Bryan Gruley - The Skeleton Box

— joanie

Mobile 313 555 6758

I sat back in my chair. Did I really want Joanie McCarthy coming back to Starvation Lake? I couldn’t stop her. In my experience, nobody could stop Joanie from doing what she wanted to do. But I didn’t have to encourage her either.

I scribbled her number on my blotter, picked up the phone, and dialed the clerk’s office in Midland County. I had no idea what I was looking for, but hoped I might learn something about Father Nilus Moreau.

Frank D’Alessio was standing in front of the Echo Township Hall where the drain commission met when I parked on the snowy shoulder across the road. He wore a white shirt and red tie beneath a dark topcoat. He was shaking hands and handing out big sheets of paper that flapped in the morning breeze.

Campaigning again, Frankie? I thought. I rolled my window down to watch, thinking of the “anonymous” tip he must have given the cops about Tatch missing hockey the night of the break-in at Mom’s house.

“It’s right there, people, right there in black and white,” I heard him shout. He’d printed out copies of the online version of Channel Eight’s scoop on Nilus. Just what I needed. “Morning, Carol, Edgar… hey, Channel Eight’s on the case, but what’s our sheriff doing? Probably sitting in his office stuffing crullers in his face.”

I rolled up my window, opened the door, and walked up to the hall, a converted firehouse that sat in a clearing of pines. The glassed-in bulletin board on the front of the hall read “Pine County Drain Commission,” and just beneath it “Phyllis Bontrager, We Loved You,” and beneath that, “Go River Rats! Beat Pipefitters!”

“Frankie,” I said. “Don’t you have a shift coming up?”

“Took a leave of absence as of today… Morning, Mrs. Jargon, here you go… Unpaid leave, incidentally, in case you see fit to mention. By the way, good game last night. Damn glad you weren’t in the net.”

“Smart move, Frank. Insult the local paper.”

“Like you matter… Hey there, Mr. Bradley, how’s by you? Take two, they’re free.”

“Come on, Frank, you work there. Why don’t you bring the burglar in?”

“Man, they’ve shut me out completely. I can’t get Dingus to tell me what he wants in his coffee… Morning, Mrs. Baranowski.”

“They appear to have a lead.”

“Yeah, sure, maybe this priest came back from the dead and did it. That’s what they’re doing, chasing ghosts. Look, Carpie, you’re just sucking up to Dingus because you’re afraid if he gets booted, the love of your life will be out of here, too.”

“Mr. D’Alessio?”

Breck had come up from behind without a sound. He carried a brown satchel under his right arm.

D’Alessio stuck out his hand and Breck took it. “Yes sir, Frank D’Alessio, running for Pine County sheriff, nice to meet you.”

“Mr. Breck. May I?”

D’Alessio gave him a printout. Breck held it in front of his face. I watched his tiny eyes dart back and forth behind his wire-rims. He turned and offered me the sheet.

“Good morning, Mr. Carpenter. Have you seen this? Do you believe it to be true?”

I looked at Breck for some sign of what he thought about the Nilus story, whether it was familiar to him, but saw nothing. “I’m still reporting,” I said.

“I didn’t see it in your paper.”

“Nope.” I reached into the back pocket of my jeans for the notebook I had dug out from under my truck passenger seat. “Can I ask you a couple of questions?”

“Excuse me,” he said. “I have to prepare for the meeting.”

He walked to the hall, stopped, opened one of the double doors, stepped to one side, and, with a wave of his satchel, ushered two women inside.

“Who’s he?” D’Alessio said.

“The new guy at Tatch’s camp.”

“One of those Jesus people, huh? Why do you want to interview him?”

“You going inside?” I started walking. “Or you got another rally at the IGA?”

“Keep sucking up, pal.”

Pine County Drain Commission chairman Les Cronholm looked around the Echo Township Hall and reluctantly rapped his gavel.

“Do we have any public comment?” he said.

Breck set his satchel on the floor. “Thank you, Mr. Chairman.”

He had waited for nearly an hour, sitting on a wooden folding chair in the front row, satchel on the floor between his knees, while the commission passed a unanimous resolution commemorating Phyllis Bontrager as a model citizen who had given generously of her time to many a community cause. Chairman Cronholm, who owned a plumbing company now doing most of its business in Traverse City, told of the time he was sick for a week with the flu, and Mrs. B came to his house with a pot of his favorite meatball soup. As other commissioners offered their own fond tales, I thought they could as well have been talking about my mother.

The five commissioners sat at a long table behind pieces of white cardboard bearing their names. On the wall behind them hung a banner reading “Pine County Drain Commission: Fresh Ideas, Fresh Water.” Each of them wore a black armband over some form of River Rats apparel-a golf shirt, a sweatshirt, a button-down-and they passed a resolution commending the Rats for their “courageous” victory the night before. I thought “lucky” might have been a better word. They also debated, without deciding, whether to lower the water level in Walleye Lake, how to assess property owners for a new drainage district near the Hungry River, and, for the hundredth time, who should clean up the runoff mess left when Norbert Plastics vacated its plant in Starvation. Breck sat through it all without a trace of expression on his face.

Now he rose from his chair.

“Yes sir,” Cronholm said. “Can you identify yourself, please?”

“Mr. Breck, sir. I represent the taxpaying citizens who live on the Edwards parcels on the northeastern corner of the lake.”

Each of the thirty-odd citizens sitting in the neatly arranged rows of chairs turned to see Breck. They usually came less for commission business than for free coffee and a slice of pie baked by Chairman Cronholm’s wife, Cara. Today, they had a man they’d never seen before to go with their huckleberry pie. There was nothing like a stranger to get the attention of the people in Starvation.

“Maybe I heard wrong,” Cronholm said. “But I thought you just wanted to be citizens, without the taxpaying part.”

“We respectfully object to the recent increase in the assessment of the Edwards parcels, which we consider to be extortionate,” Breck said. “And we also believe, separately, that as a nonprofit faith organization we are quite possibly exempt from taxes altogether.”

“What did you say your name was, sir?”

“Mr. Breck.”

Cronholm fingered his gavel, irritated. “Your full name, please.”

“Breck, sir. Wayland Ezra Breck.”

Yes, I thought. He had to be Joseph Wayland’s grandson, named with his grandfather’s surname and a derivation of his grandmother’s given name.

“Thank you, Mr. Wayland Ezra Breck,” the chairman said. “‘Extortionate’ is a two-dollar word if I’ve ever heard one. You’re a lawyer then?”

“Yes sir.”

“Registered or whatever with the state bar?”

“Yes sir.”

“How can we help you?”

Breck wasted no time explaining. Soil samples taken from the ground beneath Tatch’s family’s land had shown evidence of contamination by sewage runoff. He reached into his satchel and produced an old plat map. He unfolded it and held it up with one hand while indicating certain parts of it with the other hand.

Here, he said, etching an imaginary circle, is land the county purchased years ago. And here, he said, waggling his finger in a portion of the circle, is where an old septic field lies underground. A septic field, unused for years, but now leaking into an area where twenty-some people, including five children, were living.