Missing Chldren

by Gerald Lynch

  Bob swung round on the children and lifted his arms in shirking affirmation, I think, of the things he’d been telling them in the playground about their parents: See? What’s to be done with such grown-up liars? He mimed brushing the children back, then turned away and, unaccompanied this time by their convoy, strode out the entranceway as well as those un-legs could stride.

  I hurried after him outside and, as he pounded round the circular walk, called, “Wait!” He stopped, paused before turning.

  “So,” I said, arriving a bit breathless, “that went well.”

  In his eyes he wasn’t himself, or at least not the Bob Browne I knew.

  “What kind of stupid crack is that?”

  “Uh, a stupid ironic crack, I guess.”

  “You and your fucking ironic cracks, Thorpe. I should crack you!” He actually made a fist.

  “Me? Didn’t you hear me pleading your case?”

  “You’re the man I dealt with, Dr. Thorpe, my primary contact.”

  “Dr. Thorpe? Look, Bob, I really wish —”

  “Yeah, I have a wish list too.” He leaned forward, his face fierce. “For starters, you could pay this fucking dwarf yourself and collect from your organization later.”

  “What? That much money?”

  “Like I borrowed more against my equipment to show I could do this work, dumb-dumb?”

  “Look, Bob, I’m really not part of all that,” I gestured. “I’m sorry —”

  “Sorry nothing! You will be sorry if I don’t have a cheque in my hand by five o’clock tomorrow! Then we’re blowing this fucking ’burb before something even worse happens! I can trust no one! No one!”

  Excepting our first meeting in the cafeteria at CHEO, I’d never seen him utter an angry word, and here he was, fuming.

  “Are you threatening me, Mr. Browne?” I snickered. “And who is this we? The mystery friend with whom you have the history? The anonymous one who brought us together?”

  He smirked, shaking his head. “You think you’re in a hole now, Thorpe? I’ll put the whole fucking lot of you in a hole with a headstone on it!”

  That certainly sounded serious. But this radical change in him, what really did I know about Bob Browne? Given the situation with Shawn, my mind ran madly and I could not collect my thoughts. Detective Beldon had asked about him specifically right off the bat after Veronica and I could come up with no suspects, and again throughout the second instalment of my story. And Beldon did seem to know his business. Now Browne stood with his mouth pinched, puffing heavily through his flaring nostrils, about to lose control. I thought of Jake, our neighbours’ Down’s child, and his legendary feats of superhuman strength.

  Bob breathed deeply through his nose, exhaled slowly from puffed mouth. He looked up at me searchingly: “Don’t worry, Lorne, no physical harm. But no idle threat either. I was promised and someone has to pay this fucking piper. Personally, you disappoint me. It may sound childish, but friends don’t say insulting things about each other behind their backs.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bob. But obviously you trust someone else enough to believe that I would do that. Was it Art Foster?”

  He turned on his heels and walked away.

  I called again: “Bob?” He slowed. “What happened in there? I mean, what you did to settle that boy who looked headed for respiratory seizure? Was it as simple as distracting him? Studies have shown there’s a psychosomatic element to most childhood respiratory allergies.”

  “Don’t be dumb-dumb! Ask again!”

  “Tell me, Bob, please?”

  He called ahead of himself as he scuttled off: “I did more than you were willing to do, Dok-tor!”

  I returned to the TCA meeting and wearily took my seat. The kids were standing round the table again. A few were coughing. Not Pete though. I watched him till he noticed me doing so, then he coughed.

  Debbie grinned around at us all. “Well, then, we are joined again then. And wasn’t that a bit of jolly good fun!”

  Larry Lewis said, “Mr. Bob Browne is a fun-guy. Plural of fun-gus, right, Lorne Thorpe? I expect Mr. Browne will be getting a lawyer and suing us, thank you again, Lorne Thorpe.”

  Across the way, Gary snorted and lightly slapped the table.

  Frank Baumhauser smiled. “He has no contract, remember?” He looked at me. “And I too have heard that Mr. Browne’s equipment isn’t his any longer, legally speaking. The police are now involved, am I right, Dr. Thorpe?”

  “Not that I know of, Frank. I’m aware only of some repo men.”

  Some unsavoury sorts had contacted me at work, as Bob had forewarned, and I’d told them that I believed Mr. Browne had sold his combination backhoe-front-end-loader to a builder somewhere in Gatineau and moved back to Vienna. They were surprised, as they’d been sniffing along a trail that had them believing Bob was an American from the deep South. They were even more surprised when I called hospital security and requested they be escorted to the exit.

  Without looking up, Alice articulated precisely to her writing pad, “How very honourable of you, gentlemen.”

  Debbie harrumphed again. “How positively medieval it’s all been! But this puts an end to proceedings. The business of what to do with the remaining playgrounds will be put on the agenda for our next meeting. Motion to adjourn?” Gavel up. “Thank you, Larry Lewis. Seconded? Gary. All in favour?… Opposed? Meeting adjourned.”

  Crack.

  Debbie, her children, and Frank Baumhauser filed out past Larry and Gary Lewis, or between them, actually, as they were standing sentinel either side of the doorway. As I approached they continued to look across only at each other and, smiling enigmatically, they said together, “Jolly good fun, eh, Lorne Thorpe?”

  I was jumpy anyway, and that spooked me good. “Jesus Christ, you guys!”

  Larry repeated alone: “Lorne Thorpe.”

  “Larry?” I said. The right one turned. “Why have you taken to saying my name like that?”

  “Like what, Lorne Thorpe?”

  “Like it’s some kind of morbid joke? Surely it’s not the playground contract still? As you know, as you’ve just seen, you’d never have been paid a cent for your work. I actually saved you guys money.”

  “Oh, we always get our money, Lorne Thorpe. We’re just a couple of…what was it, Gary? A couple of small-time suburban crooks?”

  “And what else, Larry?” Gary smiled. “Sexual suspects?”

  “What?” I said loudly. “Listen, it doesn’t matter to me how you two —”

  Larry turned on me: “You listen up, you smug little prick, it ain’t over till we say it’s over. You’re gonna pay big-time for fucking with the rep of Twin Bros. Builders.”

  “Pardon me?”

  Larry, the fleshier one, continued, jabbing a fat forefinger at my chest: “Because, Lorne Thorpe, twins have twice the reason not to forget. And because you are one fucking snob of a prick who thinks he’s better than everybody else in Troutstream.”

  “I apologize, Larry…Gary? I truly am sorry, gentlemen, if I have given that impression, but I really don’t …”

  They’d turned together and walked away, in their Hawaiian shirts, shorts to below the knees, black socks and sandals. They were big boys. They could put some serious hurt on me. The late-summer evening suddenly felt a lot muggier again. I’d wanted distraction and I’d got it, in spades.

  I turned back to close the interior doors when Alice Pepper-Pottersfield stepped from the shadows of the foyer coat racks. I was startled yet again. She came into the light and, smiling weakly, touched my forearm.

  “Alice?”

  “Dr. Thorpe.” Those ice-blue eyes shone like their own lamps in the twilight. Up close her skin was porcelain pale. She breathed a sigh of minty freshness as with her free hand she fingered a buttonhole of her cardigan. “Sorry if I s
tartled you, Dr. Thorpe. I’m charged with locking up.”

  She met me eye-to-eye. “But I do wish those Lewis boys would just grow up and do the right thing. None of this needed to happen. None of it,” she said, leaning toward me. “I know it looks like Debbie runs the show, but it’s Larry and Gary Lewis who really call the shots. You didn’t know that, did you, Dr. Thorpe?”

  I pulled back my head, furrowed. “Are we talking about the same Larry and Gary?”

  “Don’t be fooled by appearances. Twin Bros. Builders has been stealing money from the TCA for years. I know. Frank has shown me the books. I was so pleased when you brought up the conflict of interest. At last, I thought, I have an ally on the committee.”

  I’d felt a tickle in my parts, the way she’d hissed stealing and drawn out ally. “Well, now I am shocked, Alice. But thanks for telling me. Was that, uh, all you wanted?”

  “No. I’ve kept you from your lovely home and family because I need to intimate something to you, Dr. Thorpe.”

  “Lorne, please. Intimate away.”

  She removed her hand from my forearm. “Yes, well, Lorne, then. It’s not the kind of thing into which one would normally stick her oar and one can never be sure of the proper protocol in such matters, can one?”

  She needed encouraging. “No, Alice, one cannot. Or one can. I’m not at all sure what we’re talking about. But, please, speak freely.”

  She made a thin determined smirk. “Well, then, I do believe that last Wednesday I saw a man in a white van pull over to the curb in front of the library and engage your daughter in conversation.”

  “What!” I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about Shawn for a nanosecond.

  She drew breath. “For a good while too. Shawn didn’t get into the van or I’d have run over. At first I thought there was already a child in the passenger’s seat, but it was a dog, a golden-coated dog, I believe. The man and your daughter talked animatedly for a long time, and when it ended the van squealed off angrily, leaving Shawn looking quite perturbed.”

  I was blinking and shaking my head and making bewildered noises. Instead of slapping me back to my senses, Alice just waited and watched closely.

  “Yes. And Shawn continued looking worried all the way back to the library doors. Now, I’m almost certain it was the same man I’d seen talking with Mr. Robert Browne at the playground a few days before when I was out for my constitutional, tallish, slim-ish. I apologize if that shocks you…Lorne. I’ve already discounted that any man would look tallish alongside Mr. Browne.” She gently snorted a laugh, composed herself. “Still, I would say he was almost your height. Though I suppose you are a bit below average for a North American male.”

  It was like I’d been slapped back and forth. With an effort I gathered my wits. “Alice, are you certain of all this? Because if you are, I know a detective you must talk to.”

  She pulled back, then squeezed my forearm again. “I’m sorry, Lorne, but I can tell only you about this. My immigrant status is — how can I put this delicately? — not quite normative. Consequently, I cannot be involved in any police investigation. But even with that risk dangling over me, I had to do the right thing by you and my conscience. Besides, I do believe that you are at least as competent as any small-town detective insofar as knowing what to do with such information. After all, it was you who cracked the arsenic-poisoning case and started all…this.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Shawn may be afraid to tell you. Children, and especially girls Shawn’s age, can be funny about things like this with their daddies, the attractiveness of the maturing female body and all. On the other hand, and what is by far the most likely scenario, the man in the white van is nothing to worry about. I’m sure you’ll hear a perfectly simple explanation from Shawn. I just had to say something.”

  I was still distracted by careening thoughts. “I’m not so sure …”

  She smiled sympathetically. “Lorne, I do apologize for unnecessarily alarming you. But there you have it, the paranoid ramblings of a spinster, I expect you’re thinking… Regardless, I was concerned, justifiably so, what with this alarming Market Slasher business and all that has the media in such a tizzy.”

  “But Shawn’s dis — Shawn has nothing to do with the Market Slasher! He’s murdering teenage hookers!”

  “Of course not, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise, but one can never be too cautious, can one…Lorne? Did you hear that the police now suspect the monster is some form of a jihadist? And by the by, those young girls are innocent victims… Lorne?”

  “…the kidnapper and Bob Browne? Kevin had asked about Bob… Or was the man in the white van and the playground threatening Bob, working for the Lewis brothers and trying to scare Bob off the job? And that’s how I come into it? Scare Bob, punish me. But to take Shawn? That would have been a crazy revenge even for the mad Lewises… The Market Slasher? Dear God …”

  “Pardon me, Lorne? I’m afraid I don’t follow you. Somebody took Shawn?”

  I hardly knew where I was anymore. My face must have shown my state, for Alice said, “Would you like to get an early nightcap at the Lighthouse Bar & Grill, Lorne? You don’t have your Cadillac, I see. I mean, you always take the parking spot right in front of the door here. Or would you prefer to take a walk? Or would you rather not be seen anywhere in the company of such a silly old maid?”

  “No…no.” Where is my Caddy?… Foster. He was supposed to have had it back to me this morning! “Thanks, Alice. I walked here and I prefer to walk home, I need the air and exercise. See you around.”

  Normally, I’d have contradicted her self-deprecating remarks. Normally. But I was feeling none too chivalrous. I’d want to talk with her again, though. As would Detective Beldon.

  Chapter 7

  The three of us took Tuesday off, holing up at home, normal routines and media-prying be damned. Beldon said it was probably too late now anyway. When the school bus honked, I went to the curb and told Debbie through the driver’s window that Shawn was sick. Standing on Debbie’s other side, Alice Pepper-Pottersfield smiled sympathetically in her fluorescent orange vest, then nudged Debbie’s shoulder. As the bus drove off, I was treated to a sideshow of kids’ faces like an old movie’s asylum scene: stuck-out tongues and thumbs in ears and fingers like wriggling antlers, cheeks and noses crushed sideways against the glass, eyes rolled up in zombie faces. At the rear a pillow fight seemed to be at full throttle. Pillows?… Backpacks then. Anyway, it would seem that Debbie was right about Alice’s permissive ways as bus monitor. But who was running the show?

  Back at our family breakfast (I’d secretly had only two Valiums), I did my best to distract them with tales of the previous night’s TCA meeting. I featured Debbie and her duffel bag of medicines, fidgety Frank Baumhauser, and the dumb-and-dumber routines of Larry and Gary Lewis.

  Veronica, sitting opposite, tilted back her head, eyeing Owen sideways: “What about the English woman with the funny name who helps Debbie on the bus? Ann Pepperpot?”

  Owen shook his bowed head like he’d been asked to do something.

  “Alice? You’d hardly even know she was there. She’s got a talent for totally disappearing into the woodwork.”

  Veronica smiled weakly. “What? She’s always been your showstopper. Last time you said a joke of yours had made her fart.” She leaned back, crossed her arms on her chest, closed her eyes for a spell.

  “I did? Wait a minute …” I rifled my addled mind. Coincidence? The diesel smell, the fart? Was it Sherlock Holmes or Detective Freud who said there is no such thing? Probably that nutter Jung, an archetype for Art Foster if there ever was one. But I needed to keep a clear head.

  “C’mon, give us Alice’s constipated little-girl face taking the minutes.” She’d opened her eyes but slid them only from Owen to the side door on my right.

  The two of them felt far away. I thought I heard Owen sniffling an
d I couldn’t even register my shock at the gangsta’s breaking down.

  I watched Veronica’s face not watching me and reflected on the many times she’d saved me from the glare of a careless world, probably even shielded me from myself. She was no longer young and pretty, but lovely now for showing the wear of loving the three of us over time, refusing to dye her hair as it greyed, faking nothing…when a bar of sunlight shot through a tear in the awning that overhangs the kitchen’s patio doors and, in some Stonehenge configuration, neatly crossed the midline part in Veronica’s hair and spotted my right hand lying by the teaspoon, then instantly lit up the bowl of the spoon. Why can’t I just say out loud right here and now how beautiful she is and how much I love her? I pinched the handle and rolled the spoon back and forth and stared, bedazzled, and the whole room was drenched in light. I checked squintingly to see if the others were experiencing the glare. They weren’t. It was some rarity of canvas tear and Veronica’s head and light and concave metal and optic nerve, for me only. I had enough presence of mind to know it was likely a delayed stress response to recent trials, perhaps even an ocular migraine or some such, simple optics, though I felt fine. In truth, I’d never felt better, and that realization was more shocking than anything.

  Returning to the bowl of the radiant spoon, I had this flash: Is it possible my family indulges me only because they love me, and Veronica especially? Looked at in a clinical light, I could well be the arrogant, snickering, witless shit others think me. Can love forgive so much?

  “Lorne?… You’ve never stooped to ugly faces before. Are you cramping? Or are you doing a new Alice Pepperpot?”

  The earth must have shifted infinitesimally, for the sun slipped past the tear in the canvas and suddenly the light died. I was just staring at my pale surgeon’s hand lying alongside a dull spoon.

  Shawn.

  I was washed by a tsunami of guilt for having left them and our family catastrophe. I pulled myself together.

  “No…it’s…Pepper-Pottersfield. And no, I’m not doing her.”