The Night Bell

by Inger Ash Wolfe

  “I understand they’re deceased.”

  “So I hear. I had nothing to do with them after the age of twenty-one. Came to the city, took my brother’s name and worked teaching grade-school math.”

  “Mr. Maracle – Claude – would you consent to giving some hair for the purposes of DNA analysis?”

  “What bit of difference could it make? He’s dead. He’s never let me know otherwise, so who cares what they did with his bones? Why not in the fields outside of Dublin?”

  “What if it was murder? What then? Wouldn’t you want to know?”

  He took a breath in slowly through his nose. “Ironic what they changed our names to. Life was no miracle for us. Eloy was bigger’n me, by almost five inches, although he was younger. He always said no one would take us together because he was too strong. He’d been trouble in all the other places we’d been.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “There wasn’t a person that could hold Eloy down when he got mad. He broke a bunch of chairs one day because there’d been no meat in our suppers for a whole week. They put a shot of barbiturate into him and he kept going anyway. We were in four homes between when I was five and twelve. The Wetherlings didn’t want us both. They wanted a good boy, not a gorilla. I didn’t want to go. I was Eloy’s only protection in that place. I kept a lid on him and calmed him down when it came off. But I had to leave. No one ever passes up an opportunity to leave a place like that. I went.”

  “Claude, let us do the test. I can have someone come out and take a single hair from your head; that’d be it. At the very least, if there’s no match we can rule out Eloy’s bones among the ones we found in those fields.”

  “Fine,” he said. “But don’t tell me nothing about it. I don’t want to know.”

  “If that’s how you feel.”

  “I’m sorry for whatever happened to my brother, but I’m too old to think differently about the past. I only know what I know, and that’s all I want to know.”

  “I can accept that,” she said. “Thank you.”

  He gave her his address. She called Jack Deacon and had him dispatch a technician to collect the man’s hair.

  Hazel heard her mother moving around in the den. She’d napped after supper and Hazel was prepared to leave her to sleep for the night, but she’d woken and come downstairs asking for breakfast. There was no harm in it. Hazel heated a pot of oatmeal from the fridge and topped it with cream as well as maple syrup. Her mother’s appetite was fugitive at the best of times, but even she could not resist the siren call of maple syrup. The kettle sang, and she poured out the water over decaf crystals. She saw her mother making for the stairs. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to floss.”

  “You’re coming back down, I hope. I’m making all this for you.”

  “Is it ready?”

  “Not quite.”

  “So tie up your horses.”

  “I wasn’t –” she started, but her mother had already begun her journey up the stairs. She was so thin now that she couldn’t make the steps creak.

  Someone rang the doorbell.

  “Oh, for … Hold on!” she called to the stairs. She ran, wiping her hands on a tea towel, and opened the door on Kraut Fraser’s nervously smiling face. “What’s wrong?” There was no one behind him. “Are you here to warn me to keep away? Because I’m away.”

  “Remember the hanging file Brendan Givens gave to Wingate?”

  “What? When did Wingate see Brendan fucking –?”

  “Never mind.” He produced two sheets of folded paper from inside his jacket. “He gave them to me. I spent a couple of days on the Internet, tracing titles and boards of directors. That kind of thing. What if I told you that some of these files might explain why the RCMP is on the case now?”

  “Fine,” she said. “Come in.”

  “Smells like coffee.”

  “You’re going to make a hell of a detective, Kraut. Want one?”

  “If it isn’t a problem. I’m on a double.”

  No cop ever drank decaf. She made fresh for him, but instant. The kettle was still hot. “If you see my mother, keep it simple.”

  “How is she?”

  “Her Honour has been a little gaga of late.” He handed her the document. It was a printout with six-digit numbers down one side and a series of contact names on the other. “What am I looking at?”

  He sipped on the hot coffee. “That’s a list of Ontario numbered corporations that are shareholders in Tournament Acres.”

  “OK?”

  “This one,” he put his finger on one of the numbers, “is owned by a Paige Willan.”

  “Paige?”

  “I’ll spare you the exposition: she’s the commissioner’s paternal grandmother.”

  “Chip has a living grandmother?”

  “No. She’s not living. But she still has sharp taste in real estate.”

  “Holy shit.” She clasped his upper arm and squeezed it. “Have you told anyone else about this?”

  “Hello Dutch,” said Emily Micallef. She’d been standing in the doorway.

  Hazel stilled herself. “Dietrich and I are just going over some papers, Mom.”

  “What did I call you?” Emily asked Fraser.

  “Dutch. That’s OK, I go by a lot of names.”

  Emily poured the rest of the decaf Hazel had brewed into a mug. Hazel watched her as if she were armed and dangerous. “Indian cigarettes, I bet,” her mother said.

  “What?”

  “You two are taking orders for cigarettes?”

  “No, Mom. Dietrich and I are on an investigation.”

  “Oh yeah?” She took a seat at the kitchen table and arranged her housecoat around her legs. “What about?”

  “I can tell you later.”

  Emily got up suddenly and clasped Fraser by the shoulder. “I called you Dutch, didn’t I? Oh my god, I’m a crazy old woman.” She laughed and it was her old laugh. A bit of birdsong. She came closer to him, to speak into his ear. “She’s been hiding my cigarettes. Get me a carton of DKs.”

  She took her coffee into the den.

  “There but for the grace of god,” Hazel said. “She’s OK when we sit down and eat together or we’re in the car. Then she seems to lock in. But otherwise she drifts. At least she’s sleeping.” She gestured with her coffee mug that they should step back into the hallway. When she was sure she was out of her mother’s earshot, she said, “Although she woke up last night hacking and coughing and telling someone to get away.”

  “I wish I knew what to tell you.”

  She put the list back into his hands. “Hold on to this. Don’t make any copies.”

  “All right. Surely you don’t like Willan for the Fremonts?”

  “No. He’s just one more thing in the hopper.”

  “What about for Renald?”

  “You think Willan has whacked Melvin Renald? Maybe he had the RCMP whack him?”

  “You don’t think having the dead boys case stalled improves matters for the shareholders?”

  “The RCMP taking over those fields isn’t an improvement for any of the investors. Even if our commissioner is posing as his dead grandmother to buy property, I’m not sure it has anything to do with Renald, or the Fremonts, or the bones in the dirt.”

  “You think the Mounties would suppress evidence?”

  “I don’t know the lofty workings of the RCMP or who they really answer to. But I hope not.”

  “Hazel, you should go to Ray with this.” He held up the pages he’d brought. “Willan might be a case we could work.”

  “We’re going to do what Ray told us to do. One: don’t go to Tournament Acres; and two: get to work. Children died in this county, Fraser, under the eyes of its citizens. That’s our case.”

  “But if Willan is the case, maybe Gateway Plaza won’t happen. So what if he didn’t have anything to do with the Fremonts? In the course of our investigation blah blah blah evidence of illegal investments blah b
lah serious conflict of interest.”

  “Gateway Plaza is a done deal. The groundbreaking is in six days. Put that stuff away until we need it.”

  ] 15 [

  1957

  Commander Drury had both families into his office, which easily fit the seven of them. Because of her mother’s stature in town, or so Hazel believed, they had not been taken into one of the interview rooms.

  Drury sat in his high-backed chair, a lit cigarette burning on the rim of a standing ashtray beside his desk. The three children sat on the couch under a map of the county, and the three adults were in chairs in front of his desk. He spoke first to Hazel’s mother. “You understand, Emily, no one is being accused of anything. But if your son did in fact find the pendant in your yard, then how did it get there? And is it possible, despite his protestations, that he may have found it somewhere else? Somewhere he shouldn’t have been, maybe? Alan –” Drury said, raising his voice a little.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Let me ask you. If I told you, as a man of the law, that you had done nothing wrong by finding and keeping Carol’s pendant, and that you would not be punished for anything you said in this room, even were you to admit to a lie, would anything about your story change?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Are you afraid you’ll be punished, Alan? If I told you that you will not be punished for telling the truth, even if it is different now than it was before, would you change your story?”

  Alan’s eyes darted around. Could he be lying? Hazel wondered. If he were lying, though, surely something would have given him away by now.

  “I want to tell you everything,” Alan said. “I am trying.”

  “What is the point of this?” asked Dale Whitman. “Master Micallef is a boy of twelve, and a very backward boy. You can’t interrogate a child.”

  “I must question him, if he is able to answer,” said Drury.

  “And why are we here?”

  “Dr. Whitman – your daughter was one of the last people to see Carol Lim five weeks ago. Memory is a strange thing.” He returned his attention to the trio of children on the couch. “Sometimes we remember what happened, but not all of it. Like you did, Gloria, when you recalled the man you saw. And sometimes when we remember, what we’re remembering didn’t actually happen. But then you hit on it! A vital detail. Something someone said. The colour of a person’s jacket. A little teaspoon of truth.” He stood up, and when Gloria’s father began to rise, Drury gestured him back down into his seat. He moved beside the desk to face Alan, Hazel, and Gloria. “That’s why we’re here, under your parents’ supervision: to see if we can help you remember. You see, children, the finding of Carol’s pendant is a very significant thing. It tells us that someone interacted with her in some way.”

  Alan put his hand up. “What if she threw it away?”

  “Why would she have thrown it away?”

  “She was angry,” he offered.

  “At whom?”

  “I don’t know,” Alan said, meekly.

  “And so why did the monkey run off with the seahorse?” said Dr. Whitman, rising from his seat. His face was red. “You obviously don’t need us here.”

  “Sit,” snapped Commander Drury. “You are not the authority here, Doctor. Gloria, did you see Hazel’s brother at any point that day? Before or after your encounter with Carol? Gloria …? I’m asking you a question.”

  “Apologize to my father.” Her voice was cold.

  “Answer his question, child,” Dr. Whitman said.

  “Did you see him?” Drury repeated.

  “I probably did,” said Gloria. “He’s always around anyway, with his dopey face covered in chocolate, looking for sticks or frogs. But I don’t know if I saw him that day or some other day. I don’t know. And I’ve told you everything. I wasn’t feeling well. Hazel can tell you. I was woozy.”

  “Do you recall Gloria being woozy, Hazel?”

  “I guess … she was a little out of breath.” Hazel felt like there was a train speeding toward her. “But I know she didn’t see Alan after I saw her. I went right home and he was waiting for me. I took him out for a float. Dad gave us money.”

  “I did,” her father said.

  Drury turned his questioning to Dr. Whitman. “I haven’t asked you what your memories of that day are.”

  “I wasn’t there. I have none.”

  “I mean when your daughter came home. Did you notice anything untoward?”

  “Her homework was done and dinner was ready. So no. Everything was as it should be.” He beamed at Gloria. “If you think my daughter is involved in the –”

  “No, goodness no,” said Hazel’s mother, and she reached out and touched the doctor’s sleeve, smiling. “We’re all very upset about the Lim girl. Commander?”

  “Mrs. Micallef.” They all noticed that he did not call her Emily or Madam Mayor, and the temperature in the room ticked up. “If you can hold your comm –”

  “She must know a lot of people in Toronto,” Emily said.

  He wasn’t going to answer her, but she stared at him. “What do you mean by ‘a lot’?”

  “In addition to her relations. Wasn’t there something about a boyfriend?”

  “Yes. We’ve already checked him out. Tom Landers. He’s at the University of Toronto. But he hasn’t heard from her since the day before she disappeared.”

  “He could be protecting her.”

  “We’ve looked into it.” Drury’s voice was hard. He looked at each child in turn and shook his head. He let a silence stretch out. “All right,” he said, rising, and it was as if air had been pumped into the room. Dale Whitman stood and shook the commander’s hand. Everyone but Alan did, in turn. “You don’t shake, Master Micallef?”

  “I don’t want you to take my fingerprints.”

  Drury laughed. “That’s not how it’s done, young man.”

  Emily ushered Alan out with the rest of them, but she stayed behind in Drury’s office. “Give us a minute,” she said. She closed the door, and then Hazel could hear nothing from inside the office.

  “Well, I suppose we should be going,” Dr. Whitman said in the corridor, and he offered his hand to her father.

  Evan Micallef shook it, but he spoke to Gloria: “We don’t want you to feel scared to tell your father or Commander Drury if anything else comes to mind.”

  Whitman put a protective hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “Do you believe your own daughter, Mr. Micallef?”

  “I do.”

  “And I believe mine. I think she has told us everything she knows. This has been traumatic for everyone, and the best thing now is for us to carry on and hope and pray that Miss Lim will make her whereabouts known. Then we can be sure we’ll get the whole story, and any suspicions about your boy can be put to rest.”

  “Suspicions?”

  “Why do you think we were asked here, sir? To question my daughter? Gloria and I are here as a courtesy.”

  “A courtesy?” said Evan Micallef. “My son is neither more or less capable of lying than anyone else here.”

  “Now now, Evan, I mean no offence. But you haven’t known him your whole life. You don’t know what he is capable of. He doesn’t know!”

  “I suggest you go back to your offices, Doctor. Where you are helpful and useful.”

  For the first time that afternoon, Hazel made eye contact with Gloria. The question of Carol Lim’s fate had become so urgent that it seemed anything was possible now. Does she think I know something? she wondered. Does Gloria know something? What if Gloria was helping Carol? They hadn’t acted like they were friends, but maybe that had been for Hazel’s benefit. Gloria could have used the necklace as a diversion. It had been so easy to conclude that things were just as they’d seemed that day. But because she was in the story she’d been telling, Hazel had not considered till now that her role in it might have been unwitting.

  “Come,” Dr. Whitman said, holding his hand out. Gloria took it and they began down the hal
l to the lot at the rear of the building. Then Emily emerged from Gord Drury’s office and kissed Alan on the crown and Hazel on the forehead.

  “That’s all, my darlings. It’s still early enough for the breakfast special at Ladyman’s. Why don’t we go park ourselves and have a feast?”

  “I’m hungry,” said Alan.

  “You’re always hungry,” Hazel said, eyeing her brother.

  “I’m energetic.”

  “You’re a human garbage can.”

  “Be nice to him,” their mother said. “He’s been through a lot today.”

  All through the breakfast, Alan applied himself to his plate like a miner hammering at a seam of coal. The food went everywhere, but by the end, as at most meals, Alan had thumbed up the crumbs and pinched the stray fleck of meat off the side of the salt shaker. “You do clean your plate … and the surrounding area,” their mother sometimes joked, but to Hazel it seemed as if her mother admired his appetite. Hazel she warned about getting fat, but she couldn’t feed Alan too much.

  Over the pancakes and coffee, Hazel watched her parents communicating silently with each other through the occasional held gaze or a look askance. Once, they locked eyes and then simultaneously looked at Alan. They traded copious information with each other without so much as uttering a syllable.

  The feelings of adults were difficult to decipher, and Hazel had long ago stopped trying to understand who her parents were together. One day, in the distant future it felt, a man would look at her and just like that she’d know everything he was thinking and feeling. But for now, she was lost in a sea of signals. She didn’t know how she felt about Andrew Pedersen, really. Was it enough that someone was nice to you?

  She was aware of her heart beating. She looked up and her father’s head seemed very far away, as if she were looking down the wrong end of a telescope. It was a scary feeling. She could hear every sound in the place. The dirty dishes clattering in the sinks; laughter and voices; the cough of a car starting. Calls from the street, a horn in the distance. Then her heart felt like it stopped. A high-pitched whine sounded inside her head that reduced all the ambient noise to something distant, and she looked at her brother. He was sitting on the other side of the table, picked out in a column of light as if the angels were going to take him away.