Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle

by H. Mel Malton

  Becker returned, and I asked him to drive me home.

  “You don’t want to stay for a while?” he said. “I picked up a video for later.”

  “I’m hung over, and I have to get back to the Kountry Pantree thing,” I said. “Besides, the dogs need me.”

  “The dogs? Aren’t they with your aunt?”

  “George and Susan are looking after them, yeah, but it’s not fair to ask them to dog-sit all the time.”

  “We could go get them and bring them back here,” he said.

  “They’d tear your place apart, Mark. Anyway, I have to work.”

  “Are you okay? Is everything okay?”

  “I’m fine. Just hung over is all—nothing to do with you. Nothing personal.” Everything personal, actually, but I wasn’t going to say so.

  In the Jeep on the way to Cedar Falls, the silence was thick.

  “I had a good time last night, Becker.”

  “So did I,” he said. “I—ah—I’m going to go into the station today and talk to Morrison. Find out what’s happening with the Vic Watson thing.” I remembered the blurry photograph that Sophie had given me, that I had been meaning to pass on to Becker. It didn’t seem to be the time, although it was right there in my jacket pocket. Later, maybe, when I had more energy to explain what I thought it might or might not mean.

  “Does that mean you’re back in harness again?” I said. He nodded. Sad, really. This was supposed to be a week off for Becker, and he had lasted less than a day. Perhaps he had some workaholic issues that he needed to clear up before he thought seriously about committing himself to a domestic partner. I considered saying so, but it would just have turned into a fight.

  “Don’t keep me in the dark, Becker, okay? I want to know why they think Vic’s death in hospital was suspicious.”

  “We’ll see,” he said.

  “Are you going to tell Morrison what Serena said about visiting him? That there was a line-up to see him? You think that was true?”

  “I’ll tell him if he’s prepared to give me the background,” Becker said.

  “This sounds more like a macho one-upmanship thing than an investigation,” I said.

  “I won’t grace that remark with a reply,” he said, after a tiny little pause. I guess I was going to get my fight after all. Lucky me.

  “Well, aren’t you guys supposed to be sharing information? Isn’t that the way it works?”

  “You seem to think police work is all nice TV cop-buddy stuff, with the clues coming in on cue like the goddamn daily newspaper,” he said. “It isn’t like that. We don’t sit around a King Arthur table and hold hands. We collect information and draw our own conclusions, and if one of us gets a lucky break, he also gets the credit. That’s the way it works, Polly.”

  “Every man for himself, you mean.”

  “That’s not far wrong.”

  “Charming. How just.”

  We were almost at the farm, and the cab of the Jeep was filling up with resentment, as if one of us had broken wind. We’d had this kind of conversation before, and we never got anywhere with it. It was old ground, like an ongoing battle between neighbours over a long disputed fence line. The thing that bothered me most about it was that, in the middle of a fight with Becker, I found that he was attractive again. Suddenly, I was very tired. I could feel Becker’s ring rubbing against me on the inside of my shirt, directly over my heart like a cold metal finger, and I decided I’d take it off as soon as I got home. There was no point swinging this way and that over the issue any more. It was a doomed notion. Marriage was a dance I would not be doing any time soon—not with Becker, at any rate.

  “Will I see you at the council meeting tonight?” I said.

  “Probably. Don’t save me a seat, though. I’ll be at the back.”

  “Consider your seat unsaved, then,” I said. I did kiss him before I got out of the Jeep. After all, we had spent an intimate night together, and though we were snarling at each other, we were still technically sweethearts. Heh.

  I collected my dogs from George’s farm house and trudged up the hill to my cabin. First I would smoke a joint to get rid of my headache, then I thought I might just take a wee nap. Sometimes life just isn’t worth staying awake for.

  Eighteen

  And the winner is . . . ! Why not visit our engraving shop at Kountry Pantree, located right next to the bakery. Get your daily bread, and then pick up that trophy for your little league tournament! Why waste time downtown when you can get everything you need at Kountry Pantree?

  —Another ad in the Laingford Gazette

  A couple of hours before the council meeting, Aunt Susan’s League of Social Justice met for a final briefing at George’s place. I was not invited, and George had requested diplomatic immunity, so we decided to go together in the same vehicle. I offered to drive the farm truck, as George’s eyesight was deteriorating and his driving technique, while lawful, combined a firm determination not to go more than 40 km per hour, with a disturbing propensity for exploring the road conditions in the oncoming lane.

  “So, do you actually know what they’re up to?” I asked as he climbed into the cab of the pickup.

  “I have some idea,” George said, “but I have deliberately stayed out of it. Your Aunt believes that the fewer people who know, the better.”

  “They’re not planning anything illegal, are they? No dynamite or anything?”

  George chuckled. “They have a lot of papers, documents they have obtained from what Susan says is an inside source. That could be dynamite, maybe. But I don’t know.”

  “Well, whatever happens, I just hope she doesn’t embarrass herself.”

  “I think your Aunt is old enough not to worry about embarrassment,” George said, craning his neck as I inched the truck past the bumper of Emma Tempest’s purple van. The driveway looked like the parking lot of Downtown Business Folks’ Association (DBFA) meeting hall: every single vehicle was an advertisement on wheels. “Emma’s Posies are Bloomin’ Lovely” on the purple van, “Downtown Drugs: Your Family Drugstore” on Joseph Olszewski’s sedan, “Smile for the Shutterbug” on Stan Herman’s yellow Camry with the camera on the roof, “Go Crazy: It’s Pizza Madness” on Pete Holicky’s battered compact (with a license plate that said PIZA PIE), “Make Every night Movie Night at Homerun Video Den” squeezed onto the driver’s door of Florence Levine’s Tempo, and “Watson’s Old Fashioned Service” on the side of Archie Watson’s vintage panel van.

  “If you are concerned about embarrassment,” George said, “perhaps it is your own that you are thinking of, no?” The wheel slipped in my hand, and I just slightly grazed the side of the pizza car. A faint noise accompanied the action, as if someone had just torn a small strip of velcro off a tin can.

  “Holicky won’t notice,” I said. “It looks like he’s a regular at the Sikwan demolition derby already.”

  “And my truck? I will not notice either?” George said. Normally, this kind of incident would have had me apologizing in fourteen different positions and offering to go to jail. I don’t know what was wrong with me. I sighed rather obviously and hopped out to examine the damage. George stayed where he was, gazing at me with a bemused expression on his face. There wasn’t a scratch on the pickup truck, but its front fender had scraped a four-inch hairline of paint off Holicky’s car, just above the wheel. The scratch blended in quite happily with the dozen or so other ones in the immediate area, stopping just short of a large, rusty dent that looked to be a couple of years old.

  “Hand me my notebook, would you, George?” I had brought it along so that I could doodle if I got bored. George passed the book out to me and I scribbled a note and left it under the windshield wiper of the pizza car. “Pete—There is a new scratch on this car. If you can tell me which one it is, I’ll give you $50. Polly Deacon.”

  We drove for a while in silence.

  “There is something bothering you,” George said. I shrugged. “There was a time once when you would have told me
about it.”

  “We used to be together more,” I said. “Now you’ve got a full house most evenings, and Susan and Eddie have taken over the goat stuff, so we don’t hang out in the barn like we used to.” I could hear a little whine begin in my voice, like a miniature sewing machine.

  “That is true,” George said and waited.

  “And it isn’t as if I can just come down there and say I want to talk to you privately and not have Susan wonder what I’m telling you that I’m not telling her, because it would just hurt her feelings, wouldn’t it?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And anyway, there’s a lot of stuff that she’s not telling me because she thinks I can’t keep a secret, and who’s to say she can keep one either?” I went on in this vein for quite a long time, George prompting me with the occasional “I see” and “Ah” in just the right places. By the time we got to the Laingford Town Hall parking lot I had brought him up to date on Vic’s near-drowning and subsequent death, David Kane’s flirtatious behaviour with me and with Arly Watson, Becker’s problems with Bryan and finally, Becker’s proposal. I left out the part about the Secret Stealing Club and Eddie and Robin’s pregnancy scare, because they were both, in different ways, too private. As I turned off the ignition and killed the lights, it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t felt such a curious lightness in my chest since my going-to-confession days with Father Douglas. I glanced over at George and pictured him suddenly in a clerical collar, seen through a screen in profile.

  “But enough about you, let’s talk about me,” I said. He laughed.

  “I miss our talks,” he said.

  “Me, too. No advice, then? No magic solutions?”

  “I could tell you about my dear first wife, Kaarina, or about how wonderful it is having your Aunt Susan live with me,” he said, “or I could tell you about how difficult it was, and is, sometimes, but I do not think you need a testimonial about marriage. I think you need to make a decision on your own, Polly.”

  “I’ve already made up my mind,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” was all George said as he got out of the truck. I’ve never heard an “uh-huh” that had so many words in it.

  The Town Hall in Laingford was built in 1872, back in the days before television and radio, when the townsfolk relied upon each other for entertainment. Because of this, the building featured a lovely auditorium with a brave little stage and proper audience seating, perfect for community concerts, amateur theatricals and edifying lectures. Of course, by the dawn of the twenty-first century, the good citizens of Laingford had long abandoned the concept of gathering in one place for culture’s sake. They had hundreds of television channels beamed into their homes by satellite, millions of films available to them at the drop of a Homerun Video Den card, billions of musical recordings stashed away inside personal CD collections and an infinite array of temptations on the Internet. The theatre had slowly succumbed to neglect, its original dimensions eaten away by the municipal need for more office space, and was now used primarily to accommodate the overflow of Disgruntled Taxpayers at controversial public meetings. The stage was used as a storage space for broken chairs, cardboard boxes full of tax files from the 1980s, obsolete flip-charts (the Town had invested in a power-point computer program for special presentations) and several retired overhead projectors, whose tall necks reached up out of the clutter, the lens-contraptions at the top looking like the heads of browsing brontosaurs in a museum installation.

  Regular Laingford council meetings were held in the council chambers on the ground floor of the Town Hall, but when the agenda included an issue that was likely to attract attention, the meeting was scheduled to take place in the second floor auditorium.

  At the top of the stairs leading up to the theatre, a woman sat at a table beside a stack of council agendas and a sign-in book.

  “Good evening,” she said, smiling in a hostessy kind of way. “You are with the Kountry Pantree deputation or that other one?”

  “Er, neither,” I said. “Just a couple of taxpayers. This meeting’s public, isn’t it?”

  “Of course it is,” she said, “but we would appreciate you signing in. For the record, you know.”

  We both signed the register and took an agenda. I half expected to find an usher on the other side of the door, who would ask us in a hushed voice whether we were with the groom’s party or the bride’s. I just couldn’t get my mind off the marriage thing, I guess.

  The place was pretty full, but there were quite a few empty seats on the right in Row A, within spitting distance of the action. I would have been happier at the back, but unless we wanted to stand, there wasn’t much choice. George headed for them, and I followed.

  The stage, of course, was not being used, as it was full of second hand furniture, but someone had set up a long table in front of the stage with chairs for all the councillors and the mayor. A big screen had been pulled down where the curtain used to be, and there was a computer off to the side, which, presumably, would impress us all with hi-tech displays at some point.

  On the way down the aisle, I saw several people I knew. Theresa Morton, Susan’s assistant at the feed store, waved to me from a couple of rows over. Beside her was Peter Kastner, a guy from Wiarton who had a cottage in Cedar Falls, and was one of those summer people who actually took an interest in local politics. My old friend Rico Amato, a Cedar Falls antique dealer, was there with a young man I think worked for the Town as a clerk of some sort, and Sophie Durette, Vic’s friend and camera club buddy, was with them. I could see Linda Kirschnick seated in the front row off to the left, with the Elliots and Duke Pitblado. There was an empty seat beside Duke that was probably being saved for David Kane, if the entire Kountry Pantree contingent was to be in attendance. We settled in at the end of the right front row, checking first to make sure there weren’t any “reserved” signs anywhere that we’d missed. I felt eyes on the back of my head and scrunched down small. Calvin Grigsby from the Gazette sat at a rickety card-table set up way off at our side with a little hand-lettered sign on it that said “Press”. Nice of the Town to accommodate the media, I thought. I gave him a little wave, and he grinned at me. His camera was ready to go, sitting on top of the table with a powerful-looking lens in place. He’d be able to get extreme close-ups, I thought.

  I glanced down at my agenda. At the top, it said: “Corporation of the Town of Laingford—Regular Council Meeting” and gave the date and time.

  Adoption of Agenda

  Disclosure of Pecuniary Interest

  Closed Session-Personnel matter (By resolution)

  Deputations a) Mr. David Kane, representing Numbered Corporation 000997-467-43. Re: Update on the Kountry Pantree Development Project

  b) Ms. Susan Kennedy representing the League of Socialist Justice. Re: The Kountry Pantree Development Project

  Bylaws and Approvals.

  It looked like a big bundle of fun from start to finish.

  “How come there are so many people here?” I said to George.

  “I think Susan and her group put the word out,” George said. “And I suppose if there is going to be a presentation by the people who are building this superstore, many locals will be interested.”

  “What, you mean because they want jobs?” I said.

  “Or they are worried about their own,” he said.

  Behind us, the League of Social Justice filed in, walked down the aisle and (I should have guessed it) filled the rest of the front row where we were sitting. Susan lifted an eyebrow and gave me a huge “I knew you’d come around” smile. I was marked now. I had inadvertently put on the uniform of the anti-Kountry Pantree faction by sitting where I was sitting. I knew this, because I glanced over at Linda Kirschnick and the Elliots on the other side, and they were frowning at me. I lifted my hands at Linda, trying to tell her it was a mistake, but she turned immediately to Duke Pitblado and made a remark that made him look up. In my mind’s eye, I saw the Kountry Pantree cash cow slipping away. Would they c
ancel my contract? Delay payment? Ask for the advance back? Sue me? I felt frightened, somehow, although it was only a stupid mascot job and losing it would not be the end of the world.

  A side door opened and David Kane entered, smiling with the confidence of a man who has never in his life paid attention to signs that say “Authorized Personnel Only”. He gave a vague, friendly wave and a wink to someone at the back, and I was not the only person to turn my head to see who he was waving at. I suspect that it was one of those deliberate, politician’s gestures, the kind that spin doctors and handlers coach their protégés to use. It was a kind of “working the room” thing. One or two of the standing-room-only people near the door smiled in a bewildered way, but I would bet that when Kane waved, he was looking directly at nobody at all. Kane took his seat with the rest of the Kountry Pantree party, and was immediately absorbed in a confab. He glanced my way, so I winked and waved.

  Seconds later, the Laingford town council trotted out from the same door Kane had used and took their places at the head table. Each councillor had his or her own nameplate, facing audience-wards, to remind us of who they were. These nameplates could be had for $7.95 from the Framery, which also did engraving and trophies on the side. (I knew this because I once had a nameplate made for Susan, for the feed store. Hers said “Susan Kennedy: She Who Must Be Obeyed”.)

  The mayor, the Honourable Phyllis Lunenburg, carried a box of Kleenex in one hand and a briefcase in the other. The tip of her nose was red and shiny, and I could hear her breathing through her mouth. Either she had a wicked cold or the death of one of her council members had hit her very hard indeed. Lunenburg was into her second term as mayor, which in Laingford is officially a part-time job. Her other sphere of work was law. She was an extremely successful real estate lawyer, and there were several people in the community who had recognized that if they dealt with Lunenburg and Associates, things like minor variances and municipal planning issues seemed to go very smoothly. The mayor was in her mid-fifties and had clearly made a recent stop at Katie’s Cut ’n Curl. Her hair was a most unlikely shade of bronze.