by L. R. Wright
Annabelle sat quiet in her chair, sipping coffee, watching the broken cage, and eventually the squirrels crept to the opening, and scurried out. They sat on their haunches for a moment, looking around. And then they raced toward the woods.
Annabelle closed her eyes and let her head drop to her chest, as if she had fallen asleep.
Chapter 38
“OH BOY,” SAID Hugh McMurtry, studying the photograph Alberg had handed him. “That was a while ago.” He laughed. “It’s one of Steven’s, I guess. He must have taken, oh, dozens of pictures of me, and the rest of the staff, too.”
“Any particular reason for this one?”
“I can’t even recall the occasion, whatever it was.”
“How about this picture?” said Alberg.
“Why, that’s Bobby Ransome. Looks like it was taken in the boys’ locker room. Where did you get these, anyway?”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“Bobby?” McMurtry sat back and spread his arms along the top of the sofa. The glass doors were open and every so often a cool breeze from the sea drifted into the room. “Basically, he was a good kid. But he got into trouble—joyriding, drinking; you know the kind of thing. And he dropped out of school in grade ten. Usually that’s it. A kid drops out, and you lose him for good. But four years later, Bobby came back.”
“Why?” said Alberg.
McMurtry grinned shyly. “Well, I think I had something to do with it. I’d see him in town, working as a laborer, and I’d put the bug in his ear. He started coming up to the school, hanging around after classes. Finally he came in to see me, asked how it would work, if he came back. It took another year, but eventually, he did.”
“How’d he make out?”
“Fine. Just fine. Everybody admired him for having the guts to sit in a grade ten classroom with kids four or five years younger than he was. But then—he was a powerful presence, Bobby was.”
“How do you mean?”
McMurtry shrugged. “He was the kind of person people are aware of. Charismatic, I guess you’d call him.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, he graduated. And he married his girlfriend. And then I think he planned to take a heavy-duty mechanics’ course.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I went away that summer, I remember,” said McMurtry absently, looking out at the roses growing on his patio. “And when I got back, Bobby had been arrested for selling drugs, and sent to jail.” He glanced at Alberg. “He’s back in town now, so I’ve heard.”
“Was this arrest a big surprise to everybody?”
McMurtry looked uncomfortable. “Yes. No. I don’t know. I mean, he was kind of a wild kid, from time to time. Maybe,” he said wearily, “maybe we should have kept a closer eye on him.”
Alberg studied the photograph. “How well did he know Steven Grayson?”
McMurtry shook his head. “I have no idea. Probably not well at all.”
Alberg had to wait a long time before Hetty Willis opened her front door.
“I’m sorry to bother you again.”
She clung to the edge of the door. Several cats swirled languorously around her feet.
“I’d like to talk to you about your nephew. Bobby.”
Her expression remained unreadable, and for a long time she didn’t move. Some of the cats slithered out onto the veranda. Alberg willed himself to relax. He tried smiling inside his head. And maybe that worked; finally she pulled the door open and allowed him to enter.
They stood in the entrance hall, Hetty looking up at him, blinking behind her glasses.
“You were upset, I think, when I showed you that photograph.”
He had the feeling that she was waiting patiently for him to finish, and leave.
“Can you tell me why?”
She made no response. Alberg remembered an old man he’d known saying that once you get to a certain age “the whole shitteree is fast wearing out—any minute, something essential could go on you.” Maybe Hetty’s hearing has suddenly gone on her, he thought.
Hetty was flipping rapidly through a mental list of her relatives and friends. She began with Rachel, her sister-in-law, because Rachel was Bobby’s mother, after all. But Rachel’s attention was still riveted upon the failing health of her second husband. And there was nobody else Hetty knew who cared about Bobby.
She looked despairingly at the policeman. Her responsibility for her nephew lay heavily upon her.
If she was wrong, she thought, confiding in the policeman would do no harm. And if she was right—well she had more responsibilities than one.
She took Alberg into her sitting room, and handed him the scrapbook.
Chapter 39
HERMAN HAD BEEN beside himself when he awoke Friday morning and found Annabelle ostensibly asleep in the lawn chair and the squirrels gone. “First the skunks, then the raccoons, now this,” he’d hollered. “Well there for sure goes my damn zoo,” he’d said, almost in tears about it, and he raged off in the truck, forgetting all about Arnold.
Annabelle had kept to her plan, though. She’d walked into town, when it was time, and gone to Bobby’s house, just as they had arranged it.
He’d been waiting for her in the living room, his face striped with light that sifted in through the blinds. “Jesus, I thought I wasn’t ever gonna see you again,” he said, taking her hands, pulling her upstairs.
“You said you wanted to talk to me, Bobby,” she said, trying to sound stern. He slipped her bag from her shoulder and reached behind her to unzip her dress and there was such hunger in her that she was trembling.
“Oh Jesus, Annabelle,” he said, and took her breast in his mouth, and they tumbled onto his bed.
Oh she loved his eyes, double-lashed, outlined by nature as if with a dark smudgy pencil. They were as green as the green water in a lake Annabelle had been to once; as green as seawater sometimes is. Even Erna had remarked enviously upon his eyes.
And oh she loved the mole next to his hipbone. She liked to touch it with the tip of her tongue. It was not merely a dark spot of skin but a protuberance; an entity that had come to rest there alongside his hipbone: maybe it even moved around, exploring the surface of his body with the same tactile curiosity that possessed Annabelle—although she had never seen it anywhere but there, alongside his hipbone.
She liked the way he touched her; not soft, tentative brushings like feathers or a summer breeze but strong, bold strokes that made her muscles ripple, setting up inside her the beginnings of tumult.
She liked the way his lips grazed her body as though it were a pasture of sweet grass.
And after they’d made love she pressed her face into the warm dampness of his hard belly and felt between her breasts his erection begin to return; she liked that, too.
She reached out to stroke Bobby’s brown back, which was shiny with sweat; he was sitting, naked, on the edge of the bed. He turned to give her a smile. He had more than one smile, and some of them were scary, but this particular smile was so open and winning that it made her heart ache.
Annabelle sat up and looked on the floor for her clothes.
“I’ll get them,” said Bobby. He scooped up her panties and sundress and put them on the bed. Then, as Annabelle watched disapprovingly, he reached for his jeans and pulled them on. A man who wore no underwear, Annabelle believed, was not a man to be completely trusted. It might have been the only thing about Bobby that she didn’t like.
She watched as he thrust bare feet into his sneakers.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he said, and went down the hall to the bathroom.
She got dressed and found her purse, which he had tossed upon the room’s only chair, and was brushing her hair when he came back. She smiled at him in the mirror as she pulled back her hair and fastened it with an elastic band.
“Annabelle,” he said, putting his hands on her waist. “I’ve got something to tell you. I don’t wanna tell you this. But I need to, Annabelle.”
Annabe
lle glanced at the window. The blind was down but the window behind it was open; the shade fluttered every time a breeze blew in, and then bounced softly against the windowsill. Annabelle would have liked to know what time it was. She’d forgotten to wear her watch again.
“I wish you’d change your mind,” she said, looking kindly at him, “and stay in Sechelt.” She pulled strands of hair from her brush and looked around halfheartedly for a wastebasket, then scrunched up the hairs in her hand and placed them neatly on top of Bobby’s dresser. She moved to the chair and put the hairbrush away. “I can’t be late getting home,” she said, slinging her purse over her shoulder. He was a pretty sight as he stood there, tall and tanned, with wide shoulders and a smooth strong hairless chest; there was a thicket of hair under his jeans, though, a splurge of coarse, reddish hair; it made Annabelle sigh to think about it.
“I can’t stay in Sechelt,” said Bobby, grim-faced, “because of what happened last weekend.”
Annabelle crossed her arms, frowning. “What?”
“You know about my temper,” he began. And all of Annabelle’s alarm bells went off at the same time.
“I can’t stand around here any longer, Bobby,” she said quickly. “I have to be getting home.” With a glance back at the disheveled bed, she headed for the hall.
Bobby stepped between her and the doorway. “Don’t run away from me, Annabelle.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She looked into his green eyes. “I have to go now. I really do.”
But Bobby blocked the doorway. “Annabelle please, just listen.”
“Bobby stop this, stop it immediately.” She recognized the tone of her voice as the one she used on her children when she was correcting their table manners. She didn’t do that often enough, she thought, looking blankly at Bobby. She couldn’t, when Herman was around. Annabelle wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. She didn’t want either of them. I don’t want anybody at all, she thought, turning toward the window, where the blind tapped gently at the sill, I only want me, she thought, and the notion of being alone speared her chest with sudden, unexpected longing.
Bobby pushed himself away from the doorjamb and put his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Yeah,” he said bitterly. “Okay. Fine. Go.”
She pushed past him, into the hall, and ran down the steps. Then she came to a halt, staring at the dirty glass panes in the front door.
“Bobby,” she said.
“I’m here.” He was right behind her.
With profound reluctance, she turned, slowly, and took his hands, which were square and brown and clean.
“Tell me, then,” she said.
Chapter 40
“WE GOT NO EVIDENCE, you know, Karl,” said Sokolowski.
“I know it.”
“Even if he did it, we can’t prove anything.”
“We can get his picture out to Thormanby,” said Alberg. “Put him on the island at the time Grayson died, at least. It’s a start. Then we can bring him in, talk to him, and take it from there. Maybe the camera will turn up.”
Hetty Willis’s scrapbook lay on the desk in front of him. It contained mimeographed programs from school concerts. An invitation to Bobby’s high school graduation. Photographs of Bobby in Halloween costumes. Photographs of Bobby with his parents, and with Hetty. Notes that he’d written her, thanking her for Christmas and birthday presents. Newspaper clippings about his arrest, trial and sentencing. And letters he’d sent her from prison.
Photographs had been entered as evidence of a drug transaction between Ransome and two fourteen-year-olds who had later testified for the prosecution.
Bobby had received a sentence of seven years, because the drugs he was convicted of having sold had been imported over the U.S. border.
But he actually served eight and a half years, Hetty had told Alberg; eighteen months had been added to his sentence after he escaped and was recaptured.
The photographs that sent him to jail had been mailed to the RCMP anonymously. But Bobby knew who’d provided them. “Steven?” Alberg had said, and Hetty Willis had nodded.
“What I don’t understand,” said Alberg to Sokolowski, “is who the hell died? That Steven felt responsible for?”
The sergeant shrugged. “I guess that part of it’s wrong.”
Chapter 41
“I THOUGHT YOU could give me a sandwich,” said Bobby, “and then we could go to the bank together.” He was very restless in his body, and kept looking out the window.
It was astonishing, thought Hetty, what fixes a person can get into in a lifetime.
She shook her head.
“No, what?” said her nephew. “No sandwich?”
“Money,” said Hetty quickly, before she lost her nerve. “No money.”
She saw his consternation, and felt a great echoey emptiness.
He stood quite still, towering over her; she had the sense of his blotting out the sun.
She thought about the cats, about how she needed them. She had always cared about animals, but since her brother’s bizarre death on the horns of a deer she had, illogically, focused her life upon them. A person has to have something, thought Hetty, looking up at Bobby, craning her neck because she was so short.
And frail, she thought. For the first time in my life, I feel frail.
Most of the murders in the world happen among family members. She watched the news. She knew.
But she also knew that he would never hurt her.
“How come you changed your mind?”
“Notgood.”
“Not good. Not good. Shit. Fuck.” He threw himself onto the love seat. “Do you know what you’re doin’ to me, Aunt Hetty?”
“No,” said Hetty.
“You’re killin’ me.” He gripped his head with both hands. “Killin’ me.”
“Notme,” said Hetty. She was crying again. She hadn’t wept for years, and now it seemed like she was doing it all the time. “You,” said Hetty, through her tears. “You.”
Chapter 42
“MY GOODNESS, WHY are you two hanging around the house?” said Annabelle. She was flying from room to room, wielding a duster. “Where’s that mangy dog, anyway, Camellia? Why aren’t you outside playing with that mangy dog?”
“He’s not mangy,” said Camellia, following her from the kitchen to the living room, which was a long, narrow room with only one window in its end wall. “I don’t feel like it.”
“Why don’t you sit down, Ma?” said Rose-Iris uneasily. “Have a cup of coffee or something.”
“I don’t want to sit down,” said Annabelle.
“Well I don’t want to go out and play, either,” said Camellia.
Annabelle stopped dusting and put her hands on her hips. “I don’t like that whine in your voice,” she scolded Camellia.
“It’s not a whine,” said Rose-Iris. “She’s just worried, that’s all.”
“I’m worried, that’s all,” said Camellia.
“Oh for goodness’ sake,” said Annabelle, dusting the television set, “what’ve you got to be worried about?”
“You, Ma,” said Rose-Iris. “We’re worried about you. Why’re you acting so funny?”
“It’s you two who’re acting funny, if you ask me,” said Annabelle, bustling past them on her way back to the kitchen. “Here it is beautiful weather again and you have no chores to do, because I’ve given you the whole day off. Arnold at least has a brain in his head. He knows what to do when he’s given a day off, he’s gone off to play like a normal child.” She had begun to shiver. “But you two, you just hang around, mope around, getting in my way.”
Annabelle remembered, suddenly, a day last autumn when she’d been walking up the gravel road to Erna’s house. The sky at the top of the hill was brilliantly blue. The trees stretched up and over the road, and the wind was blowing strong, lifting leaves from the trees and hurling them down; the air was filled with them—a golden rain of autumn leaves. And Annabelle, wal
king up the road, lifting her face to the sky and the golden falling leaves, had thought she heard laughter.
“Maybe when your dad gets back with the truck,” she said now, trying to control her shaking, “maybe we’ll go somewhere. To the beach, maybe. I’ll cook a roast and we’ll slice it up and pack us a picnic and go to the beach. That’s what we’ll do.” But she couldn’t stop shaking, and Camellia began to sniffle.
Then they heard a car.
The children looked at one another and then back at Annabelle, and they were all thinking, well it isn’t the truck, and it isn’t Uncle Warren’s van, and then they heard a car door bang and up to the screen came the girl from the newspaper.
“Will you please go away,” said Annabelle, suddenly enraged.
She struck the screen door with the heel of her hand. It slammed open, nearly hitting Diana. Annabelle strode through it, across the yard and around the corner to where Diana’s car was parked, next to the broken-down gas pumps. She opened the driver’s door and stood there.
“Get into your car and drive away,” she said. Diana gaped at her, looking very silly, Annabelle thought. The girl came near: thank God, thought Annabelle, she’s going without a word.
But instead of getting into her car, Diana said, in a very soft voice, “Can I help you?”
Annabelle looked at her incredulously.
“Please let me help you,” said the girl.
There was such tenderness in her voice that Annabelle was embarrassed for her. And then Annabelle realized that her face —Annabelle’s own face—was wet with tears; dripping with tears. And that Camellia and Rose-Iris, staring at her, were transfixed with fear.
She looked intently into Diana’s face.
“Let me take you into your house,” said Diana, “and maybe your daughters and I can make you a cup of tea.” She put an arm around Annabelle’s shoulders and led her inside.
A few minutes later they were sitting around the table, the four of them.
