by Anne Emery
“He was enjoying the whole thing.”
“So he’s into his job. He’s trying to have a good bedside manner. He plays the role a little bit. Enjoys talking like a doctor sometimes. So what? He’s planning to go to med school. Then he’ll be throwing around all kinds of doctor words and nobody will think twice about it.”
“And he thinks I’m scum.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Made a big show of pulling a pair of plastic gloves on before he would even touch me. Like I’m dirty or I have a disease or something.”
“They have to wear the gloves now, McCurdy! There’s all these new viruses going around.”
“Well, I don’t have no viruses.”
“If you were bleeding, he’d wear the gloves. Any of them would. Protects you from infection, too, I would say.”
“He thinks he’s better than me and wants to make sure I know it.”
John Rory didn’t say anything to that. He was probably thinking that Lee is better than Jeff; he’s out there saving lives, not getting into fights. But John Rory was too polite to mention it.
Pierre
Like the shed above it, the bootlegger’s cellar did not appear to be a crime scene. Our Ident officers had done their usual thorough job examining the scene. No signs of a struggle, no blood. And no useful prints from fingers or footwear. We interviewed Jeff McCurdy again, and again he denied involvement. But this time Dougald and I both thought his surprise was the real thing. Both of us had the impression this wasn’t his doing. We didn’t learn anything useful from the telephone records of the calls going into the ambulance service the evening of the teddy bears’ picnic. The call came from a payphone in the centre of Kinlochiel. We questioned the people who worked in the area of the phone booth, but nobody had noticed anything out of the ordinary. One woman thought she remembered a man going into the booth; he had arrived on foot, but she had no other details to offer. Nothing about the moment stood out.
At that point we — the RCMP — decided to offer a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person who had abducted Bonnie. We knew we would get the usual calls from freaks and kooks and bounty hunters, but you never knew when something useful would come out of the mist.
Then it was back to the legwork. Door to door questioning is one of the most tedious, but crucial, tasks we undertake as investigators. We look for witnesses who may have seen something, but in most cases they haven’t. Though the vast majority of what we hear is of no use, we can’t take the chance of missing something. We had spent a lot of time questioning all the people, young and old, who had been at the two-house party the night Bonnie MacDonald disappeared. We questioned everybody who knew Bonnie and countless other people in the community.
Then we had the MacLellan Video CCTV footage of Bonnie with a man on the night of July 15, but the video shop had closed at ten, and nobody was in the building when the image was captured. So no live witnesses there. Our members had canvassed the neighbourhood of the video shop, but the businesses had all been closed for the night, and nobody had been out walking. Nobody had seen Bonnie with or without a man; nobody had seen a man walking alone. Or, if somebody had, it had been so unremarkable that it had been forgotten. There were a few people who lived in the area and were not available when we did our canvass, so we had to go back and speak to those people, just in case. And this involved multiple trips because not everybody was home at the same time.
The going back and forth produced the predictable result that nobody had seen a thing. And I don’t mean they were being evasive; if ever there was a crime that the people of Kinlochiel wanted solved, it was this one. They just had not noticed anything that night. At least, it seemed nobody had until Dougald and I arrived chez Cook on Inverness Road. Richard Cook had been over visiting family in St. John’s, Newfoundland, since two days after Bonnie’s disappearance and had only returned home yesterday. His mother, Irene, had gone with him and was still over there. When Richard talked to his mother on the phone earlier today, he relayed the news about Bonnie. It was hard for him to carry on a conversation with the mother because she was eighty-four years old and going deaf and she refused to let on. This meant no purchase of a hearing aid, so all Richard could do was shout down the phone line at her and hope for the best. She seemed to catch what he said about Bonnie because she said how terrible it was. She asked if the police were getting anywhere, and he bellowed out that the video shop had caught an image of Bonnie with a man on the night she disappeared, July 15. At that point, his mother said something about that being the night of two parties, one at Red Archie’s and the other at Mary Reid’s. Then she said something about a car making a racket on Inverness Road the night of the parties, and she thought maybe the driver was drunk, because he was going so fast, and he blasted the horn at someone. It might be nothing, but Richard thought he should let the Mounties know.
We thanked him and asked for the phone number where his mother was staying.
“You’re welcome to the number, b’ys, but you’ll have a hell of a time asking questions and getting answers.”
“We’ll give it a try.”
We did. And Richard was right. Mrs. Cook couldn’t hear us well enough to give us confidence in any statement she might make. We did catch something about a car blasting its horn, but trying to get the details proved impossible. So we asked when she was coming back to Cape Breton. Even that left us no wiser. So we called her son again and found out that she was going to be taking the ferry from Argentia, Newfoundland, to North Sydney tomorrow, and we could see her at home and take a statement then. The Argentia ferry takes over fourteen hours, so that would be even more of a delay. I considered asking for permission to fly over to Newfoundland to take her statement, but then I figured for the sake of another day or so, and with nothing more to go on than “a car that night,” I should just wait for her return to Kinlochiel.
Normie
After I got off the boat, I went to Nancy Campbell’s because she had invited me for supper. She was having Lee over, and she asked if there was anybody I’d like to invite, so I said John Rory. I knew he had gone to Mrs. Beaton’s, so I called him there, and he said he’d come. Nancy got to work making lasagna, and I said I’d help her. I didn’t really know what to do, so I just handed her things she needed. She said she got the recipe from a girl she worked with, Gina, who was Italian and knew the real way to make lasagna, and that it’s a lighter colour than what you usually see around here, and it doesn’t have lumpy cheese the way you usually get it. It was funny when John Rory arrived. He had a green salad in a clear plastic container, which said Sobeys, the name of the grocery store. But he had written on it so it said “Imported by Sobeys from John Rory MacD, Master Chef with his own TV show.” So Nancy got a laugh out of that.
Then Lee arrived, and we all said hi to him and he said hi back, but he looked as if he wasn’t paying much attention to us.
“Everything all right, Lee?” Nancy asked.
He gave her kind of a blank look for a minute and then said, “Hi, babe,” and gave her a kiss.
“So, how was your day?”
“It was all right.”
“Not much chat out of you today, Mr. Kaulbeck,” she said. “No comminuted fractures of the distal humerus or anything to tell us about?”
She was teasing him, and I thought he’d laugh, but he said, “Not this again. I know as much medical terminology as you do, as much as anybody at that hospital. And more than some of the idiots they have on the payroll there. So I don’t see why I have to dumb things down when I talk about my work.” And he gave her a really dirty look! Imagine anyone giving a dirty look to Nancy Campbell! She is so kind and smart and everything. He was in a very bad mood.
“Lee, it was just a little joke. Why are you always overreacting to things like this?”
“Overreacting? If it wasn’t for me,
a whole lot of people would be dead at the roadside! I save lives. I could do half the stuff the doctors do at that hospital, if I was allowed to. Do you think I couldn’t fix a subluxed shoulder or diagnose a person having a stroke? But who am I? I’m just Lee, the ambulance guy. Everybody kowtows to the doctors in that place as if they’re gods. ‘Yes, doctor, no, doctor.’ But the trauma team out in the field? ‘Hey, you. Bring him here, put him there, do this, do that, what’s your name again?’ I’m fucking sick of people not recognizing me for what I am: a professional with a brain in my head!”
“Whoa!” said John Rory. He was as surprised as I was at Lee arguing with Nancy.
She said, “Lee, they don’t treat you like that!”
“How would you know? Are you in the ER? No, you’re somewhere on the wards, changing dirty bandages and bedpans. And then you have the nerve to laugh at me when I — oh, forgive me — display a bit of knowledge about my work!”
“Jesus!” she said. She looked at him as if she couldn’t believe the way he was acting. “You’re so sensitive!”
“Sensitive!” Just the way he said the word, he was making fun of it. “Girls are sensitive, Nancy. Nobody who grew up in the house with my old man could survive by being sensitive. I’d just like some respect once in a while. Unless that’s too much to ask.”
You could tell from her face that her feelings were hurt. But instead of him catching on and trying to make her feel better, she tried to make him feel better. “Well,” she said, “let’s hope a home-cooked meal will cheer you up.”
But all he did was look at his watch and say he wanted to listen to the news.
“Fine, you go in and turn on the radio or the TV and catch the news. We’re going to have a scoff, right, guys?”
“Yeah!” me and John Rory said at the same time.
So she got the lasagna out of the oven, and the three of us sat at the dining room table, and she put great big servings of the pasta and salad on our plates. Everybody seemed to be pretending that the big argument had never happened. She brought out a bottle of red wine. “I’d better put this in sippy cups for you wee bairns.”
“Pòg mo thòn!”
“Isn’t that a fine way for your guest to be talking, Normie! And I always thought John Rory was a gentleman.”
She was saying that because pòg mo thòn means “kiss my arse.” But it can’t be all that bad because my mum says it all the time!
Then Nancy said, “Of course I always thought I was a good judge of character.” And her eyes went in the direction of the living room. “Maybe I was wrong about that, too!”
I didn’t know whether she was joking or not, so I didn’t say anything.
She didn’t give us baby cups. She gave us wine glasses and poured the wine in, but just half for me and John Rory. We started to eat, and it was delicious lasagna and salad, and the wine was good, too. I think it was the best wine I ever had. I could see why people drink too much and turn into alcoholics. I knew I would have to be careful when I got older, especially since I was starting so young. I have heard people say, “I’m going to pace myself.” That means take it easy, not gulp down a whole bunch of booze early in the night. So that’s what I’ll do, now and later. Pace myself. Only a half glass for me tonight.
John Rory started talking about some teacher at his school, who used to be in Kinlochiel and knew Nancy, so I listened for a minute and then I wondered if the lasagna would be cold by the time Lee came in for his supper. Not that I cared! It would serve him right. He was in the living room watching the news. I heard stories about some political guy being in trouble and something about the big steel plant in Sydney. But I didn’t pay much attention until I heard a familiar name in the news: Bonnie MacDonald. They were saying the Mounties were offering a reward for whoever could find her. I twisted around in my chair and called to Lee, “What did they say about Bonnie and money?”
I heard him snap the TV off then, and he came to the dining room. I asked him again what they said.
“Huh? Oh, yeah, something about a reward. This looks great, Nance.” I guess he was in a better mood, if he was saying nice things about the food.
“It’s delicious!” I said. “Nancy is such a good cook.” He sat down and helped himself to some of the lasagna and salad.
“So, what were they saying about a reward?” I asked again.
He looked at me as if he wasn’t sure who I was. “Distracted” is what they say when you’re like that. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I just wanted to hear about the mine.”
The mine? The story was about the steel plant.
“I heard about the reward,” John Rory said. “It was on the news at five o’clock. The Mounties will pay fifty thousand dollars to anyone who can tell them who is responsible for . . . whatever happened to Bonnie.”
Nancy didn’t say anything.
John Rory asked Lee, “But the information has to lead to the arrest and conviction of the guy. Is that what they said?”
Lee answered, “I guess so. Which bottle of wine did you open, Nancy?”
“Oh, right,” she said and got the bottle from the counter and put it on the table.
“Perfect. The 1990 Barolo. It was a bit of luck when I spotted that.” He poured himself a glass. “So, what went on at work today, Nancy?”
There he was, asking her a regular kind of question, as if he hadn’t just been laughing about her job!
“A little girl in for her appendix. She was scared and in pain, but a real little soldier. A very good patient. There’s lots who aren’t.”
Nancy was keeping her eyes on Lee while she was talking, probably wondering if he would say something rotten again. But he didn’t.
“Tell me about it,” said Lee. “You get mean drunks who hurt themselves and take out their frustrations on the paramedics and the trauma team. Hollering and threatening to sue. Times like that, you want to throw in the towel and do something less challenging to earn your living.” He was being normal now.
“You had to pick up Jeff McCurdy after he got beat up. What was he like as a patient?” John Rory asked.
I remembered Jeff saying mean things about Lee when he picked him up after the fight.
“Rotten,” said Lee. “Combative, belligerent. About what you’d expect. I was trying to be friendly with him, reassure him, but he looked as if he wanted to put his fist in my face.”
“Yeah, I can believe it,” John Rory said. “Anybody with a violent streak like that, you’d have to watch yourself.”
“Only thing worse would be getting his old man in the ambulance. The apple never falls far from the tree, as they say.”
“Two peas in a pod,” Nancy added in the voice of an old lady.
“Scorpions in a bottle,” John Rory answered. “Which makes me wonder all over again why Bonnie would have anything to do with him. Nuttiest thing I ever heard.”
Lee agreed with him. “Yeah, that’s weird, all right. Bonnie, Jeff McCurdy. It just doesn’t compute.”
They took drinks of their wine then, and Lee said, “This wine is superb, if I do say so myself, me being the one who found it. They say 1990 was a good year for that variety of grape.”
“I wouldn’t have a clue about that,” Nancy said, laughing. “I just know it tastes right some good!”
“You’re not supposed to gulp it down, Nance. You’re supposed to savour it.” Then he picked up the glass and swirled it around and put his nose down close to it, then took a little sip.
Nancy winked at me and John Rory and pointed to our glasses. “Go ahead and gulp it down. Nobody will ever know!”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” said John Rory. “Me and Normie have a great-grandmother who’s psychic. She’s probably seeing us right now.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen that old spook,” Lee said.
“You’d better be careful what you s
ay. She may be watching over us here, and she’ll put a curse on you.”
“She could,” I told them. “Do you know Morag?” I asked Lee.
“He’s only met her briefly,” Nancy replied. “That doesn’t do justice to her. I should take him over and get her to tell his fortune. Read his palm.”
“I don’t believe in any of that crap.”
Then he raised his wineglass, as if it was a painting by a famous artist. He said, “Italy makes good wine. And they make the best clothes in the world. I want to get over there and buy some good stuff. How would you like me to take you to Italy, Nance? I could get myself an Italian-made suit. Georgie Armani.”
“I think it’s Giorgio.”
“Whatever.” His mouth was pressed down in a way that showed he was cross again. Probably embarrassed to have the guy’s name wrong when he’s the one who brought it up in the first place.
“Where are you going to wear stuff like that?” John Rory asked him. “You can’t wear anything expensive if you’re working on the ambulance. You’ll get blood all over it.”
“I’m not going to be here for my whole life, okay? Get my medical degree, do my residency in Toronto or Montreal. Lots of places to wear good quality clothes in those places.”
Nancy stuck up for the people around here. “We wear good quality clothes right here in Cape Breton, Lee.”
John Rory didn’t want to talk about clothes, so he told a couple of jokes, but Lee got back onto the subject of his plans to become a doctor. “Physician,” he said. And then he would train to be a special doctor after that. A something-ologist who cures heart attacks. Nancy said something again about her work as a nurse. And I asked her if it bothered her, seeing all the blood and broken bones and things like that at the hospital. And she said she didn’t like to see people broken and in pain, but doctors and nurses and their helpers had to get used to all that and carry on with their jobs; otherwise nothing would get done, and nobody would get cured. And besides, she said, the work she did before was worse.
