Читать книгу Dead Cow in Aisle Three - H. Mel Malton - Страница 11

Going on a picnic? Let Kountry Pantree make the preparations easy! Not only will we provide the BBQ chicken, potato salad and all the fixins, we’ll throw in the plates, cups and utensils for free! (Some restrictions apply)

—A giveaway offer in the Kuskawa Buy ’n Sell

“I didn’t know you were a photographer,” I said, when Kane got close enough. Like all the others, he carried a camera bag, which was leather and looked new. He wore designer hiking gear from top to toe, the kind that you can only get from the outrageously priced outfitting place next to the park. He had on a bright red sweatshirt and khaki trousers, and a khaki photographer’s vest over that, its pockets bulging with what was probably a selection of expensive lenses and accessories. Tanned and fit, Kane looked like something you’d see in a glossy photography magazine, captioned “What the professionals are wearing.” It was overkill, really. Everybody else was in scruffies.

“Oh, hello, Polly,” Kane said. “Have you joined the Club too?” He seemed quite pleased, which was flattering, and I suddenly remembered Susan telling me that David Kane was a bachelor. Uh-oh.

“No, we just happened to be on the trail when Vic here needed a bit of help.”

Kane looked Vic over. “Been swimming?” he said.

“Something like that,” Vic said. I could feel Sophie bristling beside me.

“Most of us usually wear a bathing suit,” Kane said.

“I’m not most of us,” Vic said.

“Oh my God, Uncle Vic! What happened to you?” A heavy young woman of about seventeen bounded up to the picnic table and flopped down beside him, propping one bright red running shoe up on the seat to retie one of the laces.

“Hello, Arly,” Vic said. He didn’t sound all that thrilled to see her. “I’m surprised you’re asking.”

“Well, last time I saw you, you were dry, eh?” Arly said and laughed boisterously. I didn’t have to ask her who her father was—she had Archie Watson’s curly brown hair and the same wide face and serious nose. There was a slight weariness at the corner of her eyes, though, probably caused by too many people saying “you’d be very pretty if you’d only lose some weight.” Rather than shrink into herself, as many large young women do, she had chosen instead to flaunt it. The result was impressive. She wore a tight T-shirt which showed off her generous bosom, and while her shorts were loose fitting and comfortable, they were brief, and her legs were smooth and tanned. Her fire-engine red sneakers bespoke a personality that was not going to be influenced by twenty-first century weight-ism. She looked terrific.

Vic shrugged and turned his back on her. For a brief second, Arly looked like she was going to clobber him, then the moment passed and she turned her head to bathe David Kane in a heart melting, come-hither glance that made even my heart beat faster. This girl had “it”, whatever that is, and knew it.

At that moment, a large wasp buzzed in and landed on the picnic table next to Arly’s shoe, attracted, perhaps by the strong pheromones that the girl was pumping into the air. Both Arly and David Kane reacted wildly.

“Ahhh!” Arly shrieked, backing away. “Arrrgh!” Kane shouted, lifted his foot and pulverized the insect with the sole of his hiking boot, twisting it this way and that, just to make sure.

“Geez,” I said, “poor little wasp. It was just looking for some lunch, David.” I hate it when people kill things for no reason.

“Poor little nothing,” Kane said. He was pale, and his eyes shone. “They can be killers if they sting the wrong person.” Arly had returned to watch Kane scraping the remains of the wasp off his shoe.

“My hero,” she said, doing a Perils of Pauline thing and pretending to swoon. “You allergic, too?” She reached into a pocket of her knapsack and withdrew a thick tube, like a magic marker, and brandished it. “It’s an epi-pen,” she said. “I take it with me everywhere.” I’d heard of those—the emergency hypodermic things that allergic people carry with them in case they get stung, or in case they eat peanut butter, or whatever. I’d never seen one before, but I suppressed the urge to ask if I could see it. Arly was getting enough attention as it was.

Kane grinned and patted a pocket of his own knapsack. “Don’t leave home without it,” he said.

“Some of us,” Arly said, fixing me with a steely glare, “live in real fear of those little suckers. It doesn’t mean we’re bad people. See ya.” She was off, bouncing with a kind of full-of-life energy that made it impossible not to watch her.

Kane’s eyes met mine, and we exchanged a wordless comment. “Kids today”, we silently said. Vic and Sophie, after watching the wasp episode, had retreated into a private chat, so Kane dismissed them both and focused on me. His eyes were very clear and dark, and I could see myself reflected in their depths.

“We?” he said. “You said ‘we’ were on the trail.” At that moment, Rosie and Lug-nut came up to me, tails wagging. Being well brought up, I introduced the dogs to him, and he patted their heads. I couldn’t help noticing his hands. They looked strong and well-kept. On one finger, he wore a manly signet ring, platinum, I think, with a green stone that I’ll bet wasn’t glass.

“What breed are these guys?” he said. I suspected that he came from a world where a dog wasn’t a real dog unless it had the pedigree to prove it.

“Rosie’s a purebred yellow Lab,” I said, which was possibly true, although the only papers she had were the ones she occasionally peed on. “Lug-nut is a Kuskawa Retriever.” I wasn’t going to perjure myself by using the word pure in reference to Luggy.

“A Kuskawa Retriever? That’s not a breed I’m familiar with,” Kane said.

“They’re very rare,” I said.

“Oh, well. Nice dogs,” Kane said. “How’s the mascot coming?”

“I’ll have some stuff for you tonight,” I said, feeling a bit uncomfortable, as the work I was doing for the Kountry Pantree had already got me in a bit of hot water, and I wasn’t eager to spread the word that I was working for Kane. I needn’t have worried. Vic and Sophie had slipped away to the other picnic table, where a veritable banquet had been spread out.

“Grub’s up!” someone called. A tiny sneer appeared on David Kane’s upper lip, barely perceptible and not very attractive.

“I’ve got my own stuff in my pack,” Kane said quietly, grasping and caressing my elbow. “Caviar, a demi of champagne. Some brie. Would you care to join me somewhere a little more private?”

I wondered if he’d come prepared to hit on a likely female, and I just happened to be handy. I scanned the other members of the camera club and spotted one or two younger women who could also have been likely candidates for Kane’s attentions. I was acutely embarrassed. Not that I haven’t been propositioned before, but never by someone who was essentially my boss. Kane must have assumed that my “we” referred to the dogs.

“Thanks for the offer, David, but I came with a couple of guys who’d miss me,” I said. I could have said I was there with my boyfriend, but I’ve never been comfortable with the term, and it didn’t suit Becker anyway. “Partner” wasn’t accurate, and “date” sounded dorky. I’ve never been very smooth when it comes to rejecting a proposition, which has occasionally resulted in nightmare dates with guys I’m not even remotely interested in. I hate hurting people’s feelings. Luckily, Bryan came up and saved me.

“Hey,” he said. “They got chicken and cake! Do we have to wait for Dad?”

“I don’t see why you can’t start without him,” I said, feeling warm and strangely maternal. He was a cute kid, and he’d actually treated me like I was somebody important in his life—like it mattered what I thought.

“Cool!” he said, eyeing Kane.

“Hey, big fella,” Kane said in a friendly way. “Haven’t I seen you before somewhere?” Bryan looked disconcerted for a moment, then decided to ignore the question.

“C’mon guys,” he said to the dogs and darted away again. It was Kane’s turn to be embarrassed, and he apologized gracefully, replacing one set of assumptions with another. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said, standing up at once and stepping out of my personal space, which he had been invading. “I didn’t know you were married. Your son’s just like you.”

I let that go. If I had a son, I thought, he would probably be like me. The fact that Bryan wasn’t mine was, under the circumstances, none of Kane’s business. I could see Becker approaching along the path which led back to the Jeep. He stopped to have a word with Vic, then headed our way.

“Well, chicken and cake sounds good to me,” I said, standing too.

“It’s a little early for champagne, anyway,” Kane said lightly. “I’ll see you at the meeting tonight, Polly.” He touched my elbow again as if it were some secret erogenous zone that only he knew about, gave it a little squeeze and let it go. Then he walked quickly over to the picnic banquet, taking the time to tousle Bryan’s hair and whisper something to him. What a smoothie. He moved in on Arly, and I could hardly say I blamed him.

“I had an extra pair of jeans in the car,” Becker said, handing me a plastic bag and following Kane’s retreat with his eyes before turning back to me. “They may be a little big for you, but they’re dry.”

“Oh, excellent,” I said. My jeans were sticking to me in a clammy, unpleasant way, and the sun had gone in again. “I’ll just change in the bushes. Thanks.”

“I figured you’d be getting into my pants at some point this weekend,” Becker said. “It’s a little premature, but hey.” I swatted at him and he ducked, grinning.

“As you no doubt noticed, David Kane just joined the group,” I said. “I don’t think there’s any love lost between him and Vic Watson. Did you know that Vic almost fell off the Laingford lookout tower during a Camera Club outing last week? His lady friend saved him that time. He suggested he might have been ‘helped’ over the edge then as well.”

“Interesting,” Becker said. “You think Kane’s trying to do him harm?”

“Who knows? You might tell him to be careful, though. I wouldn’t trust David Kane any further than I could throw him.” Kane had slipped his arm around Arly Watson’s shoulders, and she put her plate down. Moments later they were slipping away from the group and heading for the trail. Champagne and caviar and a rich bachelor to boot. I just hoped she knew what she was getting into.

“Hungry?” Becker said. “I have picnic stuff in my backpack, but there’s all that food over there. Vic said to help ourselves.”

“Perfect,” I said. “You go ahead. Bryan’s already in there somewhere. I’ll just go do the Superman quick-change thing.” Becker had seen the elbow squeeze from Kane, and it had made a tiny worry line appear between his eyebrows. I hoped that he hadn’t read anything into it, but just in case, I put my face very close to his and stared into his green-gold eyes.

“My jeans aren’t the only thing I’m wearing that’s soaked,” I whispered in my best phone-sex voice. “I want you to know that when I come out of the bushes in your pants, I won’t be wearing any underwear.” The green eyes got a shade greener.

“You are an evil woman,” he whispered back and kissed me. Kissing is an art that can be taught, but only up to a point. You have to have a natural talent for it, and only instinct will tell you what kind of kisses are appropriate in public. Becker is the greatest kisser I’ve ever met, and I don’t think it was a required course at cop-school. He’s a cup-your-face-in-his-hand kind of kisser, as if the lips he’s kissing are slightly fragile and require special care. We hadn’t displayed much physical affection in public—both too shy, really, and the matter had never come up, so to speak. This was the kind of kiss that you could do in front of your grandmother, but it left me weak-kneed and slightly out of breath. I tottered up the rocks to the trail to find an appropriate bush for changing behind.

As luck would have it, I had just stripped down to my damp gotchies when I heard someone approaching and ducked down out of sight. It was Kane and Arly. I saw the red sneakers and designer hiking boots go by through a gap in the bushes.

“. . . don’t need much experience, because we’re going to be computerized,” Kane was saying.

“At Dad’s we have one of those stupid old-fashioned tills to make the customers think we’re, like, pioneers,” Arly said. “It’s a real pain.”

“Why don’t you come work for me?” Kane said. “We have a few cashier’s jobs left, and the benefits are great. What are you getting now? Minimum wage, I’ll bet . . .” The girl muttered something, and Kane laughed and continued his mesmerizing headhunter pitch as they carried on down the trail. Great, I thought. He’s stealing staff right out from under Archie’s nose. His own daughter, no less. Vic’s brother the grocer was going to go ballistic.

Becker’s jeans weren’t too big—I’m not exactly a stick-insect myself, and I balled up my own soggy dungarees (along with my undies) and stuffed them into the plastic bag. The jeans were baggy and comfortable, but a bit long, and I had to roll them up at the hem. Something crinkled in the back pocket, and I reached in and found a business card. “K. Johanssen: Custom Jewellery” it said, with an address in Sikwan, the next biggest town south of Laingford.

Now, I am not normally a jealous woman. Far from it. I’m dangerously lax when it comes to keeping an eye out for the signs that most women pick up with internal feminine radar. This has meant that in the past one romantic partner actually drifted away to the point of having offspring with another woman before I noticed. Maybe it’s because I’ve never bothered to invest much in a relationship. In the case of Becker, though, I found myself doing and thinking things that were totally against type. Seeing the word “jeweller” on the business card I found in the back pocket of Becker’s jeans set off a peculiar and totally illogical chain-reaction in my brain. 1. Jewellers make personal adornments for women, primarily. 2. Becker had never given me any jewellery, therefore his connection with K. Johanssen had nothing to do with me, therefore 3. it had something to do with another woman who was not me, to whom Becker should not be giving jewellery.

Jeez, Polly, I told myself severely, before my train of thought screamed out of control down the Rockies. Mister K. Johanssen (or Ms.) could have been burglarized and called Becker to investigate. (Nope—Becker didn’t wear jeans on duty.) He could have dropped in to the jeweller to order a nice brooch for his mom’s birthday. (Nope. His mom died three years ago.) His sister then, the one in Calgary. I applied the brakes, Big Time, and crammed the stupid card back in the pocket from whence it came. Jealously was a new sensation for me, and I didn’t like it at all. A great big, cumbersome brain-scrambler, it felt like. A hot and heavy helmet, capable of wiping tender thoughts, like the ones Becker’s kiss had left me with, clean off the blackboard of my mind. Unlike jealousy, denial is something I’m used to. By the time I got back to the picnic site, I’d stuffed the jeweller’s name into the very back of my mind where I kept my fear of bears, my unhappy childhood and my terror of tax-forms.

The scene which greeted my arrival scattered any remaining thoughts quite effectively. Vic was on the ground again, Sophie was crouched over him, and Becker was on his cell phone.