A Matter of Malice

by Thomas King

  Maybe it was the cancer. A new car as a way of imagining a future.

  So Claire had left town. Logic said that she had gone back to Seattle for more treatments or more tests. Without telling anyone that she was going. No great surprise. Claire could be self-contained, isolated, inaccessible. Other times she could be gregarious, generous, loving. You could just never count on which Claire was going to arrive on your doorstep.

  Or which one was going to turn and walk away.

  Thumps wondered if Claire confided in anyone. Certainly not in the men in her life. Not Stick. Not him. But women talked to other women, didn’t they? Roxanne Heavy Runner? Beth Mooney? Ora Mae Foreman? Maybe he could ask one of them.

  Thumps didn’t have a death wish, so Roxanne was out. The secretary for the tribe had all the warmth of a tank and all the patience of a live hand grenade. If he asked about Claire, Roxanne would most likely run him over or blow him up.

  Beth Mooney might know, but chances were he’d have to talk to her while she worked on a corpse. Beth doubled as a family doctor and the county coroner. She lived on the top floor of the old Land Titles building. Her medical practice was on the first floor. The basement was the morgue.

  Thumps was intimately acquainted with that dank, dark room and its frightening smells. He didn’t need a refresher course.

  Which left Ora Mae. Thumps doubted that Claire would confide in Ora Mae, but the woman had earned a reputation as a clearing house for realities and rumours. If something was afoot in town, Ora Mae would know. Plus she had a bright, cheery office with windows and no armoured vehicles, fragmentation devices, or dead bodies lurking in the corners. Given the choices, Ora Mae was the clear winner.

  As he drove across town, Thumps was forced to ask himself why he was bothering. Claire was perfectly capable of looking after herself. She’d show up when she wanted to show up. Whatever she was doing was, in the end, her business, and none of his own. They weren’t married, whatever that meant. They weren’t even engaged.

  Wild Rose Realty was on Clark Street, and it had its own parking lot. The lot was for customers only, and a large sign warned that imposters would be towed. Thumps pulled in between a late model Mercedes and a gunmetal grey BMW.

  So these were the cars property barons were driving.

  The realty office was in full Howdy swing. Thumps had no idea where Ora Mae had gotten the thing, but there was a full-size, blow-up longhorn bull standing in the middle of the reception area, as well as several sawhorses with saddles thrown over them. A scene from a cattle roundup was painted on the large window that overlooked the street, and the coffee table had been replaced with hay bales and barn board.

  “Howdy.”

  Thumps tried to remember the receptionist’s name and failed. Instead of a nameplate, the woman was wearing a sheriff’s badge.

  “Hi, is Ora Mae in?”

  The woman was grinning. “I reckon she is.”

  Thumps couldn’t tell if the woman was amused or embarrassed.

  “Oh. It’s just you.” Ora Mae was dressed all in black. Tooled cowboy boots, whipcord slacks, a double-breasted cowboy shirt with silver buttons down both sides, a neckerchief, and a Stetson.

  “Howdy.” Thumps tried to get the grin off his face. “Just moseyed over to say hello. Thought I’d take a gander at all the decorations.”

  “You park in my lot?” A pair of matched pearl-handled revolvers were strapped around her waist and tied off at her thighs. “The lot’s for customers,” said Ora Mae. “You a customer?”

  Thumps felt the grin fade.

  “But you don’t have a car.” Ora Mae looked somewhat relieved. “Your car was totalled.”

  “Stas lent me his truck.”

  Ora Mae’s face tightened and she tapped the sides of the holsters. “I love that man, but I hope you didn’t park his piece of junk next to my bimmer.”

  WONDER OF WONDERS, Thumps found a parking space in the first pass, and when he got back to the realty office, Ora Mae was in a better mood.

  “Claire’s missing?”

  “She’s not missing,” explained Thumps. “She’s just not here.”

  Ora Mae moved effortlessly from concerned to cautious. “Woman’s got the right to be wherever she wants to be.”

  “Sure.”

  “You two have a fight?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then it’s sweet you’re worried,” said Ora Mae. “Shows you care.”

  “She was out at Freddy’s yesterday. Looking at cars.”

  Ora Mae shook her head. “What the two of you should be looking for is a house.”

  Thumps frowned. “I have a house. Claire has a house.”

  “That sad sack of a bachelor pad isn’t a house,” said Ora Mae. “Layout is wrong. Location is terrible. Backyard looks like something out of The Addams Family. What you going to do if you have kids?”

  Thumps had a quick flashback to Freddy and the Outback and the question of child-seat tethers.

  “Claire doesn’t want any more kids.”

  “Doesn’t work like that,” said Ora Mae. “Just ask my sister.”

  “Anyway,” said Thumps, “I need another car before I need another house.”

  “Bad investment,” said Ora Mae. “That bimmer of mine is a sweet ride, but it’s nothing but depreciation on four wheels.”

  Ora Mae had given him her speech on real estate and the wisdom of parking your money in property any number of times.

  “You should talk to Moses Blood,” said Ora Mae. “Just found him a condo at Mesa Verde.”

  As far as Thumps knew, Moses had lived his entire life on the reservation. He had a small house on bottomland along the river. It was a quiet, gentle place where everything moved in slow motion. Thumps couldn’t imagine him leaving that world.

  “It’s a one-month rental,” said Ora Mae. “I’m guessing he wants to see what life in the big city is like before he makes a decision.”

  “Moses?”

  “And look at Archie,” Ora Mae continued. “Now there’s a man who knows his real estate.”

  “Archie?”

  “Bought the old Carnegie library, didn’t he? And then he goes and buys the old clothing store.”

  “Budd’s?”

  “Course he didn’t buy it through an agent, and that’s always a mistake. If it had been my listing, I would have gotten Budd a heck of a lot more than Archie paid him.”

  “What’s he going to do with Budd’s?”

  “He’s not saying, but I got him a solid rental fee from those TV people.” Ora Mae pushed the brim of her hat up a bit so Thumps could see her entire face. “Heard a rumour that you were working for that reality show.”

  “False alarm,” said Thumps.

  “You turned down Malice Aforethought and that nice Ms. Nina Maslow?”

  “Guilty.”

  “Then you’re not as dumb as you look.” Ora Mae sighed. “Dredging up the past isn’t going to settle anything. You remember O.J.?”

  People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson had been carried on national television, a commedia dell’arte featuring O.J., Marcia Clark, Johnnie Cochran, Mark Fuhrman, Judge Ito, and a supporting cast. In 1995, it had been the prime-time drama on television for more than eight months.

  “You know anyone doesn’t think that Simpson did it?”

  “The jury?”

  “No one likes a smart mouth.” Ora Mae’s eyes were fierce and dancing. “Point is, people believe what they want to believe. Facts and lies got nothing to do with the truth. The truth is just what you believe it to be, and nothing is going to change that.”

  “Maybe Malice Aforethought will solve the case.”

  “Were you listening to anything I just said?” Ora Mae slid one of the pistols out of the holster and aimed it at the bull’s head. “That poor Samuels girl is dead, and no barrel-of-monkeys TV program is going to fix that.”

  “The stepmother’s going to be on the show.”

  “
Adele Samuels?” Ora Mae twirled the revolver around on her finger and dropped it back into the holster. “Saw her in town yesterday. With her dweeby son.”

  “Dweeby?”

  “Eaton or Evan. Something popular like that.”

  “Adele’s first marriage.”

  “Woman’s a bowl of hard sorrows.” Ora Mae patted the bull. “You know, I should have you take a picture of me and Ferdinand.”

  “Ferdinand?”

  “The bull with the delicate ego?” Ora Mae struck a pose. “Tell me I don’t look like a black Johnny Cash.”

  Eleven

  Maybe Archie was right. The Trudy Samuels story did seem a little Shakespearean.

  The dispassionate king.

  The narcissistic queen.

  The damaged princess.

  The abandoned child.

  The warrior hero.

  Buck, Adele, Trudy, and Eaton or Evan or whatever his name was. And Tobias Rattler. Two dead. Three standing.

  Or maybe Ora Mae was right. Just another barrel of monkeys.

  Thumps had never understood the logic behind the expression. A barrel would be easy enough to get, but why put monkeys in it? He had watched monkeys at the zoo, and they didn’t appear to have the temperament for barrel cramming. And just who was supposed to have the promised fun?

  Maybe Malice Aforethought knew something about Shakespeare and monkeys that he didn’t.

  There was a ticket on the windshield of the truck. Thumps saw it at the same time he saw the sign for the fifteen-minute loading zone.

  So that’s why there had been an available parking space.

  Great. Another expense. When he got home, he’d probably find that his stove had thrown a shoe or that his refrigerator had stumbled into a gopher hole and broken a leg. Or that Freeway was waiting for him on the porch with a litter of kittens. Thumps was sure that the cat had been spayed, but the way his day was going, anything was possible.

  Maybe Claire was pregnant.

  Suddenly, a job with a sleazy television show and the payday it promised wasn’t as objectionable as it had first appeared.

  His house was as he had left it. Quiet and empty. Thumps dropped his bag on the kitchen table and began sorting through the mail that had accumulated while he had been in Seattle. The first sort was easy. All the offers of free credit cards, the flyers for everything from lawn care to home evaluations, the coupons for fried chicken, triple burgers, and all-you-can-drink soda pop, and anything addressed to “resident” went straight into the trash. Thumps had never made an exact count, but he’d guess that the ratio of junk to real mail was probably ten to one.

  Today it was more than that.

  There was a flyer for cataract surgery and another for the removal of unwanted hair. Both used lasers. Thumps didn’t think it was the same laser, but he couldn’t say with any certainty that it wasn’t.

  The legitimate mail wasn’t much better. Two bills. One for electricity. One for phone service.

  Thumps opened the Pacific Gas and Electric bill. Never a good idea. It was considerably more than the parking ticket. Along with the bill was a facsimile of a handwritten note saying that the company would be adjusting rates to better serve him and his electrical needs.

  Thumps spent the next hour organizing his books. They had gotten out of order. Walter Mosley had wound up next to Eden Robinson. Richard Wagamese had slipped in between Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood. He debated rearranging the volumes by genre or by topic or even gender and race, and nationality, even though he understood that all of these categories were social constructions, all of them precarious at best. Some more dangerous than others.

  In the end, he settled for the alphabetical solution.

  As he always did.

  He had gotten as far as the Rs when he heard someone at the front door. Freeway wouldn’t bother ringing the doorbell, and the only person he wanted to see right now was Claire.

  “Hi, Mr. DreadfulWater.”

  Through the screen door, he could see his next-door neighbour Virgil Kane. With a large piece of pie on a plate and Pops the dog at his side.

  “Saw you were home,” said Dixie. “Hope I’m not disturbing.”

  Thumps left the screen door closed. He didn’t want company. Maybe Dixie would take the hint.

  Dixie held the plate up so Thumps could get a good look at the pie. “Pops is concerned about Freeway.”

  And maybe he wouldn’t.

  As soon as the large Komondor heard the cat’s name, he began demolishing the front porch with his tail.

  “She come home yet?”

  Thumps opened the door. Pops padded his way through the kitchen and the living room. Dixie stepped inside and took a long look around the kitchen, as though he were a health inspector who had stumbled upon a suspicious restaurant.

  “Not yet.”

  Pops wandered into the bathroom. Thumps could hear the dog using the toilet as a water bowl.

  “I’m real sorry.”

  “Not your fault,” said Thumps, trying to make the absolution sound sincere.

  Pops came back into the room with Freeway’s blanket in his mouth, as though he had found the missing piece of a puzzle.

  “You asked us to look after your kitty,” said Dixie, “and now she’s gone.”

  Pops dropped the blanket on the floor and waited expectantly. Thumps reminded himself once again that he should have some treats on hand for when the monster dog came visiting.

  A large bone. Half a cow.

  “She’s gone off before,” Thumps lied. “She always comes back.”

  Dixie put the pie on the table. “I don’t know what to tell you. Hope she’s not . . . you know.”

  “Dead?”

  The word was a punch in the gentle man’s stomach, and Thumps felt bad the moment it cleared his lips. It was a cruel and unnecessary jab, and one that he should have regretted more than he did.

  Pops collapsed down on the floor and farted.

  “Pops is real broken up,” said Dixie, gesturing to the dog. “Depression throws his digestion off.”

  Thumps tried breathing through his mouth. “Pie looks good.”

  Dixie’s face lit up. “Made it last night. Northern Spy. It’s the only apple I use. Except for the one Granny Smith I throw in for sauce.”

  Thumps tried moving Dixie and the dog towards the door with just the power of his mind. It hadn’t worked any of the other times, and it didn’t work now.

  “Did you see the flyer for our block party?”

  “Block party?”

  “First annual,” said Dixie. “Everyone’s bringing a dish. I’m making a cassoulet. Hey, if you have a photo of your cat, we could make up some posters and pass them out. We could even offer a reward.”

  Thumps felt a little light-headed. He braced himself against a chair. What was that? Low blood sugar? The dog? Beth had warned him about low blood sugar and high blood sugar, how the trick to managing diabetes was balance.

  “We better get going.” Dixie strolled to the door and stepped onto the porch. Pops heaved himself up and followed. “New episode tonight on the unusual friendships that animals have with other animals. Last week, it was a rabbit and a crow. Pops and Freeway were laughing so hard I thought they would hurt themselves.”

  Thumps couldn’t remember the cat ever being interested in television.

  “The pie’s a little tart,” Dixie called out over his shoulder. “Don’t like to use a lot of sugar.”

  The pie didn’t stand a chance, but it still took the better part of an hour before Thumps started to feel better. The only other food in the house was a can of baked beans and a jar of black olives.

  The hypoglycemic gourmand.

  IT WASN’T MUCH of a meal. The beans were heavy and sweet and the olives had a musty taste. He put the dishes in the sink and stood there waiting for something to happen. He wondered if normal people had such moments, suspected that people with partners, with real jobs, with children, never had the time
to consider the question of choice, that for them the crush of life came packaged with all the answers.

  Eat.

  Kids.

  Collapse.

  He could drive out to the reservation, check to see if Claire had come home yet. Make sure she was okay. Be available in case she wanted to talk. Sure, it felt a little like stalking, but Claire would recognize good intentions when she saw them.

  He could stay home, in case Freeway showed up with tales of fiddles and spoons and laughing dogs.

  Or he could just stand at the window and watch the night turn the world black.

  The phone kept him from slipping into a deeper depression and conjuring up even more ridiculous metaphors. It could be Archie or the sheriff or a telemarketer, in which case he didn’t have to move. The answering machine would manage the call.

  And if it was Claire, Thumps could grab the phone and catch her in mid message.

  Instead, the voice on the phone was unfamiliar, a young woman by the sound of it, someone who did not have a missing lover or a wrecked car or a lost cat.

  “Mr. DreadfulWater.”

  The voice was crisp and precise. It wasn’t Helen Mirren or Judi Dench. But it could have been.

  “Gloria Baker-Doyle here. I’m to be your driver tomorrow. Shall we say 8:30? Yes? Well, brilliant.”

  Thumps waited for the machine to click off in case there was more to the message. But there wasn’t. He didn’t know anyone named Gloria Baker-Doyle. He hadn’t arranged for a pickup. If the woman hadn’t used his name, he would have supposed that the call was a wrong number.

  Curious.

  Thumps looked at the clock. There was always the TV program Dixie had mentioned, the one about unusual animal relationships. Maybe watching how disparate animals got along would give him a few helpful tips that might come in handy when Claire decided to return.

  Twelve

  The show had featured a duck and a monkey who were fast friends. The monkey rode on the duck’s back, and the monkey gathered seeds and insects and fed them to the duck. But the story didn’t have a happy ending. The monkey found a live electrical wire that had fallen down and was electrocuted. The duck tried to save her friend by picking at the wire and was electrocuted as well.