But that was normal for Ed. He looked the same as he always did and again Beryl wondered if she’d imagined the sinister aspect of his presence at the coffee shop. She was probably projecting, or whatever they call it, when you force your own fears and thoughts onto someone else. Like she had done with Hermione’s geraniums.
When Beryl got to her desk, Stan was sorting his mail, but there was something about the way he was doing it that gave her pause. He was usually a sorting machine, not even seeming to look at the letters as they flew from his hands into the case. This morning Stan was going slowly, examining each letter before he stuck it in its slot.
“You’ll never get out of here at that rate, Stan,” Beryl said, as she dragged his parcel bag over and deposited it at his feet. They took turns getting each other’s bags.
Beryl began sorting; she glanced over at him. “Is everything okay?”
Stan looked at her, but didn’t seem to hear. It was no wonder, with the conveyer belts roaring overhead. There was the screeching of a power saw this morning too, coming from the other side of the floor. And the constant high-pitched beep-beep of machinery backing up.
Beryl could taste the metal and the dust. Her hands were filthy, minutes after walking onto the sorting floor. She washed her hands so often they hurt. A layer of grimy dust seemed to coat her skin and clothing. The place was filthy; the bags that the mail went out in were filthy. And some of the workers were very strange.
Sorting mail, the indoor work, leaves plenty of space in the mind for all manner of thought: potent bubbles of imagination from countless sources mingled with the noise and the dirt.
The place seemed alive with danger to Beryl today. Anything could happen. Or more likely nothing. She didn’t know which would be worse.
“Is something wrong, Stan?” she asked again.
This time he heard her and said, “Yes. We received some bad news at our house last night. Oh. Thanks for bringing my bag over.”
Beryl stopped sorting and looked at him. Under the fluorescent lights his face was as white as a fish’s underbelly.
“Did somebody die?” she asked and had the horrible feeling that there had been another killing and that Stan and his family were connected to it in some way.
Please don’t let Stan be attached to a person who dies horribly, Beryl prayed. Please let all the deaths that he has to deal with be natural, happy deaths that take place at the right times.
“Yeah, somebody did die,” Stan said. “Wally. Wally Goately.”
“What?”
“Wally Goately died.”
“Jesus. I just saw him last night,” Beryl said. “He died?”
“Yes.”
“What…what did he die from?”
“He choked to death on a chicken bone. He was eating alone at a restaurant and nobody noticed that he was choking until it was all over. His face turned blue.”
Stan stopped sorting and looked at Beryl. “Where did you see him?”
“Oh God.” Beryl sat down on her crooked little stool. “I saw him before he died, before he went into the restaurant, just outside of it. I was going to speak to him and then I didn’t.” My fault.
“I had to go and identify him,” Stan said.
“Oh, Stan.” Beryl stood up and moved to where he was leaning against his desk. She peered into his stunned face.
“You should go home.”
“I can’t. We don’t get time off for distant cousins of wives,” Stan said and went back to his new slow way of sorting.
“So what? You should go home anyway. You had to identify him and that must have been horrible. Does Ed know?”
“No.”
Beryl turned abruptly and went to seek out her supervisor.
Ed said pretty much what Stan had said: You don’t get days off for your own cousins, let alone for your wife’s.
“Stan shouldn’t have to be here, Ed. He had to identify the guy. He had to look at his face.”
“Whose face?” Barry was glued to his computer, tapping keys.
“The guy’s face!” Beryl slammed her hand down on his desk.
“So what are you, Stan’s keeper?” Ed looked up from his work. “Can’t he speak for himself?”
“You know what, Ed? Fuck off!” Beryl said, and knew that she had done absolutely nothing good for Stan or for herself.
“I’m so sorry, Stan,” she said when she got back to her desk. She was shaking from having sworn at Ed. “How are Raylene and Ellie doing?” she asked. “They were both fond of Wally, weren’t they?”
“Yeah, Ellie, especially. He was her new favourite uncle. God knows why! He was pretty good at playing with her, I guess.”
“You should be home with them.”
“It’s okay. Raylene’s sisters are there. I’d just be in the way. Besides, it’s probably good if I get a chance to digest this awhile away from my family. I might be more good to them if I do.”
Stan was probably right. Beryl regretted having spoken to Ed and she knew she had said too much; it wasn’t her information to share.
Ed approached them then and gave Stan a soft punch on the shoulder. “You holdin’ up okay, Sport?” he asked and Beryl could feel her face turn red.
Stan looked at her in stunned surprise and said, “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”
“I heard you got some bad news last night,” Ed said, also looking at Beryl.
“It’s no big deal.” Stan went back to his sorting.
Ed shuffled off and Stan called after him, “Ed!”
The supervisor turned around and Stan said, “Keep it under your hat, would ya?”
“Sure, Stan.” Ed looked at Beryl again.
She was trying to sort but was blinded by tears. I’m a busybody, she thought. Just like Gladys Kravitz on Bewitched. Stan will hate me now and I can’t bear it. Plus, I should have spoken to Wally last night. I should have sat with him while he ate and performed the Heimlich maneuvre when he started to choke. I could have done that.
“You shouldn’t have told Ed,” Stan said, barely sorting at all.
Tears streamed down Beryl’s face as she stumbled over to his desk. She opened her mouth to apologize, but all she could do was gulp.
“Beryl, what is it?” Stan asked, alarmed. “You barely knew Wally. In fact, you didn’t even like him. Did you?”
“I’m sorry, Stan. I’m sorry I told Ed. I thought he should let you go home.” Beryl swallowed another gulp and then hiccupped. “But it wasn’t my job to do that.”
Stan put his arm around her shoulder. It was the first time he had ever touched her.
“Beryl, it’s okay,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. Honest.”
“I’m sorry, Stan,” she said again. “I didn’t mean to make anything worse.”
“Seriously,” Stan said, “it’s not important.”
Beryl blew her nose and tidied herself up some and Stan went back to his sorting.
“It’s not so much that I have deep feelings for Wally,” he said philosophically. “I don’t. It’s just that it’s such a shock. So sudden, you know. One minute he’s here, irritating as can be, and the next he’s gone, all because of what he decided to have for supper.”
Chapter 36
Beryl phoned Frank at work.
“I was wondering if you could tell me who discovered the body of Diane Caldwell,” she asked.
“Pardon?” Frank sounded as though he were three thousand miles away.
“If you could tell me who found the woman in Whittier Park?”
Beryl knew that her deadheading experience, the pink collar on her cat, and now the changed furnace pegs had everything to do with her being the one who found the mushroom girl. She had no rational reason for believing this, but she knew it anyway.
Maybe whoever found the second dead person was having peculiar stuff happen at his home as well.
“Frank, could I talk to you in person, please? I think I may have something that will help.”
Beryl wondered w
hat her criminal would have done next if she’d had an old-fashioned thermostat.
Several years ago, when she’d had her furnace replaced, she had sprung for a new thermostat. It had a clock and little red and blue pegs to fasten in place at the times you wanted the furnace to warm up or cool down — red for warm, blue for cool. She could use them in the summer, too, for her air conditioner.
Beryl was fond of her thermostat pegs. During a heat wave, like the one that was suffocating southern Manitoba right now, she could set her air conditioner to come on half an hour or so before she figured she’d be home from work. Then, when she walked in the door, she would be greeted by a blast of cool air. Her cats would be huddled together on the couch for warmth.
Today, Beryl hadn’t noticed that her yard was quiet when she entered it, that there was no hum from the air conditioner beneath her kitchen window.
Plus, her house was hot and she didn’t notice that. She was thinking about Stan. And Wally. Would she have been able to save him if she had been there? Would she have had the confidence to perform the Heimlich on him? She could do it in her mind but she doubted if she’d be able to pull it off in real life. Maybe she could get someone to allow her to practise on him. Like Stan. Or Herm. Maybe Dhani. He’d probably let her. He’d probably even think it was a good idea.
She had just decided to give Dhani a call when she did notice something: Jude and Dusty had raced to the door to meet her. They ran around like kittens when they should have been snuggling on the couch trying to keep warm.
It was then that Beryl realized the air conditioner wasn’t on. She checked the thermostat, turned it down and heard the click of the machinery as it began to work. So it wasn’t broken, thank God. Next, she lifted up the flap to check that her blue and red pegs were in place. They were there all right, but they had been moved to times that made no sense. The blue peg was placed at three o’clock in the morning, for instance — the middle of nowhere, timewise. Someone had moved them. Someone had been in her house!
Now Beryl wished that the thermostat was just broken. At least then she could phone Winnipeg Supply and wait for them to come and banter with the repairman and talk about how jesusly hot it was.
She sat down at the kitchen table and cried. Tears of frustration and fear. He had been in her house, but it was like with the flowers and Jude’s collar: she couldn’t phone the police and tell them that the pegs on her thermostat had been moved. They would exchange glances amongst themselves and know that she had done it herself. Or worse, that she craved attention.
Had she done it herself? She didn’t sleepwalk as far as she knew and surely that would be something that you’d know. No. This was not her doing.
Beryl looked around at her stuff. It looked as though nothing else had been disturbed, but she couldn’t really be sure; her house was fairly messy. She checked the doors and windows and nothing looked wrong.
That was when she had decided It was time to confide in Frank.
He came right over. Beryl made iced tea and they sat outside on the deck, in spite of the heat and mosquitoes. She didn’t want to be in the house. The guy had a key.
She told Frank everything — from her lobelia to her cat to her thermostat. She talked about the strange woman that Mrs. Frobisher had seen hanging around the house next door, and Clive’s funny-smelling bed and the Pilot Mound Sentinel.
He didn’t question her sanity or her memory or her intelligence. He believed her and she wished she had told him sooner.
Frank went to talk to Rachel Frobisher and Beryl phoned Noble Locksmiths to come and change her locks. She had decided too late to be careful with her key. But never again. She had vowed that it would never come to this, that she wouldn’t buy into the fear that was advertised daily in the papers and on the tube. But now she found herself pondering an alarm system and bars on the windows.
“Dang,” she said quietly and looked over her shoulder.
Frank came back and they went over to Clive’s place to have a look around. This made Beryl nervous; she felt like a traitor. No one was home, as usual, and the door was locked for once. Frank considered breaking in and then decided not to.
Beryl remembered that she had a key; Clive had given it to her when she offered to phone someone about the vermin running rampant in his house. She hadn’t done that yet.
She didn’t offer the key to Frank, not after Clive’s reaction to the idea of having police in his house. Frank didn’t seem like a real cop to Beryl, but he was. That’s why she had phoned him.
Guilt nudged her a little, but she decided if she was going to invade Clive’s privacy she should at least warn him so he could tend to whatever contraband he was harbouring. In the meantime, she would go in after Frank left and gather up whatever she could find, in case he got serious about breaking in.
Beryl regretted involving Clive. It had been stupid and she felt her head heating up. She just hadn’t been thinking. He’d never trust her again.
“Let me know when this Clive character comes back to town,” Frank said, when they were back on the deck. “I think I should have a talk with him.”
“Yes, all right,” Beryl said.
“Do you know him very well?”
“Pretty well, I guess.”
“The newspaper he gave you, do you still have it?”
“Yes!” Beryl leapt up. “I’m sure it’s important. I’m just not sure how. When I went through it I couldn’t find anything much except stories about 4-H Clubs and fiftieth wedding anniversaries and whatnot — ads for tractors and seed.
“Only one thing stood out for me, a sinister little obituary, but I can’t for the life of me figure how it would connect to all this.” She gestured around her.
“And I’m sure it has nothing to do with Clive,” she added. “He didn’t know what to make of it.”
“May I see it?” Frank asked.
“And the pink collar?” he called after her when she headed inside to get it.
The collar was gone from its hiding spot in the north window well. Beryl shuffled the rocks around and wasn’t surprised when she couldn’t find it.
“It’s gone,” she said, handing the newspaper to Frank. “The collar’s gone. I should have hidden it better. Like my house key.”
“Yeah, it was pretty stupid of you to have a key outside like that. Anyone could have whisked it away and made a quick copy. Can I take this paper? I’d like to have a good solid browse through it.”
“Sure.” Beryl wished Frank hadn’t said the word stupid in connection with her. Even if it was true.
“And I’ll take the furnace pegs too. Maybe we can get something off them. Did you touch them?”
“No.”
“I guess you and Clive have both touched the newspaper quite a lot.”
“Yeah. I guess that was dumb too.”
“Of course it wasn’t. Neither of you would have been thinking in terms of fingerprints.”
“No.”
“Are you all right, Beryl?”
“I guess so. I just feel a little…unsafe. And stupid.”
“Well, you’re definitely not stupid. You are vulnerable. I’ll stay with you till after the locksmith comes.”
The air was still and heavy with moisture. The ice had melted in their glasses. Beryl was uncomfortable in her clothes.
“Frank?”
“Yes?”
“Would you mind if I went in and had a quick shower and got out of my postal outfit?”
“Go ahead. I’ll be sitting right here.” Frank looked sadly at his plastic chair. It was too small for him, looked as if it might stay attached to him when he stood up.
“Thanks… You can come in if you like — get away from the skeeters.”
“That’s okay. They don’t bite me very often for some reason.”
“Okay. I’ll just be a few minutes.”
Beryl didn’t want to have to worry about having Psycho-type thoughts in the shower and at least for today she could avoid it. Unle
ss, of course, Frank Foote was a policeman and a murderer as well, too evil even for mosquitoes to come near.
After her shower Beryl put on a pale yellow dress. Her feet were bare and she felt marvellously cool for a little while. When she joined Frank on the deck he was gazing off into the uppermost branches of the willow. She had expected to find him reading the Pilot Mound Sentinal and felt slightly let down. He sat with her till the locksmith arrived. And promised to stop in the next day, after she got home from work.
“I have a funeral tomorrow,” Beryl said, “so I won’t be here till a little later.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“No. It’s okay. It isn’t someone I was close to. I’m going more out of closeness to his relatives.” And because it’s my fault he’s dead.
“Well, I’ll phone first.” Frank stood up.
“This Clive that lives next door, is he the same Clive Boucher that used to play with Crimson Soul?”
“Yup, that’s him,” Beryl said. “And he still plays with them. That’s why he’s never home. He’s always out on tour.”
“I had no idea they were still together. I used to really like their music.”
“It’s not the same guys,” Beryl said. “In fact, I think Clive is the only original band member. But they do play the old songs. They’ve got a young guy singer who’s almost as good as Donny Swythins was. Still, it wouldn’t be the same, would it?”
“No. I guess not,” Frank said. “Remember that song…it went: ‘Somebody said somebody saw you crying.’ Something like that?”
Beryl smiled. “Yeah. It was laughing though. Somebody saw you laughing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. And I’m afraid it wasn’t Crimson Soul who sang it.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“Well, it’s a great song anyway,” Frank smiled.
“Yeah,” said Beryl. “I love that song too. It’s by a group called Man.”
Frank hummed the line as he stepped down into the yard. At least that’s what Beryl figured he must be doing. He couldn’t carry a tune very well.
“I guess you’ve been fingerprinted,” he said, “what with working for Canada Post. They did you, didn’t they, when you first started there?”
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