Dexter smiled. “But you don’t have that in writing, do you, Mr. Fleming?”
“No, sir.”
“How’s the theater renovation going in Sandy Cove, Mr. Fleming?”
“On schedule and under budget, sir.”
“All of us in Starvation are so delighted to hear that.”
“Look,” Teddy said, “we appreciate the board’s patience.” The tone of his voice suggested otherwise. “But, frankly, if we can’t get the support of the very people who stand to benefit from this, then, unfortunately, and with all due respect, we’ve run out of time, and we’ll say, Thank you, no hard feelings.” He picked up his briefcase. “Let me state this as clearly as I can. If we don’t have a green light by close of business Wednesday, we’ll cancel the Pines at Starvation Lake and move on.”
He and Fleming started for the door. Everyone turned to watch them go.
“Hold on, Ted,” Kepsel said. They ignored him.
“We will not be bullied, Mr. Boynton,” Dexter shouted as they went through the door.
Soupy’s absence clearly had thrown Boynton. Maybe Soupy was still drunk. Or was drunk again. Or maybe this had something to do with his outburst at my apartment the night before. I hurried out into the corridor. “Teddy!” I shouted after them. They were almost to the double doors that led out to the parking lot when one of the doors swung open and in stepped Joanie, backpack slung over her shoulder.
“It’s already over?” she said.
Teddy stopped, briefly unsure of himself, and turned toward me.
“Hey,” I said. “You’re just going to walk away? That’s it?”
“After six months of this crap?” Boynton said. “Now maybe they’ll focus.”
“Focus on what?” Joanie said.
“Could you give us some details of your agreement with Soupy?” I said.
“Why don’t you ask him?” Teddy said. “He’s your butt buddy.”
Fleming interjected, “As Mr. Boynton said, the deal has yet to be finalized, although we are confident it will be.”
“What is the deal, Ted?”
“What deal?” Joanie said.
Boynton clapped a hand on Fleming’s shoulder. “We’re done here.” They turned for the outer doors.
“You were expecting Soupy, weren’t you, Ted?” I said. It made Boynton stop. He wheeled around to face me again.
“Know what?” he said. “Better tell your buddy not to show up tonight, either, because he won’t have the zoning board to protect his ass out on the ice.”
“Please,” Fleming said, tugging at Teddy’s elbow.
The door swung closed. Joanie looked bewildered. “What was that all about?”
“We need to talk,” I said. “Follow me.”
“Look,” she said as I ushered her into a classroom and shut the door. “They were lying about our story. I couldn’t just sit there and-”
“I don’t care about the press conference,” I said. One wall of the room was covered with pencil drawings of historical figures: Lincoln, Napoleon, Kennedy. A history class? Art? I stood near the teacher’s desk.
“Sit,” I told Joanie. She sat on a student’s desk facing me. “Let’s talk about that document you took off my desk.”
“What document?”
“You know. The thick one about Soupy Campbell and his legal problems.”
“Oh.” She looked a little sheepish. “I thought it might be good background if I had to cover the zoning board.”
“Did you show it to anybody? Or tell anyone about it?”
“No-well, nobody who didn’t already know.”
“Like who?”
She let her backpack drop to the floor. “Boynton.”
“You talked to him?”
“Yeah. Saturday night. Remember when my beeper went off?”
“Why did you have to tell Boynton about a document he already knew about?”
“I didn’t.” She chewed her lower lip. “I wanted to talk about Blackburn, he wanted to talk about Campbell. I thought I’d get him going on one and he’d talk about the other.”
“But he didn’t tell you a thing, did he?”
“Not really.”
“I’ll bet you told him a few things, though, huh?”
She shrugged, looking even more uncomfortable. “I just said I was working on this feature on Blackburn. I told him-he asked me what I knew about Blackburn. He said he’d never really gotten to know the guy because he was from out of state, and he wished he had, because he was such a great coach, yadda yadda.”
“And?”
“And-and that Canada thing came up.”
“Canada thing?” I thought of Soupy crying on my landing.
“You know, how Blackburn missed that year?”
“You told Boynton?”
“No-I mean-I just told him what I knew.”
“What?” I said. “What the hell did you know? You didn’t say a word to me.”
“No, I did not,” she said. “Because I didn’t have it nailed. You told me not to bring you stuff unless it was nailed.”
“OK, I’m an asshole. Tell me now, please.”
She sat on the teacher’s desk. “It’s not-I don’t have it quite right yet-but something screwy went on up there. I told you I talked to this lady in Canada. St. Albert, actually, Alberta. Blackburn’s last team before here.”
“Yes.”
“She works at the newspaper there, in the library. She was the one who sent me to that local guy who’s like the hockey historian, and he told me Blackburn ‘skedaddled,’ remember? And then he hung up? That made me suspicious, of course, so I called that woman back, pretending I wanted some clips. She said she didn’t want to talk, but I could tell she did, so I got her to let me call her at home. It took a little bit to get her going, but she had-has-this nephew, her sister’s kid, who supposedly was a big star player for Blackburn. Everyone was saying he was going to play in the pros. Then one day, he just up and quit. No more hockey.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. She got kind of upset and got off the phone.”
“Was the kid not getting enough ice time?”
“No, no, he was a star. He was the top scorer like two or three years in a row. Blackburn supposedly worshipped him. Called him-what was it? — ‘Tiger.’”
That’s what Blackburn had called Boynton. Soupy was Swanny and Teddy was Tiger. I was just Gus.
“At first the kid told his parents he was just sick of all the pressure. I guess these kids played like a hundred games a year. His dad was ticked off, but his mom didn’t buy it. She thought maybe he was into drugs or something. So she goes snooping around in his room and finds this diary.”
“Boys don’t keep diaries.”
“My brother did. I once made the mistake of reading it.”
“OK. What was in the kid’s diary?”
Joanie shook her head. “She just basically broke down at that point, just started to cry. She said she didn’t want to go through it again. I said, ‘Excuse me, go through what again?’ and she just cried harder. So I tried to steer away from the diary and back to Blackburn and then she got pretty angry.”
“At you?”
“No. Wait a sec.” She bent down and rummaged in her backpack, producing a notebook. She flipped through the pages. “Here,” she said. “She told me, ‘Everyone said that man resigned. He didn’t resign. My brother-in-law rode him out of here on a rail. But first, of course, he had to win that last blessed championship. We had to win, at
