Chapter 14 #2
Sticks was already at the Agawam when Denny arrived.
The old diner, open since 1954, was one of those silver relics with red vinyl seats, the kind that served five different kinds of pie, all homemade, and that only accepted cash and that had rules about what came on a hamburger versus a hamburger plate versus a hamburger club (Denny could never remember the difference).
Sticks was staring down at a white, thick-walled cup of coffee, very light and creamy, from what Denny could see, running a thumb around the rim.
“Hello, stranger,” Denny said as he slid into the booth across from the officer.
Their relationship had mellowed considerably since their interrogation at the police station.
Denny would hardly call Sticks a friend, but they had some kind of townie rapport, at least. He was hopeful that the officer would hear him out.
“Well, I’d hardly call us strangers at this point,” Sticks said. He extended a hand. “Mr. Plummer. Good to see you, as always.”
“Sticks,” Denny said. He shook firmly.
“I swear, someday I’ll grow out of that nickname,” Sticks said.
“Probably not. Or probably not here,” Denny said.
“Definitely not here,” Sticks agreed. Not in Rowley, his hometown, where his small-league career on the ice had both started and ended. Sticks for life it was.
“I stumbled on some information recently,” he said. “I thought it was only right I pass it on. As a citizen.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?” Sticks seemed genuinely interested. He leaned back in the booth, a little relaxed, affect temporarily dropped.
“You ever been to Life Time? The health club at the Northshore Mall?” Denny looked at him. Was it his imagination, or had the officer blinked?
“Can’t say that I have. That’s a little spendy for my purposes. When I get hot, I jump in the ocean. When I want to work out, I head over to Hard Nock’s.” He meant, of course, the notorious gym in Amesbury, a haven for townies and muscleheads.
“A one-trick pony, you are,” Denny said.
“Let’s just say that I like what I like, and there’s no reason to change things at my age. I’ve been coming to this diner, for instance, three times a week since I graduated from high school, and why change now? But anyway. Back to Life Time.” Sticks took a sip of coffee.
“My wife was a member,” Denny said. “Well, I guess we had a family membership. Have a family membership. I never went there or anything, though.”
Sticks nodded. He didn’t seem to have any feelings one way or the other about that.
“So. What’s the story with it, then?” he asked, tapping his index finger on the table.
“The story isn’t so much with it as with a person who’s a member over there. I found out about a situation that happened with my wife. It sounds like she was threatened. It sounds like my daughter was threatened,” Denny said.
“How do you say?” Sticks said, squinting a bit, and then picked up his coffee and looked squarely at Denny. “You’re killing me with the suspense here, Plummer.”
“I’ll get to the point,” Denny said. “The summer before my wife ended up in the Ipswich River, she was threatened in public, at Life Time, by someone who is prominent in our community. And my daughter, Louisa, was, from the sounds of it, checked right into the pool.”
“Who’s the mysterious offender?” Sticks said. “Or are you just going to keep me guessing?”
“That’d be Mimi Mar.”
“That be the same Mimi Mar who lives over on Nancy’s Corner?” Sticks asked. “I believe I know her, but she has never had any connection with the Hamilton PD, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
It felt like a strange thing to say—an admission without a crime.
Denny stopped for a second. He hadn’t asked about the police department, of course.
The officer was protesting a little too much.
Tread carefully, he told himself. Friends and enemies wear the same clothing.
“The very same Mimi Mar from Nancy’s Corner, yes,” Denny said.
“Mimi Mar, president of the PTO, Mimi Mar?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So you’re saying . . . what, exactly? That she got into some little altercation with your wife at a health club and I’m supposed to look into whether or not she had something to do with your wife’s murder?”
Denny went to say something else, but he felt like a wall had come up between them. The mood in the diner had shifted. Denny, the officer was plainly telling him, had crossed a line, but he couldn’t stop himself.
“There’s more, though. I talked to Diane Maguire,” he said. “If you just . . .”
“If I just what? Start an investigation of a woman who has dedicated her life to public service? With no proof except some accusations from the man who we still have been unable to clear?” He sat back with a sneer and a little laugh, folded his arms over his stomach.
“You’re a smart one, I’ll give you that, Mr. Plummer.
Probably watch a lot of Dateline. Fault of this whole era, thinking they can run one over on the police. ”
Denny only wanted what any husband would want, what he thought Sticks wanted, though now he wasn’t so sure: to find resolution, to finish what had been started, to solve the crime.
Anna had always played this stupid song that he hated, over and over again when she had been sad or when she had been stuck on a copywriting assignment that she couldn’t get through.
He had never understood why listening to the same thing over and over again had helped her over a hump, but now he kind of got it, that she had found new meaning every different time.
Standing at opposite sides / Equal partners in a mystery
But where was his partner in this mystery? Gone, surely gone. If she were here, what would she say, anyway? This was part of the problem. He hadn’t really been listening when she was around, and now she wasn’t here to share in the thrill of the chase.
“That wasn’t my point in any of this,” Denny said. “I just think you go as far as you can with every possibility. I think you take every lead to its natural conclusion, and this is a real lead. I looked at Anna’s computer, I brought it all to you, and you have done nothing, said nothing.”
“We didn’t feel that anything on there was sufficient to pursue,” the officer said.
“‘Sufficient to pursue’! ‘Sufficient to pursue’! You said that to me before,” Denny said, slamming a palm on the Formica table.
“You practically stalked me until I came down to the station, made me feel like I was a suspect . . . then I guess that didn’t work out for you, right?
Then I gave you all these emails, all these threats, and then there was proof that she met with—guess who!
—Mimi Mar, that she had an issue with one person in all of godforsaken Hamilton, that she reached out to people about it, that people knew, and you are telling me, well, no, no one’s gonna do one goddamned thing about it.
You might as well just tell me that you have no plans to find out who did this to my wife, because finding out who did this might open a can of worms that you don’t want to open. ”
Denny had a moment of temporary recognition.
He thought of the surveillance cars that had stalked his house in the weeks following his wife’s death, about the feeling he had back then, that the cops were trying to convince him to stop meddling, about how he had disregarded it.
But what if he had been right? What if the police were trying to make him go away?
What if the cops were still trying to make him go away? And if they were, why?
“I’d be careful with what you say, Mr. Plummer.
I don’t appreciate your tone,” Sticks said.
He was standing now, loosening a tightly impacted wallet from his back pocket.
He extracted a wad of dollar bills and tossed them on the table.
“I think we’re done for today. I suggest cooling off a little.
Go for a swim in that pool of yours. Take your kids over to Hodgie’s.
Whatever you gotta do to get this out of your system.
” Grabbing his police-issued cap from the hook that hung above the booth, he tipped his head, turned on his heel, and walked out, leaving Denny alone in the Agawam, Anna’s intemperate rage coursing through his veins.