cell phone. His wife gave him a look and he smiled and dropped the phone into a pocket and sat down. I’d gone to high school with the guy. He used to come to Rats games back then. He and his buddies would sit in the very top row at one end of the stands, avoiding teachers because they’d had a little pregame party in the woods near Jitters Creek.
Oke ladled the casserole onto the kids’ plates. I imagined him and his wife and the boys sitting in the bleachers across from the Rats bench while the girl-I thought her name was Jo, and like a lot of the girls she was sweet on Tex Dobrick-squeezed along the glass with all the other high school girls in the corner near the concession stand.
My toast popped up.
I laid the pieces of bread down side by side and used a spoon to slather Miracle Whip on both. I laid a slice of cheese on each piece, the pickles on one, and mashed the whole thing together.
Miracle Whip splatted out one end of the sandwich into my palm as I took the first bite standing at the sink. I finished it in six bites and leaned my head under the faucet for a long drink of water. Dinner was done.
My phone rang. After I’d spoken with Whistler, I had tried and failed to get both Mom and Darlene. I hoped this was one of them.
“What do you got for me?” Dingus said.
I wished I hadn’t answered. “Not much,” I said. “Tatch said he had family matters the other night.”
“What family matters?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You call yourself a reporter?”
“It’s Tatch, Dingus. You were right about his camp.”
I wondered if Darlene had told Dingus about Nilus by now, if they’d figured out he might be a priest who once lived in Starvation.
“How about Bea?” he said.
“She might have told me more if you didn’t have Catledge hovering.”
“It’s for her own safety.”
My phone beeped. Another call was coming in, but I couldn’t hang up on Dingus.
“I appreciate it,” I said. “Mom did say she heard Frankie was out campaigning.”
“Yeah, waving your stories around,” Dingus said. “Thanks for the help.”
“We have a story tomorrow saying he’s going to make it official.”
“Stop the presses. That guy’s been up my butt for months.”
“Solve the case. He’ll go away.”
“I do hope your mom talks, Gus. Because I’d hate to have to bring you in.”
“Bring me in for what?”
“For questioning.”
“You might want to reread the First Amendment, Dingus.”
“Uh-huh. The shield of shields. Who the heck’s going to wield that for you, son? Your lawyers? The last time you were in my office, you had to borrow a pen.”
Which was true.
He ended the call with a satisfied grunt.
I dialed voice mail. There was a message from Darlene.
“Gus,” she said. “I hope you’re making more progress than we are, and… I hope you’re doing OK and Mom C’s all right.” Seconds of silence followed. “I might try to stop by the rink, but… we’ll see. We’ve got extra patrols out in the neighborhoods, in case this guy tries another house while everyone’s at the game. Talk later.”
I hit Replay, listened again. It hurt to hear Darlene in pain, but hearing her voice also felt good. She hadn’t spoken to me that softly since she’d ended things the year before. I hoped it wasn’t only because of her mother.
I went upstairs to my bedroom, brushed my teeth, ran a hand through what remained of my hair. Mom always said I looked better with my hair short anyway. “My own little Paul Newman,” she would say.
I heard cars honking outside on Main Street.
I grabbed my River Rats jacket, a blue-and-gold satin number with “Coach Carpenter” stitched in cursive over the left breast. Beneath that, another line of script said, “State Runner-Up 1981.” Poppy had had it put on. I told him I wished it wasn’t there, and he told me, Grow up, Gus, that was the greatest Rats team ever.
I went downstairs and stood at the bay window watching the cars and pickups and SUVs inching down Main toward the rink, an actual traffic jam in Starvation Lake. Horns blared. Kids hung out of windows waving Rats pennants. People stood curbside, thigh deep in snowbanks, clapping their mittens together and chanting, “Gooooo River Rats! Beeeat Mic-Mac!”
A sheriff’s cruiser whooshed by the line in the left lane, lights flashing.
The people of Starvation Lake had set their new home alarm systems and fastened the new padlocks on their doors and set out for a night of forgetting. Of forgetting about the vacant storefronts down the street, the For Sale signs on the lake, the high school having too little money to continue shop classes, the plastics plant closing and taking its fifty-eight jobs to Alabama. Maybe they couldn’t forget the break-in that had left one of their own dead, but they could channel their fear and confusion into cheering for the long-haired, pimply-faced boys taking their first step toward the town’s first state title.
I really wanted to join them, but I had something else to do.
ELEVEN
The kicked-up wind churned whorls of snow along the walk from Main Street to the Pine County Courthouse. I’d parked at one of the meters the county had installed in the 1980s when the town was flourishing, with rich downstate people coming up to buy property and houses on the lake. Now the meters stood there like antiques. Some county worker went around each week and collected the quarters. One week in January, he gathered a total of seventy-five cents.
Vicky Clark had propped a back door open with a phone book. I’d persuaded her to meet me in the clerk’s office to see if she could help me. Then we would go to her place for that dinner she had offered. That’s what I’d told her.
I smelled her perfume from the dark hallway outside the office. I hesitated, thinking maybe I shouldn’t do this after all. We weren’t all that different, Vicky and me. I’d left town for good, or so I thought, and made mistakes and come groveling home. She’d been a pianist with a scholarship to a music academy when her triplets made their unexpected appearance. Now here we were, chasing what we wanted amid the long evening shadows in the clerk’s office.
Vicky jiggled into the corridor and winked at me. “Pine County Clerk’s Office,” she said. “How can I help you?”
“Hi.”
“Aren’t you missing the big game?”
“Duty calls,” I said. She giggled.
Two microfilm machines squatted on the back wall of the office behind eight long rows of file cabinets. Vicky leaned over my shoulder as I sat winding a plastic handle that scrolled through the microfilm of old Pilots projected on a screen. I’d gotten used to her perfume, but I shivered when I felt her hair tickle the back of my neck.
“Can I ask why you’re so interested in all this ancient stuff?” she said.
“Just some background for some stories I’m working on.”
“Oh. It doesn’t have anything to do with Phyllis, does it?”
“I don’t know.”
“This is exciting,” she said. “You have an exciting job.”
“Trust me, Vick, that’s rarely the case.”
“My mother would absolutely kill us.”
“I’ll bet. What time do you need to get home to your kids?”
