“Did you see this Tom on the day of the play? Any of you?”
Brittany answered. “Yes, He tried to get in my door. He gave me a piece of paper and said it was a ticket. It was just a piece of paper with ‘ticket’ written on it with pencil. I told him he couldn’t come in, and that I was going to get Mr. Grubbs if he didn’t go away.”
“He tried our door, too,” said Kayla. “I was sweet about it, but I told him he couldn’t come in. He didn’t argue, he just disappeared.”
Ray turned toward Anna.
“I didn’t see him.”
“Did you stay at that door until the opening curtain?”
“Yes. My friend has a few lines near the beginning of the scene.”
Ray looked over at Sue, “Anything else?”
“Girls, here are my cards. Please feel free to contact me if anything comes to mind that you think I should know.”
After they trooped out, Ray asked, “What did we learn?”
Sue smiled, “Libraries are romantic places. Summer romances are special, especially when you are sixteen. And we need to talk to Weird Tom.”
“Let’s start with Grubbs. I imagine he can point us in the right direction.”
31
Richard Grubbs was working at a keyboard when Ray and Sue came through the screen door of his office. Grubbs looked at them over the top of his glasses, nodded his head in recognition, and turned back to the screen for a few seconds.
Looking back at them, he said, “I didn’t mean to be discourteous. I just needed to finish the sentence before I lost the thought. Even though I’ve been using these things for decades,” he gestured toward the Mac computer on his desk, “I still work the way I did when I used a typewriter, forming the whole sentence in my head before the first keystroke, typing to the period, and then starting all over again on the next sentence. I’ve watched the kids here, the girls who help me do the weekly newsletter. They just rattle away, move things around, deleting words or some times whole sentences. In the end it seems to work. But when they start, I don’t think they have any idea where they are going. Their brains are different. It’s the computers. The kids don’t really learn to think things through. I could see that in student papers my last few years of teaching. Random thoughts cobbled together with rock and roll bouncing off the sides of their brains from the omnipresent ear buds. But I don’t think you dropped by for a Luddite rant, Sheriff.”
“Tell me about someone called Tom, or weird Tom?”
“How did that poor fellow get dragged into this? That’s the last thing he and his mother need.”
“The ushers, they talked about him.”
“Sheriff, throughout the history of this colony we have always practiced and taught toleration. I think what you’re telling me is most unfortunate. The chatter of a group of slightly hysterical teenage girls should not become a police matter. This isn’t 1692, we’re not in Salem.”
Ray could see that Grubbs was extremely angry. “I don’t think it was any hysteria. I asked the young women if there had been anyone around the night of the play who wasn’t part of the colony. They indicated this Tom character fit that description. The ‘weird’ tag seems to me to be normal teenage jargon. I would like you to identify this person, provide whatever background you can give me, and tell me where I can find him.”
“He is very fragile,” said Grubbs, continuing his protest. “The last thing he needs is to be questioned about something that he couldn’t have been involved with. Tom won’t know what you’re talking about. You’ll just add to his already paranoid state. Trust me, you’re wasting your time.”
“Sir,” said Ray, “I’ll judge whether or not it’s a waste of my time. Tell me about Tom.”
Grubbs rocked back in his chair and looked at Ray and Sue. “You better have a seat, this will take a few minutes.” After they were seated he continued, “His name is Thomas Lea. Historically, his family has owned cottages in the colony for decades. They don’t any longer. They sold the last property 10 or 15 years ago and bought an all-season house just south of our beach area. At that time I don’t think Tom was a teenager yet, well maybe a young teen. After they moved from the colony, he continued to spend a lot of time here. We have an arts and crafts building with a couple of college kids who oversee a whole range of activities. I know he liked doing crafts, and he also continued to show up for the youth choir. Now, technically, he wasn’t part of the colony anymore, but like I was saying, we are a tolerant community. His participation wasn’t costing us anything, and he wasn’t disruptive or offensive in any way. Tom seemed lonely. He needed a place to be. Then he disappeared for a lot of years. I’d almost forgotten about him, and then he reappeared. The kid I remembered was exactly that, a kid, not five feet tall. I hardly recognized Tom in his new iteration, more than six feet tall, rail thin, almost wasted looking, and old beyond his years. But once someone identified him, I could see the boy in the man.”
“When was that?” asked Ray.
“It was last summer. Not the beginning of the summer, probably more like the middle of July. He was hanging around, like he was a kid again, the same activities. One of the arts and crafts instructors came to get me. She was quite unhinged by Tom, thought perhaps he was a child predator of some sort. I didn’t banish him from the colony. I did explain that he couldn’t participate in the children’s programs any longer. He was just too old.
“Tom seemed to comprehend what I was telling him. Then I took him home. His mother was there, and I had a long talk with her. He wasn’t around to hear the conversation. She told me that he had had a major breakdown his senior year in college, and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. At the time she thought the problem might have been stress related and wondered about the possibility of the condition being drug induced. They took him over to Rochester for a workup. That’s where they got the diagnosis. So now he’s on drugs, you know the prescription kind, and getting therapy.
“And this summer he started coming around again. He doesn’t do any harm, he’s just rather bizarre, especially when he’s talking on his imaginary phone. His conversations are very animated and loud.”
“One of the ushers, Anna, I believe, mentioned that he had a confrontation with Sterling Shevlin. Do you know about that?” asked Ray.
“Sheriff, I know about everything that happens here. And, yes, I’m well aware of their face-off. If Sterling had just come and gotten me, I would have guided Tom out of there. The worst thing you can do is to confront Tom directly. He totally loses it at that point. Like I said, he is paranoid. He believes that people are out to get him. Tom doesn’t understand that having a loud phone conversation in the back row of the auditorium during a play rehearsal isn’t appropriate behavior.”
“They also said he was around Saturday night for the play, that he tried to get in with a ticked he had created.”
“A ticket he had created. That’s part of his charm. Tom knows he needs a ticket, so he makes one. As you can see, there’s a bit of disconnect there. Not too dissimilar from his creating an imaginary phone conversation. And I have to tell you they are wonderful, the side that I can hear, anyway, always upbeat and full of humor. I wish I knew more about psychiatry. Tom has this way of connecting things together, not that it’s completely comprehensible to the rest of us.”
“We need to talk to him.”
“Why, Sheriff? Tom knows nothing. He’s a total innocent. You will just frighten him. Like I was saying, he’s paranoid, terrified by police. That’s why….” Grubbs stopped midsentence, biting his lip, letting his gaze drop to his hands that rested on the tabletop.