by Anne Emery
“Do Sharon and Andy know that it was nothing? Collie?”
“Couldn’t find Collie, but we advised Sharon and Andy about what we found. I had called Sharon to let her know we were having a look, and that we didn’t expect to find anything. Anyway, we dropped by to give them the news. Now, it was strange because the dog responded to something else there; we found a scrap of material. From a T-shirt maybe. But we took the scrap to Sharon, and she said Bonnie has nothing like that at all. It wasn’t hers.”
“God love them all,” said one of the aunts.
“Yeah, it was rough. Was going to be hell for them either way.”
Everyone said “Mmm” because they agreed that all of this would be like living in hell for Bonnie’s mum and dad and stepfather. It was bad enough for the grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins.
“We had a look around inside the house of course,” the Mountie said, “but we didn’t come up with anything. No sign that anyone had occupied the place, or squatted there, let alone done anything out of line. Somebody must have been in there at some point after the Campbells moved out, but there was no damage or anything. Just some old newspaper stories going way back. A clipping from the Toronto Daily Star about the Leafs winning the Stanley Cup.”
“That was back in 1967,” said Robbie. “It’s been a long, long drought for Leafs fans. No wonder somebody kept it.”
“This was the 1949 win,” Dougald said, “back when they were on a roll. There was a story about NATO being set up that year, too.”
“Maybe somebody was using the house as a library. An old timer reading his papers in peace and reliving his golden years.”
“Maybe so. The clippings were scattered by the back door of the house. Fell off a shelf perhaps. Anyway, gotta go. You can tell Morag we checked things out. We check every lead, no matter how unlikely!”
“Thanks, Dougald.”
“Okay. Carry on. Except you, young lady.”
I could feel my face turning red. But then he put his hand on my head and ruffled up my curls, so I knew he was just teasing me.
When he was gone, Robbie said, “Old Morag must be losing her touch.”
Good thing Morag had gone to bed and missed hearing that.
Somebody else said, in a voice meant to sound spooky, “Touch not the cat!”
Everybody laughed at that, and Robbie’s brother Ian said, “We could all learn from Clan Chattan on this one: ‘Touch not the cat but a glove.’”
Then somebody argued that it was “bot” a glove, not “but,” and said something about the pad of the cat’s paw, and I lost track of it all.
“If Morag got one of her intuitions about that place,” said Ian, “and it turned out to be a kitty buried under the house, she must be a kinder, gentler Morag than the one we grew up with. Remember? She wouldn’t have a cat about the house. Spooked by them or whatever. Now she’s sensitive to them.”
“Now we know what we can get Morag for her eighty-eighth birthday. A wee pussy cat.” Robbie said that and then acted out what it would be like when they gave old Morag a kitten. He pretended he had a little kitty in the crook of his arm and was petting it. He pretended to hand it to Morag, and then he acted as if he was the kitten and made his hands go up like a cat’s and he went “Mew! Mew!” the way a kitty would if it was terrified, and everybody laughed.
Ian said, “Can’t you see the headline in the National Psychic Enquirer — of course why would they need a paper? They can just intuit all the news! Anyway, if there was a paper, the headline would read ‘Blackie Turns Ghostly White at Grandma’s House; Never Meows Again!’”
And we were all laughing our heads off. Me too. I acted as if I didn’t believe any of that stuff about spooky feelings and intuitions and seeing things. Second sight. But I know it’s real because I have it. And I made a joke about it so people wouldn’t laugh at me and think I was a loony like the people in those newspapers with the colour pictures at the grocery stores. I didn’t want them to know. I didn’t want them to make fun of me, so I went along with the joke.
And that’s when old Morag appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. Her scary black eyes went to every person in the room, and then they were on me. I couldn’t turn away from the stare she was giving me. And I felt so guilty and ashamed that I was afraid I was going to start crying right then and there. Because I knew I had been disloyal to my great-grandmother. And all because I didn’t want the rest of them to laugh at me.
I was mean.
After giving everybody a dirty look, Morag left the room. I stayed with the other people and listened to them and they started talking about other things, and it was funny but I couldn’t laugh as much because I felt so awful. I tried to work up the nerve to go and talk to Morag. It took me over half an hour before I got brave enough to go and see her.
Her bedroom door was closed. I knocked on it, not loudly, but enough so she could hear. And she said, “Come in, Normie Ruadh.” She knew it was me! I thought Please, God, don’t let her hate me! And I opened the door and went in.
“Come sit here,” she said. She was propped up against the pillows at the head of the bed, and she reached over and patted the chair next to it.
I almost blurted out “I’m really sorry, Greatgran Morag.” But she started talking before I did.
“They don’t understand,” she said and looked towards the door. She meant the people in the kitchen. “But you do.” And she stared at me, and I nodded my head. “It is not always a gift, what we have. Second sight. In the Gaelic, it’s an dà shealladh, which means ‘the two sights.’ Sometimes it is more like a curse. I hope it never causes you pain. It will, at times, be frightening for you. But there’s nothing we can do about it.” That worried me a bit, but I wasn’t completely surprised because the strange feelings I had sometimes were scary. They made me feel as if something bad was there, or something bad was about to happen.
But then Morag said, “I hope they get me that kitten, don’t you?” And her eyes almost twinkled. “Contrary to the uninformed out there, I did have a cat. A long, long time ago. She came to a bad end, poor Missy.”
“What happened to Missy, Greatgran?”
“She was frightened to death.”
“No!”
“Yes, she was a dear little thing. A fine, healthy little cat, and then one day I saw her staring up at the dark staircase. She was perfectly still. I went to pick her up, and she was stiff. She was dead.”
“Oh my God!”
“I felt so sorry for the poor wee creature that I never had another cat in the house. I blamed myself. Was it something I’d brought into the house? Something unseen by the rest of us, but something the cat recognized, and it terrified her? I never knew.”
Then I couldn’t believe what she said after that. She pointed in the direction of the kitchen and said, “Their arses are sucking wind if they think there was nothing there.” She meant that about the Mounties. Imagine if they heard her say that! And that’s when I confessed that I had gone to the house. I didn’t tell on John Rory. But I told her I had gone in, and I didn’t see anything weird or get a strange feeling.
“I’m not disagreeing with you, Greatgran. It’s me. I couldn’t feel anything there. It’s a perfect house for spooky things, though, old and black, so I know it’s just me not getting it.”
“Old and black?” she said. “The Campbell place is a new house! Only a few years old, but abandoned already. It’s a grannda shade of maroon or burgundy, whatever they call it now. Must have been the trendy colour for plastic siding that year, and that’s why she picked it.”
“Who picked it?”
“That one. Campbell’s wife before he took up with our Sharon. And the two enormous garages thrust out on both sides, dwarfing the house itself. Meant to announce to the entire world that they had a fleet of big cars, was it? What’s wrong with people when they build u
gly things like that? Even Andy Campbell himself hated the place, from what I hear. And poor young Nancy wasn’t in love with it either, their oldest daughter. Any time I’ve seen her and the subject of that house comes up, she rolls her eyes to the heavens as if she wishes God would strike it down with a bolt of lightning.”
“Oh no! I went to the wrong house! I thought you meant the really old one, because it looks like the kind they would have in a movie about a haunted house.”
“Oh, m’eudail,” she said. That means my darling and it sounds like “may-t’l.” “I know which place you went to. The lovely old black house with the white trim. It’s a hundred years old. Was Mrs. Dandy Doctor home?”
“Who?”
“Ida MacKinnon. She’s a widow. Her husband was Doctor MacKinnon. People would go in to see him and, unless they had something that was going to kill them, he’d pat them on the shoulder and say, ‘Nothing to worry about. You’re just dandy.’ He died in his sleep years ago. Mrs. Dandy Doctor lives there by herself.”
“How come the paint is all falling off?”
“It costs money to paint a house.”
“Oh, that’s right. Probably a lot of money for a big house like that.”
“Certainly.”
“The door was open.”
“What door?”
“Back. It was unlocked.”
“Sure. Why would it be locked?”
“You mean people leave their doors unlocked?”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“Everybody where I live locks their doors. Some people have alarm systems.”
Morag made a face at that. “This isn’t Halifax, Normie Ruadh.”
I had broken into a house where somebody lives. The way I was going, I might end up in jail.
“The Campbell place is the maroon monstrosity down the road from it,” Morag said.
So. I knew where to go next time.
Pierre
I was enjoying a drink with Dougald MacDougald in one of our favourite establishments, Jeanie’s Grill, out on the Mira River. We couldn’t go over the blood alcohol limit, and we didn’t. But even for a beer when we were off-duty, we liked to head out of town, away from the action and the prying eyes. Jeanie’s was a quiet little place on the river, a bit of a distance from the RCMP detachment, which was why we liked it. That, and the good food and friendly service. On this night I was the driver, so I was taking it easy. Couple of beer, point. Dougald was having a drink of rum. He said to me, “Maxim Belenko came in with his report on Clan Donnie’s fans. They have quite a following here and off the island. There may be some nutcases elsewhere, but if any creep like that came across the causeway to steal Bonnie, we have nothing to go on. There are some locals who attend every show, but the band members all told Constable Belenko there was nothing threatening about any of them. They are just loyal fans, and the band appreciates them. One they kind of joke about. Johnny Module MacLaren. Know who I mean?”
“What kind of a name is that? Never heard of him.”
“He’s a fella who’s about sixty now. Years ago he went up to Ottawa and worked for the federal government. Some kind of desk job. I don’t know what it was. But when he moved back here he kept talking about ‘modules.’ He worked on this or that module, or he wanted to set up a module. Nobody knew what the fuck he was talking about. Anyway, people started calling him Johnny Module. He gets tongue-tied whenever he sees Sharon or her sister, Kirsty. Loves them and goes to all their concerts, gets them to autograph their recordings for him. But he’s harmless.”
“Another dead end. I can’t believe we haven’t been able to spot anybody for this.”
“Yeah, and it can’t just be some normal fella, somebody we know, who lost his head while on the rum and lurched towards Bonnie and took her away. He’d have left a sloppy trail behind him. And nobody was really ossified at the party.”
“Right. There was drinking going on as usual, but the only guy who was really out of it was Billy MacPherson, and the ambulance guy bundled him out of there and took him home.”
“Yeah, he did everyone a favour there. Jeeze, he gets on my nerves, though. Kaulbeck.”
“Yeah, I think you mentioned that earlier, Dougald. About a hundred times, starting about the time I got transferred here.”
“He’s an arsehole. He thinks he’s chief surgeon at the Sydney City Hospital, with all his talk about infarcts and blood counts and intubation. And he thinks he’s the superintendent of the RCMP at an accident scene, telling us what not to touch and what not to move. How the fuck old is the guy? Eighteen?”
“He’s in his twenties, and he’s a damn good paramedic. If he plays the role a bit, it’s because he’s dedicated to his job.”
“He’s a big-feeling, arrogant little prick.”
“C’est pas un crime, ça.”
“I missed my calling in life. I should be in Parliament, voting to add new crimes to the Criminal Code.”
“But you’re not. You’re on the shore of the Bras d’Or Lakes in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and you’ve got nothing to hang on Lee Kaulbeck. Tant pis, but that’s the way it is.”
“I know, I know. He’s been in the clear since day one. Bonnie was still at the party when he left to drive Billy home. He drove right to Billy’s house. Billy’s old man met him at the door, which we have confirmed, and Kaulbeck came straight back to Mary Reid’s. No time to hunt down, grab, and abduct a young girl, let alone take her somewhere and do her harm.” Dougald stopped to polish off his rum and signal for another. Then he got wound up again. “You know who else I’m not happy with these days?”
“Who now?”
“Master Campbell.”
“And what don’t you like about her?”
“That house, for one thing.”
“You don’t like her taste in decor, is that it? If that was a crime, half the population of the western world would have to be locked up. And bulldozer drivers would be kings.”
“Yeah, the house is kitschy, but . . .”
“Kitschy, ça veut dire?”
“Tacky, vulgar.”
“Okay, I’m with you so far but, beyond the vulgarity of her petit bourgeois palais de plastique, what else have you got against Madame Campbell?”
“She’s been back in that house.”
“So what? It’s her house.”
“The bank foreclosed on it.”
“All right, so maybe she’s not supposed to go in there anymore. It’s not exactly a mortal sin.”
“The talk is she wants to buy it back and fix it up, and she’s looking for cheap labour to help her do it.”
“This is way above our pay grade, Dougald. This is a job for Scotland Yard.”
“And one of the guys she’s trying to get to work cheap, or maybe even free in return for part of the profits of a sale down the road, is Collie MacDonald.”
“So she’s in on something with Collie. Doesn’t mean she’s in on whatever happened to Bonnie, if Collie was responsible. Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“I don’t know. I just find them a strange combination.”
“Yeah, they are. He wouldn’t have much time for her yapping about countertops and wall coverings. But how are you connecting this with Bonnie?”
“She hates Andy. She’s still bitter about the divorce. You saw the way she looked when we questioned her about him. She wasn’t fooled by us saying we just have to map out where everybody was. She knew damn well a stepfather would be someone we’d have to look at in the disappearance of a young girl.”
“She didn’t seem the least bit guilty when we asked her where she was.”
“She knew we weren’t asking her as a suspect. We were just trying to find out whether she saw or heard anything unusual that night, the way we asked every other person within five miles of here. But she looked like the cat tha
t scoffed down the canary and was still picking the feathers out of her teeth when we asked whether she ever saw Andy these days. Triumph all over her face, the way I read it. She tried to hide it with all that ‘This is terrible, terrible, but I’m sure nobody I know was involved.’”
“So you’re saying she’d like to help pin this on her ex? Or she actually did something in cahoots with Collie to set Andy up?”
“All I’m saying is that I’ll be keeping an eye on her.”
“Well, if you’re keeping an eye on her, Dougald, according to your story you’d have to suspect Collie, too. And you’ve already told me he’s as pure as the Blessed Virgin Mary before the Annunciation.”
“It would be her, not him. Master’s mean. Collie isn’t.”
“Well, there was nothing at that house. We checked the place after the old dame had that vision or whatever it was she had. And there was nothing buried there but poor Minou. Maybe Master Campbell has a plot to frame Andy for the unlawful killing of an innocent cat.”
“Didn’t you find it strange that all those old news clippings were in the house?”
“No.”
“A house that’s been all cleared out after a foreclosure.”
“Somebody had old newspapers from their grandpa; they were maybe up on a high shelf and weren’t noticed during the cleanout. Who cares? They had nothing to do with Bonnie or with Andy. Or Master, for that matter. Whatever they were, they’re not going to motivate me to go in to the detachment and ask for overtime to investigate.”
We turned our attention to our glasses, and Dougald said, “What we need here, Pierre, what I desperately want, is a tall, dark stranger from off the island, who was seen hanging around the Clan Donnies, and who took Bonnie away, tied her up somewhere, and then got spooked and hoofed it over the causeway and out of our lives. And we find Bonnie tomorrow, and she describes him, and one of our members picks him up just as he reaches the New Brunswick border, and he confesses, and they throw him into Dorchester prison. Problem solved.”
“I wish it, too. But we don’t have any of that. What we have is two fathers. One, the natural father, was nowhere to be seen the night of the party, has no alibi, and is a dead ringer for the guy captured on CCTV with Bonnie at MacLellan Video at eleven thirty-eight on July fifteenth, Anno Domini 1994.”