The Dells

by Michael Blair

  “Tough on the employees.”

  “Tell me about it,” Janey said. “I had twenty people working for me when I had to close up shop. Tim isn’t his old man, that’s for sure. I don’t know how he’s managed to stay above water as long as he has. It must drive the old man crazy, seeing Tim run the business he built into the ground. Old Bart ran a pretty tight ship, but he cared about the people who worked for him. The only person Tim Dutton cares about is Tim Dutton.”

  The pub was cool and quiet, except for the occasional roar from the people watching a soccer match being played on a big-screen TV in a corner. Janey led him to a table at the far end of the room. The waitress knew her by name.

  “Hiya, Janey. The usual?”

  “Yeah, Dee, thanks,” Janey said.

  “And what can I get you, big fella?” the waitress said to Shoe, dropping a pair of coasters on the scarred tabletop.

  Shoe asked for a half-pint of Double Diamond. There was a large array of single malts lined up behind the bar, and he was tempted by the Lagavulin, but this was neither the time nor the place for a sixteen-year-old malt whisky.

  “Here’s to old times,” Janey said when their drinks arrived, lifting her gin and tonic.

  Shoe sipped his beer.

  “I’m probably going to regret asking,” Janey said, “but what did you want to ask Dougie about anyway?”

  “The police are looking for Joey Noseworthy.”

  “Joey? Why? Jesus, they don’t think he killed Marty, do they?”

  “They want to talk to him about Marvin Cartwright.”

  “You mean they think Joey killed him? That’s nuts. They were friends.”

  “So I’ve recently learned,” Shoe said. “Nevertheless, Joey is the prime suspect in Cartwright’s homicide.”

  “What’s it got to do with Dougie?”

  “Joey can’t account for his whereabouts at the time of Cartwright’s death, but evidently he was in Dougie’s bar on Thursday night until between eleven and twelve, until Dougie threw him out.”

  “You’re kidding. Joey’s always been a little crazy, but I didn’t think he was suicidal? He’s lucky Dougie didn’t kill him. Well, good luck.” She drank, ice rattling.

  “Marty told me that you and Joey were lovers.”

  “Did she? Well, I guess you could say Joey and I had a kind of love-hate relationship. It was a long time ago. After you and he had fallen out. You and I had broken up — again — and, well, I guess we both sort of missed you in our own ways.”

  “What about more recently?”

  “I haven’t seen Joey in three or four years,” she said. “Not since I went bankrupt. Before that, he’d give me a call sometimes when he was passing through and we’d get together. He crashed at my place once or twice, too, after my ex took off.” She shrugged. “Things led to things.”

  “Were you and Marvin Cartwright lovers?”

  “No,” she said, with a sigh. “I told you, I hardly knew him.”

  “Where were you around the time he was killed?”

  “You’re not serious. You’re asking me if I have an alibi?”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m asking you.”

  “Well, for your information, I was in Hamilton with one of my bands. Stayed overnight in a hotel. Alone, if you must know, but I can show you the receipt. I didn’t get back to Toronto till around noon on Friday. Satisfied?”

  “Yes, but don’t lose that receipt. The police may want to see it.”

  “C’mon, Shoe, don’t spoil the mood. Drink up. You’ve hardly touched your beer. Aren’t you having fun?” She waved at the waitress and pointed to her empty drink glass.

  He raised his glass and took another sip of beer. Janey was lying to him about her relationship with Marvin Cartwright. It may not have been sexual, but he was sure there was more to it than she was admitting. There was no point in pursuing it. He knew from experience that if Janey didn’t want to talk about something, she wouldn’t.

  “Just a few more questions, then we’ll talk about anything you want.” The waitress brought Janey’s second drink. “When was the last time you saw Marty?” he asked when the waitress had gone.

  “About a year ago, I guess. She came to the club for physiotherapy when she sprained her shoulder at work. I hadn’t seen her since she dropped out of high school, so we came here for a drink and to catch up. Now there was someone who’d had an adventuresome life, maybe a little too adventuresome. Did you know she used to be a stripper?”

  “She mentioned that,” Shoe said.

  “She also lived with a vice cop in Vancouver for a while, until he killed himself.”

  “She told me she’d lived with a cop,” Shoe said. “She didn’t tell me he’d committed suicide. What else did you talk about?”

  “Mostly she wanted to talk about Joey. She was hoping she could get him to settle down. I wished her good luck with that.”

  “What can you tell me about Joey’s relationship with Marvin Cartwright?”

  “Like I said, they were friends from back when we were kids, but Joey didn’t talk much about growing up. He didn’t have a happy adolescence. Hell, who did?”

  I did, Shoe thought. Mostly.

  “I know they played chess a lot,” Janey said. “He told me Marvin thought he could’ve played professionally if he’d applied himself. I didn’t know there was such a thing.”

  “What about later? Joey told me he ran into Cartwright fifteen years ago when he was working at a provincial park in Prince Edward County. He stayed with Cartwright whenever he was in the area.”

  “Joey told me they’d reconnected,” Janey said, “but I think as far as Joey was concerned, Marvin was just another source of a ‘hot and a cot,’ as he put it.”

  “Did you ever have any contact with Cartwright after he left the neighbourhood?”

  “No.”

  “Did Marty?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Janey, be straight with me. How well did you know Marvin Cartwright?”

  “I didn’t know him any better than you did.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Tough.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  “What did you expect to find when we broke into his house?”

  “I didn’t expect to find anything. I just wanted to see if you’d do it.” She tossed back her drink. “You’ve asked your questions. It’s my turn now.” She started to signal the waitress, but changed her mind. “Let’s talk about the good times we used to have, Shoe. We used to have some pretty good times, didn’t we? Before — well, never mind that.”

  “Before what, Janey?”

  “Forget it. C’mon, tell me what you’ve been doing with your life. You don’t look like you’ve put on an ounce since you were eighteen. I’m not surprised, if that’s the way you drink beer. You married? You aren’t wearing a ring, but a lot of men don’t. It cramps their style.”

  “I’m not married.”

  “Ever?”

  “No.”

  “Haven’t turned queer on me, have you?” She winked broadly.

  She couldn’t have been more obvious if she’d been wearing a sign around her neck. Was he tempted? No more than he had been by the Lagavulin.

  Janey chattered on, uncharacteristically, about “the old days.” The problem was, she didn’t seem to remember them the same way he did. It was as if she were talking about two people Shoe didn’t recognize at all. The boy she spoke of was smarter and more confident, cooler than Shoe had ever been; the girl was sweeter and more innocent; and the times were good and full of promise, not the dark and uncertain teenage years Shoe remembered. She ordered another drink.

  “How come we stopped seeing each other?” she asked, when the drink came. “We were pretty good together, weren’t we?”

  “When we were together,” he said.

  “What do you mean? We were going steady.”

  “That’s not the way I remember it,” he said
. “You had lots of boyfriends.” Including, evidently, Joey Noseworthy.

  “Okay, maybe there were a few others, but no one I liked as much as you. And it wasn’t like you didn’t have other girlfriends. What about Mandy or Candy or whatever her name was? The one with the glasses and the teeth.”

  “Sandy? I went out with her once, and only after you and I broke up for the last time.”

  “Maybe I’m not remembering it the way it really was,” she said, hazel eyes bright and moist. “Maybe I’m remembering it the way I wish it was. You and me against the world. It was a little like that, wasn’t it, Shoe? The local hero and the girl from the wrong side of the tracks.”

  “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.

  chapter thirty-seven

  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.