In Valhalla's Shadows

by W. D. Valgardson

  Now Tom was a person of interest. He knew how people’s minds worked. The person who found the body. Single male. Fifteen-year-old female. Hopefully, the autopsy would straighten that out.

  When Tom had come to Valhalla, it was still chilly at night, but the weather had turned at the beginning of June, and with the beginning of July it had become oppressively hot and humid. He discovered that no matter how stifling the house was, once the sun went down a cool breeze would sweep in from the lake, and since the porch was fronted with windows that could be lifted and hooked to the ceiling, it cooled off enough to sleep covered with a light blanket. The porch just had the stack of wooden chairs, the cot with its thin mattress, a white wooden table with thick turned legs and two chairs that matched.

  When he’d moved into the house, there was a half-finished game of solitaire on the living room table. A blue cardigan was hanging from the back of the chair. That was where she’d been found, sitting in front of the cards. Her body had been taken away under Ben’s supervision. He’d followed her body out the door, then locked it. The kitchen table was still set for supper. Fortunately, she hadn’t started cooking.

  In Jessie’s bedroom, the waterfall dresser still had her hairbrush and comb, a china dish with a city scene on it filled with bobby pins and safety pins. A small plain tin held an assortment of buttons, all set on an embroidered scarf . The drawers were filled with her personal items. She obviously had little money, for there was nothing extravagant, nothing expensive. The drawers of the tall dresser were filled with neatly arranged sweaters and socks. The closet was small, but it was more than adequate because there were just five dresses and three jackets. If she had sold her property and gone to the city, she could have gone shopping at the Salvation Army and had a whole closet full of clothes. Not selling had come with some sacrifice.

  No one had thought to take the food out of the fridge. Tom had to throw everything out. He took the inside of the fridge apart, laid the parts out on the ground and washed them with baking soda and vinegar.

  His ambitions for a while were going to be as small as his budget. He’d buy building supplies. The stove and fridge, as old as they were, would do for the time being. He’d concentrate on the insulation, the roof and the gutters. During the winter he could work on the inside.

  He got up and went to the emporium for some condensed milk for his coffee. He was hoping that there would be a letter from Myrna. She’d said that she might come and visit. If she did, he wondered what the locals would make of her. Especially if one of her girlfriends drove her out. Goths in leather and metal. He just hoped she didn’t lead her friend around on a dog collar and leash. They sometimes did that at the Polo Park mall. They loved the attention.

  She’d got in with a bad group in high school. They called themselves the Dregs. When she turned eighteen, she started working part time in a tattoo parlour and later at a bar with strobes and heavy metal bands. When he objected, she said, “It’s just a job. I’m not shooting up. No pills. I’m not even drinking much.”

  The final straw was when Myrna turned up with a girlfriend and Sally caught them kissing in the kitchen. She started screaming. Myrna screamed back, “So, I’m a gothic lesbian slut.” Sally said she couldn’t deal with it anymore. No more kids in chains and leather, no more sneering, no more girls puking in her toilet or bathtub, no more worrying about a son doing no one knows what on the computer.

  Myrna and her girlfriend had stormed out of the house yelling, “Homophobia!” at the top of their lungs. Sally was wild eyed, enraged. Tom tried to find something positive in the situation by saying, “There’s no danger of her getting pregnant.”

  The shrink had said, “Change what you can; accept what you can’t. Kids go their own way.”

  “They’re not your kids,” Tom had replied angrily. The memory stopped him, made him pause at the bottom of the steps into White’s Emporium. He closed his eyes for a moment and thought, Focus, focus. Milk. I came for milk. “Stay in the present,” the shrink had said.

  Horst was hunched behind the counter like an angry bird. His face tensed when he saw Tom. “You got a lot of furniture in Ford’s place,” he said, “that you won’t want. It’s not good for much. Old stuff. People nowadays want new things. I’ll get Frenchie to clear it out for you and haul it away.”

  The dining room table and chairs were walnut. Tom planned to photograph them and take the pictures with him when he next went into the city. And Jessie had said the furniture came with the house.

  Tom picked a can of beans off the shelf, checked the expiry date and set it on the counter.

  “I like old stuff,” he said. “Some of that furniture must have belonged to Mr. Ford. Oak and walnut. Some mahogany.”

  Horst took Tom’s five-dollar bill and made change from a cash box. Not all transactions went through the cash register, Tom realized.

  “It’s all just junk,” Horst said. “People like new stuff. You buy new, Frenchie will bring it for you.”

  Horst was so bloody obvious that he annoyed Tom. He was a con man without any con man skills. The best con men were charming, friendly, always put the victim’s concerns first, built up trust. They were like elegant figure skaters, their moves practised. They joined church or ethnic groups, displayed their devotion to the common values of the group. They didn’t make their move to defraud people until everything was in place and they could make a maximum profit. Tom didn’t know if it was Horst’s attempted manipulation that annoyed him so much or his incompetence.

  When he returned home, he stood looking through the trees at the harbour. There were no buildings to interfere with his view of the lake. To the north side there was a dock and some finger docks. There were even three boathouses.

  In June, the boats had started to turn up, but there’d been no rush for moorage. Once July began, the berths had started to fill up. There were a few powerboats, but most were sailboats. There were some cabin cruisers. There was money there, he thought. Nobody bought those on daily wages. Nobody local was buying boats like that.

  He walked along the side of the house to the driveway and onto the road that led out of town. On the south side there was just his property, with its trees and bush. On the north side of the road, the village side, the permanent homes that were visible were scattered haphazardly behind and to the north of the emporium. A narrow drainage ditch that was choked with grass divided the road from his property. He’d have to clean it out. Fire would be the easiest way to do it, but now, with the heat of summer, it would be too dangerous. He’d have to wait until the fall rains. There were bottles and cans, bits of sodden cardboard that would have to be cleaned up. He walked west along the road to where a local side road running south dead-ended. This road ran parallel to the lakeshore but well back of it. His property, the other thirty-six acres, continued on the west side of this road. It looked nondescript, with a ragged row of small trees along the edge. From where he stood he could see an old shingle roof some distance away among a grove of trees. He kept walking because the village properties continued for another half mile, with driveways and culverts leading to yards cleared from the bush.

  Walking back he took his time so that he could get a good look at the houses. Some of them weren’t finished. They were covered with tarpaper but had never had the siding put on. Others had siding but with some boards missing.

  Sweat ran down his back. Heatstroke would be the result of vigorous work. He went to the south side of the house because there he could work in the shade. The thick mats of spruce needles were brown and brittle. If a fire started, it would race through the debris. He remembered that Ben had said there were tools in the garage. Ben had left a key for the old-fashioned lock. Tom let himself in and the smell of dry dirt and air that had sat trapped for an unknown time was thick and heavy and made him cough. There was a rake, but when he took it outside, the handle was loose. He went to his truck, took a hammer and a nai
l from his toolbox. He drove the nail through the metal and the wood, then bent it over and tapped it down. It was a crude solution, but for the moment, it would work.

  He started raking the accumulation of spruce needles, small branches and dead weeds into piles. The ground underneath was bare. Raking was good work. Repetitive but not too strenuous. He worked for two hours, then went to the emporium and bought a soft drink from one of the waitresses. His fridge kept drinks moderately cool. The Whites, with their professional coolers, kept drinks ice cold.

  When he went back outside, Karla White was sitting in the shade at a table working with some receipts. He could see that she was having a hard time concentrating because she kept picking up a receipt, reading it, putting it down, and then staring into the middle distance.

  “What do you want?” she asked sharply. She was challenging him the way a dog might bark at someone for no reason. He thought it must be the heat. It made everyone cranky. Her face was tense, the muscles around her mouth tight and the skin on her forehead pulled into wrinkles. Even though he’d been in Valhalla a short time, already he knew she felt that anything that might scare off customers was an impending disaster.

  “The company of a beautiful woman,” he replied. “A beautiful woman on a beautiful day.”

  In spite of herself, she smiled and shifted to face him. She had large dark eyes, and her makeup emphasized them. She batted her dark lashes at him. It made him feel like he had come courting. She was volatile, quickly changing moods. A compliment, a summer customer buying an expensive piece of fishing equipment, a new renter, was enough to make her hum or even sing a few lines from a cheerful song. A problem with a waitress or an ice cream girl, an unhappy boater or sports fisherman, would wind her up, make her rush to fix whatever was wrong. She apologized to fishermen who didn’t catch any fish. She apologized for the weather. Now, she put aside what she was doing, stretched her arms out and drew them back. “If you want to know about that girl, she wasn’t working here. Didn’t ask for her old job back. Last summer she worked at the ice cream counter. I wasn’t even sure of her name. I had to get one of the girls to remind me.”

  She gave him a quick insincere smile. “She came and went. Depended on whether her mother was drinking or not. Depended on whether her mother had a boyfriend. Depended on lots of things.”

  “I know Ben a little. He’s been transporting stuff for me. Dropping off lumber and stuff. It’s his granddaughter.”

  “You’d be better off with Frenchie. He’s more dependable.”

  She hadn’t asked him to join her, but he pulled out a chair and sat down anyway. He was sure he’d be welcome. She liked to be looked at.

  “You’re a puzzle, you know. Men don’t usually come to Valhalla to stay. That’s what people are saying. Why’d he come to Valhalla? It’s not like there are great opportunities here. ”

  “There seem to be quite a few men around.”

  She was wearing a low-cut blouse and she leaned her elbows on the table so he could see her breasts better. She had fine breasts, the skin still smooth, and her bra pushed them up. He thought she must never have had children, or if she had, she’d never nursed them.

  “Just the summer ones, and they don’t count. They’re like the butterflies.” She waved her left hand and wiggled her fingers to mimic the fleeing butterflies. “They appear and disappear with the sun. They don’t hang around to go to a tombola or dance or bingo in the winter. Summers are short; winters are long. Lots of men around here in the summer. Adds a little spice to our lives. Got to keep them happy. Sell them fresh wrigglers, if you know what I mean. Make sure they get their picture taken with their big catch. They’re like the geese, though. They fly south for the winter. Their winters are palm trees and rum. Just us local folk here for whist drives or turkey dinners. Maybe some moose and bear hunters drop by. They don’t know how to be part of our community. Do you know how to be part of our community?”

  “I’ll figure it out,” he said. “I’ve lived in a lot of communities. Posted here, posted there. Some good, some bad. I always found my niche.”

  Up close, he could see that she was older than he’d first thought. Maybe forty. She did her makeup well, but there were crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes and the sides of her jaw were starting to soften. A double chin was just starting to form. She had her hair pulled back and a wild daisy pinned over her left ear. Her nails were bright pink and carefully filed. Her thumbnails were painted blue. Nails not so long that they’d interfere with working but long enough to be noticeable. Her white blouse had a frilly edge.

  “You’re staring,” she said.

  “Sorry. When I see something new, I do that. An old habit. I’m trying to get over it. You could wear a higher blouse.”

  “Bigger tips this way,” she said, half joking. She didn’t quite manage a smile. “Lots of beach parties around here. Kids come out to drink. Most of the time they’re not a nuisance unless they get noisy.”

  “When I saw her lying there, I thought at first she might be a boy. The jeans. The shirt.”

  “It’s a bit of a fad right now. Girls dressing like cute boys,” she said. When he looked puzzled, she added, “It’s the fashion. Everything is fashion. You want to succeed, you have to follow the trend. Everyone wants to be discovered, to be on TV, in the movies. Nobody wants to think they’re going to spend the rest of their life cleaning houses or waiting tables.” She waited for a moment to see if he would say something, then added, “She’s got a brother—had a brother. I’m not sure how you put it. When you were a cop, you might have been chasing him.”

  “I chased lots of people,” he replied.

  “He’s lived in the city for a long time with his mother. He must be over twenty now. Dave, Dick, something with a D.

  “For someone who didn’t remember Angel’s name, you know a lot about her family.”

  “He’s trouble. We don’t want trouble. You see these people?” She waved her hand toward the harbour. “They come here to relax. Stressful, important jobs in the city. They don’t want city problems following them.”

  Tom stared at the masts of the sailboats. The squealing from kids jumping in the lake was louder for a moment as someone got thrown in. They all looked like they were having a wonderful time. The sky had shifted to a pale green. In the city, he hardly noticed the sky, but here it was impossible not to be aware of the sky’s ever-changing moods, the constant shifting of colours. Anna had sometimes said to him as they worked on her roof garden, “Look at the sky.” and he’d tip back his head but most of the time it was the contrails from the commercial airliners that interested him.

  “It’s like a postcard, isn’t it?” Karla asked. “Picture perfect. We want to keep it that way. We scare these people away, we’ve got nothing. We’ve got to make enough in summer to last the winter. Not just us, me and Horst, but lots of people. They sell them fish, the girls get work with us, get babysitting. Their mothers get cleaning work. Boats need painting and repairing.”

  “This morning,” he said, “a young woman in a long dress, long brown hair came by. She was carrying a wicker basket filled with fresh lettuce, green onions, some radishes. She said she could bring me fresh vegetables and fruit in season.” She’d been like a willow wisp, he’d thought. She’d been wearing a large straw hat to keep off the sun.

  Karla’s face tensed and her body went rigid. “Odin,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “They’re crazy. They think the end of the world, Ragnarök, is coming. Don’t get taken in. They know about you. You get discussed. They know you’re living alone. I’m sure she’d be happy to make you a salad, help out with light housework. They go to the cottages, the boats, no business licence.”

  “Odin,” he repeated.

  “The god of gods, the holy of holys, the big guy with one eye, with a big hat and a staff.”

  “That guy
,” he said. “What does he have to do with selling fresh vegetables?”

  “They own land north of town. Ten acres. They grow their own food. They don’t do any business in the community. They take money out. They don’t put any money in.”

  “You don’t like them?” he said.

  She gave him an exasperated look. “We can’t compete. We have to buy vegetables from Winnipeg and have them trucked here. They pick wild raspberries, blueberries, everything. No cost. They garden big time.” It was obviously a sore point for her, her voice was sharp with the unfairness of it all, but Tom remembered the carrots so limp that they bent, the potatoes thick with sprouts, the lettuce like a dishrag.

  He’d bought fresh green onions, lettuce and radishes from his cheerful visitor. He’d taken two bundles of radishes. She said they’d soon have cucumbers and tomatoes. There’d be new potatoes in a while.

  Karla was studying him the way she might study a horse she was thinking of buying. She would, he thought, set a price on him and treat him accordingly. He expected she would see him not as a racehorse, or a dressage horse, or a going-out-riding-on-Sunday horse, but a workhorse, plodding along.

  He didn’t want to argue with her about fresh vegetables or some weird group living past the houses and cottages to the north.

  “Yes,” he agreed, “Valhalla is picture perfect.” Except for the police tape that was still up.

  Some people came out of the café with ice cream cones. Double scoops. He supposed he wanted one and then decided he didn’t. He’d been putting on weight since he’d been living alone. When he did up his pants, he had to pull them tight to get the button done up.