A Chill Rain in January

by LR Wright

  “She saved the kid’s life, you know.”

  “That’s what I heard.” She looked up at him. “You look awful. If you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “I don’t mind.” He went down the hall to his office, pulling off his jacket. He sat behind his desk and rubbed his face with both hands. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” he muttered.

  There was a knock at the door. “What is it?”

  She opened the door. “Bernie Peters is here to see you. Right here behind me,” she added quickly.

  “No, Isabella,” he said wearily. “Please. Send her away.” Isabella vanished, and a small, nut-brown person materialized in his doorway.

  “Howdyedo,” she said, sticking out her hand.

  Her face looked like crunched-up tissue paper. He’d never seen so many lines and creases.

  He floundered to his feet and shook her hand. “Karl Alberg.”

  “She says you’re wanting somebody to do for you.”

  He was pretty sure her hair was dyed. It was an unnaturally brilliant shade of brown. She wore it in tiny curls, covered by a hairnet.

  “Well, I was, yes…”

  She wore a white uniform under a waist-length brown jacket. On her feet were white shoes, the kind worn by nurses and waitresses. From her bony wrist dangled a pea-green purse.

  “Well, are you? Or ain’t you?” She peered at him with bright eyes, small and black.

  Alberg studied her for a moment, then sat down behind his desk. “I have to ask you some questions.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Have you got anything against unmarried men?”

  “Nope.”

  “Or cats?”

  “Nope.”

  “How about police officers?”

  “Police officers saved my bacon more times than I can count.”

  “Really?” he said hopefully. “Sit down, sit down, Ms. Peters.”

  “I don’t mind if I do.”

  “Good. Now. Go on.”

  “I was a married woman for a period of time.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “But I picked myself a bad apple.” Alberg gave a sympathetic cluck. “He used to wallop me.”

  “Was this here? In Sechelt?”

  “Nowhere else.”

  “Huh. How long did you stick it out?”

  “Seventeen lickings he gave me, before we finally got him put away.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I don’t hold with blasphemy.”

  “Sorry. Where is he now?”

  “Nineteen seventy-five it was. He’s out by now, of course. But he dispatched himself well away from here, you can bet your boots on that.”

  She sat with her back straight, her feet together, her green purse upright on her lap. He had absolutely no idea how old she was.

  “Well. I do need some help, all right.”

  “I could come Wednesday afternoons or Monday mornings.”

  “How about Wednesday afternoons.”

  She stood up. “Done,” she said. “I’ll be there one o’clock on the dot through till five. She’ll tell me how to get to your place, the typer out there.” Again, she stuck out her hand. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance,” she said.

  Chapter 54

  AT THE END of the day Alberg went home, and as he drove he thought about Kenny, now safely delivered to the house of his friend Roddy, to await the arrival of his grandparents. And he thought about Ramona, too.

  And about Zoe Strachan, twice an arsonist. Responsible for three deaths. Probably four, if she’d shoved her brother down the stairs.

  A late-winter rain had arrived during the afternoon, and it continued to fall, sometimes heavy, sometimes light, as Alberg drove. The wind had picked up, too, and he made his way more slowly than usual along the highway between Sechelt and Gibsons, watching for tree branches on the road. There was very little traffic on the highway.

  It was dark when he got home. He’d forgotten to leave a light on in his house, and it looked dead, he thought, sitting there on the side of the hill: bleak, inert, unoccupied, and dead, a corpse of a house.

  But it wasn’t unoccupied, he reminded himself. And therefore it certainly wasn’t dead.

  He pulled up next to the somewhat rickety fence, upon which great masses of hydrangea bushes leaned, their uncut blooms now a brown-gold color, as though winter had rusted them. He walked up the cracked sidewalk to the front door, considering again whether he ought to try to purchase his house instead of continuing to rent it; or maybe he should start looking for something else to buy. This damn place was old and badly cared for; it was probably falling apart around him.

  Ramona Orlitzki had been a hero; Alberg wondered if she’d known that, before she died.

  Inside, he called for the gray cat and heard a squeaky meow in response. He turned on the hall light and saw her get up from the sofa in the living room, slowly, stretching first her front legs and then her back legs, yawning. He’d been very pleased when she and her kitten, who was now an adult cat, had first begun sleeping in the house instead of in the cardboard box in the sunporch. It was good to have other creatures living in the house with him. Neither of them had names; he called the older one Cat and the younger one Number Two. She was black, with white front paws and white on her chest and smeared across her mouth. She was curled up on a chair in his bedroom.

  He fed the cats, talking to them as he did so, and he wondered if Zoe Strachan had liked animals. He looked into the blunt, triangular faces of his cats and thought that these creatures were more present, more substantive, than Zoe Strachan had been.

  No of course she hadn’t liked animals. She hadn’t liked people, either. He wondered what she had liked; there must have been something…

  He felt like calling his daughters. But today he didn’t want to be distracted; he wanted to be understood.

  He thought about calling Maura. But she was probably out with her damned accountant.

  He turned off the lights and sat in his living room for a while, in the wingback chair by the window, with his feet up on the hassock. He left the curtains open and sat there quietly, watching the rain falling, and the wind shaking the hydrangea bushes.

  Soon he didn’t want to share his cheerless state with anyone, after all. It seemed appropriate to overload for a while on melancholy.

  He heard a car, and Cassandra’s Hornet appeared, and pulled up behind his Oldsmobile. Alberg swore softly under his breath. He watched, feeling surly, as she got out of her car and looked from his white Oldsmobile to the darkened house. He could tell that she wasn’t sure what she should do. He began to feel guilty. But he didn’t move to turn on a light. She hesitated beside her car, the driver’s door still open. Then she slammed it shut and walked swiftly toward the house.

  Alberg got out of his chair.

  “Hi,” he said, when he’d opened the door. Her hair had rain-sparkles all over it. Her cheeks were flushed.

  “I’ve just taken my mother home,” said Cassandra. “Bag and baggage. I’ve come to take you to Victoria.”

  Alberg felt a sudden prickling at the backs of his eyes. He shut them tight, and reached for her, and wrapped his arms around her. “What a hell of a good idea,” he said.

  Read on for the first chapter of the next “Karl Alberg” mystery, Fall from Grace. For more on L.R. Wright and other “Foreign” mysteries from Felony & Mayhem Press, please visit our website: FelonyAndMayhem.com

  ON THE SUNSHINE Coast that year, summertime was long and hot and dusty, and the world smelled of raspberries and roses.

  For weeks the sky remained utterly clear, and the air was hot and still.

  The waters that lapped at the western shoreline were such a deep blue they looked as if they might stain the skin. The nearer islands in the Strait of Georgia were etched fine and clear, every tree and every rock sharp-edged; the islands somewhat farther away were soft dark shapes against the sky; the most distant islands were purple shadows in the far-reaching sea.

  Ol
d-timers said they’d never seen a summer like it. The trees by the roadside were heavy with dust thrown up from the gravel shoulders. Garden-watering was limited to every second day, and people weren’t wasting it on their lawns, which were rapidly becoming brown.

  Roses thrived in the heat. So did marigolds. All sorts of flowers thrived in it. Some people did, too.

  That summer was an aberration. Impatiens, fuchsia, begonias both fibrous and tuberous—all were wilted, weakened, disabled by the relentless heat of the astonishingly tropical sun.

  Some people were, too.

  On a Monday in early July, Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg pulled his white Oldsmobile into the fenced lot behind the Sechelt Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment. He left the windows open when he climbed out of the car. He moved slowly and cautiously, but the heat pounced on him anyway, and swept over his body in a suffocating wave. As he plodded across the gravel and around to the front of the building he felt like he was wearing entirely too many clothes. A pair of pants, a shirt, underwear, socks and shoes: it didn’t sound like much. The pants were made of cotton. The saleswoman had told him they’d be cool because cotton was a fabric that breathed. Alberg had never conceived of clothes as breathing.

  The pants might be cool but they wrinkled awfully fast. The shirt was cotton, too; everything he had on today was breathing. If he listened carefully he could probably hear it. The shirt he wore had long sleeves. Alberg hated short-sleeved shirts, except for T-shirts. There was something unseemly about the way the sleeves flapped around. He didn’t mind T-shirts because their sleeves gripped his biceps firmly. But T-shirts weren’t appropriate for work, he felt. So he wore long-sleeved shirts to work, and rolled up the cuffs a couple of times, casually.

  Isabella had found a fan somewhere, the kind that rotates, and Alberg got a whoosh of cool air in his face as he opened the door. The fan sat on the counter in front of Isabella’s desk.

  “Good morning to you,” she sang.

  Isabella Harbud, the detachment’s middle-aged receptionist and secretary, was the only person Alberg knew who was actually relishing the weather. For once she was coming to work wearing only one layer of clothing. Her mane of graying auburn hair was pulled back into a ponytail and her face glowed with goodwill.

  “Lookee here,” she said, pointing to a bunch of flowers on the end of the counter.

  “Very nice,” said Alberg. “Are they from your garden?” He hoped it wasn’t her intention to try to put them in his office. Isabella frequently thought of things to do for him that he didn’t want done.

  “They’re from Mavis Furley,” said Isabella.

  Alberg looked at the flowers for edification.

  “She got her car stolen,” said Isabella. “Remember? We found it for her. Corporal Sanducci found it. Abandoned on a logging road. None the worse for wear. Remember?”

  “I remember,” said Alberg.

  “This bouquet,” said Isabella, “is an expression of her gratitude.” She waited. “My lord,” she cried, exasperated, “hasn’t anybody ever given you flowers before?”

  Alberg stared at the flowers. He noticed a card, and took his reading glasses out of his shirt pocket. He put on the glasses and read the message on the card. Nodding to himself, he put the card back. “Very nice,” he said, and leaned close to the flowers so he could sniff their fragrance. “Very nice.” He put his glasses away, gave the counter a brisk slap, and ambled down the hall, smiling at nothing.

  The smile faded when he opened the door to his office. It was stifling in there, and upon his desk sat a pile of personnel forms that he’d managed to put out of his mind overnight.

  He pulled up the venetian blinds and shoved the window open as wide as it would go. He left his office door open and sat behind his desk, staring gloomily at the paperwork that awaited him.

  After a while he called Cassandra Mitchell and they arranged to meet later that day. When he hung up Alberg thought about Cassandra, about him and Cassandra, and wondered what that was, anyway—him-and-Cassandra.

  His ex-wife was getting married, on the long weekend in August. In Calgary. To an accountant.

  Alberg pulled out a desk drawer, rested his feet on it, put his hands behind his head and studied the photograph of his daughters that hung on the wall. It was time to take a new one. This one had to be at least six, seven years old. Diana was staying with him for the summer and in a couple of weeks her older sister, Janey, would be joining them for a few days. He could take their picture on a boat, maybe. But he didn’t have a boat. He could rent one. Except they didn’t like boats. They’d grown up in inland places and were distrustful of the ocean.

  Alberg smoothed his hair, pulled in his gut, and tried not to let himself get depressed. It was so damned hot, though.

  He ran his hands over his cheeks and jaw and considered quitting the Force and growing a beard. His hair was getting thin on top, he was pretty sure. It had some gray in it, too. But that wasn’t noticeable, because his hair was blond. If he grew a beard, though, what color would it be? Blond? Gray? Or something else entirely? He kind of liked the idea that it would grow in a different color entirely.

  Yeah, he thought; he’d buy a boat, grow a red beard and retire. He’d spend his days sailing up and down the coast; wearing his new beard, a seaman’s hat and cutoffs. He’d be a character. People would write books about him.

  “Knock knock,” said Sid Sokolowski, peering around Alberg’s open door.

  With an effort, Alberg managed not to drop his hands, put his feet on the floor and try to look busy. “Come in,” he said.

  “How’re you doing with the evaluations?” said the sergeant, maneuvering his considerable bulk into the office.

  “Fine, fine,” said Alberg briskly. He pulled his glasses case out of his shirt pocket. “What’re you up to today, Sid?” he asked, peering at the pile of forms on his desk.

  “Couple of B and E’s,” said the sergeant. “Otherwise it’s pretty quiet.”

  “It’s the heat.” Alberg stood up, putting the glasses case back in his pocket. “I’m going into town, have a coffee, touch a few bases here and there.”

  “Staff,” said Sid Sokolowski, but Alberg was already out the door, heading for the reception area.

  “Staff,” said the sergeant, lumbering close at Alberg’s heels.

  “I’m going into town,” Alberg told Isabella, who was just hanging up the phone.

  “You want to look after this?” she said, handing him a piece of paper on which she’d scribbled a message.

  Alberg took it from her, held it at arm’s length. “A ‘death threat’?”

  “That’s what the man said.”

  “Here, Staff, I’ll do it,” said Sokolowski, his hand outstretched. “You better get at those evaluations, eh?”

  Alberg looked at him with dignity. “Of course, Sid. Of course I’ll get at them. Just as soon as I’ve dealt with”—he peered again at the piece of paper—“with Mr. Ferguson’s complaint.” He gave Sokolowski a beatific smile, and left.

  A few minutes later, Alberg drove off a gravel road, parked next to a pair of nonfunctioning gas pumps and climbed out of his car. He slammed the door, fanning at the cloud of dust created by his arrival. His skin was sore. It felt thin and insufficient, as if the sun were weakening it.

  Alberg thought about the RCMP volunteers who’d gone to Namibia. That kind of adventure, despite the heat of the African sun, would be good for a man, he thought. Therapeutic. He stood next to his car and looked around him. He felt the heat and listened to the grasshoppers, and he smelled the fragrance of dry grass—he might as well be in Africa, he thought, and wished passionately that he were. Adventure, that’s what I need, he thought; I need an adventure.

  There and then he decided to buy himself a sailboat. Right away. Right now. To hell with waiting until he retired.

  He walked toward the house, thinking about his boat. He might get a Grampian 26. Or possibly a San Juan 24. There was a nice-looking CS 27 for s
ale at the Secret Cove marina. Or maybe he should have an Alberg 30, he thought, smiling to himself; he lifted his head and found himself staring through glass at a woman, who was holding a watering can and staring back at him. He stopped, confused, his mind for a moment not registering the fact that he was looking through an entire wall made of glass. Then he saw that the woman was standing among a vast array of plants. The place was a greenhouse, then.

  A door slammed, and a man appeared from behind the building. He saw Alberg and shouted, “Get the hell off my property.”

  Alberg pulled out his notebook and flipped it open. “Are you Herman Ferguson?” he said.

  “I’m the owner of this property, that’s who I am,” said the man, waving his arms. “And I want you the hell off it.” He was about five eight and a hundred and seventy-five pounds, and he wore jeans, a sleeveless white undershirt, somewhat grimy, and suspenders. His feet were clad in hiking boots.

  “I’m Staff Sergeant Alberg, Mr. Ferguson. From the RCM Police.”

  The man stopped waving his arms. “Well how the hell’s a person supposed to know that when you got no uniform on?” He added grumpily, “It’s about damn time you got here. Yeah, Ferguson, that’s me. Come around back here and see for yourself.”

  Alberg glanced again at the greenhouse. The woman was bent over, watering a small tree. He saw that all the plants were in pots, although the floor of the building seemed to be dirt. Behind the woman, a child entered from a doorway, through which Alberg could see that the building wasn’t a greenhouse after all. “Interesting house,” he said, but Ferguson had vanished. Just then he appeared again, around the corner, gesturing impatiently at Alberg.

  The back of the house looked normal. There were a few windows, and two doors. The place stood in a clearing that was covered with brown grass. About fifty feet away the trees began, sweeping up the incline, foresting the mountain.

  In the shade of the trees, near the house, was a small, windowless shed. Farther away but still in shade was a collection of wire pens, each about five feet square. In each pen was a pair of animals. Alberg didn’t know much about animals. But a couple of them were foxes. And there were some raccoons, everybody knew what raccoons looked like. And in one of the pens, double-wired, so the chinks were smaller, there were a few squirrels. And Jesus, he thought, monkeys, too, little monkeys.