The Fixer

Chapter 4

I gave Mr. Beal a lot of thought while driving back home. The man seemed guarded, but he was very clever about not showing that side of himself. My first impression of him was he was a friendly man, a nice guy if I was to be overly simplistic about it. I tended to value first impressions; they usually ended up as good assessments of an individual.

But Mr. Beal played his cards close to his chest. That made it very difficult for me to get inside his head. He was effusive about Jaxon. That seemed very real; he did like the boy and liked having him work at the store.

But to me his reticence was apparent. I found his eyes didn’t match his voice or demeanor. I found much of his behavior odd. For instance, he hadn’t asked what almost anyone would have asked when hearing what I had to say. I’d expected him to ask the simple question that he ignored. The question was: why did Jaxon move out?

That he hadn’t asked this but said he was unaware that Jaxon had done what he had gave me a very equivocal view of the man. I didn’t know where he stood on almost anything. My only strong impression that he wasn’t a bit evasive about was that he did like and value Jaxon.

It seemed to me that the problem of what to do for Jaxon’s future could be solved if I could get Mr. Beal on board. Jaxon loved working at the store. He also loved Coop, but he was only 16. I’d seen firsthand over the years I’d taught the confusion and uncertainty over being gay or straight some teens experienced. At 16, many of the boys who’d thought they might be gay were starting to have fewer crushes on boys and more on girls. Conversely, many who had thought their gay feelings were a temporary phase were now beginning to understand that there was nothing temporary at all about their desires. They were now in the process of accepting that a partnership with a male was in their future.

The way Jaxon had spoken about Coop, even in his unemotional way of speaking, left little doubt in my mind that he was indeed gay. I wasn’t that sure of Coop. I hadn’t had much on which to base my thinking about him. That wasn’t my problem, however. Jaxon and his future were what I had to resolve.

I liked Jaxon, but I also wanted my freedom. I’d been surrounded by kids all my working life. I wanted to get out and travel, see the U.S., just Clancy and me, free as birds, able to fly on a spur-of-the-moment whim wherever the winds or our wants would take us. I thought the best thing for Jaxon would be to stay with Coop. If not live with him, at least be free to be his boyfriend. The first might be impossible, but the opportunity for the second to be true, I could probably arrange that if I could only figure out how. That was my problem. If I could do it, Jaxon would have a job and a boyfriend; he’d only need his living arrangements to be settled. I could provide that when I was in town, but he needed not to be alone when I was gone. I had to find him a place to live when I was on the road, which in my mind could easily be for months at a time. Just how to do that I didn’t know, but life does have a way of springing surprises on us all.

I was itching to be free, and as much as living with Jaxon was better for me than living alone, I didn’t want to give up on what for me was a long-held dream.

I didn’t know how to get an answer from Mr. Beal as to his feelings about gays. The simple solution was to ask him, but how could I do that without implicating Jaxon and maybe even Coop? Mr. Beal knew I’d taken Jaxon in and that I was looking after his interests. Asking him about his feelings about gays when I was taking care of Jaxon would be cutting too close to the bone. I couldn’t do that; it was imperative that Jaxon’s and Coop’s secret not be revealed.

I gave it quite a lot of thought. I went over my talk with Mr. Beal. I cogitated and puzzled and tried to come up with something. This was what I liked doing, what I’d done before when helping all the people who’d come to me for solutions to their problems. This was much harder than any of those problems had been, and screwing this up could hurt two people I liked.

I thought about what I knew about Jaxon and Coop. I thought about my talk with Mr. Beal. I thought about my interaction with Mr. Mapes. It took me a long time, all that thinking. Eventually, though, I ended up focusing on something Mr. Beal had told me. Maybe I could take from that, and what I’d learned from him, and use it to formulate a plan that would give me the solution I was looking for. I just didn’t see how yet, but inklings were there.

The more I thought about it, the trickier the situation seemed to be—and the more complicated. But the gods or the stars seemed to have aligned themselves and were suggesting a solution to my problem if I wanted to use what they’d given me. It was complicated, though, and it involved too many people. I’d have to talk to Jaxon, explain what I was thinking to him, and get his okay. Unless he agreed, I would just try to come up with something else. But at least I did have an idea that might work.

I spoke to Jaxon that night. I told him what I had in mind. He was against it initially. I reminded him he was an excellent chess player. I showed him the parallels with the queen’s gambit, how giving up a little could gain him a lot. How risk-taking was part of life. He liked things straightforward, honest and simple. I was persuasive. He balked. I pushed. Somewhat reluctantly, he agreed, and I set to work planning the details of what was needed to make this work. Timing would be everything, yet I had no control over that part of my plan.

I decided to let my Boy Scout training come into play. I would Be Prepared.

Every year in the summer, Margaret and I would have a late-afternoon-into-the-evening lawn party. We knew a lot of people in town. I knew all the teachers and administrators at school, members of the school board, and other movers and shakers as over the years I’d been on several local committees. Margaret knew even more of the important people in town through her work as a lawyer. So, our parties had included the hoi polloi in town as well as the mayor, the chief of police, the district attorney, many business owners, the hospital’s chief administrator—those sorts of folk.

Margaret made more money than I did by a considerable amount, but I’d been teaching for long enough that I was making a healthy sum at the end; salaries had risen substantially for teachers while I’d been at that job, and retirement benefits even more; between us, we had greater affluence than I’d ever thought we’d have.

The parties had cost a goodly sum, but Margaret could write them off as a business expense because she did briefly talk turkey to some of her clientele at the party and sometimes gained new accounts. It was costly because we set up two hosted bars and had a caterer grilling ribs, steaks and chicken. The party was always a great success. I hadn’t planned to continue the practice because of Margaret’s passing, but now I saw a need to resume the affair. Timing for my contrivance was going to be a problem, so I sent out notices to all who’d attended in the past, to some important newcomers, and I let everyone know the party was on, but the date wasn’t yet firm; they’d be notified when it was.

I had to deal with a few people I didn’t know. But everyone in town had heard about these summer parties, and when I invited a few strangers, they were eager to come. One of the people I asked was Mr. Beal. He’d never been before but was happy when I called him. I said I’d try to let him know a day or two in advance of when the party would occur, but arranging a time when both the caterer and the bartenders would be available was proving difficult. He said that would be no problem, he was free most every late Saturday afternoon and early evening, which was the traditional day for the party. Right then, which Saturday it would be was still uncertain; if it became impossible to get the staffing I needed for a Saturday, I might have to move it to another day.

There were a couple of people I had to speak to privately to make special arrangements, but that turned out not to be a problem.

It was finally all resolved. The party was to be on a Saturday, would be well-attended, and the fact the chief of police was in attendance would keep the most blotto guests from driving home. In the past, they’d walked, if somewhat unsteadily, or there were plenty of designated drivers available.

The party was a resounding success. Jaxon and Coop were both there conspicuously drinking soft drinks. There were other teens as well who’d come with their parents, so the boys had company throughout the event. I hobnobbed with Mr. Beal several times and also spent time with my friends from the bus company, including John and Roddy. Everyone was stuffed to the gills, those who imbibed were generally at least half sloshed, and, well into the evening on leaving, everyone agreed that the party had been a great success and hoped it would be repeated next summer.

The happiest one at the party was Clancy, as many of the guests couldn’t refrain from giving him some nibbles from their steaks. He had begging down to a science. The hope in Clancy’s eyes was too much to ignore, and he could nose-nudge gently as a practiced art form.

It was the next morning, bright and early on Sunday, when Jaxon got a frantic call from Mr. Beal. Someone had broken into his store and the place looked like a tornado had settled in for a lengthy visit. He asked Jaxon to come in; he and Coop needed all the help they could get to straighten things out. What made this so urgent was that the IRS auditor had called and said he’d be in to begin his audit first thing Monday morning.

I drove Jaxon to the store as soon as they heard the news. I parked and went in with Jaxon.

The store was in chaos. Most of the shelves were cleared and the floors so covered with what had been on the shelves that most of the aisles were clogged and unnavigable. Mr. Beal and Coop were just standing by the door, not even moving.

Jaxon was stunned as well. I took the time to study everyone, then said, “Okay. It’s a disaster. We have to deal with it. Let’s get organized.”

Mr. Beal slowly turned to look at me. His face showed despair. “We?” he asked. It wasn’t said confrontationally but simply as a question.

“I’ll help. Looks like this is an all-hands-on-deck situation, and I’m here. We have to start. First, we should call the police. They can photograph what we have and find out how anyone got in. If you have insurance, call the agent, too. I’d also suggest first putting a sign on the door saying something innocuous. Something like Temporarily closed for inventory.” I turned to Mr. Beal and asked, “How long do you think it’ll take us to get this all picked up and squared away? Does the audit you told Jaxon about need to be delayed? If so, the auditor needs to be informed about that.”

Mr. Beal turned to survey the wreckage again, shaking his head. “I think we can get it done today. What time, I don’t know. I’ll have a better feel for it once we’ve been working for a few hours.”

I took a moment to view the catastrophe. I frowned. “It occurs to me that if you tell the auditor you’ve had a break-in, he might think it was faked. The fact he’s coming here suggests the IRS feels there’s a problem with your tax returns. If they feel that, then they could suspect that the break-in is quite handy for you. I don’t know if the guy coming is already here, but it might be good if he could see this. This isn’t a fake. Of course, if he sees it, he still might think it was done to hide something, and you’d still be the most likely to have done it. Or not. This is tricky. You need to decide whether you want him to see this as it is or not.”

Mr. Beal looked stunned. Not surprising. The store was a complete mess. I shook my head, then said, “My suggestion would be, if we want to prevent the auditor from suspecting anything, see if it’s possible to get all this cleaned up before the audit tomorrow, and if we can, then don’t even tell the guy about this.”

Mr. Beal didn’t look like he was capable of making any decisions at the moment.

I gave him some time before saying, “We should get the police here and then get started fixing this.” I waved my hands at the disaster. “You’re going to have to try to figure out what was stolen. It’s possible, of course, this was just vandalism. It’s the sort of thing kids with too much energy and time on their hands would do. Ones who love taking risks, like the excitement of maybe getting caught. We won’t know what’s what till we have stuff back on the shelves.”

Mr. Beal still seemed almost in shock, and it didn’t appear he was in a state to tell any of us what to do. It didn’t surprise me when Coop rose to the challenge.

“Okay, let’s do this. We’ll start at the front here and get things on the shelves, working our way back through the aisles. Jaxon and I know what goes where, and it looks to me at first glance that stuff was just dumped on the floor closest to where it had been shelved. It really does look like kids did this. It shouldn’t be that hard to pick stuff up and put it right on the closest shelves. Dad, you need to take an aisle, and both Jaxon and I will take two others. Mr. Davison, maybe you could call the cops. They might be mad we’ve started cleaning up, but it’s our store and we can do that if we want. The police can still figure out how someone got in.”

I gave Coop a thumbs up, and he grinned. He certainly was taking this in stride better than his father. I took out my phone and called Chief Meyers. I told him there’d been a break-in at the hardware store and the amount of damage was being evaluated, but whether the Beals would want to file a report or not was uncertain at this point. They would, however, like to know how the vandals got in. The chief said he’d send a man out right away.

I didn’t start helping to pick stuff up in any of the aisles. The other three knew what went where on the shelves. I didn’t know that, and so I moved to an area up front where display merchandise had been tipped over and the front-window display had been disturbed. I could stand things back upright and put them in some sort of order, and whatever I’d done could be moved later if someone thought that necessary.

I was finishing that up when a police car pulled up and a detective got out. I knew him slightly; he was the only trained investigator on the force. Corson had almost no crime and little need for someone with his skills.

“Hi, Fred,” I said, shaking hands with him. “Break-in last night. I’m hoping it was just malicious mischief, and so far we haven’t found anything broken. The Beals would like to know how the perps got in.”

Fred was an all-business sort, a young man, short and neatly dressed. He took a quick look inside the store, then said, “I’ll take a look around. See what I can find. I’ll head around back first. That’s the usual place for a break-in because it’s darker there than at the front, and no one’s in the area to see them.”

I walked around the building with him. I was as curious as he was as to what he’d find.

What we found was some slight damage to the door frame. “I’d say a crowbar was used,” Fred said. “Put it between the door and the frame, tweaked the frame just enough so the latch bolt wouldn’t reach into the socket of the frame. For a commercial enterprise, it’s more usual to have a much stouter latch assembly than this one. But here in Corson? When we get this sort of thing, it’s rarely from thieves. What are they going to steal, a couple of cans of paint? I’d guess this was kids. You may well find nothing was stolen, and if they were nicer kids, nothing broken or destroyed, either. Mr. Beal can get the whole locking assembly upgraded with parts he already has in the store. Only pay for labor. No big deal at all.”

I thanked him and asked him not to write it up or print the pictures he’d taken till the Beals had decided to file a police report.

Back inside the front of the store, I could see progress was being made, but it was going to take a lot of time to complete. Maybe not more than could be done before the Monday audit, though. I heard voices from farther back in the store. It was Jaxon and Coop, and they were arguing.

“Cooper, let me do this. Your help will just slow me down.” I walked back and found Cooper scowling. But then he grinned and touched Jaxons’s shoulder. “I know; you’re right; go to it.”

What I was looking at was all the nuts and bolts, screws and washers and odd fasteners that were scattered all over the floor. It looked like care had been taken to empty every container of loose fasteners. The ones in boxes hadn’t been torn open but they too were strewn in the aisle. As I watched, Jaxon got to work. He had obtained several boxes and began sorting what was on the floor into the boxes.

What I found astounding was that he barely took the time to look at each piece. They had been sorted on the shelves by both length and diameter. Screws and washers, nuts and bolts, he put each size variation into its own box. And there were so many small differences: regular-slotted-head and Phillips-head screws—rounded heads and flat and countersunk. Bolts threaded their entire length or only part way to the head with various diameters and lengths. Lock nuts and regular, both hex and square. Locking and plain flat washers. It looked to me like what he was doing would take anyone a week or more to get finished, to have everything sorted correctly. But Jaxon seemed to know what everything was simply by giving it a quick glance. He was moving through all the bits and pieces, not rushing, but getting the mixed-up scatter categorized without fumbling around, without measuring, without taking nearly the time it would take anyone else.

As I watched, I was joined by Mr. Beal. He seemed to find what Jaxon was doing as amazing as I did. I looked at him closely, saw the look on his face and sensed an opportunity.

“He’s really something, huh?” I asked.

“He’s certainly that.” Mr. Beal sounded open and without the reticence or guile he usually seemed to wear like a cloak. I could swear there was pride for Jaxon in his voice.

I gave him another moment or two to watch, then decided I’d never get a better chance to do what I needed to do than right then. “These two are making excellent progress,” I said. “May I offer you a cup of coffee—or more if you’d like. You’ve been working hard, too. The diner across the street is open. I’d like to talk to you away from the store if I could.”

He said that was a good idea, that the youngsters had a lot more energy than he did.

We sat together, and the cups of coffee and pastries I’d ordered seemed to provide a feeling of camaraderie. It was as good as it was going to get. I just hoped I was reading him correctly.

“Mr. Beal,” I started, and he corrected me. “My first name is Clarence, but that’s a mouthful. Most people who know me call me Clare.”

“Okay, and I’m Neil. I needed a chance to talk to you. I don’t know you at all, and you’re a difficult man to read. The one thing I’m pretty sure of is that you’re fond of Jaxon. That’s important to me and why I’m taking a chance talking to you. I’m right about that, am I not?”

“Oh, yes! I like him, and I like it that he and Coop are so friendly. Coop is popular at school, but somehow he hasn’t made any close friends. I think teens need that closeness with someone their age. I see those two talking together, and how happy they are. They look like they’re forming a bond, and it makes me happy, seeing it.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Clare. It appears to me that Jaxon is a major asset at your store. I know he loves working here.”

“Yes, especially with the audit in front of me. I’m worried about that. If I had to tell the man we had a break-in, I’m sure he’d find that suspicious. You mentioned that and I agree. He could well think that I’d staged it. The IRS has been on my back for some time.”

“Can you tell me why?”

He gave me a long look. Then said, “I really don’t like talking about it.”

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