Poplar Falls

by Arseneault, Pierre C;

  Tilley knew now that they wouldn’t find Ms. Weatherbee in the videos, but she wanted to wait a little longer to tell Dodge. He was more than willing to tease her about Marci Grant.

  “Are we done here?” Dodge asked as he pulled a picture of Lucy Shaffer from the folder and placed it on top of the pile.

  Once the call was terminated, Dodge returned to his desk and felt a wave of relief wash over him. He sat in his chair and dropped the folder on his desk. Relief was what he found himself feeling after not having found Ms. Weatherbee’s picture in the folder; although a thought occurred to him at that moment that they were still missing something. There was a square of missing dust on a shelf that they suspected could have been a laptop. She could be in those videos, he thought. That’s when the relief he had felt dissipated as quickly as it had come.

  Driving towards the station, Tilley swung past Charlie Baker’s apartment and saw that a few more bouquets of flowers had been placed at the bottom of the steps near the yellow police tape. She slowed slightly as she drove past. She looked at the O’Briens’ house and figured no one was home. She slowed a little more and looked at the RED Realty sign on the lawn of the Turlington house; the red hair even redder, the teeth even whiter on the sign.

  Calvin waited until Dodge was gone to grab a box of tissues and locked himself in the small dark room he had been using to watch all the videos from Charlie Baker’s hard drive. Watching all that porn was becoming a serious problem. All Calvin could think about now was sex, and it was starting to affect his work. But the case made it so that he couldn’t get away from it. Lemkie was having too much fun with it, too. Calvin hadn’t masturbated this much since he was a teenager. With the door locked and the blinds shut, he sat at the monitor. With Lemkie out of the office early that day, he wanted a moment alone to watch the video of Charlie and Stella again. There was one he couldn’t get out of his mind. It was hot and he wanted a moment alone to watch it again. But this time he had the tissues.

  27

  With her car at the shop getting an oil change, Trudy sat in the passenger seat of the older-model red Corvette with the word RED on the vanity plate. Marci sat, gripping the steering wheel with her brown, battered-glove-covered hands. Trudy’s eyes wandered over her lover’s long legs as she drove, occasionally glancing at the driving gloves with distaste.

  “I got an offer on the Turlington place today,” Marci said, trying to make conversation to break the awkward silence.

  “Was it a lowball offer or a serious one?” Trudy asked.

  “Semi-serious,” Marci replied.

  “Is it gonna sell?”

  “Don’t know yet. Although it would be pretty sweet if it did.”

  “My office isn’t even done processing the sale you had two weeks ago,” replied Trudy as she gazed out the window at the houses they passed on their way to Trudy’s office.

  Marci knew something was troubling Trudy and she had no doubt what it was. Her demeanour had changed since they had watched Entertainment Tonight. The petite blonde hostess with the tight top had said that comedian Lucy Shaffer was back in rehab. This meant she was in town, staying at the Magnolia Wellness and Rehabilitation Centre. And knowing this, Trudy was worried that Marci would hang around there again like the last time Lucy had been in town. Marci was star-struck when it came to Lucy Shaffer. At least that’s what she had told Trudy when she found out and confronted her about it. And it didn’t matter that Lucy wasn’t gay. Trudy didn’t care that Lucy liked men. She had been angry that Marci had gone out of her way to bump into Lucy. Her excuse was that she’d heard the comedian wanted to buy a house here in Poplar Falls. And now Lucy Shaffer was back in town and Marci didn’t seem to care that Lucy was a heterosexual drunk.

  Marci turned down a side street, taking one of her typical detours. She wanted to check out a house for sale by a competitor. She slowed to glance at the competitor’s sign on a well manicured lawn of the bright yellow house on Robin Street. Ms. Langley must be moving in with her son after all. At least that was the rumour, as her neighbours were former clients of RED Realty. And from the sounds of it, they weren’t too heart-broken on Ms. Langley moving away. She had a reputation with the neighbourhood as the one who called the cops for any little thing that looked odd to her. And to Ms. Langley, that was a long list. Most of the police officers knew her well, including the detectives now on the Charlie Baker case. Marci slowed her car as she drove past, pulling into the middle of the road to avoid the slow kid on his large tricycle and trailer. She slowed the car and looked at Walter and his partially loaded tricycle with a look of disdain that Trudy noticed and commented on.

  “What is it with you and this Walter kid?”

  “He’s a pain in my ass,” Marci commented.

  “Why? He’s harmless.”

  “You know I have to explain his route to everyone one of my clients that buys a house in his neighbourhoods.”

  Trudy didn’t know what to say to that, as Marci did have a point. Walter’s obsession with collecting recyclables was strange; but harmless.

  Marci glanced in her rear-view mirror and saw that Walter had a busted laptop in his tricycle’s front basket. As she drove on, her brow furrowed in confusion as she wondered what a slow kid like Walter was doing with that in his basket. At least Trudy seemed to be forgetting about this Lucy Shaffer business. This was a relief because Trudy could be like a dog with a bone sometimes. And Lucy was a tasty bone, thought Marci, a small smirk spreading on her lips as she took a turn in the direction of Trudy’s office.

  28

  “Lucy’s agent called,” Dodge said as he pulled ahead in the drive-thru of a Jabba-da-Java Coffee Hut.

  “You serious?” Tilley asked.

  “Yup,” Dodge replied as he pulled his old, rusty Ford Escape up to the speaker. Not wanting to discuss an ongoing investigation by a drive-thru microphone, Dodge ordered the coffees and waited until he pulled ahead before speaking.

  “Anyway, her agent set up a meeting with her for us,” Dodge replied.

  “Her agent?” Tilley asked. “You’d think she’d call herself.”

  “Her agent probably advised against that since she’s back in rehab again,” Dodge said as he dug out his money to pay.

  “They both know we don’t suspect her anyway, right?”

  Dodge shrugged. “We can only assume so.”

  “She was shooting that movie in Las Vegas,” Tilley added.

  “Her agent asked us not to speak to any press about this,” Dodge said as he pulled up to the drive-thru window. He collected the coffees, paid, and drove off before either of them said anything else.

  “I heard she started drinking again because of this shit with Charlie,” Tilley said, as she found herself wondering what the tabloids would pay for some of those juicy photos of the famous comedian with Charlie Baker. A sly smile spread across her lips as they drove on, headed for the Magnolia Wellness and Rehabilitation Centre.

  A short while later, Detectives Dodge and Tilley sat under a small gazebo on the grounds, across from Lucy Shaffer. Lucy hid behind what Dodge thought was the largest and darkest pair of sunglasses he had ever seen. A large white hat shaded the fair-skinned comedian from the morning sun. She wore a white robe embroidered with the initials MWRC which covered her silk pyjama top, obviously not provided by the Rehabilitation Centre. Both Dodge and Tilley couldn’t help but notice all this as Lucy barely looked in their direction as she spoke.

  “I’m no whore, I’ll have you know,” Lucy said. “Yes, okay, I slept with Charlie but not right away or anything. He’s a charming… I mean, he was a charming man, you know.”

  Dodge scribbled something in a notepad as both he and Tilley checked out Lucy’s bare crossed legs, a slipper dangling off her right foot.

  “Plus I was drunk, the first time. We both were,” Lucy added, as she seemed to trail off thinking about Charlie Baker. �
��Not that being drunk justifies our fling, mind you. He was an amazing lover and an even better listener.”

  “Was the fling still ongoing?” Tilley asked.

  “No,” Lucy replied as she still stared off into the distance. “You know he’s the only fling I’ve ever had, and the fucking press is going to paint me out to be some kind of whore.”

  “Was he seeing anyone else, while you and he were seeing each other?” Tilley asked.

  “How should I know?” Lucy replied, and glanced at Tilley only to return her gaze to a woman sipping tea at a table on a nearby balcony. “I bet that’s not tea,” muttered Lucy before getting back to her story. “Charlie was charming, let me tell you. Most of the women here either loved him or had the hots for him, especially that Stella Rubbin.”

  “Tell us about Stella.” Dodge said as he took more notes.

  “I heard they might fire her,” Lucy said. “She was so in love with Charlie, but I only found that out after he and I started seeing each other.”

  A small golf cart drove past the gazebo. The man driving the cart waved at the three of them sitting in the shade. Lucy waved but looked away to hide her face as she did so.

  “Look, I don’t know who would want to kill Charlie,” Lucy stated as she finally glanced at each detective before looking off again. “I mean, I could understand some of the women wanting to kill each other over him but…”

  Lucy trailed off as a sudden look of panic came over her.

  “Fuck,” she blurted as she looked down, hiding behind her hat. She pulled a cell phone from her robe pocket, dialled using a single button, and put the phone to her ear.

  Tilley and Dodge exchanged glances before realizing that something was clearly upsetting Lucy, and they had an idea of what it might be. Dodge spotted a man ducking behind bushes with what had to be the longest camera lens he had ever seen.

  Without another word, Lucy got up and walked off, clearly chewing out whomever she had called. Dodge glanced back to the man in the bushes and recognized him as the driver of the golf cart that had driven past them mere moments before.

  At the back door of one of the buildings stood a man dressed all in white, clearly a staff member, who was pointing out the paparazzo to a man in a security guard uniform.

  Dodge and Tilley exchanged glances as they watched the man in the bushes duck out of sight, eventually reappearing from behind the bushes in the same golf cart as before. The security guard radioed someone on a shoulder radio.

  “You can’t outrun a radio,” Dodge said with a smirk.

  “What?” Tilley asked as she and Dodge walked off the gazebo and onto a perfectly groomed path.

  “Just something my brother once told me when we were kids,” Dodge replied.

  29

  Detective Franklin Dodge didn’t really consider himself all that smart, especially not when he worked with the likes of Detective Roxanne Tilley, although he’d never tell her that. Although she lacked experience, he knew that she would eventually be the better detective of the two of them, and those days were not that far off. But what he felt he lacked in smarts he made up for in wisdom and keen observational skills. Dodge used to feel he was pretty good at reading people, until he moved to Poplar Falls and met Tilley. Although he figured she did have an unfair advantage there, since she grew up in this quaint little city.

  Plus, whenever he did start feeling a bit intelligent, one of those crime scene investigator kids like Lemkie would teach him something new and he was reminded of how he was falling behind in the times. Technology was advancing way too fast for Dodge, and he felt like it was making him into a dinosaur sooner than he would have liked.

  Stumped after spending the morning mulling over pictures and ideas with Tilley, Dodge called it quits early. He rose from his desk, stating that he always did some his best thinking after a run and so he would call Tilley if he had any bright ideas. She agreed to do the same.

  Now Dodge sat in his Ford Escape, having decided to get a few things on the way home. In the back seat sat a few grocery bags and a case of beer. The beer was what he had really wanted, since it wasn’t really the run that helped the ideas flow but the beers he always had afterwards.

  He’d bumped into Myrtle while doing his shopping and he smiled at their brief encounter. She had inquired about the investigation (of course) and Dodge had politely told her that he couldn’t discuss that with her.

  Myrtle said that he didn’t have to tell her anything, as everybody in Poplar Falls knew that he and Tilley had met with Lucy Shaffer that day. The pictures were all over Facebook from the tabloid website and that paparazzo guy who’d been hiding in the bushes. Dodge’s favourite part of the encounter had been when she winked and blushed, saying that Mavis and Ester told her to say hello next time she saw that handsome Detective Dodge.

  Dodge smiled to himself as he put his key in the ignition but stopped before turning it as something caught his eye. Walter’s tricycle and trailer were parked near the front entrance of the grocery store; he’d walked past it on his way out just a few moments ago. But what he hadn’t noticed was what sat in the basket on the front of the tricycle. It looked like a battered laptop was sitting wedged in sideways on top of a few empty liquor bottles. At that moment Dodge remembered the dusty imprint on a shelf about the size of a laptop at Charlie Baker’s apartment.

  “Nah,” Dodge said to himself. “Can’t be…”

  He got out of his truck, leaving the driver’s door open without realizing it. He walked to the tricycle in a bit of a daze and gingerly picked up the busted laptop, as if he was afraid of breaking it more. What he was really afraid of was Lemkie giving him shit later about getting his prints all over it. He rotated the laptop, looking it over as if expecting to find something to tell him this was indeed Charlie Baker’s computer. This was too good to be true, if it turned out to indeed be the missing laptop he thought, and so there was no way he could leave it there. Looking around to see if anyone was watching and satisfied that no one was, he carried the busted hardware to his car, got in, and placed it on the passenger seat.

  Dodge shut the door but sat there, looking at the laptop for a moment, finding himself unable to leave yet and not really sure why. After a few moments, he realized why he felt he couldn’t depart. He was waiting for Walter to come out and discover his property was missing. Dodge found himself bothered by the idea, for some strange reason he couldn’t understand. Walter was a simple-minded man with brain damage, but Dodge felt sorry for him. And when Walter finally did come out of the Food Emporium carrying a couple of plastic bags containing what looked to be canned goods he paused, standing in front of his tricycle. Dodge watched as Walter dug through one of the bags, felt his pockets as if looking for something, and then placed one of the bags of cans in the front basket without hesitation. The second bag Walter placed in the basket at the back of his tricycle. He checked the hitch to his trailer before clumsily climbing onto his tricycle and beginning to pedal. The thin man in baggy clothes and crooked baseball cap worked hard to get the tricycle moving. Dodge watched him turn and pedal the tricycle in his direction.

  Walter looked at Dodge as he rode past the Ford Escape. The detective couldn’t hear the brain-damaged young man, but he read his lips as he mouthed the word ‘Wednesday’ with the best of crooked grins he could manage as he glanced in the direction of the Ford. Dodge looked into the basket and saw cans of pasta, stew, and beans protruding from the bag. At that moment Dodge made a mental note to go visit Walter at his home. At least he would try.

  He had heard that Walter’s mother wasn’t an easy person to get along with, but Dodge decided he would try as he started his car and headed back to the station. He had no way of knowing if his hunch about the busted laptop being Charlie’s was right, but he just had to know if it was. Plus, Lemkie was pretty much done processing the rest of the evidence and so he should have time to look at it anyway, Char
lie’s or not. That’s what he thought, as he never fully understood the complexities of the two crime scene investigators. To avoid too many questions he would leave the laptop on Lemkie’s desk with a note, asking him to check it out. And if he knew Lemkie, he’d already be on it by the time Dodge got to the station. Lemkie was usually in early, except on the days when he had to drop off his son at the Sunshine and Rainbows Daycare. Either way, Dodge would leave it on his desk with a note to have the laptop looked at it as soon as he could. Please and thank you.

  30

  Walter smelled bad and he knew it. But while pedaling his way home, he could only focus on the task at hand. The brain tumour and haemorrhage had left Walter with diminished capacities, which meant he was permanently in a one-track mode, being limited to one task at a time. Multitasking was not something Walter would ever get to do again, as that was a thing of the past. There was a time when Walter would have been able to fend for himself without his mother to remind him of everything. But that ability had been cut out and thrown into an incinerator by a well-meaning doctor who saved his life yet had sentenced Walter to a life as a simpleton at the same time. The irony was that Walter hadn’t been the nicest person before the surgery. He would have laughed at and made fun of people who were like he now was. He used to know better than to vocalize any of his insensitivity around his mother, as she would have beaten some sense into him. But now the irony, which was lost on the young man, was that Walter was what he used to find funny. And his mother wouldn’t have beaten him at all after the tumour.

  Walter’s mother was a shut-in who lived off a disability pension; she hardly left the house and was rarely seen, except for her occasional trips to the grocery store. She wasn’t a mean person, but Walter was always afraid of her. Her fierce temper was matched only by her powerful love for her son. She coddled and protected him even when he should have been old enough to leave the house. For those reasons moving out had never crossed his mind, and once the tumour came that option was taken off the table forever. He depended on his mother more and more as time went on, though for the past seven months she hadn’t reminded Walter to bathe, or to put his clothes in the wash. A few neighbours had tried to ask Walter about his mother, noticing her lack of trips to the grocery store, but Walter had only been able to respond in his usual manner, muttering the day of the week and struggling to smile.