by Don Reid
Chapter Thirty
“Go ahead and say it.”
“Say what? What do you want me to say?” Cal asked.
“Just what you’re thinking. That I was too hard on him.”
“You’ve got your job to do. I’m not going to tell you how to do it.”
“Yeah, but you don’t like the way I’m handling it, do you?”
“Buddy, are you looking for someone to fight with? Do you want me to take issue with the way you’re handling things so you’ll have somebody to strike out at? Is that what this is all about?”
Buddy took a long, deep breath and let it out with an audible sigh before he spoke again. “Maybe so. And maybe you should have been a head doctor instead of a spirit doctor. I was too hard on him, wasn’t I?”
“He can take it. But I would like to know what you have in mind. What you’re basing all these assumptions on.”
“You’ve been away for a while and haven’t kept your ear to the track the way I have. It’s a small town, and you hear things. It’s my business to know what’s going on here. And just between you and me—it’s nothing I can even come close to proving—but I think Harlan has been having some trouble with the Drakos family.”
“Nick? The old man?”
“Maybe. Maybe Nicoli. Maybe Christopher. I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure there is some bad blood there.”
“I haven’t seen Nicoli since I’ve been back. I saw Christopher just last week.”
“And?”
“And he was Christopher. What can I say? Just as arrogant as he was when he was sixteen years old. Hasn’t grown up or changed much at all. What about Nicoli?”
“We’ve got a sheet on him as long as the Shenandoah River. And just about as crooked. I worry that Harlan is tied up with them in some way.”
“Gambling?”
Just as Cal asked this question and before Buddy could answer, two women walked past them, chatting as they went in the front doors of Lenity General.
“I guess standing in front of the hospital is no place to be having this conversation. You want to go someplace we can talk?” Cal asked.
“Sure. Let’s meet for lunch at … what do you say, one o’clock? I’ve got to go back by the station.”
“I’ll see you at one.”
That neither Cal nor Buddy specified where they would meet for lunch was an observation almost anyone overhearing their parting remarks would have made. But it was unnecessary for them to confirm that after all these years. At one o’clock, less than a minute before Buddy arrived, Cal was sitting in the last booth in the back on the right at Mulligans, sipping sweet iced tea and talking with Vic Princeton. Vic stood up when Buddy arrived and hugged him as he always did.
“Uncle Vic. Keep your seat.”
“Nah. I was just sitting here chewing the fat with the reverend till you got here. I’ll leave you two boys to yourselves.”
“No, I’m serious. I’d like for you to stay.”
“Really? A stooped-over, old white-headed codger like me?”
“Certainly, Uncle Vic,” Cal said. “We figure if you stay, you’ll buy. And we’ll put up with anything for a free lunch.”
“Now you’re sounding like the old Cal.” And Vic slapped Buddy on the back as he scooted back into the booth, all three of them laughing. “I was just asking Cal here how your other partner is. What a shock when I heard that this morning.”
“He’s going to be all right,” Buddy assured him. “That’s what this lunch is about. That’s why I wanted you to stay.”
“Sounds serious, boys,” Vic said as he pulled a Pall Mall pack from his shirt pocket. “Tell Uncle Vic all about it.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Eileen Briggs taught the sixth grade at Hanna Cole Elementary from the time she was fresh out of teacher’s college. The only leave of absence she ever took was when Buddy was born and then again when his little sister, Charlotte, came into the world. She instilled a work ethic in each of her children that would not only get them through their schooling with honorable grades but also take them through life with a responsible attitude. Apart from her teaching career and her job as homemaker and mother, Eileen made all of her own clothes and most of Charlotte’s. She taught a Sunday school class and still found time to read all the new novels that appealed to her. Buddy often said of her in later years that she was the only person he had ever known who had actually read all the classics so many claim to have read. She had covered all those titles while still in high school and college and after that mostly read for pleasure. Chub didn’t share any of those interests with her, and many who knew them wondered just what their attraction to each other really was. They were opposites on so many fronts and yet appeared to be extremely happy to all who were close to them.
Eileen was in the teachers’ lounge finishing a chapter in Edna Ferber’s So Big while her friend Fran Peers, a fifth grade teacher, sat grading papers. The door opened, and they both recognized the woman who entered with a flourish and sat down next to them. Her name was Barbara Bowls. She was known to all the students as Miz Bowls and was the floating music teacher for all the county grade schools. Every month she would go from school to school and room to room and hold a thirty-minute session in each. She carried a pitch pipe and taught silly little songs to all those willing to learn. Mostly she got stares from the little boys and giggles from the little girls, but she was young and pretty, in a shallow sort of way, and was able to get by with the things she had to do.
“Good morning, ladies. I hope you don’t mind if I join you,” Barbara Bowls said dropping into a chair.
“Not at all. Make yourself at home,” Eileen said, looking up from her book.
“Do either of you mind if I smoke?”
“Smoke?” Eileen repeated as Fran looked up from her papers.
“I know. I know. Everybody frowns on women who like to take a little puff now and then. I picked up the habit in college. Now don’t tell me neither one of you never tried it once or twice?”
“I’m afraid I’d have to tell you just that,” Eileen said with no malice or judgment in her voice.
“What about you, sister? You going to look down your nose too?”
Before Fran Peers could defend herself, Eileen spoke up again with the book still open in her lap.
“No one is looking down their nose at you, deary. I simply answered your question. Why don’t you just light up and relax and try not to be so defensive about what you’re doing.”
“I’m not … well, yes … I guess I am defensive, aren’t I? I have to sneak around, or everybody just thinks I’m the bride of the devil if I light up in public. I guess I just thought you two would think the same. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Eileen assured her.
“Have we met?” Barbara asked as she exhaled a stream of blue smoke.
“We have. I’m Mrs. Briggs from the sixth grade, and this is Mrs. Peers from the fifth.”
“How do you do, ladies? I do hope I haven’t made you mad. I am just so … well … I don’t know what. This schedule they have me on is driving me daffy. I wish I could stay in one place the way you do. I can’t do this the rest of my life.”
“How long have you been teaching?” Fran asked, speaking for the first time.
“This is my first year. But I’m quitting as soon as I can. I can’t stand it much longer.”
“What do you plan to do?”
“Oh, I’ll still teach. But just not at school. What I want to do is teach piano. Have a little studio somewhere in town and have the students come to me instead of me running all over the county to them. And no voice teaching. I hate that. Just piano. That’s my dream.”
“I think that’s such a sweet talent,” Fran said. “I always wished I had learned to play.”
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“It’s not too late, you know. I could teach you and have you playing songs in two months.”
“Oh, no. I could never do that.”
“You should try, Fran,” Eileen said. “You’d learn fast and be good at it, I’m sure.”
“Oh, heavens, no. I could never do that now. I don’t know where I’d ever find the time. But you know what I’d really like? I’d really like for my little girl to learn to play. What is a good age for them to start?” Fran asked Miz Bowls.
“Can she read?” Barbara asked, waving a cloud of smoke away from her face.
“Oh, certainly she can. She’s in the third grade.”
“Then she’s ready and ripe. I could start her tomorrow.”
“Really? Where would you teach her?”
“In my apartment on the top of New Street hill. Anytime after school from about three to six. Whatever would suit you. A lesson is thirty minutes long.”
“How much does it cost?”
“One lesson a week. A dollar a lesson. And she’ll be playing ‘Sweet Betsy From Pike’ with both hands by Thanksgiving.”
Fran looked at Eileen and said, “Oh, I’m so tempted to say yes. Do you think I should?”
“Do it,” Eileen encouraged her.
“Only one problem. We don’t have a piano.”
“Well, she’ll need a piano to practice on. The lessons would be useless if she couldn’t practice,” Miz Bowls said, flicking her ashes.
“I don’t know, then. I guess it just wouldn’t work.”
“Fran, you know what?” Eileen asked excitedly. “We have a piano in the parlor. Your daughter could come over and practice at our house anytime she wanted. Matter of fact, I’d love for someone to be using it. It’s just sitting there wasting away.”
Fran turned back to Miz Bowls. “How often would she have to practice?”
“I tell my students they need to practice every day. But nobody does. If she gets in twenty minutes a week, believe me, that’s more than most of the little scamps who have one perched in their living room.” Miz Bowls was grounding out her cigarette in a glass ashtray the whole time she was saying this.
“Eileen, are you sure? Are you sure your husband wouldn’t mind?”
“Heavens, no. He’s never home till eight o’clock anyway. She wouldn’t be bothering a soul.”
And that’s how it happened.
The first time he saw her was through the screen door as she was walking up their front walk with her practice book under her arm. Eight-year-old Buddy Briggs stood in the hall and watched eight-year-old Amanda Peers ring the doorbell. He was too shy to answer it, so he hid behind a bureau while his mother came to the door and ushered the little girl to the parlor and showed her the piano. Two days a week after school for the next two and a half years, Amanda came and practiced her scales and then her songs. Soon Buddy was answering the door and then lounging on the footstool while she played, and by the time the Peers bought their own piano, he was sorry to see her go. But she wasn’t gone from his life for long. They talked on the telephone, found each other at school, and were holding hands and writing letters to each other before they were teens. Amanda had been a part of his life for nearly as long as he had had a life. And she had been just as in love with him from that first moment as he had been with her.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Kicking off the conversation, Cal said, “Buddy, why don’t you start by telling us exactly why you think there’s more to all this than there appears to be.”
“Gut.”
“I won’t let you off that easy. There’s more to it than that.”
“I’ve been a cop for a long time. I sense things. I smell things. This doesn’t smell right. Harlan is my friend just like he’s yours, but we’re not getting the whole story. You can take that to the bank.”
“You may be right,” Vic interjected. “But what Cal’s asking is how you’re arriving at this opinion.”
Buddy took a long sip from the coffee that had just been set in front of him, and then drew a deep breath before staring intently into the gray marble veneer tabletop. Without making eye contact with either of his old and trusted friends, he said, “Nothing was stolen from the Stone house.”
“Maybe the guy didn’t have time to steal anything,” Cal added.
“You don’t kick in a door at five o’clock in the morning if you’re coming to burglarize. You cut out a square with a glass cutter and then unlock the window and quietly crawl through it and quietly go about the business of stealing whatever you came for. And you don’t do it that late in the morning. You do it at two or three a.m. The middle of the night. Not when people just might be getting up. This guy wanted a confrontation. Not silverware or grocery money.”
Neither Cal nor Vic said anything for a long moment. Then they looked at each other across the table, and the elder said to the younger, “He really is a good cop, isn’t he?” When Cal nodded and smiled and agreed with him, Vic continued, “I never would have put all that together. But that’s right. Why make a noise with such an entrance if you didn’t want to be discovered?”
“You said earlier that you suspected one of the Drakos. How do you connect them to all this?” Cal asked.
“There’s been talk. Not from Harlan, mind you. He hasn’t said a word to me. Not like him not to, but he has never even hinted at anything. But everybody else in town is talking. You probably know something, Uncle Vic. You’ve heard the gossip. Is he gambling with them?”
Vic rubbed the expanse of his shiny forehead and grimaced when he said, “I never want to get between you boys. Never have, and don’t ever want to. Especially if it might be something … oh, I don’t know. Maybe something illegal.”
“Like the poker games in the back of Drakos after hours every Thursday night? I know all about them,” Buddy said.
“Well, there’s some pretty big money passed around that table each week. Out-of-towners coming in on the train from Richmond and DC. And some local big spenders too.”
“If you know all about them,” Cal asked, “why hasn’t somebody done something to shut them down? Breaking the law is breaking the law.”
Vic and Buddy looked at each other this time, and the glance they exchanged silently asked the question of who was going to tell Cal the truth. Vic stepped up.
“Lot of important people go to those games. You’ve been away, but ole Nick Drakos hasn’t. He’s been right here, digging his heels in a little firmer every year. He’s got a lot of people in town owing him.”
“And you think Harlan has gambling debts to the Drakos family? That’s what you think?” Cal asked Buddy directly. “You think Nick or one of his sons shot Harlan?”
“Could be.”
“Have there been other incidents stemming from this secret weekly poker game?”
“Some,” Buddy admitted. “Nothing as serious as somebody getting shot.”
“Fights?” Cal asked.
“Yeah, fights. Even a robbery one night a couple years ago.”
“Somebody robbed a poker game?”
“What easier place is there to rob?” Vic chimed in. “The money is all laid out on the table. And who’s going to call the cops? Nobody that’s been in the game, that’s for sure.”
“Did the guy get away?”
“We think he hopped a train that was leaving seconds after he ran out of the back door of the restaurant,” Buddy said.
“You mean you know all about this robbery and this weekly game, and it’s still going on? How come? How come you haven’t closed it down?”
“Don’t get riled up, Reverend,” Vic said with a laugh and a hand across the table on Cal’s forearm. “Mt. Jefferson’s got its share of vice just like any other town, big or small.”
“Yes, but if you know about it �
�� I mean, what stops you from going in there and turning over the table and trashing the joint?” Cal was getting angry.
After another long, awkward moment, Vic spoke again. “Let me tell you exactly why, so our pal Buddy here won’t have to. It’ll be easier for me to say it. You see, our illustrious chief of police, William J. Westover, is a regular Thursday night customer in Drakos’s back room. It would be rather unhandy for Buddy or anyone else on the force to implement the law to its fullest extent.”
Cal looked wide-eyed at Buddy and asked, “Shirley Westover’s daddy?”
“That would be him.”
“Used to direct traffic after the football games with two flashlights?”
“Yep.”
“And we used to laugh at him …”
“And we still do.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Nothing separated the Mulligans the first twenty-six years of their lives. Through high school they were even closer than in elementary years. The sports they played, the memories they made, and the people they met and knew together became the bonds that nourished the friendship into adulthood. They had planned on leaving for college together, but the health of Harlan’s father put the first kink in that unfulfilled design. Harlan stayed behind to tend to the family business while Cal and Buddy went off to find their purposes in life through higher education. Even that plan didn’t work out exactly as they thought it would, but in the end, all three wound up back in Mt. Jefferson. Buddy was the first to come home.
It had been preached to him by his mother from the time he walked into the door of his first-grade classroom: “You must have fifteen years of education. Don’t think seven years of elementary and four of high school like so many of your friends do. You will go to college, and you will finish. I don’t care what you become; I just want you to be an educated man.”
She believed in him and his sister and wanted life to be as good for them as possible. On the other hand, he had heard a different message from his dad in those quiet moments of father and son.