Summer People (8 page)

“So you think that it was diesel.”

“No, the stuff was a lot more volatile. It had to be gasoline.”

“So what do you think happened?”

“It doesn’t all quite fit, but then things seldom do. I would guess that the lightning hit the mast, and the charge came down the mast and those steel cables. There must have been a container with gasoline near one of them that exploded when it got hit by the current. He probably had a tank for an outboard. Don’t most of these big boats carry a dinghy or an inflatable?”

“I suspect they do,” said Ray.

“So,” continued Mike getting into his role as a raconteur. “This guy’s sleeping, see. He’s probably had a few. We found some gin bottles in there. This storm blows in. The lightning hits the mast and then a gas can blows, spilling burning gasoline onto the deck and into the cabin. The victim wakes up and the whole damn place is on fire. He manages to get out of the cabin and dives for the safety of the water. And that’s all she wrote.”

“What would have been the victim’s condition?”

“The autopsy will show that his lungs are singed. I’m surprised that he made it off the boat.”

“And you don’t think that there’s any sign of foul play.”

“Not unless you’ve got a murderer who can direct lightning. I think this can be labeled an act of God or an accident caused by nature, depending on the way you choose to explain the unexplainable. But there is one thing that’s less than kosher that you might want to look into.”

“What’s that?”

“Come over to the truck?”

Ray followed him.

Mike opened the back doors and took out a plastic package. He unwrapped it carefully.

“I’m trying to be very gentle. I don’t know if this got hot enough to become unstable. We found this tucked off to the side with some tools in the engine compartment.”

“Is it what I think it is?” asked Ray.

“Eight sticks of dynamite. If I had known what it was, I wouldn’t have pulled it out of the boat. I’d have called Lansing and let one of our resident nuts come and extract it. They’re coming to pick it up. If this stuff had gone, you would have had a lot more casualties.” Mike continued on with obvious sarcasm, “I’m not into the yachting scene, but is this a common cargo?”

“I’ll have to check,” said Ray. “It might be the newest thing among the white wine and Brie crowd.”

“One more thing, Sheriff.”

“What’s that?”

“Could you call Lansing and say you need me at least until Labor Day?”

“Don’t you want to stay until the end of deer season?”

“No, saw Bambi three times, don’t do that kind of thing.”

Deputy Sue Lawrence met Tawny Holden at the airport as she came through the arrival gate and drove her back to the cottage. Tawny made one last sweep through the cottage, gathering a few remaining personal possessions.

“Thank you for coming in with me,” she said to Sue. “I didn’t want to be here alone.”

“Are you worried about your safety?” asked Sue.

“Not at all, but this place,” she paused and slowly looked around, “is full of bad memories.” Tawny’s voice took on a business-like tone. “I think I’ve got everything.”

“Are you going to keep the cottage?”

“Keep?” Tawny gave Sue a look of incredulity. “No. I don’t want to ever come here again.”

Sue glanced about her, “There are so many beautiful things, don’t you want any of them?”

“No,” said Tawny, “they don’t mean anything to me. They’re part of someone else’s life. I don’t want anything that will remind me of what happened.”

“What will happen to the house?”

“I talked to Randy’s lawyer at the funeral. He will look after getting rid of the place; his sister might be interested in it. Randy once told me that she wanted it. I think the fact that he got the place when their parents died had a lot to do with their falling out. I guess they hadn’t talked in several years, and I had never met her before Randy’s funeral, but she was very nice. The James’ called her after Randy was killed. They drove me down state for the funeral and invited me to stay with them, but she insisted that I stay with her. She handled all the arrangements for the funeral. I was a complete basket case.”

“What are you going to do now?” asked Sue.

“I’ll go on just like before. I’m scheduled to work next week. I just need to get on with my life.”

“Don’t you have family or someone that you can fall back on for support?”

“No family to speak of. My father died when I was little, and I never got on with my mom. I left home as soon as I graduated from high school. I haven’t made any effort to keep in contact, and my mom hasn’t either. I don’t believe in keeping relationships going that do more harm than good.”

As Sue was locking the cottage, Ray came up the drive. She stopped and waited. “Do you want to go into the cottage?” she asked after he emerged from his car.

“Not really. I do want to talk with Mrs. Holden for a few minutes.”

“Can we sit at the beach, Sheriff?” Tawny asked. She motioned toward the cottage, “I’ve said my last good-byes to the place. I’d rather not go back in.”

“I’d prefer it,” said Ray.

They settled into the three metal lawn chairs facing the water.

“It is beautiful here,” said Ray looking out at the lake.

“Yes,” agreed Tawny. “I’m a beach and water person. My place in California is only a block from the ocean.”

Ray looked at her as she was talking. Her rich tan and sunbleached hair confirmed her love of the beach. But as he looked at her attractive face, he could sense her pain. He couldn’t exactly tell what gave him the impression, but he felt that she seemed terribly worn for her years.

“I know the last few days have been very difficult for you,” he began, “but I was wondering if you had any more thoughts about who might have wanted your husband dead?”

“I spent a lot of time thinking about that, Sheriff. Do you use visualization?”

“Visualization? I don’t quite follow you.”

“I was trying to think about the past given what has happened. I tried to visualize conversations Randy and I had; I tried to see if I could put another interpretation to things. I also tried to remember the phone calls I’d overheard; was there anything I might have missed?” She paused and looked at the lake.

“And,” prodded Ray

“I don’t think I missed anything. If Randy thought someone was out to kill him, he didn’t give me a hint that anything was going on. The hard part about this is that I’ve had to admit to myself I didn’t really know him very well. It’s strange, you meet someone, you get involved, you share your life, you share your body, but that doesn’t mean you really know them. I don’t think I’m naive, but I took everything that he told me at face value. You meet lots of men in my kind of work, you can usually spot the hustlers a mile away. They’re incredibly obvious, although they seem to think that they are unusually subtle. Randy was sweet, he was kind to me, and he wanted more than my body for a night or two. I have no misgivings, he was clearly no saint, but he was better to me than any other man I’ve known.”

Ray waited for a few moments, then said, “I appreciate the thinking you’ve done. What are you going to do now?”

“Go back to L.A. I’ll stop in Chicago and pick up some things. I have a few things at Randy’s apartment that I want. I wish I didn’t have to do that.”

“Because?”

“I don’t like dealing with ghosts. I just want to get this all behind me.”

“Whenever you’re ready, Sue will take you to the airport.”

“Thanks, Sheriff. I appreciate it.”

Ray saw Sue come into the front office and motioned her into his office with a sweeping gesture of his arm. She settled into a chair across from his desk.

“What did you think?”

“About?”

“About Tawny?”

“Well, Ray, I feel uncomfortable hazarding a guess. You’ve had so much more experience in this kind of thing.”

“And you,” said Ray, “are unusually insightful. Do you think that she is involved?”

“No, my intuition and all my logic say she’s not.”
“Why? Remember sociopaths are usually skilled actors.”
“I know, but they are often so skilled that you can’t help but be suspicious. I think she’s real, Ray. I don’t think she was involved in any way.” Sue looked directly at Ray. “But I can tell that something is bothering you.”

“I’m bothered by the lack of any affect. She is so totally controlled. Do you think that she loved him?”

“Love, I don’t know. She’s been married three times, and she’s only in her late twenties. She really opened up on the way back to the airport; I think she needed to talk.

She told me that Randy was the first man who was ever kind to her. So to answer your question, I think she loved him as much as it was safe for her to love him.”

“What else did you learn?” questioned Ray.

“She got married the first time at eighteen; she married her high school sweetheart as a way of getting out of the house. They moved to L.A. and only managed to stay together for a few months. She worked and went to college for several years and then got a job with the airline. Her second husband, a pilot, was dashing and very romantic before they were married, but soon proved to be cruel and abusive. She stayed with him less than a year. Between marriages she had a number of other relationships, but nothing ever worked out. She said that she had just about given up on the possibility of a successful relationship when she met Randy, and this one, from the beginning, just felt right.”

“It all sounds pretty grim,” said Ray. “But let’s be cautious. Verify her employment history with the airline and see if you can substantiate her account of her marriages. Let’s hope her exes are alive and well.”

As she opened a notebook she said, “I do have a couple of additional things for you.”

“Okay.”

“The man at the state police lab says the bullet is a steel jacketed 30.06, and it was fired from a Winchester model 25. McGee, that’s the guy’s name, says that was a very popular model, there were more than a million produced. He also said that the bullet is in pretty good condition. If we find the murder weapon, he’s sure he could do a comparison that would stand up in court. And….” She turned several more pages, “I have a little information on Holden.”

“What’s that?”

“I took the information you gave me about Holden’s possible problem with the state bar, the things your friend told you. I called my mother—this is using the good old girl network. One of her partners in the law firm used to be on the license review board of the state bar. The man remembered Holden’s case. He said Holden should have been disbarred, but a deal was worked out.”

“What kind of deal?”

“Well, it seems that Holden’s dad was a former president of the state bar and there was a lot of discomfort with pulling his license. The deal was that if he would agree not to practice in Michigan for a minimum of ten years, they would take no formal action against him.”

“He plea bargained his license.”

“That’s what it amounts to. There’s more. I got this from NCIC. Holden was under investigation by the SEC for violations of security laws, but no charges had been filed. Also, he had several civil suits brought against him in recent years by dissatisfied clients.”

“What happened with those?”

“They were settled out of court.”

“He sounds like a perfectly wonderful human being, doesn’t he?” said Ray. “One of the disturbing things you discover in this business is that people who are clever and reasonably affluent can operate for years beyond the edge of the law and get away with it. And some poor bastard who steals a rusty old car….”

“Gets sent to Jackson,” Sue completed his sentence.

Betty and John Vandenburg built the Last Chance, a bar, on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan just after John was mustered out of the army. Betty’s father put up the money for the building and liquor license. Six years and two children later, John left her—went off to start a new life in Grand Rapids with a woman he had met in a Traverse City bar.

Jack Grochoski had wanted to be in the military when he graduated from Fordson High in Dearborn, but his uncle got him a foundry job at Fords (as they say in Dearborn). He worked there until a long strike, coming north for deer season and then deciding never to return to his foundry job at River Rouge. He built a small cabin south of Empire, fished, hunted, trapped, and eventually became the evening bartender at the Last Chance. During one long winter, he and Betty—more out of loneliness than any real attraction—were lovers. Later, she married a car dealer from Kalkaska and sold Jack the Last Chance.

Jack stood behind the bar washing glasses and surveying afternoon customers. The bar had changed little in his years there. The knotty cedar on the walls had darkened with age, the color change seen when old beer signs were taken down, leaving rectangles, ovals and squares of yellow cedar on the umber walls. But the basic structure, a cement block rectangle with a flat roof, had not been altered save an A-frame entrance covered with shake shingles that had been added in the 60s when A-frames were the fashion. At that time Jack also had the floor redone with vinyl tile, in a pattern of red and black. The pattern was now barely distinguishable and the tiles were worn through to the concrete slab around the entrance and in front of the restroom doors. When the original chairs, chrome tubing with plastic covered seats and backs, started falling apart, Jack replaced them with oak chairs he bought when the furniture from the old Methodist church in Nessen City was auctioned off, its congregation having moved away or died.

Some of the regulars from his earliest days at the Last Chance were still around. Jack sometimes wondered how they could stand to sit on the same stool in the same bar year after year—and then would remember that he stood at the same place behind the bar year after year. There was a certain constancy that he enjoyed: the same faces, the same drinks, the same stories and jokes. And when one of the old timers died, he was reminded of his own mortality and the fact that the years were slipping by.