The Skeleton Box (34 page)

“Soon,” I lied.

I slid into my desk chair and let my head fall into my hands.

How had I missed so much? How had I let Whistler put so much over on me? I looked up to him. I trusted him. He was me. A reporter.
If you can’t trust a fellow scribe, who can you trust?
he had said.
It’s me and you and the rest of the world, right?

I’d had the puck in my hands, and I had dropped it.

I sat up and looked at the phone. I heard one of the Channel Eight anchors babbling about a budget vote in Elk Rapids. I had calls to make. I was afraid of what else I might find. But I had to look anyway.

Philo was first. He was still up, watching the news. I told him I needed the name of that consulting firm Whistler had hired.

“Why?” he said. “It’s late.”

“I want to find out what the hell they billed us for. Maybe I can get it back.”

“I’m afraid it’s not going to save the
Pilot,
” Philo said.

“Give me a fucking break,” I said. “Just do it. In two days I’ll be out of your hair and you can go back to playing newspaper exec.”

There was a lengthy silence before he said, “Wait.” I heard a keyboard clacking and Philo mumbling something about the idiots in accounting. I liked Philo, but I didn’t have time to be nice to him now.

“All right,” he said. “Something information services. Gawd-ralt? Gawd-ree-oh?”

“Spell it.”

I wrote it down as he recited, “G-A-U-D-R-E-A-U-L-T.”

“GAW-droh,” I said.

“I guess. Gaudreault Information Services. Grosse Pointe.”

I stared at the penciled word, recalling the voice I had heard, first around the pool table at Aggeliki’s, later on the answering machine in Joanie’s loft.

Frenchy. Albert Gaudreault. The computer geek.

Frenchy, whom Whistler had hired. Frenchy, who had lost one lover to me and thought Joanie would be next. Frenchy, who probably had known Joanie and I were going to meet with Reilly and Repelmaus at the golf course—and might have been working for them, too, for all I knew—and who had to have been the one who had stolen my mother’s lockbox and given it, no doubt for a price, to Luke Whistler.

“I’ll be goddammed,” I said.

“Huh?” Philo said.

“Good luck shutting the paper down,” I said, and hung up.

I dialed again, this time the number Joanie had given me. Eight or nine rings later, Beverly Taggart croaked, “What?”

I pictured her lying in bed. On the nightstand next to her would be a fake leather pouch for her cigarettes, probably pink, and an ashtray spilling over with butts.

“Tags,” I said.

“Who’s this?”

“I know where Luke is.”

I heard sheets rustling. “That bastard,” she said.

“I have to agree.”

“Who is this?”

I told her. She asked me where Whistler was. Of course I had no idea, but I said headed for Canada, with the cops on his tail. That didn’t seem to surprise her. I told her he had stolen something that had been buried on a hill overlooking Starvation Lake.

“He found it then?” she said.

“Found what?”

I heard the click of a cigarette lighter. “I wish I knew,” she said. She exhaled. “He would never say, exactly. All I know’s it had something to do with a nun his mother knew, and it was going to be our ticket out of the newspaper game.”

“Big book deal, huh?”

“How do you know about that?”

“Everybody up here knows about it.”

“That son of a bitch,” she said. She stewed for a minute. I pictured her in a redbrick bungalow in Garden City or Inkster, a rusting gas lamp sticking out of the front yard slush. “I did a lot of work on that project.”

“You talk to a guy named Breck?”

“The name sounds familiar. I don’t think he helped much.”

“It was you who found out about the map, though, wasn’t it?”

“Lucas told you an awful lot. What did you say your name was?”

“Philo.”

“That’s a strange name.”

“After my great-grandfather.”

“Did he get the map? He wouldn’t even have known about it if it wasn’t for me.”

“Somebody up here told you?”

She paused. I heard her lighter click again. “Some lady, I forget her name.”

“Louise Campbell?”

“Could be. She was all hopped up to help us—for cash of course—and then she just clammed up, wouldn’t talk again.”

“She died a couple of years ago.”

“Too bad. How?”

Cop reporters always wanted to know how.

“Broken heart,” I said. “Your book was supposed to be about a nun?”

“Partly. A nun who died back when Lucas was just a baby. He never told me everything, but what I heard sounded like a humdinger. Priests, murder, buried treasure. Bitsy knew it was buried, she just didn’t know where. Then again, Bitsy was just this side of crazy, and she was all drugged up on her deathbed when she told him, so maybe it’s all BS.”

“Who is Bitsy?”

“His ma. Elizabeth Josephine Pound Whistler. Bitsy.”

I wrote it down.

“Is she alive?”

“No. Died, oh, mid-nineties.”

Something was familiar about that name.

“Luke never said what the treasure was?”

“Nope. He just told me we’d be all set. So now the son of a bitch has it all to himself? I hope the cops—”

I hung up in the middle of her sentence. I’d gotten what I needed from Beverly Taggart. I got Darlene on the phone.

I told her I was now sure that Whistler had made off with Nilus’s box. His mother had told him things. He had learned that there was a map. He’d acquired my mother’s piece of it.

“He’s getting away,” I said. “You have to call the state police.”

“Dingus doesn’t like us sending the state cops on wild-goose chases,” she said. “I’m lucky he hasn’t asked for my badge already for kidnapping Bea.”

“Come on, Darl.”

“We don’t even know that he took anything, let alone what he took. Even if it was what you say, what does this have to do with my mother?”

“It must have been him. He was looking for the map. That’s why
he never took anything. He left nothing behind. I’ll bet he broke into Soupy’s mom’s house, too.”

“All of those could just as well have been Breck. I mean, he was actually digging. And wasn’t Whistler covering the story the night of the murder?”

I thought back, recalled seeing Whistler at the hospital.

“Shit,” I said. “He was with T.J.”

“Tawny Jane?”

“Yeah, they’ve been fooling around. He was with her that night. He heard about it on her scanner. Damn.”

“Look,” Darlene said. “I’ll alert the borders at Sault Ste. Marie, Port Huron, Detroit. If he’s got something strange in his trunk, they’ll hold him.”

I sighed. “OK.”

“Get some sleep, Gussy. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”

I grabbed my coat. I was exhausted and hungry. I considered driving to the Hide-A-Way for a burger, decided I was too tired. I’d have to settle for peanut butter toast. I glanced at the police scanner perched over Whistler’s desk. It was dark. “Now he turns it off,” I said to myself.

I moved to the TV. Merv, the weather guy, was talking about a snowstorm expected that weekend. He was fat and bald and way too cheerful about the prospect of ten to twelve inches of snow. Tawny Jane Reese, I thought, would not make a good weather bitch.

Then I froze. I looked at the scanner, then back at the TV, then at the scanner again.

“I have a huge scoop for you,” I told Tawny Jane when she answered.

“It’s late.”

“Two huge scoops.”

“Why the hell would you give me a scoop?”

“Don’t worry, you don’t have to sleep with me. But I need to ask you something personal.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“True. You want the scoops or not?”

I waited. “Give me the first one,” she said.

I told her about the
Pilot
’s imminent demise.

“Like the bosses at Media North are going to let me report that,” she said.

“That’s up to you,” I said. As I talked, I stared at the name I had scribbled earlier: Elizabeth Josephine Pound Whistler. I drew circles around the four initials.

“What’s the other one?”

“First I get to ask you.”

“I might not want to answer.”

“Understood. But at the hospital the other night, when they took Phyllis, you were late.”

“Yeah. So?”

“You’re never late. You’re always on the ball.”

She was. And if she’d heard the bulletin about the break-in at Mom’s house at the same time Whistler had, there was no way she would have been late to the hospital. No way would Tawny Jane let a guy she was fucking beat her to the story—
especially
a guy she was fucking.

“Thanks,” she said. “Except when my scanner goes bonkers.”

“What scanner?”

“I have a police scanner next to my bed. It died on me Sunday morning.”

The hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

“So,” I said, “Whistler was not with you that night.”

“Sunday night? No. Why?”

I told her everything I knew about Nilus, Sister Cordelia, Whistler, the box he had stolen away. She must have said, “Oh my God,” ten times.

I called Darlene again and told her what I now knew.

“Calm down,” she said.

“He’s getting away.”

“No.”

“They got him?”

“No, I’m going to get him.”

“You mean we’re going to get him.”

“Are you still at the
Pilot
?”

“Yeah.”

“Wait there.”

“Out back?” I said, but Darlene had already hung up.

I turned off the lights and the TV and locked the door and stood in the back parking lot watching for headlights. Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. I called Darlene’s cell. She didn’t answer. I walked out to South Street and looked up and down, as if that would make her arrive faster. At half an hour, I called again. It went straight to voice mail. I called the department.

“Pine County.” It was Catledge.

“Deputy Esper, please?”

“Sorry, Gus. She’s gone.”

“Don’t bust my balls, Skip.”

“Not busting your balls. She hightailed it out of here forty-five minutes ago. Said she was going to make last call at Dingman’s.”

“She doesn’t drink at Dingman’s.”

“Good night, Gus.”

I stood listening to the wind hum through Starvation Lake, wondering where Darlene was and whether I’d see her again.

H
alf the town came to watch the arraignment of Wayland Ezra Breck. By the time Mom and I squeezed between Millie and Elvis Bontrager in the third row of the gallery, every fold-down wooden seat in the courtroom was taken. Reporters jammed the jury box. Dingus and county coroner Joe Schriver sat behind the prosecution table to the judge’s left. There was no sign of Frank D’Alessio, whose campaign for sheriff appeared to be over.

Breck stood at the table opposite the prosecutor, alone. An orange jumpsuit bagged on his frame. Shackles bound his feet and hands.

I scanned the courtroom for Darlene. She was not there.

The night before, I’d gone home and moved an unpacked box from Mom off of the sofa and lay there with my cell phone within reach, waiting for Darlene’s call. I dozed for snatches of ten or fifteen minutes, waking amid dreams of my cell phone ringing, only to see it resting silently on the end table. At six-thirty, I started calling her. Each time, her phone went to voice mail. Either she was choosing not to answer or she couldn’t.

I considered calling Dingus, then recalled what Skip Catledge had said about Darlene—“One hell of a police officer, if you ask me”—and called him instead. I swore him to secrecy and told him Darlene had gone after Whistler.

Now I left Mom in her seat and walked up to where Dingus was whispering with Prosecutor Eileen Martin. When he saw me mouth the words “Where’s Darlene?” he turned away in what looked to me like disgust. “What happened?” I said, too loud, and the prosecutor gave me a dirty look and pointed me back to my seat.

I sat again, patting my coat pocket for the tissues I’d brought in case Mom needed one. She and Millie were holding hands. I hadn’t told her about Darlene.

From atop his bench, Judge Gallagher peered down through his horn-rim spectacles. He rapped his gavel once.

“We have before the court today a single arraignment,” he said. “Counsel?”

Eileen Martin stood, wobbly as ever on her high heels. “Yes, Your Honor,” she said.

“Thank you, Ms. Martin,” Gallagher said. “Mr. Breck, am I correctly informed that you have declined counsel?”

“I will take my own counsel, sir.”

“Sir?” Gallagher said. The judge smiled as he shuffled papers around. The residue of Brylcreem that usually made a circular shadow on his leather chair was gone. The judge had lost most of his silver hair while undergoing chemotherapy for an unspecified cancer. “I suppose ‘sir’ will do. But please tell me, Mr. Breck, that you are trained, at the very least, as an attorney.”

“I am, sir.”

“I assume you’re familiar with the old joke about the lawyer who represents himself?”

“If you’re saying I am a fool, so be it. I come to represent more than myself.”

“Well, I’m interested solely in you. What do you plead, sir?”

“Excuse me, Your Honor?” Eileen Martin said.

Gallagher’s head swiveled like a turtle’s. “Ms. Martin?”

“Your Honor, we’ve just learned of new information that could—”

“Ms. Prosecutor, this is an arraignment. The purpose of an arraignment is to extract a plea from the defendant for the record of this court. Would it inconvenience you to let me accomplish that before you tell me whatever it is you wish to tell me?”

“Your Honor—”

“Or are you saying the prosecution wishes to withdraw felony charges of illegal entry, breaking and entering, conspiracy, and second-degree murder against the defendant?”

“Not at this moment, Your Honor,” she said.

“That is a relief. Thank you.”

Eileen sat, brushing a hair from her reddening forehead. She couldn’t have been surprised. As a judge, Horace Gallagher was as unpredictable as cell phone service north of Gaylord. He ran his courtroom the way he saw fit, standard legal procedure and state judicial commission be damned. Lawyers whispered that he was unstable, but time and again, appellate courts agreed that Pine County’s circuit judge, pushing seventy, had charted an improbable map to the correct destination. The judicial commission nannied him on occasion, most notably when he ordered a philandering husband in a divorce case to kneel before his soon-to-be-ex-wife and apologize. But the gripes from officialdom seemed only to encourage Gallagher’s unique ways of pursuing justice.