Cruelest Month (3 page)

4

Ray sat at his conference table,
the 10 pages of a Missing Person Report laid out in two sets of five. Ray couldn’t remember ever having any previous contact with the woman sitting on the other side of the table, but she looked vaguely familiar. She’d identified herself as Joan Barton, and appeared to be in her middle to late 50s. Her long black hair, streaked with gray, was pulled into a loose bun. A tight black jacket covered a maroon turtleneck.

“There’s a lot I didn’t fill in,” Barton said, her hands grasped together in her lap.

“I understand. It’s a generic form. Only a fraction of the information applies in this case.” Ray looked at second page the form, “And you’re Vincent Fox’s daughter, Ms. Barton?”

“Yes.”

Ray slid the first page of the report across the table. “Would you put your e-mail in the margin next to the phone numbers. We need to get this form updated.”

“Can you read it?” she asked, sliding the form back.

“No problem, you have beautiful handwriting.” Ray sat back and took a breath. “When did you last see your father?”

Speaking quickly, Barton said, “It was this past Wednesday. I took him grocery shopping and to the bank. Then we had lunch at the Last Chance. He loves their cheeseburgers and fries. That’s not what I think he should be eating, but when you’re pushing 90 it probably doesn’t matter much.”

“And you’ve had no contact since then?” he asked, noting the shade of her eyes, a mahogany brown.

“I call every day to check on him, but quite often I don’t reach him. I don’t bother to leave messages because he refuses to learn how to use voicemail, says he doesn’t want to talk to a machine. I even got him a cell phone and he wouldn’t use it.” She shrugged, tugged at her collar. “So it’s no big thing if we miss a day or two, sometimes three. Like I said, I was with him on Wednesday. He didn’t answer on Thursday. We did connect on Friday and Saturday morning. But then I couldn’t reach him Sunday or yesterday morning. I went downstate to visit one of my kids; my daughter’s having a rough time with a pregnancy.” She lifted her chin. “I help her with housework and look after my two very energetic grandsons. Then I called him several times as I was driving north this morning. And instead of stopping at my house in Traverse City, I just drove right up to his place. His little dog was there, cold and hungry. He almost never goes anywhere without her. His bike was there, too. That’s how he gets around. And now that the snow is mostly gone, he’s been using it again.”

Barton was looking agitated. Ray smiled and said gently, “So you went to his house. Tell me what you did then, step by step.”

“I parked in the drive. His dog came out and yapped at me—there’s a dog door and a small fenced area off the kitchen. I don’t know if I’m over-reading the situation, but the dog seemed more hysterical than usual. Dad’s very hard of hearing, but the barking is usually enough to bring him to the door. I knocked and knocked, and when I didn’t get a response, I let myself in.”

“The door was locked?”

“Yes, he’s very compulsive about that, keeping the place locked up. He’s afraid of getting robbed,” she scoffed. “Not that there’s much anyone would want. I had a lock put on his door with one of those keypads about a year ago. I programmed his birth year as the entrance code, something he wouldn’t forget. Before that, he kept losing his key and then the backup, which he would invariably forget to return to its hiding place in the shed. He’d go to the neighbors and call me and ask me to drive out and open the door. That gets old real fast.”

“Why didn’t you give the neighbors a key?”

“I did,” she said, raising her hands in the air. “He would get that key, also, and forget to return it.” She sighed and shrugged back in the chair. “So, like I said, I let myself in. By this point, I was getting scared, like what if he’d died a few days before and I’d stumble over his body. I don’t like him living alone. For years I’ve been trying to get him to move to a senior apartment, but he’s such a stubborn old coot. He insists on staying in that tumbled down shack. When my mother was alive, they had a cute little house in town. After she was gone, he moved to the cabin. It was his ‘getaway in the woods.’”

Ray took a moment to type a few notes, letting her simmer down. “Any ideas about when he might have last been there?”

“I don’t know. Hard to tell. Some of the food we bought on Wednesday was gone from the refrigerator. So I think he was probably around till the weekend.”

“He doesn’t drive?”

“Not in recent years. His driving was getting pretty scary, so I was happy when he let me sell his car before he got hurt or injured someone else. Like I said, in warm weather he uses a bike. It’s a big old black Schwinn he’s had for decades.” Barton passed her hand over her forehead. “I take him on errands at least once a week,” she said, almost whining. “And there’s a neighbor down the road, who will drive Dad to appointments and things when I’m not available.”

Ray nodded his head, encouraging. “And his name, the neighbor?”

“It’s Henry Seaton.”

“Did you check with Mr. Seaton about your father?”

“I stopped by there after I left my father’s house. No one was home.” Barton stood up suddenly. “And let me say one more thing: I looked in my father’s house, then I checked the garage, and finally I walked around the perimeter. Everything seemed normal.”

“Sit down, Ms. Barton. How about friends, someone he might have gone away with?”

“He used to have a lot of friends, but not so much anymore. They’d drink beer and play euchre at the Last Chance, or go to the casino when they got their Social Security checks. Most of them are gone now. There are still a few people around the village he spends time with. I’m not sure who they are, but I can’t imagine anyone who he would take off with.”

“How about relatives?” Ray asked.

“No, not up here. I mean, it’s just me and my sister. And she lives down in Livonia. She only makes it up occasionally, mostly in the summer. I would know if she was here because she stays with me. We don’t have any other relatives in the area.”

Ray slid the second to the last page of the form in front of him and studied it. “Was there anything missing from his house?” he asked.

“Not that I noticed.”

“Did your father keep any cash there?”

“Not any big money, if that’s what you mean. Just 50 or 60 bucks, a hundred at the most. Grocery money, beer money, something for the slots.”

“How about the bank? Does he have substantial assets?”

“No, he has a checking account, a small savings account, and a few CDs. I have power of attorney and look after that for him. He gets on quite well on Social Security and a small annuity. When he needs money, I get it for him.”

“And there’s been no recent withdrawal of funds?”

“No. I was paying a bill for him this morning. They all come to me, and I pay them electronically. Everything is in order.”

Ray ran his fingers over the pages of the form again, then gathered them into one pile. “Now tell me about your father, the kinds of things that aren’t here,” he said, placing his index finger on the top of the pile.

“What are you looking for?” she asked, looking genuinely perplexed.

“I need a sense of the man. Tell me about your father as a person. Give me a sense of his character.”

“Where do you want me to start?”

“During his working years, what did he do? Tell me about the connections that he has, or has had, with other people in the community.”

Barton relaxed. “Character, that’s the word. My dad is a character, a real storyteller. At times he embarrassed me,” she laughed. “Then I just sort of accepted him for what he is.”

“I’m not quite following.”

“Do you know my father?” she asked.

Ray shook his head, thinking. “I don’t believe so.”

“Well, even though you don’t know his name, I’m sure you’ve seen him around the village. For the last ten years he’s been wearing his Native American costume—a buckskin jacket with fringe, usually over a flannel shirt and worn-out jeans. Those jeans are too long when they’re new. He just grinds them away with the heels of his boots. He stopped getting haircuts years ago. One of his women friends showed him how to make pigtails. And he wears this big old felt hat with a couple of eagle feathers in it. In the summer he’s got these old moccasins that run to his knees with some beadwork on them. In the winter he wears a pair of Bean hunting boots, the kind with the rubber bottoms and leather tops.” Barton smiled across the table at Ray. “Now you know who I’m talking about?”

“Yes, from your description, I know who you are talking about.”

“Did you think he was a member of the band?”

“No, I just remember the costume,” said Ray. “Is he? A member of the band?”

“Not a drop of Indian blood.” Barton grimaced. “My mother had some, not much, maybe a 16
^th
from her mother’s side, way back in lumbering days. What my father is, is a storyteller. He has been for as long as I remember. When we were kids—my sister and me—he would read us stories at bedtime, but he would change them; he put himself in the story as a knight, or prince, or pirate. It was terrific. We loved it. As I grew up, I could see that his stories were just part of his life, that he didn’t separate fact and fiction very much. I mean, nothing malicious or bad, like he didn’t cheat anyone in his business or anything, but he was always telling stories.”

“What kind of business was he in?”

“He was a mechanic, a really gifted mechanic. For years he ran Vinnie’s Import Auto Repair in Traverse City. Back in the day he was the only one in town that worked on the exotics. You know, for the summer people who would bring their Jaguars, Porsches and Mercedes up north. When they had problems, he was the only one around who could fix them. Dad was in the Army Air Force during World War II. That’s where he learned mechanics. He was stationed in England.” Barton paused and frowned across the table at Ray. “And here’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about, the storytelling. When we were growing up, he always told us that he had been a bomber pilot, that he had flown dozens of missions over Germany. A number of years ago, his old unit had a reunion, it was down in Florida. I told him that I would drive him there—he doesn’t like to fly anymore. He said he wasn’t interested, but I sensed that he wanted to go. So I called the organizers to get some more details, thinking that I could persuade him. I knew he’d like it once he got there.” Barton shifted in her chair, but kept her eyes on Ray. “But when I was talking to one of the organizers, I found out that my father had been a mechanic. The guy went on and on about how he was the best mechanic in the group, how he could fix anything. I asked if my father had ever been on a mission, had flown over Germany. He said that occasionally a ground crewman would sneak on an aircraft so he could experience combat. But he had no knowledge as to whether my father had ever truly participated on a mission.

“And his Indian get-up,” Barton said, nodding. “It’s just another story. And if you talk to him, he is not part of the local band. He is a descendent of what I like to call the movie Indians, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. And then there’s Al Capone.”

“Al Capone?”

“Yes. One of Dad’s stories is that he was the driver for Al Capone, and not only in Chicago, up here, too. I’ve checked, not that I ever believed it would’ve been possible. The dates didn’t match up. He wouldn’t have been old enough. He did grow up in Chicago, that’s his only connection. But he’s got this great story of how he worked for Capone. When big Al was under pressure from the Feds, my father helped him hide millions of dollars in northern Michigan. In fact, he wrote a book about it. He’s even sold a few copies.”

“Let me have this again,” said Ray. “Your father wrote a book about Al Capone stashing money in northern Michigan? When did he do this?”

“Just in the past few years. He said he wanted to write his memoir before he died. He took one of those life story classes at the library a few winters ago. My sister and I bought him a Mac. He loves that machine. He had no trouble learning how to use it. Occasionally he’d get in a bit of a mess, and we would sort it out for him.” Barton laughed, this time to herself.

“When I started to read the stuff he was producing, I was amazed. It wasn’t a real memoir. It was all about Al Capone. Of course, I confronted him, but he just laughed. He said the stuff he was writing was a lot more fun than what actually happened to him, growing up poor in Chicago. When he finished it, he found a woman who does this kind of thing, you know—helps people put together memoirs and family books. She formatted the book for him. Initially, he got 10 copies, print on demand. Dad buys a lot of stuff at that little bookstore in the village. He got the owner to take a copy or two on consignment. Turns out Dad has sold or given away a couple of dozen over the last six months. He’s been having so much fun with this. I hope people don’t start digging up the beaches….”

“Does he give locations? Are there maps?”

“No, nothing like that. But he hints at what the places look like. You know, sand and beaches, headlands, and islands.” She laughed. “Almost everything around here fits that description.”

Ray took another moment to make notes.

“Has your father ever gone missing before?” he asked.

“Never,” she responded emphatically.

“How’s your father doing cognitively?”

“What do you mean? Like is he getting senile? Alzheimer’s?”

“Yes.”

She shrugged. “Other than his rather bizarre fantasy life, he’s pretty sharp.”

“Has he ever had a stroke, anything like that?”

“No, not that I’m aware of. But he’s close to 90.”

“How about his spirits? Depression?”

“No. He’s one of the happiest people I’ve ever met.”

Ray nodded. He could see it in the daughter as well. “There’s just one more thing. I need to clarify something, When you got to the house, was the door locked?”

“Yes, like I said. I used the keypad to get in.”

“Did you check other entryways, the doors and windows? Any evidence of forced entry?”