Purgatory Chasm: A Mystery Part 19

Finally Patty shook her head and said, "He was dying to show me the big river house he was building himself. That's why I say he was his own worst enemy."

"What do you mean?"

"In a piece like the one I was doing, Tander Phigg Junior had fall guy tattooed on his forehead. And he should have known it."

"Why?"

She stuck her fork in the piecrust and ticked off reasons on her fingers. "The paper company's shut down, right? Tander Senior, the daddy who built the empire, is revered by all, the benefactor who employed the whole town for thirty years. Now that town is collecting welfare, food stamps. The men are crooks or drunks or both, the girls are knocked up by the time they're fourteen. The only player who's doing okay is Tander Phigg Junior, and what did he ever accomplish? He was daddy's boy, the company collapsed on his watch, and he's sitting on a fortune."

She built momentum as she said it and gave the table a good fist-thump when she finished. I wondered again what she wasn't telling me.

"Point being?" I said.

"The point is if he had a whiff of common sense, he would've seen he was destined to be the bad guy in my piece. He either wouldn't have talked with me at all, or he would have spun his story like crazy. He could have earned himself at least a little sympathy by telling me how awful he felt for the laid-off workers, for Fitchburg, for the region. Get it?"

"I guess."

"Instead, he showed me around the million-dollar timber-frame home he was building on the Souhegan! So into the piece it went."

"So you made him look like a jerk in your article."

"He made himself look like a jerk," she said. "I took pity and tried to soft-pedal him for his own good, but my editor knew I'd struck gold. Tander Phigg Junior, showing a reporter around his mansion-to-be while Fitchburg went in the toilet, was the lead anecdote when the story ran."

"How'd he react?"

"The way p.i.s.sed-off sources always react."

I ate pie. Patty watched me. After a while she said, "What was your deal with Tander?"

"Friend."

"In pretty deep for a friend."

I told her a little about the Barnburners, about what I do. She listened with hard eyes, maybe buying it, maybe not. My story sounded weak even to me. I didn't like being on the defensive. Decided to go blunt, try to surprise her. "There's something heavy you're not telling me," I said. "What is it?"

"Thank you for the pie."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

A hundred minutes later I pulled off my still-wet boots and socks on Charlene's front landing. I stepped inside, headed for the kitchen, and plopped two Walmart bags on the table.

Staring at me from great room sofas were Charlene, Sophie, and my father. He held a bottle of cream soda, his favorite from way back. Charlene didn't keep any in the house. Who does? She'd bought it special.

Charlene said, "What on earth happened to you?"

"Greeter at Walmart asked the same thing," I said. I patted one of the bags and looked at Fred. "Boots, socks, underpants, T-s.h.i.+rts, a b.u.t.ton-down, jeans. Wranglers. Junior's brand. Thought you'd appreciate that."

He said, "Junior who?"

"Dale Earnhardt Junior."

"Earnhardt has a kid?"

Oh boy.

Sophie giggled. She knows her NASCAR. Charlene shushed her. Fred looked lost.

But as I headed upstairs to shower he perked up and started telling the gals about the time he raced against Dale Earnhardt's father, Ralph. I was pretty sure the story was bulls.h.i.+t. He'd been telling it since I was a kid, and the details changed every time. Let him tell it often enough, he'd have himself winning the Daytona 500 with a last-lap pa.s.s.

I smiled as I thought it, squelching upstairs to the shower.

As I stepped from the bathroom, towel-wrapped, my cell rang. I grabbed it from Charlene's dresser, saw it was Randall. I picked up and said, "The h.e.l.l you been?"

"I spent the weekend reposing on Cape Cod. At the lovely and exclusive Chatham Bars Inn, specifically." Big fake sigh. "Tennis, window-shopping, oysters on the beach. You know how it goes."

"'Bout time you got laid."

"Philistine. Cad. Masher." Long pause. "Yeah, it was about time."

I shoulder-jammed the phone to my ear while I pulled on underpants and jeans. "Who's the lucky gal?" I said. "Anybody I know?"

"No, but you might be interested in what she does."

I ran a belt through the jeans, looked in the mirror that tops the dresser. I needed a haircut. Whenever it looks like it could use combing, I get it cut instead. Never have understood why anybody, man or woman, would want long hair. Pain in the a.s.s.

Randall said, "Thanks for asking, dips.h.i.+t. She owns an insurance agency in Bellingham."

"Okay." I wondered what the h.e.l.l was interesting about insurance. I also wondered if Randall really liked the gal, felt bad about my getting-laid crack.

"The interesting thing about insurance," he said, "is that you need myriad databases for underwriting purposes."

"Myriad?"

"A s.h.i.+tload. And if you're whiling away a cozy Cape Cod weekend with a debonair man of the world, you may find yourself persuaded to surf some of those databases on your laptop while lolling about your handsome room that overlooks Chatham Harbor."

"Jesus, Randall."

"You're not much fun to tell a cool story to."

"When I tell you about my day so far you'll understand," I said. "Databases. Tell it."

"Myna Roper? Tander Phigg's former paramour? The one you texted me about?"

I'd been tugging on tube socks. I stopped. "What about her?"

"I found her."

"What?"

"She lives in Hebron Crossroads, South Carolina," he said. "Been in the same house since 1962."

"You sure it's the same Myna Roper?"

"I called to confirm. We had a short chat."

"Well I'll be d.a.m.ned," I said. "Can you come to Charlene's?"

"What for?"

"We'll fill each other in. We'll have some dinner. You can meet my father."

"What?"

I clicked off and looked in the mirror again. Caught myself smiling. Not as much as McCord, but smiling.

I wanted to talk with Charlene in private. I texted her: Meet me lvngrm. Then put on a T-s.h.i.+rt and my watch, headed downstairs.

She was just zipping through the front hall into the fancy room, which caps the western end of the house. It's stiff, formal. Crimson drapes, no TV, a pair of chairs that cost more than my truck. I think Charlene entertains serious prospects there, little parties I'm not invited to-the parties where she serves booze. Sometimes I wonder why she doesn't include me. Is it because of the booze, or because I'd embarra.s.s her in front of the high rollers? Either way, it's probably a good idea all around.

She spun, folded her arms the way she does, waited.

"I'm sorry about my dad," I said. "If there'd been anywhere else to-"

"I adore Fred. Sophie does, too, I can tell. He's welcome here forever."

Jesus, she's hard to figure. A year or so ago, she bought Sophie two hamsters-and returned them three days later, saying they were disruptive.

I wondered why Charlene was looking at me that way if she wasn't p.i.s.sed about having Fred under her roof. He had to be more disruptive than a pair of hamsters.

She said, "Why didn't you look for him, Conway?"

I said nothing.

"He says a few years ago, you spotted him at that intersection near the Allston/Brighton tolls." She softened her voice and stance. "Why didn't you look for him? He's your father."

There was so much to say.

I said nothing.

Charlene spread wide her arms. I stepped in.

I shook.

An hour and a half later, Chinese takeout wreckage covered the kitchen table. Me, Randall, and Charlene ate fortune cookies and orange slices. Sophie and Fred were sofa-splayed in the great room. The TV was tuned to a highlight show about last weekend's NASCAR race. Fred would point at the TV, then hold an imaginary steering wheel the way racers do. Then he would use body language to show Sophie how today's pansy-boy drivers would drive if they had a pair. Sophie sat rapt, loving every word, giggling when Fred dipped into dirty language.

"He's handing her a giant load of horses.h.i.+t," I said. "You do realize that, don't you?"

Charlene slapped my arm. "Look at her. Look at them."

Randall said, "It's exactly like looking at Conway in thirty years."

"But a Conway that talks," Charlene said. They cracked up.

I said, "a.s.sholes." But I might have smiled while I said it. I faced Randall. "Now you need to hear what I found at Phigg's shack, and I need to hear about Myna Roper. Who's first?"

Randall s.h.i.+fted his chair. "You."

I told it, starting with Montreal at Motorenwerk. Charlene listened in while she cleared the table.

When I got to the part about falling in the Souhegan, I lightened it, tried to make it a Three Stooges moment. But Charlene read my tone, read my eyes. She kissed the top of my head as she took the egg foo yong carton. "Thank G.o.d you're okay."

"You almost drowned three feet from the riverbank," Randall said. "How embarra.s.sing."

I slapped the table. "That's exactly what ran through my head, even while it was happening."

"Very common." He knuckle-rapped his prosthetic. "I can't remember this myself, but the guys swear that while I lay there in the street, bleeding out with my foot blown over a wall somewhere, I asked if somebody could help me into the back of the Humvee. I said I'd just wait in the car while they mopped up, that I didn't want to be any trouble."

We were quiet awhile.

"This Montreal drug dealer," Charlene finally said, sponging the counter. "Did he kill Tander?"

"Maybe," I said.

"I keep coming back to the physical act of hanging a good-size man who was presumably struggling," Randall said. "Montreal's muscle-bound pal would certainly come in handy."

"What about Ollie and Josh?" I said.

Randall wiggled a hand in a not-so-much gesture.

"And the son, Trey?" Charlene said. "Randall tells me he's unlikely, but you can't be sure."

"That's true," I said.

"And yet he's your guest," she said, scrubbing a bit of invisible goop. "He's living under your roof."

I hadn't known until now how much that bothered her. "Well," I said, then didn't know what else to say.