“But their three kids were rounders of the worst sort. Remember, it was the 60s when they came of age, but they were all about drugs, sex, and rock ’n’ roll to the exclusion of everything else. Garr is the child of the second son, Jeff, and his hippy girlfriend. As I remember it she went by the name Moonbeam. That first summer they carried him around in a cardboard box with Tide printed on the sides. Then they sort of disappeared. Word was they were living in a commune in California or Arizona. Next time I saw the kid he was in his teens, sent to spend the summers here with his aunt, Regina. She ended up inheriting the cottage after Dr. Zwilling and his wife had passed on. She was the only one of the three children who turned out okay.”
“And she still owns the place?”
“As far as I know. I haven’t seen her around here in years. In fact, the cottage has been standing empty for a number of seasons. That happens sometimes. People vacation in other places, get sick, and sometimes end up in nursing homes or die. No one uses the cottage. So I was surprised when Garr showed up. I hadn’t seen him for years, but he looked just like his dad, long hair and all. Impossible not to recognize.”
“Did you contact Regina about the fire and her nephew?”
“I tried to call her yesterday. The number I had was out of service, and I don’t have an email address for her. We have lots of people dropping their landlines, and they just don’t notify us. Then when there’s a problem, or I need to talk to….”
“Well, I’d like to have any information that you can provide about Regina. We will try to find her. Also, Zwilling’s car, I didn’t see one near the cottage.”
“No,” said Grubbs, “there wasn’t one. He knew he shouldn’t be in here. So if he came by car, he deserted it somewhere in the woods or maybe left it in town and hitched a ride out here. If you follow me down to the office, I’ll give you all the info I have on Regina. And how about some coffee? It will take the chill off.”
3
Richard Grubbs placed two books in front of Ray, black plastic bindings holding the 8 x 11 pages together. Ray looked at the titles, each from the imprint of a woodblock—The History of Mission Point Summer Colony and The Cottages of Mission Point Summer Colony.
Grubbs pulled the second book back to his side of the desk, briefly looked at the index, thumbed through the large pages for a few moments, and then pushed it back toward Ray. “There’s the Ravenswood Cottage. There are several photos on that page and the next. As you can see, other than the trees getting bigger, not much changed over the years. How do you want your coffee?”
“Black, please.”
Ray studied the photos and the text carefully, then turned to the next page. The pictures appeared to be at least thirty or forty years old. He quickly paged through the book. The snapshots, grainy and indistinct, were all in black and white. Turning back to Ravenswood Cottage, he looked at the building and the children who had been assembled in front of it, three boys and two girls holding towels and smiling in beachwear from the early part of another century. A United States flag hung from a pole at one end of the porch. Ray looked at it closely, wondering about how many “stars” were included in the folds.
Grubbs set a heavy, thick-walled coffee mug in front of Ray, its ceramic finish dulled by decades of use. He peered over at the page with the Ravenswood Cottage. “Looks about the same.”
“Yes,” said Ray. “I’m guessing from the names listed that four families owned it over the last hundred years.”
“Yes. That’s probably sort of average. I’ve never looked at things quite that way. Maybe this summer I can get one of the kids to make a database for me. I’d like to do that kind of analysis.”
“Pretty easy to set up a….”
“For you, perhaps. My computer skills are limited to hunt and peck typing. I can sort of do e-mail, too. Don’t plan to learn anything else. People will expect me to do things I don’t want to waste time on.
“As you can see,” Grubbs continued, “some of the places are still in the hands of the original families, passed down from one generation to the next. If the kids don’t want the cottage, it often goes to a niece or nephew, or sometimes cousins who summered here. Mission Point Summer Colony is magical. Lots of people with rich childhood memories hope to come back and recapture that magic every summer for the rest of their lives.”
“And I see here that Regina Zwilling is the owner of record. I need her contact information.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” Grubbs pulled open a battered wooden file box and flipped through the 5 by 8 cards. “I must not have put it back.” He crossed the room to another desk, one with a computer and phone. “Here it is.”
Sliding it across the desk to Ray, he said, “Sorry I can’t make you a copy. The toner cartridge died last week, and I haven’t had time to run to town and get a replacement.”
Ray opened a small notebook and copied the information, then took a picture of the card with his iPhone. “Just in case I can’t read my writing,” he explained. “I need to go over some of the things you told me earlier. First, this is the number you called?”
“Yes. I dialed it, and I got one of those out of service recordings.”
“When was the last time you had contact with Regina Zwilling?”
Grubbs looked thoughtful and pulled at the skin on his Adam’s apple. “I’m not quite sure. People come and go all summer. Some are very social, stopping when they arrive for the summer, taking part in the colony’s activities, visiting me here in the office for coffee and conversation, and always coming in at the end of the season to say goodbye. Then there are others. If I see them at all, it’s just a chance event.”
“But how about Regina?” Ray pressed.
“Like I said, I’m not sure. I don’t think I saw her last summer, perhaps the summer before.”
“And the nephew?”
“Garr, I haven’t seen him in years, not until yesterday, or I guess it was the day before wasn’t it. Hard not to recognize him, though. As I think I told you, he looks just like his father. And I’m about his father’s age, a few years older. We were teenagers here at the same time.”
“Were you friends?”
“No,” said Grubbs. “We were just different enough in age that we didn’t hang out together. You remember how much two or three years seems to matter when you’re fourteen or fifteen. I do remember he was wild, even in high school. Like I was telling you before, Jeff became a real hippie his freshman year in Ann Arbor. Next time I saw him he was in bells, with beads, long hair, and tie-dyed shirts. He and his girlfriend were around for a year or two, Garr arriving along the way, and then they headed west.”
“Have you seen Jeff in recent years?”
“No. I don’t know anything about him. The only member of the family that I’ve had contact with over the years is Regina.”
“For the record, what is your title here?”
“I’m the Executive Director for the Mission Point Summer Colony. That’s a new position. We never had anything like that before. But after I retired from my college teaching position, the board members decided to get this place more organized. So they created this position. They also wanted me to write a history of the colony. They tied those two things together, paying me a pretty good salary and turning the old caretaker’s cottage into a year-round residence so I would have easy access to the county road. Before that, I had been the mayor of the summer colony.”
“Mayor?” said Ray, some amusement in his voice.