by L. R. Wright
She glanced over at Naomi, who was waiting on a couple of people sitting at the counter. She was a small, wiry woman in her thirties, with dense black hair that today was scraped away from her face and fastened in the back with something that looked like an enormous clothespin. She was scrubbing the surface of the counter, polishing the napkin container, wiping the salts and peppers, and keeping up a running conversation with her customers that was neither cheerful nor polite. She was wearing tight blue jeans, cowboy boots and a shapeless black sweatshirt with lettering that Mrs. O’Hara was too far away to decipher.
Mrs. O’Hara folded the newspaper and set it aside. She tried to remember what she’d been told about Naomi. She knew that Naomi had two little kids. And that her husband was in jail—for drug trafficking, Mrs. O’Hara believed.
Mrs. O’Hara watched Naomi, a thin, restless little person, tightly wound, and wondered about her character.
“Excuse me,” said a voice behind her, and Mrs. O’Hara whirled around, her skin prickling unpleasantly.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” A young woman with a huge leather bag slung over her shoulder thrust out her hand toward Mrs. O’Hara, who took it automatically. “My name is Cindi Webster. May I sit down? Just for a minute?” She was pulling out the chair opposite Mrs. O’Hara’s, but kept her eyes on Mrs. O’Hara’s face, waiting for permission.
Mrs. O’Hara asked, “Who are you?”
“I’m a reporter. With the local paper.”
“What do you want with me?” asked Mrs. O’Hara, alarmed.
“Well, I’m doing a series of stories,” said Cindi, shifting her bag higher onto her shoulder, “about people and their work.”
Mrs. O’Hara looked at her incredulously. “Their work?”
“Yes,” Cindi continued. Mrs. O’Hara observed that her face was growing pink. “And I was wondering if I could talk to you sometime, about your work, if you’d, uh, agree—” She was floundering, now, sounding like a person who might be drowning. “Uh, to talk to me, uh, about, about—”
“About my work,” said Mrs. O’Hara, taking pity on her. She wondered if the girl was always so red-faced and tongue-tied.
“Yes,” said Cindi. “Right.” She expelled her breath in relief—Whoosh!—and looked at Mrs. O’Hara expectantly. “So. What do you think?”
“Here you go, Mrs. O,” said Earl, setting down a plate that held an eggcup and two slices of buttered toast, and a large glass of orange juice. “Listen to me. ‘Here you go, Mrs. O.’ I’m a gol-darn poet and I don’t even know it.” He burst into laughter as he sailed away.
Cindi hefted her bag again. “Here,” she said, sliding a business card toward Mrs. O’Hara. “Maybe you could give me a call? At your convenience?”
“Maybe,” said Mrs. O’Hara, smiling slightly. She tucked the card into the breast pocket of her overalls. “I wouldn’t hold my breath, however.”
Chapter 11
ALBERG GOT TO work early that morning, but not as early as Eddie Henderson. By the time he arrived, the search for Janet Maine was well underway.
He made himself tackle the paperwork in his IN tray, and worked steadily away. But he was always aware of time passing.
Halfway through the morning he put down his pen, took off his reading glasses, and rubbed his eyes. He sat back in his chair and stretched, then studied, curiously, the new photo of his daughters that sat on his desk. Janey and Diana had their arms around one another’s shoulders and they were laughing. It was a picture taken by the damn musician...but Alberg had to stop calling him that. Daniel, he corrected himself. It was a picture taken by Daniel. His son-in-law.
His daughters kept telling him to get e-mail, but Alberg didn’t want e-mail. Isabella handled that sort of thing. Alberg had only recently become comfortable with the computer that had its own table in his office. He had absolutely no desire for an electronic mailbox.
His daughters had told him, though, that if he got one they’d write to him a lot.
“Why can’t you write real letters?” he had complained.
But Janey had said, “It’s so much easier, Dad, to press one key, than to print the thing out, and fold it up, and put it in an envelope, and address the envelope, and find a stamp to go on it, and then a mailbox to drop it into.”
So he wasn’t permanently committed to his aversion to e-mail.
He had to get a picture of Cassandra, too, he reminded himself. For some reason this brought to mind his new sergeant.
Alberg went out into the reception area to refill his coffee mug. “Where’s Sergeant Henderson?” he asked.
Isabella turned from her computer. “The sergeant and Constable Mondini went out to check the place where the Granger girl was found.” She shrugged. “Kind of a long shot.”
Alberg was staring into space.
“Don’t you think?” she said.
***
Denise was in Zeller’s, her arms full of towels. She had chosen four bath sheets, four large towels, four hand towels, and four facecloths, deep blue in color.
Now she was in women’s wear, looking hastily through racks of sweatpants and sweatshirts. Suddenly the pile of towels toppled and fell. She grabbed at some, but the rest landed on the floor.
Denise squatted down to retrieve them, and was surprised to find that she was weeping. But the alarm that this created in her quickly dried her tears.
She picked up the towels and set them down on a chair that someone had placed next to a full-length mirror. Avoiding the mirror, she returned to the rack and selected a pair of dark gray pants and a bright pink sweatshirt, size medium, and took them and the towels to the check-out counter.
***
Cindi returned to Earl’s in mid-morning for a take-out coffee. There were no other customers in the cafe. As she paid Naomi she asked, “So how long have you worked here?”
“A while,” said Naomi, wiping the table next to Cindi’s.
“We haven’t met. My name’s Cindi Webster. I’m a reporter with The Record.”
Naomi picked up the napkin dispenser and gave it a swipe with her dishcloth.
“You know—just up the street?”
Naomi, vigorously cleaning the salt and pepper shakers, made no response.
“I’m working on a series of stories about work,” Cindi went on bravely, “you know, about the various kinds of work that people do. And I was wondering, would you, uh, be interested, because, uh, I’d like to do one about a waitress.”
“Sounds dead boring to me,” said Naomi, moving on to another table.
“Not to me,” said Earl, from behind the counter. He had donned the huge apron bought for him years ago in Paris by one of his regular customers, now deceased. “Talk to her,” he said. “A story in the paper about my waitress? Good for business.” He disappeared through the swinging door that led to the kitchen.
Naomi, stone-faced, looked at Cindi Webster in silence, then flicked the dishcloth onto the counter and sat down on a stool with a sigh. “So whaddya want to know?”
“Well, first of all,” said Cindi, reaching into her voluminous shoulder bag for her notebook and pen, “what do you like about your job, and then, what do you dislike about it.”
“I don’t like anything about it,” said Naomi promptly. She was in her late twenties or early thirties, small, with a lean, wiry body and hair whose extreme blackness Cindi thought was probably not natural. She wore very tight jeans and a big baggy sweatshirt that said LAS VEGAS on it, in something that glittered.
“Why do you do it, then?” Cindi asked.
“I got kids to support,” said Naomi, rubbing against the counter, easing an itch in her back.
“Well, but—”
“I kinda slide through it, you know?” said Naomi, waving her hands in the air. “Pretend like I’m two people, and only one of them’s doing the waitressing.”
Cindi looked down at her notebook, uncertain. She decided she’d come back to this remark, which she didn’t entir
ely understand.
Naomi sprang from the stool and picked up the dishcloth. “Shit,” she said, regarding it critically. She went behind the counter, rinsed it in hot water, and wrung it out.
“What hours do you work?” said Cindi, trying another angle.
“Too damn many.” Naomi was wiping another table, removing smudges from another napkin dispenser, ridding more salt and pepper shakers of stickiness and grime. She straightened and looked over at Cindi. “I mean, I’m glad for the money and all. But he needs another waiter in here, you know what I’m saying?”
“Yeah,” said Cindi, nodding. “You’d like to spend more time with your kids. Who takes care of them when you’re at work?”
Earl came through the swinging door and walked over to the blackboard, now blank, on which the day’s specials were to be displayed.
“You know that, Earl, don’t you?” said Naomi sternly. “You need more staff.”
“More staff,” said Earl, printing, slowly, with chalk. “Huh. I’m selling out pretty soon. Any day now. I don’t need more staff.”
“He did hire somebody once,” said Naomi, moving to the next table. “Last fall.”
“Yeah,” said Earl. He stepped back and peered at the blackboard. “Is that straight?” It read, “SOUP OF THE DAY: FRENCH ONION. LUNCH SPECIAL: CHICKEN CACIATORE.”
“I think there’re two c’s in ‘cacciatore,’ ” said Cindi helpfully.
Earl studied his printing. “I got two c’s in it,” he said.
“No, I mean—” She got up and went over to the blackboard. “There,” she said, pointing.
“Oh,” said Earl. “Okay.” Carefully, he made the correction.
“So if we needed somebody last fall,” said Naomi, angrily scrubbing the last tabletop, “we need somebody now.”
“I hired that girl and what happened?” said Earl, turning to glare at her. “She comes one day, two days, three days, and then, whuff!” he said, throwing his hands in the air. “I never see her again.”
“That doesn’t mean the next one’ll do the same,” said Naomi. “Look at me. I stayed, didn’t I?”
The bell over the door jangled and a quartet of young women entered. Cindi recognized two of them. This was a good feeling. It warmed her. She was getting to know people, getting to know the town. She waited until Naomi had taken their orders, then, “Listen,” she said, “maybe we can get together later? And finish the interview?”
“I thought we were finished,” said Naomi.
“Let me buy you a coffee after work,” said Cindi. “Or a beer, if you like. Please?”
Naomi considered this for a moment. “I’ll think about it.”
***
Eddie Henderson came into Alberg’s office fast, bursting through the doorway, almost as tall as Sid but a whole lot thinner. Her face was flushed. She stood there looking at him, temporarily incapable of speech.
“You found her,” said Alberg quietly.
The sergeant nodded.
“Buried in the clearing.”
She nodded again.
***
Denise put the towels and her new sweats through the wash, and when they were dry, she hung the clothes in her side of the closet and folded the towels.
She opened the door to the linen closet and slid the towels onto the top shelf, which was empty: bath sheets on the left, large towels on the right, hand towels and facecloths in the middle. It was very satisfying to see that shelf filled.
Denise checked the time. Four o’clock. Lots of time for a bath before going to Penny and Harold’s for dinner.
She reached for the interior knob of the linen closet door, glancing casually in that direction as she did so...and somehow she knew immediately that she should not have done this. She tried to shout, No! in an effort to distract herself, to cause her head to turn quickly in another direction—
But it was too late. She had seen it.
She hissed, and clapped her hand over her mouth.
Denise couldn’t scream, couldn’t run, could only stand there, paralyzed, unable to look away from the bloody handprint that shrieked at her from the inside of her linen closet door.
Chapter 12
IT WAS VERY late when Eddie parked in front of her house. She got out of the car, locked it, and walked swiftly to the front door. She was physically tense, and shook her hands energetically in front of her as she walked, trying to dispel some of her energy and frustration. If she had had her way she would still be at work; god, she’d probably have stayed the whole damn night, if they’d let her.
Eddie knew about excess, and obsession. She had been cautioned about them, and genuinely wanted to establish more control over herself in these matters. But she felt proprietary about this homicide. She had written her report, made sure the various aspects of the investigation were well underway, and was poring over the report of the earlier homicide when she had been reminded that her shift was up.
“Okay, right,” she had said.
And later: “Yup. Just give me a minute.”
“Sergeant,” Alberg had finally snapped at her. “Get the hell home.”
She unlocked the door and went inside, stripping off her jacket and tie, and headed for the kitchen, where she grabbed a bottle of lime-flavored mineral water from the fridge and drank from it greedily. Then she went into the bedroom, where she took off her white shirt and the dark blue pants with the wide yellow stripe: both were crumpled and dusty. She’d take them and the jacket to the cleaners on the way to work in the morning. She put on shorts, a T-shirt, socks, and sneakers, and stepped onto her treadmill, after putting the water bottle and a hand towel on a table within her reach.
She’d been working out for less than fifteen minutes when the phone rang. When she picked it up she saw the flashing light—the answering machine had recorded three messages. “Damn,” she said under her breath.
“Where’ve you been?” said Frank Henderson plaintively.
“Sorry, Dad,” said Eddie, wiping her face with the towel. “Had to work a bit late.”
“How are you enjoying your house?” he asked.
She had bought the house, instead of renting something, because her father had told her it would be a good investment.
“You can get into the market now,” he had said when she told him about the promotion and her new posting. “This is good news, Edwina. The Sunshine Coast’s about the only place on the Lower Mainland you can afford,” he’d said. “It’s a perfect opportunity.”
In Burnaby she had lived in a rented apartment, which had been fine with Eddie, for whom domicile wasn’t terribly important.
“It’s fine,” she said. “I like it.”
“And the job?” he said.
“I don’t think my new staff sergeant likes me much,” she confessed.
“What do you mean? What did he say to you?” asked her father indignantly.
“Nothing, Dad. It’s just a feeling.” She climbed back on the treadmill.
“I’m sure you’re mistaken, Eddie. And even if you’re right—you can come on a bit strong, after all—well, he’ll get over it.”
He didn’t ask her about her day and she didn’t volunteer anything. They didn’t discuss her work. Her father was a bank manager and had never understood Eddie’s desire to become a cop. It had developed during her adolescence, which occurred without incident; that is, she maneuvered through it without angering either her parents or her teachers. Her attention was always focused on what was to come afterward. She was impatient to get there, and worked hard so that when she did arrive she would have choices. Although she knew from junior high school that she wanted to be a police officer, she hadn’t decided how to go about this. Should she become a lawyer first? Or get some kind of science degree? In the end, she decided to get a basic bachelor’s degree and then apply for admission to the RCMP training academy in Regina: she wanted to serve with a federal force, doing police work in more than one part of the country.
Her high schoo
l was host to a series of resident cops during her last two years there, when there were starting to be lots of drugs around. She watched them intently but they never noticed this because she hadn’t reached her full height yet, nor had she filled out as her mother kept promising she would. Eddie was on the girls’ basketball team, and although she got good marks, she was casual about her academic achievements, so most people liked her. But the cops, they didn’t even see her. They saw only the guys who were the troublemakers, and the girls with shiny hair and big boobs who sashayed slowly past them, offering oblique glances and crooked smiles: the cops’ eyes followed these girls helplessly. Edwina laughed to herself, watching this, and felt enormously free, knowing she could smoke dope or carry a knife around in her backpack and the cops would never know. You had to be aware of someone, in order to suspect them. She also knew that the guys whom the cops had decided were the troublemakers were not the only troublemakers in the school.
“How’s the unpacking going?” asked her dad.
Eddie reached for the water bottle and took a swig, then looked wearily at the boxes that crowded the bedroom, some of which had been opened and partially emptied. Their flaps sprawled, gaping, and packing paper littered the floor around them. Eddie had been dipping into them as she needed things. The iron, for instance. She had needed the iron that morning, and since she had never gotten around to listing which things had been packed in which boxes she had had to tear open several before coming across the iron, which had been packed with a carton of laundry soap, a container of bleach, the battered pink telephone with the long cord, a small lamp, and a skipping rope.
“It’s going as you’d expect,” she said defensively, striding on the treadmill, beginning to get out of breath.
“Mmmm.”
“For pete’s sake, Dad, you know me. I’m trying to get up to speed on the casework here.” She didn’t tell him about the homicide. “And this place is no fun to come home to empty.”
