“At Tweedy, I was a poor kid. There were new money kids, old money rich kids, and old money ‘poor’... I guess that’s me… just draining the accounts, now. Well, trying not to.”
“Old money poor?” Chloe asked.
“Yeah, well, we really don’t count for much in the money category. To me, this house is big and nice and comfortable, but it’d just be the guest house or maybe a barn for some of those families at Tweedy. When I say my family is ‘old’, all I mean is we know our history--every family is the same age, right? But yeah, follow me for the Wells Family History tour. The parts I know anyway.”
They walked into the library. It was a two story room with big bay windows and rows of stoutly built walnut bookshelves that formed aisles from the floor to the ceiling. Oil paintings and black and white photos hung from the sides of the bookcases and the walls. A plank walkway circled the second floor aisles.
“See that painting?” She pointed to a big portrait on the wall. “That’s my great-great-something grandparents. They were part of the original Massachusetts Bay settlement. Eventually, my family came here to help set up the Western Reserve deal… which was a total flop my dad says… Then they just stayed here instead of moving back East. Really, we’ve been on this farm since--mothers having babies, grandparents dying in beds.”
“That’s amazing.” Chloe said and looked around the room. A twinge of self consciousness crept into her mind. “My family history goes back to… my Dad and my Mom and Grandma.”
“Well, don’t feel bad, no matter what, it’s better than mine.” Morgan said and whistled twice into the beer bottle.
Chapter Five
Keith’s office was in an old industrial park in Newbury, only about 7 miles from the condo. When he called about the place, he got a rose-colored description, for sure. The carpet was threadbare, and the office furniture looked like it had been sitting in a warehouse since Ike was President. At least there was a big picture window and he could see a patch of blue sky above the warehouse next door.
He was setting up the computer on the desk when there was a knock at the door. “Hello?” a man called out. He was wearing a tan sport jacket and jeans and had thick bifocals. His hair was white, but still thick and wavy. He looked familiar. Keith squinted at him.
“You look so familiar… Chardon High?”
“Yes, that’s right, Keith. I remember you, but really only because I heard you were back in town. I looked you up in the yearbook before I came by.”
“Let’s see if I can remember… Rrrrrrriiiich, Rich Simons, right?”
“Yeah, that’s me, I think the white hair really throws people. It’s a genetic thing.”
“Tell me about the hair! Where did mine go?” Keith rubbed his head and sighed. “It doesn’t seem that long ago, but man time just marches on faster and faster. I think once I hit thirty, the years started going by in the blink of an eye.”
“Tell me about it! My youngest is in college this year. I’m an empty nester!”
“Just curious, how’d you find my office? I haven’t even put an ad in the paper yet.”
“I saw you move in. My office is just across the road.” He gestured over his shoulder. ”I actually could use some help if you’re ready to do some work.”
“I’d be happy to.”
“I’m an attorney. A friend of a friend asked me to look into a hit and run...”
“The Judge? I saw the driver was just sentenced.”
“Yes that’s it.”
“I read about it in the paper this morning. Tragic accident.”
“Yeah… well…. maybe an accident. I’ve heard gossip about your career here and there… you’ve had, let’s say, an exciting career while I’ve been doing Wills and Divorces.”
“Yeah, it’s been exciting at times....” he rubbed his shoulder. The muscle was still more like jelly than the solid mass it used to be--he still couldn’t do a push-up.
“Well, people will be glad you’re back. Things have changed here… a lot… and not all for the better.”
“Fill me in over a drink?”
“Stop over later today and we can crack a bottle.”
Chapter Six
Tracy, Chloe and the boys walked through the woods. The leaves were just starting to change, and the tractor trail was dry and hard as concrete. The trail ended at the top of a hill. Hemlock trees shaded a fire ring, beyond it the hill sloped down toward a sheer sandstone wall, which plunged to the valley floor below. The woods was carpeted with centuries of leaves from ancient, tall oaks, smooth barked beeches and immense, gnarled maples. The brilliant bright field was visible in the distance.
The boys set down a cooler and popped open two more bottles. “Want any?”
Tracy, “No, I’m good. Please guys, don’t get drunk. You’re not staying over here again. Your parents hate me enough.”
“Hate you?” Chloe asked.
Steve tapped the bottle with his fingernail. “She ‘undermines parental authority by living alone’… that’s what my mom says.”
“I have to run into town, too.” Tracy said.
“More online auctions?” Steve asked.
“I have to pay the property taxes on this place next month. That’s the downside to independence.”
Morgan asked, “Why not get the firewood business going again? Or sell some more trees to the Amish guy? Where’s your Uncle anyway...”
“He’s here one month then gone for six. It’s too early for the firewood. Yeah, I need to scout around here again for some more trees to sell. I always feel bad selling them though. I’d rather just sell the shit we still have in the attic from Mom’s shop.”
“Some of that stuff is your history… Trees, well, they’re just trees. Can you hear them scream or something?” Morgan screamed and mimed toppling over.
“I get it about the trees...” Chloe said looking around at the canopy. “These are old, old trees.”
Morgan hit Steve’s shoulder, “Should we climb the cliff before we go?”
“Oh you ‘studz’ with a ‘z’ have to show off? Geez don’t fall again. Remember that?”
“Scared the shit out of us.” Steve said. “That must have been twenty feet.”
“No blood, no foul.” Morgan said.
The boys ran down a path to the valley floor. Chloe jogged after them. On the steepest part of the path, the boys descended wildly, arms flailing. Steve kept kicking at Morgan’s heels to try to knock him over. When they got to the bottom, they were both out of breath. Chloe stopped and looked up. “Hey, that looks taller from here.”
“We don’t try to go all the way up the face anymore. If you reach that root there, you can get into that crevasse between the rocks, then the tree roots are like a ladder back up to the top. It’s fun. Watch me.” Morgan followed a well tested path up the face to the root. Then he hoisted himself into the crack and wedged himself in so he could look down. “See, it’s easy.”
Chloe followed up to the root. Morgan held out a hand to help her. “Let’s see if I can do this.” She grabbed another handhold then scampered up the face to the top.
“Holy moly… are you a monkey?!” He could just see her face peering over, smiling at him. She flexed her muscles.
Chapter Seven
Keith trotted across Kinsman Road to the “Law Offices of Richard Simons III”. The office was a converted Cape Cod. There was a reception room and two lawyer’s offices. The place still had a full kitchen. Rich opened the fridge. “Let’s see. There’s beer, I think there’s some wine, and there’s definitely some whiskey… the good stuff. I think there’s even a couple of bottles of champagne in here…”
“Beer sounds perfect. You said things were changing for the worse around here. What’s been going on?”
“There have always been drugs, right, but it’s gotten a lot more organized lately, and more hard stuff, lots of heroin, believe it or not. It’s got people worried.”
Keith nodded. “That’s a shame. Could be g
rowing pangs. I guess more people means more bad people.”
“You’re probably right about that.” Rich trailed off. He took a big drink.
Keith decided to push the conversation toward business, “What do you know about the accident?”
“My client--and before you ask, I should say the client will remain anonymous--suspects it wasn’t an accident. A month before Judge Marcus was killed, Sarah Cantoe won the lottery. She redeemed a scratch off ticket worth $100k.”
“She could just be lucky.” Keith smirked.
“It’s an ideal way to pay someone for dirty deeds, right?”
Keith scratch the stubble on his bald head. “Is there anything more to go on than that? That’s some weak stuff, Rich. That’s like putting a carrot in a bucket of water and calling it soup.”
“Well, from my perspective her behavior was unusual, really out of character. This perpetually broke, druggie party girl didn’t blow any of the money in a month. For the first time in her life, she was prudent and socked it all away.”
“Interesting. It’s possible someone managed her…” Keith raised an eyebrow. “That’s definitely some smoke, at least. I investigated a couple contract killings on insurance cases. They were both done by dumb-ass criminals who left a trail a blind man could follow. An interesting question here is who could get their hands on a winning scratch off ticket like that?”
“Yeah, I’ve wondered about that.”
“Any way we can we talk to Sarah Cantoe? That might save us a lot of time.”
“Hmmm.” Rich put his fingers together. “I think we can.”
Chapter Eight
Steve and Morgan raced Tracy and Chloe down the driveway on their bikes. She stayed parallel to them for a few seconds like it was a contest, then drove away. They shook fists in mock rage.
She and Chloe drove to the PO to drop off the package. The attendant knew her now as a regular. She’d mailed dozens of packages all over the country. “Hi Tracy, any insurance on this one?”
“Not on this one, thanks Emily.” She patted the box and she and Chloe went out into the parking lot. The sun was starting to sink on the horizon and the heat of the autumn day was turning chill. The pavement smell wafted through the air.
“Cha-ching. Food for the next few weeks! I need a smoke… well a vape anyway. It’s killing me.”
“I’m glad I never started smoking.”
“Yeah, it’s a really bad habit. After my parents were gone, I smoked in the house for a while, really mostly just because I could. Then one day I was cleaning the windows in the library and saw how nasty the rag was from the tar. I switched to this, which seems better,” she waved the e-cigarette, “and I’m tapering off.”
“I think my dad must be starting to wonder where I am, first day and all. I should head home.”
“I’ll drop you off.”
Chapter Nine
Tracy pulled into a parking spot in front of the Marte’s condo. MARTE was spelled out on the mailbox with some gold and black block letters. The condos were all the same. They were built on a small patch of ground evenly spaced around concrete cul de sacs radiating from a main road. Each one was small, tidy, white, and vinyl sided.
“Want to come in? I can’t offer you a beer, but at least there’s some juice in the fridge… I think, or tap water anyway.”
“I have to warn you most of the time, parents hate me… In fact, let’s put it off for a while. I’m going to go home and veg.”
“No problema. My dad’s cool. Sometime you should meet him.”
The car pulled away and Chloe waved. Tracy beeped the horn.
Her father was breaking down boxes. “Look what I did!” the rest of their stuff was put away. The condo started to look like a home.
“While you were busy with that, I fixed the hair emergency and made some friends… A friend with a cool car.”
“Nice. I saw it. We will definitely need to look for one for you--probably not an Austin Healey, though. Not too practical in the winter! Here, a car’s basically a necessity.”
“Vroom.” she pretended to drive to a stool at the kitchen counter. “That was Tracy Wells. She’s cool. Very adult. We also met a couple of her friends. The Northeast Ohio version of brahs.”
“Wells? I wonder if she’s related to Matt Wells. I knew him back in the day… They had a farm over on Sherman Road.”
“Yeah, maybe. I didn’t pay any attention to the roads. It was a big old white farmhouse, really nice inside, fields, trees, and some cool rock formations in the woods. Her parents are gone.”
“Yep, that’s it. Matt and his wife--her parents--disappeared. I wonder how she keeps the place going… That’s a lot for one person to take care of.”
“She mentioned an Uncle. I didn’t meet him though. She seems very independent.”
“Independence is a nice quality in a young lady.”
“How was your day?”
“Well, I got a job, so that’s good. Local lawyer--actually I knew him in high school--wants me to look into a hit and run case. Other than that, I started looking up some old friends. Not many people stayed in town.”
“They all went off for adventures in the big city, I suppose.”
“I’m the only one who got shot. Seems to gives me some gravitas.”
Chapter Ten
Jerry’s black Mercedes SUV rumbled along a rutted crushed limestone driveway. An old tow truck carcass with grass growing out the wheel wells was rotting next to the drive. “Pattie’s Tavern and Party Center” was painted on its door. A hand written sign was staked into the ground “GOP FUNDRAISER”. The gravel lot was full, so he had to park in the adjacent field.
The restaurant was in a cedar sided building with a shake roof. A crowd was standing around on a deck that was attached to the second floor of the building and people were just starting to assemble on the patio. A band was setting up and he could just hear the tinny sound of an electric guitar being tuned.
He shut the engine off and checked his look in the mirror. His black hair was slicked back, gray at the temples. His face was still tight across his forehead and cheeks but gravity was starting to work on his neck a little. He pulled the knot of the tie a little tighter. He wondered if he should start cultivating a “friend of the working man” facet of his persona and go with rolled up shirtsleeves and open collar. He watched a group of kids--probably college students--head into the building. They were all wearing his “Here’s Jerry!” T-shirt. It was a caricature of him chainsawing a door. The caricature was wearing the same pinstripe suit and red tie, so he decided to keep it on while he was working.
Jerry worked for the Brotherhood for a couple of years before he even knew it, and before that he’d been groomed for the job during college. He was in a frat and taking business classes when he wasn’t partying. In spite of a solid “C-” grade average, he got a sales job right after school when a professor hooked him up at an industrial supply company in the outskirts of Columbus.
He worked there for five years, traveling the state, making contacts, and growing his network. The nature of the work changed drastically when he got promoted to regional manager. At first, he thought it was a step backward in his career. Instead of managing the sales force or working clients, his boss asked him to run little errands any day of the week and at any hour of the day.
Jerry assumed it was all corporate business--deliveries that were too delicate to trust to the post office or UPS. But, finally, one morning he drove a few hours to deliver a package to a run-down farmhouse in a remote corner of Ashtabula County. A guy wearing biker leathers and carrying a shotgun answered the door and took the package. He got a big flat box in return. He could tell it was filled with bundles of cash. He returned to the office with the box and just sat at his desk the rest of the afternoon.
His boss came in his office and closed the door. “Jerry, you must wonder what you’re doing for us, right?”
“I wonder, but not too much. I just do my job.” His
face didn’t give anything away.
“You and I both work for Black Box Diesel Supply… but I also work for a big, old multi-national company. The work you’ve been doing for me lately has really been an interview with them.”
“So, is this a job offer, then? Are you offering me a job?” He was curious, but a little angry.
“I’m not. In fact, there’s not much I can tell you myself. If you’re interested, I’ll send you over to talk to an old friend of mine who can advise you on some important matters.”
“Hmmm…. so if I talk to him, can I say no.”
“Absolutely. This is an offer you can refuse. Either way, that box is yours--no strings--our way of saying thanks. There should be about two hundred and fifty grand in there. If you say no, you’ll just need to resign here, and we’ll help you get that money tucked away safely.”
He drove to a patent attorney’s office in Cleveland. The ornately furnished office overlooked Lake Erie. Jerry sank into a comfortable heavy chair and watched the sun shine on rippling water. The attorney was bald and wore glasses with thick black rims. His suit wasn’t flashy, but was well tailored and he gave an overall impression of precision. He gave Jerry a thorough, methodical explanation without much personal interpretation. He set out the pros, cons and mechanics of working for the organization. He made sure to explain what it meant to be “let go”--at best, you just lost your job and spent years worrying what might happen. At worst people important to you died, then you did.
The Chardon Chronicles: Season One -- The Harvest Festival Page 2