Читать книгу Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle - H. Mel Malton - Страница 7

It’s okay, Babe, if they hurt you,

God doesn’t care how it’s done.

God wants you there with a smile on your face

making sure that your man’s having fun.

—Shepherd’s Pie

“Did you touch anything?”

“Nope. Just got my tootsies in a little blood,” I said and felt my face drain like a bathtub. Damn. Keeling over in Mark Becker’s arms a second time just would not do. Especially since Morrison had shifted his butt out of the driver’s seat and had come pounding in behind Becker when I called, or rather, screamed for help.

Morrison was really awfully big. How had he got on the force? Maybe he was regulation size when he was hired and ballooned afterwards. Some cops just get sucked into the Tim Horton’s vortex and never escape, I guess.

I sat down on a kitchen chair and stuck my head between my knees, breathing deeply until the world stopped spinning. When I looked up, Morrison was standing there with a glass of water in his hand.

“Shock, right?” he said. He was smiling kindly.

“Thanks. Yup. Shock.” I schlooped the water in a fair imitation of Lug-nut. Becker was making a phone call.

“… photographer, the works,” he was saying. When he hung up, his face was grim. “Judging from the amount of blood on the floor, I’d say Travers bought it right here,” he said. “You go wait in the car, Ms. Deacon. We don’t want to spoil the scene.”

Oh, so it was back to the formal Ms. Deacon, was it? What did he think I was going to do? The dishes? Still, he had blood to examine, and I had a dog to feed and my friend to find. I figured, accurately as it turned out, that this would plunk the crime directly in Francy’s lap, and I knew she couldn’t have done it. I had to find her before they did.

“Do you have any objection, Detective Becker, to my just getting a little dog food from that cupboard, or do you think that might constitute tampering with the evidence?”

He thought seriously for a full minute. Gone was the sense of humour, if it had ever been there.

“All right,” he said, finally. I picked up the feed bucket and walked towards the cupboard.

“Wait,” he said. He removed his nightstick from its sheath and used it to open the cupboard door. The bag of kibble was open, with an empty margarine container lying on top. I looked at it closely before touching it.

“No bloody fingerprints,” I said. “I think we can safely assume that the victim was not bludgeoned to death with Kibbles and Bits.” Morrison snorted, but Becker just glared at me. I filled the bucket and stalked out, trying desperately to remain dignified. I don’t think it worked. Truth was, I wanted to stay and watch them detect, but I was too proud to say so.

Lug-nut greeted my arrival with so much exuberance that I had no choice but to sit down and bond with him. He wolfed the food and turned over on his back again, his tail wagging so hard his whole body jack-knifed in the dirt, sending up clouds of dust. I clung to him for comfort and thought about what to do.

The Schreier’s place was only half a kilometre away to the east. It would take me ten minutes to walk there, less if I took the bush trail. If Francy was there, I could at least warn her that the police were coming. I had little doubt that she already knew what was going on, but Francy thought she was invincible. She led her life walking right on the edge of things. Without a friend there, this time, I was afraid that she would end up with more than bruises.

Becker had ordered me to go wait in the car. I looked at the front door of the house, which I had slammed behind me. Morrison and Becker were probably sifting through the debris, oblivious to everything but the evidence—the evidence which might send Francy to jail.

What had happened last night? I pictured John coming home from Kelso’s tavern, liquored-up and horny maybe, or just spoiling for a fight. I knew how Francy felt about having sex with her husband when he was drunk. It was a battle every time, which she sometimes lost. We had been over it more than a dozen times. I would urge her to get out, go to the Women’s Shelter in Sikwan, before it was too late. I urged her to get help, get counselling. She always said that John didn’t mean it, that he always begged for forgiveness afterwards, and she was content with that. He would never do it again, she said. She also said that if I reported John to the police, she would hate me forever. I believed her. Now, when the police were well and truly involved whether she liked it or not, I discovered that I wanted to protect her from them. Go figure. Somehow, I felt that the whole mess was my fault. I should have tried harder.

Maybe, last night, the baby had been crying. Maybe the dog had been howling. Maybe something was said or done that made Francy lose her patience, her stoic “I can handle it” attitude. I imagined her grabbing the shotgun from its rack beside the kitchen door—I hadn’t even looked to see if it was there. The cops would, though.

John kept it loaded, I knew that. It was his “protection”, he said. From what, he never bothered to explain. Maybe, like Spit’s gun, it was for the bears.

Maybe Francy blasted a hole through John as he reeled towards her with a smashed beer bottle in his hand, his eyes piggy and insane. I could imagine it and I didn’t blame her one bit, if that’s what happened.

What I couldn’t see was Francy loading the body into the truck and driving it to the dump. She didn’t drive, for one thing, and she would never leave Beth, for another. What I couldn’t see her doing was whacking Spit Morton over the head to cover her crime. Somebody had, I was certain, but it wasn’t Francy.

Although it was obvious that someone had blasted a hole in John Travers in his own kitchen, I was sure that Francy had not dumped the body.

“Hush, now,” I said to Lug-nut, who whined once and then sat looking at me as I tore off on the woods path to the Schreier’s place.

There are black bears in them thar woods. The dump attracts them, and they are not as afraid of humans as they ought to be. I had never met one, but everybody has monsters and bears are mine. After my parents were killed when I was ten, I woke up screaming night after night, chased by bears. Black ones, grizzlies, polar bears, vaguely bear-like villains, and once, horribly, a sweet, murderous teddy-bear—the result of my well-meaning aunt’s gift of a fuzzy Paddington to comfort me at night.

George had told me that the best thing to do if you meet a bear is to run away. Francy said climb a tree. Eddie Schreier said lie down and pretend you’re dead, but I think he was kidding. Everyone has a different answer. Rico Amato, the antique dealer, assured me that bears in this part of the world are a myth, perpetuated by macho hunters who need an excuse to wander off into the bush and get drunk.

Aunt Susan advocates a calm about-face and a little song as you walk away. I can just see me coming nose-to-muzzle with a bruin, turning my back on it and humming “O Canada”. Not likely.

This is why I took the woods path to the Schreier’s place at a brisk trot. The sun had gone in behind a dark cloud, and the woods were gloomy. It was late autumn, and there was an added danger; not only were there bears, there were hunters, looking for deer, moose, or basically anything that was moving. I was not wearing the requisite orange jacket.

The woods smelled vaguely of cat pee, the way they do that time of year. It had been a wet season, and the piles of leaves were starting to decompose. After my recent brush with death, the smell was more than appropriate. It made the breath catch at the back of my throat, and as I was a pack-a-day smoker, my breath as I ran was not coming particularly smoothly.

I kept my ears open for snufflings or gruntings, but made it all the way there without meeting a soul.

There was smoke trickling out of the chimney of the sprawling bungalow, and Carla Schreier’s old Dodge was in the driveway. There was no sign of the pram, but the Schreier place had a wide front door. Now that I was out of the woods, so to speak, I slowed down. No sense in arriving out of breath, especially as I had bad news to impart, and ought to deliver it with some semblance of decorum, as Aunt Susan would say.

The Schreiers, Carla, Samson and their son Eddie, were members of an obscure Christian sect whose purpose included the gathering of souls. Shortly after I arrived in the area, I was approached in a slightly nervous, albeit friendly manner by Carla Schreier in the A&P.

She was very pretty, with soft, shoulder-length hair which curled around her face. She wore too much make-up, but it was applied with skill. Her flowered cotton dress was all flounces and ruffles—rather young for her—and from a distance you might mistake her for a woman in her twenties. Up close you could see the slight sagging around her neck, indicating that she was probably closer to forty than twenty.

She had been staring at me while I was squeezing avocados in the produce section. I didn’t know who she was, then. She was just a woman who was dressed for a party when there was no party in sight. Her eyes and the way she was trying to get my attention made me nervous. She came bouncing up and touched my arm.

“You’re Susan Kennedy’s niece, aren’t you?” she said. (Susan is my mother’s sister.) The woman’s voice was breathy and child-like, the kind that makes people get all protective.

“Yes,” I said.

“I thought so. You look just like her.” This wasn’t true. Susan is handsome, dark and strong. I’m plain and weedy.

“I heard you’d moved here from the city,” the woman said. “Your aunt’s a good friend of Samson’s—my husband. We get all our feed from her, you know.”

“Really. That’s good of you.” Later, Susan had some less than friendly things to say about Samson Schreier, but I won’t mention them here.

“Well, her prices are a bit higher than the new place on the highway, but her stock is always fresh and she delivers.”

“I’m sure she does. Well, nice to meet you Ms…?”

“Schreier. Missus. Carla. And you’re Pauline, aren’t you?”

“That’s right.” Something made me not say “call me Polly,” and I soon found out what it was.

“Well, Pauline, I just wanted to welcome you to the community and to ask you if you’ve accepted Jesus Christ as your personal saviour.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I just know you’d be interested in coming to our meetings. We have them every Sunday in the Chapel of the Holy Lamb, which is really not that far from where I hear you are staying.” She was so enthusiastic. Reminded me of Lori Pinkerton, trying to get me to join the cheerleading team at Laingford High.

“Well, actually, I…”

“Oh, don’t give me an answer now, Pauline. I know you’ll want to think about it, but I want you to know that we would truly love to have you come and be a part of the glorious mystery of the love of our Lord. Ten o’clock sharp. See you on Sunday!” She retreated, trotting on her little patent-leather heels and making a quick left into the bakery section. She had pressed a tract into my hand and I looked at it, dazed.

“ARE YOU WANDERING, LOST, HUNGRY FOR MEANING?” A miserable-looking young person gazed heavenwards. There were little rays of light coming out of the clouds. Very artistic. “JESUS IS THE ANSWER,” it said. I sighed.

When Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons came to my door in Toronto, I’d just usually tell them I was a witch—a Wiccan—but it didn’t seem like a good idea to do that in Cedar Falls. It would get back to Susan, who would be derisive. Either that, or the zealots would burn down my cabin. The fact is, I’m not big on organized religion of any kind, and it’s taken me a long time to shake off the residue of guilt left by my blessedly short career as a child-Catholic.

I shoved the tract deeply into my pocket and headed down the tinned vegetable aisle. I met Carla Schreier again in Dairy and she gave me a radiant smile. It was all I could do not to bare my teeth and hiss “six, six, six” at her.

I had never come face to face with her again after that. Although she was Francy and John’s nearest neighbour, the Travers and the Schreiers were not friendly. Carla and Samsons son, Eddie, was interested in cars and liked to hang out in John’s shop, but he did so against his parent’s wishes. Francy had told me once that the Schreiers thought their neighbours were “ungodly”.

“Probably because we show that kid a bit of fun once in a while,” she had said, bitterly. “Carla’s a bitch, and Samson’s straight out of the Old Testament.” Francy’s venom was perplexing. Carla hadn’t seemed like a bitch to me. A little over the top, maybe, but fluffy and warm. Just not my kind of warm.

Meeting Carla again after three years of careful avoidance was going to be tricky. I rang the doorbell and ran though a few opening lines in my head. A curtain twitched at a side window.

“Hi, Mrs. Schreier, remember me? The lost soul you tried to recruit a while back?”

“Hi, Carla. Can Francy come out and play?”

I had no proof that Francy was there, but where else could she be? I was convinced that she was hiding, that she knew there would be trouble. But would Carla Schreier be the kind of woman to harbour a fugitive? It seemed unlikely.

The door opened. Eddie, looking guilty as sin, stood there with his mouth hanging open. He was tall for his age, which was sixteen. His body had run away with him in the past year, growing so fast he looked perpetually astonished by it. He was six-foot-two in his socks, his elbows and knees protruded from clothes which could never hope to keep up, and his feet were enormous. His hair, blonde and baby-fine, was cut fashionably short, which was imprudent, considering that his ears might have been happier with a little camouflage. His eyes were blue, his face tanned from outdoor work and his prominent Adam’s apple bobbed up and down like a hamster caught in his throat.

‘Oh. Hi, Polly. How are you?” he said. He made no move to let me in.

“Hi, Eddie. Is your Mom at home?” This threw him.

“Uh, yeah. Yes. She is.”

“Do you think I could talk to her, please?”

“Sure. I guess. Let me check.” He backed away from the door and only just managed to keep from closing it in my face. Eddie was normally very polite. It was one of the things I really liked about him. Something was definitely up.

“Mom!” I heard him yell. He hadn’t moved far away from the door and was calling over his shoulder. “It’s Miss Deacon, Mom.”

“Ms.” I said, out of habit. I heard a distant garbled murmur and then Eddie returned, opening the door wide enough for me to enter and casting a furtive glance past me out into the front yard.

“Come on in,” he said.

As I moved past him into the hallway, he was still peering out into the road. I tapped him on the shoulder. “Eddie,” I said. He jumped.

“Huh?”

“When the police come, let your mother answer the door, okay? You’re an open book.”

“A what? How’d you know? Are they coming now?”

“They’ll be a little while yet. Show me where Francy and your mother are.”

Silent, he led me towards the kitchen.