Hearts of Stone

by Brad Smith

  There seemed to be a gray area regarding Frances and the insurance policy. Technically she was the only one listed in the paperwork. The company didn’t know what to do, or at least they were pretending that. So far, Carl had gone through two agents and the office manager. After a certain amount of doublespeak, they eventually all maintained that things were moving forward.

  Next he would call the two detectives, first Dunbar and then Pulford. Dunbar always took time to talk, and stayed on the line for as long as Carl wanted. He didn’t, however, have much to report. He said more than once that they were waiting for a break.

  ‘In cases like these, someone almost always talks,’ he told Carl one morning.

  Almost always, he’d said.

  Pulford was less accommodating. She was polite but to the point and after a few minutes on the line Carl was usually left with the distinct impression that he was bothering her.

  ‘We’ll call as soon as we have something to tell you,’ she’d say. When she said it, Carl knew that the conversation was at a conclusion.

  The media was still covering the story, even though there was little to report after the initial deluge. The police weren’t saying much, which was only natural since there was nothing new to say. Reporters and news teams showed up at the farm off and on for the first couple of days, seeking comments from Carl, or Norah in the warehouse. Neither had much to tell them, for the same reasons that the cops didn’t. Carl in particular wanted nothing to do with them. They seemed determined to make a soap opera of the incident, to have him talk about himself and Frances. One reporter even asked pointed questions about Carl’s possible involvement with Stacy. Carl had asked the man to leave and ended up escorting him to his car by the scruff of the neck. That made the paper.

  Virtually all of the neighbors within a couple of miles had been interviewed, or at least given a chance to comment on what they’d seen or expound upon whatever theory they might have about the incident. There was a prevailing feeling of both fear and outrage in the community. However, as the days passed, it was replaced at least in part by a sense that the perpetrators had flown the coop. Nobody seemed to be of the opinion that they might be next in line, although most of the older farmers in the area had their shotguns loaded and ready in case they were wrong.

  One of the newspapers, a tabloid from Rose City, ran a piece in its weekend edition focusing on Carl and his past. The piece went on about his troubles with the law, the Sanderson case and the fact that he had spent time in prison on two occasions. It suggested somewhat cryptically that the police were concentrating on Carl’s history while investigating the home invasion. The theory was reinforced by a statement from Pulford that they were ‘not ruling anything out’. The tabloid did not bother to try to get a comment of any kind from Carl before running the piece. Not that he would have given them anything. After reading the story and tossing it in the trash, Carl had a notion to call Pulford to ask her if she wanted to expand on what she had said. He decided against it though; it wouldn’t accomplish a thing.

  Every few days he would call Kate in Scotland. She’d ask about any developments and Carl would have to tell her there were none and then hear the disappointment and frustration in her voice. He considered not calling as often but he was afraid that she would then fly home, suspecting something was the matter. He still didn’t want her near, not while the three men were at large. It was unreasonable to think they would go after her, but in this Carl chose to be unreasonable.

  Mid-mornings he drove to Rose City to see Frances. There was no change in her condition, although it seemed that each day she had more tubes and lines running into her. IV feeding, saline solution, electrolytes. The bruise on her face was fading while her skin was growing paler. Some days Carl would sit close to her, holding his breath, staring at her closed eyelids as if willing them to open.

  It was surreal, seeing her like this. She was the most capable person Carl had ever known. The most alive. Nothing fazed her, in work or play. She had an analytical mind when it came to the business and seemed to know instinctively what would work and what would not. On the more impractical side, she and Carl had made love in nearly every room of the old farmhouse as well as in the hay mow several times, and once in the warehouse atop some cardboard cartons. Just a month ago she had mentioned that they would need to ‘break in’ the sugar shack as well, once it was built.

  For that reason, and others, he would tell her daily about the progress on the cabin, and give her whatever news Norah had about the business. In Carl’s mind he could see her, at any moment, getting out of the bed and returning to the farm, to work, to play. To her life, and his. It was impossible that she would not.

  Before leaving he would talk to the nurse on duty, or Harkness, if he was available. They had nothing more for him than did the cops. Everything was wait and see. Carl felt as if he’d been waiting too long for too little development. Close to two weeks had passed. Carl was by nature an impatient man. Sometimes that impatience had served him well but most times it had not. In this case, it didn’t really matter. His level of patience would not impact the investigation. Or so he thought.

  The only time he relaxed was when he got back to the farm, drove the tractor and the wagon with the tools to the bush lot and went to work on the cabin there. At first he was able to get by using just his right hand. Nailing the joists and the boards for the floor was easy enough; he had gravity to keep it all in place. The walls were a different story. A few days after his surgery he ditched the heavy wrap on his shoulder and made do with a sling that enabled him at least to use the fingers of his left hand, which helped considerably. He could put the planks in place and then prop them there with his left hand and knee while using the nail gun with his right hand. It took twice as long as it normally would but he didn’t mind. What else was he going to do?

  By the end of the week he had the floor finished and the four walls up. He roughed in a door and two windows, all on the south side. Earlier that fall Frances had shown him some windows she’d stored in the machine shed, left over from a project her father had started years earlier, and Carl now hauled them back to the shack and installed them. Coming home from Rose City on Thursday morning he’d picked up hinges and a latch and that afternoon he built a plank door for the cabin and hung it.

  Friday afternoon he finished the double plate atop the walls. Next up were the rafters. They would be tricky, handicapped as he was. He considered asking Josh to help him out on the following day – the Saturday – but he decided against it. This was his project. His and Frances’s actually, but until she was better, it belonged to Carl.

  He nailed two-by-fours on a vertical on each end of the building, then calculated the pitch to get the height for the ridge board. He cut the board from a length of two by eight and tacked it approximately in position on one end, then moved the ladder to the other to do the same. Checking the height and the level, he went back and forth, moving the board slightly each time until he had it right.

  It was time-consuming climbing up and down the ladder, moving the ridge board with one hand, but Carl was fine with that. It gave him purpose, and purpose was all he had for now. It was nearly dark when he finished. With the board in place he took a measurement and cut the first rafter. He tried it on either side of the board and it fit perfectly, the birdsmouth tight against the plate. He would cut the rest in the morning. Before leaving he determined how much steel he would need for the roof, using the cut rafter for reference. It would take a few days for the steel to arrive and he needed to order it. After making his notes, he loaded his tools on to the wagon and headed for home.

  As he entered the motorhome, he took the cell phone from his coat pocket and saw that there was a message waiting. The phone must have rung while he was driving the old Ferguson up the lane; he wouldn’t have heard it over the noise of the tractor. The number on the display was Dunbar’s. Carl’s pulse quickened at once. They’d found something.

  But they hadn’t. Dunb
ar was going away for the weekend, up north on a hunting trip, and he wanted Carl to know that he wouldn’t be reachable by phone. Carl appreciated the call but he was disappointed at the lack of news. He opened a beer and sat in the trailer, drinking and thinking about his reaction at the mere sight of Dunbar’s number on the phone. Thinking of how it was all out of his control, this thing that had happened to Frances and Stacy, and everything that had happened since. Or conversely, all that had not happened since. Maybe the police were making progress but not saying anything. Maybe they had suspects they were following. If so, Carl was out of the equation. His job was to wait, the one role he was most unsuited for. Wait on the cops, on the insurance company. Wait for Frances to wake up.

  Wait for something to happen.

  The waiting would be easier if Carl knew for a fact that something eventually would happen. But he didn’t know that. There were crimes that went unsolved forever. That was just a fact. But it was something he couldn’t bring himself to consider in this case. He felt as if he should be out there doing something to preclude that possibility, but he had no idea what that something might be. In truth there was nothing he could do, and so he spent his hours in the bush, trying not to dwell on that nothing.

  When he got up the next morning he drove to the lumber yard in Talbotville and ordered the steel for the roof. He had to choose a color and he settled on red. Frances would like a red roof, he thought. It would have to be cut to length at the fab shop and he was told it would take a week or so to come in. He also bought a new blade for his circular saw and a spare extension cord to use at the shack.

  From the yard he drove to the hospital, where he visited with Frances for a half hour. He was feeling strangely guilty about ordering the steel. Frances had been adamant about cedar shingles. But steel was the best way to go, Carl had told her. In the end, Frances was a pragmatist. Today he didn’t mention it to her. He didn’t say much at all, in fact, just sat there, watching her on the hospital bed, seeing her chest rise and fall, the movement so slight it hardly seemed to be there. He wondered if she was thinking in her state. Did she dream of waking up? Did she know how desperate Carl was for her to awake?

  As Carl was leaving, Norah came in. Carl was surprised to see her; she hadn’t mentioned that she was planning to visit.

  ‘I was in the city,’ Norah said.

  Carl glanced at Frances. ‘She doesn’t really respond, you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You were here before?’

  ‘A couple times,’ Norah said. ‘At night. I don’t stay long. Just, you know …’ – she hesitated – ‘… to say hello.’

  Back at the bush lot that afternoon, Carl cut the rafters – thirty-two in all – and nailed them in place one by one, awkwardly climbing the ladder clutching a rafter in one hand, with the air nailer clipped to his tool belt. It was mid-afternoon when he finished and there was thunder to the southwest, the clouds building there, stacking up like a great gray abutment atop the horizon. There would be rain by nightfall. Carl cut the fascia boards for the end rafters and nailed them and afterwards sat on the wagon to look at the building, which now actually resembled just that.

  Next he needed to nail two-by-four strapping along the rafters at two foot intervals. The steel roofing would be screwed to the strapping. It began to drizzle and as he sat there he thought back to the day when he and Frances had staked out the building site. How they had gone back and forth about the particulars. How many windows were required, where would the doorway face? Carl remembered how excited she was about the project, not just the making of maple syrup but the actual building of the cabin. He knew that she’d been looking forward to being back here, just the two of them. And so had Carl.

  And she had wanted a cedar roof. The fact was, she had never really asked anything of Carl. She had never asked anything and yet there was nothing Carl wouldn’t give to her. Then and now, there was nothing. So why would he deny her the roof she wanted? And why would he deny himself the chance to see her face when he finally brought her here to show her?

  Carl began to cry, and as he did the rain started to fall in earnest.

  He drove the tractor through the downpour up to the farm and parked it in the shed. He went into the motorhome and after changing into dry clothes he picked up the cell phone and punched in the number for the lumber yard. He needed to cancel the steel and order a couple of skids of cedar shingles. The phone lit up and then went dark. The battery was dead.

  Norah had been charging it for him in the warehouse every now and again. But it was Saturday and Norah wasn’t there. The yard would close in half an hour. Carl recalled that Norah had said that the phone could be charged in Frances’s car. He went out the door and trotted through the rain to the vehicle. Since the night of the fire Carl had not, for reasons he didn’t quite understand, gone anywhere near the car. The keys were in the ignition. Frances wouldn’t have thought to remove them the night she’d returned from the bank. Inside, Carl couldn’t locate the charger. He didn’t know what it looked like anyway. He knew that the police had searched the vehicle and found the cell phone along with Frances’s laptop. Maybe they’d taken the charger as well.

  Running back through the rain to the trailer, he suddenly remembered the bundle of Frances’s clothes that the nurse had given him at the hospital. Carl had stowed them in an overhead bin in the trailer, thinking he needed to have them cleaned, and then forgotten. He wondered if Frances might have kept the charger in her coat pocket.

  It turned out there was no charger there. There was some chewing gum, lip balm and a sales receipt. It was the receipt that drew Carl’s attention. It was from Fred’s Custom Meats in Talbotville for the Thanksgiving turkey Frances had bought. Scrawled across the paper in black marker was a number. A license plate number.

  Carl sat in the trailer for several minutes, holding the scrap of paper in his hand, considering it. Frances had picked the bird up on her way home that night. There were just two possibilities with regards to the plate number. The first was that she’d written it down at some point on her drive home from the butcher shop. That seemed unlikely. It seemed more plausible that she’d written it later, between leaving the house for the bank and returning with the money. Carl folded the paper carefully and put it in his shirt pocket.

  He walked over to his truck and headed for town.

  He had faith in Rufus Canfield being a creature of habit and that trust was duly rewarded. It was just past six as Carl walked into Archer’s bar to find the little lawyer propped on a bar stool at the far end of the room. It was happy hour on a Saturday and Rufus was drinking dark ale and talking basketball with a guy wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs jacket. Carl settled on a stool a few feet off and ordered a beer. His expression must have given him away because within minutes Rufus had concluded his conversation with the Leafs fan and moved over to sit beside Carl.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Carl put the receipt from the butcher shop on the bar. Rufus picked it up and examined it while Carl told him of how he’d found it, and of his theory about the number.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Rufus asked.

  ‘I’m thinking about the Dodge pickup parked down by the river that night,’ Carl said. ‘Lucy Bronson next door told the cops about it. Remember?’

  Rufus nodded. ‘The assumption was it belonged to a fisherman.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And it probably did belong to a fisherman,’ Rufus said. ‘Keep in mind, Carl, there are probably a million reasons for Frances to take down a license number. Maybe she spotted a reckless driver. Maybe somebody backed into her car and drove off. Maybe she – oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘You said a million but you only came up with two,’ Carl said. ‘I don’t see Frances writing down a number for a reckless driver. And if somebody backed into her, she’d chase them down. Besides, there’s no damage to her car.’

  ‘You have talked yourself into something here,’ Rufus warned. ‘Probably due
to the lack of anything happening with the investigation.’ He looked at the slip of paper again. ‘I agree, though. You should have the police run the number. Leave no stone unturned. Have you called them?’

  ‘No,’ Carl said. ‘Dunbar is away.’

  ‘What about the other one? What’s her name again?’

  ‘I’d rather deal with Dunbar.’

  ‘And when is he back?’

  ‘Not sure. He left a message and said he was going hunting for a few days.’ Carl watched Rufus for a moment. ‘You don’t have any way to run a plate number?’

  Instead of replying, Rufus signaled for the bartender to bring a round. Carl waited until the fresh draft arrived before asking the question again.

  ‘That’s something for the police to handle,’ Rufus said. ‘Not you or me. For a couple of reasons. One, they are the police. Two, there are issues here relating to invasion of privacy statutes.’

  ‘Invasion of privacy?’ Carl said. ‘I can’t believe you said that.’

  ‘I’m sorry. That was bloody stupid of me.’

  ‘You didn’t exactly answer the question,’ Carl said.

  ‘I believe I did.’

  ‘I asked if you have any way of running a plate number,’ Carl reminded him.

  Rufus had a long drink of ale. ‘Legally I do not have any method for running a plate number.’

  ‘We’re getting closer to an answer.’

  Rufus started to say something but then stopped. Getting to his feet, he drained his glass in three gulps and placed it on the bar. He put the receipt in his coat pocket. ‘I swear, one of these Saturdays I am going to head straight home at the end of the day.’

  The office was walking distance from the bar. They entered through a back door and Rufus turned on an overhead light. Carl remained on his feet while the lawyer went to sit behind the cluttered desk by the bay window that looked out over the street. He logged on to a computer and hit a few keys.