Leopold's Way (11 page)

“Leopold! Sure, I remember you. God, it's been a long time.”

They shook hands and Leopold told him quickly about the reunion plans. “Venice Park, the first Saturday in June. And bring the wife and kids if there are any.”

Jim Groves was suddenly glum. “They're with her family up in Boston. We're separated.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“One of those things. After all these years she decided she'd married a failure.”

“You'll come to the reunion anyway?” Leopold urged. Somewhere along the line he'd caught the fever of the thing.

“Sure. It'll be good to see them all. The team and all. You finding everybody O.K.?”

Leopold glanced at his list. “Harry Tolliver's contacting most of them. I've got all but two on my list. Maybe you know something about them. It'll save me another call to Harry.”

“I see a few of them once in a while. Who you looking for?”

“Shirley Fazen…”

“Sure. She married Quain, the class president. Remember? Chuck Quain? They live in town somewhere. He went to college and got an engineering job of some sort. They got a big house out in the suburbs.”

Leopold made a note. “Thanks. One more—George Fisher.”

For a moment, Groves didn't answer. He only looked at Leopold, his face troubled and intent. “Don't you remember? Don't you remember what happened to George Fisher? He drowned on the senior picnic at Venice Park.”

“Yes,” Leopold said slowly, wondering how he could ever have forgotten that night, even after so many years. “I never knew him well, and his picture was in the yearbook. I forgot it was him.”

“Sure,” Groves went on. “The yearbooks were already out by that time. I remember we were all signing them at the picnic. Poor George! You know, I always thought there was something funny about his death. I always thought maybe somebody pushed him out of that boat.”

“It was a long time ago,” Leopold answered carefully.

“Yeah. Well, I gotta get to work before that whistle blows. Keep me informed on the plans and I'll be there.”

“All right,” Leopold answered.

“Poor George,” Groves mused as he turned away. Then, as an afterthought, he asked, “What are you doing these days anyway, Leopold? You were always the brains of the class.”

“I'm with the city, Jim,” Leopold answered, starting down the stairs. “I'm a detective.”

Chuck and Shirley Quain had made it big. Their house perched on top of a small hill, just a bit higher than the others in the suburban subdivision, and to Leopold's untrained eye it appeared to be in the fifty-thousand-dollar class. As he climbed out of the car he wished he'd worn a better necktie.

They remembered him, because he'd “hardly changed at all,” and he remembered them. Shirley Fazen had been the best-looking girl in the senior class, and looking at her in the doorway Leopold could still remember why. Her cheer-leading at the football games had been a major attraction, and even the somewhat dull swimming meets were well attended by boys anxious for a look at Shirley Fazen in a bathing suit.

Leopold was a bit surprised to find that she'd married Chuck Quain. He'd been elected president of the senior class after a hard-fought, dirty campaign that seemed to mark him as a future politician but little else. The house on the hill showed that he'd made it to something else, but Leopold couldn't help wondering if he was still using the same tactics.

“Come in, come in,” Quain urged. “You remember Shirley, surely. Ha, ha!” That must have been his favorite joke. “Drink? Scotch, rye, rum, vodka, anything you name. We live the good life out here.” Behind him, the setting sun was streaking through a window, turning his grey hair momentarily reddish.

Leopold followed them into a sunken living-room a bit too full of the good life. “You have a nice place here,” he managed to say.

“We like it.” Quain lit a cigar without offering one to Leopold. “How about that drink, or are you on duty?”

“I see you've kept up on me more than I have on you.”

“How could I miss? Every time there's a murder Captain Leopold gets his name in the papers. Isn't that right, Shirley?”

She nodded agreement and came over to perch on the arm of Leopold's chair. She was wearing tight orange pants that did youthful things for her figure, and Leopold had to remind himself that she too must now be forty-three years old. “But I don't imagine the Captain's here on business,” she purred. “Are you, Captain? I'll bet it's about the big reunion. Harry Tolliver has already talked to Chuck about it.”

Leopold smiled up at her. “Then my trip was for nothing.”

“Not if you'll take a drink.”

“All right,” he said with a sigh. “Scotch and water—but just one.”

Chuck Quain produced the drink from a little bar at one end of the living-room. “The good life does have its drawbacks,” he said. “The kids are getting old enough now to sneak a swig of the booze when we're not around. But I guess that's the only way to learn about it. I guess I did things like that myself when I was young.”

“You're an engineer, aren't you?” Leopold asked.

“That's right. That's where the money is these days. I could tell you…”

“Chuck, no shop talk, please. We haven't seen him for twenty-five years! I want to hear about this reunion, anyway.”

“You probably know as much as I do, from Tolliver. He's the one who roped me in on it. Venice Park's the place, right where we had our senior class picnic.”

“Yeah,” Chuck muttered. “I remember that.”

“Funny thing, I'd completely forgotten about George Fisher drowning that day. I stopped by to see Jim Groves this afternoon and he reminded me.”

“It's not the sort of thing you like to remember,” Shirley said.

“But the three of us were right there when it happened,” Leopold said. “I can remember it now as if it were just yesterday. You saw him fall in, didn't you, Chuck?”

Quain nodded. “I got there a minute later, anyway. I was taking the canoe back to the boathouse, and I guess he was doing the same thing. He was always ahead of me on the creek, just around the bend, when I heard a yell and a splash. He'd fallen out of the damned canoe and was thrashing around in the water. God, it was awful!”

“Then why talk about it?” Shirley asked. “It was awful for all of us. I was practically engaged to George at the time.”

“You helped pull him out, didn't you?” Leopold asked.

She nodded. “Some of us had been swimming earlier, and I still had my suit on. We heard Chuck yelling for help and came running. It was pitch dark, of course, but he shouted that George had capsized his canoe and gone under. A bunch of us dived in, and finally we found him. Not in time, though.”

The details were growing more vivid in Leopold's memory as she spoke. He'd never been a good swimmer himself, and the black of the water had been too frightening that night. But he remembered running to one of the footpath bridges directly above the tragic spot, remembered looking down with flashlights playing over the water as Shirley and someone else pulled the body onto the grassy bank of the creek. The place was called Venice Park because of these creeks and footbridges, and it was a perfect setting for picnics and canoeing—a bit of Venice in New York State. For the most part, the creeks were barely six or seven feet deep, hardly enough to be very dangerous. That night, though, they'd been dangerous—deadly—to George Fisher. They'd worked over him for an hour before admitting what they all must have known. He was dead, and the senior picnic had been ended by sudden tragedy.

“Who else helped you pull him out, anyway?” Leopold asked.

“I think it was Jim Groves.”

Leopold nodded. “I thought it might have been. Funny he didn't mention it today.”

“What
did
he say about it?” Chuck Quain asked.

“Oh, nothing really. Just that he thought there might have been something funny. Something not quite right.”

Shirley Quain laughed. “Are you going to make a murder case out of it after all these years, Captain?”

He joined her with a chuckle. “Hardly.”

Chuck studied the damp end of his cigar. “It would be too late now anyway, wouldn't it? After twenty-five years?”

“Well, there's no statute of limitations on murder, if that's what you mean.”

“Let's find a pleasanter subject,” Shirley suggested. “How about another drink, Captain?”

“No, no. I really have to be going. I didn't mean to be talking shop either. Just wanted to tell you about the reunion.”

“Do you think under the circumstances that Venice Park is a very good place to have it?” Chuck asked.

Leopold got to his feet. “I'll bring up the point with Harry Tolliver. He might have forgotten about Fisher too.”

“Everyone seems to have.”

Leopold nodded. “Everyone but Jim Groves. He still remembers it.”

That night, later, Leopold phoned Harry Tolliver at his home. The man was a bit overly jovial, as if he might have been drinking. “Hi, boy! How you doing? Did you reach everyone?”

“All but George Fisher. He's dead.”

“George…Oh, sure. I didn't know his name was on the list.”

“Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think we should consider moving the reunion to some other location? Venice Park might bring back unpleasant memories.”

“Why? What do you mean?”

“Well, Fisher and all.”

“Everybody's forgotten that.”

“Some people haven't. Some people even think his death might not have been accidental.”

“What?
God, Leopold, stop letting that badge go to your head! I asked you to call a few people, that's all.”

“Sorry.” Leopold hung up and lit a cigarette. For a long time he sat staring at the frosted glass of his office door. What was it? Was he just trying to be a big man with his former classmates? Was he overdoing the detective bit? He was forty-three years old—hardly a child any more. He'd forget about the thing. Right now!

But the next afternoon he went to see Jim Groves again.

Groves was blinking sleepy eyes as he opened the door. “Hey! We don't see each other for twenty-five years, and then bingo—two days in a row!”

“Sorry to bother you again,” Leopold said.

“Come on in. I got some cold beer in the icebox.”

“No thanks. I just wanted to ask you something, Jim. Yesterday you said something about George Fisher's death. You said you thought someone may have pushed him out of that boat. Why?”

“You're working now, aren't you? You're going to solve the damn thing after twenty-five years!”

“If there's anything to solve. It was a long time ago.”

“There's something to solve, all right. Fisher was never much of a swimmer, but the damned creek was only ten feet wide!”

“How deep?”

“Six feet, maybe. He could almost have walked out.”

“But he didn't.”

“Darn right he didn't! Because somebody pushed him out of the canoe.”

“Somebody walking on the water?”

“Maybe somebody in another canoe,” Groves answered.

Leopold lit a cigarette. “You've got quite a memory. What else do you remember? Who else had a canoe out that night?”

“Quain. Chuck Quain was right behind him when it happened.”

“Were they friends?”

“That's hard to say.” He went into the kitchen for a moment and returned with a frosty bottle of beer. “Hard to say. They both were hot for that Shirley Fazen. I remember the football games when she used to cheer. She was really built.”

“Wasn't just about everybody hot for Shirley, as I remember it?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Even me, once.”

“Was George with Shirley that day?”

“Not too much as I remember it. He had this other chick on the string. Marge Alguard. Remember her?”

“Vaguely. Short girl, dark hair?”

“That's the one.”

“What's she doing these days?”

“I don't think she ever got married. I see her around town once in a while. She works at one of the department stores.”

“Thanks a lot, Jim. You've got quite a memory.”

“Listen, if you've got some time, let me tell you about one or two of my best games. Remember the time I ran eighty-five yards for a touchdown against Tech?”

“I remember, Jim. Maybe I can come again some time and we can talk about it. Right now you'd better start getting ready for work.”

“What? Yeah, it is getting late.” He downed the rest of his beer. “See you around. In June if not before.”

“Sure.” Leopold left him there, feeling vaguely sorry for Jim Groves, feeling that nobody should be cursed with that good a memory of the better days.

Marge Alguard's name didn't start with
F
or
G,
but Leopold went to see her anyway. He found her working behind the candy counter of the city's largest department store, scooping multicolored jelly beans into little plastic bags. Easter was only a few weeks past, and he imagined this was the unsold remainder. He found himself wondering if they melted down the chocolate rabbits, too.

“Pardon me. Miss Alguard?”

“Yes?” She still had a pleasant smile, though she was too obviously a woman in her forties.

“You probably don't remember me after all these years. My name's Leopold and I went to high school with you.”

She hesitated a moment and then her tiny face lit up. “Why yes, I remember you! How
are
you?”

“Fine. I'd like to talk to you a few minutes if I could. Do you get a coffee break or anything?”

“I'm in charge of the department,” she answered with a superior smile, signaling to one of the other girls. “I'd be happy to have coffee with you. I see so few of the old crowd any more.”