Stamped Out

by Thayer, Terri

  Inside the bulging folders, April found invoices, bills of lading and statements from the various supply houses that Buchert Construction used. The old Castle job had generated a lot of paperwork.

  She leafed through the invoices. She found one for kitchen cabinetry—custom, from the looks of it. The invoice, clearly marked “The Castle” on the upper right-hand side, had been sent to the old business address, which was the house where Bonnie now lived alone. Red check marks were placed along the margin, indicating that the cabinets had been received. She saw a note in her mother’s handwriting. Back then, the offices had been in the garage and Bonnie had helped out.

  April set aside that folder. It was fascinating to see the raw materials that made up a job, but she was looking for people. She could get Yost off her father’s back if she could just show him that all of Ed’s men were accounted for.

  She found a folder marked “Payroll.” Ed used a payroll system with ledger entries attached to each check he wrote. Each payroll check had its own sheet, with the man’s name, the hours worked, the deductions taken: SSI, state tax, union dues.

  April started at the end. There was no payroll after the second week in June. The job had come to an end right after the party. She hadn’t made the connection until Yost said it earlier.

  Of course, she’d known that Buchert Construction had gone bankrupt. Her senior year in high school was one of no new clothes and no gas money. She’d been forced to sell candy to the neighbors to pay for her band uniform. She’d taken a part-time job at the IGA.

  She had escaped as soon as she could. With enough credits to graduate in January, she did that and left for college in San Francisco. And stayed there.

  Her father had found work with other contractors until he and Vince opened Retro Reproductions about ten years later. After a few lean years, they were just starting to make a profit.

  She went back to the file box. There were piles of change orders. The job had been started nearly three years before the graduation party. It seemed that Warren Winchester had changed his mind on a monthly basis.

  Red-striped code violations were mixed in with the papers. She pulled out one to read. The initials at the bottom were “GW.” George Weber. He had taken exception to the addition of an air-conditioning unit that had not been in the original plans. There was no sign of how Ed had fixed the problem.

  Nearly at the bottom, April found a rubber-banded group of time cards. The men used yellow time cards, gridded by day of the week. There were columns for jobs worked, in case a man worked on two different jobs on the same day.

  She flipped through the timeworn cards. There were six. She recognized a couple of names: Lyle Trocadero, Mike McCarty. The other four were Clyde Reiser, Danny Whitlock, Frankie Imperiale and Martin Festler.

  She walked over to her father’s desk. Were any of those four guys still working with her dad? Lyle and Mike had come back to work for Ed. Maybe there were others.

  She found the Retro Reproductions checkbook and pulled it out. Last week, Ed had paid ten guys. Excluding Lyle and Mike, she compared the list to the names of those who had worked on the Castle. One matched. Clyde Reiser.

  That left three.

  She turned on her father’s computer and clicked on the Internet icon. She’d go the easy route and see if anyone was listed in the online white pages. Bingo. Martin Festler lived in Moosic, thirty miles or so up north.

  She was two-for-four and feeling pretty good. If all the guys were still alive, her father would be in the clear.

  Where else would these former employees be listed? Her father had a cup on his desk, full of bright blue pencils with a gold insignia. Carpenters Union Local 76. The phone number was right below. Buchert Construction had been a union shop. Unions kept records. There were pensions and health care plans.

  April called the hall. “This is April Buchert, from Retro Reproductions. Can you tell me if Frankie Imperiale and Danny Whitlock are still members of Local 76?” she asked in her best businesslike manner.

  “I’m sorry,” a nasal voice whined. “We don’t give out information on our current members.”

  April thought fast. “That’s a shame because I’ve got a paycheck to send to them. I just need current addresses.”

  The phone went silent, and then April heard the dulcet tones of Johnny Mercer. She pushed the speakerphone function on her end, and waited.

  “Ed? Is that you?” a booming, hearty voice came through the tiny speaker. “It’s Danny O’Malley.”

  April’s heart sank. She wasn’t a member of the good-old-boy network that was so fundamental to doing business here. “No, this is his daughter.”

  “Cripes, I thought Ed was pulling my leg. Send a check to Danny Whitlock? He knows Danny disappeared. What, eight, nine years ago?”

  April’s heart pounded. “Disappeared?” What if it was more like fifteen years ago?

  “You know, moved to Florida. Those guys always say they’ll stay in touch, but then they disappear.”

  April let out a sigh of relief, then said, “Sorry. My dad isn’t here right now, and I was just trying to track down some of his old employees.”

  “Planning some kind of a surprise party, are you? Is the old geezer getting ready to retire?”

  “Something like that,” April lied. “What about Frankie Imperiale? That name ring any bells?”

  “Sorry, sweetie, no. But you know how it is. Workers come and go. Some guys don’t have what it takes, you know.”

  “I suppose.” April quickly realized she wasn’t going to get any more information from this source. She thanked him and signed off.

  She tapped the time cards. Frankie Imperiale was the only one not accounted for. That didn’t mean anything, she told herself, trying to resolve the niggling feeling she had that it might. He could have dropped out of the union or moved out of the county.

  She found her father’s local phone book. It was at least five years old. There was an Imperiale in Butler Township. She called the number, but there was no answer and no machine to take her message. She saved the number in her cell to try again later.

  She closed up the box and stashed it back in its place among the others by her father’s desk. A set of blueprints was rolled up in the corner. Written in blue ink on the light blue page, she saw the word “Winchester.” She pulled them out. The rubber band was so thinned with age, it broke as soon as she touched it.

  April spread the prints out on the kitchen table. They were dated September 1991. These must be the prints for the Castle, April thought, but the building didn’t resemble anything remotely regal. It was a simple design. No towers, no turrets, no crenellations. Just three rooms. One half was a large living space. The other contained a kitchen and a bath and a bedroom. A modest fireplace. Nothing like the stone façade that had come tumbling down earlier.

  The plans were initialed by GW. George Weber, Code Enforcement.

  She hadn’t really found exactly what she was looking for, but she was getting closer. She needed more details before she went back to Yost, though. Then she thought about the skull. Yost had no real reason to suspect the skull was only fifteen years old. Maybe it was much older, dropped there by an animal after the site had been abandoned.

  She looked at the pictures of the skull on her phone again, wishing she could decipher what it had to tell her. How long had the skull been there? Was it a male or female? How had it come to be inside the fireplace of the Castle?

  Suddenly she realized she knew someone who could help her.

  CHAPTER 6

  Since Deana’s place was only a few miles from the barn, April decided to take a chance and drive by the funeral home.

  The Hudock Family Funeral Home and Mortuary was out the Sugarloaf Road. She turned off Route 93 and headed south. Once she was past the new elementary school, farms took up most of the available acreage. Now and again a cookie-cutter Harris rancher would appear at the end of a long driveway. She drove slowly, remembering how the deer liked t
o amble from field to field using the road as a cut-through.

  At the top of a long rise, she saw the funeral home. The sign was discreet, carved wood with gold accents. Billboards announcing its location were unnecessary. The Hudocks had been in the same spot for over fifty years. Only the building had changed. Deana’s parents had built the new place, a sprawling red brick Colonial, in the eighties. A colonnaded front porch spanned the length of the building. White wicker furniture was grouped in several seating areas. Large pots of geraniums graced the top steps.

  April pulled into the farthest spot of a large black asphalt lot. A line of Normandy poplars blocked the view of the back door. April got out, leaving her car window open, hoping the car wouldn’t get so overheated again. She headed toward the hidden path she knew was there. This route, through the trees into the rose garden to the family entrance, more than all the places she’d been since returning to Aldenville, felt like home. As a child, she’d ridden her bike to Deana’s house every day during summer vacations. She felt herself relax.

  At the back door April admired Deana’s décor. She’d done everything she could to distinguish it from the formal front, the business end of the house. A peeling faded blue wheelbarrow held a dozen pansies. Deana had arranged a bright yellow rain slicker over a distressed wooden bench and placed a pair of green rain boots alongside. The resulting vignette was homey and inviting.

  When there was no answer to her knock, April’s disappointment was sharp. She couldn’t stand the idea of going back to the empty barn, with its unanswerable questions about Ed, just yet. It was only four thirty. Dinner at Bonnie’s was always at six. Going there early was not an option. Her mother was not very social in the throes of cooking.

  Reluctant to leave the backyard, she wandered through the roses. Deana’s mother had planted most of them. The tiny red buds promised a good show later. From the back corner of the garden, April noticed a new trail, a path of colorful flagstones with hues of subtle pinks and reds and purples leading away from the parking lot. The path turned through some trees, and following it, April came to a pond.

  The water was rimmed with tall grasses, reeds and cat-tails instead of the pampas that April was used to seeing.

  Bushes clustered along the bank—mock orange, forsythia. The leaves from a low-reaching weeping willow dappled the light on the water’s surface. A rustic wooden bench had been placed facing away from the house, with a pretty view of the geometric cornfields beyond.

  There’d never been a pond here before. This had to be one of Mark’s projects. An oval stone sign read “Sanctuary.” What a beautiful place to see the sunrise, April thought. There was silence except for the occasional splash from a fish or the rustle of the wind through the grass. She could see for miles. Quiet spaces with wide-open views had been too rare in her busy San Francisco life. Too often, her view had been the inside of her car or the paint store, or a customer’s wall.

  This day had been a crazy one. April scratched her chin. Trying to keep Mrs. H. happy was looking as though it would be a full-time job. Add to that, trying to keep Yost away from her father, and she felt close to a breaking point. But being here was helping her to relax. April breathed in and watched a mallard serenely paddling. The sunlight changed the green iridescence on his feathers until they looked translucent. The duck was unaware of the beauty on its back. She thought about going back to the car for her sketchbook, but the sun on her face felt too good.

  She heard a car pull in, and as she came part way up the hill from the pond and saw Deana exiting her car, April waved.

  “Stay there,” Deana called. She was wearing tan slacks and a crisp button-down pink shirt. With her blonde hair, which would get even lighter as the summer went on, she looked more like a California girl than a funeral director.

  April waited, watching a goldfish with a speckled back surface to catch a fly and go back under the water.

  Deana arrived, slightly out of breath from racing downhill. She hugged April and sat next to her, patting her on the knee. “This is a nice surprise.”

  “So is this,” April said, pointing to the view. “You must love it out here.”

  Deana squinted, looking over the pond. “I never sit out here. Mark built it for the clients. See that forsythia over there? Planted by a family that lost a kid in an ATV accident. The willow was put in by the Kenner grandkids for their nana. The place has evolved into a living memorial. We didn’t plan it that way.”

  April looked at the pond with fresh eyes. She could imagine someone grieving, finding solace out here. It would be a lovely place to regain your equilibrium. Or start to.

  April sighed.

  Deana asked, “So you were out at the Castle when the remains were found?”

  “Geez, I thought for sure I could be the first to tell you.”

  Deana shook her head. “The state police called to see if we had room for body parts if need be.”

  April didn’t want to think about where Deana might have room. She pulled out her phone and flipped it to the pictures. “I was thinking of you,” she said, showing Deana the skull.

  “Cool,” Deana said, taking the phone from her. “You’re the best.”

  “It was creepy at first, but the funniest thing happened. While I was taking pictures, the skull just became another object. I got caught up in the light and getting the best angle.” April felt sheepish, but she knew Deana would understand.

  Deana twisted and turned the camera, studying the skull. “Don’t be ashamed. You got some great shots. You have to detach. If I didn’t, I’d never get anything done.”

  “Can you tell how long it’s been there?” April asked.

  Deana shook her head. “Can I? No, but the forensics lab in Harrisburg surely can. Usually they would do soil samples from around the ground. Was any of that preserved?”

  April shrugged. “Not sure. How long would it take for the body to decompose?”

  “Depends on the time of year. Summertime, decay happens pretty fast if we’re having one of our hundred-degree spells.”

  “Yost thinks it was probably a murder.”

  Deana shrugged. “Officer Yost is just eager to have something to do besides escort drunks home from Cousin Joe’s.”

  “Well, he’s sinking his teeth into this.”

  “There are plenty of missing people in this country. Yost has a long list at the police station. We’re right at the crossroads on the two most heavily traveled interstates in the country. Chances are some poor soul wandered in there and died.”

  April wanted to believe her friend. It could have been a homeless person, despite what her father said. Or a hiker like Mitch suggested. “It just seems a little nuts that someone could die at the Castle and no one would notice.”

  “Even around here,” Deana said, “where everyone knows everyone else’s business, people’s lives sometimes fly under the radar. It’s not that difficult to disappear.”

  April considered that, but her experience had been completely different. When she had to return to high school after her father had left her mother, she’d tried to make herself invisible, but it seemed that overnight everyone knew who she was. She’d hated the attention. And now she was going to be branded again. Daughter of a murderer. A bankrupt murderer.

  She picked at her thumbnail, making it ragged.

  Deana stopped on the shot that showed the skull’s fracture and pointed to it. “Someone got bonked pretty hard,” she said.

  “Bonked? Is that a technical term?” April teased, grateful for any lightheartedness. “Did you learn that in college?”

  Deana said, “Forensics 212, I believe. See that crack?”

  “Couldn’t the blast have done that?” April asked.

  Deana shook her head. “The jagged edges are all the same color. A newer crack would look whiter. This guy definitely took a blow to the head back then. ”

  “Or girl,” April suggested.

  “No, most likely a guy. See here?” Deana said, pointing
at the image. “That’s pretty clearly male. Women don’t have such broad foreheads.”

  April’s heart sunk. Yost was right about that, at least. It was a man.

  “And a fairly young man,” Deana continued. “See the stitches along the skull plates? Those fade in older people, after sixty or so. His are very visible.”

  Worse news. A young man. April gnawed on her cuticle.

  Deana closed the phone and looked at her friend. “What are you really worried about, April?”

  April leaned back on the bench and sighed. Deana knew her well. “Two things. I’m afraid that it’s one of my father’s workers and he’ll be accused of murder, and I’m scared to death Mrs. H. will shut the job down and I’ll have nowhere to work.” Tears pricked the corners of her eyes and she fought them back. “I can’t go back to California,” she added quietly.