by Neil Plakcy
“He was a very bright boy. He desperately wanted to go to college but his parents didn’t have a spare nickel for him, and they didn’t have such big scholarships back then as they do today. The best he could have managed was to go part-time, and that wasn’t enough to keep him out of the service.”
She picked up her coffee and sipped, then bit into one of the rum balls. Since Rick had brought a plate of them, I took one myself, ignoring his dark look.
“Did Peter have any plans once he got to Canada?” Rick asked.
“Just to go to school. We had heard, you know, that there were people at the universities in Canada who were sympathetic to draft resisters. He had a couple of names of people at various schools.”
“And the other boy, Don? Did he get back while you were still there?”
She shook her head. “I only saw him the once, very briefly.” She sniffed. “He asked me where people who smoked dope hung out.”
“Did you tell him?”
“Of course I didn’t have any habits like that,” she said. “I was a very good girl. And my, I was only about eighteen or nineteen. I had heard rumors, though, about hippies who camped out in the woods behind the Meeting House. I told him that’s all I knew.”
She picked up another rum ball. “These are so delicious,” she said.
Behind us, I saw Declan flip the “Open” sign on the café’s front door to “Closed.”
“Those were such special times,” Mrs. Holt said. “John Brannigan was so handsome and dashing, and he kept telling us what good work we were doing. He called us his girls, you know.” She looked at her watch. “Well, I’m afraid I must dash. Have to get Sunday supper on the table.”
“Thank you,” Rick said. “You’ve been very helpful.”
She left, and I picked up the last rum ball on the plate. “It’s another piece of the puzzle,” I said. “Don left the Meeting House looking for dope.”
“But he had to have come back alive,” Rick said. “There’s no way you could get a dead body in there."
“They could have argued,” I said. “Don and Pete. Don sounds like a slacker, and Pete a smart kid. Maybe things got physical, and Pete killed Don.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions again,” Rick said. “I’m not saying that’s not what happened, but we still have more pieces of the puzzle to fill in.”
I remembered what Edith had said, that even as a kid I was curious about everything. That curiosity had gotten me into trouble in the past, and I hoped it wouldn’t do so this time.
26 – Husband of the Year
When Rochester and I were back in the car, I decided I needed to see Lili in person to tell her what I’d done. So instead of heading for home, I drove up the River Road to Leighville. I stopped at the Genuardi’s outside town and bought a fall bouquet, asters and chrysanthemums in shades of red, yellow and brown.
Lili rented a second-floor apartment in a converted Victorian a few blocks from campus. The owners had restored it to its former glory, cleaning the small stained-glass windows, refinishing the pine floors, and painting the crown moldings. She had decorated it with an artist’s eye, though she didn’t display her own work. There were a couple of art-quality photographs and a few pen-and-ink drawings by undiscovered geniuses, but most of the apartment was simple and uncluttered, with classic Craftsman-style furniture and hand-knotted wool rugs from Mexico.
“This is a nice surprise,” Lili said, when she opened the door. I handed her the flowers and we kissed. Rochester pushed past me into her living room, intent on something.
“What brings you up here?” she asked, as she led me inside. “You want to have dinner? I’m making spaghetti sauce to put up for the winter. It should be ready in a half hour or so, and I can boil up some pasta.”
“First I have something to tell you,” I said.
She looked at me. “It’s all right. I shouldn’t have even brought it up.”
I was confused. Brought up what? I’d just gotten there. Rochester circled around twice and settled on the rug in front of the sofa. Oh, moving in together. I’d forgotten about that when I got caught up in my hacking angst.
“You may be changing your mind,” I said. “Come on, sit down with me.”
We sat on the sofa, slightly turned so we were facing each other. “I made a mistake today. I’m sure it’s not the last one I’ll ever make, but it reminded me that I still have a long way to go to be the guy you deserve.”
Her eyes were dark and her voice serious. “What did you do?”
“I hacked into this reunion database online, looking for information on Peter Breaux.”
She looked at me, and then burst into laughter.
My bafflement must have shown on my face, because she took my hands in hers. “Oh, sweetie, I know that no one gets over problems overnight. I thought you were…”
“What?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, confessing that you’d cheated on me or something.”
“I’d never do that,” I said. “I know that Phillip probably told you that, too, and it was a lie. But I’m not Phillip. I’m not wired that way. Even when things were at their worst with Mary, when we were sleeping in separate beds and she was telling me I was the most awful husband in the world, I never once considered cheating.”
“Clearly you were never the worst husband in the world,” Lili said. She leaned forward and kissed me again. “Not even in the top ten.”
I kissed her and then pulled back. “In the top twenty?” I said, with mock irritation.
“Well, you did commit a felony and go to prison,” she said. “So you’re out of the running for husband of the year.”
“I guess I’ll just have to try harder.” I leaned forward and we kissed again. I felt like the anvil that had been in the pit of my stomach had floated away, and I was very, very lucky.
That would have been a good time to bring up our moving in together, I guess, but I was worried Lili would see it as a bounceback after my hacking confession. I owed it to her and to myself to make sure I was saying yes for all the right reasons.
She sniffed the air. “My sauce,” she said, and jumped up. Rochester was right on her heels, hoping there was food in the offing.
I followed them both. “Taste this,” Lili said, offering me a wooden spoon with some rich orange-red sauce on it.
It was delicious, and I told her so. “I use fresh tomatoes, but I dehydrate them first to concentrate the flavor. Why don’t you set the table while I put up some pasta?”
We ate dinner with Rochester at my feet, and then went into Lili’s bedroom, where we cuddled together and then read for a while.
I didn’t stay over, because I didn’t have clothes with me for the next day, but I drove home in a much better mood than I’d been in on the way upriver.
Monday morning, I took Rochester for his walk around eight. As we walked, I noted the arrival of the maids and the nannies. Some came in their own cars, while others walked in from one of the bus stops along Main Street. We passed, as usual, an obese Russian man in his sixties, wheeling his tiny grandchild in a stroller, as well as a number of other dogs and their parents. The Camerons, who spent winters in Florida, were having their gutters cleaned, in preparation for their departure, and Bob Freehl was standing in his driveway supervising the work of an exterminator.
I felt like a slacker, when so many people around me were either already at work, or on their way there, and I still had an hour before I had to be at Friar Lake. Not for the first time I blessed my parents, first generation Americans who had worked hard so that I could get an education and qualify for a skilled job. Peter Breaux hadn’t been so lucky, and I was sure that many of those maids and yard workers were intelligent, often educated in their home countries, but their immigrant status or limited language skills restricted them to manual labor.
I was very fortunate to have my job, and I knew it. Every day when I arrived at Friar Lake I marveled at the way I’d landed on my feet, that I had a
job that was interesting and challenging and paid enough for roof and kibble.
The morning was busy, as Mondays often are, but at lunch I had some free time to think back on the case. I pulled up the list of the ten members of the renovation committee from the Friends Meeting website and printed it out. As I remembered, the only three I recognized were Hannah Palmer, Vera Lee Isay and Eben Hosford. But I was curious about the ones I didn’t recognize. Could any of them have a connection to the case?
Two of the other members were Realtors in town; two others were school teachers, one at General Lucius Stewart Elementary and one at Pennsbury High – both schools I had attended. I couldn’t find anything on the other three, so I looked them up in the white pages online. They all lived in Stewart’s Crossing, which made sense.
As I was typing I realized I didn’t know Vera Lee’s address. I’d assumed she lived in town because she belonged to the Friends Meeting. But a quick search, and a look at Google’s satellite view, revealed that she lived in a small stone house in Lahaska, about a half hour north of the George School campus in Newtown. Why would she be involved with the Stewart’s Crossing Meeting, when there was another right in her home town?
The quick answer was that she knew more than she was telling about the body behind the false wall, and that by belonging to the Stewart’s Crossing Meeting, and serving on the committee, she could keep abreast of any developments.
I looked up Hannah Palmer’s number and called her. “It’s Steve Levitan,” I said. “We met at the Harvest Festival.”
“Oh yeah. Rick’s friend.”
Interesting. I guessed Hannah and Tamsen talked a lot. “I wanted to ask you about one of the members of the renovation committee. Vera Lee Isay.”
“I don’t know her that well,” she said. “She used to belong to another Meeting, and she joined ours just about the time we began the renovation. She volunteered to be the committee secretary, which was a blessing, because she keeps excellent minutes.”
I thanked Hannah, and hung up. Vera Lee’s recent interest in the Stewart’s Crossing Meeting House was suspicious, and I sent a quick email to Rick. I tried to come up with a way I could casually run into Vera Lee, perhaps with Rochester, who had charmed her. But I couldn’t see walking the dog around the George School campus, or showing up out of the blue at her home. I’d have to leave following up on her involvement with the Meeting to the professional.
27 – The Whole Story
Rick called a couple of hours later. “Arnold Lamprey’s on his way to Stewart’s Crossing,” he said. “He wants to see where his brother died. And he wants to thank you for uncovering the remains. You think you could join us at the Meeting House? He’s going to be there in about an hour.”
“I’m getting ready to leave the office,” I said. “I can meet you. Did you get my messages, about Eben Hosford and Vera Lee Isay?”
“Yeah. I’m tracking down Eben Hosford so I can talk to him. He lives off the grid, though. No voter’s registration or driver’s license, doesn’t own any property. I’ll give Vera Lee a call tomorrow.”
I locked up, and Rochester romped over to my car, tugging me with him like the tail on a kite, and then stuck his head out the window all the way down to Stewart’s Crossing. It was chilly but I didn’t have the heart to pull him in. The sky was brownish-gray, and a skein of Canada geese flew overhead, heading south for the winter. We passed a building where the first “S” had been torn away from the “Self-Storage” sign, and I wondered if that was where Santa kept his elves when he didn’t need them.
At the Meeting House parking lot I saw a dusty pickup with one bumper sticker that read “My other ride is a tractor” and another in the shape of an apple with “Support Your Local Farmers.” I figured that had to belong to Arnold Lamprey.
I hooked up Rochester’s leash and he went for a quick pee. As we turned the corner of the Meeting House I saw Rick standing where Rochester had found Don’s sneaker. With him was a big-chested man in his sixties with white hair, and a younger woman who looked like a contemporary of Hannah and Tamsen.
Rick introduced us. Arnold wore a faded all-weather jacket with a corduroy collar, jeans and work boots. His hands were broad and calloused and his smile was genuine. He had brought along his daughter Lori, the woman who had created the family tree and given us the connection to the Lampreys.
She got down on one knee to ruffle Rochester behind his ears. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and it looked like she wore no makeup—though I’d learned from living with Mary that often meant a woman was just skilled at its application. In Lori Lamprey’s case, though, I thought it meant that she was a no-nonsense kind of woman who could castrate a bull as easily as create a webpage.
“Must have been a long trip across the state,” I said.
“Didn’t matter to me,” Arnold said. “He was my brother, and we let him go for too long.”
“I insisted that my dad bring me, too, because I know him, and I knew he wouldn’t tell you the whole story,” she said.
“Now, Lori, don’t go rushing things. Let me have a moment here where my brother died.”
Rick, Lori and I stepped away. “What’s the whole story?” Rick asked her.
“I want to see how much my father is willing to tell you. But you’ll understand when we’re finished.”
A chilly breeze picked up, scattered dead leaves around the broad horseshoe-shaped lawn. A low-riding car passed by on Main Street, bass thumping, and high above us a jet left a white contrail across the sky. The late afternoon had a lonely, almost funereal feel and I was glad to have the comfort of Rochester’s warm bulk beside my leg.
Arnold spent a few minutes in silent contemplation of the wall of the Meeting House, and then came back to us. “I’m about dead on my feet,” he said. “Anywhere in this town we can get a cup of coffee?”
We agreed to reconvene at The Chocolate Ear, where we sat at a table outside so that Rochester could stay with us. He sat between me and Lori, and she occasionally reached down to pet him.
“You know I had three brothers,” Arnold said. “Each of us two years apart. Brian, Charley and Donny. Brian wanted to see the world, so he enlisted in the Army the day he turned eighteen. He was in one of the first divisions to leave for Nam, back in 1965.”
“Did he come back?” I asked.
“In 1967, when Charley’s number was coming up. Brian was healthy enough in body, but something inside him was broken. Had these nightmares, these black moods. Today they’d call it PTSD, but back then we didn’t know what to think.”
Arnold drank his coffee while the rest of us were silent. I thought briefly of Jerry Vandeventer, who’d suffered the same way.
There was a steady stream of traffic down Main Street, delivery trucks and SUVs, and I wondered where all the station wagons of my youth had gone. When I was a kid, every family with more than one child had one of those long wood-paneled numbers, and it was a treat for me to ride along with someone who had multiple siblings. Those were the days when all I knew of war came from bits of TV news. Now I was well aware of all its costs—from the soldiers who didn’t come back, to the ones who did, to the people who reported on atrocities like Lili.
After a while, Arnold spoke again. “Charley saw what happened to Brian, and he filed for an agricultural deferment when his number came up.”
“You said your dad was a World War II vet,” I said. “How did he feel about that?”
“He came from that generation, said you had to pay your dues to live in a free country. He didn’t approve when Charley got out of serving, but there wasn’t much he could do. When Don came of age, he applied for the deferment, too, but he got turned down because the three of us were on the farm. Pop was pretty insistent that it was Don’s duty.”
Lori reached over and stroked her dad’s upper arm. “There’s more to the story,” she said. “Go on, Daddy. Tell them.”
“I hesitated because I didn’t want to admit to breaking any
laws,” Arnold said. “But Lori here said I had to tell you, in case what my brothers and I did caused some harm to Donny. See, like I told you, when Brian came back from Nam, he had all those problems, and the only thing that made him feel better was smoking dope.”
Rick and I leaned forward, listening closely. In the distance I heard the cawing of a crow and the blare of a car horn.
“Us being farmers, Brian had this idea. He got some marijuana seeds from a buddy of his fresh home from Nam and started growing them, first sprouting them in a corner of our greenhouse. Then come spring he planted those seedlings at the edge of a cornfield. Our pop never knew about them.”
“But Don did,” I said.
He nodded. “We had a real good crop that year. We harvested and dried it in big bunches. Then we separated out all the seeds and twigs and packaged it up. Brian used to take the bus into Pittsburgh every couple of weeks to sell to guys at the VFW.”
He looked at us. “It wasn’t about the money, you know. Just about helping those boys feel better after all they went through. We couldn’t even spend the money, because all of us still lived at home and we didn’t want raise any suspicions with our kin. Then come January, Donny disappeared. He had taken all the money we had, close to a thousand dollars, and all the marijuana, too. Brian was spitting mad. Took off on the bus to Pittsburgh after him.”
Up to that point, Don Lamprey had been fairly anonymous to me. I thought of him as a teenaged version of myself, wondering what I’d do in his shoes. But hearing his brother speak, Don became more of his own person. Not a person I thought I’d like – but still a human being who had died.
Arnold drank some of his coffee before he continued. “Pop was plenty mad that Donny had run off, and even madder that Brian went after him. Brian didn’t come back for a week, and he was a mess – drunk and high and I don’t know what all. Had to keep him out in the shed for a day until he dried out.”
“Did he eventually tell you where he went?” I asked.
“Just said he’d gone to Pittsburgh, looked around for Donny but couldn’t find him. So he stayed with some friends til he ran out of money. When we never heard anything from Donny, we thought maybe Pop was intercepting the mail, or maybe that the boy was embarrassed about what he’d done and couldn’t face us.”