He needed to know the truth.
He pulled onto the I-71 south ramp, cranked up the volume on the CD player and sat back comfortably in his seat. In a couple of hours, he would get to the bottom of what this was all about.
CHAPTER 20
As he neared the Smithtown city limits, Tom was barraged with childhood memories. It had been nearly six years since he’d visited his hometown and he wondered how much of the small southern Ohio burg had changed. He didn’t expect much since the town of 20,000 always seemed to be standing still in the grand scheme of things. Smithtown had been under economical duress for as long as he could remember and suffered from the same ills as the other small towns in Appalachia: high unemployment rates, low wages, sub-par health care and an alarming rate of poverty. The few friends he knew of that still lived in the area were either doctors or drunks-there seemed to be little else in between.
He passed by the several gas stations that greeted him and continued south until he spotted a phone booth in a small strip mall. He pulled into the parking lot, went into the booth and began thumbing through the white pages.
He looked under the C’s and wasn’t particularly surprised to discover that there was no listing for a Mindy Conkel. There was an M. Conkel, however, so he dug into his pocket for his cell phone and keyed in the number. After a few rings, a man answered.
“Hello?”
“Uh, hi. I’m trying to locate a Mindy Conkel and was wondering if this was her number.”
“No Mindy here,” the man replied in a thick hillbilly drawl.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Do you by any chance know a Mindy Conkel?”
“Nope. Never heard of her.”
“Okay. Well thanks, anyway.”
“Uh-huh.”
Click.
Time for Plan Two, Tom thought. He thumbed through the pages until he reached the S’s and found a few Shortridges but no Donny nor any D. or M. Shortridges. This came as no surprise either, but it was at least worth a shot.
Plan Three was to track down his old friend, Alan Hughes, and see if he could help him locate Mindy. Although he had doubts that Alan knew her, he figured that his friend might at least give him some ideas of where to start looking. Smithtown was, after all, not a very big place.
He looked up Alan’s number and gave him a ring, only to get a recording that the number had been disconnected. No forwarding number was given so Tom snapped the phone shut in disappointment.
Already, he was losing faith in this whole insane idea. Besides the fact that he felt depressed every time he came to this miserable hellhole of a town, it was beginning to look like he might have driven all this way for nothing. He was so out of touch with everybody here that at the moment, he wasn’t sure what to do next. He tried thinking of anybody else he knew who might be able to help him locate Mindy but came up empty. Desperately, he picked up the telephone book and starting with the A’s, flipped through the names randomly, hoping to spot a name he recognized.
He’d gotten to the F’s when he noticed the name of the same bar where he had met Mindy all those years ago. He decided that Frankenstein’s Pub was as good a place as any to begin his search.
Hopping back into the Jeep, he proceeded south toward the downtown section of Smithtown. As he entered the business section, he couldn’t help but notice that most of the old stores he’d known as a child were shut down. In fact, the whole town seemed eerily ghost-like, save for the occasional pedestrian walking down the street.
He spotted Frankenstein’s and parked a few doors down. When he entered the place, Tom noticed that very little had changed over the years as he walked past the pool table toward the bar.
He sat down and waited for the bartender to come over, noting that there were only four persons other than himself in the whole place.
“Whatcha need?” a gruff looking man in his mid-sixties with greasy gray hair asked.
“Mick Ultra, please.”
The man turned and headed toward the cooler. Tom watched him pull out a longneck bottle, pop the top and return with it.
“Two fifty,” he said as he set the beer down on the weathered wood bar.
Tom pulled out three ones and slapped them down.
He took a long slug of the ice-cold lager, relishing the feel of it going down. He wasn’t much of a daytime drinker, but this beer was as welcome as it was required under the circumstances.
He fixed his eyes on the two guys playing pool, trying to determine if he recognized either of them. He had seen the tall one before, but had no idea what his name was. The other one drew a total blank.
There were a couple more men standing toward the back of the bar playing a video game. The bar was rather dark so it was hard to make out their faces. Tom got up and sauntered toward them.
As he drew closer to the pair, he realized that he knew one of them fairly well. It was one of the friends he used to hang out with when he was in high school. Brad Thompson looked almost the same as he did nearly twenty years ago except for the fifty or sixty pounds he had tacked on since then. Tom hadn’t seen him since graduation.
Brad glanced over and recognized Tom before he could open his mouth.
“Jesus Christ, if it isn’t Tom Grayson! How the hell are ya?” Brad said, extending his hand.
Tom shook and said, “Great! How have you been, Brad?”
“Can’t complain-still stuck in this shit hole trying to make a livin.’”
The other man finished his game and turned around.
“Tom, this is my cousin, Lenny. He’s visitin’ from KY.” He said to Lenny, “Tom is an old high school friend I haven’t seen in over twenty years.”
Tom shook the man’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Lenny.”
“So where are you livin’ now, Tom? Last I heard, you’d moved to New York City. You still there?”
“Not anymore. I moved to Columbus a while back. Got married and have a couple of kids, in fact.”
“Hey, that’s great! So what are ya doing up there?”
“Teach at Capital State.”
“Don’t tell me-some kind of art course, right? You always were the artistic type.”
“Yeah. Art history.”
“I knew it! So what the hell brings you down here?”
Tom wasn’t sure how to answer that at the moment. “Well, I’m sort of looking for somebody I haven’t seen in a while.”
Brad looked at him suspiciously. “Not some old girlfriend, I hope. Your old lady wouldn’t be too happy with you if that’s the case!”
Tom realized that Brad was trying to be funny-if he only knew that he was on the right track.
“No, just an old friend of mine. You don’t know Mindy Conkel, do you?”
“Hmm. Mindy Conkel. Charlie Gossett’s old lady was named Mindy, but I’m not sure what her maiden name was. Do you remember Charlie?”
Tom tried to hide his shock. Charlie Gossett was a hillbilly redneck that was always getting into bar fights.
And if he had to think of someone who reminded him of Charlie Gossett, it would be a certain character that didn’t exist in real life Donnie Shortridge: the stuff that bad dreams were made of.
Tom recovered enough to say, “Yeah, I remember Charlie. He was one of the scariest guys in high school. Always carried a knife looking for trouble.”
Brad nodded. “Yep, that was Charlie all right. He finally got sent up the creek quite a while back. Beat up his wife so bad that he nearly killed her. Like I said, her name was Mindy. Never knew the chick before she married Charlie, though.”
Holy hell! Tom thought. This can’t really be happening!
“What did this Mindy look like?” Tom inquired.
“Well, I only saw her a couple of times. She used to come here every now and then without Charlie. No one would ever go near her though because they knew that Charlie was the jealous type and would probably murder anyone who tried to pick her up. Anyway, she was a freakin’ beauty, no doubt about that. Really blonde hair, kinda tall with great tits. Had one hell of an ass, too.”