Free Purgatory Chasm: A Mystery by Steve Ulfelder

be different, you made a rebel stand. Took off for parts unknown.”
    “Just as my father had,” Trey said. “Thus repeating the pattern in spite of my best efforts. The irony is not lost, I can assure you.”
    We were quiet for a few miles. When I hit I-495 North I said, “Well, you sure did one thing right.”
    He looked at me.
    “You didn’t name your son Tander Phigg the Fourth.”
    Trey laughed a long time. “You’re fucking-A right I didn’t,” he said. “Pardon my French.”
    I said, “Yesterday somebody asked me what I thought of your father. First thing came to mind was horse’s ass.”
    “Okay.”
    “But he did some good things,” I said. “He got sober. He stayed sober a long time. Helped plenty others sober up, too.”
    “Huh.”
    “How much did Randall tell you about things?”
    “My father hanged himself in Rourke, Hew Hampshire.”
    Randall had played it smart—had sketched things out for Trey, leaving me room to spin the details when the time was right and do some digging while I was at it.
    I said, “You surprised your father killed himself?”
    He took his time. Finally he said, “Yes.”
    “Why?”
    “Ego,” Trey said. “No. Almost ego, but not quite. Self-importance. He thought the sun would forget to rise if he wasn’t around to remind it.”
    “That’s about the way I see it.”
    “What are you saying?”
    I shrugged, drove. Moved right to take I-93 North.
    Keeping a peripheral-vision eye on Trey to gauge his reaction, I said, “Your father died flat broke. He was collecting cans and eating crackers in an abandoned shack.”
    “ What? There is absolutely no way that can be true.”
    “It’s true,” I said. “I guess the cops and lawyers’ll tell you more.”
    “How? Is there any chance he had a drug or booze habit? Prescription meds, maybe?”
    “No.”
    “Gambling?”
    “Not that I know of. It would’ve been hard for him to hide that, the circles he ran in.”
    “What, then?”
    I shrugged and made a snap decision not to talk about Motorenwerk. Yet. “All of us Barnburners thought he was loaded,” I said. I saw the question on his face. “It’s an AA group. The Barnburners. Tight bunch. Your father must’ve mentioned it when you were a kid.”
    “I suppose so,” he said. “I didn’t listen to him much.”
    I nodded. “From what your father said, your grandfather ran a big paper mill and left your father a bundle. We thought he was set for life.”
    “Me too.” Half laugh. “Truth be told, I thought I was set for life.”
    “You’re taking it pretty well.”
    Shrug.
    I needed to get him going. “Phigg Paper, was it?”
    Trey straightened in his seat and put on a radio-announcer voice. “In 1928 Tander Phigg, Senior, a twenty-one-year-old immigrant from Liverpool, stood on the banks of the Nashua River. Phigg had the clothes on his back, four dollars, and a note from his father asking any fellow Liverpudlian to take on the youth as an apprentice. But he also had a dream: to dominate the market for paper receipts used in the fast-growing cash-register market.”
    “I guess you heard that story a few times around the dinner table, huh?”
    “Worse,” Trey said. “That was the intro to an industrial film my dad made about the company. He used to bring in a projectionist after Sunday dinner. We’d watch it in his study.”
    Trey was quiet as we crossed into New Hampshire. He was a smart kid. I could feel him organizing his thoughts, making sure he told it clean and clear, maybe crossing out details he didn’t want me to know.
    Trey’s grandfather, Tander Phigg, Sr., launched Phigg Paper Products, Inc., in 1928, just in time for the Depression. Married a Catholic girl in 1932 despite her mother’s promise to kill herself out of shame.
    “Yikes,” I said. “Different world back then, huh?”
    Trey waved a hand. “Basic histrionics. She didn’t kill herself, in case you’re looking for a family suicide history.”
    Like I said—smart