The Hanging Tree (38 page)

“Nothing about kinky sex?”

Philo stopped arranging the pages and looked at me. “Kinky—oh, the waiter.”

Belly stood at the table glowering at Philo. “I am the proprietor, sir,” he said.

I grinned. “Hey, Bell. Meet Philo Beech of the
Pilot
.”

Neither of them offered a hand. Belly grunted. “What the hell kind of name is that? Philo? Sounds like something you use to wash a pot.”

“I was named for my great-grandfather.”

“BFD,” Belly said. He looked at me. “You guys going to order today?”

We ordered Italian subs to go, mine with peppers, Philo’s without. “Here, let me grab this,” Belly said, tearing the newspaper away from the table and balling it up in his hands. “I’ll bring you another.”

“Did you say kinky sex?” Philo whispered.

“Just a joke. Let’s see some more.”

“Well.” He took a deep breath. “There’s this one thing.”

“The thing I couldn’t have figured out.”

He ignored me and pulled out another stack of pages. “This particular collection of documents seems to show that Mr. Haskell, along with some other individuals, owns a great deal more property than we thought, right next to the property where the new hockey rink is being built.”

“Really?” It immediately made me think that Vend might like to get his hands on that too. Which may have been why he seemed so interested in the town council meeting.

“Yes. Much of it is owned by a company called—”

“Felicitous Holdings,” I said.

“How did you know?”

“Lucky guess. Does it say what they plan to use the land for?”

“No, just ‘future development.’ But you can imagine, if the rink is a success, that land could become valuable.”

“Big if, but yes.”

“If it doesn’t, they have problems.”

He had no idea. “Correct,” I said.

“What most interested me, though, was this.” He turned the first few
pages back to one listing the company’s board of directors. There were nine directors, including Haskell and his wife; Haskell’s local attorney, Parmelee Gilbert; and other names I didn’t recognize. Philo placed a forefinger on one.

“Here,” he said.

The name he pointed to was Linda Biegeleisen. Her address was given as Suttons Bay, Michigan, a village on the Leelanau Peninsula jutting north from Traverse City. Jim Kerasopoulos, I knew, lived in Suttons Bay.

“Who’s she?” I said.

“She’s listed by her maiden name. I suppose that’s legal, if that’s the name you have on your driver’s license.”

“So what?”

Philo took another breath. He seemed, to my surprise, angry. “A few years after my great-grandfather came to this country, his wife made him shorten the family name. Some of his nine children adopted the altered form. But some chose to revert to the old one, out of respect for their ancestors. My father did not. His sister did.”

“Get to the point, Philo.”

He tapped the name twice. “This is my aunt.”

“Your aunt as in—holy shit. No.”

“Yes.”

I almost jumped out of the booth. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Kerasopoulos has a piece of Haskell’s business?”

“His wife certainly does.”

“Same thing, man. Same thing. So your uncle has a direct interest in that rink. Direct. Man, I’m dumb. Here I thought he was just shilling for ads. Jesus. How the hell did he think he could get away with this?”

Philo took off his horn-rims and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. He put his glasses back on and stared at the table. “Believe me,” he said. “My uncle thinks he’s smarter than everyone. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

He looked up at me. “For being a little bitch.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. I thought of saying I always knew his uncle was a fat ass, but that wouldn’t have helped.

“Never mind,” I said. “Your uncle could be in a lot of trouble.” I was thinking now of Vend. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to cover the story.”

“Right. Kerasopoulos will want to banner that baby across the front: ‘Publisher of This Newspaper Linked to Slime-Ball’—oops.”

Belly showed up with our sandwiches in one hand and a wrinkled piece of newspaper in the other. “Two subs, one peppers, to go. That’ll be six dollars and thirty-five cents.”

“Thanks, Bell.” I set a five and three ones on the table, took the sandwiches, and stood up.

“Hey,” Belly said. “Remember that broad you were asking me about?”

“Who? When?”

“The broad was with your cousin in here.” I had totally forgotten about that. Belly shoved the piece of newspaper at me. “Didn’t know her name, but I never forget a face.”

The date at the top of the clipping was November 8, 1998. The headline on the story said, couple renews wedding vows. There was a black-and-white picture of the couple: Laird and Felicia Haskell.

“Her?” I said, pointing at Felicia. I didn’t remember the story; it was probably written by one of our blue-haired freelancers. Philo leaned in to see. “She was here with”—I hesitated—“with Gracie?”

“Yep. Didn’t look like she wanted to be here. No wonder because your cousin, she got pretty worked up there for a while.”

“About what?”

“Fuck do I know. Girl stuff. This broad”—he pointed at the paper again—“she wore sunglasses the whole time, like she’s a movie star or something.”

“You’re absolutely certain?”

Belly dropped his arms to his sides. “Are you deaf?”

Outside, Philo followed me to my truck.

“Aren’t you walking?” I said.

“Wait,” he said. “Kinky sex. That wasn’t a joke.”

“Not really.”

“Gus,” he said. “As I said, I’m sorry I wasn’t much help to you before. But frankly, I’m not in much better shape than you.”

“No.”

“And if I’m going to do what I have to do—what we have to do—I’m going to need to know what you know.”

I looked down Estelle Street. The blue Suburban sat on the opposite end of the Estelle Street Bridge, peering up the slope and across the Hungry River at Philo and me. I could feel the stare of that cratered face.

I turned to Philo. “So,” I said, “is now the time to stand on principle?”

Philo didn’t flinch. “I think so.”

I opened my truck door. “Hop in. We got a little time before the council meets. I think it’s going to be interesting.”

Town hall sat on Elm Street just up from Main, in sight of the preserved remains of the dam the Civil Conservation Corps built in the 1930s to create the lake they christened Starvation.

A fire in the 1970s destroyed the grand four-story edifice of brick and granite that had once towered over the spot. Before the fire, the council had been deadlocked over the budget, and
Pilot
headlines screamed of lawsuits and countersuits and citizens demanding recalls. Amid the uproar, the council neglected to appropriate enough money to pay the insurance premiums on the building. Today, town hall was a low-slung rectangle of beige brick that could have passed for a post office. Two willows flanking the walkway to the glass double-door entrance were all that remained from the old days.

Now a long line of locals, most of them retirees, waited beneath the willows for seats at this afternoon’s town council meeting. The snow had stopped but the wind had not and many of the women had wrapped their faces in scarves. I watched from the open window of my truck on the street, keeping an eye out for the blue Suburban. I had dropped Philo at the
Pilot
after telling him some but not all of what I knew about Gracie’s doings downstate. I was taking a chance that he wouldn’t squeal to Dingus or his uncle. I didn’t think he would. Betrayal can change a person.

I stood near the street watching the queue waiting to get into town hall. I’d been checking my voice mail all day for something from Darlene. Now I checked again, and again there was nothing. With so many people, I thought, maybe she’d be working the council meeting.

The milling crowd at the head of the line parted and I saw Gracie’s mother, Shirley McBride, with her back to the double doors, her blond head wrapped in a white wool headband, a cigarette in one hand and a sign in the other. She had duct-taped a poster board to a metal clothes hanger bent into a crude handle. On the poster she had written in black
felt-tip pen,
UNFORGIVEN: MY DAUGTER OR HASKEL’S HOCKEY
? Sheriff’s Deputy Frank D’Alessio stood a few steps away, his eyes fixed on the ground, looking like he wanted to scream, or at least haul Shirley off to jail.

“We’ve got lots of police for a town hall meeting,” she was yelling. “But not enough to find out who killed my daughter.”

“Not enough to shut you up either, Shirley,” shouted someone from the waiting line. “Get her out of here, Frank.”

D’Alessio turned his head to Shirley and said something I couldn’t hear. She continued her yelling.

I looked down the street and saw the Channel Eight van rolling up from Main. Walking along the sidewalk next to it was my mother. She didn’t go to many town council meetings, so the rumors about a Haskell apology must have reached her. Mom took her place at the end of the line, craning her neck to see what was going on at the entrance. Then she slung her purse over a shoulder and started to jostle her way around and past the waiting throng, meeting their annoyed stares with smiling hellos and good afternoons until she came face-to-face with Shirley McBride.

What are you doing, Mom? I thought. I jumped out of my truck and started walking, then trotting, toward the hall. Mom tried to take Shirley by the hand, but Shirley shook her off and thrust the sign into Mom’s face, saying something I couldn’t hear amid the voices rising around them. Now Mom disappeared in the mob. I heard Shirley telling her,
Go to hell, I’m not your charity case,
and Mom saying,
Shirley, please listen to reason, for once just listen.

I made my way through the line just as D’Alessio stepped between my mother and Shirley. Shirley was yelling louder and Mom didn’t like it but she wasn’t backing off. I grabbed her by a shoulder. “Mom,” I said. “What are you doing?” She shrugged me off without a glance and put her hands up to Gracie’s mother in supplication. “We can work this out, Shirley,” she said. “We can work this out like adults.”

“OK, ma’am, that’s enough now,” D’Alessio said. But Shirley lunged toward Mom, almost knocking D’Alessio over. He grabbed her by her down-filled vest and forced her back against the wall. Her sign fell to the sidewalk. “Take her to jail where she belongs,” some old guy shouted. D’Alessio struggled with Shirley, who was just as short as Gracie but twice as wide. “Settle down, Mrs. McBride, or I will take you in.”

She turned and shouted in his face. “Why don’t you go do your job and find my daughter’s killer instead of picking on me? Oh, I’m sorry—we need every penny we can find for a goddamn hockey rink.”

“Please calm down, Shirley,” my mother said.

“Mom,” I said, pulling at her again. She took a step back, still without acknowledging me, as the others closed in around us, shouting things about the rink and Haskell and Gracie and Shirley. D’Alessio had one hand on the cuffs dangling from his police belt and the other palm up in front of Shirley’s face, warning her back. Her headband had come off and her hair flew around her pickled beet face as she screamed and pointed at my mother. “She wants my money. She got my Gracie, now she wants my goddamn money.”

“No, Shirley,” Mom said. “Please.”

Once more Shirley tried to force her way past D’Alessio. The cuffs came out. She kept yelling as he dragged her away. “You can’t have it. You bitch. You got what you wanted. You got what you wanted. Now you don’t get a penny. Not a fucking penny. Do you hear me? Not a goddamn penny.”

Mrs. B stepped between me and my mother and embraced her. “Bea, are you all right? Never mind her, sweetheart.”

Mom pressed her face into Mrs. B’s parka. “My God,” she said.

I stepped around Mrs. B and took my mother by an elbow. “Mom?” Behind me I heard the town hall doors being opened. The line began to move past us. I saw Philo beneath one of the trees, snapping photographs. “Come on. It’s all right. Let’s go over here.”

She yanked her elbow away. The look on her face was defiant.

“Mom, what is going on?”

“I came for the meeting, Son. Come on, Phyllis.”

She and Mrs. B locked arms and pushed past me. I watched the rest of the people pass, heard them mutter, “Some people should just avoid each other” and “Like a couple of damn cats.”

I entered last. Just before I turned to go in, the Suburban pulled up to the curb across Elm and parked. The driver must not have seen the fire hydrant half buried in snow.

Laird Haskell turned his back on the seven members of the Starvation Lake town council and faced the rest of the room.

“This,” he said.

Next to his head he held up a copy of that morning’s
Free Press.
He pointed to Mich’s story. He turned slowly to his left then to his right so that everyone in the room could see.

He read the headline aloud to the people filling all the seats to his left, standing along the wall beneath photographs of former council members, most of them dead. “‘Feds Investigating Car Makers’ Nemesis,’ ” Haskell said. He swiveled toward his right, where I was standing, but he avoided my eyes just as I was avoiding those of Jim Kerasopoulos, sitting at the opposite end of the front row, eight seats down from Haskell. On the wall beyond Kerasopoulos stood Jason Esper, his neck wrapped in gauze. Philo sat in the back row on my side of the room, scribbling in his notebook.

“‘Feds Investigating,’ ” Haskell repeated. He let the paper fall to his side. He was wearing his denim shirt and a tan corduroy jacket with cocoa-brown patches on the elbows. Denim and corduroy went over fine in Starvation Lake, but usually not with starch and elbow patches. At the moment, it didn’t matter. Laird Haskell was going to bring a new hockey rink to Starvation Lake, a new attitude, new championship banners to hang in the rafters. We just had to help him a little more than he’d told us before.

The council had dispensed quickly with the early items on its agenda, referring one concerning potholes back to the roads commission and approving the Girl Scouts’ request to set up cookie tables at hockey games. All that remained was the executive session that folks had been hearing would get the new rink back on track to open for the start of the next season.