Children in the Morning (37 page)

“Such as?”

“I dunno. I can’t remember now.”

“Try.”

“Well, he said there was a couple of girls in the family. He said he might take pictures of them.” Kyle shuffled his feet and looked away.

“Like, when they were changing their clothes or taking a bath or something.”

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I felt sick, but tried not to show it. “Did he ever produce pictures like that?”

“No, no, I never heard nothin’ about it after we got out. Guess he never got near them, or he woulda taken the pictures. He’s a fuckin’

sicko. Delaney woulda killed him if he knew about that.”

So would I, I thought.

“Hell, Delaney was gonna kill him about the money he took off me and Cody and Mitchell for the rides that we never got, or the chance to move into the big house. Cody and Mitchell are suckers, if they thought that was gonna happen. But that was Corbo’s big scheme when he got out of Shelburne and went back to the Delaneys. Then he disappeared. Corbo did. I figured he was dead.”

“Oh? Why did you think that?”

“Because Delaney threatened to kill him.”

“Well,” I said, “I can believe Mr. Delaney would be a little upset when he learned of the things Corbett was up to.”

“You don’t get it, man. Delaney wasn’t just a little upset. He went ballistic. He took Corbo into the woods at night. Somewhere outside Halifax. He did something to him, some commando move or something that made Corbo scream and cry like a girl. Corbo said he couldn’t believe anything could be that painful, and he was scared shitless. Delaney got in his face and told him to get the fuck out of Halifax and told him in all these gory details what he’d do to him if he ever showed his face around here again. He said he’d kill him, and nobody would ever find him. Corbo, who’s a psycho himself, didn’t have no doubts at all that Delaney would do it. Corbo decided to fuck off that night. He came and woke me up and told me what happened, and bummed some stuff off me, so he could get out of town. I had some cash, and I gave him some. And he went. Like I say, I thought Delaney got him, and he was dead, until he showed up on tv.”

I was hardly aware of Kyle. The only thing in my mind was Beau Delaney looming over Corbett Reeves and threatening to kill him. Is this what Reeves had been planning to say on the stand? Had he come back to play out his revenge on Delaney? Was this the alibi he was going to offer Delaney for the night of his wife’s death? “I wasn’t there, My Lord, I was in the park threatening to kill my foster son.

And I was so convincing, the kid blew town that very night.”

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Oh, God. I had to get a grip. I cleared my throat and spoke to Kyle again. “When was this? When did Corbett come to you and say he was running away?”

“It was just before I got arrested again. I gave Corbo some of my cash, so I wanted to go out and get some more. I pulled a knife on a guy on Maitland Street, but I got caught. So they had me in court the next morning. That was at the end of October.”

“You’re sure of the time?”

“Yeah, ’cause that’s when I ended up in a group home in Dartmouth. So I know when it was.”

I tried not to show my relief. The night Corbett fled the city after his encounter with Delaney was nearly three months before Peggy’s death.

“Do you think Corbett came back to get revenge on Mr. Delaney, by maybe telling this story in court?”

“Corbo’s more twisted than that. It’s more like he’d mess around with Delaney for the hell of it. Make him nervous. But he’d try to get something out of it too. You know, give fake evidence for Delaney, Delaney gets off because of it, then Corbo squeezes Delaney for money for the rest of his life. He’d have to stay out of reach, though, in case Delaney killed him. You wouldn’t want Corbo on the witness stand. No way, man. But you didn’t need him anyway. Delaney got found not guilty. Guess you did a good job. But Delaney woulda got off no matter what.”

I couldn’t help asking: “Why do you say that?”

“Because he didn’t do it. No way he killed his wife.”

“Again, why do you say that?”

“Because if he lost it with her and freaked out enough to kill her, they’d have had to pick up the pieces. He wouldn’t just push her down the stairs and leave it at that.”

(Normie)

I went to the Delaneys’ house on Tuesday. It was the ninth of June and it was a big day for us at school because we didn’t have any.

Didn’t have any school, I mean, on account of our teachers all going 241

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to a meeting. Except Father Burke; he doesn’t like meetings. But he let the rest of them go. All the other schools in Halifax had the day off too. It was a hot, sunny day and Jenny Delaney invited me to her house. Mum said it was okay. Even Richard Robertson was allowed, but I kind of wondered if he lied about where he was going. Anyway, he came in this really cool old green car that made a lot of noise.

Gordo was driving and he called the car a beetle. Jenny and her sisters and brothers had a big surprise planned for their dad because of him living in the house again and not killing their mum. He’d already moved back in, but they never got the plan together till now.

When we arrived at the house, Jenny and Laurence were in charge because the big kids all went shopping for stuff for the surprise. I asked what kind of stuff, and Jenny said treats and streamers and balloons. Sarah and Ruthie would probably sneak in some shopping for clothes, too, so they would be gone a long time.

The little kids were really cute. There were four of them: three boys and only one girl. Their names were Sammy, Danny, Edward, and Kristin. What they were going to do was draw beautiful pictures all over the driveway with coloured chalk. They were allowed to do whatever pictures they wanted, but Jenny gave them a paper showing how to spell “We love you, Daddy!!!”

I was going to help Jenny bake a big humongous cake and decorate it. She showed me some cookbooks as soon as I got there, and we gawked at all the pictures of amazing cakes that looked like castles or music boxes or even birthday presents with fake ribbons and bows on them. The only cakes we ever had in our own house, unless we bought them, were flat in a square pan. It was going to be hard to decide which kind to make for Mr. Delaney.

Richard was supposed to help Laurence build this big archway to put in front of the door, so Sarah and Ruthie could put flowers and balloons and everything all over it, for their dad to walk under. But when me and Jenny went down to the basement to see what the boys were up to, they weren’t doing their job. They were playing with the hockey game, or I should say they were trying to make the Delaneys’

two kitty-cats play and chase the players and the puck. But the cats didn’t want to play, and kept trying to get away. No wonder the game is always broken!

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Richard was talking about his cat, whose name is “Filth.”

Laurence asked him why he called it that, and he said his mother always called it “that filthy thing” and wouldn’t let it come in the house, so him and Gordo built a secret cabin for it outdoors. He said he’d show Laurence how to build a cabin, and even a place for the cats to do number two, and that’s when Jenny said: “Ahem! You guys are supposed to be making the archway, remember?” So they said okay and went to look for the wood and the toolbox.

“Boys!” Jenny said, shaking her head, when we were back in the kitchen.

She bent down and looked in the cupboards and got out bowls and a mixer, and she told me where the flour and sugar and food colouring were.

“Do you cook a lot?” I asked her.

“Yeah, I really like it. You?”

“I’m the one in our house that likes to cook. Mum doesn’t enjoy it much.”

“Ruthie and Derek do most of the cooking here, and Dad.”

So we chatted away and gathered all the stuff we needed, and decided not to use any of the designs in the book but to make our own cake, to look like the Delaneys’ big white house, with the black roof and shutters. We were going to cut cherries up and make them look like bricks for the chimney, and make some green trees for the front.

We didn’t even need to keep running out and looking at the front to remember what it looked like, because their house is in a book about beautiful old houses in Nova Scotia, and Jenny had the book open on the counter.

It was fun swirling stuff around in big glass bowls and using the mixer. When we had flour puffing up in our faces and were in a fit of the giggles, Edward and Kristin came in and asked if they could use the paints and brushes, and Jenny said it was okay to play with their paints as long as they didn’t use them on the driveway, just chalk. Then we went back to our baking. There was a box of Smarties on the counter and we tried to figure out where to use them in the design, but we couldn’t, so we ended up gobbling them all up. We could hear hammering and sawing, and Laurence and Richard making dumb jokes and laughing in the basement. Then we heard them lugging stuff outdoors, 243

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and hammering out there. It seemed to take hours to do it all, but not in a boring way. I couldn’t wait till we had everything made and could see how happy Mr. Delaney would be when he got home.

Just when we got the cake in the oven we heard somebody burst out crying. The sound was coming from outside the house, so Jenny made a big sigh and ran out. I followed her.

She screamed “Oh my God!” and I knew it must be something bad for her to say that, because she’s not allowed to say it.

When I got outside I saw a bunch of big paint cans on the lawn, and thought maybe the little kids had spilled some paint in the grass.

Then I saw Sammy all covered with red paint, and crying his eyes out. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Jenny was staring at the house like someone in a horror movie. Oh my God is right! You should have seen it. The kids had painted all the parts of the house they could reach. Instead of white, it was now green and black and red and yellow in ugly blobs of colour. It looked horrible! You wouldn’t believe it was the same white house that is included in the beautiful Nova Scotia house book.

Jenny turned to the kids. “What did you do? Are you guys crazy?”

They all started to cry. Sammy got mad and threw his brush at Jenny. It made a big red stripe down the front of her blue jumper.

Sammy stomped away into the house.

“Why did you do this?” she asked Kristin.

“You said we could play with the paint!”

“I thought you meant your paint-by-number kits, not Daddy’s real paint!”

Laurence and Richard came running from the backyard then, and they gawked at the house and their mouths were hanging open.

Jenny started up again at the little kids. “Sarah and Ruthie and Derek and Connor are all going to have a heart attack when they see this! And Daddy’s going to kill you. He’ll kill us all, if we can’t get this paint off before he comes home!”

Richard looked at me and I thought he was going to make a funny joke, but he didn’t. He looked worried. Really upset.

“Let’s get this off,” Laurence said.

“What kind of paint is it?” Richard asked.

“I don’t know, just old paint from the garage.”

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“Because if it’s oil paint, you need special chemicals to get it off, and even then it won’t really come off.” He went over and picked up one of the cans. “Holy shit. It’s oil paint, all right. Let’s go and look for some paint remover.”

But Laurence went to the house, and grabbed a bunch of leaves and tried wiping some of the paint away. All it did was smear around and around without coming off. It looked as if some of the paint was already dry, maybe because of the hot sun.

Richard had left and was gone for a few minutes, then came back.

He said there was no chemical to remove the paint.

The little kids were still bawling, and Jenny went over to them. They backed away. “Never mind. You guys didn’t know any better. We’ll tell Daddy you meant to paint the house as a nice surprise for him.”

“We did!” Kristin said. “We thought he’d like the new colours!” She was sniffling and so were Danny and Edward. Jenny gathered them all up in a big hug, and Laurence went over and ruffled their hair.

“We’ll get you off. This time!” And he kind of laughed, and they did too, through their tears.

Then we heard the phone ring inside the house, and Jenny ran to answer it. She came back with a scared look on her face. “He’s on his way home!”

“Your dad?” I asked.

She nodded her head. Then she gave Laurence a weird sort of look and said: “We’d better check out back.”

And they took off around the back of the house. Me and Richard ran after them.

Jenny was standing there as if somebody had put a hand out and stopped her in her tracks. “Where’s all the wood?”

Laurence said: “Uh, we used a whole bunch of it for a log cabin.

Over behind the maple tree . . .”

“A log cabin! You were supposed to be using those thin, bendy pieces of criss-crossed wood to make an archway. You weren’t supposed to get into Daddy’s wood pile!”

“I know! We just did, because it was fun.”

“Weren’t we allowed to use those logs?” Richard asked.

“No, but it’s not your fault,” Laurence said. “It’s just that Dad likes to, well . . .” Then he shut up.

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Jenny filled in the rest of it: “When Daddy gets mad, which he hardly ever does, he goes outside and chops at that woodpile with this little axe he has, and he keeps doing it till he’s not mad anymore.”