The Dells (11 page)

“Yeah,” he said. “Look, I'm sorry. I forgot. He raped you too, didn't he?”

“It wasn't him,” she said insistently. “Anyway, I wasn't raped. Just … ” She shrugged.

“Just what? Molested? Never mind. Look, I'm sorry I brought it up, okay?”

“Sure, Tim.”

She was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and jeans that looked as though they had been washed ten thousand times. He had a rule about employees wearing jeans to work, just as his father had, but he didn't say anything; it was Saturday, after all, and if Marty wanted to wear jeans to work on Saturdays, it was fine with him.

The jeans didn't bother him half as much as the tattoos, a band of barbed wire encircling her upper right arm, and a blue spiderweb on the back of her left shoulder. She knew how he felt about them and usually kept them covered up. He was about to tell her to put a shirt on when he noticed the shiny black motorcycle helmet on the floor beside her desk and the motorcycle jacket on the coat rack by the door. He remembered the motorcycle parked by the employee entrance.

“Did you buy a new bike?” Marty had a smelly old Triumph, but he wouldn't let her bring it to work.

“The Harley?” Marty said. “I wish. No, it's Joey's. He lets me use it when he stays at my place.”

“Your place? What the hell's Joey Noseworthy doing at your place?”

“He usually stays with me when he's passing through. You know that.”

“The hell I do.”

“There's no reason for you to be like that, Tim,” Marty said.

“Like what?”

“You know. Jealous.”

“I'm not jealous, for Christ's sake. I just don't think letting him stay at your place is a very good idea, that's all.”

“What's wrong with him staying with me?”

“Besides him being a worthless drunken bum and ex-con, you mean? What if I wanted to come by?”

“You never have before,” she said. “You don't own me, Tim. You have no right to tell me who I can be friends with. Or who I sleep with, for that matter.”

“Are you sleeping with him?”

“Are you sleeping with your wife?”

“It's not the same thing.”

“If you say so.”

“Okay, look, never mind, all right?”

“Sure, Tim.”

She stood up. She was only an inch or two shorter than him, a little thick-figured, but not too thick, with heavy, pendulous breasts, low on her chest. Although she'd been around the block a time or two, she was still a good-looking woman, wore her forty-six years well, but wore them nonetheless. Her hair was dyed an inky black and raggedly cut, as though it had been styled with a hedge trimmer.

“Is there something the matter, Tim? You aren't worried the police will think you had something to do with Mr. Cartwright's murder, are you?”

“What? Don't be stupid. Why would they think that?”

She made a clicking sound with her tongue. “Because
maybe someone will tell them about the jokes you used to play on him? You and Hal Schumacher and Dougie Hallam.”

“I never played jokes on him,” Dutton protested. “That was Ricky Marshall. He hung out with Hal and Dougie. I was friends with Joe Schumacher.”

“I remember some of the stuff you used to do, Tim. They might not have been as bad as the things Dougie and Hal did, but they weren't very nice, either. I never understood why you boys teased him the way you did.”

“Because he was a pervert.”

“He wasn't like that at all,” she said. “Maybe some people thought he was different, because he stayed home and looked after his mother, but he was nice. You and Hal and Dougie made him mad, but he never said anything bad about you, even when one of you pooped in his living room when he was visiting his mother in the hospital.”

“Come on, Marty,” Dutton said. “It was thirty-five years ago. You were just a little kid.”

“I've got a good memory, Tim.”

She did, too. She remembered how much of a particular item was in stock, who was behind on their payments, what they'd had for dinner on any particular day when they were at trade shows, and the name of every motel they'd ever shacked up in.

“Anyway,” he said pointedly. “I was home all Thursday evening, except when I had to come here because
someone
didn't close up properly and that fucking alarm went off again in the middle of the goddamned night.”

“Everything was fine when I left,” Marty said with a sigh. “And if you aren't happy with the way I close up, stay and do it yourself for a change.”

“All right, never mind. Forget it.” He went into his office. She followed. “What are you doing here,
anyway?” he said.

“Trying to get caught up on some paperwork. Which reminds me … ” She returned to the outer office, took a handful of printouts from the printer beside her desk, and came back into his office. “Since when did Dougie Hallam have an account with us?”

“Eh? He doesn't.”

“Then maybe you can explain these.” She handed him the printouts.

He took them, glanced at them, said, “Oh, these,” and dropped them onto his desk. “Don't worry about it.”

“They're six months overdue.”

“It was a special order. A sort of favour. He paid cash. I guess I just forgot to enter it. I'll take care of it.”

She retrieved the printouts from his desk. “Look at this stuff. Pumps. PVC piping. Electrical fixtures. What was he doing, anyway?”

Tim took the printouts out of her hand. “He was renovating an old greenhouse for some guy. Under the table. You know Dougie.”

“Yes, I know Dougie,” Marty said. “I also know that it's — ”

He cut her off with an angry gesture. “I
said
I'd take care of it.”

She flinched. “Okay, Tim.”

“I should go set up Rachel's computer,” he said.

He didn't make a move to leave, however. He just stood in the middle of the cluttered, windowless room, facing his desk, which was as messy as the office. Marty looked good in her jeans, a lot better than she did in the frumpy skirt and blouse she usually wore to work. They made her look younger, and it was sexy the way they rode low on the slight roundness of her belly and how the crotch seam emphasized her sex. He pulled the big executive chair out from behind his desk, dropped into
it, and swivelled to face her.

“Close the door,” he said, unzipping his Dockers.

Shoe was at loose ends, and trying to decide how to rectify the situation, when Maureen brought his parents to the park. Despite their ages and his mother's arthritis, both were still fairly spry, but they tired easily and after a short while were content to sit quietly in the shade of the big tent shelter.

“Hal didn't come with you,” Shoe said to Maureen.

“He's out shopping for that Porsche,” she said. She was wearing a lightweight wraparound floral skirt that hung below her knees and a loose raw cotton peasant blouse. Her flamboyant red mane was tied up off the back of her neck with a twist of yarn the same colour as her hair.

“He told me he was thinking about buying an RV,” Shoe said.

She snorted. “I'd rather it was a Porsche. At least I could drive it.” She smiled. “He had to go into the office. Something about quarterly performance evaluations. Maybe he's having an affair with his secretary, after all.

If it helps him get whatever's bugging him out of his system, I'm all for it. He thinks I'm in love with you, you know.”

“Pardon me?”

“And that the feeling's mutual. We argued about it on the way home last night. Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“Yes, indeed,” he said.

“Sorry,” she said. “I guess I can be a bit too forthright sometimes. Let's change the subject. Last night you started to tell me about Marvin Cartwright. I get the impression that he was something of a neighbourhood character. A recluse or something.”

“I wouldn't call him a recluse,” Shoe said. “He just didn't mix much with the other folks in the neighbourhood.”

“Did he have any friends at all?”

“I'm sure he must have,” Shoe said. He moved closer to his father, who was watching some kids pitching rubber horseshoes while Shoe's mother dozed in a lawn chair. “Dad?”

“Mm?”

“Do you remember if Marvin Cartwright had any friends in the neighbourhood? Someone who might be at the homecoming?”

Howard Schumacher rubbed his chin. He still hadn't shaved and his jaw was bristly with grey stubble. “That was a long time ago, son,” he said. “I don't recall anyone in particular. Your mother and I, we tried to be neighbourly, invited him to a backyard barbecue or two. He was never unfriendly or rude, but he never accepted. I don't think he liked leaving his mother alone too long, in case she took a bad turn. I felt sorry for him, a young man in his prime burdened with taking care of his sickly mother. Had to admire him for it too, though. How many kids these days would do it? Stick old folks in homes
nowadays, hire someone to look after them, instead of doing it themselves.”

“What about the Braithwaites?” Shoe's mother asked. She hadn't been asleep after all. “He was friendly with Ruth, wasn't he?”

“Now that you mention it,” Shoe's father said, “I did use to see him in the woods with Ruth Braithwaite now and again. I remember thinking that they made a queer couple, her family being so religious and all and him being an atheist.”

“If you didn't know him very well, how do you know he was an atheist?” Shoe asked.

His father looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “Not sure, actually. Maybe it was just talk.”

“Takes one to know one,” Shoe's mother said, not unkindly.

“Now, Mother,” Howard Schumacher said. “I'm not an atheist. I'm just not a believer.”

“Braithwaite?” Maureen said. “They live in that house off by itself at the end of the little cul-de-sac that sticks into the woods behind your place, don't they? The one with all the religious statuary in the yard.”

“That's them,” Shoe's father said. “The twins, Naomi and Judith, and Ruth. She's the youngest. She'd be Hal's age or so, I'd say, Naomi and Judith a year or two older. Mr. Braithwaite came from money. Liquor or tobacco, I think. His family owned most of the land around here before the war, but he sold it off to developers and started doin' missionary work in Africa with his wife. They got themselves killed in the Congo or someplace. Left those girls pretty well off, too, I suppose. Financially, anyhow. Didn't leave 'em very well equipped to get on in the world.”

Shoe remembered Mr. and Mrs. Braithwaite. Older than his parents, they'd been drab and stern and aloof. He had no recollection of ever having seen the twins,
Naomi and Judith, but he'd seen Ruth in the woods a few times, usually with a drawing pad. Never in the company of Marvin Cartwright, though, or anyone else. He'd thought she was pretty, in a nervous, awkward kind of way, and had tried to speak to her once, but she'd fled from him as if pursued by demons. Neither she nor her sisters had gone to public schools, receiving their schooling at home from their parents or from the even drabber and unsmiling woman who'd looked after them when their parents were away, which they often were. Shoe had been in university when Mr. and Mrs. Braithwaite had died.

“Far as I know,” Howard Schumacher was saying, “none of 'em has set foot out of that house in daylight in thirty years. Get their groceries delivered. Front yard is more like a field than a lawn. Every so often kids'll knock over some of the statues, or spray paint graffiti on 'em, but in the next few days they'll all be standing again or painted over. I remember some talk, too, that Ruth may have been the first victim of the Black Creek Rapist, but if she was, she or her father never reported it.”

“The Black Creek Rapist?” Maureen said.

She'd grown up in another part of the city, Shoe remembered, and would have been only ten at the time. “There were a series of sexual assaults in the woods the summer Marvin Cartwright moved away,” he explained. “One of the victims died.”

“And Marvin Cartwright was a suspect?” Maureen said.

“Not the only one,” Shoe said.

Howard Schumacher harrumphed. “No one with a lick of sense really believed Marvin did it.”

“Do you remember how you heard that Ruth may have been attacked?” Shoe asked.

“It was just talk,” Shoe's father replied, with a dismissive shrug.

At noon, Shoe took his parents back to the house, where he helped his father fix lunch, tomato soup, mild cheese, and crackers for them, a meatloaf sandwich and an apple for him. He returned to the park while his parents took their afternoon nap. He found Maureen and Rachel in the kitchen shelter. With them was a stocky man with freckles and thinning red hair, and a woman with shaggily cropped inky black hair and light brown eyes. Shoe knew who she was as soon as she smiled at him. “Well, speak of the devil,” Tim Dutton said. “How the hell are you, Shoe? People still call you Shoe?”

“I'm fine, Tim,” he said as they shook hands. “And, yes, I'm still called Shoe.”

“Shoe?” Marty Elias said.

“A nickname I gave him in high school,” Dutton said.

It had been Janey Hallam who'd started calling him
Shoe, but Shoe chose not to contradict him. “How are you, Marty?” he said instead.

“You remember me,” she said, her face lighting up with surprise and delight.

“Of course.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but Dutton cut her off. “What're you doing with yourself these days? Not still a cop, are you?”

“No.”

“Still living on the left coast? Not back to stay, uh?”

“Yes and no,” Shoe said.

“Isn't that a kicker about Marvin the Martian?” Dutton said. “Coming back to the old neighbourhood after all these years just to get beaten to death by some wacko in the woods. Too bad. He was a bit weird, I guess, but he was okay.”