Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle

by H. Mel Malton

  In mid-summer, the artists turn to cottage life for their subject matter; “Still Life With Canoe” is a popular theme, as are “Kuskawa Chair on Dock” and “Child Fishing”. Not all of the art produced in this Mecca is what you’d call quality. Some of it is frankly awful, but almost all of it finds a market, which means that there are plenty of people in Kuskawa calling themselves artists. Every community holds an annual art show, usually outdoors in the local park. On any given weekend in August, you can usually find one, although finding a piece of art you actually might consider buying and hanging on your wall is another matter.

  Okay, so I’m an art snob. You try carving out a living as a puppet maker in any Ontario town north of Toronto and see if it doesn’t make you bitter.

  The Weird Kuskawa Art Show was Yolanda’s idea. Yolanda is an old friend from high school, one of the out-crowd with whom I spent my traumatic teenage years. The out-crowd were those of us who couldn’t afford designer clothes, did reasonably well in school, were interested in the arts rather than sports and who all, to varying degrees, suffered from acne, braces or corrected vision. We were so uncool we had to band together to keep from being crushed like bugs under the feet of the jock elite. Yolanda Kristopoulos is a painter, a real one, whose work actually gets shown in Toronto galleries, which, as we all know, is the only true measure of success. She does commercial artwork to pay her rent, and she’s a wacky person who doesn’t really care what people think of her. Lately, she’s been working on a series of surreal Kuskawa landscapes with incongruous things like businessmen, computer keyboards and bananas inserted into the picture, hovering in the air or half-buried under some leaf mould. I really like her work.

  The third member of our Weird Kuskawa Art project was Dimmy Cox, who is a photographer. Dimmy doesn’t belong to any photo clubs. She works alone and creates elaborate, set-up shots with lots of props, using local people as her subjects and putting them into emotion laden situations. One of my favourites was taken on George’s farm. She placed two adults in Edwardian dress inside a pen in the goat barn (the resident goat didn’t seen to mind much) and on the outside, peering in, was a child in a silvery Star Trek outfit, talking on a cell phone.

  We met in the storefront space where we had planned to set up the exhibition. In Laingford’s early days it had been a family run men’s clothing store, specializing in tailor made suits and beautiful shirts. It had thrived for several generations until the advent of Tommy Hilfiger, the rise of the baseball cap empire and the availability of cheap off-the-rack dress jackets at the Bargain Hut.

  Many of the fixtures were still in place, including a bedraggled mannequin which Dimmy immediately decided would be part of the show.

  “We can dress him up and park him in front of one of your pictures, Yolanda, as if he’s studying it. An art critic. See if anyone notices.”

  I found a broken clothing rack from which I could hang some of my marionettes, and after some discussion we chose the centre of the room to display Audrey. Audrey is an enormous foam rubber body-puppet I built some years ago for a production of Little Shop of Horrors. When the company went bellyup, I had bought the puppet back from the prop shop, because anyone doing the show needs an Audrey, and the market isn’t exactly flooded with them. I’d rented her out a couple of times, and when she wasn’t on the road, she lived in a plastic-lined fridge box in George’s barn. Audrey is a man-eating pitcher plant, about seven feet tall—a big mouth, basically, with tentacles. The puppeteer climbs inside, hangs onto the interior aluminum frame with both hands and levers the mouth open and shut in coordination with Audrey’s dialogue. Playing Audrey is kind of like working out on a Nautilus machine for two hours while stuffed inside a pitch black, foam rubber bag. Not for the faint-hearted.

  “Maybe we could get somebody to work Audrey during the art show,” Yolanda said. “You know, just sit there inside until someone comes close enough to get eaten. Performance art.”

  “You’d probably have to pay them union scale,” I said. “It’s hot, and it stinks in there. Good idea, though.” I wondered if David Kane had chosen which poor teenaged employee was going to be forced into wearing the Kountry Kow costume. Maybe we could give the kid a foretaste of the job by hiring them to do Audrey for our art show.

  “By the way,” Dimmy said, “I wanted to ask you two if we would consider letting any other artists into the show. I know it’s kind of late in the game, but a couple of people have approached me.”

  “Is it weird art? Our kind?” Yolanda said. “I don’t want this to degenerate into a craft fair.”

  “Well, there are two,” she said. “A sculptor, a young girl from Laingford High who does neat compilation pieces, and another photographer, Sophia Durette.”

  “They give you slides or examples?” Yolanda said.

  “Yeah. The girl, Arly Watson her name is, gave me these, and Sophia asked me yesterday if she could drop by with a couple of pictures.” Dimmy passed over a couple of crumpled colour photocopies.

  “I’ve met Arly,” I said. “She’s Archie Watson’s daughter. She belongs to the Camera Club, but I didn’t know she was a sculptor as well.” Her sculpture was interesting, certainly. It looked like she was working with “found objects” (the term we art-types use for garbage) which she glued and bolted together into human figures and then shellacked. The figures were proportional and kinetic, some of them obviously designed to make a political statement. The masculine genitalia on one, for example, were fashioned from a tiny toy pistol flanked by Christmas tree baubles.

  “I like it,” I said. “How big are the sculptures? Have you seen them?”

  “They average about two feet high,” Dimmy said. “She works in a corner of her Dad’s garage, and I went to visit. I think she’s got something—she’s a peculiar kid, but she’s disciplined. This is not just a hobby for her.”

  “Well, I don’t see why we can’t bring her on board,” Yolanda said. “She’s weird enough, wouldn’t you say, Polly?”

  “Yup. Maybe we should make a deal with her. She can show her stuff if she’s willing to do Audrey for us.” The others nodded. Arly might not go for the idea of baking inside a foam rubber puppet for the duration of the show—not exactly the ideal celebrity status a budding artist might imagine, but it was worth a try. We decided that even if Arly nixed the Audrey idea, we’d still offer her some space. Her sculptures would help smooth the transition from my three dimensional stuff to the flat planes of Yolandas canvases and Dimmy’s photos.

  There was a knocking on the papered-over window at the front of the shop, and I could see the shadow of a person standing outside.

  “That’ll be Sophia,” Dimmy said, moving to the door.

  “What if her stuff isn’t what we’re looking for?” I muttered to Yolanda.

  “We’ll tell her so, I guess,” Yolanda said, but she looked uncomfortable. Dimmy returned with an older woman in tow, whom I recognized at once as the late Vic Watson’s friend, Sophie. In the dim light of the empty shop, her face appeared unnaturally pale, her grey hair was unbrushed and her expression was one of pure misery.

  “Oh, hello, dear,” Sophie said to me. “I suppose you’ve heard about Vic.”

  “I have, Sophie, and I’m awfully sorry,” I said.

  “You two know each other?” Yolanda said.

  “We met on the weekend,” I said. “A friend of hers was in some trouble, and we helped out a bit.”

  “You saved his life,” Sophie said. “Not that it made any difference in the end. Kane got him anyway.” When she spoke David Kane’s name, her eyes flashed and her face contorted in a grimace of pure hatred. Yolanda shot me a questioning glance, and I frowned quickly in response. “Tell you later,” I thought at her. She got it.

  Dimmy had missed the exchange, having become distracted by her mannequin, which I could see she was just dying to photograph.

  “Did you bring some work for us to look at, Sophia?” Dimmy said, tearing herself away from her Art Critic.


  Sophie nodded and produced a slim portfolio of photographs, as well as a package of prints from Shutterbug.

  “I just picked these up,” she said. We leafed through the portfolio together. Sophie’s pictures were very good, but conventional, as I’d feared. Her landscapes and close-ups of plants and flowers were hasty-note or postcard material, very slick and professional but hardly what you’d call weird. Yolanda and I exchanged worried glances. How do you tell a freshly bereaved senior citizen that her art wasn’t weird enough? Sophie shoved the package of snapshots at me.

  “You might find these more interesting,” she said, as if reading my mind. I looked through them. More of the same, I thought sadly, gazing at a nice composition of rushing water over rocks and another looking down over a cataract. She must have taken these on Saturday, at the Oxblood Falls. Then one picture made me gasp aloud. It was a long shot across the top of the falls. A figure crouched in the distance at the very edge of the precipice, slightly out of focus, leaning over the water—a large man, with grey hair. Behind him, obscured by a tree, was another figure. The blurry photo gave no clue as to who the other figure was, but the big man could only be Vic Watson.

  I looked up to find Sophie staring at me. “Interesting, isn’t it? Look at the next one,” she said. I did so. The next photo didn’t look like anything at all. It was completely unfocused and at an odd angle. There was water and rock, a dark blur which could have been the crouched figure, and a small blurry patch of red behind it.

  “I wasn’t looking,” Sophie said. “I was advancing a new film, and I didn’t bother to take the zoom lens off. There was nobody there when I looked up again.”

  “This was at the top of the falls, I take it?” I said. Sophie nodded.

  “David Kane was wearing a red sweatshirt that day,” she said, with meaning.

  “That’s weird,” I said without thinking.

  “Weird enough for the show?” Dimmy said. She had been looking through Sophie’s portfolio and was obviously hoping that the pictures I held in my hand might save us all from having to reject Sophie’s work.

  “Not really, just weird,” I said.

  “I’ll just leave those prints with you, shall I, dear?” Sophie said. “I know your friend the policeman would be interested in looking at them. And never mind about the others. I can tell by your expressions that my photographs aren’t appropriate for your show, which is more or less what I expected, but I thought I’d chance it.” Her voice was brisk and unaccountably perky, as if her job was done and she was ready to move on. She took the portfolio gently from Yolanda’s hands and advanced toward the door.

  “Call me if something develops, won’t you?” she said, adding “Pardon the pun” at the end as a kind of afterthought before sailing through the door and out into the street. Dimmy, Yolanda and I were left staring at each other.

  “What the hell was that all about?” Yolanda said.

  “I think I have to talk to Becker,” I said.

  Fifteen

  I heard it through the grapevine! Have you heard that Kountry Pantree offers premium Canadian vintages right on site in our own Wine Shoppe?

  —A Kountry Pantree ad in the Laingford Gazette

  Of course, as soon as I said it, I realized that it wasn’t Becker to whom I should be taking Sophie’s snapshots, it was Morrison. After all, Morrison was the one leading the investigation, if there was one, into Vic Watson’s death. Morrison and that cute, blonde rookie cop called Marie. I wasn’t quite sure why I felt so much antagonism towards her. She hadn’t done anything to me, she’d been perfectly polite and sensitive, even, in her dealings with me and with Bryan. Deep down I suspected that my mistrust was based on Morrison having the hots for her, but I didn’t want to examine that one too closely. Still, I would have to come to some sort of conclusion about the photos, and soon.

  I invited Yolanda and Dimmy to join me at the Slug and Lettuce Pub for a pint to talk it over and perhaps to solicit some friendly feedback about Becker’s proposal. Dimmy begged off, explaining that she was shooting a wedding the next weekend, and had to go meet the bride and groom and talk about locations, shot lists and all that complicated stuff that professional photographers have to nail down before the big day. In my “what if I actually said yes to marrying Mark Becker” moments, I had fantasized about Dimmy being the official wedding photographer. Me on soft focus in a frothy white gown, gazing wistfully into a mirror, the veil held in trembling hands. Dimmy called that the “sucky mirror shot” and said every sentimental bride insisted on it. Sucky? Sentimental? You bet. Who was I to stand in the way of tradition?

  The Slug and Lettuce overlooks the Kuskawa River in downtown Laingford. It has all the qualities that I insist on in a watering hole: plenty of English beer and Kuskawa Cream on tap, old jazz playing not too loudly in the background, comfortable booths where friends can get intimate without making a spectacle of themselves, deep ashtrays on every table and a bartender who knows what you drink without having to ask.

  Yolanda and I grabbed a booth by the window. The screen doors let in a cool breeze and Nick, the barman, drew us a couple of pints of Kuskawa Cream as soon as we walked in the door.

  “Afternoon, Polly. Caught any murderers lately?” Nick said, wiping the table and depositing the beer in front of us with a flourish.

  “Hot on the trail of a new one, Nick,” I said. It wasn’t as if I bragged about it. It’s true that I had been connected with a couple of suspicious deaths (well, four) in the past year or so, but I didn’t hand out little cards with “Polly Deacon, Private Eye” on them. It’s just that word gets around in a small town and I did (ahem) occasionally take a drink at the Slug and Lettuce, eh? Nick went back to the bar, and Yolanda and I clinked glasses.

  “Here’s to weird Kuskawa art,” she said.

  “Cheers,” I said.

  “I’m glad that Arly Watson is on board,” Yolanda said, “but that was very strange about Sophie Durette. It was like she didn’t really even want to be included at all—she just wanted you to have those snapshots. So what’s up with that?”

  I filled her in on the Vic Watson thing, including the suspicion that David Kane had something to do with it. She had heard about his death, but none of the details. Yolanda’s a safe confidante. I know this because in Grade Ten I told her that I had a crush on Fish Gundy, which, because he was four foot nothing and had really bad acne, would have been dangerous information in the wrong hands. She never told a soul, and I’ve always appreciated her discretion.

  “I don’t even know how Vic died,” I said. “All I know is that the nurse at the hospital said there was something funny about it and that Morrison and Lefevbre are looking into it.”

  “So why did you say you had to talk to Becker?” she said.

  “Well, Mark’s on vacation right now, but normally he would be investigating something like this.”

  “Uh-huh. You’re still seeing him, I take it.”

  “Yup. More than that, Yolanda.” I whispered the next bit. “He wants to get married.”

  “To you?” she said and hooted like a fog horn.

  “Thanks a bunch,” I said.

  “Oh, jeez, I’m sorry, Polly,” Yolanda said, straightening up as soon as she saw my expression. “I thought you’d find that as funny as I did. I just can’t see you as the marrying type. Your dogs and your, you know, lifestyle.”

  “It’s not that far-fetched,” I said. “I could adapt. He’s a nice guy, you know.”

  “Of course he is,” she said. “Or at least, he’s not a criminal and he has a steady job, which is more than I can say for the last two men I went out with, but honestly, Polly, the thought of you going through with a marriage just tickles my funny bone. You told him no, didn’t you?”

  “He put you up to this, didn’t he?” I said. “He’s working on all my friends, getting them to tell me how crazy the idea is so that I’ll consider it just to be perverse.” Yolanda narrowed her eyes.

  “You’re
not serious?” she said. “You’re really considering it? Who have you told?”

  “You’re the first,” I said. I showed her the ring I wore around my neck.

  “Oh, God, you’re wearing his ring?” she said.

  “Around my neck, Yolanda. I haven’t given him an answer yet.”

  “Around your anything is bad,” she said. “Listen, Polly, I’ll be frank, okay? None of us, your friends I mean, think it’s a great idea that you’ve been dating a cop, although we haven’t said anything, mainly because you automatically do the opposite of whatever advice you get. If you marry this guy, you won’t be Polly Deacon any more. You’ll be a police wife. God.”

  “Of course, I would still be Polly Deacon.” This was not, I discovered, what I wanted to hear from Yolanda, or from anybody. She knew me too well—I am a sucker for reverse psychology. What I wanted to hear was the conventional “Oh, Polly, congratulations . . . when’s the wedding?” so I could tell them that I was flying in the face of convention and would rather perform self-surgery than marry him. What I wanted was to hear people trying to convince me that marrying Becker was a good idea, so that I could argue against it. What I didn’t want to hear was a validation of my own gut feelings, because—why? Because that would make me predictable? Because that would mean that I was actually taking the advice I was being given? Heaven forbid.