Scare the Light Away

by Vicki Delany

  ***

  They served tea in the church hall after the interment. Kimmy’s children wandered about the big room, lost and confused, while the entire district pressed sandwiches and tea and heartfelt condolences on them. Mrs. Wright, close to the age of my own late mother, sat at the front of the hall, under the basketball net, on an uncomfortable fold-away auditorium chair. She was in a state of such profound shock that it was unlikely she felt the hard seat under her scrawny bottom or tasted the overly sweet tea in her cup. She had made a brief, near heroic, attempt to organize the funeral reception but collapsed under the weight of her grief. The women of the church calmly stepped in, guided Mrs. Wright to one side, and took over.

  I ate a tuna sandwich, beautifully prepared on thin, snow-white bread with the crusts cut off, without tasting a thing. Sampson was out in Aileen’s car, hopefully napping. She’d been an angel throughout the service, but the presence of food would certainly be her undoing. It had been Kimmy’s son, the rebellious Clint, who insisted on the dog being allowed to attend the service.

  Driven by nothing but curiosity, Clint had gathered on the hill, among the rest of the sensation seekers, with a pair of powerful binoculars to watch the goings on down at the big house. He had taken a swallow of beer and tossed a joke to his friends when he saw his mother walk out of the house, covered with blood, stumbling under the weight of the big dog whose life she was in the process of saving. And then, to his unbelieving horror, she went back inside, as she had promised. Clint visited Sampson in the animal hospital every day, and he fought against convention like the grief-maddened thing he was to ensure that the big dog came to his mother’s funeral.

  “Ms. McKenzie.” Inspector Eriksson greeted me. She was dressed in a different, but almost identical suit to the one she wore when we first met: lifeless brown but well cut out of good wool. Perhaps she had them tailored ugly, especially for her.

  “Inspector. Nice of you to attend. But don’t you people only come to funerals when the murderer has yet to be found? Hoping he will return to the scene of the crime, so to speak?”

  “Mrs. Michaels was a lovely woman. I know her mother and am here in my private capacity.”

  I flushed. “My apologies. That was insensitive of me.”

  “Don’t apologize, please. The more I hear of what went on in that house, the more impressed I am with all of you. And young Jason there…” We stopped talking to watch him rush by, a wicked smile on his face as he chased his squealing cousin Jessica past the refreshment table. His father reached out one hand and collared him. Jessica stuck out her tongue and disappeared into the crowd. “…not least of all.”

  “I’m glad Mrs. Taylor came. And Ryan with her. It was brave of the both of them.”

  “It was. You may not have heard, but Mr. Taylor has vacated the matrimonial home. Until the strain of the trial is over. Or so he says publicly.”

  To no one’s surprise Mrs. Taylor and Ryan didn’t attend the reception. Kyle was being held without bail, charged with the murders of Jennifer Taylor and Kimberley Michaels. No one had seen Mr. Taylor since the arrest of his son.

  “Afternoon, Inspector. Ready to go, Becky?” Jimmy appeared at my side.

  “I’ve probably drunk all the tea and eaten all the tasteless sandwiches I can handle for one day. Nice talking to you, Inspector. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope I never see you again.”

  Eriksson burst into shouts of laughter. She had a deep, rolling laugh that had me grinning along, although my comment wasn’t all that funny.

  Conversation paused and heads turned toward us. I glanced around, and for the first time I noticed that Jack Jackson was here, standing in a dark corner by himself tossing back the delicate sandwiches and beautiful pastries by the handful, and not watching me. No sign of his buddy Pete.

  Jimmy collected Dad and we made our way to the door. Aileen hadn’t come. She was resting at home under her doctor’s orders, attended by Maggie so that Jimmy could come to the funeral.

  I almost made it out the door before being cornered by Norma Fitzgerald “what was.” The high-school acquaintance I’d last seen tagging along in Kimmy’s wake at my mother’s funeral. Norma threw her arms around me and wept copious tears into my shoulder. I managed to disengage myself, murmuring about needing to take my father home to rest. Norma swore that we must keep in touch, sobbing all the while into a shred of tissue so thin it might flutter into the winds at any moment.

  I climbed into the back of the car beside Sampson and gathered her onto my lap. The cone made the hug awkward, and she glared at me in reproach. But a rub of the tummy and all was forgiven.

  Twilight was falling into what promised to be a lovely night.

  “Feel like coming for a stroll down to the lake after dark?” I asked, scratching at Sampson’s favorite spot. She waved one leg in contentment. “One last chance to look at the stars in all their glory.”

  “What, you don’t get stars in Vancouver?” Jimmy chuckled as he switched on the engine.

  “Sure we do. Lots of them. But they’re hidden by the city lights, that’s all. We know they’re there.”

  “Nine o’clock late enough?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Dad and I piled out of the car, and I helped Sampson jump down.

  Jimmy continued on up the road, with a wave and a promise to meet me at the lake at nine.

  “I have a few last-minute things to pack up, Dad,” I said. “Then I’ll join you in a drink, if you like.”

  “Sounds good.” He pulled off his shoes and settled in front of the TV. Sampson curled up at his feet, trying to rest her head despite the invader-from-outer-space getup in which she was trapped. She wasn’t well enough to travel, the vet had told me. Flying was exceedingly stressful for dogs at the best of times, and in her condition… She left me to fill in the rest of the sentence. My boss had been wonderful about all the time I’d missed—and now another week tacked on for Kimmy’s funeral—but he’d reach the end of his sympathy mighty quick if I told him I had to stay in Ontario a bit longer because my dog wasn’t well enough to fly. So Sampson would remain behind with Dad for a month, then I would come back for her. It would be a tough month for us both. Me most of all.

  Chapter 50

  The Diary of Janet McKenzie. July 19, 1990

  Reverend and Mrs. Wyatt invited me for tea today. She’s a bit of a stuck-up old cow, but he’s a perfect dear.

  While Mrs. Wyatt was refreshing the teapot, her husband asked me oh so casually if I had heard of Al Anon. I have heard, of course, about AA —Alcoholics Anonymous. But I didn’t know that there is a support group for the families of alcoholics. I took the little card with the phone number out of his hand and slipped it into the pocket of my cardigan as Mrs. Wyatt bustled back into the room with another plate of her perfectly dreadful fruitcake.

  October 4, 1990

  I have been attending Al Anon for several months now. Somehow, without even asking if I needed help in getting there, Reverend Wyatt arrived at the front door that first night to pick me up. He sits in the back of the hall while I attend the meeting and then drops me back at home. On the Tuesday nights that he can’t make it, Mrs. Wyatt has taken to coming to collect me. She sits beside me at the meeting. She doesn’t seem like such a cow any more.

  Tonight, I had gathered my coat and handbag, and I was sitting in the living room, watching for the lights of their car turning into the road. Bob walked in, his hands in his pockets. “Going out?” he asked. All of a sudden I was feeling so bold. After all these years, what did I have to lose? “I am going to a meeting with Reverend Wyatt,” I said. “A meeting of a group called Al-Anon. Have you heard of them?”

  He shook his head.

  “They’re a support group to help people who are dealing with alcoholism in their family,” I said, holding my breath.

  Car lights turned into our driveway and flashed once. Mr. Wyatt always comes to the door, but Mrs. Wyatt remains in the car and flicks
the lights to tell me she is here.

  “I don’t have anything much to do tonight,” Bob said, “Can I come with you, Janet?”

  I held out my hand and my husband lifted me off the sofa.

  Chapter 51

  I went down to the cellar and checked the seals on the tea chests. All nice and secure. Earlier I had fastened the crates and prepared big labels with my name and address and flight information. Satisfied, I returned to my room, took off my Armani funeral suit and packed it into my suitcase. I slipped on the pair of worn jeans and an old sweater that I planned to wear on the plane. The only things remaining to be packed were my pajamas and toiletry bag. It would be nice to be home, to see the mountains and smell the sea and sleep in my own bed once again. And it would be wonderful to be back at work.

  From what I had heard, my secretary, Jenny, was having the time of her young life, dining out all over town on the thrilling story of her quick-witted rescue of her endangered boss. I planned to give her a big hug, a sincere thanks, and then order her back to work.

  When she’d called my cell phone to hook me into the conference call and heard the confusing and inappropriate response from Kyle, Jenny immediately called back. That I failed to answer worried her, so she phoned Dad at the house. He’d been napping but recovered consciousness enough to tell her that I was at the big house. Jenny’s nerves screamed that something was wrong. She knew that I would never give my cell phone to someone else, nor disconnect it after asking her to call me for something as important as a call from my boss. She made Dad get up from his nap and insisted that he call the police and ask them to drop by. Which, of course, they did.

  If Rigoloni and LeBlanc hadn’t given me the chance to alert them as to what was going on, I have no doubt that Aileen and I, along with Jason and Sampson, would be resting in the churchyard beside poor Kimmy. Kyle’s hysteria had been mounting. Fast. Nothing would have brought it back down.

  But what do I know? I’m an investment banker, not a psychiatrist. And it was long past time I got back to banking.

  Jimmy was sitting on the rocks looking out over the water when I arrived. Sampson found him first, of course, and rushed to his side to offer herself up for a tummy scratch.

  “Don’t worry about your dog, Becky. Dad will look after her, and Aileen and I’ll pop in regularly.”

  “To check on Dad or Sampson?”

  “Both.”

  He shifted to one side to make a place for me on the rock. The good solid rock of the Pre-Cambrian Canadian Shield. Almost as tough as some of the families living up here in the Near-North. We sat in silence for a long while. It was a clear night with a big, round, full moon. The moon cast a luminous streak of white light to run across the dark lake waters up to our rock. The promised stars were largely invisible under the searchlight strength of the moon. The air lay still and quiet, the wonderful silence broken only by the sounds made by Sampson as she scrambled up the rocks to dig at something rustling in the undergrowth.

  “Do you remember the time you went for a swim in April?”

  “Oh, yes,” Jimmy groaned. “God, that was so awful.”

  “Awful! It seemed to me that you positively loved it.”

  “I loved the attention, sure. The adoring crowds and all that crap. But the swim itself? You can’t imagine, Becky, how much that water hurt. Like a thousand little knives digging into my skin. At the time I thought it was worth it. I would have done anything for Grandpa’s approval. Absolutely anything.”

  “And now?”

  “Now?”

  “What would you do now?”

  “I’d do anything for my wife, and almost anything for my father. I hated him when we were kids.”

  Together we looked up at the heavens. In the sky far from the bright moonlight a tiny meteor crossed the horizon and disappeared in a heartbeat.

  “Geez, did you see that? A shooting star.”

  “Lovely.”

  “I hated Dad. I considered him weak, spineless. Not a real man.” His voice filled with bitter echoes as his tongue spat out the final two words. “It took a lot of hard years and a bit of hard time. And most of all the proverbial love of a good woman to teach me that a man isn’t a man because he can fight all comers, terrify a child, and abuse a frightened woman.”

  “Don’t blame yourself too much. Dad’s drinking didn’t help any of us respect him.”

  “Yeah. But I know now that he wouldn’t have drunk so much if he had a bit of approval from his own father. And my contempt certainly didn’t help his self-respect any.”

  A slash of yellow headlights broke into our perfect world. Sampson gave one sharp bark and then trotted off to greet the intruder. It was someone she knew.

  “What on earth are you two doing sitting down there,” Shirley’s voice pierced the night. “I wouldn’t have even noticed you, if that dog hadn’t dashed out of nowhere.”

  Pebbles scattered and twigs snapped as she clambered down the bank. “I remember that rock. Before we were married, Al and I would sit out here for hours, doing nothing but watching the water and the stars.”

  We wiggled over and made room.

  Shirley picked up a pebble, small, washed smooth, perfectly oval. “Do you know, I haven’t stepped foot on this beach since the day I found out I was expecting Jackie. I came down here and threw rocks into the water and wondered what on earth I was going to do. Grandpa found me. He asked if I was waiting for customers and told me to get back up to the house and pretend I was a decent girl. I didn’t even know what he meant.” She tossed the rock from one hand to the other.

  “We were talking about Grandpa,” Jimmy said. “How many lives do you imagine he ruined?”

  In the moonlight I could see surprise dart across my sister’s face. “I thought you liked Grandpa,” Shirley said.

  “I worshiped the ground he walked on. When I was in jail for the first time, what kept me going was the knowledge that my grandpa would’ve taken care of any bastard who dared mess with him. So I looked after myself and I survived. That first time and all the others. But it would have been better if I hadn’t been in jail in the first place, wouldn’t it?”

  Shirley and I mumbled our agreement, and then the three of us settled into the silence. In the city it is never silent. There’s always something going on in the background, the cacophony of what a neighbor’s teenage son calls music, police sirens, cars honking, a party breaking up, or a restaurant shutting down. But here, sitting by the lake in the soft moonlight, the silence was more than the absence of noise. It had a physical presence all its own that I could breathe in deeply and swirl around my tongue like fine brandy.

  “What brings you out this late, Shirl?” Jimmy asked.

  “Came to say bye to Rebecca. You’re off home tomorrow, right?”

  “Yup.”

  “I wanted to make sure that the arrangements are all set with Maggie.”

  That could easily have been accomplished over the phone. I leaned over and hugged my sister’s bony frame. She stiffened slightly but made an effort to relax.

  “Jackie told me that you invited Jason to go skiing next winter,” she said.

  “Jessica and Melissa as well. They’re welcome anytime. I can take vacation when I like.”

  “They’re rather a handful, at that age. Need watching every minute.”

  Time I learned to be an aunt. “They can help me by looking out for each other. We’ve decided that Dad’s coming out in July for a month. It’s hard to believe that he’s never been on an airplane.”

  “Neither have I,” Shirley said, her voice low, as if it were something to be ashamed of.

  “Then you’ll have to come with him. Keep Dad company. Flying is a perfectly horrible experience, not in the least bit glamorous or adventurous, but you can endure it for Dad’s sake.”

  “For Dad then.” We watched the stars, which were struggling to be visible against the all-powerful glare of the moon. The solitary cry of a loon echoed across the lake. Sampson plopp
ed down at our feet and sighed deeply.

  “I’ve been wondering about one thing,” Shirley said after the loon’s call died away.

  “Yes?”

  “It doesn’t make me an expert, but I read police novels all the time. Their search dogs are supposed to be good. How come they couldn’t find Jennifer’s body, but Sampson did?”

  “Because she wasn’t there when they searched,” Jimmy said. “Kyle isn’t exactly a rocket scientist; he would have been caught pretty soon. Reading between the lines, and going by something Rosemary Rigoloni told me, Eriksson stepped out of the office for a bit just as the lab report came in. She came back to find the posse heading out to arrest me. They gave her a precis of the lab report and so she came along for the bust. The local cops—no names of course—got a mite excited at the idea of solving the murder all by themselves. I gather Eriksson just about hit the roof when she actually read the lab report: The evidence had obviously been planted. She was in the process of not-quite apologizing to me when they got the call about the hostage taking at the house. Anyway, Kyle originally stashed Jennifer’s body somewhere else. Then when the police searched the swamp after Sampson found the scarf, he got the bright idea of planting her nearer to me. So he waited until the cops finished the search and left and then he dumped her.”

  “Idiot,” Shirley mumbled.

  “Digging her up again must have been rather unsettling,” I said. “To say the least.”

  “For sure,” Jimmy said. “Kyle isn’t exactly a hardened criminal. Not yet, anyway. That’s still to come.”

  “The experience probably pushed him over the edge, made him take a chance on doing something so stupid as to march up to your house in broad daylight to plant evidence.”

  “He just wanted it to be over,” Jimmy said, his voice soft in the velvet darkness. “But screw him, he’ll get nothing but what he deserves. I keep thinking of poor Jennifer. She was a great kid, full of dreams, full of life.” His voice broke. “She reminded me a lot of you, Becky, when you were that age. A single-minded determination to get away from the rotten family that fate had given her. Maybe that’s why I liked her so much.”