Murder at Fenway Park (10 page)

W
e were a confident team going into June.

The Red Sox had possession of first place with a five game lead over the third-place Athletics. Washington was in second place, only three games behind us, but this was mostly due to an April hot streak; the Senators could be counted on to do their traditional nosedive soon, and we didn’t give them much concern.

I think June is my favorite month for baseball. It’s late enough in the season so that the players are warmed up and their reflexes sharp, but early enough so that the accumulating aches and pains haven’t yet taken their toll.

It’s the time of year when one can best appreciate the beautiful balance of the game. The warming weather has the pitchers’ arms loose, and gives them a more sensitive feel of the ball. But the batters have their hitting eyes honed, so the pitcher-batter matchup remains even. The legs of the base runners are limber, and they get quick jumps in their sprints to steal bases. But the catchers have developed snappier releases, so the catcher-runner duel also stays close. The critical matchups are ideally balanced this time of year, with all of the combatants at the peak of their powers, and every skirmish of mind and body a close and exciting contest.

I had time to dwell on such thoughts of the game. Too much time.

My nocturnal adventure in Fenway Park had left me in a state of mental paralysis. Trying to find out what had happened to Red Corriden accomplished nothing but put me in the path of a bullet.

Who did the shooting?

Did the Fenway tunnels have some deranged inhabitant who killed those he considered trespassers? Maybe that’s why Corriden was killed. And why I became a target when I went to the same place where Corriden had been.

Or was I followed? Were the shots intended to kill me, or were they just a warning?
Just?
It was a hell of an effective warning. It stopped me—temporarily—from pursuing Corriden’s death any further.

When I tried to take action, I ran into trouble. But I had a feeling that doing nothing could be worse. A moving target has a better chance than a sitting one.

The first week of Peggy’s absence, I concentrated on baseball. By now I was on friendly terms with enough teammates that I could find players willing to pitch me extra batting practice or hit me ground balls to sharpen my fielding.

Clyde Fletcher kept coming early to Fenway, too, in his continuing effort to conquer the left field hill. This had become a prime entertainment attraction for the team. The Red Sox players would stand along the left field foul line yelling encouragement and suggestions at Fletcher as he scrambled up the hill to catch the fungoes I hit out to him.

Even the team’s biggest star got into the act. Tris Speaker spoke to me for the first time as I was hitting fly balls to Fletcher. With a deep rumbling voice, he said, “Let me hit him a few, kid.” He reached for the fungo bat, and I handed it over with pride. The way I chose to look at it, this meant Tris Speaker was substituting for
me.

Fletcher did get better, although he never made it up the hill as fast as I had. Most of the time now, he could run back to the fence without falling on his face. But all his hard work seemed to be for nothing; Duffy Lewis still played every inning for the Red Sox in left field during the games.

By our second week back in Boston, with Peggy still on Cape Cod, I started to read the newspapers. Any page without box scores on it was unfamiliar territory to me, but I decided to explore the news sections and find out what was going on in the wortd—not due to any sudden interest in international affairs, but because I thought it would give me more to talk about with Peggy.

Since the presidential nominating conventions were coming up, it seemed a good time to start following the campaigns. I read about the opening of the Republican convention in Chicago, expecting it would be straightforward and easy to understand. I assumed that President Taft would automatically be nominated to head the Republican ticket again. But then Teddy Roosevelt’s followers got mad at Taft’s nomination by what they called “conservatives” and went off to form a “Progressive Party.” Great—just when I start to follow politics, they complicate it by forming a third party. Well, at least it’s supposed to go smoothly with the Democrats; according to the papers, Champ Clark is an easy winner for their nomination. Not that it mattered—I wouldn’t be old enough to vote yet.

Eventually, I exhausted the available pool of ordinary topics with which I tried to occupy my thoughts, and returned reluctantly to the murder of Red Corriden.

In the weeks since my talk with Jimmy Macullar, I had reviewed our conversation a hundred times. After each rehash, I was a little more troubled than the time before. By now, my perspective was quite different from what it was immediately after speaking with him. It led me to a difficult and uncomfortable decision. I was eager to talk it all out with Peggy and was frustrated by her absence. What should have been an obvious thought finally dawned on me, and I put the address she gave me to use.

It seemed a good idea to redeem myself for the winter’s omissions by writing to her. Damn, I hate to put anything in writing. If I had shown up at school more often, I might be more comfortable writing letters. But I hadn’t and I wasn’t.

At Mrs. O’Brien’s, I sat down at the small writing desk in my room to endure the strange and perplexing experience of trying to compose a letter.

Dear Peggy
—No, that’s no good. Sounds too familiar.

Dear Miss Sh
—Oops, it should be “Mrs.”

Dear Mrs. Shaw
—Nope. That doesn’t sound right—too formal.

Well, if I were talking to her, I would call her “Peggy,” so that’s what it’ll be here. Okay, now that that’s decided, what do I say?

After two hours of intense labor, endless uncertainty, and a floorful of crumpled sheets of paper, I finally put together a letter that sounded pretty good:

Deciding on the closing caused me more distress. I again didn’t want anything to sound either too formal or too familiar. I was tempted just to sign my name without any closing, but she might have thought that I didn’t know how to write a proper letter. Well, when she gets back I’ll just have to see if she’s pleased, disappointed, or insulted.

She was pleased. Very pleased. And I discovered that, after all the time and agony I had put into its composition, the content didn’t matter a bit. Merely that I had thought to write was enough. I’ll have to keep this in mind for the future—maybe I can cut the time in half on the next letter if I don’t have to worry about what goes in it.

It wasn’t until the third week of June that Peggy returned to Boston. We would overlap in the city for less than two days, then I was off on the Red Sox’s next road trip.

As soon as she got back, she invited me to dinner. I had never been inside Peggy’s home before. It seemed excitingly improper to be alone with a woman in her house... at night ... with no one else there... just the two of us.

Peggy’s parlor and dining room—the only rooms I got to see—were immaculately kept and tastefully furnished. Not that I was entirely sure what “tastefully” meant, but it looked the way I assumed “tastefully” would be: elegant but functional, not the intimidating don’t-touch-anything sort of decor. The parlor was dominated by a glossy black piano. A wood-trimmed blue couch and matching chairs with white throw pillows were artfully placed about the room, not cluttering it, but appearing to be exactly where one could ever want to sit. The walls of the room were lined with overflowing bookcases whose contents were slightly torn and scuffed from use. A tall Victrola spewed the scratchy voice of an Irish tenor into the room.

Through dinner, Peggy and I chatted pointlessly about her aunt, the weather on the Cape, the weather in Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and St. Louis, the Red Sox’s prospects for taking the pennant, my misfortune in Larry Gardner’s ankle healing... the conversation seemed consciously kept on a tedious track. I helped keep it in that rut, though I wasn’t sure if it was sweet talk we were avoiding, or if it was murder that wasn’t a fit topic for dinner conversation.

After eating, we retired to the parlor and Peggy brought in a tray of coffee and gingersnaps. The polite trivial chatter was left behind in the dining room, and we picked up with the more important subject we last discussed almost a month ago.

Peggy took off on an odd tack. “I looked through some old detective books of David’s. I brought them with me to the Cape. If Aunt Phyllis hadn’t gotten sick, I wouldn’t have had as much chance to read. So it was lucky in a way that I had to stay with her. Well, not
lucky
—because she
was
sick. But she’s fine now.
Fortuitous
—that’s what it was. There, that doesn’t sound as callous.

“So anyway, I went through Sherlock Holmes, and Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin stories—but I don’t think they’ll help. And Jacques Futrelle. He’s a wonderful writer. Was a wonderful writer. Did you know he died on the
Titanic?”

I shook my head no, and wondered who Jacques Futrelle was. I also wondered what the point was of reading through her husband’s detective books. This is no way to go about solving a murder. And I know—I’ve read the
Police Gazette
for years, and I don’t remember one case where a crime was solved by somebody reading books.

Peggy started to go off again, but I held up my hand. “Time out. Uh, maybe I should tell you what I found out first. It turns out things weren’t really what they seemed.”

“Yes! Tell me!”

Readily breaking the promise of secrecy I had given him, I filled her in on my conversation with Jimmy Macullar, leaving out the reminiscences of his playing days. And leaving out his
“Not from the police”
comment.

Peggy paid rapt attention. When I concluded, she gave a yell of relief, “Oh, that’s wonderful! You’re not in any trouble then!”

“Well, that’s what I thought at first.”

“You
are
in the clear, right?”

“I suppose I am. But I was thinking... there isn’t any mystery anymore about the body. It was Red Corriden. And I’m not really a suspect... so it has nothing to do with me anymore. Right?”

Peggy looked puzzled, but nodded.

“Well, then it occurred to me: with Corriden’s body moved, how can his murder be solved? I mean, the police will be looking for somebody who killed him in Dorchester. But that’s not what happened. So how are they going to solve it?”

“But didn’t Mr. Macullar say a policeman helped him move the body? So won’t the police
really
be looking for a killer at Fenway Park?”

“No. I thought about that. The officers who were at the ballpark weren’t detectives.
I think
the one was just a stadium cop. The other man—the captain—he seemed to be a crony of Bob Tyler. They both did whatever Tyler said. I
don’t
think they’d have told the police department what they did.

“So anyway... there’s no good reason for this, I guess ... Maybe it’s because he was a ball player—or because I’m the one who found him, I don’t know. But nobody else is trying to get him any justice. So this is something I’m just going to
have
to do: I am going to have to find out who killed Red Corriden.”

I wasn’t going to say anything to Peggy about being at risk myself, certainly not about getting shot at. She’d have just worried. I didn’t like being dishonest with her, but it seemed better than scaring her. And if she thinks that my reason for wanting to solve Corriden’s murder is more noble than self-preservation, so be it.