Fall from Grace (23 page)

“Who do you know, here?” he said when they'd both seen all of the photographs.

“Hetty Willis,” said Cassandra. “Alex Gillingham. And that piece of forest.”

“Are any of them familiar to you?” said Alberg to Natalie.

“No,” she said, shaking her head.

“What did Steven say about them?”

“Nothing,” she said firmly. “He gave me the envelope, like I told you. He said he was going to phone me from Sechelt when he'd finished things here, and tell me to burn it.”

“And you asked him what was in it.”

“Sure I did. He said, ‘Pictures.' ”

“And then you probably asked him why he wanted them burned.”

“Sure. He said, because they were a part of his life that would soon be over.”

“But why wouldn't he burn them himself?”

“Because he didn't want anything lying around, when he got back, that he didn't want to see.”

Alberg turned to Cassandra. “Do you know who this is?” he said, pointing to the kid kissing his girlfriend.

“No,” said Cassandra. “But isn't this the same guy, in the picture with Hetty Willis?”

Alberg looked at it more closely. “Yeah. It looks like the same jacket.” He shuffled through the photos again. “McMurtry. Gillingham. And by God”—he moved one of them directly under the light from the standing lamp next to the sofa—“I think this is the Ferguson woman. The one laughing.”

“And the old man in the overalls used to manage the Petro-Canada station,” said Cassandra. “He died a few years ago.”

“What can you tell me about the piece of forest?”

Cassandra laughed. “It's a clearing behind the high school. It's a make-out place,” she said, and instantly blushed. “Has been for years,” she added lamely.

“What do you think?” said Natalie to Alberg. “Will they be any help?”

“Probably,” he said. He stood up and headed for the kitchen, in search of sandwiches and beer. He just didn't have the faintest idea how.

“I
CAN'T DO IT, Bobby,” said Annabelle on Wednesday. “Not today.”

“That's what you said yesterday.”

“Yes and I might say it again tomorrow, too. I can't just up and do whatever I like, you know. I'm a married woman.” Annabelle was standing in the kitchen, keeping her voice low even though she knew there was nobody else in the house, keeping her eye on the door.

“A married woman,” he snorted. “Some kind of a married woman you are.”

“I'm the only kind I know how to be.”

“You'd be a different kind if it was me you were married to.”

She didn't bother to respond to that. “I have to go, Bobby.” The azaleas lined up on the buffet looked positively parched, she noticed.

“Some kind of a friend you are, too.”

“Oh, Bobby,” she said, exasperated. “It is so much trouble, having you in my life.”

“I need to talk to you, Annabelle. I told you. I really do.” He hesitated. “I'm going away. And I gotta tell you why.”

Annabelle's gaze fixed on the screen door. “What do you mean? You just barely got here, for heaven's sake.”

“My aunt's giving me the money.”

“Well talk to me on the phone, Bobby.”

“I can't talk about it on the phone,” he said flatly. “I'm not gonna beg you, for Christ's sake.”

Annabelle could see Camellia through the screen, watering the animals. “I could meet you tomorrow afternoon.”

“For sure, this time, Annabelle?”

“For sure.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

Annabelle went to the buffet and rubbed at the soil in the azalea pots. It was dry as a bone. She watered them, then she watered the rest of her plants. This took her almost an hour.

Then she found herself in the bedroom, going through her side of the closet, tossing clothes out over her shoulder. Most of them were landing on the floor, although some got as far as the bed. She flipped impatiently through the hangers, assessing each garment against some need or credo that she hadn't identified but to which she was responding with urgency. If Rose-Iris were to have come into the room and said, “Ma, what are you doing?” Annabelle would have replied, “I'm cleaning out this closet, there isn't room in it for a single more thing.”

She whipped a red dress off its hanger, and then a green one: maybe I'm getting rid of all my dresses, she said to herself. Is that what I'm doing? But no, her hand had moved past the yellow dress, and the pink one, so that couldn't be it.

She didn't understand why he'd decided to leave. She was quite certain he'd be better off here. There were all sorts of jobs he could do. Logging. Or working on the tugboats. All sorts of things.

She shook her head, as if to dislodge things caught in the fringes of her brain. If she could shake them into her blood they might come out with the next menstrual flow and she'd be done with them, rid of them. Oh dear oh dear, thought Annabelle.

She was suddenly tired—her body was throbbing with exhaustion—but she squatted down, her hands pressing on her kneecaps, and peered into the darkness of the bottom of the closet. She smelled the smell of foot sweat down there, and saw huge dust balls.

Yesterday she'd planted another rosebush. She didn't want any more. Seven was enough. Maybe six had been enough.

Annabelle hauled out sneakers and pumps and sandals, sending them flying one by one with the back of her hand.

She thought, whenever I go out of the house, I hear the animals. They make sounds that are listless and desolate. They have exotic voices, and speak something that isn't words.

It was the heat, maybe.

“Ma! Ma!”

Annabelle's heart stopped beating; then it rushed to start again, tripping over itself. She scrambled to her feet and raced out of the bedroom; would there be blood? would she be calm? would she know what to do?

She found them outside, dancing from foot to foot in the dust of the yard, and behind them the animal cages lay in a sullen sprawl.

“What is it?” said Annabelle, breathless. “My heaven, you scared my heart clear out of my chest, I thought one of you was dead.”

Their eyes were large, and Camellia was blinking rapidly. “There's stuff on the window wall,” she said.

“Paint,” said Rose-Iris, walking backward, her hand stretched out toward Annabelle. “Come and see.”

Annabelle followed them around the corner.

Huge letters, spray-painted in black. They made tears come to her eyes. They hurt her in the chest. “Whore of Babylon,” they spelled. Annabelle glanced around quickly but there was nobody else in the yard, no cars on the gravel road.

“Somebody must have done it in the night,” said Rose-Iris.

“Yuck,” said Camellia, with a shiver. “Will it come off, Ma?”

“Of course it'll come off,” said Annabelle. “We'll roll up our sleeves and get ourselves a couple of stepladders and some turpentine and a pile of rags and we'll get that off there right now, that's what we'll do.” She pushed her hair away from her face with trembling fingers. “Come along,” she said, “and be smart about it.” She marched around the corner and toward the shed, her daughters tumbling along in her wake, and they collected what they needed.

Much later, they stood back and looked.

“That glass, it's never been so clean,” said Annabelle, panting. She dropped to the ground. “I'm spent,” she said. “Thank you for your help, Rose-Iris.”

“That's okay, Ma,” said Rose-Iris, sitting beside her.

“And me, me,” said Camellia. “For the iced tea.”

“And thank you, too, Camellia,” said Annabelle, “for the iced tea.”

“Ma,” said Rose-Iris, craning her neck to see behind her. “Look. You forgot to take down the sign.”

“Ah yes,” said Annabelle calmly. “I must have done. For there it is, sitting in its hole, pointing right at us.”

The girls began to giggle.

The three of them put away the ladder, and the turpentine, and Annabelle threw the rags in a plastic bag and sealed it with a twist tie. She told the girls to wash up, and asked Rose-Iris to start dinner. Camellia groaned when she was asked to set the table, and stomped around the kitchen for a while, but Annabelle ignored her fussing and went on into the bedroom. Soon things were quiet out there; she heard them talking, and china and cutlery clinking, and heard something sizzling and then she smelled it, too, it was hamburger, Rose-Iris was probably making Hamburger Helper.

Annabelle hung up all of her clothes, smoothing them on their hangers with her hands, which had smudges of black paint on them, and smelled of turpentine. She needed a bath, but she wouldn't have time before Herman got home. And it would be more practical to have it afterward, anyway.

He made a lot of noise driving up, as she'd known he would.

She looked quickly around the room, as if another exit might reveal itself; she thought about the window; but how undignified that would be; and she'd made her bed, after all.

He yelled something at Arnold, in the yard, and stomped through the kitchen without speaking to the girls. He came into the bedroom and slammed the door behind him.

She looked at him as if she were tranquil, reached for tranquillity somewhere inside her, tried not to flinch when he came near, and didn't flinch, didn't feel it, really, not the first blow, and then she found herself on the floor looking at dust, smelling dust, tasting slivers of blood.

I will not make a noise, she thought.

I cannot do this anymore, she thought.

“I
DON'T GET IT,” said Sokolowski, staring at the photographs. “I remember this guy,” he said. “He died. I know Gillingham, too. And Hetty Willis.” He looked up at Alberg. “The cat lady. She can't have anything to do with this. What could she have to do with it?”

“I don't know,” said Alberg.

“I also know her,” said Sokolowski, pointing. “The girl getting her neck kissed, there. She works at my bank. Her name's Wanda.” He peered closely at the picture. “She's a lot younger here. Maybe this guy's her husband, who works at the Petro-Can station. Nah. Warren's got dark hair. Who the hell is this guy, anyway?”

“His name's Bobby Ransome,” said Alberg.

The sergeant handed back the photographs. “So what're you going to do?”

“I'm going to see these people. All except the dead guy.”

“Yeah, right,” said the sergeant, smiling despite himself. “We got the description of the camera, by the way. It's a very, very expensive camera. So I'm putting it out to the pawnshops, et cetera, toot sweet.”

“Good,” said Alberg. “How about phone calls from the Grayson number?”

“Too soon for that. But we got the property owners. Not by noon, though. The guy sent it over, must have been four, five o'clock.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Well I don't know, do I?” said the sergeant plaintively. “What am I looking for, anyway?”

Alberg was moving paper clips around on his desktop. “Sid. What do you know about this Ransome guy? He got sent up for drugs about ten years ago.”

“Before my time,” said Sokolowski. “Why?”

“He went to school with Grayson. Got out of the slammer about eighteen months ago. He's been living in Vancouver, but he showed up back here in early June. And Velma Grayson reports this to Steven when he phones her, and Steven immediately decides to come home for a while.”

“Coincidence,” said Sokolowski significantly, “happens more often than people think.”

Alberg got up to open his office door. “Jesus it's hot,” he muttered. “But she tells me all this, Sid, and I look up Ransome's sheet, and lo and behold, it turns out it's Ransome in all those photos.”

“But you said the kid felt responsible for somebody dying,” said the sergeant. “This Ransome thing, it was just a drug bust, wasn't it?”

“That's what I want to find out,” said Alberg. “Get somebody to drag the files out of dead storage. Court records, exhibits entered—everything there is.”

“Anything else?” said the sergeant, watching Alberg as he absentmindedly picked up the pile of evaluation forms, tapped the edges against the desktop to even up the stack, and put it down again.

“Yeah. Get a list of Ransome's friends and relatives, and check it against the property owners. Also, let's find out exactly where this guy is, and then let's keep a quiet eye on him.”