Читать книгу The Defilers - Deborah Gyapong - Страница 4

Chapter 2: The Neighbour

At day’s end I stored my pistol in its metal case, stowed it in my locker, then showered and changed into jeans and a sweater. As I drove my red Jeep away from the grey slush and bright lights of Sterling’s strip malls I felt drained, like a drunk with a hangover. Why couldn’t I love justice without becoming someone I couldn’t control?

The Jeep tires swished on the wet highway and the full moon gleamed on the snowy fields. Across the water the lights from the village of Cornwallis Cove twinkled. The Annapolis Valley radio station played My Achy Breaky Heart. Then a weather report promised more snow and unseasonably cold temperatures for early November.

When I turned onto the road leading up the hill to my farmhouse, the heavy snow weighed the tree boughs down so they arched over the road. Snow coated every twig. The Jeep’s headlights illuminated the beauty, reminding me of my childhood and how a snowfall would transform Boston’s Franklin Park, covering the cigarette butts, condoms and bottle caps, decorating the leafless maples and oaks, and making even the shabbier areas near my neighbourhood look festive. Driving under the arch I felt like I was passing through a magic gateway, and for a few moments, the hell of South Dare seemed like a bad dream.

At the top of the hill several small farms spread before me. Snow frosted the spruce trees and roofs of the houses. Except for some wet tire tracks even the road ahead was white. A public service announcement about hunter safety blared on the radio. I shut it off. The beauty and wholesomeness of the countryside was as calming as the fire and South Dare had been intoxicating. Even the snow looked different here – fresh and pure instead of cold and dead. Warm yellow light shone from the windows of the farmhouses. TVs flickered in some of the front rooms and woodsmoke curled from the chimneys. This achingly beautiful place was my neighbourhood now. I’d traded a studio apartment in Surrey, British Columbia, for a nineteenth century farmhouse on sixty acres of pasture and woodlot with a small barn I used as a garage.

The sight of my darkened house almost broke the surrounding beauty’s magic. Though I loved the old place with its peaked roof and single dormer window over the front door, tonight it seemed empty and cold in the stark moonlight – so unlike the happy-looking homesteads I’d just passed. An icy bough had snapped off the old maple tree and lay across my front lawn. At least I’d left the light on over the back steps.

Sniffing the fragrant woodsmoke in the chilled air I tromped through the wet snow to the back door. I glanced across the white meadow to Catherine’s place. Her kitchen windows glowed and her wagon was parked in her laneway. I wondered if she’d already filed her story about the South Dare fire and put her weekly newspaper to bed.

A bare bulb cast a harsh bright light on my damp cold kitchen. Years of footsteps had scuffed a brownish trail on the faded flowered linoleum. A few dingy white cabinets hung over a worn porcelain double sink. The previous owner’s aqua and chrome table and chairs still occupied the room’s centre.

The kitchen had lots of windows, though I had no blinds for them yet. The oil stove dominated the interior wall. Its weight made the floor sag, tilting the monster so one of its warming oven doors hung open. I cranked up the oil and threw a lighted match into the carburetor. The fuel oil smell and the fan’s annoying rattle had taken me a while to get used to. Aside from the stove the other homey touch was the single bed under the back windows. Many of the older homes in Nova Scotia still had a bed in the kitchen, going back to the days when it was the warmest room in the house. Though I hated the frilly yellow bed covering, matching pillow covers and curtains, my budget and schedule didn’t allow me to do everything I wanted to right away.

No, my farmhouse didn’t feel like home. It felt like an investment, something I’d scrimped and saved for, and the home I hoped to create was still somewhere in the future. That made me glad Catherine was expecting me for supper. I insisted on throwing in some money toward groceries so as not to be obligated to her. After shovelling my back steps I sprinted across the snowy meadow for supper.

The fire in Catherine’s cast iron stove hissed and popped, radiating warmth. The wide pine floorboards, braided rug, and stained glass lamp hanging over the table comforted my senses. I stretched my legs across another chair toward the stove. Catherine grasped the neck of a large screw-top bottle of white wine and plunked it on the table. I poured myself a glass to help get my mind off the firebomber.

Typically I would have done an exhaustive post mortem on the investigation, replaying over and over what had happened at the crime scene. This time I refused to beat myself up for how things had gone. I’d moved back to Nova Scotia to start a new life, and one of my goals was to stop being a workaholic perfectionist. I needed balance, a life outside work. It was okay to enjoy Catherine’s friendship. Catherine padded to the table with a couple of placemats and a fistful of tableware.

“Where’s Grace?” I hoped it wasn’t too late to see Catherine’s six-year-old daughter.

“In bed. Her nose was running and she was pretty cranky.” Catherine took two earthenware bowls from the cupboard and ambled over to the woodstove.

The news disappointed me. Grace was one of the new joys in my life. In recent years the only children I’d ever seen were victims of porn or abuse, or they were pawns in domestic violence. What a change to be around a happy, innocent little girl who loved teddy bears and horses.

Catherine ladled stew into the bowls. “Edna’s stew is fantastic. I’ve already had some, but I think I’ll have a little more.” She opened one of the wood stove’s warming ovens and removed a pan of fresh rolls. She sat across from me and poured herself more wine in a goblet-sized glass.

“Your housekeeper’s a great cook.” I unfolded a paper napkin on my lap. “She cost an arm and a leg?”

“Edna costs less than putting Grace in daycare. And she cooks and cleans. It’s like having a wife.”

I laughed. “I could use a wife too. Someone to iron my shirts…”

Catherine bit into the crusty golden bun and winced with pleasure at the taste. “These rolls are better than sex.”

I laughed again and raised a spoonful of stew to my mouth. When did I start laughing when a conversation made me uncomfortable? I reminded myself to cut the laugh track. It made me sound nervous.

The beef was moist and tender, but needed salt. As I reached for the shaker I felt Catherine staring at me and looked up at her shining brown eyes. “What?” I grinned.

“Nothing. It’s nice to have you here.” She smiled, a dimple forming in her left cheek. “Speaking of sex, why don’t you bring that gorgeous Will Bright by here some evening?”

I stiffened. “I don’t socialize with people from work.”

Catherine grinned. “Whoa! Sounds like I hit a sore spot.”

Under the table she poked my shin with her slippered toe. “You have a crush on him, don’t you?”

“Puhleeze.” At least I didn’t laugh.

“I bet he flirts with you, doesn’t he?” she smirked, poking me again. “Some girls get all the breaks. You are so drop-dead beautiful, Linda.”

I hunched over the stew, rolling my eyes. Beautiful. My looks made me feel like prey so I deliberately played them down.

“My ex-husband ran off with Will’s fiancée. Ever since then he has avoided me. I mean, it’s not my fault she dumped him, you know?” She took another sip. “And why his fiancée would prefer Michael to him sure beats me.”

I shook more salt over my stew, surprised by this little tidbit of information. Will struck me as someone who broke hearts, not the other way around. This made him seem more human. “Will’s personal life doesn’t interest me.”

“I think it does.” She grinned.

“Should I tell him you’re interested?”

“Tell him he can put his shoes under my bed anytime.”

I raised my eyebrows, my palms growing damp. I knew some women liked to discuss their sex lives, but I’d never felt comfortable doing it.

“Just kidding!” Catherine’s foot nudged me again. “Actually, I’m dying to talk about the fire.”

“What about it?”

“I heard someone threw a Molotov cocktail. And Staff Sergeant Ramsay says you have no suspects.”

The wooden chair creaked as my muscles tensed. “It’s under investigation. I can’t tell you any more than Karen did.”

“So there was a Molotov cocktail?”

I shrugged.

“Oh, come on! I won’t tell anyone where I got my information. You know that.”

“Please, I’d rather not talk about work.” As much as I enjoyed Catherine there was no way I going to blurt out my need to keep the job from consuming me. Besides, I’d never reveal details of an investigation to a journalist.

A look of irritation crossed her face. “Okay, you can’t tell me anything. I understand.” Catherine rubbed the lipstick off the rim of her wineglass. “Can I talk to you about it, though? Maybe I can bounce things off you and you can let me know if I’m on the right track. I know some things about David Jordan you might find interesting.”

Catherine had hooked me. Maybe she would tell me something that would make up for my lack of success at the fire scene. “Okay.” I glanced at my watch, trying to appear blasé. “But nothing that happens between us appears in your paper. Ever.”

“Of course!” She pushed a manila file folder toward me. “I did a story on David Jordan when he arrived here a couple of years ago. He’s pretty weird.”

Inside the file lay a stack of yellowed newspaper stories and pages of notes she must have typed on her laptop.

“About four or five years ago David got fired from a church outside Halifax. From what I could gather he’s one of those zealous types with no people skills. His first wife left him at the same time the church let him go. Took the kids.”

I rifled through the musty-smelling clippings. “The kids I saw this morning didn’t exist four or five years ago?”

“No, this is a new marriage. New kids. His first wife divorces him. The denomination he works for doesn’t take kindly to divorce so they kick him out. He’s broke, depressed, can’t earn a living. Then he’s diagnosed with cancer. The doctors tell him it’s terminal. He becomes jaundiced, pencil-thin, except for a belly like he’s nine months pregnant. There’s a picture of him with the article.”

“And God intervened,” I deadpanned. How is any of this relevant?

Catherine chuckled. “Yes. He believes it was a miracle. His doctors called it ‘spontaneous remission.’”

“So, he’s out to save the world now, is he?” I spooned carrots and potatoes into my mouth.

“Out to save the world. Yeah, right!” Catherine grinned.

For some reason my heart began thudding and my mouth grew dry. My mind drifted. Save the world. Ron seemed like a saviour to us at Holy Child. Suddenly, I saw him standing in my bedroom in Jamaica Plain. The memory was so vivid I almost choked. He popped a clerical collar from around his neck, and placed the stiff white band on the dresser next to the gowned replica of the Infant of Prague Gran had given me.

I was perched on my single bed under a poster of Pope John Paul II, wearing my school uniform, my navy blue and green skirt hiked up so the woollen afghan tickled my bare thigh. My heart fluttered with anxiety as I thought about how much I wanted to please him. “Are you scared, sweetheart?” he asked. He sat down next to me, making the bedsprings groan. He gathered me in his arms, stroked my hair, then loosened my blue tie and unbuttoned my white blouse. I heard the scratchy sound of his fingers on the cloth and smelled his oniony breath.

Feeling my stomach curdle I fought to hear what Catherine was saying. Don’t think about Ron. Don’t. I hadn’t thought about him in years. Why now? Is David Jordan another Ron?

“David Jordan came here as an associate pastor at Cornwallis Cove Baptist. I guess he had to take a junior position to redeem himself. At least they were willing to overlook his divorce.”

“So what’s up with the church in South Dare?” The flashback had made me so tense.

“He’s still at Cornwallis Cove teaching Sunday school. But he started the new church – meets in the afternoon – and moved to South Dare. Maybe he wants to get out from under the authority of the Baptists. Start some kind of cult. I don’t know.”

Unable to concentrate any longer I feigned a yawn and covered my mouth. My watch read 9:07.

“I can’t talk about this now.” I spoke more abruptly than intended. “I’ve got to wind down so I can sleep.”

Catherine’s plucked eyebrows shot up and her mouth formed a small o. “I haven’t even told you the juiciest stuff yet!”

I carried my wineglass, bowl, and utensils to the dishwasher, opened the door, and looked for a place to put them. “I have to get up at five. Going for a run tomorrow morning.”

Catherine padded behind me. “Did something I said upset you?” Catherine tugged the sleeve of my sweater. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. If you tell me more, I’ll be up all night thinking about it.”

I couldn’t look at her. Ron’s face flashed through my mind again. “Let’s go in the other bedroom, sweetheart. That bed is bigger.” I felt the goosebumps on my knees. I was thirteen again. I couldn’t go into Dad’s bedroom, even if he had moved out to live with his new wife. Even if he’d never know. I placed my spoon in the caddy and my bowl on the top rack.

Catherine slid my dirty wineglass toward the sink. “Well, okay. But you might want to hear this. David was active in the anti-abortion movement. He was charged with – ”

“Not now, Catherine.” As I interrupted her, my cheeks flushed and my heart pounded. “I need to sleep. If I’m not alert and rested tomorrow, someone could get hurt.” I slid my arms into the sleeves of my parka.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” Catherine’s voice shook a little. She padded back to the kitchen table and fumbled with the file.

“I’m not upset. Tired, that’s all.”

Catherine searched my face. It astonished me how much she seemed to care, how much she seemed to fear damaging our new friendship. The sudden affection I felt for her hurt like a numb arm when the blood starts circulating again. The mask I’d spent years moulding slipped for a second.

“You could read this tomorrow.” She offered the file to me like an olive branch. “Please forgive my pushiness, but there’s stuff you need to know about David. Make sure you look at the affidavit from his ex-wife.”