H.J. Gaudreau - Jim Crenshaw 02 - The Collingwood Legacy by H.J. Gaudreau Read Free Book Online Page A

favor pleeease. We just closed the deal on the twenty acres next to us with that big garage on it. If we were to cook steaks and make a nice cherry pie would you bring your acetylene torch up this weekend? We can’t seem to get into that stupid garage and Gerry figures the only way is to cut a hole in one of the doors. Let me know, love ya. Bye”
    Jim considered himself to be fairly practical, and cutting holes in doors didn’t sound quite right. Surely there had to be a way to get in that old building without destroying expensive doors. In any case a trip north was a good deal this time of year. Eve would be excited to visit family, and he and Gerry could get in a little trout fishing. Jim went to the barn to load his torch on the wagon.
    Eve’s arrival home from work was always an event. Carrying a minimum of two large cloth bags, she would burst into the kitchen, simultaneously calling “I’m hoommme.” Then, before Jim answered she would recite the details of her day, beginning with the funniest thing a child had said or done and ending with the stupidest thing said or done by a member of the school’s administration or a fellow teacher. The entire process interrupted by their beagle Molly’s excited barks and demands for attention.
    Jim looked forward to this ritual, he rarely listened in great detail; it was the enthusiasm with which it was told that he loved. Tonight’s ceremony was no different, and to Jim it proved once again that all was right with his world.
    Eve was surprised and pleased that Sherrie had phoned and immediately returned the call. No one outside the family could tell the two were not immediate sisters, they were “like two peas in a pod” Jim’s mother used to say. Twenty minutes of one trying to out talk the other and somehow arrangements were made.
    Friday was the beginning of the Easter break. Thursday night Eve left the school as quickly as she could. She hurried home and, upon entering the kitchen announced they would stop at “Cops and Donuts” in Clare for dinner. A quick change of her clothes and she was backing the Jeep up to the trailer almost before Jim had the barn doors open.
    Ten minutes later, the Jeep Grand Cherokee, hitched to a small trailer loaded with an industrial sized acetylene torch and attendant tanks, along with two bikes and two kayaks slowly moved down a hundred-yard long driveway.
    On the folded down back seat lay a large pillow where Molly sat calmly watching the scenery slide past. She would be curled up and snoring before they came to the end of the long drive. Molly would miss most of the three and a half hour trip north.

 
    Chapter 13
     
    Detroit and the Detroit River business soon returned to normal. The city forgot the Collingwood murders. Harry Keywell, Irving Milberg and Ray Bernstein were gone and quickly faded from memory. Sol Levin soon became the funny story of a scared rabbit who refused to leave the police station. Sol was quickly forgotten by everyone involved with or who had ever heard of the ‘Collingwood Manor Massacre.’ Everyone, that is, except Dolly Eleanor Grongoski.
    Dolly slipped out of the city and moved to Michigan’s west coast and the gritty little port town of Muskegon. The town’s small waterfront was jammed with ships, large and small, making the run up and down the lake to Chicago. Some of the bigger ones even crossed to Milwaukee or north to Green Bay.
    The sailors got hungry and Dolly landed a job at the Dockside Café. It wasn’t the kind of café she had seen in the movies. Muskegon was not Paris or New York. The Dockside’s walls were nearly as grimy as the coal fired ships whose crews it served.
    Behind the building a small pigpen housed three large sows and their piglets. A large boar was kept in a separate pen to the side. The pen provided about half of the ham and bacon for the café and a good deal of ambiance.
    Dolly worked four days a week. Five if she could talk Mel, the cheap bastard owner, into