Neither of us spoke for a few minutes.
I said, “I guess there’s one thing I wish I knew the answer to.”
Jill looked at me. Waiting.
“The note. Why the note?”
I watched her think about it for a while, then shake her head. “Part of the hate, I guess. It wasn’t enough to destroy the girls, she had to cause as much pain as she could to the people they were closest to.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe that’s it.”
We sat, sipped our wine, and felt the warmth of each other. And slowly, some of what had been my life for the past few years ebbed away. Not all of it. But some.
“Okay.” Jill stood up. “I say we clean up.”
“No need,” I said, “I can do it in the morning.”
“Uh-uh. Come on, it’ll only take us a few minutes.”
She was right and after the dishes were in the dishwasher and everything was put away but the second bottle of Amarone, she headed for the stereo.
“Okay if I pick the next music?”
“Absolutely.”
She sat cross-legged on the floor next to one of the speakers and studied the CDs and albums that covered, some would say littered, the floor along the wall next to the front window. Apparently Jill attached considerable importance to the music selection because she spent quite a long time at it. I sat on the couch, drank wine, and watched her. I liked watching her.
She put two CDs into the stereo unit, stood up, and returned to the couch.
“Well?”
She pressed her index finger to her lips. “Shh, it’s a surprise.”
I didn’t have to wait long. The Deep Dark Woods’s “The Place I Left Behind” slipped through the speakers and into the room. Jill had started the album on the title track.
“You know those guys?” I asked. It surprised me a little. The Saskatoon band had a pretty solid following but weren’t really a household name. At least not yet.
“Know those guys, love those guys.” Jill grinned as Ryan Boldt’s gentle vocals insisted on our undivided attention. Jill joined me on the couch, sitting closer this time and we let the music take us.
“That’s such a great CD. I keep saying I have to get it but I just haven’t done it so far.”
“And now there’s no need. You can come here and listen to it any time you want.”
We listened for a long while before either of us spoke. It was “The Ballad of Frank Dupree,” a song about a murder that got us talking again.
“You want to know something strange?” I asked. “Everything that Delores Bain did — even killing Donna, the note, all of it — I’m not glad she’s dead.”
Jill didn’t answer right away. But she moved so that her body was against me.
“I like you better for that,” she said.
I reached around her and pulled her still closer and we sat like that through the rest of the CD.
“And now part two of the surprise recordings,” I said.
“Uh-huh.”
I listened as the CD player made the change and Leonard Cohen’s The Future filled the room. I tilted my head down and brushed my lips against her cheek.
“You remembered,” I said.
“I did.”
She stood up, crossed the room, and turned out the light.
I set my glass down and stood up. Darkness filled the room, broken only slightly by the lights of Drury Avenue and the rest of the city outside my window. I could see only Jill’s shadow. She was moving toward me, slowly, soundlessly, and as she came closer I could smell the gentle apple scent of her hair, feel again her warmth as she moved against me.
“If you were to kiss me …” she said softly.
I put my arms around her and held her, neither of us moving for a long time. I thought of other times, other places, and other people.
And I knew that at this time, in this place, she was the person I wanted to be with.
And I kissed her.
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to the following for their invaluable help: Mike O’Connor, long respected, now retired member of the Calgary Police Service; Dr. Adam Vyse, dedicated and gifted physician in High River, Alberta; my editor, Jennifer McKnight, for her perceptive and always thoughtful comments and suggestions; my agent, Arnold Gosewich, for believing in me; Sylvia McConnell, for opening the door and guiding me through it; my wife, Barb, for her spot-on insights and never-ending support; and the Saskatoon Public Library, where I served as Writer in Residence while much of this book was written.
While I have been fortunate to have twenty-three previous books published, this one is special because it is the book I have always wanted to write and frankly never thought I could. I owe so much to the mystery writers I have admired and read with such delight — from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Earl Stanley Gardner, whom I first encountered, to Christie, Dixon, Stout, Hammett, Chandler, Buchan, James, Parker, Hillerman, Kellerman, Connelly, Rankin, Robinson, and Bowen. I am indebted to all of them.
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Copyright © David A. Poulsen, 2014
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All characters in this work are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The street names in this book have been altered to reflect common usage.
Editor: Jennifer McKnight Design: Laura Boyle
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Image credits: Snakeskin ©1joe/iStockphoto. Cityscape ©ImagineGolf/iStockphoto.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Poulsen, David A., 1946-, author
Serpents rising : a Cullen and Cobb mystery / David A. Poulsen.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4597-2172-2 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-4597-2173-9 (pdf).--
ISBN 978-1-4597-2174-6 (epub)
I. Title.
PS8581.O848S47 2014 C813’.54 C2014-901031-1
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Serpents Rising Page 32
