by Katie Tallo
“What was that?”
Todd clears his throat and begins to speak in a whisper. As if a secret whispered isn’t really being revealed. Gus moves closer to hear.
“Junie was raped. She was fifteen. I was the only one she ever told, and I’ve never told another soul until now.”
Gus immediately regrets poking at his wounds. She touches his shoulder and pats it lightly.
“It’s okay, Todd.”
“I said it was mine ’cause she begged me to.”
“You must have loved her a lot.”
He nods. Choking back tears.
“My family was better off away from that town. Away from Kep Halladay. We would’ve lost everything in that fire anyway if we’d stayed. But a part of me always regretted not going back for Junie. Not getting her away from him. When I heard what ended up happening to her a few years later, I knew it was no accident. The only justice for Junie was that old man disappearing into thin air and leaving his fortune to June’s little girl. What goes around comes around.”
Gus tries to take it all in.
“Do you know who Gracie’s father was?”
“Junie said they were teenagers. A couple of players from the annual high school rugby tournament that was in town. The tournament was sponsored by her father. Two boys took advantage of her. They were not much older than her. The smaller one held her while the bigger lad raped her. She never heard names. She said when it was happening, all she could do was stare at the green-and-gold crest on the front of his shirt.”
Todd’s eyes glisten as tears stream down his pockmarked cheeks. Gus sees the young, pimple-faced boy Todd once was. The helplessness he felt then and feels to this day. She’s sorry she stirred it all up.
Augusta wants to tell him to forgive himself. That it wasn’t his fault. That he was just a kid. But she knows words won’t matter. They never do. Once regret seeps into your bones, it lives in your marrow until the day you die.
28
Manny
AUGUSTA CAN HEAR THE WIND WHIPPING VIOLENTLY AT the trees outside her bedroom window. Red veins dance across her eyelids like lightning. She tries to open them, but sleep drags her deeper. She can feel someone lying next to her. Breathing on her arm. Hot breath. She’s scared. Can’t move. Trapped by lifeless limbs that seem paralyzed. Clawing from the deep, Augusta wills herself to consciousness. Her eyes pop open. She sits bolt upright and leaps out of bed.
“Who’s there?”
Her eyes adjust. It’s Levi.
He wakes up with a great sigh. Stretches his back legs and exposes his belly for a rub. He must have left Rose’s bed in the middle of the night to join her. Seems to be his habit when the winds begin to whip branches against the old siding of Rose’s house. Gus calms her racing heart, sits on the edge of the bed, and rubs his belly.
Only justice for Junie was that old man disappearing into thin air and leaving his fortune to June’s little girl.
Todd’s words come to her as she throws one of Rose’s knit sweaters over her nightie and heads downstairs. Gus wonders what happened to Kep’s fortune when Gracie died.
While the coffee’s brewing, she leafs through Renata’s scrapbook and finds the article she’s looking for. One of the last articles Renata wrote before she retired. Gus hadn’t read it closely before because it didn’t seem relevant. Just a short notice really. About the bank closing in Elgin. A CIBC branch. The article is dated August 1, 2011. Two years before the fire. The town was already dying. The bank manager at the time was Manfred Clocktower. He’s quoted. Calling it a sad day for Elgin. Says the bank had no choice. With businesses closing and people moving on, they had to relocate. He says he’s being transferred and he’ll be happy to continue to serve the good people of Elgin at the new branch in Perth, just twenty-five miles away. Renata’s article goes on to list other businesses that have closed in the past year. The bowling alley. The local pub. Her article ends with an announcement that the newspaper itself will be publishing their final issue at week’s end.
Gus sips her coffee.
If anyone knows about the Halladay fortune, it’s the bank manager. And Augusta’s lucky streak continues. Manfred Clocktower is easy to find on the library’s computer. He’s everywhere. Has his own website, blog, Facebook page, and Twitter account. He’s all over social media but doesn’t have many followers. His bio says he retired from banking in 2014 after sixteen years. He now goes by the name Manny the Happy Medium. His life journey, as he calls it, has taken him on a new and exhilarating path. He has become an online practitioner of the mystical arts. His spiritual retreat is located just outside Perth, Ontario, in the small hamlet of Glen Tay. Augusta uses Manny’s online reservation tool to book a spiritual reading for later that morning.
His schedule is wide open.
LEVI COMES ALONG FOR THE RIDE. HE LIKES ROAD TRIPS. AND he’s good company. The dog sticks his head out the window for the first few miles, then curls up on the back seat and snores the rest of the way. Gus is beginning to love that sound.
Manny’s spiritual retreat turns out to be a dilapidated mobile home in a place called Sunset Veranda Trailer Park. Gus pulls into the narrow stone lane next to his unit. The lane is bordered with plastic pink flamingos. Manny is standing on a small vinyl porch that clings to the side of his trailer. He’s smoking what looks like a joint. Above his head, a hand-painted sign hangs from a rod.
MANNY THE HAPPY MEDIUM
YOUR BRIDGE TO THE SPIRIT WORLD
Manny snuffs the rolled cigarette into a small metal container in his palm and snaps it shut with his thumb. He’s quite a sight. His fingers are adorned with silver rings that snake down to his knuckles. He’s very short. Almost as tall as he is wide. He’s got man boobs that bounce as he descends the narrow steps to greet her. His purple sweat suit and lime-green flip-flops make him look more like a cartoon character than a spiritual bridge. Manny’s not the most attractive man. And the lip liner, chin stubble, and fake eyelashes don’t help. But his big smile and gushing enthusiasm instantly put her at ease. His total lack of shame and his head-to-toe weirdness are actually quite endearing. Reminds Gus of a gaudy showgirl.
They shake hands, but instead of letting go, Manny holds hers tight. Augusta gets a warm feeling from him. She figures there’s no point in lying. She confesses immediately that she’s not come for a reading. She’s come to talk about Elgin. He smiles, nods, and says he knows. The slight lift of one eyebrow tells her that he had no clue.
He sets them up in a couple of faded lawn chairs on the porch, offers her a diet cola, and they settle in. Gus explains that she’s investigating some cases in Elgin. She drops Renata’s name. He brightens at the mention.
Manny goes on about his job at the bank. About the town before it fell apart. Nothing she doesn’t already know, but it’s a good warm-up to the main event. Asking about Halladay’s money. Gus feigns interest and slowly she eases the conversation toward the Halladays. Asks if he had any dealings with Kep.
Manny pauses. His boobs heave as if the memory of the man exhausts him.
Augusta waits. Manny closes his eyes. She’s pretty sure he’s pretending to conjure up the past. And he does. She opens her notebook.
“The man was a skinflint through and through, Kep Halladay was. A cheapskate. And paranoid. Woof! He always insisted on doing his banking behind closed doors in my office. Too good to mix with the rabble waiting for a teller. He didn’t want anyone looking over his shoulder. Knowing how much he had. He’d take me to task over a two-dollar service charge even though the man was worth millions. He wouldn’t deal with cash directly, though. Everything was bank drafts and checks and transfers. He actually hated touching the stuff. He said it was covered with the filth from grubby-handed farmers. Bit of a germaphobe. I think he thought himself something of a Howard Hughes type. Kep met the man once at a CNE air show in Toronto. From then on he carried hand sanitizer in a little spray bottle. Squirted the armrests of the chairs in my office, doorknobs, pens if he ha
d to touch one. The man wouldn’t even shake my hand.”
Manny opens his eyes. Looks down at his fleshy palms. Gus can see that these encounters with Kep Halladay actually hurt his feelings more than they annoyed him.
“But what I remember most about Halladay was the aroma. Antiseptic. The second I’d see his Cadillac pull into the handicap spot, I’d practically smell it. I couldn’t shake it for the rest of the day once he’d left. Slightly minty, but not in a good way.”
Gus wants him to focus on something other than Kep’s personal hygiene.
“Did you know his granddaughter, Gracie?”
He seems startled by Augusta’s presence and quickly looks down at his rings, twirling one between his fingers. His glassy eyes flit up to look at her. He’s definitely stoned.
“How old are you? Seventeen? No, eighteen?”
“Twenty.”
He quickly looks down again.
“Must be the fiery hair that gives you that youthful glow.”
Gus begins to wonder if this is why people open up to her so easily. Renata, James Pratt, Todd, even Bebe, the records office lady. They see a young girl in her and let their guard down.
But Manny seems to be stalling. He’s not opening up. Gus can tell it’s not because he doesn’t want to. There’s a sadness in his eyes. He knows things and he’s either ashamed or disturbed by those things. Gus isn’t sure how to get him to talk. She just wants him to know it’s safe to do so. She tries honesty.
“Sometimes I feel so young. Like a child. Like I’m stuck there and I might always be stuck there.”
He looks up at her. “The past can be sticky like that.”
He takes a deep breath, as if collecting himself.
“But I can see you’re no child.”
Gus and Manny look at each other, and both of them smile. He doesn’t look away, but absentmindedly fiddles with his silver rings as he tells her what he knows.
“Kep brought the little girl in just once. Gracie. She was about nine or ten. Slip of a thing. She was wearing her Sunday best. His lawyer was with them. He’d drawn up papers making her the beneficiary of his fortune. It was all to be directed to a living trust. All those royalties he was getting from the local farmers’ mineral rights were to be transferred to that account as they came in. Everything was in her name, to be held in trust until she turned eighteen. It was all legal.”
Shame catches in his throat. Gus makes a note about the trust.
“Funny word for it. Trust. It was a charade. That trust was completely revocable. I knew what was going on. He knew it. His lawyer definitely knew it. And they both knew I knew it. The girl was never going to inherit a penny. The trust was a tax scheme. The assets could be transferred back to Kep and the whole thing dissolved whenever it suited him. It was simply a way to make Kep Halladay richer as the mineral royalties flowed in practically tax free. Meantime, across the bank floor at the teller’s wicket, local farmers were getting by on Kep’s fumes. Arrogant bastard never even tipped his hat to a single one of them for all they’d given him.”
Gus looks up from her notetaking. Manny looks stricken, like Kep is standing right in front of him. Like he’s back in his office at the bank in Elgin.
“You ever smell evil?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
She thinks back to the stench rising from that black crater in the middle of Elgin. That came close.
“Well, it smells like mint. Like it’s masking something horrifying.”
Then Manny shakes off the past and it seems to literally lift from his shoulders. He shrugs, smiles, and sits back in his lawn chair with a sigh. Augusta gets Manny. Gets how he slips in and out of time and place. She does it too. He smiles at her.
“What is it you really want to know from an old banker?”
“I want to know what happened to the Halladay fortune.”
“The girl cashed out.”
“Gracie Halladay? What do you mean?”
“Well, the day she turned eighteen. She inherited it all. And withdrew the lot.”
Gus flips back through her notebook. “March thirty-first. 2013.”
He nods. “You’ve done your research.”
She scans her notes. “This was the day before she died in the fire. April first, 2013.”
He nods again. Then he leans closer. “I shouldn’t be telling you any of this, Miss Monet.”
“I think all this has something to do with my mother’s death. But I don’t know what or why. Manny, it’s important.”
He leans back. Stares at her. She holds his gaze. He blinks. Then tells her about Gracie.
“The girl was only eleven when Kep left her that fortune, but she couldn’t touch a penny of it. So for seven years, she lived like a pauper while the royalties kept flowing into the trust. The bank closed, moved to Perth, and the trust moved along with us. Then in 2013, a month before her eighteenth birthday, she showed up. She wanted to get things in order. The balance was over two hundred and sixty million at that point. I verified signature cards and set her up with a savings account so that the day the trust matured, the balance would be transferred over to her account. Then she came in a week before her birthday and said she’d changed her mind. Said she wanted to pay off any taxes owed and cash out. She arranged for a bunch of certified bank drafts. She wanted nothing left in that savings account that I’d set up for her just a few weeks before. I got everything ready. Then the day came, and Gracie Halladay walked out of the Perth branch of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce with one hundred seventy million dollars’ worth of bank drafts in her purse. Made out to cash. No names. No expiry date.”
Gus makes a note of the amount. Trying to picture what size mattress you’d need to fit that much cash inside. Manny continues.
“I strongly advised her against it. I told her it was highly irregular, not to mention flat-out dangerous to be walking around with that much money in drafts. Anyone could cash them. She wouldn’t listen. She didn’t want a record anywhere of who the money was going to. She wanted it the way she wanted it. Odd young woman.”
Gus flinches ever so slightly at his descriptor: “odd young woman.” Gracie’s behavior sounds specific and defiant, but odd? Funny how people can toss out judgments about someone when they don’t understand them. Gus feels like she’s beginning to figure out who Gracie is. Damaged. Different. But that only looks odd to those walking around whole and ordinary. Manny breaks her train of thought.
“Then the poor thing died the next day. So to answer your question as to what happened to the Halladay fortune? At the time, I imagined it burned up in the fire along with the girl. But I had no clue. And that’s exactly what I told her father when he showed up the next morning asking about the money.”
Gus nearly falls out of her chair. He knows he’s just dropped a bombshell from the stunned look on her face. Momentarily, she forgets how to breathe. She can’t speak. He pauses to let her catch her breath, and for dramatic effect. Then he forges ahead with gusto, like he’s revealing the sleight of hand behind a magic trick.
“Remember I told you I opened her a savings account? Well, it was a joint account. With her father. The pair of them came in together. She insisted on it being a joint account. Bank card. PIN. The whole bit. She was going to give him full access to the entire fortune.”
“Her father. You mean Todd? He was posing as her father?”
Augusta’s head is spinning as she tries to match up Manny’s words to the image of a teary-eyed Todd standing outside the Home Hardware. She can’t. It couldn’t have been Todd. Unless Todd lied, and Gracie knew who he was, and she wanted him to have her money. Gus is beyond baffled. Manny helps her out.
“Gracie vouched for the guy so what could I say? At first, I figured she wanted to share the wealth with kin, but when she came back into the bank a few weeks later, without dear old Dad, I got the feeling she’d had a change of heart. So, like I said, he shows up that fateful morning. A few hours before the fire in Elgin. T
he guy went white as a ghost when he found out the money was all gone. Then he laughed. Said I was messing with him because it was April Fools’ Day. He thought it was a joke. I told him I most certainly was not joking since that would be highly inappropriate given my position at the bank. Then he blew a gasket. He started ranting about how the bank doors opened not ten minutes before and there was no way the money could be gone because today was his daughter’s eighteenth birthday and her trust didn’t come due till today. It was not lost on me that this rogue’s plan all along had been to come grab the cash as soon as it was transferred into that joint account. Otherwise, why come in without her?
“That’s when I told him that Gracie Halladay’s eighteenth birthday was in fact yesterday. Not today. He got this blank look on his face. Then his body shuddered like a realization had just sunk deep into his bones. I could tell he knew he’d been made the fool. He called me a liar. I told him I was surprised he didn’t know the date of his own daughter’s birth. That was when he tried to clock me, and security tossed him to the curb.”
Manny looks proud of how he handled the situation. He folds his arms across his man boobs. Gus can’t wrap her head around any of it, and yet Manny’s acting like he’s just wrapped up his story with a nice tidy bow. Meanwhile, Augusta’s mind is racing ahead, searching for what comes next. There has to be more.
“So Kep’s entire fortune burned in the fire.”
“Didn’t say that. Said at the time I imagined it did. But over the next few months, those bank drafts started getting cashed. None in our branch, but mostly branches scattered across the province.”
“Gracie’s father?”
“Hard to say. Maybe he somehow got his hands on them. Stormed out of the bank like he was on a mission. But I doubt it. She had me put each one of those bank drafts in a separate envelope instead of all in one. Seems they weren’t destined for one place or one person. Maybe she mailed them before she died.”