Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle

by H. Mel Malton

  “Oh my God. Eddie!” I said.

  “That the boy you said was with them?” Lefevbre said. “Those legs on the floor?”

  “I don’t know. Oh, please, get the door open. Hurry!” Lefevbre banged on the door, trying to get the attention of the figure on the stool. The figure remained motionless.

  “Jesus,” she whispered. “It looks just like Selma Watson, come back to life.”

  “Who?”

  “Selma Watson. The old lady who used to run this place when I was a kid. She always sat behind the counter, just like that. Gave us free gumballs. Hey!” she shouted suddenly. “Hey, open up!”

  Around the back, we heard a cracking of wood. Becker, I presumed, doing the unlawful-police-entry thing. There was a pause, then we heard the thump of rapidly approaching feet. He let us in, twisting the old-fashioned lock on the heavy glass-and-brass door, and then turning back to the figure on the stool. It was Arly, and she still hadn’t moved.

  I didn’t care about Arly. “Eddie!” I yelled and ran to the figure in the cow costume sprawled in the grocery aisle. I slipped and fell almost at once. There were broken jars everywhere, pickles and artichokes, I think. I put my hand down on some glass, felt a sharp pain in the ball of my thumb and caught a whiff of vinegar. I had to get to Kountry Kow, motionless among the wreckage. What the hell had happened here?

  “Polly, I’m here,” a voice said. In a corner, beyond the still figure of Kountry Kow, Eddie Schreier sat huddled on the ground, his arms around his knees. “I’m okay, Polly.” I stood carefully and made my way over to him. As I passed the mascot, I smelled the sour, unmistakable odour of shit. At the end of the aisle, set up on a tripod, was a camera, aimed down towards the cash register.

  “Kane?” I said, gesturing to the mascot. Eddie nodded.

  “He died so fast,” Eddie said. “It was like in fast motion. And Arly was grabbing on to me so I couldn’t get to him in time, and he was thrashing around and sort of whimpering, and I swear I could hear his throat closing up.”

  “Do you know how he died?” Lefevbre said. She was standing behind us, listening. I was on the ground, now, hugging Eddie. He nodded, trying not to cry.

  “He was stung. You know, like I was this afternoon, Polly. That was what she called a trial run. A hornet in the puppet head. Arly told me. She was whispering in my ear the whole time. Her voice was sort of sticky. It was awful.”

  “She set this thing up?” I said. “The photo op at David Kane’s rival’s store. He’d go for something like that. Convinced him to put the head on for the shot, right?”

  “I helped put the head on,” Eddie said. “Does that make me guilty, too?”

  “No, Eddie. Don’t worry about it,” Lefevbre said. “Come on, now, let’s get you out of here.”

  Becker was sitting next to Arly, writing down everything she was telling him. She was talking in a dull, sing-song voice, as if reciting a poem, or a piece of history.

  “I saw David Kane push Uncle Vic over the falls, but he wouldn’t tell me why he did that. I pretended to like him, because it was the only way to get close enough to find out. Then at the hospital, he told me that Uncle Vic was a partner in the Kountry Pantree, but he wanted more money because of some voting thing. I knew about the property from some guy at the library. You see, Uncle Vic was a traitor. I was so mad I cried. Uncle Vic was going to ruin Dad’s store. He betrayed us. So I spiked him with my epi. I knew it would work. I looked it up on the Net.

  “I didn’t want to kill that other traitor in here,” Arly went on. “The river would have been better. In front of everybody. I had a hornet in the cow head, but then Eddie was going to be the cow so I had to change it. But I should have left it there, because Eddie won the race. Dad was so sad. So sad.”

  “You know what’s the weirdest part?” she said, suddenly looking up and straight into my eyes. I froze.

  “What?” I said.

  “How easy it was to make David Kane believe that I was a traitor, too. He just accepted that I hated my dad and wanted to go work for his stupid big store. That I wanted to betray Dad and everything he’s worked for all his life, just to get a few dollars more an hour. He just believed that I was a bad person, because he was one. That’s what’s weird.”

  EPILOGUE

  The aftermath was curiously quiet. Because Arly was a young offender, her name never made it into the Laingford Gazette. She was charged with the murders, but she wasn’t tried as an adult, in spite of the Toronto Kanes putting a heckuva lot of pressure on the Powers That Be. It was suggested that her uncle Victor Watson had molested her at some point, and that Kane had messed with her as well, which got the child abuse people on her side, although I never heard the details. She got sentenced to a couple of years in a juvenile detention centre, but she’ll be out soon enough, and I heard she got pre-accepted at art school. MacLean’s magazine did a feature on her a while ago—the “Incarcerated Artist” type-thing. They used a fake name and put one of those black-out things over her eyes in the pictures of her doing sculpture in her cell, but everyone knows who she is. Her stuff is fetching big bucks now. I bought the male figure with the Christmas ornament genitalia myself. It’s a nice piece.

  The Kountry Pantree opened on schedule, with a nice parade and a free community picnic. Kountry Kow, however, having been stained rather nastily by its final animator, was tossed. I did get paid for it, though. I gave the bucks to Eddie, to help pay for his new car.

  You will not be surprised to learn that nothing ever came of the Ontario Municipal Board inquiry into Laingford Council wrongdoing. Mayor Lunenberg is, as far as I know, still acting on behalf of the numbered corporation that runs the place. The beachside playground at Kountry Pantree went ahead and the pike, as far as we know, are spawning elsewhere.

  The League for Social Justice disbanded after numerous attempts to be heard. Susan was particularly devastated by Eddie’s involvement with Kountry Pantree, though I don’t think she ever actually confronted him about it. She never shops there, though. Eddie still works at Watson’s and has become quite a close friend of Archie, who seems to let him run the place. Archie is said to be back at AA meetings again.

  Brent Miller moved in with Rico, and they’re both trying to get the local United Church to recognize their partnership by legally marrying them. More on that next time.

  After Arly Watson said what she did, I got to thinking about betrayal. Everything she did, I believe, was based on a kind of skewed sense of loyalty. But at least she was loyal. A couple of days after the Bath Tub Bash, when I was clearing up my worktable, I came across those notebooks from the Secret Stealing Club, and all of a sudden I remembered, like Serena, what my mind had filed away safely in a box marked “Do Not Open.”

  Gaby and I had been operating our club for a month or two. I was helping my Mom bake bread one day when there was a knock at the door. My mother opened it, and Mr. Murchison, the school principal, was standing there. Gaby was standing beside him, as pale as candle wax. I knew immediately what was going on. Mr. Murchison said that Gaby had been caught shoplifting, and that she had confessed everything, told about the club, and about me. I was so mad I could hardly stand up. What did I do? I denied everything. I called Gaby a lying, dirty thief and, being a fine actress, pulled it off. At least I think I did. That was why Gaby’s book stopped suddenly. I carried on for a while longer, out of defiance, probably, then hid the books at Emma Tempest’s store. But I will never forget the look on Gaby’s face when I betrayed her. Never.

  I guess, if I am looking for a place or a time when I first became a person without integrity, I’ll have to go back to before I was ten.

  You might be wondering about the Becker thing. Hah. Me, too. His ex-wife, Catherine, came back early from Calgary because she was offered a job there and had come back to pack. The rumours about her and Duke Pitblado were just rumours, I guess. Who cares? Anyway, she took Bryan with her. I saw him briefly, just after the Watson case. He offered to do me a website agai
n, and I declined. Then I showed him Sophie Durette’s photograph, the red blur at the top of the falls.

  “I tried to tell you in that picture I did at your place,” Bryan said. “I saw a guy at the top of the falls, and, well, I mooned him. I never mooned anybody before. Then I looked and there were two of them, then the red guy pushed the other guy over.” The “red guy”—Kane in a red sweatshirt—had threatened the kid at the picnic, just before taking Arly off for champagne and caviar. “He told me I could get arrested for what I did,” Bryan said. “I was scared to tell Dad.” No kidding. I would’ve been, too. Cop’s kids don’t moon people.

  Becker now flies out occasionally to see him, and they exchange e-mail. Bryan often writes “Say hi to Polly,” which is sweet of him.

  I still have Becker’s ring, and I still haven’t given him an answer to his question. The day after David Kane’s death, we had a long talk, and we agreed to work for a little longer with what we have. I did a lot of apologizing, and he did, too, although I think I had more to apologize for than he did.

  My disinterest in beer did not go away, but my interest in Kahlua did, about a week after the Bath Tub Bash. Then one day I lit a cigarette, put it out, and dumped the whole thing, ashtray and all, into the garbage. Next it was dope. Then I developed a peculiar, unprecedented appetite for perogies and sauerkraut and had to admit that something was up. I pulled Robin’s “second opinion” package off the bathroom shelf, did the test, and the stupid, wretched stick turned bright blue.

  I haven’t told Becker yet, but I’m going to have to mention it soon, because my army fatigues are starting to feel distinctly uncomfortable.

  One

  Mood swings, insecurities, fears, ambivalence, impatience, and anger are all likely to surface during your pregnancy—often at unpredictable times. Why do you sometimes feel so out of control while you’re expecting?

  -From Big Bertha’s Total Baby Guide

  When a woman is noticeably pregnant, the normal rules of social interaction get thrown completely out the window. I learned this the hard way at about the seven-month point. Some women manage the earth-mother thing with extraordinary grace—they’re radiant, their swelling bellies draw the gaze as if they’ve been festooned with twinkly lights, they wear that joyful, wide-eyed expression that says: “Rejoice with me in this miracle, O my fellow humans! O frabjous day, callou, callay!” I, on the other hand, turned into a fat, ferocious, touch-me-you-die kind of creature, lank of hair and greasy of skin. I was the kind of pregnant lady you’d cross the street to avoid, like a barely-controlled pit bull out for walkies with a sneering, tattooed and pierced teenager.

  This state of affairs didn’t happen overnight. I like to think that I started out as my usual pleasant and friendly self. It was all the attention I got that changed me. As soon as it was generally known that I was eating for two, (enceinte, expecting, a mother-to-be, a stinkin’ oven with a bun), and long before my delicate condition was visually inescapable, I began attracting comment from all and sundry.

  “Congratulations!” said Donna-Lou Dermott, the egg-queen of Cedar Falls, whom I met as she was dropping off a couple of dozen at the General Store in the village. “I heard from your aunt Susan that you’re in the family way. Who’s the father?” My jaw dropped at the sheer nerve of the question, but I quickly learned that etiquette doesn’t apply if you’re knocked up. Donna didn’t wait to hear my answer, which was just as well, because I was choosing some words that don’t look very nice in print. “Oh, I sure hope you’re going to have it at the hospital,” she went on. “My first was a breech birth—hurt like hell and tore me open from front to back—but they have pain killers for that kind of thing now.” Then she smiled seraphically and sailed off, reminding me over her shoulder that I should eat lots of eggs over the next while.

  That began it. Anyone on the planet who had ever had children accosted me on the street, in the FoodMart, the bank and the post office, sharing their horror stories, telling me what to eat and what not to eat, asking impertinent questions about my living arrangements and the identity of the father and about his reception of the news. By the time I was showing, as they say, absolute strangers had developed the curious habit of reaching out and patting me on the tummy. I learned to converse at a distance, out of arm’s reach. And eventually, I developed a Rottweiler approach—the permanent snarl, the “give me any advice and it’ll be the last thing you ever say” attitude.

  My boyfriend and putative fiancé, Detective Constable Mark Becker, was the gentleman responsible for all this—at least in the biological sense. The moment of conception was far from blessed, though, having taken place at the tail end of a booze-sodden July evening. We were too plastered to bother with a condom—that’s the truth of it, and the later realization that I was hosting a little blastula somewhere in my gut was not exactly wonderful news. But as far as responsibility was concerned, Becker and I were equally culpable. I was the one directly and immediately affected, though, and because of this I didn’t actually let him in on the secret until I’d made my own decision about what to do.

  Anybody who knows me will have gathered that I’m not big on babies. I have made no secret of my opinion that children should be caged until they’re fifteen, and after that, let out only occasionally for exercise and lessons in etiquette. I’m in my late thirties and have never in my life gone all soft and squashy at the sight of an infant. I do not make oodgy-woodgy noises and tickle the chins of Babes in Prams. I avoid McDonald’s restaurants and fun fairs and the Laingford Mall on weekends, precisely because there are always children present. One of the things I love about my remote cabin in the woods is that I am unlikely to come across any stray infants or toddlers while out walking in the bush.

  You would be quite justified in wondering why the heck I didn’t opt for the medical solution to my urgent dilemma. I considered it very seriously, certainly. In fact, even now, I still wonder why I didn’t just call up Dr. Wright and ask her to book me for a D&C. But while I have always been willing to fight fiercely for every woman’s right to choose her reproductive moment, I found that my own choice in the matter had already been made for me by past experience. Been there. Done that. This time, I wanted to keep the T-shirt. You don’t want the details—stories of successful and trauma-free abortions are boring, and if you’re a Right-to-Lifer, you’d hurl this book across the room the moment you realized where the narrative was going. Simply put, I decided after much deliberation to go through with the pregnancy.

  “Becker,” I said, “I’m going to have a baby.” (I have never been one to beat about the bush.)

  It was the second week of October, and we were playing a Thursday night game of pool together at the billiard parlour in Sikwan. Becker’s presence had, as usual, cleared the hall of teenagers, who can smell a cop a mile away. We were alone in the small room at the back—Becker was working on a Kuskawa Cream Ale, and I was swigging Perrier. I’d explained my choice of beverage by saying that I was “cleaning out my system”, but the truth of it was that my body had rejected all forms of alcohol from the moment Becker’s wretched little drunken sperm buried its head in the pillowy wall of my private pickled egg. It’s as if every cell in me had immediately been put on High Alert by Head Office. “Attention all Polly-bits! We have a guest, whom you are all bound to treat with utmost courtesy. You shall desist at once from any unhealthy cravings. Lungs—we know you’re used to a shot of nicotine every fifteen minutes. Well, forget it. Gut—we know you’re trained to require a regular infusion of fermented material. Prepare for a new order. From now on, you’ll get milk and fizzy water, and you’ll bloody well like it.” The directive had nothing to do with me. And my sudden metabolic Puritanism played merry havoc with my mood, let me tell you.

  I blurted out my news while Becker was lining up a shot. It was an easy one—fourteen in the corner pocket—and it was already an inch away, set up perfectly so he could come back for the eleven. After I’d spoken, Becker’s cue sort of slipped si
deways, the cue ball popped skywards and landed on top of the eight, smacking it squarely into the side pocket and ending the game in my favour.

  “Shit, Polly,” Becker said. “No fair—those are the kind of dirty tactics that can get you arrested.” He was laughing as he said it, reaching into his pocket for another loonie so we could play again.

  “That wasn’t a tactic,” I said.

  He went very, very still. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re pregnant? You’re sure?” He was speaking carefully, now, moving towards me on tiptoe, as if I might be packing explosives.

  “Yes, Mark. Positive.”

  “And you’re positive you’re having it? You want it?” I appreciated that he didn’t knee-jerk all over me right away. I nodded, studying his face for signs of pleasure, pain, anger, elation—whatever. Signs of anything. He’d gone pale, and his expression was unreadable.

  He let out a breath, a sigh, and sat down beside me, not touching, but close enough that I could feel his body heat. “How long have you known?” he said.

  “Not long. It was that night we whooped it up at the Mooseview and took a taxi to your place afterwards.”

  I could see him doing the math. “That’s ten weeks, roughly,” he said. “Is there still time to do something about it, if you wanted to?” I wonder how many times, and in how many places, that same conversation has played out between two people. It conforms to the Trite-but-True rule. Life’s big moments don’t come wrapped in poetry and profound phrases. We humans are predictable. I had known damn well that Becker would be hurt beyond measure by the fact that I hadn’t told him right away. He was nobody’s fool, my policeman, and it had taken him less than a half a second to understand that I had made a decision already, without him. Maybe it would have been different if we’d been married. But we weren’t.