Quabbin - 1. Chapter 1

OK, so I was slightly hung over. But the guy I’d worked my way around the world for had just gotten married, and I was more than slightly pissed off.

Dane was his name, probably still is in some outpost of Hell where he can rot along with his new, over-aged husband. He has a name, a couple of them I’m sure. But I don’t want to remember even the beginning of the first.

Which is why I’d been drinking Monday night, third in a row since Dane’s -- would you believe it -- white wedding. Good German beer, just like I drank in Hamburg. I was way too young to be hanging out with the kind of hard-beat guys I worked with on the docks, and I didn’t speak any real German when I got there. Five weeks later, I still didn’t speak much, but by then I’d hoarded enough money to move on. I stupidly thought I wanted to see Poland, love of my long-dead great-grandparents. At least, I could recognize Polish.

But docks are docks and guys are guys, internationally. And wherever I ended up, I quickly learned to grin and grunt and point and lift things. I thought if I spent a couple of years traveling, Dane might at least take me seriously again. Maybe I’d have an even chance against his rich slumlord. What could have been in my head?

Far less than in Mary Foti’s when she phoned on that too-bright Tuesday morning. “Is this Security?” she asked, when I’d only answered, “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” I repeated. “Security.”

“This is Mary Foti -- Mr. Kohler’s secretary?” She seemed unsure, though her name read out in neon red on my phone. “I’m afraid I need to get into the Founder’s House.”

Just what I wanted to do, go for a walk. And there was no way Cameron wouldn’t send me, no chance separating him from his morning coffee, donuts, and crossword puzzle. Besides, he’d probably been inside the Founder’s House thousands of times. I’d mainly checked the doors.

“Be right up, Mrs. Foti,” I chirped, aiming for friendly. “Walk you right over.”

There was also no way Cameron would let me take our one-and-only squad car -- quasi squad car -- I think it used to be a golf cart. And the CEO’s secretary, no matter how rushed, would never sit in my ‘84 Olds, with it floppy ceiling and flaking paint. “How can you drive that thing?” my father’d accused me, like I was dragging his reputation through the exhaust.

“Buy me a new one,” I’d joked. But money wasn’t to be kidded about, not after I’d fumbled away a football scholarship to Tulane.

Besides, the Founder’s House was just down the street. I pulled the keys out of the lockbox, told Cameron where he was sending me -- he confirmed by asking for a five-letter word for “bucolic taste” -- then I headed up the back stairs. The front, white marble steps didn’t make it to our basement. When Waldron Mill was built, maybe a hundred years ago, our office was probably stables. Sometimes, I think it still is.

The steps were worn and wood and creaky. On the main floor, I could’ve cut over and used the central stairs, but I continued up the narrow ones to the second floor. The top floor was dark storerooms, once tiny offices, though no one wanted to use them anymore.

And who’d want to work at Waldron Mill? Their motto used to be: “If the Army won’t take you, Waldron will.” ‘Cept now, the Army only bribes its recruits, doesn’t draft ‘em. I’d thought about joining, after the Tulane mess, when Dane first started backing away. But working around the world, with no more than jeans and a T-shirt, seemed more of a guy thing to do. I couldn’t match his rude boyfriend’s investments, but I was a dozen years younger than the guy. Dane just needed to see that.

Waldron wasn’t really that horrible, now that it wasn’t a factory anymore. But it wasn’t L.L. Bean or Lands’ End. Drew Kohler had managed to take his family’s dying clothes business and turn it into the third-ranked, down home, online and mail order house nationally. And if everything looked slightly better in the pictures than it did actually hanging on you, what did it matter -- the place kept a lot of people working. Still, Waldron Mill, Waldron Street, Waldron, Massachusetts was less an address than an epitaph.

Mary Foti’s small office was paneled in dark wood, now painted white maybe to make it look bigger. Kohler’s office walls had been left naturally dark, probably to seem more self-important. Mary knew me when we saw each other, though she hadn’t recognized my voice on the phone. I’d grown up with two of her sons.

“Good morning,” she said, smiling. But she clearly couldn’t think of my name.

“Jim,” I told her, grinning back.

“Jim! Of course! Why was I thinking James?”

Formal name, mainly used by family. In the house, I was James. In the world, Jim. It confused strangers and sometimes didn’t do a whole lot for the six of us kids. But I didn’t explain that to Mary, who was obviously thinking of other stuff.

“Mr. Kohler’s late,” she told me. “He knows he has this meeting. We talked about it last night.”

She made it sound like they’d both worked very late, and I was glad I hadn’t been there. Would’ve interfered with my beer-fed self-pity. Nah, I’m kidding. I wasn’t that bad.

“I called the Founder’s House an hour ago,” Mary went on. “But I got the machine. Normally, I wouldn’t call before nine, but he has this meeting...” Her voice trailed off, as if to emphasize how important the meeting was. “Then I called again at eight-thirty, then fifteen minutes ago. In between, I tried his cell phone and everywhere else I could think of -- to see if anyone had seen him. No one had. Finally, I even called his home, to see if he was possibly there, though he said he wouldn’t be. Still, it’s not like him to disappear. And he’s always right on time.”

By then, Mary and I were down the central stairs, outside, down the stone steps, and most way across the parking lot. We passed the old, arched gate, crossed the narrow street in front of the Mill, and walked the short block to the Founder’s House.

It was a big, old, white-with-green-trim New England thing, built maybe a hundred-and-fifty years ago, easily before the factory existed. It now sat close to the street, on what was probably not originally a corner. But it was still protected by hedges higher than my head and tall, overhanging trees.

Kohler didn’t live there all the time. The house was mainly used for receptions and meetings, or to house visiting clients. Still, when he was working late, or he needed to be in the office really early, Kohler sometimes slept in the house where he’d been raised. When Mary Foti mentioned “calling his home,” I knew she was rambling ‘cause she was nervous and didn’t know where her missing boss was. But she probably didn’t realize I understood what she meant. I’d been to Kohler’s other home, a half-hour away in Amherst. I’d been there a lot. His daughter was a high school friend.

Mary and I cut into the driveway. There was a narrower opening through the hedges, with a low white gate, but using the driveway seemed easier. Kohler’s grey Audi was parked outside the closed garage. The front porch light was still on.

We knocked at the door, though we were only being polite. “I’m sure he won’t answer,” Mary insisted. She tried first, using the dippy ornamental thing, brass, ‘cause there was no bell. Then I knocked, more forcefully, whamming my knuckles against the heavy oak. After we waited, I looked to Mary for permission she seemed unwilling to give. “I guess we should go in,” she finally allowed.

I opened the door, not getting the key right at first, the ring holding a half-dozen. Then I waited, to follow Mary.

“Mr. Kohler?” she called quietly. “Mr. Kohler?”

She looked at me.

“ANYONE HOME?” I bellowed, instantly embarrassed by how well my voice carried. I was still hung over.

“Mr. Kohler?” Mary tried again. We were standing in the entryway. Wide arches led right and left. Mary went right, through the living room.

“The study’s over there,” she told me. “He may be on the phone.”

I followed her again. The study was off the far end of the living room, in what might once have been a porch. No one was there. We doubled back, through the other arch, to the dining room. There was a second side porch there, almost a mirror image of the first, though furnished as a den. Nearby, a door swung into the kitchen.

No one. Anywhere.

Mary started up the steps, sighing, as if dreading the climb. She could have said, “Oh, dear, oh, dear.” She was one of those women. She probably was the same age my mom would’ve been, early fifties. But Mary seemed older.

“I’ll go if you’d like,” I volunteered. She hesitated, then shook her head.

“He wouldn’t know who you are,” she decided. “He’d probably shoot you.”

“He has a gun?” I yelped. Until then, I’d felt safe.

Mary blushed. “I didn’t mean that... There’s no reason to think... It’s just, you know, an expression...”

I grinned, maybe to reassure her, maybe to humor myself. All I needed was to be shot, three weeks into a job I hated having. And hated having again. It was a long way from working the sexy docks of the world.

“We’re a premier company,” I’d often heard dimwit Bill Grenon say. “Fastest growing business in western Mass.,” -- where, of course, the main competition was grass. Grenon’s official title was Vice President in charge of God Knows What. Word had it that he did everything Kohler hated.

Reaching the top of the Founder’s House stairs, Mary and I found four doors. “Mr. Kohler?” she called again, a sparrow dogging crumbs. We glanced through the two open doorways, then moved on. “Mr. Kohler?” Mary repeated.

The name seemed uncomfortably formal. All the times I’d seen him, his kids called him “Dad,” his wife, “Drew.” Forced to, I might have said “Mr. Kohler,” but I hated titles and usually managed to duck them. Around the mill, he was mainly known by his last name.

I’d known his daughter Carrie forever. Amherst wasn’t small, but we’d lived on the same block and had gone to the same schools. Plus, she was Dane’s best friend.

Mary Foti knocked on each of the closed bedroom doors, while I stood wondering why, after all the years of being his secretary, she still couldn’t call him “Drew.” Or maybe she did, in private. But not in front of the help.

The last two bedrooms were empty. There was one common bathroom and a second, off the largest room. We glanced in these and out several windows, at deserted porches. We even opened the door to the attic. Mary seemed to know the house pretty well, but she couldn’t find the attic light. Still, since it made no sense that Kohler was just sitting up there in the dark, we went back downstairs.

“Let me try calling again,” Mary suggested. “Maybe he’s come in.” That seemed logical. He wouldn’t have gone far without his car.

While Mary phoned from the kitchen, I tried other doors, mainly to seem useful. Actually, I wanted to be back at my desk, slowly sobering. One door led to the basement, partitioned into laundry, family, and furnace rooms. Back on the ground floor, I found a pantry, a mudroom, and another bath, I guess left over from days with servants. Unfortunately, wedged in the narrow tub, was a drowned Drew Kohler.