Summer People

by Aaron Stander

  André and Mr. Charles, the proprietors of the Third Wave, were new to the area. They had purchased the only beauty shop in the village, Betty’s Beauty Nook, in late fall and had spent most of the winter renovating both the interior and exterior. The building housing the business, dating back to the twenties, had originally been a filling station. Betty’s husband converted it to a beauty shop in the late fifties when they moved north from Detroit. The building had stood empty for a number of years after Betty’s death.

  When the Third Wave first opened in early April, the local women were pleased to have a beauty shop in the village again, but didn’t know quite what to make of André and Mr. Charles. They dressed identically in skin-tight black pants and loose white canvas pullovers that opened in a “V” to mid-chest. They sported rich tans and hair in matching styles—carefully shaped, and tinted. Their sandal-covered feet showed the extensive nature of their tans.

  The new interior of The Third Wave left no traces of Betty’s. The reception area had beenexpanded, and André and Mr. Charles now worked their miracles in the area that had once held a grease pit and service bay. The large aluminum coffee urn had been replaced by a silver tea service, and the coffee now had a hint of cinnamon, chocolate, or almonds. The foam cups had been supplanted by Belleek cups and saucers. A neat pile of delicate linen napkins was renewed throughout the day. The floor, once covered in maroon vinyl, was now a lustrous pink marble. The walls were papered in subtle pastels and the windows cloaked in elegant lace.

  While the women of the village found the “boys”—that’s the way they were referred to locally—“a bit much,” the women from Birmingham, Grosse Pointe, West Bloomfield, and Winnetka were comforted to find a bit of home when they came north for the summer.

  As Lisa sat waiting to get her hair cut she tried to interest herself in the current issues of House Beautiful, House and Garden, People, Town and Country, and Redbook. She finally settled on looking at the pictures in Architectural Digest. She glanced up briefly as another woman came in and settled into a chair across from her in the waiting area. She glanced up a second time as the woman sorted through the pile of magazines. Lisa thought the woman looked vaguely familiar. She couldn’t immediately place her. The woman looked back, and Lisa could tell she was also struggling.

  “Hello, you look quite familiar, I’m Lisa Alworth.” “I was thinking, too, that you looked familiar. Is that a married name?”

  “Yes, Weston was my maiden name.”

  The woman looked thoughtful, “Lisa Weston, that sounds more familiar. Now I know who you are. You were a pledge my senior year. I’m Marilyn Case; I was Marilyn Holden then.”

  “I remember you, you were Missy Morrison’s big sister, weren’t you?” asked Lisa.

  “Yes, I haven’t thought of her in years. Ann Arbor seems like another life now, doesn’t it? We grow up.”

  “Or at least we get older,” said Lisa with a wry smile.

  “I remember about you; you were a bit of a wit. You never seemed to take any of the hocus-pocus of the sorority seriously. You were one of the more interesting pledges. I take it you’re married and have a summer place in the area.”

  “The name is left over from a starter marriage. I should have changed it back. But you’re right on the second count. My family has a place here. And you?”

  “My husband and I just bought a condo on the peninsula. I’ve loved it here, been coming up here since I was a child. My parents had a place on the big lake.”

  “Are you up for the whole summer?” asked Lisa.

  “Yes, I came up as soon as the kids were out of school. Had to go back for a few days for a funeral; came back up last night.”

  “No one close, I hope.”

  “Yes and no. It was my older brother, but we were hardly close.”

  Lisa made the connection between Marilyn’s maiden name and Randy Holden. She was chagrined and didn’t know what to say next.

  Marilyn continued, “I’m sure you heard about it. It was big news up here. He was shot.”

  “Just as you said that it occurred to me that your brother might have been the victim. It must have been a horrible thing for…”

  “It was unpleasant, but not surprising. My one reservation about buying the condo in this area was that I might have to run into him. I don’t think we had talked in five or six years, not since my father died.”

  “Why weren’t you surprised?”

  “Randy was a low life, a cheat, a scoundrel, a rake.” She enunciated each derisive term with great care and vehemence. She continued, her tone lightening. “And he was handsome, polished, and extremely charming. He used everyone, always had. I imagine this time he conned the wrong person and got himself killed. From the time we were kids he was always in some kind of trouble. My parents were two of the most ethical and proper people you could find. Randy caused them endless grief. And they did everything they could, made sure he got a good education, helped get him jobs, covered bad checks, and helped him get out of trouble numerous times. I think they finally gave up on him. Thank God they didn’t live long enough to see this.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “It wasn’t like he stole hubcaps. He was always a confidence man, always taking people in and then using them. By the time he was in high school there were already major problems. I was much younger, and my parents tried to keep me in the dark about what was going on. I just knew that every time there was a major crisis at home, Randy was in some new difficulty.”

  “But you don’t know exactly…”

  “Not the early problems, I was kept ignorant of those. Later, when he was working as a lawyer, well that was all in the papers. My mother once told me that a psychiatrist friend said that Randy had a sociopathic personality—she didn’t really understood what the psychiatrist was telling her. From that point on she felt better about Randy because she didn’t think he was responsible for his misdeeds; his problems were caused by some illness. That’s when I was a junior or senior in college, a psych major. I didn’t have the heart to tell her those big words just meant Randy was a sleaze-bag with a criminal mind.”

  “And the funeral?”

  “I didn’t want to go. But one of my father’s oldest friends, a man who was his law partner for over forty years, called and reminded me that my parents would want me to do the proper thing, regardless of what my brother did to me. This man handled my parents’ estate, knew my brother screwed me out of the family cottage, among other things, but he wanted to make sure I did the ‘proper’ thing. I met the new wife, a real young woman, and worked with her to plan the funeral. She was really nice; I liked her a lot. That was one of the amazing things about Randy. He was always able to attract interesting women. Once they figured him out, they got out, but it didn’t take him long to come up with another one.”

  “Sounds like a real charmer,” said Lisa sarcastically.

  “That’s a good name for him, a charmer. Anyway, that’s finished, and I can get on with the summer. It’s good we’ve finally got a decent beauty shop, isn’t it? Betty didn’t understand hair.”

  Mr. Charles came out with a client and entered her bill on the cash register. After he was paid and tipped, he walked her to her car. Before Lisa could be ushered in Marilyn offered, “It’s good to see you. I think I would like to know you as an adult. If you can stand two middle-school boys, I’d love to have you over for lunch. I’ll write our number on the back of a card.” She took one of the business cards—neon blue letters on a hot pink background— from the counter, wrote her number and gave it to Lisa.

  “I would like to do that. I’ll call you early next week.”

  “Good,” said Marilyn, “I’m looking forward to seeing you again.”

  41

  The sound of the car door brought Claire Lapointe out onto the back porch, a slender, sinewywoman in her late seventies, with grayblack hair pulled back into a bun, and thin, wire-rimmed glasses perched below the bridge of a delicate nose. Ray rem
embered when he was a boy, how his mother used to bring him along when she would visit Claire. He remembered how strikingly beautiful she used to be. She was still a beautiful woman.

  “Thanks for coming, Ray,” she said as she came down the porch steps. “Dad’s in the barn working on something. He just won’t let go of this. He’s convinced that someone moved that old truck, and he keeps going on and on about it.”

  “And you don’t think it was moved?” asked Ray. “Look, Ray, he doesn’t seem to remember hardly anything from one day to the next. The boys just don’t appreciate what I have to put up with. They just think I’m going on about how forgetful Dad is. He hadn’t used the truck since last fall. I’m surprised it even starts. How would he remember where he left it? Half the time he can’t remember where to get a clean pair of shorts. I’ve been putting them in the same drawer for over fifty years. But humor him, Ray. Humor him.”

  Ray walked to the barn. It was empty. He followed the sound of a motor to the next building, a small garage. John stood in front of an electric grinder. A shower of sparks came from the piece of steel he was holding against the grinding wheel. Ray walked to one side and grabbed his elbow. John jumped. He switched off the grinder. “You scared the hell out of me, Ray.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

  “Thanks for coming, Ray. Someone’s been messing with my truck, and that old woman,” John, with irritation in his voice, pointing toward the house, “just don’t believe me.”

  “Show me the truck,” said Ray.

  John led him behind the garage. “Last fall I mounted the snow plow and left it sit right here. Look where the grass grew long. That’s where it sat. I come back here yesterday and the truck is over here. Just ten feet over, but over here. And there is one more thing, Ray, I topped off the tank last fall so it would be ready to go. Now more than a quarter of a tank is gone. Now tell me that someone didn’t take the truck.”

  “And you never used the truck to plow snow?”

  “No, I wanted to, but the old woman,” he motioned toward the house again, “she won’t let me. She hired young Bob Johnson down the road. She said she didn’t want me dying of a heart attack just to save a few dollars on snow plowing. She don’t let me do anything anymore.”

  “Could one of the boys have borrowed the truck?”

  “No, I checked. I called Junior just to see if he took it. I sometimes forget things, you know what I mean? He said he hadn’t used it for several years. And Bobby is working down state. He hasn’t been up here for several months.”

  “I didn’t know Bobby had moved,” said Ray.

  “He got transferred down state sometime in early spring. He didn’t want to move, but the manager of the Detroit branch had a heart attack, and they needed him. He’s hoping the guy will get better so he can move back.”

  “When did you notice the truck had been moved?” Ray asked.

  “Yesterday morning, I came back here looking for something, and I knew something was wrong. You know how that is. At first I thought I must be confused, but as soon as I walked over here and saw this pattern in the grass, I knew that it had been moved.”

  “Other than the missing gas, the truck hasn’t been damaged or vandalized in any way.”

  “Not that I can tell. I took it for a little drive and everything seems to work all right.”

  Ray walked around the truck looking for new damage. The sheet metal on the old truck was covered with dings and rust holes. Last, Ray inspected the snow blade, held by a hydraulic piston about a foot off the ground. Ray noted that in two places the coating of rust, that uniformly covered the surface of the blade, had been scratched away. The surface of the blade had several deep gashes where the rust had been scraped away, exposing bare metal.

  “John, when you took your test drive, you didn’t push anything with the blade, did you?”

  John came to his side; Ray pointed to the gashes on the blade.

  “To be truthful, Ray, I didn’t notice those. See what I tell you, someone did use this truck. When you go back, stop at the house and tell the old lady about this. Every time I tell her something, she says I’m just getting old and funny. Tell her, will you?”

  “I’ll stop and have a word. And I’m going to send my evidence technician to check the truck for prints. She’s a pretty young woman, John. You’ll like talking to her. She’ll have to take your prints, too.”

  “Mine?”

  “She has to be able to tell the difference between your prints and any others that might be in your truck. Don’t touch the truck again until she is finished, understand?”

  “I hear you. I won’t go near the damn thing till you’re done with it.”

  “When I get back in the car, I’ll call in. She’ll probably be here tomorrow morning. I’ve got to run.”

  “You will stop at the house and tell her, Ray?”

  “Yes, I’ll stop and have a word with your wife. I promise,” said Ray.

  42

  Dell was standing outside the garage having a cigarette as Ray approached.

  “Cigarette, Sheriff?”

  “I quit.”

  “Another one, hardly any of us left anymore.”

  “Time to give it up, Dell. Those things can kill you.”

  “Look Sheriff, a whole lot of things have been trying to kill me. Nothing’s done it yet. At this point I’ve outlived most of my friends. A few cigarettes won’t make a hell of a lot of difference.”

  “I want to look at that Triumph again.”

  Dell walked with him to the fenced storage area.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I want to see if there is any sign that the car was hit by something, something like the blade of a snowplow.”

  Dell walked around the car with Ray.

  “I can tell you one thing, Sheriff. It wasn’t a head-on. The front bumper and grill are the only things that aren’t busted up.”

  Ray walked around to the rear of the car. “What happened to the back bumper?”

  “It wasn’t there when the car was brought in. When the rear slammed into that tree, it probably got torn off.” Dell looked from one side to the other. “You can see how the damn thing was attached. Fucking limey engineering. Bumpers on their cars were too damn flimsy to do any good. This one probably caught on the tree. You can see where the bolt pulled through the sheet metal. You got two broken studs back here, and the sheet metal is torn on the other side. Those bumpers were never anything more than trim, anyway. They didn’t have any strength. I’m glad these damn cars aren’t around anymore; they were a royal pain in the ass to work on. Five pounds of shit in a three-pound bag, you know what I mean, five pounds of shit in a three- pound bag. You could never get the damn things to run right.”

  “Dell, where is the rear bumper?”

  “It still may be in the woods somewhere. If Jeff threw it on the truck, it would’ve been stacked with the scrap over there.” He motioned with his hand. “Company from Grand Rapids has a truck come through once a month and pick it up. He was here yesterday. If your bumper was in that pile, it’s gone now.”

  “Dell, I told you to hold onto the car until we were through with the investigation.”

  “Car’s there, Sheriff. But we can’t be responsible for all the bits and pieces.”

  Ray drove back to Ely road. He parked on the shoulder near where Grimstock’s car left the road and carefully climbed down the steep embankment. The car’s path was still clearly marked by the bent and broken underbrush and grass.

  As he descended the hill, he carefully checked for the missing bumper. Part of the way down the hill, he stopped at a large maple. The base of the tree was badly gashed, bark peeled away, its white interior cut and torn.

  Ray circled the tree in widening circles, going beyond where the bumper might have been thrown. Then he went to the base of the hill and carefully worked his way to the area of the car’s final resting-place. He then followed the path used to remove the car
. He followed the tracks of the dozer back to the highway.

  He was disappointed in not having the bumper, not that it necessarily would have proven anything, but it might have been one more piece of the puzzle.

  43

  Ray was parked in an “Authorized Vehicles Only” space in front of the restaurant near the harbor. He was leaning against the car— back arched, arms folded, mirrored sunglasses hiding his eyes— talking to one of the charter boat captains as Marc drove past looking for a parking place. Ray was still leaning on the car when Marc and Lisa arrived. As they approached, Ray began to playfully berate Marc for inviting him to dinner and then showing up long after the appointed time.

  Once inside, the hostess, a pretty young woman with a gluedon smile, told them in a scolding tone that since they were more than half an hour late for their reservation, their table had been given to another party. She added that if they would be willing to wait, she would have another table in about thirty minutes. She directed them toward the bar and said she would find them when their table was ready.

  They walked through the bar out onto a deck that was cantilevered over the river and found a table on the outside perimeter. Once seated, Lisa glued the same smile and in a mocking tone, started delivering the hostess’s speech again, word for word.

  “Please,” protested Marc cutting her off, “it was bad enough the first time.”

  Ray, teasing, remarked, “If the woman knew why you guys were late, she’d really have a reason to lecture you.”

  “You better have your woman friend get back here soon. Your fantasy life is getting out of hand,” Marc kidded back.

  “That would be good. I talked to her last night; looks like it will be at least a week or two. What are we celebrating tonight? Dinner on the town and all. When I told you I wanted to talk this whole thing through, I just meant coffee on the deck as usual.”