Alison Preston - Norwood Flats 02 - The Geranium Girls

by Alison Preston

  “Oh, my God.” The colour had drained from Frank’s face. He noticed then that Beryl was still shivering. “I think I have a blanket in the car,” he said. “Let me get it for you to throw around your shoulders.”

  “No, honestly, I’m fine. It’s starting to heat up again. Thanks, though.”

  “Okay. I just have to wait till a forensics guy gets here and then we can go. Tell me everything, Beryl.”

  She sat down on a flat granite gravestone and told Frank about how the man who helped her in the park was not who he said he was.

  “Who did he say he was?” Frank asked.

  “Dr. Joe Paine. You know, the famous veterinarian?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Frank said.

  “What?”

  “That’s not who he told us he was.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. I would have remembered if the witness had been Dr. Paine. That’s who we take Doris and Hugh to. And I read his column all the time. Doggie Dog Days, it’s called.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Beryl said. “Well…who did he tell you guys that he was?”

  “Joe Keller.”

  “Joe Keller?” Beryl’s temples prickled.

  “Joe Keller.” Frank looked again at the sinister collection of items and the simple marker on the grave: Hortense Frouten Keller.

  “Dear God,” he said. “We’ve found him.” He corrected himself. “You found him, Beryl.”

  He looked at her in her damp clothes. “What brought you here? What brought you to this grave?”

  Beryl hugged her knees. The sun was coming out. She was glad of her wetness. It would keep her cool.

  “It said in the Free Press that this was where she was buried and I…I just knew there was something about her. I didn’t know that I would find anything here, but I sure did, didn’t I?”

  “Yup. You sure did.”

  “So, you saw her obituary in the Sentinel then?” Beryl went on. “Didn’t it seem odd to you at all? Cold, kind of?”

  “Yes. I did see it and yes, it did seem off somehow, but…God, I’m sorry, Beryl,” Frank said. “I’ve been so… And I had to go to that stupid conference. I should have given it a miss. I had to give a paper at it. That’s the only reason I went. I should have given it to someone else to read. Stupid fucking paper. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Frank.”

  “That was some hunch, Beryl. Have you ever thought about joining the police?”

  She smiled. “No. I hear there’s lots of paperwork. I hate paperwork.

  “I was really just putting in time till you got back,” she said, “and I could tell you about the man who’s not Joe Paine.” She squinted up at Frank. “He’s a murderer, isn’t he? For some twisted reason, probably connected to this long dead Hortense Frouten Keller, he’s killing tall thin women. I wonder if Hortense was tall and thin.”

  “We have to find him,” Frank said. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he’s at the address we have for him. He’s probably not even hiding. God, I feel so stupid.”

  “That’s quite an assumption isn’t it, that he’s not hiding? That he’s that sure of himself? He didn’t seem like that to me,” Beryl said. “He seemed more sad and scared.”

  She thought then of Joe’s willingness to give her his phone number, which she never dialled. That carelessness. If she’d had “Call Display” she could have discovered his real name that way any time he called. Of course, that could be easily blocked. If he cared at all.

  “Maybe he’s some of each,” Frank said. “Sure of himself and sad and scared. Maybe he’s a multiple personality-type guy. I mean, for one thing, he probably dressed up in women’s clothes to do that stuff in your yard. If Mrs. Frobisher is to be believed, and I think she is. This guy is wa-ay gone.”

  “So you figure that was him too?” Beryl asked.

  “Yes. Don’t you?”

  “Yeah. And Herm’s geraniums.” She gestured toward the dead flowers. “That was him. This was the first summer she put them outside. It was my idea. I don’t think she’ll be doing that again.”

  Frank sat down beside Beryl on another flat stone; they sat atop a husband and wife who had died within the same year: 1927.

  Beryl told him about Stan’s part in all of it, his discovery of Rollo alive and well in the waiting room of the animal hospital. And how one thing led to another.

  “My God, this psycho killer was in my house,” she said. “And in Clive’s house too.”

  A man and a woman from the police department arrived and Frank showed them the area to be dealt with.

  “Is that eyes?” the policeman asked, pointing to the jar.

  “It’s an eye,” Frank said. “Just the one.”

  He led Beryl to his car and settled her in the front seat.

  “I’m making your car seat all wet,” she said.

  “Don’t worry. Lots worse things have happened to it than that.”

  “Hermione has disappeared,” Beryl said, as they travelled the bleak route from the graveyard back towards downtown.

  “No. No, she hasn’t,” Frank said. “I forgot to mention, she left a message for me.”

  “For you?”

  “Yeah. She called you but you weren’t home, or at least didn’t answer the phone, and she didn’t want to leave a message. She thought that whoever this lunatic is might have the wherewithal to access your phone messages and she didn’t want him listening to her, figuring out she was going somewhere.”

  “Good. Good for Herm. She’s quite a bit smarter than me. Where is she?”

  “She’s safe in the country with some friends of hers out near Tyndall. She didn’t leave their name or address or anything, which is fine. She’s safe. I do have a phone number for her.”

  “Good.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” Frank said, as he turned onto Logan Avenue. “Let me get this straight. The guy who helped you in St. Vital Park told you that his name was Joe Paine. And that he was a veterinarian.”

  “Yes.”

  “He told the police that his name was Joe Keller and that he was a part-time janitor at one of the Catholic schools in St. Boniface, which checked out. So it looks as though it was only you he was trying to trick,” Frank said. “I wonder why.”

  “Maybe he was trying to impress me,” Beryl said.

  Frank smiled.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” Frank said. “You’re probably right.

  “Okay,” he continued. “So yesterday you came face to face with Dr. Joe Paine and confirmed what your friend Stan had led you to suspect — that the guy who helped you in the park was not Joe Paine, much-loved veterinarian, author of Doggie Dog Days.”

  “Right.”

  “Creepy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you phone the police?”

  “I tried quite hard to get hold of you.”

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “I even left a message with your daughter, Sadie.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. She said you might be phoning home.”

  “I did and she didn’t say anything about you having called.”

  “That’s okay. She probably just forgot.”

  “No, it’s not okay.”

  “Yes, it is, Frank. Please don’t yell at her on my account. She was very helpful.”

  “Still…it was really important.”

  “Frank, there was no way in the world for her to know how important it was. I probably didn’t even say it was important. Promise me you won’t yell at Sadie.”

  “Yes, all right.”

  “I tried to get the last name of the pretend veterinarian out of Sergeant Christie,” Beryl said, “but he wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Prick.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And Frank?” Beryl sighed. “It seemed so complicated, you know, all the stuff about flowers and furnace pegs and everything, I thought I’d just wait for you.”

  “You
could have just mentioned that the guy who helped you in the park wasn’t who he said he was.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Okay. Never mind. So. While you’re waiting for me to come back, you figure you’ll investigate the one thing that you saw in the Pilot Mound Sentinel that you found to be a little odd.” Frank looked at her. “You have good instincts, Beryl.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So in the Free Press you find that this Hortense Frouten Keller is buried in Brookside Cemetery. You come out to look at her grave and find all kinds of evidence pointing to the guy who killed Beatrice Fontaine and Diane Caldwell.”

  “Yup.”

  Frank turned off the Norwood Bridge onto Lyndale Drive. They were almost home.

  “I wonder what relation Hortense is to Joe,” Frank said. “Mother…aunt?”

  “I’m thinking aunt,” Beryl said. “I don’t think she was a mother.”

  “It would be interesting,” said Frank, “if tall thinness is a part of it, like you say, if that is the connection to the dead women. Whew! I hope this Joe Keller is a talker.”

  Frank saw Beryl into her house and looked around to make sure everything was as it should be.

  “You’ll keep me posted, won’t you?” she asked.

  “I’ll call you as soon as we pick him up. If we can’t find him, I’ll come back. Are you sure you’re going to be okay here?”

  “Yup. I’m going to lock the doors and wait for your call.”

  “I think I’m going to get someone over here to sit outside till we get him. Can I use your phone?”

  “Yeah. Thanks, Frank. That’s a good idea. If you’re going to do that, I’ll feel safe enough to have a bath and a sandwich.”

  “Good. Oh. I talked to Katy in the VSU, the gal who’s keeping an eye on the boys who found Diane Caldwell.”

  “Oh yeah. And?”

  “Well, neither the boys nor their parents or guardians or whatever have mentioned anything strange going on at their homes. Two of the young fellas have started crawling in with their mums at night, though. Poor little guys.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Frank. Maybe it doesn’t matter now.”

  “Probably not.”

  When he left, Beryl locked the door behind him and waited till a uniformed cop pulled up and stationed himself at the curb. Then she poured a tub full of hot water and magnolia-scented bubbles.

  Chapter 44

  The doorbell rang an hour later as Beryl was smoothing lotion onto her legs. She looked out the kitchen window and saw the Poulin’s truck parked in the lane.

  “Yes?” she called through the back door, pulling her terry cloth robe tightly around her.

  “Poulin’s! For the house next door? I was told to pick up the key here?”

  “Could you please step back so I can see you out of the kitchen window?” Beryl shouted.

  What she saw when she peered outside was a sturdily built young man, not more than twenty-two, looking up at her. Beside him stood the uniformed cop who gave her a thumbs-up gesture with both hands.

  She opened the door to the young exterminator and gave him Clive’s key.

  “Sorry,” she said. “There’s been some trouble.”

  “That’s okay, ma’am,” he said.

  Beryl put on a sleeveless dress, ivory coloured, and then threw a peach tee shirt on over top after catching a glimpse of her arms in the bathroom mirror. She didn’t like the look of them.

  The phone rang and she picked it up.

  “We got him,” Frank said.

  Beryl sat down where she stood in the middle of her living room floor and began to shake.

  “Are you there, Beryl?”

  “Yeah, I’m here,” she whispered.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  She hauled herself up onto the couch and lay down. Jude and Dusty joined her there, sitting on her chest with their faces as close to hers as she would allow.

  Frank came over within the hour. They sat down at the kitchen table.

  “He lives on Taché, at the river end,” Frank said, “in a house left to him by his aunt, Hortense Frouten Keller.

  “You know what he said when he opened the door to us?”

  “What?”

  “‘It’s about time.’ That’s what he said. As though we were a bunch of idiots. I acted gruff, but I sure felt stupid. You solved this for us, Beryl.”

  “Yeah, I guess I kind of did, didn’t I? With Stan’s help. And Clive’s. And Herm’s. And Rachel’s. And yours. You believed me when I told you about the crazy goings-on around here. That was really important, Frank.” Beryl’s eyes filled up.

  “Yes, I did that, I guess,” Frank said. “I feel like that’s about all I did.”

  Beryl got up to turn the air conditioning off. It was cold in her house. She splashed cool water on her face and pressed a small towel against her eyes to absorb the tears. She didn’t want to cry in front of Frank again.

  “So what was he like, this Joe Keller?” she asked when she came back.

  “Well, I guess you know him as well as, if not better, than I do at this point, Beryl. I mean you’ve had actual conversations with him, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah…I have. It just seems so bizarre now that I know he isn’t who he said he was. Like, if I saw him now he might not even look the same.”

  “He looks the same, all right. Just like he did that day in the park. Like a regular thirty-something guy, kind of handsome, even. But with a horror story inside his head. He’s a lone wolf if I ever saw one. He can’t name anyone as a friend or even an acquaintance.

  “He’s had this particular janitorial job for a couple of years. And he’s also worked as a security guard and as a night watchman in other places, mostly around St. Boniface. In the summer he just works part time at the school, so he’s had a lot of time on his hands. With those types of jobs, he’d have time on his hands anyway, wouldn’t he, to brood and imagine and plan who knows what?”

  “Yeah,” said Beryl. “I guess.”

  “You know what set him off?” Frank continued. “The pots of geraniums at Hermione’s place. Having to walk by them every day to get anywhere. They reminded him of his Aunt Hortense who he really hated. She used to grow geraniums. She sounds like a real prize.”

  “Was she tall and thin?”

  “Yeah, tall and thin, with sparse hair. And bossy. Hermione reminded him of her. She was his prey but she was hard to trap. He just hadn’t gotten to her yet. He made do with the other women, with her customers, as he bided his time, till he saw his chance with what he thought of as his real trophy.”

  Beryl shuddered. “Thank God Herm’s okay. Does she know about all this yet?”

  “Yes. I talked to her on the phone. She’s pretty upset, as you can imagine. She’s going stay out there with her friends for a few days. She said to say hi; she’ll talk to you soon.”

  “Okay. Good. So Beatrice and Diane were tall and thin and connected to the shop.”

  “Yes.” Frank fiddled with the salt shaker, trying to balance it on its edge in a little pile of salt he had poured out onto the table.

  “God,” said Beryl. “Tall and thin with a love of geraniums. How arbitrary is that?”

  “And bald. Yeah. Pretty arbitrary.” The salt shaker tipped over and caused Beryl to jump.

  “Beatrice and Diane weren’t even bald,” she said.

  “No. But, like I said, he made do. He followed them. Hermione didn’t give him a good opportunity; at least she hadn’t yet. He seems to like to kill outdoors. She doesn’t jog, or even walk, it seems.”

  Beryl smiled. “No. She’s the opposite of an exercise freak. Jesus. Thank God.”

  “He said he hadn’t even noticed the shop till this summer when all the geraniums appeared outside. He’d been walking by it for years without giving it a second thought.”

  The salt shaker banged onto the table again.

  “For goodness’ sake, Frank!” Beryl said and snatched it out o
f his hand.

  “Sorry,” Frank said.

  The doorbell rang again. It was the Poulin’s guy returning the key.

  “I laid some traps,” he said, “but he’s gonna have to get the holes in his house fixed if he wants to stop the problem. The place is in bad shape.”

  “I’ll tell him,” Beryl said. “And I’ll try and get him to do something. I know it’s bad.”

  “I seen worse,” the Poulin’s guy said and was on his way.

  “Frank?” Beryl asked. She could see he was getting ready to leave.

  “Yes?”

  “What about the stuff that happened around here? The cat collar and the furnace pegs and everything?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry I don’t have anything to tell you about that yet. I will, though. I’m going back to see him again. We had to get the worst of it over with first. The killing part. I’m sorry, Beryl. I know how important those other things are to you. To me too, actually.”

  “It’s okay, I understand.”

  “We do know that he does make a habit of walking in St. Vital Park on Saturday mornings. We had checked that out right at the start, with other regular Saturday morning walkers and joggers. He didn’t lie about that. It was sheer coincidence that he was walking by shortly after you discovered Beatrice’s body. Or, as he called it, ‘sheer luck.’ He wasn’t there to hurt you.

  “And it came to him on the spur of the moment to pretend he was Joe Paine, the veterinarian. He’d heard of him and how well-liked he is. He figured a vet would seem trustworthy to a young woman such as you. As long as you didn’t know the real Joe Paine, that is.”

  “Wow. Yeah, I did trust him at first,” Beryl said. “For maybe an hour or two.”

  “A prostitute was murdered about eighteen months ago,” Frank said. “We’re thinking there’s a good chance she may have been killed by this guy too. It was a strangulation. With a nylon scarf.”

  “Charise Rondeau,” Beryl said.

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yes. We’ll see.”

  “And he’s lived right here in the neighbourhood all this time,” Beryl said. “That’s scary.”