Grady Lake, page 11
part #1 of Grady Lake Mystery Series Series
“Let’s meet at Portside so you can buy me an Italian Beef. And don’t get too hammered; you know it pisses Katie off. Yeah, I know she is. Okay, see you soon,” she says before ending the call.
“You know I’m what?” I ask her.
“So pretty,” she answers without hesitation.
I roll my eyes and take a turn to get onto the main highway, 41 North, which will take us into Marquette and to Nicole’s favorite lunch spot. Although not exactly a booming metropolis, Marquette is the largest town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and has around twenty thousand year-round residents. It’s the home to Northern Michigan University and the most beautiful shoreline imaginable, along the banks of Lake Superior. Marquette is also where we go for any sort of major medical procedure or scan, as the rest of the area only has small clinics and doctors’ offices.
“Hey, maybe we chill on talking about Sammie Spencer? Anything that could bring up memories of when we lost Mal is only going to get him to drink more,” I ask Nicole as I parallel park between two cars in the first spot I see about a block past the restaurant.
Nicole opens the passenger door and looks down to check how close I’ve hugged the curb. “Damn, KB, you have like two skills in life and one of them is parallel parking.”
“What’s the other?”
“Driving me up the damn wall. And yes, you have my word, I won’t bring Sammie up. I’ve got to keep him lucid enough to trade me quarterbacks, anyway.”
Dad is walking down the sidewalk toward us as I lock the Highlander. There’s a chill in the air as September takes hold, but that doesn’t stop Charles David from wearing his “retirement uniform”—a Packers t-shirt and cargo shorts. I have on a jean jacket and I’m already shivering.
“What’s with all the denim?” he asks, pulling me into an entirely too tight hug.
“I know, I told her she looked like an idiot,” Nicole says before leaning forward to participate in their secret handshake, which is about six moves and thirty seconds longer than it needs to be. I look down at my outfit; I was wearing blue jeans and a cute pink blouse before I realized how cool it was so I grabbed the denim jacket from the backseat.
“Denim on denim is back in style, not that you two would know anything about style,” I quip.
They both throw their heads back in laughter, slapping each other on the shoulder. “Man, she sure got us,” Dad says.
I walk to the small front entrance to the restaurant, and the faded wooden door with a large porthole window on the front gives me chills from the nostalgia. I’ve been eating here for as long as I can remember. The bartender, Chaz, used to have my Shirley Temple drinks ready before we even took our seats. I frown when I see the hours of operation next to the door; they don’t open until 2:00.
“Well, shit,” I say, looking at my watch. 1:36.
“That doesn’t apply to us, baby,” Dad says as he motions for us to follow him around back. He takes out his phone and presses a few buttons before saying, “Chaz, my man! I’m with my girls out back. Any chance we can come see you a few minutes early? We won’t make a peep . . . perfect. You’re a good man.”
“Chaz still bartends?” I say incredulously. I swear that man was in his sixties when I was a kid.
“You ever hear that song called “Prop Me Up Beside the Jukebox (If I Die)?” Well that’s gonna be Chaz. He’ll be working here until the good lord calls him home,” Dad says.
“Can he not afford to retire? Doesn’t he get social security?” Nicole asks.
Dad stops and turns, leaning toward us to whisper his next bit of information. “One of the regulars talked Chaz into buying into Amazon when it was a penny stock. He could be on the beaches of Kokomo by now without a care in the world. That man bartends because he loves his job.”
“Kokomo isn’t a real place, Chuck,” Nicole says.
“Yes, it is, you idiot,” I tell her as dad smiles and puts his long arms around us both.
“God, I’ve missed you girls. You’ve been arguing since you were toddlers.”
The employee entrance door swings open and Chaz, looking like a handsome Colonel Sanders, stands in the doorway and smiles, his teeth bleached so white that they nearly match his hair.
“Charles David, how do you keep surrounding yourself with such good-looking women? Did you lie and tell them you have money?”
Dad puts a hand on each of our shoulders and gently pushes us forward. “Well, Chaz, get a good look. Do you remember these sweet faces?”
Chaz takes a few steps toward us and comically takes his glasses off to clean them on his shirt before placing them back on his face and squinting. “Sweet Jesus . . . Katie and Nicole? I haven’t seen you two since you were barely big enough to see over the bar and drinking me straight out of grenadine.”
“Hi, Chaz,” we say in unison, taking turns to hug him. Although he’s frailer than I remember, he appears to be in good health and even better spirits.
“I’ve come in here a few times over the years, but you weren’t working. Some lady was behind the bar, and she didn’t hold a candle to you,” Nicole tells him.
“Nobody does, sweetheart,” he replies with a wink and ushers us inside. “The kitchen isn’t quite ready yet, but I can get some drinks started. Don’t tell me you two are old enough to order alcohol, now.”
I smile. “We’re thirty-five, Chaz.”
He turns sharply to face Dad. “How old does that make us?”
“Keep walking, Chaz. It’s best not to think about it.”
The three of us enjoy a round of beers—thank goodness Dad isn’t drinking liquor—as we sit at a pub table near the bar and catch up. My feelings for my dad seem to change every day. Afternoons like this, for example, I adore him. His misdeeds are a distant memory. He is charming, attentive, fun, caring. He’s the man I wish he had always been. When Chaz stops at the table to let us know the kitchen is ready for business, Dad orders an ice-cold Dr Pepper to go with his hamburger. Why can’t he be like this all the time? When he goes on his hard liquor benders, he offends everyone he encounters, burns any bridges that are still standing, and disappears for weeks. They say addiction is a disease, but it’s one I’ll never understand.
Nicole and I do our best to converse without bringing Sammie up in conversation, but it’s hard. It is quite literally the only thing being discussed at Grady Lake, with the exception of my suspicion of the Palmers—another subject I don’t wish to discuss with my dad. I somehow get on the subject of Robbie and how impressed I am with his work ethic and how grateful I am that he’s staying for the winter.
“Yeah, I bet the residents of Grady Lake are happy about that, too,” Dad says, taking a bite of his burger with what can only be described in these parts as a shit-eating grin.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I ask.
Dad looks from me to Nicole and back again, as if wanting to laugh at an inside joke with us and then realizing we aren’t, in fact, in on said joke.
“Katie, you didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. You’ve been working alongside the kid for weeks and didn’t notice he’s selling pills to half the boats that pull up to the docks?”
“Pills? What kind of pills?” Nicole asks. If there’s anyone on this planet more naïve than me when it comes to drugs, it’s her. In high school, we took a few hits from Justin Rodger’s homegrown marijuana and ended up hiding in the woods for eight hours, for no particular reason. When I came home for Christmas my sophomore year of college, we each ate a ten-milligram edible from one of the line cooks and ended up back in the woods, this time convinced we were having synchronized heart attacks. I’m confident that those will be the only two experiences with weed we will ever have, even though it’s now legal to purchase here recreationally. We most certainly don’t know anything about pills or harder drugs. It’s a part of being small-town sheltered that I don’t mind owning up to.
“Well, Nic, I’m not sure. I assume he’s got an array of options, judging by the amount of business he’s getting,” Dad replies.
“How do you even know this?” I ask.
“Last week when I stopped by Benard’s, before your formidable aunt Lou gave me a few choice words, I was sitting out on the picnic table admiring the view. It took me approximately five minutes to realize the kid was dealing.” Dad takes a sip of his drink and eats a few fries like this is no big deal; business as usual.
“How are you so casual about this?” I can’t believe he didn’t tell the aunts the minute he saw Robbie dealing drugs on the Benard’s dock.
“Sweetie pie, there have been drugs dealt on that dock since I arrived in town in 1972. I think that’s probably what I was doing the day I met your mother; someone told me Benard’s had the best weed, and after I bought a dime bag, I stopped in the restaurant for a milkshake, and she was working. I didn’t realize the dock workers had graduated to opioids, but I guess it’s just a sign of the times.”
Nicole and I are staring at each other, meals untouched, waiting for the punchline because this must be a joke. There’s no way the aunts would allow this. Brenda and Deb are old-fashioned, uptight spinsters, and Lou cares entirely too much about the reputation of the resort to allow it. How in the world am I going to tell them? Also, she just made a training schedule for Robbie to learn the restaurant side of the business so he could stay on for the winter. Now, we’re going to have to find a replacement, which isn’t easy in our neck of the woods. My panicked thoughts are interrupted by Nicole’s phone buzzing on the table. She answers it, listens intently, and responds with a few questions of What? How? When? before saying “Okay, we’re on our way.”
Dad and I are looking at each other, eyes narrowed, when Nicole sets down the phone and says, “That was my dad. He just heard on the scanner that someone called in a body found in the water by the north shore.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
By the grace of God, the media hasn’t been tipped off about the body in the time it takes us to finish our meals, pay the check, and drive back to Grady. Sammie’s body. Sammie, who must have been under the surface of the lake while Nicole and I sat on the Boon Dock and stuck our toes in the water. She could have been beneath the boat I drove over to Palmers’ Resort. I feel lightheaded even thinking of it.
I pull into a parking spot behind the lodge, and we spring from the car, running past the restaurant and directly down to the lake. I can see the sheriff’s boat on the north shore, along with several out-of-town officers who are assisting with the recovery. I pass the picnic tables by the swimming area before realizing Brandi and Todd Spencer are sitting on one of them, his arm firmly around her shoulder. She isn’t crying, but her red, swollen eyes look like they’ve probably shed enough for a lifetime in the last hour. She simply stares blankly in the direction of the law enforcement operation with both hands firmly in her lap.
Is this what it would have been like if Malorie’s body had been found? Would we have cried or been too numb for our bodies to perform the function? Would we have dropped to our knees and screamed across the lake? I remember that horrible day when I watched out my bedroom window as the divers searched the lake. I was a selfish fifteen-year-old, and I wasn’t thinking about the pain Malorie may have gone through; my only thought was that if they pull her body out of that lake, I was going to go back to school the next month as the sister of the dead girl. Nobody would look at me the same again. I didn’t know anyone in our entire school who had lost a sibling; it would be all they could think about when they saw my face. Little did I know, those things would happen even though her remains were never found. That week, I became known as Malorie Rose Benard’s little sister and nothing else. All these years later, I still see receptionists do a double take when I check into the doctor’s office or hair salon with my last name. They want to ask, but few ever do.
Robbie is working the dock, and I don’t have it in me to confront him yet. I ask Nicole to hold off until we have more solid evidence than my drunk-more-often-than-not father claiming he saw a drug deal at a resort run by his ex-in-laws. She agrees but insists on going to visit with him and “deciding for herself,” which makes me more than a little nervous. Subtlety is not Nicole’s strongpoint.
“I’m going to talk to the Spencers. I’m trusting you not to fuck this up,” I tell her.
“I’ve been waiting my whole damn life for a sting operation, KB. It’s my time to shine,” she says before straightening her baseball hat and walking in the direction of the dock. I’m certain this isn’t going to end well, but I have bigger problems. Like comforting two parents who are about to watch the body of their teenage daughter pulled from the very lake where they were supposed to be enjoying a carefree family vacation.
I take a deep breath, as if that could somehow prepare me for this interaction. When they spot me walking in their direction, their eyes focus intently on mine. They squeeze their fists a little tighter and sit up a little straighter. They want me to tell them what to do. Katie Benard, fellow survivor of a Grady Lake tragedy, tell us how to act! Who do we call? What do we say? How do we stay standing? I instinctually look past them at the restaurant, willing Lou to pop her head out. She is vastly better than me in situations like this. To make matters even more awkward, Brandi and Todd scoot apart and pat the space between them on the bench for me to sit. Maybe I should turn around and hit Robbie up for some of those pills; surely, he has something for nerves.
“Brandi, Todd . . . I’m so sorry. I am so incredibly sorry.”
Brandi gasps. “Have they confirmed her dental records? Did Sheriff Nelson tell you that?”
Shit. Why did I say I was sorry? The officers haven’t even spoken to them yet. They only know as much as I do, and I’m over here assuming her identity has been confirmed. As morbid as it sounds, she’s the only one missing, and if my sister’s remains were finally found, I don’t exactly think they would have been called in as a “body” after twenty years underwater. We are cautiously optimistic for “skeletal remains” to be found in our lifetime.
“Oh, no, I haven’t talked to anyone, and he most certainly wouldn’t tell me before he spoke to you both. My friend Nicole and I just got back from Marquette and saw all the commotion; I’ve only heard bits and pieces. I guess I was just saying sorry that you’re having to deal with any of this.”
“The minute they pull my baby girl’s body out of that water, the only purpose in my life will be to find out who did this to her and make them pay. She’s never hurt anyone in her life; what kind of monster would take her away from us?” Todd says, the fury in his voice giving me chills. I’ve been dreaming for years of what I would do to the person who took Mal from us. I have mentally choreographed my attack when we finally get our day in court, and I leap across the defense table to strangle him, damn the consequences.
It’s finally happening; a black tent is set up on the shore to block everyone’s view from the recovery. For nearly twenty minutes, we all sit in silence, no doubt picturing what is occurring behind that tent no matter how hard we try not to. The coroner’s van is now backed down onto the boat launch and a second tent is erected behind it. I say a quick prayer of gratitude that they’ve blocked these poor people from seeing their daughter’s lifeless remains. When the back door to the van closes, Brandi flinches like she’s heard a gunshot. That’s it; she’s loaded up. They’ll take her to Marquette, the nearest medical examiner’s office, and determine what happened and hopefully get enough evidence to catch the monster who has been existing among us in this peaceful little town.
Sheriff Nelson doesn’t leave with his officers; he turns in our direction and starts walking toward Benard’s. I’ve somehow begun holding Brandi’s hand and I can feel her pulse beating like a drum, vibrating straight up my arm. I’m going to be sitting between them when they get the worst news of their lives. There will be two distinct versions of the Spencers—before they found out Sammie was killed and after.
I see movement to our left and it’s their young son, Brandon, running toward us with a smile on his face and a toy truck in his hand. A woman, presumed to be the relative who is in town helping, frantically chases after him.
“Mommy! Daddy! I found my monster truck; it was under my bed. We can play now!”
I watch Todd and Brandi each suck in a breath and prepare to greet their five-year-old in the most normal way possible while also counting down the seconds until Nelson makes it to this side of the lake to deliver the news.
“Oh sweetheart, that’s wonderful,” Brandi says but barely gets the last words out before a stifled sob escapes her lips.
“Hey, you’re sissy’s friend,” Brandon says, pointing at me.
Me? Sammie’s friend? I don’t understand. We barely spoke. Does he really remember me from that first day by the beach or is he thinking of when I was their server at dinner?
I look frantically in his eyes and realize he’s not pointing at me; he’s pointing behind me. The three of us spin in unison to see the person his little index finger is aiming at. Coming out of the restaurant and walking directly toward us is my cousin, Dougie. He stops in his tracks.
“What the hell does he mean, sissy’s friend?” Todd says, gritting his teeth so aggressively I fear they may crack.
The color has drained from Dougie’s face.
“I can explain,” he says, both hands slowly rising in front of him, palms toward us.
We are interrupted by Sheriff Nelson greeting us, which was a vision of impending doom just seconds ago, before being upstaged by Brandon’s words. We all turn back toward the lake and I jump to my feet, not wanting to be between the couple when they get this news. They need to embrace each other, not me.
“Mr. and Mrs. Spencer . . . the body we recovered . . . it’s not Sammie.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Wasn’t it supposed to be Brandi and Todd falling to their knees in agony? I wonder as my own knees hit the dirt. Dougie rushes to my side and collapses along with me. If it’s not Sammie, it has to be Malorie. I can’t think straight.
