It’s been said that if you can’t
pick out the sucker at the poker table in the first two minutes…then it’s you.
In other words, if you’ve only got the info your competitors want to give, you’re
sunk. Now, however, thanks to Barton, I had inside information and for some
reason I wanted to run out of the room and text it to Miss Iceland with a Happy
Face emoji immediately. Fortunately, I was able to refrain from such high school
hijinks long enough to hear Barton out.
Of course, my first question was how
did he know this, but he instantly fixed me with a “Have you no gay-dar at
all?” stare and it suddenly became clear. Next there was the whole
marriage/divorce thing.
“Ted never really talked about that.
He wasn’t bisexual, as far as I know, so it’s kind of a mystery even to me.”
“He was very ambitious from what I
heard. Education was his life,” I offered, trying to get a fix on the man.
“Absolutely, it was all he ever
wanted to do. He had two Master’s, his Doctorate, was highly qualified in both
Science and Math, published in multiple education journals,” Barton rattled
off. “He could have been an administrator years ago, but he wanted to stay in
Artfield, right the things he felt were wrong here.”
I recalled a story told by former
Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson of how he married young, not for love, but
because as a no-name assistant he needed to show stability and have someone to
bring to dinner parties and events. Once he got his first college head coaching
job he dumped his wife because at that point wins and losses were all that
mattered. He no longer had to put on a show. Vermont may be a Blue State
politically, but there’s still a strong strain of Yankee conservatism socially,
particularly in the more rural areas. I considered whether Ted Sheehan’s
marriage was just a convenient façade.
“What did he feel was wrong?” I
asked, trying not to get ahead of myself.
“Same as everyone, money…funding. Less emphasis on meetings and paperwork, more on the students,”
he answered.
We sat and talked about the myriad
ways money is wasted on everything but the students and learning. From teacher
workshops that taught how to “lead with love” (“I tried that once,” Barton
cracked, “they called Family Services”) to proms that made the Court at
Versailles look like a Chuck E. Cheese it sounded like a shit show of
considerable proportions. I knew well old Wes Willard, Riley Chase and the rest
of the curmudgeons on the town council and school board were stingy with the
buck. Balancing increasing technology needs, parents expectations and payroll
pressures against an ever tightening budget was a constant tight rope walk. Had
Ted Sheehan lost his footing?
Eventually he looked up at the
digital clock mounted under the regular school-issue clock and told me he had
to get ready for the incoming class. “Kids can’t read analog clocks anymore,”
he said when he noticed my gaze lingering on the wall. “If I didn’t tack the
digital up there they’d be looking at their phones every other minute and once
that starts you’ve lost ‘em.”
Things had certainly changed since I
roamed these halls though I did notice from the stack on Barton’s desk that
they were still teaching A Catcher in the Rye to sophomores. “Still spoon feeding ‘em J.D. Salinger huh,”
I observed.
“You’ve read it?”
“Yup, sophomore year.”
“What’d you think?” he queried.
“Well, after I got about 50 pages in
and realized it wasn’t about baseball I kind of lost interest. And don’t get me
started on the Somerset Maugham they made me read in college. Of Human
Bondage, what a tease.”
Barton wasn’t sure if I was joking
or stupid, but before he could confirm that it was a little of both I un-wedged
myself from the desk, thanked him for his time and was off. Outside it was the
kind of gorgeous spring weather that took me back to my college days when we’d
grab a Frisbee and a cooler full of beer, pop the Grateful Dead’s American Beauty in the cassette deck and
drive up to the mountains debating how it was possible we were failing Western
Civ.
With those memories in mind, the
scoop on Sheehan in my notes and my car delightfully feces-free I pulled out
the flip phone to call Miss Iceland in a state of euphoria delightfully free of gin and/or Xanax.
“Hello,” she said a little too
formally, as if she didn’t recognize the number.
I leaned up against a rare rust-free
spot on the Falcon and dropped my bombshell. “Ted Sheehan was gay!” I
exclaimed.
It was not exactly Hiroshima August
’45. “Who is this?”
Mr. Peabody was just waking up, but this put him down for the count. “It’s Luke, Luke Williams, from The Artfield Review, the double murder
suicide…” I was running out of details and octaves in my panicking voice when
she finally cut in.
“Oh yeah, hey Mr. Williams, what’s
up?” Mister Williams? I quickly looked around for my father and just as quickly
felt my heart shatter like when you dropped a piece of that gum that came with baseball cards on the floor.
She did sound distracted so I still
hoped to bring her back around. “Ted Sheehan, the VP at Artfield High who was
shot, was gay. He couldn’t have been fooling around with the young girl. That
shoots a hole in the whole police theory. We were right something more is going
on here.”
There was a fair to middling pause
before things started to register. “Gay? Son of a bitch you were right.” I was
happy we were back on the same page, but her shock at my actually being correct
was a little off-putting. Also she didn’t seem excited or suggest she’d be
right down so we could have a romantic tete-a-tete as I was hoping.
If my dating life proved anything,
however, I was not one to take “never in a million years” for an answer so I
forged on. “This opens up a ton of possibilities. Why don’t you come out here
and we can work it together,” I tried.
“I’d like to, but the paper’s sent
me to cover an event at the planetarium in St. Johnsbury.”
“Planetarium? What’s going on there…Laser Zeppelin?”
“What…uh…no, some kind of new
educational program for grade schoolers,” she said, sounding dejected.
“That shouldn’t take long. Come to
my office afterwards.” Then still feeling good added, “I’ll take you out for
dinner.”
“I can’t. I’m off the story.”
“What? Why?”
“I pitched our angle to my editor
and thought he was on board. Then out of nowhere he called me up at home last
night to say I wasn’t ready for it yet,” she went on sadly, which perversely
made me feel good, until it made me feel like a bad person and things came full
circle back to miserableness, as they usually do in life. “They’re having the kid that
was here before me work it freelance.”
My brain was too sober to wrap my
head around these myriad machinations. I was thinking I needed to get back to
the well-stocked mini fridge at the office and discuss everything with Gladys
when she cut in again. “Gotta go. I’m pulling up to the place now,” she alerted
me, as I began to pace while brushing paint chips from the Falcon off my ass.
“Good God! There must a hundred
snot-nosed bastards waiting to get in. This is gonna be a nightmare…”
And with that she clicked off and I thought, for the first time in a longtime,
I might be in love.
Driving back to the office I felt
strange. When I moved back to Artfield the plan was to hopefully live another
30 years, drink beer, play ball and read everything I could get my hands on.
Ambition, investigative journalism and especially women be damned. The three
had brought me nothing but frustration yet here I found myself as P.G.
Wodehouse used to say of Bertie Wooster, “back in the soup again”, only with no
Jeeves in sight.
It was Miss Iceland, however, that
was bothering me the most. My history of getting jazzed up as regards a woman
only to be crushed was legendary. Folks had been predicting my impending
nuptials to every woman that passed through my proverbial transom because I
talked each one up like the greatest thing since self-adhesive stamps
(seriously, what took so long). The closest I’d ever come, though, was one
drunken proposal to Kayla using the chorus from Eric Clapton’s Wonderful Tonight as she drove me home from Pete’s Pub; to which
she replied “…wonderful tonight? What
was I yesterday…or the day before that?” Hey, at least it wasn’t You Are So Beautiful…To Me or even worse
I’ve Grown Accustomed to Your Face, I thought.
Miss Iceland’s fingers told me she
wasn’t engaged and she’d mentioned she lived alone, but for all I knew she
could be a dominatrix lesbian with a fetish for feet porn- which by the way
produces the message “Did you mean Sweet Corn?” when you try to Google it…uh, you
know, for a story.
By this time I had reached the
office, there were three people dead and what appeared to be a coverup taking
place so I decided it was time to “put childish things aside” as Pete Gent was
told ad nauseum in North Dallas Forty and
get back to business. As I looked up and down a main drag quaintly devoid of
chain stores and fast food restaurants I realized Ted Sheehan was onto
something. I too needed to stick around and see this matter through. I’d grown
up here and it was my refuge in adulthood when times got tough. Following up
seemed like the least I could do and frankly “the least I could do” was
generally my M.O. Of course, it wasn’t going to be easy, so I entered the Review offices in search of cheap liquid
refreshment and the counsel of Gladys Nutwell.
What’s-her-name the 19 year old
receptionist sat at the front desk popping a chocolate in her mouth and looking
her signature bored, but beautiful. “Not sure four out of five dentists
recommend a 100 Grand bar for breakfast, but I guess when you’re young…,” I
wisecracked.
“Want one?” she said, looking up and
I’m not sure registering who I was.
“No thanks. I just look at one of
those or a Goldenberg’s Peanut Chew and the fillings start leaping out of my
mouth. Besides I’m trying to watch my girlish figure.”
“Oh, don’t worry it’s Fun Size,
see,” she offered, holding up the tiny wrapper.
“Yeah, that’s what I told my last
girlfriend, ‘It’s not small, honey, it’s Fun Size.’ That didn’t work out well
either.” She tilted her head like a well-endowed Labrador Retriever and I looked into the back office which was unkempt and empty.
“Where’s Gladys?”
“Oh, she had to run out to the bank.
She didn’t say when she’d be back.”
The reception desk was shockingly
uncluttered, but for her personal phone and a single “While You Were Out” slip.
I gave her a second, even tried to lead her with my eyes, like some kind of
Clever Hans trick, to the message, until silence gave way to awkwardness and all
my memories of High School and pretty girls started to breach the dam of
repression. “Is that for me?” I asked, pointing decisively as it was clear she
was more a visual/kinesthetic than auditory learner.
“Right…uh some guy named Derf
called,” she said, finally handing over the pink square.
“Thanks,” I said, taking the paper
that read only “Dirph” with a smiley face dotting the “i”. “You’re doing a
heckuva job.” She shrugged as she bent over the desk for another candy and
regret over my tone was instantly assuaged by the knowledge that my sarcasm had
no effect on cleavage such as that.
Back in my office I popped a Natty
Ice and rummaged the desk drawers for a snack. Finding an ancient jar of peanut
butter and a fistful of cracker packets left over from a long ago aborted soup
diet I settled in. Gladys running an errand to the bank concerned me. She ran
the place and rarely left her post. If she did it was at lunch. Not to mention
leaving-I wanna say Naomi-the receptionist in charge was not her
ultra-efficient style. We weren’t exactly heading up NORAD here, but still having
Ms. Breasty McRacksome at the helm was akin to putting a 10 year old in charge
of the Space Shuttle.
I tried smearing peanut butter on a
stale cracker with a letter opener, gave up and used my finger. I put a second
cracker on top, popped the sandwich in my mouth and took a long pull letting
the beer swirl around my mouth washing the sticky snack from between my teeth.
As I did, I gave up for the moment on worrying about Gladys’s errand, Miss
Iceland’s aloofness and where exactly the investigation was leading me and why
I even cared so much. Then I picked up the phone and dialed Derf.
Derf generally called for only two
reasons. First to set up our yearly weekend at the races in Saratoga and,
second, to settle a bet. Many nights I’d been woken to hear:
“Is Brown in the Ivy League?” “Yes.”
“Crap.” Click;
“Who kidnapped Patty Hearst?” “The
Symbionese Liberation Army. “Son of a…” Dial tone;
“What was the name of Tennessee
Tuxedo’s sidekick?” “Chumley.” “Mother…” Silence.
“Luke!” Derf answered, surprisingly
upbeat.
I paused for the inevitable inane
trivia question, but when it failed to materialize I waded in. “Hey Derf.
What’s up?”
“I need to ask a favor.” My wallet
immediately shriveled up like testicles at a Polar Bear Plunge. “My brother-in-law hooked me up with a job as a food merchandiser…”
Never one to let a little thing like
work get in the way of gambling he paused to let the ‘job’ part of the
statement sink in. “What the hell’s a food merchandiser?” I asked, jumping in.
“I hand out samples in supermarkets
for a new product, Amalfi’s Gourmet Sausage,” he said, unenthusiastically. “I’m
like the Abe Froman of Northern New England. They have me in six stores in
three days up near you and I need a place to crash Thursday and Friday night.
Can you put me up?”
If I had any style this would’ve
cramped it, but lacking same I had no ready excuse so I stalled. “Doesn’t a big
intestine stuffing concern like this give you travel expenses?”
“Yeah, but it came last week in the
form of a per diem check and let’s just say me and Javier Velasquez didn’t
remember the stretch at Suffolk Downs being quite that long.”
“Sure, no problem,” I buckled.
“Thanks and I’ll hook you up with
all the sausage you can handle.”
“As long as that’s not a euphemism,” I
added, drolly, “I’m onboard.”
I was calculating what this was
going to cost me in dinners, reading time and other sundry matters when he
suddenly changed the subject. “Hey, what happened up there? I heard there was a
triple murder or something?”
The Boston papers must’ve picked up
the story from Burlington or Montpelier. Three dead in the sticks is hardly
worth the news print in major cities these days so Derf probably didn’t know
the details and I wasn’t about to fill him in as my Natty Ice warmed. “I’ll
tell you about it when you get up here.”
“How come it’s not on your website?”
he questioned as the sound of banging keys came faintly over the line.
“Cause we don’t have one. Try the
Burlington Bee site,” I responded, looking for an exit.
He typed away and I figured I’d
stick around long enough to get his opinion of Miss Iceland whose photo was in
the byline. But before I could ask he was strangely distracted by another
picture altogether. “Hey who’s this guy about half way down the page…beneath
the ad for Canadian Prozac?”
Since no photos were allowed at the
crime scene I recalled they ran a shot of Harry Bowden decked out in his dress
blues. “That’s our police chief here. He’s been real hush-hush on the whole
investigation. Why do you ask?”
“Cause I know that dude,” he said,
incredulously. “He owes me money!”
