“I see,” she said. “So that’s what happened the night before the wedding.”
“I don’t suppose Gracie ever told you.”
“No.”
“Did she make the wedding?”
“No.”
“Of course you forgave her.”
“Not at first. At first I said I’d had enough. I mean, I didn’t even see her, barely talked to her, for years. Then she wrote me this long letter about her life, about how she knew she’d gotten mixed up with the wrong people and now she was finally getting herself together. This was after she got back, last year sometime. I just reread it last night.”
“I’ll bet she didn’t name any names.”
“No. Except one, which is why I called, partly. Maybe you can find this woman. Looks like she might have been trying to help Gracie.”
“Gracie never said anything about her before?”
“Not that I can recall. Her name’s Trixie.”
“Trixie what?”
“I don’t have a last name.”
“Great. I’ll just look in the phone book under Trixie.”
“I thought you were a reporter.” She waited for a reply that I wasn’t about to give her. “She works at some kind of center for abused women. She apparently went by Trixie the Tramp, or at least that’s what Gracie called her.”
Darlene’s landline phone began to ring in the background.
“Trixie the Tramp,” I said. “I’ll figure it out.”
“I know you will.”
“By the way, your hubby and I had a little talk last night.”
The landline phone rang for the fourth time.
“Jesus-hold on.”
The ringing stopped as Darlene picked up. I pressed my cell phone to my ear to hear. “Roger,” Darlene said. “OK. I’ll be there in ten.”
She hung up the landline and came back to me. “I have to go.”
“We have to talk about Jason.”
“Not now,” she said. My heart sank a little. “That was Dingus.”
“OK. Go.”
My cell phone battery was almost out, and I’d forgotten the charger. But I wanted to call Philo. He’d sounded oddly urgent on the brief message he’d left for me to call him. Maybe he’s cleaning out my desk, I thought.
“Were you aware,” I said when he picked up, “that there really was a drain commission meeting today? Eleven a.m. at the county building.”
“I know. I went.”
I almost dropped my phone.
“Really? How was it?”
“Boring, mostly. A collection of old fat white guys dithering. How do these people order in restaurants?”
“That’s the drain commission.”
“And what the heck is a ‘wet-bottom pond’? Are there ponds with dry bottoms?”
“Welcome to the big time, Philo.”
A blue Suburban that looked newly washed pulled slowly past me and parked two driveways ahead, directly across from Vend’s house. I watched for the driver’s door to open. It didn’t. The tinted rear window kept me from seeing inside.
“Where are you?” Philo said.
“Downstate, like I said.”
“The boss is not happy. Is it really family you’re down there for?”
“It is.”
“That woman who hung herself-she was family, wasn’t she?”
“She didn’t hang herself. But, yes, she’s family.”
Philo went silent for a moment. I kept one eye on the house’s big front window, watching for the blue-on- white curtains to move.
“I doubt the boss knows that,” Philo finally said. “But I’m supposed to tell you, if you’re not in his office at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, you are no longer employed by Media North or the Pine County Pilot.”
“Thank you. Is that all?”
“No.” Philo lowered his voice. “Do you really think somebody killed her?”
I hesitated. Was Philo spying for his Uncle Jim? Or was he genuinely curious? Had I somehow gotten through to him the day before?
“I don’t have to think anything, Philo. Just following the bread crumbs. Tell me about the drain commission. You got a story?”
“I don’t know. Of course, I don’t have a paper for four days. But they had a pretty lengthy discussion about sewer service at the new rink. Apparently the developer-”
“Haskell.”
“Yes, Laird Haskell. Apparently he has asked to modify his proposal for financing the system out there.”
“That wasn’t on the agenda, was it?” I always checked the drain commission agenda. A lot of a little town’s money could literally go down the toilet in fifteen tedious minutes on a Tuesday morning.
“No. They just showed up like they owned the place. Made me late for a meeting at headquarters.”
I could tell that worried him. “That’s too bad. Haskell was there?”
“Well, not at the meeting itself. I saw him later. Let me just tell you-”
“Let me see,” I said. I wanted Philo to see this as clearly as possible. “Just two months ago, Haskell was going to pay for the whole thing. Read my lips and all. I’m betting he proposed an improvement. ”
“His lawyer, Mr. Gilbert, did the talking. He called it an enhancement, actually.”
“For which the town and the county would pay.”
“That’s approximately right. I thought this one commissioner-I forget his name-might spit up his dentures. Then that Elvis guy was trying to say everything’s all right, nobody ever expected Haskell to pay for everything, the rink is the future of the town, yadda yadda.”
I let that sit there a second, savoring the thought that Philo might be coming around to the possibility that Haskell, for whatever reason, didn’t have the money to build the new rink. Which meant, of course, that he wouldn’t need all those Pilot ads he was promising to buy.
“So did the commission actually do anything?”
“Tabled it till next month. But, listen, I wanted to ask you-you got a couple of pretty thick envelopes in the mail this morning.”
The Suburban doors remained closed. I peered into the rearview mirror on the driver’s side. A pair of aviator shades on a wide face looked back. I averted my eyes, first to the house, then to the other side of the street. I turned the key to start my truck. It coughed twice, clicked, and died.
“Shit,” I said.
“What?” Philo said. “I didn’t open them.”
“No, no, it’s my damn truck, needs a starter. What about the mail?”
The driver’s side door on the Suburban swung open.
“You got two big envelopes from Lansing.”
I looked at the house. I wasn’t going in there now. Maybe later. Maybe never. I tried the ignition again. Philo was saying something but I wasn’t listening. The truck finally wheezed to life and I pulled it out onto the street. I tried to keep my eyes straight ahead but as I passed the Suburban I glanced to my right and saw a man approximately half the tonnage of the vehicle itself turned sideways in the driver’s seat. He had a face like a moon, complete with craters that looked like someone had taken a ball-peen hammer to him.
In my rearview I saw him step out of the Suburban and stand in the street, watching me leave.
