I parked in front of the general store, opened all the windows a crack for Henry, and got out. A middle-aged couple were sitting on the bench in front with their heads together, drinking bottled water and studying a road map. Out-of-staters, I guessed, trying to figure out how they’d ended up at this place, or how to find their way out of it.
I looked around, and my eyes settled on the real estate office across the street. If anybody knew where an old house on a local pond was located, it should be a real estate person. How many houses and ponds could there be in a town the size of Southwick?
The office was located in a lovely old brick colonial. A bell dinged when I went through the front door and stepped into the empty reception area.
A minute later a slim fiftyish woman wearing tailored slacks and a red sweater appeared from around a corner. A pair of glasses was perched on top of her head. “Hi, there,” she said. “I’m Carol. Can I do something for you?” She was pretty and blond and had what I guessed was a New Jersey
accent. New York, maybe. Certainly not New Hampshire.
I told her my name, and we shook hands. “I’m afraid I’m not in the market for real estate,” I said.
“You’re not the only one,” she said. “You lost?”
“Well,” I said, “I wouldn’t have said so. But I’m looking for a place, and I don’t know where it is, so maybe I’m lost at that.”
She smiled. “Try me.”
I pulled out the two pictures of Albert’s hunting camp and spread them on top of the unoccupied receptionist’s desk. “Does this look familiar?”
She put her glasses on and peered at the pictures. Then she looked up at me and shrugged. “I don’t recognize it. You think it’s in Southwick?”
“It might be. I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere around here.”
She touched the pond on one of the pictures. “Doesn’t look like any of our ponds.”
“You have many ponds in Southwick?”
“Four,” she said, “not counting the millpond. One’s the town pond with the swimming beach out past the cemetery. This isn’t that one. Two of our ponds you can’t get to except by hiking through the woods. No buildings on any of them.” She smiled up at me. “My husband’s big on portaging canoes. He drags me to these places.”
“What about the fourth pond?” I said.
“Oh, a road goes all the way around that one. It’s lined solid with cottages. I’ve sold a bunch of them, actually, mostly to folks from Connecticut and New York. Not recently, though.” She smiled. “You want motorboats, water skis, Finn Pond’s your place. You can see”—she pointed again at the picture—“this one is nothing like Finn Pond.”
“I guess it’s not in Southwick, then,” I said.
“I’m sure it’s not,” she said.
Well, that would’ve been too easy. “The place I’m looking for belongs to a man named Albert Stoddard,” I said. “Does that name ring a bell?”
“Does he live here in town?”
“No. His family’s from here, though. This camp, it was in his family.”
Carol frowned. “Stoddard,” she mumbled. “Same name as that woman who’s running for election in Massachusetts?”
“Yes,” I said. “Same name. She’s running for the Senate.”
“I’ve seen her on TV,” said Carol. “A Democrat, right?”
“Yes. So what about Albert?”
“Nope.” She shook her head. “I don’t recall any Stoddard family in town. But, hey. I don’t know everybody. Let’s try the phone book.”
“That’s inspired,” I said.
She pulled out a rather thin phone book, flipped through it, and ran her finger down a page. Then she looked up at me and shrugged. “No Stoddards in Southwick or any of our adjoining towns.”
“I know my friend grew up here in Southwick,” I said. “I assume this camp is somewhere around here.”
“You should talk to Harris and Dub,” she said. “The Goff brothers. They run the auto shop down the street. Local characters. They know everybody and everything. There’ve been Goffs living in Southwick since the Pilgrims, practically.” She smiled. “Me, I’ve only been here twelve years. As far as the local folks are concerned, I’m still that brassy broad from Pennsylvania, and I guess I always will be.”
Pennsylvania. I would’ve sworn New Jersey. Northeastern Pennsylvania, no doubt.
I folded the pictures, stuffed them in my shirt pocket, and
started to thank Carol when the front door opened and the bell dinged and a young couple came in, followed by a lanky sixtyish woman wearing a flowered dress and sandals. They were all laughing about something.
“Helen,” said Carol, “got a minute?”
“Just about one,” said the woman. She had sharp blue eyes and a long iron-gray braid and a tanned, weathered face. “We need to make a phone call, check a couple things on the computer. What’s up?”
“This is Mr. Coyne from Boston,” said Carol. “He’s got a question.” To me she said, “Helen’s lived in this neck of the woods all her life.”
Helen smiled and held out her hand. I shook it. She had a manly grip and a no-nonsense manner. “What’s your question, Mr. Coyne?”
Her clients hovered behind her. I sensed she was hot on the track of a sale.
I took out the picture of Albert’s camp with the pond in the background and spread it on the desk for Helen. “I’m looking for this place. I think it’s around here somewhere. Carol says it’s not in Southwick. Maybe in some nearby town?”
She put her hands flat on the desk and bent to look at it. She frowned, then looked up at me. “I don’t recognize it. There are lots of ponds around here.”
“The camp belongs to a friend of mine named Albert Stoddard,” I said. “It was in his family. Albert grew up here in Southwick.”
Helen glanced back at her clients, then smiled quickly at me. “There was a Stoddard family in Southwick, oh, twenty-five, thirty years ago, as I recall. They moved away.”
I started to ask Helen if she’d heard anything about Albert
since then, or if she realized that it was his wife who was running for U.S. senator from Massachusetts, or if she had any suggestions for how I might locate his camp, but she had already turned to her clients and was ushering them into an office. At the doorway, she glanced back over her shoulder, gave me a quick shrug, went in, and closed the door behind her.
“Well, hm,” said Carol, “that was kind of rude.”
“No, that’s all right,” I said. “She’s busy.”
“Still …” She shook her head. “Business has been awfully slow lately,” she said. “Me, I try to take the long view, but Helen worries. The fall’s normally our best season, but that couple are the first hot clients either of us has had in about three weeks. I apologize for her. She’s usually friendlier.”
“No problem,” I said. “You’ve been very nice.”
“Not very helpful, though.”
“I’ll try the Goff brothers. Harry and Bub, was it?”
She smiled. “Harris. Harris and Dub. You’ll find them, um, amusing. Don’t be fooled. They both went to college.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.” I lifted my hand. “Thanks for everything.”
I went back to the car and got in. Henry was snoozing on the backseat. He opened his eyes, yawned at me, then closed them again. Henry liked the car and didn’t mind being left alone in it. He knew I’d always be back.
I could have walked to the Goff brothers’ garage, but I liked to keep my car in sight when Henry was with me. It was a two-minute drive.
I parked out front by a pair of old gas pumps that were no longer in operation. Environmental laws have made the old-fashioned gas pumps obsolete, and only the wealthy multinational companies can afford to update them, so many
small family-owned gas stations have either shut down or been bought out.
Good for the environment, bad for small business. It’s the way of the modern world. Somehow, environmental laws never seem to cause big multinational corporations too much suffering.
The Goff brothers apparently had managed to stay in business without selling gas. The side lot was littered with vehicles. Many were quite old, and a large percentage of them were pickup trucks, although there was an interesting mixture of Ford Escorts, Volvos, several species of SUVs, and at least one Jaguar.
The garage itself was a peeling old white two-story clapboard structure, with an office area on the left side and two bays on the right. There were curtains in the upstairs windows. A Coke machine stood against the outside wall next to the office door. A sign over the bays said GOFF’S GARAGE. The doors to the bays were up, and from inside came loud rock music. A Dell Shannon song, if I wasn’t mistaken.
I opened the office door. No one was there, so I went around to the bays. There were two lifts with cars on them, and under each car was a man digging and poking at the undersides of the engines. Both men had black beards streaked with gray and wore workboots and greasy overalls with raggedy T-shirts underneath. One had thinning gray hair. The other wore a backward Red Sox cap and rimless glasses. I guessed they were both in their early fifties.
I stood there for a minute, but neither of the men seemed to notice me.
“Excuse me?” I said.
The music was very loud, so I stepped inside, and in a louder voice I repeated, “Hello?”
The man with the cap and glasses craned his neck around and peered at me. Then he returned his attention to the engine he was working on.
“Sir?” I said. “You got a minute?”
“Hold your horses,” he mumbled without looking at me.
The man under the other car, the one with the thinning hair, turned to look at me. Then he went back to what he was doing.
A minute later the one with the glasses came over. He wiped his hands on the seat of his overalls. “You got a problem?” he said.
“Not with my car,” I said. “Carol over at the real estate office said you might be able to help me.”
He leaned around me and looked at my car. “Beemer, huh? How do you like it?”
“I like it a lot.”
“Folks think Beemers’re yuppie cars,” he said. “You a yuppie?”
“I’m too old to be a yuppie.”
“They’re good cars,” he said. “Don’t listen to ’em.”
“I try not to.” I smiled. “My name’s Brady Coyne,” I said. “From Boston.”
He looked at his greasy hand, shrugged, and held it out. A test, maybe.
I shook it without hesitation.
“Dub Goff,” he said. “That”—he jerked his head toward the other man—“that’s my kid brother Harris. He’s the one give me this name. Dub. Short for Dubber. How he said ‘brother’ when he was little, and I got stuck with it. Name’s actually Lyndon. You had a name like Lyndon, you wouldn’t mind so much being called Dub. So Carol sent you over, huh?”
I nodded. “She said you and your brother have lived around here for a long time.”
“Too long,” he said.
I took out the picture of Albert’s camp. “Recognize this place?”
Dub Goff glanced at the picture, then turned his head and yelled, “Hey, Harris. Turn off that goddamn radio and come over here.”
A minute later the radio went off and Harris Goff was standing beside Dub wiping his fingers on a rag that looked dirtier than his hands. “Take a look at this,” said Dub.
Harris looked at the picture, then looked at Dub. “That’s Stoddard’s old camp, ain’t it?”
“You’re right,” I said. “Can you tell me how I can find it?”
“You a friend of Albert’s?” said Harris.
I nodded.
“So how come you don’t know where his camp is?”
“I’m actually more a friend of his wife,” I said.
“His wife, huh?” Harris looked at Dub. They exchanged grins.
“That’s right,” I said.
“So you’re not Albert’s friend.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’m Albert’s friend, too.”
“But you never been to his camp?” said Harris.
“No,” I said. “You guys know him, though, huh?”
“Albert?” said Dub. “He grew up here, we grew up here. Hard not to know him, whether you wanted to or not.”
“You saying you didn’t want to know him?”
“Saying nothing like that,” said Dub. “Albert Stoddard didn’t matter one way or another. He was younger than us. We didn’t hang out together.”
“Have you seen him lately?”
“You lookin’ for him, or for his camp?” said Harris.
“Both,” I said. “Either.”
“Well,” said Harris, “couldn’t tell you where Albert might be, but I s’pose we know where Albert’s camp is, don’t we, Dubber?”
“Yep,” said Dub. “S’pose we do.”
“Not sure Albert would like us tellin’ some friend of his wife’s where it is, though. Whaddya think?”
“I think you got a point, brother.” Dub poked my arm. “What do you think, Boston?”
“I think,” I said, “that you guys are having some fun for yourselves. Me, I just want to find this place. You going to tell me where it is or not?”
They looked at each other, pretending to ponder the question. Then Harris nodded, and Dub said, “Well, I guess any friend of Albert Stoddard’s wife oughta be considered a friend of ours. You want to get to this place, you gotta head up to Limerick. Next town to the north. Fifteen, twenty minutes from here.” He hesitated. “Shit, Harris, fetch that DeLorme from the office, willya? We don’t want Boston, here, driving that pretty Beemer down some dead-end road where he can’t turn around.”
Harris went into the office, and a minute later he returned with a tattered book of topographic maps. He and Dub spread it on the hood of my car, and Dub used a ballpoint pen to trace the route from the village of Southwick to a little round pond buried deep in the woods in the northwest corner of Limerick. They showed me where the long driveway led off the dirt road to the camp. I’d spot it about fifty yards after I crossed a wooden bridge where a brook passed under the road.
“Long ways in,” said Dub, tracing with his finger the distance from the road to the pond.
“Close to a mile, I’d guess,” added Harris. “Long ways in a Beemer.”
I studied the map, then looked up and nodded. “Got it,” I said. “Thanks.”
“You ain’t gonna get lost, are you?” said Harris.
“No,” I said. “I’ve got it here.” I tapped my head.
Harris looked at Dub. “He must’ve went to college.”
“I did,” I said.
“You got one of them cell phones with you?”
I shook my head.
“What’re you gonna do if you get stuck?”
“I guess I’ll have to walk,” I said. “You think I’ll get stuck?”
“Not unless you get lost.”
“I won’t get lost,” I said. “Thanks for your help. I better get going before it gets dark.”
Harris nodded. “Gets dark early this time of year. That’s when the bears come out.”
“Lotta bears around here,” said Dub.
I smiled. “I’ll keep an eye out for bears.” I climbed into my car and pulled away from the garage. Harris and Dub stood there side by side, watching me go. I lifted my hand, and they both lifted theirs.
I decided to get Henry some water and something to drink for myself before I headed to Limerick and went looking for Albert’s camp, so I stopped at the general store.
When I went in, Helen, Carol’s partner at the real estate office, was standing by the counter talking with the elderly man at the cash register. She was leaning over the counter
patting his cheek, and they were laughing about something. When they saw me, they stopped laughing.
I said hello to Helen, and she nodded to me. I found the cooler at the back of the store. I got a bottle of orange juice for me and a bottle of water for Henry and took them to the front.
Helen had left, and the old man—I guessed he was somewhere in his late seventies or early eighties—was perched on a stool looking at a newspaper through a pair of thick black-rimmed eyeglasses that were perched way out there toward the tip of his long, meandering nose.
I put the two bottles on the counter.
The old guy used his forefinger to push his glasses onto the bridge of his nose and peered up at me. “That’ll be two bucks even,” he said.
I took out my wallet and put a five-dollar bill on the counter. I noticed that his eyeglasses were the kind with built-in hearing aids.
“Understand you been lookin’ for Stoddard’s old hunting camp,” he said.
“That’s right.”
He clanged open his cash register, made change, and slapped the three bills down on the counter.
“Did you know the Stoddards?” I said.
“Can’t say I really knew ’em,” he said. “It was a long time ago.” He frowned. “Arnold? Harold? Something like that. Owned a business of some kind over in Keene. Quiet folks. Pretty much kept to themselves. One day they up and moved away. Let’s see, that was … my goodness, that must’ve been thirty, thirty-five years ago.”
“You don’t know Albert, then?”
“The boy?” He shook his head. “Guess he was a teenager when they left. Helen was mentioning him just now. Friend of yours, is he?”
I nodded.
“And you’re looking for his camp.”
“I am.”
“Guess you talked to the Goff boys, eh?”
I smiled. “Do you know everything?”
“I guess I know just about everything that happens in this here town,” he said. “Which amounts to nothin’ much worth knowing.” He grinned. His teeth were yellowish and a little large for his mouth. “I’m sure the Goff boys got you squared away.”
I smiled. “They were very helpful.”
“It’s up to Limerick,” he said. “The camp.”
“Dub and Harris eventually showed me how to find it,” I said. “It probably would’ve been easier if I’d asked you.”
“Think they’re Abbott and Costello, those two fellas. Some folks don’t think they’re so funny.”
“I thought they were pretty funny,” I said. I held up the water bottle I’d just bought. “You don’t have some kind of container I can borrow so I can give this water to my dog, do you?”
“Guess I might,” he said. He groaned, climbed off his stool, bent creakily under the counter, and came up with a plastic bowl.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll bring it right back.”
The old man waved away that idea with the back of his hand. “Keep it,” he said. “You might need it later.”
“Well, thanks a lot.”
“Hell, it’s just a plastic bowl.”
“Even so,” I said. “It’s very friendly of you.”
“Guess I want you to think of Southwick as a friendly town,” he said. “I’m betting the Goff boys had a little fun with you. Their idea of fun, anyway. Pair of clowns, them two.” He held out his hand to me. “Names Farley, by the way. That’s my first name. Farley Nelson. Lived in this town all my life. So’d my daddy. Me, I never saw no reason to go anywheres else. Never understood why anybody would. Nice town, Southwick. No place better on God’s green earth, if you ask me.” He grinned. “Course, I ain’t ever been anywhere else.”
I gripped Farley Nelson’s hand. It felt like a hunk of tree bark. “I’m Brady Coyne,” I said.
“Yep,” he said. “Heard that already.”
“Well,” I said, “thanks for the bowl.”
“Oh, I like dogs,” said Farley. “Got two setters and a beagle and an old black Lab, myself. Usta hunt ’em, but last few years, my damn arthritis, mainly in my knees …”
I shifted my weight from one leg to the other and smiled and nodded while he told me about his ailments, and how good the partridge hunting used to be before the woods grew too tall, and how the cottontails had about disappeared—damn coyotes, he figured—and how nowadays the out-of-staters all came for the turkeys, and how he didn’t do much hunting anymore. Still liked fishing, though. Had a bass pond dug out behind his barn, got a kick out of raising the fish and then trying to catch them, and I guess old Farley Nelson would’ve talked on and on if a gang of kids hadn’t come in to pepper him with questions about the latest videos.
I used that as an opportunity to escape.
When I stepped outside, I saw that Helen was sitting on the bench in front. I nodded to her.
“Mr. Coyne,” she said.
I stopped. “Yes?”
“Got a minute?”
“Sure.”
She patted the bench beside her, and I sat down.
“That your dog?” She pointed at my car. Henry was sitting in the front seat looking at us.
“Yes. How’d you know?”
“Massachusetts plates. Hunting dog?”
“I guess he would be if I hunted,” I said. “He’s a Brittany. It’s in his genes.”
“Everybody hereabouts hunts. Bet Farley got your ear.”
I smiled. “He seems like a nice guy.”
She nodded. “He is. He’ll talk your ear off, though.” She looked away for a moment. “I was a bit short with you back at the office,” she said. “I wanted to apologize.”
I waved that sentiment away with the back of my hand. “You were doing business,” I said. “I understand.”
“It wasn’t exactly that.”
“No?”
“I knew the Stoddards,” she said. “Didn’t like them very much.”
I shrugged. I figured if she wanted to tell me why, she would.
Evidently she didn’t. “That’s why I reacted the way I did when their name was mentioned,” she said. “I don’t like to be impolite, but I guess I was, and I’m sorry for it. I can tell you where their camp is.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I talked with the guys at the garage. They showed me on a map.”
“Harris and Dub,” she said. “Regular encyclopedias of information, those two.”
“Did you know Albert Stoddard?”
“Just by reputation,” she said. “He was about twenty years younger than me. He was a teenager when the Stoddards moved away.”
“What was his reputation?”
Helen blinked at me. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant, I didn’t know him personally.”
“Have you seen him recently?”
“Albert Stoddard?” Helen shrugged. “I don’t suppose I’d know him if I did see him. What I remember is a skinny towheaded boy riding around the dirt roads on a three-speed bicycle. He must be, what, a forty, forty-five-year-old man now?”
“About that. He’s a college professor.”
“Imagine that,” she said. “Are you looking for him?”
I smiled. “I’m just looking for his camp.”
“It’s in Limerick.”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s what the Goff brothers told me.” I stood up. “And I want to see if I can find it before it gets dark.”
“Well, you better get started, then,” said Helen.
I held out my hand to her. “It was nice talking with you.”
“I just didn’t want you to get the wrong impression,” she said. “We’re really a friendly town.”
“That is my impression,” I said.
I went to my car, and when I opened the door, Henry slinked guiltily into the back.
I poured half of the bottle of water into the bowl Farley Nelson had given me and put the bowl on the backseat. Henry licked the bowl dry, then lay down.
As I pulled away from the general store, I waved at Helen, who was still sitting on the bench.
She lifted her hand to me.
The truth was, I still hadn’t made up my mind whether Southwick was a friendly town.