“Yeah, it was.”
“And if you ever bring me here again I’ll break both your legs.”
“You’re just mad that I beat you at Splat the Brat.”
“There is no game in there called Splat the Brat.”
“I’m paraphrasing. The point is you’re a sore loser, as indicated by your rather nasty threat.”
“Okay, a) I’m not a sore loser, b) I beat you at everything but what you’re calling Splat the Brat, and c) if you ever take me there again, I’ll break both your legs.”
I nodded and put my arm around her shoulders. “Do you think Kyla had fun? I mean really?”
“Trust me, she had fun and you have a new fan. Well, actually she was already a fan.”
“Cool.”
“What eight-year-old girl could possibly resist a man who is a writer and a Chuck E. Cheese’s guy?”
“Wow, a guy with a fan. What’s better than that?”
“How about a guy with two fans?” Jill squeezed my arm and smiled up at me.
“That is better.”
On the way home Kyla asked me who Audrey Hepner was. I explained that Audrey Hepburn was a wonderful Hollywood star and the third most beautiful woman to ever grace the planet, right behind the two women currently in my car. I then launched into what I thought was a thorough and fascinating summary of Ms. Hepburn’s life and career but about halfway through my oratory I glanced in the rearview mirror and noted that Kyla was sleeping soundly.
Which meant that when I pulled into the driveway at Jill’s house we were able to enjoy a long, slow, warm kiss. Actually two. When I moved in for a third, Jill put a finger to my lips and promised “more where that came from” on Saturday night.
Twenty-One
I was sitting on what passes for the balcony of my apartment, my feet on the railing, as I watched a guy on the balcony of his in-fill across the street. He was cleaning his barbecue.
It was December 14. Maybe he’d misread the calendar.
I was on my second cup of coffee, dressed in navy blue sweat pants, an Oklahoma State hoodie, and sneakers, no socks, no jacket.
Optimist.
Library Voices’ Denim on Denim was filtering out of my apartment onto the balcony. They were a solid Regina band I’d seen perform a couple of years before. Their sound was helping my mood to improve. That and the smell. Chinook smell. Warm, dry, clean air that southern Albertans get to enjoy from time to time during winter. And might explain the guy working on his barbecue.
I’d made a decision. Cobb had called that morning and we’d set a time for the next day to get together and review everything we knew about Donna’s murder. At 9:30 a.m., my apartment — I provide the bagels, he brings the coffee.
It would be good to get going on it again. But in the meantime I was antsy. I wanted to be doing something and I didn’t want to be idle for even one more day.
There was only one thing I could think of to do. I wanted to try to find out what had happened to the other girl who had died. Elaine Yu. Appleton had said she’d died in Prince Albert. I’d Googled it and come up with next to nothing other than that Elaine Yu had died in a vehicle mishap of some kind. That seemed awfully general. I wondered if I could find out a little more and take that information to the meeting with Cobb.
And there was only one place my minimal detecting skills could come up with to try to learn more about Elaine and how she had died.
I sipped more coffee. The guy across the road was finished with his barbecue grill and had gone back inside. Probably planning to fire up the lawn mower.
I picked up the newspaper but couldn’t really concentrate. Did the headlines and the sports page; the Flames had lost 5–3 to New Jersey.
I followed the lead of the guy across the way and went back inside. I changed into jeans, a bulky knit sweater, added socks to my ensemble, pulled on my down fill, and headed out to pursue the one idea I had.
The students at Northern Horizon Academy were apparently enjoying the spring-like interlude as much as I was. Several were hanging around outside the main entrance, perched on benches or leaning on walls contemplating the weather, sex, and each other. My guess was that few were contemplating chemistry or social studies.
I walked up the walk, ready this time in the event a group of girls tried to mow me down while exiting the main front doors. None did.
I entered the school and turned left, heading for the office. I stopped, this time intent on finding Donna’s photo in the display of her grad year’s pictures. I did. It was a picture I hadn’t seen before and I had to clear my throat and swallow a couple of times before I completed my walk to the main office.
I stepped into a space I hadn’t really paid much attention to the first time I’d been here.
There were three desks in the office but only two of them were occupied. The walls behind the desks displayed pictures, smaller than the collections of student photos in the school’s hallways. These were pictures of adults, I guessed the teachers and staff that had served at NHA over the years. Some were black and white.
A hallway led away from the office to a room or rooms I couldn’t see. And there were two doors, one on each side of the office. The one on the right, I knew, was the domain of Delores Bain, principal. The other I guessed was the vice-principal’s office. Both office doors were closed.
The woman at the desk nearest me looked up from a notebook she was writing in. “Can I help you?”
She was in her forties and attractive. She was wearing a blue jacket over a soft yellow blouse that was open just enough at the neck to activate high school boys’ hormones. She smiled as she spoke to me and I smiled back.
“I was hoping I might see Ms. Bain if she’s available.”
“Is she expecting you?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry. She has several appointments this morning and she’ll be out of the school at a meeting all afternoon. Can anyone else help you?”
“No. I wonder if you’d give her my name.”
“As I was saying —”
“I heard what you said and I’d appreciate it if you’d give Ms. Bain my name and see if she can spare a few minutes.”
That had come out much more harshly than I intended and I knew the secretary was only doing her job.
I was thinking about how to soften what I’d said when she stood up and stepped away from her desk. The rest of her looked as good as the part that could be seen over the desk. The smile disappeared.
“What name should I give her?”
“Cullen.”
She nodded and crossed to the principal’s door.
I scrapped my planned apology — too late anyway. The woman at the second desk had stopped typing and was glaring at me over the top of her computer screen. Her body language made it clear we would never be friends.
The attractive secretary tapped on the principal’s door and stepped inside. She closed the door behind her. Maybe thirty seconds passed before the door to Delores Bain’s office opened and the secretary came out and headed in the direction of her desk. She didn’t look at me. Delores Bain stepped out of her office and offered me a half smile.
“Please come in, Mr. Cullen.”
I raised the hinged door that allowed me into the office and crossed between the two secretaries. Principal Bain stepped to one side to let me enter her office, then followed me inside and closed the door.
She stepped around to her side of the desk and sat.
“I’m sorry to stop in without an appointment,” I said. “I know how busy you are and I appreciate your taking the time to see me.”
She gave me the half smile again but there was no offer of coffee this time. She nodded at the chair opposite her desk and I sat.
“Faith said you were quite insistent about seeing me,” she said.
I nodded. “I guess I was. I wanted to ask you a couple of things.”
She sat back in her chair. “By all means.”
“I was wondering, first of
all, why you weren’t more forthcoming with me when I was here the first time.”
She stiffened. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“When I asked you if there was anyone in the school who might have had a reason to want harm to come to Donna, you said you couldn’t think of anyone.”
“I did, yes.”
“Do you not think that a teacher who sexually abused Donna and several other girls in this school and then went to jail for what he did might qualify as a person I should know about?”
She paused. “I see your investigation continues.”
“I wonder why you didn’t at the very least tell me about what had happened to Donna in her grade eleven year.”
“I thought you must already be aware of what happened — that Donna must have told you about it.”
“That frankly, Ms. Bain, is lame. Had I known about the abuse surely I would have mentioned it as part of trying to determine if there was something in Donna’s school life that might be connected to her death.”
Delores Bain thought for a few seconds, sat forward, and placed her arms on the desk.
“Mr. Cullen, I did not see the relevance of that incident to what you were asking me about. You had indicated the fire that killed Donna was deliberately set. There is absolutely no chance that Richard Appleton set fire to your home.”
“That’s what everybody, including Appleton himself, says. I’m curious what makes you so sure that a man who could prey on teenage girls would draw the line at arson — or murder.”
“It is my business to know people, Mr. Cullen. I know that Richard Appleton did not set fire to your house.”
“Did you hire him?”
“Pardon?”
“Did you hire Richard Appleton to teach at this school?”
“I was part of the hiring process, yes, along with my superintendent and someone from HR.”
“Apparently your knowing people didn’t preclude hiring a sexual predator.”
She took a breath, let it out slowly. “I didn’t go into this the first time you were here because it has no bearing on what happened to your wife, and frankly I didn’t want to add more pain to what you had already suffered. If I erred in keeping that information from you, I assure you that it was done for the right reasons. Nevertheless, I apologize.”
I wanted to tell her I considered her apology a crock but decided there was little to be gained from a full-blown confrontation.
“There’s something you can do that might be of help,” I told her.
“Of course … if I’m able.”
“Another of Appleton’s victims, Elaine Yu, died a few years ago in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. I’m sure you are aware of the incident.”
She nodded and looked down at her desk, then up at me. “I did hear that Elaine died. It was a few years ago — a traffic accident of some kind, I believe. I found out some weeks after it happened so was unfortunately unable to attend the funeral. And frankly, that’s all I know about it.”
“Do you know what kind of traffic accident?”
She shook her head. “I never heard any of the details. I suppose I didn’t really want to. When I learned that Elaine had been killed I sent a note to her family expressing my sadness. I didn’t hear back from the family and hadn’t expected to. It had to have been terrible for them with her so young.”
I nodded.
“Are you asking this because you think there’s a connection between the two girls’ deaths?”
I shrugged. “I don’t honestly know. I just thought I should check it out.”
“Of course.”
I wasn’t sure what else I could ask her.
Her features softened and her voice, when she spoke, was gentler. “It would seem that you have been quite diligent in your investigation.”
“I’ve talked to some people,” I said. “But I’m not sure I’m any farther ahead than when I started.”
“Adam … I don’t want this to end badly. I really am sorry I wasn’t more forthcoming in our first meeting. And I hope you will accept that my reasons for not telling you about Richard Appleton were genuine, if flawed. I do wish you well in your pursuit of the person who set fire to your home.”
“And killed my wife,” I said softly.
“And killed your wife,” she repeated.
I stood up.
“Thanks again for your time. I’ll let you get on with your day.”
She stood, smiled, and offered her hand. I shook it, then turned and walked out of her office. In the outer office I thought about saying something by way of apology to the two secretaries, but changed my mind.
As I left the school it seemed to me that the temperature outside was sinking again. Like my mood.
Twenty-Two
I stopped for groceries and wine in preparation for cooking dinner for Jill the next night. Then I drove the rest of the way home and cleaned house and drank a slow rye and Diet Coke as Gordon Lightfoot, then the Rankin Family provided pleasant background sounds.
I called Jill on her cell and left a message telling her to come any time after six and not to bring anything. The house looked decent and the Rankins were wrapping up Endless Seasons, my favourite of their albums.
I built a second rye and Diet Coke and sat down in the leather recliner to think. The meeting with Delores Bain had been unsettling.
I hadn’t enjoyed pushing her. But she had kept information from me the first time we’d met — information that, despite her assurances that Appleton the predator could never be Appleton the killer, might have been important to me.
Thing was I knew nothing more than I’d known before I paid my second visit to Northern Horizon Academy. I sat and drank my whisky and thought hard. And no matter how I dissected and analyzed it all, I kept coming back to Richard Appleton.
What I didn’t have was anything that looked remotely like evidence. The man had preyed on young girls from a position of trust. What could be slimier? And he had gone to jail because of the testimony of those girls. And now two of those girls were dead, one the result of a deliberately set fire, and the other….
Revenge is a powerful motivator. And if it turned out that there was anything at all suspicious in the death of Elaine Yu, then that would be significant. But would it point any more clearly to who killed Donna?
That was a question I couldn’t answer. I hoped that Cobb, a few days of R and R under his belt, might have more answers — even one more answer — than I had.
And that was the last thought I had before falling asleep in the recliner.
When Cobb arrived just after nine the next morning I was no longer in the chair. I had woken at around three a.m. and shifted to my bed for the last few hours of sleep, sleep that was punctuated with a dream about a car race in which I was driving the Accord. It was a sort of NASCAR, sort of Formula One race and I was frustrated that no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t seem to make any headway in the race. As stupid as that sounds, dreams never seem stupid when you’re having them and I woke around seven a.m. in a bad mood and nursing a headache.
By the time Cobb arrived I’d gone for a run, had a shower, downed three extra strength Tylenol, and four glasses of water. Half the recommended daily intake. I was ready.
Cobb set two Starbucks take-out coffee containers on the counter and took up residence in the recliner. He had dressed winter casual. Jean jacket over a Route 66 sweatshirt, faded jeans, sneakers not laced up.
The bagels had been staying warm in the oven. I had cream cheese and jam set out on a TV tray that was older than I was.
I pulled the bagels out of the oven.
“Whole wheat or plain?”
“Whole wheat? There’s a whole wheat bagel?”
“Sure, they got lots of flavours now.”
“But whole wheat?”
I shrugged.
Cobb shook his head. “There are rabbis all over North America in shock right now.”
“I take it you’ll want the plain.”
I sat on one of my kitchen chairs opposite him. I’d poured my coffee into a New York Yankees mug Donna had given me for a birthday present. Cobb left his coffee on the counter for the moment, working instead on a bottled water he had brought along.
Probably just getting started on his recommended daily intake.
For a while we ate bagels and talked about the Flames.
Then I told him about my encounter with Delores Bain. He furrowed his brow but didn’t say much.
“It feels like it’s so close,” I said. “That the answer to who killed Donna is just out of my reach and if I could just put a couple of things together it would all be right there.”
Cobb nodded. “It’s like that in my business a lot of the time. Sometimes it all comes clear and sometimes it doesn’t.”
“So what’s next?”
He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and looked at me. “I called a few people in Prince Albert, some local cops and an RCMP guy I know. The accident that killed Elaine Yu may not have been all that accidental.”
I set my coffee mug down.
“More.”
“Elaine Yu was a home care nurse. Travelled around to people’s homes administering their meds, doing minor tests, changing dressings, bandages, and the like. She had come to Canada with her family from a little village just outside Beijing. She was twelve, went into grade seven. Never looked back. Bright, hard-working, I heard a lot of the same things about her that you’ve told me about Donna.
“The RCMP cop I talked to, First Nations guy named James Moostoos, he worked on the case. He told me Elaine was returning to Prince Albert after a home visitation. Sometime between nine and nine-thirty at night, she went off the road at probably close to the speed limit. Dry road, good visibility, no alcohol involved.”
I leaned forward, watched Cobb.
“Moostoos told me their investigators’ best guess was that her car, which was a 2002 Toyota Camry, was forced off the road on a highway south of Prince Albert. Near a place called St. Louis. The car rolled into the ditch and she was killed instantly. No witnesses.”
Serpents Rising Page 27