Dutch Me Deadly

think one of those fellas did it?”

“I know they were standing practically on top of him when he fell, so they certainly had the opportunity.”

“What do you s’pose Pete knew that them two fellas wanted kept secret?” asked Nana.

“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. I don’t have a clue, but every time I talk to a reunion person, the conversation always finds its way around to a classmate named Bobby Guerrette, who disappeared on their Senior Skip Day and was never seen again. If they’re hiding skeletons in their closets, my gut tells me, the skeletons are wearing Bobby Guerrette’s face.”

“Sounds like we’re flirtin’ with a cold case file,” said Nana.

“But it’s spilling over into the present day,” fretted Helen. “How do we know my Dick’s disappearance isn’t connected with one or more of them trying to keep their skeletons hidden?”

I had no answer to that.

“Did anyone notice how composed all the Mainers were when Wally announced that Paula Peavey was dead?” asked Tilly. “It was almost as if the news didn’t come as a surprise. I didn’t notice a single tear being shed.”

“There wasn’t no tears for Pete neither,” said Nana.

“Good thing Wally didn’t threaten to cancel the tour,” said George. “I think the Mainers would have staged a rebellion.”

“Isn’t it nice how the tour company is going to handle all the arrangements for flying the bodies back to the states?” Alice chimed in. “It must give folks great peace of mind to know that if they get knocked off in Amsterdam, their bodies won’t be left to molder away in a forgotten corner somewhere, while their cheap relatives bicker over who’s going to get stuck with the air freight bill.”

Helen looked intrigued. “Do you suppose there are other perks in our travel packages that we don’t know about yet?”

Before they could take off on another unrelated tangent, I let out an attention-getting whistle. “Do you want me to tell you what I know about Bobby Guerrette and Senior Skip Day?”

Nods. Mumbles of assent.

“It’s pretty depressing, just so you know.”

Margi grabbed a box off my bedside table and waved it in the air. “I’ve got tissues.”

I recounted every detail I could remember about Bobby Guerrette, focusing on the qualities that seemed to define him—his intelligence, his popularity, his strong self-image—qualities he’d developed despite having no family other than the nuns at the orphanage. I told them how he’d appointed himself as Laura LaPierre’s protector, and how he’d befriended Mike McManus in the days when Mike had been a super geek. I related how he’d stayed home from his senior prom rather than attend with Paula Peavey ,and how he’d been in line to be valedictorian of his class. “When he disappeared, Pete got bumped up to valedictorian, Laura became salutatorian, and Gary Bouchard got elevated to fifth in his graduating class, which was apparently a big status thing for Gary’s father.”

I talked briefly about Senior Skip Day, how the in crowd had dropped in and out of the gathering that was going on at a local park, how most of the kids spent the day getting hammered, how Bobby was forced to hitchhike back to the orphanage later that night, how Ricky Hennessy saw Bobby get into the car that apparently drove him into oblivion, and how Mike and Peewee backed up Ricky’s eyewitness account.

“Was Paula Peavey considered a member of the in crowd?” asked Tilly.

“I got the impression that she ran with the in crowd because she was so vicious, they were afraid what she might say about them if they ignored her. Chip Soucy told me that she wasn’t specifically invited to hang out with them on Senior Skip Day, but her parents had given her a car for graduation, so she showed up anyway.” I threw them a pleading look. “Can you see why my head is about to explode?”

Tilly removed a pen and notepad from her pocketbook and began taking notes. “Pete Finnegan, Laura LaPierre, and Gary Bouchard benefited most from young Bobby’s disappearance. Is that correct?”

I nodded. “All three reaped the academic rewards of Bobby’s not graduating.”

“You s’pose one a them coulda done that young man in?” asked Nana.

I sighed. “Laura idolized him, so I’d take her name off the board. I don’t know about Pete and Gary. Do you think they would have had the stomach to kill a fellow student to improve their academic ranking?” I shivered. “It’s just so brutal.”

“Were Pete and Gary at the park when Bobby got into that car?” asked George.

“Pete wasn’t. No one invited him to participate. But Gary was there, which pretty much gives him an airtight alibi.”

“Who said he was still there?” asked Bernice. “His buddies? If you believe that, I’ve got some land in Florida I’d like to sell you.”

I stared at Bernice, her accusation zapping me like a shot of stray voltage. Uff-da! This whole time I’d been operating on the assumption that everyone was telling me the truth. But what if that wasn’t the case? What if everyone was lying to cover up what had really happened? Duh?

“Why was Pete left out?” Alice asked me.

“He wasn’t socially adept, he didn’t try to fit in, and no one enjoyed his company.”

Eight sets of eyes riveted on Bernice.

“What?” she balked.

Helen bristled with indignation. “If folks snubbed me like that, I wouldn’t take kindly to it at all. I might even find a way to make them regret it.”

Nana raised her hand. “If Pete Finnegan wasn’t at the park, where was he?”

I regarded her dumbly. “I don’t know. But I do know that he was the first person in the class to get his driver’s license, even though no one bothered to acknowledge it. So if he had access to a car, he could have easily cruised by to see what was going on with his classmates.”

“And seen something he shouldn’t have?” asked George.

A stillness fell over the room. Yes, he could have gotten an eyeful that day. But what in God’s name had he seen?

Tilly thumped her walking stick on the floor. “Have you considered the possibility that the person who picked Bobby up might not have been a random stranger? What if the person driving the car had been Pete Finnegan?”

Collective gasps, the loudest of which was my own.

“Pete could easily have offered Bobby a ride back to the orphanage,” she continued, “then made sure he never got there. What better way to wield power over the ruling elite than by eliminating the one student who stood in the way of your receiving the highest honor in your graduating class?”

“I think you’re all ignoring the obvious,” Grace spoke up. “Bobby Guerrette refused to attend the senior prom with Paula Peavey. Can you imagine how angry that must have made her? Don’t you think she would have wanted to get even? You said yourself she was vicious, Emily. And she had her own car. Maybe she was the one who picked up Bobby that night.”

“And made him pay the ultimate price,” said Helen.

“Hell hath no fury,” offered Osmond.

Was it Paula who’d picked Bobby up? Had Pete witnessed it? Could he have carried that secret around with him for five decades? But why wouldn’t he have spoken up at the time? “Arrrrhh!” I scrubbed my face with my hands. “I can’t think.”

“You people are so delusional,” Bernice grumbled. “What are you trying to prove? You think there was a murder fifty years ago? There wasn’t. That kid ran away. It happens all the time. They’re called runaways.”

“Oh, yeah?” countered Margi. “So if there was no murder to cover up back then, how come so many people are dying now?”

Bernice stared at her. “Is that supposed to make sense?”

Margi stared back. “It does to me.”

“It doesn’t make sense to Bernice because she doesn’t know how to connect the dots,” said Grace.

“Here’s some dots for you,” huffed Bernice. “Pete fell down a staircase because he wasn’t looking where he was going. Paula fell into a canal because she wasn’t looking where she was going. Not to mention, she had vertigo.”