“Where did you get that?”
“Gracie left it to me in her will.”
The key slid into the lock and turned. I lifted the cover. Inside were half a dozen black plastic boxes. Along the spine of each box was a piece of white tape marked with what appeared to be initials and a date:
DTJ 7/26/92
LKH 3/19/90
MXR 2/8/93
JAV 12/31/91
“Videos?” I said. I picked up one of the boxes and opened the plastic shell casing. A videotape fell out into my hands. The tape, too, was fixed with a label marked with initials and a date matching the ones on the box.
I waggled the tape at Trixie. “Gracie got a video player?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Then what are the videos for?”
“I don’t know.”
“You got a tape player back at the center?”
“You’re not going in the center.”
“Can I take these then? I’ll return them.”
“Nothing leaves the house.”
“Why?”
“Nothing leaves the house.”
“Trixie, I can’t do my job-”
“I thought you’d seen enough,” she said. “We’ve pawed through enough of Grace’s things. We’re not taking them away. This is her home.”
I held the tape up next to my head. “Please?”
“Sorry.”
“Will you at least think about it?”
“Put it back, please.”
I set the tape back in the safe, closed the safe, lifted it into the cardboard box. I’d try her again later. I could always come back downstate if she relented. When she relented. I got up off the floor.
“Tell me,” I said. “If you knew, why didn’t you just come out and tell me Gracie was mixed up with this Vend character?”
“Because,” she said, as if the answer was obvious, “you’re a reporter. I’ve dealt with plenty of reporters. You’re skeptical. You have to find things out for yourself or you don’t want to believe them. That’s the way you are. Besides, Gus, face it-you’d never believe what Grace told you anyway. She could have given you chapter and verse about Vend or Laird Haskell and it would’ve gone in one ear and out the other.”
“Ah, so it’s my fault,” I said, though I knew she was probably right. “What do you expect? She was drunk or high every time I saw her.”
Trixie stepped forward and pointed a finger in my face. “Of all people,” she said, nearly shouting, “ you should know that appearances-oh, never mind.” She turned away, shaking her head. “Never mind.”
“What happened to the others?” I said. “The women Gracie brought you. Are they OK now?”
She let out a sigh, collecting herself. Trixie the Tramp obviously didn’t like losing her cool. “I have to be going now.”
“Come on,” I said. “I’m listening.”
“One of them is managing. I try not to let her out of my sight. The other…” Trixie’s voice trailed off. I waited. She closed her eyes. “They found her a few weeks ago in Sarnia, near the beach, hanging from a swing set.”
“Oh, man. No.”
“Suicide.” She opened her eyes. “At least that’s what the cops said.”
We rode back to the center in silence. I thought of what Trixie had just told me. A “suicide” in Sarnia followed by a “suicide” in Starvation Lake formed a gruesome pattern. I had to get to a phone.
She parked the Civic in a dirt lot next to the center. I opened my door. The inside light came on. Trixie didn’t move. She still had her hands on the steering wheel.
“Thank you for coming,” she said.
“You’re welcome.”
“I know it probably upset you, even though…” She swallowed. “You should know, Gus, that Grace was trying to turn her life around.”
She shut off the car. We sat in the dark alongside the center, cars swishing past us on the road. “She would’ve been happy that you came,” Trixie said. “Even if it won’t do any good.”
“You don’t believe she killed herself.”
She let her hands drop into her lap. “Sometimes I do. It’s easier because, let’s be honest, what difference does it make? These are clever men. They didn’t get to where they are by leaving fingerprints all over their mistakes.”
She turned in her seat to face me.
“I know what I said before, but… I didn’t realize until I started to show you, but I wanted you to see. Grace would have wanted you to see. Now go home and bury her and forget all of this. You don’t have to ruin your life trying to prove something you can’t.”
Either she was trying to be nice or she was daring me.
“Would it ruin my life if I got a look at a couple of those videos?”
Trixie opened her door. “I’ll let you know.”
“One last thing?” I said.
“One last thing.”
“Did she regret it?”
“Regret what?”
I chose my words carefully. “Her baby.”
“Very much.”
I watched her walk back into the center with her determined limp, her dress swaying beneath the bomber jacket. Trixie the Tramp was a good woman. She was not a good liar. She’d said she hadn’t really looked at those newspaper pages; it was Gracie’s hobby, not hers. But she knew enough to call Haskell by his first name. I could only wonder if that was her only slip.
The pay phone at Nasty Melvin’s was right where I remembered it, beneath the Bud Light sign-used to be a Miller Lite sign-hanging on the wall in the back of the bar alongside the chalkboard menu. The price of a cheeseburger had gone up since I’d drunk there with Wally and other hockey pals a few years before, from $3.25- with fries and a dill pickle-to $3.75.
With my cell phone dead, I had no choice but to use a pay phone, but I didn’t mind visiting Nasty’s. I’d had a lot of fun there and managed to keep myself out of the occasional fights that broke out between the middle-aged bikers who tried to keep to their Bud longnecks and the overserved yuppies who insisted on playing pool for money, then tried to sneak out before paying their debts. Not once in my years of drinking at Nasty’s did I see a hockey player get into a fight. Fights were a part of the game on the ice, but skaters carry no illusions about hockey being some metaphor for life. Life was quite a bit harder than hockey, as was getting up for work with a busted face.
I ordered a bottle of Blue Ribbon and five dollars’ worth of quarters.
I figured I would make my calls, grab a cheeseburger or two to go, and head back up north. If all went well, I’d be back in time to make the playoff game against the Minnows before I went looking for Darlene.
I set my Blue Ribbon on a table and stepped over to the phone, the soles of my boots peeling off the linoleum floor. I had to get someone at the Wayne County Clerk’s Office before it closed at five o’clock. Then I’d see if I could dig up a cop in Sarnia.
The phone at the clerk’s office rang six times. Then came a recording. I hit a few buttons, hoping the options hadn’t changed. A man came on the line. I asked for Nova Patterson.
“She’s left,” the man said.
“No,” I said. “Look in the back. She always stays late.”
“I am not allowed to leave the front desk, sir.”
