Barrington Street Blues

by Anne Emery

  It was my first time inside the door of the His Word Bookshop on Blowers Street. The shelves bore titles like Free Your Inner Evangelical!and Deviants in Power: Liberals on the Court. But the man behind the counter on Saturday morning was not the sour-faced pilgrim I had been expecting. True, he had his blonde hair in a style bordering on the blow-dried confection of a TV evangelist. But he was casually dressed in tan pants and a yellow sweater, and his expression was welcoming. I could not quite picture Warren Tulk as a cop.

  “Good afternoon. If there’s anything I can help you with, just let me know. Otherwise, I’ll leave you to browse all you like.”

  “Actually, Mr.Tulk, I was wondering if I could have a word with you.”

  “Yes? What about?”

  “My name is Montague Collins. I’m a lawyer and I’m looking into a death that happened a few years ago. An apparent suicide.” He had begun to look a little wary. “Darren Campbell, the lawyer.”

  His face registered distaste but only fleetingly. “I remember Mr. Campbell. Why is his death under investigation?”

  “It isn’t, except by me. I’ve discovered that he had a gun in his possession before he died, and that gun has turned up in a case that I’m involved in.”

  “What kind of case?”

  “Another suicide. I’m just wondering how the gun got from there to here.”

  “And how do you think I can help you, Mr. Collins?”

  “I understand that you were a police officer in the past.”

  “That’s correct. I retired to take up another calling.”

  “Right. And I heard from someone that you participated in some kind of raid at an office building on Barrington Street, where Mr. Campbell and some friends were having a party.”

  “It was not a raid. I was responding to a complaint from a citizen, about a group of people disturbing the peace. I issued a warning and left them to it.”

  “So, what was going on? What kind of party was it?”

  “The usual. Gambling, loud music playing, liquor flowing, people groping each other.”

  “No sign of a gun on the premises?”

  “Not that time.”

  “Do you mean you were there on other occasions too?”

  “No, I wasn’t there. Thank the Lord. I had heard rumours of a gun. A gun being fired into the air off a balcony. But it never became a police matter. As I say, a rumour.”

  “Who was there when you showed up at the party?”

  “Campbell. His wife. She was drunk. A couple of people I recognized as lawyers. Most of the others I didn’t know.”

  “Who made the complaint?”

  “I can’t remember now. It may have been one of the other tenants in the building. Or somebody in one of the apartment buildings downtown.”

  “Who was your partner that night?”

  “Lorne Balcome. I’d have to say Lorne was less than enthusiastic about our approach to Campbell and his gang. I don’t know why. Maybe he just didn’t care about the noise and the possible offences being committed.”

  “These parties of Campbell’s. They were legendary, weren’t they?”

  “They were depraved!” Tulk snapped. “I happened to catch them on a good night. From what I heard there were goings-on at that place that would curl your hair. But nobody seemed to care. Let the lawyers disport themselves as they please! That seemed to be the attitude.”

  “The attitude where? In the police department?”

  “Everywhere.”

  “So what kinds of things were going on? You say they were depraved.”

  “All I have is innuendo, Mr. Collins. I’m not going to pass on rumours. Lest I inadvertently bear false witness.”

  I knew I wouldn’t get anything more from Warren Tulk, so I thanked him for his time and had a look around the shop. I spied a book on statuary depicting angels and cherubs, which I bought for Normie. Even since she had seen Father Burke at a wedding, dressed in white vestments and — she claimed — surrounded by spirits, she had been on a quest to determine whether he might in fact be an angel. Perhaps this book would assist in her research. I would present it to her on Wednesday, when she would be hosting a dinner party with me and Burke as guests. Normie was choosing the menu, cooking the food, setting the table and, given that my daughter had proven herself to be a bit of a seer, maybe conducting a seance.

  †

  Having met Dice Campbell’s flamboyant and hard-living wife, Mavis, I tried to form a mental picture of the woman he would turn to for recreational fun, his mistress. I had been on the verge of imagining a Swedish masseuse or a Brazilian porn star, but I was way off track. Dorothy Mellish had a master’s degree in early childhood education and ran her own daycare centre. I had spent a day and a half trying to find somebody who could identify one of the rumoured “other women” in Campbell’s life. Here I was on Tuesday afternoon in the Poplar Street Preschool. Dorothy escorted me into her office after the last child had been picked up; she cleared off a seat and offered me tea.

  “None for me, but you go ahead.”

  “I will. It’ll just take a second.” Dorothy busied herself with the tea things, and I looked her over. Small, with glasses, pale skin, and light brown hair tucked behind her ears, she could almost be described as mousy. She was dressed in a light blue jumper over a flowered shirt. When she was seated, she said: “You’re here about Darren.”

  “Yes. As I explained on the phone, I’m wondering whether there might be a connection between Dice’s — Darren’s — death and a case I’m working on. The possibility may be remote, but if there’s a link, it may raise questions about what happened to Darren in 1985.”

  “You mean there is some doubt about whether his death was really a suicide.”

  “Right. What did you think when you heard about it?”

  “I was broken-hearted. But it never occurred to me that it was anything but self-inflicted.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Because Darren’s life was a shambles. And it was destroying him.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “When I was doing my master’s at Mount Saint Vincent, Darren was teaching a law course to undergraduates. It wasn’t part of my curriculum but I hoped to start my own business some day, my own preschool, so I sat in on the course. Thought it would be useful.”

  “Was it?”

  “Yes, I’m glad I took the course. And Darren was a good instructor. He made the subject come alive. Of course, he was most entertaining. I was a few years older than the other students; Darren and I got talking after class. I resisted his flirtation, I suppose I’d call it, for a long time. I knew he was married. And I don’t approve of that. Eventually, I came to know he was unhappily married. How many people use that excuse to justify themselves? I turned out to be another one of those. I fell in love with Darren against my better judgment.”

  “So you began seeing each other regularly?”

  “Yes. Once or twice a week.”

  “Where?”

  “At my apartment.”

  “What was he like on those occasions?”

  “He was very sweet and very serious. Talked to me a lot about his life and his problems.”

  “What problems did he describe to you?”

  “Darren wanted children. His wife did not.”

  “I see.”

  “He thought they both wanted kids but were unable to have them. He tried, for years, to get Mavis to go with him to a doctor. She kept stringing him along, putting him off. ‘It will happen when it happens, don’t worry about it.’ He finally found out she had been on the pill all along and had no intention of getting pregnant.”

  “Do you think what Darren really wanted was to divorce Mavis and settle down with — someone else? Was that the real Dice Campbell?”

  She gave a quiet laugh. “No, Mr. Collins, I think the real Dice Campbell lived to party and raise hell. He just got tired; I was his relief. He cared about me, I know. But I doubt there was a future in it. I wou
ld never, ever have accepted the wilder side of his life, and we both knew it.”

  “Did Mavis Campbell know about you?”

  “Not for a long time. But eventually, yes.”

  “How did that come about?”

  “That followed hard upon the heels of the pill revelation.”

  “A confrontation?”

  “There was a confrontation between Darren and Mavis every time the driveway needed to be shovelled, or one of them failed to get to the liquor store on time. So, yes, there was a confrontation. A major blow-up.”

  “When was this?”

  “Not long before he died. Two or three weeks maybe. I’m not sure now.”

  “Did he stomp out of the house and come to you after the fight?”

  “No. She got to me first.”

  “Really!”

  “Yes, the quarrel took place in the morning when Darren was on his way to court. I was at work with the children. We had just sat down for story circle when the door burst open and Mavis came charging into the room, scarves flying, eyes blazing. She ranted and screamed at me like someone in an opera. I stood up to try to shield the children from her wrath. They were terrified. One of the other teachers shepherded them into the kitchen. Anyway, Mavis called me every name in the book and some I’d never heard, warned me to keep my hands off her husband, and flounced out.”

  “You must have been frightened.”

  “I was initially. I was appalled for the sake of the children; all during her tirade I was calculating how to explain this to the children and their parents. But I quickly realized it was only going to be verbal. And do you know, I’m sure I saw a glint in her eye that wasn’t only rage. I think she was enjoying the scene. I wasn’t the only woman Darren had ever seen on the side, and Mavis knew it. Maybe I was a more serious threat. But that woman was enjoying herself!”

  “Was she drunk?”

  Dorothy looked thoughtful. “I don’t think she was. From what I heard, she was inebriated most of her waking hours. But I got the impression she wasn’t that day. Of course, it was morning.”

  “What did she say to you? Apart from the name-calling, I mean.”

  “Just that Dice was her man and I was a little so-and-so who would never win him away from her. ‘He’ll never leave me. Never. Dice and I have a love you can only dream of. So find yourself a nice little furniture salesman, get married, produce a couple of rug rats, and disappear.’ Darren didn’t get out for a while after that! I only saw him a few more times before he died. He didn’t even hide from her where he was going, so I was a little nervous about another attack from Mavis, but it never happened.”

  †

  I was asking questions and getting answers. But all I really had were a number of isolated facts. Three men were dead. The deaths may all have been connected — the gun raised that possibility — but I had no idea how. If anybody was present when Dice Campbell died, that individual had never surfaced. Which wasn’t surprising if Dice’s death was a homicide. How was I going to smoke him out, if there was such a person? I did know there was somebody on the scene when Leaman and Scott met their demise — Wanda, the world’s most elusive streetwalker — if Yvette could be believed. How was Wanda earning her living if she wasn’t out on the stroll? It was time to go cruising again.

  I didn’t see her in Cornwallis Park, but there was a girl down on the corner of Hollis and South streets, so I called her over. Her face fell when I said I was trying to find Wanda.

  “Wanda isn’t here, baby. I am. So, what would you like?”

  “I just want to talk to her.”

  “Yeah, right. Well, I haven’t seen her.” She shrugged and walked away.

  I tried again the next night, with the same result. So I knocked at the door of the flat where she lived on Mitchell Street, down by the grain elevator. The old wooden apartment building had been quite stylish at one time, if the bracketed doorways were any indication. Now a tattered Confederate flag drooped in the front window, and the mailbox I took to be Wanda’s overflowed with junk mail. Nobody answered any of the doors.

  †

  “Mummy, listen to this!” Normie burst in upon us, wide-eyed, brandishing a tattered cookbook. “Brains! Brains are supposed to be pink and plump. You should only buy them when they’re fresh, and you have to cook them immediately!” She looked up. “Otherwise, they’d be rotten and stinky, right? Are you okay, Father Burke?”

  I glanced in his direction. He gave her a wan smile. “Fine, sweetheart.”

  It was Wednesday night, the first of May, and I was sitting in my old family home on Dresden Row with my wife scowling at me from across the room. Brennan and I were having dinner with the family. Brennan, as usual, affected to ignore the tension, and chatted away about a fellow priest’s trip to Ireland. Normie plunked herself down on a footstool in front of his chair and delved further into her cookbook.

  “It says here you can eat the brains of calves, pigs and lambs. Lamb brains only weigh a quarter of a pound. Not too smart, eh? You have to remove the membrane — mem-brain, get it? — anyway, you do it with a knife and wash the blood off, then put the brains in a pan and boil them —”

  I heard some kind of murmur from Burke’s direction and looked over again. He had put his drink on the table and was massaging his temples with one hand. His face, what I could see of it, was the very whitest shade of pale.

  “Am I grossing you out, Father?” she said, her concern not quite masking her delight.

  “I’ll get you for this, you little maggot,” he said to her, lightly pulling on one of her auburn curls. She grinned at him.

  As it turned out, the meal was beef Stroganoff, which she brought off successfully enough to earn a compliment from her brother, Tom, before he left for a party of his own. Beef Stroganoff struck me as an unusual choice, but there was something familiar about it. She remained tight-lipped but sported a telltale blush.

  Her mother spoke up: “I was cleaning out some old letters and photos. Normie came in and found a menu I had planned years ago. She thought it would be nice if —”

  “It was the first dinner she cooked for you!” my daughter burst out. “When you were her boyfriend!”

  Maura rolled her eyes as if the memory of us as boyfriend and girlfriend was too tedious to bear, but I said: “Let’s have a look at it.”

  “Okay.” Normie rose and stomped upstairs. She must have squirrelled it away somewhere. A minute later she was back. “Here it is!”

  I unfolded the yellow paper and smoothed it out on the table. The menu was there with all the ingredients, and page references to the cookbook.

  “Why beef Stroganoff?” I asked Maura.

  “I didn’t even know what it was, but the name ‘Stroganoff’ sounded impressive.”

  It was the other notes she wrote to herself, however, that were so arresting. I read them aloud:

  “Use Fannie F. Read recipes all thru first in case surprise at end, e.g. soak overnight.

  “Call landlord, fix stuck window. If burn anything, need air thru.

  “Slice onions BEFORE shower and make-up!

  “Use metal measuring spoons — plastic warped, may be inaccurate. Smooth off top with wide blade knife before dumping in.

  “Dessert: bring into conversation somehow — if he makes face, don’t let on I made them.”

  “Awww,” Brennan was prompted to say. “That’s sweet. She wanted to do everything right to impress you.”

  “Young and delusional,” she replied.

  “What did you mean about the dessert?” I asked. “You don’t have the ingredients down.”

  “How the hell am I supposed to remember that?”

  “Come on.”

  “I think it was cupcakes. With Smarties stuck in the icing.”

  “Why did you think I’d make a face?”

  She shrugged.

  “She must have thought you came from a family of cordon bleu chefs,” Brennan suggested.

  “I figured they probably
had some kind of soufflé every night at his house. But I wasn’t going to attempt that and have it fall flat.”

  I read out the final note, which was marked by an asterisk at the bottom of the page: “‘If he brings wine/flowers/candy, bring out candles. If no, save for P. Unless!!!’” I looked up at her. “What was this? You were planning another dinner with P? Pierre, I suppose. And you were going to the highest bidder? Whoever showed up with the biggest box of chocolates?”

  “No! It wasn’t like that. Though leave it to you to draw that inference. It was just that if you arrived with flowers or candy, I would take that to mean — this is corny but — a romantic dinner. As opposed to you stopping by for a quick scoff and then going out with the boys, in which case candles would have been embarrassing.”

  Brennan cut in. “So, did he bring wine or flowers or candy?”

  “He brought all three.”

  “A success then, was it?” he asked.

  “Back to Pierre,” I interrupted. “I always wondered just how long he stayed in the picture after we got together.”

  Burke cut me off. “She said ‘unless.’ Unless what, MacNeil?”

  “None of your business!”

  Burke smiled at her over his wineglass.

  We were all silent for a while. Normie, not hearing any more old tales, drifted off to her own amusements, but not before she took one last look at Father Burke and wrote something in a small notebook she carried in her pocket. Angel research, I assumed. Maura got up and went behind my chair on her way into the kitchen. I caught her by the hand. “Since you went to all that trouble to win my heart, why don’t we —”

  “Buzz off!” She slapped my hand away and continued into the kitchen.

  Maura, Burke and I sat in the living room afterwards and spoke of other things. But Burke, who had been playing the matchmaker ever since we met, brought the conversation back to the past.

  “Ah, the poor wee child, slavin’ over the hot stove to feed her da and her mam. Sure, didn’t she think her efforts tonight would rekindle the —”

  “Piss off,” I responded.

  “Now there was obviously something about this fellow you liked at one time, MacNeil.”

  “Sure. I liked him wailing on that harmonica till three in the morning. And then getting up next day and whipping everybody’s arse in debates at the law school.”