The Pumpkin Murders

by Judith Alguire

  “Cherry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please come.”

  “Is he dead?” I pictured him laid out on one of her slabs, waves of stink rising from the body.

  “No. He’s not dead. Just come, will you? Take a taxi. I’ll pay for it.”

  I dialled 775-0101 for a Duffy’s cab. Then I grabbed Frank’s phone numbers off the dining room table where he had left them. I tried his home phone first. He answered on the first ring.

  No one ever goes to Myrna’s place voluntarily. Dead people live there.

  She met me at the curb and paid the driver.

  We didn’t go in the front door to the house. We walked around to the side and entered there, into a short hallway that smelled like the science lab at Nelson Mac on the day that we dissected frogs. I threw up that day. I had known it was coming and ran down the hall to the boys’ washroom. It was closer than the girls’. I made it to a sink before I spewed my guts. There was just one boy at a urinal. He was out of there before he had time to give his dick a shake.

  Now we entered a large white room with four tables, four slabs: the room where Myrna does her work. There was a fridge, a freezer, two stainless steel sinks, water-glass fronted cupboards, spotless countertops. Three of the tables were empty. On the fourth there was a slight figure underneath a heavy sheet.

  Pete stood at one end of that table. He had lifted the edge of the covering and he was looking at the dead body.

  “Get away from there!” Myrna hissed.

  Pete jumped back.

  “What’s she doing here?” he asked.

  “I called her,” Myrna said.

  “What for?”

  Myrna sighed. She was wearing orange lipstick. Like on the glass in Pete’s room at the Norwood.

  I hate orange lipstick.

  It was Myrna that Pete was in touch with all through the years, not Eileen. It was Myrna who told Pete I was happy.

  “You knew he was alive,” I said. I wasn’t able to look at her. “All this time, you knew.”

  “She and Eileen both knew,” said Pete. “So what?”

  I turned to him. “Are you going to kill me?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Or hurt me physically in any way?”

  “No,” said Pete. “Of course not.” His gummy eyes wandered.

  Of course not. My face was heating up, but I struggled to stay calm.

  “Or Henry?” I asked

  “No.” Pete snickered. “I’ve already done Henry. How is he, by the way?”

  “None of your business.”

  Pete had lost a front tooth since the night before. He was falling to pieces.

  “What are you going to do next?” I asked.

  He reached out for a straight wooden chair, dragged it noisily across the white tile floor and sat down.

  “You talk like I have a master plan,” he said. “I’m just taking it minute by minute. Believe me.”

  “Believe you?”

  “Yeah. Why not?” He smirked.

  “Okay,” I said. “Give me your best shot. Die every day if you want to. That seems to be what you do best. I can take it.”

  There was a knock at the door and Myrna went to answer it. Frank came in and took Pete outside. I didn’t know if anyone but me realized how useless this all was. There was no way Henry would press charges against my brother. And he hadn’t really done much else, except steal an iron, drive Henry’s car a few blocks, use drugs and try to bite me. Would the cops be able to charge him without any input from Henry? I doubted it. There was possible arson; that was something. But they’d need proof. Maybe he would admit to it.

  I followed them outside and Myrna came too.

  “Cherry?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Cherry, please,” she said.

  I still didn’t answer.

  She went back inside. I guess it was time to get started on the stiff.

  Frank and Pete and I sat on the front lawn of the funeral home in the shade of a Manitoba maple. It was evening now and the sun was low. The days were getting shorter. Frank asked Pete why he had been given such a long sentence for his drug bust in British Columbia.

  “Bad behaviour,” Pete said, like he did when I asked him.

  “Did it have anything to do with the 1981 riots?” Frank asked.

  “Yeah, some,” Pete said. “I was due to get out that summer. And then the riots happened. I got caught up.”

  “What riots?” I asked.

  “There were riots at Matsqui in June of ’81,” Frank said. “The place was in flames. It was all over the news at the time.”

  It rang a faint bell.

  “So when did you finally get out?” Frank asked.

  “Not till early this year.” Pete grinned. “I just couldn’t seem to behave myself.”

  He reached in his mouth and came out with a dark brown tooth. He tossed it at the trunk of the maple tree.

  “After the riots I got into junk pretty heavily. It wasn’t hard to get fixed up inside. I would get caught up every now and then and the time just kept stretching out.”

  “How could you and Nora have thought it was a better idea to pretend that you were dead than admit that you were in jail?” I asked.

  Pete laughed and it turned into a cough. “How can you even ask that?” he said. “It was all about appearances for Nora. All. I couldn’t have given a flying fuck if Jane Fonda knew I was in jail, but Nora couldn’t handle it. It was just too shameful. She said, how could you do this to me? about eight thousand times.”

  It was the most animated I had seen him since he came back. It took our goddamn mother to get a rise out of him.

  “She wa-ay preferred my death.”

  My eyes began to ache. How many times do I have to weep for my brother? I didn’t want to do it then, in front of him. I forced the tears back and the ache got worse.

  Frank took Pete to the Remand Centre but he was out in a couple of days. He wouldn’t admit to the arson and Henry made it clear that he just wanted to forget about the whole thing.

  His kids were furious. They wanted Pete strung up. Henry hadn’t told them that the maniac who had hurt him was my brother. He made up a name, Buzz Mantle, and a story about an old rivalry from the past. A rivalry for a history scholarship. It was the best he could do in his weakened state. He didn’t want them to associate anything bad with me.

  I’m a little uncomfortable with this fabrication but I’m glad that Henry wants to protect me and what we have together, although I’m still not sure what that is.

  Henry is not the love of my life, but I don’t think I’m going to have one of those.

  CHAPTER 35

  The next time I saw Pete he was laid out at Myrna’s place on one of her tables. This time he really was dead.

  Frank knocked on my door the Friday morning before the long weekend, to tell me that Pete had washed up on the bank of the Red near the Provencher Bridge. Two nuns out for a walk saw his body knocking up against the river’s edge.

  “Did he jump or did he fall?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, Cherry. I’m sorry.”

  “Maybe he was pushed,” I said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What were the nuns’ names?” I asked.

  “I don’t know that, either. I’m sorry.”

  Pushed, fallen, jumped. I could pick whichever one sat best with me. The police ended up ruling it a drowning by misfortune, an accident. There had been no evidence of foul play.

  Now it was Monday, Labour Day, and I was with my brother in Myrna’s death room. She had left us alone and Frank waited outside.

  Myrna had done a pretty good job of fixing him up. He looked dead all right, absent, but not scary or gross. I touched the twin scars on his cheek; the old one barely visible and the new one still a scab. Myrna had tried to cover it. I found some cotton swabs and alcohol in a cupboard and removed the makeup hiding the angry quarter moon. He was going to be cremated, but still,
I didn’t want it hidden.

  I half expected his eyes to flutter open. Just another lark. But they didn’t. I am so glad that they found him, the nuns. What if he had never washed up and I spent the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for him?

  It turned out the nuns had regular names: Valerie and Margaret. They don’t seem to take on dramatic titles anymore, like Sister Mary of the Five Wounds. I was disappointed in a low-key kind of way.

  I chose to believe that Pete fell. I didn’t want him to have given away whatever remained of his deathly life.

  If only I had been able to embrace him, if only I hadn’t bitten him. Maybe he had been counting on me. Maybe he had known Murray was doomed and that Nora couldn’t love him in the way he needed.

  Did Pete escape guilt? Did he feel so wronged that his own vengeful acts left him feeling scot-free? Or was the guilt buried so deep that it festered inside his bones and sickened him? Like Nora’s smothered true self had done to her.

  Frank drove me home and sat with me awhile on the front steps. My backyard was still a disaster area. Whoever was supposed to show up to clean away the remains of the fire hadn’t managed it yet.

  We drank lemonade. It was hot in the sun, but fall was beginning to make its presence known in the odd golden leaf drifting down in my peripheral vision.

  “It was the fellow from Green Guys who burned down your garage,” Frank said.

  “Hmm,” I said. It occurred to me that I may never feel surprised about anything again in my whole life.

  “He came by the morning of the scarecrow to check out his handiwork.”

  I pictured him hugging and lifting the semblance of a man that Pete had concocted.

  “Not a very successful criminal,” I said.

  Frank chuckled. “No. He blurted it out to me when he was doing my next-door neighbour’s lawn. We were talking about something completely unrelated, the scarecrow, I think. You had apparently pissed him off in some way. He didn’t realize I was a cop. I had to arrest him then and there. Arson is a serious crime.”

  “I guess you’re the type of person people blurt things out to,” I said.

  “He’s done it before, too,” Frank said. “This was not a first offence.”

  “I’m pleased it wasn’t Pete,” I said.

  “Me too,” said Frank

  I was pleased, too, that I could feel less guilty now about my knee-jerk hatred of the Green Guy.

  After Frank left, I phoned Dougwell Jones to tell him that Pete was dead. I told him the choices that we had to pick from: leapt, fell, or pushed. I told him that for now I was going with fell. But even as I said it I realized that I didn’t believe it anymore. Pete had jumped and a piece of me believes that a small part of him may have done it for me.

  Dougwell knew about my older sister who died, the one I read about in Nora’s journal. Nora had told him. And he knew that the little body of Baby Girl Ring was buried in St. Vital Cemetery. He didn’t know why my mother hadn’t buried Murray’s ashes out there beside her. Maybe I would like to do that now, he suggested.

  I phoned the cemetery and made the necessary arrangements, to bury both my father’s ashes and those of my brother beside the long-dead body of Baby Girl Ring. In my head I named her Luce.

  As soon as I hung up the phone rang. It was Dougwell. He still had Nora’s ashes, he said, in an urn in a cupboard. He offered them to me.

  “Yes, “ I said. “I’ll take them. I’ll place them with the others.”

  I phoned the cemetery back and postponed the burial.

  CHAPTER 36

  I’m done with my column, No, But Really. I went to see my editor at the Free Press to tell her that I am no longer able to write it. She didn’t seem at all disappointed. I told her that I’d been tossing around a couple of ideas for a different kind of column and she was genuinely interested in a change of tack. That was a relief; I didn’t want to worry that they didn’t want me at all. I needed a break, though, and I told her that. I had a train ride to take and many things to ponder. She didn’t even try to get me to tell her about my new ideas. I was grateful for this, as I hadn’t sharpened them up yet.

  I knew that I no longer wanted to hurt people with my words.

  One of my ideas was a column about things that happen to the human body and mind as you age. I would get things rolling by talking about my second hip replacement. People could write to me about their strange growths and odd-coloured rough patches: the things their doctors tell them to stop worrying about. They could tell me about their hair going from poker straight to curly or about how they sprouted an extra asshole over the long summer.

  I dreamed that a man wrote to me about an insect growing out of a sore on his face. I told him to wash and I didn’t use it in my column. He didn’t like this and came after me. I forced myself awake so I wouldn’t have to meet him face to face. My sheets were soaking wet and I decided that that idea for a column was foolish.

  My other concept also concerned aging, but it had to do with discoveries that come with age, bits of wisdom that people might like to share. I could call it Good Stuff to Know or What a Good Idea!, something like that. I would start out with my own bits of wisdom that I knew were none too wise, but that would let people know that their views didn’t have to be genius calibre to share. Things like: after a night of too many cigarettes, take a brisk walk, breathing deeply and you won’t feel nearly as horrible the next morning. It’s true! You just have to force yourself to do it.

  And people could send in questions: Does anyone sell fruit you can count on? Do our teeth grow further apart as we get older? Why don’t men have trouble with their thighs? What, once and for all, is the truth about worms? And other readers could write in answers, theories, comforts.

  This one seemed more likely—an interactive column—a friendly, positive column. I could maybe fit a few bits from my first idea in, but in a helpful way: what to do if you find yourself drooling while awake, or breathing loudly on the bus, or drifting off at parties.

  CHAPTER 37

  I’m on a train going west to see Dougwell Jones. Joanne and Henry saw me off. As the train pulled out of the station I noticed that Hermione had arrived as well. No sign of Myrna. I haven’t seen or spoken to her since the day I picked up Pete’s ashes. I doubt if we can still be friends; I’m not sure we ever were. This is one of the many things I have to think about during my trip to Penticton.

  “I loved you both. What was I supposed to do?” she asked the last time I saw her.

  You loved Pete more, I thought. Yet how could I blame her for that?

  But still.

  Another thing I have to think about is the trip Henry and I have decided to take to Ireland next summer. Henry still loves me after all that has happened. He says it is impossible that he would stop loving me, that no one could love me more than he does.

  And I’m still not sure how I feel about Henry. I love him for sure, but it ebbs and flows, just like it did when we were young. Next summer might be too far away to plan.

  Spike is in good hands. Joanne is looking after him at her house and she won’t let him off his leash while I’m away. He and her dog, Wilson, get along pretty well. Frank offered to take Spike too, so I know I have a backup dog sitter.

  Soon there is no trace of the city outside the window.

  The train reminds me of the one my dad would travel on when I was a girl. While we waited for it to rumble in from Regina, where Murray had gone to visit his sister Ruth, Pete and I would play on the Countess of Dufferin steam locomotive outside the cpr Station. Nora smoked nearby. Then, when we heard the train coming, we went into the station and climbed the long stairway that led up to it. At the top of the stairs, we were outside again. I peered through the cold steamy morning till I saw Murray’s familiar form loping towards us. And then I ran. He dropped everything to crouch down and hold me while I pressed my face into the rough cloth of his overcoat.

  “How’s my girl?” he always said.

  Bu
t it’s me now, on board, travelling through the prairie afternoon in mid-September. I sink into the comfort of the leather seat and smile at the elderly gentleman across from me. The sun slants through the windows and glints off the chain on the old man’s watch.

  The breeze dances in the tall grass as the train rolls by, blowing its horn at each town and village along the way: Carberry, Elkhorn, Wapella, Indian Head. The smell of sweet clover mingles with the oil and smoke from the train. And apples. A woman passes through with a basket of dusty apples that fill the air with their scent. She moves from one car to the next, the heavy doors clanging shut behind her. I want very much to bite into one of those sweet apples.

  Henry offered to come with me but I want to go alone. It will give me a chance to know Dougwell better. He is, after all, family of sorts.

  After I visit Dougwell I will come home to Joanne and Spike and Hermione and Henry. To Dr. Bondurant—I made an appointment with him that I’m going to keep. (He still has a part-time practice.) To a date in November to have my new hip installed. I won’t be laid up for as long as I was the first time around. To my brand-new column. And I’ll have a proper burial for the members of my family. Friends will come and I’ll say my good-byes. Once and for all.

  About the Author

  Alison Preston was born and raised in Winnipeg. After trying on a number of other Canadian cities, she returned to her hometown, where she currently resides. All of her mysteries are set in the Norwood Flats area of Winnipeg, including The Rain Barrel Baby, The Geranium Girls, Cherry Bites, and Sunny Dreams.

  A graduate of the University of Winnipeg, and a letter carrier for twenty-eight years, Alison has been twice nominated for the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer, following the publications of The Rain Barrel Baby (Signature Editions) and her first novel A Blue and Golden Year (Turnstone Press). She was also shortlisted for the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award and the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award for Cherry Bites and the Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher for Sunny Dreams.