“Not me,” Fruge says. “I don’t talk to the media, and I don’t answer to her even when she thinks I’m being cooperative. And I hate to be the one to ask such a negative question. But how do you know pennies left out here have anything to do with anything?”
“We don’t,” I reply as doubts continue to nag. “As old as many of them seem, it’s unlikely they’re relevant.”
“I SUSPECT IF YOU started looking you’d probably find them by railroad tracks all over the place,” Fruge says. “Coins or fragments of them that nobody bothers to pick up. Or more likely they shoot out from under the wheels like bullets, ending up who knows where,” she adds as if familiar with the dangerous activity.
“Do you know if that’s a popular thing to do around here?” I ask her as we start walking back to Marino’s truck. “Because I wouldn’t think so. Leaving pennies, other coins, anything on railroad tracks is very dangerous.”
“Not that I know of, and it wouldn’t be encouraged, that’s for sure,” she says. “You’d have to ask August Ryan, the park police. It’s their jurisdiction, they’re quick to remind you. I personally haven’t heard about kids or anyone else coming out here and doing things like that. But it doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.”
“Where are you parked?” Marino asks as he unlocks his truck.
“Near the sailing club. I thought it a good idea to walk, get the lay of the land, see what I felt out here,” she says, and I don’t buy it.
She didn’t want us to hear her coming until it was too late, and I think of Maggie tipping her off. Fruge caught me redhanded as I collected what may or may not turn out to be evidence, and it’s impossible knowing who to trust.
“Well, don’t sneak up on us again,” Marino says to her. “Hop in, I’ll drop you at your car. And no comments from the peanut gallery about what I’ve got in back.”
“No problem.” She climbs in, moving his big military surplus ammo box out of her way. “I don’t mind riding around with a truck full of guns. I grew up in Virginia, remember?”
“When you were talking to Maggie,” I say to Fruge as we drive off, “I’m wondering if she mentioned that I’m trying to reach your mother.”
“No, ma’am, she didn’t. But that’s an easy one. Anything special you want me to tell her?”
“I have a question when she has time to call.” I give Fruge my number.
“I’m letting her know right now, texting her as we speak,” she says, and then I ask about something else.
“Doctor Reddy showed up at the scene last April tenth. Supposedly he’d been out to dinner near Daingerfield Island,” I explain. “He was near the scene when notified about the body.”
“I remember he was looking at it with August Ryan, and it was embarrassing,” Fruge says. “I don’t like him in the least but it’s not up to me to ruin people. That’s for them to do. And you can imagine what I see around here, people getting drunk, fighting, cheating on each other.”
She tells us that the former chief had been drinking, was slurring his words, and it would be bad for him if that ever came out. Maggie had to drive him, confirming what I suspect, and that wouldn’t be good for him, either.
“Then he didn’t have his wife, Helen, with him,” I make sure.
“No. Maggie was with him but she didn’t get out of the car,” Fruge says.
“Whose car?”
“His Mercedes. And when I knocked on the window to say hi, Maggie shook her head at me. It was obvious she didn’t want people seeing her there, probably afraid it might look like the two of them had something going on.”
“Do they?” Marino asks, and Fruge shrugs.
“If they do, it’s not against the law. All I know is Doctor Reddy had been drinking, and she was driving him. This was right before August asked me to leave, saying the park police were handling things.”
“I’m sure they didn’t want you there, nosy as you are.” Marino eyes her in the rearview mirror, and I can tell he likes her more than he lets on. “How’d you find out about the bag of clothes and body parts?” he asks as we rumble slowly along the narrow road through the woods.
“The dumpster diver who found it called nine-one-one,” she says. “Dispatch called me, and off I went.”
“I’m assuming the person who found the bag opened it. Or he wouldn’t have called the police,” I reply.