Beach Strip (21 page)

Of course I remembered. I thought it was Tina calling back. It was Grychuk.

“You’re asking me for a date?”

He shrugged. “Maybe just a talk.”

“About what?”

He shrugged again. “Things.”

I felt like I was back in grade eleven, talking to some nerd from algebra class. “Some other time,” I said, and turned toward my gate. “And don’t hang around my house anymore, please. You perverts are liable to trip over each other and wreck the roses.”

“I’m not a pervert, Mrs. Marshall.”

I walked through the gate, closed it, and looked back at him. He was caught in the same setting sunlight as the rest of the scene and, like the rest of the scene, it made him look nostalgic. Not Grychuk himself, who was hurt. Just the whole picture, the sunlight, the lake, the sky.

Grychuk put his hands in his pockets and walked toward me, lowering his voice. “I just thought you were a nice woman and might need some company. Seeing as how you lost your husband and I lost my wife last year, we could talk about things. That’s all. Not really a date. You gotta talk about things sometime, right?”

“Sure,” I said. “Maybe sometime. Not now.”

I left him standing in the lane, watching me walk through the garden and through the back door of my house, which I secured with the double locks.

I
woke the next morning resigned and determined. Resigned to the fact that I was not likely to learn the truth about Gabe and Wayne Honeysett and the whole damn thing until Mel or someone else let me in on the secrets they were keeping from me. And determined to get on with my life. I would not stop searching for the truth about my husband’s death, but I would find things to do that gave me as much sense of normalcy as I could expect.

One thing I could do was return to work at Trafalgar Towers. I would need the income more than ever, it would provide a reason to get out of bed, and the job would enable me to see more of Mother.

It was another mild and sunny day, so I decided to walk to the retirement home, crossing the lift bridge on foot for the first time since Wayne Weaver Honeysett had spoken to me from beneath it. I stared straight ahead to avoid seeing the bridge operator’s window, although I knew Grychuk wouldn’t be there so early in the day. Crossing the bridge, I followed the road leading back to Lakeshore Boulevard, turned right at the second street, and climbed the steps to Trafalgar Towers, surprised by how comforting it felt to return to a familiar routine.

Intuition is never turned off. Not mine, anyway. When I entered the reception area, Candace, the day receptionist, glanced at me with a smile that faded almost immediately, and looked back at her computer screen. Candace and I were hardly sorority
sisters, but I could usually make her smile with some snappy observation. She once took my advice about ditching an abusive boyfriend and thanked me for weeks, so her response at the sight of me entering the reception area was confusing.

“I’m back,” I said when I reached her counter. “I need the work, I need the money, and I need to see your smiling face. How’re you doing?”

Candace said she was fine, never taking her eyes from the computer while reaching for the telephone receiver. “I’ll tell Helen you’re here,” she said. After one quick glance at me, then away again, she added, “She wants to see you.”

This was strange, but so had my life been for the past couple of weeks, and when Candace said, “You can go up now,” I took the elevator to the third floor and Helen’s office.

The elevator faced Helen’s door, and both opened simultaneously. I stepped out to see Helen standing at the entrance to her office, waiting for me to arrive. “Come in,” she said, and when I passed her, she said, “Please sit down,” and closed the door behind her.

“What’s going on?” I asked when she settled herself in her chair, facing me across her polished and empty desk.

“I’m not sure what you mean.” Her hands were clasped in front of her.

“First Candace treats me like I’m some broom peddler off the street, and now you’re acting as though you’d prefer not to see me.”

“Actually, I wanted to see you,” she said. “Are you here to discuss your job?”

“And to see my mother.”

“I’m certain she will be pleased to see you. She is concerned about you.” She frowned at a spot on her desk, pressed her index finger on what I assumed was a speck of dust, and wiped it on her dress.

“Why are you acting like this?” I asked. “Last week you were hugging me and now you’re behaving as though … I don’t know, as though I’m a threat or carrying some kind of disease …”

“We had a visit yesterday from a senior police official.” When I said nothing, she added, “He was making inquiries about you.”

“About me? What kind of inquiries?”

“So far …” She was uncomfortable. Good. So was I. She began again. “So far they have been only empty charges, only suspicions, nothing definite—”

“Helen,” I interrupted, “I don’t have any idea what the hell you’re talking about. For god’s sake, get to the point. What is going on?”

“This officer, this detective, wanted to know if anything, uh, untoward has occurred in our finances lately. If there is any money missing or improper cheques issued, that kind of thing.”

“You mean they’re wondering if I’m crooked? They’re suggesting I’m stealing from the place, skimming money, submitting false invoices, getting kickbacks, that kind of thing?”

This seemed to give her confidence. She arched her eyebrows and sat up straighter. “You certainly appear familiar with those activities,” she said.

“Did you believe him, whoever it was who came here?”

“The allegations were made, as I said, by an individual in an office of some authority with the police department, and I would be foolish to ignore them.”

“Well, you were an ass to believe them,” I snapped. “Who told you these things? Who’s accusing me of stealing from you?”

She raised her chin, and with a voice and attitude that would have done Queen Victoria proud, she said, “I prefer not to identify the individual.”

She didn’t have to. “Walter Freeman, right? Big guy, nose like a walnut, head like a melon?”

She twisted her mouth and looked away.

“He’s upset with me because I refuse to believe his crap about my husband committing suicide. My husband was murdered, Helen, and Walter and his incompetent creeps are pissed at me because I insist on them getting off their asses to find who did it. That’s why he came in here to spread rumours about me. I haven’t taken a damn penny from this place that wasn’t mine.”

“We are making other arrangements,” Helen said. “For your job. Of course, if our audit reveals that the allegations are false, you may be invited back to reclaim your position.”

“I don’t plan to reclaim anything,” I said, standing up. “Except my mother.”

“Your mother is a wonderful woman,” Helen said to my back as I headed for the door. “She will always be welcome here.”

I’LL GET OUT OF HERE AS SOON AS I CAN
,
Mother wrote on her blackboard. I had finished describing my encounter with Helen Detwiler.

“Don’t,” I said. “I’m not moving, and there’s nowhere else this nice for you that’s close to the beach strip.”

Mother erased the words on her blackboard and wrote,
You have been difficult, but you have always been honest.

“Not always,” I said. “Mother, I have not done anything wrong here. You believe me, don’t you?”

And she wrote,
You are my sweetheart. You always have been. Of course I believe you.

I was damned if I would shed tears in front of Helen, but at the sight and the meaning of Mother’s words, I sank to my knees and lowered my face to her lap while she stroked my head and wiped away my tears.

WALTER FREEMAN WOULDN’T SPEAK TO ME.
“He said you could leave a message,” the duty cop at Central told me over the telephone. “If you have a complaint about his conduct, you can write the commissioner.”

I promised I would, after the audit at Trafalgar Towers cleared my name.

But before I did that, I would go to Vancouver.

It wasn’t Tina I wanted to see. It wasn’t even Vancouver, which I have always considered a city that’s like somebody else’s attractive spouse. You visit because it gives you a thrill, you have a good time, and after the thrills have ended you get the hell out of there. Later, you feel silly about being seduced by mountains and ocean and mild weather and tofu, and you forget about them until the next time you realize your own spouse is boring. So where do Vancouver people go for that kind of sensual fix?

It didn’t matter. I had so many things in my head, none of them good, that I just wanted a few days away. Let someone else worry about the meals and the dishes and the dusting and Walter Freeman and perverts. Tina and Andrew had a house you could park a jetliner inside, and a full-time maid. It would do.

I found a noon-hour flight the next day at a price that wouldn’t convert my credit card into an improvised explosive device, then called Tina, who became appropriately hysterical.

“I love it! I love it!” she said, and I pictured her almost jumping up and down. “We’ll go shopping, we’ll do lunches, we’ll gossip.” Tina is as predictable as a perpetual calendar. “We’ll cruise Robson Street. There’s this sweet little café where the waiters are athletes, two of them from the Winter Olympics—and I think a couple of them are gay, but who cares—and Andrew would love to talk to you, he always loves talking to you, and the only problem is my bridge club.”

I asked why her bridge club would be a problem.

“Because this week it’s my turn to host it, but if you don’t mind … you play bridge, don’t you?”

I asked with whom I might play bridge, here on the beach strip.

“But you know how? I mean, I know Daddy taught you. He taught both of us. Anyway, sometimes we need a fourth hand for one of the tables, and maybe you can fill in. I promise not to ignore you.” She took a deep breath, long overdue, and a new Tina was speaking, the quiet, solicitous one. “Oh, sweetie, I’m so glad you’re coming, really. I can only imagine what you’ve been through, and I’m sorry I wasn’t more help when I was there with you.”

“You were all the help I needed, Tina,” I assured her. “Don’t worry about it. You’ve been the perfect sister.” And she had been. From time to time.

I could almost feel her tears through the receiver. “That’s lovely, Josie. Really. Thank you. What time does your plane arrive?”

The officious Tina returned. She told me not to bring too many clothes because we would buy a whole wardrobe, and besides, I shouldn’t have a bag big enough to check, carry-on was always better, and she was going to tell Goldie to put new sheets on the guest bed, Andrew’s brother had slept there last, he was a carpenter in Moose Jaw, and those sheets just wouldn’t do, she had some flowered 600-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets in the prettiest pattern with lilacs at the edge—

I cut her off before I changed my mind and cancelled the trip in the interest of self-preservation. And who the heck was Goldie?

I RETURNED TO TRAFALGAR TOWERS,
driving this time, and avoiding eye contact with staff members when I got there. Mother was alone in her room, reading an Elmore Leonard novel. For her
birthday two years earlier, I’d bought her a leather-bound set of
The Collected Works of Jane Austen
, which she kept displayed on a side table like a family heirloom.
Good writer, but a prude
, Mother wrote to me on her blackboard. She preferred tough talk over sense and sensibility.

Good!
Mother wrote when I told her I was going to spend a few days with Tina.
When you come back, they’ll have done their audit and will know the truth!

She was pleased to hear I was visiting Tina because it was preferable, I suspected, to having Tina visit her.

Mother loved Tina, because Mother was a good woman who loved her children, which is what mothers are supposed to do. But there had been too many clashes between them over too many years, and I honestly believe that when Tina announced she and Andrew would be living in Vancouver and would keep in touch one way or another, Mother was relieved. Her daughter was married to a successful doctor. They would be living two thousand miles away. And they would not be having any children, meaning no grandchildren for her. Well, two out of three …

We didn’t discuss this, Mother and I. “I’ll be back within a week,” I explained. “I just need a break, somebody to do the things for me that you always did,” and I began to cry.

Mother reached her arms to me and I bent into them, her sitting silent in the wheelchair and me, for the second time that day, becoming ten years old again, just for a minute, to enjoy the feeling.

MY DECISION TO VISIT TINA
may not have been profound, but it was popular.

“Josie, you don’t know how good this makes me feel,” Mel told me. We were in a café down the lake toward Toronto, the remains of our dinner in front of us, the lake shining beyond the
window. I had suggested we have dinner together. I didn’t want to meet Mel in my home or his apartment. I just needed a bit of normalcy, or as much as you can have with an ex-lover.

He wasn’t surprised to hear about Walter Freeman’s visit to Helen Detwiler or his suggestions that I might have been stealing from the retirement home. “He’s fixated on that expensive ring and where Gabe got the money for it,” Mel said. “But more than that, he’s really upset with you. Walter’s not used to people standing up to him, not treating him with the respect he wants. He’s getting back at you in the best way he knows how. Maybe the only way.” He reached across the table and took my hands in his. “This will all blow over, and when it does …” He searched for words. “I’ve been worried about you, and confused about what happened between us.”

“Confused?” I had expected guilt.

He looked out at the lake, gathering more words. Plastic surgeons could use his profile as a template for every male patient who wanted his face corrected—the perfect squared chin, the full mouth, the straight, ideally proportioned nose, the narrow eyes, the uncreased forehead …

“I’m sorry about the pain it caused Gabe.” He turned from the window to face me again. “But you know what? I don’t regret it completely, because of what you came to mean to me. That’s why, sometimes, I might appear tongue-tied or say the wrong things or not say the right things.” He lowered his head and leaned toward me. “Do you understand?”

I told him I did. I told him we both shared whatever amount of guilt needed to be passed around. I told him I would love to talk about what we had done, and how, when enough time had passed, when all the mystery and questions surrounding Gabe’s death had been resolved. At that point, we might renew our relationship, if we were both comfortable. “Do you know what I would like?” I added. “I would like you to play some of that music you
played for me once, that nice bluesy stuff, and tell me who it is and what became of the musicians.”

He smiled and said, “Sometime soon,” then looked at his watch and told me he had to check on a stakeout team down on Barton Street. “Things are coming together,” he said.

I drove home pleased that I was going to Vancouver and even more pleased about what I would be returning to.