Colorado Kid Part 2

"Take the Church Picnic Poisonings. No one knows who killed those folks. What is known is that Rhoda Parks, the Tashmore Methodist Church secretary, and William Blakee, the Methodist Church pastor, had a brief affair six months before the poisonings. Blakee was married, and he broke it off. Are you with me?"

"Yes," Stephanie said.

"What's also known is that Rhoda Parks was despondent over the breakup, at least for awhile. Her sister said as much. A third thing that's known? Both Rhoda Parks and William Blakee drank that poisoned iced coffee at the picnic and died. So what's the musta-been? Quick as your life, Steffi."

"Rhoda must have poisoned the coffee to kill her lover for jilting her and then drank it herself to commit suicide. The other four-plus the ones who only got sick-were what-do-you-call-it, collateral damage."

Vince snapped his fingers. "Ayuh, that's the story people tell themselves. The newspapers and magazines never come right out and print it because they don't have to. They know that folks can connect the dots. What's against it? Quick as your life again."

But this time her life would have been forfeit, because Stephanie could come up with nothing against it. She was about to protest that she didn't know the case well enough to say when Dave got up, approached the porch rail, looked out over the reach toward Tinnock, and remarked mildly: "Six months seems a long time to wait, doesn't it?"

Stephanie said, "Didn't someone once say revenge is a dish best eaten cold?"

"Ayuh," Dave said, still perfectly mild, "but when you kill six people, that's more than just revenge. Not sayin it couldn't have been that way, just that it might have been some other. Just like the Coast Lights might have been reflections on the clouds...or somethin secret the Air Force was testin that got sent up from the air base in Bangor...or who knows, maybe it was little green men droppin in to see if the kids from Hanc.o.c.k Lumber could turn a double play against the ones from Tinnock Auto Body."

"Mostly what happens is people make up a story and stick with it," Vince said. "That's easy enough to do as long as there's only one unknown factor: one poisoner, one set of mystery lights, one boat run aground with most of her crew gone. But with the Colorado Kid there was nothing but unknown factors, and hence there was no story." He paused. "It was like a train running out of a fireplace or a bunch of horses' heads showing up one morning in the middle of your driveway. Not that grand, but every bit as strange. And things like that..." He shook his head. "Steffi, people don't like things like that. They don't want things like that. A wave is a pretty thing to look at when it breaks on the beach, but too many only make you seasick."

Stephanie looked out at the sparkling reach-plenty of waves there, but no big ones, not today-and considered this in silence.

"There's something else," Dave said, after a bit.

"What?" she asked.

"It's ours," he said, and with surprising force. She thought it was almost anger. "A guy from the Globe, a guy from away-he'd only muck it up. He wouldn't understand."

"Do you?" she asked.

"No," he said, sitting down again. "Nor do I have to, dear. On the subject of the Colorado Kid I'm a little like the Virgin Mary, after she gave birth to Jesus. The Bible says something like, 'But Mary kept silent, and pondered these things in her heart.' Sometimes, with mysteries, that's best."

"But you'll tell me?"

"Why, yes, ma'am!" He looked at her as if surprised; also-a little-as if awakening from a near-doze. "Because you're one of us. Isn't she, Vince?"

"Ayuh," Vince said. "You pa.s.sed that test somewhere around midsummer."

"Did I?" Again she felt absurdly happy. "How? What test?"

Vince shook his head. "Can't say, dear. Only know that at some point it began to seem you were all right." He glanced at Dave, who nodded. Then he looked back at Stephanie. "All right," he said. "The story we didn't tell at lunch. Our very own unexplained mystery. The story of the Colorado Kid."

5.

But it was Dave who actually began.

"Twenty-five years ago," he said, "back in '80, there were two kids who took the six-thirty ferry to school instead of the seven-thirty. They were on the Bayview Consolidated High School Track Team, and they were also boy and girlfriend. Once winter was over-and it doesn't ever last as long here on the coast as it does inland-they'd run cross-island, down along Hammock Beach to the main road, then on to Bay Street and the town dock. Do you see it, Steffi?"

She did. She saw the romance of it, as well. What she didn't see was what the "boy and girlfriend" did when they got to the Tinnock side of the reach. She knew that Moose-Look's dozen or so high-school-age kids almost always took the seven-thirty ferry, giving the ferryman-either Herbie Gosslin or Marcy Laga.s.se-their pa.s.ses so they could be recorded with quick winks of the old laser-gun on the bar codes. Then, on the Tinnock side, a schoolbus would be waiting to take them the three miles to BCHS. She asked if the runners waited for the bus and Dave shook his head, smiling.

"Nawp, ran that side, too," he said. "Not holdin hands, but might as well have been; always side by side, Johnny Gravlin and Nancy Arnault. For a couple of years they were all but inseparable."

Stephanie sat up straighter in her chair. The John Gravlin she knew was Moose-Lookit Island's mayor, a gregarious man with a good word for everyone and an eye on the state senate in Augusta. His hairline was receding, his belly expanding. She tried to imagine him doing the greyhound thing-two miles a day on the island side of the reach, three more on the mainland side-and couldn't manage it.

"Ain't makin much progress with it, are ya, dear?" Vince asked.

"No," she admitted.

"Well, that's because you see Johnny Gravlin the soccer player, miler, Friday night practical joker and Sat.u.r.day lover as Mayor John Gravlin, who happens to be the only political hop-toad in a small island pond. He goes up and down Bay Street shaking hands and grinning with that gold tooth flashing off to one side in his mouth, got a good word for everyone he meets, never forgets a name or which man drives a Ford pickup and which one is still getting along with his Dad's old International Harvester. He's a caricature right out of an old nineteen-forties movie about small-town hoop-de-doo politics and he's such a hick he don't even know it. He's got one jump left in him-hop, toad, hop-and once he gets to that Augusta lilypad he'll either be wise enough to stop or he'll try another hop and end up getting squashed."

"That is so cynical," Stephanie said, not without youth's admiration for the trait.

Vince shrugged his bony shoulders. "Hey, I'm a stereotype myself, dearie, only my movie's the one where the newspaper feller with the arm-garters on his shirt and the eyeshade on his forread gets to yell out 'Stop the presses!' in the last reel. My point is that Johnny was a different creature in those days-slim as a quill pen and quick as quicksilver. You would have called him a G.o.d, almost, except for those unfortunate buck teeth, which he has since had fixed.

"And she...in those skimpy little red shorts she wore...she was indeed a G.o.ddess." He paused. "As so many girls of seventeen surely are."

"Get your mind out of the gutter," Dave told him.

Vince looked surprised. "Ain't," he said. "Ain't a bit. It's in the clouds."

"If you say so," Dave said, "and I will admit she was a looker, all right. And an inch or two taller than Johnny, which may be why they broke up in the spring of their senior year. But back in '80 they were hot and heavy, and every day they'd run for the ferry on this side and then up Bayview Hill to the high school on the Tinnock side. There were bets on when Nancy would catch pregnant by him, but she never did; either he was awful polite or she was awful careful." He paused. "Or h.e.l.l, maybe they were just a little more sophisticated than most island kids back then."

"I think it might've been the running," Vince said judiciously.

Stephanie said, "Back on message, please, both of you," and the men laughed.

"On message," Dave said, "there came a morning in the spring of 1980-April, it would have been-when they spied a man sitting out on Hammock Beach. You know, just on the outskirts of the village."

Stephanie knew it well. Hammock Beach was a lovely spot, if a little overpopulated with summer people. She couldn't imagine what it would be like after Labor Day, although she would get a chance to see; her internship ran through the 5th of October.

"Well, not exactly sitting," Dave amended. "Half-sprawling was how they both put it later on. He was up against one of those litter baskets, don't you know, and their bases are planted down in the sand to keep em from blowing away in a strong wind, but the man's weight had settled back against this one until the can was..." Dave held his hand up to the vertical, then tilted it.

"Until it was like the Leaning Tower of Pisa," Steffi said.

"You got it exactly. Also, he wa'ant hardly dressed for early mornin, with the thermometer readin maybe forty-two degrees and a fresh breeze off the water makin it feel more like thirty-two. He was wearin nice gray slacks and a white shirt. Loafers on his feet. No coat. No gloves.

"The youngsters didn't even discuss it. They just ran over to see if he was okay, and right away they knew he wasn't. Johnny said later that he knew the man was dead as soon as he saw his face and Nancy said the same thing, but of course they didn't want to admit it-would you? Without making sure?"

"No," Stephanie said.

"He was just sittin there (well...half-sprawlin there) with one hand in his lap and the other-the right one-lying on the sand. His face was waxy-white except for small purple patches on each cheek. His eyes were closed and Nancy said the lids were bluish. His lips also had a blue cast to them, and his neck, she said, had a kind of puffy look to it. His hair was sandy blond, cut short but not so short that a little of it couldn't flutter on his forehead when the wind blew, which it did pretty much constant.

"Nancy says, 'Mister, are you asleep? If you're asleep, you better wake up.'

"Johnny Gravlin says, 'He's not asleep, Nancy, and he's not unconscious, either. He's not breathing.'

"She said later she knew that, she'd seen it, but she didn't want to believe it. Accourse not, poor kid. So she says, 'Maybe he is. Maybe he is asleep. You can't always tell when a person's breathing. Shake him, Johnny, see if he won't wake up.'

"Johnny didn't want to, but he also didn't want to look like a chicken in front of his girlfriend, so he reached down-he had to steel himself to do it, he told me that years later after we'd had a couple of drinks down at the Breakers-and shook the guy's shoulder. He said he knew for sure when he grabbed hold, because it didn't feel like a real shoulder at all under there but like a carving of one. But he shook it all the same and said, 'Wake up, mister, wake up and-' He was gonna say die right but thought that wouldn't sound so good under the circ.u.mstances (thinkin a little bit like a politician even back then, maybe) and changed it to '-and smell the coffee!'

"He shook twice. First time, nothing happened. Second time, the guy's head fell over on his left shoulder-Johnny had been shakin the right one-and the guy slid off the litter basket that'd been holding him up and went down on his side. His head thumped on the sand. Nancy screamed and ran back to the road, fast as she could...which was fast, I can tell you. If she hadn't've stopped there, Johnny probably would've had to chase her all the way down to the end of Bay Street, and, I dunno, maybe right out to the end of Dock A. But she did stop and he caught up to her and put his arm around her and said he was never so glad to feel live flesh underneath his arm. He told me he's never forgotten how it felt to grip that dead man's shoulder, and how it felt like wood under that white shirt."

Dave stopped abruptly, and stood up. "I want a Coca-Cola out of the fridge," he said. "My throat's dry, and this is a long story. Anyone else want one?"

It turned out they all did, and since Stephanie was the one being entertained-if that was the word-she went after the drinks. When she came back, both of the old men were at the porch rail, looking out at the reach and the mainland on the far side. She joined them there, setting the old tin tray down on the wide rail and pa.s.sing the drinks around.

"Where was I?" Dave asked, after he'd had a long sip of his.

"You know perfectly well where you were," Vince said. "At the part where our future mayor and Nancy Arnault, who's G.o.d knows where-probably California, the good ones always seem to finish up about as far from the Island as they can go without needing a pa.s.sport-had found the Colorado Kid dead on Hammock Beach."

"Ayuh. Well, John was for the two of em runnin right to the nearest phone, which would have been the one outside the Public Library, and callin George Wournos, who was the Moose-Look constable in those days (long since gone to his reward, dear-ticker). Nancy had no problem with that, but she wanted Johnny to set 'the man' up again first. That's what she called him: 'the man.' Never 'the dead man' or 'the body,' always 'the man.'

"Johnny says, 'I don't think the police like you to move them, Nan.'

"Nancy says, 'You already moved him, I just want you to put him back where he was.'

"And he says, 'I only did it because you told me to.'

"To which she answers, 'Please, Johnny, I can't bear to look at him that way and I can't bear to think of him that way.' Then she starts to cry, which of course seals the deal, and he goes back to where the body was, still bent at the waist like it was sitting but now with its left cheek lying on the sand.

"Johnny told me that night at the Breakers that he never could have done what she wanted if she hadn't been right there watchin him and countin on him to do it, and you know, I believe that's so. For a woman a man will do many things that he'd turn his back on in an instant when alone; things he'd back away from, nine times out of ten, even when drunk and with a bunch of his friends egging him on. Johnny said the closer he got to that man lying in the sand-only lying there with his knees up, like he was sitting in an invisible chair-the more sure he was that those closed eyes were going to open and the man was going to make a s.n.a.t.c.h at him. Knowing that the man was dead didn't take that feeling away, Johnny said, but only made it worse. Still, in the end he got there, and he steeled himself, and he put his hands on those wooden shoulders, and he sat the man back up again with his back against that leaning litter basket. He said he got it in his mind that the litter basket was going to fall over and make a bang, and when it did he'd scream. But the basket didn't fall and he didn't scream. I am convinced in my heart, Steffi, that we poor humans are wired up to always think the worst is gonna happen because it so rarely does. Then what's only lousy seems okay-almost good, in fact-and we can cope just fine."

"Do you really think so?"

"Oh yes, ma'am! In any case, Johnny started away, then saw a pack of cigarettes that had fallen out on the sand. And because the worst was over and it was only lousy, he was able to pick em up-even reminding himself to tell George Wournos what he'd done in case the State Police checked for fingerprints and found his on the cellophane-and put em back in the breast pocket of the dead man's white shirt. Then he went back to where Nancy was standing, hugging herself in her BCHS warmup jacket and dancing from foot to foot, probably cold in those skimpy shorts she was wearing. Although it was more than the cold she was feeling, accourse.

"In any case, she wasn't cold for long, because they ran down to the Public Library then, and I'll bet if anyone had had a stopwatch on em, it would have shown a record time for the half-mile, or close to it. Nancy had lots of quarters in the little change purse she carried in her warmup, and she was the one who called George Wournos, who was just then gettin dressed for work-he owned the Western Auto, which is now where the church ladies hold their bazaars."

Stephanie, who had covered several for Arts 'N Things, nodded.

"George asked her if she was sure the man was dead, and Nancy said yes. Then he asked her to put Johnny on, and he asked Johnny the same question. Johnny also said yes. He said he'd shaken the man and that he was stiff as a board. He told George about how the man had fallen over, and the cigarettes falling out of his pocket, and how he'd put em back in, thinking George might give him h.e.l.l for that, but he never did. n.o.body ever did. Not much like a mystery show on TV, was it?"

"Not so far," Stephanie said, thinking it did remind her just a teensy bit of a Murder, She Wrote episode she'd seen once. Only given the conversation which had prompted this story, she didn't think any Angela Lansbury figures would be showing up to solve the mystery...although someone must have made some progress, Stephanie thought. Enough, at least, to know where the dead man had come from.

"George told Johnny that he and Nancy should hurry on back to the beach and wait for him," Dave said. "Told em to make sure no one else went close. Johnny said okay. George said, 'If you miss the seven-thirty ferry, John, I'll write you and your lady-friend an excuse-note.' Johnny said that was the last thing in the world he was worried about. Then he and Nancy Arnault went back up there to Hammock Beach, only jogging instead of all-out runnin this time."

Stephanie could understand that. From Hammock Beach to the edge of Moosie Village was downhill. Going the other way would have been a tougher run, especially when what you had to run on was mostly spent adrenaline.

"George Wournos, meanwhile," Vince said, "called Doc Robinson, over on Beach Lane." He paused, smiling remembrance. Or maybe just for effect. "Then he called me."

6.

"A murder victim shows up on the island's only public beach and the local law calls the editor of the local newspaper?" Stephanie asked. "Boy, that really isn't like Murder, She Wrote."

"Life on the Maine coast is rarely like Murder, She Wrote," Dave said in his driest tone, "and back then we were pretty much what we are now, Steffi, especially when the summer folk are gone and it's just us chickens-all in it together. That doesn't make it anything romantic, just a kind of...I dunno, call it a sunshine policy. If everyone knows what there is to know, it stops a lot of tongues from a lot of useless wagging. And murder! Law! You're a little bit ahead of yourself there, ain'tcha?"

"Let her off the hook on that one," Vince said. "We put the idea in her head ourselves, talkin about the coffee poisonins over in Tashmore. Steffi, Chris Robinson delivered two of my children. My second wife-Arlette, who I married six years after Joanne died-was good friends with the Robinson family, even dated Chris's brother, Henry, when they were in school together. It was the way Dave says, but it was more than business."

He put his gla.s.s of soda (which he called "dope") on the railing and then spread his hands open to either side of his face in a gesture she found both charming and disarming. I will hide nothing, it said. "We're a clubby bunch out here. It's always been that way, and I think it always will be, because we'll never grow much bigger than we are now."

"Thank G.o.d," Dave growled. "No friggin Wal-Mart. Excuse me, Steffi."

She smiled and told him he was excused.

"In any case," Vince said, "I want you to take that idea of murder and set it aside, Steffi. Will you do that?"

"Yes."

"I think you'll find that, in the end, you can't take it off the table or put it all the way back on. That's the way it is with so many things about the Colorado Kid, and what makes it wrong for the Boston Globe. Not to mention Yankee and Downeast and Coast. It wasn't even right for The Weekly Islander, not really. We reported it, oh yes, because we're a newspaper and reporting is our job-I've got Ellen Dunwoodie and the fire hydrant to worry about, not to mention the little Lester boy going to Boston for a kidney transplant-if he lasts long enough, that is-and of course you need to tell folks about the End-Of-Summer Hayride and Dance out at Gernerd Farms, don'tcha?"

"Don't forget the picnic," Stephanie murmured. "It's all the pie you can eat, and folks will want to know that."

The two men laughed. Dave actually patted his chest with his hands to show she had "gotten off a good one," as island folk put it.

"Ayuh, dear!" Vince agreed, still smiling. "But sometimes a thing happens, like two high school kids on their mornin run finding a dead body on the town's prettiest beach, and you say to yourself, 'There must be a story in that.' Not just reporting-what, why, when, where, and how, but a story-and then you discover there just isn't. That it's only a bunch of unconnected facts surrounding a true unexplained mystery. And that, dear, is what folks don't want. It upsets em. It's too many waves. It makes em seasick."

"Amen," Dave said. "Now why don't you tell the rest of it, while we've still got some sunshine?"

And Vince Teague did.

7.

"We were in on it almost from the beginning-and by we I mean Dave and me, The Weekly Islander-although I didn't print what I was asked by George Wournos not to print. I had no problem with that, because there was nothing in that business that seemed to affect the island's welfare in any way. That's the sort of judgment call newspaper folk make all the time, Steffi-you'll make it yourself-and in time you get used to it. You just want to make sure you never get comfortable with it.

"The kids went back and guarded the body, not that there was a lot of guardin to be done; before George and Doc Robinson pulled up, they didn't see but four cars, all headed for town, and none of em slowed down when they saw a couple of teenagers joggin in place or doin stretchin exercises there by the little Hammock Beach parkin lot.

"When George and the Doc got there, they sent Johnny and Nancy on their way, and that's where they leave the story. Still curious, the way people are, but on the whole glad to go, I have no doubt. George parked his Ford in the lot, Doc grabbed his bag, and they walked out to where the man was sitting against that litter barrel. He had slumped a little to one side again, and the first thing the Doc did was to haul him up nice and straight.