“Me closest to the rock,” Doug muttered. Gerry got a little ahead of his broom with her own and kept brushing. “Off! Off!” he said suddenly, and she leapt back.
“Hard!” shouted someone else at the rapidly approaching end of the rink.
“No, off!” shouted Doug. She decided to obey him. The rock slid neatly past another and came to rest behind the first. When Doug joined their fourth player behind the stones to confer, she trailed him and stood uncertainly.
Here was the tall red-haired man who’d been speaking with Betty Parsley at church the previous morning. Rick slid all the way from the far end of the rink and said, “What were you thinking, Steve? Doug called it. I called it.”
Steve stared coolly at Rick. “I just thought it could use a bit cleaner ice, that’s all. Don’t make a case of it. And who’s this?” He turned his attention to Gerry, who felt uncomfortable with the testosterone level in the immediate area.
Doug introduced her as his cousin. That gave her a moment’s pause. His cousin. Not his — ? Fine. She flashed Rick and Steve brilliant smiles. “I’m really excited to be learning to curl,” she began, when Rick interrupted her.
“Doug! She’s a beginner? We’ve got the match this weekend!”
“I thought she could sweep a bit tonight,” he replied mildly, “as Jimmy is away and Ralph is sick. And if she likes it, she can sign up to learn.”
Gerry’s heart sank. Learn? Sign up? As in a curling class? And apparently, she was causing some tension within Doug’s team. This “date” wasn’t turning out at all as she’d hoped.
“Doug, Rick, can I get you over here?” A guy with a clipboard was beckoning. Doug hesitated while Rick hurried off.
“Don’t worry about me,” Gerry assured him.
“We’ll grab a coffee, won’t we, Gerry,” said Steve with a smile. She nodded and Doug, relieved, slid over to the organizer. Steve and Gerry left the rink, walking up the stairs back to the lounge. “You take a seat. What do you like in your coffee?” She told him.
Gerry sat in one of a row of seats facing the window. Doug looked over in her direction. She lifted a hand. Steve brought her a coffee and sat down next to her. “Cheers!” he said.
Gerry sipped and almost choked. There was something stronger than cream and sugar in there. “I don’t really like it,” she said, putting the cup on the floor, thinking, it must be half whisky.
Steve looked blank. “Oh. Sorry. I thought you might be chilled standing around on the ice.”
“No, I’m fine.”
“I’ll get you another.” Gerry watched as he returned her coffee to the barkeep, offering it to him with a laugh. He brought her a fresh cup.
There was an uneasy silence, which Steve broke. “When my dad and his buddies used to play, they had a can of rye and ginger ale in one hand and a cigarette in the other.”
Gerry laughed. “What did they do when they actually had to play?”
“See that little ledge running down the side wall? Now it’s for water bottles, but back then it was for drinks and ashtrays.”
She laughed again. “I don’t see other women playing with men.”
“Not tonight. But it’s a thing. Called mixed doubles.”
“Oh. Like in tennis,” she said. They subsided into silence again.
This time Gerry spoke first. “So what are they discussing?” She jerked her head to where Steve’s teammates stood with the clipboard guy.
“Our rink is hosting a tournament this weekend. Rick and Doug have got themselves on the planning committee.” He flashed a grin. “Me, I just turn up and play.”
“Very sensible,” she commented. “I stay away from committees myself.”
“And what do you do, Gerry?”
Gerry was surprised. Usually men didn’t ask women her age about their jobs. “I’m a commercial artist. Comics, greeting cards. Paintings of your house, spouse, child, pet.”
“Well, I don’t have any of those, so I’ll pass. Unless you’d like to paint me. For myself, of course.”
Gerry looked at his face more closely. Long and thin, with hollow cheeks and high prominent cheekbones. Ruddy, but pale underneath it. And that red hair, much redder than her own, a real russet. “I see you as a Viking or an Elizabethan privateer. A white ruff would set off your colouring and maybe a cloth-of-gold cloak. Background another red than your hair, with lots of brown undertones.”
He looked surprised. “Hey! You really are a pro!”
She inclined her head. “Thank you. That’s just the patter. The proof is in the execution.”
“Well, I’m impressed, anyway.” He rose. “Look. I see Doug coming. I don’t think we’re going to practise anymore tonight. Good to meet you, Gerry. Maybe see you around sometime.”
She was going to say, “Yes, like I saw you at church yesterday,” but just then Doug arrived and, after discussing their next practice time, Steve left.
Doug took his vacant seat and sighed. “I can’t believe how many details there are in planning an event.”
“That’s why people hire professionals.” She spoke rather more tartly than she’d intended.
Doug looked somewhat taken aback. “Oh. Yes. That would be nice. But we’re a small club with few benefactors. We have to pay for everything out of members’ dues. Are you mad at me?”
Gerry felt contrite. “No. Yes. A little. I thought —”
Doug spoke slowly. “You thought this was a date. Geez, Gerry, don’t you think I know what a date’s supposed to look like? And that this isn’t it?”
She felt miserable, and stupid.
Doug continued, “I just thought, maybe start to get to know each other better, away from your house, where I work for you, you know?”
Now she added embarrassed to her list of negative emotions. She stood. “I’m going to go now, Doug. Your friend needs you again anyway.” True enough, the organizer was advancing on them, clipboard to the fore, Rick trailing behind. Doug swore under his breath.
Gerry stooped and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. After all, she still liked him. When she got into her car, she blew her nose and wiped away a few tears. She looked up where the roof bulged down into the interior. She sang, “And my car crushed under a tree.”
Tuesday morning, the familiar routine reasserted itself. Feed cats, make coffee, clean litter boxes — “Six litter boxes,” chanted Gerry — drink coffee, make fire, work.
It felt good to get back to drawing. She roughed out a few cat portraits: the elusive calico Lightning; Bob’s inquisitive face with its white whiskers and dickey; Mother’s benevolent marmalade-coloured expression; and little Jay’s round-eyed innocence. She was just choosing her colours when the phone rang. The kitchen phone had a long cord. She stretched it so she could still look at her work on the table in the living room. “Hello,” she said, absently.
“I’m calling to make sure you don’t forget we have an appointment at 1:30.”
“I haven’t forgotten, Prudence. I’ll pick you up but you have to drive us there.”
Silence at the other end of the line.
“Oh, come on,” coaxed Gerry. “You missed a lot of practice time because of the storm and sleeping over at my place. You need to drive in winter. The roads are clear today.” She added, “I’ll buy you a lollipop.”
“Very funny,” Prudence replied coldly. “I’ll be ready at one,” and hung up.
“Eat or draw? Eat or draw?” Gerry eyed the clock on the mantel. She compromised by taking a banana, which lay, uneaten, and another coffee, which cooled as she began colouring in Jay’s black and white. At five past one, Gerry caught sight of the clock, squeaked, gulped coffee, grabbed banana and wallet, and dashed to her car.
It was ten past by the time she pulled into Prudence’s driveway, and a quarter past by the time a red-faced Prudence had the car backed out and onto
the road.
Gerry reassured her. “Don’t worry. It’s a lovely sunny day and we’re fifteen minutes away from Mrs. Smith’s. It’s that condo at the end of the river road, right?”
Prudence nodded, her hands gripping the steering wheel. Once she got going, she was fine.
Gerry looked out the window at the lake. “Almost frozen.” She thought about the previous evening. Somehow, none of that seemed important. She resolved to put Doug, his teammates, and curling out of her mind. Stick to work, she told herself.
Prudence parked and they walked into the modest foyer. They buzzed Mrs. Smith and took an elevator to the fifth floor, the topmost. Mrs. Smith’s door was decorated with a little artificial wreath. Prudence knocked.
“Hello, Prudence. How are you, dear?” Mrs. Smith gave Prudence a little hug. “Miss Coneybear,” she politely greeted Gerry, shaking her hand. “Please come in.”
“Call me Gerry. Oh!” Gerry stopped in amazement. She’d been expecting a dark, drapery-lined room with a round wooden table covered with a cloth. Instead everything was painted white and the narrow, door-lined hallway opened into a rectangular living, dining and cooking area, which sprawled along a glass-lined fourth wall, outside of which was a long balcony with glass railings, so the view was unimpeded. And what a view!
Where Gerry’s waterfront home looked at a section of the river up close, Mrs. Smith’s abode took in miles of it, stretching from the northwest down to and beyond the bridge to Montreal.
Prudence was already seated at the glass-topped dining table and Gerry remembered they were here on business. She sat down next to Prudence. Mrs. Smith sat so she was facing them.
There was no clasping of hands in a circle. Mrs. Smith’s eyes didn’t roll back in her head. She simply closed them and sat quietly. Prudence did the same, so Gerry followed suit.
A clock ticked somewhere. A plane droned overhead. The room was comfortably warm and Gerry contrasted Mrs. Smith’s worry-free existence with her own wood-hauling, tree-dodging, cat-litter-infused one. The fridge clicked on. Mrs. Smith spoke.
“A family. No, two families. Deeply unhappy individuals in both.” There was a pause.
“Is that Mother speaking?” asked Prudence in a low voice.
Mrs. Smith wrinkled her brow. “This is someone new. Someone I’ve not spoken with before. A man? There’s a lot of emotion here. Love. And hate.”
Gerry immediately thought of the bones under the woodshed. Maybe they belonged to the man who was communicating through Mrs. Smith. Gerry opened her eyes a crack, checked Mrs. Smith’s and Prudence’s were still closed, and shut her own again.
“He knows — knew — some people belonging to someone here. Is it the Catford family?” Gerry supposed Mrs. Smith began with Catford because it was Prudence’s maiden name. There was a pause. “Is it from the Parsleys?” Mrs. Smith continued.
Bound to be, thought Gerry, then remembered Prudence’s mother had been one. And Prudence was Mrs. Smith’s client. Another pause.
“No? Is it from —” and here Mrs. Smith hesitated. “Is it a Crick?” Gerry almost gasped and felt Prudence draw in a tiny audible breath. Prudence had been, might still be, married to one Alexander Crick, but Gerry hadn’t yet learned the man’s history.
“So not a Crick.” Prudence and Gerry both relaxed. “Prudence, do you have any names to suggest? Gerry?”
Prudence said softly, “Shapland, Coneybear, Muxworthy. Who else, Gerry?”
“Petherbridge?”
“Is the person — the people — named Petherbridge?” Silence. “Is the person a Shapland?” Silence. “Do you know anyone called Coneybear?”
Gerry held her breath and cracked open one eye. She was in time to see Mrs. Smith clap her hands over her ears. Gerry opened her eyes wide, reached over and pressed Prudence’s arm.
“Yes, yes! I understand. Coneybear. Yes? Another name?” Mrs. Smith’s voice sounded loud and strained. She uncovered her ears and asked Prudence, “Which names have I not yet tried?”
Prudence whispered, “Muxworthy.”
“Is the other person’s name Muxworthy?” Mrs. Smith had to cover her ears again. “I have to stop,” she gasped, got up and walked over to the long glass wall, stared out at the view.
“Coneybear and Muxworthy!” Gerry said excitedly.
“Shush,” cautioned Prudence, getting up. “Mrs. Smith, I’m leaving the money on the table. Mrs. Smith, are you all right?”
The medium turned and looked at them with a weak smile on her face. Her eyes were moist. “I’ll be fine after a cup of tea. I hope you heard something helpful. Your mother wasn’t forthcoming today, Prudence, or maybe this other was so much stronger, she got out of his way.”
“Well, thank you, anyway. Maybe next time. You take care of yourself, now.” She jerked her head to indicate to a reluctant Gerry it was time to leave.
They rode down in the elevator in silence, and it wasn’t until they got into Gerry’s car that she burst out with, “My family, Prudence! This has something to do with my family!”
9
The ever-sensible Prudence replied, “Well, that’s no surprise. It’s your family’s woodshed.” She started the engine. “Where am I going?”
“I need to eat,” Gerry said. “Let’s go to that patisserie that’s so good. My treat.”
After a roast beef panini with caramelized onions, mustard and Swiss cheese, fries and a salad, and two cups of excellent coffee, Gerry felt better. Prudence had had lunch, so settled for an almond croissant with her coffee. “Well,” she said, ruminatively.
“Yes?” Gerry replied, wondering if she had room for dessert.
“Just — well,” said Prudence. “Go on. You know you want to.”
Gerry beckoned to their waitress. “Do you have any of those big chewy cookies with chocolate and nuts in them? I’d like one, please.”
“And so order is returned to the universe,” Prudence commented, drily.
“What? So I like a cookie.” She leaned forward. “To be honest, Prudence, I’m getting a bit sick of fruitcake.”
Prudence waved a hand, dismissing all fruitcakes. “What we have to discuss are Coneybears and Muxworthys.”
Gerry tried to make a joke. “It sounds like a company. Coneybear and Muxworthy. May I help you? No?” Her cookie arrived and she began eating.
Prudence continued. “I’m assuming we’re talking about individuals, one of each name. That’s how it seemed to me.”
“Well, Mrs. Smith kept saying ‘person’ in the singular, but I don’t think we can assume. Until we know the exact date of the bones, how can we know in which generation to start looking? It’s pretty vague. Can they even date bones with any degree of accuracy?”
“I’m afraid my life in Lovering and work as a housekeeper hasn’t qualified me to answer that,” Prudence replied sarcastically.
“Very funny. I’m trying to remember from crime shows and mystery novels, but I can’t. So we’ll just have to go back 100 years — at least we know that much — and see where Muxworthy intersects with Coneybear. Gramma Ellie was born around the start of the First World War. Grampa Matthew a bit before. So the generation of my great-grandparents is where we start. Let’s get going. I need my family tree.”
The sun had set and they joined a light version of the regular commuter traffic on the road back to Lovering. Across the lake, the lights of other habitations shone. The wind blew against the still-open water, making little stiff waves.
Gerry felt exhausted and over-stimulated at the same time, yet she was surprised when Prudence turned at Station Road. “You’re going home?”
“I’m tired, Gerry. At Charlie and Rita’s I can lay down before supper, then have a nice quiet evening. I suggest you do the same. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
When she got home, Gerry had all the business of cat stomachs to fill and ca
t boxes to empty. She was too distracted to make a fire and settled for cranking the thermostat. The oil furnace crashed on in the distance and soon little blasts of warm air began coming from the vents. It was easy to locate said vents: some of the cats were fond of lying in front of them.
Gerry got the Coneybear family tree and sat staring at it, elbows on table, hands either side of her jaw. The generations marched across the page, the descendants and ancestors slid up and down. “Snakes and ladders,” muttered a sleepy Gerry. Tired out by the séance, she went for a nap.
A couple of hours later, she woke up, refreshed. Eight o’clock. She went downstairs in robe and slippers, made tea, and rummaged through her collection of Christmas treats.
Not fruitcake; she really was sick of that. Ooh, there were some of Cathy’s Viennese crescents left. She took her tea and the tin to the living room table and had another look at her family tree.
So, based on dates of birth, she could eliminate the last four generations. She drew a pencil line across the page. Nobody below there could be the “persons” involved,” she told Bob, who lolled on the table, waiting for cookie crumbs to fall.
She realized she could even eliminate the great-grandparents’ generation — most of them born in the 1890s. “Unless they were child psychopaths,” Gerry explained to Bob, flicking him a bit of nut from a cookie. He spat it out and looked at her, disgusted, as if to say, “What? I look like a squirrel?”
She erased the line and raised it up one generation. So, the great-great-grandparents. People born in the 1860s, ’70s and ’80s. There were others on the tree whose times fit, but they were Petherbridges, Parsleys and Catfords.
My grandparents would have known these people, their grandparents. She stopped and looked out the window at a clear, cold night. If she leaned down and looked up, she could see through tree branches a half moon, set like a bowl low in the darkness.
Similarly some others, 100, 200 years ago, could have sat by this window, doing accounts or writing letters or nursing a restless baby — or, perhaps, a broken heart. And the moon would have shone or not, depending on the date and the weather.
The Cat Vanishes Page 8