The Dells (29 page)

“I was hardly a local hero, Janey, and you lived just down the road.”

“I may as well have been from wrong side of the tracks,” she said. “I know what people said about my parents. Trailer trash in a nice house. Never mind that it was true, it still hurt.”

“I never thought you were trash, Janey.”

“I know. You didn't think I was a slut, either. I was, though. I still am. I think … ” Her voice trailed off.

“What?”

“Never mind. Forget it.” She leaned toward him, gestured for him to lean closer. She hunched her shoulders, deepening her cleavage. Her breath smelled of juniper and quinine. “Why don't we get out of here? Go back to my place. There's beer in the fridge and a couple of steaks in the freezer we could throw onto the barbecue. How's that sound?”

“I don't think so, Janey. Not tonight.”

“There might not be another offer.”

“I'll have to live with the disappointment.”

“Sarcasm. Shoe. I didn't think you had it in you.”

“I should be going. Can I drop you somewhere?”

She sat back. “I think I'll hang around for a while. Who knows? Some other guy might get lucky. But you haven't finished your beer. Stick around. Maybe I can change your mind. I'm as good as I ever was. Maybe better. Hell, definitely better.”

“It's a tempting offer,” he said. And it was, too, more that he cared to admit. A lot more. He stood. “But I'm going to have to decline.”

“Too bad.”

“You're sure I can't give you a ride home?”

“I'm sure.” She downed her drink and waved at the waitress.

Shoe went to the bar to pay the tab. As he was leaving the pub, he saw two men in business suits approach Janey's table. One spoke to her, then the other. She smiled up at them with an air of boredom, but nodded. Both men sat, smiling at their good fortune. Shoe wondered which of them would get to scratch Janey's itch. Or was he underestimating her? Maybe it would take both of them to satisfy her itch.

Rachel emerged from the woods onto the turnaround at the end of Wood Lane. The narrow cul-de-sac was aptly named; it was more like a driveway than a street. In fact, it may have once been an entrance drive, before Mr. Braithwaite had sold the surrounding property to the developers and used the money to perform his missionary work. The Braithwaite house stood by itself at the end of the road, surrounded by woods, next to the turnaround. A sprawling single-story precursor to the typical Toronto bungalow, it was fifteen or twenty years older than the other houses in the neighbourhood. To Rachel, it looked as it always had: sagging eaves; curtains drawn across unwashed windows, some of which appeared to be boarded up; trim desperately in need of scraping and painting; old flower beds choked with weeds and a few struggling shrubs. The overgrown front lawn was littered with cheap religious statuary: plaster or cement casts of the Madonna, with and without child; Christ figures, some blessing unseen supplicants, some bearing
a cross, some on the cross; plus numerous effigies that meant nothing to her, but which could have been saints or apostles or, for all she knew, characters from
The Lord of the Rings
. They were scattered haphazardly about in the long grass and weeds, some leaning drunkenly, some fallen, most stained and scabrous with neglect, like the house and lawns. There was no discernible path to the front door.

Earlier in the afternoon, Joe had come to the welcome tent in the park, where he'd told her that Ruth Braithwaite's father had evidently filed a complaint with the police about Marvin Cartwright. “It was the main reason Ron Mackie was so certain Cartwright was the Black Creek Rapist,” he'd said. “Dad said he thought Cartwright and Ruth Braithwaite might have been sweethearts. Perhaps Cartwright kept in touch with her and she can tell us why he came back.”

“You said you were going to leave that part of it to the police,” Rachel had reminded him.

“Hannah — Sergeant Lewis — told me that they haven't had any luck contacting Ruth or her sisters. No one answers the door or the telephone. I thought I'd give it a try, but Dad thought there probably hasn't been a man in that house since their father died.”

“Do you want me to try to talk to her?”

“They might be more likely to open the door to a woman.”

“Sergeant Lewis is a woman,” Rachel had said. “In case you hadn't noticed.”

“Her partner isn't,” he'd replied.

The house had no porch, just a broken concrete slab at the front door. The varnish of the door and doorframe was crazed and peeling. Three small triangular panes of frosted glass were set into the door at eye level. Two were cracked. There was no doorbell, just a pair of frayed, corroded wires protruding from a hole in the doorframe.

There was a brass knocker, green with age and so stiff that she could barely move it. She rapped on the door with her knuckles, and stood back. She waited a minute and rapped again. There was still no answer, but she thought she saw the curtains in the living room window twitch.

Rachel knocked again, harder. She leaned close to the door and called, “Hello.” Still nothing. She was about to turn away when she saw a shadow of movement behind one of the cracked triangular windows, followed by the grinding click of the lock. There was a tortured creak from the rusted hinges as the door opened a couple of inches.

“Who are you?” a woman asked, peering through the gap. She looked to be in her mid-to late-fifties, with wide-set blue eyes, a small nose, and full, pale lips. Her hair was shoulder-length and thick and the colour of ashes. Her voice was light and papery, as if she were unaccustomed to speaking.

“My name is Rachel Schumacher. My parents live on Ravine Road. Their backyard is opposite yours. Are you Ruth?”

“What do you want?” The woman leaned close to the gap as she spoke. Her breath was stale and her teeth were small and yellow. Once she might have been pretty. “Go away,” she hissed, but she didn't close the door.

“I want to talk to you about Marvin Cartwright,” Rachel said.

“Marvin,” the woman said, inflection flat. She blinked quickly, spasmodically. “Marvin.”

“Marvin Cartwright,” Rachel said again. “He lived down the street from my family, with his mother. Are you Ruth? Did you know him?”

“You're that tall boy's sister,” the woman said. “The one who tried to talk to me about my drawings.”

“You mean Joe? Yes, I'm his sister.”

“Is that his name? He didn't tell me his name. He was nice, but I ran away. Father told me that wasn't polite, but I wasn't supposed to be in the woods, and he punished me. I like the woods. He doesn't let me go into the woods, but I do. I know I shouldn't, but I do.”

“Do you still go into the woods? Were you in the woods last Thursday? Did you meet Marvin in the woods, Ruth?”

“Thursday. Marvin.”

“Yes. Thursday. Three days ago. Did you go into the woods to meet Marvin?”

Ruth didn't answer, or even appear to have heard or understood. Her blue eyes shifted as she looked past Rachel toward the road. Rachel turned. A stout, elderly woman, dressed in flowered shorts and carrying a green plastic pail, stood watching them from the middle of the road. She nodded slightly, then resumed walking toward Cantor Street. When Rachel turned back, Ruth was closing the door.

“Wait,” Rachel said, putting her hand on the door.

“Go away,” Ruth said, leaning close to the gap in the door. “He doesn't like us to have visitors. He'll punish us. He'll punish you, too. Go away.”

“Who? Who will punish you? Your father? Your father is … ” She hesitated. She couldn't say it.

“Father.” The woman's eyes became unfocused in confusion for a moment, then she blinked and said, “Yes. Father. Father will punish us. We aren't allowed visitors.”

“Did Marvin visit you?”

“Marvin.” Again, the inflection was flat. “He's writing a book about Africa, you know. Mother and Father are in Africa. Have you been to Africa?”

“No,” Rachel said.

“Neither have I. Father said he'd take me, but Mother won't let him.”

“Marvin talked to you about Africa? When?”

“Father got angry and sent him away. He came back, though.” She pressed her pale face close to the gap and there was fear in her eyes. “He doesn't know,” she whispered urgently. “He'll get angry and punish us. Please. Go away. He'll punish you, too, if you don't go away.” And she closed the door with enough force to rattle the cracked triangular panes of glass.

Rachel stared at the door for a moment, then turned and made her way through the statuary to the road. There was no sidewalk and she walked in the road to the corner. The woman in the floral shorts was sitting on the steps of the screened porch of the house on the corner, sorting through the contents of her pail. Rachel didn't remember the woman's name, but she'd lived in the neighbourhood for some time. She looked up as Rachel stopped at the end of her driveway. She was the Braithwaites' nearest neighbour. What the hell, Rachel thought.

The woman watched as Rachel walked up her short driveway. “Hello. I'm Rachel Schumacher.”

“Howard and Vera's daughter?” the woman said. She was about seventy, with sharp, dark eyes in a face like a crumpled brown paper bag that had been poorly smoothed out.

“Yes,” Rachel answered.

The woman set aside the plastic pail, which was half filled with wild mushrooms. “I thought I recognized you. I'm Flora Zaminksi. I used to babysit you and your brothers when you were little.”

“I'm afraid I don't remember.”

“You wouldn't. You were very young. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude, but it's been ages since I've seen any of the Braithwaite girls. That was Ruth, wasn't it?”

“I think so. Did you know the Braithwaites?”

“No, not really. Once in a while I'd see him or her
on the street or in the yard, and they always said good morning, but that was all. Bert — he was my husband — he helped Mr. Braithwaite push his car out of a snow-bank one winter. Otherwise they kept to themselves and their kind. Each to his own, as Bert used to say. We were in Turkey, I think it was, when Mr. and Mrs. Braithwaite died.” She looked down the road toward the Braithwaite house and shook her head. “I wish the girls would take better care of their yard.”

“You've lived here a long time.”

“Forty-six years, on and off. Bert was an engineer. He built hydroelectric dams all over the world. We didn't have any children, so I went with him. We kept this place, though, to come back to, between Bert's projects. Bert reckoned it would be worth a lot of money when it came time for him to retire and we'd sell it and buy a place in Mexico or Costa Rica or St. Lucia. When Bert died of a heart attack in India, I came back here. That was eighteen years ago. Except for visiting my brother in Ireland twice and my sister in Florida for a month every winter, I've been here ever since.”

“Do you remember Marvin Cartwright?”

“About as good as I remember Mr. and Mrs. Braithwaite. It's a shame about him getting killed in the woods like that.”

“Do you remember if he was a friend of the Braithwaites?”

“I'm not sure the Braithwaites had many friends in the neighbourhood. I didn't think Marvin Cartwright did, either. Except the little kids. You were one of them, weren't you, dear?”

“Yes.” Rachel hesitated. She looked toward the Braithwaite house. She could see it quite clearly, hunched by itself in the woods at the end of the cul-de-sac. She turned back to Mrs. Zaminski. “Have you noticed if anyone has visited Ruth and her sisters recently?”

Mrs. Zaminski's face crumpled as she smiled. “I admit I'm something of a busybody, dear. I do try to mind my own business, but television is so boring and stupid these days, and I find it harder and harder to read for any length of time now. I don't sleep very well, either, anymore, so I spend a lot of time just sitting on my porch or in my window, depending on the weather.” Rachel waited, curbing her impatience. “There were a lot of police bustling about on Friday morning,” Mrs. Zaminski went on. “After Mrs. Mahood found poor Mr. Cartwright's body. They parked their cars and trucks in the turnaround at the end of the road, right next to Ruth's house. It was exciting, really, but she and her sisters must have been quite upset by all the activity. The police knocked on the door several times, but no one answered. I'm really very surprised Ruth opened the door for you.”

“Do they have any regular visitors?”

“Sobeys delivers groceries every Monday afternoon — the driver leaves the boxes in the breezeway — and once in a while the Jehovah's Witnesses will knock on the front door. No one ever answers, of course. And Dougie Hallam. I've seen that truck of his, like the ones the American army uses, only shinier, parked in their driveway. He does odd jobs for them.”

“Dougie Hallam?” Rachel said. That was a side of Dougie Hallam she'd never seen. Or imagined. “What kind of odd jobs?”

“A few months ago I saw him going into the house carrying a big tool box and what looked like plumbing supplies, pipe and whatnot. He does work for a lot of older people in the neighbourhood. I hired him once myself to replace a broken front step. His work was less than satisfactory, and I didn't like the way he looked at me. Like he was sizing me up for something. It ‘creeped me out,' as my grandniece says. He also overcharged me.”

That seemed more Dougie's style, Rachel thought. “He visits the house at night sometimes, too,” Mrs. Zaminski added. “At least, I'm pretty sure it's him, sneaking around in the dark. He comes through the woods and goes in the breezeway door.”

“Did you see anyone last Thursday night?” Rachel asked.

“Thursday? No, dear. I can't be at the window all the time.”