In Too Deep (13 page)

“The ski place?” Morgan said.

Colleen nodded. “One of the trail groomers found him. My dad knows Mr. Henderson really well. My dad said he freaked when the cops told him what they'd found. He pressured Mr. Griffith at the newspaper not to mention it. He said, it's not like anyone cares—and that it could be bad for business, you know, all those city people hearing that they found a body at the resort ...” More tears ran down her cheeks. “Do you believe that? It's like Mr. Henderson was right. Nobody cared.”

“You cared,” I said.

“For all the good it did.” She wiped her tears away with the palms of her hands. “I have to get back.” She stood up. “Remember,” she said. “You promised.” She started to walk away.

“Hey, Colleen?”

She turned.

“The guy Steven used to come into town with—the one who used to let him go off on his own. Was he meeting a girl?” If he was, maybe I could talk to her.

“I don't know. Steven never said, and I never asked.”

“Do you know the guy's name?” It might help Nick if he knew that one of Larry's kids had been breaking the rules. Maybe he could get the guy to talk to him.

Colleen shook her head.

T

he next morning, Morgan was up before me. She was out behind the house, wearing rubber kitchen gloves and balancing on one crutch while she did her best to clean up the garbage that was strewn around the garbage cans.

“What happened?” I said.

“I'm hoping it was raccoons. But I'm afraid it might have been a bear.”

“A bear? What makes you say that? Did you see it?”

“I didn't even hear it. Did you?”

I shook my head.

“But I did hear the radio first thing this morning, Robyn. A woman was walking in the woods behind her cottage before dark. She ran into a bear. She did all the right things. At first she backed away and watched the bear, hoping that it would leave. But the bear kept coming toward her. It said on the news that at one point the bear was less than six feet away from her.”

“What did she do?”

“She did what they tell you to do when a bear approaches.”

“Which is?”

“For the kind of bears around here, you're supposed to stop and face the bear. Do not run. Then you wave your arms to make yourself look bigger and make noise—you know, be aggressive and try to get the bear to leave.”

I looked into the thick woods behind Morgan's summerhouse.

“What happened to the woman?”

“She finally managed to get into her house. The bear prowled around outside for more than half an hour. She called the police. They called some rangers. But by the time they got there, the bear was gone.”

I wasn't sure I wanted to ask my next question: “Where did this happen?”

“Just down the point.”

“You think the same bear got into our garbage?”

“Maybe. But I think we should be careful with our garbage. I'm afraid of bears, Robyn. Especially ones that aren't afraid of people.”

“No problem.” I glanced around nervously. “I'll get another pair of gloves.”

We cleaned up quickly, both of us checking the yard and the tree line obsessively, afraid we would see a bear lumbering toward us.

  .    .    .

Lunch detail turned out to be my most predictable duty at the
Lakesider
. Every day at quarter to noon I made the rounds of the staff and collected orders and money from everyone who was planning to work through lunch, which turned out most days to be everyone except Mr. Griffith. I'm not exactly sure what newspaper publishers do. I only know that whatever it is, they do it outside of their office more often than they do it in their office. I always went to the same place—Roxy's. I was sitting on a stool at the lunch counter, waiting for the order, when someone said, “Robyn, how's it going?”

I spun around. It was Dean Lafayette. He was smiling at me.

“It's going fine,” I said.

“Are you enjoying the job?”

“Yes. Well, except maybe for these lunch runs.”

He laughed. “Everybody starts somewhere. I hear they've given you a couple of interesting assignments. Rob tells me you're working on a piece about Larry's kids. What sparked your interest in that?”

I told him about my accident and how a couple of Mr. Wilson's guys had helped me out. I also told him that I thought there was a big discrepancy between what it was like at Mr. Wilson's place and how people in town regarded the kids.

“Discrepancy?”

“Everyone's so negative about Larry's kids. It seems unfair.”

“Tell me about it.” He settled on the stool next to mine. “I get more complaints about those kids than about anything else. More often than not, the complaints are blown out of proportion. I'm not saying those kids are perfect. But I can't tell you the number of times I answer a call from one of the local storeowners asking me to move those kids away from the sidewalk in front of his place. Or to kick kids out of his shop, even though all the kids want is to buy something. At first I argued with them—you can't stop people from coming into your place to shop. But I seem to be fighting a losing battle. If I don't try to move those kids out, people do it themselves—and that usually makes the problem even worse. Larry's been pretty cooperative, all things considered. He's made peace with some of the storeowners—the ones who benefit most from his business, the grocery store and the hardware store. He's tried to keep his kids out of the way of the people who are less understanding. He's even tried his hand at public relations.”

“Public relations? What do you mean?”

“Last year his kids participated in a walk-a-thon to raise money for the conservation area. They couldn't collect pledges from the locals, of course. So they canvassed the tourists and the cottagers. People usually collect the money for those things up front, but Larry had his kids do it differently. They collected pledges only, no cash. Then, once they completed the walk, the mayor signed their pledge forms, you know, to show that they had actually done the walk. Then they went back door-to-door with the executive director of the conservation area, and people gave the pledges directly to him. Those kids raised more than a thousand dollars.”

“I didn't see anything about that in the newspaper.”

“A pileup on the highway resulted in an oil spill, and that pushed that story out of the
Lakesider
,” he said. It sounded to me like he didn't think that was the real reason the story hadn't made the paper. I remembered what Colleen had said about the resort owner pressuring the paper not to print the story about Steven.

“This year Larry has organized a softball game—his guys against the volunteer fire department. The fire department is selling tickets for the game, and all the proceeds go to them. I understand sales have been pretty brisk. In my opinion, there are a lot of people in town who want to see those kids get their clocks cleaned at the game.”

“Sounds as though Mr. Wilson's public relations moves aren't working out,” I said.

Dean Lafayette sighed. “The people up here aren't so bad, Robyn. They just see things a certain way. They like their town. It's nice. It's clean. It's safe. Relatively crime-free. There hasn't been a homicide up here for years. And they don't like the idea that they're getting saddled with someone else's problem. Larry's kids are all products of the city. They think the city should deal with them. But they're also fair people. If Larry's kids stay out of trouble, folks might eventually get used having them around. They might even get to know some of those kids and find out what I already know—that, for the most part, they're regular kids who have made a few wrong choices. That it's too soon to write them off.”

I knew Nick didn't trust the police. He had very little reason to. But this was different. Dean Lafayette was my dad's friend. He cared about Larry's kids. And I didn't even have to mention Nick. I already had the perfect excuse to ask questions.

“I read back issues of the
Lakesider
,” I said. “I saw an article about a kid who drowned at Larry Wilson's place.”

“The suicide.” He shook his head. “I was out of town when it happened. Phil handled the investigation—Phil Varton, my deputy. Coroner ruled it a suicide. Apparently the poor kid was depressed. His brother—his only family—was terminally ill. I guess he had trouble coping. Who wouldn't?”

“So it was definitely suicide? You're sure it couldn't have been something else? Some kind of fight or grudge? I've heard that guys like those can have a lot of problems. Or maybe—”

He looked surprised for a moment. Then he laughed. “You're Mac's daughter, all right. They tell you at the academy, a good cop has to be naturally suspicious. Can't assume anything. Mac was the most suspicious cop I know. Mind you, he was good at his job, too, which I guess is why he was so keen to make detective. Me, I'm more of a community-oriented type. I love the small-town life. I love that I know everybody who lives here year-round. I'm pretty good with the regular summer people too. But, to answer your question: Phil did a thorough death investigation, and the coroner was satisfied, so I'm satisfied.”

“Has anybody ever mentioned anything to you about something ... strange going on out at Mr. Wilson's place?” I said.

“Strange? What do you mean?”

“Well, people in town treat the kids out there like they're criminals. I was just wondering if that's because they think there might be some kind of criminal activity going on out there.”

Dean Lafayette laughed again. “To be honest, it wouldn't surprise me. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me that some people might
think
that. As far as I know, all Larry Wilson is doing out there is turning lives around. In that sense, he's doing us all a favor, even if people around here don't want to give him credit for it.”

The waitress came with my order, boxed and ready to go.

“Good luck with your story, Robyn,” Dean Lafayette said. “And if there's anything I can do to help—not just about that, anything at all—just let me know.”

  .    .    .

“Robyn, run this ad over to Fred Brookner at the Hardware Emporium and have him approve it, will you?” Gloria said later that day. “He can't open our attachments, and I need his sign-off this afternoon.”

I walked the three blocks to the hardware store and was told I would find Brookner in the lumberyard behind the store. I headed down a narrow aisle that had light fixtures on one side and packages of every conceivable type and size of nail and screw on the other, took a left at the end of the aisle, and found myself face-to-face with Nick. He looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him, but his expression quickly changed to one of warning. I glanced over my shoulder. There was a man halfway up the aisle behind me. I didn't know him, but Nick might have.

“Excuse me,” I said, squeezing by him.

“Newspaper box outside,” he hissed in my ear as I passed. “Watch for me.”

I nodded and continued on out the door to the lumberyard. I had to ask for Fred Brookner again, but I finally found him. He was with a customer—Bruno—but he called someone else over to help him while he excused himself to look at the ad.

“No, no, no,” he said. “Some of these prices are wrong. Give me a few minutes. I'll get you the right information.”

He turned and went inside. I walked back to the door. Nick was just coming out, but he stood aside to let me pass.

“I got the screws you wanted,” he called to Bruno. “They're up at the register. You need me to do anything else?”

“Gus should have those parts Larry ordered,” he said. “Pick them up and put them in the truck. You can wait for me there. I won't be long.”

I was standing at the front counter, waiting for Brookner to correct the prices on the ad, when Nick left the store. I watched him go into the auto parts store across the street and come back carrying a couple of boxes, which he loaded into the back of the pickup truck. Fred Brookner handed me back the ad while I was looking on.

Nick was standing in front of a newspaper dispenser near the truck when I emerged from the hardware store. As soon as he saw me, he dug into his pocket for some change, which he fed into the dispenser. He opened it and pulled out a paper—one of the dailies from the city. Before he closed the dispenser, I saw him slip something in between some of the other papers inside.

“Hey, Nick, what are you up to?” a voice behind me said. Bruno. Had he seen what Nick had done? I spun around to face him.

He broke into a smile, but his eyes skipped back to Nick.

“Just getting a paper,” Nick said.

“What do you need a paper for?”

Nick shrugged. “Catch up on what's going on.”

“That's what TV is for,” Bruno said. He grinned at me. “No offense.”