Touchdown Reversed

Sam Jones, Sr. noisily started up the front end loader, anxious to put the finishing touches on the new Bonn High School athletic complex.

Then, just as he began smoothing out the soil to make room for the football field goalpost, he struck a hard object that almost knocked him out of the cab.

He jumped down and rushed to see what was standing in the way to completing his greatest construction project.

To Sam’s surprise, he had uncovered a rusty gym locker from the school’s old gymnasium. The fact that his crew did a sloppy job of clearing the field of debris didn’t disturb him the most, but his whole body shook when the locker’s door fell off and two corpses fell out.

Exposure to some of the roughest weather in Delmarva history had decimated the remains, but not enough to make them unrecognizable. Lying on the turf were the bodies of his son, Sam, Jr., and his fiancée Stacey Stonington.

The mystery of the disappearance of the former Bonn football star and his ex-cheerleader girlfriend had confounded Frederick County and state law enforcement officials for two years.

Now, face-to-face with the images that had haunted the boy’s father’s sleepless nights for too long, he resolved once and for all to put an end to this sorted tale. He immediately put a cellphone call to Steve Sheridan, the ace private eye who had graduated Bonn High School with Junior.

Sheridan, bored with zilch in the way of cases in the rural Maryland backwater, had left the area three years ago for the more productive mean streets of Baltimore. Stories of the disappearance on social media had continued to intrigue the investigator, and he didn’t hesitate to return to his old stomping ground at the request of the wealthy grieving father.

“The trail may be ice cold by now,” he told Sam, Sr., “but I think there still might be enough people in town who remember enough for us to uncover facts glossed over two years ago.”

When the private eye Googled “Bonn football star and cheerleader vanish” he found that, shortly before the couple turned up missing, Sam, Sr. had thrown a huge party at his Eastern Shore estate near Ocean City to celebrate winning the contract for the new Bonn athletic complex.

Senior invited many of Junior’s classmates who went to work for him at his construction firm shortly after graduation.

Sheridan uncovered a secret never revealed to authorities at the time of the disappearance–in their high school gridiron days many of the players resented Junior because they felt his father’s influence rather than his athletic ability had won him the starting position on the football squad.

This left the detective with a possible room full of suspects.

Although many of the former players had moved far from the area, those who remained did recall one of their crowd, Jim Pierce, had a continuing hatred of Junior, his father and Stacey extending far beyond their high school days.

Pierce, although he had far more athletic ability than Junior, had warmed the bench continually while the younger Jones got all the glory. He came in during the last few minutes of the state championship game to save the day, but barely got a mention in the local press.

The fact that Stacey had teased Jim incessantly throughout high school and had constantly turned down his requests for dates added heat to the fire, his classmates said.

In the years immediately following graduation he often had sworn revenge on the “phony star and his Barbie girlfriend.”

Sheridan ran into another deadend when he tried to track down Pierce, who mysteriously disappeared a few weeks after the Ocean City party.

One of the former football players did give the private eye what he considered a solid lead. He said Jim’s father had abandoned a garage on the outskirts of Bonn that he no longer used for his car repair business.

It took the detective several hours to sift through the debris piled high in the abandoned building, which it had taken him more than an hour to find on the obscure rural road.

Just as he was about to abandon his search a piece of lumber fell from the roof, almost knocking him out. As the wood tumbled from the ceiling it brought with it what looked like a leather case held together with a belt.

As Sheridan pulled the belt off he found what looked like a well-preserved diary in the case. He opened the diary and began to read the entry for two years before:

“I lured Stacy and Junior away from the party, by telling them I wanted to discuss our upcoming Bulldogs’ 10th reunion. I took them to the construction site of the new athletic complex, supposedly to celebrate the completion of Senior’s biggest project and to show them I had forgotten about the past.

“To add to the festivities I absconded with a bottle of Sam Sr,’s finest champagne.

“My plan also included adding something a little extra to the couple’s champagne, a poison which no one could possibly trace to me.

“After spending a lifetime sitting on the sidelines, thanks to two over privileged rich kids, I finally made up my mind to run across the goalline for the score that would earn me the recognition I so richly deserved.

“I never dreamed that running in for that touchdown would make the clock run out on my game.

“My life revolved around Bonn High School and its state championship football team. Almost every one of my teammates, coaches and even my opponents recognized me as the real quarterback power behind the Bulldogs’ championships.

“Standing in my way were the overblown ego of Sam Jones, Jr. and favors purchased through the wealth and influence of his father, who owned Jililco, the biggest construction firm in town.

“Sam Sr. made sure that his son started in every championship game and claimed credit for victories that should have belonged to me.

“Junior, although homely as sin with a stage four case of acne during his entire high school career, also scored major points with cheerleader captain Stacey.

“As I mapped out my revenge plan against the pretend quarterback and his girlfriend, during the summers I used my natural construction talent to work my way into an internship with Jililco, where I would move up to a foreman’s position right after graduation..

“Rich kids Sam and Stacey didn’t have to work during the summer. They took their fancy convertibles on trips to nearby Bethany Beach, only a half hour’s drive from Bonn.

“Sam Sr.’s influence as a Harvard alumnus got his son into the top Ivy business school, and Stacey began her career with Vogue after a number of high-profile New York modeling gigs. Sam Sr. used his influence to make all the right connections at the top firms for his future daughter-in-law and keep junior and his future bride in the top echelon of the social strata.

“While they executed their plan I continued to aim for my touchdown play.

“I used my influence as Jillilco’s lead construction foreman to wrangle an invitation to Senior’s big celebration.

“After our little trip to the athletic complex and a few sips of my special champagne it didn’t take the couple long to fall into their permanent Sleeping Beauty’s rest,

“I then loaded their bodies into my car and drove over to my father’s abandoned auto repair garage. I buried them deep enough so the authorities wouldn’t find them until they had given up the search.

“Later I dug them up and took them back to the high school field. I started up my front end loader to add some finishing touches to the goalline.

“ I had just finished the burial when my backhoe struck a piece of cement. This threw me from the cab, breaking my leg in three places.

“Doctors repaired my leg, but I never walked correctly again, and, for the next year I suffered unbelievable pain. My broken leg ended my construction career with early retirement.

“To deal with some of my pain, doctors prescribed toradol shots, often used to alleviate pain for football players injured on the gridiron.

“Toradol has extremely addictive properties and I fell under its spell.

“Long before a great deal became known about opioids I became one of its victims.

“My never-stopping pain and my need for toradol led me to overload one of my shots one afternoon, and I saw myself back on the Bonn Bulldogs football field leading my high school team to victory.

“The dream turned into a nightmare as I felt life draining from me."