The Dells (32 page)

After a quick check of the basement and the security cameras, he collected his flashlight and left the house, using his own key to lock the side door behind him. He was halfway home when he realized he'd left the DVD discs on the table in the living room. Hell with them, he thought. He'd pick them up later. He had other things on his mind. What was Schumacher's sister doing nosing around? And when, exactly? Ruth's sense of time was crap. Mostly, when she talked at all, it was about things that had happened twenty or thirty years ago or within the last few hours. Everything in between was scrambled like the pieces of a jigsaw in a box, and too many of them were missing. Rachel Schumacher might have come round thirty years ago or just that afternoon. Hallam was pretty sure it had been the latter.

He had a good thing going with Ruth. Between the fake invoices, the crop in the basement, and selling videos of his games with her on the Internet, he was making a small fortune. He was goddamned if he was going to let some do-gooder dyke bitch screw things up. He was going to have to keep an eye on her.

Monday, August 7

Shoe looked at his watch. It was past one o'clock. The wine bottle on the coffee table was empty and Maureen had fallen asleep on the sofa. One minute, they'd been talking about his plans for his motel and marina, and her hopes for her own landscaping business, then she'd put her head back, closed her eyes, and started snoring softly. He was spreading an afghan over her when the headlights of a car turning into the drive lit up the drapes drawn over the living room window. A moment later a key grated in the lock.

“Well, isn't this cosy,” Hal said when he saw Maureen on the sofa and Shoe standing in the living room.

Maureen's eyes fluttered open and she sat up. “Hal.” She scrubbed her face with the palms of her hands. “You're home?” She stood, clutching the front of her dressing gown.

“And just in time, too,” he said. “Or am I too late?” He was wearing what appeared to be new clothes, tan
trousers and a polo shirt with the hang tag still attached to the back of the collar. He was carrying a small overnight bag.

“Where the hell have you been?” Maureen demanded. “You've had us all worried sick. Isn't that right, Shoe?”

“Not so worried that it prevented you two from having a little fun, I see. Is my wife as good a shag as Marty, Joe? I wouldn't know. It's been so long since she bestowed her favours on me, I've forgotten.”

“Don't be an ass, Hal,” Maureen snapped. “Shoe has been a perfect gentleman.”

“And gentlemen don't kiss and tell, do they? Well, don't let me interrupt. I hope you'll be very happy together.”

“Oh, for god's sake, Hal,” Maureen said. “I've got a splitting headache and I'm not in the mood for your foolishness. Nothing happened.”

“Fine, nothing happened. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to bed.” However, instead of going upstairs, he went into the kitchen and down the basement stairs.

Maureen slumped onto the sofa and put her face in her hands. “Christ, what am I going to do?”

“Get some rest,” Shoe said. “I'll call tomorrow.”

She raised her head. “Are you leaving? Please don't. It's late. You can sleep on the Hide-A-Bed downstairs. I — I don't want to be alone with him in the morning.”

Shoe was also uncomfortable at the thought of being in the house when Hal woke up in the morning. He considered suggesting that if Maureen didn't want to be there when Hal woke up, she could come back to his parents' house with him, but all he said was, “I should go.”

“Fine,” Maureen replied coldly, and stamped petulantly from the room and up the stairs.

Shoe turned to leave as Hal came into the living room. “Where's Maureen?” he said.

“Upstairs,” Shoe said.

“Well, you can let yourself out,” Hal said. He started up the stairs.

“Hal,” Shoe said.

“What?” Hal stared down at him.

“You're my brother, whether I like it — or you — or not, and at the moment, I don't. Whatever it is you've got yourself into, or whatever's got into you, I'll do whatever I can to help you.”

“I appreciate that,” Hal said, voice dripping with false sincerity. “There is something you can do for me.”

“Name it,” Shoe said, with a sinking feeling.

“Get the fuck out of my house.” He turned his back and went up the stairs.

Shoe let himself out.

It was almost three o'clock by the time he got back to his parents' house. Despite his fatigue, sleep eluded him. It was an hour before he finally fell asleep, only to awaken some time later from an explicitly carnal dream — of Muriel or Sara or some anonymous succubus conjured up by his imagination — achingly erect and on the brink of orgasm. He lay awake for another hour then, until finally sliding into sleep as the sky outside the high window began to lighten.

He awakened again a few minutes before eight o'clock. The house was silent except for the quiet hum of the central air conditioning system. He lay in bed for another twenty minutes, drifting in and out of sleep, until he heard movement overhead, then got up, showered, dressed, and went upstairs. Rachel was in the kitchen, washing her breakfast dishes.

“What time did you get in last night?” she asked.

“Late,” he said, as he took the coffee out of the fridge.

“Any sign of Hal?”

“He got home about one-thirty.”

“Where the hell was he?”

“He didn't say. He looked as though he'd been on a bender.” He started the coffee maker. “He accused Maureen and me of having an affair.”

“Stupid bastard.”

“We're not.”

“Of course you're not. I meant him.”

“I know you did.”

He'd made enough coffee for both of them. He poured a cup and took a grateful slug, but it did little to revive him. His longing to go home to Vancouver and Muriel was an almost physical force. He wasn't scheduled to return until Friday, but a telephone call was all it would take to change that. The urge to make that call was almost overwhelming.

“You okay?” Rachel asked.

“Just tired,” he replied. He drank more coffee. “What's on your agenda today?”

“There's a children's choir at ten and a kids' Irish dance group at eleven, then we start wrapping things up. Thank god. How 'bout you?”

“Not sure,” he said. Involuntarily, he wondered if he should try to talk to Hal, beat some sense into his thick head. The desire to pack up and head for the airport became even stronger. “I'll lend a hand, if you like.”

“Sure,” she said.

“How are you holding up?” he asked.

“Okay, I guess.” She paused, staring at nothing for a moment, then said, “It's weird. Yesterday, we were all but strangers. We'd seen nothing of each other in years and years, but all that changed the moment we started talking. I was looking forward to getting to know her again.” Her voice thickened. “Now there's just this aching emptiness when I remember she's dead and that will never happen.”

Shoe knew how she felt. He'd felt the same way too
many times in his life. He had no reason to believe he wouldn't again.

Down the hall, a door opened with a click and a soft creak of hinges, followed by shuffling footfalls. Shoe's father came into the kitchen. He looked at Shoe and Rachel, a slightly puzzled expression on his face.

“Mother said she thought she heard Hal's voice,” he said. “Is he here?”

“No, Dad,” Rachel said. “No one here but us chickens.”

Hal woke up in increments, as if his brain were coming online bit by bit, neuron by neuron. At some point in the process, he looked at the digital readout of the clock radio on the bedside table. It read 11:22, but it took an inordinately long time for him to comprehend the meaning of the symbols. He also slowly became aware that he was ravenous; he'd eaten hardly anything at all the day before, just a couple of Big Macs after leaving Gord Peters's house with his overnight bag of money. Panic twisted in his guts when he couldn't immediately recall what he'd done with it. Then, with a rush of relief, he remembered that it was locked in his big tool chest in his basement workshop.

He heard voices from downstairs, muted and unintelligible. Who was Maureen talking to? he wondered with a flash of irritation. Had his brother stayed over? Had he and Maureen taken up where they'd left off when Hal had arrived home and interrupted them? He strained to
make out the words, then realized it was just one of the inane talk radio shows to which Maureen was addicted.

His stomach rumbled and, with a grunt, he passed wind loudly into the bedcovers. So much for the myth that the noisy ones didn't stink, he thought, as he threw back the covers and got out of bed. Too tired to shower, he dressed in the clothes he'd purchased the day before and went downstairs. Maureen was in the all-white, blindingly bright kitchen, sitting at the table, doing some kind of paperwork. Her face tightened as he entered the room, but she otherwise ignored him.

He went to the refrigerator and yanked the door open. The jars and bottles rattled. He stared at the contents of the shelves, for the most part completely mysterious, no idea what to do next. With the exception of the barbecue, he didn't cook. He didn't have a clue how to turn on the oven, let alone operate the microwave. He could barely manage the toaster.

With a sigh, Maureen stood up. “I'll fix you something. What do you want?”

The martyred tone in her voice raised his hackles. “Forget it,” he said. “I'll just have toast.”

“Suit yourself,” she said. She sat down again and resumed her paperwork.

He found the bread. It was that nasty, brown seedy stuff Maureen preferred, but he couldn't bring himself to ask her if there was any white bread. He put two slices in the toaster and depressed the lever. There were four margarine tubs in the fridge. The first one he opened contained something brown and lumpy. He wasn't sure what it was, but it definitely wasn't margarine. He put it back and opened another. Potato salad. He put that back.

“The butter is in the compartment on the door marked butter,” Maureen said dryly, without looking up from her paperwork.

“I thought we used margarine.”

“You haven't eaten margarine in years.”

“Where'd all the margarine containers come from, then?” he asked, taking a stick of butter from the door compartment.

“Oh, for god's sake, Hal,” she said, slapping the file folder closed. “Where do you think? You're not the only person who lives in this house.”

Maureen stood, collected her paperwork, and started to leave the room, just as smoke began to rise from the toaster. Gripped by a sudden, uncontrollable rage, Hal grabbed the toaster. Yanking the cord from the wall outlet, he flung the appliance across the kitchen. It glanced off the edge of the doorway to the dining room and ricocheted onto the dining room table, tumbling and scattering crumbs and pieces of blackened toast across the polished surface. It fell onto the parquet floor and broke in half. Maureen stared at him in astonishment. Hal, his hands smarting, scorched by the hot metal of the toaster, turned on the cold water and thrust his hands into the soothing flow.

“That's just perfect, Hal,” Maureen said.

“Why are you still here?” he growled, hunched over the sink. His hands were beginning to ache from the cold, but the sting had gone out of the burns.

“Pardon me?” Maureen said.

“Why are you still here? Why didn't you leave with my brother? It's obvious you'd rather be with him. Frankly, I'm in awe of your uncanny ability to land on your feet while spreading your legs.” He knew he'd struck a nerve when the colour rose in her face.

“Give me a single good reason why I shouldn't rather be with someone else,” she snapped.

He dried his hands with a dish towel. “Would it make any difference?”

“Probably not,” she said. “Where did you go the other night? Where have you been?”

He looked at her and wondered what it was that made him want to hurt her, to punish her. “You don't really want to know,” he said.

“I wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to know,” she replied.

“All right,” he said. “If you really must know, after I left my parents' house, I met Dougie Hallam at his bar, where we had a drink or two. Then we went to another bar, where we had more drinks. At some point during the course of the evening, Dougie rounded up a couple of women and we went to a motel somewhere out near the airport. I had sex with one of them, or perhaps both, I don't really remember.”

Maureen's face was stony. Red and white blotches mottled her cheeks.

“I woke up yesterday morning,” Hal went on, “alone in the motel room. I slept till about noon, bought some clean clothes at a Wal-Mart, dropped by a friend's place, then spent the rest of the day and evening just driving around. To be honest, I wasn't looking forward to coming home.”

“No fucking shit,” Maureen said, through clenched teeth.

“See, I told you, you didn't want to know.”

“You're lying. You're saying those things just to hurt me, aren't you?”

“Maybe so,” he agreed with a shrug. “But I'm not lying.”

She looked at him as though he were something green and slimy she'd found in the back of the refrigerator. “Was Marty Elias one of the women you had sex with?” she asked, voice barely audible.

“What?” he said, not quite certain he'd heard her correctly.

“You heard me,” she said. “Was she?”

He closed his eyes. He tried to visualize the faces of
the women with whom he and Hallam had partied, but they were a featureless blur. One had had dark hair, he remembered, and a tattoo at the base of her spine, but it hadn't been Marty Elias. Had it? No, he was sure of it.