Fall from Grace (21 page)

She went outside, and the screen door banged behind her, bouncing in its frame. She walked quickly past the animal cages, averting her eyes, and kept on going until she got to the edge of the gravel road, where a big fir tree grew. She sat on the carpet of needles and leaned against the trunk.

There flashed into her mind a picture of Steven Grayson falling from the cliff. Had it felt like flying, for a moment? Or had he known, all the way down, that flying was impossible?

Annabelle rested, in the dry heat of the day.

Percy Grayson put a sign in the window announcing that his shop was closed. “What's this all about, then?”

“We're investigating the circumstances of your nephew's death,” said Alberg, “because it wasn't a natural death.”

Percy rubbed vigorously at the top of his head, which was bald. “It surely wasn't. What a god-awful thing.”

Alberg figured Steven's uncle was pretty close to sixty. He was a big man, six feet tall, tanned and fit. He was wearing dark brown slacks and a short-sleeved tan shirt with thin dark brown stripes.

“Just a hell of a thing.”

“Thanks for taking the time to see me,” said Alberg, opening his notebook. Percy adjusted a discreet SALE sign that hung on the wall above a rack of summer clothing. “I used to be a fisherman,” he said. “Did you know that?”

Alberg shook his head.

“Well I did. Then six years ago this summer we had the best sockeye run in seventy-five years. I made myself a packet. So the wife says, let's do this or let's do that, and so on and so forth. But I knew exactly what I was gonna do.” He gestured proudly. “Get myself a store. Sell men's clothes. And that's what I did.”

“It's a very nice store,” said Alberg.

“Come on, sit down, we might as well be comfortable.”

They were in an area at the rear of the shop, near the four changing rooms. There was a grouping of chairs and a sofa, and a big wooden coffee table bearing a selection of magazines. Most were news magazines, but Alberg saw a copy of
Vogue
, too, and realized that most of the people who sat there waiting were probably women.

“I'm not gonna be much help to you,” said Percy. “See, in the last ten years we hardly saw Stevie at all.”

“We think the reason he died has to do with his life here,” said Alberg, “before he went away. That's what I want you to talk about.”

Percy looked doubtful.

“Tell me about his parents. Was he close to them?”

“My brother Harry,” said Percy, after a pause, “he was gone a lot. Out in the woods. He could be in a logging camp for weeks, even months at a time. That job's even worse than fishing, if you ask me. And then when he did get home he'd lay down the law.” He shook his head in disgust. “Stevie got along good with his mom, though.”

“What can you tell me about his friends?”

“Nothing. All I remember is, he was always taking pictures.”

“He was a good photographer, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Damned annoying, though. Never asked your permission, always snapping away. Sometimes it was just because he was nervous, I think.” Percy shook his head. “Mustn't speak ill of the dead,” he said tiredly. “He was a good boy, Stevie was.”

“Did you see him when he came home this summer?”

“We did, yes. The wife and me, we had the two of them to supper right after he arrived.”

“Did he tell you why he'd come back?”

“Just said he'd come for a visit. That's all.”

Alberg sat back. “What kind of a man was your nephew turning out to be, Mr. Grayson?”

Percy pondered the question, staring at his shoes, which were brown, highly polished loafers. Finally, “I don't have any idea, really. You couldn't get real close to Stevie,” he said heavily. “At least, I couldn't.”

Annabelle, who had fallen asleep under the tree, awoke gradually, feeling a sweet burgeoning inside her. For a moment she thought that when she opened her eyes Bobby would be there, smiling down at her. But it wasn't Bobby, it was Camellia. She was sitting cross-legged, looking intently at Annabelle. And Annabelle turned her head slowly to the left and saw that Erna Remple's mangy dog was there, too, and that he had fallen asleep in the heat with his muzzle in her hand, in Annabelle's hand; she felt his warm anxious breath on her palm.

The sweetness inside her began to ache.

“Don't be mad, Ma,” said Camellia—softly, so as not to waken the dog.

Annabelle, gazing at Camellia, thought: Bobby Ransome was my childhood sweetheart. She liked the words: “childhood sweetheart.”

She heard a whirring sound, and looked up and saw a flock of medium-sized brown birds swoop down to occupy the branches of a tree across the road; their flight had been so single-minded that she thought the tree might be magnetized in some way, and the birds powerless to bypass it once they were within its range.

She looked down at the dog, who was twitching in his sleep. “I'm not mad,” she said to Camellia.

Camellia stood up, and the dog awakened, and lifted his head. He looked at Annabelle, whose hand still rested, palm up, on the ground beside her. Then he moved close to Camellia and swiped at her grimy knee with his tongue, and trotted off up the gravel road, toward home.

“Can I help you make supper?” said Camellia.

“When it's time, you surely may.” Annabelle got to her feet and wiped her hands on her dress. She began to follow Camellia across the yard. Then she stopped, and walked to the edge of the road, where Herman had hammered a sign into a hole in the dirt.

“Mini-Zoo,” it read. “Adults $2, Kids $1.”

“Camellia,” said Annabelle. She held out her hand, and Camellia took hold of it with both of hers.

“Swing me around, Ma,” said Camellia.

“Tomorrow,” said Annabelle, “we're going to start doing something. You and I and Rose-Iris.”

“What? What're we going to do?”

“See this sign here?”

“I see it.”

“Starting tomorrow, we're going to take this sign down every morning. And put it up again every afternoon. And we're not going to tell your dad.”

Camellia frowned at the sign. “Why're we going to do that?”

“Because the mini-zoo is, in my opinion, a silly idea.” Annabelle swooped down and picked up Camellia and headed for the house. Camellia's legs circled Annabelle's waist, and her arms were around Annabelle's neck. Camellia threw back her head and laughed at the bright summer sky.

Back at the detachment, Alberg sat in his office with the door closed and the window open wide. On his desk lay a large brown envelope stuffed with yearbooks and copies of the school newspaper from 1978 to the graduation ceremonies in 1980; he'd found nothing useful there. He was flipping through his notebook, jotting down on a pad of lined yellow paper what he'd found out about Steven Grayson's last weeks:

Up to June 17, the kid had lived his life as usual.

June 17: he calls his mother and tells her he wants to come home for a while.

June 18–28: he finishes several assignments, and gets extensions on several others.

June 29: he takes the ferry to the Sunshine Coast; according to Velma Grayson he intends to spend two or three weeks.

July 3: he calls Natalie; the guy he wants to see won't see him. She tells him to persevere.

July 19: he goes to the Bank of Montreal in Sechelt, where he runs into Keith Nugent and arranges to borrow his boat on Saturday, the 21st. Then he tries to withdraw most of the contents of his savings account. But the bank won't let him, because it isn't his branch. He takes the ferry to Vancouver and gets it from his own bank. He phones Natalie and tells her everything's going to be okay.

July 20: he tells his mother he's going to meet somebody the next day, Saturday, but that it won't take long and he'll be back in time for dinner with his aunt and uncle.

July 21: he falls from the cliff top at Buccaneer Bay wearing a belt containing twenty-three thousand dollars.

Sometime between July 3 and July 19, he must have persuaded this guy, whoever he was, to see him.

Alberg made another list: what was it that he wanted to “put right”? why did he decide to do it now? what happened to the missing camera?

Then he got a call from Natalie Walenchuk.

“I have something here,” she said. “It's some pictures. Some photographs. And negatives. I forgot all about them.”

“What photographs?”

“They're Steven's. He left them with me. He said he'd phone me from Sechelt when he'd finished whatever he was doing, and then I was supposed to burn them in my fireplace.”

“Have you looked at them?”

She hesitated. “Yeah, I did. They're very ordinary. Mostly just pictures of people. I don't know who they are. You'll want to see them, right?”

“Right,” said Alberg.

“Well I'm coming over there in the morning,” said Natalie. “I want to meet his mother. Pay my respects. I could bring them.”

“I
THOUGHT YOU must have left town,” said Warren.

He'd gone into the drugstore for some throat lozenges—Bobby was the furthest thing from his mind, for once—and there he was. Buying himself a hair dryer, for Pete's sake. He looked jumpy, Bobby did; as if he'd been trying to steal the thing. But he was standing in the lineup so obviously he planned to pay for it.

“Why'd you say that?” said Bobby, turning swiftly to Warren.

“Haven't seen you around,” said Warren. “That's all I meant.”

“Yeah, well, I'm not gonna
be
around much longer,” said Bobby, getting out his wallet. He had a way of moving, Bobby did, that made a person cautious. Made you watch him very carefully. So you could get out of the way in a hurry.

Warren was shifting from foot to foot, feeling awkward, wanting to break away and go find the throat lozenges. But being too nervous to do that, for some reason.

“Oh yeah?” said Warren.

“Yeah. Gotta move on, you know?”

“So is your stepdad better, then?”

“Yeah,” said Bobby. “Better enough.”

Warren said, “Well I'm on my break, and it's already used up.” Bobby was paying for the hair dryer now. Warren said, “Well, seeya,” and he backed off toward where he thought the throat lozenges might be.

He didn't like it at all that Bobby followed him over there, carrying the drugstore bag containing his new hair dryer.

“Is he taking good care of her, Warren?” said Bobby softly.

Warren didn't have to ask who “her” was. “Her” was Annabelle. Warren was exceedingly alarmed, as he scanned the selection of lozenges. There was everything from cherry to eucalyptus looking him in the face. Bobby was waiting for him to answer, so he said, “Yeah, I'm pretty sure of it, Bobby.” He picked up a package of mentholated cough drops, then put them down again.

“She happy with him, is she?”

“Yeah, I think so, Bob,” said Warren. Maybe cherry would be better, he thought.