Athletic Supporter: Frank Pooler #1

Athletic Supporter

Henri Duffy

Copyright 2017 Henri Duffy

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Athletic Supporter is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity between the characters and actual people, living or dead, events, or locations, is purely coincidental.

Contents

What Happened on My Summer Vacation

September

October

November

December

January

February

March

April

May

Author’s Note

Other Books by Henri Duffy

Read part of Biological Imperative, the second Frank Pooler novel coming in 2018

About Henri Duffy

What Happened on My Summer Vacation

It was an early Sunday morning in July, a month in New England that can be known for its heat and humidity. But this was a very early morning; the sun had not yet fully risen above the horizon. It was warm and humid, but not oppressively hot as it would be later in the day when the breaths of a breeze would vanish and the dog days of summer would show themselves.

A lone man sat in the playground on an old-fashioned swing and watched his dog explore all the various areas where dogs had gone before him in the currently deserted playground. This was an old playground close to the man’s home, the playground where he had actually played as a child.

Change had come to the playground, but not abruptly, just some minor changes over the years. The basketball court had been paved over and repainted, the volleyball net poles replaced, and the monkey bars once so tall and forbidding made of galvanized steel had been upgraded to a newer and seemingly plastic version. The swing set he was on had the same multiple ‘A frames’ of galvanized steel with a pole running the length of the set. The seats were not the strap seat affairs of new swings, but were planks two feet long, eight inches wide and three inches thick. Good solid wood, painted red, and held on to the polls by chains.

The man remembered playing in this playground swinging on these very swings having jumping contests with his friends --could they get past the tree roots from seemingly ancient trees flying through the air and land without turning an ankle. All the fencing around the playground, at least on this side which backed up against the backyards of several houses built in the 19th century, was now chain-link and not the wooden picket fence that he remembered as a child. With the new fence the old shortcut to the house in which he had grown up, and now lived in once again, was gone. He had to go all the way around it to get back to his house.

While the dog had been in this park often he always approached time here with great enthusiasm, much like his person had at an earlier point in his life. There was tall grass to root through where the mower couldn’t get close enough to the fence. There were trees, old trees, oak trees that were acorns when the United States was a new country. There was the water fountain that was put up every summer so that the children playing in the park could get a drink and next to it the slide which had been so tall when the man was young, but now was only head high. These are all places the dog loved to explore when not chasing the ball thrown by the man to where the children still played baseball and football as they had for the last 50 years or more.

It always amazed him that so little had changed in this part of the town. The houses that were there may be freshly painted with neatly mowed lawns and some flowers, but no additions, none had been destroyed for new construction, the neighborhood looked much as it had when he was a boy. The mills across the road whose owners had once had all these houses built in the 1860s and 1870s for the mill workers were still there, but inactive after having been bought and sold several times in the mid to late 20th century. What was once a thriving economy was now a single mill still operating up the road.

It seemed like a good idea for Franklin Xerxes Pooler to come back here in solitary retirement. The home had stayed in his family after his long-lived mother passed away. His brother had no use for the house having moved south to escape what he thought were the brutal New England winters. The mortgage had been paid off long ago. When his mother passed Pooler decided to maintain the house just to have it. All it cost him was taxes and a few bucks for one of the local kids to cut the grass in the summer and shovel snow off the walk way in the winter. Even while he was away he thought it was a good idea to keep the house. He’d come back every year just to look at things, say hello to the neighbors, and make sure everything was all right. About five years ago he had discovered a leak in the roof and had the roof replaced. Not all that long ago he had the house repainted; white, with black shutters and a grey porch, just like it had been when he was a boy.

It was the same time he discovered the leaking roof that his wife of two decades had presented him with a puppy; the dog that was now happily running the playground. She told him that he needed to get out and exercise and it was his job to walk the dog. She knew he would do it every day because he was so responsible. He cut the grass every Saturday morning weather permitting, he was never late for work, and he worked hard taking pride in whatever he did. She knew he’d walk that dog every day, rain or shine, hot or cold.

He was glad that he had the dog to make him walk, or at least get out of the house. Not only was the dog good company, better than many people he thought, he didn’t talk back. Pooler was in his sixties, and overweight, but not obese. Being broad in the shoulders he carried his weight reasonably well with his middle thickness less noticeable. He stood straight, a couple of inches under six feet tall. While he had a forest of hair on the sides of his head which he kept cropped very short, the top of his pate could only be described as a follicle desert. His brown eyes and salt and pepper moustache gave him a somewhat worldly look, but nothing too noteworthy. A good general description would be just that, not too noteworthy.

He had continued to maintain the house after his wife passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack not long after she gave him the puppy. After her passing he decided to retire in his late 50’s. He had always lived frugally and saved, the insurance from his wife’s passing was an unexpected and unwanted windfall, and having served a lengthy time in the military he had a modest pension and health benefits. While far from wealthy, he did not need to work.

After remaining in the town where his last job had been for a few months he decided to move for his own mental health. Everything reminded him of his very happy marriage to his late wife, and he thought it best to move rather than deal with that anguish continually. He had moved to Seattle for about six months, and decided while it was a nice city it was maybe a little too big for him. He remembered that he still had this house and since it was already paid for he figured why not live in it. Even though they say you can never go home again he decided to go home.

He was glad that he had come back even though only a few of his old friends were still there. He knew where most things were in town, there were still a few good restaurants and the pub that he used to frequent as an underage drinker was still there, even though it had undergone a serious facelift and had new bartenders. No longer a working man’s pub it now looked and catered to a more affluent clientele. He realized kiddingly that he had started to act like the old man across the street when he was a boy.

In the heat of summer that old man would sit on the porch with some iced tea, a fan of some type, and a radio listening to the Red Sox game. The porch was the same, although across the street, the tea was certainly not the same, the iced tea might be Long Island or maybe a Sam Adams instead of tea, and the radio was a smart phone with a set of earbuds, but he was certainly starting to exhibit same tendencies as the centenarian from across the street during his youth. Maybe it was time to do a little something different. He always thought about writing some fiction or maybe go to some of the places he hadn’t been to in so very long: a drive to the Cape; going look at the Housatonic tunnel that people from his hometown were so instrumental in building; a drive to Franconia Notch, but the old man in the mountain and tumbled away years ago. Pooler was not discontented only a little bored.

As he was reflecting on his boredom while walking the dog back to his house, and what he might do to alleviate that boredom, his phone rang. Taking it from his back pocket he looked to see who would be calling him, especially early on a Sunday morning. Most of his colleagues and friends still worked and liked to take it easy on their weekends so a call this early was just a bit out of the ordinary. Looking at his phone he saw the caller ID Brad and answered the call.

Brad, how the heck are you? Haven’t heard from you in quite some time. What’s up?

Well I thought I should give you a call to give you a heads up. The last time we spoke, way over a month ago, you were starting to talk about being a little bit bored. From what I could gather all you been doing is staying home and walking the dog. I thought I should help out my longtime friend and colleague by finding something useful for you to do that you can do easily.

That’s oh so very thoughtful of you, but I’m okay. The dog and I are doing just fine I get to walk regularly because of him. I’ve been doing some reading, a little fiction, a little history, I go to a movie, I try new recipes, things are good.

Frank, I knew you’d say that, that’s why I did this anyways, before I even talked to you about it. Look, you are really good at what you did. You’re a good administrator. Higher Ed is just going to hell in a handbasket; several presidents get fired every year, the average lifespan for dean is three years, and VPs are told to have an exit strategy soon as they take a new job. This is no way to run an airline.

So what’s that got to do with me, I’m not a pilot.

No shit. You know you’ve been a dean, been a VP and you’ve been a college president, you have a lot of skill and a lot of good experience, it’s time to use it. Don’t do this crap about being retired. You know there are several companies that specialize in placing interim administrators. You’re gonna get a call next week from one of them. I gave them your resume.

You did what? Why the hell would you do that? What on God’s green earth makes you think that I want to get back into that vast freaking wasteland known as higher education? Jesus Christ, Brad, I know you’re trying to do nice things for me; this just isn’t one of them. And where the hell did you get my resume anyways?

Brad was pleased that his long-time friend and colleague hadn’t just hung up the phone. At least he was still talking to him for the moment. Before answering the question, and dealing with the aftermath of a little more anger, Brad thought it best to take two or three deep breaths, and let all this sink into his friend’s mind. He had known Frank Pooler for almost 20 years and knew that given some time he would be okay with this.

Frank, I had your resume from previous searches, and you gave me another copy before you left work when we were at your last place of employment. Look, just take the call and see where it goes. If you don’t like the direction the conversation takes, then cut it off…..nicely, said Brad.

Wadda ya mean nicely? I’m nice, he said.

Sure, I can hear the navy comin’ up in your speech. ‘Wadda ya mean?’ Is that anyway for a PhD to talk? Huh?

Okay, maybe I do get a little wound up sometimes. But sometimes plain talk is better than the intellectual and verbal masturbation academia puts itself through, ya know? Brad was right, Frank thought, he could hear his old way of speaking emerging. The manner of speaking he had worked so hard to suppress while in graduate school years after getting his heavy Boston accent under control while in the navy. Okay, I’ll take the call.

Good. Call me back after you talk to them, please.

I will. And, Brad, thanks, I think.

Detective Ben Hardwick got out of his car on a sunny Monday morning and crossed the street so that he could knock on the door of the Pentland’s house. He was a little put out that he, the only detective on small-town police force, was asked to do a wellness check on a couple’s home because no one had answered the telephone in two days. Pentland, or Dr. Pentland as he preferred to be called, was the president of the local college. His wife was very active in state politics for the region. It wasn’t all that unusual that both of them would be gone on some type of business either together or separately for multiple days. But Hardwick was just up the street from the couple’s home and the dispatcher asked him very politely to just go by and do a quick check.

As the detective walked up the concrete walkway to the front stairs of the green and white craftsman home he looked around very quickly. He noticed the lawn was cut probably three or four days ago by a local kid no doubt, the flowers around the front porch had been weeded and mulched recently, the concrete slabs that formed the front walk had seen the business end of a pressure washer. The door was not a jar, windows closed and unbroken. Inside window treatments of pastel colored shears blocking the view from prying eyes, but letting plenty of natural light into the house covered the windows and were as they should be. Nothing in the yard or on the front porch seemed to be amiss.

Climbing the few steps and crossing the porch he gave the deep green front door three sharp raps. No answer, no noise from inside. He knocked again, harder. Hearing nothing he looked into the windows on the front porch. He first looked through the window to the right of the door and inspected the home’s dining room. Nothing apparently out of place; nice wood furniture, no lights on, no dirty dishes on the table and all the chairs looked to be pushed in; pretty much like any dining room in any house in town. He could see into the kitchen and saw that everything there had apparently been put away; no dirty dishes lying about, no food on the countertops. Satisfied with the dining room, and what he could see of the kitchen, he turned around to look through the window on the other side of the front door.

When he looked through the window the only thought his mind could form was ‘Oh shit’. Hanging from the living room ceiling was Dr. Pentland, not moving, an odd shade of blue, and quite dead.

Struggling to maintain some focus and recall proper procedures Hardwick quickly left front porch and walked back to his car. The first thing to do was to call this in. Just as he was getting to his car a shiny white Chevy hybrid drove up and parked in front of the Pentland’s home. The detective stopped reaching for the radio just see whose car it was because he didn’t fully recognize it. When he saw the blonde ponytail rise above the top of the small car and the brisk walk which caused that ponytail to sweep from side to side as it went up the walkway toward the house he knew that he was looking at the shapely backside of Mrs. Pentland. Breaking into a long stride close to a jog, but not actually running, Hardwick caught up to the president’s wife before she got to the bottom of the porch steps.

Mrs. Pentland please stop. My name is Ben Hardwick from the Police Department can you give me a minute before you go into your home? I really need to talk to you before you go inside. He pulled out his badge and ID so that she could see he really was with the Police Department.

Certainly Officer Hardwick what can I do for you? And please call me Beth.

Ma’am I was asked to come here and check on your home because people had been trying to call either you or your husband for the last two days and no one had answered the phone. I know it’s not unusual for both you and Dr. Pentland to be gone on business for several days at a time. But I checked anyway. I’m afraid that I have some bad news for you. It appears that Dr. Pentland is dead in your home.

Mrs. Pentland looked at him blankly for just of a few seconds and then smiled and started to laugh saying, Boy somebody went all out to pull a gag. I’m surprised the police would go along with it. But I have to admit you had me going for a moment. Well done.

Mrs. Pentland I’m sorry. I’m not joking. Would you mind waiting a moment before going into your house? I’d like to call some people and have them here and we’ll all go in together.

No. I have things to do and this very bad joke has gone on long enough. Unless you’re going to arrest me or shoot me, I assume you have a gun; I’m going into my house now. You are not welcome to come in and I would like to leave. Now.

Hardwick knew he really could not stop her from going into the house. In fact, he knew she was going to have to be going into the house relatively soon if nothing else to identify the body. He had to admit, in a small town where hardly anything ever happened; this whole conversation seemed like to set up for bad joke. He knew she wouldn’t be in the house long so he went to his car and radioed in while she went into the house. He told dispatch what he found at the house and that Pentland’s wife was at the house and apparently didn’t know about the dead husband. Dispatch acknowledged his call and said more officers will be on the way soon.

He didn’t have to wait long before Beth Pentland came running from the house talking, not shouting, talking, in rapid staccato.

Oh my God, oh my God, you weren’t kidding, he’s in there, he’s hanging, he’s just hanging, dead, hanging dead in the living room, he’s just in there, my God, he’s dead, Bill is dead, he’s hanging, Bill’s hanging in the living room dead…

Mrs. Pentland, please come sit in the police car. Officers are coming and we’ll go into your house. Right now let’s just go to my car and please sit in the back seat with the doors open I have a nice cold bottle of water there for you. While talking to her gently he led her away to his car across the street with his hand on her elbow guiding her and opened the door and had her sit down. He reached into the front seat where he kept a small insulated bag with his lunch and a couple bottles of chilled water. He took out a small bottle and handed it to her.

While he was doing this he kept one eye on the front door, which in her panic she had left open and the other on Mrs. Pentland. It appeared that she was distraught, but she wasn’t crying. She didn’t make a scene about going back into the house to save her husband. And she allowed herself to be escorted to the police car with no resistance. While he was leading her to the car with his hand on her elbow he noticed she was not shaking, she was neither hot nor cold, and really didn’t need to be guided to the car as she seemed to walk with a gentle swinging of the hips that he enjoyed watching even at close range. While he wasn’t quite sure what to make of any of this because people reacted differently to these kinds of situations, he did know it wasn’t what he expected.

Within minutes other officers arrived, sirens blaring, lights flashing. Hardwick brought them into the house and went to the living room with them. They looked at Dr. Pentland. He was hanging, still, a peculiar shade of blue, and clearly dead. He was hanging by an extension cord from the chandelier in the middle of the living room. The detective thought that was somewhat odd as most things from the ceiling would not be able to support the dead weight of a man without caving in.

While others were cordoning off the front of the house Hardwick went into the living room. Nothing seemed to be terribly out of place. There were no visible indentations on the carpet from any of the furniture being moved, other than the tipped over coffee table. The coffee table was overturned, although it was uncommonly clean with no magazines, ashtrays, or candy dishes lying about, nothing at all appeared to have been on it; not even dust. A sofa was also overturned. Seeing nothing of any immediate value in the living room he went off to look at the rest of the house.

He skipped the dining room because he had given at a cursory review through the window and went directly to the kitchen. Everything was neat and tidy as he had seen from the porch earlier although now he noticed there was one copper bottomed pan not on its appointed hanger that was on the floor by the refrigerator with its cooking surface down and there was a knife out of the butcher block knife holder. There was no blood on anything and nothing else appeared to be out of place. If his own kitchen could only be this neat and orderly, he thought.

Leaving the kitchen he went up the stairs. On the second floor were two bedrooms and the house’s lone bathroom. One bedroom was clearly an office with desks. Two computers, file cabinets, all the things you expect to see in a home office. It too made Hardwick somewhat jealous because it was so neat and organized. Neither of the computers were on and there were no papers out none of the file drawers were open. There was no landline telephone in the entire house so there was no message machine to look at. So why would the police receive a call for a wellness check if there was no land line? People always carried their cell phones. He did a quick look into the bathroom. It looked like the bathroom of an average couple; shaving cream, razor, soap, aftershave at one sink the other with a variety of skin and hair products, nail files, cuticle pusher’s, and other tools that women seem to buy and rarely use. The sinks were clean and while he didn’t look closely he figured there was nothing here in the sink considering how clean the rest of the house was. Seat and cover down on the toilet and from what he could see of the shower stall it too was clean and organized.

The second bedroom was the master bedroom. The bed was made, each nightstand had a book, apparently the Pentland’s did not enjoy e-readers, but a couple of oak dresser drawers were open as was the closet door. The detective went in to look at the open drawers, but he could see little, the open drawer was a sock drawer and judging from the socks apparently it was Dr. Pentland’s drawer. The socks were all scattered about within the drawer not put in any particular order and Hardwick began to wonder if all the open word neatness and organization of the home was just a veneer. Couldn’t see into the other drawer below the sock drawer and didn’t want to touch anything until the evidence people had been through the house. He looked into the closet briefly and noticed that there were several shoeboxes on a high shelf that were not lined up as he would’ve expected judging from the rest of the house. He had no idea people could be this neat.

Descending the stairs he asked the officers in the living room if Mrs. Pentland had come back into the house. They just shook their heads in the negative. Hardwick went back outside to his car to see how she was doing. She was sitting in the car calmly and had opened the bottle of water and taken some. She was staring straight ahead, but turned quickly when she noticed the detective approaching his car from about 30 feet away.

I suppose that you want me to come in and identify the body?

Yes ma’am please. I’d also like to take a quick walk around the house so you could tell me if anything seems odd to you.

He extended his hand as an offer to help her exit the police car. She took it and he thought avoided his eyes, smiled, and got up out of the car. Hardwick noticed as she smoothed her skirt she still had her purse in her hand. He wondered why the shock of seeing her husband dead, hanging in their living room, hadn’t even caused her to drop her purse. And why had she averted her eyes?

A quick walk around the house reveled nothing out of the ordinary to the widow Pentland. Hardwick saw no footprints, crushed flowers, or anything amiss. The outside looked as it should.

In the house she quickly verified that the man hanging from the ceiling was indeed her husband Dr. William Pentland, president of the local college. As they walked to the house she commented on the frying pan on the floor in front of the refrigerator, but didn’t say anything about the knife being out. She did notice that one of the chairs in the dining room was not pushed in all the way to the table. It was the chair furthest from the window and closest to the kitchen; Hardwick would not have been unable to notice it because of the angle he had to look through the window when he initially saw the dining room; the table was between him and it when looking from the outside. When they went upstairs she commented about the closet and drawers saying how typical was of her husband to leave things somewhat askew.

Back outside the detective asked the new widow about any work done to the house. When she asked him why he said he found it odd that a living room chandelier would be able to hold the weight of a man without breaking the mounting bracket under the ceiling’s sheet rock.

She chuckled, "Oh we had a great deal of work done on the house when we bought it right after we moved here. You know we’ve been here for over 15 years right? At any rate we had a great deal of work done. We liked the craftsman style and the separation of rooms and the wood, but we wanted some touches of our own. Clearly the kitchen is not the kitchen the house came with the other thing we wanted to renew lighting fixtures. I liked the chandelier and thought it brought something a little different to the house. While Bill thought it was gaudy he humored me and we put it in, but not without substantially reinforcing what it hung on. He was of the opinion that if you put something big and gaudy up, make sure that whatever is holding it can hold two of them. He made sure that the guys putting that thing in went hell-bent for stout for the support for that fixture. He used to brag at some of our dinner cocktail parties that you could hang a car from that chandelier.

And before you even ask, and I know you have to, I wasn’t home yesterday. Yesterday morning I was visiting my sister in Denver and drove back this morning. I’ll be giving her call to see if she can put me up for a few days. I’m not sure I want to stay in the house at least not right now.

Hardwick thanked her, said he’d call her when the police