, turning to leave. Cronholm asked if there was any more public comment. Breck stopped in the center aisle and turned again to face the commissioners.

“You brood of vipers,” he said.

“Pardon me?” Champagne said. Mrs. Jones snarled, “How dare you?” Cronholm banged his gavel as a murmur moved through the room. Someone behind me muttered, “Goddamn Holy Rollers.”

“We’ll thank you to leave quietly,” Cronholm said.

“Good luck Thursday night,” Breck said.

I followed him out. “Breck,” I called after him. He kept walking toward the street. I came up behind him. “Breck. Your grandfather?”

He stopped without turning to face me. I came around and stood in front of him. “Joseph Wayland,” I said. “He was killed in the Pine County Jail after they arrested him for killing a nun. A long time ago.”

Breck gave me a long look. “I am truly sorry for your loss,” he said. “But what business could that possibly be of yours?”

“It might have something to do with what happened to Mrs.-Phyllis Bontrager.”

“Why would you think that?”

“I have my reasons.”

“Ah, your inscrutable reasons. But you expect me to tell you all about mine, is that it? Does the public have some inalienable right to know?”

He wasn’t going to answer my question. Not yet. Sometimes you had to ask a question more than once, in different contexts, to get an honest answer. Sometimes you never got an honest answer. But I was sure now that Breck was Joseph Wayland’s grandson, and that he had some purpose to being in Starvation Lake other than locating a septic field. “You aren’t really going to hold Tex hostage, are you?”

“His name is Matthew.”

“He’s just a kid.”

“We are all children in God’s eyes. You and the rest would do well to remember that.”

“Come on. Does Tatch-?”

“Matthew is no more to you than I am, or Mr. Edwards, or anyone up on that hill. Young Matthew is but a means to an end, isn’t he?”

“You’re angry, Breck. Are you angry about your grandfather?”

“Are you even remotely aware, Mr. Carpenter, of how you are being led astray?”

“Huh?”

“Of course not. None of you are. Good day.”

He started to walk away. My phone rang in my pocket.

“How about Nilus, Breck?” I called out. “Father Nilus Moreau? You know that name?”

He slowed his gait for a step but did not stop until he climbed into a mud-stained Jeep on the road shoulder. I pulled my ringing phone out, watched Breck make a U-turn. A yellow frame around his rear license plate bore the name Strait Dodge. I knew it. Bob Strait Dodge sponsored the Strait Arrows, a men’s hockey team in Livonia, near Detroit.

“Yeah?” I said into my phone.

Luke Whistler said, “The shit has hit the fan.”