Scot & Soda

by Catriona McPherson

  “Are you being sarky?” said Todd.

  “Don’t say sarky,” I told him. “You sound lame.”

  “Don’t say lame,” he shot back.

  “Dude! You don’t own lame,” I called over my shoulder, walking away.

  “And for God’s sake, don’t say dude,” they chorused.

  “Snap, jinx,” I shouted.

  Then I had to try to get my head back in the counselling zone, in time for the emergency appointment with Dorian who was bringing her possibly on-the-game daughter for a family therapy session. I just had time to send Todd and Kathi the photo of Mo Heedles’s cat memorial decal, with the message Call this number. Then I was hopping between the mounds of leaf litter Florian and Flynn had scratched up on the slough bank and climbing the stairs to my front porch.

  Through the net curtain, I could see two shadows sitting on my back porch.

  “Won’t be a minute!” I sang out to them. I plumped a couple of cushions, turned on the soothing water feature I had turned off because of a previous client’s dicky bladder, and then went to greet them.

  The first thing I noticed was that Dorian was seething. She was literally pulsing with anger. Well, she was figuratively pulsing with anger because she was literally breathing hard and bright red. She had one shoe on her foot and one shoe in her hand.

  “I stepped in doo-doo,” she said, and I was filled with admiration for her. How anyone could stick to the word doo-doo while angry enough to seethe was beyond me.

  “Yes,” I said. “Kittens. Sorry. I’ll wash it off for you.” I stuck out my hand but she shook her head irritably like I was a fly. A shit-covered fly straight from a pile of kitten crap.

  “She’s already done it,” she said, jerking her head at her daughter. “Didn’t even blink.”

  I didn’t see why that would be annoying, but then, when you’re really at loggerheads with a loved one, you can get pissed off by anything at all they have the nerve to do.

  When Todd was hauled into work for a case progress report before his status changed from long-term sick leave to whatever he was on now, he got ratty enough to insult Roger’s hair. Now, Roger’s hair is about half a millimetre long all over because he gets it shaved on a number one setting every Friday afternoon at the Jamaican barber. And his head is moisturised and his skull is a lovely shape and his ears sit flat and he never gets blocked pores on his neck.

  And when Noleen has had too many empty rooms on too many consecutive nights, she takes aim at Kathi. Not for the obsessive neatness, which is genuinely annoying, but for the habit of giving people free services they haven’t paid for at the Skweeky Kleen, such as always fluffing and folding every load and kicking in a plastic basket that’s supposed to cost five bucks because it’s too painful to hand back a tangle of staticky clothes in a bin bag

  And when my dad stuck a fishing fly through this thumb and ignored it and went out fishing anyway and got a massive infection that meant he couldn’t drive or cut up meat, he moaned at my mum so much for never getting into fifth gear and for making his mouthfuls too small “for him to feel like he was eating a proper dinner” that she bought him a bus pass, filled the freezer with ready meals, and went on a girls’ trip to Morecambe.

  So I smiled at the daughter and, as I did, I felt something shift inside me. I knew her. I was sure I’d met her but I couldn’t remember where. Or was it that I’d seen a picture of her? No, because she knew me too. She was looking at me with exactly the same expression as the diving nephew had looked at me with. As if she knew I knew her and couldn’t believe I wasn’t placing her and wondered how long that could last.

  “Come on through,” I said. “Now then … ?”

  “Kim,” she said. I felt something else move inside me. It was like the first inkling that you didn’t get away with eating three pomegranates last night after the cauliflower curry. Exactly the same as after drinking from an irrigation hose. Just a little shift. Fair warning.

  “And how have things been?” I said. “Dorian? Have you managed to get a time to discuss your concerns with your daughter?”

  “Did she get time?” Kim said. “She didn’t take a single break long enough to go to the bathroom! We had discussed it plenty before she saw you last time. I told her it was none of her concern and that I wasn’t doing anything illegal. But she just wouldn’t drop it!”

  “I know you, Kim,” her mother said. “I know you’re feeling guilty about something and/or hiding something.”

  “I’m not feeling guilty!” Kim insisted, rubbing her nose and looking away.

  “Where did the money come from?” her mother demanded.

  “I can’t believe you were snooping on me and you haven’t apologized! I told you. I got a job.”

  “And I told you we pay your tuition and rent and give you an allowance and cover your livery fees.” That thing was shifting inside me again. “And you don’t have time to study and have a job as well as look after poor Agnetha.”

  “Agnetha!” I said. “Aha! You’re not fazed by kitten shit because you muck out horses! Aha! You’re Kimberly Voorheft! Aren’t you?”

  Kim pressed herself against the back of the chair and said nothing.

  “Aha?” Dorian said. “What do you mean aha? How do you know my daughter? You don’t provide counseling for prostitutes, do you?”

  “Kim is not a sex worker,” I said. “She didn’t do anything illegal for that money. But you’re right, Dorian. She is ashamed.”

  “What is it? Chat lines? Drug-running? Who have you got yourself mixed up with, Kim?”

  “Grandma!” the girl blurted.

  “Grandma?” I blurted too. “And her name is …?”

  “Maureen,” said Dorian. “Why?”

  “And your family name is …?”

  “My mother has always been a Tafoya,” said Dorian. “Why?” She turned to her daughter. “And why did Grandma give you so much money?”

  “To do something for her.”

  “Do what?”

  “Well, not really for her. Just to do something and not tell anyone I’d done it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Cut off Agnetha’s tail,” I said. “Did she tell you why?”

  Kim shook her head. Her mother’s eyes widened and then narrowed and then began to fill. “Animal cruelty?” she said. “That’s one of the warning signs of a schizophrenic, isn’t it?”

  “Sociopath,” I said. “But it’s not, anyway. Now, you two obviously have much to discuss. Don’t shout and don’t break anything. I’ll be back in five. Okay?”

  I ran along the side deck so quickly I could feel the houseboat dip and surge and hoped Dorian and Kimberly were good sailors.

  Up in the Skweek, Kathi and Todd were fussing over Melvin, who had turned up—I noticed—in pale loafers and no socks and had left his striped suit-shirt untucked. It was as if he had done his best to look cruise-ready with what was already in his wardrobe. And, looking at him, I agreed that a trip to the Gap was something of an emergency.

  “Could you … ” I began, wishing I was cool enough to say give us the room and that it wasn’t pathetic to say that about a launderette. “Melvin, could you possibly wait in the car? I need to say something in confidence to my colleagues about another client.”

  I saw Todd smirk and cursed him. But Melvin was already toddling towards the door, with his sta-press trousers flapping round his bare ankles. He had rolled them up a couple of times for that beachy look.

  “I’m good,” he said. “You take your time. I got my Clash of Clans to do.” He patted his pocket and let himself out.

  “Was that you?” I said to Todd. “Clash of bloody Clans? That’s got you written all over it. He was quite happy with his Sunday crosswords.”

  “I’m juicing him up to appeal to the funnest widows,” Todd said.

  “Don’t say
juicing and don’t say funnest.”

  “Okay,” Todd said. “Make that the most super-fu—”

  “And don’t use super as an adverb! And shut up and listen. Jesus, you’re annoying. I own you both, remember? Stop bugging me.”

  “You’re the only one who ever calls those in,” said Todd. “What?”

  “Yeah,” Kathi said. “I thought you had a client.”

  “I do have a client,” I said. “Mo Tafoya’s granddaughter.” I paused. “Kimberly Voorheft.” I paused again. “Who had an unexplained five hundred dollars in her bank account and whose mother thought she was turning tricks.” I paused so long Todd flicked my forehead. “Ow. But who has just confirmed what we thought all along.” My forehead was still stinging so I didn’t pause. “The whole story about the mysterious stranger jumping out of nonexistent shrubbery at the overpass really was bogus.” My forehead was better so I paused again. I paused too long.

  “Her granny paid her to cut off her pony’s tail?” said Todd.

  “Yip,” I said.

  “Why?” said Kathi.

  “To back up the story that this was a sick joke about Thomas Shatner’s name,” I said. “Same as the Jimmy wig and the cutty sark at the burial ground. To misdirect.”

  “So … ” said Todd. “You’re saying it wasn’t Mo Heedles? Despite the class ring her nephew stole?”

  “Of course, it wasn’t!” Kathi said. “We’re idiots. Mo Tafoya is the real estate agent who faked the listing of the old Armour place to lure Tam back here. It had to be her who did that. So it had to be her who killed him.”

  “But it was neither Mo who tried to shift suspicion onto poor Mrs. Ortiz, was it?” said Todd. “That was Joan Lam—”

  “We need to check that story with someone,” Kathi said. “At least go back to Mrs. Ortiz and ask.”

  “Ask a woman who killed a guy with lye if she killed a guy with lye?” said Todd. “You first.”

  “What did you say?” I asked Todd.

  “Narrow it down.”

  “You just said … ” I closed my eyes and made a massive effort to dredge up the notion, fleeting and faint, that was tickling me. “Joan Lam—”

  “—peter,” said Todd. “Yeah, Kathi, stop interrupting me!”

  “This is getting stupid!” I said. “I don’t think it was Mo Tafoya, even if she did pay to have a horse’s tail removed. And I don’t think it was Mo Heedles, even if her nephew tried a cover-up. I think it was Joan.”

  “What? Why?” said Todd.

  “Why? What?” said Kathi.

  “Can you explain,” said Noleen, coming in at the door, “why there’s a geezer in Reception flashing his dentures at me and asking if I want to go on a cruise next week?”

  “Tell him I’ll be right down,” said Todd. “And don’t worry. He’s only practicing.”

  Noleen turned to leave, giving us all a flash of the sweet little kitten cartoon on the back of her sweatshirt and the slogan written underneath in looping pink ribbon—Grab this and see what happens. “Oh, by the way, Lexy,” she added. “It’s getting pretty lively at your place.”

  But I had no brain space to worry about Kimberly and Dorian wrecking the boat in a mother-daughter brawl. I had to let my latest theory out before I burst.

  “Joan Lampeter might have had her handkerchiefs re-monogrammed for her trousseau or she might not,” I said. Noleen gave me a withering look and left. “And I understand now why she was so very chuffed when I first turned up.”

  “That was weird,” said Kathi. “I noticed that.”

  “And I know who it was who dived for cover when he heard my name too.”

  “Who?” said Todd.

  “Well, I don’t know his name or what his connection to Joan is—nephew, grandson, gigolo—but I know where we met him and why he didn’t want us to meet him again.”

  “Will you stop spinning this out before I punch you in the neck,” said Todd.

  “Or Noleen runs off to Mexico with Melvin,” Kathi added.

  “He brought her family heirloom Lamont tartan kilt to be dry cleaned and, when he told her where he’d taken it, she freaked out and sent him to get it back.”

  “And why was she so chuffed when you turned up on her doorstep?” said Kathi. “Shouldn’t she have been even more freaked out?”

  “When she heard my name,” I said. “And she was. But when Joan Lampeter Lamont only heard my accent she thought maybe I’d like to sit and talk about the thrilling history of the Lamont clan with her for a couple of hours. Which, as you know, I would not. And, girl? Don’t say chuffed.”

  “Don’t say girl,” Kathi replied, but her heart wasn’t in it. She was thinking. Todd and I waited to hear what came of it. At last, she took a big breath and said: “What the hell’s going on?”

  Which was a bit of a let-down.

  “Look,” I said, “you need to take Mel shopping and I need to get back and finish my session. Let’s get together later, Della and Roger and everyone, and hammer this out, shall we?”

  As Todd and I were trotting down the exterior stairs to the car park, I asked him, “Oh by the way, did you try the number?”

  “The cat death anniversary date you sent me?” said Todd. “Funnily enough, no.”

  “Try it,” I said. “Come on, Todd, just quickly, for me. Your business partner and friend.”

  Todd sighed ostentatiously but he got his phone out, found his messages, opened the photo and started jabbing.

  “Put it on speaker,” I said and I was delighted I did. Todd’s next sigh was gusty enough to make a door swing open and crash shut again, but his breath stilled in his throat when he heard, coming out of his phone, not the canned voice telling him his call could not be completed but instead, the sound of ringing.

  “What da?” he said, but got no further. Because someone answered.

  “Mo?” came a voice. “Stop using this number. I told you it wasn’t safe anymore. Just sit tight. Mo? Is that you?” Then the line went dead.

  “Can I borrow the Jeep?” I said. “To go round and snap all of them before they peel them off?”

  “Sure,” said Todd. “I’ll take Don Juan to the Gap in Roger’s car.” He wiggled his key off the ring and pressed it into my hand. “Then later,” he said, “we get together and make this make sense, right? Because this shit is cray-cray.”

  “Is your grandma an animal lover usually?” I asked Kimberly when I got back to my consultation room.

  “No,” said Dorian, literally answering for her daughter. If she lived in Cuento, I’d have been itching to take her in hand and get her back inside her boundaries. “I think she might have had a cat briefly because she’s got a memorial in the window of her minivan, but she didn’t have the kitty long because the decal wasn’t there at Christmas.”

  “Minivan?” I said. “Does she get her coffee at Swiss Sisters?”

  “What kind of therapy is this?” said Kimberly. “First you leave me to be scolded by my mother then you ask a pile of weird questions about Grandma. How much are you paying for this, Mom?”

  “It’s a technique known as stramashing,” I said. Which was a double-fried lie. Stramashing meant flailing about uselessly. Who knows why that word in particular sprang to mind. “It’s useful to toggle between focussing attention into the room and the relationships—which is much easier in the absence of the therapist—and then focussing it out of the room away from the contentious relationship and onto shared positive areas, such as a mutually cared-for third party.”

  It was scary the stuff that came out of me if I was up against it.

  “That makes a lot of sense,” said Dorian. “And I’ve never heard it before. Do you do phone sessions? For after I go back home?”

  “Lexy is well-known in this town for her original therapeutic thinking,” Kimberly said. She was twenty and she was
talking to her mother so I had no idea if she was being sarcastic about me in particular or if this was base level.

  “And do you feel able to evaluate the technique?” I said. “I forgot to ask you to log your stress and upset when you came in, what with the kitten shit and all, but where is it now? Are you still angry, Dorian? And how about you Kimberly? Still feeling guilty?”

  “Kind of,” Kimberly said. “Because I haven’t come clean about it all yet. There was more that Grandma wanted done than Agnetha’s tail.”

  “Go on,” I said. “This is a safe space, without judgement.”

  “Did she want you to pull tail feathers out of a rooster?” Dorian said. “Cut worms in half and Scotch tape them back together?” For a woman who believed animal cruelty was a sign of schizophrenia, she certainly had some examples all ready to hand.

  “No,” Kimberly said. “She wanted me to lay a nightshirt on a little hill out in the fields at the edge of town.”

  “Oh God,” said her mother. “This is it. This is how I find out that mother has Alzheimer’s and that it’s in the family and I’ll get it, and you’ll get it, Kim.”

  I didn’t do phone sessions as a rule but I was tempted to take Dorian on, for the challenge.

  “A blood-stained nightgown,” I said. “Did you provide the bloodstain or did it come that way?”

  “I suppose you could say I provided it,” Kimberly said. “Weird way to put it, though.” She was rubbing one hand in the palm of the other, but she stopped when she saw me noticing. “I cut my finger on the shears I used for Agnetha. And I had the nightgown tucked inside my down jacket. It was the only thing to wipe the blood on. And then, when I thought about washing it, I figured it was a nice touch: blood on a shroud at a graveyard. You know, for Halloween? But after I placed it, my finger started to throb, so I went to the ER. Instead of doing the third thing Grandma wanted me to do. She’s pretty angry.”

  I could imagine. This plan was detailed and complex and highly engineered, and Kimberly flaking out to go to the hospital to get her boo-boo kissed better had removed some essential component from it. Todd had said it—half the poem was missing—but he’d thought, wrongly, that the class of sixty-eight carousing at the market filled the gap.