Children in the Morning

by Anne Emery

  (Monty)

  When I got back to the office after my conversation with Kyle on Tuesday, I called Beau Delaney at work and then reached him at home, and ordered him to come see me. Now.

  When he came in and closed the door, I gestured for him to sit. He kept his eyes on me as he sat down. I didn’t waste time.

  “I’ve just received some disturbing information.” Delaney blanched, but did not speak. His reaction made me wonder just how many disturbing bits of information might be out there. “It’s about Corbett Reeves.”

  Delaney swallowed and looked down at his hands. He tried to sound bored, but could not quite pull it off: “Yes, what about him?”

  “He was selling access to your family!”

  “As I said to you during the trial, things didn’t work out with Corbett.”

  “Didn’t work out? What if there’s another trial? What if the Crown appeals and is successful, and we’re in court again, and Corbett Reeves gets another chance to insinuate himself into the proceedings, and into your life? Maybe as a Crown witness. What’s he going to say?” I leaned across the desk towards him. “This Corbett took money from disadvantaged children in return for a promise of a ride in your Mercedes bus, and he squeezed them for more money with the promise of a chance to join the family as foster children. Held out the hope that they could have a loving mother and father and a beautiful home and brothers and sisters and a dog and a cat and who knows what else? They could buy into this happy future by paying a few hundred dollars to your foster son at the time, Corbett Reeves! And you can be sure the kids he shook down got the money from criminal activity because there is no other way they could have come up with it. They could have been caught and charged with theft, and had a whole new nightmare forced upon them. I know for a fact one of the kids got into trouble after giving Corbett money to run away. And you tell me ‘things didn’t work out’? What do you have to say for yourself, Beau? Somehow I suspect you would have reacted quite strongly when you got wind of this. Now, what the fuck happened with this kid Corbett Reeves?”

  “There was a blow-up.”

  “Between you and him.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did it get physical?”

  A hesitation, then: “No.”

  “Why do I find that hard to believe?”

  “I don’t give a shit what you believe.”

  “Yes, you do. You want me to believe you were at the top of the stairs with Peggy when she died and yet you had nothing to do with her death! I think there’s something going on in the background here. It has me spooked and I think it has you spooked too.” He glared at me, fury in his eyes. “And I think the confrontation with Corbett did get physical.” I could almost see the effort he made to compose his features into an expression of unconcern.

  “If you call pushing the kid to get him out of my way ‘physical,’ then it was physical. If you heard anything more than that, if Corbett has been spinning tales, all I can say is: consider the source. So get over this stuff about Corbett Reeves. What matters is that I didn’t kill my wife, intentionally or accidentally. Got it, Monty? Now stay focused on that fact and on how you’re going to counter the Crown’s factum if they do appeal. I don’t think they have any grounds, but that hasn’t stopped them in the past. And if it does happen, I’ll expect another superb defence and another acquittal. Now, if you have nothing positive to offer here today, I’ll be on my way, so I can have a bit of peace now that I’m back with my family again.”

  I had no intention of getting over Corbett Reeves. And I had a lead to his whereabouts. Kyle had mentioned a Mrs. Victory, or Vickery, a relative who used to visit Corbett in Shelburne. She apparently lived in the Annapolis Valley. It didn’t take long to find a few Vickerys, and to narrow the search down to one: Alice Vickery, of Bridgetown. So the day after my confrontation with Beau, as soon as I got away from the office, I was headed west on Highway 101, and it took me an hour and a half to get to Bridgetown. I pulled up at the given address, and saw a big blue Queen Anne–style house with a high corner tower and a wraparound porch.

  Mrs. Vickery greeted me on the porch and invited me inside. Her thinning white hair was held together with a number of hairpins. Despite the mild June weather, her trembling hands held a black wool cardigan closed over her wasted body. She led me to the front parlour, where we sat facing each other on Victorian loveseats.

  “So. Mr. Collins. How can I help you? Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “Sure. Thank you.”

  She got up, painfully, and went to the kitchen. The tea must already have been on, because she was back in about two minutes with the tray. I took my cup and thanked her.

  “Now. You’re here about Corbett? Where is he?”

  “I’m not sure, Mrs. Vickery. As I explained on the phone, Corbett appeared in the courtroom during Mr. Delaney’s trial. I don’t know where he is now.”

  “Oh! Well, now, he lived with the Delaney family for a while last year, spring to fall, and years before that, too. A very wealthy family, Corbett told me. Apparently, they relied on Corbett to help keep things running smoothly in a household full of children. He was indispensable to them. It’s a shame he had to leave.”

  “Right. I was never clear on why he had to leave . . .”

  “The jealousy and resentment, from what I hear. Corbett is so gifted, really. Athletic, intelligent, talented. Not everyone has those gifts. It is my understanding that some of the children in the Delaney home had various difficulties, handicaps, unfortunate backgrounds, that sort of thing. It would be quite natural, I suppose, for them to resent a boy like Corbett, with his good looks and his robust health and abilities. The situation just became impossible for Corbett.”

  “I see.”

  “But he’ll always have a home in this house, as long as I’m here anyway! My husband and I never had any children, so we were overjoyed when Community Services found us all those years ago, and asked us if we could take in this grand-nephew we had never met. We didn’t even know our niece had a baby. She hasn’t been living in Nova Scotia since she was a child, so we had lost contact with her completely. But we certainly had the space for Corbett when he arrived. He pretty well has the third floor to himself whenever he’s here. The whole area up there is one big room, with a magnificent view of the Annapolis River. I haven’t been up there in dogs’ years, myself. Like the basement, it’s out of my range now. I’m not good on stairs. You can go on up, if you wish.”

  “Maybe I will in a minute, thanks. Tell me a bit more about Corbett. What is he like?”

  “He’s a sensitive boy, a very trusting child. There are always people who will take advantage of a young person like that. He got in with some ruffians here. I never met them, thank goodness, probably because I go to bed so early and these juvenile delinquents would be a bunch of night crawlers! My daughter came for a visit from Calgary, and she discovered that some of my things were missing. Silver, my husband’s cameras, some foreign currency, and other items I had stored in the basement. I can’t get down those stairs now, with my hip. So I didn’t realize the things were gone. I asked Corbett if he knew anything about it. He said he would look into it. Turned out these companions of his had helped themselves to our family heirlooms! Corbett was mortified. He did his best to track the items down and get them back, but it was too late. He came to me practically in tears. ‘I’m sorry, Auntie Alice, I can’t get those things back. But I promise you I’ll never see those guys again.’ And he was as good as his word. He never saw them again.”

  He never saw them in the first place, because they didn’t exist. To Mrs. Vickery, I said: “What else can you tell me about him? How far along is he in school?”

  “Well, now, school. You know what the schools are like. Not everybody fits in. So he didn’t get the best of grades. But there are different kinds of intelligence, aren’t there? Corbett is an extremely bright youngs
ter. He spent a lot of time here, studying on his own. He’s very interested in history, which delighted my husband, George, when he was alive. George taught European history at Acadia till he retired, and we came back here. His area of specialty was Germany in the 1930s and 40s — the war and what led up to it. George had been retired for a good many years, so he loved having the young boy around. He had a real student in Corbett! Oh, I miss him. I miss them both. My husband died two years ago. And Corbett, well, he comes and goes. I hope he comes back soon. You go ahead, up to his room. He did some painting up there. I hope he did a good job! Maybe you’ll see something that will give me an idea of his plans, or when he might be back.”

  So I excused myself and headed up the two flights of stairs to Corbett’s aerie. If I had expected black walls and heavy metal posters in the teenage boy’s room, I had it all wrong. Everything was white. The walls, the painted wood floor, the furniture and linens. And, most emphatically, all the people whose images adorned the walls. Without exception, the pictures he had tacked up were of white folks with blond hair and blue eyes. Some were actors and actresses who looked familiar. Others I did not recognize, with one notable exception: SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. Not only was there a photo of the ss man with a little biography taped underneath it, there were chapters ripped from history books, giving all kinds of details about Heydrich. I flipped through the pages and shook my head.

  A small portable television and VCR were shoved in a corner, with a stack of World War Two movies piled precariously on top. Then I found a homemade comic book with a superhero — more like a human killing machine — with an ss uniform and a face and haircut that looked a lot like those of Corbett Reeves.

  When I returned to the parlour, I told Mrs. Vickery I had not seen anything that would offer a clue to Corbett’s intentions, at least not his travel plans. We chatted about him for a few minutes more, then I thanked her and said goodbye.

  “Corbett Reeves is the blond beast,” I reported to Brennan that night at the Midtown.

  “The boy reads Nietzsche?” Brennan said.

  “Doesn’t have to. He has a twentieth-century role model who upheld the ideal of the blond Aryan warrior, and carried it through to its logical conclusion.”

  “This would be someone from the Third Reich, I presume.”

  “Reinhard Heydrich. Corbett has a collage of Heydrich memorabilia — photos of him in his ss uniform, excerpts from books about him, how he was taunted and mocked by the other schoolboys for — get this — his high-pitched voice, and whatever other flaws they picked up on, how he rose in the ‘racially pure’ ss and ran the Gestapo for Himmler, how he helped plan the ‘final solution’ in which the Jews would be wiped out. A Nazi so feared he made other Nazis tremble at the knee. Did you know Heydrich was the product of a very cultured, musical family?”

  “That sounds familiar. He played the violin, didn’t he?”

  “Right. The father was an opera singer. He sang Wagner — no surprise there. They even gave Heydrich the middle name of Tristan. They had a lovely house, a life of culture. And the son grew up to be a cold and murderous Nazi.”

  “Well, Germany was one of the most civilized countries in the world when all this happened.”

  “And the Nazis will always have their admirers. Like our Corbett. I found a comic book he created, with himself as a blond killer in an ss-style uniform.”

  “What got him on to Heydrich?”

  “The great-uncle, dead now, taught German history at Acadia University. When Corbett lived there years ago, the professor used to tell him all about the war, the Third Reich, the Holocaust. He showed him the materials he had collected for his classes on the subject. He didn’t expect the child to become a fan!”

  “Do we know that? Maybe he did. Maybe the uncle was a fan himself. And Corbett seems to be exactly the type to become fascinated with the Nazis.”

  “Mrs. Vickery had no insight into the kid at all. You should have heard the poor old soul going on about him. ‘Corbett is very bright, you know.’ And: ‘Corbett does not like the coarser things in life,’ she told me when I was leaving. ‘He needs comfort, a certain amount of refinement. He always loved this house, the furnishings . . . I cannot bear to think of him living in poverty, in squalor.’ He was robbing the old lady blind, and she didn’t have a clue! That young fellow, Kyle, told us Corbett used to brag to the inmates in Shelburne about living in a big house in the posh part of Halifax. He obviously thinks that’s the style to which he is entitled to become accustomed.”

  “I’d say the Delaneys were well rid of him.”

  “And I wish they’d stayed rid of him. I don’t like the fact that he’s out there, circling around us, with accusations against Beau.”

  “What sort of accusations?”

  I shook my head and raised a “don’t ask” hand in his direction.

  Then I said: “I want to find Corbett. Either that or receive a message from a higher power, assuring me that Corbett has found true happiness on the other side of the continent, and has no plans to travel east ever again. The latter option is as fantastical as Corbett Reeves’s sense of entitlement in this world. So I guess I’m stuck with option one, track him down and try to determine what kind of a threat he might pose to Delaney.”

  “How do you intend to find him?”

  “I’ll start with you. Do you still have the phone numbers of those kids, Mitchell and Kyle?”

  “I think I know Mitchell’s number, but I’ll check when I get home to make sure I have it right. I’ll give you a call.”

  Brennan gave me Mitchell’s number and, through him, I found Kyle and, after a bit of rigmarole with him, I found out where Corbett Reeves was staying. So, the following morning, Corbett and I were face to face outside his current place of residence, a group home in Dartmouth. He told his story in his high, grating voice.

  “Beau took me out to the woods. Somewhere outside the city, off the Bedford Highway. It’s got some name like poison. Hemlock Forest or something.”

  “Hemlock Ravine?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “When was this?”

  “I don’t know. Well, the leaves were red and yellow, so fall time. He took me along a path and then into the trees. There was nobody around. He told me off for getting money from all those little losers who thought I was going to give them a ride in the Merc, or get them into the family. And some other stuff I did.”

  “What other stuff?”

  “None of your business. So then I badmouthed him back, and he picked me up and practically choked me, then threw me down on the ground. He was going to kill me!”

  “And yet, here you are, alive and well.”

  “Only because he’s chickenshit.”

  “He was afraid of you, is that what you’re saying? He’s over a foot taller than you, and he weighs twice as much.”

  His face flushed, and he put his hands on my chest and tried to shove me away. “You fuck off! People who laugh at me don’t end up laughing very long.”

  “All right, all right, settle down and tell me your story.”

  “Bet you didn’t know Delaney wears special shoes!”

  What had I heard about that? It sounded familiar, but I didn’t let on. “No, I can’t say the subject ever came up.”

  “It wouldn’t ever come up! He freaks out if he thinks somebody might find out. They have things in them to make him taller!”

  I remembered it then. Sergeant Morash had told me. Well, I wasn’t about to get into it with Corbett. “Let’s be serious here. Why do you say Delaney was going to kill you?”

  “Because he told me!”

  The boy was becoming more and more agitated, and in my own way, so was I.

  “What did he say to you?”

  “He said: ‘I know what you are. I’m going to send you to hell.’”

 
“Corbett, if Delaney was going to kill you, why do you suppose he didn’t just flatten you with one big fist? Why all this chat leading up to it?”

  “Maybe he was chicken, and he was trying to talk himself into it. Trying to psych himself up.”

  “What did he mean by saying ‘I know what you are’?”

  “There are two kinds of people in this world. Did you know that, Monty?”

  “What kinds of people, Corbett?”

  “Masters and slaves.”

  “I see.”

  “Ever hear of the master race?”

  “Oh, come on, Corbett.”

  “I told you, people who make fun of me end up not laughing in the end!”

  “Are you saying you have hurt people who have made fun of you?”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. It’s none of your business.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  He studied me for a moment. “What are you? Dutch or something?”

  “Irish and English.”

  “Oh yeah? Well . . . English might not be too bad.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “That’s what Beau meant about me. I’m the blond warrior type, and I could cause a lot of death and destruction if I wanted to.”

  I wanted to laugh out loud again at this preposterous child, but I kept it in. “Is this what you were going to say if you had taken the stand in Delaney’s trial?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not? Didn’t you want to take revenge on him?”

  “I told the TV and the court that he didn’t do it.”

  “You said he ‘didn’t kill.’ Maybe that meant he didn’t kill you. But you say he threatened to. Is that what your evidence was going to be?”

  “I was going to keep him out of jail.”

  “How were you going to do that?”

  “By telling them he was with me that night.”