by Susan Calder
Paula set the glasses on the café table and caught a whiff of Walter’s acrid odour. “What about your smoking?”
“I’ll tell him I’ve given it up,” Walter said. “It’s no problem if I smoke outdoors.”
She glanced at his house, too close to hers if it blew up. Caspar Becker had smoked in bed.
Walter looked at her mother. “Is Paula taking you to Seniors’ Day at the Stampede grounds? Folks over sixty-five get in free. Don’t know if you qualify, Theda.” He flashed his smile with its two or three missing teeth. “The wife and I always go, but I can’t see her managing this year. Bad enough she missed the parade. First time in….”
Paula escaped inside. An advantage to Sam not turning up tonight would be an opportunity to give the fire and police reports a deeper reading.
* * *
Paula settled her mother on one of end of the sofa and herself with her laptop on the other. Her mother told her to turn up the television volume. To the tune of the Coronation Street theme Paula started to skim the police report. Becker’s next-door neighbour noticed flames and called Emergency at 2:03 a.m.…fire trucks arrived…Single point of origin…bedroom…No evidence of accelerant…Cause undetermined, most probably smoker’s material igniting combustible materials—
A commercial blasted from the TV. Her mother had dismissed Paula’s and Ron’s suggestions it might be time to consider hearing aids.
Paula studied the police photographs of Caspar Becker’s charred furniture. “I don’t understand hoarding.”
“It was hard enough for me to get you to take my soup tureen,” her mother said.
Both glanced at the china tureen standing alone in its wall unit cubicle.
“All it does is let your soup get cold,” Paula said. But she liked the tureen’s hand-painted scene of an English village near the town where her mother had grown up.
“We all hoard in different ways,” her mother said.
“Not me.”
“Some hold on to past hurts.”
“I don’t.”
“Your marriage fell apart, and you’re afraid this relationship with Sam will do the same.”
“Who wouldn’t with his history of commitment?” By his own admission Sam hadn’t lasted more than three years with any woman before he sabotaged the relationship. Another detail about him she’d have been better off not sharing with her mother.
“You chose him over a steadier man.”
“Are you saying I picked Sam so I’d have a reason to hold back?”
Her mother stared at the TV, not hearing or choosing to not hear.
“Did you learn that from Oprah or Dr. Phil?” Paula asked.
“Phil’s good background while I sort through my belongings. I wish you’d taken my teacups. The church didn’t get enough for them at the spring sale.”
“They aren’t dishwasher proof. Sam would never get his thumb in their dainty handles.” Assuming she went along with Sam’s desire that they expand her house and he move in.
Coronation Street characters popped up on the screen. In Paula’s view, she had gotten over her failed marriage as well as anyone could in six years. She’d consider the possibility of hoarded hurts later.
The police report included several photos of Caspar’s apartment. They showed a pile of chairs and video players lodged against the door to the interior stairwell that connected the three units. Caspar had knocked the items down in his failed effort to flee the blaze and get to Brendan’s or Florence’s apartment. Only his bedroom sustained fire damage. Burnt mattress, charred headboard and dresser. Soot blackened the walls and the paintings that might be pastoral scenes. Close-ups of the dresser and bed revealed strips of plastic and cloth clinging to toy vehicles, alarm clocks, a magnifying glass. The report noted these objects had been wrapped in multiple plastic bags and covered with clothing to create pillows. Somehow the investigators had determined this from the remains. What a firetrap.
A new e-mail chimed in. The adjuster originally assigned to the claim wrote: Thanks for taking this on and saving my sanity. I’m swamped with friends from out of town and still coping with the latest hail claims. You have no idea how hairy that’s been. When the cops recommended we reassign this to you, I knew it would be in excellent hands.
She might have been flattered by his compliment if she didn’t know this adjuster to be a tad arrogant and inclined to suck up. And yes, she had no notion about the hairy hail claims because the insurance companies had handled them in-house. No doubt the adjuster knew this and had stuck in the reference to needle her.
Another new e-mail. Mike’s transcript of his interview with Johnny. A commercial blared. Less than twenty minutes remained of her mother’s program. Paula had suggested they watch an old movie next. She skipped through the transcript’s preliminary questions to the ones about Johnny’s work.
Johnny: I live easy from June to September.
Detective Vincelli: The rest of the year?
Johnny: I do tourist-trap shows in the southern USA. Melodramas, shootouts.
So that’s where he got his idea for the parade stunt. Johnny added that he came to Calgary every summer to see his mother and hang out at his friend’s ranch. They rode horses, drank and played poker.
V: Isn’t summer the height of the tourist season in the US?
J: They replace me with college students.
V: Do you have a green card to work there?
J: These kinds of places don’t ask about that.
Johnny told Mike about his figure skating background. Despite his fall at the Olympic trials, he earned an alternate position on the national team and might have made it if someone had bowed out. He was surprised his mother didn’t break a competitor’s legs.
V: Is that a joke?
Mike wouldn’t appreciate levity in a case of suspicious death. If humour always carried a grain of truth, Florence Becker might have been the ultimate sports mother. Paula hoped Florence would return her call soon.
After the next commercial, Paula continued through Mike’s interview. From the Olympic trials, Johnny and Cynthia had joined a professional ice show. A wrenched knee derailed Johnny. Cynthia had lost her heart for skating. Both quit. Johnny found employment as a clown with Cirque du Soleil in Montreal, but he soon got fired him for improvising. The last straw was Johnny’s mooning the audience.
J: Everyone laughed. If you ask me, the choreographer was jealous I got the big applause for something that wasn’t his idea. From the Cirque he moved into USA stunt shows.
Mike shifted the questioning to Johnny’s relationship with his deceased uncle. Johnny admitted he hadn’t seen much of Caspar since he was a kid. He called Caspar a drifter, like him, except his uncle stayed home and didn’t drift anywhere. With Mike’s prompting, Johnny explained, his uncle had drifted into the family housecleaning business but did nothing to build it up, just kept it going until he and his parents retired. Johnny thought his grandparents felt sorry for Caspar.
V: Why?
The transcript noted a pause.
J: Caspar’s son. Pause noted. Adam, his only kid, died when he was ten years old.
Paula sat up. Johnny hadn’t mentioned Adam to her. The Coronation Street theme song drew the program to a close, but she couldn’t stop reading.
J: Adam and a friend were playing on the railway tracks. They didn’t hear the train coming. The friend leaped out of the way. Adam’s sneaker got caught on the track.
Paula’s eyes watered; her throat felt raw.
“What is it?” Her mother asked.
“Caspar Becker, the man who died in the fire. He lost a child.”
Her mother nodded, her lips slack. Her first child had been stillborn. She and Paula’s father had named him Stephen. Paula remembered visiting the cemetery and playing with Ron on a hill while their parents remained at the grave of a sibling they had never known. What thoughts had her parents shared there? Now her mother stared absently at the TV.
J: Adam’s death
crushed the family. That’s melodramatic, but…my parents divorced soon after. That wouldn’t be related, but I connected it in my child’s mind. My uncle and his wife blamed each other for Adam’s death. Caspar accused her of not keeping a proper eye on him. She blamed Caspar and his family for choosing to live in a neighbourhood near a train yard and encouraging Adam to take chances. Their divorce was definitely related to the death. I think, psychologically, my uncle ‘collected,’ as he called it, to fill the hole left by his wife and son.
That was sensitive of Johnny. Why did Mike dislike him so much and suspect him?
J: My grandparents shambled on. They tried filling their hole with Brendan, when he came along, and with the big house they bought to keep the family close and the hole from breaking open. None of that could replace Adam, their golden boy, the great promise for the family. But if Adam was so great, why did he choke? I mean, why didn’t he yank his foot from the track?
V: Could he have done that?
J: How would I know?
V: You brought it up.
J: You asshole.
V: Could he?
J: I’m not answering any more.
V: We aren’t finished yet.
J: I am, Motherfucker.
“Whew.” Paula looked over at her mother.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Paula said. “What movie do you want? Something light, I think.”
During their conversation on the deck Johnny had seemed easygoing, so taking-things-in-stride. Mike had hardly badgered him in the interview. Obviously Johnny was filled with resentment and had a real temper.
Chapter Five
A beefy teenage boy brandishing a sports bag tore out of the house and almost collided with Paula on the sidewalk. He galloped to a van that had pulled up to the curb.
“Kids,” Cynthia said to Paula from the doorway. “You must be the insurance adjuster?”
“Paula Savard.” She shook Cynthia Becker Hawryluk’s hand.
Cynthia had her brother’s turned-up nose. Despite her wedge heels she was a few inches shorter than Paula. Unlike Johnny, Cynthia had put on weight since her skating years. Easily forty pounds, Paula estimated from her recollection of the photo in the Becker hallway. Skin-tight capris emphasized Cynthia’s heavy thighs and calves. Layers of tops seemed designed to hide her thick waist. Tension creases around her eyes and mouth made her look older than forty-five.
Cynthia glanced at her split-level’s three-car garage. “I can’t wait until he can drive himself to soccer and hockey. Save me a lot of running around.” Inside she apologized for the mess. “I haven’t had time to clean, what with my uncle’s death and my mother staying with me.”
“Is Florence here?” Paula said. “I’d like to talk to her, too.”
“She moved back to the house last night.” Cynthia said ‘The House’ as though it were capitalized.
Paula stepped around a pile of tote bags. Cynthia’s entranceway would be gorgeous, with its dangling chandelier, if it weren’t for the jumble of shoes. Off the hall was a living room with a vaulted ceiling. Afghan blankets draped haphazardly over a sofa and too many chairs. Magazines sprawled on the floor.
The Saturday newspaper littered the kitchen island. An L-shaped counter along the walls was barely visible under the coffee maker, kettle, two toasters, blender, can opener, spice bottles, loaves of bread, apples and mixing bowls.
“Busy cooking this morning?” Paula asked.
“My daughter started to make some kind of health food and gave up. Want a coffee?”
“Love one.”
“Sugar or cream?”
“A little milk.”
Cynthia opened the fridge crammed with jars, containers and pots. “Whole, two percent, skim?”
Paula glimpsed jugs of each variety.
“My son goes through five or six glasses a day,” Cynthia said. “I try to coax him to drink the less fatty kind. My daughter, on the other hand…. Pour your own so you get the right amount.”
Cynthia settled on a kitchen chair. Paula sat across, looking out patio doors to a deck and yard with a trampoline.
“Do your kids like jumping?” Paula asked.
Cynthia swivelled around. “My daughter wanted that. It’s good cardio for her figure skating.”
“Is she serious about skating, like you and Johnny were?”
“That will depend on if she sticks with it. Kids these days have too many distractions.”
Paula agreed, hoping this helped put them both at ease. She took out her phone. “Johnny says you might have your uncle’s will.”
“My mother kept those. We inherit it all, my brothers and me.” Cynthia reached for a blueberry muffin from the plate on the table.
“I’m curious,” Paula said. “Why did your grandparents leave the entire property to your uncle rather than to him and his brother?”
Cynthia’s forehead wrinkles deepened. “We only found out about that after Dad died. What a shocker. Ma told us Dad had convinced his parents, years earlier, to give him his share of the inheritance in cash so he could blow it on a start-up business.”
“Did he?”
“Obviously, since there was no money in his estate, same as in Uncle Caspar’s.”
“How do you know Caspar left no money?”
“Ma’s paid the city taxes for the last couple of years because he couldn’t afford them.” Cynthia’s delicate nostrils flared. “Does his insurance policy cover replacement cost? Mine does.”
“Your uncle’s doesn’t, which is common for apartment buildings. For older ones like his, the premiums can be prohibitive.”
“That isn’t fair.” Cynthia crossed her arms over her chest. “What about the contents?”
“They also weren’t insured for replacement and will be settled with depreciation.”
“Humph.” Cynthia bit into the muffin.
“Did your uncle have a bank safety deposit box for items of value?”
“Ma would know. I doubt it.”
Florence, Caspar’s ex-sister-in-law, seemed to have had quite a hand in his business matters. Paula wanted to ask how Florence came to take over her former parent-in-laws’ apartment, but it wasn’t relevant to the insurance claim. “When was the last time you were in Caspar’s apartment? We’ll need details of his contents to draw up a list of items.”
“Gawd.” Cynthia took another bite of muffin and chewed. “My grandparents bought The House the year I married my first husband. That was in 1994. They renovated it into three separate units.
“They lived on the top floor, Caspar on the bottom and your father in the middle?”
“With his second wife and Brendan,” Cynthia said. “I’d go there to visit Dad. Later I brought my kids. They loved running up and down the stairs.”
“Between the apartments?”
“They called it the hidden staircase and spent half the time at Caspar’s playing hide-and-seek and eating cereal, which spoiled their dinner.”
Paula typed on the phone: hidden staircase. “Do you and the children still go there to see your mother?”
“I do sometimes. They’re at that age where they think they’re too old for family visiting.”
Paula eyed the muffins. The large blueberries were tempting, but the muffins looked store-bought, and she didn’t want to spoil her lunch. The coffee was stronger than she usually liked, but good.
“I understand your grandparents were immigrants who started up a cleaning business,” Paula said. “It must have been successful for them to buy such a prime property.”
“They were careful with money,” Cynthia said.
“If the cash they gave your father equalled the value of the property they left to Caspar, they saved a considerable amount.”
“They bought right before the start of the last boom. Why couldn’t Dad have inherited their luck? It’s like he was programmed to fail. Just like my ex-husband.”
Paula made notes to find out about Cynthia’s financial statu
s and if she received alimony or child support. Did she work outside the home? This house in Strathcona Park wasn’t cheap; nor were figure skating lessons.
Cynthia grabbed a napkin. She blotted muffin crumbs from her lips. “More coffee?”
“Thanks, no. I’m told your uncle Caspar was once married.”
Cynthia went to get her own refill. “Until I met my ex, I never understood why Dad’s ventures always flopped. He was smart and charming and connected, and got some good projects going at times. Now I see he was like a gambler with an addiction. Instead of roulette, he threw money into businesses until he lost.” Cynthia returned to her chair. “As kids our life was always up or down. On the ups, Dad spoiled us with expensive restaurants and fabulous gifts. One year Johnny and I got horses that cost a fortune to board. This being Dad, he sold the horses in a falling market and spiralled us to our next down, when every meal was macaroni dinner or beans from a can. It drove my mother nuts. She eventually left with Johnny and me.”
“How did she afford figure skating lessons” Paula asked. Had Cynthia avoided her question about Caspar’s marriage or simply been more interested in pursuing her speculations about her father? “Were the lessons boom and bust as well, into the skating one year, out the next?”
“Skating was Ma’s one extravagance. No matter how broke we were, she scraped up the cash. Ma always worked steadily and kept us going. It wasn’t all canned beans, just felt that way to me as a kid.”
“Did your mother skate as a child? Is that why she got Johnny and you into it?”
“Her family couldn’t afford it. Ma said that when she was a teenager, she saw a film of Barbara Ann Scott, you know, the figure skater who won Olympic gold. Ma had never seen anything more graceful or beautiful or perfect. When Johnny and I were around three and five, she took us to a skating rink, and we tried to mimic the skaters we’d seen on TV, doing leaps and turns. Ma figured we were geniuses and signed us up.”