by Dave Balcom
“This makes me feel right at home,” I said as I watched to see which chair Miles considered his own.
“Sit where you’d like,” Gail said. “You should feel right at home, Jim; Miles made me redecorate this room to be like yours after we came out there for Round-Up that year. And Miles sits in a different chair all the time, so just take one.”
“What do you want with me?” Jan asked.
“I want you to tell Miles and Tony about the people who’ve just up and disappeared from Stoney in the years since you guys graduated.”
“What?”
“Tell them about the research you did last week after you started ‘wondering.’”
“Oh, that.” She collected herself for a minute, and then said, “Can you go retrieve the computer bag out of the Suburban?”
I hopped out of my comfortable chair and came back with her “perhaps” bag that served to carry her computer, notebooks, and anything else too big for a purse.
“Thanks, honey.” To the rest, “I became interested in two episodes that seemed totally unrelated but were amazingly similar.
“I had lost my high school yearbook in a fire,” she nodded at Miles who nodded back, “so I was using the museum’s records to refresh my memory about our classmates, and then Angela Ritter loaned me a copy that had been donated to the museum from Dave Boyington’s home after he abandoned it.”
“Boyington, from our class?” Tony asked.
“Dave, yes. He came home to Stoney after retiring from the Army.”
“He wasn’t involved in sports other than hunting or fishing in high school,” Tony looked like he was dredging his memory, “kind of a hoody kid. I remember everybody was jealous cause it was pretty common knowledge that he was sleeping with Marci Evers...”
“That’s the guy,” Jan nodded, “but as it turns out they may not have been sleeping together in high school, but Dave was certainly carrying the torch for her when he left, and, after he’d come home, their paths crossed again.
“Marci had been married and was divorced, and they became real close during the summer when she was there taking care of her parents’ home after their death.”
Tony sighed, “About the only thing anymore that brings the children home to rural America is cleaning out the family attic.”
“That’s so true,” Gail whispered.
“Well,” Jan picked up the thread of her story, “I started wondering after I’d heard that both Dave and Marci disappeared that summer.”
“What do you mean, ‘disappeared?’” Miles asked.
“Just that. By the time officials started wondering where Dave had gone, they found his home and all his belongings moldering in his unlocked house, and it didn’t look like he’d taken anything with him when he left.
“Then someone became curious about Marci, and called the Battle Creek schools where she had been teaching since college, and they found out she’d never shown up for classes in the fall – no show, no call – just gone to who knows where.”
“Wow,” Miles whispered, “Both of them?”
“While I was curious about that, I found that Frank Foster had also disappeared. He left a note, but nobody saw him depart, and he’s never tried to contact anyone ever again.”
“He was a lawyer,” I said to Tony. “He graduated from Wayne State law then interned with a judge and a district attorney’s office downstate before coming home to work in the Antrim County Prosecutor’s office.
“When his boss hung it up, he announced and campaigned for the job.”
“A Wayne County judge who had moved up north to take his kids out of Detroit, smoked him in the election.” Jan filled in. “Filed right at the deadline and then really campaigned. Frank went home, kissed his mom good night, went upstairs, packed a bag and left a note for her to not worry and be happy.”
“Just that?” Miles asked. “Did it sound like a suicide note?”
“Not really,” I said in response. “I don’t remember the exact words, but sounded like a ‘fuck-this-place-I’m-outta-here’ note.
That searching-the-memory look was back on Tony’s face, “I don’t think Frank Foster ever said the word ‘fuck,’ and I wouldn’t be surprised if he never practiced it, either.”
“Is that all of it?” Miles asked Jan.
“No.” She had her notebook out and open in front of her. “It all started, actually in 1988, but I’ve been wondering...”
“Oh, oh,” I said in a whisper, “It always gets interesting when Jan starts wondering...”
She gave me a withering look, then turned to Miles, “Do you think you could finish some research for me?”
“I’ll try,” the investigator said. “What have you in mind?”
“A fatal fire in Ferndale, a Detroit suburb, sometime around 1971 give or take a year...”
“Any names?”
“Deal, I’m pretty sure.”
“Excuse me,” he said, rising out of his chair. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
But it was more like ten minutes when he came back. Jan and Tony were discussing the realities of kidnapping, and Miles was not subtle in interrupting them. “Jan? Give what you have on the Deal murders.”
“Murders?” Jan blanched, and I was suddenly worried about her. “Murders?” She said again.
“Melanie and Richard Deal, both 32, died June 11, 1971, when their house was fire bombed. There were no arrests, no suspects, and the case remains open and unsolved to this date. What do you know, Jan?”
I watched her take in all that information and found myself in awe of her composure. She sat there, and I could almost see her mind churning, “What changed in Stoney after 1971 that would have made a difference in 2000, 2001 or 2002? What changed?”
I recognized the question. “The yearbook! It was Dave Boyington who asked that question in 2001, wasn’t it?”
She gave me an appreciative look, and then turned to Tony, “Did your father work with either Melanie or Richard Deal?”
“I have no idea, but my mom might know.”
She was in full investigative mode, “And find out, if you will, just who your dad interned with after he graduated. I remember he was with a judge and a prosecutor. Think that information is available?”
Tony was agitated, “I’m sure I can, but what does that do to help me find my dad?”
Miles responded, “Unless we hear a ransom demand today or tomorrow at the latest, we have all the time in the world to find your dad.”
The look that flashed across Tony’s face told us he had already presumed the worse case, but he was fighting that reality as best he could.
Miles continued, “I think that while we wait to hear something we should also be chasing down every possibility of finding the person or persons responsible; don’t you?”
The lawyer sat back in his chair with a sigh. “I’ll check. I’ll check it all, but that’ll take some time.”
CHAPTER 29
Tony resumed his drive to his mother’s side and Jan and I took less than ten minutes to decide that we couldn’t just go home as if nothing had happened.
“I really like that man,” I told her. “I don’t know. There’s something about him, his bearing, his down-to-earth approach to living; I can’t just go home without knowing.”
“I agree,” Jan said. She was tapping her notebook, “I think my curiosity last week might be of some help to the police up there.”
I went into the office to call Jack and Shirlee Jensen back in Oregon. Jan was calling Fran at the Skeegmog Inn.
I was sitting in the kitchen over a cup of Gail’s tea when Jan came out of the office. She was frowning.
“Did we reserve the cottage again?”
“Not yet. Fran and Greg are not there. I talked to the lady who checked us out, and she said they had gone to Detroit. She said the place was empty and Fran had told her that Greg was in Detroit and she was going to meet him there. She left just an hour or so ago.”
“What do you want
to do?”
“You can stay here,” Gail offered.
I appreciated the offer and said so. Jan gave her friend a grateful smile, but said, “It’s a little too far away. I think we’ll need to stay closer. I have friends in Traverse.” She gave me a sideways glance, “We’ve stayed there before.”
I caught the look and the memory of that stay made me look away quickly. Gail had observed all this and a knowing smile started. I excused myself, and left the room.
“There he goes,” Jan said in a stage whisper directed at Gail, “not blushing again; he’s such a prude.”
“Where’s he going?” Gail answered in a similar voice, as if I weren’t in the room.
“No idea.”
“Miles went to his MSP office to start making inquiries...”
I turned down the hall out of earshot and gained Miles’s home office where I could close the door and not hear the two women laughing.
I had only been in the office for a few moments when my cell went off.
I didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?”
“Jim? This is Tony Ralph.”
“What’s up?”
“I just started wondering how long I might have to be up here, and then I wondered if you and Jan were going to stick around, and, if so, where you might stay? We have scads of room at the lake, and I’d be grateful to have you folks there until we know what’s happened...”
“Of course we’re going to stay around, and Jan was looking for accommodations. We don’t want to be a nuisance, and we’re not traveling alone, we have a hunting dog with us.”
“Nonsense. Ours is totally a pet-friendly place. Jim, my folks were so happy to meet you, especially my mother. Please, come up and stay with us.”
“Well, then, yes; we will.”
“That’s great. Should we expect you tonight for supper?”
“What can we bring?”
“I can’t think of a thing, unless it’s Jan’s favorite wine.”
“You know that joke?”
“Annie must have told that joke a hundred times last weekend.”
“We’ll see you, what, by 6?”
“Whenever you show up, it’ll be supper time. Thanks again.”
CHAPTER 30
I called Miles and he was all business on the phone as usual. “That’s a great idea. I’m sure you’ll be a big help to Tony and his mom. Sheriff Bromwell and I spent a few minutes on the phone when I first came in, and there’s no news up there.
“He just made a formal appeal for MSP help, and while I wouldn’t normally catch that call down here in Cadillac, he asked for me by name, and that’s been approved.”
“When are you going up there?”
“In the morning. I’ll have to allocate my time; I have two other investigations in progress; one down here, another in Manton, but they’re about stolen vehicles. Anything I can do on Mr. Ralph’s situation will take priority, but I can’t totally ignore those other irons in the fire.”
“If you need anything from us, don’t hesitate to ask. Jan’s notebook is full of stuff she picked up last week as she became curious about those missing classmates.”
“I told Bromwell about that, and he was going to call her and ask for those notes.”
“Why don’t we stop at your shop before we head north; you can make a copy for you and keep a copy for her use and Bromwell can have the originals?”
“That’s a plan; actually, depending on the quality of the copies, she can probably keep the originals until or if they’re needed for trial.”
“I’d think the chain of evidence would be sounder if the originals were with you folks rather than us.”
“When you headin’ out?”
“Any minute.”
“I’ll make a call on the evidentiary question. I’ll be ready when you arrive.”
He met us at the door to the post, and took us upstairs to a squad room where the copier lived.
“I spoke with our legal department and they agreed with you, only they want me to keep the original and make a copy for Bromwell.”
“And us, of course.”
“You don’t exist in their view.”
“Those notes could reasonably be termed ‘work product of artistic research,’ and that would make them protected under intellectual property law.”
“Yes, counselor, they could if anyone was going to confiscate them, but that’s not happening here,” he turned to Jan. “Does he go off like that all the time?”
“Only when he’s informed that his existence is in question.”
“They’re your notes, I thought,” Miles said with a smile.
“Community property, actually,” she said sweetly, handing over her notebook.
Miles looked through the pages of notes and carefully numbered each page in the lower right hand corner. Then he methodically tuned the copier, and produced three copies of each page,
As the machine spat out the final burst of three, he quickly finished the collation process, thumbed through each stack to insure they were in order, and then stapled them in the upper left hand corner.
“Come with me, please,” he said officially.
We went into his office, which was immediately identifiable by the artwork and mementoes on his desk, walls and book shelves – pictures of his family, pictures and carvings of hunting dogs and wildlife – to see his office was to know the man, I thought.
He sat and filled out a receipt for the notebook which cited that it had been copied in triplicate and that each copy was a complete duplicate of the fourteen pages submitted by Janice Stanton on this date, etc.
“I’d like you to each sign this.”
We didn’t question him, and signed; then he handed us another receipt book, “And sign this, too.” The second receipt had been filled out earlier and recorded that one of the three copies of the notebook had been delivered to the original notebook author, Janice Stanton.
I admired his thorough approach to this kind of detail, especially knowing him as an intuitive and gifted investigator. I understood the discipline it took him to carefully attend to these minute but vital footnotes.
“Now drive carefully, and I’ll probably see you folks up in Bellaire tomorrow,” and we were summarily dismissed with a smile and a pat on the arm.
We drove north on US-131 to Kalkaska, admiring the changing colors of autumn. The softwood tree leaf drop was in full progress but some of the brilliant maples and beech trees were striking counterpoints to the deep green of the cedars and the yellow of the deciduous juniper. “Those are called tamarack or juniper, here,” Jan said musing as she watched the countryside of her home state flow by the passenger window. “Out west everyone calls them larch...”
“There are varieties of larch; maybe they’re not the same tree,” I said.
“I grew up with these, and I’ve looked at the ones in our mountains very closely, and I can’t tell the difference.”
“What’s really on your mind, Jan.”
“I’m trying to keep from thinking about the ‘fear and recognition’ looks you talked about Sunday.”
“Me too.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m trying to be logical about it. I want to talk to Greg.”
“Me too; I want to know that Fran is all right.”
I reflexively killed the cruise control and slowed down as I tried to catch a glimpse of her face. “Why wouldn’t she be all right?”
“I can’t explain it, but there’s something niggling at me...”
In Kalkaska, we took M-72 west until we resumed our northward journey on country blacktop to Rapid City. From there it was a northwest trek on Aarwood Road to the Torch Lake outlet, and the road headed north a few miles to the turn off to the Ralph home.
We pulled in just after five. The drive wouldn’t have taken as long if I hadn’t dawdled around the Antrim Pond. The nostalgia of that place for me was too much to just drive by.
“What was so special abo
ut this place?” Jan asked as I pulled up to the dam which creates the pond.
“Come on, I’ll show you.”
I let Judy out of her crate, and she immediately went to work protecting us from any possible encounter with a game bird.
We walked out on the dam, and I pointed up stream. “That’s all there was to this place, but my dad brought me here, and we put a canoe on the water and fished the stumps up there.”
“For what?”
“Brown trout. He paddled and I cast flies to those stumps, in the evening, just before dark. Big parachute Royal Coachmen; they seemed to glow white in the dusk, and he’d hold us steady and sneaky and I’d let the fly just lay there.”
“Did you catch any?”
“One or two a trip if we were lucky; you’d think it was a total waste of time, and then a fish would just gingerly sip that fly off the surface. The key was the tippet, nothing over two pound test would earn a rise...”
“How big were the fish?”
“Frankly, most of them went unseen; I was just starting my fly fishing, and most of my experience was with bluegill in the lakes, and dace and chubs in the river... I’d snap my wrist to set the hook and we’d part company in a heart beat. There’d be that one surge of power and then limp line... It sure was a thrill.”
“How big was the best fish you landed?”
“Twenty-two inches long, my senior year in high school. That was the last time I fished with my dad in that canoe. I went off to the Navy the next spring, and he died while I was over seas...”
“You never fished it by yourself?”
“No, by then I’d discovered the white water below the dam; rainbow trout that were always voracious and while much smaller on the whole, a lot more action... that water is flowing so fast a ‘long’ drift is just seconds, and the trout know it’s now or never for every meal... nothing very subtle about it, and they jump pretty...”
“You miss your dad still?”
“Every day. And I miss the three old men who lived in that cottage down there,” I pointed to a white house down the road, across from the river. “They were all retired lawyers from Detroit, or at least down there somewhere, and they lived here all summer. My dad would drop me off in the early morning hours when we first started coming up here, and I’d fish all day until he’d come back and pick me up in the evening. Those old guys were always fishing the pond in the early hours and late afternoon, and I’d watch how they fished, how they cast.