The Calling

by Inger Ash Wolfe

  'Sorry, Miss Micallef. Your breakfast is ready.'

  'Keep it up, Mother.'

  That low chuckle again.

  Hazel closed the bedroom door and hobbled back to stand in front of the mirror. She was still hunched over, the pain in her lower back radiating around to her hips. She watched herself in the mirror lean forward to brace herself against the dresser. It sometimes took up to ten minutes before she could stand upright in the mornings. If it still hurt after fifteen, she took a Percocet, although she tried to save the painkillers until the evening, when it wouldn't matter if she could think straight or not. She tried to push her pelvis forward, but a bolt of electricity rushed down through her rear end and into the back of her leg. She shook her head at herself, ruefully. 'You goddamned old cow.' Her grey hair was standing out on the sides of her head and she leaned across the dresser, separated the comb and brush and pulled the brush through her hair. Two bobby pins tucked in tight behind her ears would keep it all in place. She ran her hand over her forehead and her hair, and her other hand followed with her cap. She tugged it down. Every morning, this transformation: a sixty-one-year-old divorcée under the covers, a detective inspector with the Ontario Police Services Port Dundas detachment in front of the mirror. She straightened her name tag and pulled her jacket tighter around her shoulders, trying to stand tall. Then she took the cap off and shook her hair out. 'Christ,' she said. The Percocet was in the top drawer, between the underwear and the bras. She looked at it, respite tucked between underthings, almost erotic, a promise of release. She closed the drawer.

  * * *

  Downstairs, there was an egg-white omelette with a single piece of sprouted wholegrain flax and kamut toast sitting on a plate. The bread that made this toast was so dangerously high in fibre it had to be kept in the freezer lest it cause bowel movements in passersby. There was a cup of steaming black coffee beside it. 'You need a haircut,' her mother said.

  Hazel Micallef took her seat and put her cap down beside the plate. 'No one sees my hair.'

  'I see it.'

  'Are you going to eat with me, or are you just going to torment me?'

  'I ate.' Her mother – either Mrs Micallef or Your Honour to the entire town – was still dressed in her quilted blue-and-pink housedress. She kept her back to Hazel, moving something around in the frying pan. Hazel smelled bacon. 'Eat,' said her mother.

  'I'll wait for the bacon.'

  'No meat for you, my girl. This is for me.'

  Hazel stared down at the anemic omelette on the plate. 'This isn't food for a grown woman, Mother,' she said.

  'Protein. And fibre. That's your breakfast. Eat it.' She stared at her daughter until she picked up a fork. 'How's your back?'

  'The usual.'

  'Every morning your back tells you to start eating right. You should listen.'

  Her mother had been back in the house for almost three years. After Hazel's divorce from Andrew, she had taken her mother out of The Poplars and brought her home. She'd never cared for that place, and having her 'underfoot' (as Hazel put it to her, to get the old goat's goat) provided them both with company. Her mother was the sort of elderly lady that younger people called 'spry', but to Hazel, Emily Micallef was a force of nature, and not to be trifled with. She had seen her mother, on more than one occasion, react to an offer of help – to carry a bag, to cross a street – with a tart 'piss off, I'm not crippled,' followed by a semi-lunatic smile. She was the only woman Hazel had ever met who loved being old. At sixty-one, Hazel herself was not entirely enamoured of old age, but at eighty-seven, her mother was in her element. Thin and rangy, with skinny red-mottled arms, and long blueveined fingers, her mother sometimes seemed a clever old rat. Her eyes, still clear but rimmed with faint pink lids, were vigilant: she missed nothing. In her younger years, before she entered civic politics, she and Hazel's father had owned Port Dundas's largest clothing store, Micallef's. It was legend in the town that no one ever stole anything out from under Emily. She could smell unpaid-for merchandise going out the door, and after catching a dozen or so would-be thieves, it was widely assumed that no one ever tried again. It was only after Burt Levitt bought the store, in 1988, that Micallef's even had a theft-detection system.

  Her mother brought a plate of crispy bacon to the table. Hazel had choked down half the flavourless omelette (it had a sliver of waxy 'Swiss cheese' in it that she suspected was made of soy protein) and watched her mother snap off a piece of bacon between her front teeth. She chewed it savouringly, watching Hazel the entire time. 'I need the fat,' she said.

  'And the salt?'

  'Salt preserves,' said her mother, and Hazel laughed.

  'Are you Lot's wife?'

  'I'm nobody's wife,' she said. 'And neither are you. Which is why I need to put on weight, and you need to take it off. Or the only man who'll ever come into this house again will be here to read the meter.'

  'What would you do with a man, Mother? You'd kill anyone your age.'

  'But I'd have fun doing it,' said Emily Micallef with a grin. She finished off a second slice of bacon, then flicked a piece onto Hazel's plate. 'Eat up and go. My shows are coming on.'

  Hazel and Andrew had bought the house in Pember Lake in 1971, when Emilia, their first daughter, was eighteen months. It meant a ten-minute drive back into Port Dundas to get to Micallef's for Andrew (whose father-in-law had hired him on), but both he and Hazel preferred being at least a little outside of the town's grasp. Later, when Hazel had been promoted back to the town after paying her dues at a community policing office in the valley, the house served double sanctuary. Both born in places where dropping-in was de rigueur, they'd opted for privacy in their adulthoods, raising children in a town outside of the 'big smoke' (as they called Port Dundas), in a place with a population of less than two hundred. People knew not to come knocking – with a job that saw her knowing many hundreds of men, women and children by their first names, Hazel Micallef was a woman entitled to her time off. You didn't come to the house in Pember Lake unless you were invited, or it was an emergency.

  Hazel got into the Crown Victoria she'd inherited when Inspector Gord Drury, the detachment's CO since 1975, had retired in 1999. Central Division of the Ontario Police Services had been promising a replacement for Drury ever since, but it was an open secret that the commander of Central OPS, Ian Mason, wanted to roll the Port Dundas detachment, and five other so-called rural stations, into Mayfair Township's catchment. Mayfair was one hundred kilometres to the south, in a different area code. It was a long-distance call to Mayfair. Hazel, the only detective inspector in the entire province acting as a detachment commander, was holding her ground: she reminded Mason on a regular basis that Central owed her a CO, but she was despairing of ever getting one.

  She remembered the look on Commander Mason's face at her swearing-in as interim when Drury had dropped the Crown Victoria's keys into her hand, like the passing of a torch. It had been fairly close to a sneer. A female skip. A female skip whose mother had once been mayor, and who herself was a mere detective inspector. Drury had been superintendent material, but he chose fishing over it. Hazel knew what Mason thought of her: she'd made DI by the skin of her teeth and now she was in charge of a detachment that represented a saving of over nine million dollars a year to the OPS if they could get the clearance to merge services with Mayfair. She'd been entitled to a new car, one that didn't smell so much of Gord's cigarettes, but she knew the car would air out eventually, and it was still running. Plus, the frugality would look good on her, she thought. Let Mason deny her anything: she was driving someone else's junker. But deny her he did. It was sport to him. Extra men, travel allowances, computer upgrades. He lived to say no, mumbling across the line from the HQ in Barrie, 'Goodness, Hazel, what need have you up there for colour screens?' And here she was, six years on, driving the same car. Two hundred and fifty thousand kilometres on it, but it was her vehicle like it or no, and she was going to drive it until the engine fell out. Then, she suspected, Mason
would give her a horse if she begged enough for it. She backed out of the drive-way and onto Highway 117.

  It was fall in Westmuir County. A carpet of leaves had accumulated at the edges of fields, on lawns, in parks. Still red and yellow, but within a couple of weeks, the trees would be entirely bare, and the leaves on the ground brown and brittle. The air was changing, the moisture leaving it, and in its place was a wire-thin thread of cold that would expand, leading deeper into November and December, to become sheets of frigid wind. Hazel could already hear the branches rattling with it.

  She took the bridge over the Kilmartin River and noted a torrent of leaves flowing down the middle of it. In three of the last four years, the river had spilled over its banks, eating away at the base of the high shale walls and destabilizing the road above. There had already been one tragedy, across the way from where she now drove, when a car carrying four teenagers back from a prom in Hillschurch had driven off the blacktop by two or three feet and hit a fissure. In a panic (so investigators later said), the girl behind the wheel had hit the accelerator rather than the brake, and the crack in the earth had directed them right over the edge, like a rail. All four were killed. There was not a shop or service within forty kilometres open for business on the day of the burials.

  She rolled down the window, coming into town, and the scent of the fall air swirled around her head. She followed the road down to the right and then up into Main Street rising in front of her, its far end a full eight hundred feet higher above sea level than its bottom. On either side of the street were arrayed the buildings and names she had known her whole life: Crispin's Barbershop; Port Dundas Confectionery; The Ladyman Café; Carl Pollack Shoes (Carl himself dead now almost twenty years); The Matthews Funeral Home; Cadman's Music Shop; The Freshwater Grille (the 'e' was new); Micallef's, of course; the Opera House and the bowling alley behind it; the Luxe Cinema; Roncelli's Pizza and Canadian Food (which everyone called 'the Italians'), and the newer businesses, like the computer shop owned by the guy from Toronto; a bookstore that actually sold more than suspense and horror paperbacks, called Riverrun Books; and a mom-and-pop store beside the gas station, called Stop 'N' Go. All of it serviced a population of 13,500 in the town; Hoxley, Hillschurch, and Pember Lake made it 19,000.

  It was strange to have spent all of one's life in or close to a single place. But every time Detective Inspector Micallef drove this strip, her heart sang. This was where she belonged; there was no other place for her. Mayfair was more than a one-hour drive (forty-five minutes if it was an emergency), and Mason, in Barrie, was a further thirty kilometres to the south. She kept that world at a mental arm's-length as much as she could. This was her world. Every doorway framed a story for her – some good, some not so good – and the faces that peered out of those doors, or walked the sidewalks, were her intimates. When she and Andrew split up, she felt lonesome and bereft, but the feeling only lasted a while. And then, as if the marriage had been a caul in her eye, she saw her true life-partner in front of her, and it was this place.

  She pulled up to the curb beside Ladyman's and put her cap back on. Inside the café, the counterman, Dale Varney, turned the moment he saw her and poured a cup of coffee. 'Your mother still starving you?'

  'To death,' she replied.

  'Toasted western?'

  'Please, Dale.'

  She pulled a copy of the Toronto Sun toward her along the countertop and took in the front page. Some giant baseball player had admitted to using steroids. Really – you mean you don't look like a firetruck from guzzling raw eggs, pal? She sipped the coffee and leafed through the paper. Nothing of interest, and of course, nothing local. You needed a gruesome murder in the middle of Main Street to make it into the Toronto papers. In these parts, the paper came out only twice a week, but everything in it counted. Who was born, who had died, what happened in the county courts, what shocking speeds certain cars on certain country roads were caught going. Her name and the names of her officers were standard fare in the pages of the Westmuir Record; it came with the territory. Any crime reported in the county had her imprimatur on it (or her deputy Ray Greene's), and a quote from the Port Dundas OPS meant that what you were reading was true, was vetted. It was as much a responsibility as policing was, but it had different rules. Hazel had made it clear to her corps that any media requests came through her, and once she agreed to speak, or to let someone speak, to a reporter, she got final cut on the quotes. It wasn't exactly tampering, but her office was the only outlet for the bona fides. So the Record played by the rules. And when she asked the paper – as she did from time to time – to hold back something of what they'd learned about a certain situation, or to delay publishing a detail or two, they complied. Because they were neighbours and friends to everyone who walked the streets of the various townships their newspaper covered, they knew everyone affected by a crime, or involved in one. Their first vested interest was their own community, the second was newspaper sales. Hazel liked living in a place where certain priorities still held.

  Dale brought her sandwich, and she tore into it. It was hot and salty, with sweet red pepper hidden in the folds. Her mother would kill her if she knew, but at least now, she would have the energy to get to lunch. Her mother was giving her protein and fibre. That's what they put into kibble, she thought.

  She paid Dale and got back into the car, drove halfway up the rest of Main Street to Porter Street and turned right. There, set back from the corner a little, was the Port Dundas police detachment. Her men and women covered the front line from Dublin in the south to Fort Leonard in the north, and from Georgian Bay to Temakamig – in other words, the entirety of Westmuir County, an area totalling 1,100 square kilometres. There were community policing bureaus in many of the larger towns of the county, but for anything major – murder, armed robbery, aggravated assault – the Port Dundas PD was called in. Her officers could make it to most parts of their catchment in under an hour, although many of the larger communities of Westmuir County were within a half-hour drive. They were well situated even if they weren't well staffed: she had only twelve front-liners – eight provincial constables and four sergeants leading the platoons – and two detectives including herself. (They'd been three, but DC Hunter had retired in the summer. She knew how hopeless it would be to try and get him replaced.) The Port Dundas detachment was generally regarded the best-run station in the region, despite its lack of an official CO. The phrase 'copes admirably' was frequently used in connection with them.

  She went around the back and parked in her spot. The sign said, Parking for Inspector of Police Only, not her name, like some of the other signs. Six years in the role, but she was still (and still thought of herself as) the interim commanding.

  Detective Sergeant Raymond Greene was standing in her doorway the moment she went into her office. Greene liked to dress the part: beige mackintosh, shiny black shoes, a black homburg. He pushed himself off the frame and came toward her. He looked tense. 'Why can't you get a cellphone, Skip?'

  'I don't like cellphones, Ray. It means people can reach me whenever they want.'

  'Exactly,' he said.

  Melanie Cartwright, her assistant, came out of her office farther down the hall. 'Detective Inspector, I have a message for you from the community office in Kehoe.'

  'River or Glen?'

  'River.'

  'Can this wait?' asked Greene. 'I think I have dibs.' He gave them both a toothy smile.

  'I'm touched, Ray. Is it Ken Lonergan again?'

  Cartwright nodded. She turned to Greene. 'He wants permission to shoot a cougar.'

  He smiled at Hazel. 'He's not talking about you, is he?'

  'Watch it, Ray.'

  'Sorry.'

  'Melanie, tell him to talk to someone in Parks and Rec, please. I can't authorize a posse to kill a cat. He knows that.' Cartwright nodded and disappeared back into her office. 'What is it, Ray?'

  'Jamieson got a call from Bob Chandler out in Hoxley. He told him he'd been calling his mo
ther all morning and there's no answer.'

  'So why is he still in Hoxley? It's only twenty minutes.' Ray shrugged. 'Fine, then why is PC Jamieson still here?'

  'Well, you've known Mrs Chandler for ... and I just thought—'

  'Fine.' She strode partway down the hall. 'Melanie, I'm going back out. If Ken calls again, you tell him that shooting cats is a felony today. I don't want him wandering down the middle of Kehoe River with a pistol like some cockeyed Wyatt Earp, okay?'

  'Got it,' said Cartwright.

  'We'll take your car,' said Hazel.

  'You have diced ham on your name tag.'

  She plucked the offending meat off her chest and put it in her mouth. 'Go,' she said.

  3

  Saturday, 13 November, 10:45 a.m.

  Robert Chandler sat slumped forward onto his mother's kitchen table, his head in his arms. Detective Inspector Micallef laid her hand on his forearm and squeezed it. In the room just beyond, she heard the hiss and squawk of police radios and the opening and closing of the front door. It was the morning shift and constables Cassie Jenner and Adrian Ashton had come to the call. Sergeant Renald and Provincial Constable Kraut Fraser, two of their three trained Scene of Crime Officers, were also present.

  'You say you spoke with her around lunchtime yesterday, Bob?'

  'I was going to come by in the evening, but I called to cancel. I had too much work to do last night.'

  'Did she say she had any plans herself?'

  He lifted his head off the table and ran the side of his face against his shoulder. 'When did you know my mother to have plans, Hazel? If she was out of this house, it was with me or Gail. Otherwise she was here, watching the television or reading her magazines. That was her life.'

  'Do you think she might have come into contact with someone you don't know? Maybe even over the phone? Maybe in a waiting room somewhere?'

  'If she did,' said Robert Chandler, 'then she didn't say anything to me about it.' His eyes were wild, moving back and forth over the table as if the blank surface could reveal something to him. 'She was just a peaceful lady, you know that. Biding her time, trying not to be trouble to anyone. I can't believe this,' he said, laying his arms out on the tabletop. 'Who would want to hurt my mother? Who would do this?'