George had told me that the best thing to do if you meet a bear is to run away. Francy said climb a tree. Eddie Schreier said lie down and pretend you’re dead, but I think he was kidding. Everyone has a different answer. Rico Amato, the antique dealer, assured me that bears in this part of the world are a myth, perpetuated by macho hunters who need an excuse to wander off into the bush and get drunk.
Aunt Susan advocates a calm about-face and a little song as you walk away. I can just see me coming nose-to-muzzle with a bruin, turning my back on it and humming “O Canada”. Not likely.
This is why I took the woods path to the Schreier’s place at a brisk trot. The sun had gone in behind a dark cloud, and the woods were gloomy. It was late autumn, and there was an added danger; not only were there bears, there were hunters, looking for deer, moose, or basically anything that was moving. I was not wearing the requisite orange jacket.
The woods smelled vaguely of cat pee, the way they do that time of year. It had been a wet season, and the piles of leaves were starting to decompose. After my recent brush with death, the smell was more than appropriate. It made the breath catch at the back of my throat, and as I was a pack-a-day smoker, my breath as I ran was not coming particularly smoothly.
I kept my ears open for snufflings or gruntings, but made it all the way there without meeting a soul.
There was smoke trickling out of the chimney of the sprawling bungalow, and Carla Schreier’s old Dodge was in the driveway. There was no sign of the pram, but the Schreier place had a wide front door. Now that I was out of the woods, so to speak, I slowed down. No sense in arriving out of breath, especially as I had bad news to impart, and ought to deliver it with some semblance of decorum, as Aunt Susan would say.
The Schreiers, Carla, Samson and their son Eddie, were members of an obscure Christian sect whose purpose included the gathering of souls. Shortly after I arrived in the area, I was approached in a slightly nervous, albeit friendly manner by Carla Schreier in the A&P.
She was very pretty, with soft, shoulder-length hair which curled around her face. She wore too much make-up, but it was applied with skill. Her flowered cotton dress was all flounces and ruffles—rather young for her—and from a distance you might mistake her for a woman in her twenties. Up close you could see the slight sagging around her neck, indicating that she was probably closer to forty than twenty.
She had been staring at me while I was squeezing avocados in the produce section. I didn’t know who she was, then. She was just a woman who was dressed for a party when there was no party in sight. Her eyes and the way she was trying to get my attention made me nervous. She came bouncing up and touched my arm.
“You’re Susan Kennedy’s niece, aren’t you?” she said. (Susan is my mother’s sister.) The woman’s voice was breathy and child-like, the kind that makes people get all protective.
“Yes,” I said.
“I thought so. You look just like her.” This wasn’t true. Susan is handsome, dark and strong. I’m plain and weedy.
“I heard you’d moved here from the city,” the woman said. “Your aunt’s a good friend of Samson’s—my husband. We get all our feed from her, you know.”
“Really. That’s good of you.” Later, Susan had some less than friendly things to say about Samson Schreier, but I won’t mention them here.
“Well, her prices are a bit higher than the new place on the highway, but her stock is always fresh and she delivers.”
“I’m sure she does. Well, nice to meet you Ms…?”
“Schreier. Missus. Carla. And you’re Pauline, aren’t you?”
“That’s right.” Something made me not say “call me Polly,” and I soon found out what it was.
“Well, Pauline, I just wanted to welcome you to the community and to ask you if you’ve accepted Jesus Christ as your personal saviour.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I just know you’d be interested in coming to our meetings. We have them every Sunday in the Chapel of the Holy Lamb, which is really not that far from where I hear you are staying.” She was so enthusiastic. Reminded me of Lori Pinkerton, trying to get me to join the cheerleading team at Laingford High.
“Well, actually, I…”
“Oh, don’t give me an answer now, Pauline. I know you’ll want to think about it, but I want you to know that we would truly love to have you come and be a part of the glorious mystery of the love of our Lord. Ten o’clock sharp. See you on Sunday!” She retreated, trotting on her little patent-leather heels and making a quick left into the bakery section. She had pressed a tract into my hand and I looked at it, dazed.
“ARE YOU WANDERING, LOST, HUNGRY FOR MEANING?” A miserable-looking young person gazed heavenwards. There were little rays of light coming out of the clouds. Very artistic. “JESUS IS THE ANSWER,” it said. I sighed.
When Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons came to my door in Toronto, I’d just usually tell them I was a witch—a Wiccan—but it didn’t seem like a good idea to do that in Cedar Falls. It would get back to Susan, who would be derisive. Either that, or the zealots would burn down my cabin. The fact is, I’m not big on organized religion of any kind, and it’s taken me a long time to shake off the residue of guilt left by my blessedly short career as a child-Catholic.
I shoved the tract deeply into my pocket and headed down the tinned vegetable aisle. I met Carla Schreier again in Dairy and she gave me a radiant smile. It was all I could do not to bare my teeth and hiss “six, six, six” at her.
I had never come face to face with her again after that. Although she was Francy and John’s nearest neighbour, the Travers and the Schreiers were not friendly. Carla and Samsons son, Eddie, was interested in cars and liked to hang out in John’s shop, but he did so against his parent’s wishes. Francy had told me once that the Schreiers thought their neighbours were “ungodly”.
“Probably because we show that kid a bit of fun once in a while,” she had said, bitterly. “Carla’s a bitch, and Samson’s straight out of the Old Testament.” Francy’s venom was perplexing. Carla hadn’t seemed like a bitch to me. A little over the top, maybe, but fluffy and warm. Just not my kind of warm.
Meeting Carla again after three years of careful avoidance was going to be tricky. I rang the doorbell and ran though a few opening lines in my head. A curtain twitched at a side window.
“Hi, Mrs. Schreier, remember me? The lost soul you tried to recruit a while back?”
“Hi, Carla. Can Francy come out and play?”
I had no proof that Francy was there, but where else could she be? I was convinced that she was hiding, that she knew there would be trouble. But would Carla Schreier be the kind of woman to harbour a fugitive? It seemed unlikely.
The door opened. Eddie, looking guilty as sin, stood there with his mouth hanging open. He was tall for his age, which was sixteen. His body had run away with him in the past year, growing so fast he looked perpetually astonished by it. He was six-foot-two in his socks, his elbows and knees protruded from clothes which could never hope to keep up, and his feet were enormous. His hair, blonde and baby-fine, was cut fashionably short, which was imprudent, considering that his ears might have been happier with a little camouflage. His eyes were blue, his face tanned from outdoor work and his prominent Adam’s apple bobbed up and down like a hamster caught in his throat.
‘Oh. Hi, Polly. How are you?” he said. He made no move to let me in.
“Hi, Eddie. Is your Mom at home?” This threw him.
“Uh, yeah. Yes. She is.”
“Do you think I could talk to her, please?”
“Sure. I guess. Let me check.” He backed away from the door and only just managed to keep from closing it in my face. Eddie was normally very polite. It was one of the things I really liked about him. Something was definitely up.
“Mom!” I heard him yell. He hadn’t moved far away from the door and was calling over his shoulder. “It’s Miss Deacon, Mom.”
“Ms.” I said, out of habi
t. I heard a distant garbled murmur and then Eddie returned, opening the door wide enough for me to enter and casting a furtive glance past me out into the front yard.
“Come on in,” he said.
As I moved past him into the hallway, he was still peering out into the road. I tapped him on the shoulder. “Eddie,” I said. He jumped.
“Huh?”
“When the police come, let your mother answer the door, okay? You’re an open book.”
“A what? How’d you know? Are they coming now?”
“They’ll be a little while yet. Show me where Francy and your mother are.”
Silent, he led me towards the kitchen.
Six
And every time the wind blows, she shatters.
–Shepherd’s Pie
The interior of the Schreier home was, as Aunt Susan would say, “roped off by Sears”. A spindly-legged hall table held a vase full of fake flowers whose buds matched the wallpaper. Above it hung a gilt mirror. Throw pillows and bowls of pot-pourri multiplied all over the place like Tribbles. There was God-stuff everywhere—embroidered Bible verses on the walls, stacks of tracts on every flat surface and an actual plaster Jesus bust, like a watchdog near the door. Francy’s pram stood out like a beat-up Chrysler in the middle of a china shop.
A stack of sticky-looking squares on a decorative plate held pride of place in the centre of the kitchen table, and there were pretty napkins set out, as if company were expected. A silver coffee pot and rose-patterned cups and saucers stood at the ready.
Carla rose as I entered the kitchen. She was wearing a crisp, blue, Barbara Billingsley dress, and she smiled in welcome.
“Oh, Pauline, what a nice surprise,” she said.
Francy was huddled at one end of the table, Beth in a snuggly-carrier against her chest. She held her coffee cup in both hands, as if the warmth of it were desperately important. She looked terrible.
Her skin, pale at the best of times, was almost blue-white, the scarred side of her face was livid, and she had been crying, lots. Her right eye was swollen almost shut and there was a cut on her cheek. I didn’t have to ask who had hurt her. She looked at me once, as I came in, and then went back to staring into her cup. Her glance scared me. It was totally devoid of emotion—she had looked through me, not at me. The lights were on, as they say, but nobody was home. I felt the back of my neck prickle.
“Francy,” I said, “good on you for getting out of there. You okay?”
“She won’t tell you,” Carla said, in a hushed, we’re-at-a-funeral voice that made me want to smack her. “She’s been like this ever since Eddie brought her in last night. She hasn’t said a word.”
“Oh, boy. She seen a doctor?”
“I tried to call one last night, but she went—well, she was quite upset. Pulled the phone cord right out of the wall.” Carla gestured to a telephone on the counter near the back kitchen door. The phone cord dangled. Exhibit A.
I walked around to the end of the table and crouched next to Francy’s chair. I put my hand on her arm, an experiment, and she didn’t flinch, so I put my arms around her thin shoulders and hugged, hard. I could feel her vibrating like a small, cold animal, but she didn’t make a sound.
“Is Beth okay?” I said. She nodded, still not looking at me.
Carla had poured me a cup of coffee and handed it to me, eagerly passing the plate of squares as she did so. Amazing, really, that kind of hostess training. Maybe it was so firmly ingrained in her psyche that she did it without thinking. I took a square, to be polite, and placed it on the delicate saucer next to my cup. What Carla Schreier would make of a tea party at my place, I didn’t like to think. Mugs sluiced hurriedly in the water bucket, wood shavings and leather scraps swept from the guest chair, a bowl of pistachios plunked in the middle of the table, if you were lucky. Goat milk from a jar.
“Do you know what happened, Carla?” I said. “Was Eddie involved? When did he bring her over here?”
“I sent Eddie next door around six last evening to return a book Francy had given him,” Carla said. “He didn’t want to go. I insisted.” What did that have to do with it? Carla was waiting for me to ask, so I did.
“Why didn’t he want to go?”
“Well, the book, Pauline. I mean. I don’t know if you’ve read it—you probably have—but I didn’t think it was appropriate for a sixteen-year-old boy to read. Not at all. When I saw the cover I almost had a heart attack.”
“What was it? That thing by Madonna?”
“Madonna? Oh, no, nothing like that. I don’t have a problem with Catholics, although I don’t hold with their practices. No, this was a book called Lady’s Lover, or something. I’ve heard that it’s absolutely disgusting, and I didn’t want my son reading it.”
“Lady’s Lover? You mean Lady Chatterley’s Lover? By D.H. Lawrence?” I said.
“Yes, that’s the one.”
I fought the urge to giggle and let my eyes flicker over to Francy to see if she got the joke, but she had not looked up. She wasn’t even listening. Too bad. I would have given anything to see some light in those clouded eyes.
“Lady Chatterley’s not really that bad, Carla. It was written a long time ago. People’s perceptions have changed since then.”
“Smut is smut. I must say that I didn’t appreciate Francy giving Eddie that kind of thing to read. He’s young for his age. And she must have warned him that I wouldn’t like it, because he hid it under his mattress. I found it when I was cleaning his room.”
I wanted to ask her how often she turned her son’s mattress in the course of cleaning house, but I smiled instead.
“So, you found the book and asked Eddie to return it.”
“She’s loaned him books in the past, you know. I didn’t mind that. We don’t have a lot of books in the house, and I’m glad that he likes to read, but I feel they went behind my back, here.” She darted a swallow-like, but resentful glance at Francy, and then back at me, waiting for my agreement.
I pictured Detective Becker on the porch of the Travers’s place, wondering where I had got to. I didn’t have much time, and this was neither the time nor the place to be getting into a heavy literary discussion, so I steered Carla back on track.
“And he went over there at six, you say.”
“Yes. Well, he can tell you himself,” she said. “EDDIE!” Her call was sudden and shrill, and I must have jumped about a foot in the air. Francy jumped too, and spilled her coffee. Beth began to whimper.
Eddie appeared almost immediately, and I guessed that he had been standing in the hallway, just out of sight. Carla looked pleased and surprised that he had come so soon. Perhaps her son normally made sure he was well out of earshot.
“Yes, Ma?” He cleared his throat and stood on one foot, then the other.
“Tell Miss Deacon what you told me about last night, sweetheart.”
I didn’t bother correcting my name to “Ms.” this time.
Eddie stood to attention, like a kid auditioning for a part in a play.
“I took the bush path, eh? To the back door? Mr. Travers doesn’t like me being over there when he’s not home, and he wasn’t because his truck was gone, but I didn’t know that until later. If I’d went the road way, I wouldn’t have even knocked. Francy, Mrs. Travers, I mean, said it was okay though. So I gave her the book back and then we had some tea and talked in the kitchen for a while.”
“Tell her what you talked about, Eddie,” Carla said.
“It doesn’t matter what we talked about, Ma. Just stuff, okay?”
“It pays to be truthful.” He glared at her and continued.
“Then Mr. Travers’s truck pulled in and I said I had to go. Don’t get me wrong. He likes me, eh? But, well, he has rules about stuff.”
“What kind of rules, Eddie?” I said.
“Like never being alone with Mrs. Travers. Never touch his dog. Always ask him first before using his tools. You know.”
“Yeah, Eddie. I know.”
“Anyway, he came in before I got out, and I knew he would be mad. He was kinda drunk, and when he saw me he went for me like he was going to kill me. He hit me in the stomach and I fell down, but I didn’t fight back or anything.”
Carla was nodding her head and emitting little peeps of approval, as if she were following along in the script in her head. I wondered how many times she had made him rehearse.
“Did he say anything?” I said.
“No, he was just sort of growling. Crazy. Then he went for Mrs. Travers and started hitting her. I was real scared, eh, so I grabbed a wrench that was sitting there and sort of hit him over the head with it.”
“That was brave, Eddie,” I said. He looked uncomfortable.
“Mrs. Travers said it was stupid. She said when he woke up he would kill me and her both. So we grabbed the baby and got out of there. That’s all really, except when we got in, Ma tried to call the cops or an ambulance or something and Francy ripped the phone out of the wall.”
“Why did she do that, do you think?” I said.
“I don’t know. I was in the bathroom and I heard a yell and when I came out there was Ma standing there with the phone cord in her hand, looking at Francy like she was crazy. Francy was crying. It was awful.”
“Sounds like it. What time did you and Francy get here?”
“They came in about eight o'clock,” Carla said. “I was so worried. Samson’s away at a farming conference and I had to feed the stock all by myself. I don’t like being alone in the house at night, and I’d told Eddie to come right home after dropping off the book.”
“And what did you do after Francy pulled the phone out?”
Carla frowned, trying to remember. “I guess I served up dinner and tried to get things back to normal. Then I made up a bed for Francy in the guest room.”
Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle Page 4