by Rich Foster
Now eight months later she could still ill afford the cup of coffee she stopped to buy. She hurried up to her ward. At the nursing desk, heads came up upon her arrival. There was an awkward pause when no one knew what to say. Calley bit her lip, fought back possible tears and said. “Please don’t tell me you’re sorry. Please help me pretend this is an ordinary day.” An unspoken sense of relief moved through the staff. After all, what could one say? And so, somehow, the day gained a sense of normalcy as Calley tried to lose herself in her work.
At Abby’s coffee shop the early morning regulars passed the gossip while Abby passed the food
“What the hell happened?” asked Hiram as he took his regular stool. He took his coffee at Abby’s every day before opening the hardware store. “Somebody said something about Lester being dead?”
Abby poured him a cup. “Well Luis, the regular Deputy was over at the church when I opened. But he never came over. About ten minutes later another car joined him and the two of them hustled toward the church. I made a comment about it to Bobby, saying it seemed kind of strange. So he hoofed it over there. When he came back he was mighty shaken up. He said someone hung themselves in the belfry! I asks him who, but he didn’t know. Little while later the coroner’s van pulled in. A couple of guys from the restaurant wandered over there but the other cop, not Luis, he’s always real sweet, more or less told them to beat it.”
Hiram poured too much cream in his coffee as he listened. Without a pause Abby dumped the coffee, poured him a fresh one and went on talking.
“So the next thing I see is Will Farron’s jeep pull in. A bit later the van leaves, and then Luis leaves but he doesn’t even stop, just drove on by. The other cop came out a couple minutes behind him. When Will came down the hill, Arlo… do you know him?”
Hiram nodded his head.
“Well he walks out and flags Will down. When Arlo came back he said Will looked like a sick dog and that the Reverend hung himself from the belfry rope.”
“It's a shame,” said Hiram sipping his coffee. “But what could the man do? He was finished here. Who’s going to listen to a minister who pees his pants when a gun is shoved in his face?”
“I didn’t see you rushing forward to get shot,” piped up Herb Loudon as he ate a stack of hot cakes, looking like a raccoon from his matching black eyes.
“No but you didn’t see me busting my nose running for the door,” countered Hiram. That shut Loudon up. “It’s a shame about the Haskell girl, but the others knew what they were doing. Well maybe not Desmond, he was a little touched.”
“He was retarded, for God’s sake. You make it sound like he was possessed by fairies.” Abby chided.
“Well like I said, he wasn’t all there.” Hiram tapped the side of his head with his forefinger.
“He was also the happiest person I knew,” Abbey pronounced. “Never complained, never had a problem. When something went wrong he’d say, God will take care of it.”
“A little touched,” Hiram said one last time, still tapping his head.
The talk went on. People came for coffee and eggs. They left with gossip. Soon word of Lester’s suicide spread around village and across the valley.
At nine-fifteen Lou Harding, in search of news, swung past the Sheriff’s station to skim the night reports. A few minutes later he left, driving hell bent for Mason Forks. He poked around town picking up what he could. He interviewed people about Leeds. He took photos of the parsonage. Later he jimmied a window to get into the church. There was nothing to see. Lou was undeterred. He made a hangman’s noose out of the bell pull and photographed it. What he lacked in facts he filled in with creative fiction.
The local television network missed the story completely, so the Clarion scooped them. Tuesday morning, the Clarion carried the rather lurid photograph of the noose framed by the belfry door. The article’s caption, bordered on yellow journalism, read, “Cowardly Churchman Commits Suicide.”
After talking with Will Farron at the church, Egan walked back across the grass to the parsonage. That morning, after he ascertained no one was in imminent danger he could not legally search the house. To do that he would normally need Grace Leeds’s consent or a search warrant, but the house belonged to the church. The occupancy agreement was solely a part of the late Reverend Leeds’s contract. He was dead, so the lease was null and void. Permission from Will Farron, as president of the church board of trustees was sufficient to enter.
If Egan thought Grace Leeds was even remotely complicit in her husband’s death, he would have filed for a warrant; avoiding the off chance it might kill the case in court. However, if Mrs. Leeds had any secrets in the house, she took them with her.
The spare bedroom was converted to an office. He sorted through the desk. The only interesting item was a photo of a young couple smiling in front of a geyser. On the backside of the snapshot, neat handwriting read,
“Our honeymoon. Lester and me at Old Faithful.”
Egan studied the man. It was hard to see in the photograph, the same person as the aged, bloated face, he had seen at the church. Grace gazed up at her new husband with adoring eyes. She clung to his right arm with both hands in a cloying way. The years had not only eroded their looks, it evidently eroded her love and devotion.
He opened a filing cabinet beside the desk. Color-sorted folders documented their life. They had few accounts. Egan found statements for a joint checking-savings account with $481 in the first and $3,241 in the other. A brokerage account showed a market value of $22,312, split between stocks and a money market account. It wasn’t much to leave behind after thirty years of work.
The brokerage firm was the same as his. Egan picked up the phone on the Lester’s desk and dialed the number. He waited past the electronic options. When he got a human voice, he asked for the manager.
“Hello, Dale, Pat Egan here.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Well this is official business. Lester Leeds, of Mason Forks, died this morning, so you probably want to put a lock on his accounts.”
“I see. Well thank you for the notification.”
“Now unofficially, can you tell me if their accounts have been drained lately? I’d hate to have to get a warrant.” Egan figured if Grace Leeds was trying to disappear, cash would make the trail a lot more difficult.
“I don’t even have to look. Mrs. Leeds called Tuesday morning to say she planned a large withdrawal. She wanted me to make sure we had the cash on hand.”
“How much?”
“I can’t say, but between the money market fund and a little stock we liquidated it came to exactly half.”
“Thanks.” Egan hung up. Exactly half? It smelled more like divorce than trying to disappear. If so, he had a fair chance of tracing her through her credit cards. He went back to the file draw.
They had one visa. The last balance was less than two hundred dollars. A check number and date showed it fully paid, on time. He copied down the visa number.
The Leeds’s cars were both paid for, as evidenced by the titles he found. One car was a Saturn sedan and the other a Dodge van. Both car companies were out of business, he thought, just like the Leeds’s marriage. He wrote down the Saturn’s VIN and plate numbers. The Dodge van was in the garage.
The last item of interest was a term life insurance policy for $250,000 dollars. There was one for each of them, naming their as the beneficiary. Well, he thought, Grace Leeds may have aged since the photo however someone might find her an attractive widow.
Back at the station, Pat filed a search warrant request for the Visa account. It asked for all transactions posted to the account for the past five days with continuing access. Visa was a stickler about disclosure rules. The signed warrant was electronically filed with Visa and within an hour he had the Leeds’s current statement.
An electronic trail of gas charges led from Red Lake, across the heart of the country, straight to California. It surprised him the trail did not end in Reno. There
were several motel postings, all in different states; the last posting was for The Beachfront Motel in Santa Barbara.
Egan went on line and web searched the motel. Their home page popped up.
Near the waterfront! Offering hospitality within walking distance of the beach. Close to beautiful downtown Santa Barbara.
Egan had to admit the pictures made it look good. He dialed the number. When the clerk answered, he asked for Grace Leeds’s extension. Privacy laws were a headache. A simple question like “is she registered” would have been rebuffed. But if he asked for the person’s room, they would happily connect him making it the customer’s problem. The phone rang four times before a machine took the call. After the beep he said, “This is Detective Pat Egan from Red Lake. Please contact me as soon as possible.”
He left his number. If she didn’t call, he would ask the Santa Barbara Police Department to look her up.
At St. Catherine’s Hospital a Sheriff’s van waited at the ambulance entrance. The building’s doors opened. Two deputies escorted Robert Goodman out wearing handcuffs and shackles. He moved stiffly as he shuffled. His head was bandaged. His face was puffy, discolored by black and blue. The lid of his left eye bulged like a sickly colored Easter egg. His lower lip was twisted; crisscrossed by a web of sutures where the doctor closed a gash. The fingers of his right hand were splinted, all five having been smashed by the heel of an inmate’s shoe.
The deputies assisted him into the van where they shackled him to the floor, before slamming the door shut and driving away.
Ten minutes later they arrived at the county jail. Robert was taken through booking again. His custody status was changed from the hospital to solitary lock-up. A jail guard walked him to his cell. The endless noise of jail life bounced off the hard surfaces. Somewhere an inmate was screaming. Bars clattered. The deputies’ shoes squeaked on the linoleum floor. They stopped at a cell door. Robert’s cuffs and shackles were removed. He was told to enter. The cell door slammed shut behind him. Robert Goodman never said a word.
Lucas spent the afternoon rummaging through his uncle’s home. Amongst his uncle’s papers he found a small ledger. In it were recorded the names and information of people Elijah helped. It told how much he gave and what the money was for. Most of them had a short addendum added in a different color pen. He thumbed through them. “Graduated with honors.” “Re-married-Living in Minneapolis” “Surgery successful!” The book, marked volume six, went back four years. The amounts were not always a lot but Elijah impacted a lot of lives. On the library shelf he found ledgers one through five.
Next to these he saw a group of novels all penned by the same author, Hunter Wells. Lucas had never heard the name. The books were in original paper jacks and protected by a cellophane wrap. Evidently, they meant something to Elijah. He opened one. The backside of the title page showed the novel was a first edition and over forty years old.
The summary on the jacket read like boilerplate fiction. When he leafed through the book, reading a sampling of pages he found the writing to be captivating. The style was more literature than pulp fiction. He set the book aside for reading later.
A collection of framed photos showed his uncle in various places around the world usually with people he did not know. One caught his eye. It was his mother in her wedding dress. In this photo his uncle was at her side. They were both so young. His mother died when he was fourteen, she was forever frozen in time not that much older than this photograph. On the other hand he had known his uncle only as an older man, so it was equally odd to see him vibrant and in his early thirties.
Memories of his childhood flashed across his mind. Recollections of his mother left a hollow ache within him. After thirty years he could still feel the pain of her death. Lucas took the picture and the novel and to the guest room. The snapshot captured two of the most, emotionally, important people in his life. When he left Mason Forks he would take the photo with him.
He made himself a lunch of salami on rye, adding pepper-jack cheese, mustard and pickles. Adding a bottle of Downtown Brown Ale he carried his lunch out on the front porch. As he ate a hawk soared silently above the trees, the bird banked hard and swooped low over the field. It spread its wings, coming almost to a stall, while thrusting its claws down and forward. An instant later the wings beat furiously. The hawk gained momentum and altitude. An unfortunate rabbit dangled from its talons. The kill took only seconds.
After lunch, Lucas looked around the house until he found a rucksack. He filled it with a water bottle and some snack foods. Outside he climbed into his uncle’s Ford Bronco and left for the Four Apostles. He drove through town, which was quiet, and continued until he came to the turn off for the Four Apostles Recreation area. The access quickly became a rutted one-lane road that meandered along a stream. The water cascaded and foamed over the rocks. A canopy of trees shaded the road and creek.
His route left the stream. It began to rise as it switch-backed up the side of the mountain. Behind the jeep a plume of dust danced in the air. The deciduous trees gave way to pines. Gradually, these yielded to areas of raw, granite outcroppings.
As he gained altitude, the valley was visible below. In the distance, Red Lake shimmered. The road passed through two hard cuts. Elsewhere, the shoulder was a precipitous drop. He came through a short tunnel that pierced a bluff, after which the land opened out to a broad meadow. Tall pines rimmed the grass. A narrow waterfall dropped off the rock rim above. It fell into a small pool, from where a small stream ambled across the field. Campsites were scattered among the pines. Tents filled the few occupied sites. It was an impossible road for an RV.
He parked near the sign for the Apostle’s trail, slung on his pack and began the hike. The trail followed a ridge that climbed the backside of the peak through scattered clumps of pines. The trees became sparser and more stunted. The dirt and forest duff of the trail gave way to decomposed granite. The trail crossed large rock slides where he was forced to step boulder to boulder. Eventually, the trail petered out at the base of the granite dome that capped the mountain.
Small piles of stones marked a trail. It was wide=open granite, one could actually walk anywhere. By late afternoon he gained the top. The Lazarus Range turned purplish-blue as it ran off into the distance. Northerly he saw Desolation Peak, Mason Forks lay hidden in its long shadow.
The sun had dropped low enough to lose the harsh midday glare. The landscape took on the tones of a Kodacolor sunset. Small lakes dappled hillside valleys like silver coins dropped by a giant.
Lucas cautiously sat down on the edge of the rock letting his legs dangled over the edge. The dome was a shear face which, geologic forces had sheared away. He took a long drink of water. Beneath his feet it was a thousand foot drop to the forest below. A light breezed puffed gently at his back. For an hour he took in the vista. He thought about the events of the past week, he thought about his uncle. He thought how ugly and beautiful life could be.
As the sun lowered, the wind among the peaks picked up. He moved back from the rim. From the pack, he lifted out his uncle’s urn. He reached in and took a handful of ashes. He held his hand high then opening his fingers, let the wind carry them away. Again and again he reached in. Like a planter sowing seed, he scattered the ashes to the world. He shook the last bit out into his hand. Touching his uncle for the final time, he let the ash run out between his fingers over the rim. Lucas turned away, into the growing gloom, hurrying to return to the parking area before darkness fell.
In Santa Barbara, what the locals called “June gloom” came in late July. Instead of the warm balmy beaches Grace dreamed of while driving to California, she found the coast wrapped in a dank cloak of low lying, fog. The desk clerk said the fog would burn off by late morning. For three consecutive days it remained, blotting out the sun and dimming her spirits. When in passing she complained of the weather, the clerk suggested she drive over the pass to Solvang, saying the inland side of the coastal range would be sunny and warm.
/> Grace left town on the pass road. As the highway climbed the mountains, the sky steadily lightened. Then, like an airplane breaking through the cloud cover, she was in sunshine. In the bright light, her mood brightened instantly.
Overhead the sky was an azure blue. To the south, the fog flowed so evenly that it seemed the Pacific Ocean had simply risen two thousand feet, blotting out all civilization.
Further to the south the blue peaks of the offshore islands poked through. Grace had read of them in her room. Having mentioned it to the hotel maid, the woman laughingly told about her elderly aunt, who upon visiting Santa Barbara, asked if she were seeing the Hawaiian Islands. Now, for the first time during her stay, Grace was able to see them, too.
The Santa Ynez Mountains were different than the Lazarus Range. These hills were covered by scrub oaks and dense sage, which made the slopes virtually impassable. It was an arid landscape. The creek beds she caught sight of were dry. The road’s cut banks revealed loose, sedimentary gravel. Agaves plants often rimmed the top.
Grace tried the radio but heard only the coarse driving beat of rap bands or Latino stations playing mariachi music. Giving up, she put in a c.d. The car filled with the sound of the Glen Miller band and Tex Beneke crooning a solo.
She had been born into the “rock and roll” not the “big band” era. Grace thought she was born too late. Throughout her life, the “swing” sound carried her off into a romanticized world she never knew.
A 40’s car club passed in the opposite direction. It completed her fantasy. Grace was happy.
Throughout the day, warmed by the valley’s sunshine, she sustained the dream that she was someone else, living in a different time. She was more gregarious and less introverted. In the Danish gift shops of Solvang she struck up conversations. Easily and gaily chatting to people who would soon pass out of her life. She found comfort in knowing, that they would never be burdened by, the “real” Grace.