“Screw it,” he mumbled. “I’ll file a Freedom of Information Act request.”
“Help yourself.” She pretended to busy herself with the papers on her desk, but he could see her watching him as he left the building and got into his Tahoe. Probably running his license plate, he thought, as he pulled away.
The Bonaventure County Public Library building was not nearly as scenic as the sheriff’s office. A bland, beige brick box wedged in between a nail salon and a Piggly Wiggly supermarket in a strip shopping center. It was quiet inside, with only a couple of senior citizens sitting at tables reading newspapers.
He told the librarian, a middle-aged Black man in a bow tie, what he was looking for and explained that he’d already done a database search on his own, which yielded nothing.
“We can access digital copies of the Atlanta, Jacksonville, and New York newspapers here,” the librarian said. “I can show you how to do that, if you like.”
Whelan gave it some thought. “What about the local paper? Do you have those here?”
“TheIsland Express? Afraid not. They went out of business a few years back. Unfortunately, their files were never digitized. All their bound copies are kept at the historical society. I can give you directions if you like. It’s just over in the village. Five minutes from here.”
“Thanks, I can find it,” Whelan told him. “Maybe I’ll just search the bigger papers first.”
As he’d suspected, the big-city papers contained nothing helpful. Why would they care? Shootings, stabbings, political unrest made the headlines of the day. The drowning of an eight-year-old boy at a posh resort on the Georgia coast was definitely not newsworthy. To them.
Whelan decided to grab lunch before hitting the historical society. Pour Willy’s was located two doors down from his apartment, and it wasn’t busy. Perfect.
He sat at the bar, looked at the menu written on the blackboard, and ordered nachos and a Heineken. The bartender wore a T-shirt that readI WILL PUT YOU IN A TRUNK AND HELP PEOPLE LOOK FOR YOU. STOP PLAYING WITH ME.
“Cute,” he said, pointing to her chest when she brought his beer.
“I absolutely mean it,” she said, looking him over. “No offense or anything, but aren’t you kind of old to be hanging out in a place like this?”
He looked in the mirror in the bar back. He’d let his hair grow out and it was streaked with silver and almost touched his shoulders. He wore a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap, and one of the manyHawaiian shirts in his collection. His mustache needed a trim, his skin was weather-beaten, and his sunglasses dangled from a string, resting on his chest.
“I could say the same of you,” he pointed out. She had long, frizzy gray hair and tinted granny glasses perched on the end of her nose.
“True that,” she said. “But I’ve got family to support. I work here a couple days a week as a side hustle. And I fill in sometimes at the Saint.”
He raised an eyebrow in question.
“You know. The Saint Cecelia. The big pink hotel?”
“Ohh. Right.” He pretended to be surprised. “I keep hearing about that place. Maybe I’ll take a ride over there to check it out.”
“You can’t.”
“How’s that?”
“Unless you’re a member or a hotel guest or a guest of a member, you can’t get in. There’s security. And they’re real particular about who they admit as members.”
He chuckled. “So, that’s a nice way of saying they’d never admit a lowlife like me?”
“Around here, if you belong, you’re a Saint, and if you look like you and me…” She pointed at her faded T-shirt and worn jeans. “You’re an Ain’t.”
“Guilty,” he said. “Guessing you’re a local?”
“Grew up here, never got around to leaving.”
She went to the kitchen and brought back a plastic basket with his nachos nestled in a wax paper liner.
The place was empty, except for a couple of blue-collar types who were sitting at the end of the bar, watching a rerun ofCheers. The bartender busied herself near him, unloading glasses from a dishwasher rack.
After a few bites, he blotted his lips with a paper napkin. “Hey, uh, since you’re local, you ever hear of a little kid drowning out there in the pool at that pink hotel? Would have been back in the summer of ’02.”
She screwed up her face as she considered his question. “Let’s see. Two thousand and two? That’s the summer I split with my husband. The first time, anyway.”
