A Brilliant Death (18 page)

The civic groups set up booths for food—the Brilliant Volunteer Fire Department had its fish fry; the Junior Women’s Club sold cream puffs; the Kiwanis Club sold caramel apples; the Lions Club roasted corn in its husks; the Merchants baseball team sold barbecued chicken, which was cooked on spits over charcoal pits in front of Myron Feldman’s house; and the Polish-American Club sold spicy sausage sandwiches with fried green peppers and onions, the memory of which still makes my mouth water.

Each year, a Brilliant senior-to-be would be named Polish Festival Queen, an honor as coveted as homecoming or prom queen. She and her attendants would ride on a float in the Fourth of July parade that had a plywood cutout of Poland propped up in the back and signs that stated “Free Poland of Communist Rule” running the length of the float, covering the sides the way a duster covers the sides of a bed.

At dusk on the Fourth, Ohio Valley Steel sponsored a huge fireworks display at the football field that could be seen for miles up and down the valley. I liked to watch the fireworks from Fifth Street, which was a tarred and gravel road that ran parallel to the river across the western hills over Brilliant. From the front lawns on Fifth, the fireworks seemed to explode right in front of your eyes, and you could watch the streams of fire reflecting in the dark waters of the Ohio River. Travis and I were sitting in the Denzels’ front lawn, a sloping bed of thick sod that was perfect for lying back and watching fireworks, when Mrs. Denzel offered us a burger off the grill and a Coke.

“No thanks,” I said. I had always been taught to be gracious but not to accept such offers in case they were only doing so to be polite.

“Oh, please,” she insisted. “We have more than enough.”

We accepted the second offer and sat on the grass with a bottle of Coke and a paper plate holding a well-done cheeseburger, potato salad, and baked beans. I was sitting next to the youngest Denzel girl, Laura, who was two years my junior. I had played basketball in high school and during the summer league for Kennedy’s Market with Laura’s brother, Phil, who was two years older than me. Laura and her parents always went to the games, but I had never paid her much attention. Then, she was just an eighth-grader and Phil’s little sister. However, sometime between the last summer league basketball game and the moment when I sat down next to her as the first rocket of the night exploded against the backdrop of the West Virginia hills, Laura had matured—greatly, magnificently, stupendously, in fact. Her sandy hair was trimmed neatly above the shoulders so that it fell back in a feathered wave. She had on pink shorts, a blue, midriff blouse exposing a tight belly, and the scent of her perfume—a hint of citrus—drifted my way. She gave me an occasional glance, sensing my interest, and I fell in love with her that moment. The booms and bangs and crackles of the fireworks echoed off the Ohio and West Virginia hills as the colored embers fell toward the river. It was on this perfect night that I began to realize that, my narrow escapes with Travis aside, the security of my youth and the cocoon that was Brilliant, Ohio, were about to slip into history. When school began, I would start planning for college and Brilliant would become simply the place where I had grown up. There were times when I wished time would stand still, and this night was one of them.

The big news on this July Fourth was the passing of a Brilliant legend. Earlier that morning, death had claimed the life of our best carp customer, Harold “Turkeyman” Melman. A lifetime of stomping around the dump had finally caught up with Turk. He had stepped on a nail, or something that caused a puncture wound in his right foot. He didn’t tell anyone, having a terrible fear of doctors since he had been hospitalized for the fierce beating he had taken some twenty years earlier. The foot had gotten infected and one of the bank tellers, Pammy Yates, noticed that his body odor was becoming particularly fetid, like that of rotten meat, and the Turk was looking pale and weak. She told her husband, who visited him and found that nearly his entire left leg was eaten up with gangrene. It was amputated the next day, but the infection had spread and went to his heart. Antibiotics could not stem the tide. He spent his last days in the hospital, out of his head with fever, muttering and crying.

As he lay dying, Turk’s sister-in-law, Van, the wife of Turk’s only brother, Luther, a self-ordained minister and laborer at Ohio Valley Steel, sat at his bedside, kindly dabbing his face with a cold sponge, combing his hair, spoon-feeding him what broth he could swallow, plumping his pillow, and trying in vain with all her breath to extract the location of the hidden cache of gold. But Turk was loopy with fever. He rolled his head back and forth on the pillow and repeatedly muttered, “Nomo teemo nomo. Nomo teemo nomo. Nomo teemo nomo.”

These were simply the dying cries of an old man, a result of the taunting and traumatic memories that would not allow him to go in peace. Van, however, interpreted them as a garbled code, some type of hidden message directing her to the treasure. She called her husband at work and said, “He told me, ‘nomo teemo nomo.’ What’s that mean?”

“I don’t know, Van. It sounds like gibberish,” Luther said.

Van slammed down the phone and as soon as Turk breathed his last, she bolted from the room and began scavenging the hill behind his house. Late that afternoon, after news of Turk’s death hit Brilliant, Cloyd Owens stretched yellow crime-scene tape around Turk’s property in an effort to keep people from digging up the entire hillside.

As the last of the finale faded to wafting smoke, the Brilliant High Marching Blue Devils struck up the beginning of their annual show,
A Salute to Old Glory
, down the block in front of the post office. Travis reached over and slapped my calf. “Let’s walk down to the post office. There’re some cute girls from Toronto in town—friends of Gretchen Mercer.”

They had been cruising through town in Gretchen’s dad’s Mustang convertible earlier in the afternoon. They were cute, but I wasn’t as interested in them as I was Laura Denzel, and she was listening to every word. I shrugged and turned away from Travis. “Laura, do you, uh, you want to walk down to the post office and listen to the band?”

“Sure,” she said without hesitation. “Let me ask.”

She ran back to the porch where the neighbors had gathered to enjoy the fireworks. “Why’d you do that?” Travis asked. I didn’t say anything, and after several seconds a wide grin spread across his face. “Nahhhhh? Get out? Laura Denzel?”

“Don’t start, Travis.”

He rolled back on his side and smirked. “She’s cute, man. Good luck.” He twisted his head toward the porch to be sure she was out of earshot. “She smells good, too.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

She came back down the hill. “My dad said no, but my mom said it was okay, as long as I’m back in an hour.”

I could feel Walter Denzel’s eyes on me, but I didn’t look back. In my dating career, I had found that mothers seemed to like me; fathers did not. Period. So I tended to avoid contact with the dads. I assumed that this wasn’t personal. Rather, it was simply the fact that I was a hormone-laden, male teenager with a fully functional penis, who happened to be in the presence of their daughters.

We walked down Ohio Avenue toward the biggest annual social event in Brilliant. It was a beautiful night and I was suddenly quite smitten with Laura, and Travis was thoroughly enjoying the moment. The air smelled of cotton candy and fried dough. The amusement rides that extended down Third Street rattled and clanged, drowned out only by the calls from the bingo table. The post office sat at the corner of Ohio and Third, across from the Coffee Pot. We were slipping through the yellow shop-horse-style barriers that served as street blocks as the band began the first bars of “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” It was a nice concert, though I had a hard time enjoying it because I couldn’t quit staring at my watch, fearing that if I got too wrapped up in the patriotic fervor, I would be late returning Laura home.

I walked her back up the hill, asked her to go out Friday night, and met Travis back at the volunteer fire department’s stud poker booth. “Did you kiss her?” he asked.

“You are such a tool,” I said.

He grinned. “I’m up four bucks. Ready to call it a night?”

“Let me get a sausage sandwich first,” I said.

“A hot sausage sandwich at eleven-thirty at night? That’ll sit well in your gut.”

I bought the sandwich and began eating it as we walked down Ohio Avenue toward my house. As we passed under the last string of lights near the bingo stand and into the canopy of maple trees that formed a foliage tunnel over Second Street, a male voice called out, “Hey, boys.” We both jumped. “What’s the deal with you two? You queer for each other or joined at the hip?” All that was visible inside the Pontiac was the glowing ember of a cigarette. He turned on the dome light. It was Chase Tornik.

“What are you doing down here?” Travis asked.

“Looking for you.”

“How’d you know where we’d be?” I asked.

“I used to be a detective, remember?” He pitched his cigarette out the window and it skidded across the brick road. He looked at me and said, “That was a cute little girl you were with.” I nodded. He waved Travis in with his fingers. “Come here.”

“Think he wants to beat my ass?” Travis whispered.

“He might, but I don’t think he’d drive down to the Polish-American Festival to do it,” I whispered back.

Travis walked up to the car, placing his hands on the roof above the driver’s door. “I didn’t expect I’d ever see you again,” Travis said.

“That little dust-up at the cement factory?” Tornik waved his right hand at Travis. “I’ve been treated a lot worse. You didn’t hurt my feelings if that’s what you’re worried about. You boys got a couple of minutes?”

“Yeah. Why?” Travis asked.

“Hop in. Let’s take a little ride.”

“A ride? Why?” I asked.

“Jesus, man, relax. I’ve got something to show you, and I can’t do it here.”

Travis looked at me; I shrugged. Travis walked around and got into the front seat. I slipped into the back, situating myself behind Tornik.

Tornik pulled away from the curb and drove down Second Street, sliding around the festival blockade, hopped on Third Street, and headed south out of town. The detective remained quiet until he hit the southern boundary of Brilliant. “I didn’t know if your old man would be at the festival or not,” Tornik finally said, breaking the silence. “I doubt that I enjoy favored-nation status with him, and I really wanted to avoid any possible contact.”

“The Polish Festival isn’t the kind of social event my dad usually attends,” Travis said. “He’d rather go up to Welch’s Bar and drink himself blind.”

“I’ve got a little present for you,” Tornik said. “Look under your seat.”

Travis reached down between his feet and pulled out a manila envelope. “What’s this?”

“That,” Tornik said, taking control of the car with his left knee as he slipped a cigarette into his mouth and fumbled with his lighter, “is probably more than you’ll ever want to know about the investigation into the death of Amanda Virdon Baron. It’s a copy of the investigative file—most of it anyway.”

“Most of it?”

Tornik nodded. “I’m holding a little bit back. You digest all that and maybe I’ll give you the rest.”

Tornik pulled off at the Georges Run exit and drove to the parking lot at Patty’s Diner, a popular, twenty-four-hour stop for truckers running the Ohio River route. “You want a coffee or anything?” Tornik offered.

“Nah. I’m good,” Travis said.

He looked back at me. “I could use an RC,” I said. The sausage felt like it was burning a hole in my stomach lining.

Travis and I got out of the car. He leaned against the right front fender of the Pontiac, unclasped the envelope, and flipped through fifty-one pages of handwritten notes and a more formal, single-spaced report. “Wow, it’s like a book; there’s a lot of stuff here,” he said, scanning the report by the lights trimming the soffit of the diner.

When Tornik re-emerged from the diner a few minutes later, he was carrying a steaming cup of coffee in his right hand and a twelve-ounce RC in the other. He handed me the soda, then set his coffee on a concrete parking barrier and lit yet another cigarette.

“How did you get this?” I asked.

Tornik’s brows arched. “Now, you don’t really expect me to answer that, do you?”

“I guess not,” I said.

“Let’s just say there are some folks at the sheriff’s office who don’t despise me quite as much as the others. And at least one of them owed me a favor.”

Travis never looked up from the report. “Jesus, this is a lot of information. Did you do all this?”

“Yeah, most of it. Before you get too far into that report, understand this: I did not start the investigation to set up your dad to take a fall. Okay? I didn’t have to. He didn’t need my help. He did a fine job all by himself. Your dad says that I was trying to set him up? Well, see what you think after you’re done reading. Do whatever you want with that copy, but for the love of Christ, don’t let your dad find it. And if he does . . .”

“I’ll never tell him where I got it.”

“That’s the right answer.”

“So, this will explain everything?” Travis asked. “I’ll read this and I’ll be convinced that my dad was involved in the death of my mother?”

“Maybe, maybe not. You read that first, and this,” he said, patting the business-sized envelope that was protruding from his breast pocket. “This is the dessert I was telling you about.” Tornik pulled a small piece of notebook paper from his pants pocket—a cheat sheet. “Look on page nineteen.” He waited until Travis found the page. “Your dad was going to lose that boat.” He pointed to a copy of a letter from the Steelworkers Federal Bank to Frank Baron, dated two weeks before Amanda’s death. “He’d had the boat a little over a year—bought it from Ohio Valley Boat Sales—and he was six months behind on his loan. This was a perfect way to lose the boat without having it repossessed. The insurance paid it off, and it provided a perfect cover for your mother’s death.” Travis read the letter aloud.