The Coal Black Asphalt Tomb: A Berger and Mitry Mystery (Berger and Mitry Mysteries) (15 page)

It was eerily silent in the newsroom. No reporters were seated at the desks. No phones were ringing. The only person in the whole place was a young guy with blond hair who was perched on an orange fitness ball pecking away at a laptop. He stood up when he noticed Mitch there. He was tall and athletically built. Good looking. No doubt always had been. He smiled with his whole jaw in that practiced, phony way male models do. Mitch hated him on sight.

“This is a real honor, Mr. Berger. I’m Bart Shaver, sir.”

“Call me Mitch. And cut out the ‘sir’ stuff. You’re making me feel like I’m forty or something.”

“Sure thing, sorry.” He treated Mitch to his big-jawed smile again. “I’m just kind of in awe.”

“You can cut that out, too. I’m the one who’s in awe. This place is incredible. I’ll bet you still have a darkroom, right?”

“Back through there.” Bart gestured to a doorway with his thumb. “Not that we use it anymore. Everything’s digital now. The printing press used to be back there, too. They printed every edition of
The Gazette
right here on the premises in the old days. Sometimes when the weather’s damp I swear I can still smell the ink. But that era is long gone,” he said regretfully. “And we’re folding what’s left of our print edition, as you may have heard. Can’t afford it anymore. Uncle Buzzy’s incredibly bummed.”

“I understand that he had to be hospitalized.”

Bart nodded. “But he’s doing much better today. They’re releasing him this morning. I sure am grateful to the resident trooper for coming to his rescue. I guess he just got overwhelmed by the reality of what’s happening—even though I’m doing everything I can to make the transition as smooth as possible.” He glanced around at the empty newsroom. “Uncle Buzzy used to employ two full-time reporters, a photographer, a managing editor and an advertising manager. Now there’s just me, and I haven’t drawn a salary since back on the 11th of never. But I’m convinced that we can keep
The Gazette
viable as an online paper. If I didn’t believe that I wouldn’t be here. And I want to be here. I love this paper. Where would Dorset be without us? Who would record the births and deaths? Where would you get your school bus schedules and your latest Kiwanis Club news?” Bart Shaver was such a true believer that Mitch was warming to him in spite of himself. “
The Gazette
is a vital part of this community. Always has been, always will be. We’re going to be fine.”

“Even though you have to put it together all by yourself?”

“That’s not entirely true. A couple of Uncle Buzzy’s fishing buddies help out a bit when they’re awake and sober. One of them has been talking to our local advertisers, the other keeps tabs on society news. Or tries. It’s the ladies who really know what’s going on, but for some reason I can’t get any of them to help me. Except for Mrs. Grossel, the faculty advisor for the high school paper. She’s recruited her students to handle our sports coverage and youth news. I have help, Mitch. Really, I do.” He trailed off, running a hand through his floppy hair. “It’s just not the kind of help that I need.”

“What kind is that, Bart?”

“I grind out a ton of articles every week. I sure could use someone to give them the once over. Our masthead says that Uncle Buzzy’s the editor of
The Gazette
. But what with his health and all he’s really not up to it anymore.” Bart gave Mitch a sidelong glance. “You went to Columbia J-school, didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah.”

“So you know everything there is to know about editing other people’s copy.”

“I know a bit,” Mitch acknowledged. “But my plate’s kind of full right now. I’m writing a lot of articles myself every week. Plus I’ve got my Web site, Facebook page, Twitter account and a book under contract.”

“I understand. You’re hot stuff.”

“That’s not what I meant, Bart. I’d like to help you out. I’m just incredibly busy.”

“Sure, whatever,” Bart said with a shrug of his broad shoulders. “So what are you doing here?”

“I wanted to talk to you about wedding photos.”

“Don’t tell me you and the resident trooper are getting—”

“Okay, I won’t. Because we’re not. But when local couples do get married you typically run a wedding photo, don’t you?”

“Absolutely. That’s our bread and butter.”

“Do you archive those photos?”

“Uncle Buzzy’s a pack rat. Never throws anything away.”

“Even a wedding photo from the 1960s?”

Bart eyed Mitch curiously. “Whose wedding photo are you looking for?”

“A couple that was married in Old Henry’s garden at the country club in June of ’69. The 14th, to be exact.”

“A couple named…”

“Bob and Delia Paffin.”

Bart let out a hoot. “I am
so
glad the voters finally booted that fossil out of office. He was a do-nothing
and
a crook. I nailed him cold for misappropriating town resources to regravel his driveway.”

“I heard about that.”

“Uncle Buzzy wouldn’t print it.”

“I heard about that, too.”

“Why do you want to see the Paffins’ wedding photo?”

“I had a notion about something.”

“And you’re not going to tell me what that notion is, are you? That’s cool. I’m happy to help a colleague—assuming you give me the story first.”

“Who says there’s a story?”

“I say there’s a story. Something’s going on or you wouldn’t be here looking for a photo from the Paleozoic era.” Bart went to one of the glass-fronted bookcases and removed a bound volume of back issues from June of 1969. He laid it open on an empty desk and leafed through it until he arrived at the weddings for the week of the 14th. “By God, Bob was a geeky-looking doof, wasn’t he?” He spun the bound volume around so Mitch could get a good look at Bob and Delia Paffin posed together in Old Henry’s garden on their wedding day.

“Indeed. I’m amazed he could find a shirt collar big enough to fit over that Adam’s apple.”

The proud, squinty young groom had his arm around his zoftig new bride, who was twice as wide as Bob even way back then. Her eyes gleamed at the camera in monumental triumph.

The paragraph of copy beneath the photo was standard society-page stuff. The bride, Miss Delia Ann Blackwell, daughter of Stephen and Laurel Blackwell of Dorset, had been attended by her maid of honor, Miss Beryl Beckwith. The happy couple planned to honeymoon on Sanibel Island, Florida, before taking up residence in Dorset where the groom, whose best man had been Mr. Chase Fairchild, was an associate of Paffin Realty.

Mitch studied the photo of the happy couple, which had been cropped tight at their shoulders and waists. Too tight. “Bart, do you suppose there were other photos of them taken that day?”

“Sure. Probably an entire roll.”

“Do you think Buzzy kept them?”

“Photos and negatives are stored in those filing cabinets over in the corner. Knock yourself out. I have to get back to work.”

Mitch poked around in the oak cabinets for a while before he located the file that contained all of the black-and-white wedding photographs the newspaper’s photographer had snapped in June of 1969. There were quite a few weddings that month. Bob and Delia’s was the only one high-toned enough to be held in Old Henry’s garden. And he found the eight-by-ten glossy print of the photo that
The Gazette
had run, crop marked with a red grease pencil. What had been cropped out were the opulently blooming rose bushes that the couple had posed in front of. He also found two other eight-by-ten glossies that hadn’t been used. These were less formal shots of the newlyweds and a few close friends grouped around those teak garden benches that were still there. Some of the friends were standing. Some of them were seated. All of them were sipping champagne. Mitch recognized Buzzy Shaver and his liverish, low-hanging bottom lip instantly. The old editor had worn a cowlicky crew cut back in those days that was reminiscent of the young Jerry Lewis. Mitch also recognized the maid of honor, Beryl Beckwith, who was as gorgeous as he’d been led to believe. A total knockout. The young guy holding hands with her had to be Chase Fairchild. Glynis was a dead ringer for him. Chase had been fair-haired and on the short side, barely as tall as Beryl. But good looking in an earnest, all-American sort of way. Luke Cahoon was there, too, sporting a mane of hair that fell to his shoulders. The future US congressman looked like a wild-eyed hippie beside his scrubbed country club friends. The willowy, dark-haired beauty standing with him was likely Noelle, the woman he married.

Mitch studied them one and all, these people who Beryl Fairchild had characterized as young and privileged and insulated from, what was it, life’s harsher realities.
Back then our world seemed so perfect.
Mitch studied the garden, too, which was for damned sure plenty perfect. Snipped and manicured, not a leaf or petal out of place. A traditional garden, Delia Peck had called it. Properly enclosed.

Bart sidled over toward Mitch, his reporter’s curiosity getting the best of him. “Find what you were looking for?”

“Don’t know. Have you got a magnifying glass?”

Bart pulled one from the top drawer of his desk and handed it to him. Mitch held it over the photos, studying each of them closely.

“Uncle Buzzy hasn’t changed much, has he?” Bart said. “It’s a shame he never got married. He sure seems lonely.”

“Sure seems … hunh?” Mitch murmured distractedly, his wheels spinning as he moved the magnifying glass this way and that.

“But you’re not interested in him, are you? What
are
you…”

“Old Henry’s garden.” Mitch tapped the photo with his finger. “It doesn’t look like this anymore. Got completely replanted after they had a fire in ’92.”

Bart frowned at him. “And this is significant because…”

“These days it’s enclosed by a boxwood hedge. But back in ’69 it was ‘properly’ enclosed.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It was surrounded by a low wrought-iron fence, see? Looks to me like it was two feet high. Maybe two and half.” Mitch offered him the magnifying glass. “Take a look for yourself.”

Bart took the glass and peered closely at the fence. “Okay, I’m looking at a wrought-iron fence. So what?”

“It’s a
spiked
wrought iron fence, that’s so what. Do you mind if I hold on to this photograph?”

“Not if you promise to tell me what you’re up to. I don’t get it, Mitch. Why do you care so much about that fence?”

“Because it’s not there anymore. Is there any way to find out what happened to it?”

Bart tilted his head at him quizzically. “Does this have something to do with Lance Paffin’s body being found under Dorset Street?”

“That information hasn’t been made public yet.”

“True enough. But I hear things. And you didn’t answer my question.”

“You didn’t answer mine either.”

“This is Dorset, my friend. Nothing ever gets tossed. That fence probably found a home somewhere else in town. Young Henry might know where. Do you belong to the club?”

“Not a chance. Why, do you?”

“Buzzy does. So they let me have the run of the place. Want me to talk to Young Henry for you?”

“I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You didn’t ask. I’m volunteering. Maybe some day you’ll do me a favor in return. Like, say, read a few stories for me. Deal?”

“Deal.” Mitch handed Bart his business card. “My landline and cell numbers.”

“I’ll be in touch.” Bart flashed his big-jawed smile at Mitch. “Know what? Something tells me I’m going to be seeing a lot more of you.”

Mitch stood there in the middle of the old-time newsroom, soaking up the magical elixir of its atmosphere. “Know what? Something tells me you may be right.”

C
HAPTER
9

T
HE SENIOR CENTER IN
Fairburn was a beautiful new facility—which meant that Des was there ten whole minutes before she wanted to sprint out into the road and hurl herself in front of the nearest oncoming car. She had a bit of a thing when it came to senior centers. She respected older people. And respected the services that were provided at the centers, mostly by neighborly volunteers. Yet the places gave her the jimjams. Partly it was the hushed stillness. Older people don’t move around a lot or make much noise. Partly, it was the suffocating air. There’s no such thing as an open window at a senior center. But mostly it was just an overwhelming sense of dread that one day soon she, too, would find herself caged in just such a temporary holding center for the soon-to-be departed.

All she could think about was fleeing.

It had taken her forty minutes to drive to Fairburn, an old brass mill town that was about twenty miles inland from Mystic Seaport. Eastern Connecticut was comprised of two completely different worlds. There were the coastline towns such as Dorset. Lovely, prosperous places that were popular summer destinations. And then there were the landlocked towns to the north such as Fairburn, which had once been thriving mill towns and were now just a tattered assortment of economically depressed backwaters with few job opportunities. If young people wanted to make a life for themselves they had to move elsewhere.

But Fairburn’s new senior center was state of the art, thanks to the strenuous efforts of US Congressman Luke Cahoon, whose district encompassed not only the shoreline towns but also Fairburn and a dozen other struggling towns just like it. There was a fully equipped nurse’s station. A recreation room with a giant flat-screen TV. And a cafeteria where hot breakfasts and lunches were served up daily by a crew of volunteers.

Today, one of those volunteers serving up scrambled eggs, sausage links and oatmeal was the seventy-three-year-old congressman himself. It was a made-for-the-media event. The local TV news crews were all set up and ready to capture Congressman Cahoon as he ladled out oatmeal and bromides about the future of Medicare. The congressman was scheduled to spend no more than thirty minutes at the center assuring his older constituents that he was in DC fighting for their interests. Then he’d be whisked off to Electric Boat in Groton to assure the workers there that he was in DC fighting for their interests.