Long Gone Man

by Phyllis Smallman

  Singer must have made some small sound, alerting the man in the kitchen to her presence. He turned and Singer moved away in astonishment, putting her weight on her left foot. It crumpled under her. Sliding down the wall, groping for something to break her fall, her eyes were still focused on the man already coming towards her. About twenty, with black hair and eyes, his features were fine, almost sharp. Slick, that was the word to describe him; handsome in an old-time matinee idol way.

  Lauren followed the man into the hall, pushing him aside and dropping to her knees beside Singer.

  “What happened?” Lauren asked.

  “Forgot about the foot, tried to stand on it.” Singer clutched the robe closed. “Help me up.” While she spoke to Lauren, Singer watched the stranger.

  “Can I do anything?” he asked.

  “No,” Singer said too loudly. “No.” She put up her hand to keep him away.

  “All right, don’t get your tail in a twist.” He stepped back.

  “Singer?” Lauren read the revulsion on Singer’s face and swung to look at the man. She said, “Go back to the kitchen, Ian.”

  Ian hesitated.

  Singer watched the handsome young man as if he was a dangerous snake that had slithered into the kitchen.

  “Go,” Lauren repeated.

  Singer put out a hand to Lauren. “Help me up.”

  Lauren put her arm under Singer’s shoulder and, with Singer pushing with her good right leg, heaved Singer to her feet.

  Lauren picked up the cane and said, “Lean on me.”

  Slowly they made their way to a barstool at the counter. By the time they got her settled, sweat was beaded across Singer’s forehead.

  “This is Ian Pye,” Lauren said, helping Singer adjust the housecoat. “He wanted to meet you.”

  “Hi.” Ian stuck out a hand.

  Singer held up her bandaged hands.

  “Oh yeah, right, sorry. Lauren told me about your mishap. These roads can be treacherous.”

  “Not just the roads,” Singer replied.

  Lauren turned away and went back to the stove, while Ian sat down on a stool beside Singer.

  “Dad said you had a great song. I’d love to hear it.”

  Singer held up her hands again.

  His eyes went from Singer to Lauren, but Lauren offered no help. “Just really,” he gave a hapless shrug, “wanted to hear your music.”

  Ian hitched his stool closer to Singer. “I sing and play bass guitar. Had a group back in Toronto but it folded in May.” His tongue slipped across his full top lip. “Came out here to work with Uncle John, he was really helping me and he was going to introduce me around.”

  His eyes flicked to Lauren again, but she continued to ignore him. “The thing is I really need some good, original material. We haven’t come up with anything decent, and you can’t just cover other people’s stuff. That’s what I told Uncle John. I need one big song.”

  “I haven’t got it.”

  The anger in Singer’s voice got Lauren’s attention. “Singer’s kind of tired. It’s been a bad couple of days.” Lauren took off her oven mitt and edged towards the door. “We’ll talk later, okay, Ian?”

  “Sure,” he said, but he didn’t move. “I could just take it and play it for myself.”

  “No,” Singer barked. “Never.”

  “Okay,” he said, surprise chasing hurt and disappointment across his face. “It probably isn’t that good anyway.” Some small social grace kicked in and he added, “I mean for us. We need something edgy.”

  Lauren picked Ian’s flashlight up off the table. “Better go, Ian.” She opened the patio door. “We’ll talk later.”

  Like a dog with a bone, he held on. “I thought you could use the money.”

  “Good night,” Lauren said. She held out the flashlight.

  Still Ian was slow to move. When he finally stepped outside, he peered back at Singer, hoping she might relent. Lauren handed him the flashlight and slid the door shut, then locked it. Ian stood just outside, gazing in. Lauren waved to him and returned to the sink. Singer watched as Ian’s light flicked on and he sloped away.

  When the security light went dark, Singer burst out, “Don’t you know who that is?”

  “Sure, Ian Pye.”

  “Ian,” Singer said. “Ian,” she said again, louder this time. “Ian is the Scottish name for John.” Singer laughed. “Johnny Vibald’s chickens finally came home to roost, big time.”

  Lauren froze. Her head came up. “What are you saying?”

  Singer gave a huge sigh. “Nothing for you to worry about, but I’ve been thinking it might be time for me to move on.”

  “Will the Mounties let you?”

  Singer shrugged.

  “So you’re going to run out and leave me.”

  “An unexpected trip down the mountain changed my mind about staying.”

  “Hang in until after the funeral.”

  “When’s that?”

  “Don’t know. Corporal Duncan told me today that she’d call me when the coroner releases John’s body.” Lauren went to the stove and started lifting lids and checking the contents of pots. “But I called the funeral home this afternoon.” She stirred the contents of a pan. “I have to go and pick out a casket.”

  “Make it a cheap one,” Singer said. “It’ll suit him.”

  The lid clattered back on the pot. “Are you going to show Ian your music?”

  “Hell no. I’d burn it before I’d let anything go to one of them.”

  “Good,” Lauren said.

  Singer watched Lauren take down plates and glasses from the cupboard, but her brain was arranging a list of possibilities. She decided she’d been rather stupid since arriving on Glenphiddie, letting her hate get in the way of her good sense. Her actions had made her a target. She went over her options in her mind.

  “Earth to Singer.” Lauren slid a steaming plate onto the bar in front of Singer. “Go anywhere interesting?”

  “Just trying to find the thorn among the flowers.” Singer leaned in over the plate and breathed deeply.

  “Moroccan chicken and rice,” Lauren said and picked up Singer’s knife and fork.

  “Smells heavenly.” It had been a long time since the muffin the girl had brought to the table with their coffee. “Have the police finished with Johnny’s office?”

  “Yes.” Lauren turned the fork around and helped Singer grasp it between her unbandaged thumb and wrapped fingers.

  “So we can go in there?”

  “Why would you want to?” Lauren moved the plate closer. “What do you think you’ll find in there?”

  “I want to see if there’s anything . . . maybe Michael’s original music.”

  “John would have been crazy to keep that.”

  “Let’s see anyway.”

  Lauren scraped her hair back from her forehead. “Man, I can’t believe this. I was married to a murdering drug dealer. The papers will love this.”

  Singer blew on the steaming food.

  “They’re already circling. One from Victoria showed up while you were sleeping and I was in the garage. Scared the hell out of me. I asked him politely to leave, told him it was private property.” Lauren went to the fridge for water. “Seems he wasn’t too impressed with private property, or the police, so I told him to leave in language he could understand—but nothing he’d be able to use in a family paper.”

  “Sorry I missed your fine selection of words.”

  “When he left, I got Foster Utt to come up and park his truck at the end of the driveway. Foster will enjoy throwing his weight around and being in charge. He’ll keep them away from the house.”

  Just as Lauren predicted, Foster Utt was enjoying his contact with the press. “My dad owned all this land,” he told the reporters, who stood stamping
their feet and shivering in the frigid night air, only half listening to Foster. “Three hundred acres—John Vibald stole it all from my father.”

  The verb got the reporters’ attention. “Stole, what do you mean he stole it?” The photographer took a picture of Foster.

  “Well it was the same as stealing, paid nothing for it.” Foster went on to tell them that by rights the land should still belong to him.

  They listened for a bit, tried to ferret out anything Foster might know about John Vibald’s murder or any gossip about the family. Bitterness and hot air quickly grew stale. Bored with Foster’s whine, they got in their cars and drove away.

  “Bastards. If I had money they’d hang around. All they’re interested in is money.” He pulled a half-empty pint of whiskey from his pocket, uncapped it, and drank deeply. The liquid burned down his throat and warmed his belly. “This should all be mine. Bastards.”

  Now that John Vibald was dead, Foster figured Vibald’s pretty widow would be itching to get out of here, back to the bright lights.

  He was unscrewing the lid of the bottle again when a thought struck him. What if she didn’t sell? He heard her tell his mother that Glenphiddie should never be developed. He tightened the cap.

  Forty-two

  At the door to John’s office Lauren hesitated. She peered over her shoulder at Singer, who gave a little nod. Lauren pressed open the door. But still she didn’t enter. “I always hated coming in here. Now . . .” She rubbed her arm with her right hand. “It stinks of John. Can’t you smell it?”

  Singer pushed her aside and hobbled into the room.

  Lauren stayed at the door. “Do you think you’ll find anything the cops didn’t?”

  “I don’t know, but then, I’m hunting for different things.”

  On the desk was a small stack of papers, but Singer couldn’t pick them up with her bandaged hands. Using both hands, she took a pencil out of a holder and maneuvered it between the mitt of bandages and her thumb so she could use the eraser to slide the papers apart. The pile contained only bills—telephone, hydro, and one from the lumber company.

  “No way John would keep anything that incriminated him,” Lauren told her. “He was a bastard but he was a smart bastard.”

  Singer put the pencil through the handle of a drawer to open it. It revealed pens and a stapler among a jumble of office necessities. “Did John have a Rolodex?” She shoved the drawer closed with the back of her hand.

  “Yes, but the police took it.” Lauren took a hesitant step into the room. “They said I could get it back tomorrow so I can notify people of John’s death.” She went to the desk to join Singer.

  For an hour, Lauren and Singer read through letters and contracts and everything else that came to hand.

  Lauren picked file folders up off the floor beside her chair and came and got the ones Singer had dropped on the desk. Lauren opened the desk drawer and put the files away, then took out the last few remaining.

  Missy growled.

  “Shhh, Missy,” Lauren said and set the buff folders on the desk in front of Singer.

  Missy lifted her head off her paws and gave a sharp bark at the glass doors. Lauren made more shushing sounds, ignoring the dog.

  Outside, one of the security lights flicked on. Missy growled. The two women froze.

  Lauren said, “A deer, happens all the time.” But her voice had lost its assurance.

  Singer went back to scanning the page in her hands, lifting her eyes every few seconds to check out the night beyond the French doors. The contract she was looking at, between John and an entertainment agency, couldn’t hold her attention. She reread the page before she closed the file, set it aside, and opened the next one with the eraser.

  Singer said, “In a way, Johnny did pay for what he did to Michael. Johnny didn’t get to perform. His heart was still on stage, but his body was trapped here in the wrong place. That must have been its own kind of death.”

  “It wasn’t enough,” Lauren said. She closed a folder and set it on the floor beside her. “Is any of this helping?”

  “Not really, but it’s better than doing nothing.” Singer read the letter on the desk in front of her and then used the eraser to move it aside. “Johnny kept copies of every letter he sent out and received, and he kept in touch with a lot of people. Lately he’d been using his contacts for Ian, trying to get him tryouts but no luck. Johnny’s name didn’t carry the weight he thought it did.” Singer shuffled through several more letters before she asked, “Was Johnny planning a comeback?”

  Lauren lifted her eyes to Singer. “What?”

  “Seems he was trying to book venues across Canada, said he had a new group. Wasn’t getting much of a response.”

  “First I’ve heard of it,” Lauren said. “But then John and I weren’t exchanging anything much beyond snarls.”

  “Would the others know if he’d been planning a tour?”

  “Beats me.” She got to her feet and came to the desk. “I was out of the loop.”

  Lauren opened the bottom drawer of the desk and started going through it. “The stuff that man kept—maps of every state, souvenirs even, not to mention programs from every concert he ever saw.”

  “Probably kept them to steal ideas. Didn’t you say he had the band practicing?”

  “Yeah, since Ian has been on the island, but lately it seemed to have fallen apart. John and Ian were having lots of long conversations behind closed doors.”

  Missy’s head came up and she growled at her image in the glass. The women paid no attention.

  “He definitely had plans for Ian,” Singer said. “Johnny Vibes wanted to rise from the ashes on Ian’s coattails.” Singer had music scores in her hands. She read the lyrics and softly hummed the notes to herself. “Material seems to have been a big issue. Johnny never had any talent. In twenty years he never wrote one original line. He dated all this shit, but you don’t need a date; you could just play the song and know, based on what was hot that year. You’d be holding Johnny’s rendition in your hand. It all sounds just like someone else’s. That’s what he did, kept reinventing himself to be whatever was hot—hair rock, dry ice, crazy makeup and stunts, all that stuff, all about appearances not the music. Image was everything.”

  “Okay,” Lauren said, “I’ll bite. What’s hair rock?”

  “You know . . . guys with tight pants, platform shoes, and big hair.”

  Missy raised her head and gave a sharp yap.

  Beyond the glass, a shadow moved. Singer started, catapulting papers to the floor. “There’s someone out there.”

  Missy bolted to the French doors, barking loudly.

  Singer struggled to stand. “I saw someone.”

  Lauren hurried to where Missy stood rigid, barking out into the night. “Shush.” She ran her hand along the dog’s stiff back and then switched on the outside lights and opened the door.

  Yelping, Missy ran past Lauren into the night.

  “Missy, come back here,” Lauren called. And then she said, “Who’s there?”

  No answer.

  “Come on, we know you’re there. If you’re a reporter, I’ll sue your ass off if you take any pictures.”

  Silence. Not even a bark from Missy.

  Singer limped up behind Lauren and peered into the blackness. A cold, damp breeze blew through the open door.

  “Missy?” Lauren stepped over the sill. “Missy, get back here.”

  “Lauren, come in.” Singer reached out her arm. “Missy will come back. Come in.”

  Lauren stayed where she was.

  “Please,” Singer begged.

  Lauren looked over her shoulder at Singer and then stepped inside.

  “She’ll be fine,” Singer said and fumbled with the door, trying to shut it.

  A sharp cry came from out in the woods and then there was a piti
ful wail, abruptly cut off.

  Forty-three

  “Missy!”

  Lauren started outside, but Singer barred the exit with her arm. “We don’t know who’s out there.”

  Lauren pushed Singer aside and stepped out.

  “Wait!” Singer shouted. “There’s a killer still loose.”

  Lauren gave a startled gasp. “But Missy . . .”

  “She’ll come back.” Singer shuffled farther away from the door. “This may be just what someone wants, to separate us or to get us outside. Come in and close the door.”

  Once again, Lauren called to her dog, but only silence answered.

  “Lock the door.” Singer made her way to the middle of the room. “She’ll bark when she wants in. Please, Lauren.”

  Lauren stepped back over the threshold. “Are you sure you saw someone?” She locked the door.

  “Just for a second.”

  “It could have been an animal.”

  “It was no animal. It was big, big like someone . . . a man, not small like an animal. What I saw was a pale face on a tall shadow, moving and indistinct. The person out there didn’t want to be seen.”

  Normally Lauren never bothered to close the drapes, but normal had disappeared with John’s death. Now she drew the window coverings closed but remained standing by them, holding on to the velvet fabric, waiting to hear Missy yapping to be let in. “Silly dog. Thinks she’s a Great Dane.”

  Someone was out there watching them, and it made Singer feel vulnerable and afraid. She fumbled with the housecoat, trying to draw it tighter around her. The bandages made Singer’s hands clumsy and the fine, wool material refused to co-operate.

  “Maybe it was one of those reporters,” Lauren said.

  “Did you hear a car?”

  “No, you can’t hear a thing through log walls.”

  “So who’s out there, and how did they get up the drive?”

  Lauren released the curtain. “Assuming Foster is still blocking the drive, if you really wanted to sneak up on the house, you could leave your car on the road and walk up through the woods. Or you could just give Foster twenty bucks and walk up the drive.”