by L. R. Wright
She opened the fridge and had to smile: her mother had tidied up in there. Leftovers had been transferred from plates or plastic bags to proper containers, with lids. Jars of condiments had been wiped clean and replaced with all labels facing front. The drawers had been washed and lined with clean paper toweling. Cassandra took out a can of soda water and poured it over ice into a large glass.
She returned to the living room, where a rented cot had been set up in the corner behind Karl’s wingback chair. A standing lamp sat next to it and its light shone upon the cot, a pile of books on the floor beside it, an opened book sprawled on the bed itself. Cassandra put the glass on the floor. She climbed into bed, adjusted the pillows, and turned out the light.
A few minutes passed.
“Cassandra?”
She turned her head and saw that her mother was sitting on the end of the sofa. She sat up quickly. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I couldn’t sleep, that’s all.”
Cassandra pulled up the pillow and leaned against it. The sound of the rain on the roof had subsided to a shallow clatter, and she could no longer hear the wind. Her mother’s robe was a splotch of white in the darkened room.
“I’m glad you asked me to stay with you. I’m glad I can be of some use to you, still.”
“I’m glad, too, Mother.”
“Are you and Karl planning to get married?”
Cassandra rested her head against the wall. “I don’t know. Maybe.” She looked over at her mother, whose face was still in shadow, but Cassandra could see her hands, in her lap, smoothing the fabric of her robe, a quilted white one with pink piping around the collar and cuffs. She tried to see if her mother was wearing her slippers, but her feet were hidden by the folds of the robe. “I was going to propose to him the other night, as a matter of fact,” she said with a little laugh. “And then he told me he had to go out of town.”
“For heaven’s sake, Cassandra. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“You know, Mom. I can’t bear to be alone yet. That’s no reason for getting married.”
“But it wouldn’t be the reason, would it?”
“No. But it would feel like it was.”
Her mother leaned forward, and the faint light that filtered through the curtain from the street lamp touched her face. “This is such a difficult time for you. I wish I could help.”
When it was all over, Cassandra had sat on the edge of her mother’s bed and said, “A bad thing happened to me, Mom. I have to tell you about it.” As she talked, her mother sitting up in bed by then, Helen Mitchell had had tears in her eyes. They ran slowly down her wrinkled cheeks as she touched Cassandra’s face and gathered her in her arms. Cassandra had been very impressed with this, for her mother had never been a demonstrative woman, not even when Cassandra was a child.
“I remember,” said Cassandra dreamily, “when macaroni and cheese was my favorite food, and I wanted to have it every day, for lunch.”
“I remember that. It was before you started school,” said her mother.
Cassandra heard a siren, far away, a mournful sound that brought Karl back into her thoughts.
“Your father didn’t like macaroni and cheese. Neither did Graham. I did, though. Apart from not wanting to be by yourself—how are you?”
“I’m fine, Mother,” said Cassandra. Helen Mitchell’s face, in the dim light and at this distance, looked fresh and young. “I’m going to be fine.”
***
The next morning Alberg parked his rented car in front of a house in southwest Calgary where Art Johnson lived with his son, who was divorced and childless and a few years younger than Alberg. The son was a chartered accountant who worked in a small office with a partner on Twelfth Avenue. Today was Sunday, though, and he would be at home.
Alberg had begun the search for the hired man in the town where the murders occurred. The woman who used to be postmistress, when there was a post office there, told him about Johnson’s son, whose name was Thomas. “Thomas Hardy Johnson,” said the erstwhile postmistress, “named after the Englishman who wrote Tess of the d’Urbervilles.” He’d gone to university in Saskatoon, she said. Alberg traced him through the alumni association, to which Thomas Hardy Johnson had made regular contributions ever since his graduation.
Alberg climbed the steps and went through a screen door that led into a porch about half the width of the house. He knocked on the inner door and waited, shivering, for someone to answer. It was a very cold day—although at least it had stopped snowing and the sun had come out. There was a stack of folded-up lawn chairs in a corner of the porch, and several hanging baskets containing frozen flowers had been lined up next to it. Corpses, awaiting burial.
The door was opened by a tall, middle-aged man, balding, slightly paunchy. He presented Alberg with a wary expression, not exactly hostile, but certainly reluctant. This guy was not pleased to be opening his door to Alberg: maybe because Alberg was a cop, maybe because he was concerned for his aged dad—who could tell. But Alberg was not unaccustomed to this kind of reception and had learned not to let it bother him.
“Karl Alberg. You’re expecting me.”
“Right.” Johnson stepped back to let him enter.
In the cramped hallway Alberg’s eye was caught by a row of hooks, the kind he remembered from his schooldays. Two jackets hung there, along with scarves and toques. On the floor, on a rubberized tray, sat one pair of toe rubbers and one pair of ankle-high galoshes; weatherproof footwear with metal clasps. The floor was hardwood, with a rubber-backed carpet runner in the middle.
Johnson took Alberg’s jacket and hung it on an empty hook. He appeared to be waiting for something. Alberg rubbed his hands vigorously and made a comment about the weather. Finally it dawned on him that his host wanted him to remove his shoes. “Ah!” he said. He leaned against the wall and toed off his shoes and followed Thomas Hardy Johnson in his stocking feet.
The hallway—which he thought of as a cloakroom—was dim, lit by a hanging lamp whose wattage ought to have been increased, a cramped and gloomy area, and he was pleasantly surprised by the living room. There was a window in the front, and two big windows on the side looked out into a large garden.
“Take a seat,” said Thomas Hardy. “I’ll go get Dad.”
The narrow hallway widened into a circular area from which a staircase led to the second floor. Alberg had noticed a dining room across from the living room. The back of the house would contain a kitchen and a bedroom—probably the old fellow’s room, to save him having to climb the stairs—and there would be a bathroom down here, too, he thought.
He looked around the living room, which didn’t look like a room shared by two bachelors. The furniture was covered in fabric striped in muted shades of blue and green—there was a sofa, an easy chair, and a wingback chair that matched. But over in the corner by the fireplace stood a big tweed chair and a scuffed leather footstool, with a standing lamp positioned for reading. And in another corner there was a padded, high-backed rocking chair, a TV set, and a potted tree, and from the ceiling hung a huge plant with long segmented branches dripping with red flowers. Alberg saw no sign of music, no CD or tape or record player, and no bookcases, either, although there was a pile of newspapers on the floor by the sofa, and a book lay facedown on the footstool.
He heard the two men coming across the hall and turned to greet them.
Art Johnson was much shorter than his son, but he was permanently bent over, so it was hard to tell how tall he might once have been. He was clean-shaven and almost completely bald, with a fringe of white hair that was neatly trimmed. He wore gray pants and a white shirt with a maroon vest on over it. His dark blue necktie had tiny white horses on it, and on his feet were leather slippers. His son stood close to him, and Alberg wondered just how tottery the old guy was and whether he usually used a cane, but not in front of strangers if he could help it. He could not imagine this man as a hired hand. We are talking about another world, he thought;
another time, and about people who have slipped perhaps not easily from then to now, from there to here.
“Mr. Johnson? I’m Karl Alberg.” He stepped close to the old man and offered his hand. “Thanks for agreeing to talk to me.” He was surprised by the size of Johnson’s hand and the strength of his grip.
Art Johnson moved to the wingback chair and sat down. What the hell has he got to tell me? thought Alberg, gazing at him.
Thomas Hardy said, “I’m going upstairs to do some work, Dad. Give me a holler if you want me.”
“He wasn’t even born when it happened,” said Art Johnson, watching his son cross the room. “He probably works too hard. I know he works harder than he needs to.” He turned to look at Alberg, who had stationed himself on the sofa. “He hasn’t got much else in his life but work. I look after him as best I can. He’s a sad person, Thomas is. Luckily, he’s got me. I don’t crack a lot of jokes. But I have a perspective on things that interests him. Now. How about a glass of sherry?”
Alberg hesitated. “It’s a bit early, isn’t it?” he said. “But what the hell. Sure. Good.”
The old man pushed himself to his feet and shuffled out of the room. Alberg heard him in the dining room, opening a cupboard door, selecting glasses, pouring—a slow glug-glug—replacing the bottle, closing the cupboard door. Alberg forced himself to remain seated as he watched Johnson shuffle back into the living room, bearing a small brass tray on which sat two crystal sherry glasses filled almost to the brim. Alberg took one. Johnson put the other on the small end table next to his chair and turned to toss a small smile of triumph over his shoulder. He put the tray on the floor and sat down.
Alberg lifted his glass to him and took a sip. “Excellent.”
Johnson nodded, pleased. “Now. What do you think I can do for you, Staff Sergeant?”
The sun glinted from the snow in the garden and fell summer-warm across the dove gray carpet and Alberg’s sock-clad feet. “Maria Buscombe, once Maria Gage, has been murdered, in Sechelt, which is my patch. Part of the investigation into her death involves looking into her personal history.”
“You’re going pretty far back,” said Art Johnson.
“Yeah. I started with the fact of her adoption, and one thing just led to another.” Alberg shrugged.
“Things usually do,” said Johnson dryly. He picked up his sherry glass, which looked small and fragile in his huge hand.
“I guess you’re the end of the line, though,” said Alberg. “According to Edward Dixon, anyway.”
Johnson sipped the sherry but didn’t seem to taste it. “Tell me about Maria,” he said. “Did you know her?”
“No,” said Alberg.
“She’s just another victim to you, then.”
“No. She’s a puzzle, to me.”
“The last time I saw her,” said Johnson abruptly, looking out the window, “her little face was as white as that snow out there. Her eyes were shut, her cheeks were covered with...dried tears, she was lying in an apple box with a pillow in the bottom, covered up with blankets. It was just before they took her away from that house. She’d screamed herself unconscious.”
“Tell me about her parents,” said Alberg quietly.
Johnson turned back to him. “I’ll probably dream about it tonight. If I do, it’ll start with the screams.” He put down the sherry glass. “Ira was hardworking. A worrier. Loved his kids. Doted on his kids. Loved Nadine, too, I guess.” He stood up and shuffled around the chair. “My joints get stiff. Gotta change position, every so often.” He rested his forearms on the back of the chair. “It was a bloody hard life. First the Depression, then the bloody war. All the women putting together parcels for Britain, wondering if their men were gonna join the bloody army.” He shook his head and stared into the sun splotch on the floor. “Still,” he said softly. “There were good times, too.”
“Did Nadine send parcels to Britain?”
Johnson looked blank for a moment. “Nadine? Well, she tried. See, Nadine—” He paused while he moved out from behind the chair and sat down again. “Nadine was different. People said it was having babies that made her go crazy for a while, what they call postpartum depression nowadays, I guess, but that wasn’t right. Nadine was always crazy. No. Let me correct myself.” He looked away, his face screwed up in thought. “Delicately balanced. That’s what she was.”
Alberg thought about this. “You mean more things than childbirth could throw her off.”
“Yes. That’s what I mean.”
“And what happened,” Alberg asked, “when she got thrown off?”
Johnson stared into the sunlight again, remembering. “She would become agitated. And then she’d either blow up, or she’d get laid flat by melancholy. Sometimes things would happen to calm her, like one time...
“She’d hung the washing on the line, it was a summer day, hot and windy, and along about noon the winds got stronger and a storm blew up and the washing got drenched in the rain that fell. I remember she was standing on the steps, looking at the rain that was dousing the clothesline. And her, too; she was soaked. She had one hand on her head, keeping her hair out of her face, and I was standing nearby, wondering what the hell she was gonna do, when the rain stopped and the sun came out. You know how sudden that can happen on the prairie, the wind just goes whoosh”—he made a sweeping gesture—“and the rain’s gone. And there was a double rainbow. From horizon to horizon. Nadine put her hands together, like this, and watched the rainbow, and cried. And she was fine, that time.”
“But other times?”
“Other times she’d walk off up the road and not come back for hours. Or else she’d throw things around and yell at Ira and the kids. And me.”
“What was she like when she was—balanced?” said Alberg.
“As pleasant a woman as you’re likely to meet. Smart, too. And she had a fine sense of humor. Wry. Ironic, like.”
“Do you know what set her off, the night she killed her family?”
Johnson shook his head. “I’ve been over it and over it. What did we miss? I keep looking for it. Why couldn’t I get upstairs faster? I keep trying again, in dreams. Fifty-four years ago, it happened, but when I dream about it, it’s happening now.”
“You saved Maria’s life,” said Alberg.
“Yeah. But it’s the others I remember. That’s just human nature.” He took another drink of sherry. “She seemed to be fine that day. Calm, she was. She seemed calm, anyway. And then—ah, God. She was so strong. And slippery with their blood.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “Yeah. I saved the little one.” The old man looked at Alberg, moisture gleaming in his eyes. “But she ended up getting murdered anyway.”
“Yes,” said Alberg. “She did.”
“I’ve got one thing to tell you that probably won’t help you. I hesitate because it feels like gossip. Although it isn’t. It’s a thing I know to be true. I just don’t figure it’s relevant.” He glanced away, then back at Alberg. “Nadine had a boyfriend.”
Alberg had a vision of a woman on a tightrope. She was wearing an ankle-length dress, and her long hair flowed down her back—it was an image completely wrong for the period, but he was stuck with it. She held her arms away from her body, for balance, and there was such hesitant, tenuous grace in her carriage that he felt an ache in his heart. He was on her level, in this vision, but looking at her from the side and from a little bit behind her, so that he could not see her face. She was harshly illuminated from both sides and surrounded by darkness. The rope on which she balanced stretched back and forward into infinity.
“Did she, now?” he said softly.
“Uh-huh. I saw them together three times.”
“How long had it been going on?” said Alberg.
Johnson shrugged and shook his head.
“Did her husband know?”
“Oh God, no.”
“But could he have found out? And confronted her? Because that would have—set her off. Wouldn’t it?”
“You’d think so.” Johnson glanced toward the hall, hearing his son’s footsteps on the stairs. “It’s one of the things I wonder about.”
“What was his name?” said Alberg.
“Stewart,” said Johnson. “Alan Stewart.”
“You two about ready to wrap it up?” said Thomas Hardy Johnson, from the doorway.
“Almost,” said Alberg, his eyes still on the old man. “What can you tell me about him?”
“He was the doctor. He retired fifteen years ago, same as me. Only he went to the Coast.”
“Where on the Coast, do you know?”
“Vancouver.“
Chapter 23
ALBERG SPENT THE MORNING of Thanksgiving Day in his office, getting caught up. It was just before noon when he sat back with a sigh and took off his reading glasses. He studied the photograph of his daughters, which took pride of place on the wall next to his desk. He leaned closer, to peer at it more critically, and saw that it was time for a new one. This one was out-of-date. They’d gotten older again. And now one of them was married; by rights the musician ought to be in the picture, too. Alberg was very glad he wasn’t.
Alberg looked restlessly around his office. He wanted some kind of big change in there, now that he no longer had to consider early retirement. He wanted to knock out a wall, or at least get a larger window, or maybe paint the walls yellow or some damn thing. In the meantime, he thought, picking up a file folder from his desk, he would vacate the place.
When he pulled up a few minutes later in front of Sid’s house, Sokolowski was standing on the porch of the house next door. Alberg cut the motor and climbed out of his Oldsmobile as the front door opened. A young Chinese woman stood there, with two small children hiding behind her legs. Alberg wasn’t close enough to hear what Sid said to her as he handed her something. The woman looked surprised but accepted it. Sid gave her a little salute and turned to leave, and Alberg saw that he had presented her with a dish of some kind. The woman disappeared back inside.
