“Sometimes right after Halloween,” he said. “But never before. I remember flurries and deep cold when the children went out trick or treating, having to wear long johns under their costumes, but never snow on the ground.”
“Is your house warm enough in the winter?” Gerry asked.
“Oh yes. I had it re-insulated a few years ago and that made all the difference. And I bought a new furnace. We’re very comfortable here, aren’t we, Graymalkin?”
The cat had returned to the living room where they were relaxing, and jumped on Mr. Parminter’s lap. Cathy launched into a recital of the cute things Charles had recently done and Mr. Parminter responded with Graymalkin’s antics. Gerry and Prudence quietly went to the kitchen to divide and put away the leftovers — and to tidy for Mr. Parminter.
“I wish I could afford to insulate The Maples.” She picked up a tea towel. “I’m worried, Prudence, about Aunt’s reference to the boys. If she was looking at those letters and then mentioned “the boys,” don’t you think it could have been because she thought they’d sent them?”
Prudence scrubbed at the turkey pan. “James and Geoff, possibly. David, no.”
“But don’t you remember, when you were young, how you wanted to be included by the older kids? I saw David look miserable when he wasn’t included by his brothers. Maybe he’d do something wrong in order to fit in.”
“You may be right, but if you’re thinking of another confrontation, don’t go on your own.”
“Art class is Wednesday. Why don’t we drop in on the Shaplands on Friday?”
Prudence nodded. “The morning would suit me. I’m going to visit Mother in the afternoon.”
Gerry tried to keep her voice casual. “Er, how is your mother?”
“She’s all right. She tells me about old friends of hers that she sees, relatives too. Apparently, your Gramma Ellie is still around. Unfinished business, Mother says.”
“Any word about Aunt Maggie?” Gerry could hardly believe this conversation was happening.
“That’s just it. Aunt Maggie is busy elsewhere and Gramma Ellie can’t relax until they’re together.”
“Oh. That makes sense. Kind of.”
“Apart from Mother, Mrs. Smith said she sees a dark shadow spreading through the family. A shadow cast by greed.”
“Sounds like what she told me. I don’t like the sound of it.”
“No. Lock your doors, Gerry.”
After eating turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie for a few days, it was exciting for Gerry when Prudence arrived to bake on Wednesday morning. All she had brought by way of supplies were shortening and cinnamon. “Apple pie,” she said, handing Gerry an apron. “We’ll make two so you can have one after the art class demolishes the first one.”
One young woman, three middle-aged people and one elderly lady, plus Gerry, could certainly be depended upon to consume one pie with their afternoon tea. The people of Lovering obviously didn’t care about their figures, if she was to judge by the voracious appetites of the members of her art class.
Prudence fetched the blue bowl of apples from the living room and dumped them in the sink. “I washed them,” protested Gerry.
“They’ll be dusty. Now, peel about sixteen and slice thinly.” With the two of them working it didn’t take long. They set the apples aside and began the pastry. “Recipe on the box. Ridiculously easy. I don’t know what the fuss is, about making pastry. Oh, double the ingredients while you’re at it.
“Now comes the delicate part. You want to work it just so you can roll it out. No kneading, just gathering and patting, then divide into two balls.”
Gerry must have had the right touch because the dough coalesced into smooth lumps. “Now. Divide those two lumps into two slightly unequal lumps. You need a little more for the bottom crust than the top because of the sides.” She handed Gerry the rolling pin and showed her how to strew flour across the pin and work surface. “Roll it like it has feelings, firmly but respectfully. And keep changing the angle so you get a round. We’ll do both the bottoms. Good. The filling is easy. Alternate apples with a little cinnamon and sugar. Okay, set those aside. Now the top crusts. I’ll show you how to crimp the edges. Fold top over bottom and pinch. Repeat.”
Gerry was thrilled to find out how easy it was to produce pie crust edges that looked just like the ones she’d been eating for twenty-five years. “Now cut two slits in the middle in the shape of an X and fold back.” They admired the two unbaked pies. “That’s it. That’s how my mother taught me. Works for pears too. Juicier fruit like plums or berries, add some corn starch to the filling, or flour if you don’t have corn starch, so it thickens up.”
The pies went into the oven. Soon, one of the most wonderful smells on the planet began oozing out of the kitchen into the rest of the house. They took their coffee out onto the back porch, having put on their jackets first.
“I read somewhere,” Gerry began, “that if you bake a pie or bread in a house you want to sell, it can seduce prospective buyers into making an offer.”
“Huh. I believe it.”
“Prudence. Do you think this house needs insulation?”
Prudence nodded.
“Is it very expensive?”
She nodded again. “Not the insulation itself. It’s the labour. The walls have to come down, or have many, many holes drilled into them. You should ask Doug.”
“Doug seems to be avoiding me, like all the rest of my family,” Gerry admitted ruefully.
“He’s probably just embarrassed about his ex-wife, if he knows how she feels about you, or his sons, if it was them keyed your car.”
“I hope that’s all it is. I wonder if I could just do one room at a time. Maybe I could afford it then, use some of Aunt Maggie’s money for that.”
“I think you should save that money for emergencies. Houses always have something necessary going wrong with them and you don’t want to be caught short.” They finished their coffee. “Come on,” Prudence said, “I’ll show you what to do with the leftover raw pastry.”
She gathered the scraps and rolled out a final circle, smeared it with butter and sprinkled it with brown sugar, then rolled up the dough and sliced it into inch-wide rounds. These she laid, cut side up, into another pie plate and popped in the oven. “Doo-dads,” she said with a smile. “Treats for the cooks.” Gerry ate two of them after her lunch and decided that they were better than apple pie.
It was a cool but sunny day so she had the art class out on the lawn again. This time they faced the house. “Draw what you see, of course,” she urged, “but more importantly, draw what you feel about what you’re looking at, or even what you’re feeling in your life today. You can draw the whole scene or zoom in on one little thing.”
Gerry drew the roofline of the house, with the chimneys poking up and the front yard’s treetops draping the tiles. Then she got silly and drew all the cats, lined up on the roof’s ridge, striking characteristic poses. Mother groomed Ronald, who was trying to escape; Bob and the boys were almost falling off; and Marigold was dozing, while Lightning seemed to be attacking a chimney. Others were grooming, looking at the sky, batting at flies and birds.
As they stood around eating pie, the students admired her drawing. Christine even said she might buy it, if it was for sale. Gerry critiqued their pieces gently but paused overlong looking at Judy’s.
The girl had focused on the apple tree in the side yard to their left. Its leaves were gone and she’d done a good job of delineating the twigs and boughs, even the odd wizened apple that still clung in place. Yet, as Gerry looked closer, she began to see the shape of a woman, arms and legs stretched out, as though she was floating in space or water, interspersed among the twigs. “Hey, Judy, this is very clever.”
Judy blushed. “You mean the tree?”
“Yes, the tree is lovely. But I mean the way you’ve
got the form of a woman sort of mingled with the tree’s parts. It’s like a puzzle. One picture hidden within another.”
Judy peered at her work. “Oh. That’s just an accident. I didn’t mean to do that. Is it good?”
Gerry was beginning to feel uncomfortable. Just there, to the right of the tree, was where the Scottish figurine had been buried, and, a little further away, was the place where Marigold had dug up the aconite. There was something a bit strange about that spot.
“Is it okay, Gerry?” Judy repeated.
“It’s very good. All the more so for having been unconscious. I like it.”
Judy’s face flushed happily.
“Teacher’s pet,” Ben teased.
After they’d gone, Gerry went and stood under the apple tree, stretched out her arms and looked up into its branches. Then she fed the cats.
Gerry still felt uneasy on Thursday. She put it down to dreading visiting her cousin. When she entered the studio to work, she found that a painting, one of a group massed on the wall over the sofa, had fallen. It appeared to be undamaged, but one of the screws holding its wire to the frame had come out and she couldn’t find it, though she pulled the sofa away from the wall. She leaned the painting against the sofa and tackled her work.
She was doing her best but finding the concept of Mug the Bug greeting cards increasingly difficult. “These just don’t work,” she said to herself, and pushed the morning’s efforts aside. Then she grinned and quickly sketched the bug being threatened by a giant hand holding a can marked bug spray from one side, while on his other side appeared another hand wielding a large fly swatter. The text read “You think you have problems!!!” followed by “Get well soon!”
“You have a childish sense of humour,” one Gerry scolded. Another Gerry replied, “I know. Ain’t it great?”
She saw that Marigold had entered the room at some point and was asleep on the spot where the painting had fallen. Gerry picked it up and sat next to the cat, studying the piece.
Non-representational, it was mostly black shapes irregularly alternating with white. There was a little salmon pink, even less green. She was reminded of Judy’s drawing, though that had been representational, where this was abstract. You could see so much in this, she reflected.
The signature was light grey on white and hard to make out. She sat and thought for a time. She made two phone calls. Then she tore off a length from a big roll of sketching paper and wrapped the painting, tied it with string and addressed it. She made herself a big cup of coffee, stared out the window at the lake, and waited for the courier to arrive.
16
“How do I look?” a nervous Gerry queried Prudence.
“What do you mean?” a mystified Prudence responded.
“Well, I’m about to accuse one of my cousins of the calculated murder of one of my aunts. I mean, what does one wear on such an occasion?”
“Blue jeans and a hoodie are fine,” Prudence commented drily. “You’re just trying to distract yourself. Are you ready?” She stood calmly by the porch door, holding her large black purse, while Gerry fidgeted, topping up the tub of kibble, feeding Marigold one more time.
“Wish us luck, Princess.” She scratched the cat between its ears before grabbing her keys and finally leaving.
They drove north, through Lovering, past Geoff and Mary’s street by the golf club, and continued to where the number of houses thinned out and their grandeur similarly decreased. They pulled into a dirt track driveway, its two ruts deep on either side of its grassy centre. “Whoa,” said Gerry, slowing the car, “this driveway could tear off my muffler. No wonder Margaret doesn’t have people over.”
The house, when they finally got to it, after lurching and bumping for four or five minutes, wasn’t bad. In fact, Gerry liked it and said so.
“Doug built the extension when the second and third boys came along.” It was a split-level with flat roofs and Doug had cleverly doubled its size by adding on to one side a mirror image of the original.
“I don’t see what’s wrong with this,” Gerry remarked, getting out of the car, “and it’s nice and secluded, far from the road. I could live here.”
“What suits you doesn’t suit everybody,” was Prudence’s cogent reply.
“Does it hurt, being so wise?”
Prudence mock swatted at her and Gerry rang the bell.
They’d not phoned ahead, but taken a chance Margaret would be home in the morning. Sure enough, she opened the door wearing sweats, without any makeup, and with her hair hanging naturally. She looked much younger.
She must have previously looked out a window before coming to the door, because she didn’t seem surprised to see them. “No cats?” she asked sarcastically, before standing aside so they could come in.
They brushed past the many coats hung off pegs in the hall before mounting half a dozen wooden steps to the living area, and, as they did, Gerry caught sight of David’s worried-looking face coming out of what must have been his room in the basement. She waved and he gave a kind of half-wave in return.
The level where Margaret led them was open plan. It was furnished simply. She’d been drinking coffee at her dining table, midway between the kitchen and sitting area, and she returned to sit there. Gerry and Prudence sat down on a sofa facing her. Gerry cleared her throat and took some papers from her pocket.
“Margaret, is it possible that one or more of your sons may have written and drawn these letters to Aunt Maggie?” She carried the pile of letters to Margaret and spread them out on the table in front of her. Margaret didn’t touch the letters and barely looked at them.
“It can’t have been David. He’s inherited the family’s artistic tendencies.” She fairly spat out the last few words, no doubt referring to Doug as well as Gerry.
Gerry felt relieved. She hadn’t wanted it to be David. “But they could have been drawn by James or Geoff?” No response. “Where are they, anyway? I saw David.”
“Out.” Margaret got up and refilled her coffee. Prudence shifted on the sofa. “What’s she doing here? Your bodyguard?”
Gerry sat back down, feeling rather foolish and wondering what to do now.
Prudence spoke for the first time. “Something like that. Do you think the boys might have sent these letters, hoping to please you?” Margaret became very still. “Because I’ve seen how hard you work to please your mother — dressing like her, serving her — and that kind of behaviour is learned by kids.”
“What would you know about having kids, I’d like to know?”
Prudence flushed. “I’m older than you, Margaret, and I see things.”
“So because I’m a good daughter, my sons might send nasty letters to their great-aunt? Don’t be stupid.”
Gerry’s voice cut in. “But, Margaret, didn’t they go to Maggie’s to swim? That would have given them the opportunity to push letters through her door.”
“Yeah, they liked to hang out at Yalta. So what? They didn’t write those letters.”
“So if they didn’t, who did? You? Your mother?”
“Leave Mother out of it. She had nothing — ”
They all paused, realizing Margaret had admitted to something. Gerry pushed. “Now you’re defending her? You told me you heard her recommending an herbal tea to Aunt Maggie right before she died. What’s it to be, Margaret? Your mother or you? Because I can’t believe Uncle Geoff or Andrew would hurt Aunt Maggie.”
Margaret looked confused and angry.
Gerry continued. “Your mother told you she’d be sure to inherit Aunt Maggie’s house, didn’t she? And then what was the deal? You got The Maples or your parents’ present house? Or was it just going to be sold and Aunt Mary was going to give you some money?” Gerry felt cruel but she kept going. “This house not big enough for you, Margaret? Not in the right part of town? Were you jealous of Aunt Maggie, Margaret? Ni
ce house by the river. Everybody loved her. Not like you, eh? Margaret who trails around after her abusive mother. Margaret who everybody pities and — ”
“Stop!” Margaret was on her feet, hissing. “Of course Mother should have inherited. She’s the last child of Grampa and Gramma Coneybear. And she was going to give it to me. Me and the boys. I love that house. I knew Grampa and Gramma. They loved me. They didn’t even know you!” She was spitting out the words. “It broke their hearts when your father left — their only son.”
Gerry turned pale.
Margaret continued. “Hah. Who are you? I knew Aunt Maggie before you were born. She loved me.” Here Margaret pointed to her own chest. “If you hadn’t come along — I could see how she changed toward me after you arrived — cute little baby, little five-year-old when I was pregnant, had to get married. Oh, she changed all right.”
She paused, panting. “And why shouldn’t I want more for my sons. David!” she screeched, and the boy, frightened-looking by now, stumbled up the stairs.
“What’s happening, Mum?” he implored.
“Go outside and take that one with you.” She pointed at Prudence, who was already on her feet.
“No way,” Prudence snorted.
“Prudence,” Gerry cautioned, staring at Margaret. “Just go outside with David and wait by the front door. Please?”
“Yeah, Prudence,” mimicked Margaret, “do what your mistress says.”
Prudence turned and took David’s arm, led him, protesting, down the stairs, slammed the door. Gerry could hear David’s voice from outside, but not what he was saying.
“That’s why David’s never come over — he didn’t want to displease you,” Gerry said slowly.
“Bad enough my former husband is slinking around you. Bitch.” Margaret said the last word calmly and sat back down at the table.
“He’s not slinking. He does the garden and the grass, same as he did for Aunt Maggie. Margaret, why did you clear the room except for the two of us?”
“Because I want you to hear how I did it.”
The Cat Among Us Page 16