by L. R. Wright
“Sunday dinners. The ones you mean, that was when I was just about Arnold’s age, and we lived not far from my grandparents.”
“Your mother’s mother and your mother’s father,” said Camellia.
“Yes,” said Annabelle. “That’s right.”
“And Uncle Warren was just a bitty baby,” said Camellia.
“Yes,” said Annabelle.
“And your grandma and grandpa were very old,” said Camellia.
“Not so very old,” said Annabelle. “They were about sixty, I guess.”
“Your grandpa was tall and skinny,” said Camellia.
“Let Ma tell it,” said Rose-Iris irritably. She’d put her book down, with a bookmark in it, and had linked her hands behind her head.
“Yes, my grandfather was tall and skinny,” said Annabelle. “He wore round eyeglasses, and his hair, which was white, was combed straight back from his forehead. He always seemed to be wearing a suit, although he must have worn other things some of the time.”
“At night,” said Camellia, giggling. “He must have worn pajamas at night.”
“And the suit was always gray,” said Annabelle, smoothing her skirt. She leaned back on her hands and crossed her ankles. “I remember that his pants had belt loops but he never wore a belt, he used suspenders instead. And he’d have on a white shirt, and a tie that was mostly gray.”
“What about his shoes?” said Camellia.
“Black,” said Annabelle promptly.
“And tell me about your grandma,” said Camellia.
“She was a little person,” said Annabelle, and Camellia giggled again. “She sat very straight and some of the chairs, like the dining room chairs, were a little bit high, I guess, because when she sat on them her feet didn’t quite touch the floor. She wore dresses all the time, all the time, and a round brooch at the neck, and black shoes with sensible heels, that laced up. She had white hair, too, and it had lots of little waves in it. She grew African violets,” said Annabelle. “My grandfather built a little greenhouse for her, in their back yard, and it was jam-packed with African violets.”
“And they’d come for dinner on Sundays,” said Rose-Iris, being helpful.
“That’s right. And it seems to me—” Annabelle leaned forward, her hands loose in her lap. “Memories are very funny things. You can be absolutely sure of something and then find out that you were wrong about it. It’s very disconcerting.”
“What’s ‘disconcerting’?” said Camellia.
“Annoying,” said Rose-Iris. “Confusing. Like that. Go on, Ma.”
“Well,” said Annabelle, “in my memory we had roast beef and Yorkshire pudding every single time my grandparents came for dinner. But we probably didn’t. But that’s the way I remember it.”
“And you’d have to set the table,” said Camellia.
“Yes. But I didn’t mind. I liked setting the table.”
“First you put on the tablecloth,” said Camellia.
“First she put on the silence cloth,” said Arnold.
They all three turned and saw him lounging against the door frame.
“Well,” he said defensively, “I can be here if I like.”
“Of course you can,” said Annabelle. “Yes, that’s right, first the silence cloth. And then the tablecloth. And then the silverware and the china.”
“And the napkins,” said Rose-Iris. “In the napkin holders.”
“That’s right,” said Annabelle.
“Then you’d have to peel the potatoes,” said Camellia.
“And put the pickles in the pickle dish,” said Rose-Iris.
“And you’d have roast beef,” said Arnold, “and Yorkshire pudding.”
“And maybe carrots,” said Camellia.
“And a lemon pie for dessert,” said Rose-Iris.
“Because that was your dad’s favorite,” said Arnold.
The children looked at one another.
Arnold ambled off down the hallway toward his room. Rose-Iris sighed, and picked up her book.
“Thanks, Ma,” said Camellia, turning over so that the light from Rose-Iris’s bedside lamp wouldn’t shine upon her face.
“Goodnight,” said Annabelle. She went into the room with the window wall, where she sat in a lawn chair and looked through glass at the black, starlit sky.
Eventually, she went to bed.
That night nobody in the house awakened.
In the morning when Arnold went out to tend to the animals he found the lock on the shed door broken, and the bags of feed inside slashed and emptied, and he saw that another cage had been opened, and the raccoons were gone.
Chapter 36
ON THURSDAY MORNING Alberg caught up with Alex Gillingham while the doctor was doing his hospital rounds. Alberg pulled out the photograph and put it down on the counter at the nursing station. Gillingham looked at it uncomprehendingly and said, “What is it?”
“It’s a picture of you, Alex. Steven Grayson took it.”
“He did?”
“You don’t remember?”
Gillingham shook his head. “But he always had a camera with him. It got so you never even noticed it.”
“There’s another thing,” said Alberg.
“Go ahead.”
“He apparently felt responsible for somebody’s death.”
“Who, Steven?”
“Yeah. You got any ideas?”
Gillingham thought for a moment. “The only person in his life who died that I knew about was his father.”
“Yeah. But I think this thing happened before that.”
“I can’t help you, Karl. Sorry.”
Alberg put the photograph back in the envelope. “Thanks anyway.”
He went to the detachment and called in Sokolowski and Carrington.
“I got zilch,” said Sokolowski heavily. “Went back to the islands, rechecked everybody, nobody saw a thing.”
“What about the marinas?”
Sokolowski shook his head.
“When am I going to get the files on Ransome?”
“Tomorrow,” said the sergeant. “If we’re lucky. What I can’t figure is why he’s still hanging around, if he’s the perp.”
“I don’t know, Sid,” said Alberg. “But I want to make damn sure we know it if he changes his mind.”
“Don’t worry. If he hits the ferries or the airport, we’ll know about it.”
“So you’re pretty sure it’s this Ransome, Staff?” said Carrington.
“No. Not sure. But maybe it’s him,” said Alberg.
“The guy could have been killed for that camera of his,” said Sokolowski. “By a berserk tourist he met on top of the cliff.”
“A berserk tourist,” said Carrington. “Ha. I like that.”
“A thief who missed all that cash?” said Alberg.
“Maybe he fell off the cliff before the guy could grab it,” said Sokolowski. “It could be he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Him and his belt full of money. And his two-thousand-dollar Hasselblad. People have died for less than that before now.”
“He was for sure in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Alberg. “As it turned out.”
“A berserk tourist,” said Carrington. “Ha.”
“Carrington,” said Alberg. “I want you to get me a list of everybody Grayson knew in the last three years he lived here. That means faculty and students at the high school, plus anybody else his mother or his uncle can think of.”
“Right,” said Carrington.
“Cross off anybody who doesn’t live on the peninsula anymore,” said Alberg. “Get phone numbers for the rest. Once we hear from the phone company—the numbers that were called from his mother’s house—we can look for a match.”
When Sokolowski and Carrington had left his office, Alberg pulled in front of him the pile of evaluation forms, which even if he did the whole works today would still be two weeks late getting to Vancouver. He put on his reading glasses.
“Sokolowski,” sa
id the top form. His eye skimmed the blanks to be filled in. “Number of years on the Force. Number of years at the detachment. Current duties and responsibilities. Recommendation for promotion? Recommendation for a merit increase?”
Christ, Alberg said silently to himself. I cannot deal with this. Not now. He shoved the stack of forms away from him.
He thought of Sid. And Sid’s wife, Elsie.
He reached for the forms again.
And then he heard a tap on his door. “Come in,” he called out, and his heart lifted to see Diana standing there. “Come in, sweetie,” he said, taking off his glasses.
“Have you got a minute?” she said, sitting down in the black chair.
“Of course I have. Are you here in an official capacity?” said Alberg with a smile, pointing to her notebook. He wondered what reporters wrote in their notebooks. Most of them had tape recorders now, too. It didn’t seem to do them any good. They still got most things wrong. Not Diana, of course. Her newspaper stories were extremely well written, thoughtful and intelligent…but of course, he thought, looking at her in sudden dismay, he was in no position to judge their accuracy.
“Well, yes,” said Diana. “If you’ve got time,” she said, pushing her hair back from her forehead, “I’d like to talk to you.” She laughed. “Interview you. Is that okay?”
“Interview me about what?”
“I went to see that mini-zoo guy,” said Diana, opening her notebook, “and what a jerk he is. And I talked to the guy with Wildlife Management, which is part of the Ministry of the Environment.” She dug in her large straw handbag and pulled out a pen. “And now I need to find out what the police position is.” She looked at him expectantly, pen poised.
“What the police position is on what?” said Alberg carefully.
“On the mini-zoo, Dad,” said Diana.
Alberg looked out the window at the heat. “The police don’t have a position on the mini-zoo,” he said.
“Why not?” said Diana.
“Well, Diana. Because it’s not necessary. That’s why.”
“Have you had any complaints about it?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“You mean to say, Dad, that not a single soul has protested to you about that awful place?”
“Yeah, one single soul has. You.”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “You’re not being honest with me.”
Alberg shifted in his chair. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said, with dignity.
“You are not telling me everything.”
He squinted at her. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“How come you’re not telling me about the broken cages?”
“Why should I tell you about them?”
“Or the bags of feed cut open?”
He looked at her sullenly.
“Or the death threat that awful man got, not that he doesn’t deserve it.” Diana shook her head reproachfully. “How can journalists do their job, Dad, when we don’t get cooperation from the police?”
Alberg was silent.
Diana glanced at her notebook. “How’s your investigation proceeding?”
“We’ve been distracted from our investigation,” he said dryly, “by a homicide. Maybe you heard about it.”
She looked chagrined, which gave him some pleasure. “I’m sorry, Dad.”
“I can’t discuss these things with you, Diana. You know that.”
“You’re happy enough to talk to us when you need us,” said Diana, flushing. “When you need people to do a search, or whatever, you’re sure willing to talk to us then.”
“Diana, I can’t discuss ongoing investigations with you. Not as a reporter, and not as my daughter. When there’s something to say to the press you can be sure I’ll say it. But there isn’t. Not yet.”
“Are you investigating that Willis woman?” Diana blurted.
“What, the cat lady? For murder? What do you know that I don’t?”
His daughter closed her notebook and stood up. “You don’t seem to be doing a great deal that’s useful,” she said coldly. “You don’t care about the animals in that man’s zoo. You probably don’t care about his wife, either. He hits her, you know. I saw him.”
“Diana,” said Alberg. “You stay away from that place. Do you hear me?”
“Are you speaking as a father?” she said. “Or a cop? Because if you’re being a father, I’m past the age of majority. And if you’re being a cop, you have no right to order me around.”
“Diana,” said Alberg, but she was already out the door.
Chapter 37
ANNABELLE WAS DEEP in sleep when she felt her shoulder being shaken. She opened her eyes and drew back in a quick flinch when she saw Herman standing by the side of the bed. He ignored this, although she knew he’d seen it, and handed her a mug of coffee.
“It’s three o’clock,” he said. “It’s your turn, Annabelle.”
“Oh my goodness Herman I can’t believe you meant it.”
“I been out there since eleven. You only gotta stay till it gets light. That’s only a couple hours.”
Annabelle took the coffee and sat up in bed. She reached for the switch on the lamp, but Herman stopped her.
“We don’t want no light showin’,” he said, keeping his voice low. “She’d know we were up.”
Annabelle leaned against the headboard and took a sip of coffee. “Well I might as well get going,” she said, and sighed. Herman put his hand on her shoulder. She waited, in case he wanted to say something. But he didn’t. So she got up, and got dressed, while Herman got undressed, and climbed into bed.
The dark night was pierced and flooded with light from a fixture attached to the gable of the shed. Annabelle sat in a lawn chair next to the house. She wondered how the animals could sleep. Maybe they were huddled in their cages with their paws over their eyes.
Herman hadn’t gone away for a night and a day after all. He’d slept all night in the truck, parked a little way down the road, and then he’d driven off to work in the early morning before anybody was up. As soon as he’d gotten home from work and seen that the raccoons were gone, he’d driven back into town to get what he needed to install the yard light.
It was so bright that nobody would come near the place now, Annabelle had told him. Surely it was unnecessary to stand guard. But Herman said he had an investment to protect; he would stand watch half the night and either Rose-Iris or Annabelle had to do the other half; Arnold and Camellia were too young.
Now that she was out here, sitting in the lawn chair with her coffee, she was almost content.
After an hour or so she went inside for more coffee.
When she sat down again she caught a whiff of the fragrance of her rose garden as it drifted through the brush.
She smelled the animals in their pens, and the roses. There wasn’t even a breath of a breeze. She moved her arms, trying to create a ripple in the air, but all that did was set the uncommon warmth of the night to stirring.
Annabelle, sitting in the hot, dark night, began to feel like someone enchanted.
She wasn’t surprised when she saw a movement across the yard, on the light-pool’s opposite shore. She wondered if it was a raccoon. Maybe raccoons had set their brethren free, she thought, and leaned forward slightly to see.
Into the light crept a figure, and Annabelle saw that it was human. She watched, fascinated. The figure stopped, and stood still; it stood there, motionless, for such a long time that Annabelle began to think she’d been mistaken; it wasn’t a person at all but a shrub, some kind of vegetation that had been there all the time, just inside the boundaries of the artificial day in which the animals were submerged. Then it moved, and Annabelle saw that it had something in its hand. Annabelle put her hand up to her mouth. She didn’t know what she ought to do. She hadn’t discussed with Herman what would happen if either of them actually caught the vandal in the act. She got to her feet and moved backward a few steps, until she had r
eached the side of the house, and got down on her haunches; the smaller she could make herself, the better, she thought.
She peered across darkness into the light-flooded mini-zoo and watched as the figure made its way past the first cage, which Annabelle knew was empty, and past the second one, also empty, to the third. Annabelle tried to remember what was in that cage. Then she heard chirping sounds—squirrels, that was what was in there.
The figure at the cage was crooning, now, and working away at the wire. Annabelle moved a little closer, slowly, cautiously, not making a sound. But even if I do make a sound, she told herself, he won’t hear it with the squirrels chirping like that.
The figure became still, and turned suddenly, and looked directly at Annabelle.
But she can’t see me, thought Annabelle, for she’s in light, and I’m in shadow. She stood up, slowly. The cat lady—Bobby Ransome’s Aunt Hetty—straightened from her crouching position in front of the cage. She shaded her eyes with one hand. Annabelle moved to the lawn chair, and sat down. The cat lady looked at her intently, and Annabelle looked back. Yes, thought Annabelle calmly, I guess she can see me after all. She picked up her mug from the ground and took a sip of coffee.
The old woman held what Annabelle took to be a pair of wire cutters. She had gray hair that she’d wound up and pinned on top of her head. She wore heavy shoes, and a skirt that almost reached her ankles, and a cardigan buttoned up to the neck, and of course her black shawl. She stared at Annabelle for a long time, until Annabelle finally realized that something more was needed. So she lifted her hand and slowly touched it to her forehead, in salutation.
The old woman hesitated, then turned back to the cage, and, with several looks back across her shoulder at Annabelle, resumed her work with the wire cutters. Annabelle watched, and listened for sounds from the house, but heard none; she was getting worried, though, because of all the excited noises coming from the cages.
In a few more minutes the old woman was finished. She pushed herself to her feet, reached toward the cage, and pulled. A chunk of the wire cage came away. The old woman looked steadily at Annabelle for a minute. And then she walked away.
