Prized Possessions
Page 25
“Corporal Sanducci—”
“Eduardo,” said Sanducci, flushing. But this caused her to smile at him, so he didn’t mind it. He thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.
“You call me Kathy, then, okay?”
“Kathy. Right.” Maybe not beautiful. He couldn’t tell. But he’d definitely never met anybody he liked looking at so much.
Her smile faded away. “When you go there…will it be… cleaned up?”
“Not yet.”
“Who does that?”
“The owner of the house. Or else he’ll hire somebody.”
They were sitting on a vinyl sofa near the door, next to a tall plant. Kathy reached out and brushed a layer of dust from one of its large, thick leaves. “I never thought about that before,” she said. “I mean, when I read in the paper about things like this happening, I never thought about who’d be cleaning it up.” She glanced at Sanducci. “I guess I kind of assumed it would be the police.”
Sanducci shook his head.
“No,” said Kathy. “I mean, it’s bad enough you have to spend time there looking for evidence and stuff. You don’t want to have to…clean it up as well.” She tucked her hands together in her lap. “I feel like doing it, you know? I don’t mean I want to, exactly. But I just feel like I ought to do it.”
“Because you got away and they didn’t?” He wanted to go to bed with her, sure, of course he did. But he thought that if he couldn’t do that, he’d be happy to just sit here and look at her, and listen to her, for the rest of his life.
“Yeah, maybe,” she said. “But also…it would be doing something for them, you know?”
“No,” said Sanducci. “You’re wrong about that. They wouldn’t want you to do that for them. They definitely would not want that.” Through the glass doors he saw a middle-aged couple hurrying from the parking lot toward the hospital. “I’ll get Norah to help me,” he said, turning his service cap in his hands. “We’ll get your stuff and your roommates’ too. And, uh, I could probably go over there in a day or so, take it to you over there in Richmond, at your folks’ place. If you want.”
“That would be great,” said Kathy, smiling at him.
Her parents burst through the door, and Sanducci stood, and watched, while Kathy ran toward them and into their arms.
***
“Holed up there like a rat in a nest. I never did like that man,” said Bernie, her arms crossed over her flat chest.
“I don’t think I’m ever going to hear properly again,” said Emma, banging her left temple with the heel of her hand. She was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee. “Sid Sokolowski told me that might happen.”
“You just be happy you’re alive, never mind you can’t hear things right. You coulda been killed dead, like those poor girls.”
“Will you go to court with me, Bernie? For moral support?”
“You just bet your life I will.”
Self-defense, that was Emma’s plea. Her lawyer was pretty confident. But there were weapons charges too.
“At least I didn’t have to stay in jail,” she said with a shudder. “I would’ve stopped doing for Mr. Alberg,” said Bernie fiercely, “if he’d clapped you in jail.”
She’d been released on recognizance, because she was known in the community and not considered to be a danger to herself or others. Emma had found the whole process humiliating but fascinating.
She was going to sell the house and move somewhere, just as soon as this business was over and she was free to go where she liked.
She looked out the window into the backyard. She thought about the red-haired man. It ought to make her feel better about shooting him, knowing he’d murdered two people. But it didn’t. She couldn’t get it out of her mind, the inexplicable gentleness on his face, just before she killed him.
***
“We don’t know which one of them actually did the shooting,” said Alberg. “The one that’s alive blames the one that’s dead, of course.”
“Isn’t there some way you can tell for sure?” said Cassandra.
“He showed us where they dropped the weapon, so we’ve got prints; but both of them handled the shotgun, so that’s no help. The dead guy is the one with the motive. And it’s his car that ran down Melanie Franklin. So I’m inclined to think it was him, all right.”
They were on the ferry that crosses Jervis Inlet, on their way to Lund. It was breezy and cold out on deck, so they’d moved inside and were sitting in the cafeteria. Alberg looked across the table at Cassandra. “Thanks for coming with me.”
“Thanks for asking me.”
There was an awkward silence. They were supposed to be talking, trying to work out which one of them was going to move. But now neither of them wanted to be the one to bring it up.
Twenty minutes later, they were driving off the ferry at Saltery Bay, heading up the highway toward Powell River. They passed through Westview, and the Powell River town site, where the pulp mill belched smoke into the air, and then they were on the road to Lund.
Cassandra, studying the map, followed the highway, a confident red line moving up the Coast from Langdale to Gibsons to Sechelt to Earls Cove, and starting again across the inlet at Saltery Bay, and going northwest to Powell River and through the hamlet of Sliammon and beyond to this place called Lund…where it simply stopped. There was no way to continue up the coastline except by boat or plane.
What if it turned out that she didn’t like living with Karl Alberg on a regular basis? Sharing housekeeping tasks, and the food bills, and the television set, and the bathroom. What if she didn’t like sharing a bed with him on a regular basis?
They drove through forests and past acreages, past signs directing them westward through the trees to oceanfront campsites—and then the road took a curve to the left, up a lilting little rise, and they drove around the curve and saw the village of Lund, clustered around a small but perfect harbor.
The highway ran straight toward that harbor and drowned itself in the waters of the Pacific Ocean.
Alberg parked across from the hotel, and they got out of the car.
Still, thought Cassandra, gazing out at the sea, she wasn’t the only person getting into cohabitation in midlife. She’d have to learn to be flexible. That was the important thing.
They went into the hotel café, where they found a waitress, three townspeople, and two tourists waiting for the water taxi to Savary Island.
“What’s on Savary Island?” Alberg asked, over coffee.
“Sandy beaches,” said Cassandra, “and the biggest arbutus tree in the world.”
He inquired about the Franklins and learned that they lived right behind the hotel. “Wait for me here, okay?” he said to Cassandra.
She could probably be flexible, she thought, watching him go. As long as he could too.
***
Alberg knocked on the door of the brown-shingled house and looked down at the concrete step while he waited for somebody to answer. They had a boot scraper. Alberg hadn’t seen one of those for years.
He looked up as the door opened. “Mr. Franklin?” he said through the screen.
“That’s right. You’re Staff Sergeant Alberg?”
“Yes. My car’s right here,” said Alberg, stepping back. Franklin pushed the screen door open and joined Alberg. “How many boxes did you say?”
“Four.”
“I can’t believe it,” said Franklin heavily, watching Alberg open the trunk. “Any of it.”
They transferred the cardboard cartons to the Franklins’ living room.
“They were going to do this, you know,” said Franklin. “The girls. Kathy and Caroline and Sandy. They were going to bring this stuff up here Saturday night. Had it in the car, all ready to go. But then they put it off a day.” He glanced at Alberg. “If they hadn’t put it off, those girls might be alive now. Is that right?”
“It’s hard to tell, Mr. Franklin.”
Franklin looked at the boxe
s, lined up on the living room floor. “Her mom will want to go through them. I’ll just leave them here.” He turned to Alberg. “I thank you for this,” he said, and they shook hands. “I appreciate your trouble.”’
“It was no trouble,” said Alberg.
***
He collected Cassandra from the hotel café, and they went back to his car. “That was the northern end of the road, back there at Lund,” said Cassandra, as they headed for Powell River. “The southern end of it’s in Chile.”
“Maybe we should just keep on driving,” said Alberg, smiling at her.
They drove a mile or so in silence.
“So what about it?” he said.
“I’ll live in your house for a year,” said Cassandra promptly. “That is, if we find that—that this whole thing is a good idea.”
Alberg grinned, and a nice zinging sensation warmed his chest. “And then what?”
“And then we’ll see,” said Cassandra. She rested her hand on his thigh.
“Okay,” said Alberg. “I can handle that.” He covered her hand with his. “Jesus. I feel good.”
“Me too,” said Cassandra, laughing.
For more “Karl Alberg” titles by L.R. Wright, and for our full catalog of vintage and contemporary mysteries, please visit our website: FelonyAndMayhem.com
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All the characters and events portrayed in this work are fictitious.
PRIZED POSSESSIONS
A Felony & Mayhem mystery
PUBLISHING HISTORY
First Canadian print edition (Doubleday): 1993
First U.S. print edition (Viking): 1993
Felony & Mayhem print and digital editions: 2017
Copyright © 1993 by L.R. Wright
All rights reserved
E-book ISBN: 978-1-937384-91-3