The Ruinous Sweep

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  “There, there,” said Jilly.

  But “there, there” wasn’t going to cut it with the baby. “I’m going to try to put her down,” said Jilly, getting to her feet.

  “I should probably go,” said Bee, making as if to stand.

  “No,” said Jilly, fussing with the child. “I mean, would you stay just a little longer?” She looked fleetingly at Bee.

  Bee nodded. She wasn’t sure she could stand up anyway. She was in shock.

  Jilly rocked the baby on her arm. Cassie’s face was red with the exertion of her displeasure at being woken up so abruptly. But already her eyelids were falling. “I’ll be back in just a minute,” said Jilly softly. “There’s something . . . Well, just wait, if you can.”

  So Bee waited and thought. Kali and Rory, the — what did Jilly call him? — the roisterer. Bee had never heard the word before. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. No signal. Not much of one anyway. She’d look up the word later, but she’d gotten the sense of the man from Jilly’s story. She imagined him as a brawler with a mean streak in him, a man capable of killing a dog out of spite.

  Then a thought came stealing into her brain, demanding her attention. Why had Jilly told her that story in the first place? Donovan had come out to the farm over a period of a couple of years, probably many, many times — times enough for he and Jilly to become fast friends. There were probably a hundred stories she could have told Bee about his visits if she’d wanted to wax nostalgic. And Bee had pretty well invited her to remember at will, wanting to hear anything about his past. But something had made Jilly recall this one horrible story of a little boy coming across a dead dog — a murdered dog. Murdered by the very man who now loomed large as a suspect, at least in Bee’s eyes, and despite Kali’s alibi. It seemed uncanny — too much of a coincidence.

  “You okay?”

  It was Jilly, staring at her, at Bee sitting on the edge of her chair, her hands gripping each arm as if she were about to catapult herself into action. Bee looked at her, not sure whether to trust her and not at all sure why she would think that. But she had to. Looking into Jilly’s eyes, she had to. There was some link there. Some connection.

  She stood up, dropped the journal back in her handbag, rubbing her hands down the front of her skirt nervously. “I was wondering why you told me about Rory — about him killing your dog and Turn finding it like that.”

  Jilly’s face seemed to quake a bit. “I knew something was up,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Jilly shook off whatever it was that had made her grimace. “You’re upset,” she said. “You want to go.”

  “Yes — I mean, I think I should get back to the cops about Kali and Rory. But I want to know what you meant when you said you knew something was up.”

  Jilly bent down, picked up Bee’s bag, and looked at it. “‘Theater is My Bag,’” she read on the bag’s black sides. She smiled and handed it to Bee. Then she took her by the elbow. “I’ll walk you to your car,” she said.

  So they walked, and Bee waited and Jilly did not speak and Spinach came, tail wagging, and walked with them, a loyal escort. They reached the car and, spontaneously, Jilly hugged Bee. Held her, then quickly let her go.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “It’s all right. I just . . .”

  “I’m getting to it,” said Jilly. “But it’s hard. Hard to say.” The sound of the tractor suddenly filled Bee’s ears again. It must have been there all along, but now it sounded as if it were coming their way. Jilly noticed it, too. She put her hand to her eyes to block out the sun and looked out to the western field. She looked at her wristwatch. Hubby coming home for lunch? thought Bee. Then she looked at Jilly and there was something like fear in her eyes. Not fear, exactly, Bee thought, but what . . . disapproval?

  “I knew something had happened,” she said. “I mean, before I heard any news of it, I just sort of felt it.”

  She looked toward the house — no, toward the garden between the house and the long shed. Bee watched her face. There was something in her eyes, a mystery there, and Bee remembered what Trish had said about her being magical.

  “I was aware . . . I guess that’s the word for it . . . I was aware of Al being here.” She looked into Bee’s eyes as if for a confirmation.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Friday. Last Friday evening. I was just cleaning up in the kitchen and I started thinking of Al. God, I hadn’t thought of him in ages, but suddenly it was as if he was filling up my senses. I actually stopped washing the dishes and headed out to the yard as if I’d heard someone there. Then when I came in I just stared at the kitchen table. Matt was there doing the books, paying some bills or something. And Al was there, too.”

  Bee went cold. “I don’t understand.”

  Jilly wagged her head from side to side. “That makes two of us,” she said. “It just happens to me sometimes.”

  “Like a . . . ghost?”

  “Sort of. A presence. And then later, after we’d gone upstairs, I heard something. At first I thought it was the baby. I felt as if I’d heard a voice. I went to the window. There was no one there, but . . .” She glanced at Bee, then looked away.

  “This is pretty weird,” said Bee.

  “Don’t I know it!”

  “Go on.”

  “Matt and I were getting ready for bed and I said something to him. ‘Did you hear that?’ I said. But he hadn’t heard anything. I listened and . . . well, eventually I just had to come downstairs and check. I went out in just my nightshirt and robe. It was raining. I stood on the porch and looked out toward the woods. I felt somehow as if there was this boy coming through those woods, coming to the house, needing me in some way. I panicked a bit. I mean, I couldn’t tell Matt. He’s a wonderful husband, solid and trustworthy and loving. I didn’t want him to see me in the state I’d gotten myself into.” She brought her palms together and raised them to her face, as if in prayer. She bowed her head, closed her eyes. “I know you think this is nuts.”

  “Maybe I do,” said Bee. “I don’t know what to think.”

  “I’m not the hysterical type,” said Jilly. “It was just this feeling, is all.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went inside and tried to phone Trish.”

  Bee was stunned. “You had her phone —”

  “No. I didn’t. I hadn’t seen her or talked to her in a donkey’s age. I got directory assistance, but there was no listing.”

  “They don’t have a landline. Anyway, they were out of town. She and Scott had gone camping.”

  Jilly nodded. She looked up into the deep-blue sky, took a big breath, and then returned her gaze to Bee. “Anyway, for what it’s worth. I wanted you to hear that. God knows why.” She threw her hands out to her sides.

  Bee wasn’t religious, but somehow Jilly’s last comment seemed as good a note to end on as anything. “I suppose he does,” she said.

  They looked at each other for one more moment and Jilly’s eyes seemed to say, This is our secret. Bee nodded — wasn’t sure whether to hug the woman back or shake hands or what. In the end, she just fished in her pocket for her keys and headed around the car. She was opening the door when Jilly spoke again.

  “Oh, and one more thing,” she said. “Rory wouldn’t call himself an archer. Around these parts he’d be called a bowhunter.”

  Bee glanced down at her cell phone on the passenger seat. Only one bar. She needed to phone Stills, or maybe Bell. Somebody. Bell was more approachable, but Stills was the one she wanted to impress. Then again, Stills was the one who would be more likely to ream her out for pulling a Nancy Drew.

  She wanted desperately to be back in Ottawa, but she turned west on the highway because Perth was a lot closer than Ottawa and the sooner she talked to the cops the better. As she recalled, there was a long stretch of nothing between here and home, so Perth was the best option — or earlier, if possible, wherever she could get service.

  She t
hought about Jilly’s utterly strange confession. “I see dead people,” Bee said to herself with full-on irony, but she couldn’t dismiss the woman that easily. And come to think of it, she hadn’t really said she saw Al or Donovan, only that she sensed them. Very strange. Bee recalled Jilly’s initial diffidence toward her, as if she didn’t really want to see Bee at all. As if she didn’t want to admit to her or anyone that she had this . . . what was it: a gift, a curse?

  “ESP,” said Bee out loud. “Do we believe in such things, Toddy?” The car was too busy trying to keep up to speed to answer.

  Around these parts he’d be called a bowhunter.

  There had been a look in Jilly’s eye when she said those words, as if this wasn’t just some wayward thought. Which is when Bee went cold all over. With a quick glance at the rearview mirror, she swung the car onto the shoulder and slowed to a stop. She grabbed her bag up from the floor on the passenger side of the car and dragged out her journal. She flipped it open to Turn’s last words. Not really words at all but an attempt at words — not just some random sound.

  Bo . . . Hun . . .

  “Oh Jesus,” she said. She grabbed hold of the wheel. “Oh Jesus.”

  A truck flew by, rocking the car and making Bee shout with surprise. She put her hand on her heart and waited a moment. Then she checked the road over her shoulder, put on her blinker, and pulled back out onto the highway.

  Toddy the Turtle dawdled along, a dusky sage vision of loveliness on this sunny day, but her driver was not in a lovely state. Not aware of anything but the presence suddenly in her life of a man — a name, at least — she had never heard of before last night.

  A history of violence. Wasn’t that the expression? Rory Tulk had a record with the local cops. He killed things. He used to be married to someone who left him to live with Al McGeary. Talk about motivation. Okay, it was — she counted on her fingers — ten years ago that Jilly kicked Rory out. But still, he was a hothead.

  And he was going out with Kali O’Connor.

  A car beeped as it pulled out to pass; she turned to look, prepared to apologize. But the face in the window was smiling with a big thumbs-up. “Cute car!” the woman was saying. Bee couldn’t hear her, but she could read her lips and she was used to it.

  Kali, née Kelly. Bee had met her just the once. It was at a ball game early last fall, the semifinals. Donovan had tried and tried to get his dad to come and see him play. She’d once suggested that at seventeen he was too old to need his father’s support. Wrong. And when she told her mother about it later, her mother said, “Beatrice, my darling, some of my clients in their fifties are still trying to win the love of their parents — even when the parent in question is deceased.”

  Anyway, at the game, Kali had come along with Al, and it was a rare enough sighting that Bee watched her across the stands as avidly as any bird-watcher scoped an accidental tourist. She was sexy in a slightly sleazy kind of way. Cigarette thin, big boobs, hair and lots of it, as red as cinnamon hearts. Not exactly trailer trash — a bit more style than that in her getup — but kind of used up. “Ridden hard and put away wet,” Donovan had said later, an old expression he’d picked up somewhere. “Eww!” Bee had responded. But yeah, that was the impression of the woman. Except, up close, when they finally met, introduced reluctantly by Donovan after the game — up close there was something in Kali’s eyes, a kind of green longing that made you want to like her. Her lips were caked with lipstick and would have been sensuous if they weren’t cracked. And her face would have been almost glamorous if it weren’t for the beer she was wearing inside her flesh. “I feel sorry for her,” Bee had said to Donovan driving home that evening. Then she berated herself. “God, what a patronizing thing to say. Sorry.” And Donovan had said, “No, feel sorry for her all you want; she’s with my father.”

  And then she wasn’t.

  Bee glanced down and saw the phone spike two, three bars, four. She glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that she had a trail of six or seven vehicles — too hard to pull off the highway onto the shoulder now — scary. Then she saw a sign up ahead: SUGAR VALLEY ROAD. Aha!

  She threw on her turn signal, slowed down, and made the turn left off of the highway. Good.

  But Sugar Valley Road wasn’t wide enough for stopping. There were no shoulders at all. And soon enough the pavement gave way to a dirt road that wound through wooded land and Bee realized she had made a mistake. “Idiot!” she said to herself. “No problem,” herself responded, “just find a driveway to turn around in.” She passed a sign tacked to a tree: DRIVE CAREFULLY, ELVES CROSSING.

  “Now look what you’ve gotten us into,” she said in her most peevish voice. “Stick with me,” herself responded. As if she had any choice.

  Meanwhile, this was the place — or near enough — where Donovan’s family had fallen apart. And from what Jilly had told her, he would have come here with her, as a middle-schooler, until his life got shaken up yet again, when Jilly came to her senses and got rid of Al.

  Donovan had liked coming out here, according to Trish. What wasn’t there to like? The road was beautiful. She hadn’t seen any houses yet, mind you. Not even elfin ones. But here she was, not five minutes from the highway and she felt already as if she had entered a fairyland. The thought made her shudder.

  “This is no time for lollygagging,” she said. One of her father’s words.

  The hilly, winding road straightened out and up ahead she could see a break in the canopy of trees. Then there was a driveway with a sign beside it on the left. A fairly big sign that read: WELCOME TO SUGAR VALLEY SCHOOL. There were elves painted on the sign, presumably the ones she was supposed to avoid hitting. She slowed down to look at the sign. One elf was peeking out from behind the S. Another one was sitting on the word “Valley” so that her legs made the L’s. A third elf was holding up the word “School.”

  “Cute,” said Bee.

  The road widened here, so instead of turning left into the school driveway, she pulled over onto the right verge and stopped. She didn’t turn off the motor, not right away. She looked around for signs of something more dangerous than elves, orcs maybe, but all she saw was gentle meadowland and, past the school and down a hill, the first habitations she’d laid eyes on since she left the main road. The nearest house she could see could easily have been a hobbit house. It was made of fieldstone and had a high peaked roof, a turret, and a chimney that looked to be straight out of a picture book. “Oh, Toddy,” she said, patting the dashboard. “I do believe you’ve found the place you belong.” She smiled and turned off the motor.

  As soon as the engine stopped, she heard the wind, and then she heard, on the wind, the sounds of children. She was directly across from the school’s driveway and there were children out playing. It was recess, she guessed — correction, lunch hour. The morning had flown by. She cracked her window and the shouts and laughter seeped in. From where she was sitting, she could only see a dozen or so kids. Perhaps that was all there were. It was such a bucolic sight, and the happy sound eased her anxiety. And best of all, her phone was still registering four bars!

  She dove her hand into her bag and dug out her journal. Tucked in the back were the detectives’ business cards. She considered for a moment who she’d phone but knew it had to be Stills. It was Stills she wanted off her back. And Stills was the lead on the case. She was the one who needed convincing that Donovan was not guilty of anything. She picked up her phone and began to punch in the number, but her progress was interrupted by a bump outside the car. She looked up in time to see a soccer ball ricochet off the car’s side and bounce out into the middle of the road. Looking up, she saw a boy, maybe eight, running down the hill toward the escaped ball. Behind him a woman appeared and through cupped hands shouted, “Caleb, do not go out on the road!” Caleb stopped immediately. Good little elf. “I’ll be right there,” the woman said. Was she their teacher? Bee wondered. She looked lovely. Older than most teachers were anymore, but with the kindest face you co
uld imagine. Her immediate time was taken up by a little girl who had come crying to her with a bloody shin. Meanwhile, Caleb waited patiently, not five yards from the soccer ball and with not a car in sight other than Toddy the Turtle. He was gazing at the car with rapt attention. Ogling it. Well, Bee could solve the soccer ball issue. She stepped out of the car, looked both ways, just to model good traffic safety for young Caleb, and then marched over to the runaway ball.

  “Catch,” she said, and lobbed it to him.

  He grabbed it happily. “Thank you, miss,” he said. God, he’s cute. He turned and headed back up the drive toward the school, then he stopped and turned again. “I really like your car!” he said.

  Bee gave him a thumbs-up. He waved and ran to join his classmates and she returned to her car and the half-dialed number. The phone rang and went to a message. Inspector Callista Stills was not able to come to the phone. Bee was invited to leave a detailed message or, if it was an emergency, to phone 911. Well, it wasn’t an emergency, but she hadn’t thought about leaving a message. So she pushed the little phone icon to end the call. Now she could try Jim Bell, she thought. So she tried with the same result. Damn! Okay, leave a message at least, but not with Bell. So she phoned Stills a second time, and when the beep came inviting her to speak, she said who was calling and began her message: “You need to check on someone named Rory Tulk, who lives in the Perth area. He has a history of violence and a police record and he is currently going out with Kali O’Connor. He and Al McGeary have a past. Call me, please, as soon as you get this and I’ll fill you in on the rest. Thanks.”

  She ended the call. She felt she should say, “Over and out” or “Roger that” or some other official sounding thing. She clasped the cell in both hands and let it sink to her lap. She breathed out, long and slow. Then her head drooped and she closed her eyes, letting the wind slipping in the open window ruffle the edges of her hair. When she opened her eyes, there was a woman standing beside the car, the fingers of one hand resting on the hood. It was Kali O’Connor.