LCole 07 - Deadly Cove (14 page)

With that last phrase, she had raised her fist, and now she said again, louder, “Shut her down! Shut her down!”

The audience quickly took up the cheer, echoing her, making it louder and louder, and it seemed like the banners overhead were fluttering from the impact of the hundreds of voices.

*   *   *

There was a brief media availability in the Stone Chapel's greenroom, where performers would wait until being called onstage. Laura Toles was stuck in a corner, surrounded by camera crews and radio reporters with extended microphones, and she looked like a female quarterback in a huddle with her teammates, though she certainly didn't look like she had any control over them. Lots of questions were being tossed her way, and she was doing her best to answer in a voice that was raspy and hoarse.

I edged up the best I could and then stepped away. The frenzy here was for the electronic media, and although I guess with my new marching orders from Denise Pichette-Volk I was somewhat electronic, I felt out of place with my pen and notebook.

In another corner of the room, where chairs had been piled up, Vic Toles stood by himself, watching his mother do her best with the loud questions being directed her way. I went up to him, and he looked at me and gave me a nod, and I nodded back. He had on worn dungarees and one of those blue and white sweaters that were supposedly popular with preppies a decade or a century ago.

“Lewis Cole,” I said. “
Shoreline
magazine. Sorry about your loss.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“Mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”

“Knock yourself out.”

“Is your mother serious about wanting to close the Stone Chapel?”

He was in his midtwenties, lean, with short brown hair and a puffy look about his face, as if he had been up for twenty-four hours straight, which was a reasonable guess considering what he and his mom had been up to.

He said, “Even with Bronson running the joint, with all his energy and connections, it was a month-to-month challenge. You know? Signing up the acts, trying to get good talent, working in the kitchen … only one day off a week, on Monday … yeah, most times, it was a hell of a grind. So with Bronson gone … why put up with it, you know?”

“I see,” I said, writing carefully in my notebook. “You know, I went through some newspaper archives about Bronson Toles and the Stone Chapel, and I never got a handle on how he and your mom met.”

Vic smiled a little, like it was an old memory that was amusing. “Our rescuer—that's what my mom called him. You know, she turned out to be right.”

“In what way?”

“Didn't know my real dad at all,” Vic recalled, looking away from me just for a moment, as if looking at something far away. “My mom dropped out of real life before I was born, moved into a commune in the upper part of Vermont. Called the Northeast Kingdom—one of the most remote places in God's New England you'll ever see. My dad was a part-time logger, full-time hash smoker, and got in a fight with a runaway chain saw and lost. So my mom raised me up there with the others, homeschooled me. We lived off the land, fished, hunted, starved and froze in the winter, and used a two-hole outhouse. Me, I was young, it was an adventure—but I think Mom got tired of it. Then Bronson came by, on some sort of safe-energy tour, and the two of them clicked and … there you go…”

“Sounds like a good story,” I said.

“A good real-life story,” Vic said. “I grew to really know him as a dad, even went along with him adopting me. You know … first time I used a flush toilet was when I moved to Tyler. Funny, hunh?” Then he wiped at his eyes a couple of times and turned away and said, “Enough, okay?”

“Sure,” I said, putting my pen and notebook away. “Enough.”

*   *   *

Outside I met up with Paula, and she said, “Off to my office and file, Lewis, if I can get the energy up. A hell of a story, hunh? The Stone Chapel, closing. See you later.”

“You, too, Paula—and good to see you.”

She smiled. “Good to be seen, but … only by you. You know? I'll be one happy girl when they catch that damn shooter.”

When she left I moved through the moving crowd of journalists and cameramen, something caught my eye. It was the guy that had been up on the stage, talking to Laura. He was speaking into his cell phone and getting into a black BMW with Massachusetts license plates. A Realtor, getting ready to sell the joint on Laura's behalf? I was too far away to talk to him, but close enough to write down his license plate number. Maybe I could wheedle a trace from Diane Woods, though that was proving more and more difficult lately with more stringent rules from the new police chief.

“Lewis! Lewis!” I turned and saw a slight woman pushing her way through the journalists. It was Haleigh Miller coming up to me. I could tell from her puffy and red face that she had been crying during the memorial service. I went over to her, and she said, “The meeting with Curt Chesak. It's set up for tonight.”

I couldn't help it. I stared at her in amazement. “How the hell did you do that?”

She said, “I told you I had friends … and some connections. So are you still interested?”

“Absolutely.”

“Tonight, six o'clock. At the parking lot of the Laughing Bee doughnut shop, in Falconer.” She wiped at her runny nose. “I've … I've got to get going. The occupation the day after tomorrow is going to keep us all busy. Oh, what a sad, sad day … to lose Bronson, to lose that voice, and now”—her voice broke—“I'm out of a job. I mean, it was just a job while I'm in school, but God, it meant so much to me…”

Seeing her like that made me feel like I had two left feet and two left hands. “You heard what Laura said. Maybe somebody will take it over.”

Haleigh managed a smile. “Maybe, but even then … it will never be the same, will it. Never be the same.”

For a moment I remembered being her age, when it seemed possible that you could outline your life's course for the next twenty years, and I said, “You're right. It'll never be the same.”

*   *   *

At home I scrounged lunch from whatever was still within the stale date that was existing in my refrigerator, and when I was finished writing my piece for
Shoreline
on the memorial service, my phone rang, and it was Paula Quinn.

“How are you doing over there by the ocean?” she asked.

“Doing fine,” I said. “How are you doing at the
Chronicle
?”

“Lousy,” she said, sighing. “I just … I just don't have the energy for this, Lewis.”

There was a
click-click
on the phone line, meaning an incoming call was heading my way, but I ignored it. “Go on,” I said.

Another sigh. “Deadline is in a half hour, and Rollie keeps on staring and staring at me, and when I look at the computer screen … nothing's coming out. Nothing at all.”

Another
click-click
on the phone line.

I closed my eyes, recalling all the times I had seen Paula at the scene of multiple-car accidents, arsons, and the occasional untimely death. Each time this young blond woman with the slight body would go in and come out with the story, and get it done with hours to spare. Whoever was on the other end of this phone line was not Paula Quinn.

“What do you need?”

“Excuse me?” she asked.

“What do you need? How many words?”

No answer, and I thought for a moment that she had hung up the phone in anger. Then she spoke, her voice lowered to a slight whisper, like a little girl asking a storefront Santa Claus for a gift and not sure if she was going to get it.

“About eight hundred words. That's it.”

“Your e-mail address the same?”

“Lewis, you can't be serious, this is—”

“You'll get your eight hundred words, but only if you let me get off the phone. You can take those words and rearrange them anyway you like, but I won't let you miss deadline.”

She tried to speak, failed, and I said, “I'm hanging up now. Check your e-mail in-box in a while.”

*   *   *

After hanging up the phone I went back to my notes and the story I had filed for
Shoreline,
and took a breath and went to work. I'm sure Denise Pichette-Volk wouldn't have been thrilled at what I had been doing, but I didn't care. Paula needed help, and if it meant breaking what few rules journalism had left, I was okay with that.

Boy, was I under a deadline. I wrote and wrote, and the phone rang once and I could hear the answering machine downstairs pick up, but I kept on typing. When I was done and had sent the story as an e-mail attachment to Paula, I looked up at the clock and saw I had done it with ten minutes to spare. Nice job. I got up and stretched some and went downstairs and checked my answering machine, where I had missed a message from my dear Annie Wynn.

Damn.

*   *   *

I picked up the downstairs phone and started dialing frantically, and I sat back on the couch in relief when she picked up.

“My dear boy, where the hell have you been?” she asked. “You must have been on the phone when I called. Why didn't you pick up?”

“I was … I was helping someone out, and I was on the upstairs phone. No caller ID screen on that one.”

There was a din in the background of her phone, and I said, “At the airport?”

“I am,” she said. “About to get on a plane, go for a 6:00
P.M.
meeting in Arlington, and then I'm catching an early flight tomorrow to Manchester. Will be there at 9:00
A.M.
Or have you forgotten our date?”

“Not for a moment,” I said, hoping she believed me, “and I'm glad it's tomorrow. Looks like my day is wide open.”

“Glad to hear that. Who was so important on the phone that you couldn't talk to me?”

Ouch.

“Paula Quinn, from the
Chronicle,
” I said. “We were both at a news event this morning, and she needed some help on a story.”

Annie said, “Oh, that sounds nice. Is that all the help she needed?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good,” she said. “Because I don't want to come up there and have to kick her ass, and then yours.”

I smiled. “No ass kicking required. You just get up here.”

“Fine,” she said. “Southwest Airlines, arriving in. Manchester at 9:00
A.M.
You be there, friend, or I'll think you're sniffing around your old girlfriend.”

I was going to say that what Paula and I had was more complicated than the old boyfriend/girlfriend routine, but I let it be.

“Deal,” I said. “Are you packing anything special in your luggage?”

A low laugh that warmed me. “Just you see.” There was an echo of an announcement in the background, and she said, “Flight just got called. See you tomorrow.”

“Oh yes,” I said, and I hung up the phone.

*   *   *

Just before 6:00
P.M.
I was parked in a gas station lot across the street from the Laughing Bee doughnut shop in Falconer. In this part of town, Route 1—or Lafayette Road—was three lanes, with a turning lane in the center. At one time there had been rows of old colonial houses lining this road, but they had all been bulldozed, burned, or converted into office space. Now this stretch of Falconer had grocery stores, box stores, fast food restaurants, muffler shops, a store that sold pornography, jewelry stores, and lots and lots of firework stores. Not to pick on the fine people of New Jersey, but for those thinking New England was all white church steeples and fine green lawns, this stretch of New Hampshire looked like it belonged at an exit off the Garden State Parkway.

My destination this early evening was the small parking lot of the Laughing Bee doughnut shop, and as I sat in my Ford Explorer, I had a bit of doubt about why I was there. There was that drive, of course, of finding out who had traumatized my friend Paula, and as an afterthought—as cold as it sounds—the killer of Bronson Toles. But to what purpose? The state police and the Falconer police had better resources than I did. What I did have was that stubborn drive to make it all right, and that's what prompted me to start up my Explorer and drive across the street. If I had a hand in getting the shooter, then Paula wouldn't have to worry anymore about a nameless, faceless killer out there, staring at her through a rifle's telescopic site. Maybe that would help her get back to the old Paula.

Besides, whatever I learned tonight could be used for
Shoreline,
and to keep Denise Pichette-Volk … well, if not happy, at least satisfied.

*   *   *

The logo of the Laughing Bee doughnut shop was pretty self-explanatory, with a grinning bumblebee in flight, holding a variety of doughnuts in its legs. The store was closed, and there were two other vehicles parked in the lot: a hybrid Prius and an old Chevy pickup truck. Both vehicles were empty.

I looked at the dashboard clock: 6:05
P.M.

I guess fighting against the Man meant not worrying too much about appointments and such. Then again, maybe my escorts were hiding in one of the vehicles. I turned around and the parking lot was still empty.

The dashboard clock said 6:10
P.M.
I rapped my fingers against the steering wheel. Five more minutes and then I'd be out of here, Curt Chesak or no Curt Chesak. I waited some more. Three National Guard Humvees motored by, and a straggling line of protesters across the street jeered at them.

It was now 6:17
P.M.
I started up the engine and—

Somebody rapped a hand against the driver's window.

I lowered the window, and whoever was there stepped back.

“Don't look back at me, all right?” came a male voice. “You look back at me, and the meet is off.”

“All right,” I said. “I won't look back.”