A Cloud of Suspects

by Laurence Gough

  Sandy hadn’t moved an inch since he’d asked her what was bothering her. She had never in all her life met anyone who was half as patient. The first time he’d come over, the babysitter was late and Tyler was still up, running around the apartment in his pyjamas, venting the last of his steam. Eight years old, but he’d instinctively known Sandy for the rival he was. He’d blind-sided Sandy as he sat on the sofa, hit him with a metal dump truck that weighed a couple of pounds, easy. Smacked him on the kneecap and then swung viciously at his head and missed by inches, but only because Sandy saw the blow coming, and ducked. Some dark part of Harve in there, inside the child. Jan didn’t want to think about that. She had offered Sandy ice for his knee, but he’d said he was just fine, no damage done. The sitter had finally showed up, and Sandy had taken her out for dinner. No dancing, though. He’d taken her home early, still limping as he walked her to her door. He had graciously declined her offer of a nightcap. She didn’t waste any of her precious time wondering whether he’d spurned her because Tyler had assaulted him or because he didn’t like her perfume, or had done the math and figured out that she had almost a decade on him, or whatever. You couldn’t please everybody. There was no point in giving yourself a migraine worrying about it.

  When he phoned a couple of days later and asked her if she wanted to take in a movie, she couldn’t have been more surprised.

  Sandy sat up a little straighter, startling her. God, she’d been aching to see him all day long, and here they were, alone on the sofa, and she’d forgotten all about him, her mind wandering. She smiled. Here she was having an out-of-body experience when it was an in-body experience that she so desperately craved.

  Sandy said, “Where were you?”

  “Thinking about when Tyler hit you with the truck.”

  “Wishing he was here so he could whack me again?”

  “Of course not.”

  She drank the last of her wine and snuggled up against him, casually rested her hand on his thigh.

  She said, “You can kiss me if you want to.”

  Sandy said, “i’ll try to remember that.” He looked serious but the light in his eyes told her he was kidding, teasing her. She’d never met anyone as passionate as Sandy, but he took a little more winding up than most of the guys she’d known. She’d thought at first that he was repressed, but it was a lot more complicated than that. There was a shyness to him. As if he didn’t know himself, wasn’t sure who he was. That was okay with her. She kind of liked it, to be honest. When they were together it was always a learning experience for both of them. What made it really exciting was that they were both learning something entirely different. It had to be the age thing. That, and a boy’s own innocence, slowly and deliciously eroded.

  It drove her crazy, just thinking about it.

  *

  Straight up no chaser

  The waiter brought Willows’ Cutty Sark, Parker’s bowling-pinshaped green glass bottle of Perrier, and a tall glass and a lowball glass full of ice cubes to the table. He poured half the Perrier into the tall glass and set it down in front of Parker’s empty chair. Willows shifted slightly as the waiter placed the Cutty and ice cubes in front of him. The ice shifted, rattling in a subdued way. The waiter said, “Was there anything else? Did you want to see the menu?”

  Willows shook his head, no.

  The waiter went away. Willows reached down and around with his right hand, and adjusted the angle of his holster so the butt of his Glock wasn’t digging into his ribs quite so irritatingly. He should have left the gun in the trunk of the car. It made him a little nervous, packing iron in a bar.

  He thought about Janey Markson, how surprised she had been by her husband’s sudden, violent death. She’d had no idea he was an armed robber. Peter had told her all sorts of lies when he’d gone out at night. He was going for a walk, to Starbucks, to the library to do some research …

  The true story, Peter Markson had kept a set of burglar’s clothes and a ten-speed bicycle in his ratty, ten-year-old Econoline van, had driven around the city until he saw an ATM he liked, parked a few blocks away, changed into his black jeans and black, long-sleeved T-shirt and black sneakers, stuffed his black balaclava into his pocket, and rode the bike over to the ATM, hid in the shadows until somebody who looked like a victim used the machine. It was lucrative work. Most people had an arrangement with their bank or credit union that allowed them to withdraw four or five hundred dollars a pop. If Peter hit two atms a night, he was often grossing eight hundred to one thousand dollars. His operating costs were almost nil — coffee and doughnuts and a few dollars’ worth of gasoline. Of course, the wear and tear on his psyche had been considerable …

  Janey Markson had said, “What van? Peter owned a car?”

  She’d switched to the past tense in the blink of an eye. Willows hadn’t been surprised.

  Parker came back from the washroom. She touched Willows’ shoulder as she sat down. The overhead pot lights glinted on her diamond engagement ring and gold wedding band.

  She said, “What a day.”

  Willows nodded. “Yeah, it was, wasn’t it.” Now that she was sitting at the table, he could take a drink. He took a very small sip of Scotch. Parker twirled the straw in her glass. She looked out the window at English Bay. It was a little past eight, but the city’s informal “sunset club” was already starting to gather, dozens of people sitting on the grass banks and on the many logs arranged neatly on the beach, parallel to the shore, like giant pick-up sticks. By sunset there would be several hundred people on the beach, all of them facing the setting sun, and the sea. It was as if they expected, or at least hoped, that some kind of all-knowing god would rise up out of the depths and clue them in to whatever it was that woke them in the middle of the night, gave them the three-in-the-morning sweats. One time only, pre-Jack, Parker had joined the sunset crowd. It was a spooky experience. Everybody was very quiet, as if conversation were forbidden. When the last pink traces of the sun had faded from the sky, people had started leaving. They’d stood up and walked away in total silence, like zombies. Weird.

  Parker drank some Perrier. She watched a trio of bikini-clad in-line skaters propel themselves powerfully down the sidewalk. During the past few years Vancouver had developed a well-deserved reputation as a “no-fun” city. It had started when the police had arbitrarily and illegally forbidden citizens from frequenting the Robson Street area to celebrate a Stanley Cup series win, and had snowballed as the city’s tight-ass bureaucrats repressed or outright banned more and more civic events. Greek Day, one of her personal favourites, was apparently gone forever. The Parks Board morons had even stripped the hoops from the Kits Beach open-air basketball court, because the sound of kids having fun had irritated a few taxpayers across the street from the court.

  Parker drained her glass and poured herself a refill. Fortified, she turned to the matter at hand. It wasn’t going to be easy to broach the subject, but if she raised it quickly she knew it would go easier on both of them — especially her.

  She said, “Jack, I can’t do this any more.”

  “Drink Perrier?”

  She leaned back in her chair, collected herself, let him see in her eyes that this was not the time for bullshit, and tried again. “Jack, I can’t do this any more.”

  “You just got back.”

  “That’s true.”

  It was, too, almost. But that was beside the point. Being separated from her beloved son was driving her crazy. She was a crazy woman, armed with a 10-millimetre Glock.

  Willows said, “Give yourself some more time to adjust.”

  “I don’t want to adjust. I want to be a mother.”

  “You are a mother.” Willows almost added, “and a damn fine mother, too.” But wisely decided against pushing his luck. During her term, Parker had gained twenty pounds. No problem, because his love for her was more than just skin deep. Then, during the last few weeks of her pregnancy, she’d lost her sense of humour. She’d worked hard to shed the
extra pounds, but he couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed out loud. Except, rarely, at something brilliant Hadrian had done or babbled.

  “I want to be a full-time mother,” said Parker. “Not someone who says goodbye to her son at seven o’clock in the morning and comes home too tired to see straight, just in time to tuck her baby into bed.”

  Willows stared down at his Scotch. He felt the anger rising up in him again, and struggled to push it back. He and Claire had talked about the problems of parenthood for hours on end. They’d reluctantly decided they were in no position to have a child. Not yet, anyway. Maybe in a few years, but not now. When Parker told him she was pregnant, he was concerned, even frightened. But he was also deliriously happy. He knew there wasn’t a chance in the world that Claire would abort the fetus. If she’d suggested abortion as a way out, he would have argued vehemently against it, done everything he could to stop her, short of locking her in the basement.

  “Something else has been bothering me,” said Parker. “How much of the crap I put up with during a shift do I bring home with me? Nobody understands what babies sense or absorb. Will Hadrian look into my eyes and see Peter Markson’s body lying on the floor?”

  “I seriously doubt it,” said Willows. He added, “No, he won’t,” and knocked back half his Scotch.

  Parker made a show of checking the time. It had taken a real effort to convince her to stop on the way home for a drink. He’d hoped they could relax for half an hour, take a rare break between the exhausting tedium of work and the eternal sameness of their domestic life together.

  Parker said, “We should go.”

  Willows drained his glass, and signalled for the check. The waiter had been watching them. He said something to the bartender, who rang up the tab. Willows suspected the waiter had been keeping an eye on him because he believed he and Parker were going to start shouting at each other. Fair enough. The waiter put the check down in front of him. Willows calculated the tip as he got out his wallet. He’d never waited tables, but he knew it must be hard work. He considered himself a generous tipper. Tipping was an integral part of the dining experience, not an optional expense. If you couldn’t afford to tip properly, stay home and stare at the TV. He tossed twelve dollars on the table, and pocketed the receipt.

  Parker had done the math. Her face was tight. She pushed back her chair and stood up. Willows stepped aside to let her past. He followed her as she wended her way past the noisy, crowded tables and out of the bar. As they exited the building the dam burst.

  “You overtipped. Again.”

  “I might want to go back there some day.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “Claire, it was only a couple of dollars.”

  “It’s your attitude, Jack. That’s what bothers me, your need to impress people you don’t even know. Your wasteful attitude.”

  This was so unfair, Willows wasn’t bothered by it. Parker hadn’t finished her Perrier. Was that such a terrible waste? Willows didn’t ask. He had two children from his previous marriage. Sean had left home and Willows didn’t expect him to ever come back. In September, he hoped, his daughter, Annie, would be going into third-year Arts at the University of British Columbia. Annie had just broken up with her boyfriend. During term she had a rented room near the campus and she rarely came home, except to do her laundry.

  Willows considered that he’d been an average parent at best, though he gave himself credit for recapturing lost ground after his first wife left him. When Parker told him she was pregnant, he’d relished his second shot at fatherhood. He was older, and wiser. Not nearly as prone to explode in fits of anger.

  He had told Parker he had no preference as to the sex of their child, but secretly hoped it would be a boy. He loved Annie’s older brother, Sean. He was proud of him, and what he had done with his young life, but there was a distance between them that Willows believed was entirely his fault, and it nagged at him.

  Parker was silent during the ride home. Five days a week, Hadrian put in a ten-hour shift at a nearby daycare facility. Willows and Parker quickly learned that the daycare staff cut no slack where late arrivals were concerned. Their overtime rates were usurious, but the worst part of it was the visible anger they radiated when a parent didn’t pick up his child on time. Willows and Parker had sought extra help. Their next-door neighbour had recommended a retired nurse named Miriam Witherspoon. Miriam was in her late sixties but had excellent references, a kindly disposition, and boundless energy. In the span of a few short months, she had almost become a member of the family. Willows supposed that to Hadrian, she was a member of the family.

  Maybe that’s what Parker was so upset about …

  For Detective Jack Willows, this was a major insight.

  Chapter 4

  Days off

  Claire called in sick the next morning. As Jack dressed, she told him she had an upset stomach and a headache. He wasn’t quite as sympathetic as she thought he should have been. Maybe he didn’t believe her. Small wonder, since she was lying through her teeth.

  Jack said, “Want me to leave the car?”

  “No, take it.” He’d already kissed her goodbye and was lingering by the door. Claire waved him out of the bedroom. As soon as she heard him shut and lock the front door, she sat up and reached over and picked up the cordless and phoned the daycare.

  “Hi Wendy, this is Claire Parker. Hadrian won’t be coming in this morning. No, he’s fine. We both needed a day off, that’s all. Thank you, we will. ’Bye now.”

  Claire hung up, and swung out of bed. It was just past seven. Hadrian was usually awake by six, but this morning he hadn’t made a peep, probably because she’d kept him up late the previous evening. She’d heard about babies who woke at their regular hour no matter how little sleep they’d had. Hadrian wasn’t one of them, thank goodness.

  Jack had cut a doorway in the wall between the two bedrooms. Claire moved soundlessly across the wall-to-wall, and peeked into the curtained bedroom. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light. Hadrian stood bolt upright in his crib, holding tight to the closely spaced bars with his tiny little fists, staring fixedly at a moth batting against his nightlight.

  Claire held out her arms as she walked towards him. She smiled and said, “Hello, my darling!”

  Hadrian’s face crumpled. He burst into tears.

  *

  A girl’s best friend

  There was nothing to eat in the house, so they went out. Sandy drove a late-model Toyota pickup with a bench seat. Jan liked to sit close, snuggle up against him with her hand resting on his thigh. He was a careful driver, not reckless and wild like a lot of men she knew. If somebody cut him off, it didn’t seem to bother him in the least. When she asked him about it, he said he’d witnessed a terrible accident shortly after he’d started driving and it had made him a more thoughtful and better driver.

  Jan was in the mood for seafood. Nothing fancy. A bowl of clam chowder or a crab salad, something along those lines. Definitely not fish and chips. Nothing deep-fried. Given the geography, there weren’t a whole lot of seafood restaurants in town. Even more surprising, there were only a handful on the water. Vancouver had miles of wonderful beaches, but there was nothing much to do but swim or lie around on the sand, or play volleyball, if you were feeling athletic. Why was it impossible to find a restaurant on the beach, somewhere nice where you could sit outside and enjoy the sunshine and the view, and a decent meal and a glass of wine? She told Sandy what she’d been thinking, and added, “It’s as if scenery and a fine dining experience are mutually incompatible around here.”

  Sandy smiled and said, “‘Mutually incompatible’?”

  Jan said, “I learned that phrase from the marriage counsellor, when he was telling me why I should split up with Harvey.”

  Sandy nodded. Jan had told him about Harvey.

  She said, “Anyway, am I right, or am I right?”

  “You’re right,” said Sandy. “There’s that place
across the street from English Bay. With the upstairs, downstairs, and the big outside deck.”

  “Is it expensive?”

  “That’s up to you. But I’m buying, so don’t worry about it.”

  “You’re buying me lunch?”

  “It’s a limited-time offer that may never be repeated,” said Sandy. “You can choose to use it, or sit back and lose it.”

  “I want a crab salad and a bowl of clam chowder and some fresh sourdough bread and at least two glasses of dry white wine.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Jan snuggled a little closer, and casually rested her hand again on his thigh. He was such a sweet guy, but jam-packed with contradictions. Careful with his money one day, generous the next. When she’d first met him a couple of months ago, at a Starbucks, she’d asked him what he did for a living, how he earned his daily bread. He’d said he was between projects. She had no idea what that meant but hadn’t pushed it. He wasn’t a friend of a friend of Harvey’s, and that was really all that mattered.

  After lunch they went for a walk on the beach. There were plenty of gorgeous women around, some of them in bikinis so outrageously skimpy Jan wasn’t sure she’d feel comfortable in them, even though they were legal. Sandy was an extremely observant person, but he was also sensitive, and smart. If he ogled other women, he took care that she didn’t know about it. What she did know, with a comforting certainty, was that when she was with him, he treated her as if she were the only woman in the whole damn world. Harvey had been just the opposite. When he spotted a good-looking woman, he’d made a point of staring at her, acting as if Jan didn’t even exist.

  Jan was still feeling the effects of the lunchtime wine when they got back to her apartment. The alcohol and long walk in the sun had given her a slight headache. A couple of Aspirin took care of the headache. A cool shower perked her up. She dried herself off and strolled into the living room and sat down naked on Sandy’s lap as he read the morning paper. Pretty soon, she’d sweet-talked him into taking her to bed …