by L. R. Wright
“No, it feels wonderful. Cool.”
“It won’t last. But it’ll help for a while.” She smoothed it over his high wide forehead, his long straight nose, across his cheeks, around his mouth; it was a generous mouth, and there was a slight cleft in his chin. She screwed the top on the tube. He opened his eyes. They were wintry blue, and probably specially trained to spot a lie or an evasion a mile away.
She thrust the tube into his hand. “Here. Take it with you. Put some more on tonight, before you go to bed.”
“Maybe you’d do it for me,” he said, looking up at her. “Before I go to bed.”
Cassandra ignored this and sat down again. She picked up her glass. “How did you get that burn, anyway?”
“I was out in a boat all day.”
“Playing? Or working?”
“Working.” He drained his glass. “May I get myself another one?”
“Of course. I heard there was some kind of search going on,” she said casually as he got more scotch and went into the kitchen for ice. “What were you looking for?”
He put his glass on the coffee table and dropped onto the sofa. “Oh, we took it into our heads there might be a murder weapon out there.”
“And was there?”
“Don’t know yet. They’re still looking. Doesn’t look very encouraging, though.”
“Has this—uh, got to do with Mr. Burke?”
He looked at her curiously. “Yeah, as a matter of fact.”
“Well he’s the only person I know of who’s been murdered around here lately,” said Cassandra defensively. “If you don’t want to talk about it, just say so.”
“Sorry. I can’t talk about it, really. I shouldn’t, anyway.”
Cassandra got up to freshen her drink.
“How’s your friend George?” said Alberg.
She turned quickly from the fridge; he was out of sight, in the living room. For a moment she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“Not very well, I think,” she said at last, and was surprised at how calm she sounded.
She went back to her chair. She couldn’t have denied seeing him. They had been observed by all sorts of people.
“He came to the library today,” she said. “He seemed very tired. I drove him home.” Stop, Cassandra, she told herself; stop right there.
“Tired,” said Alberg.
Cassandra’s heart was thudding. This man had her ointment all over his face, his sock feet on her carpet; this man had come to her for food and, presumably, affection; this man worried about her unlocked doors and burglars creeping down on her from the woods: He was not her enemy, after all, she told herself.
But she had to keep her loyalties straight, because that’s what duty was, after all, wasn’t it? Loyalty. She had known George Wilcox for years, and an affectionate regard had grown between them; she had met this policeman less than a week ago.
“Yeah,” said Alberg, looking at the glass in his hands. “I imagine he’s pretty tired, all right.”
Cassandra didn’t respond. He didn’t seem to expect her to.
“It’s half an hour until dinner, now,” she said.
In the kitchen he opened the wine and Cassandra put rolls in the oven to warm. They were standing back to back, almost touching. She felt the heat from his body, and smelled the sea, and sunburn ointment, and sweat.
“There’s no dessert, I’m afraid,” she said.
“You warned me I’d be taking pot luck.”
He was observing her thoughtfully, standing only a couple of feet away. She slipped past him into the living room.
“Don’t you ever wear a uniform?” she said, sitting again in the chair by the window.
“Sure.” He was looking beyond her, out toward the highway.
“When?”
He sat on the sofa, holding his glass between his knees, where the denim of his jeans looked thin enough to fray. “I wear it when I go to talk to kids in the schools, or to service club meetings, or when somebody from Vancouver’s coming over to inspect. Gotta look shipshape for the brass.” He took a drink.
“What about the red one? Do you ever wear that?”
“You mean boots and breeks?”
Cassandra laughed. “Is that what you call it?”
“The red tunic, the boots, the Sam Browne, the breeches—yeah, that’s what we call it. Review Order. It’s only worn for ceremonial things. I look pretty good in mine,” he said comfortably.
She laughed again.
“Well, most people do, I guess,” said Alberg with a grin. “Not so much the women. They don’t get to wear the Stetson or the breeks—just skirts and a kind of a pillbox hat.”
“What a chauvinistic bunch,” said Cassandra. “You’re undoubtedly a chauvinistic man.”
“We’re a paramilitary outfit,” said Alberg. “What the hell do you expect?” He put his glass down and fell back into the sofa, stretching his arms along the top. “I feel better.”
“Three scotches,” said Cassandra dryly. “That’ll do it.”
He sat up. “Two. I don’t think it’s the booze. I just like it here.”
The timer on the stove began to ring, and Cassandra got up to serve dinner.
She lit the candles.
He complimented her cooking, and she complimented his choice of wine.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” said Alberg suddenly. “In Sechelt?”
“Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here, first,” said Cassandra. “I know you people get moved around. But by the time you’re a staff sergeant, surely you have something to say about where you’re going to go next.”
“I don’t know how much to tell you.” He looked at the candles and the flowers. “What the hell.” He put down his fork and leaned his elbows on the table. “In Kamloops it got to be time for my annual review. Personnel evaluation. I was a sergeant there, in charge of my first detachment. And it was also time for promotion to staff sergeant. There were several places I could have gone. Sechelt was one of them.”
He picked up his fork and started pushing salad around on his plate. “Sechelt’s what we call a ‘jammy’ posting. Nothing heavy, a nice place to live, nice people to deal with, for the most part. A quiet place, not much happening. And yet it’s close to Vancouver.”
He looked up at Cassandra. “My wife and I had decided to separate. I didn’t tell the review team. They’d have wanted me to stay in Kamloops, try to work things out. The force gets uneasy about divorce. They feel guilty. And it’s true that in a lot of cases it’s the job that does it.”
“Was it the job in your case?”
He started to rub his forehead, winced from the pain of the sunburn, and drank some more wine instead. “I thought it was, yeah. Maura thought so too, I think. But now—lately—I don’t know. Anyway. I was feeling a bit—well, low, and battered.” He laughed a little. “A jammy posting sounded like just the thing. And it was on the water, too. So I asked for Sechelt.” He spread his hands. “And here I am.”
“How long will you be here?”
He looked directly at her. His eyes looked warmer in candlelight, and his hair was the color of wheat. “It’s up to me. If I don’t screw up, I could probably stay until I retire. I don’t think I’m going to screw up. I usually don’t.”
“Would you want to stay, though?” She made herself take a sip of wine, slowly. “It’s pretty dull around here. Especially for a policeman.”
“I don’t know yet,” he said reflectively. “Sometimes I think if I stay in a place like this, a little place, with a lot of ordinary people in it and not a whole lot of—well, hardcore creeps, let’s say…maybe in a place like this, where most people don’t feel uneasy around police officers, some of my cynicism will wear off. Eventually.”
“I hadn’t really thought of you as a cynic,” said Cassandra gently.
“Thank you, ma’am.” He smiled. “But you don’t know me very well. Yet.” There were hollows beneath his eyes—but maybe t
hat was the candlelight, she thought. “Also,” he went on, “I think I’m tired of change. I think I want things in my life to stay pretty much the same, for a while.”
“You like your job though, don’t you.”
“Yeah, I do. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to do anything else.”
“What do you like about it, exactly?”
“Figuring things out,” he said promptly. “Talking to people, thinking, finding out what happened, who did it, why they did it—that kind of thing.”
“What about…justice?” said Cassandra tentatively.
He looked at her quizzically, not quite amused. “Justice isn’t up to me. Getting the answers, that’s my job. And making sure the Crown prosecutor has enough to go ahead with. And that,” he said grimly, “is the toughest part of it all.”
Cassandra got up to clear the table. Alberg helped. In the kitchen she reached to switch on the light, but he stopped her.
“No, look,” he said, taking plates from her. He put them on the counter and turned her toward the window, his hands on her shoulders. The moon had broken through the clouds to shine bright above the water.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“Is that why you’re here? Because it’s beautiful?”
“I’m here because my mother’s got heart disease,” said Cassandra, looking at the moon, which was being obscured once more by cloud. “She’s lived in Sechelt for more than twenty years. When my father died, my brother and I decided one of us ought to live near her. Not with her, I told him I wouldn’t do that, not under any circumstances. But near her was okay. He’s married, has kids, lives in Edmonton. I was in Vancouver. It was easier for me.”
He turned her around to face him. “What did you give up to move here, Cassandra?”
“Quite a lot, actually. But it’ll keep.”
“What was it? A man?”
Cassandra laughed. “I said it would keep, didn’t I? No, it wasn’t a man. I’d been to Europe for the summer and got all excited about traveling. I was going to sell everything I owned and go live someplace strange and foreign for a while.”
His lips brushed her cheek. Oh, Jesus, thought Cassandra. She would tell him anything in bed, she knew it: all her hopes, all her dreams, all her worries about George Wilcox.
“What about men?” he said. “Tell me about the men in your life.”
“Like hell I will.” Cassandra pulled slightly away from him. “Listen, Karl, you’re getting too personal too fast.”
He wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly against his chest. “I like you. I want to know things about you.”
“I’m happy here,” she told him, her voice muffled in his shirt. “I like my job and I like this place and I have lots of friends.”
“How come you put an ad in the paper?” He was rubbing a big hand slowly up and down her back. “You’re wearing a bra.”
“I always wear a bra. I put an ad in the paper—it’s none of your damn business why I put an ad in the paper.”
“Sure it is. I answered it.” He bent his head and rested his hot cheek, sticky with ointment, against her temple.
Cassandra pushed herself away. She put her hands on his chest, to keep him at a distance. “All right,” she said. “I put an ad in the paper in the hope of finding a pleasant, courteous, not unattractive male person, intelligent and interesting, with whom I might enjoy adequate conversation and spectacular sex.”
She dropped her hands. She knew her face must be as red as his.
“Well?” said Alberg. “So?” He held out his arms and capered around in a clumsy circle. “What do you think?”
She made a determined effort not to laugh. “I don’t know yet. I haven’t decided.”
The phone rang.
He dove at her, growling. She fought him off, laughing, and they stood in the darkened kitchen smiling at one another.
Then he stepped close and kissed her, and she put her arms around him.
The phone continued to ring.
“Shit,” said Alberg after a while. “It’s probably for me.”
It was Sokolowski.
Alberg told Cassandra he had to leave. He told her he had to interview a suspect in the Burke homicide.
With an odd deliberateness, Cassandra put her hand delicately to her throat. “Anybody I know?” she said casually.
“Could be,” said Alberg. “You seem to know everyone in town.” He smiled, kissed her again, and pulled on his yellow boots.
She watched him drive away.
She tried to feel relief.
Surely he wouldn’t have gone off so cheerfully if it was George Wilcox, his white hair springing from his head in the indomitable waves that so touched her heart, who was sitting patiently in God knew what kind of a rathole of a cell, waiting to be grilled by the Mounties about murder.
But if it wasn’t George, she thought suddenly, feeling sick, who was sitting there, waiting for Alberg the cop?
25
“GOOD DINNER?” SAID SOKOLOWSKI innocently from the counter where a constable just beginning night duty was checking the book.
“You’re working overtime again, Sid,” said Alberg. “Where is this guy?”
Sokolowski pointed. “Right over there.”
On the green-cushioned bench in the reception area sat a man about forty, dark-haired, with a beard showing some silver. He was wearing jeans and a denim jacket, and western boots, and smoking a cigarette.
“How did we find him?” said Alberg. From its covered cage next to Isabella’s desk, not far from the fish seller, the parrot muttered.
“We didn’t find him. He found us. Saw the story in the local rag, he says, and drove right over.”
The rainbowed van was in the parking lot. Alberg had stopped to have a close look, on his way in. It was the right van, all right: orange paint underneath, where the gray had flecked away, lots of bluebirds.
“Bring him into my office,” said Alberg.
When he got there, Alberg motioned the man to the black chair. Sokolowski leaned in the doorway.
“What’s your name?” said Alberg, who was standing by the window.
“Derek Farley. I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner.” His voice was deep and melodious. He spoke slowly and deliberately and seemed perfectly relaxed. “I only come into town once a week. Saw in the paper while I was having a meal that you’ve been looking for me and my van.”
“We had a homicide here last Tuesday. I guess you read about that, too.”
“Yes. A Mr. Burke, it said. He was one of the people who bought a salmon from me.” He pulled out his cigarettes and a folder of matches. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Go ahead,” said Alberg. “Where do you live, Mr. Farley?”
The man shook out the match and put it in the ashtray on Alberg’s coffee table. “Up near Garden Bay. I’ve got a little cabin there, out in the bush.”
“What do you do for a living?”
Farley grinned at him. “I sell things. Fish, vegetables. It depends on the season. My wife’s got a big garden. She’s also a weaver. There’s a couple of stores—one in Garden Bay, another in Gibsons; we’re working on one in Sechelt, here—they take her things on consignment. Ponchos, things like that.” He dragged on his cigarette. “I’m a carpenter, too. I do work for people all up and down the coast.” He grinned again. “Word of mouth. I’m good at it. Slow, but good.”
“Tell us about last Tuesday. That was your day in town, was it?”
“I came down to Sechelt, yes. Let’s see.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “I’ve been trying to get it straight. A week ago, that’s a long time.”
“What time did you leave home?” said Sokolowski. “Let’s start with that.”
“I left about eight. Had a dozen salmon in the van, packed in ice in washbuckets. Sold about four-five fish in Madeira Park, Secret Cove. Had some coffee and a doughnut at a little place near Halfmoon Bay. It must have been…sometime after eleven, I guess, when I got here. I r
emember I drove right through Sechelt and turned around, figuring to try to get rid of the rest of the fish along the road outside of town, then stop for a bite to eat and head on home.”
“And is that what happened?” said Alberg.
“Pretty well. I still had—I had five left when I stopped for lunch. That’s right. Forgot I sold one to the guy who runs the cafe at Halfmoon Bay. I remember thinking I should keep on going down toward Gibsons, try to get rid of the rest of them there, but I was pointing in the wrong direction by then.” He grinned up at them. “But it turned out okay. When I got back to Garden Bay I went down to the wharf and sold all five to some tourists up from Seattle in two big yachts.”
“I’m happy for you, Mr. Farley,” said Alberg. “But could we get back to the ones you sold here?”
“Yes, sure, sorry. Well, let’s see. I sold two. Now I know you’ll want to know what time this was. Let me think…”
Alberg and Sokolowski waited. Alberg picked up a pen that was lying on his desk. Sokolowski shifted in the doorway, turning a page in his notebook. Alberg leaned against the filing cabinet and discovered that Isabella had put a plant on top of it; long leafy tendrils wafted down the side of the cabinet nearest the window.
“It was after eleven when I got here,” said Farley, confident. “And it was about twelve thirty when I went into that little place down from the library, to have some lunch. And it must have taken me—oh, say twenty minutes to drive through town and get turned around. So I’d say I was trying to sell my fish from about eleven forty-five until about twelve fifteen.” He smiled, contented. “That’d be about right.”
“About half an hour, then,” said Alberg. “Tell us what you did and what you saw.” He moved to the window and peered out at the van from between the slats in the blind. In the light from the building he could see rain spattering the roofs of the van, the patrol cars, and his Oldsmobile.
Farley sighed. “This is tough. Let’s see.” He looked up at Sokolowski. “You know, I can’t possibly remember everything. It was a week ago. Just an ordinary day. I know I didn’t see anything particularly unusual. I know for sure I didn’t see anything suspicious.”
