by A J Maybe
“The disrespect!” Kasper blustered.
“No, no, like, he wasn’t doing an impression or anything. The mask was on backwards, and tied real tight around his neck and, brother, the man is dead! Suffocated inside the mask, by the sounds of it.”
Holy cannoli. Luke! The poor guy.
“Ah, see?” Kasper said. “No one calls an old man except for death. Well, good riddance to bad rubbish, as they say.”
I gasped, more shocked that Kasper would talk about Luke like that than I was by the death.
“So he had a dumb accident,” Kasper continued. “The world is better off.”
“No, brother. It doesn’t look like an accident. Smothered or strangled or whatever... he’s not just dead. The man was killed!”
“Greasy gourds!” I said.
Sherry lifted an eyebrow at me.
I shrugged. “My mother was strict about cussing in the house.”
Kasper, in the other room, kept silent for a beat, then said, “Listen Jimmy, that’s too bad, but it’s got nothing to do with me. Call me if someone important dies.”
Kasper shuffled back to the table, eased into his chair, and sipped more soup from the side of his spoon.
I gaped at him as if he were an alligator and had just sat down for dinner. How could he be so uncaring? Luke was a little laconic, sure, but he seemed like a fine enough man!
Sherry pushed back from the table. “How can you just keep eating like that? Lion Tamer was a Good Guy.” She said ‘good guy’ in such a way that I understood how, in Sherry’s world anyway, there were Good Guys and Bad Guys. Her face mottled red and instant tears traced paths down her cheeks
And Luke, one of the Good Guys, had just been found suffocated to death in a park. My eyes filled and threatened to overflow. This day had finally proven too much for me.
Kasper shrugged. “You should eat up too. Don’t let good soup get cold over the likes of Rex Bales.”
Sherry blinked at him. “Rex Bales?”
“So, Luke’s not—”
“Lion Tamer’s not dead then?”
Kasper sipped more chowder and shook his head, “No.”
I understood. “Ohhhh! So Luke found Rex?”
The old man nodded slowly. “His body, anyway.”
“Strangled?”
“Suffocated, Jimmy thinks. In the park. But Jimmy is excitable. That stuff is just details. That’s police business, not mine.”
I supposed he had a point. Still, a man was dead, even if it was that jerk Rex Bales.
I finished my chowder, but the taste had changed.
6
That Particular Truck (Monday)
I biked home as if I had wings.
It was like I was made of pure adrenaline. Which made sense, really, after the day I’d had: spending every dime I could scrape together, a new career on the horizon, witnessing actual magic first hand, meeting the world’s biggest donk and then finding out he’s dead a few hours later, plus Kasper’s cold reaction to the murder of a fellow Covey... no wonder my system was in overdrive.
Or maybe it was the chowder.
Darkness crowded in from the shoulders of the road. The Cove had all sorts of charm, but only a few streetlights and they were all downtown. Every other road in the Cove was really a country highway. Deep ditches, tiny shoulders, and no lights. The sun had only just set, but with all the trees stretching overhead, dusk on Familiar Island rushed in faster than it did in the city.
I imagined animals hiding in the dense brush, waiting to ambush me as I rolled by. In my mind, the sound of my tires became a bear padding down the rough asphalt behind me. I snapped my head over my shoulder repeatedly to check.
It was silly, but there was also a murderer on the loose, wasn’t there? That human threat was more real than any random animal attack.
And what kind of fool was I to refuse Kasper’s offer of a ride home?
A proud one. One who liked to seem stronger than she really was.
Plus, I was freaked out by Kasper’s blasé reaction to the news. He had been more worked up over Rex ribbing me at the auction.
But, Kasper had retired to the Cove many years ago. He knew Rex better than an outsider like me — maybe his death really was a blessing to the community.
I sang a little song to keep the bears away but felt silly and quit before the chorus. I couldn’t remember the words anyway.
“Ugh! Wish I had a headlamp on this thing!”
And then it happened.
I had a light. A faint green glow blossomed just ahead of my front tire and kept pace, bouncing along in front of me. “What the…”
I squeezed the brakes, wondering whether my eyes were failing or I was going mad. It had to be one of the two, right?
Brake pads squawked. The light stopped too.
I pedalled forward cautiously.
Sweet lady of the lake. Is this real? What was in that chowder?! Did Sherry turn me into a witch?
At that thought, a private glee gleamed inside me.
I raced home, finishing the forty-five minute ride in about twenty-three. The glow stayed with me, even into Brennan’s camp, across the back deck and through the kitchen, even into the bedroom, where I collapsed in exhaustion, not at all bothered by the extra light.
I don’t think I even moved all night. I didn’t wake until nearly lunch, and then I was groggy from that massive stretch of sleep. I staggered to the bathroom to splash some water on my face. The green light had vanished.
My haggard reflection startled me so much that I squeaked and my eyes goggled, like I was one of the stooges. And that face, with the wild eyes, freaked me out even more. My cheeks were extra puffy, even more than on a standard morning. Rosacea flared across them and around my nostrils, making my nose even more prominent. My hair seemed to be at war with itself, with individual pieces of it swooping one way, then arching back into the turmoil that was my head. A wash of pink stained the whites of my eyes, and my irises seemed as black as my pupils.
“Great goulash,” I swore. I certainly looked like a witch today.
I felt much more human after a long, steamy shower, and I looked okay too.
I flipped open my laptop to email Brennan while I air-dried. I had sworn off the auction sites, and had even started a 60 day social media cleanse —’breaking up with Fakebook’, Brennan called it— but I hadn’t gone full Luddite. I could still use the freakin’ internet without sliding down the slippery slope of addiction again.
Brennan approved this. Out of all my online friends, he was the only one to notice the change in my posts when I hit rock bottom. He reached out and applied the lessons he’d learned when he ‘broke up with alcohol’, becoming my unofficial auction addiction sponsor.
Unsure of how he’d take the news that I’d gone to a live auction and bought a truck, I chose to work my way up to the email. Instead of opening the mail tab, I skimmed the headlines on the island’s news site, a gossipy rag called The Familiar Faces.
The site was too neon, used a swoopy font which made me squint, and was so full of ads that it loaded like honey through a strainer, but what can I say? Without social media, I was an easy mark for the site’s sensationalist, tattling headlines. I found The Familiar on my second day in the Cove and hadn’t missed a day since.
I should’ve guessed what the top story would be:
Local Millionaire Found Slaughtered!
Yeesh. Have a little respect, Familiar Faces. I clicked anyway.
Police aren’t releasing any details, but your intrepid reporters at The Familiar have confirmed that the identity of the body located in Sherwood Park yesterday afternoon is none other than local millionaire Rex Bales.
(We haven’t exactly seen Mr. Bales’ bank balance, but with a dozen businesses located in Saint Mauvais, the Cove, and Blind River, we’re confident that ole Rexy was deep into the highest tax bracket.)
Sources tell The Familiar that Mr. Bales had recently made a VERY generous donation to the St. Mauvais Humane Society.
I snorted, knowing that “donation” was only made as a means of reclaiming the memorabilia Rex felt he should’ve inherited.
The investigation is ongoing. Police are asking for any witnesses who may have information about the park incident to come forward. The Familiar is looking for anyone who saw the argument between Rex and a group of beefy Bridge Trash guys at Soggy Notions immediately before his untimely demise.
Officials ask that the public stay away from Sherwood Park, which has been declared a crime scene. The park will be shut down until further notice, but never fear: the Familiar will be there, live tweeting with new information as it comes available.
Before it’s available, actually, if we’re doing our jobs right.
Those folks at The Familiar were such creeps. Despite that, I returned to the main page and looked for any other juicy tidbits, scanning to see if anyone had reported a glowing cyclist cruising down the old highway last night.
Instead, I got a video pop-up ad. Rushing to click out of it before some virus got its hooks into my laptop, I accidentally hit “play next”, and an old video from the Cinnamon Challenge heyday came up.
I couldn’t help myself. I let it load through the sluggish connection and let it play. The Cinnamon Challenge had been a favourite of mine, when it was trending about ten years ago. Bored or overconfident suckers would fire up their webcams and try to swallow a heaping tablespoon of cinnamon, without water, in less than 60 seconds.
Sounds easy enough, right? But every single time, the sucker in question would end up hacking and wheezing and doubled over in pain, or desperately searching for water, or throwing up. Sometimes it was all three.
This one ended in the predictable way, and I closed the tab with a guilty grin.
Then I rushed out an email to Brennan, a summary of my Sunday which was full of run-on sentences and way too many exclamation points. I hoped my enthusiasm would be infectious and he wouldn’t take me to task about the auction. I hadn’t gone to any websites, but he might think that an auction is an auction, and that I’d relapsed.
After hitting ‘Send’, I googled the number for Gino’s Garage and retrieved my cell phone from the bedroom. It had stayed there since I arrived and discovered that my southern Ontario-based service provider had an almost useless network in northern Ontario. I got one bar of reception, sometimes, for five minutes maximum.
The screen showed me that ‘now’ was not one of those times, so I borrowed Brennan’s phone and dialed.
“Yeah?” grunted a male voice.
“Oh, uh, hi. Is this the garage?”
“Well it ain’t the foyer.”
“Mmm-kay. Well, if this is Gino’s, my truck’s there.”
“Got a couple trucks here.”
“This particular truck is big, and pink, with a three-foot-long horn in the hood, and a cupcake on the roof.”
“I know the one,” he snorted.
“Great. I need it certified or safetied or whatever.”
“Right, right, yeah. Sorry lady. I’m Gino. Kasper called me this morning about it, first thing.”
That sweet man, I thought. “Oh great!” I said.
“Well...maybe not so great,” Gino grumbled.
My stomach filled with anxious electricity and my heart rate peaked to emergency levels. “Oh no! Does it need a lot of work? Because I don’t have any money left. I seem to have blown it all on a broken truck,” I said, laughing nervously. “Maybe we could work out a deal? Like if you can just sign off on it now, say it’s safe to drive, and I’ll PROMISE-promise-promise to fix it once my business is up and running?
“But wait, it ran fine yesterday. I basically drove it to your shop. There was a chain between my truck and Kaspers but—”
“—listen lady, I don’t know if the truck’s okay or not.”
My tone took a hard dive into the grumble zone. “Stop calling me ‘lady’, thanks. My name is Piper Mars. How long until you know about my truck?”
“As I was saying… Kasper called me first thing. That was my first call of the day. But the second call of the day was the OPP.”
Oh no. The Ontario Provincial Police.
“The coppers think your truck had something to do with that funny business at the park.”
The room spun and I gripped the edge of the glass-topped end table where Brennan kept the old avocado-green phone. I focused on these details, then concentrated on the rotary dialer, counting off each number. I counted up, then down.
This was a grounding technique Brennan taught me, and I felt a twinge of pride at using it so reflexively. That pride was mixed with terror, of course.
“Lady?”
“I, yeah, I mean...but, the truck can’t be involved! It’s been parked at your shop the whole time!”
Gino cleared his throat. “Unattended, with the keys in the console. Anyway, it’s not parked anymore. The cops say that particular truck of yours is evidence in a murder investigation — they seized it before I was done my morning coffee. Sorry, Ms. Mars.”
There was not a grounding technique in the world that could get me through that piece of news, so I screamed until I was hoarse.
7
Rex’s Law
“Sorry,” Gino repeated, all the gruff melting out of his voice. “They said they’d call you about it.”
And they probably did, but they would’ve found my old cell number and tried that before digging any deeper.
I wondered how long the police would keep my ‘evidence’. In a few weeks, I’d have to start making credit card payments on it! In a panic, I dialed the numbers on the back of each credit card. FYI, it takes about an hour to dial a 1-800 number on a rotary phone. That’s what it felt like, anyway.
After each round of hold music, the credit card service representatives were chipper and polite. They each told me that, yes, the charges had gone through, and no, I couldn’t cancel them, unless I wanted to file a fraud claim against the auction agency.
The agency, really, had done nothing wrong. As-is, where-is. The truck wasn’t evidence when I bought it.
The representatives were telling me I was screwed, but at least they were saying that in a really chipper and polite way.
In thirty days I’d start accumulating interest on about twenty thousand dollars. Compound interest. Wonderful.
I began to pace the tiny cabin. I circled the kitchen a few times, but it was too small for proper laps so I skirted the pine island between the kitchen and the living room and bore down the short hallway to the left of the living room. The hall passed the basic three-piece bathroom, both bedrooms, and the disused front entryway.
The camp just didn’t have enough air space to let me properly process my predicament. I needed to get outside, so I pulled on the worn out Seshman’s hoodie they gave out to employees of the month. The frayed cuffs comforted me like a hug. I then walked outside, across the cedar deck and down the steps, past the car, past the vintage Airstream trailer rotting in the yard, and mounted my bike.
Aimless cruising meant downhill cruising and I soon found myself in ‘downtown’ Carterton Cove. Main Street curved lazily toward the water. Bells dinged in the doors of the squat, sandstone shops as people wandered in and out. Floral scents wafted from planter boxes lining the sidewalk, and people visited in a little courtyard designed as a communal dining area.
The place would be crammed soon, from the May Two-Four long weekend until Labour Day in September, and then steady through hunting season too, but for now it was pleasantly populated, not crazy.
Wouldn’t it be nice to just stay here? I slipped into optimistic fantasy, wondering if a cupcake truck could survive in the seasonal, tourist-driven economy of the Cove.
My partially-educated business sense told me that wasn’t feasible. At least in the winter, I’d have to drive into St. Mauvais and set up shop at their concerts and other major events. St. Moe was only an hour or so away, and the fifty thousand potential customers there could keep a mobile cupcake bus
iness afloat through the lean months, I thought.
It seemed like fun, honestly. It’d be like making a guest appearance in my hometown. I’d seem like a rock star.
If I could get my food truck back, that is.
The scent of scalded butter drew me to Main Street’s grilled cheese shop. An ooey-gooey sandwich from red-and-black checkered counter of For the Love of Cheese’us wasn’t exactly the salvation I needed, but it couldn’t hurt.
I locked up my beloved lemon-coloured bike before rushing through the flower-filled courtyard toward the shop. I eyed the sandwich board outside the door, which listed the day’s offerings in chalk. It listed their prices, too. I grimaced; tourist-trap prices. My dad taught me to wheel and deal, but my mom taught me frugality. With a mountain of debt looming, I just couldn’t justify a thirteen dollar sammie.
A groan of longing escaped me as I drooled in front of the sandwich board.
“Right? Who would’ve thought to coat a cheese sandwich in Crisco and deep fry it?” said a voice from behind me, referring to the Special. I knew the voice immediately this time: Robin Jarvis.
“You can deep fry anything, if you put your mind to it,” I said. We’d met face-to-face at the auction, and his producers briefly had my name slotted in for an appearance on Robin’s show, Hoarder Redemption, but he didn’t seem to recognize me. I retreated to one of the wooden benches in the courtyard.
Robin Jarvis came out from Love of Cheese’us hefting his stylish matte black travel mug. He took the next bench down from mine, which kept six feet of paving stones and a low planter box full of chrysanthemums between us. I turned a smirk to him. “Takes a lot of willpower to pass on deep fried cheese, doesn’t it?”
Robin Jarvis, famous Youtube celebrity (okay, semi-famous, at best), chuckled into his travel mug. At my joke! I hated the part of myself that celebrated this. He’s just a guy, Piper. And he’s a jerk, at that.
A thin man, Jarvis was average height according to his online profile but an inch or so less in person. His sandy shag of hair glinted with silver accents —many more than showed up on a computer screen— and his scalp shone through the thinning strands.