I know it’s not mine, but maybe it will help us find Kevin, all right?”
“Kevin will be mad.”
“I won’t tell him about your being here.”
“Okay.”
I found a pinch bar among the tools on the floor and pried the hasp off the trunk. Inside the cover of the trunk an eight-by-ten glossy was attached with adhesive tape, a publicity still of Vic Harroway in a body-building pose. In the trunk itself was a collection of body-building magazines, a scrapbook, a pair of handsprings that you squeezed to build up your grip, and two thirty-pound dumbbells.
Dolly did an exaggerated shudder. “Gross,” she said.
“What?” I said.
“The guy in the picture. Ugh!”
“Do you know him?” I asked.
“No.”
I sat down in the lawn chair and picked up the first magazine in the pile. Dolly said, “Are you going to read that?” I said, “I’m going to read them all.”
“Sick,” she said.
“They’re clues. That’s what I’m supposed to do—study clues and after studying enough of them I’m supposed to solve a mystery and…”
“Are you going to tell?” she said.
I knew what she meant. Kevin had hidden this stuff from his parents, for whatever reason.
“No,” I said. “Are you?”
“NO.”
I opened a copy of Strength and Health. On the inside cover and spilling over onto page 1, there was an ad for high-protein health food and pictures of hugely muscled people who apparently ate it. There were badly laid-out ads for strength-training booklets, weight-lifting equipment, and choker bathing suits; and pictures of weight lifters and Mr. America contestants. On page 39 was a sepia-tone picture of Vic Harroway. He had on a white bikini and was posed on a beach in front of a low shelf of rock that kicked spray up as the sea hit it. His right arm was flexed to show the biceps. His left hand was clamped behind his neck, and he was flexed forward with his right knee bent and the toes of his left leg barely touching the ground. The sun glistened on his features, and his narrowed eyes were fixed on something high and distant and doubtless grand behind the camera. Beauty is its own excuse for being. The caption said, “Vic Harroway, Mr. Northeastern America, Combines Weight Lifting and Yoga.” I read the story. It said the same thing in supermasculine prose that made me want to run out and uproot a tree.
While I read, Dolly Bartlett sat down against the wall with her knees drawn up against her chest and listened to her radio.
I went through all the strength magazines. They dated back five years, and each of them had a story on Vic Harroway. I learned how Vic trained down for “that polished look.” I learned Vic’s diet-supplement secrets for gaining “ten to fifteen pounds of solid muscles.” I learned Vic’s technique for developing sinewy and shapely underpinnings.“
I didn’t learn much about Vic’s theories on kidnapping and harassment or if he might know where Kevin Bartlett was.
I looked at the scrapbook. It was what I thought it would be. Clippings of Vic Harroway’s triumphs in body- building contests. Ads announcing the opening of a new health spa where Vic Harroway would be the supervisor of physical conditioning. Fifteen-year-old newspaper clippings of Vic Harroway as a high school football hero in Everett.
Snapshots of Vic and one of Vic and Kevin with Vic’s arm around Kevin’s shoulder. Harroway was smiling. Kevin looked very serious.
”Did Kevin lift weights?“ I asked Dolly.
”No. I remember he wanted to buy a set once, but my mother wouldn’t let him.“
”Why not?“
”I don’t know. She said it would make him big and beefy and stuff, you know?“
I nodded.
”They had a big fight about it.“
I nodded again.
”Would it?“
”Would it what?“
”Would it make him big and beefy?“
”Not if he did it right,“ I said. I took the publicity shot of Harroway, put the magazines and the scrapbook back in the trunk, and closed it. Dolly and the dog and I went downstairs. The dog edged me out on the way down, and I was last. In the driveway Marge Bartlett was standing looking impatiently into the open barn. She had on a pale violet pants suit with huge cuffed bell-bottoms and blunt-nosed black shoes poking out underneath. A big burlap purse with a crocheted design hung from her shoulder. She wore white lipstick, and her nails were polished in a pale lavender.
”Come on, Dolly, time to go to Aunt Betty’s. Hop in the car.“
