Mystery

“I wanted to see recent copies that would have stories about the local burglaries, especially the one at Barbara Deane’s house, but as many of them as I could read about, and I also wanted to look at papers from the summer of 1925 that would deal with the Jeanine Thielman murder.”

“What are you?” The man reared back from the counter, whipped a pair of round tortoiseshell glasses from his pocket, and peered up at Tom.

If I say I’m an amateur of crime, this guy is going to throw me out of here, Tom thought. And he’d be right.

“I’m a junior at Tulane,” he said. “In sociology. I have to do a thesis next year, and since I’m spending the summer at Eagle Lake, I thought I’d do some of my research here.”

“Crime in a resort area, that kind of thing?”

Tom said that was the general idea.

“Past and present, something like that?”

“Get any closer, you’ll be writing it for me.”

“All right,” the man said. “In a couple of weeks, I’d have to say no, but things are still relatively calm around here. As crazy as things look out on the street now, by the middle of summer there are twice as many people around here. I’m Chet Hamilton, by the way. The proprietor and editor of this hole-in-the-wall operation.”

The man at the linotype machine snickered.

Tom said his name, and they shook hands.

“I guess I can take you up there now and get you started, but I can’t stick around and hold your hand. You’ll have to put everything back and turn off the lights when you’re done. Just tell me when you’re through for the day.”

“Great. Thanks.”

Hamilton pushed up a hinged flap and came through to Tom’s side of the counter. “I did a series on those burglaries, you might be able to use some of my stuff.” He opened the front door and led Tom outside.

A man with knobby knees and a woman with frizzy hair and fat thighs were peering in the Gazette’s windows. “Hey, is this real or is it an exhibit?” the man asked Hamilton.

“I’m not too sure myself,” the editor said.

“See?” the woman said. “I told you. But would you listen to me? No, every word I say is stupid.”

Hamilton led Tom around the side of the building and pulled a crowded key ring from his pocket. “Consider this,” he said, searching through the keys. “Back home, those two people are sensible, responsible individuals. They pay taxes and they hold down jobs. They come five hundred miles north to a resort, and suddenly they turn into drooling babies who can’t see what’s in front of their noses.” He found the right key, and slotted it into the door. “Crime is different in a resort area, and that’s the reason why. People change when they get away from home.” He opened the door to a worn flight of stairs. “I’ll go up and switch on the lights.”

Tom followed him up the stairs.

“People who’ve never stolen anything in their lives turn into kleptomaniacs.”

At the top of the stairs, he flicked a switch. Bound volumes of the Gazette stood in rows on metal shelves. At the far end of the room were a wooden desk and an office chair. “I suppose you’re from Mill Walk?”

“Yes,” Tom said.

“You’d have to be, you’re up at Eagle Lake and that’s been a hundred percent Mill Walk since before I was born. David Redwing bought all that land and parceled it out among his friends, and it stayed that way ever since.” He took two volumes from a shelf and put them on the desk. “Besides that, you mentioned Jeanine Thielman. You’d have to be from Mill Walk to know that name. She was the first summer person to be killed up here, at least the first one that was ever proved.” Hamilton strode back into the rows of metal shelves and put his hand on the two most recent volumes. “I think you’ll find nearly everything on those break-ins in here.” He slid them off the shelves and came back to the desk.

“It sounds like you think there was another murder of a summer resident before Mrs. Thielman,” Tom said.

Hamilton grinned, and set down the new volumes on top of the old ones. “Well, my father certainly did. He was the editor of the Gazette in those days. A woman drowned in Eagle Lake the year before the Thielman murder. The coroner called it accidental death, and most people thought it was really suicide. My father was pretty sure that the coroner had been bought and paid for—see, in those days, we didn’t have a real full-time coroner in Eagle Lake, we had three undertakers and they took the job in rotation, month by month.”

Tom felt a chill in the hot, airless upstairs room. “Do you remember this woman’s name?”

“I think it was Magda something.”

Tom realized that he had never heard his grandmother’s first name until this moment—so successfully had his grandfather erased her memory. “Magda Upshaw?”

“You got it.” Hamilton leaned on the stack of bound newspapers and frowned down at Tom. “Are you sure you’re as old as you say you are? You don’t look like a junior in college to me.”