Fear at First Glance

by Dave Balcom

  “What were you going to do in B’laire?”

  “Oh, I did some class research last week, you know, about the classmates who seemed to have disappeared?”

  Fran nodded, and Jan continued, “We were visiting an old friend in Cadillac, a State Police Investigator, and that’s where we heard about Paul... anyway, Miles – his name’s Miles Lawton – was assigned to Paul’s case, and he asked for copies of my report, and now Sheriff Bromwell has that report and asked us to stop by his office today to discuss it.”

  “So, you’re actually involved in the investigation?” Fran asked.

  “I guess, in a way. Jim has a real connection to Miles from back when we first met and all the trouble we had down in Mineral Valley and a couple of other things over time. He suggested Jim and I stick around to support Tony and his mom more than anything.”

  “They’re lucky to have you...”

  I felt that Fran wasn’t all that eager to have company, “Greg around? I’d love to see him for a minute.”

  She shook her head and looked away, “No. He’s still down state. Something came up, I guess. He called last night and said he’d be home but it might take another day or two.”

  I waited to see if she’d add any detail, but it was clear to me that she either had none to add or wasn’t inclined.

  “Well,” Jan said. “I’m glad I stopped; I hope we can keep in touch better this time than we have in the past...”

  “I have your address now, so you can count on it,” Fran said with a touch of her normal self. She put an arm around Jan’s shoulder and gave her a peck on the cheek. “Be safe; I’ll be sure to write...”

  Back in our vehicle, Jan pulled us out of there without another word. We were back on the black top road speeding toward Bellaire when she finally made a sound, something half way between a sob and a sigh.

  We drove in silence into the county seat and found the sheriff’s office across the street from the courthouse.

  Bromwell, we were informed, was in a meeting and could not be disturbed. Jan raised an eyebrow at the receptionist, and I could hear acid in her voice as she almost whispered, “Well, you be sure that he knows Mr. and Mrs. Stanton are here as he requested; okay, dearie?”

  “Oh, of course; he told me you would be along, but I just thought you would be older. I’m so sorry.” She was physically back-peddling to go with her change in tone. “Please follow me, and I’ll take you to the meeting room.”

  “You’re very kind,” Jan responded as she pushed her way through the gate that separated the public from the officers.

  CHAPTER 35

  “We have nothing, I’m afraid,” Sheriff Bromwell greeted us. “We’ve reviewed your notes and considered your thoughts and compared them to what I gleaned from Mrs. Ralph last night.

  “I think I can see some merit to your supposition about why the Ralphs relocated to Northern Michigan. Paul Ralph had found out that defense trial work wasn’t his cup of tea, and then, during the great push to clean up Detroit’s gangster image in the late ’60s, he seems to have been caught up in a retribution deal...” He paused, reviewing a note card he had in his hand.

  “The partner in his law firm that he reported to decided that a gangster...” he was checking his note again, “name of Stahl or Stalingal, I’m not sure which...”

  Miles Lawton interrupted, “It’s Stahl, but that family, during the height of prohibition, was called Stalingal. They shortened it, Americanized it, trying to disappear from their connection to the Purple Gang.”

  The sheriff continued, “Anyway, the youngest Stahl went down for murder, and his daddy refused to believe that there was an undercover cop inside their operation. So he decided the only thing that could have happened was this young lawyer – a new face to the old man – must have snitched, either he did or his assistant...” he was back at his notes, “A woman, Melanie Deal...”

  He stopped as both Jan and I came out of our seats at the mention of her name.

  “What’s the matter?” Miles asked.

  “That name,” Jan stammered, “That’s the whole story in a nutshell. Her children were in my class in Stoney. They came to live with their aunt and uncle after their parents died in a house fire...”

  “Double homicide,” Lawton said, looking at a note of his own, “Open and unsolved, but it was murder. A fire bombing of their house killed both Mr. and Mrs. Deal.”

  “Wow,” Jan murmured.

  “What connection could there be to Dave Boyington, Marci Evers or Frank Foster?” Bromwell asked, looking at his notes again.

  “I need a chronology,” I said out loud even as I thought it. “Sorry, that was my inner conversation slipping out.”

  “I have one,” Jan said absently. “At least I can create one from my notes.”

  Bromwell walked to a bulletin board, and pushed it aside unveiling a white board behind it. He picked up a marker, and handed it to her with his copy of her notes.

  “Let’s start with the murder; you have the date?” She asked Miles.

  “June 11, 1972.”

  She entered it and noted the double homicide. After a few seconds, she wrote “July, 1972” followed by “twins arrive in Stoney.”

  Next she wrote, “Sept., 1972” followed by “Ralphs arrive in Stoney.”

  “What’s next?” Miles asked.

  I suggested that we just start entering dates we know, and see what comes of it.

  Jan wrote, “May, 1980, Twins, Tony and I graduate from SHS.” Then she added another note: “Most of us scattered off to college, some never to return.”

  Then she wrote, “June, 1980, Dave Boyington, enlists in U.S. Army.

  There was a knock on the door, and the receptionist from the office was there with a tray. “Thought you folks might need refreshments,” she said shyly.

  “Thanks, Ed,” Bromwell said, taking the tray. “Appreciate it.” He started to close the door, then changed his mind. “Folks,” he said, turning to us, “This is Edwina Halverson, our receptionist. She’s also a student working on a degree in criminal science.”

  We all nodded and smiled. She blushed and backed out of the room, closing the door with a click.

  “Feel like a bully?” I asked Jan.

  “What’s that?” Bromwell asked.

  “Nothing of importance,” Jan said quickly.

  “Rude to the help, were we?” Miles said from his corner.

  Jan blushed and kept her mouth shut.

  “Where were we?” Bromwell asked, putting our business first again.

  Jan turned to the board, and leaving extra space between entries, jotted, “June, 1987 – Jan Coldwell graduates from CMU” followed by a smiley face.

  “Let’s go back,” Bromwell said referring to a new set of note cards. “August, 1982 – Ralphs sell store and move to Torch Lake.”

  Jan made the notation in the space she’d left. “I may have to expand my blanks between entries.”

  “Or, we’ll use arrows to show insertions for now,” Bromwell said almost to himself.

  “Oops,” I said. “We need an arrow. I don’t remember the month, but I know that the Blakes took over the Skeegmog Inn in 1986.”

  Jan nodded. “Right. I was working for the Traverse City paper in September, and ran into Frannie while I was waiting for a client. She and Greg were celebrating their first anniversary at the Inn.”

  She put “1986 – Blakes come to Stoney” in a balloon off to the side, connected by an arrow to the space between the ’82 and ’87 entries.

  Suddenly the memory of that look that flickered across Paul Ralph’s face when he met Greg Blake exploded in my mind with such a shock that it made me quickly focus on my pulse and breathing as both had spiked in that split second.

  I sat with closed eyes and listened to the room while my breathing came back to normal and my pulse slowed back to where I wanted it.

  “What is it, Jim?” Jan asked. “You have a thought, don’t you?”

  “Just that Pa
ul Ralph and Greg Blake would never have bumped into each other in Stoney...”

  “You think they might have bumped into each other down state?” Miles asked.

  I shrugged, and then tried to describe what I saw at the alumni banquet the Saturday before.

  “Fear at first glance?” Miles repeated.

  “Or just plain recognition, but as quick as it was, it was something electric.”

  “Where did Frannie meet Blake?” Bromwell asked.

  “In the Pontiac Hotel in Detroit. Frannie was interning there after earning her degree in hotel management at MSU,” Jan said.

  “At the Pontiac?” Miles said with a bit of wonder in his voice.

  “Know that place?” Bromwell asked.

  “Knew of it. It has a prominent place in the history of crime in that city. It was to Detroit’s mobsters what the Algonquin Round Table was to starving writers in New York City.”

  “You thinking that Greg was a made man in his young life?” I asked.

  “No, I’m not saying that, but he might have been an ‘associate’ to the made men; there were always hundreds of “associates’ to those in the inner circle.”

  Jan shuddered, “I’d find it very difficult to believe that Frannie would have anything to do with a hood. Greg was a successful contractor when she met him...”

  Miles was trying to be understanding, “Jan, I’m not saying anything about a guy I never met, but nobody in the ’60s was walking around with a business card that said ‘hood for hire.’ All of those associates who did work on the side for the mob had real jobs, too. And, because of their association with the rackets, many of them were more successful than others in their trade.”

  “He was in concrete; he was a construction guy.”

  Miles laughed a little bit to take the sting out of his next comment, “But, Jan, maybe he specialized in galoshes.”

  Jan gave him a friendly frown at his attempt at humor. “You don’t know him; he’s a sweet guy.”

  I spoke up, “Jan, I agree with you about Greg; I like him, but I’m pretty sure all of those people we’ve read about were ‘sweet guys’ to everyone except the people they put on the spot.”

  She was staring at me. “You really think he could be...?”

  “No idea, but I saw what I saw. After much thought, I’ve categorized Paul’s reaction as fear and Greg’s reaction as recognition. I have no proof, but I’m wonderin’, you know?”

  She smiled at me for our inside joke, “Made you wonder, did it?”

  Sheriff Bromwell brought us back on task. “So what’s next in our timeline?”

  “Nineteen ninety,” Jan said. “That was our 10-year reunion, Margie Phillips came back to town with a rich husband in tow, and then was never heard from again.”

  “Not heard from here or heard from anywhere?” Sheriff Bromwell asked, looking up from his tablet where he was recording the meeting.

  “From what I heard last week, nobody saw her leave, nobody heard from her again...”

  “What was her husband’s name?”

  “Phil, but nobody heard his last name.”

  “Damn, that makes this all the harder; there’s no paper chase in all this... you can’t trace the whereabouts of ‘Margie Phillips’ who is married to ‘Phil.’”

  “That’s all true, Sheriff,” I said, trying to calm him; “but that’s the difference between investigation and chasing a lead. We have the information we have; nothing else. We need to put this information into a usable format, and then turn our brains to finding that ‘documentation and paper trail’ that will provide real leads to chase.

  “Right now, we’re just inventorying the ‘knowing-what-we-don’t-know-and-wish-we-did’ list.”

  “What about her family?” Lawton asked.

  “Her mother is Alice. Her dad died in Vietnam. I knew Alice a little; I don’t know about her now.”

  “I’ll check that right now,” Bromwell said, getting up from the table and going out the door.

  “This is tough on Rick,” Miles volunteered after the door closed. “His world is pretty cut and dried – take witness statements, collect forensics, close in on the perp, and then use your head or your baton and, ‘Voila! Case closed.’”

  “That’s why you’re here,” I said with a smile.

  “But there’s a way to be here without trampling all who live here.”

  “And that, my friend, is the voice of experience talking,” I said with a gentle chuckle and a bright smile.

  “Yes,” he was grinning sheepishly and nodding. “It’s called ‘tact,’ and it came to me over time and quite unnaturally. You could call it a career necessity.”

  Jan had been listening and it was clear she had never heard of Miles’ first case as an investigator. He looked at both of us, and then nodded his understanding that I wasn’t going around telling his stories. Jan caught the nod and I could see she wasn’t sure where this was going. “I think you’re doing it just right with Sheriff Bromwell.”

  “Thanks, Jan,” he said just as the door opened and Bromwell stomped to his chair. “She’s still living at the old address.” He was talking directly to Miles. “She said we could come over after supper if we wanted to.”

  Miles made an entry on his notebook.

  “What do you remember of her, Jan?”

  “Margie? She was crazy radical. Protested anything. Didn’t seem to give a rip about anybody in particular, but wore her heart on her sleeve for people in general. There were lots of Margie Phillips legends – fast and loose with boys, drugs and alcohol. That sort of stuff. We were at CMU together that first fall after high school, and she hit that place like a freight train. I think it was our first full week on campus and I saw her marching in an SDS protest in front of the administration building. Hair all scraggly, no makeup, tattered clothes ... she was just another scream carrying a placard about Apartheid and the shame of colleges investing in South African businesses.

  “I recognized her, made eye contact, but I’m not sure she recognized me...”

  “I remember she made quite an impression with her valedictory address at your graduation,” I said.

  Jan nodded, “That was her all over. I’m certain she was completely accurate in her knowledge, but I doubt any of the audience had a clue as to what she was talking about.”

  Miles asked, “Was it politics?”

  “No, not really,” Jan was obviously dredging her memory and she paused, then a smile crept across her face. “She was urging us – the town, the school, all of us – to be something more than, and she changed her voice, ‘a refuge for downstate losers.’ I remember that particular phrase clearly...” She paused and then looked at us from face to face, “It means more to me right here, right now, than it ever did then...”

  “Well,” Miles said to Bromwell. “Let’s see if there’s anything more we can do with this timeline, and then start heading towards Mrs. Phillips.”

  The sheriff nodded, “What’s next, Jan?”

  She was studying her notes, “Angie Ritter took over the bank manager job and started her lifelong campaign for the historical museum...”

  “When?” the Sheriff asked.

  “That was in ’90 as well, then there’s nothing until 1999 when Dave Boyington comes home after retiring from the Army.”

  “What kind of guy was he?” Miles asked.

  Jan looked up, “In high school? Poor kid, nothing outstanding that I knew about; he and his buddies all fished and hunted, but in school? I don’t know much about him. He had a real thing with Marci Evers; everyone was convinced they were intimate, but that speculation ended just before graduation; she ditched him in a very public way. He was one of those early enlistments; fished all summer, and then left for boot camp...”

  “What did he do in the Army?” Miles asked.

  “No idea. I never saw him again after high school; never heard about him, either.”

  “I saw a note in the old newspapers that he had been assigned to the Ar
my’s Criminal Investigative Division,” I said.

  Miles and the Sheriff exchanged a look, and Miles said, “I’ll put that into the mill right after we’re done here.

  “When did he disappear?” He asked the sheriff.

  Bromwell had a piece of paper in his hand, “First notification to the sheriff’s department came just after the first of the year, 2002, but from the notes in the file, he had been gone for some time by then.

  “Last time anyone could remember actually seeing him was October of 2001, but that wasn’t all that strange to the folks around Stoney who knew him.

  “He lived, it appeared to them, for fishing, hunting, shootin’ pool and church. He was often gone for extended periods of time, in Saskatchewan duck huntin’ or out West chasing elk. He spent one winter in the Keys learning to fly fish for bonefish, permit and tarpon. Never told anyone he was going, just turned up at Annie’s one day with a great tan and a bunch of pictures of his fish.

  “Then that winter, somebody drove by his place and noticed the front door was ajar; it was first week of January and the temperature was down to about zero...” he was reviewing his sheet, “Guy named Marco Franks, has a cabin over on the Rapid, was the guy. He went to the door and saw the place had been ransacked. He called the office later that day and reported it as vandalism.

  “When the office started to look they found that mail hadn’t been picked up out of the mailbox since before Christmas, but then they learned Gundersons – they’re the propane provider up here – hadn’t delivered any fuel since December because Dave hadn’t paid for anything since August. Probably the only reason the vandals didn’t burn the place was there was no propane in the tank.

  “All the pipes were frozen, so it was pretty obvious nobody’d been home for quite some time.

  “Department went through all the motions, BOLOs, missing persons flyers; nada. I can understand with a guy like Dave, who knows?”

  Jan was at the white board with her notes in one hand and the marker in another. She left an extra space between her entry for Angie Ritter and Dave Boyington’s arrival, and an even larger space before she noted 2002 – Dave Boyington reported missing, indications suggest he was gone in fall of ’01.