Page 89
Story: Holly
“Yes. I used to like that name, but these days it kind of grates on me. The only ones in this picture I still roll with are Avram and Ernie Cog. Small Ball comes, but just to watch. It’s not like it used to be.”
“Nothing is,” Holly says gently.
“No? No. But it should be. And could be, if people would only take care of themselves.” He’s staring at the picture. Holly is looking at him and realizes that even the sixpack is starting to show wrinkles.
“Who is this last one?”
“That’s Vic Anderson. Slick Vic, we used to call him. He had a stroke. He’s in some care home upstate.”
“Not Rolling Hills, by any chance?”
“Yes, that’s the name.”
The fact that one of the old bowlers is in the same care home as Uncle Henry feels like a coincidence. Holly finds that a relief, because seeing a picture of Barbara Robinson in the Strike Em Out foyer felt more like… well… fate.
“His wife moved up there so she could visit him more often. Sure you don’t want a little pick-me-up, Ms. Gibney? I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“I’m fine. Really.” Holly stops recording. “Thank you so much, Mr. Clippard.”
He’s still looking at her iPad. He seems almost hypnotized. “I really didn’t realize how few of us are left.”
She swipes away the picture and he looks up, as if not entirely sure where he is.
“Thank you for your time.”
“Very welcome. If you locate Cary, ask him to drop by sometime, will you? At least give him my email address. I’ll write it down for you.”
“And the numbers of the ones that are still around?”
“You bet.”
He tears a sheet from a pad that’s headed JUST A NOTE FROM MIDGE’S KITCHEN, grabs a pen from a cup full of them, and jots, consulting the contacts on his phone as he does. Holly notes that the numbers and the e-address show the slightest tremble of the hand writing them. She folds the sheet and puts it in her pocket. She thinks again, time the avenger. Holly doesn’t mind old people; it’s something about the way Clippard is handling his old age that makes her uneasy.
She basically can’t wait to get the frack out.
3
There’s only one (and oh-so-tony) shopping center in Sugar Heights. Holly parks there, lights a cigarette, and smokes with the door open, elbows on her thighs and feet on the pavement. Her car is starting to stink of cigarettes, and not even the can of air freshener she keeps in the center console completely kills the odor. What a nasty habit it is, and yet how necessary.
Just for now, she thinks, and then thinks again of Saint Augustine praying that God should make him chaste… but not yet.
Holly checks her phone to see if Barbara has answered her message with the attached photo of Cary Dressler and the Golden Oldies. She hasn’t. Holly looks at her watch and sees it’s only quarter past two. There’s plenty of day left in the day, and she has no intention of wasting it, so what next?
Get off her ass and knock on doors, of course.
There were eight bowling Oldies in 2015, including Desmond Clark, the one not in the picture. Three of them don’t need to be checked out. Four, if she counts Hugh Clippard. He looks capable of overpowering Bonnie and the skateboard kid—about Ellen, Holly’s less sure—but for the time being she puts him aside with the two who are dead and Jim Hicks (living in Wisconsin… although that should be checked out). That leaves Roddy Harris, Avram Welch, and Ernie Coggins. There’s also Victor Anderson, but Holly doubts if a stroke victim is sneaking out of Rolling Hills to abduct people.
She knows it’s very unlikely that any of the Golden Oldies is the Red Bank Predator, but she’s more and more convinced that the presumed abductions of Dressler, Craslow, Steinman, and Bonnie Rae Dahl were planned rather than random. The Predator knew their routines, all of which seem to have Deerfield Park as their epicenter.
The bowlers knew Cary. She doesn’t need to mention the other desaparecidos, unless she gets a feeling—what Bill Hodges would have called a vibe—that questions about Cary are making someone nervous. Or defensive. Maybe even guilty. She knows the tells to look for; Bill taught her well. Better to keep Ellen, Pete, and Bonnie as hole cards. At least for the time being.
It never once crosses her mind that Penny Dahl has outed her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
4
While Holly is smoking in the parking lot of the Sugar Heights Boutique Shopping Mart, Barbara Robinson is staring uselessly into space. She’s shut off all notifications on her computer and phone, allowing only calls from her parents and Jerome to ring through. Those little red check-me-out circles by the text and mail icons are too tempting. The Penley Prize Essay—a requirement for the five finalists—has to be in the mail by the end of the month, and that’s only four days away. Make it three, actually; she wants to take her essay to the post office on Friday and make absolutely sure of that postmark. Being eliminated because of a technicality after all this would be crazy-making. So she bends to the work.
Poetry is important to me because
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89 (Reading here)
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 146