by Vicki Delany
“He did?” Imagine that.
“Your brother loves you very much indeed. I don’t know exactly what happened between you when you were kids, but I have a pretty good idea. He wants to make amends, if you’ll let him.”
“Let’s leave the past for another time.”
“You’re right, there are far more immediate matters to worry about. But you and he have to deal with your history someday.”
It seems to me that I have been dealing with my past with perfect success all these years—mainly by ignoring it. “Tell me what they have on him. Why did the cops take him in? They questioned me in my living room. It was all terribly civilized. Over tea and fruitcake, of all things. Perfectly Agatha Christie.”
A flash of light as we drove through Hope River, marking a tiny outpost of human habitation in the vastness of the wild. A Monday night in May, not much happening in town. Lights and canned music spilled from the bar, but there were only a handful of cars parked outside. We drove past the restaurant. Maggie Kzenic stood on the steps putting on her hat and mittens as inside someone extinguished the last light. She looked up, without much interest, to watch us go by.
“They said they found Jennifer’s body in the swamp.”
“Unfortunately I found her. Or rather Sampson.”
“You found her?”
“Yes. Buried in the muck.”
“How awful for you. Are you all right?”
“Thanks for asking, but we aren’t here to worry about me, are we?”
“No. That was the psychologist in me, always struggling to rise to the surface. The police found something on her. A necklace. Like one Jim has.”
“Is there something special about this necklace, Aileen?”
“Yes.” She choked on the word. We had passed Hope River; the OPP detachment wasn’t in town, but a good bit further north, the other side of North Ridge. There were no other cars on the road. My headlights carved a path out of the darkness, illuminating the thin white line leading to the vast, empty North. Beyond the confines of this rented monstrosity of a vehicle lay nothing but the gloom of the primitive forest. By the lakes there would be a few summer cottages, owned by people who didn’t mind the distance from Toronto, and some homes like ours, built in the days when lakefront property didn’t cost too much more than anything else. But inland there wasn’t much at all: a scattering of farmhouses on the rare bits of land suitable for agriculture, the homes of people who liked their privacy.
“What’s special about it?”
“It’s one of a kind. I can testify to that. Because I made it myself, in honor of our first anniversary. Two broken hearts linked by a thin chain. At the time I thought I was being so clever.”
“Can’t you tell them it isn’t Jimmy’s?”
“The cops came directly out and asked him if he had one like it. They described it, all the details perfectly. Obviously they knew it was his, lots of people have seen him wearing it. So, yes, he said he owned a necklace like that, no point in denying it. And when they asked him to show it to them, he had to confess that it had been lost.”
“Did you know he’d lost it?”
She hesitated before answering. “No.”
“Did they tell you where they found this necklace?”
“No, but we were certainly given to understand that it had something to do with the finding of Jennifer’s body.”
A flash of light shattered the black night as we rounded a corner. The OPP station. Aileen was out of the car and running for the door the moment the car edged into the driveway, before I had even started to look for a parking spot.
By the time I parked and made it into the building, she was standing in front of the desk, tapping her toes, bare and wrapped in open sandals.
“He said I have to wait here.”
“Did you talk to someone already?”
“They were waiting for me. He told me to wait.”
“So we’ll wait.” I took her arm and guided her to a row of institutional chairs lining one wall.
And there we waited, as instructed.
Aileen pulled at the loose threads on her shawl as if she could unravel it all and knit herself a perfect world in which murder never reared its ugly head and love lasted forever and the police sat around all day playing cards and eating doughnuts because they had nothing else to do.
I touched the back of her constantly moving hand, and she gripped me with a ferocity of which I wouldn’t have believed her capable.
“Let’s go, babe.”
We looked up and Aileen released my hand. She rose to her feet in her characteristic gentle, flowing movement and studied her husband’s face. “Are you okay?”
“Perfectly. Let’s go home.”
I’d fallen asleep in the rock-hard chair, clutching my sister-in-law’s hand in mine. For the second time that day my head felt as thick as the mud in the swamp. Thicker.
Sergeant Reynolds stood in the background watching the touching little family tableau. No emotion cracked the lines on his face. “The inspector will be here tomorrow. He’ll want a few words with you, McKenzie.”
“I heard you the first time.”
“Consider it a friendly reminder. Don’t leave town.”
“I have no reason to.” Jim shifted his grip to his wife’s waist. She melted into his arms and he half carried her out the door.
“Ta ta for now, Sergeant Reynolds,” I said in a failed attempt at frivolity.
“Always a pleasure, Ms. McKenzie, always a pleasure.” He sounded as sincere as I did.
We drove home in silence. Jimmy and Aileen sat close together in the back, not saying a word. We passed through Hope River, the town dark and silent except for the bright lights spilling from the bar. There were a handful more trucks and cars in the parking lot than when we had last passed. Even on a Monday night in May in northern Ontario, there are bound to be some people out in search of a good time.
We were minutes the other side of town when a deer leapt across the road in front of the car. A gleam of immense brown eyes reflecting the harsh light of headlight beams, a clean movement as liquid as a fish floating under the surface of a lake tinged red by a new dawn, a flash of brown and white rump, and she was gone.
“Come in, please, Rebecca,” Jimmy said as I pulled up to their house. “We won’t be going to sleep anytime soon.”
He led the way through to the living room and immediately set about preparing a fire in the enormous stone fireplace. I hadn’t been in this room since my childhood, and if I’d stopped to think about it I probably would have refused to step foot over the threshold. And that would have been a mistake. Even before the fire flared to life, the room was seductive and inviting. Tapestries and woolen wall hangings in autumn shades of rust, gold, and all the colors of green imaginable warmed what once had been cold, beige walls. The old shag carpet was gone, replaced by good hardwood flooring and a scattering of colorful area rugs.
Aileen moved around the room, lighting candles in wall sconces and on the mantle, which was of stone so carefully laid that it might have risen directly from the solid rocks of the Canadian Shield lying beneath the foundations of the house. She selected a CD from a full rack and popped it into the player. Muddy Waters. I love the blues.
I sank into a leather chair the color of caramel and the consistency of butter; Aileen took a wooden rocking chair opposite. Once the fire was blazing, Jimmy slipped out of the room and returned with a bottle of excellent brandy and three crystal balloon glasses. He poured with a generous hand and handed the drinks around before collapsing on the floor to sit at Aileen’s feet. She stroked his hair.
“This is wonderful. All of it. What you’ve done with this room. I remember it as being the most perfectly awful place. And it was always so cold. The grandparents never wasted any money on heat.”
“See that piece over there?” Jimmy pointed to a small china figurine of a shepherdess guarding one sheep. The top of her staff had broken off, and a poorly glued crack ra
n up the other arm. “Recognize it?”
“No.”
“One of Grandma’s pieces. Most of it was hideous stuff, but we saved a few things to remember her by. I think of her as that shepherdess. Trying to do some good for her sheep, but her crook is broken and her spirit as badly patched together as that statue.”
I swallowed my brandy.
“I think of her a lot these days,” he said. “She was a good woman, Grandma. She wanted to do good, but she was, sadly, simply too timid.”
I studied the frail shepherdess with the concentration I normally give to a company prospectus or my own investment portfolio. That was a startling statement, coming from Jimmy. To me, Grandma had been just plain weak. As weak as a single drop of water taken from the lake outside. Nothing else. A woman I’d wanted to get as far away from as I could. I hadn’t even cared enough to come home for her funeral.
Jimmy smiled at his wife over the rim of his brandy glass. The smile was strained. He tried hard to make the effort: to smooth over her worries. She rubbed one finger across his hand, lightly. Aileen asked him if he was warm enough, or if she could bring him a sweater. He replied that he was fine.
Of all the people who made up my family, I was the last living soul who knew the story of Jimmy’s parentage. Not for the first time, I wondered if I should tell him what I had discovered in the diaries. My answer always came back the same: Leave well enough alone. But if I was comfortable with the answer, why did I keep asking the question? Should I burn the diaries before I left? Take my mother’s secret to my own grave? The ultimate question again: Why had she left them to be found?
“Rebecca?”
I looked up.
“How’s the brandy?”
“Wonderful, thank you. Sorry, I was thinking about what a wonderful job you’ve done with this room. You’ve managed to chase all my ghosts away.”
Aileen smiled at me, a tiny smile, just the edges of her mouth curling up. Her face was brittle with fear, but she enjoyed the compliment.
I sipped again. “This is good stuff.”
“Aileen has taught me to appreciate some of the finer things in life,” Jimmy said.
She burst into tears like a dam breaking open under an earthquake. “Please, please,” she sobbed, “we have to talk about it.”
Jimmy looked stricken. He lifted himself to his knees and gathered his sobbing wife into his arms. “I’m so sorry, dear heart. That’s the McKenzie way of dealing with a problem.”
“Ignore it and it’ll go away,” I said.
“But not this time, unfortunately. You both deserve to know what happened tonight.” He released Aileen and resumed his place at her feet. He looked deep into his brandy glass and swirled the golden liquid around and around. “They found Jennifer Taylor’s body in the swamp behind Dad’s place earlier today. That bit of news is no surprise to you, Rebecca. I guessed that it was your dog that came across her. When they inventoried the items on the body they found a necklace, identified instantly by Constable Rosemary Rigoloni as similar to one owned by me.”
Aileen sobbed, quietly but steadily. Jimmy patted her knee. “Rosemary is a friend of Aileen’s,” he explained. “She’s been here several times as part of Aileen’s book club. I wear the necklace my dearest wife gave me every day, proudly. In the summer it’s more visible under T-shirts. If not Rosemary, anyone else in town could have told them that it belonged to me.”
“The curse of a small town. No wonder I hate this place.”
Jimmy grinned, his familiar disarming grin. “Today I agree with you, little sister. But if it wasn’t for this town, I sometimes wonder if I would be doing real hard time.”
Aileen sobbed again. Jimmy slipped out of the room and returned with a box of tissues.
I indicated that perhaps it was time for me to go. He signaled to me to stay. “Aileen has to hear this, Rebecca. And I’d like you to hear it as well. More cognac?”
I held out my glass. In the fireplace a log broke in half and collapsed in a shower of yellow sparks.
“Do you know how Jennifer came to be in possession of this necklace?” I asked.
“Yes, I do. Jennifer was a great girl. And I mean that. She wanted to be a carpenter, she loved to work with wood, really loved it. Her hands were born to it. Her brothers help me out for the money, but they have no heart for the work. Jennifer does… did. Her father was staunchly against it. I can’t stand the man, a supercilious asshole of the first degree. You didn’t know I can say words like supercilious, did you, Becky?”
“I’ve never underestimated you, Jimmy.”
“Perhaps you should have. Anyway, Mr. Taylor didn’t approve of her working for me, but he permitted it as long as there was money to be made. There aren’t a lot of jobs for a school kid around here that last any longer than July and August. But he wouldn’t hear of her taking up carpentry as a career. Jennifer told me many times that he thinks it not a suitable occupation for a woman. Fellow is living in the nineteenth century.”
“Sounds like the Dennis Taylor I went to school with, all right.”
“Anyway she was a great assistant. Far better than those lazy brothers of hers. I would have sacked the both of them in a flash, if anyone any better came to hand. She showed up on time, early more often than not, and worked like her heart and soul were in it. Course she is… was… still going to school, so she only helped out on holidays and on the weekends when I was busy.” His voice changed, and he turned his head to stare into the fire. “Dead. Do you know, I haven’t really even thought of her that way. I knew she hadn’t run away. As tough as her old man is on her, she isn’t the type to up and run. When Reynolds told me they’d found the body, it didn’t come as much of a surprise. But dead. She was so young, she had real promise.” He got up to toss more pieces of kindling onto the fire. The flames reared up hungrily. We all watched the wood be consumed. Muddy Waters sang about love.
“But…”
“No flies on you, are there baby sister? But she was interested in more than just the carpentry. Christ. Only because I’m probably the only man she’d ever met who told her to follow her heart and her talent. She and her brothers worked for me last summer. Remember, babe, we had that big job on that place with the gazebo and the guest house?”
Aileen nodded.
“We were finishing it up, putting the last touches on the gazebo. You should see it; it’s absolutely fantastic. The lady of the house saw one in a garden in England and had to have one just like it. One day, the last week of work, Ryan is off sick and Kyle has a dentist appointment. Me and Jennifer are having a perfectly great day. It was real hot, sweltering, so when we took our lunch break I stripped off my shirt and dove into the lake. And Jennifer did the same. I tried not to notice, really I did, babe. But she swam up to me and started rubbing herself against me and saying things I didn’t want to hear.”
Aileen blew her nose.
“I told her that lunch was over and it was time to get dressed and back to work. She was embarrassed, but she put her shirt and bra back on, and we finished the gazebo. Her brothers were back the next day; we moved on to the guest house and I thought it all ended then.”
“But it didn’t?”
“I got a few odd jobs in the fall, and the twins and Jennifer helped out on weekends. She didn’t say anything about what happened and everything between us settled back to normal. Over the winter I do work indoors, making furniture and the like. No need for help, so I hardly saw the kids. Last month I started back to work up at Lake Ramsey, and I called them. Their dad had been sick over the winter, so Ryan was working at Fawcett’s Hardware. But Kyle and Jennifer were available.”
He stopped talking and poured out another round of drinks. Good thing I only had a few hundred yards to drive home. The brandy was excellent. Ray loved good brandy and he taught me to appreciate it as well. It was one of his few extravagances. Would my husband and my brother have gotten along? Would they have found something in common?
“First
day of work, Kyle hit his thumb with a hammer. I don’t like the kid, take your eye off him for a second and he’s slacking off, but I had to admit that his thumb was a real mess. His mom came to collect him. They were scarcely out of sight before Jennifer turned it all on. Told me that she missed me all winter and she was so glad to be working close to me again. I told her that I’m a married man and I don’t believe in fooling around on the job. If she wanted to learn to be a carpenter she would have to act a pro and not mess up the best chance she was going to get. She said she understood.”
“But she didn’t?” Aileen croaked. She had shrunk so far into herself that she was in danger of disappearing altogether if something didn’t pull her out of it. I didn’t know what could.
“I wear that necklace every day. I want to be buried in it, you know that Aileen. Don’t you?”
She didn’t respond.
“But I have to take it off at a work site. No jewelry on the job. That’s asking for trouble. So every day, soon as we arrive, I put my wedding ring and the necklace into my lunch box. That day Jennifer’s mom came for her early. They didn’t approve of their precious daughter alone with the likes of me all day. Christ if only they knew.”
“Parents worry,” said I who had no experience whatsoever. My mother worried. But never of anything that lay outside of our own family.
“Yeah. With cause, eh? I don’t like them, the Taylors, they’re both a piece of work. They both remind me of Grandpa. All piss and wind and not an ounce of human kindness in their shriveled up bodies.”
I swallowed and focused on the flames dancing in the grate. “I always thought you got on great with Grandpa.”
He looked at me with those lovely eyes the color of the lake on a summer’s morning. At the present storm clouds were moving in. “I never believed in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, you know. Grandpa told me straight out that stuff was for girls and babies. And he told me that I wasn’t a baby and I was certainly not a girl. But I was a kid, little sister. I needed to believe in something.”