Pretty Girl Gone (13 page)

“Still, we were both twenty-two, Monte and I, single and pretty and living away from home for the first time, and we couldn’t get a date with anyone who used vowels when they spoke besides eh! There was a sexual revolution going on out there and we were missing out. It didn’t bother me so much. I was excited to be a part of it all, the Seven, the resurgence of the town. Monte—at the end of the school year, she moved to Mankato.”

“Did you keep in touch?”

“Not at first,” Suzi said. “I heard she got married, had a child—heard that her husband was killed in Vietnam. We didn’t talk again until a few years later and I saw her name. Monte was conducting a seminar at a teacher’s conference. She had kept her maiden name, which was a radical thing for a married woman to do in those days, but she was always a bit of a feminist. I saw her name and looked her up and we’ve been fairly close ever since.”

“What about the other teachers that were here back then?”

“Gone. Some died. Some moved away. There weren’t that many of us. As far as I know I’m the only one from back then who’s still teaching.”

“Maybe you can answer some questions for me.”

“About the Seven?” Suzi asked.

“Yes, but mostly about Elizabeth Rogers.”

Suzi thumbed through the yearbook, found a page and turned the book for me to see. The photograph covered nearly the entire page. It was the same shot that appeared in the newspaper, only in color. There
was a black border around the photograph and beneath it Elizabeth’s name was printed along with an epitaph.

God gives us all love. But someone to love he only lends us.

“Beth,” Suzi said. “She was what they used to call ‘a dish.’ ”

I hadn’t thought much about her when I first saw Elizabeth’s faded black-and-white photograph in the newspaper. Just a pretty girl now gone. It was only her death that had held interest for me. Yet seeing the photograph in color, that changed. Elizabeth’s face was smooth and gold tinted, her hair was a lustrous shade of gold that only nature could create, and her eyes—had they really been that brown, or was it merely a publisher’s trick, a mixing of ink?

Elizabeth had been seventeen at the time of her murder. It must have seemed to her that all the good things in life were hers for the taking. She had only to reach out her hand.

Did she date much?
I wondered, suddenly. Date boys besides Jack? My mother didn’t have many dates when she was in high school. She told me most boys were afraid of her, afraid she would reject them. Or they had simply assumed she already had a boyfriend: someone who looked like her, of course she did. My mother had to wait for a man who was nearly a decade older than she, a man who had been with the First Marines at Chosin Reservoir in Korea, who wasn’t afraid of anything, including a beautiful woman. Did Elizabeth have that problem, too? What about the other girls? Did they resent her because she had such pretty eyes, like they did my mom? Did she ever have the chance to be anything but a girl with pretty eyes?

Suzi turned the book around and stared at the photo for a few moments.

“Poor Beth. I sometimes wonder what she was thinking when—when it happened. Did she know she was going to die? Did she think
she would be saved at the last moment? She must have been afraid. Alone and afraid. Did she beg for her life? Did she pray? Did she . . . ?”

Suzi closed the book and set it on the sofa next to her.

“Life should be a pleasure for those people lucky enough to be born pretty. That’s what the poets tell us, and I believe it,” Suzi said. “Only it isn’t always so, is it? What did Shakespeare write?
Alas, what danger will it be to us, Maids as we are, to travel forth so far! Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.
”

“I hadn’t thought that much about it,” I confessed.

“I have. Far too much. For months after Beth’s death, I took every compliment as a threat, every invitation as—It was years before I felt comfortable enough to walk the streets alone, even here in crime-free Victoria. Truth is, I don’t think I have really gotten over it. It was just too close to me.

“The sad thing, one of the truly sad things, is that we never really had the chance to mourn her. Excitement over the Seven took care of that.”

“Were you at the party?” I asked.

“The night she was killed?”

“Elizabeth was dating Jack Barrett,” I reminded the teacher.

“Beth. Everyone called her, Beth. Yes, she was dating Jack. Of course she was. The prettiest girl dates the prettiest boy. That’s the way it works.”

“At the party, she and Jack had a fight. Do you know what it was about?”

“Who knows? Kids fight, don’t they? I was gone by the time Beth left, anyway. We discovered that a lot of the kids had been drinking. The principal didn’t believe it was wise for us to have any part of that. We were supposed to educate against that sort of thing. But he didn’t want to ruin the party, so he asked us to leave a few at a time. Monte was the first to go. She was happy for the excuse. Monte was not a sports person. She left about, I don’t know, eight-thirty. I left around ten.”

“Were you close to the students?”

“Monte and I both were, probably because we were so close in age.”

“If Beth was upset, distraught over Jack, and wanted to talk, who would she turn to?”

“Lynn Peyer. She was Beth’s best friend.”

“Was Peyer at the party?”

“Yes.”

“When did she leave?’

“I don’t know.”

“Anyone else? Anyone she might have been going to see the night she was killed?”

“Me, I guess.”

“Except she didn’t come to you.”

“No.”

“How about Monte?”

“Very unlikely.”

“Why’s that?”

“Monte didn’t approve of Beth. You need to understand. Monte, like I said before, she was a bit of a feminist. At least she was a feminist by Victoria, Minnesota, standards. She believed women could be, should be, whatever they wanted. Only back in those days, living in a small town like this, a woman who graduated from high school either got married or left for college. Beth, to put it charitably, was not going to college.”

“Put it uncharitably.”

“Beth could talk for an hour and not say a thing. She did all her thinking with her body. A lot of girls in small towns did. Maybe big towns, too. They spent their senior years looking for the man they were going to marry, and then spent the rest of their lives wondering what went wrong. That’s just the way it was back then. Beth, like so many of the girls in Victoria, wanted only to get a ring on her finger as soon as possible.”

“She expected to marry Jack,” I said.

“Exactly. Anyway, if Beth had gone to Monte, Monte probably would given her a few college brochures and a lecture on self-esteem.”

“Would Beth have gone to anyone else?”

“No one comes to mind.”

“Chief Bohlig claims that she was killed by transients,” I said. “That she was grabbed up off the street and killed.”

“That’s what he said.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I want to believe him. I truly do. Otherwise Beth was killed by someone living in this town, someone who probably is still living in this town.”

“You want to believe him, but you don’t.”

“No, I don’t.”

There didn’t seem to be much more to say after that. After a few moments of silence, I asked to borrow the yearbook. Suzi said, “Sure.”

“You know who you should talk to?” she added. “At least about the Seven? Coach Testen.”

“Is he still in Victoria?”

“Are you kidding? Mark owns this town. He has a place near Jail Park.”

“Jail Park?”

“Central Park,” Suzi said. “Before they moved it, the county jail used to be located across the street and people called it Jail Park. Still do.”

“Will Coach Testen talk to me?”

“Try to stop him.”

Jail Park wasn’t what I had envisioned. Instead of a few trees, well-trimmed lawn, playground equipment, maybe a baseball diamond, I found what resembled a wilderness preserve. I knew it was bordered on all four sides by narrow city streets, but the streets were far apart and I was unable to estimate its depth. It could have been as vast as Sherwood Forest for all I knew. There was a wide boulevard between the street and the trees, but no sidewalk. What looked like a path began about a hundred yards from where I had parked in front of Coach Testen’s house and bent into the park, disappearing among dozens of trees and high,
thick brush. There were areas like this in the Cities, too, I reminded myself. Pockets of wilderness, hidden, isolated, yet only five minutes from the nearest pizza joint.

Coach Testen lived in one of those newer homes designed to appear much older, larger, and grander than it actually was. It had a brick front, eccentric angles, high windows, pronounced gables, vaulted ceilings, and exposed staircases. It would have gone for $350,000 in my neighborhood, probably twice that in John Allen Barrett’s. Even so, its dominant feature was an attached two-car garage and the wide asphalt driveway leading to it, the black of the asphalt in sharp contrast with the snow piled on either side. I walked up the driveway to a narrow concrete path that led to the front door and used a knocker that resembled brass but seemed lighter. Coach Testen opened the door as if he were expecting me and I wondered if Suzi Shimek had called him.

Testen was closer to seventy than he was to fifty, yet he looked as well preserved as Suzi. There must be something in the water, I decided. His eyes were bright and he still had plenty of light-colored hair that seemed to suit the sunny smile and aw-shucks demeanor he presented the moment he found me standing at his front door. I suspected the smile and easy manner were part of a carefully constructed facade, but it’s already been established that I’m cynical.

Testen seemed overdressed for just hanging around the house—black loafers with tassels polished to a high gloss, neatly pressed black slacks, a brown, blue, and white cashmere sweater worn over a white cotton dress shirt, tennis bracelet on one wrist and gold watch on the other. Yet what surprised me more was his size. Testen was short—no more than five-five. I had expected a basketball coach to be taller.

Like Suzi, Testen welcomed my company.

“It’s always a pleasure to chat about the Seven,” he said.

“I, for one, enjoy meeting a local legend,” I replied, laying it on a little thicker than probably was necessary.

“Please,” Testen said, although he was obviously comfortable with
the label. “Most of the people living in Victoria today probably don’t even know who I am.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“Come with me.”

I followed Testen down a corridor toward the back of the house.

“People in Victoria are pretty excited about the basketball team this year,” he said. “We have a young man—a Somali named Nooh Mohamud Abdille—he’s the real deal. There’s talk that the NBA could make him a lottery pick right out of high school. Plenty of scouts have been following his development closely even though he’s still a junior. I’ve encouraged him to play at least one year of D-1; spend a year in college before trying to make the transition to pro ball. But I’m not his coach. I haven’t been on the bench for a couple of years. Instead, I’m the old coach now, emphasis on
old.
The kids don’t listen to me.”

Testen paused outside a closed door.

“Still, Mr. Abdille and his teammates will have to go a long way to achieve what we did.”

With a flourish, Testen opened the door and waved me into the room. Two large windows all looked out on the backyard. The rest of the walls were covered with a banner that screamed “Go Wildcats!” several pennants, two basketball jerseys—one white with red numbers, the other red with white numbers—a Victoria High School letter jacket, framed pages from the Victoria, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Mankato, Rochester, and Duluth newspapers proclaiming the Seven’s championship, and dozens of photographs, most in black and white, some in color, of Testen and his team in action. There were also shelves crowded with other memorabilia—two autographed basketballs, a half dozen trophies in assorted shapes and sizes, medals, and even more framed photographs. In the center of it all was a huge trophy mounted on a round platform.

I felt as if I were visiting a shrine.

“I collected most of what you see, but a lot of it was sent to me,” Testen said. “People send me things. A few years ago during the thirtieth
anniversary celebration, we put it all on display for the public. People seemed to get a kick out of it.”

“All this for a basketball game?” I asked.

“It wasn’t just a basketball game.”

Testen moved slowly to the huge trophy and set his hand on top of it.

“This is a replica,” he said. “The real trophy is locked away in the school.” Yet the way he caressed the golden basketball made me think it was real enough.

“You have to understand something about the times we lived in to fully appreciate what the championship meant.” Testen spoke as if he was reciting a speech he had given many times, yet never tired of. “We had just lost the war in Vietnam. Because of the growing Watergate scandal, Congress was preparing to impeach the president of the United States. OPEC triggered the first energy crisis in America—people who had never wanted for anything were suddenly waiting in long lines to pay soaring prices for gasoline if it was available at all, and our government’s response was to encourage us to lower our thermostats and wear sweaters. The post–World War II boom was finally ending, inflation was rampant, and the nation began spiraling down into what seemed like an endless recession. The first Earth Day brought millions into the streets to demonstrate over the environment, there were riots in Boston over desegregation and busing, and feminists and anti-feminists protested just about everywhere over
Roe. v. Wade.

“After all that, after the pain and confusion and frustration and anger and rebellion, what did we get? We got Jerry Ford. A good man. An honorable man. A lousy president. Believe me, people needed heroes, and at just that moment we found a few in the form of a ragtag team of smalltown American kids, ultimate underdogs who made it to the top . . .”