Читать книгу A Killing Frost - Margaret Haffner - Страница 14

Catherine smiled as she looked out of the kitchen window and sipped her morning coffee. The heat haze had evaporated and the sky shone with a luminous blue. Fluffy white puffs of cloud lazed against the robin’s egg background while closer to earth the tree tops rustled conversationally. Catherine leapt up, threw open the window and stuck her head out. Breathing deeply, she listened to the chirps of the wrens and the whistles of the blue jays who made their home in the cedar hedge.

From next door she heard Mr Steimann scolding one of his cats. ‘What yer think yor doin’ ye divil? Why can’t yer behave like Duke here?’ His wheeze turned into a cough and he spat up phlegm. Catherine’s nose wrinkled.

‘Mom?’

Catherine pulled her head in. ‘Good morning, honey. Looks like a gorgeous day.’

‘Whoopie,’ her daughter said, slumping into her chair and pouring milk on the cereal her mother had put out for her.

‘Oh, honey, I know you’re upset.’ Catherine crossed the kitchen to squeeze the girl’s shoulders. ‘It’ll be OK. That dance is completely irrelevant in the scheme of life.’ She ruffled Morgan’s hair. ‘We’ll go into London for a movie that night. Your choice.’

Morgan refused to be comforted. ‘If Jason had only said why he couldn’t go … But he just turned and ran!’ Her anxious eyes searched her mother’s face. ‘He must know about us. And Dad.’

Catherine began clearing away the breakfast dishes. ‘I don’t see how he could. Only Martha at Agromics knows and she promised me her lips were sealed. I’m sure no one connects us with the Kingsport mess.’

‘They will,’ Morgan predicted gloomily.

‘But they haven’t yet.’ She put her hands on her hips and looked at her daughter. ‘Let’s face it. When one person finds out, everyone will know.’ She paused and the familiar shadow fell across her face. ‘And when everyone knows … we’ll know it.’

‘It was in all the papers … On television …’ Morgan said in a small, miserable voice. ‘With our names.’

Outwardly Catherine remained perfectly tranquil, belying the anxiety within. She knew it was only a matter of time before the cat got out of the bag. ‘Edison is a very common name, Morgan, and people have short memories – much shorter than you credit them with.’ Again she put her arms comfortingly around her daughter. ‘If our past catches up with us, we’ll deal with it, but there’s no point in worrying about it now.’

Letting go, she moved briskly back to the window. ‘Time for you to go to school. It’s so nice out, I’m going to do some field work.’

As she tidied up the kitchen and packed her field kit she reflected on the path which had brought them to Atawan. Back in the early summer, when she had decided to ask for an unscheduled sabbatical from her university post, she hadn’t cared where she went or what she did. Wanting only to get away, she wrote to the first person who came to mind – Martha Morin, a former associate and now a scientist at Agromics. Martha had been more than accommodating. ‘We’ve plunged into biotechnology,’ she’d said. ‘That’s where the money is now. If you come you can play around in my lab and learn about DNA sequencing and RFLPs and all that high-tech stuff.’ Now that she was calmer, Catherine was still pleased with her decision. It had been a good career move.

Catherine slammed the front door behind her and tripped lightly down the steps slinging her sample bag over one shoulder. One of the aspects she liked best about her job was the opportunity to spend time outdoors and today was a perfect day for sample collecting. She wanted at least a few samples from ecosystems other than cultivated fields and mature forest and the vacant land behind her house intrigued her. If it had been neglected for decades, as old Mr Steimann implied, the fungal population was bound to be different from that of the surrounding farmland.

She burrowed through the thick cedar hedge at the back of her yard, expecting to emerge through the belt of trees on to the land leased by Connolly Chemical. Instead, once past the trees, she was confronted by a ten-foot-high soil embankment topped by a barbed wire fence. Undaunted, she climbed the hill and edged along the fence, looking for an opening. Behind Mr Steimann’s house she found a hole through the central portion of the fence. From the way the cut ends glinted in the sun she guessed the opening had been made recently. Was this the way the old man entered to continue his clandestine patrols? She shook her head and smiled. The managers at ConChem didn’t know how dedicated their former employee was. He’d probably keep an eye on the property until he died – or until Mr Grant built his housing development.

She glanced back the way she’d come – she could just make out the chimney of her house. She took her bearings, climbed through the opening and skittered down the slope. Despite Steimann’s claim that ConChem had ignored the land, she could tell the company hadn’t completely forgotten about it. In twenty or thirty years a young forest could have grown up if nothing had been done to discourage it. But instead of trees, all she saw were scrubby sumach and juniper among the weeds and volunteer wheat. She idly wondered what method they’d used to keep down the regrowth.

The landscape wasn’t beautiful but it was peaceful and pleasant so Catherine walked farther than she intended, stopping from time to time to bag a leaf or scoop up a soil sample with her small trowel. She hummed as she worked. As she approached the centre of the field, she began noticing the occasional bald patch of ground where nothing grew. The spots, of irregular sizes and shapes, exposed dull brown earth under a thin covering of yellow grass and dead leaves. She dug a small hole, shovelled out some of the deeper soil and poured it into a small jar. She labelled it simply with a question mark and the date.

As she stood up, the sound of a rapidly approaching vehicle startled her. A four-wheel-drive jeep skidded to a halt just a few feet away.

She shaded her eyes with her hand as she watched a man climb from the driver’s seat. A frown of concentration furrowed her brow, then cleared as she recognized him. It was Ernie Grant, the real estate agent who’d arranged her lease. She moved forward, hand held out in greeting.

‘What are you doing here?’ the man growled, ignoring her proffered hand. ‘This is private property.’ As he hitched his pants up over his beer belly, Catherine couldn’t help noticing the spreading dark patches of sweat on the underarms of his shirt. At the moment he didn’t look much like the urbane businessman she had dealt with.

‘I’m just taking a walk,’ Catherine replied, letting her hand fall to her side. She glanced over her shoulder to be sure her pack lay invisible in the grass. ‘It’s such a beautiful day.’

Grant seemed to relax a little. ‘Don’t mean to be rude, Mrs Edison, but there are prettier places to walk, and you really shouldn’t be here. Not safe.’

Catherine looked around. ‘Seems peaceful enough. Not even any mosquitoes at the moment.’

Grant shifted his considerable weight from one foot to the other and back again. ‘There are a couple of old wells around. ConChem tries to keep people away … don’t want any accidents.’ He smoothed his sparse hair over his bald spot. ‘Wouldn’t want you drowning or getting stuck in an old shaft. Long way from help.’

‘I guess I’d have to wait for Mr Steimann to make his rounds,’ Catherine remarked.

Grant’s head shot up. ‘That old goat? ConChem fired him over a year ago. He’s supposed to stay away from here.’

She decided to say nothing about the gap in the fence and the fact that she’d often seen him and Duke heading off in that direction. ‘I’ll be careful,’ she assured him as she started to move off. Grant’s hand snaked out and gripped her arm. ‘Maybe I should drive you home.’

Catherine fixed him with an angry stare. ‘Let go of me.’

The pincers loosened, but he didn’t let go. ‘How’d you get here anyway … the gate was locked.’

She flushed. ‘I climbed the fence behind my house.’ She had no intention of getting old Mr Steimann into trouble.

Grant tut-tutted and shook his head. ‘You might have been hurt – it’s an electric fence. I just turned the juice off for a couple of hours while I did some repairs.’

Catherine tried to hide her spurt of dismay. Giving in to the insistent pressure of his grip, she let herself be pulled towards the truck. Grant opened the passenger door and stood beside her while she got in. She wanted to get her backpack, but admitting at this late date that she’d been digging around didn’t seem like a good idea. Instead, she fixed its position in her mind and resisted the temptation to stare at it as Grant got into the truck, slammed into reverse and squealed away. Now that she was in the truck, she could see the faint track they were following. A hundred yards further along, the vehicle turned on to a rutted road and then on to a gravel one as they approached a sturdy metal gate.

‘Stay here,’ Grant ordered. He took a key from his pocket, unlocked a heavy padlock and swung the gate open. Then he disappeared into the decrepit gatehouse.

Catherine opened her window. She needed relief from the smell of cigarettes and stale sweat which permeated the vehicle. When she’d been house hunting, Grant had driven her around in a fancy Oldsmobile. Evidently he wore more than one hat in the community.

The man got back behind the wheel and drove through the opening. Once he had the gate closed again, he smiled for the first time. ‘The current’s on again, Mrs Edison. Good thing I saw you or you might’ve been fried getting back home.’

Since he obviously expected some kind of reply, Catherine managed a curt ‘I was lucky’ as she fastened her seat belt. Fried indeed, she snorted to herself. Those electric fences just gave enough of a shock to discourage animals. She edged away from the driver. Grant’s body odour filled the truck like a stink bomb. ‘Is this the property you’re hoping to buy?’

Grant swivelled to look at her, almost driving off the road as he did. He jerked the truck back into the lane and snapped the radio off. ‘Where’d you hear that?’

‘I overheard you in the restaurant,’ she replied, surprised at his violent response.

Grant frowned. ‘Nothing’s decided.’

‘Some sort of development?’

‘It’s just an idea,’ the real estate agent said, relaxing again. ‘Nothing definite.’

The truck slowed and they turned on to the highway and headed back towards Elm Street.

‘How do you like the house, Mrs Edison?’

‘Fine.’ She compressed her lips. ‘But it would’ve been nice of you to tell me why I got it so cheaply.’

‘So you found out, did you?’ Grant laughed. ‘Would you have taken it if I’d said anything?’

‘I’m not sure …’

‘Well, I wasn’t taking any chances. I promised to find a tenant and I always keep my word.’ He ran his eyes along her body and grinned. ‘Besides, you’re just the kind of good citizen we like in Atawan.’

She ignored his innuendo and inched further away on the seat. ‘Who owns the house and the land now? Mr Desrochers?’

Grant turned his attention back to the road. ‘He’s just the trustee. Michael Bliss, the dead woman’s son, owns it.’ Grant stopped for the only traffic light in Atawan. ‘Michael’s only ten so Paul Desrochers is managing his inheritance.’

Catherine shivered. ‘Paul Desrochers? Is he the man with the red hair? Late thirties?’ The one who reminded me of my Paul, she silently added.

Grant nodded. ‘Good lawyer. If you need any legal work …’

‘I suppose a ten-year-old doesn’t have much use for a parcel of vacant land,’ Catherine remarked, trying to distract herself from her memories.

‘Especially since ConChem’s lease has expired and they don’t plan to renew it.’ Grant turned on to Elm Street and drove slowly up towards Catherine’s house. ‘Tracy Tomachuk wanted to sell the land but died before she did.’ He shook his head. ‘Poor woman. Pillar of the community. Terrible tragedy.’ He slammed his fists on the steering wheel as he pulled to a stop. ‘And they let the bastard go! What’s the justice system coming to?’

If she hadn’t been so anxious to get away from Grant, she would have asked about the man who’d been arrested. But she didn’t want to give Grant any encouragement and, besides, she wouldn’t know the man anyway. ‘Thanks for the lift,’ she said, scrambling from the truck.

‘Glad to oblige. Hope you enjoy your stay in Atawan.’ Leaning over he grabbed her hand. ‘Maybe you and I could take in dinner some time …’

‘I don’t think so, Mr Grant,’ she said, jerking free and slamming the door of the truck.

He gunned the motor and started to drive off, then jerked to a halt. ‘Oh, Mrs Edison,’ he called, an unpleasant note in his voice, ‘best stay out of that field. Don’t want a nice lady like you to get hurt.’

Men, Catherine thought. Squelch their oversized egos and they sulked like little boys. She dismissed him from her mind. As she climbed the porch steps, all she wanted was a cool shower and a long drink.