Loonies

LOONIES

By

Gregory Bastianelli

JournalStone

San Francisco

Copyright © 2015 by Gregory Bastianelli

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN:  978-1-942712-17-6  (sc)

ISBN:  978-1-942712-18-3  (ebook)

JournalStone rev. date:  March 20, 2015

Library of Congress Control Number:  2015932365

Printed in the United States of America

Cover Art & Design: Wayne Miller

Edited by:   Dr. Michael R. Collings

To my parents,

for their faith in me

LOONIES

Smokey Hollow had the appearance of a quiet and quaint New England town, until the day the trunk in the attic was opened.

Brian Keays left his downtown newspaper office at the end of the day to stroll over to the police station when he got the call from his wife. Darcie had been poking around in the attic of the house they had just settled into when she discovered an old steamer trunk. He didn’t like the idea of her going up the drop-down ladder that led to the attic space. She was four months pregnant, and the thought of her missing a step and falling backwards onto the floor unnerved him.

She was curious, she told him, and excited about exploring their new home. When he asked what was in the trunk, she informed him it was locked. There was a small keyhole, and she had been thinking about jamming a screwdriver in it to try to open the trunk. He told her not to, to wait until he got home. Those old steamer trunks were valuable to antique dealers if they were in good shape. He didn’t want her damaging it trying to open it. She wasn’t happy about waiting, but she ended up being glad she did. If she had opened it by herself, she might have gone insane.

Brian liked the location of his newspaper office, on the corner of Main Street and Hemlock Avenue, not only because it looked out on the business district of Smokey Hollow, but also because it was across the street from Cully’s Pub, where he liked to imbibe a cold draught beer after his day was done, and diagonally across from the police station where he was headed now.

Not that the police station was a hotbed of activity. Not in Smokey Hollow.
At least not before the trunk was opened.

The New Hampshire town lay in a valley. Often on early summer mornings, mist would settle there, bathing the town in a smoky haze, giving the community of about seven thousand the origin of its name. The town’s forefathers misspelled the word
smoky
, but it was never corrected.

Smokey Hollow had a minimal staff at its police station. The chief, Noah Treece, was new and young, late twenties, about the same age as Brian. There were only two other full-time officers, both named Alvin by some odd coincidence. One worked day shift and one worked night shift. Chief Treece floated between the two shifts but always said he was never really off duty. There were several part-time officers, a couple of part-time administrative people, and a dispatcher, though most of the emergency calls went through the county office.

Brian walked through the front door of the station, no metal detector or security buzzer to worry about. This was Smokey Hollow, not the precinct stations in Boston, where just a few short months ago Brian Keays was working the crime beat for one of the city papers. Now
that
was a time when walking into a police station was like opening Pandora’s box, with any type of depraved crime of passion, greed, or lust just waiting for him at the sergeant’s desk. He still remembered the flutter in his chest every time he approached a grizzled police veteran for the nightly report. It was the same flutter in his chest he had when he fell in love with Darcie.

Walking into the Smokey Hollow police station spawned no flutter in Brian Keays’ heart. Nothing happened in this town. This wasn’t Boston or any of its bustling burbs. This was a town whose highlight was the annual Dump Festival. The only major crime in the past several decades was the unsolved disappearance of four-year-old Timmy Birtch twenty-four years ago, a case that the outgoing police chief had pledged to solve before retirement. That never happened.

Chief Noah Treece had a glass office and always seemed happy to see Brian whenever he walked into the station, which Brian could never figure out because neither of them had any information to share to help their stagnant careers. Brian sometimes thought Noah was just glad to see a friendly face to talk to that would help break up the mundane pace of his job.

Brian greeted Wanda, the dispatcher/receptionist/secretary/not-sure-what-other-functions-she-had, and she half-heartedly nodded as if disturbed he was interrupting her boredom. Noah flung open his door and waved him in. Brian settled in one of the hard wooden chairs across from the chief’s desk. He looked at Noah’s smile—such a handsome, even pretty face on a man young enough to only be a patrolman in Boston, but here he was at the top spot in this town’s Police Department, a job that didn’t apparently require a lot of experience.

Brian liked Noah, and he wasn’t quite sure what it was about the young chief that drew him. Maybe it was the fact they both had jobs that could be exciting in a different setting than Smokey Hollow, but their career paths had unceremoniously dumped them into their current positions and they were stuck with their lot in life. The only major difference Brian saw was that Noah seemed content, happy overseeing a community where the major scofflaws were people breaking pooper-scooper laws or the occasional peeping tom.

Give me something! Brian wanted to shout. Tell me something happened that will make my heart flutter. Make me be in love with my job again. Would that be so hard?

“How are you, Brian,” the smiling face said. “How’s your day going?”

“About the same as most days.”

“How is Darcie?”

“Good. Thanks.”

Not long after Brian had met him, Noah had stopped by their house to welcome them to the town. Darcie had thought the chief charming.

“Finally settling in to her new home?”

“A little too much,” Brian said. “She keeps digging through the place. Now she’s discovered some trunk in the attic and got all excited about it.”

“Oh, nice. What did she find in it?”

Brian sighed. “That’s the problem. She can’t open it. It’s locked. So her curiosity is raging, and she can’t wait to see what’s inside.”

“Locked?” Noah’s smile weakened slightly. “No key?”

“I don’t know if she’s tried looking around for one. She only called me a few minutes ago.”

Noah leaned back in his chair, his smile fading as he dropped into a deep contemplative state. Brian studied him, wondering what the chief was thinking.

Noah held up a finger before reaching down and opening one of the bottom drawers of his desk. He dug through it, trying to get to something at the bottom, his smile returning when he pulled an old coffee mug out of the drawer and set it on the desk.

“Let me tell you an interesting story.”

Noah began to tell him about former Police Chief Pfefferkorn, now retired and living in Florida. He had run the quiet town for many years but felt his career was tarnished by his inability to solve the Timmy Birtch disappearance. Sure, the State Police took charge of the case, as they did with major crimes in small towns, but it happened on his watch, and he was the one who had to look the townspeople in the eyes every day and feel like he failed them.

Timmy Birtch had been four years old when he went missing. One summer night, he was snatched from his bedroom while he slept. His mother, asleep in the next room, didn’t hear a sound. There were no clues as to what happened to him, no evidence. Not a trace.

About sixteen years after the disappearance, and a few years before retiring, Chief Pfefferkorn had made a seemingly innocuous discovery. He had left the station around midnight and was walking along Main Street and some of the side streets around downtown when he happened upon something: a key.

Pfefferkorn had kept it in his front shirt pocket and for most of his last few years on the job had wondered about it, had become obsessed with finding the lock the key opened. He had told Noah how he tried every lock he came upon, usually late at night while walking the streets, hoping he’d get lucky and find the lock the key fit. But it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Noah said the chief told him that he needed to find the lock it fit. Somehow, he had gotten it into his head that the key opened something important, that he had been destined to find it, that he couldn’t retire until he found the lock. It had become a compulsion.

The chief had told him he never stopped trying until the day he retired. Noah said he could see the sadness in the chief’s eyes on the day of his retirement. Not sadness that he was leaving his position, but that he never found the lock that key went to.

“I think,” Noah said to Brian, “that his inability to solve the Birtch case sent him over the edge with frustration, and that the key became some tangible object that he could resolve if only he found the lock it went to.”

Noah picked up the coffee mug.

“And when he retired,” Noah said, “he left this with me.”

Noah turned the coffee mug over and a key clattered onto the desktop.

Brian looked at the small black key. It didn’t look like the kind of key that would fit a door lock. It was old and looked more like it would open the lock of an antique roll-top desk, suitcase, maybe …

“And you think this key might go to the steamer trunk in my attic?”

“I have no idea, but why not try it?” Noah said, smiling. “And the interesting thing was, Pfefferkorn told me where the key was found. It was near your house.”

Brian and Darcie Keays lived on Ash Street, a U-shaped residential street off the main drag, with both ends connecting to Main Street. It was dotted with Victorian and Colonial houses, some of the oldest in town. They bought the house because of its convenience to downtown. Darcie wanted to be able to walk to the shops on Main Street. She especially liked going to the flower shop and the public library. The elementary school was at the end of Main Street, and Darcie was hoping to do some substitute teaching in the fall, just until the baby came. Eventually she hoped to get back into teaching full time, and having the school close would be convenient.

Noah followed Brian home and Darcie showed them where she had found the trunk. The three of them stood in the attic of the Keays’ house. It was hot and stuffy, the air stagnant. Brian’s sweat-drenched shirt clung to his back. The floorboards were covered in a layer of dust, stirred up a bit by three sets of footprints.