Читать книгу Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle - H. Mel Malton - Страница 24

She’s waiting for me, fathoms down,

where light’s a rumour

death and pain the only game in town.

—Shepherd’s Pie

I have an old-fashioned alarm clock. It winds up. It’s brass. It made a lot of noise when it hit the wall, and the glass front made a satisfying shattering sound just before the ringing stopped.

Lug Nut barked at it for two minutes as it lay dying on the carpet.

“Leave it, Lug-nut. It’s toast.” My head pounded. Too much brandy. I’d killed the bottle after Becker left. At least I think I did. It was empty, anyway.

I heated up some coffee and sat carefully, trying not to move too much. Perversely, my mind told me that if only I had left some hooch in the bottle, I’d be able to have some in my morning coffee. The thought made me retch. Lug-nut, sensing my discomfort, shut up and started tiptoeing around, which was wise. I was not in the best of moods.

The goats were yelling their hairy heads off as I approached the barn. I banged around a bit, muttering. If I was in a lousy frame of mind, there was no need for anybody else to be cheery.

I was carrying the milk up to the dairy room off George’s house when he pulled up in the truck. He positively scampered out of the cab. Scampered. I growled.

“So,” he said, stretching as if he’d just got out of bed. He probably had. “Lovely day, yes?”

I glowered. He stopped in mid-stretch and stared at me.

“Oh. Oh, dear.” He didn’t say anything else for a while, just fell into step beside me and followed me into the dairy.

I strained the milk while George set up the pasteurizer for me.

“Thanks,” I said. “Had a good time last night, did you?”

“It was fair to middling,” he said, backtracking. “The beer was flat.”

“The entertainment was pretty good, though. Local cop in bust-up with Cedar Falls thugs. Story at eleven.”

“I thought he did very well, Polly.”

“Yup. He did. Regular boy scout. Pure as the driven snow.”

George’s face went through a series of wrinkly gymnastics as he tried to figure it out. It can’t have been very difficult.

“It didn’t work out?”

“Bingo.”

“Too bad, Polly.”

“Thanks, George.”

“I won’t say that I told you so.” People in love can be so annoying. He was glowing.

“Have you and Susan set a date, yet?” I said.

“A date? For what?”

“Don’t tell me your intentions toward her aren’t honourable.”

“You mean marry her? Polly, we are having a wonderful time. You want us to ruin it by getting married?”

“Just a thought, George. Forget I mentioned it. Can I borrow the truck? I’ve got to go into town.” I didn’t have any reason to go anywhere, but I had to go somewhere.

“Certainly. Yes. Do you want to talk about it?”

“About what?”

“About your policeman.”

“He’s not my anything.” I finished pouring the milk into the pasteurizer, banged the buckets into the sink and started washing them out with a full stream of noisy, you-can’t-talk-above-it water.

“Ah,” said George and left me to my misery.

Back up at the cabin, I changed out of my overalls and into a clean pair of jeans. I’d go to the mall and shop. Not that I had much extra cash, but sometimes spending twenty bucks at Zellers and the Dollar Store on stupid plastic junk and cheap Chinese candy can cheer me up.

I found myself singing the blues as I freshened up Lug-nut’s water bowl. Well, at least I was singing, even if it was all about my baby having left me and my dog having been busted for possession.

I went to the closet where I kept the bag of dog food I’d lifted from Francy’s place. I scooped a bunch of the kibble into the bowl and watched with fascination as a fat roll of twenties rolled out of the bag and bounced across the floor. Lug-nut grabbed it before I did.

“DROP IT!” The dog almost dropped his teeth as well. I apologized to him and picked up the money.

There were twenty twenties, rolled up and secured with a rubber band, greasy from dwelling in the bag with the Kibbles and Bits. John’s four hundred bucks. No question. A perfect hiding place. If he hadn’t been killed, not a soul would have touched the dog food.

After I counted it, I just stared at it. Four hundred bucks may be peanuts to some people, but it sure wasn’t to me. And it wouldn’t be to Francy. What was I supposed to do with it now?

There was no way the police could get any information from it at this point. I’d handled it. The dog had slobbered on it. It was just currency, covered in kibble crumbs. Francy needed it now, not six months down the road, after the cops got through with it and gave it back, which was not necessarily a sure thing. Not that Becker wouldn’t be scrupulous. If he was the kind of guy to contemplate busting his date, then he’d deal with the cash by the book, but there are no guarantees in this world, and this money was real and unmarked.

I pushed the wad of bills into my pocket and went to see Francy.

I knew there was something wrong as soon as I pulled up in George’s truck, a little after ten. I could hear Beth wailing with the kind of full-lunged desperation of the baby who has been left too long on her own. I opened the cab door and ran, Lug-nut at my heels, barking.

I opened the front door and found Francy in the kitchen, hanging from one of the big beams over the table. There was a chair knocked over and she turned, very slowly. Her face was black and absolutely horrible. The room stank of shit and piss. There were no beer bottles on the table this time. Just a teapot and a cup. I dived for the phone.

Becker and Morrison arrived after twenty-five hellish minutes. I stood on the porch, holding Beth in my arms, rocking her back and forth, back and forth. She was still crying, but the panic in the sound had changed to one of exhausted distress. She was probably hungry, definitely wet, but my experience with babies was nonexistent, I was in no shape to change a diaper and I had no milk in my breasts.

It was Morrison who held me. He came up the porch steps two at a time and took me in his arms, and it was like being swallowed by a big soft pillow. He produced a hanky the size of a young flag, and I buried my face in it. It smelled of lavender.

Becker plunged stone-faced into the house and emerged a moment later, hurrying to the cruiser to radio for help. Soon Beth was quiet and so was I. Morrison’s arms were padded and comfortable, and I felt like I could sleep for year and a half.

Becker came back from the cruiser, and Morrison let go of me gently, easing away with his arms kind of spread, as if he were afraid I might fall over.

“You okay?” Becker said.

“No,” I said and tried to smile. My face cracked.

“We’ll get you out of here soon. Can you tell me what happened?”

“I came to see Francy. I heard Beth screaming, and I knew something was wrong. I ran inside and found her—like that. I called 911. Grabbed Beth. She was in her carrier right where Francy, right where her mother… right there. I took her outside. Oh, God, Becker. I can’t take the baby, too. The dog, yes, but not the baby.” I know it’s ugly. But that’s what I said. I remember it.

“You don’t have to take the baby, Polly. It’s okay.” He reached out a hand to touch me, but I pulled away from him.

“We’ll call the Children’s Aid,” he said. “They’ll take care of the kid and get in touch with the family.” He used the kind of voice you use on a small child. I whimpered.

“Who did this, Becker?” I said. “Who would kill Francy? How could she let someone hang her up? Francy. She was the gentlest, sweetest woman. She put up with so much.”

George came, and soon someone from the Children’s Aid showed up. I wouldn’t let go of the baby until I had looked deeply into the eyes of the worker they’d sent. She was young, younger than me, but she looked capable and concerned. She had to pry Beth loose.

George took me home to his place and put me to bed in the spare room. I guess I had come apart, a bit, like Francy had done after Eddie bonked John on the head. Although my memory was fine, I wasn’t planning to do any sleuthing for a while. All I wanted to do was sleep.

“You’re on overload,” Cass Wright said. George had called her after we got home. She was my GP, one of the last of the breed that makes house calls. She was ancient.

“You’ve seen too much and your brain can’t cope with it,” Cass said. “Put this under your tongue, Polly. It’ll make you sleep.” “This” was a pill, yellow and menacingly small. “The police said they’d talk to you when you’re ready.”

Not long after the little yellow pill dissolved, I began to drift away, aware that George was right there if I needed him. His hand, which had been holding mine, kind of disembodied itself and started to float around the room like a pale, freckled starship. I addressed the hand.

“There’s treasure in my pocket,” I told it. It patted me gently. “Really,” I said. “Four hundred treasures. Doggy food.” I was gone.

Hours later, when I returned to the land of the living, I felt better, although my tongue felt like a towel.

I went to the bathroom to get a drink of water and stared blearily at my reflection in the mirror. I had a little trouble focusing. “Polly Deacon, Private Eye,” I said aloud. Then I giggled. I guess there was something mildly hypnotic in the yellow pill, unless I was just going mad.

“Polly? That you?” George called from the hall.

“Yup. I’ll be out in a sec.” I splashed cold water on my face and stuck my head under the tap, trying to erase the Don King bed-head I’d woken up with.

I heard George shuffle up to the door and lean against it. “Becker the policeman is here,” he said quietly through the wood. “Are you ready for speaking to him or do you want to go back to bed for a while?”

“No. I’ll talk to him.” I combed out my soggy locks with my fingers and stopped caring how I looked.

Becker was sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of coffee. He started to get up when I came in, which was gallant but unnecessary. Embarrassed, I flapped my hand to make him sit down again.

“Hey, Polly.”

“Mark.”

George muttered something about the goats and went outside.

“Are you feeling any better?” Becker said.

“Some. But whatever the doctor gave me seems to have left me a wee bit stoned. It’s legal, though. Prescription. Don’t worry.”

“I can come back later if you’d rather,” he said.

“No, it’s fine. Really. It’s not as if you haven’t seen me stoned before.”

I offered it as a giggle, as a test, but he didn’t smile. Whatever crashed and burned the night before seemed to be permanent. I could really have used a hug from him—or at least some sign that our night together was at least in his thoughts, but there was nothing. I felt cheap and stupid.

“When did you last see Francy Travers?” he said.

“You mean alive?”

“Yes, alive.”

“I helped her clean up the—mess in her kitchen yesterday. About noon or half past.”

“Did she seem okay?”

“Well, she certainly wasn’t swinging from the rafters at that point.”

“Hey, now. Easy, eh? I’ve got to ask these things.”

“I know. Sorry. It’s stress.”

Becker stared hard at me for a moment, perhaps trying to gauge how tranquilized I really was. My pupils were probably huge. I felt like I was wrapped in cotton wool. Next time he spoke, it was as if he were speaking to a rebellious teenager. He sounded patient, reasonable, with just a hint of anger boiling just below the surface.

“So she was fine when you left her… when?”

“About two o’clock, I guess. And she was still fine when I dropped off some groceries for her a couple of hours later.”

“She didn’t seem depressed?”

“Not at all. She seemed happier than she’s been in a while. She was thinking about ways to get her life back together. She was looking forward to it. Hey, wait. You’re not seriously thinking suicide, are you?”

“It looks that way, Polly.”

“No way. No goddamn way, Becker,” I said. I was getting mad, really fast. “Francy would no more commit suicide than you would. Her father hanged himself. Way back when she was a kid. She was the one to find him. There is just no way she would do the same thing. She saw what it looks like.” Poe, who was listening, ruffled his feathers and shifted uneasily.

“So, it runs in the family, eh?”

“Jesus, Becker. No!”

“She left a note.”

“What?”

“There was note on the table. She confessed to John’s murder, said she couldn’t stand the guilt and asked for someone to take care of Beth.”

“Somebody else wrote it. No way she did. Who was it addressed to?”

“It wasn’t addressed to anybody. It was just there. And it was written on the same kind of notepaper you got your warning message on. I’m surprised you didn’t see it when you found her. We think she was trying to scare you away from being involved.”

I knew I had to stay coherent. I knew I had to remain calm and reasonable, but I was so angry I was shaking. Poe started clicking his beak.

“You—are—so—wrong,” I said.

“Try to accept this, Polly.”

“Try to accept it? Accept that my best friend would commit suicide when she was finally free? Accept that she would write a suicide note and not address it to me? Accept that the police are so fucking stupid that they can be taken in by a planted suicide note and a nice neat answer to the murder of John Travers? I don’t think so.”

“Insulting me isn’t going to help,” Becker said, standing up.

“What is? You want some evidence? You want me to do your job for you? It was Freddy at the dump who did the squirrel thing, Becker. He practically told me so.”

“So, Francy Travers got Freddy to do her dirty work. It’s no surprise. We were on to him.”

“Bullshit. You were on to nobody. You don’t know what the hell you’re doing in this case and you never have. You’ve been trying to pin this whole thing on Francy since it started, and now somebody’s tied it up in a nice little bundle for you and you’re glad, aren’t you? You’re glad Francy’s dead and you’ve got a note to tell you whodunnit. Check out the handwriting, you moron. It won’t be hers.”

“Look, I know you’re angry. I would be too, if it was my friend dead. But you’re still in shock, and you’re saying whatever comes into your head.”

“I am not in shock. And what’s in my head makes a hell of a lot more sense than what’s in yours.”

“I haven’t been killing my brain cells with drugs, Polly.”

I flew forward and attacked him, full out. I really wanted to hurt him. He wasn’t expecting it, and my adrenaline must have kicked in, because I landed a few vicious blows before he grabbed both my wrists and twisted me very suddenly so that I was lying face down on the floor, his knee in my back. I felt the handcuffs cold against my skin. It was nothing like my sick little fantasies in the hospital corridor had been. It hurt. It was humiliating. I felt like a jerk. Poe went nuts, cawing and flapping his wings.

The front door banged, and George was in the room. All I could see were his shoes. Becker hauled me to my feet by my arm, none too gently, giving me an angry little shake when I pulled away from him.

“Polly! What’s going on?” George said. “Detective Becker. What are you doing?”

“Pauline Deacon, you are under arrest for assaulting a police officer,” Becker said. Finally, he was smiling.