The Skeleton Box

SIX

The little bells on the door at Audrey’s Diner jangled as I stepped inside.

“Ask him,” somebody yelled in my direction, and a bunch of other people sitting at the tables and along the counter yelled, too.

“Ask me what?” I said.

I had come from Mom’s house, where I’d sat by her bed watching her sleep for an hour, then made sure the sheriff’s deputy watching her knew how she took her tea. I thought I’d stayed long enough to miss the morning rush at Audrey’s. But I’d never seen the diner like this, not even on Saturdays when Audrey made her egg-pie special. Every stool at the counter and every seat at every table was taken. The tables were arranged in a haphazard semicircle so everyone could face the man standing a few feet away from me in a brown-and-mustard Pine County Sheriff’s Department uniform.

“Take a seat, Gus,” Sheriff Aho said.

“Ask him if that’s a good idea, Sheriff.” It was Elvis Bontrager, Mrs. B’s brother-in-law, Darlene’s uncle, and a Pine County commissioner.

“What idea?” I said.

Audrey DeYonghe emerged from behind the counter wiping her hands on the white apron she wore over a sky-blue smock. “Oh, dear,” she said, taking my face in her damp hands, then pulling me into her arms for a hug. “This is so sad. It’s so, so terrible.”

“Yes.”

“I almost decided not to open today, but I thought, well, this would be a good place for people to blow off steam. How is Darlene?”

I glanced at Dingus. He was listening. “OK, I hope.”

“And your mother?”

“Not so good. She was sleeping when I saw her this morning.”

“I don’t suppose there are any funeral arrangements yet.”

“That’s going to take a while. The cops have to do their work first.”

Audrey squeezed me again before letting me go. She reached behind the counter and pulled out a wooden stool. “Here, honey, set this over there. I’ll get you some coffee.”

“Thank you.”

I set the stool by the window near the end of the counter and sat. Dingus was still looking at me, waiting. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a notebook.

“No,” Dingus said. “We’re off the record here.”

“What’s going on?” I said.

“The sheriff’s trying like hell to save his job is what’s going on,” Bart Fleder shouted from the back of the room. Then everyone started to yell again. I couldn’t make out everything they said, but I heard “bingo” and “murder” and “Phyllis” and “incompetent.” I could barely believe I was in Audrey’s. The faces around me were pinched with fury and fear. Two women looked as if they had been crying.

“Please,” Dingus said, holding his palms up for quiet.

“Tell us what you got, and we’ll stop,” Fleder said.

Elvis turned to me, his belly straining against the suspenders clipped to his jeans. “The sheriff wants to cancel all bingo. Just shut it off. Like that’s going to catch this guy. Brilliant, huh?”

“Elvis,” Dingus said. His cheeks had flushed red behind his handlebar mustache. He wasn’t used to this sort of treatment. When he spoke to audiences of more than three or four people, he was usually the welcome guest handing out a safety award or posing for photographs with schoolchildren.

Floyd Kepsel piped up. “I think what Elvis is trying to say, Sheriff, is that we couldn’t give a hoot about bingo being canceled. But is that it? Is that all you have for us?”

“I’ll tell you what I’m trying to say, Dingus,” Elvis said. “Do you see my wife here today? Huh? Do you? She comes here every day”-Elvis rapped a forefinger on the table with each word-“because she loves this place and this town because it’s quiet and peaceful and you don’t have to lock your doors and we have places like this where nice people come to have a nice breakfast and talk about their grandkids. But she’s not here today, Sheriff, because she can’t get out of bed, she can’t move, she can’t do anything but cry.”

“I’m sorry, Elvis. You know-”

“Sorry? I’ll tell you what’s sorry. What’s sorry is you coming here like this is some damn campaign stop and telling us we’re the problem, we’re the ones who have to be confined to our homes.” The yelling started up again. “What if the guy starts breaking in on bowling night, huh? You going to shut the bowling alley, too? And what about hockey? We got a big game tonight and everybody’s going. You going to order us to forfeit so we all stay home because you and your overpaid deputies can’t catch a thief who doesn’t even take anything?”

“He’s not a thief,” Dingus said. “If he was, we’d have-”

“No, he’s a murderer.”

It was Sally Pearson. Her home had been broken into on a bingo night in February. She rose from her table. The room quieted. Behind her, I saw Jo Evangelista dabbing at her eyes. I felt a catch in my throat and started taking notes to distract myself.

“A murderer, Dingus,” Sally said. “And he killed one of the best of us.”

“I realize that, Sally. We’re doing everything we can.”

“We don’t have murderers in Starvation Lake. It can’t be one of us.”

“Probably not,” Dingus said. “But we have to look at all of the possibilities.”

“Do it, Dingus. And do it quickly. Because we can’t have this hanging over us in our town. We’ve had our problems with the economy and the real estate but we get through it because we know what we have here, a little piece of heaven on earth.”

“And there are no murderers in heaven, sir,” Elvis said.

Sally sat. Dingus fingered the brass mitten-shaped clasp on his tie. “I’m deeply regretful that we haven’t solved this-these cases,” he said. “And I understand your concerns. But I’m afraid I must go ahead with my decision to cancel bingo until we have a better handle on this.”

“What’s to stop this guy-”

“Enough, Elvis.” Audrey barked it from behind the counter.

Elvis turned in his seat. “Now, come on, Aud-”

“I said, enough. Phyllis was my friend, too. Dingus is doing his best. If that isn’t good enough, you’ll have a chance to let him know at the polls. But now let’s let the poor man do his job. If you still insist on second-guessing him, that’s up to you, but you’ll do it somewhere else from now on. And Sheriff?” She turned to Dingus. “I’ll thank you to refrain from calling meetings in my establishment. The same goes for Frank D’Alessio.”

“Yes ma’am,” Dingus said, giving a little bow. “With that, I’ll take my leave.” He picked up his hat and jacket off a chair and had opened the jangling door halfway when he looked at me. “You,” he said. “Out here.”

I followed the sheriff down Main. He veered into the narrow alley between Repicky Realty and a defunct antique shop, waving me along.

“Where are you taking me?” I said, but Dingus ignored me until he turned onto the walkway along the Hungry River and stopped. He peered over the railing at the river gurgling to the lake. He shook his head and leaned his elbows on the railing. Green paint was peeling off in spots because the town had only enough money to repaint once every two years.

“My loyal deputy was in there earlier,” he said, “stirring up the rabble.”

“D’Alessio?”

“The one and only.”

“The guy’s dumber than a sack of hockey pucks.”

“Which never hurt a politician before, so far as I can tell. I wasn’t going to do any dog-and-pony shows, but Skip was in there getting a coffee and saw D’Alessio and gave me a jingle and said, ‘Boss, you better get down here before they hang you in effigy.’”

“Jesus.”

“Yes. Frank’s treating all these crazy ideas-Phyllis got shot with a hunting bow, she got sliced up with a cheese grater-like they’re all real possibilities. He doesn’t know a thing.”

“What did-”

“The guy may have slammed her head into the bathroom door, and then, we think, into the floor. He may not have meant to kill her, but he did.”

We stood watching the water for a moment. I’d never seen Dingus so worked up. “When was the last murder in Starvation?” I said.

“In 1973,” he said. “A couple of brothers arguing over natural gas rights. Drinking, of course. One grabs a shotgun out of his gun cabinet and shoots the other across the kitchen table. I think he’s out of prison by now.”

“That the only one?”

“Before that, we had a man accused of murdering a nun at St. Val’s back in the forties or fifties. He got into it with somebody at the jail and got his throat cut. It was kind of a big deal at the time, though more because of the nun than the guy who killed her.”

“And now you have this.”

“Yes.” He came up from the railing. “And you are going to help me.”

Dingus and I had a special relationship. Sometimes he helped me, mostly he didn’t. But when he did, he expected something in return, usually more than what he gave up. It never would have worked for a marriage, but as cop-reporter romances go, it was about as good as it gets.

“Am I working for you or something?” I said.

He stepped in closer. “Can it. You want to solve this as much as I do, whether it’s in your paper or not.”

“Go ahead.”

“Your mother. She knows things. I know she knows them. She knows she knows them.”

“Not always. She-”

“Pipe down. I know about memory problems. My mama had them, too, may she rest in peace. But Bea, forgive me for saying, she knows more than she’s letting on.”

“Sometimes she can’t dredge it up.”

“Yeah, well.” He leaned his face in close. I smelled the Tiparillos again. “Maybe you can help her.”

“And then what?”

“Then you pass it along to your friendly neighborhood sheriff.”

“So, Dingus, do you have any clues at all? Do you know why they’re not taking anything?”

A frown bunched his mustache at his lips. He wasn’t going to respond. I considered asking about nye-less but didn’t want to expose Darlene. And I didn’t want to give away the only lead I had. “So, can I take off?” I said.

“How about your friend Tatch?”

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I let it go.

“What about him?”

“We got a tip he didn’t show up at the rink last night. That so?”

A tip? Shit, I thought, that had to be D’Alessio, who’d heard from me that Tatch was a no-show. Then I recalled the message left at the Pilot the night before: Anyone checking on those whackaroonies at the Christian camp? Meaning Tatch. His camp.

“Tatch wasn’t at the game,” I said. “But he’s not the most reliable guy on the planet.”

“Uh-huh. He’s a goalie, isn’t he? Like you? I’m no hockey expert, but it’s pretty unusual for the guy who guards the net to miss a game, isn’t it? Kind of puts his team at a disadvantage?”

“Kind of. What do you want from me?”

“Just ask him a question or two.”

“Why don’t you ask him a question or two?”

“He’s your buddy. Couple of goalies, you think alike, right? If ‘think’ is the right word for goalies.”

“That’s funny.”

“Just do it, huh?”

A breeze off the river washed cold along the back of my neck. “I’m going out to his camp later anyway. I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Good,” Dingus said. “You been out there before? I have nothing against born-again Christians, but I’ll tell you, that place is just a tad creepy.”