Caretakers (Tyler Cunningham)

by Sheffield, Jamie

  I hopped into the car and drove out of town as fast as I felt that I safely could, making plenty of turns along the way. I had the better part of an hour to kill before I was due at Frank and Meg Gibson’s house for dinner, and I needed to think. I needed to think about all that had happened so far today. What the two attacks/ambushes meant. What the old man’s love-story/sob-story about Dee Crocker meant. What Frank might have for me. What I should look for with Terry at the Adirondack Museum. Where I could live for the duration of my investigation, given that I was driving a valuable piece of Porsche history. What I was hoping for in this investigation, beyond staying un-stomped (which seemed an adequate goal for today, but not for the long term).

  I unzipped the duffel part way, grabbed a still freezing-cold Canadian Coke, and popped the top; it fizzed a bit, but I caught it before any spilled on the car. My immediate concern was dinner, then getting clear of dinner, then getting out of town and to a remote camping spot (but not so remote that the Porsche would bottom out and leave me stranded for all time) where I was not as likely to be spotted/noted/harassed by the forest ranger over the next week or so. I threw my big mental map up in front of me while still keeping an eye on the road, and thought about possibilities. I had been building this map of the Adirondacks one day at a time since the late fall of 2001, so had more than a decade of explorations to fall back on. I was, however, used to exploring the park (my world) with the relatively high clearance of my Honda Element, which the Porsche 993 did not have.

  {{{Horseshoe Lake}}} popped into my head, so I adjusted the map to show me the area leading to, and away from Horseshoe Lake, and liked what I saw, given the particulars of my current need/want equation … it would do perfectly.

  Having settled that, I drove back into town, looping and keeping an eye in my rearview all of the time, and decided to arrive a bit early before Frank got home for six, and risk surprising Meg by asking her to let me park my Porsche in her side of the garage.

  Gibson Household, 7/16/2013, 8:38 p.m.

  Meg had no problem with me housing the Porsche in their garage during dinner, when I filtered it through the ‘borrowed car’ rationalization; I breathed a sigh of relief once it was under cover, and we’d gone inside. Meg Gibson knows me first and foremost through the TLAS … we share a love/obsession for dogs. She works as a guidance counselor in the local school system, and as she found out more about me through a combination of observation and well-meaning intrusiveness (which might be in, or comprise most of, her job-description), she passed quickly through nervous and scared to concerned and nurturing, and finally landed on something between a big sister and the cool aunt. She’d been nervous last year when I’d crossed briefly over (in her mind) from being a dog-loving trustafarian to doing some crazy and dangerous stuff for the police; as it always seems to be, the truth was somewhere in the middle.

  “Tyler, I haven’t seen you in months! (It had been 17 days) What have you been doing with yourself, and why are you driving that delicious green car?” I enjoyed that she described the car in terms of food (as she did all good things, in my experience), and that she clearly had no idea what kind of car it was, but would remember the color for the next ten years. “There’s nothing wrong with the Element, is there? Frank’s not making you...” She tailed off, having nowhere left to go. She’d been very scared last September when my Element had gotten banged up while I was helping Frank with some things (actually, Frank was helping me with some things, but he didn’t know it, or see it that way, which worked out well for all of us).

  “I’m borrowing the car from a friend for a while, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong with the Element, and this is important, so listen up … your husband is not, did not, and will not, make me do anything. What happened last year was entirely my choice/fault, and Frank is helping me this time, not the other way around.”

  “Come out back, the dogs’ll be happy to see you (it’s true, they would be), and I’ve got some Cokes chilling in the cooler, along with a growler of Ubu for Frank when he gets here.” She chills Cokes for me with salted ice and brings home half gallon bottles of local microbrews for her husband … it’s how she loves.

  Toby and the new dog that they were fostering, Lola, were all over me the instant that we got out into their big fenced yard, and it seemed as though things would be easier if I just rolled around on the grass for a bit, so I did. I made a New Year’s resolution in 2002 not to live a life that required suits and ties and dry-cleaning and ironing and dress-shoes and worrying about grass-stains or dog-prints … so far, it’s been working out pretty well; I don’t miss any of those things. I opened the bag I had in my pocket containing some cookies I’d recently made for the dogs (here, at the TLAS, and a few other spots with dogs that I visit frequently), and put the dogs through their paces to earn some treats for a minute, while Meg raced back inside for the wine which she was surprised that she had forgotten to bring out (I wasn’t … she always forgets to take care of herself).

  “Does Toby still miss Chester?” I asked, when the dogs had run off to play tag at the far end of the fenced run. Toby and the ancient Gibson Golden, Chester, had been great friends, and when they’d had to put Chester to sleep this spring, Toby had moped around the house looking for his friend. Frank and Meg had taken in Lola, another dog from the TLAS, to foster for a while, and it seemed to have helped, but Frank had confided in me during our lunch that he still thought Toby spent some time thinking about, and looking for Chester. (Things like this helped me to understand the Frank/Meg dynamic, and also to tolerate Frank hassling me from time to time).

  “Maybe, a bit, but less every day. I think we’ll end up keeping Lola; they get on so well together.” The danger of fostering a second dog had always been that they would become a family member, instead of simply being more socialized/adoptable.

  “Makes sense,” I said, and left it at that, having learned not to delve too deeply into peoples’ dog lives.

  We talked about dogs and public education and summer and summer people and locals and things slowly drifted towards my looking into the disappearance of Deirdre Crocker.

  “Frank and I talked about it a bit last night, just what we remembered our parents talking about over the years.” Both Frank and Meg had been born in Saranac Lake, and would have heard a different version than the Crockers would hear, or tell. “It was, of course, a shame,” she paused here, which led me to believe that I was going to hear from the anti-Crocker side of things in a moment, “but as the days and weeks went by, Fred Crocker, Deirdre’s father (and Mike’s ‘Da’, I thought) stepped on more and more toes, and got more and more outspoken as nothing was turned up.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I thought that I could hear the crunch of Frank’s car in the driveway on the other side of the house, and wanted to get a little more out of Meg before Frank appeared. Meg understands people and emotions and relationships in ways that I don’t even start to comprehend; hearing that side, the side having to do with feelings and human/social bonds, is always interesting, and often useful in informing the facts and statistics that my worldview is drawn from.

  “That summer people versus locals dynamic. It’s even more pronounced with great camps, especially back then; people like the Crockers had a few on-site staff year round, and even more during the season to support their visits. That’s a lot of money, besides just taxes, going into local pockets. After the Crocker girl vanished, Fred was hurt and suspicious and angry. He brought in outsiders to look for her, and then to staff his camp, and eventually to do all of the work associated with opening and maintaining Topsail. It’s shifted back a bit since he died, but they never went back to a local caretaker, or cook, or having a local lawyer for camp issues, like a lot of summer families used to do.” Meg’s father had worked his whole life as a lawyer in town, and I wondered if there were something there beyond second-hand knowledge.

  “Some families make the relationships work, and others keep it to a working relationship;
in the end there’s a big difference. On-site caretakers have a great deal. The owner gets the peace of mind that their property has someone year round providing maintenance and security—the caretakers get to live in a beautiful place rent free. That symbiotic relationship can become quite close. I have family members, the Reinegers, who have been working for the Edelmans on Upper Saranac Lake for 80 years, maybe more. Uncle Robert is one of the few remaining year round on-site caretakers left in the Tri-Lakes, and the men in his family have gone hunting with the Edelmans for generations, working as guides, but also out west a couple of times, I think. I also know that Bobby’s sister Emily went to school with lots of help from the Edelman’s, and his daughter, Louise got a lot of help from the Edelmans when it was time for her to go off to school.”

  “At the other end of the spectrum, the Crockers pay a service to maintain their camp, based up in Plattsburgh with local sub-contractors doing the work; they bring all of their domestic help up with them from Manhattan. It may be a bit cheaper, but they’ve got more money than God; my guess is they like avoiding the relationships that the Reinegers and Edelmans seem to cherish. Most camps are somewhere in the middle, I guess.”

  “Middle of what?” Frank asked as he came out through the door, frosty mug in hand (I suspected a note was responsible for his having the mug, Meg left lots of notes, to make things run smoothly, which they did), and was rushed by happy dogs. Fresh from work, Frank had a couple of treats in his pocket for the dogs (reminding me why I liked him despite our sometimes being on opposite sides of a legal issue) and he got the dogs to sit/shake/kiss before coming over to get his beer out of the cooler.

  “Middle of talking about something else, Franklin Porter Gibson.” She softened this with a wet and noisy kiss which got the dogs jumping up to try and get in on the action (and made me a bit nauseous, although it didn’t show, because I don’t emote … much). “How was your day?”

  “I caught some bad guys, some got away, I’ll deal with the rest tomorrow.” It was a set piece with them, but routine is nice (I’m a big fan of routine, preferring even things that I don’t like to things I’m unfamiliar with … that’s why I study/read/research anything and everything, it sounds, and is, simplistic, but the more I know, the less there is to surprise me in this world).

  “So, what do you have for Tyler, stud-muffin?” Meg asked, giving Frank a sloppy kiss and then turning around to watch how/if I would react; she likes to play at studying me, but there’s always a hint of genuine interest which leaves me feeling a bit like I’m in a Skinner box when she does it.

  “Jesus, Meg, gimme a minute to shake the day off won’t ya? I left the stuff inside, and figured I might have a drink before I started, if ya don’t mind. A little foreplay before I get screwed, if you know what I mean.” I didn’t. Either Frank was in on Meg’s ongoing experiment, or something was wrong; he seemed significantly more tense than this situation would ordinarily warrant. The dogs and I looked nervously back and forth between them, hoping someone would tell a joke or fart, to break the tension.

  “Screw that, off with the clothes!” Meg shouted, and jumped him, taking both of them (along with a pair of pouncing dogs) to the ground. They all rolled around for a few seconds, and then I could hear Frank laughing, followed by him going on the offensive and tickling Meg, while the dogs jumped and barked and wagged and kissed. A minute later, they both got up, Meg grabbed Frank’s mug and poured him a dark beer from the growler, and brought it over to him with a kiss.

  “All better now?” she asked.

  “Yup,” Frank said, wiping some foam off of his mustache on his sleeve, “that’ll about take care of it. Thanks honey!”

  Now he turned to me, “Tyler, can you tell me why the hell you were rappelling out of your office and down onto Main Street at a bit after five this afternoon, one of two times every day when anything anyone does on Main Street will be seen, and if the slightest bit hinky, reported.” He looked at me with honestly curious eyes, and held me with his stare until Meg started giggling. Ten seconds later a chuckle bubbled out, despite his best efforts to stifle it.

  “Meg, it’s not funny.” He gave her his serious face, which she tried, and failed, to return. “Well, it’s a little funny, but dammit Tyler, I can’t help thinking that this is related to the Crocker thing, which you promised you’d keep low-profile. I’ve seen low profile, and son, this ain’t it. Honest to Christ, Meg, Tilly Auer said he came down the rope like a ninja, or some special forces guy.” He was smiling too, now.

  “We must have gotten fifteen calls, Tyler. What the hell were you thinking?” he asked, shaking his head and chuckling into his mug, as he took the beer down another inch and a half.

  “I wanted to lock up SmartPig with that lock, you know, the bar that goes from the door to a hole in the floor. But you can’t lock it from the outside, or lock it and leave, so...” I trailed off at this point.

  “Tyler, how are you gonna get back in?” he asked, smiling at me like he’d trapped/outsmarted me, but I was ready, had thought about this ahead of time.

  “I’ll rappel down from the roof to the same window and open it,” I answered plainly; it was the only sensible answer.

  “Like a frickin’ ninja!” Meg blurted out, and started to giggle again.

  “Tell you what, Tyler me boy,” Frank said, after finishing his first mug of Ubu, “How about you try not to do that during what passes for ‘rush-hour’ in Saranac Lake. Okay?”

  “Deal,” I answered, although it was hard to know when/why I might need to get into SmartPig, so I couldn’t really guarantee to do what he asked.

  “So, do I want to know why you felt the best thing for all involved was for you to rope down from your offices like Seal Team Six during drive-time, or should we talk about dogs?” He looked at me, and waited.

  I thought about his question, what it meant in a surface interpretation and implied beneath the top layer (I’m not very good with nuanced language and rhetorical questions, but I’m trying), took five seconds, and then answered, “Meg tells me that she thinks Toby is getting over the loss of Chester, now that Lola’s here on a permanent basis.” Frank got a stormy/angry/frustrated look on his face for a second, and then it seemed to bleed out, when he took in the blue sky, loving wife, sweet dogs, cold beer, and … me. We sat out in the fading day for most of an hour, until the beer and Coke and wine ran out, and then we headed in for dinner. Meg had made pulled pork in the slow-cooker, and told me all about it; I don’t have a kitchen in SmartPig, so food that’s easy to make without actually cooking is right up my alley.

  As we settled down at the table to eat, and the dogs worked out the right spots to lay down (apparently my presence threw off established norms of behavior and begging and food recovery, and the geometry of food/family/room matrix changed enough to stress out the dogs a bit, and they spent five to seven minutes at each visit redrawing the lines of sight and supper-supplication), Frank patted a thick manila folder meaningfully. He was about to say something so I cut in before he could.

  “The name manila folder comes from the fiber originally used to make the folders, manila hemp. Manila hemp is actually derived from the Abaca, or Musa Textilis, plant, a relative of the banana, not at all related to cannabis, and the name Manila refers to the fact that the Philippines was, and still is, the country which produces the most abaca fiber. The fiber is harvested from the trunk or pseudostem, and now-a-days it is most commonly used in the production of teabags, not manila folders.” I smiled at him (a #8, sucking up and obsequious), and he looked up at Meg helplessly as she came in with the huge bowl of salad.

  “How?” he said to the room.

  “You try to stump me with something every time I come to your house; I could see you thinking about the folder, and wanted to preempt with one that I knew, rather than wait for you to pick something I’ve never read up on.”

  Meg beamed at me with an angelic smile, and asked, “Tyler, how and why is a second date different from a fifth d
ate; and how would the answer differ for a 15 year old versus a 21 year old?” Frank stood up to get the wine bottle, refill her glass, pausing for a casual high-five before returning to his seat … I was speechless. Frank basked in the glory of my embarrassment and humiliation (such as it was … I just didn’t/couldn’t know the answer to that question, so I sat and waited for someone else to talk) for 17 seconds before reading from some notes that he pulled from the folder.

  “July 13, 1957, Deirdre Crocker, 17, and Kimberly Stanton, 18, were in a one car accident on Route 30, roughly a mile from where it connects with Route 3. It was called in by Trooper Neil King, who drove by the scene a few minutes after 11 p.m.. When he arrived, Trooper King saw one still functioning headlight in the woods. He opened the driver’s side door and his initial notes (Frank held up photocopies of notes from a steno pad) mention a smell of alcohol, although the report (Frank waved a copy of a more official-looking filled out form) was written up as an accident resulting from swerving to miss a deer in the road. Both Crocker and Stanton were lucid, and able to identify themselves and emergency contact information. King’s notes reflect that the driver, Crocker, had broken her nose on the steering wheel, but was otherwise not visibly injured. Stanton, the passenger, had shattered the windscreen with her head, and slammed her midsection into the console. She had multiple lacerations on her face and scalp, complained of some difficulty breathing, and had obviously vomited numerous times, some of it suggestive of internal bleeding or injury.” He paused and breathed and ate some pulled pork. We were having it wrapped in warm tortillas, with a little shredded cheese, some sliced dill pickles, and a ribbon of barbeque sauce … it was better than all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and I was thankful for my exquisite listening-memory, without which I would have been too focused on the food to take in what Frank was saying.