Bryan Gruley - The Hanging Tree

Unless, of course, Gracie could not be appeased. Unless she really did want her dignity back, and neither Haskell nor Vend-who might well have received the same sort of note from Gracie-could give it to her.

I stepped out of my truck. I watched the boughs of the evergreens along Mom’s bluff swaying gently in the night wind, heard the pulley cable on Mom’s flag clanging off the metal pole.

I folded the letter and slipped it into the inner pocket of my jacket. What would I do with it? What could I do, without knowing whether Gracie had actually presented Haskell with her notion of blackmail?

I thought of Haskell and his wife and his son sleeping in their mansion beyond Mom’s evergreens, across the frozen lake, two of them more than likely knowing not a thing about Gracie and Haskell and the things they had done downstate. Unless Haskell had really killed her, or had her killed, what claim did Gracie really have on him and his family? Yes, Haskell was a goddamn bastard, as Trixie had said. So was Vend, who seemed a lot more capable of doing what had to be done. But Gracie was a big girl. She’d known what she was doing.

I supposed I could just go to Dingus, or Darlene, give one of them the letter. And watch Tawny Jane Reese tell the world about it on Channel Eight.

Oh fuck, I thought.

I had to be in Traverse City-I looked at my watch-in about five hours. As Philo said, eight o’clock sharp or I would no longer be employed by Media North or the Pine County Pilot, as if it mattered anymore.

Voices in the kitchen woke me at 6:34.

I found Mom and Darlene’s mother sitting at the dining room table. Mom was in her flannel pajamas, Mrs. B in a faded violet housecoat. Her galoshes stood dripping on the carpet by the sliding glass doors that led to the yard. I smelled the coffee they were drinking out of matching mugs labeled B for Bea and R for Rudy, my father. My mother had the R mug cupped in her hands.

“Good morning, Gussy,” she said.

Blinking against the hanging lamp, I peered past the table into the living room. A dozen or so bouquets of flowers adorned the floor beneath the picture window facing the lake. Through the window I saw scattered lights winking on the bluffs on the north side of the lake. I remembered my father taking me on my first snowmobile ride on a yellow-and-black Ski-Doo he had borrowed from a friend. Dusk was just falling. We shot down the slope in front of the house, across the snow-covered beach, and out onto the hard white lake. I almost fell off the back as I tried to turn and wave to Mom watching from shore.

“Morning,” I said. “You guys are up early.”

Mrs. B regarded me through her Tweety Bird glasses. “Dear, I’ve been up since two. Can’t sleep for all the excitement around here.”

“What did you do, Gus?” my mother said.

“What do you mean?”

“The police called here last night. And you’re limping.”

“Took a puck off the foot. What police?”

“The D’Alessio boy. He said he needed to talk to you.”

“Ah. Just hockey stuff.”

More likely, it was Dingus turning up the pressure on me to talk. If he only knew what I had in my jacket pocket.

“Why are you up so early?” Mom said.

“Got a meeting.”

“Where were you yesterday? You didn’t return my calls.”

“I was out of town. Did you call my cell phone?”

Lately Mom had been calling my office when she meant to call my cell, and vice versa. Mrs. B reached across the table and took one of my mother’s hands in hers. “Bea,” she said.

“Of course, yes,” Mom said. “How did it go?”

“Fine.” I assumed Mom had told Mrs. B where I’d gone. I decided to change the subject. “Who sent these?”

A glass vase holding a bouquet of white lilies and carnations stood on the snack bar in the kitchen. I picked up the card lying in front of it.

Deeply sorry for your loss.

With sincere regards,

Felicia Haskell

“Huh,” I said. “That’s nice. I didn’t know you knew her. Or that she knew Gracie was… you know.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Felicia Haskell.”

Mom thought for a second. “Oh,” she said. “I don’t think I know her.”

“It’s all just part of the campaign,” Mrs. B said.

“Campaign?” For a second her suggestion eluded me. “Oh. You mean for the rink? Come on. They know me better than that.”

An idea popped into my head. I fingered the letter in my pocket.

“They came late yesterday,” Mom said. “I was just running out to ceramics and didn’t have time to move them.”

“If it was me, I’d feed them to the deer,” Mrs. B said.

“I might just do that.”

“We don’t need that rink, and we don’t need a new coach either. Poppy does just fine with those boys.”

I set the card back down. “I better get in the shower.”

“We’re going to Audrey’s, dear. Would you like to join us?”

That gave me another idea.

“No thanks. I’m already running late. See you at the office later, Mrs. B.”

The bathroom sat between the two bedrooms and had doors on either end. I went in one door, locked it, and turned on both the shower and the sink. I listened. Mom and Mrs. B were still talking. I opened the door at the other end and slipped into Mom’s room.

I found the manila envelope Audrey had told me about in the middle drawer of my mother’s desk. It was torn open at one end. As quietly as I could, keeping one ear on the conversation in the dining room, I slipped two sheaves of pages out of the envelope.

The first was bound within a cover of light blue cardboard. “Haverford Variable Life Insurance Company” read the logo on the front. I scanned the first page quickly. On January 7, Grace Maureen McBride had signed up for a term life policy for the sum of $250,000. I flipped through the pages, wondering who was the beneficiary. On page six I found a notation that the beneficiary “will be as shown in the application unless you change them.”

I switched to the other sheaf of pages, Gracie’s application for the policy. I found what I was looking for at the bottom of the fourth page. Fifty percent of the death benefit, it said, would go to Patricia Armbruster of Melvindale, Michigan, the woman I knew as Trixie.

The other 50 percent would go to Beatrice Carpenter of Starvation Lake, Michigan.

“Oh, holy shit,” I whispered.

“Gus?”

My mother’s voice came from behind the opposite door of the bathroom. I stuffed the papers back into the envelope. She knocked on the door.

“Gussy. Why is the sink running?”

I slid her drawer closed, tiptoed back into the bathroom, and eased the door on my side shut. I turned off the running water.

“Just shaving,” I said.

“Are you all right in there?”

“I’m getting in the shower.”

“Gussy. Are you going to be all right? At your meeting?”

Mrs. B must have known where I was going.

“Everything’s going to be fine, Mom.”

I stood there staring at the door, waiting for my mother to go back to the dining room. I could tell she was waiting herself, probably thinking, What does my son know? while I wondered the same about her.

My cell phone rang as my truck descended the big hill overlooking Skegemog Lake along M-72 west. If I didn’t hit traffic along the Traverse bays, I’d be on time for my appointment with Jim Kerasopoulos.

“Hello?” I said.

“Where are you?”

There was something unpleasant in the tone of Darlene’s voice.

“Got a meeting with the fat ass in Traverse. Did you talk to the cops in Sarnia?”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes you’re as slippery as an eel.”