You want to go? This Breck guy’s supposed to be there.”
“The drain commission? Hmm.” Whistler pedaled his chair back to his desk. “I’m going to be a good guy and let you do it, how’s that?”
“Thanks a million.”
“But tell you what. I’ve got a source in the archdiocese from covering the pope’s visit to Detroit way back when. If he’s not dead, I’ll call him, see what I can find out about this Nilus character.”
“Did you check the old papers downstairs?”
“In the morgue?”
“Nobody calls it a morgue anymore.”
“What you got downstairs ought to be one, as cold and damp as it is. I got allergies. The last time I went down there, I sneezed for a week.”
“I’ll look. There’s probably something.”
Whistler stood up. “I’ve got to see a man about a horse,” he said. “But one thing. If you’re poking around back in whenever Nilus was here, you might stumble over my mother.”
“Your mother?”
“Yeah. She lived nearby for a little while in the forties. Matter of fact, I lived here, but we moved away when I was a little shaver.”
So Mom’s recollection of a Whistler in Starvation Lake was not mistaken. I said, “But didn’t you tell my mother-”
“I know, I fibbed to your mom. I’m sorry. See, unlike your mom, mine was nothing to be proud of. Spent most of her life in a bottle. I just, I don’t know, I didn’t know how well your mom knew her, and I didn’t want to get into it.”
“Gotcha.”
“How is your mom anyway?”
“Getting through it. I’ve got to check on her.”
Whistler yanked keys from his vest pocket. “Will let you know what I find out. Let’s get there before the cops, eh, boss?”
I finished up the next day’s paper. Wrote a few headlines, some photo captions, a brief on the high school girls’ basketball team going to Big Rapids for a game. Then I went to the back of the newsroom and descended a set of creaky stairs to the basement.
At the bottom I reached up and pulled on a string that lit a single overhead bulb. The air tasted of chalk. Black binders filled with old newspapers lay in racks along two walls. The binders went back only about forty years, so I doubted they’d help me much. In the darkest corner of the room stood a pair of wooden file cabinets, painted green. Index cards taped on the drawers were marked with letters in alphabetical order. I pulled open the drawer marked Na-No and flipped through the file folders inside.
I found the file I wanted about two-thirds deep in the drawer: “Moreau, Rev. Nilus.” I pulled it out and opened it, praying it would hold a yellowed, cut-out clip or two. The file was empty except for an index card. I pulled the card out and walked across the floor to read beneath the lightbulb. The typewriting on the card said:
St. Valentine’s Welcomes New Pastor, November 2, 1933.
Nilus Expands Orphanage with Children from Midland, January 20, 1934.
Town Searches for Missing Nun; “No Stone Unturned,” Priest Vows, p. A-1, August 17, 1944.
Hope Ebbing in Search for Nun, p. A-1, August 28, 1944.
“Holy shit,” I said. I flipped the card over. The list continued on the back:
Gardener Arrested in Disappearance of Nun, p. A-1, August 5, 1950. cf. Accused Killer Murdered in Pine County Jail, p. A-3, August 7, 1950.
Gardener Arrested in Disappearance of Nun, p. A-1, August 5, 1950. cf. Accused Killer Murdered in Pine County Jail, p. A-3, August 7, 1950.
This had to be the nun Dingus had told me about, and the guy who’d gotten his throat cut in the jail. I did the math in my head. Mrs. B and Mom were the same age, sixty-six. They had known each other since they went to the school at St. Val’s together. The school had closed sometime in the 1970s. Mom and Mrs. B would’ve been eleven years old when the nun vanished. I wondered if the nun had taught at St. Val’s, if Nilus had. Did he know Mrs. B as a little girl?
I flipped the index card back to the front. A faded blue stamp in the upper right hand corner said MICROFILM.
“Shit,” I said.
I slipped the card into my shirt pocket. I ran up the stairs and sat down at my desk and picked up my phone. I felt a little burst of that energy I’d felt at the Detroit Times whenever I thought I was on to a good story. I wanted to tell someone. For a second, I thought about calling Whistler and telling him too bad about your allergies.
Instead, I dialed the clerk’s office.
“Pine County Clerk,” Verna Clark said.
I hung up and looked at the clock. Three forty-five. The pregame skate had already begun. I had to get going. I dialed again.
“Clerk,” Verna Clark said.
I couldn’t afford to wait again. “Vicky, please.”
“Vicky?” her mother said. “Is this a personal call?”
I screwed up by hesitating. “No. Not really.”
“Not really? Well then, perhaps I can help you if whatever you need is doable within the next hour and fourteen minutes. After that, I’m afraid you’ll have to call tomorrow.”
“It’s Gus Carpenter, Verna.”
“I am aware of that.”
“Can I speak to the deputy clerk?”
“May I?”
“May I speak to the deputy clerk?”
“She’s busy at the moment. How can I help you?”
If I told Verna Clark what I really wanted, which was to look at the microfilm of those newspaper clips in the county archive, she would have informed me that I would need to come to the office the next morning and fill out a request form and then wait a week or ten days or whatever she decided would be long enough to frustrate the hell out of me. Silently I cursed the Media North bean counter who had decided the Pilot ’s oldest stories could be most efficiently stored where Verna could lord it over them. The Pilot actually paid the county for this privilege.
I had to throw her off somehow. So I said, “I need to ask Vicky about a recipe.”
“A recipe? This is not Audrey’s Diner.”
“Yes, but-”
“I’m sorry. Is there any official county business I could help you with, sir?”
“Could you tell your daughter I called?”
“Excuse me?”
Verna Clark hated to be reminded that her deputy also happened to be her daughter. Her opponent in her last election had run an attack campaign based largely on nepotism, and Verna had been forced to nearly drain her election fund defending herself. She even had to stoop to buying ads in the Pilot, which must have infuriated her.
“Could you please-”
“I heard you the first time, Mr. Carpenter. The Pine County Clerk’s Office will welcome your request in person. We close in one hour and thirteen minutes and reopen tomorrow at nine o’clock sharp.”
She hung up. But I had gotten her to speak my name aloud. My phone rang again a few minutes later. Vicky Clark whispered it: “Are you ready for chicken and dumplings?”
