The Dime Box
Page 2
The detective’s jaw clenched and colour rose up along her neck and into the sides of her face, just like her father’s used to.
“What times?” Her voice rose.
She sucked in her breath. Make it stop. Eyes to the floor, she bit her cheek. There was the taste of metal in her mouth, and she searched for the words to describe what she’d felt back in the cabin that first day.
Confusion? Anger?
Fear.
THREE
S omething roused her. She jolted upright and ran her chubby hands under the blankets. She knew where to find Bunny. Face down. Out of sight. Near the foot of the bed. She and Bunny often tried to disappear, together, in that same spot. She felt his warm fabric and jerked him upwards, clutching him tight to her chest. She stretched out the frayed weave of his one and only ear and wound it around her fingers, rubbing it on the side of her cheek. Gently. Back and forth. Up and down. It was the only place Bunny still had softness.
She wiped the sleep from her eyes and stared into the darkness, squinting, straining to see. Was it nighttime? Maybe morning? She had no idea which was which.
Except for the slit of yellow that glowed around the edge of the doorframe, everything was inky black. The black part scared her, but not the yellow. Yellow was the same colour as Bunny. She pulled the sheet down to her shoulders. Shivering. Waiting. She held Bunny tight. Then she heard it. Squeaking. Good. The lock outside of the bedroom door slid open. She swung her feet from the bed and inched her way forward, the floorboards cold under her feet. Then she froze. There were sounds, faint ones, coming from the other side of the door. Scraping. Muttering. A low voice. Then footsteps. She batted her hands around to find what she was looking for. Twisting the latch, it gave way. She blinked. Eye to the crack, she inched up onto the tips of her toes. A naked light bulb glowed on the ceiling, dangling a dirty string. Shadow monsters climbed the walls as the backs of grown-ups disappeared down the hallway. Who were they? Her heart pounded as she fought the urge to shut the door. She held her hands in front of her, fingers trembling, and counted. One. Two. Bunny clutched to her side, she held her breath, and then opened the door.
Silence.
She crept along the length of the hallway and poked her head around the corner. The man and woman on the staircase walked like robots. Like Transformers. Heads forward, arms straight to their sides, steps matching one another. When they got to the bottom, they bypassed a room with tall windows, then they disappeared. She searched for a hiding place. There. Close enough she could see, yet far enough back to be safe. She slipped down the staircase to the bottom step. Bunny started to shake. Was he scared? Cold? She couldn’t tell.
Poor Bunny.
She put her fingers to her mouth to shush him, hoping he’d be okay, then shoved him into the top of her nightgown. The long, beige one patterned with faded daisies. Like the rough patches of the wooden staircase, it had seen better days. Then, careful not to make the stair under her bum creak, she rocked forward and watched.
The woman stepped nervously, right foot to left, left foot to right, in front of an old gas stove, frying eggs in a pan. The man sat nearby, jaw tensed, watching. Waiting. His beat-up chair rattled as he pulled it up close to the edge of a small metal table making the woman jump. Her hands shook as she laid out three thick pieces of bacon in the frying pan. Though the salty scent wafted towards the staircase made her mouth water, the sizzling scared her. She scrambled back up the staircase.
The woman stopped, cocked her head, and for a moment glanced away from the eggs. Their eyes locked. Warm and brown, they invited her closer. She tucked her limp black hair that fell loosely down the sides of her face behind her ears before scooting back down the stairs and tiptoeing to the archway in the kitchen. She peered at the woman; she smiled back. Then the man. He had messy hair and wasn’t wearing a shirt. Black hairs covered his chest, and his arms that rested on the table. He scratched at the bottom of his blue pajamas, then looked up and gestured to two empty chairs.
“Sit.” He didn’t smile.
She took a step to the one on the left. As she lowered herself to the seat, she heard the scrape of metal. Then a gasp. Then the chair jerked sideways and clattered to the floor. She stumbled, hitting her chin on the edge of the table, causing her to fall backwards. A sharp pain cut through her leg.
The man laughed. “Get up,” he said, pointing to the other chair.
She struggled to the chair on her right, sat down, and put Bunny gently in her lap. The woman put plates on the table beside a dish of butter and a half-empty jar of purple jelly. Gently. Carefully. One at a time. Eggs. Bacon. Toast. Her mouth salivated, anxious to taste the sweet smoke of the bacon.
“Don’t touch it,” the man said.
She pulled her hand back and jammed it under her leg. How did Blue Man know what she was thinking?
“Give me Bunny.”
Her eyes widened before she could stop them. She clutched him tight. How’d he know Bunny?
Blue Man stood and held out his hand. “Now.”
She swallowed hard. Her eyes stung, and she tried to keep the sick from her throat.
His thick arm extended across the table and ripped Bunny from her hands. He crossed the kitchen to the bin beside the sink and stuffed him in the garbage. When he turned, his eyes bore into her. “Crying has consequences.”
She didn’t know what the man meant, but his words sounded ugly.
He sat back down at the table. “Let’s eat.”
No longer hungry, she snuck a peek at Blue Man as he piled up the plate in front of him. When he’d finished, there was no more bacon for her or for the brown-eyed woman who half-smiled. She guessed he was the boss and he was used to getting what he wanted.
She picked at the eggs on her plate and glared at Blue Man across the table. The black in his eyes made her jumpy. She bit down on her lip and stared dead straight ahead at the garbage. She’d have to wait until later to save Bunny. Knife in hand, she reached for the jar in the middle of the table and scraped around the sides. When a big blob of jelly rolled out, covering the toast on her plate, a lump welled up in her throat. She lowered the jar and wiggled half back in. Blue Man kept shoveling his fork in his mouth. He’d missed it completely.
Her head hurt. She put the knife down and covered her ears to stop the thumping. Her fingers brushed Scar. Bumpy and round, it felt like a worm. She let her fingers travel up and down. Up and down. She didn’t know how Scar got there but she knew every ridge of it the same way she knew each and every lump on Bunny. But Scar was different; it was attached and it was hers. Even if he wanted to, Blue Man couldn’t take it and throw it in the garbage.
The odor of grease lingered thick in the air as they ate their breakfast in silence. Blue Man speared the bacon with his fork. “Greta starts Kindergarten in September.”
She looked right at him. “Me?”
“Are you stupid? Is there another Greta here?”
Was there? There were only three of them at the table. She looked down at the cracked plate in front of her and didn’t dare answer.
Blue Man ran his fingers along the sides of his fork and sucked off the yellow yolk. “She’s going on the bus. Got the confirmation yesterday.”
The woman didn’t respond. Greta looked at her. She was wearing pink pajamas. They were pretty, but ripped; little white threads opened to show bare skin on her shoulder. The man shoved the last piece of bacon on his plate in his mouth and jabbed his fork in the air. Greta had no idea what was unfolding in front of her, but the strain on the woman’s face gave her a sick feeling. She looked like she was trying to be brave, but was having difficulty. Hold it together, she begged her, you can do it. The woman rallied but a tear trickled down her cheek, followed quickly by others. Greta watched the man’s face redden. He slammed his fist on the table.
“Jesus, Emily. It’s Kindergarten.”
Greta froze. Emily? She mouthed the woman’s name over and over again, carving it into her memory.
Greta clung to the woman’s words. Her voice was soft and gooey. She grappled with a third name. Ian. It didn’t sound real. Was it missing something?
“She’s going. End of story.”
Emily took a shaky breath. “Staying home another year won’t hurt. I can read to her. Teach her some numbers.”
“No.” the man said. His voice was firm.
“What about the library instead? She loves it there…”
A switch flicked in Greta’s mind. She looked at the two adults in front of her. They were her parents and they were sending her somewhere scary—and soon. Ian didn’t seem to think much of the place she loved—the library, whatever that was—so she hoped her mother would take her there after breakfast. Her mood lifted. She looked at her father. Something told her to wait for his permission to speak.
“Can we talk about this?” her mother asked.
“We just did.”
“Please?” she said, her voice higher.
Greta sat between them, barely breathing. Her thighs were stuck to the chair.
“I’ve made my decision.”
“Please, Ian,” she pleaded, more with her eyes than her words.
“Drop it now.”
“Ian…”
“Don’t make me do something you’ll regret.” As he spoke, a small glob of spit flew from his mouth and landed in a smear in the yolk on Greta’s plate.
“Ew,” she said, leaning back.
Ian banged his palms on the table, pushed back his chair and stood.
Emily flinched.
FOUR
D etective Perez snapped her fingers in the air. “Hello? Anyone home? I asked you a question.”
Greta jerked her head up, back from that morning in the cabin, relieved she wasn’t alone.
“What’s going on? You’ve gone pale.”
“Just tired.”
“You mean hung over?”
Greta grimaced. That figured. She should’ve known the officers saw the bottle on the counter. Which one had the big mouth?
Detective Perez frowned. “Listen, Greta. When people don’t have answers to simple questions like the ones I’m asking, it makes them look dodgy, like they’re hiding something.”
Heat prickled in her armpits. “It’s true, though. Sometimes I forget stuff. I fell down and cracked my head open when I was little. I’ve still got the scar.”
“Were you hospitalized for this injury?”
Greta swallowed. “I don’t remember.” She titled her head to the ceiling and peered into the dimness, images hovering on the periphery of her mind. “Yeah,” she said, slowly. “I was.”
“Do you remember the hospital?”
She gave her a slight nod. “First of all, I’m in a room lying down. It’s not light. I can see shadows on the wall. Not black ones. Yellow, like canaries. Or maybe that’s the wall. Anyway, I can only move my head one way and there’s this row of windows. Not to the outside; into a hall. Figures, blurry ones, like ghosts in a swamp are walking back and forth.” She demonstrated, her arms spread wide. “When they look in through the window, their skin is greenish brown, kind of like the colour of dead sunflowers. I don’t know what they’re looking at because their faces are fuzzy and they don’t have eyes and—”
“Which hospital?”
She thought back to the story she’d been told. “No idea.” The detective cocked her head, seeming not to understand. “I was three or four.”
The detective raised an eyebrow. “Be honest with me, Greta. Are you on some type of medication?”
She started at her, wide-eyed. “You think I have a problem?”
“Crossed my mind.”
“I don’t even like taking pills.”
The detective shrugged. “Come on. You watch TV. It’s my job to assess people. Their behavior. What they do. What they say.”
“And what they don’t?”
Detective Perez drummed her fingers on the desk and looked at her as if she’d just proved her point. “Have your memory lapses, so-to-speak,”—her tone hard—“the ones that happen at times, ever been medically documented?”
Greta crammed her hands in her pockets. “I don’t have a doctor. Never did.”
“No checkups? No vaccinations? I find that hard to believe.”
“How do you mean?”
“Withholding medical care is tantamount to neglect.”
Greta looked at her. Detective Perez had no clue. Sometimes it was murder.
The detective glanced at her wrist. “Speaking of medical care, my officers are at the hospital right now talking to the staff. Anything you want to tell me before they get back?”
“So we’re done?”
Detective Perez tented her fingers. “No. Don’t you understand why you’re here, Greta?”
She squeezed her eyes shut and thought back to what the officers had told her at the apartment, replaying the conversation in her head. Slow. Fragments. Pieces. It was coming. There. She popped them open.
“To help you decide how to handle my father’s death.”
“No.”
She jabbed a finger in the air. “That’s what they told me and Latoya.”
“You remember those exact words?”
“Yes.”
Detective Perez leaned in, elbows on the desk. “You, and whoever Latoya is, misunderstood.”
Greta made a face. “Then why am I here?”
“The hospital called to report you were the last one with your father before he died—”
“Of cancer.”
“When he did, you ran out.”
“No I didn’t. I left.”
The detective sighed. “Do you know what a person of interest is?”
She shook her head and stretched out her legs to the edge of the desk.
“My officers didn’t explain this last night? It’s someone we believe has knowledge about what we’re investigating. Could this be another detail you’ve forgotten?”
Greta retraced the conversation in her mind again. Nothing there. “One of us would’ve remembered.”
“Meaning you or Latoya?”
She glared at the detective. If she couldn’t figure that out, she had no business carrying a gun.
“I find that highly doubtful. I’ve worked with these officers for years and there’s no way they’d shilly-shally about. They know full well how I run investigations.”
“Ask them when they get back.” Shilly-shally. She knew she was right.
“Maybe I will. In the meantime, let’s start with some background information.”
The air went thick with silence. Detective Perez reached into a drawer of her desk and pulled out a pair of silver metal-framed reading glasses. Like her hair and the clip in it, they matched. She perched them on the end of her nose, ran a fist along the crease in her notebook, and picked up the pencil.
“You’re from Toronto?”
“No. Ravensworth.”
“Never heard of it. Where’s that?”
Greta raised her arms and waved them in a circle. “Way up in northern Ontario.”
The detective glanced up and smiled. The first one. “I’m from Barrie.”
She gave her a half smile back. Barrie, an hour drive north of Toronto, wasn’t northern Ontario. Had the detective never seen a map? But she had nothing to gain from pointing it out.
“Born and bred.” She put the pencil down. “Started working there, too. Beat cop first. Then vice. Drugs. Prostitution.” She turned sideways and pointed to the wall at a picture, slightly off-centre. “That’s me. Second from the left. Strange, really, but I looked a bit like you do.”
Greta peered into the frame. Like hers, the detective’s hair had been black, yet cut much shorter. While they were both slim, the detective wasn’t five foot ten; she took up way
less space. And her stiff, standard day uniform? No resemblance at all to her black jeans and scuffed-up Converse. She crossed her legs and looked away.
“After vice, I did a stint in undercover but it didn’t last long. The brass yanked me out and… well, we won’t go there,” she said.
Emily’s words echoed through her head. You may not be interested in what other people say, Greta, but be kind because whatever they’re telling you is important to them. Honestly, how hard can it be to sit still for sixty seconds?
“They dropped me in homicide next. Didn’t like it much at the time, but it grew on me. Truth be told, it’s where I cut my teeth. Couldn’t get promoted, though, so I applied to the city and, for the last ten years, I’ve been here, leading homicide.”
She kept her face straight. Had she finished? No such luck.
“I still miss it up there. Bet you do, too. The ponds. Swimming. Ice-skating in winter. I remember when…”
And she was off again. Several minutes more ticked by. Greta listened, bobbing her head at the right parts of the story, interjecting with questions of her own. She knew exactly what the detective was doing. Trying to build trust. Nice try, but she wasn’t stupid.
“Anyway,” Detective Perez said, finishing up, “enough about me. Let’s talk about you.”
She didn’t bite.
“Ravensworth. What was growing up there like?”
“Alright.”
“Anything that stands out?”
She tapped her foot on the floor. “It was hot in the summer, cold in the winter. Same as here. Nothing special.”
The heat in the kitchen that morning had continued through the summer. She’d spent mornings running up and down the laneway in rubber boots, peering into puddles, searching for worms, a frog if she was lucky enough to find one. Dark clouds would roll in mid-afternoon, but they brought little relief. Every so often, lightning struck and, for a half hour, sheets of rain pelted the side of the house. Though the storms never lasted long, the noise chased her deep under the sheet on her bed where she sought comfort with Bunny.
After that morning her father had eaten all the bacon, he’d stormed out of the kitchen, giving her the chance to sneak back in and fish Bunny out of the garbage. She had been relieved he was with her again, even if he was covered in grease and bacon rind. And so then, whenever the storms hit, she had held onto him tightly, not caring if he made her sheet grimy.