Coach Trimble running was a thing of beauty, and the amount of ground that flashed by with every stride—amazing. Ingrid caught up to her, churning just about her fastest.
“Coach Trimble?”
“Hi, Ingrid.”
“Is that true about the Visigoths? Being fat?”
Coach Trimble gazed straight ahead. “I didn’t take much history,” she said.
“But they were vandals,” Ingrid said. “Pillaging and stuff. They got a lot of exercise.”
Coach Trimble didn’t reply at first, then said, “Keep working on that left foot.” Then she stepped up the pace, not by making any visible effort, more just shifting gears and letting some motor inside do the work. She was as smooth as Mr. Ferrand’s Mercedes. Ingrid couldn’t stay with her, not close.
Halfway through practice they had a water break. Coach Ringer came from the old school, didn’t like water breaks, but league rules were strict on that. While he doled it out in paper cups, the smallest you could get, like for rinsing at the dentist, Ingrid saw Joey ride up on his bike.
Ingrid took her water, went over to him, five or ten yards from the team.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.” He was looking at her feet. “Those your soccer cleats?” he said.
Uh-oh. Out of the blue, or left field, or wherever totally unexpected things came from. Ingrid glanced down to confirm what she already knew, that she was wearing the slightly too-tight black ones. “Yeah,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady but aware she wasn’t doing a good job. “Who else’s would they be?”
Joey looked at her real funny. Something was very wrong. “How come you told my dad you were working on a project about littering on the bike path?”
“I was ditching,” Ingrid said. “You knew that.”
“But I thought you were ditching at home,” Joey said. “What were you up to, anyway?”
“Up to?” said Ingrid. “Riding around. I got bored.” Lying to Joey made her feel bad. She even felt a little nausea in her stomach. This whole rickety thing was going to make her sick. Plus he was still looking at her funny, like he was seeing her in a new way, not good. It made Ingrid afraid and angry at the same time. “And what’s any of this got to do with my cleats?”
“I don’t know,” Joey said. She could see in his eyes that he knew something. “But—”
Coach Ringer blew his whistle.
“But what?” Ingrid said.
Coach Ringer blew it again, louder. “Any interest in being on this team, Ingrid?” he called.
She went back to practice.
“No ‘I’ in ‘team,’” Coach Ringer said as she walked by.
“But there are two of them in Visigoth,” Ingrid said, a remark she regretted right away.
“Take a lap,” said Coach Ringer. “Make it two.”
Ingrid ran two laps. Practice went bad. She lost all control over the ball. Her legs got heavier and heavier. Ingrid looked around for Joey, but he was gone.
That night Grampy came to dinner. This hardly ever happened, but whenever it did, Mom served the exact same meal—shrimp cocktail, steak with roast potatoes and a tomato-and-onion salad, and pecan pie for dessert—because that was Grampy’s favorite. Ingrid’s too.
“Freshen your drink, Pop?” Dad said.
“Don’t mind if you do,” said Grampy. He always wore a tie when he came to dinner—even if it didn’t go with his shirt, like the orange-and-green flannel one he had on now—and had his face shaved smooth and his thick snowy hair combed and wetted down.
Dad poured VO in Grampy’s glass. Mom and Dad were drinking wine, Ty milk, and Ingrid Fresca.
“What’s this?” Grampy said.
“Our new dog,” said Ingrid. “Nigel.”
“I knew a Nigel,” Grampy said.
“Who was he, Pop?” said Mom. Calling him Pop again, which she never did: Ingrid started to get an inkling of what this dinner might be about.
“Brit,” said Grampy. “Spring of forty-three.” They waited for more, but no more came. Grampy sliced his steak into bite-sized pieces and went after them one by one. Then he happened to see that Ty was watching him. “Better eat up, young fella,” he said. That meant he and Ty would be arm wrestling after dessert, a little ritual they had that Ty hated. He never won. Ty started eating up.
Ingrid remembered something. “Hey, Grampy,” she said, “do you know Mr. Sidney?”
Grampy looked up, roast potato half mushed in his mouth. “Myron Sidney?”
“I don’t know his first name. He drives the school bus and wears a hat that says BATTLE OF THE CORAL SEA.”
“That’s Myron. What’s he doing driving the school bus?”
“I think it’s his job, Grampy.”
Grampy looked puzzled, and for a moment not his normal strong self, more like other guys his age.
“Do you get together with him?” Mom said.
Grampy’s strength returned fast. “Why would I get together with Myron Sidney?”
“But weren’t you old friends?” Ingrid said. “At Corregidor?”
“Has Myron been running his mouth?” Grampy said. “Nothing changes.”
Sometimes best to answer a question with a question. “What was Corregidor all about?” Ingrid said.
Grampy got a faraway look in his eyes, gone so fast you had to be watching like a hawk, and Ingrid was. She would have bet anything he was thinking about that place beyond the point of fear. Him or you. Then he shook his head, had a big drink of his VO, and went back to eating.
After dessert—Grampy had seconds—came the arm wrestling. Grampy and Ty, his face already pink and they hadn’t even started, sat at one corner of the table, their sleeves rolled up. Hey! Ty’s forearm was just about as big as Grampy’s. That was new and should have been a good thing, but Ingrid couldn’t help thinking about the acne on Ty’s back.
Dad got their elbows positioned fairly and said, “One, two, three, go.” Usually it took Grampy about fifteen seconds to win, but not this time. This time it went on and on, their faces purpling up, plus all these grunts and groans and bared teeth. Ty got Grampy’s arm down, down, down, almost there, only two inches or so, but no more. Grampy’s face got fierce. He panted. Mom opened her mouth to say something, but Dad made a little sign to shush her. Grampy’s arm came up, inch by inch, back up to the top. They stayed like that for an unbearable amount of time. Ingrid saw a look in Ty’s eye that said “I can beat him.” Then Ty’s arm started going down. And when it did, it went down faster and faster. Boom.
“Whew,” said Grampy, slugging back the rest of his drink. Ty rolled down his sleeve, eyes on the floor. Grampy reached out, rumpled Ty’s hair. “Last time we do that,” said Grampy.
Ty looked shocked. “You’re not going to give me a chance to beat you?” he said.
“What sense would that make?” Grampy said. “From now on I’ll take my chances with Ingrid.”
“What have you been smoking?” said Ingrid, glad, oh so glad, to be a girl.
Ingrid and Ty started cleaning up, Ingrid clearing the table, Ty loading the dishwasher. Mom and Dad stayed in the dining room with Grampy. Dad took a folder from his briefcase. As Ingrid went into the kitchen with a stack of dessert plates, Grampy reached for the VO bottle and refilled his glass. Then she heard him say, “What’s this?”
“A little proposal we printed up,” Dad said. “For you to take a look at.”
“In your own good time, of course,” said Mom.
“Who is ‘we’?” Grampy said.
“A brand-new entity,” said Dad. “Still in the planning stages, depending on whether…just depending.”
“Entity?” said Grampy.
Ingrid went back into the dining room for the salad bowl. Mom and Dad sat on either side of Grampy, down at Dad’s end of the table.
“FHL Development Company,” Dad said.
“H for Hill?” said Grampy.
“Yes,” Dad said, with an encouraging smile.
�
�And F?” said Grampy. “What’s that F stand for?”
Ingrid paused at the other end of the table, salad bowl in hand. No one seemed to notice her.
“It’s a partnership with Tim,” Dad said. “Carol knows the architect who did the Negresco condominiums in Old Saybrook.”
“Understated,” said Mom. “Unobtrusive.”
“Didn’t they win some big award?” Dad said. “The thing is, Pop—”
“Who put that F right beside the H?” said Grampy.
Mom and Dad exchanged a glance behind Grampy’s back. “We could change the order,” Mom said.
“Put Carol in the middle,” said Dad.
Grampy was gazing at the first page of the proposal. He hadn’t even opened it. Ingrid could make out what looked like a watercolor of big white buildings backed into a hillside with tennis courts and golf course down below. “Condos,” Grampy said.
“Nicer than almost any houses in Echo Falls,” said Dad.
“You want to put condos on my land.”
“For a price,” said Dad. “Enough so you won’t have to worry about money anymore.”
“Who says I worry about money?” said Grampy.
“For God’s sake, I do the taxes on the place,” Dad said, his voice rising. “If you’re not worried about money, you damn well should—”
Mom interrupted, “What if you had a share, Pop?”
“A share?”
“In the partnership,” said Mom. “So you’d be selling to yourself, in a way.”
Mom was smart.
But it didn’t do her much good, because Grampy said, “Partners with the Ferrands?”
“That’s where the money comes from,” said Dad. “Tim’s the only one who can get the bank to back something this big.”
Unobtrusive and big at the same time? Dad and Mom didn’t quite have their story together, but maybe it didn’t matter, because Grampy didn’t seem to hear. He repeated, “Partners with the Ferrands?”
Dad banged his fist on the table, faced Grampy, took Grampy’s shoulder. “Pop,” he said, “listen to me. We need this.”
Grampy tried to shake Dad’s hand off, but Dad was a lot stronger. “You need condos on my land?”
“What you don’t know,” Dad said, and glanced around. He saw Ingrid. “Get in the kitchen.”
Ingrid went into the kitchen. The dishwasher chugged away and Ty was gone. She lingered just beyond the archway, out of sight.
“What you don’t know, Pop,” said Dad, lowering his voice, but not below the threshold of Ingrid’s hearing, “is that things aren’t too good at work right now.”
“Not good for who?”
“Me. Tim thinks I encouraged him to back this biotech start-up.”
“Biotech start-up?” From Grampy’s tone, Ingrid knew he had no clue what Dad was talking about.
“Some Princeton guys,” Dad said. “I found them, yes, but the truth is I told Tim to go slow, even if he doesn’t remember it that way.”
“What are you telling me?” said Grampy. His voice sounded a little thin and scratchy.
“The drug, chemical, hormone, whatever it was,” said Dad, “ended up making cancer worse. Tim lost a million bucks.” There was a long silence. “Do you understand the situation, Pop?”
Maybe Grampy nodded, one way or the other, because there wasn’t another word. What was the situation? Ingrid wasn’t sure. How did you lose a million bucks? Was Dad’s job in danger? Didn’t the Ferrands have other millions, or at least the stuff to make it, twenty-four seven? She put the salad bowl in the sink.
Mom came in, those two lines deep in her forehead.
“Mom? Is it true Mr. Ferrand owns houses in the Flats?”
“Yes.”
“Including the one where the woman got murdered?”
“I’m listing it tomorrow.”
“So the woman rented it from him?”
“Sort of,” said Mom. “She was pretty spotty about actually making the payments. Tim tried to get rid of her for years.”
Upstairs, in her pajamas, the ones with the big red strawberries, Ingrid passed Ty on her way to the bathroom.
“Good job,” she said. “You almost won.”
“I could have,” Ty said.
“I thought so too there for a while,” Ingrid said.
“No,” said Ty. “I mean I could have. Dad told me not to.”
Ingrid was stunned. “But why?” she said. It went against the whole sporting code they’d been brought up with.
“For Grampy’s pride.”
“Dad said that?”
“Uh-huh.”
Ingrid brushed her teeth and went to bed, more mixed up than she’d ever been. Her mind was full of questions. One rose to the top. Did Mr. Ferrand own a pair of paint-spattered Adidas sneakers? The bigger the crime, the more obvious the motive.
twenty-two
INGRID WOKE UP IN THE night. Nigel was crowding the bed, had her jammed into the wall, her face mashed against what was left of Mister Happy.
“Move.”
He wouldn’t move. She pushed at him, hands, feet, both together. He didn’t budge.
“You’re sleeping in the basement from now on.”
Still snoring, Nigel shifted over a few inches. What did that mean? Was he smarter, more obedient, better in every way, when he was unconscious?
Ingrid closed her eyes. Her own unconscious was bubbling around inside, turning things over at high speed. Shoes—red Pumas and paint-spattered Adidas; the hanged audiotape man; the good-bye letter that Philip Prescott wrote to The Echo; the missing Dial M for Murder playbill with the frightened Kate and the silhouetted actor. All that stuff spun around like one of those effects in a bad movie and kept sleep far away.
Hey.
She opened her eyes.
Who was he anyway, that silhouetted actor? So many questions. Maybe the only way to solve the case was to answer every one. Those names in The Echo’s Dial M for Murder review, for example—R. William Grant, David Vardack, Marvin Sadinsky: Didn’t the silhouetted actor have to be one of them? Philip Prescott had hired professional actors. Maybe they’d been reviewed in other places. What would Mia say at a time like this?
Google them.
Ingrid climbed over Nigel—he made a grumbling sound—and went to her computer. The house was quiet, except for the rain outside, falling softly on the roof. She Googled in alphabetical order.
J. William Grant: many, many hits for many J. William Grants, but no mention of acting, the Prescott Players, or Echo Falls.
Marvin Sadinsky: eight hits for three Marvin Sadinskys—a professor at Tulane, the head of a running club in Duluth, a scrap metal dealer in Long Beach.
David Vardack: one hit. It linked to a blog run by a fan of obscure movies. “Anybody ever see The Accused Will Rise with Jack Palance and Barbara Stanwyck, more than thirty years old now? Best thing in it’s this one scene with a young actor named David Vardack, where he gets trapped down an old well. Whatever happened to him?” No one had replied.
Ingrid gazed at the screen, pretty sure now that the silhouetted actor was David Vardack. But what did that mean? All she’d done was add even more questions to the pile. Did any of this—Philip Prescott, David Vardack—have to do with Kate’s murder? She didn’t see how; it was all so long ago. The Accused Will Rise, Jack Palance, Barbara Stanwyck, all complete unknowns. The only solid fact she had was Mr. Ferrand wanting to get Cracked-Up Katie out of 341 Packer—
Someone was moving in the hall. Ingrid turned. Her door opened and Dad walked in, wearing his robe, hair mussed up.
“Ingrid,” he said. “What are you doing up?”
“A little work,” she said.
“It’s three in the morning.”
“You’re up too,” she said.
“I saw your light,” said Dad. He leaned on her doorjamb, gazed at her. There were dark circles under his eyes. If he’d been sleeping, it hadn’t been a good one. “You’re a hard worker, Ingrid. Don’t forge
t to have some fun on the way.”
“I won’t.”
“Better get some sleep,” Dad said. “What’s that in your bed?”
“Nigel.”
“Jesus,” said Dad.
Ingrid shut off the computer. “Why does Grampy hate the Ferrands?”
“Grampy hates a lot of things,” Dad said.
“Why are the Ferrands so greedy?” Ingrid said.
“They’re not greedy. Tim’s a good businessman, that’s all.”
“Do you like working for him, Dad?”
“It’s a good job,” Dad said. “No complaints.”
Ingrid realized Dad was protecting her from worry: a real dad. But she was protecting him from worry too. She climbed over Nigel, got back in bed. “Does Mr. Ferrand play tennis?” she said.
“That’s a strange question,” said Dad. “He doesn’t like tennis, actually. He’s played squash all his life.”
That figured—mere tennis not elite enough for the Ferrands. “What kind of shoes do you wear for that?”
“Like tennis,” Dad said. “Why?”
“No reason,” said Ingrid. “Night, Dad. Love you.”
“Night,” said Dad, moving toward the door. He stopped. “Heard about the backward poet?” he said.
“Backward poet?”
“Who always wrote in verse,” Dad said.
“Please,” said Ingrid.
Friday night. The visitors wore black and silver, very cool uniforms. They did a lot of yelling during warm-up, yelling that drifted over to the parking lot where Ingrid was grilling burgers for the Boosters.
Stacy and her brother, Sean, came over, their faces painted red. Sean had his shirt off too, even though it was cold, or maybe because it was cold, and on his chest in big red letters was the word KILL. Was that about the game or something else? The problem with Sean—lots of problems with Sean, actually—was that you never knew.
“Want me to paint your face?” said Stacy.
“No, thanks.”
“How about just the tip of your nose?” Stacy said.
That struck Sean as pretty funny. “Yeah,” he said. “Like Rudolph.” Which was kind of immature coming from a seventeen-year-old of DUI fame. He uncapped a paint stick and leaned across the grill.
Down the Rabbit Hole Page 17