Death in a Summer Colony (15 page)

30

I
n the course of the afternoon Ray interviewed most of the remaining cast members while Sue, working in the auditorium’s green room, met individually with the crew members. The one exception to the one-on-one rule was her planned meeting with the five teenage girls who served as ushers. That interview was scheduled for the end of the day.

Most of the remaining actors were younger than the ones Ray had first interviewed, people in their 20s and 30s, none of whom seemed to have a history with Malcolm Wudbine or his family. The interviews went quickly and provided no new information. The one exception was eighty-seven year old Lenore Beeson–tart tongued and venomous, especially toward Malcolm Wudbine. She played the gossipy Mrs. Price Ridley. Frail and unsteady, she was clearly not a possible suspect. She did explain in great detail how Wudbine had robbed her of much of her retirement while making millions for himself. But beyond her vituperations directed at Wudbine, she had little to add.

Soon after Lenore Beeson departed, Sue called Ray, asking him to come to the green room. He found her sitting at the head of a table with five young women, teenagers. One by one, Sue introduced the ushers: Samantha, Brittany, Megan, Kayla, and Anna.

“I would like to cover the same ground again,” said Sue, “this time with the Sheriff listening. She looked over at Ray, “Samantha and Brittany were at the west entrance, Megan and Kayla were at the east entrance, and Anna was at the doors in the rear of the building. Okay guys, let’s talk about the flashlights first.”

“Who should start?” asked Kayla.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“There’s been some kind of trouble with the lights over the doors, the ones that should turn on if the power goes out,” said Kayla. “Mr. Grubbs told us about it the day of the dress rehearsal. We were there with the cast and crew, just like this was the actual event. He gave us flashlights, new out of the box, and told us in case the power went out we were to open the doors, block them open, and use our lights to help people exit the building. But he said having to do that was unlikely. In the thirty or forty years since the emergency lights had been installed, they had never been needed, but he said it was better to be safe than sorry.”

“So how did that work out?”

“Not exactly as planned,” answered Megan. “The first scene came to an end. We had been told that it would be a ten-minute scene change and lots of people would be going out to stretch. As soon as the curtain closed, we propped the exit doors open.”

“We did the same on our side,” said one of the other girls.

“And then what did you do?”

“Well, since I had ten minutes I went to talk to people,” said Samantha. “We wouldn’t be needed again till the lights blinked, indicating that the play was starting again.”

Ray looked at the other girls, they all looked slightly abashed. “We all did the same thing,” said Brittany. “How were we supposed to know the lights would go out in the middle of an intermission?”

“And then,” said Ray.

“I used my light to get back to the door, not that I really needed it,” said Brittany. “And shortly after that the lights were back on. It was no big deal.”

“Did anyone leave early, before the end of the scene?” asked Ray.

“Not on our side,” said Brittany.

“Or ours,” said Megan.

Ray looked over at Anna, the girl responsible for the back entrance. She looked down toward the table.

“Same thing for you?” said Ray looking in her direction.

Anna’s answer was slow in coming. She lifted her head and looked at Sue. “I wasn’t there. I slipped away for a few minutes after everyone was seated. I was planning to get back. I just lost track of the time. And then it started raining so hard. I didn’t think it would matter.”

“Where were you?” asked Ray.

“I was over in the library.”

“Catching up on your reading?” giggled Megan.

“One of my friends was leaving this week,” she said, directing her answer to Sue and Ray. “I just wanted to spend some extra time with them.”

“So let me summarize here,” said Ray. “During the first act, no one left the theater from either the east or west exits. And we don’t know about the back entrance.”

One of the girls answered, “correct,” and the rest nodded their agreement.

“So you were here for the dress rehearsal and the performance. And you are all residents of the summer colony, correct.”

Ray had everyone’s eyes. They nodded their assent.

“Have you seen anyone around who wasn’t part of the colony in recent days?”

After a long silence Megan said, “Well, there’s crazy Tom.”

“Who is that?”

“I don’t know what his last name is. He’s been hanging around. I know Grubbs talks to him all the time and sometimes asks him to leave. A day or two later he’s back.”

Ray looked over at Sue. Her nod told him that Tom wasn’t on their radar.

“The guy creeps me out,” said Megan. “He likes hanging around the beach. I don’t like the way he looks at me.”

“He’s been around the theatre a lot,” said Brittany. “I think he wanted Mr. Shevlin to give him a part in the play. And someone told him to go away last week, maybe that old guy that works the lights. Tom got nasty. I heard him drop a few f-bombs as he was leaving.”

“What does this Tom look like?” asked Ray.

“Like a street person. He’s got long hair and a beard. It’s a narrow one that just covers his chin, but it’s sorta long. He’s tall, real tall, and his jeans just hang on him,” added Anna. “And he reeks of cigarettes. You can smell him coming.”

“But the real creepy thing is that he’s always jabbering away on his phone, loud conversations, lots of laughing and hand waving,” added Megan.

Ray held her in his glance.

“Well, you have to understand. It’s not a phone. I saw it up close. It’s just a piece of wood about the size of an iPhone. It’s colored up with pencils or markers to make it look like a phone.”

Ray looked over at Anna. “This Tom has been hanging around the theatre a lot?”

“She’d know,” chimed in Samantha. “She’s hardly left the place since rehearsals started.”

“He’s been hanging around. He would often sit way back in the rear of the auditorium. In the beginning he didn’t bother anyone, and no one said anything. Lots of people drop in and watch the play practice. About a week ago he had one of his famous phone conversations, and Mr. Shevlin asked him to leave. He started out being very nice, but Tom said something, and Mr. Shevlin lost his temper. And then there were a lot of obscenities from both sides. And Mr. Grubbs showed up. He got Tom in his car and drove off somewhere.

“I didn’t see him for a few days, but he was around the other day, not in the theater, but around back. One of the older women said she thought he was looking in the windows. Anyway, that other man I told you about asked him to go away, and there was some more shouting. Not as bad as the day with Mr. Shevlin.”

“Did you see this Tom on the day of the play? Any of you?”

Brittany answered. “Yes, He tried to get in my door. He gave me a piece of paper and said it was a ticket. It was just a piece of paper with ‘ticket’ written on it with pencil. I told him he couldn’t come in, and that I was going to get Mr. Grubbs if he didn’t go away.”

“He tried our door, too,” said Kayla. “I was sweet about it, but I told him he couldn’t come in. He didn’t argue, he just disappeared.”

Ray turned toward Anna.

“I didn’t see him.”

“Did you stay at that door until the opening curtain?”

“Yes. My friend has a few lines near the beginning of the scene.”

Ray looked over at Sue, “Anything else?”

“Girls, here are my cards. Please feel free to contact me if anything comes to mind that you think I should know.”

After they trooped out, Ray asked, “What did we learn?”

Sue smiled, “Libraries are romantic places. Summer romances are special, especially when you are sixteen. And we need to talk to Weird Tom.”

“Let’s start with Grubbs. I imagine he can point us in the right direction.”

31

R
ichard Grubbs was working at a keyboard when Ray and Sue came through the screen door of his office. Grubbs looked at them over the top of his glasses, nodded his head in recognition, and turned back to the screen for a few seconds.

Looking back at them, he said, “I didn’t mean to be discourteous. I just needed to finish the sentence before I lost the thought. Even though I’ve been using these things for decades,” he gestured toward the Mac computer on his desk, “I still work the way I did when I used a typewriter, forming the whole sentence in my head before the first keystroke, typing to the period, and then starting all over again on the next sentence. I’ve watched the kids here, the girls who help me do the weekly newsletter. They just rattle away, move things around, deleting words or some times whole sentences. In the end it seems to work. But when they start, I don’t think they have any idea where they are going. Their brains are different. It’s the computers. The kids don’t really learn to think things through. I could see that in student papers my last few years of teaching. Random thoughts cobbled together with rock and roll bouncing off the sides of their brains from the omnipresent ear buds. But I don’t think you dropped by for a Luddite rant, Sheriff.”

“Tell me about someone called Tom, or weird Tom?”

“How did that poor fellow get dragged into this? That’s the last thing he and his mother need.”

“The ushers, they talked about him.”

“Sheriff, throughout the history of this colony we have always practiced and taught toleration. I think what you’re telling me is most unfortunate. The chatter of a group of slightly hysterical teenage girls should not become a police matter. This isn’t 1692, we’re not in Salem.”

Ray could see that Grubbs was extremely angry. “I don’t think it was any hysteria. I asked the young women if there had been anyone around the night of the play who wasn’t part of the colony. They indicated this Tom character fit that description. The ‘weird’ tag seems to me to be normal teenage jargon. I would like you to identify this person, provide whatever background you can give me, and tell me where I can find him.”

“He is very fragile,” said Grubbs, continuing his protest. “The last thing he needs is to be questioned about something that he couldn’t have been involved with. Tom won’t know what you’re talking about. You’ll just add to his already paranoid state. Trust me, you’re wasting your time.”

“Sir,” said Ray, “I’ll judge whether or not it’s a waste of my time. Tell me about Tom.”

Grubbs rocked back in his chair and looked at Ray and Sue. “You better have a seat, this will take a few minutes.” After they were seated he continued, “His name is Thomas Lea. Historically, his family has owned cottages in the colony for decades. They don’t any longer. They sold the last property 10 or 15 years ago and bought an all-season house just south of our beach area. At that time I don’t think Tom was a teenager yet, well maybe a young teen. After they moved from the colony, he continued to spend a lot of time here. We have an arts and crafts building with a couple of college kids who oversee a whole range of activities. I know he liked doing crafts, and he also continued to show up for the youth choir. Now, technically, he wasn’t part of the colony anymore, but like I was saying, we are a tolerant community. His participation wasn’t costing us anything, and he wasn’t disruptive or offensive in any way. Tom seemed lonely. He needed a place to be. Then he disappeared for a lot of years. I’d almost forgotten about him, and then he reappeared. The kid I remembered was exactly that, a kid, not five feet tall. I hardly recognized Tom in his new iteration, more than six feet tall, rail thin, almost wasted looking, and old beyond his years. But once someone identified him, I could see the boy in the man.”

“When was that?” asked Ray.

“It was last summer. Not the beginning of the summer, probably more like the middle of July. He was hanging around, like he was a kid again, the same activities. One of the arts and crafts instructors came to get me. She was quite unhinged by Tom, thought perhaps he was a child predator of some sort. I didn’t banish him from the colony. I did explain that he couldn’t participate in the children’s programs any longer. He was just too old.

“Tom seemed to comprehend what I was telling him. Then I took him home. His mother was there, and I had a long talk with her. He wasn’t around to hear the conversation. She told me that he had had a major breakdown his senior year in college, and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. At the time she thought the problem might have been stress related and wondered about the possibility of the condition being drug induced. They took him over to Rochester for a workup. That’s where they got the diagnosis. So now he’s on drugs, you know the prescription kind, and getting therapy.

“And this summer he started coming around again. He doesn’t do any harm, he’s just rather bizarre, especially when he’s talking on his imaginary phone. His conversations are very animated and loud.”

“One of the ushers, Anna, I believe, mentioned that he had a confrontation with Sterling Shevlin. Do you know about that?” asked Ray.

“Sheriff, I know about everything that happens here. And, yes, I’m well aware of their face-off. If Sterling had just come and gotten me, I would have guided Tom out of there. The worst thing you can do is to confront Tom directly. He totally loses it at that point. Like I said, he is paranoid. He believes that people are out to get him. Tom doesn’t understand that having a loud phone conversation in the back row of the auditorium during a play rehearsal isn’t appropriate behavior.”

“They also said he was around Saturday night for the play, that he tried to get in with a ticked he had created.”

“A ticket he had created. That’s part of his charm. Tom knows he needs a ticket, so he makes one. As you can see, there’s a bit of disconnect there. Not too dissimilar from his creating an imaginary phone conversation. And I have to tell you they are wonderful, the side that I can hear, anyway, always upbeat and full of humor. I wish I knew more about psychiatry. Tom has this way of connecting things together, not that it’s completely comprehensible to the rest of us.”

“We need to talk to him.”

“Why, Sheriff? Tom knows nothing. He’s a total innocent. You will just frighten him. Like I was saying, he’s paranoid, terrified by police. That’s why….” Grubbs stopped midsentence, biting his lip, letting his gaze drop to his hands that rested on the tabletop.

“That’s why what?” prodded Ray.

“A little while after Shevlin’s confrontation with Tom, Malcolm came storming in, demanding that I get a court order prohibiting Tom from stepping on colony property.”

“And did you?”

“I started the process, called our attorney, and asked what steps needed to be taken.”

“Did you authorize them to go forward?”

“Actually, no. The summer is almost over. I talked to Tom’s mother and tried to impress on her that it was important for Tom to stay away, at least for the rest of the season. You have to understand, Sheriff. Malcolm made a big brouhaha, but most times by the next day he was onto something else. Over the winter lots of things could change. Perhaps Tom won’t be around next summer. My hope was that the problem would go away.”

Ray looked over at Sue and then back at Grubbs. “We need to question this Tom. If he was in the area of the theatre, he might have seen the person who turned off the power.”

“Oh, Sheriff, I assure you that anything he might tell you would be absolutely untrustworthy. He lives in his own fantasy world. He would be sending you in the wrong direction and wasting your time. Besides, he’s very wary of males, especially police officers. In the past they are the people who have taken him to the hospital when he’s had his meltdowns. If he sees you coming, he’ll probably will do a runner and disappear into the woods and only God knows what will happen then.”

“Mr. Grubbs, we have to talk with this individual. As you know, someone pulled the main disconnect, giving the perpetrator several minutes of complete darkness. If this Tom person was circulating around the exterior of the building, maybe he saw the person who caused things to go dark.”

“He’s not going to tell you anything, but if you insist, maybe your colleague here can talk to Tom. Like I said, he responds better to women then men.”

Ray looked over at Sue, then answered, “I’m good with that. Will you go with her and do the introductions. Then she needs to talk to Tom in private. Will that work?”

“Yes, and I’ll drive her in my car. Don’t want to spook him with a police car.”