last beer. Now I had to wonder whether Soupy had driven Gracie out to the shoe tree. Nobody could be that stupid.
Except maybe Soupy. My stomach tightened. He wasn’t capable of hurting anyone intentionally. But he was damned good at hurting himself.
I decided against asking Darlene about Soupy. Instead I said, “So what about your voice mail?”
“Did you go to Audrey’s?”
“Yeah. Elvis was holding court.”
“I figured. What did he say?”
“He said the cops-you guys have a suicide note. Said it was on TV this morning, why the hell hadn’t I seen it, blah blah.”
“Which is why I left that message.”
“So there is no suicide note?”
“No… well, there’s a… it’s complicated. She had a piece of paper on her. Some people might call it a suicide note, people who knew about Gracie’s”-I thought I heard a catch in Darlene’s voice-“you know, her flair for drama.”
“A piece of paper? Like what?”
“It wasn’t a suicide note.”
“So, what then?”
“She was trying to tell us something.”
That she was suicidal? No. No car. No ladder. A shoe missing. “What exactly did she write?”
“She didn’t. The people at that new hockey rink did.” There was a pause. I thought Darlene might have been collecting herself. “A rejection letter. One page.”
“She applied for a job at the new rink?”
“Yes. The same job she has-had at the old rink.”
“Was the letter dated?”
“Not sure. They haven’t let me actually look at it. But I assume it’s recent.”
It seemed a little strange that the owner of the new rink, or his minions, would be making decisions about jobs when the rink was barely a skeleton of structural steel. Might Gracie have gotten the job if construction hadn’t stopped? Now I understood what Elvis had meant by the “connection” between my rink stories and Gracie’s death: my stories, by halting construction, had killed Gracie. Elvis had quite an imagination.
“And they told her no?”
“Yes. They told her to go to hell.”
“Forgive me, Darl, but why would anybody think that’s a suicide note?”
“Most people wouldn’t. But we’re talking about you-know-who.”
She meant Pine County sheriff’s deputy Frank D’Alessio, who probably had leaked the detail to Channel Eight. “Where did you find it?” I said.
“In a snowdrift a few feet from where she was hanging.”
“So she could have just dropped it.”
“Or it could have fallen out of her pocket as she was being dragged up into the tree.”
I tried to imagine it. A man? Two men? It wouldn’t be a woman. Not with Gracie. No, it would be a man, or men. But why? I had no idea. All I could think at that moment was that the answer was likely to be found somewhere other than Starvation Lake. Somewhere downstate.
“When do you expect to hear from Doc Joe?” I said.
“You mean Doc Slow?” Doc Joe was Joe Schriver, Pine County medical examiner. He was not known for expediting cases. “We’ll probably figure this out before he rubber-stamps it.”
“You’ve positively identified-Jesus!”
A rapping on the window to my left startled me. I turned and saw D’Alessio standing in the road outside, a long flashlight in one hand.
“What?” Darlene said.
I lowered my voice and put a finger up to let D’Alessio know I’d be just a moment. “I have a visitor,” I told Darlene. “You-know-who.”
“Gus,” Darlene said, “somebody wants us to think this was a suicide. Somebody who really didn’t like Gracie.”
D’Alessio rapped the butt end of his flashlight on my window again, harder. “Open up, fuckhead.”
I took another look at the shoe tree. “You’re right,” I told Darlene.
“Gracie was no angel but-”
“I know. She didn’t deserve this. Don’t worry. I’m on it.”
six
Cold whipped across my face as I rolled my window down. D’Alessio had hidden his eyes behind unnecessary sunglasses.
“Frankie,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Can’t be parking here.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of town. “Got to move it along.”
D’Alessio had come to Starvation from Detroit as a boy. His father had been a Detroit cop who got sick of the shot-up streets and falling-down houses, so he came up north and bought a grocery store in town. Frankie had a wife and a couple of kids. He skated in the Midnight Hour Men’s League. Not a lot of skill, but a knack for whacking the top of your skate with the heel of his stick when you weren’t looking, something I hadn’t had to endure when I was playing goalie.
He also carried a barely disguised hard-on for Channel Eight’s on-air reporter, Tawny Jane Reese.
“What do you think?” I said. “I hear you’ve got a suicide note.”
“Crazy little bitch,” he said, meaning, I assumed, Gracie. “No comment.”
“It’s not a suicide.”
“All communications with the press should be directed to the sheriff or the on-duty press liaison.”
I chuckled. “Tell me, Frankie. How do I get you to leak me stuff like this so-called suicide note? I hope Tawny at least gave you a hand job.”
I didn’t really think she’d ever given in to D’Alessio’s come-ons, but I was sure she regularly used them to her advantage.
“You want a tip?” D’Alessio said. He grinned and leaned his head down so he could look at me over the tops of his glasses.
“I’m not giving you a hand job.”
“Meat’s back.”
I tried to look nonchalant. “Who?”
“Fuck you,” D’Alessio said. He leaned his head back but kept the grin in place. “You know-the guy whose wife you been banging.”
He meant Jason Esper, Darlene’s estranged husband. I had heard rumors that he might come back to Starvation after leaving Darlene and town many months before.
Those of us who played hockey called him Meat for how the knuckles on his right hand looked after dozens of fights in the lowest of the low minor leagues. Like pounded meat. Darlene had told me that Jason went through periods when it was too painful for him to put his hand in his pocket. He also happened to be about as big and muscled as a steer.
“Aha,” I said. “Well, welcome back, Meat. Why’s he back? Did someone beat his video golf record at Dingman’s?”
“I hear he’s fixed himself up pretty good,” D’Alessio said. “But you can see for yourself tomorrow.”
Tuesday night, Soupy and I and our team, the Chowder Heads, had a first-round playoff game in the Midnight Hour Men’s League.
“No shit, huh?” I said. “Meat’s playing?”
