A Score to Settle

by Donna Huston Murray

  "No, Mom. Nothing like that. And I don't think Tim Duffy was necessarily a bad man."

  Too late, I remembered that one grain of sand constituted a beach to Cynthia Struve. If she knew I knew the murdered man's name and something, however insignificant, about him, I must be on the case.

  I tried reasoning with her anyway; I always try. "Actually, Mom, Michelle is in the hospital, some sort of scare over the baby–I'm sure Harriet must have told you–so Ronnie asked me to go down there to," here I had to watch my words, "to cook for Doug and take care of Michelle when she comes home."

  Mother's laugh was much less inhibited than the snickers Ronnie got from me only minutes before. She bent at the waist and let it go.

  I waited long enough for her to find a tissue to wipe her eyes. "Everyone knows you don't cook, dear," she imparted between two last snorts. "You're marvelously intelligent and surprisingly good with a wrench, but," she paused to giggle, "you can't possibly convince me Ronnie asked you to cook."

  I scowled, but it wouldn't hold. "Make food, then," I amended. "Doug's in the middle of the football season, and I suppose he..." I couldn't help it. I laughed myself, "...eats a lot, and..."

  "Oh, give it up, Gin," Mother advised.

  "Okay, sure," I agreed. "I'm going down there to solve the murder of the year. You want to babysit my family while I'm busy making headlines?"

  "Can Gracie stay over, too?"

  "Sure. Bring Gracie," whoever she was. "Bring all your friends."

  "Now you're just being silly."

  Mother and I ironed out the particulars of pickup and delivery, then I rung off and went to work on the details of my own trip. Half an hour later I was booked on the U.S. Airways Monday flight to Norfolk, Virginia, departing 3:40 p.m., arriving 4:37 p.m. A shuttle service would take me directly to the hospital. Apparently, Michelle had driven herself in; so after my visit with her, I could use her car for the duration.

  Rip listened to my plans with approval until I got to the Cynthia and Grace whatsername part.

  "We could have managed," he almost whined. "The kids are okay on their own."

  "For a week?" my guesstimate and probably the longest I dared to be away. "You're involved with that accreditatioan stuff, holed up in your office even when you're home..."

  Periodically PAIS, the Pennsylvania Association of Independent Schools, put the schools they accredit through an exhaustive self-evaluation and brief committee visit. The process was as annoying to the faculty as it was essential and ultimately worthwhile. But probably more than anything it was time consuming.

  "Haven't been much fun lately, have I?"

  "No complaints here. I just thought you didn't need to add laundry and dog dinners and TV monitoring to your chores."

  "You're a wise woman, Gin Barnes."

  "Sexy, too," I pointed out.

  "So I've heard."

  To prove how swamped he was, he delegated my ride to the airport. His assistant, Joanne Henry, who I once affectionately dubbed, "Hank," would drop me off then take the rest of the afternoon off. Joanne was also chronically overworked.

  And, as it turned out, grouchy about it today. She threaded her Jetta in and out of the Route 476 traffic while delivering a monologue of complaints.

  "Beepers and virtual pets going off in class, teachers never looking at their mailboxes, boys peeking in the girls' locker room, girls peeking in the boys'. And you know that's just the easy stuff." She wagged her head. "It's the evaluation process that's killing us–committee meetings every day. Why does it have to take all year to prepare for a three day visit?" She clucked over the unfairness of it all.

  "But it's only once every ten years, right?"

  Joanne grunted as she finished passing a Volvo.

  I scanned the scenery: embankments of winter-gray grass, clumps of leafless bushes on the median strip, and four to six lanes of cars, depending. "Didn't everybody start calling this the Blue Route because on the original proposal it was drawn in blue?"

  Joanne ignored me and floored it up to seventy. Rip's most devoted soldier was footsore, which meant the rest of the army probably needed R and R at least as much or more. The last two weeks before Christmas vacation would be morale hell at Bryn Derwyn Academy. If I made it to the airport intact, I would be sure to warn Rip.

  Considering Joanne's mood, I decided to answer my own question. "I think that's right. If they had chosen one of the other possibilities we would be riding on the Red Route or the Yellow Route right now."

  "Fascinating," Joanne remarked just to be polite. Her beige hair hadn't budged since we set out. Nor had the scowl lines behind her designer-framed glasses. The troops were definitely not in a holiday frame of mind.

  From the relative safety of the Departures’ curb I thanked my husband’s assistant profusely, for she had performed two valuable services. One: She delivered me to the airport unscathed, and Two: She almost made me glad I was going.

  The plane rushed off the runway and sliced through a slab of stratus clouds into glaring winter sunlight. There was nothing to see, and I had no concentration for a book. I accepted a Sprite and an envelope of peanuts and stared out the window thinking about dominoes.

  Hanging up a sweater you bump heads with a cute fraternity guy, and the next thing you know he's your husband. Or you chat up a single mom at your son's baseball game and suddenly find yourself in another car pool. Or your aunt Harriet revives the traditional family Thanksgiving dinner, and ten days later your cousin recruits you to help out in a family crisis. Rows of dominoes tumbling down, one event touching off another.

  Watching that bed of clouds move under me I imagined myself to be caught up in just such an accidental progression of events, one possibly begun even before the demise of my mother's oldest sibling.

  For Thanksgiving had been Aunt June's holiday–the boiled onions, the oyster stuffing, the corny toasts with the sickening sweet sherry, and the kids prodded to come up with something they were thankful for each year. After June's death six years ago, we none of us could face Thanksgiving–not together–so each family faction had begged ourselves off in other directions until Harriet had wisely tugged on our consciences and gathered us in again.

  Nobody even considered turning her down this year, and all of us had been glad we went. Even later, after I found out fate's game was really tag, not dominoes, and I was "It," I still remembered the day with fondness, exactly as I reviewed it in my mind gazing out the window of the plane.

  Thanksgiving had been overcast this year, in contrast to our spirits. My mother even got the kids to sing as we headed over the Delaware River and through the woods toward Aunt Harriet and Uncle Stan Applestone's modest, Moorestown, New Jersey, home.

  We arrived about one, but in order to help Harriet in the kitchen, Gloria and her husband Bill had already vanned themselves and their two preschoolers to the Robert's Park colonial. Perhaps because of Doug's need to rejoin his team back in Norfolk the following morning, Michelle and her quarterback husband had also arrived early.

  Even before we had time to breathe in the fragrance of roasting turkey, Chelsea got conscripted into babysitting the two preschoolers. The last glimpse I got of her until dinner was her phony eye-roll of resignation. Garry recognized what was coming, peppered the air with, "Hi. Hi. Hi," and scooted under Harriet's arm toward the sound of a TV.

  Hugs, kisses. Sniff. Detecting even a whiff of roasting turkey required a hearty intake of air and some imagination. I raised an eyebrow in Gloria's direction.

  She moved me out of earshot to explain. "Harriet forgot to turn the oven on. Dinner will be a little late."

  "How late?"

  "Two, three hours, tops. Know any parlor games?"

  Since the only ones I knew had been learned through great embarrassment and were not suitable for children, I told her no.

  Gloria tossed her head, which I noticed included a particularly pointy nose. "Well, you'll have to handle the living room. I've got more than my hands full in
the kitchen."

  Already my mother was gravitating in that direction arm and arm with her sister. Gloria rushed to intervene. Evidently she knew enough about her mother-in-law to know that Harriet's sister wouldn't be much better.

  To my right lay a dungeon of mahogany and brocade that smelled of musty lemon oil when it wasn't busy not smelling of turkey. I checked for a window to open but noticed that all the heavy drapes had been drawn, the better to view the football game on TV. Rip had already hopped over a coffee table to claim a spot on the sofa next to Doug and Michelle. Doug rose to shake my hand hello.

  "Don't get up," I hastily told my pregnant cousin, whose expression had begged me to say just that.

  "Thanks," she sighed.

  "Feeling okay?" I asked.

  "Oh, sure," she lied.

  Her brother Ronnie popped up from a chair to grin and greet me. His side of our mix-and-match family tended toward wavy medium brown hair and darkly edged light hazel eyes framed with lush curly lashes. "Cuz, you look great," he insisted with some amusement. "New haircut?"

  I elbowed him in the ribs, reaching up to do it. "You know it isn't, Turkey." I had been wearing an acorn-lid style since before my senior year.

  "Chicken," he retorted.

  I threw him a smile and turned toward the edge of the dining room where Garry had been skewered by Uncle Stan, Harriet's throwback of a husband. For company he had donned a Mr. Rogers cardigan of blah blue. Even six feet away his after-shave lotion competed with the sour lemon oil that had been lavished on the furniture.

  "Lookit this," Stan told my son with a wink. Apparently, he had determined that Garry was just the right age to appreciate his dining-table humor, and he couldn't wait another second to start in. Garry tilted away from my uncle's shoulder while Stan pressed him to admire the reflection of his knuckles on the back of a stuffing spoon. While Garry squinted to see, Stan rubbed his index finger up and down.

  "Dolly Parton taking a bath. Get it?"

  "That's totally wild," my son responded with a snort. "Know any others?"

  Overhead children’s running rattled the floorboards. Chelsea’s charges, probably playing tag. Since they weren't running past the TV, nobody appeared to care.

  Across the room Rip seemed to be chatting up Doug. I hoped he wasn’t asking the pro quarterback to speak at the dedication of Bryn Derwyn's new gym in January, but he probably was.

  Yup. "Doing anything January sixteenth?" I heard him inquire. Role models were hard to come by, especially in my family.

  Doug chuckled. "I won't be getting ready for the Super Bowl, if that's what you mean."

  I pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen, and the world tilted.

  "Hello, darling," Mother cooed. "Want to stir the gravy?" She thrust a foil envelope in my direction.

  "Ack. No, no, no," Aunt Harriet yipped. "We've got enough cooks." Her hair, a bluer gray than my mother's, had been yanked into spikes of frustration.

  I had an impression of pots and pans everywhere, filling the counters left and right, plus the table in between, cluttering even the floor in spots. A gray cat mewed and walked around one.

  Gloria stood alone, a slender stalk trembling in the eye of the hurricane. "Harriet's right," she said with lawyerly composure, "we can manage here. Why don't you just take some pretzels out to the guys." She handed me a bag of Bavarian jaw-breakers and a basket.

  "Beer?" I asked hopefully. It threatened to be a long afternoon.

  "I don't...Of course," she said, realizing her error. She extracted a six-pack of long-necked bottles from the antique refrigerator and pushed it toward me. Then she resumed chopping celery on a piece of wax paper. As I retreated, I imagined her muttering deliriously, "There's no place like home, there's no place like home." I'm pretty sure it was only my imagination.

  Eventually halftime arrived. Six years apart and most of the family was sitting mute as mushrooms in front of the TV. Stirring us up seemed to be in order.

  "Ronnie," I said, gesturing with my beer bottle. Unlike Gloria, I did drink the stuff. "Isn't NFL Films pretty near here?" I asked with more than a little hope.

  "Sure. Ten minutes, give or take."

  "Could you stand to give some of us a tour? Garry's taking a photography course..."

  During the football season I knew Fridays and Thanksgiving to be Ronnie's only guaranteed days off. Asking him to go to the office today was quite an imposition, yet it seemed preferable to sitting there growing spores.

  Ronnie called over his shoulder to Garry. "Hey, kid. You wanna see my office?"

  "Yeah!" Garry almost squeaked with excitement. As I said, he was very into photography.

  "Anybody else?"

  Doug accepted, and I very much wanted to go. However, Stan and Rip preferred to stay to watch the second half of the game, and Michelle had fallen asleep against some pillows. Doug removed her glasses and folded them on the end table before we left.

  A VOICE COINCIDING with our airplane's touchdown rattled me out of my reverie. "Please remain seated until the plane has come to a complete stop in front of the terminal."

  I peeked out the window at tarmac and low clouds. I had arrived in Norfolk.

  Yippee.

  Chapter 4

  WHEN I LIBERATED MY lumpy carry-on bag from the overhead compartment, it wrestled itself free from my grasp and fell heavily on the arm of an unoccupied seat. Working hard not to bruise anyone, I eventually deplaned into a long hallway and skirted the usual metal detection station.

  Glancing back I noticed a no-nonsense gray sign: NO MACE, NO GUNS, NO WEAPONS, NO JOKES. Another comparable rectangle alerted outgoing passengers about which (foreign) airports the Secretary of Transportation determined were not maintaining effective aviation security measures.

  Along a relatively empty stretch a sign depicting Paul McCartney's smiling face welcomed me to, "...Norfolk, World Headquarters of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals." A red hexagonal sign that said, "Stop eating animals," was positioned about where fans might have expected a guitar. Further along another picture of an elderly woman in need of a wheelchair scowled at me in black and white. To her right a hand filled out a United Way pledge card beneath the copy, "Fill in the blank...Generously."

  Apparently some ill-advised fool had chosen an exceptionally humane city in which to commit murder. Lucky thing I hadn't bopped anyone with my carry-on.

  The lobby was clean, more or less round, and dotted with strips of comfortable, dark red chairs. At opposite edges the Check-in and Ticketing sign faced the Baggage Claim/Ground Transportation escalators.

  Downstairs I collected my larger bag and stepped out into the chill. A miniature brown building labeled "Airport Shuttle" resided between the two driveways. Yes, a driver could take me to the Virginia Beach General Hospital. A limousine, really a white car wearing a rainbow-colored swath that read "Groome Transportation," would leave within ten minutes.

  Perhaps out of respect for my destination, the driver decided against small talk and entertained himself by drumming his fingers to the tune playing in his head.

  At least initially Norfolk seemed to be a many-laned highway lined with low, boxy businesses, so I shut my eyes and daydreamed about our Thanksgiving Day tour of NFL Films. Garry had viewed the place with such wide-eyed thrall that I began to wonder whether immortalizing football games might eventually become his profession. Exactly what, I reflected rocking back and forth in the dusty-smelling cab, had so captivated my son?

  For starters, probably Ronnie himself. Broad shoulders flexing as he steered his comfortable van, my cousin possessed the body type of someone who had played the game he recorded.

  “No,” he responded when Garry asked, “but a couple of other cinematographers did. It is very physical work," he added as we arrived at our destination. I noted that the white "National Football League NFL FILMS" sign included the NFL logo, since the company was actually owned and operated by the league.

  We were already headed fo
r the door before Garry gave voice to his confusion. "What's so physical about it?" he asked, causing Ronnie to pause and turn back.

  He rubbed his cold hands together then spread them wide. "I guess you've seen me rushing back and forth on the sideline with a camera on my shoulder?"

  Garry nodded.

  "Well, that camera weighs about thirty-five pounds," Ronnie told him. "But for every game I also have to move six metal cases of equipment in and out of vans, airports, hotels and stadiums. The cases weigh forty to seventy-five pounds apiece. I've got a cart, but the cart weighs twenty-five pounds all by itself."

  Doug contributed his own thought. "Then when you get back here you spend, what? ten, twelve hours a day putting it all together?" Clearly he admired his brother-in-law's dedication to his craft.

  Ronnie nodded modestly. "Right. So I can use all the stamina I can muster. Usually I lift weights. Tomorrow I'll probably run–especially if I eat what I think I'm going to eat tonight."

  I remembered that Fridays were his only days off in the fall. Fridays and Thanksgiving.

  "I'm really sorry to bring you back here today," I apologized, finally realizing the magnitude of what I had asked.

  "I can stand it if you can." He winked at me then headed toward the larger of the two low, pale brick buildings belonging to the company.

  "Do you really have to go to all that trouble?" my son inquired. He hated carrying so much as a book bag.

  "We think so," Ronnie answered, casting me a conspirator's smile.

  "Why?" Garry asked for the first, but certainly not last time that day.

  "Because we're the historians of professional football," my cousin patiently explained. "Twenty, thirty years from now people will be able to pull out a tape and watch the Miracle in the Meadowlands, or the Immaculate Reception, maybe some Joe Namath, or Brett Favre. Pretty wonderful stuff."

  Doug shook his head to disagree. "It's a little more than that," he chided his brother-in-law. "You make us look great, man. Larger than life. It's an art form. Admit it."