An icy wind started to blow, stinging his already wind-burned cheeks. He wished the bus would come soon. Shivering, he rocked back and forth from one foot to the other, rubbing his hands together and blowing on them for warmth, sending white puffs of smoke up into the air.
Today he was alone at the bus stop. Over his right shoulder at the amusement park he could hear music coming from a jukebox. The fans from the food courts filled the air with pizza and pepperoni, teasing his nose. It brought back memories of his teen years and Lillian when he worked at the park. The horses from the merry-go-round and all the other rides had been packed up and put away for the winter. The park owner made money through the cold months selling pizza, hoagies, and drinks to the locals, as well as an occasional traveler.
The long bus ride wasn’t something Bert enjoyed it was a necessity. A few months back he demolished his truck coming home from a night of drinking, when he lost control and ran it over a cliff. The truck landed on the riverbank below wedged between two trees, saving the truck and Bert from the chilling waters. The doctors said it was a good thing he was drunk. The booze kept him from freezing to death and relaxed enough to keep him from serious injuries. It was then the police took away his driving privileges.
As the bus pulled up, he hurried aboard, taking a seat in the front close to the heater. After a thirty-minute ride, the bus deposited him one block from his favorite drinking establishment.
About ten o’clock that night the sky started spitting snow as he walked into the sixth bar on his list. The windowsills as well as the sides of the buildings were soon blanketed white. The blinking neon lights of the bars and eateries on the south end reflected unrecognizable shapes on the new-fallen snow. The strong wind exposed shiny patches of ice, glazing the sidewalks.
When he stumbled into the next bar, he thought he noticed the same man in every bar he went into. He always came in after Bert taking a seat in a booth with his back to him. He was a man whom Bert knew from years ago, and couldn’t remember his name, what he did recall was he didn’t care for the guy. Determined not to let him spoil his night on the town, he soon pushed the thought of the man to the back of his mind, and returned to his drinking.
Bert forgot about eating dinner spending his last dollar on beer number twenty in bar number nine, the Squashed Frog, his favorite. He was drinking his Bud and doing his best to stay out of trouble, when the stranger started crowding back into his thoughts, intruding on his fun. He wished he would’ve taken a seat in one of the booths away from the door, because every time a patron came in a chilling blast of wind followed them.
His stomach growled from hunger in spite of all the beer. Gulping down the last of the brew in his glass he was ready to leave. As he wobbled up from the bar stool, a loud belch came from nowhere. He held his hand to his mouth, rolled his eyes from side to side, he was glad no one was paying attention. He moved his big hand in a slow swipe across his lips, as he staggered toward the exit. When he reached the door, it swung wide open, a blast of icy wind took his breath away as he stared down into the face of a short boyish looking man.
“Hi Bert, let me hold the door for you.” Bert blinked, staring at the man, his head was fuzzy from too much booze and lack of food. It took him a few seconds to come up with the man’s name.
“Thanks Henry.”
Bert liked Henry, he thought they connected on a personal level, by being too shy to speak to people, but unlike Bert, Henry was a nice guy. Bert’s friends and acquaintances were perceptive enough to know not to cross him, because those who did knew he had a way of taking care them.
The giant of Bridgetown was the nickname they hung on Bert in his younger days when he went ten rounds at the old theater on Rainbow Street in a boxing match with John L. Lewis. Bert was one big, rough guy. His reputation was known around town, but in the south end Big Bert Grayson was respected by many, feared by a lot, and loved by all the women.
Bert stumbled out onto the street.
“Hey Bert, you better grab hold of one of those light poles so you don’t slip and fall on the ice.”
Bert saluted the guy and continued down the busy avenue. He maneuvered his massive frame toward the light poles swinging around some of them with one arm, waving and smiling at the passers-by with the other. A lot of them Bert knew by name.
The aroma of hot dogs and onions mingled together, drifting out into the street, teasing his nose, pulling him toward the little diner, about two hundred feet ahead. He was confident he could make it without falling. After all, he didn’t want to look like a common old drunk.
His hunger intensified with the aroma from the hot dog diner. Lizzie wanted to fix something for him, but he told her he would eat in town. Besides, Lizzie was busy primping while waiting for her new man friend to arrive. They were going out to dinner, then to see the new movie Dr. No. Lizzie was in love with James Bond.
He was now one hundred feet from the diner on the corner of Fifth and Tenth streets. The reputation of the diner had spread around the state. Hot dog lovers drove from all over to experience the best in the world at Jim’s Diner. On week-ends lines of men and women waited for hours to experience the taste.
As he muddled his way down the street, he paused every now and then to enjoy the sounds of the night. Loud voices of drunks cursing, the soft voices of women talking, loud jukebox tunes drifting out into the cold night air.
At last he was in front of the diner and still standing on his feet. He breathed a deep sigh of relief.
When he pulled the door open, heat wrapped around him like a warm blanket, causing him to wobble more, once inside he hung onto the glass door for balance.
He didn’t look around; he wanted to get to the empty stainless steel red vinyl-covered stool to sit down before he fell over. He lurched toward the counter at the empty seat beside a man he knew. With a thick tongue and slurred words, he managed to say, “Cain, it sure is cold outside tonight. I’m surprised to see you here so late. Your shift must have ended hours ago.”
“Yeah, it did. I thought I’d get a dog and suds while I waited for my ride home. We worked overtime in the roundhouse. The extra money always comes in handy this time of the year. Know what I mean. It pays for the heat in the drafty old house I live in. The old lady complains a lot about how cold the house always is.”
He nodded in agreement, remembering the drafty old century home he lived in. “I know what you mean.”
Bert wobbled around on the stool balancing himself. The diner was full. Some of the patrons were standing in the back, leaning on the walls drinking a glass of beer while talking to one another. He glanced around the room to see if he knew anyone. His eyes stopped at the back booth where he spotted the petite dark-haired woman. She was facing a heavy-set man. Bert patted his wallet in his shirt pocket. Lillian’s phone number was safely tucked inside. From the back, the man across from her looked like her piggish husband. Bert never understood why she put up with him.
He stared at her until she stopped talking, glanced up and made eye contact with him. The giant raised his hand and saluted her, almost falling off the stool when he brought his arm down. She smiled and turned her attention back to piggish.
Bert paused at the third booth, what caught his eye was a woman sliding an envelope across the table to a man who took it, then quickly shoved it inside his jacket pocket. The woman’s back was to Bert, he thought she looked like Donna, one of his nieces who hounded him, trying to buy some land he didn’t want to sell. He wobbled back around and continued his conversation with Cain.
“Would you lend me five dollars to buy a couple hot dogs and a beer? I didn’t get to the bank so I couldn’t cash my pension check. I brought it along thinking one of the bars might cash it for me, but they wouldn’t.”
Cain pulled a five-dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to him. Bert noticed Cain’s eyes stopped at the pension check sticking out of his shirt pocket.
“Sure, here you are.”
“Thanks, you’re a
real friend.” Bert pushed the five-dollar bill across the counter. “Jim, I’ll have two dogs and a beer.”
As Jim placed the hot dogs, beer, and change in front of him, Bert turned his head just in time to see Piggish turn around. He nodded at Bert before he turned his attention back to Lillian.
Bert took a big bite of his hot dog. “Hum.” He mumbled. A mixture of ketchup, mustard and relish dribbled out of both sides of his mouth, slid down onto his chin before lodging in his graying five o’clock shadow.
Cain handed him a napkin. “Better clean your face.”
Bert rubbed the napkin around his face, smearing the mixture all over his chin and cheeks. As he put the napkin down the door opened and a blast of cold wind blew in. A tall man covered head to foot with soot hurried in, leaving black shoe prints behind him on the white tile floor. He headed toward the empty seat on the other side of Bert, puffs of soot bellowed into the air as he sat down, then settled on the floor beneath his stool. Bert looked over his way, and with slow, slurred words and a mouth half full of hot dog, said, “Looks like you had a long rough night, Clay.”
“Yeah, I did. I’m tired and hungry,” he nodded at the cook to take his order. Clay looked like a raccoon with the whites of his eyes shining through the black dust on his face.
“Jim, give me three dogs and a six-pack to go.”
He turned to Bert. “Yeah, shoveling coal for eight hours into the big boilers on a train engine is back-breaking work and I’m not getting any younger.”
“Bert,” Clay said, “do you want a ride home?” He craned his neck around Bert and nodded at Cain.
“Are you ready to go?” Raccoon eyes grabbed his bag of dogs stuffing the six-pack of Bud under his arm before turning to Bert.
“Cain and I are leaving now, Bert. I think you missed the last bus home. Why don’t you let us drop you off? We’ll be driving right past your place on the way.”
“Okay, it’s nice of you guys to make the offer. Sure, why not? I can stretch out on the back seat while you fellas drive.”
On the way out the door with the two men, one on each side of him, he glanced over his shoulder at the woman in the back booth. She looked up and smiled, he watched her as the door closed.
They had a hard time getting Bert to the car. His huge feet would slip and slide in part from the ice and from being stupefied by the alcohol flowing through him. They made it to the old blue four-door. Cain opened the car door, then helped Clay stuff Bert into the back seat shutting the door. Cain got behind the wheel and raccoon eyes took shotgun.
The dark sedan slipped into the avenue, blending into the traffic flowing north. Bert’s mind faded into blackness as he drifted off into a drunken slumber.
CHAPTER 5
Present Day
The day after Lee was fired from his job he made his second mistake by going to the mailbox.
It was on this day his suspicions collided with the evidence. Lee now knew to follow the trail leading him through the door to the past and the clues to an old unsolved murder, presenting him with two choices. He could step across the threshold following the signs or seal the opening and walk away forever, but he wasn’t a close the door kind of guy.
In the semi-darkness on the deck of his houseboat, Lee stood resting against the wooden railing with his legs crossed in front of him sipping a cup of coffee and enjoying a perfect sunrise over the bay.
His eyes were glued on the horizon watching the brilliant ball as it started to creep above the water line of the Atlantic. It splintered the sky with streaks of red and orange patches reflecting a mirror image across the waters of the cove as it pushed the night away.
The sounds of silence were broken by the squawking of an occasional hungry sea gull flying overhead looking for breakfast and the mesmerizing tide rolling in and out.
The clean fresh smell of a new day lifted Lee’s spirits if only for a little while. The serenity was satisfying, but right now his body and soul were still numb. Yesterday seemed surreal, as though it happened to someone else, he couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that they did fire him.
Lee for some unexplainable reason could sense something different in the air. He had never had a sensation like it, and couldn’t put his finger on it, but it was there. As he turned to go back into his houseboat he stopped at the door, glanced up at the docks, scanning the area in all directions. He didn’t know what he was looking for, as he rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head. What was going on?
He stood at the door searching the docks north past the expensive yachts and houseboats bobbing in their slips. Jim Goodson owned the yacht next to his boat, he was careful not to complain too much about the way Lee’s houseboat looked. Jim only came to the docks a couple of times a year, the rest of the time his yacht sat idle in its moorings. It irritated Lee how the rich wasted their money.
His location on the docks gave him the opportunity to see everything that went on around the other boats that were close to his, when he was home. If he spotted something out of the ordinary around Jim’s yacht, he would call him and relay the information; then in appreciation Jim would every now and again send Lee an expensive bottle of champagne or wine as a thank you.
For most of his adult life Lee lived on the houseboat docked in slip number ten on the picturesque Taylor’s Cove Bay. On the outside his home looked a little rough, but on the inside it was his version of a castle. Early March on the bay brought mild warm breezes, not that hot sticky muck that arrives on the first day of summer.
Around 9 A.M. Lee stepped off the usual fifty feet on the pristine wooden dock to check his mail. This was the first time he noticed the disgraceful shape his box was in. It was attached to an oversized rope-wrapped piling on the well-maintained pier. It hung loose, dented, rusted, in bad need of a good paint job. It was almost as though Lee was seeing everything with new eyes since yesterday even the air had a different smell.
A yellow business-size envelope stood out in contrast to the dirty box. Lee pulled the mail out and noticed the return address. Seeing it was from Miranda he was leery about opening it, thinking he didn’t need this right now and at the same time speculating what she wanted from him of all people.
She was like a manipulative little kid sister. In fact, he nicknamed her Kid. He never understood what Joan saw in her or how they remained best friends all their lives. Joan was soft, quiet, and gentle, the complete opposite of Miranda.
Miranda, as a child was precocious. The year she was to go into third grade the school skipped her ahead two years. That’s when she met Joan, in the fifth-grade. Joan took Miranda under her wing making them inseparable from that day on. Miranda idolized Joan, and somehow they made it work through the years.
Ripping open the envelope while strolling back to the boat, he pulled a note out first, then noticed a handful of old letters along with copies of newspaper clippings tucked down inside. He theorized Miranda might be looking for some mystery to solve to occupy her time now that she was retired. She considered her twenty-five years as an investigator for the FBI her credentials that proved she was a brilliant detective.
He had to admit there were times when he called on Miranda to help research a project, and she always managed to come through with the information he needed.
From the first day he met Miranda he was jealous of her relationship with Joan. They were inseparable and dedicated to each other. Commitment was something he never gave to Joan. By her actions and inactions he could tell she never shared with him the things she shared with Miranda. What he didn’t realize, or maybe deep down inside he did, was he didn’t have a close relationship with Joan because he didn’t want one, but he didn’t want anyone else to have one with her either.
Lee’s world revolved around him and his work. He stayed away from Joan for weeks at a time, he believed if he didn’t have an emotional attachment to her his conscience wouldn’t nag him for neglecting her. Now he lives with the haunting dreams that wake him almost nightly.
/> Miranda and Joan became soul mates, the closer they grew to each other the distance widened between Lee and his wife. He knew it, and didn’t like the situation, but at the time Lee considered his job more important than Joan. It was convenient for him to keep the relationships the way they were. He didn’t care about the emotional cost to Joan. What mattered was his mental state and the position he held with his company.
It never occurred to him that he might have been the problem in their marriage, he was sure Joan was the bone of contention. But now he was beginning to see the world and himself in a whole new way.
Maybe he had been misjudging Miranda all these years, and she wasn’t so bad after all. As he remembered, she was drop-dead gorgeous like Joan.
Miranda’s technology skills were one of the reasons she secured a prized government job. She was the top in her class at M.I.T. Many of the major computer companies sent her offers to work for them, but her heart belonged to the FBI. She wanted to fight crime, serve her country and live a life of adventure.
He slid the paper out of the envelope.
Hi Lee,
I was cleaning out some of my old boxed up papers the other day when I came across a stack of letters.
They were written by a Lillian Grace who claims to know who murdered Joan’s Uncle, Bert Grayson many years ago here in Bridgetown, but Lillian said she couldn’t get anyone to believe what she was saying.
Jane had given her the letters.
Because you were gone so much, Joan decided to look into the murder to fill some of her lonely hours.
Joan kept running into brick walls, so she gave me the letters to read and asked me to look into the murder when I found the time.
I was busy with work as well as rebuilding this mansion, so I never took the opportunity to read them. As usual they got shoved aside and ignored until now.
Secret Keepers and Skinny Shadows: Lee and Miranda Page 3