Sticks and Stones

by Janice Macdonald

  What if whoever took the journal could find Jane too? She should be warned, even if whoever had the journal wasn’t the sadist who had murdered Gwen.

  The little editor on my shoulder tsked at me as I went rummaging for my Yellow Pages, but I wasn’t in the mood to agree that this was precisely the sort of thing Steve would frown at. I shook off the feeling. It wasn’t as if I was actually thinking of tracking Jane the therapist down myself. I was just going to find out how easy it might be to do so.

  I flipped through to Physicians and Surgeons. Under Psychiatrists there was two-thirds of a column, none of them a Dr. Jane Anybody. I tried Psychologists, but they weren't listed. Nothing under Therapy either. I started flipping ­randomly, trying to think of another grouping. Under Marriage Counseling, I found two pages of listings, along with little advertisements. I liked the one that read Relationship Therapy: Before, During & After Marriage. I scanned all the names, finding only two Janes but several ads that read So and So and Associates, which didn’t bode well. I made a note of the two Janes.

  I was on a roll of sorts so I tried Counseling and again struck a windfall. Some of the marriage counselors were listed here again, as well as a few of the more marginal churches. There were several associations and networks listed too, making me think that perhaps Jane might be too layered in a bureaucracy to be discovered by some lunatic. Or me, for that matter.

  One of the Janes was listed in both places, but her address placed her somewhere on the north side of town. I had a vague recollection of Gwen mentioning not having a car after years of relying on one, so it occurred to me she’d be looking closer to campus for an appointment.

  I thumped the Yellow Pages closed and hit my head in the standard “I could have had a V-8” pose. Of course she’d look closer to campus. She’d be looking on the campus itself. I reached for last year’s Campus Directory (I keep the current one in the office). Under Student Services I found the Campus Helpline.

  On impulse, I picked up the phone and dialed the number. Several rings went by before someone answered. It didn't surprise me. The week before exams was bound to be a busy one for these guys.

  “Campus Help,” answered a friendly male voice.

  I hadn’t planned this call and wasn’t really sure what I wanted to say. I was so busy thinking, my tongue took over for me, and I listened to myself say, “Is Jane there?”

  “I’m afraid Jane’s not in for a couple of days.” The voice took on a saddened, friendly tone. “Can someone else help?”

  “Uh, no thanks. I’ll call back later. Oh, what are your hours?”

  “The phone line is twenty-four hours. If you want to come in and see a counselor, they make bookings from eight-thirty till four-thirty, and till eight p.m. on Thursdays. I can make a booking for you now. Have you seen Jane before?”

  “No, but I’d really like to talk to her.”

  “Could you make it in on Monday at ten-thirty?”

  What the heck was I doing?

  “Sure.”

  “And your name?”

  “My name?”

  “A first name will be fine. Everything here is confidential, don’t worry.”

  “Randy.”

  “Okay, Randy. Monday at ten-thirty. Until then, stay loose, you hear?”

  I put down the phone. Contrary to Steve’s wishes, I was sleuthing on his territory. I had no idea if this Jane was Gwen’s Jane, but I had a ten-thirty appointment with her on Monday.

  Well, there was something else to put on my to-do list.

  31

  STEVE CALLED THE NEXT MORNING TO SET A TIME for a late ­dinner, but he sounded rushed so I didn’t mention his case. I’d bring up the list of questions later in the evening. I was dawdling about, half-heartedly getting ready to catch the bus for downtown shopping when the phone rang again.

  It was Leo, wondering what I was up to. I admitted my Christmas shopping plans.

  “Am I on your shopping list, or can I tag along?”

  I laughed.

  “Very clever ploy, Leo. Were you one of those kids who shook all the presents under the tree?”

  “Of course not. I didn’t need to. I used to find them hidden away before they were wrapped.”

  We agreed to meet up at Audrey’s, one of my very favorite bookstores in town, at twelve-thirty and find a spot of lunch together. I figured that, if I timed things right, I could be down there early enough to pick up Leo’s present and have it bagged before he made it downtown.

  It was such a nice, bright day that I decided against waiting for a bus, and headed for the High Level Bridge. I have a distinct fear of bridges, and you’d think a structure a half-mile long would send me catatonic. Paradoxically, the High Level was the only one I wasn’t too bad on. The High Level spanned the river valley from high bank to bank, whereas all the other bridges demanded that cars drive down one steep bank and up the other. It was huge and black, with railroad tracks on the upper level, and two lanes of traffic heading south underneath. The pedestrian/bike lane was on the outside of the ­driving level, overhanging the river. I refused to bike across it, feeling that the winds might knock me over the metal balustrade, but if I kept my eyes on the tips of my boots I could walk across in about fifteen minutes.

  The slight sweat brought about by fear made me warmer still. I walked into Audrey’s about half an hour after leaving my apartment. So much for getting the drop on Leo, though. He was already at there and gave me a huge hug as if we’d just met up by accident after seventeen years.

  “Cara mia,” he gushed, and kissed me on both cheeks. I wonder if Shelley or Byron had ever really been this flamboyant.

  “Am I late?” I asked. “Can we look around for a bit here before lunch?”

  “But of course! I have a few things I want to pick up too. How about we meet in cookbooks in half an hour?”

  “Why cookbooks?”

  “To get an idea of what we want for lunch.”

  I smiled and sidled away from him through the crunch in the aisles. No matter what time of year, Audrey’s always seemed to be packed. Maybe it is because it’s on Jasper Avenue, the main drag of downtown, or maybe the big window displays that wrap around the corner just lure people in, but I couldn’t recall ever being there without having to mutter “Excuse me” more than once while meandering through the aisles. Nice tall stacks make it possible to browse for hours, and no one comes up behind you with a frown. There is an air of sanctity for the printed page, the same feeling you’d get in some medieval ecclesiastical library. The sun coming through the windows and dappling the dark wood helps the image. Every so often along the stacks a Lucite notice board holding a recent review or announcement of a local reading would grab my attention. I stuck to the main floor, and edged around the banistered stairwell to get to the fiction. The children’s section downstairs was wonderful, but I had grown-ups to buy for.

  The new Ondaatje would suit Greg. I picked up a paperback copy of Paul Quarrington’s Whale Music for Fiona, thinking I’d wrap it with a Pavarotti tape as a joke. Her and her tenors. Give me a baritone any day. I’d seen Carolyn Heilbrun’s Hamlet’s Mother on Denise’s desk the other day, and it had given me the idea of getting her a couple of Amanda Cross mysteries, Heilbrun’s other, distaff literary offerings. I picked The Players Come Again and The James Joyce Murder. While I was in the mysteries section, the title Literary Murder jumped out at me. I picked up the book. It was by an Israeli named Batya Gur, and apparently about a sensitive policeman solving a murder at a university. How could I resist?

  There was no point in searching for something for Leo, with him leering over shelves at me. I checked my watch and dutifully headed for the cookbook section. Leo was already there with a Vietnamese cookbook in his hands.

  “Are you feeling like noodles? There’s a wonderful place just a block from here.”

  “Lead on, Macduff. Just let me pay for these first.”

  We chatted as I waited to get near the till. Leo was thinking of taking a w
eek off in Puerto Vallarta during exams.

  “A fellow I know says there’s a charter heading down that needs a few more people. I have to get some reading done before I tackle the next chapter of the thesis. Why not read on the beach?”

  “It all depends on how much you can absorb mentally while absorbing margaritas and cervezas.” I sounded like my grandmother, who had, I was certain, personally coined the phrase “No play before work.” There’s nothing like someone else’s talk of escape to make me curmudgeonly.

  “Well, there is that.” Leo looked as pensive as Leo could, a pathetic attempt on his part. “And, one has to wonder how one’s supervisor will feel when one turns up looking like a bronzed god among the pasty-faced intellectuals.”

  “What with melanoma scares, pasty-faced is high fashion now,” I reminded him.

  “Right, just like skinny is out for gay men. Now we’ve all got to have washboard abs and rippling pectorals. Nothing like a disease or two to set the fashion wheels making U-turns.”

  I constantly marvel at Leo’s ability to hold nothing sacred. Just then my turn came at the counter, and I burrowed for my MasterCard, thankful that I now didn’t have to come up with a rejoinder.

  The cashier slid a slip toward me and I blithely signed without checking the total. It comes, I swear, from being an English major as an undergrad. After being sent to the bookstore with mile-long required text lists, I have no qualms about dropping sixty or seventy bucks at a time in bookstores. On the other hand, I will agonize over cheap cuts of meat and small trays of chicken breasts, buy generic toilet paper and keep all business-sized envelopes for making lists on the backs. Go figure.

  Leo bustled me out of the warm and cozy store and onto Jasper Avenue, heading east.

  I was glad Leo knew where he was going, because I’d have missed it. Behind an unassuming glass door was a long narrow restaurant with the trademark look the best oriental restaurants have: they all look as if the owners had asked someone’s Aunt Vera to replicate the look of her fabulous fifties kitchen, only with thirty-five chrome tables instead of one. The menus had clear plastic covers over mimeographed sheets (well, it was probably laser printer made to resemble mimeograph), and the waitress smiled and nodded as we covered the extra two chairs in various layers of outerwear.

  Leo ordered a pot of tea and two big bowls of vermicelli noodles, assuring me I’d love it. The waitress smiled and nodded and took off for the nether regions of the restaurant.

  “So,” said Leo, as he poured the tea that arrived with another waiter. “I want to hear your thoughts on the vigil, and Denise’s reporter, and your policeman. In any order which you might care to proceed.” He sipped his tea, and offered up one of his infuriating smug grins.

  “What don’t you know?” It was impossible to keep anything from Leo, but there was no need to go over stale ground. Besides, I wouldn’t mind knowing about “Denise’s reporter” too.

  “Well, Denise was in the department yesterday, moaning about the destruction of the spirituality of the convening moment …”

  “She was not.”

  “Oh all right. She was bitching about getting wet in sub-arctic weather. But she did say something about you disappearing with the boy in blue.”

  I might have known that Leo would get hold of that tidbit of information. Luckily our lunch arrived just then, and Leo proceeded to explain how to pour the small bowl of fish sauce over the noodles and salad greens and spring rolls piled into the medium-sized serving bowl set in front of me. It was fabulous, and for a few minutes neither of us spoke. Finally, pouring us each another small cup of tea, I got back to the topic at hand.

  “So what about the reporter?”

  “Oh. Well, Denise was giving us a blow by blow …”

  “Us?”

  “Me, Greg, some MAs I don’t really know: the girl with the frizzy boot-black hair and the guy with the lace-up boots, and Julian, who had been at the ceremony. I think Arno was in the background mooching a cup of coffee, but I don’t recall him having anything to add. I take it he wasn’t there on the evening?”

  “No, he wasn’t. And that begs the question of where you were. Why weren’t you out freezing along with us, bucky?”

  “Did you really expect me to be shivering in the frigid evening air, Miranda darling?” Leo looked down his not inconsiderable nose, and sniffed. “I’m perfectly willing to fold the odd leaflet, but I draw the line at shivering in the cold. As it happens, I was at the club, and I think it was Emma Goldman who suggested that ‘if I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of the revolution,’ wasn’t it?”

  “That is not at all what she meant, you nitwit.”

  “May I continue?”

  I nodded.

  “So as Denise was telling us about these masked offenders spraying you all with water and chanting obscenities, in walks this guy from the Edmonton Journal. Our Lady of Perpetual Vigils stops in mid-sentence and, I do not tell a lie, begins to flirt with him.”

  “Denise? Our Denise, flirting?”

  “Well, it sure looked like it from where I was. She looked at him through her eyebrows, you know the way Lauren Bacall used on killers, and then she slid off the edge of the table and went off to lunch with him.”

  I took a gulp of tea and proceeded to burn my tongue. I couldn’t imagine what Denise might see in Mark Paulson, but then who could tell which pheromones might call out to whom? I’d often wondered what sort of a guy might catch Denise’s fancy—she whom I figured could just crook a finger at almost anyone. If Leo was right, Denise was playing a dangerous game. I remembered what McNeely had said to me about consorting with the police. Just imagine what he’d say about Denise and the fourth estate.

  “Okay, so that takes care of La Wolff.” Leo grinned. “What about you and the thin blue line?”

  I proceeded to tell Leo a slightly more risqué version than I’d tell my mother, but highly censored from what I’d write in a diary. I could trust Leo not to blab my private life if he thought he was getting an exclusive. He’s very proprietorial about his gossip, figuring his right to know is obvious and everyone else’s prurient.

  “This is wonderful, and just in time for expensive presents! What are you getting him?”

  I showed him the book, and he questioned me about Steve’s off-duty taste in clothes. We decided to take a look through Holt Renfrew for ties on our way to the Edmonton Centre mall. The noodle dish had been extremely filling, but Leo was already talking afternoon tea at the restaurant in Holt’s. I looked at my ensemble and decided I could look inconspicuous enough among the beautiful people to risk it. A leather bomber jacket is so ambiguous, and for once my hat, mitts and scarf all matched.

  Leo passed on the power ties and began flipping through some novelty ties with Tin Tin and Asterix the Gaul on them. That’s what happens when the head office of your retail chain is in Montreal. I heard him giggle and turned from my examination of silk boxer shorts.

  He was holding out a navy silk tie with what looked like a running pattern of little circles. I came closer and realized they were tiny sets of scarlet handcuffs dotted across the blue.

  “It’s perfect,” Leo gushed.

  “Are you sure? What if it’s supposed to be a signal that you’re into bondage or something?”

  “Trust me, those signals are a wee bit more obvious that this. With this and the book and a tape of the first record you listened to together, you’re set for a perfect evening beneath the winking lights of the tree.”

  I bought it and agreed to have it gift-boxed. I had over half my list filled, and I paid for the tea to thank Leo for his help. We moved onto Sam the Record Man for Fiona’s tape and a copy of Joni Mitchell’s Blue (who am I to argue with Leo when it comes to romance?), the Den for Men for my dad’s golf warmers, and I snapped up a snazzy cotton sweater shot with metallic thread that Mom could couple with her chiffon evening trousers for a simple evening ensemble on their next cruise.

  Leo took his leave around four
to meet some friends at the Bistro Praha. We made plans to see each other at Grace’s Christmas party and have a dinner together if he didn’t jet off to the Mexican Riviera.

  “It’s still nebulous, but I’m one level of frostbite away from signing onto the charter.”

  “If you do go, I hope the mariachi band plays ‘Guadalajara’ under your window all night, every night.”

  “You’re so supportive, cherie.”

  After another European kiss, he was off in a flurry of scarves and coattails. I watched him cross the street then turned back into the mall to head to the SmithBooks on the main level. I wanted to check if there was a published filmscript of Ken Russell’s Gothic, the movie he’d made about Shelley and Mary and Polidori all daring each other to write horror novels. That, or the actual video, would be a coup for Leo.

  They didn’t have anything of the sort, but the salesclerk suggested I try one of the record stores in the mall. I wandered about from floor to floor, watching the people move about like ants up and down the escalators. I decided to give up when the old Christmas angst started wafting around me. A little carolling might be nice, but the thousand strings doing Jingle Bells can drive me into a slump like nobody’s business. I headed for the exit doors that would bring me out closest to my bus stop.

  Luck was with me and a bus was waiting. I pushed on, holding my shopping in front of me. After dropping coins in the box, I lumbered toward the back door, looking for a double seat that could hold both me and my bags. The bus started rolling as I found a seat, and I just avoided crushing an older woman by turning as I fell onto the bench.

  It took me twenty minutes to get home. I dropped the bags on the chair by the door, shucked off my boots and started pulling off my scarf as I made my way to the blinking red light of my answering machine. I paused to count the blinks before pushing the pulsing red button. Four calls.