My shirt melted off.
“Aren’t you cold?” Becker said.
“Come this way. It’s warmer under the covers.”
He had a body like sculpted granite, but his skin was soft and smelled wonderful. We lay there, staring at each other, nose to nose, just grinning. It was the kind of shyness that occurs when two people, who have chosen to act on a mutual attraction, are finally confronted with a delicious expanse of willing, unexplored flesh. It’s dizzying. Where to begin?
Going to bed with someone for the first time is nerve-wracking. I’ve never been thoroughly engulfed in the moment, the way the heroine is in romance novels. There’s no “suddenly they bonded together like liquid fire, she opened herself to his throbbing manhood and their passion exploded so that she swooned with pleasure” stuff.
That isn’t to say that it wasn’t good, but rather than Bolero, ours was an intricate Slavonic folk dance, where every gesture held particular meaning.
Everybody has a specialty or two and our moves were introduced one-by-one, like characters in a play, presented with bashful pride. After all, the audience had never seen the show before.
I’ve never believed that sex was an entirely mutual act. There’s a certain selfishness to it that requires tiny, electric moments of wordless negotiation. If things are going well, the back-and-forth pleasure is seamless and wonderful. With Becker, it was. We kept our eyes open. We fit. We even managed the absurdity of the condom with dignity and humour. After the first tentative rehearsal, we didn’t need to ask each other for an encore, it just happened.
When first sex is satisfying, you feel like you’ve just won a medal for your gender—there’s no other way to describe that “I’ve still got it” glow. You’ve just represented womanhood, or manhood, and you got the gold—no faking it, no failure, no need to apologize and blame it on the booze. You’ve just proved that there’s something deep and profound that men and women can do together beautifully, without messing it up. It makes you really cocky.
We lay together in the classic “her head on his chest/his arm around her/their legs tangled together” position. We were warm and wet and panting happily.
“Mark? I’m sorry. I really have to pee,” I said. “You want another brandy while I’m up?”
“Mmmmn.” He began a caress he knew would make me not want to leave.
“Unfair, Becker.” I retaliated with a move of my own. Later, my bladder screaming for attention, I slipped out of bed, then found myself tucking the duvet around him, a curious feeling of warmth spreading out just below my rib cage. He was quiet, his breathing even. Asleep, the crinkles around his eyes relaxed, and he looked a little sad. I kissed him gently, and he smiled in his sleep.
The outhouse was freezing cold. When I got back, I poured myself a splash of brandy and put the kettle on for a quick wash. I was too keyed-up to go back to bed. Whatever I was feeling—and it was a new one for me—I wanted to savour for a bit.
Lug-nut had looked at me reproachfully when I came out of the lean-to bedroom. He’d accompanied me outside, guarded the outhouse door and stuck close on the way back. Could he be jealous? Great, I thought. No male attention for years and then two guys at once. Go figure.
After my sponge bath, I rolled a small joint and smoked it outside on the porch. The moon was nearly full and the outlines of the trees and the grey ghost of my breath and the smoke swirled together in a comfortable, smug spiral. There was a lot to think about. The evening’s scenes played again in my mind’s eye, from Vern, the pickup boys and the puking girl in the bathroom to Becker’s heroics and inevitably to the last few hours. It was odd to be sad about John’s death, Francy’s pain, Eddie’s black eye and Spit’s getting whacked and at the same time to acknowledge the bubbling excitement I felt at the back of my throat when I thought about Mark Becker.
Then suddenly he was there, zipping up his pants, dressed again. I reached out my hand, and he squeezed it, then dropped it as if it had burned him.
“Are you smoking dope?” he said.
“Yup.” I handed the joint to him in a friendly way.
“I can’t believe you’re offering me a joint.”
“I was being polite.” It was terribly funny, and I started laughing.
“Polly. I’m a cop. Don’t you have any sense at all? I could bust you right now.”
There was a nasty little pause. Oh God. He meant it. He was serious.
“They might want to know what you were doing here at four in the morning, Officer,” I said, punching him playfully on the arm.
He didn’t laugh. He didn’t even crack a smile. “Did you grow it yourself? A little patch out back?” It was a complete transformation. He was utterly furious, and his anger frightened me.
“Just try it, Mark. It’s very mild. Better than brandy.”
“Just put it out, would you? Please?” He slumped over the porch railing and stared out at the moon.
I touched his back. “It’s only a little grass,” I said. He shrugged my hand away.
“I gotta get going,” he said.
“Let’s just go back to bed,” I said. “We can forget this. I won’t smoke around you if you don’t like it, Mark. This doesn’t have to be a big deal.”
He turned to look at me. His hair was rumpled, and there was a faint shadow of stubble around his jaw line.
“Lots of people smoke the occasional joint,” I said. “It doesn’t make me a bad person, does it?”
He just stared at me. Something passed behind his eyes, some kind of internal battle. The Mark Becker who won wasn’t the Mark Becker I’d just been falling in love with. It was someone else, and the cold, sorrowful look he was giving me made the bottom drop out of my stomach.
“You’re not a bad person, Polly,” he said, “but you are breaking the law. In a way, I am the law. That’s my job, but it’s also my duty, and I care about it. If someone’s smoking marijuana at a party, I may not wade in there and arrest everybody, but I sure as hell leave. Right away.”
“You can arrest me if you want,” I said.
“I’m not going to arrest you.” His voice was full of bitter disappointment. Everything had gone down the toilet in a lightning moment and I would have given anything to put the whole thing on rewind.
“It’s not like we don’t have anything happening between us,” I said, then hated myself for saying it. I was pleading and it wasn’t pretty.
“We did,” he said. “I’m sorry about that. It was a mistake. I should have kept a lid on it. I’m leaving now.” And he did.
Twenty-Two
She’s waiting for me, fathoms down,
where light’s a rumour
death and pain the only game in town.
—Shepherd’s Pie
I have an old-fashioned alarm clock. It winds up. It’s brass. It made a lot of noise when it hit the wall, and the glass front made a satisfying shattering sound just before the ringing stopped.
Lug Nut barked at it for two minutes as it lay dying on the carpet.
“Leave it, Lug-nut. It’s toast.” My head pounded. Too much brandy. I’d killed the bottle after Becker left. At least I think I did. It was empty, anyway.
I heated up some coffee and sat carefully, trying not to move too much. Perversely, my mind told me that if only I had left some hooch in the bottle, I’d be able to have some in my morning coffee. The thought made me retch. Lug-nut, sensing my discomfort, shut up and started tiptoeing around, which was wise. I was not in the best of moods.
The goats were yelling their hairy heads off as I approached the barn. I banged around a bit, muttering. If I was in a lousy frame of mind, there was no need for anybody else to be cheery.
I was carrying the milk up to the dairy room off George’s house when he pulled up in the truck. He positively scampered out of the cab. Scampered. I growled.
“So,” he said, stretching as if he’d just got out of bed. He probably had. “Lovely day, yes?”
I glowered. He stopped in m
id-stretch and stared at me.
“Oh. Oh, dear.” He didn’t say anything else for a while, just fell into step beside me and followed me into the dairy.
I strained the milk while George set up the pasteurizer for me.
“Thanks,” I said. “Had a good time last night, did you?”
“It was fair to middling,” he said, backtracking. “The beer was flat.”
“The entertainment was pretty good, though. Local cop in bust-up with Cedar Falls thugs. Story at eleven.”
“I thought he did very well, Polly.”
“Yup. He did. Regular boy scout. Pure as the driven snow.”
George’s face went through a series of wrinkly gymnastics as he tried to figure it out. It can’t have been very difficult.
“It didn’t work out?”
“Bingo.”
“Too bad, Polly.”
“Thanks, George.”
“I won’t say that I told you so.” People in love can be so annoying. He was glowing.
“Have you and Susan set a date, yet?” I said.
“A date? For what?”
“Don’t tell me your intentions toward her aren’t honourable.”
“You mean marry her? Polly, we are having a wonderful time. You want us to ruin it by getting married?”
“Just a thought, George. Forget I mentioned it. Can I borrow the truck? I’ve got to go into town.” I didn’t have any reason to go anywhere, but I had to go somewhere.
“Certainly. Yes. Do you want to talk about it?”
“About what?”
“About your policeman.”
“He’s not my anything.” I finished pouring the milk into the pasteurizer, banged the buckets into the sink and started washing them out with a full stream of noisy, you-can’t-talk-above-it water.
“Ah,” said George and left me to my misery.
Back up at the cabin, I changed out of my overalls and into a clean pair of jeans. I’d go to the mall and shop. Not that I had much extra cash, but sometimes spending twenty bucks at Zellers and the Dollar Store on stupid plastic junk and cheap Chinese candy can cheer me up.
I found myself singing the blues as I freshened up Lug-nut’s water bowl. Well, at least I was singing, even if it was all about my baby having left me and my dog having been busted for possession.
I went to the closet where I kept the bag of dog food I’d lifted from Francy’s place. I scooped a bunch of the kibble into the bowl and watched with fascination as a fat roll of twenties rolled out of the bag and bounced across the floor. Lug-nut grabbed it before I did.
“DROP IT!” The dog almost dropped his teeth as well. I apologized to him and picked up the money.
There were twenty twenties, rolled up and secured with a rubber band, greasy from dwelling in the bag with the Kibbles and Bits. John’s four hundred bucks. No question. A perfect hiding place. If he hadn’t been killed, not a soul would have touched the dog food.
After I counted it, I just stared at it. Four hundred bucks may be peanuts to some people, but it sure wasn’t to me. And it wouldn’t be to Francy. What was I supposed to do with it now?
There was no way the police could get any information from it at this point. I’d handled it. The dog had slobbered on it. It was just currency, covered in kibble crumbs. Francy needed it now, not six months down the road, after the cops got through with it and gave it back, which was not necessarily a sure thing. Not that Becker wouldn’t be scrupulous. If he was the kind of guy to contemplate busting his date, then he’d deal with the cash by the book, but there are no guarantees in this world, and this money was real and unmarked.
I pushed the wad of bills into my pocket and went to see Francy.
I knew there was something wrong as soon as I pulled up in George’s truck, a little after ten. I could hear Beth wailing with the kind of full-lunged desperation of the baby who has been left too long on her own. I opened the cab door and ran, Lug-nut at my heels, barking.
I opened the front door and found Francy in the kitchen, hanging from one of the big beams over the table. There was a chair knocked over and she turned, very slowly. Her face was black and absolutely horrible. The room stank of shit and piss. There were no beer bottles on the table this time. Just a teapot and a cup. I dived for the phone.
Becker and Morrison arrived after twenty-five hellish minutes. I stood on the porch, holding Beth in my arms, rocking her back and forth, back and forth. She was still crying, but the panic in the sound had changed to one of exhausted distress. She was probably hungry, definitely wet, but my experience with babies was nonexistent, I was in no shape to change a diaper and I had no milk in my breasts.
It was Morrison who held me. He came up the porch steps two at a time and took me in his arms, and it was like being swallowed by a big soft pillow. He produced a hanky the size of a young flag, and I buried my face in it. It smelled of lavender.
Becker plunged stone-faced into the house and emerged a moment later, hurrying to the cruiser to radio for help. Soon Beth was quiet and so was I. Morrison’s arms were padded and comfortable, and I felt like I could sleep for year and a half.
Becker came back from the cruiser, and Morrison let go of me gently, easing away with his arms kind of spread, as if he were afraid I might fall over.
“You okay?” Becker said.
“No,” I said and tried to smile. My face cracked.
“We’ll get you out of here soon. Can you tell me what happened?”
“I came to see Francy. I heard Beth screaming, and I knew something was wrong. I ran inside and found her—like that. I called 911. Grabbed Beth. She was in her carrier right where Francy, right where her mother… right there. I took her outside. Oh, God, Becker. I can’t take the baby, too. The dog, yes, but not the baby.” I know it’s ugly. But that’s what I said. I remember it.
“You don’t have to take the baby, Polly. It’s okay.” He reached out a hand to touch me, but I pulled away from him.
“We’ll call the Children’s Aid,” he said. “They’ll take care of the kid and get in touch with the family.” He used the kind of voice you use on a small child. I whimpered.
“Who did this, Becker?” I said. “Who would kill Francy? How could she let someone hang her up? Francy. She was the gentlest, sweetest woman. She put up with so much.”
George came, and soon someone from the Children’s Aid showed up. I wouldn’t let go of the baby until I had looked deeply into the eyes of the worker they’d sent. She was young, younger than me, but she looked capable and concerned. She had to pry Beth loose.
George took me home to his place and put me to bed in the spare room. I guess I had come apart, a bit, like Francy had done after Eddie bonked John on the head. Although my memory was fine, I wasn’t planning to do any sleuthing for a while. All I wanted to do was sleep.
“You’re on overload,” Cass Wright said. George had called her after we got home. She was my GP, one of the last of the breed that makes house calls. She was ancient.
“You’ve seen too much and your brain can’t cope with it,” Cass said. “Put this under your tongue, Polly. It’ll make you sleep.” “This” was a pill, yellow and menacingly small. “The police said they’d talk to you when you’re ready.”
Not long after the little yellow pill dissolved, I began to drift away, aware that George was right there if I needed him. His hand, which had been holding mine, kind of disembodied itself and started to float around the room like a pale, freckled starship. I addressed the hand.
“There’s treasure in my pocket,” I told it. It patted me gently. “Really,” I said. “Four hundred treasures. Doggy food.” I was gone.
Hours later, when I returned to the land of the living, I felt better, although my tongue felt like a towel.
I went to the bathroom to get a drink of water and stared blearily at my reflection in the mirror. I had a little trouble focusing. “Polly Deacon, Private Eye,” I said aloud. Then I giggled. I guess there was something mildly hyp
notic in the yellow pill, unless I was just going mad.
“Polly? That you?” George called from the hall.
“Yup. I’ll be out in a sec.” I splashed cold water on my face and stuck my head under the tap, trying to erase the Don King bed-head I’d woken up with.
I heard George shuffle up to the door and lean against it. “Becker the policeman is here,” he said quietly through the wood. “Are you ready for speaking to him or do you want to go back to bed for a while?”
“No. I’ll talk to him.” I combed out my soggy locks with my fingers and stopped caring how I looked.
Becker was sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of coffee. He started to get up when I came in, which was gallant but unnecessary. Embarrassed, I flapped my hand to make him sit down again.
“Hey, Polly.”
“Mark.”
George muttered something about the goats and went outside.
“Are you feeling any better?” Becker said.
“Some. But whatever the doctor gave me seems to have left me a wee bit stoned. It’s legal, though. Prescription. Don’t worry.”
“I can come back later if you’d rather,” he said.
“No, it’s fine. Really. It’s not as if you haven’t seen me stoned before.”
I offered it as a giggle, as a test, but he didn’t smile. Whatever crashed and burned the night before seemed to be permanent. I could really have used a hug from him—or at least some sign that our night together was at least in his thoughts, but there was nothing. I felt cheap and stupid.
“When did you last see Francy Travers?” he said.
“You mean alive?”
“Yes, alive.”
“I helped her clean up the—mess in her kitchen yesterday. About noon or half past.”
“Did she seem okay?”
“Well, she certainly wasn’t swinging from the rafters at that point.”
“Hey, now. Easy, eh? I’ve got to ask these things.”
“I know. Sorry. It’s stress.”
Becker stared hard at me for a moment, perhaps trying to gauge how tranquilized I really was. My pupils were probably huge. I felt like I was wrapped in cotton wool. Next time he spoke, it was as if he were speaking to a rebellious teenager. He sounded patient, reasonable, with just a hint of anger boiling just below the surface.
Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle Page 17