Purgatory Chasm: A Mystery Part 20

"A cla.s.sic Conway Sax conundrum," Randall said. "The Barnburner must be served, hence the Barnburner's kin must be served. Even if the kin murdered the Barnburner."

Charlene laughed at that. I was grateful to Randall for taking the pressure off me.

"Hey, Hardy Boys," Charlene said in a lighter voice, "don't leave me hanging. Do you think Tander stashed something?"

"Good question," Randall said, then gestured at me. "I defer to you, Brother Frank."

"What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?" I said.

They looked at each other and laughed.

I said, "Bet your a.s.s he stashed something."

"But what?" Randall said. "He didn't have a pot to p.i.s.s in."

"We'll find out tomorrow. You, me, and Trey."

Charlene said, "The Shabby Shanty Mystery."

Randall said, "The Secret of the Souhegan Shack."

I stared while they laughed. Idiots.

A noise like the world's biggest crow strangling came from the great room. Fred rolled off the sofa and balled himself up, hands pressed to his stomach, twitching.

Sophie said, "What should I do what should I do oh my G.o.d what should I do?"

We all rushed in. Smelled it: Fred had s.h.i.+t himself.

"Sophie, come with me," Charlene said. Sophie didn't move fast enough. "Come with me right now!" Charlene got a hand on the small of Sophie's back, walked her through the dining area and up the stairs.

Fred's eyes were clenched shut. He was still spasming a little.

Behind me Randall said, "Too soon for Chinese food."

I nodded.

Fred's eyes opened and locked on mine. He tried to speak. Couldn't. Tears rolled.

I said over my shoulder, "Randall, maybe you can put leftovers in the fridge." I leaned and told Fred it was all right. He kept shaking, put a hand on my forearm and squeezed. "Right in front of everybody," he said. "Right in front of the girl." He cried.

I put my mouth to his ear, said again it was all right, asked if he could stand. He shook his head.

I got my arms beneath him, wrapped one of his around my neck, braced myself, rose, cradled him like a baby. Part of me wanted to make it look easy. Another part asked why.

I ignored the smell, ignored the s.h.i.+t transferring from the seat of his jeans to the front of mine. I told my father we would go upstairs and get him in the bathtub.

As we moved he kept saying, "Right in front of everybody." He was whispering, talking to himself.

Half an hour later I stepped into the great room again in sweatpants and a fresh T-s.h.i.+rt. Everything was neat as a pin. I palmed the sofa. It was damp and smelled of cleaning stuff. G.o.d bless Randall. He'd left a note on the kitchen table: Long day. Rest. Call me AM w/plan.

He was right-h.e.l.l of a long day. I went upstairs, silently opened the door to Jesse's room, stuck my head in. I heard Fred breathing, fast asleep.

In Charlene's room, I listened to her breathe, too. I stripped, knelt, prayed, climbed in bed, slept like a dead man.

"Charlene Bollinger stayed home from work?" Randall said. "Now I know you're lying to me."

I said, "My mouth to G.o.d's ear."

"She must love your old man."

"I figure it's like having me around, but he doesn't paw after her."

"As far as you know."

It was the next morning, Tuesday, and we were northbound in Trey Phigg's rented Dodge. Trey had volunteered to drive, saying he needed the practice. He kept up with traffic, but you could see he was white-knuckling it.

I rode shotgun, and Randall took the backseat. The trunk was loaded with stuff we'd picked up at Lowe's and a sporting-goods place.

Fred had woken up at seven, had come downstairs acting like nothing had happened. Charlene, Sophie, and I had gone along with that. Before I left, Charlene had pulled me aside and said she'd stay with Fred today. It was the first time in six years she wasn't itching to get to the office.

Before climbing in, Randall had made a bogus excuse to speak with me alone. "Why the h.e.l.l are we bringing Trey?" he'd said. "As far as we know, he killed his dad for whatever we're looking for."

"If he did, I'd rather have him up north with us than s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around in Framingham," I said. "And if we do find anything, let's see how he reacts. It could tell us a lot."

Randall grumbled but went along.

Now, the Dodge had a good vibe as we headed for Rourke. Why not? We had another sunny day and an adventure to boot. We were digging for buried treasure. As a bonus, Trey was enjoying his escape from the Framingham house.

Randall read my mind. "Sure beats taping and mudding that office."

I nodded. "Myna Roper. We got interrupted last night. How'd you find her?"

"Once my friend showed me how to manipulate these insurance databases, it was easy," he said. "I doubt it took fifteen minutes. Roper's a common name down there, but with the first name, the race, and the approximate DOB, she rose to the top pretty soon."

"Race?"

"For the actuarial tables, yeah." He leaned forward.

"You called her up?" I said. "Just like that?"

"And she picked up and talked. Nice lady. Born and raised in Hebron Crossroads, went to New York in 'fifty-nine, sowed her wild oats-her very words-came home in 'sixty-two, married, raised a family. Husband died thirty years ago, she's been on her own since."

"What line did you use to get her talking?"

"Semitruth. Laid on some dialect, made it clear I was a brother." He said it "brotha," sneering. His father, Luther, sneers the same way at the street/ghetto bit. They both talk like they went to Yale. "And I may have let slip that I'm a wounded veteran."

"Laid it on thick, huh?"

"With a trowel," he said. "I told her Phigg had died, and said we found references to her in his papers."

I pointed. Trey turned right onto the road that paralleled the Souhegan. We'd be at the shack in five minutes. I said, "How'd she react?"

"She went quiet," Randall said. "Then she got more polite and more formal, and I knew I was a goner. I would've liked to probe deeper, but all I had to go on was the text message you sent me."

"You did fine." I turned to Trey. "Slow, but don't pull in." He eased past Jut Road. We saw no sign of a vehicle. Trey drove a quarter mile while I looked at the river to my left. Finally I said stop, pointed. "See that clump? Three dead birches? Keep watch for us here, just in case things turn to s.h.i.+t."

"Good call," Randall said. "It wouldn't take but two minutes to float down here, and there are plenty of branches to grab for."

Trey nodded, turned the Dodge around, idled back to Jut Road, stopped.

While Randall cleared the trunk, I recapped Trey's job. I watched him close while I did it, making sure he wasn't jittery. We'd figured it wasn't safe to have a car here: The lady who called the cops yesterday when she saw an SUV had proved that. So Trey would cruise up and down the road, staying nearby and we'd call when we needed him. He would buzz my cell if he saw anything sketchy.

I climbed out, thumped the roof, watched the Dodge pull off. Randall asked if Trey was okay. I said yes, then led the way.

The Souhegan was running high and fast, runoff jacked up a notch by the warm spell.

In two minutes, we dumped gear at the riverbank and I pulled on the fisherman's waders we'd bought. Randall took off his shoe and his ankle-I never got used to that-and began working his way into a royal-blue wet suit. The sporting-goods place hadn't had one big enough for me, so I was stuck with the waders.

I hate fis.h.i.+ng in general. I especially hate waders.

After Randall zipped the wet suit, he tied a knot in its right ankle-to keep it out of the way, I guessed. I eyeballed it. "You sure that'll work?"

"It has to," he said, shrugging. "I'm not larking around in some freezing river wearing my hundred-thousand-dollar prosthetic." He sat, pulled an air pump and a pack of D batteries from a bag, and installed the batteries. Then, from the same bag, he pulled the smallest inflatable boat the sporting-goods shop had. It was more of a heavy-duty pool toy, really-circular, three feet across. The guy at the store said kids climb in them and get pulled around by boats-water-skiing for people who can't water-ski.

The pump made a racket, but in three minutes the boat was inflated. While Randall loaded it with tools, I took my cordless drill and fifty feet of climbing rope to the waterline.

I was clumsy in the boots. Just wearing them on land felt like walking through Jell-O. I worked my way west until I was beneath the shack, in a spot where the drop-off wasn't as sudden. Trying not to think about what happened here yesterday, I stepped into the river.

Once I stopped worrying about falling in, it was easy to move around in two and a half feet of water. Funny feeling, wading boots: You're not cold, exactly, but you never forget how near the cold is.

Yesterday I hadn't looked hard at the underside of the shack. Now I did. It had been built on two-by-ten ribs that ran perpendicular to the river. The five ribs were stout, the kind of lumber you can't get anymore. Along with the rebuilt piers, they explained why the shack still stood.

The important thing right now was that the strong ribs would hold the rigging I wanted to set up. I used a half-inch bit to drill a bunch of holes, ran rope through the holes, then tied off the rope.

Randall said, "Catch."

I looked up the slope and saw he was getting set to release our little rubber boat. I nodded. He let go. The boat slipped down the steep bank. Top-heavy with gear, it wanted to overturn when I stopped it, but I managed to keep everything dry. Randall a.s.s-slid down behind the boat and looked over the rope rigging. "'T'will serve," he said.

"f.u.c.king A it t'will."

Randall looked at the piers eight feet away. "You sure those things have been fixed up? They look grungy to me."

"That just means whoever rebuilt them did his work well. Get closer." I realized it was kind of nice down here if you weren't drowning. It was cooled by shade and river water, and there was enough of a breeze to keep bugs away.

Randall grabbed a handful of rope as a safety line and hopped into the Souhegan, just like that. I saw the current hit him, saw him counterbalance. Two hops later he was swimming. He made it to the northwest pier, the same one I'd about died at, in maybe six seconds. He was a natural athlete. Must've been something when he had two feet.

He turned and looked at me, silently rubbing it in.

Then he turned again to check out the pier. He looked it over and nodded. "Okay, from here I see it," he said, raising his voice above the river rush. He pushed off the pier with one leg, swam a few strokes, and was sitting on the riverbank a few seconds later.

By then I was checking out the underside of the shack.

"What are you looking for?" Randall said.

"Not sure." But I kept looking.

The shack had been built long before plywood existed. The flooring, six-inch-wide planks set across the supporting ribs, ran the same direction as the river. The age-gray planks had tiny flakes of paint-orange or brick red, hard to tell-clinging here and there. When I stuck a thumbnail in them, they were a little mushy but basically sound.

I froze, thought, looked again. I stepped back, made a sloppy measurement with my hand-span, stepped back under, and measured again.

"If I had a dictionary with me and I looked up s.h.i.+t-eating grin," Randall said, "I do believe I would find a picture of you as you look right now."

"Wait here."

I pistoned up the slope, walking in slow-motion due to the waders. Stepped across the clay drive and into the woods, looking for the remains of the main house. When they started Phigg's dream house, the contractors had regraded heavily to fight flooding, so it took me a while to find what I was looking for. I bashed through the woods until I found remnants of a brick foundation, then hit my knees and cleared leaves, moss, dirt.

Finally I found it: a plank, six inches wide. I rubbed dirt from it, held it up, squinted.

And saw paint flakes. Burnt orange, maybe brick red.

I ran back and b.u.t.t-slid down the slope so fast I was up to my knees in water before I got myself stopped.

Randall said, "What?"

I pointed. First at the plank in my hand, then at the shack floorboard.

Randall tried. He looked back and forth. Then again. Then he gave up, looked his question at me.

"You don't paint the underside of a pump house floor," I said, and pointed again-at paint flakes this time.

Randall said, "False floor."

"Want to hand me that pry bar?" I said.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.