by Jo Macgregor
“Was Derek any different after that accident?” I asked the two ladies.
“He had a dent right here.” Liz touched the right side of her forehead. “It never filled in or popped out again. He took to combing his hair over it to hide it, though some kids still teased him about it.”
“And did he behave differently? Would you say his personality changed?”
Liz laughed. “All our personalities changed. We were teenagers! But Derek wasn’t brain-damaged or anything, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“What happened to Mr. Kehoe?” I asked.
“Didn’t they send him to a nursing home in New Hampshire?” Liz asked Ruth.
Ruth stopped sucking on her straw to shake her head. “Way I heard it, he went to live with family there. He was tired of working in the store and wanted to spend his retirement with his elder brother. Or was it a cousin?”
Had Kehoe died in the well? Or had he left the farm because he was growing frail and was no longer confident he could keep his family in line? Maybe Mary Kay and Derek had insisted he leave. If he was the Button Man, then he might’ve been happy to go because he would’ve had even more freedom to drive around, looking for victims. Had he wound up in Hucknall playing tic-tac-toe with teeth?
Liz answered the phone, and her expression grew increasingly surprised as she took down what seemed to be the details of a huge take-out order. I guessed the cops and agents at the Kehoe farm where getting hungry. It wouldn’t be long before the news hit the diner; I needed to hurry.
“When did Mr. Kehoe leave Crowbury?” I asked Ruth.
“You sure do want a lot of detail. I wouldn’t have thought anyone would be much interested in the Kehoe history,” she said, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“More food?” I asked. “Coffee?”
“In a minute. Just got to let the pancakes settle a bit. Now, what did you ask me?”
“When did Kehoe leave town?”
“Well, it was after my Walter died. I know that, and he passed in 1992. And it was before my youngest got married because he wasn’t in the store anymore when we bought the lace for her dress, so I’d say somewhere in the mid-nineties.”
“Did you ever see him again?”
Both ladies shook their heads.
“So once Mr. Kehoe was gone, did Mary Kay run the store?” I asked.
“Yes, with the help of her ‘lodger,’” Ruth said with another cackle.
Liz drew in an excited breath. “I’d forgotten about him!”
– 29 –
A lodger at the Kehoe place — this was interesting. “Can you tell me more about him?” I asked Ruth and Liz.
“I sure can,” Ruth said. “He had dark hair and a big smile, and he was young — a good five, maybe even ten, years younger than Mary Kay. The rumor was that she was more than just his landlady, if you know what I mean? Ah well, a lot of the ladies in town had a crush on him. He wasn’t bad looking if you like ’em slicked-back and smooth-talking. A real charmer, as you’d say.” She shrugged. “Plus, he was new.”
By which I gathered that in an old small town like Crowbury, novelty was in short supply. Ruth turned her attention back to her iced coffee, and Liz weighed in with her opinion.
“He wasn’t as handsome as he thought he was, but when you’re confident, people don’t tend to notice,” she said. “When he came sliding into town in that car of his—”
“What kind of a car was it?” I asked.
“A Thunderbird, same as my Aunt Nancy’s.”
“What color was the car? The lodger’s, I mean,” I said.
“Something dark, I think. Can’t really remember. It sure wasn’t white with black racing stripes like Aunt Nancy’s.” Liz topped off my coffee mug and gave a big sigh. “She wrapped that automobile around a tree two hours into 2000 after celebrating that the world hadn’t ended.”
I stayed silent for a few respectful seconds while we all contemplated the irony of that, then I cleared my throat and asked, “Was he a white guy or—”
“White. Like most folks around here,” Ruth said.
“And did he use to pick up hitchhikers?”
“Now how in the world would we know that?” Liz said.
“And why would you want to? It’s not even about the Kehoes,” Ruth pointed out.
I blew on my coffee and then sipped it, buying time to come up with an excuse. “Thing is, I’m thinking of turning the history into a book, so it really helps to get these little details. Fills in the picture, you know?”
“A writer, huh? Well, that explains it,” Ruth said in the tones of someone who clearly believed writers were a strange breed and there was no accounting for their ways.
“Can you remember the lodger’s name?” I kept my fingers crossed under the counter. I needed to catch a lucky break here.
“Larry,” Ruth said confidently. “I remember thinking of him as Larry the Lounge Lizard, because he was an oily one, you know? And a drinker, you could smell it on his breath.”
“And his surname?”
Ruth frowned, tugged on an earlobe, and consulted the ceiling again. “Smith, maybe? Or Jones. Something common like that.” I must have looked disappointed because she added, “Sorry, hon. Liz, can you remember his last name?”
“I remember he took his coffee white and sweet,” Liz told me. “Some people have a memory for names, others for faces. Me, I got a memory for beverages.”
“Would anyone else in town remember?” I asked.
“Some drifter from twenty-something years ago?” Ruth laughed.
Liz said, “If Ruth don’t remember, you can bet your bottom dollar no one else will either.”
Ruth chased the last of her iced coffee around the bottom of her glass with loud slurps. “Anyhoozle, Larry stayed at the Kehoe place and worked in their store. Supposedly, he was paying room and board to help poor Mary Kay out, but we all wondered if he was just a sponger, you know? Because he had that way about him.”
“What way?”
“Too friendly.”
Spoken like a true New England native.
“Was he ever not friendly?” I asked them. “Ever see him lose his temper?”
Ruth shook her head, but Liz said, “There was one time he got into it with Chuck Robbins from the feed store. Chuck ran a Wednesday night poker game there, and I don’t know exactly what happened, but one day, he had a black eye, and I asked who did it.” Lowering her voice, she said, “I wanted to congratulate them, you know, because Chuck was a real ass wipe. And he said it was Larry who did it.”
“Larry beat up Chuck?” Ruth dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. “That surprises me.”
“I was pretty surprised, too, because he didn’t seem the type, did he?” Liz said.
“Exactly. He was a lover, not a fighter,” Ruth said. “Always touching the ladies on their elbows, complimenting them on their dress or hair, sniffing at them like a dog looking for something to eat, letting his hand dip to fondle their rear ends, and more besides when he got them behind the shelves, I reckon.”
Liz tilted her head, considering this. “You know, I always wondered if all that hound-dogging was just an act.”
Ruth looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“Like maybe he preferred men but didn’t want anyone to know?” Liz said uncertainly.
“You think he was a homosexual?” Ruth said, sounding flabbergasted. “But … but he was always groping girls. And what about him and Mary Kay? And what about Tiffany?”
“Who’s Tiffany?” I asked.
“The young girl he left pregnant when he ran out of town!” Ruth said. “How’d he knock her up if he didn’t get it up for females?”
“We don’t know for sure it was him,” Liz pointed out. “Maybe it was just convenient to blame it on him because he was gone. It would’ve let the real culprit — and I have my suspicions about who that might be — right off the hook.” Ruth still looked unconvinced and Liz continued, “My husband always thought so to
o, and he wasn’t the only one. He told me how one of the boys at the bar once made a comment insinuating Larry might be gay, and Larry saw red and went in swinging. He said it took a couple of guys to pull him off! I’d forgotten about that incident,” she said to me. “I guess that was another time he was violent.”
“Liz, I believe I’m going to need another cup of coffee,” Ruth said, looking shocked that, at her age, she was still capable of being surprised by the nature of mankind. But she soon rallied to declare, “Well, one thing I can tell you about Larry for sure is that he was always more talk than action. He had an opinion on everything and most of it hooey if you ask me.”
“You think he was a liar?” I asked.
“He was one of those people always telling stories about himself. Some of them were sob stories about how bad his childhood was, which just melted the ladies’ hearts because there’s nothing a silly woman wants more than to fix a broken man. And some of the stories were the kind that made him look grand. Like, he wore this flashy ring on his pinkie and said it was a class ring from his old school.”
“Which school?” I asked, desperate for any fact I could actually follow up on.
“A swanky one, ivy league, but don’t ask me which. Point is, I didn’t believe it for a moment. I figured he’d picked that ring up in a pawn shop somewhere and concocted a story to go with it. Anyhow, next thing we knew, he was running the store.”
“So he arrived in town only after Melvin or Marvin Kehoe d—” I caught myself and finished, “Departed?”
Liz and Ruth put their heads together to discuss this but couldn’t reach consensus.
“Before or after, he was soon the one behind the counter, giving instructions and running the store.” Ruth gave a disgusted snort. “Running it all the way into the ground. Pilfering from the register, no doubt, and not buying new stock. There’s a fashion in fabrics, you know, same as everything else, and he wasn’t staying with the trends. Place got an old, neglected feel. Dusty and dull. Soon the ladies weren’t giggling at being sassed; they were taking their business elsewhere.”
“Shouldn’t Derek have run the store once his grandfather was gone?” I said.
“He certainly would’ve done a better job of it. But he was still young, maybe eighteen or thereabouts, and didn’t have much of a say, I guess. So he worked the farm all day while Larry and Mary Kay canoodled in the store.”
Liz looked like she doubted the canoodling part, but she merely said, “That poor woman.”
Ruth nodded sadly. “She must’ve thought the business was going to recover with him at the helm because he talked such a good game, and she probably thought he’d make an honest woman out of her, too, because they’d been bumping uglies for sure” — she shot Liz a defiant glance — “and I daresay she fancied herself in love.”
“But he wasn’t the marrying kind?” I asked.
“Right in one,” Liz said.
“Well, if it has tires or testicles, it's gonna give you trouble.” Ruth craned her neck to see what was written on the specials board. “Then one day, he just packed his suitcase and left. He came around town to wish us goodbye and tell us of his grand plans then drove off in his fancy car.”
“Did he say why he was leaving?” I asked.
“He said he had a backer for some new business idea, but I figured he needed a new goose to pluck. There wasn’t any money left in the business; it had gone under by then. They’d sold everything on clearance and closed it down, and I don’t think there could have been much left over after the debts were settled. I could be wrong, though.” Leaning closer to me, Ruth confided, “Money and finances and such don’t interest me much. I like to know about people.”
“Me too,” I admitted. “Where did he go after Crowbury?”
“Larry?” Ruth said. “Portland, Maine.”
“He told me San Francisco,” Liz said. “Had some offer in a new tech business out in Silicon Valley, he said.”
“Well, he definitely told me Portland,” Ruth said. “It struck me because I had an old beau living out there who used to send me a birthday card every year. Risqué ones, they were too.”
So Larry with the unknown surname had either gone west or east. Great. I’d have no trouble at all tracking him down.
“And a couple of years later, Derek left too,” Ruth said. “He must’ve been around twenty by then and free to seek his fortune.”
That pleased me. I was glad he hadn’t died at that miserable farm at the tender age of fifteen. I wanted to believe that he’d left this town and never looked back, that he’d shed all the old pain and bad memories like a too-small coat. I hoped with all my heart that he’d built a new and happier life for himself somewhere else and found a terrific therapist to help him deal with the trauma and build his self-esteem.
“And where was Derek headed?” I asked the ladies.
“New Hampshire,” Ruth said at the same time as Liz said, “Hucknall, I think.”
My ears pricked. “Hucknall, Vermont?”
“Uh-huh. I think his grandmother came from there,” Liz replied.
“Not wishing to disagree with you again, Liz,” Ruth said, “but I got the idea that he was going to his grandfather’s family in New Hampshire.”
Liz shrugged. “Well, I guess he could’ve gone anywhere, but we never saw him again in Crowbury.”
“Neither hide nor hair of him,” Ruth concurred.
“And he just left his mother behind, alone on the farm?” I said.
“Lord, no! She was dead by then. Didn’t I say?”
“That poor woman,” Liz said again. “Drowned in the pond on their farm. But I heard she had a bottle of vodka in her stomach and rocks in her pockets.”
I blew out a long breath. So Derek had lost his mother as well. And in such a difficult way. Having a near relative commit suicide raised his own risk for doing the same, I knew, so maybe the reason no one had ever seen him again was that he’d followed his mother’s example. It hurt to consider that possibility.
“If you ask me,” Ruth said, “Mary Kay died of a broken heart. Her father had left, the business had tanked, the farm was falling down around their ears, and her lover” — another pugnacious look at Liz — “had run off. And what with the money troubles and taking care of the lodgers who came and went, why, she was just used up and worn out. Like an old lady despite she was still young.”
“There were more lodgers?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Liz said. “They never stayed long, though.”
“And the house?”
“It just sat there, crumbling,” Ruth said. “I guess what’s left of it still belongs to the kid because it never got sold.”
She pushed her coffee cup and glass away. Was she finally done eating or just making space for another order?
“There are rumors that farmhouse is haunted,” Liz said.
“That’s just baloney. There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Ruth declared, scanning the glass-domed display of pies on the far counter with the kind of serious consideration usually brought to bear on making life-altering decisions. “You can bring me a nice slice of cherry pie, Liz, with two scoops of vanilla ice cream, and then I reckon you can stick a fork in me and call me done.”
At that moment, a man with an excited expression came into the diner. “Hi, Liz, Ruth. Did you hear the news?”
That being my cue to skedaddle, I paid the check, thanked the ladies, and hurried out. It was already late afternoon, and I still had a two-and-a-half-hour drive back to Pitchford, so I called Ryan to let him know I’d be too late and too tired to make the date we’d set up earlier.
“Are you okay to drive?” he asked, the real concern in his voice melting another sliver of my heart’s frozen shell of protection. “I can drive up and get you.”
And I knew he would; it wasn’t just an empty offer.
“No, I’ll be fine. Really,” I said.
“Pull over somewhere safe if you get too tired to drive, and call me, okay?�
��
“I promise.” This time, my fingers weren’t crossed.
I drove home, thinking about all I’d learned that day, trying to arrange the pieces into a pattern that made sense. By the time I got home, it was long dark, and I trudged up the stairs to my loft on exhausted autopilot. On the landing outside my door, a bottle of merlot stood beside an insulated bag. I opened the zipper, and the mixed aroma of cheese, pepperoni, and jalapenos wafted out.
“Bless you, Chief,” I murmured. A sure way to this woman’s heart was through her stomach.
– 30 –
Sunday, April 22
When I woke up late the next morning, I was aware of a distinct lack of rise and shine. If I was a phone battery, I’d have been on about twenty-two percent. All that psychic stuff the day before had drained me, and a night of complicated, distressing dreams hadn’t helped. After a breakfast of enough toast and coffee to impress Ruth, I set off for my parents’ house, calling Ryan en route to thank him for his thoughtfulness the night before.
“How are you feeling this morning?” he asked.
“Strong as an ox.”
“That bad, eh?”
I snorted a laugh. “Pretty much.”
“What you need,” he said, “is a holiday. A good couple of days at a beach or spa, at least.”
“That sounds amazing.” The thought of possibly taking a break with Ryan was even more tempting. “But I can’t. I’ve got work to do.” The clock was counting down to May sixth, when the Button Man was due to take his next victim.
“Anything I can help you with?” Ryan offered.
“Since you ask …”
“Uh-oh.”
“Could you run a name, a couples of names, through your databases for me?”
“Off the record?”