by Neil Plakcy
“Semper Fiber,” I said, without thinking.
Rick looked at me like I was nuts, but the younger Carter understood. “That’s my sister,” he said. “She makes those. I think they’re crap, but what can you do? She’s family.”
By then Amos had found what he was looking for. He opened an old book with frayed binding that had once been navy blue. “Here they are,” he said, pulling a few pages of lined white paper out of the back.
He handed the pages to me, and Rick looked over my shoulder. The first was a list of names, addresses and phone numbers of Quakers involved in the anti-war movement all over the state of Pennsylvania. Fortunately, Amos Carter hadn’t felt the need to encrypt everything he wrote.
The second and third pages were lists of activities, books and pamphlets. There were only four names on the last page, each followed by a date. The last two were Peter Breaux and Don Lamprey, January 25, 1969.
“Is that what you were looking for?” Amos asked.
“It is,” Rick said. “Thank you very much.”
20 – Art and Mortality
On the ride back to Stewart’s Crossing, Rick looked at his watch. “Shoot, I’ve got to scramble to pick up Rascal from his doggie day care. If I leave him there past seven-thirty I have to pay extra.”
“Why don’t we get him and go to my house. We can order a pizza and look for information on Don Lamprey and Peter Breaux online.”
“You think there’ll be anything?”
I shrugged. “You never know. You can log into the police database remotely, can’t you?”
“Yeah. At least I can see if either of these names is connected to a police record.”
“And I can look for a Lamprey family in western Pennsylvania with four sons, one of them named Don.”
I called and ordered the pizza, our regular large mushroom and sausage, and we picked up Rascal. It was my turn to pay, so I went into the pizzeria, where Rick and I had been going since we were kids with our families. It had changed hands a few times over the years. The new owners were a young Italian couple who bought their mozzarella from one of the last dairy farmers in the county and made their own sausage, from locally sourced beef and pork. As I stood in line, a very large man in a triple XL T-shirt that read “I Beat Anorexia” came in behind me.
I thought it was kind of funny. But as I was paying, a skinny woman came through the door. She walked right up to the man and said, “Your shirt is very offensive to all the girls and women who have fought eating disorders.”
I wondered what she was doing in a pizza parlor if she had food issues, but I didn’t say anything. The man said, “It’s what you call ironic humor.” He started to explain the irony, and I grabbed my pizza and hurried back to Rick’s truck.
“While you were inside I started thinking about Vera Lee,” Rick said, as he backed out of the space. “Why do you think she was so reluctant to let us see those records? Protecting Brannigan’s reputation? Or something more?”
“I thought of that,” I said, remembering my flight of fancy. “I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t have any evidence. But if Brannigan was the one moving those boys around, he may have been the last one to see this kid alive.”
Rick turned off Main Street toward River Bend. I noticed that the license plate on the car in front of us read ALL4JUAN, which reminded me of an Eastern student named Juan Tanamera, who’d been implicated in drug dealing at the college. Just because someone was a student or a teacher was no reason to eliminate him from suspicion.
“Suppose Brannigan killed Don himself – either accidentally or on purpose, and Vera Lee helped him cover it up.” Thinking of the plate in front of us, I added, “Or the whole bunch of volunteers could have been involved. These were the last boys through -- maybe the kid was threatening to report them to the police, or to break up their smuggling ring.”
“Not really a smuggling ring,” Rick said, as he pulled into my driveway. “And if that was the case, then Edith Passis and Amos Carter wouldn’t have been so willing to give us information. There must be something more between Vera Lee and Brannigan.”
We carried the pizza inside and sat down at the kitchen table to eat. Rascal and Rochester were much more interested in the pizza than in each other. They clustered around us, waiting for crust or bits of sausage.
“You think maybe they were having an affair?” I asked. “Vera Lee and her boss? She might have been afraid that something we found would reveal that.”
“Brannigan’s wife was dead, and she was barely out of high school,” Rick said. “So she probably wasn’t married herself. And she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring this evening.”
“But still. He must have been in his forties by then, right? And with her almost the age of a student, that would be scandalous. If something like that happened at Eastern, even now, it would be a problem.”
“But there’s nothing that would keep you and Lili from moving in together, right?” Rick asked. “No rules against fraternization?”
“If she was my boss, or vice versa, there’d be a problem,” I said. “But there are lots of married couples and family members working at Eastern. I’m just not sure that I want to be part of one right now.”
“Don’t make any rash decisions. You know as well as I do that once you have a woman in your house it’s hell getting her out.”
“Didn’t happen that way in my case,” I said. “Remember? I’m the one who left. For prison.”
“From what I’ve heard of your marriage, it was switching one prison for another, with a more pleasant roommate.” He looked at me. “You weren’t anybody’s wife in prison, were you?”
“Nope. Got a couple of offers, but they accepted when I said no thanks. Especially when I added I could help them with their appeals if they let me keep my pants on.”
“Smart guy.”
“Yeah, but if I’d been smarter I wouldn’t have been in there in the first place.”
We ate in silence for a while, but as we were cleaning up, Rick asked, “Any chance you could keep Rascal Saturday night?”
“Shouldn’t be a problem. Why?”
“I have a thing.”
I laughed. “You have a date with Tamsen Morgan, don’t you?”
“It’s not a date.” He looked embarrassed, which I thought was funny. “Just, you know, dinner. We’ll probably talk about Justin and his football team.”
“Uh-huh.”
Rick took the pizza box out to the recycling bin while I washed my hands and then opened up my laptop. He had his own laptop in his truck, and he brought it in and logged into the police database while I searched for Lampreys.
At a genealogy websites, I found that Lori Lamprey, of Zelienople, Pennsylvania, had set up a family tree that included her father, Arnold, and his three brothers: Brian, Charles and Donald. Donald had been born in 1950, with no date of death shown. “Looks like we found him,” I said, pointing to the screen.
I was able to save the tree as a PDF. “Let’s see what we can find out about Mr. Arnold Lamprey of Zelienople, Pennsylvania,” I said.
“Where the heck is Zelienople?” Rick asked.
I pulled up Google Maps. Zelienople was a small town about a half hour north of Pittsburgh. I found an address for Arnold Lamprey on Sunflower Road, and zooming in on the satellite view showed us it was a farming area.
“Looks like I’ve got a call to make tomorrow,” Rick said. “Too late to call tonight – if they’re farmers they’re already in bed.” He shook his head. “I hate having to notify next of kin. It’s the worst part of the job.”
We switched to Peter Breaux, who had presumably been the last person to see Don Lamprey alive, and thus was a person of interest. His birth certificate said he’d been born at Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown; his parents were Reynard and Joy Breaux, with an address on Fairchance Road in Cheat Lake, West Virginia.
Rick took Reynard and I took Joy. We came up with our results at about the same time. Reynard had die
d first, in 1973, survived by wife Joy and son Peter. Joy followed in 1985, survived by son Peter. There were no other immediate relatives listed, and no matter where we looked, we couldn’t find anything else about Peter Breaux.
“So he was alive in 1969, and then again in 1985,” I said. “Where was he in between? And where’s he been since?”
It was as if he’d disappeared into Canada, emerging only at the deaths of his parents, then fading back into the dust. “I’ll have to go through channels on this,” Rick said. “Get somebody up in Canada to search their records. Not going to be easy, especially if he doesn’t want to be found.”
For curiosity’s sake, I asked Rick to do a quick search for Vera Lee Isay through the police database, and I did the same through my own sources – all legit, of course. She was born in 1950 and never married. She belonged to several pacifist and environmentalist groups. She was a member of the Stewart’s Crossing Friends Meeting and served on the renovation committee.
“That’s interesting,” I said, twisting my laptop around so he could see. “You think Vera Lee joined this committee because she knew there was a body in the wall?”
“Or because she’s the kind who volunteers for stuff,” Rick said. “Who else is on that committee?”
I looked at the list online. Hannah Palmer, the clerk of the Meeting, was the chair. Besides Vera Lee, the only other name I recognized was Eben Hosford. “Edith pointed him out to me at the Harvest Festival,” I said. “She said he’s been very opposed to the renovations. I wonder why he’d join the committee.”
“You know how committees work,” Rick said. “Don’t you have to serve on them at Eastern? If you want to screw up progress, you join the committee and then you argue every single point until the issue is dead.”
I thought of the committee I was serving on, and had to agree with him.
He and Rascal left a few minutes later. I called Lili and told her about talking to Amos Carter and connecting Don Lamprey back to his family. “We can’t be sure until Rick talks to his brother tomorrow, but it looks right.”
“That’s good,” Lili said. “I’m glad we’ll know who he is.”
“The next step is figuring out how he died,” I said. “But I can leave that up to Rick.”
She snorted. “Like that’s going to happen.”
“You free for lunch tomorrow?” I asked. “It’s going to be a slow day at Friar Lake, and I could come down to the campus. You have a studio class in the morning, right?”
“But it’s done at eleven-thirty. I could meet you at noon. How about the Cafette? It’s still warm enough to sit outside with Rochester there.”
“That sounds great.” I relaxed back against the throw pillow, and we chatted for a few more minutes. After she hung up, I stared at the cell phone as the screen displayed the call ending, then returned to the list of frequently dialed numbers. It was a visual testimony to the way I had begun to reintegrate myself into the world at large, and Stewart’s Crossing in particular. Rick Stemper, Mark Figueroa, Gail Dukowski at The Chocolate Ear. A couple of folks at Eastern, including Joe Capodilupo. Tor, and Lili.
When I returned from prison and got the cell phone, the only number I had programmed in was Santiago Santos. I scrolled down to his name, and though I didn’t delete his number, I did remove him from my list of speed-dials.
That was progress, I thought.
21 – File Search
After breakfast the next morning, I loaded Rochester in the car and we drove up to Friar Lake. Joey Capodilupo had set up a meeting with a guy who was going to redo all the gutters and downspouts, and I walked around with the two of them. I knew that Joey would be there to keep an eye on things until his crew shut down at three-thirty. “I’m going to head down to the campus,” I said. “Call me if you need anything.”
I closed my office, and Rochester and I drove to Leighville. Though dogs technically weren’t allowed on the Eastern campus, nobody had ever complained about Rochester. He and I strolled through the grounds, trees turning color, students breaking out long-sleeve shirts, toting backpacks I assumed were full of books – though they could as easily have been carrying netbooks, laptops, tablets and other electronic gizmos. Rochester stopped beside a trash can and lifted his leg to pee, his nostrils quivering as he did so.
Old wooden picnic tables and benches clustered around the outside of the Cafette, an on-campus sandwich shop in a renovated carriage house. They were incised with initials of long-gone lovers and the wear of wind and rain. Lili joined us there, and Rochester tried to jump up on her, but she gave him a gentle push on his snout, then scratched behind his ears and told him he was a good boy.
“What about me?” I asked.
She reached up and patted me on the top of my head. “You’re a good boy, too,” she said, and laughed.
I looped Rochester’s leash around the leg of an Adirondack chair painted in Eastern’s colors of light blue and white and Lili and I went inside. The Cafette was a worn, homey-looking place, decorated with old college pennants and faded T-shirts. The multi-paned windows at the far end were open and a light breeze ruffled the pages of an Eastern Daily Sun, the college newspaper, open on one of the small tables that cluttered the front of the room. The kitchen took up most of the back of the room, with a fireplace along one wall. The first cold day, there would be a fire there, and students lounging on the overstuffed chairs around it.
We both opted for the salad bar, chatting as we piled our plates with bibb and romaine lettuce, tomatoes, raw mushrooms, and diced green peppers. Lili added a bunch of other veggies to hers, while I opted for croutons, raisins and crumbled blue cheese. We took them up to the register, where the student worker on duty had a large silver ring pierced through the side of her nose. I had an urge to get Rochester’s leash and see if I could hook it to her ring, but I resisted.
She weighed the salads, and Lili paid for them and the drinks. “My turn,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’ll let you take me out somewhere nice this weekend.”
“Not tomorrow night,” I said. “We’re baby-sitting Rascal so Rick and Tamsen can go out to dinner.”
She began to sing, “Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match…”
The cashier looked at us like we were nuts. And she was the one with the big ring in her nose.
We walked back outside to Rochester. I fed him pieces of French bread while Lili and I ate. As we were finishing up, Lili said, “You’re going to think this is weird.”
“What’s that?”
“You remember those pictures I took of the sneaker? I started fiddling with one of them, desaturating the color. Then I kept on fading it out a few degrees at a time until I had a series. I imported them into a movie program and timed the fade.”
I understood the technical terms but I had no idea why she was telling me, or how I was supposed to respond. So I just said, “And?”
“And it’s sort of beautiful, but creepy. Like a metaphor for life fading away. Though I would never say anything that explicit.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“Do you think it’s too strange?”
“I don’t think there’s anything so strange, or so morbid, that you can’t make art out of it,” I said. “Look at murder mysteries and crime TV shows. They take awful stuff and bring it into our living rooms and bedrooms. And doing that helps us appreciate our own lives and our mortality.”
“That’s the way I feel, too,” she said. “I took so many photographs of horrible things when I was a journalist, and there was always this fine line between exploiting the pain of the victims and documenting the events. Witnessing. There’s something of that going on in the back of my head, too.”
“Can you show me the movie?”
“I’d like that. You want to come over to my office now?”
“Sure.” The three of us walked to Lili’s office in companionable silence, and Rochester picked a good spot on the hardwood to sprawl. Lili and I sat in front of her desktop computer an
d she ran the movie for me.
It was creepy but oddly beautiful. The sneaker began in fully saturated colors, the blue canvas a vivid contrast to the white laces and sole. “The real shoe is a lot more faded,” she said. “I upped the colors to start with.”
Gradually, in frame after frame, the shoe’s colors faded, and the background darkened. It was like watching a slow-motion shot of a flower dying.
She played me a couple of slow, dirge-like pieces of music that didn’t add anything to the movie. “How about something from the sixties,” I suggested. “Like in that scene from The Deer Hunter, where they played 'You’re Just Too Good to Be True.' A song with a hard-edge but some melancholy.”
“That could work. I can’t use a real song because I’d have to buy the rights. But maybe I can find something similar on one of the royalty-free music sites.” Her desk phone rang and she picked it up. “Dr. Weinstock.”
She listened for a moment, then said, “But I can’t do anything about it. It’s a registration problem.” Another pause. “Yes, I told her to go in and see you. I’m trying to notify you of the problem.”
She hung up in frustration. “What’s the problem?” I asked.
“I have a student in my art history class whose name on the roster is Jean Bean,” she said. “When she handed in her first paper, she wrote her name as Joan. I asked her about the discrepancy, and she said somebody wrote the name down wrong when she first registered and she ignored it.”
“But she can’t do that,” I said. “All her records will be wrong.”
“You’re preaching to the choir. I told her she had to make the change, but she didn’t seem to care. So I called the registrar myself. You’d think with all the rigmarole students have to go through with registration and financial aid somebody would have caught this beforehand. But no. And they say she’s the only one who can fix it.”
She made a washing motion with her hands. “You know what? Not my problem.”
“I agree,” I said. “All you can do is figure out what name to call her.”