Children in the Morning (38 page)

Richard’s eyes were like great big saucers. Then I couldn’t believe it. He started shaking, as if he was cold. Or afraid. Richard!

Jenny said: “He’s never mean to us when something gets him upset.

He just hits the wood, not us. But now there’s hardly any wood.”

“What are we going to do?” Laurence asked.

“I don’t know! Maybe Sarah will get home before Dad, and she’ll tell us what to do.”

That’s when we smelled something burning. There was smoke coming from the kitchen window.

“No! Our cake!”Jenny took off inside.

I started to follow her. But then I saw Richard going behind one of the trees in the backyard. I didn’t know what to do, help Jenny with the cake, or see what Richard was doing. But Laurence went with Jenny, so I walked over to Richard.

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” Richard was saying. He’s a funny guy, but his jokes don’t usually include swearing.

“Don’t worry, Richard,” I said. “He’s not going to go after us with the axe!”

But he didn’t calm down. He was curled up in a ball, shivering, and he couldn’t seem to stop. There were tears in his eyes. It was as if he didn’t know I was there, and when he saw me and caught on, he got mad. In a shaky but angry voice he said: “You think I’m a baby!”

“I don’t think that! I just think you’re worried. About, uh, the other kids.”

“Guys aren’t supposed to cry!”

“Who said? I’ve seen lots of guys cry. What’s wrong with it?”

“Well —” he wiped his eyes with his knuckles “— now that I think of it, I’ve seen tears in Gordo’s eyes . . .”

“Sure. Why not?” The things guys worry about! It’s sad. “But remember, Jenny said Mr. Delaney never hits the kids.”

“Maybe not. But he’s going to be really upset. He’s not going to approve of what they did.”

“Well, not approving . . . that’s not so bad.”

He looked at me as if I had said something wacky. “I don’t know 246

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how you’ve been brought up, Collins, but disapproval is a big deal in our house! Nobody gets hit, but it’s almost worse the way they react.

You feel like shit when it happens. And you feel it for a long time. It’s a big, big deal.”

And it must have been, if Richard was shaky and all in a panic.

Then we heard the honking of a horn.

Jenny came running out of the house with oven mitts on and the cake on fire, and stared out at the street. “It’s Dad!” she croaked.

Richard said: “Oh God!” And then — it was unbelievable — he threw up in the grass.

I wanted to help him even though it was gross, but I also wanted to help stick up for the Delaney kids, so I ran to the driveway.

There he was. Mr. Delaney, getting out of his car and looking huge and staring at the house. I read somewhere about a person looking “thunderstruck” and that was him. He glared at the house as if it was a house of horrors. Then he turned and looked at all the kids, who were lined up in front of it, including Sammy and Edward who were covered in paint and Jenny with the black, smoking cake. The kids all looked too stunned and scared even to cry.

Then Richard came running towards us. “Don’t want you to face the music by yourselves,” he whispered to me.

Mr. Delaney saw him and me amongst the crowd of guilty people.

He took his eyes off us and looked down at the driveway. The little kids had written in chalk: “We lave you, Doddy!!!”

Mr. Delaney made this big noise, and everybody jumped. But then they realized it was a big roar of laughter. He started laughing so hard he bent over, and then he leaned against the car and put his arms out, and the kids knew he wanted to hug them, and they all ran into his arms.

Jenny threw the cake on the ground on the way to her father, and Richard picked it up. He grabbed this dirty, paint-covered paper towel from the ground and placed it over his arm the way they do in snobby restaurants. And he had this big grin on his face and he presented the burnt-up cake to the Delaneys’ dad. “Welcome home, Mr. Delaney.”

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(Monty)

When I got back to the office after my conversation with Kyle on Tuesday, I called Beau Delaney at work and then reached him at home, and ordered him to come see me. Now.

When he came in and closed the door, I gestured for him to sit.

He kept his eyes on me as he sat down. I didn’t waste time.

“I’ve just received some disturbing information.” Delaney blanched, but did not speak. His reaction made me wonder just how many disturbing bits of information might be out there. “It’s about Corbett Reeves.”

Delaney swallowed and looked down at his hands. He tried to sound bored, but could not quite pull it off: “Yes, what about him?”

“He was selling access to your family!”

“As I said to you during the trial, things didn’t work out with Corbett.”

“Didn’t work out? What if there’s another trial? What if the Crown appeals and is successful, and we’re in court again, and Corbett Reeves gets another chance to insinuate himself into the proceedings, and into your life? Maybe as a Crown witness. What’s he going to say?” I leaned across the desk towards him. “This Corbett took money from disadvantaged children in return for a promise of a ride in your Mercedes bus, and he squeezed them for more money with the promise of a chance to join the family as foster children.

Held out the hope that they could have a loving mother and father and a beautiful home and brothers and sisters and a dog and a cat and who knows what else? They could buy into this happy future by paying a few hundred dollars to your foster son at the time, Corbett Reeves! And you can be sure the kids he shook down got the money from criminal activity because there is no other way they could have come up with it. They could have been caught and charged with theft, and had a whole new nightmare forced upon them. I know for a fact one of the kids got into trouble after giving Corbett money to run away. And you tell me ‘things didn’t work out’? What do you have to say for yourself, Beau? Somehow I suspect you would have reacted quite strongly when you got wind of this. Now, what the fuck happened with this kid Corbett Reeves?”

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“There was a blow-up.”

“Between you and him.”

“Yeah.”

“Did it get physical?”

A hesitation, then: “No.”

“Why do I find that hard to believe?”

“I don’t give a shit what you believe.”

“Yes, you do. You want me to believe you were at the top of the stairs with Peggy when she died and yet you had nothing to do with her death! I think there’s something going on in the background here.

It has me spooked and I think it has you spooked too.” He glared at me, fury in his eyes. “And I think the confrontation with Corbett did get physical.” I could almost see the effort he made to compose his features into an expression of unconcern.

“If you call pushing the kid to get him out of my way ‘physical,’

then it was physical. If you heard anything more than that, if Corbett has been spinning tales, all I can say is: consider the source. So get over this stuff about Corbett Reeves. What matters is that I didn’t kill my wife, intentionally or accidentally. Got it, Monty? Now stay focused on that fact and on how you’re going to counter the Crown’s factum if they do appeal. I don’t think they have any grounds, but that hasn’t stopped them in the past. And if it does happen, I’ll expect another superb defence and another acquittal. Now, if you have nothing positive to offer here today, I’ll be on my way, so I can have a bit of peace now that I’m back with my family again.”

†

I had no intention of getting over Corbett Reeves. And I had a lead to his whereabouts. Kyle had mentioned a Mrs. Victory, or Vickery, a relative who used to visit Corbett in Shelburne. She apparently lived in the Annapolis Valley. It didn’t take long to find a few Vickerys, and to narrow the search down to one: Alice Vickery, of Bridgetown. So the day after my confrontation with Beau, as soon as I got away from the office, I was headed west on Highway 101, and it took me an hour and a half to get to Bridgetown. I pulled up at the given address, and saw a big blue Queen Anne–style house with a 249

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high corner tower and a wraparound porch.

Mrs. Vickery greeted me on the porch and invited me inside. Her thinning white hair was held together with a number of hairpins.

Despite the mild June weather, her trembling hands held a black wool cardigan closed over her wasted body. She led me to the front parlour, where we sat facing each other on Victorian loveseats.

“So. Mr. Collins. How can I help you? Would you like a cup of tea?”

“Sure. Thank you.”

She got up, painfully, and went to the kitchen. The tea must already have been on, because she was back in about two minutes with the tray. I took my cup and thanked her.

“Now. You’re here about Corbett? Where is he?”

“I’m not sure, Mrs. Vickery. As I explained on the phone, Corbett appeared in the courtroom during Mr. Delaney’s trial. I don’t know where he is now.”

“Oh! Well, now, he lived with the Delaney family for a while last year, spring to fall, and years before that, too. A very wealthy family, Corbett told me. Apparently, they relied on Corbett to help keep things running smoothly in a household full of children. He was indispensable to them. It’s a shame he had to leave.”

“Right. I was never clear on why he had to leave . . .”

“The jealousy and resentment, from what I hear. Corbett is so gifted, really. Athletic, intelligent, talented. Not everyone has those gifts. It is my understanding that some of the children in the Delaney home had various difficulties, handicaps, unfortunate backgrounds, that sort of thing. It would be quite natural, I suppose, for them to resent a boy like Corbett, with his good looks and his robust health and abilities. The situation just became impossible for Corbett.”

“I see.”

“But he’ll always have a home in this house, as long as I’m here anyway! My husband and I never had any children, so we were over-joyed when Community Services found us all those years ago, and asked us if we could take in this grand-nephew we had never met. We didn’t even know our niece had a baby. She hasn’t been living in Nova Scotia since she was a child, so we had lost contact with her completely. But we certainly had the space for Corbett when he arrived.

He pretty well has the third floor to himself whenever he’s here. The 250

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whole area up there is one big room, with a magnificent view of the Annapolis River. I haven’t been up there in dogs’ years, myself. Like the basement, it’s out of my range now. I’m not good on stairs. You can go on up, if you wish.”

“Maybe I will in a minute, thanks. Tell me a bit more about Corbett. What is he like?”

“He’s a sensitive boy, a very trusting child. There are always people who will take advantage of a young person like that. He got in with some ruffians here. I never met them, thank goodness, probably because I go to bed so early and these juvenile delinquents would be a bunch of night crawlers! My daughter came for a visit from Calgary, and she discovered that some of my things were missing. Silver, my husband’s cameras, some foreign currency, and other items I had stored in the basement. I can’t get down those stairs now, with my hip. So I didn’t realize the things were gone. I asked Corbett if he knew anything about it. He said he would look into it. Turned out these companions of his had helped themselves to our family heir-looms! Corbett was mortified. He did his best to track the items down and get them back, but it was too late. He came to me practically in tears. ‘I’m sorry, Auntie Alice, I can’t get those things back.

But I promise you I’ll never see those guys again.’ And he was as good as his word. He never saw them again.”

He never saw them in the first place, because they didn’t exist.
To Mrs. Vickery, I said: “What else can you tell me about him? How far along is he in school?”

“Well, now, school. You know what the schools are like. Not everybody fits in. So he didn’t get the best of grades. But there are different kinds of intelligence, aren’t there? Corbett is an extremely bright youngster. He spent a lot of time here, studying on his own. He’s very interested in history, which delighted my husband, George, when he was alive. George taught European history at Acadia till he retired, and we came back here. His area of specialty was Germany in the 1930s and 40s — the war and what led up to it. George had been retired for a good many years, so he loved having the young boy around. He had a real student in Corbett! Oh, I miss him. I miss them both. My husband died two years ago. And Corbett, well, he comes and goes. I hope he comes back soon. You go ahead, up to his room. He did some painting 251

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up there. I hope he did a good job! Maybe you’ll see something that will give me an idea of his plans, or when he might be back.”

So I excused myself and headed up the two flights of stairs to Corbett’s aerie. If I had expected black walls and heavy metal posters in the teenage boy’s room, I had it all wrong. Everything was white.

The walls, the painted wood floor, the furniture and linens. And, most emphatically, all the people whose images adorned the walls.

Without exception, the pictures he had tacked up were of white folks with blond hair and blue eyes. Some were actors and actresses who looked familiar. Others I did not recognize, with one notable exception: SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. Not only was there a photo of the SS man with a little biography taped underneath it, there were chapters ripped from history books, giving all kinds of details about Heydrich. I flipped through the pages and shook my head.