Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle

by H. Mel Malton

  Francy giggled, the amusement in her eyes making me feel warm and human. “So, now the hamster is banished, right?” she said. “The bear rules. Got any beer at your house?”

  “Yup.” We hurried the rest of the way, not for fear, but for thirst and clean undies.

  It was chilly in the cabin. I had banked up the fire in the morning, getting it nice and hot and then pouring a bucket of ashes over top, which usually kept the coals burning agreeably for hours. Not this time. The damn thing was out.

  When you rely on a wood stove for heat, you develop a relationship with it, learning to feed and nurture it like a lover. Like most of my lovers, this one was demanding, temperamental and, unless it got enough attention, cold. There were times when I felt like whanging it across the damper with a two-by-four.

  Francy stood in the middle of the room, shivering, as I started to shovel ash and lay a new fire.

  “Beer’s in the icebox,” I said.

  There’s no hydro at my place, and so a fridge would be silly. I got the icebox from Rico Amato not long after I moved in. He thought I was crazy when I said I wanted to use it for its original purpose. He had stripped it down to bare wood and varnished it (it was pine under the enamel paint) and the price tag matched its intended new life as a chic bar unit for some wealthy cottager.

  I fell in love with it when I saw it in Rico’s shop, nestled between an old steamer trunk covered in stencilled roses (five hundred bucks) and a vintage sled full of dried cattails (one fifty plus GST).

  Rico knew his customers, kept on top of all the latest trends as laid down in Architectural Digest and Country Home, and the icebox was priced accordingly. The number on the tag was more than I’d made for the last puppet-building project, more than I had in the bank, and more than I would ever pay for anything smaller than a trip to Mexico, but Rico cut me a deal. I guess he liked me.

  I get my ice in winter from the creek out back, hacking it out and storing it in straw in a small lean-to next to the cabin. It works, just like they tell you in Harrowsmith. The straw keeps the ice solid well into the fall.

  Francy cracked a couple of cold Algonquins and sat down in my guest chair with a huge sigh. I was whacking away at a piece of kindling with my hatchet and making a big racket. I stopped and looked up.

  “Is this noise going to upset Beth?” I said. Francy just shook her head. The baby, still wrapped in her snuggly and leaning against her mother’s chest, was watching me with wide open eyes. I was amazed at how quiet she’d been throughout all the fuss.

  “Does that kid have a larynx? Does she ever use it?”

  “Oh, she uses it all right,” Francy said. “She just never cries when you’re around. Maybe you send out soothing psychic waves or something.”

  “More likely she recognizes that if she started, I’d join in,” I said. Babies scare the crap out of me, and Francy knew it. She was always trying to convince me that there was nothing to be frightened of. That they were safe, really. But I still refused to hold Beth. I knew what would happen. I’d panic and drop her. Her skull would split open like a ripe melon and then I would have to kill myself. It was a kind of anti-maternal vertigo, and there was no getting around it.

  “She will start yelling if I don’t feed her, though,” Francy said, opening her shirt and waving a breast, like an icecream cone, in her daughter’s face. “It was hard to breastfeed at Carla’s,” she said. “As soon as I started, Carla would get real uncomfortable. She’d go red and sort of fidget, like she was itching to go get the holy water and sprinkle it all over me.”

  “Maybe she was afraid of how it would affect Eddie,” I said.

  “Oh, Eddie’s seen it before. He’s over at our place all the time. It doesn’t bother him any.”

  “I’ll bet Carla doesn’t know that.”

  “She’s such a damned priss,” Francy said.

  “Well, she’s religious. Plenty of religious folks are hypermodest, but that doesn’t necessarily make her a priss, Francy.”

  Francy looked up at me, her face oddly blank.

  “There’s things you don’t know,” she said. “Take it from me. Priss is being kind.” The blank look scared me, so I changed the subject. Beth was grunting wetly, making the kind of sounds I make when I’m knocking back an Algonquin on a hot day.

  “What does that feel like?” I said. I’d always wondered, but the only other person I’d known well enough to ask was a girl I went to high school with who had a baby in grade eleven. We were too young to talk about that kind of stuff, then. Not too young to have sex, though. When I asked her, in a rash moment, why she hadn’t used a condom, she told me that she hadn’t known the guy well enough to feel comfortable asking him.

  “Breastfeeding feels like heaven,” Francy said. “It’s sort of sexual, but not. Like she’s pulling my soul out, if you know what I mean.” I didn’t. Motherhood. The great mystery. Count me out.

  I finished getting the fire going and joined Francy at the table.

  “You ready to talk about last night yet?” I said.

  “Not really, but I will if you want me to.”

  “Why are you so scared of the police?”

  She laughed. “I can’t believe you’re asking me that,” she said. “You’re the one who insists on hiding in the bathroom to smoke a joint. You’re scared of them, too.”

  “Yeah, but possession isn’t the issue here, Francy.”

  “Look, I didn’t shoot John, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “I know you didn’t. That’s why I can’t understand why you’re afraid to talk to them.”

  “John wasn’t dead when Eddie and I left. I’m sure the kid didn’t hit him that hard, just enough to knock him out. We left him snoring on the kitchen floor. The only reason we got out of there is that I knew when he woke up he’d be loaded for bear. I didn’t want either of us to be there.”

  “So who do you think shot him?”

  Francy looked exasperated, and there were tiny white marks around her mouth. Maybe I shouldn’t be pushing her so much, I thought. But still, her icy calm was getting to me.

  “I don’t know. There were plenty of people mad at him. There always were. John collected enemies like he collected trashed-out cars. He owed poker money all over the place.”

  “So maybe you could give the cops a list.”

  “No way. The point is, Polly, that I’m at the top of the list and you know it.”

  “Aren’t you eager to find out who did it?”

  “Oh, I’m eager, all right. I’ll go right up to him and shake his hand, whoever he is. But I don’t want to sit in a jail cell while the cops find him, Polly.”

  This was a new Francy, one I’d never seen before. In the time we’d known each other, she had always defended him, always underplayed the harm he did her. I stared at her for a long moment, and she looked back defiantly.

  “Yeah, I know,” she said. “The penny dropped, eh?”

  “When?”

  “When he started coming home smelling of perfume, just after Beth was born. When he went out for poker games that I found out later never happened. You know. I could handle the odd smack in the face, but there was no way I could handle not being the most important thing in his life.”

  “Geez, Francy. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wanted it to be not true, I guess. Telling you about it would have made it true, you know?”

  “So, who do you think he was seeing?” I said.

  “God only knows. A stripper at Kelso’s, maybe. Could’ve been anybody. He wasn’t picky. He married me, didn’t he?”

  Francy had never talked like that before. The “poor little me” thing set off alarm bells in my head. It had to be an act. For the cops, maybe, and she was trying it out on me.

  “So, back to last night,” I said.

  “What about it?”

  “After Eddie gave you the book back, what did you guys talk about?”

  “What?”

  “I mean, Ed
die said you had tea and talked. What about?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. The usual. His parents. School. Why?”

  “How many beers did you give him, Francy? Was he drunk when John came in?”

  Francy stood up, her eyes hot and angry. Beth’s mouth slipped off her nipple with a little popping sound, like a cork coming out of a bottle.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  “Oh, come on. There were beer bottles all over the place. No teapot in sight. If John was staggering drunk when he came in, and Eddie conked him out with a wrench, he wouldn’t have had time to down the twelve or so I saw smashed in your kitchen, would he? I know you didn’t shoot John, so why not tell the truth?”

  Francy actually snarled at me. “Just who in the hell do you think you are, Polly? Nancy fucking Drew? So we had a couple of beers. So what? The poor little guy never gets any fun at home. None at all. It’s Jesus, Jesus, Jesus from morning to night. What’s the harm in a couple of beers?”

  “None,” I said. “None at all. That’s what I’m saying. John is dead, honey. The police don’t care about a sixteen-year-old drinking beer. They’ll see that there’s no teapot, though. No tea. They’ll smell a lie right away and go looking for more.”

  Francy started pacing the floor. “It’s not that,” she said. “I’m not running because of that.”

  “Why, then?”

  “It’s because I can’t remember. After Eddie and me left with Beth and headed for his parent’s place, I sort of blanked out. I can’t remember a thing.”

  “Oh, boy.”

  “Yeah. Oh boy.” She was gulping in air. Beth was looking up at her, screwing her face up, getting ready to scream. I tensed. Francy popped the nipple back into Beth’s mouth and sat down again.

  “How's that going to sound, eh? We leave and I can’t remember anything until you said at Carla’s that John was dead.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nope. Carla said I pulled the phone cord out of the wall. Don’t remember. Carla said I ate a hearty meal and slept in the guest room. Don’t remember that either. Total blank, Polly. Until I get that back, I’m not talking to any cop.”

  “Okay. I get it,” I said, getting really scared for her. I’ve heard that trauma can do that—wipe out whole blocks of time. What if Francy did go back and shoot John? What if her memory just wiped it all out?

  “Do you think you went back?” I said, quietly.

  Francy’s face crumpled. “I don’t know. Maybe. I feel like I could have. I’d decided to leave him. I was real mad. I was also ripped out of my mind, long before Eddie showed up. I could have done it.”

  “Could you have driven John to the dump, though? Could you have hurt Spit Morton?”

  “Spit? God. Did someone shoot him, too?”

  “No, but they whacked him over the head, Francy. You may have had something against John, but you like Spit, don’t you?”

  “Sure I do. And hey, Polly, I can’t drive.” With this realization, she seemed to relax a little, but she looked awful. Her eye was still swollen, and her face had gone white again.

  “I couldn’t have done it,” she said. “But if I didn’t, then who the hell did?”

  Nine

  Judas sang a good song

  right up until they paid the price,

  then he felt awful.

  —Shepherd’s Pie

  One thing I knew for certain, Francy and the baby couldn’t stay with me for very long. To begin with, there wasn’t the sleeping space. My bedroom was an add-on at the back of the cabin, barely enough room for my futon and a rack for my clothes. The bed was small and would have accommodated a friend only if our acquaintance were truly biblical. I didn’t think Francy would be interested in spooning with me, and I wasn’t about to suggest it. If Francy wanted to spend the night, I’d be sleeping on the workroom floor, which was part of the kitchen, which was part of the living room. In a place as small as mine, “open concept” just means there isn’t any room for walls.

  Also, there wasn’t any plumbing. I had a pump outside, and when I wanted a bath, I heated water on the wood stove and bathed beside the fire in the zinc tub I got from Spit. There was no toilet, just an outhouse. On cold winter nights, I used a Victorian chamber pot. (I got it from Rico. When I told him what I wanted it for, he giggled, produced a lid for the pot and only charged me ten bucks.)

  Francy had a baby, who would presumably need to be changed and washed occasionally, and after her recent ordeal, Francy would probably need a nice hot bath, but she wouldn’t get one at my place.

  Then there was Becker. He would be looking for both of us and we couldn’t keep running forever. I was most likely in deep doo-doo as it was, scuttling away from the Travers place and then kidnapping the prime suspect. Did that make me an accessory after the fact? I wasn’t looking forward to finding out.

  Becker had probably already interviewed Carla Schreier and Eddie, and Eddie’s statement would have made him even more eager to find Francy. He would discover that I had left with her, and he would drive back to George’s place, expecting us to be there. George would make excuses for me, but it was only a matter of time before Becker figured out that I didn’t live in the farm house. All he needed to do was ask one of the locals.

  “Oh, you mean Polly? She lives in that old shack up on Hoito’s farm. Been there some years now. What’s she done? Always thought she was a weirdo.” Becker would come screaming up the track to the cabin and that would be that.

  I decided to save him the effort and give Francy a bit more time to get it together. I bullied her into lying down for a nap with Beth on the futon, and she was out like a light in less than five minutes. Then I made some ham and cheese sandwiches and left them on a plate on the kitchen table with a note, which told her that I was going down to see George and not to worry. I locked the door when I left, which is not my habit, but then people don’t get shot around here very often, and leaving Francy and the baby alone gave me an uneasy feeling.

  The October air was unseasonably cold, and I pulled my jacket around me, shivering. It was beginning to get dark already—those autumn nights closing in to warn the hapless Canadian that the snow would be flying soon. I had ten cords of wood split and stacked in my mind. All I had to do to make it a reality was to haul it out of the bush.

  Leaves crunched under my feet and as I reached the end of the track which opened out onto George’s hay field, I could see that we were in for a spectacular sunset. Fingers of pink and orange light were reaching tentatively out of a low cloud bank, touching the treetops like neon icing. I thought of John Travers. Had he ever enjoyed a sunset? Of course he had. He lived here, didn’t he? Or had he been too unhappy a man to have ever looked up into the sky and felt glad to see what was there? He wouldn’t be experiencing any more sunsets, now. Walking down the hill, bathed in those impossible colours, I threw out a kind of mental “sorry” to John, wherever he had gone. Not that I had liked him much, but knowing he couldn’t see what I was seeing made me sad.

  Becker’s cruiser was parked next to George’s truck, and I slowed to a saunter, putting off the inevitable. There were more lights on in the house than was usual. I guessed that the officer had decided to do a thorough search, maybe to see if the madwomen were in the attic, where they belonged.

  I was about fifty metres from the house, fastening the gate which kept the goats out of the hay field, when Poe descended like a black bag of potatoes, landing so close to me that I gasped and jumped back.

  “Dammit, bird. You scared me,” I said. Poe cocked his head to one side and I swear he was grinning. He had something hanging from his beak which caught the light.

  “What have you got there?” I said. He just looked at me. I stepped closer, softly so as not to startle him. He rarely came close to me and I felt honoured, albeit slightly nervous. Budgies and robins I can handle, but ravens are big suckers and their beaks are wickedly sharp. The thing in his beak was a pendant of some sort on a
gold-coloured chain, and as it turned, it flashed pink and orange.

  I knew better than to try and take it. Ravens are terrible thieves when it comes to shiny things; they snatch them and hoard them like dragons do. George raids Poe’s stash every so often when he runs out of spare change, or if he can’t find the key to something. Poe is very possessive, though, and will defend his property if it’s threatened. George won’t touch the stash unless Poe’s outside, and even so, the bird notices right away and retaliates, usually by pooping on George’s pipe stand.

  “That’s a pretty thingy you’ve got there,” I said. “Snatch it off a dead body, did you?” Then I realized the gallows humour of what I’d said and let out a bark of laughter. The noise spooked Poe, who dropped the chain and took flight, passing so close over my head that I felt my hair move. He landed on the roof of George’s house and started croaking at me, swearing in fluent Raven.

  The thing was, he could very well have taken it off a dead body. After all, someone had left one lying around very recently, and Poe was a frequent visitor to the dump, often accompanying George by flying directly above the truck like an albatross.

  I picked the thing up. The chain was heavy—solid gold, it looked like. The pendant was a crucifix, quite old and exquisitely carved, if you like that sort of thing. The tiny figure of the crucified man was lovingly detailed; anguished expression, nails and all. At the top of the cross was a little carved scroll, bearing the letters INRI.

  I slipped it into my pocket, deciding to ask Francy later if it had been John’s. I had seen him more than once with his shirt open to reveal gold, although I admit I’d never looked closely enough to check out his jewellery.

  An image flashed into my mind—of Poe, circling above the ruined body of John Travers, lying there in the “wood only” pile at the dump. Poe swooping down, maybe aiming for the eyes, thinking “Hey, hey! Snacktime!” then snapping up the shiny necklace instead. It could have happened. I damned my imagination for the picture, which made my stomach hop a little. I straightened up and walked towards the house, sticking my tongue out at Poe on my way.