Acts of Murder

by L. R. Wright

  There were two tiny windows in the front, one on either side of an oversize door, thick and strong, from which two wooden steps led down to the ground. The cabin sat on four large concrete bricks, about two feet above the earth. The path led up to the door and also encircled the house, pushing through trees and bushes—mainly salal—that crowded close. Mrs. O’Hara went around to the back. The rain stroked her face and crackled in the greenery.

  Behind the cabin were several small clearings, mainly outcroppings of exposed rock, but also places where undergrowth had been uprooted. In some of these clearings Mrs. O’Hara planted things each year: peas here, lettuce there, sunflowers near the house, a couple of tomato plants. In or near each clearing there was a seat of some kind. On the rockiest one, from which she could glimpse the lake, she had placed a faded, tattered deck chair, and liked to imagine, while sitting on it, the famous people who might have lounged upon it when it had perhaps graced the deck of the Queen E. Near another clearing she had hung a hammock between two yellow cedars: from this she would have a good view of the sunflowers when they bloomed.

  The tall trees that stretched high above her little cabin moved restlessly in the high winds. When she heard them lamenting she wondered if they felt pain, tossed cruelly about by the blustering winds.

  ...They were like tempered steel, those long-ago decisions. Or rather, Mrs. O’Hara had felt like tempered steel when she made them. It was not possible to keep the planet clean, or the country. She would mark out a small piece of territory, then, and sweep. That’s what she had done. That’s what she was still doing. She had cheated a bit in coming to the Sunshine Coast, where the community was sheltered and small. But it was of a size that matched her quota. She had been confident, then, of meeting her quota—after all, she would have ten years...

  Reaching for the doorknob, she glimpsed the face of her wristwatch: yes, she would be late at the Dyakowskis, but it couldn’t be helped.

  Inside her small cabin, Mrs. O’Hara went directly to the bathroom. She stripped, dropped her overalls and underwear on the floor, bathed, and put on clean clothes. Then she put her soiled things in the tub and filled it with cold water.

  A few minutes later she was sitting in her massive recliner, holding a mug of herbal tea in her hands, breathing deeply. She had stopped shaking. The various parts of her body were apparently working together again, compatible and cooperative.

  Ten sweeps in a decade. She had thought this would be plenty of time. But now here she was only eighteen months away from the deadline and she was still three short.

  A cold paleness stole across her skin. How on earth could she do it three more times in only a year and a half? How could she find three more deserving people, in just eighteen months?

  Lukewarm tea slopped from the mug onto her hand, and into her lap.

  Mrs. O’Hara took the mug into the kitchen, wiped up the mess and left the cabin, heading wearily down the hillside to her van, her head full of clutter and uncertainty.

  ***

  When Denise Dyakowski got home shortly after five-thirty, Mrs. O’Hara ought to have come and gone, having used the key that was snuggled onto the kitchen window ledge. But she hadn’t. That is, she had come, but had not yet gone.

  Denise and Ivan hadn’t been invited to the wedding ceremony itself, just to the reception, which was to begin at seven-thirty. Since it was now not quite five-thirty, Denise should have had plenty of time to get ready, but she hadn’t counted on Mrs. O’Hara still being there.

  She pulled cautiously into the backyard, following a muddy, rutted pseudo-driveway that led between a large gap in the falling-down fence and a shed whose swaybacked roof threatened to fall in on the rusty garden implements that had been abandoned there by previous occupants. Denise’s elderly Toyota bumped and bounced slowly along the track as she wondered why the hell she always insisted on parking there instead of on the street. There was no shelter for the damn car there and she had to pick her way to the back door through sticky, gloopy mud, getting her shoes more dirty than necessary. Inside the house, thanks mainly to Mrs. O’Hara, Denise’s small world was clean, orderly, tranquil. But outside, it was a mess. Denise stood in the rain, hands on her hips, surveying the backyard with exasperation. But even as she looked, she was calmed.

  The house was on a street off the road that led to Porpoise Bay. It was yellow, with blue shutters, and Denise thought it looked quaint, like a fairy-tale cottage. The extensive accumulation of vegetation that surrounded it enhanced this impression: laurel, broom, blackberries, and trees: several pine trees, a willow, and an arbutus whose trunk made a ninety-degree turn and grew horizontally for a foot or so before changing its mind and aiming upward again. Grass grew shaggily in the back and front yards. The brush that filled in the spaces among the trees and shrubs was today newly, shrilly green, and snowdrops, violets, and crocuses had struggled up through the long grass at the edges of the yard and next to the house. The rain fell softly on Denise and pattered tenderly in the greenery as she looked around and pronounced much of her surroundings pleasing. Sometimes enchanting.

  But the mud wasn’t enchanting, nor the falling-down shed, nor the rusting garden equipment. They really must prop up the shed roof, and oil the damn garden tools, and do something about the fence.

  She was reminded by Mrs. O’Hara’s van, parked next to the fence, of the cleaning woman’s continued presence inside. She’d send her home, Denise decided, heading across the spongy grass to the front door, whether she’d finished or not, because Denise wanted to get in and out of the shower before Ivan got there. He would be late, as usual, and distracted, as usual, and in a flurry of ill-planned activity.

  The smells of furniture polish and a strong cleaning agent appeased Denise and she called out cheerfully to Mrs. O’Hara, who called back to acknowledge Denise’s arrival. Denise, shedding shoes and coat, heard water running in the bathtub and the flushing of the toilet. She padded into the bedroom in her stockinged feet and dropped her handbag on the bed.

  “I’ll be out of here in a minute,” said Mrs. O’Hara.

  Denise heard the squeaking of a cleaning rag on porcelain and stuck her head around the bathroom door, smiling. She saw Mrs. O’Hara squatting next to the bathtub, slowly polishing, and was about to speak when Mrs. O’Hara suddenly sank back on her heels, gripped the edge of the tub, and lowered her head until it was resting on her hands. Anguish was sketched in the slump of her shoulders, the curve of her back, the crook of her elbows. Denise, frozen in the doorway, was appalled. She was instantly transported back in time to a day in her childhood when her grandmother had died. Her mother had received the news over the telephone, and she had slumped, just like Mrs. O’Hara, and her body had curved, just like Mrs. O’Hara’s, in an instinctive but unsuccessful attempt to shield itself from pain.

  Denise stepped back, out of sight. And there was silence in the house, Mrs. O’Hara motionless in the bathroom, and Denise thinking, What to do? What to do?

  Then Denise moved swiftly back into the bathroom and, before Mrs. O’Hara could react, she knelt next to her and put an arm around her shoulders—broad shoulders, fleshy shoulders; they were warm, and probably sweaty, and brought to Denise’s mind large roasts of beef.

  “What is it, Mrs. O’Hara? What’s wrong?”

  Mrs. O’Hara gave her head a shake and blinked several times. Denise wondered if she wore contact lenses, or if she possessed eyesight exceptionally fine for a woman her age.

  “Oh, well,” said Mrs. O’Hara, in a voice so heavy with weariness that Denise doubted for a moment whether she’d ever be able to rise to her feet again. “Oh, well,” she said again. “It’s been a long day.”

  “Did you get some bad news?” said Denise, tentatively rubbing Mrs. O’Hara’s back, uncertain whether this was more likely to soothe or to irritate.

  Mrs. O’Hara choked out a small laugh. Denise took this as concurrence.

  “I’m very tired,” said Mrs. O’Hara, speaking slowly, as
if she had to push each word through a mouth filled with dust, or ashes.

  Denise stood up, aware of feeling fit and slim, and took Mrs. O’Hara’s elbows in her hands. “It’s time you went home,” she said firmly.

  Mrs. O’Hara pretended for barely an instant that she wanted to protest. She pushed on the edge of the bathtub while Denise pulled gently on her elbows, and soon she was standing. She tucked some squiggles of iron gray hair back into her bun and wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands, a gesture that clutched at Denise’s heart. Adjusted her denim overalls. Tugged at the wristbands of her denim shirt.

  “I’ll be going, then,” she said. “And I owe you two hours,” she added, gathering her cleaning tools, assembling her supplies.

  Denise watched from the front door as Mrs. O’Hara, laden, moved across the grass and through the mud to her van. She heaved back the side door and thrust her equipment inside, closed the door, and trudged around the van. Denise couldn’t see her any longer, but she waited anyway, shivering, until the motor started and the van moved off down the street.

  Half an hour later she had had her shower and was standing on the bathmat, drying herself. She had opened the window slightly, to let the steam out. She noticed a crack in the paint on the bathroom wall and, frowning, reached out to pick at it with her fingernail, flaking off white paint, revealing lime green beneath.

  Denise knew only vaguely where Mrs. O’Hara lived, somewhere up the coast, near Pender Harbour, she thought. This was a long drive from Sechelt when one was exhausted. Denise wondered, what was the bad news she’d gotten this day?

  She pulled her shoulders back and examined her profile, cupping her breasts with her hands, then running her palms down her sides to her waist. She was still slim but she’d definitely put on weight there, around her waist, enough to make some of her clothes uncomfortable. Exercise had been on her list of things to do for months now. No, she admitted silently, not months—years. Three years. Ever since she’d hit thirty.

  She didn’t know much about Mrs. O’Hara, who had been cleaning house for the Dyakowskis for the last two years or so. Well it was no wonder, she thought now, since she hardly ever saw the woman, usually only once a month when Mrs. O’Hara stayed late so Denise could pay her.

  Denise, absentmindedly stroking her body and thinking about Mrs. O’Hara—she had been absolutely gray with exhaustion, her eyes black pits in a face swollen, maybe, with weeping—didn’t hear Ivan’s car pull up outside. But she did hear the front door open and close.

  “Denise? It’s me,” he called out, and Denise smiled.

  “I’m in here,” she said, “just out of the shower.”

  “Okay. Me next,” said Ivan. He rapped lightly on the bathroom door as he passed.

  Denise looked down at her smooth belly, slightly rounded. Ivan liked to press his face against it before putting his tongue in her navel and starting to lick his way down, down...

  She fingered herself, and considered calling out to him. But she knew they didn’t have much time. It’ll keep, she thought.

  And this was a moment that her brain decided to save. It plucked it free of the strands of minutiae that made up her everyday routine, strands that would have ordinarily choked this moment, inconsequential as it seemed, into oblivion. Her brain snatched this instant from the mainstream—rescued it from life’s momentum—and stored it in a memory cupboard. Later, the red light above this cupboard would start flashing, and Denise, rummaging around in there, would wonder if things might have been different, if she could have altered the course of her own personal history, if she had not decided, It’ll keep...

  Denise rubbed her wet hair vigorously, streaked the towel across the foggy mirror and turned on the blow dryer, fluffing her hair with her fingers as it dried, pleased with her new perm, which had given body and a certain amount of panache to her unremarkable sandy hair. She dropped the towel into the blue laundry hamper and went into the bedroom.

  “Hi,” she said to Ivan’s back.

  “Hi, hon,” he replied, turning to smile at her over his shoulder as he tossed his shirt onto the bed and stepped out of his shoes.

  Denise was feeling very horny. It was hard to keep her hands off Ivan, who was bent over, wearing only jockey shorts by now, selecting clean socks from the bottom drawer of his dresser. She wanted to press her crotch against his ass and slip her hands inside the front of his underwear, where he would be warm and damp and muskily fragrant.

  She let him be, though, contenting herself with sideways glances filched while she burrowed in her closet for her yellow dress.

  Ivan was a restless individual. Sometimes Denise saw him tremble. He might not actually physically tremble, but she saw this in him—a shuddering reaction to life, like ripples in water, or the sudden swelling of sunlight.

  She relished the delicacy of his narrow waist, savored his flat stomach, craved his hairy genitals, admired his wide shoulders, and the blunt brutal thickness of his neck. She wished she could persuade him to let his hair grow longer, thick and black, so she could entwine her fingers in it. This had always been one of her fantasies: to wrap her fingers in his hair, both hands, and bring his face close, to kiss it. She could do this now, taking his head in her hands, but believed it not to be the same as gripping his hair would be.

  Ivan had brown eyes and thick eyebrows, and a nose that was too small for his face. His lips were rather thin, and there was a space between his front teeth.

  The only thing she didn’t like about him was his table manners.

  He taught school in Sechelt. Denise worked in a bank in Gibsons, fifteen miles south, doing word processing and reception. She was perfectly contented with her job, over-qualified though she was—she had left her university degrees off her résumé when she had applied for the position—and disregarded Ivan’s frequent nagging that she ought to look for something more challenging, more rewarding.

  With the yellow dress Denise wore a gold necklace and earrings, thigh-highs, and tan pumps, and she would carry a small tan clutch bag.

  She watched the TV news while she waited for Ivan. During the commercials she glanced around the house, getting up from time to time to straighten the sisal mat in front of the door, clean some smudges from the glass-topped coffee table, wash and dry and put away a glass that stood on the counter next to the kitchen sink.

  She imagined Mrs. O’Hara, tall and dense with flesh and muscle, filling the glass, draining it, refilling it, draining it again. Had someone in her family died? Surely not. Surely she would not have come to work at all, if that had been the case.

  Denise and Ivan’s living room contained a high-backed rocking chair with spindles and a slip seat covered with ivory silk. A love seat, wheat-colored, with several cushions, some brown, some rust. The coffee table was far too big—Denise was forever banging herself against one of its edges. A tall bookcase stood against one wall. And there was a halogen lamp, so slim and black and angular that it resembled a giant insect, hibernating in the corner. Denise, waiting, amused herself with a fantasy about the halogen lamp awakening, now that it was spring, pulling itself free of the electrical outlet, and prowling about the house.

  “Hurry up. Ivan. We’ll be late.”

  He said something Denise couldn’t quite hear. She moved to the kitchen where she rested her head against the window sash and closed her eyes. Soon Ivan came around the corner, rushing, tying his tie.

  “Ready, hon? Where’s the gift?” he asked, looking around. But he was the one who had bought the gift, and wrapped it, so really he was talking to himself.

  Denise waited, leaning against the window sash, until he’d found the present, which was on the bed, under the clothes he’d flung there.

  Mrs. O’Hara would be home by now. Would she be on the phone to family or friends, sharing grief, deriving comfort?

  “Okay,” said Ivan. “Let’s go.”

  Denise picked up her purse from the coffee table, and followed him out to the car.

 
; Chapter 5

  THE TINY WHITE church had its back to the woods, and trees grew so close to the building that they pressed against its windows. It was as if they were looking inside, curious about what went on there.

  Several cars were parked on the street in front and in the clearing next to the building. To the accompaniment of organ music drifting outside, Richard Harbud and two RCMP constables were hard at work tying strings of tin cans and bunting onto a white 1994 Oldsmobile.

  Inside, Alberg stood next to Cassandra, facing the minister, acutely aware of the small crowd that breathed and stirred and murmured behind him. He had insisted that only relatives and close friends be invited to the ceremony itself: Diana and Janey and the musician; Cassandra’s mother; Elsie Sokolowski; Isabella and Richard Harbud; some friends and colleagues of Cassandra’s. In such a small gathering Alberg had thought that he would feel his mother’s absence keenly, painfully; and maybe Maura’s, too, although he knew it was probably inappropriate to wish for his ex-wife’s presence at his wedding—he hadn’t actually invited her, of course. And now he was feeling nobody’s absence, not his mother’s, not Maura’s, as it turned out, because the small church was crammed full of people who had come uninvited. He had thought he ought to feel indignant about this. Cassandra wasn’t indignant, though—a church was a public place, she had reminded him, and they had every right to be here, especially since they had come to wish the two of them well.

  Alberg took a quick glance over his shoulder and was relieved to see his daughters in the front pew. They made him think of flowers sitting there, smiling at him, dressed in flowerlike colors, moving with the grace of blossoms stirred by a summer breeze. And then Diana blew him a kiss, put a tissue up to her face and dabbed at her eyes, and Alberg turned, hurriedly, looked wonderingly at the minister. He felt Cassandra’s hand brushing against his and took hold of it, tightly, not daring to look at her, trying to master the hugeness of his joy.