by Marc Strange
“Not today, anyway.” He turns from the rail and we start promenading aft.
The Alexander Library has three cars in the lot. Madge Killian’s Austin Healey Sprite is parked to the right of the space reserved for the man who has never visited.
“Right there,” I say, pointing at Leo’s name. “He won’t be showing up.”
Madge Killian is conducting a tour. Two couples. The older man and woman have the glowing complexions and crinkled eyes of yachting enthusiasts, the pretty girl and handsome lad accompanying them are holding hands. The little group dutifully follows Madge from station to station, pausing at photos and artifacts and paying close attention to her running commentary. Weed and I stop in the foyer and keep our voices low and our presence circumspect.
“Let’s wait ’til she’s done with that lot,” Weed says.
“Could be a while,” I say. “They haven’t made it past the trophies yet.”
Weed goes to the visitor’s book and signs in. I do the same. It seems fitting somehow.
“Now isn’t this a lovely surprise,” Madge says, clapping her hands together as she gives us the once-over. “Two of my favourite men showing up unannounced on the same day.”
“We tried the house first,” I say. “Took a chance you’d be here.”
“Some nice people from Seattle,” she says. “They were supposed to come last week but couldn’t make it.”
“You go ahead and show them around,” says Weed. “We’re in no rush.”
“They’ll do fine on their own,” she says. “The older couple are the girl’s parents. They’re trying to get their prospective son-in-law hooked on sailing.”
“If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll take the bait,” says Weed.
“Why don’t you sit in my office for a minute?” she says. “I’ll be right back.” She bustles off to attend to her guests. She’s wearing heels. She’s wearing a skirt and jacket and pearls. She’s wearing a diamond ring.
Weed takes the nice leather club chair across from Madge’s desk, leaving the straight-backed wooden one for me. It reminds me of a classroom.
“I’m showing them a movie,” Madge says, coming back. She plops herself on the other side of the desk and settles in like a broody hen. “It’s quite exciting. Should keep them occupied for twenty minutes or so.”
Weed looks in my direction.
“Madge, we have a tape of your little Sprite exiting the parking garage very early Wednesday morning.”
“Of course you have,” she says brightly.
“And a security tape shows you on the sixth floor at 02:34, coming in through the emergency exit.”
“I was so sure you were going to catch me on the stairs,” she says. “Of course, I didn’t know it was you at the time.” She giggles like a little girl. “Oh, don’t be embarrassed, Joseph,” she says. “I knew this could happen sooner or later. Too many connections could be made. It wasn’t planned. It was impulsive.”
“You can have a lawyer, Madge,” Weed says. “You don’t have to say any more.”
“I know my rights, Detective Weed. Maybe we can do without a big trial. I wouldn’t want to put Leo through more pain.”
“I don’t think you can,” I say.
“What about the first one?” Weed asks. “On the ranch?”
She nods at the memory. “So long ago.” Her eyebrows pull together. “Impulse again,” she says. “Not planned. Although I’ll admit I was never fond of the woman. One time she threatened to make Leo fire me. She said she could do it.”
Weed frowns. “So you came back early? That counts as planning.”
“It was an accident that I came back,” she says. “Leo and one of the corporate wives disappeared. He was a terrible roué in those days. I didn’t really mind. I turned a blind eye. Those affairs never amounted to anything anyway. But I didn’t care to wait around so I checked out of the hotel and drove back. I’ve always preferred having my own transportation. It’s liberating.” She gets up briskly and takes a stack of file folders from the top of a cabinet. “Now these,” she says, placing them squarely on the desk, “are all the most important papers. I insist that they be given to Leo’s lawyer for safekeeping until he can find someone to replace me.” She divides the stack into two separate piles. “Now this one is the complete inventory, and this is the history. Everything comes with identification numbers. It’s really quite simple to understand.”
“I have to know what happened, Madge,” I say.
Madge nods quietly. “I suppose so,” she says. She stares into the middle distance and her expression is calm, thoughtful. “I have a key. From when he first moved in. She was very surprised to see me. I told her I’d brought a birthday present for Leo. And some maiden cake because Leo loves it so. I told her I’d give her the recipe.” She sounds like she’s reading a book report. “She said she’d save the date squares for some other time. Hid them away.” Madge waves away the insult, resumes her account without emotion. “She told me she was getting married. To Leo. Showed me the engagement ring he gave her. It was so beautiful. I asked her if I could try it on. Please, she said. She was very happy. She told me she was pregnant, that it was Leo’s son. She was putting out platters and singing something in Spanish, and I picked up the chef’s knife to make her stop singing.”
“And being happy,” I say.
“What did you do with the knife?” Weed asks.
“The morning ferry. I threw it overboard.”
“Why, Madge?” I ask her.
“I’m not sure,” she says, giving it some thought. “She had so much.”
“What did you do after you killed Raquel?” Weed wants to know.
“The most amazing thing happened,” she says. “I thought it was another sign that it would all work out for the best, like when I found Rose under the table that time, all covered in blood, holding the knife. She couldn’t make a sound. ‘Well, look who’s here,’ I said. ‘Tsk tsk,’ I said. ‘Now you must never ever tell anyone what you’ve done.’”
“Yeah, that worked out great,” I say.
“Monday night,” Weed prompts.
“I stayed for a while looking for the Alberta album. He promised I’d get it for years and years and never delivered. I wanted to check the bookshelves, to see if I could find it. I need it to complete the collection. And then when I was down the hall, someone came over the roof. I heard them go into the kitchen and then screams and things crashing and swearing in some foreign language. They made such a noise, I was sure they’d attract attention. There was a lot of yelling. Then they must have gone down the stairs because it was very quiet. I couldn’t find the album. I looked and looked. Then I heard the elevator, so I left.”
Someone’s voice is echoing in the hall. Madge doesn’t notice. She’s twisting the ring from side to side. “I forgot I had it on until I was almost home.” She grinds the ring against her knuckle. “I haven’t been able to get it off,” she says with a note of complaint. “It went on so easily.”
Knocking on the office door. “Miss Killian? You in there?”
I open the door. It’s the yachtsman. “We’re smelling smoke,” he says. “I don’t know where it’s coming from. Trev’s having a look around. Have you got a fireplace going?”
Madge looks up, blinks, waking from a reverie.
“No,” she says, “no fireplace.”
The younger man is at the far end of the hall. “I think it’s coming from the basement,” he says.
Weed is already on the phone.
“Get your family outside, sir,” I say. “I’ll have a quick look.”
“What’s the address?” Weed asks Madge.
“Address?” she says. “What? Here?”
I get the family group out the front door. Weed is bringing Madge out. She’s trying to pull away from him. She doesn’t want to leave. “There are things that I need to bring,” she says.
“It’s just stuff,” says Weed.
She’s starting to cry. “Don’t be ridiculou
s! It’s irreplaceable.”
I can’t see any smoke at the front. I head across the parking lot and around to the side. Basement windows, grilled and dark. Still no smoke but maybe a whiff of something scorched. There’s a lane at the back, garbage cans and stacked newspapers and steps leading down a basement door where smoke is curling around the frame.
A familiar figure is walking away down the lane. Long legs. Blonde hair. Not in a hurry.
“Roselyn!” I yell after her.
She turns and waves cheerily at me. “Aw,” she says. “You called me by my first name.”
I catch up to her. “What did you do?”
“And you call yourself a sleuth,” she scoffs at me. “Smoke, fire, even you should be able to figure that one out.” Behind us a basement window explodes and flames start licking up the rear of the building. “That cellar was just filled to the brim with papers and boxes,” she says. “I think it will burn very nicely, don’t you?” Sirens are getting closer. “Let’s go around to the front, all right?” She takes my arm. “I don’t want to miss the excitement.”
Fire trucks are arriving; firemen are climbing out, telling people to move back. Flames have reached the ground floor. Weed is trying to get Madge into his car. “I need to move mine!” She’s trying to pull away from him. “I need my keys!”
Roselyn watches it all with an expression of satisfaction. “Gone-y-gone,” she says. “Clean slate.”
Weed is having a difficult time controlling Madge. She’s twisting out of his grasp, trying to open the door of her Sprite. “Just let me move my car,” she says angrily. “It’s my car.”
Firemen run by heading for the front door. They are carrying axes.
“No!” Madge yells at them. “You don’t have to break anything.”
The head fireman tells us to clear out. The cars will have to take their chances where they are.
We lead Madge to the sidewalk. Roselyn is waiting for her.
“Hi, Madge,” says Roselyn. “Like old times, isn’t it?”
A main floor window explodes, billows of black smoke, flames crawling up the ivied walls. Madge screams. It is the agonized cry of a wounded child. She sinks to the ground, folding herself inside her arms and rocking back and forth. “No no no no no,” she sobs. “I can’t lose everything. Not everything.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Roselyn says.
chapter twenty-seven
“Is that the tie you’re gonna wear?” Gritch wants to know.
“Yes, it is,” I say. I’m standing in front of a mirror adjusting the ends and turning down my collar. I’m pleased to see that my left hand is holding up its end of the operation.
“It’s got a horse head on it.”
“I’m aware,” I say. “She liked it.” Trigger, Roy Rogers’ distinguished palomino, is nicely centred. I figure if Weed can wear a lobster for his granddaughter, I can wear a horse for Raquel. “She told me once.”
“She was being kind,” he says.
“That’s a possibility,” I say. There. A nice half-Windsor, better than I usually manage. “She was a kind person. But she wasn’t insincere.”
“You escorting the old man?”
“Nope,” I say. “It’s all family in the first car. Lenny and his wife …”
“Together again.”
“So I hear. Plus grandkids.” The top button is proving uncooperative. “And there’s Roselyn.”
“Crowded.”
“It’ll be good for Leo,” I say. “He can use backup that isn’t hired by the hour.”
“Figure Fat-Boy will show?”
“Theo will be there,” I say. “He can’t afford not to be.” Lenny’s star is definitely in the ascendant.
“I guess he’s lost some traction with the old man,” Gritch says.
“Plus Leo’s got his daughter back.”
“If he can keep her out of jail.” Gritch does a little tie-adjustment of his own. “She still going to publish her book?” he wonders.
“Definitely.” Success. The top button is buttoned, the tie is snug, the ends are even, my left arm isn’t complaining much. My watch is back where it’s meant to be. Things are looking up. “But with new details, of course.”
“Look forward to it,” he says.
“I’ll likely give it a miss,” I say. “I know too much already.”
As funerals go, Raquel’s ceremony at St. Barnabus was all right, I guess. Sufficient unto the occasion. Substantial turnout. I’m never completely comfortable with church funeral services — something about the setting, I suppose — it hardly ever feels like they’re talking about the person I knew. Father Renfrew kept his portion brief, spoke in generalities, winging it the way clergymen do when they have few facts and abundant platitudes. Leo couldn’t bring himself to say anything publicly. Tricia made a nice little speech about how Raquel’s uniforms always fitted better than anyone else’s because she used to sneak them home for alterations, one of the few moments that felt halfway authentic.
Theodore and his wife, Gloria, attended, their public faces proper to the gravity of the day although it was clear, even from a distance, that Theo’s wife was standing an extra few inches away from his side and never deigned to glance in his direction. They didn’t hold hands. Lenny and Jaqueline on the other hand looked like a married couple. Their children were in attendance, the older girl with black and red hair, a ring through her nose, supremely bored, sending private messages via the little device she kept poking with a black fingernail. The boy, too, had an electronic contraption that he stared at with intense concentration. The younger girl I recognized from the little photograph. She stood between her parents, holding their hands, keeping them linked, pleased with herself, as though she had negotiated the rapprochement.
Jesus Santiago spoke for a few minutes about his sister. His eulogy was heartfelt and not entirely coherent. He was wearing a good black suit and tie. One of Leo’s, I think. They’re about the same size. Jesus, like Roselyn, is out on bail, residing at the hotel while his case makes its way through various levels of bureaucracy. Leo’s legal team is getting a full workout this spring.
Mrs. Dineen didn’t come.
I was a pallbearer. I took a place on the left side so that I could use my good arm. Jesus was across from me. Lenny took a handle, also Maurice. Roland could have carried it on his own.
The wake is in Olive’s. Invitation only. It has a sort of New Orleans/Havana feel to it. The flavours are Latin but Olive can’t stop her left hand striding from time to time. I’m feeling the emotional conflict that comes with recognizing that the person being celebrated would have had a great time.
Weed is there, at the bar, enjoying the music. “Jeeze,” he says, “half the people in here are out on bail.”
“A slight exaggeration,” I say. “How did you get in?”
“Somebody has to keep an eye on this bunch.”
“Feels sort of tribal, doesn’t it?”
“One way of putting it.”
“Everyone here is connected, somehow. Even you.”
“How about you, pal?” he asks. “You belong to this tribe?”
I lift my left arm as I head for the exit. “Blood relative,” I say.
“What do you mean you have a TV in your room? When did this happen?”
“I hooked it up today,” I say. “Big sucker, too.
Supposed to be highly defined, I’m told.”
“High Definition.”
“That’s what the cable guy told me. I have a clicker thing that I can almost figure out, and I’m looking at your face right now.” On the screen the tiny perfect newswoman is doing her first standup from Kandahar airport. She’s wearing desert camo gear and a helmet and she looks courageous, beautiful, capable, and right where she wants to be. I’ve seen the footage three times. They repeat the news on this channel. “If I knew how to work it I could record these for later. We could watch them from bed.”
“I’ll make sure you get a copy, big guy.�
�
“Keeping your head down?”
“I may be intrepid, but I ain’t stoopid.”
“Atta girl. I want you to do your helmet strap tighter.”
“Gotta go, slugger. You done good.”
“You too.”
“Love you.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
On the television screen Connie is ducking her head. I can see smoke rising in the distant background. When she ducks, the helmet slips forward.
“Do up your chinstrap,” I say. “I want you back.”
Also by Marc Strange