Page 24 of Light of Day
Heather thought it over. Gabby clearly had been onto something, and if her goal was to unearth some kind of “dirty rotten bastard” story for the podcast, there was absolutely no way she’d let someone like Amy Lou get in her way. If anything, her dismissive attitude would have been fuel for Gabby’s fire. She would have a called her a “Karen” and maybe quoted a Beyoncé song.These mother-fuckers ain’t stopping me.
“I might…well, Amy Lou mentioned that her predecessor started the project. I suppose I might try that person next.”
Luke shot her an approving smile. “Bingo. Hop in.”
“Who’s her predecessor, do you know?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. It was Jimmy Simms, Denton’s brother. Somehow that doesn’t feel like a coincidence. Amy Lou ousted him from the director position about two years ago. I heard she staged a full-on coup with the support of some donors.”
“Poor Jimmy. He’s a nice man.”
Heather’s impression of Jimmy Simms was that he was a shy man who’d never married and who played the organ at the Episcopal Church every Sunday. He’d apparently been running the historical society for years, probably quietly, as he did everything else.
Jimmy lived not far from Denton, in a small yellow-sided cottage with a brick chimney. He had to be nearly eighty, with the bent posture of most men who’d spent decades pulling waterlogged lobster traps from the ocean floor. His cottage had the familiar island smell of salt air and musty fabric. Piles of crossword puzzle books filled every spare surface.
He offered them tea, which neither one wanted, but accepted for the sake of politeness. Heather moved aside the Lipton tea bag to add sugar from a china dish shaped like a milkmaid’s pail. The tea was still too hot to drink, so she blew gently on it and watched the steam swirl into the stale air.
“Sure, I remember her,” Jimmy said after looking at Gabby’s photo. “She wanted to know about some of the research I did back when I was interested in local lore.”
“You aren’t anymore?”
“Oh no. I learned my lesson. Some things are best left at the bottom of the sea.”
Heather exchanged a glance with Luke. What lesson? Had Gabby learned that same lesson? “Can you be more specific?” she asked cautiously. “What things are you referring to?”
“Didn’t I just say it’s best not to stir things up? I told your friend that same thing. Even more ’cause she’s not from here.”
“What about Denton?” Luke asked.
“What about him?” Jimmy took a sip of his tea, which was just as scalding hot as Heather’s, but didn’t seem to bother him. Maybe all those years of drinking hot coffee from a thermos on a lobster boat had turned his lips to scar tissue.
“Apparently he sent Gabby something. Whatever it was, it might have inspired her to come out to Sea Smoke. Do you have any idea what it might be?”
Jimmy’s mouth slowly twisted to one side. Alarm spread across his face. He held up a finger, then rose to his feet. “Stay here.”
They watched as he limped out of the living room and climbed upstairs, using a handrail made of rope to assist him. When he came back down, empty-handed, his expression was dark.
“He might have sent her my tapes. Looks like he never brought them back.”
“What tapes?”
“From when I went up to Pinewood. Some folks there I wanted to talk to before they died. Mind you, this was over thirty years ago now. The technology wasn’t what it is now. Those tapes are wicked scratchy now, hard to understand. You could listen to them and hear different things depending on the day. More or less worthless from a historical point of view, but I held on to them anyway.”
Luke shot a glance at Heather, but she was just as mystified as he was. “What’s in Pinewood? Where is that?”
“It’s in Pownal, down east. The Pinewood Center. They changed the name in the seventies, but it used to be called the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded.”
“The huh-what?” Heather felt her mouth gaping open. “I can see why they changed the name. But what kind of place was it?”
“It was for retarded people, disabled, whatever you want to call it. They called it a school, but it was just a place to hide people away who didn’t fit the mold. I’ll tell you…” He hesitated, then seemed to force himself to continue. “My mother used to threaten me with it, because I was kind of slow to learn. I’m dyslexic, but they didn’t have a word for it when I was little. I had to study extra, and if I didn’t want to, my mother would talk about the School for the Feeble-Minded.”
“That’s terrible.” Heather wanted to put her hand on the elderly man’s gnarled one, but she doubted he would welcome that.
He shot her a sad smile. “Different times. I was too sensitive. She tried to harden me up.”
“Why did you go there later on, with your tape recorder?” Luke asked.
Good question. Heather had been so caught up in his story that she’d forgotten why they were asking.
