Читать книгу A Killing Frost - Margaret Haffner - Страница 12

‘Mom,’ Morgan called, ‘do we have any more strawberry jam?’

Catherine stuck her head out of the bathroom door and clouds of steam billowed into the hall. ‘If the jar in the cupboard’s empty, then we don’t.’ She shut the door again and pulled her cotton blouse over her head. As she straightened the collar, she remembered the preserves in the basement.

After she had dressed she rushed down the stairs to the dank basement and headed straight for the shelves under the north window. She peered at the dusty labels, squinting in the gloom. The first shelf seemed to be all vegetables. She tried the next one. Peaches … rhubarb … apricot jam … strawberry jam. ‘Aha!’ She snatched up the jar and squinted at it. It looked normal, but she’d examine it more closely when she got upstairs into the light. As she turned towards the stairs, something about the dirty window caught her attention. There was an almost perfect hand print in the dust in the centre of the glass. She studied it for a moment, then, without touching the pane, Catherine stretched out her own palm over the imprint to measure the size. Her fingers fell a good inch shorter than the template. Biting her lip she tried to picture the window as she first saw it. The window had been dirty, but the grime had been uniform.

She stared around the basement. Nothing seemed different … missing, but she couldn’t be sure. She stifled a gasp as the hair rose on the back of her neck. Maybe those sounds in the night hadn’t been just a cat-and-dog fight.

Curious, Catherine reached up again to touch the window pane. She hesitated, then ran her finger through the edge of the hand print as if it were red hot. The mark was on the inside. The familiar lump of ice settled into her stomach as if it had never left and sent its chill through her veins.

She sat down on the bottom stair and put her chin in her hands. Maybe it had been Mr Grant … maybe he’d noticed the window was loose. Maybe she was wrong about the print not being there before. But it was fresh – there wasn’t even a thin film of dust over it. Maybe Morgan had let some workman in … a meter reader or something.

Catherine raced up the stairs. ‘Morgan!’

Her daughter stepped from the kitchen. ‘What were you doing down there?’ she asked.

‘What?’ The question didn’t register for a second. ‘Oh, getting jam.’

Morgan looked at her mother’s empty hands. ‘Where is it?’

Catherine, too, stared at her hands. ‘I must’ve left it downstairs.’

Morgan shook her head with exasperation. ‘I’ll get it.’

‘No, I will.’

Morgan’s brow furrowed in puzzlement.

‘I’ve got to get something else anyway,’ Catherine lied. No way she was letting her daughter go down there … not if anyone off the street could just waltz in. ‘Oh, by the way. Has anyone come to the house? Meter readers? Repair men?’

Morgan shook her head. ‘Nobody. You know I wouldn’t let them in if you weren’t here. Why?’

Catherine tugged at her ear, a sure sign she was agitated. ‘I asked the landlord to make a few repairs. I was just wondering if something was done while I was away.’

‘Not that I know of,’ Morgan replied, dismissing the subject. ‘My toast’s getting cold. What about the jam?’

‘Coming.’ Catherine hurried back down to the basement and grabbed the jar. Back upstairs, she slammed the cellar door and shot the thin bolt home. It wouldn’t keep much out but psychologically it helped.

‘I saw a poster for a dance at the high school,’ Catherine said to her daughter at dinner.

Morgan glanced up but then returned to chasing her peas around the plate. The sun glinted off her shiny brown hair and Catherine’s heart filled with love. If only life could become normal again.

‘It’s this Friday night, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah. In the gym.’

‘Are you going?’

‘No … I don’t know anyone.’

Catherine took another forkful of broccoli quiche and chewed slowly. Since Paul was no longer with them, they ate a lot of vegetarian meals. ‘What about that boy Jason? What’s his last name?’

‘Royce.’

‘Like the garage?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You said you talk to him sometimes.’

Morgan wriggled uncomfortably. ‘Only walking from class to class.’

‘Maybe if you took your lunch to school instead of coming home you’d have more time to make friends. You could eat with Jason or even some of the others …’

‘Jason goes home too.’ Morgan pouted mutinously, her warning to drop the subject. ‘Anyway, I want to come home. I can relax here.’

Catherine sighed. She did understand Morgan’s withdrawal but it wouldn’t be good for them to remain the hermits they’d been in Kingsport. After all, one of the reasons for coming to Atawan was to leave the past behind and get on with normal life.

‘If you ever want to bring one of your school mates home, it’s OK.’ She watched the set expression on Morgan’s face turn to granite. She didn’t press the topic, but wished things were going as smoothly for her daughter as they were for her.

She opened all the windows in the car for the forty-minute drive to work and let the warm breeze blow through her hair. It was good to be away from the large cities with their dirt and their noise. The Agromics facility was in the country, halfway between Atawan and Glenview, the larger town. She was enjoying the life of a visiting scientist at the research labs.

She had spent the first week sorting her papers. Like all scientists, she tried to keep up with the literature, scanning the top journals in her field of mycology and checking Current Contents for interesting titles in other publications. She religiously photocopied each article, or if she didn’t have access to the journal, she sent out requests for reprints. In this way she had generated hundreds of pages of information which she never had time to catalogue, much less read. Now she had the luxury of time and she dove into the pile like an avid reader into a stack of best sellers.

Martha Morin stuck her head in at the door. ‘Going for coffee this morning?’ she asked, her homely face radiating good humour.

Catherine put down the Journal of Fungal Systematics and stretched. ‘You bet.’

Martha led the way down to the coffee room, a small lounge with a few battered tables and wobbly chairs. A coffee machine was set up in the corner. Catherine poured herself half a cup, remembering the caffeine jolt she had received her first day. Nodding politely, they squeezed past a small group of white-coated men and women and installed themselves at a small table in the corner.

‘How are you enjoying Atawan?’ Martha asked as she wiped the table with the sleeve of her lab coat.

‘It’s OK. Quiet. I thought a lot of people from Agromics would be living there, but I haven’t run into anyone I recognize.’

‘Most of us live in Glenview – I don’t know why. It’s about the same distance away. Perhaps because it’s a little bigger …”

Martha gestured to someone at the other table. ‘Steve used to live in Atawan, but when he and his wife, Tracy, split up he moved to Glenview.’

Catherine’s ears pricked up. ‘Tracy? That wouldn’t be Tracy Tomachuk by any chance, would it?’ Her cup clattered against the formica table.

‘Yes. The woman who was murdered. You must’ve heard about that.’

‘Yes … ?’

‘Steve was married to her.’

Catherine looked over at the other table. There were only two men, and one she recognized as the personnel officer, Wayne somebody. The beefy one with the moustache must be Steve. ‘What does Mr Tomachuk do?’ she asked.

‘Not Tomachuk. That was his wife’s name before she married and she didn’t change it. Steve’s surname is Bliss. He’s the radiation technician. He’s good, but he’s got a temper and knows how to hold a grudge.’ Martha ran a hand over her unruly mop of grey hair. ‘You’ve got to stay on Steve’s good side if you’re going to do any radioactive work.’

Unable to pull her eyes away from Steve Bliss, Catherine studied him. He was good-looking in a florid, macho way. His nose, slightly off centre, might have been broken at one time. ‘I suppose he was questioned about his wife’s death …’

‘Ex-wife. The cops were all over him for a couple of days … the break-up hadn’t been exactly cordial.’

From his face, Catherine’s gaze strayed downwards. Inevitably, his top buttons were undone and she glimpsed the shine of a thick gold chain nestled in his dark hair. As if aware of her regard, he smoothed his collar, showing off a chunky gold ring adorning his little finger. It clattered against the table when he lowered his hand.

‘Was he ever arrested?’

Martha shook her head. ‘The cops charged someone else but he was acquitted.’ She too regarded the radiography technician. ‘We’ve been wondering if they’d investigate Steve again, but no one’s been around asking questions.’ She smiled mischievously. ‘Too bad. A murder investigation really livens up this old place.’

With a scraping of chairs, the people at the other table got up and drifted out of the coffee room. Catherine watched Steve Bliss leave, joking with one of the women – the prettiest one. ‘He looks like a ladies’ man.’

‘He is, oh, he is! I don’t know why he ever got married.’ Martha shook her head, and leaned back in her chair. ‘Or how Tracy put up with him as long as she did. Even I know of three affairs he had while they were together. But when she finally had enough and went for a divorce he didn’t take it well.’

‘What do you mean by that? Was he violent?’

Martha shrugged. ‘He certainly was unbearable around here, and he delayed the custody hearing as long as he could.’

Catherine remembered the snatch of conversation she’d overheard in the restaurant. ‘There’s a kid … ?’

‘He’s ten or eleven. He lived with his mother till she was killed … lives with his dad now, but I’ve heard rumours that Steve doesn’t control the boy’s inheritance.’ Martha noticed the expression on her colleague’s face and smiled. ‘In a rural community like this, it’s hard to keep secrets.’

Catherine drained her coffee and spiralled her cup on the table top. ‘Did you know her? Tracy Tomachuk?’

Dragging her timer from her pocket, Martha squinted at it. ‘Five minutes and I have to be back in the lab to extract my samples.’ She pushed back her chair. ‘Know Tracy? Not very well. I met her at Christmas parties and stuff like that.’

Catherine rose too, and the women headed back to their offices. Catherine tried to concentrate on her papers but she couldn’t keep her mind from wandering to the dead woman. What had she looked like? Thought about? What had she been doing in her last hours? Did she have any premonition about what was going to happen? Again Catherine’s hand went to her throat and she trembled. Had Tracy felt the same indescribable terror she’d felt herself when hands had tried to squeeze her life away? As Tracy struggled for breath, had she been staring into eyes she knew? Catherine groaned and put her head in her hands. Why couldn’t she escape her past?

Two figures met, almost casually, on the bench in front of the ornate legion building. ‘If only the house hadn’t been rented out,’ the younger one whined. ‘It complicates things … and the Edison woman’s smart. She might find out.’

‘You worry too much,’ the older one said. ‘Everything’s fine, and with the house occupied, there’ll be fewer people snooping around.’

‘Even so … Maybe we should encourage her to move.’ A slim hand slipped a flick knife briefly from a pocket.

‘Put that away, you idiot! Keep an eye on her if you like, but you’re worried about nothing. Everything’s still going according to plan.’

‘I don’t like it …’

‘You’re not paid to like it.’ The voice took on a threatening note and steel fingers grasped the other’s sleeve. ‘You can’t back out now.’

‘I’m not gonna!’

‘We can still get into the house whenever we want.’ The speaker lounged back, arm along the back of the bench, the picture of contented ease. ‘Here comes Reverend Stillman. Smile.’

When Morgan told her mother Jason Edison went home for lunch, she’d carefully omitted mentioning that his route paralleled hers. In fact, he lived just a block away. Usually they were careful not to leave school simultaneously and they walked on opposite sides of the street. After lunch they again maintained a comfortable distance.

But it was already the Wednesday before the Sadie Hawkins dance and Morgan hurried along the cracked sidewalk, very aware of Jason’s presence, a hundred feet or so behind her. She tracked his progress until he turned off the side street before hers and then she sped up.

She threw together a cheese sandwich and sat down at the sunny kitchen table. She ate without tasting her food, while her mind circled endlessly. The night before, she’d realized with a shock that she wanted to go to the dance. A lot of girls would go without dates, Morgan knew that, but they’d share the emotional protection of being in a group. She could have gone by herself, but the prospect of standing alone along the wall all evening was unbearable. Jason Royce was her only hope. She could picture herself at the dance with him, smiling shyly, dancing, talking, but how could she ask him?

She took another bite, chewing automatically and swilling it down with a gulp of milk. ‘Jason,’ she said in her mind, ‘I’d like to ask you something.’ She pictured the confusion on his face. Vague questions might make him apprehensive … that wouldn’t do. ‘Jason, have you heard about the dance on Friday?’ she tried. ‘Stupid,’ she said aloud. ‘Of course he’s heard of it. He’s not deaf and blind.’ She finished her lunch and wandered up to the bathroom. ‘Do you enjoy dancing, Jason?’ she asked the mirror and then shook her head in disgust. None of the guys would admit they liked to dance.

Discouraged, Morgan cleaned up her dishes and headed out the door. Even if she did manage to ask him without stuttering and fainting, what would he say? She sensed he felt as lonely as she did but it didn’t necessarily follow he’d be thrilled to go to the dance with her. What if he said no? She’d be mortified. But what if he said yes? And if he said yes, would she have to tell him about Kingsport? She felt the muscles of her neck draw tight. No. She couldn’t possibly do that.

Walking back to school, lost in her fog of conjecture, Morgan wasn’t paying attention to her surroundings. Instead of checking out Jason’s whereabouts and altering her speed accordingly, she barrelled right up to the corner and ran smack into him. ‘Oh! Um … Hi, Jason,’ she stammered.

‘Hello. Going back to school?’ he asked nervously, jamming his hands in his pockets.

Wrapped in her own nervousness, she was oblivious to Jason’s discomfort.

‘Yes. Don’t want to be late,’ Morgan babbled with false brightness. She started hurrying and Jason fell into step. They each stayed at their extreme edge of the sidewalk, pushed apart by an invisible pole.

‘Wasn’t French class … ?’ Jason started to say.

‘Didn’t Mr Tybec … ?’ Morgan began to speak at the same time. They both stopped, then giggled. Jason moved over so that he was actually walking on the road.

Morgan felt the perspiration forming on her forehead. She knew her cheeks were flushed and she wisely kept her trembling hands out of sight in the folds of her skirt. She darted shy glances at her companion who walked with his blond head bent and his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jeans. He extricated his right hand to run his finger around inside the neck of his T-shirt. Glancing towards Morgan he caught her eye. They both smiled and examined their shoes but Jason moved back on to the sidewalk.

The school was in sight and still Morgan hadn’t asked. She slowed her steps to gain time. It was now or never. She stopped. After taking another couple of steps, Jason halted uncertainly while his brown eyes flickered over Morgan’s face.

‘Would you come to the dance with me?’ Morgan blurted out. Wrapping her arms around her body, she drew invisible circles with the toe of her shoe. She couldn’t look right at him, but she peeped out of the corner of her eye.

Jason stood absolutely still. An eager smile started at the corner of his mouth but before Morgan was even sure it was there it evaporated into a hunted wariness. He gulped, his skin flushed under his tan. ‘I … I can’t.’ He bolted towards the school, banged the door open and disappeared inside.

Outside, Morgan’s cheeks drained of colour. She’d been holding her breath but now it rushed out in a low moan. Why had she asked him? By the expression of horror on his face, he must know all about her. The knots in her stomach drew ever tighter while nausea and panic washed over her. She grabbed the post of a No Parking sign as she stumbled.

‘Something wrong, Morgan?’ Mr Enright appeared beside her and gripped her elbow.

She focused on his face. ‘Just a bit dizzy, sir,’ she replied unsteadily. With an effort she straightened and brushed her hair out of her eyes. ‘I’m OK now.’ Morgan cleared her throat. ‘I’m fine.’ Her voice was stronger. One thing she had learned in recent months was how to hide her feelings, her fear. She managed a bright smile. ‘It’s just the sunshine. I should have worn my sunglasses.’

Mr Enright walked beside her to the school. As he opened the door, he again studied her pale features. ‘Want to lie down in the nurse’s office for a bit?’

But Morgan just wanted to get away, to blend into the anonymity of the classroom. She shook her head and hurried down the hall.