Mother Love

by L. R. Wright

  “You said you could keep her out there in the Valley,” Harry blurted. He glanced quickly left and right and lowered his voice. “That was the deal. That was your part of the deal.”

  Hamilton felt his good mood beginning to fracture. “Shut your face, Harry,” he said coldly. He watched Harry settle back on his chair. He had a little more color in his face now. “It’s always a mistake,” said Hamilton, his tone once more conversational, “to look back. Much more productive to look forward.”

  The waitress delivered Harry’s meal and gave him a pat on the shoulder. What was it about this guy, Hamilton wondered irritably, that made women feel sorry for him? He leaned forward and sniffed. “Mmmm. Smells good. What did you tell the cops, Harry?”

  Harry paled again. “What cops?”

  “Come on,” Hamilton said impatiently. “They were bound to wend their way to you eventually.”

  “I didn’t tell them shit. Nothing,” said Harry defiantly, his little eyes gleaming. “Why the hell would I?”

  Hamilton studied him, brooding. Then he said, “Eat, Harry. Dive in.” Harry picked up his fork and took a bite of mashed potatoes and gravy. He was wearing baggy jeans, of course, and a T-shirt under suspenders. Jesus, thought Hamilton in disgust, they were probably the same jeans, the same T-shirt, he’d worn that day seven years ago when they’d escorted Maria Buscombe to her new home.

  He wet his finger and helped himself to more salt. “Failing, you said,” he mused. “And just how imminent is your old man’s departure from this earth, do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” said Harry plaintively. “It could be anytime.”

  “Yeah, and it could be fucking years.” Hamilton brushed the rest of the salt off the table and onto the floor. “I’m losing my patience, Harry.” He rested his forearms on the table and skewered Harry with his metallic gaze; he was aware that his gray eyes seemed cold and empty, like a sunless sky. “I need bucks. I am sick to death of doing crappy stories for crappy magazines when I ought to be writing poetry.”

  “It’s good stuff, you’re right, Ham,” said Harry, nodding. “I told you that. I read your book, and it’s genuinely good. Should’ve won some kind of prize.” He glanced at Hamilton. “Did it?” he said uncertainly.

  “Nah,” said Hamilton, as the waitress arrived with his dinner. He began eating immediately, realizing that part of his vexation was due to hunger. He was ravenous again. “Yeah,” he said finally, “I know it’s good.”

  “He’s over eighty,” said Harry. “He’s bound to go soon.”

  “The old geezer’s in some kind of nursing home, I guess,” Hamilton said around a mouthful of chicken. He watched Harry consider lying and saw him decide against it.

  “No,” Harry said. “He still lives in his house. But he can’t clean the place anymore,” he added quickly. “Or do the gardening. He needs a lot of help.”

  Hamilton contemplated Harry thoughtfully, looking deep into his small, dark eyes, noting the flabby shape of him, wondering about his determination, and trying to assess the extent and the nature of his desperation. He leaned across the table toward him. “I’ll do the daughter,” he said quietly, “if you’ll take care of your old man.”

  Harry felt sweat break out all over him. He could almost see waves of his body odor sweeping out across the restaurant. How the hell had he ever gotten mixed up with this guy? That damn Everett, he thought; it was all his fault. He made a bleating sound that he hoped Hamilton understood was a big “no,” but looking into Hamilton’s cold gray eyes, he knew it didn’t matter what he said: that girl was going to die, and Harry’s old man, too, because if Harry wouldn’t kill him, Hamilton would.

  Harry clung to the edge of the table, hanging on as if it were a mountain ledge and to let go would send him plummeting to his death. He made another sound—Hamilton was starting to look impatient, darkly impatient—and then over Hamilton’s shoulder he saw the door open, and the cop was there. He pointed, words churning in his throat, and Hamilton turned, frowning.

  “What?” said Hamilton.

  At first Alberg thought Harry was having some kind of attack. His tiny black eyes were three times their normal size, and his face was the color of soap scum. He looked like he was trying to stand up. He was pointing at Alberg and making gargling noises. His gray-haired friend stared at Alberg over his shoulder with a look of exasperation.

  Alberg went to their table and sat down next to the stranger, across from Harry. “You don’t look well, Harry,” he said, and shifted his gaze. “Who’s your friend?”

  “Who the fuck are you?” said the gray-haired guy.

  They both looked at Harry.

  “He did it,” said Harry, struggling to his feet, pointing to Hamilton. “He did it,” he said, starting to cry.

  ***

  “He said that? He pointed at the guy and said, ‘He did it’?” said Sokolowski.

  “Yeah,” said Alberg.

  “So what did the guy do?”

  “Hammered him.”

  Sokolowski bent over on Alberg’s black leather chair, laughing. “Oh oh oh,” said Sid, laughing.

  “Yeah, right, it was real funny,” said Alberg. “I had one hell of a time getting the cuffs on him.”

  “Oh oh oh,” said the sergeant, sounding like he was in pain.

  “I’ve got cuts and bruises all over me,” said Alberg indignantly, “and you sit there laughing.” He watched Sokolowski guffawing, red-faced, and wished Elsie was there to see this.

  Chapter 45

  TWO DAYS LATER Belinda sat next to her father on the red-and-white-checked sofa, looking at Maria’s photograph album, which Alberg had given her.

  “Belinda, at about one year,” her mother had written on the first page. “She is sitting in a tree. Richard is holding her there; only his hand shows in the picture, which is in black and white. Belinda is wearing a white sweater, I remember, and there is a dark curl of hair on her forehead. Her eyes are squeezed shut, and she is laughing.”

  “I could have found her, if I’d tried,” said Belinda’s father.

  “Maybe not,” said Belinda. She turned the page. “Belinda on her third birthday. She is wearing shoes with little bells on them and a dress with light blue, dark blue, and white stripes. Her hair is in a French braid. She looks very solemn.”

  “I wish I’d tried. I should have tried.” He ran his hand wearily over his head.

  Belinda continued to turn the pages, reading descriptions of photographs her mother had left behind. The last one was Belinda at fourteen, only a few months before her mother left, wearing her McDonald’s uniform: “Belinda’s first job,” her mother had written.

  On the next page was mounted an actual photograph: Belinda climbing onto her bike in the driveway of the house in Vancouver. It was followed by five more, taken about a year apart.

  Here was one of her and her father getting out of the car. Another of Belinda in the backyard in Vancouver, mowing the lawn. The rest had been taken after she and her father had moved to Sechelt: Belinda in her father’s store—in the hospital parking lot—with Raymond going into the SuperValu. The last one showed Belinda outside the doorway of the Jolly Shopper.

  Belinda closed the album and put it to one side. She felt somber and shaken.

  Her father got up and went to the window, where he stood looking out, his hands in his pockets. They were quiet for several minutes, the two of them.

  And then the policeman knocked on the door. An old man stood beside him.

  Belinda said, “What do you want?” She sounded inhospitable, maybe even slightly hostile, but she didn’t care. She had no more time for murder, and police.

  “I’ve brought someone to meet you,” said the policeman. “This is your grandfather, Belinda,” he said.

  Belinda looked at the man intently. He was extremely old.

  “I’m your mother’s father,” he said, blinking. “My name is Alan Stewart.”

  She felt her father at her elbow.

/>   Belinda didn’t know if she wanted a grandfather. He looked harmless enough—but gazing into his wrinkled face filled her with apprehension.

  “You look a lot like Maria,” he said. “Except you’re bigger.”

  “Please come in,” Belinda’s father said quietly. Belinda looked at him in surprise.

  “I’ll pick you up in half an hour or so,” Alberg said to Alan Stewart, who was looking frail and uneasy, “and take you home.”

  Alan Stewart stepped away from the door, tugging at Alberg’s sleeve. “How much should I tell them?”

  Alberg shook his head. “I don’t know, Mr. Stewart,” he said wearily. “It’s your call.”

  ***

  Cassandra was working late that night, so when Alberg got home from West Vancouver he fed the cats, set the table, and started dinner. Then he sat on his wingback chair with a Scotch and water, brooding, watching the cats at play.

  Eventually he realized that Cassandra was considerably later than usual. He was instantly filled with unease and went to the phone: he’d call the library first, then Phyllis, then Cassandra’s mother...and then he heard her car pull up in front of the house.

  It was dark by now; he turned on lights, waiting for her to come inside.

  She burst through the door, her face alive with excitement. “I’ve found the most wonderful house,” she said, tossing her handbag onto the sofa. She rushed to him and hugged him tightly. “You’re gonna love it. It’s right on the water.”

  “Oh, Cassandra,” he said, dismayed, but hugging her back. “We can’t afford anything that’s on the water.”

  “Yes, we can,” she said. She stepped back, smiling at him.

  “How?”

  “There’s a mortgage to pay off on this house, true. But there’s no mortgage on mine.”

  “There’s no mortgage on your house?”

  “I own it free and clear.”

  “You own it—?”

  “My God, Karl. No wonder Maura married an accountant, after twenty years with you. Come on,” she said, grabbing his arm. “Let’s go see it.”

  ***

  That night in a dream Belinda saw her mother, her head bent low, hands limp at her sides, dressed in something white. Her hair, which was black again, covered her face. She was crying. She wept quietly, streams of tears cascading silver from beneath the fall of her hair. Belinda, in the dream, was whispering to her mother, wanting her to lift her face and look at her. Belinda’s whispers were soft but urgent, trying to persuade. And then the tears lessened, and her mother’s head began ever so slightly to move, to lift—and Belinda was filled with terror. She stumbled backward, wanting to turn around and run but unable to move except in slow motion. Her mother’s head lifted higher, and higher, her hair began to fall away...

  Belinda’s eyes flew open. “No!”

  Raymond woke and held her. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t even make murmurs meant to be comforting.

  After a while Belinda pulled away and turned on her bedside lamp. She looked into Raymond’s face for a long time. She shook her head. “I don’t know, Raymond. I’m really afraid of this.”

  “Me too.”

  “My dad—”

  “I’m not anything like your dad.”

  “You aren’t, are you.” She touched his eyebrows, his forehead, the bridge of his nose. “Okay, Raymond. Okay.”

  Raymond closed his eyes. “We’ll get him a dog,” he said. The smile he smiled then was the loveliest thing Belinda had ever seen. “Moe Two,” Raymond said dreamily.

  Belinda turned off the lamp and lay beside him, and watched moon shadows flickering across the bedroom wall, and listened to the autumn breeze in the acacia tree. There were things she could never understand. But there were other things that someday she would know, inside herself, when she had lived long enough and loved well enough. Belinda rested her hand palm down on her belly and whispered in her heart to her baby.

  For more “Karl Alberg” novels by L.R. Wright and other Felony & Mayhem mysteries, including mysteries by Canadian authors such as Anna Porter and John Norman Harris,

  please visit our website:

  FelonyAndMayhem.com

  All the characters and events portrayed in this work are fictitious

  MOTHER LOVE

  A Felony & Mayhem mystery

  PRINTING HISTORY

  First print edition (Doubleday Canada): 1995

  Felony & Mayhem print and digital editions: 2018

  Copyright © 1995 by L.R. Wright

  All rights reserved

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-63194-153-5

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Wright, Laurali, 1939- author.

  Title: Mother love / L.R. Wright.

  Description: Felony & Mayhem edition. | New York : Felony & Mayhem Press, [2018]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017060961| ISBN 9781631941412 (trade pbk.) | ISBN 9781631941535 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Alberg, Karl (Fictitious character)--Fiction. | Police--British Columbia--Fiction. | GSAFD: Detective and mystery stories.

  Classification: LCC PR9199.3.W68 M68 2018 | DDC 813/.54--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017060961