Death Spiral (6 page)

Mary looked up at Wilf. She seemed to be considering the call and then she turned to her mother. “Well, it’s not like I’ll be needing that key anymore, is it?”

“No, it isn’t,” Wilf said.

* * *

Wilf managed to park the car safely back in his father’s garage but the familiar weight he’d felt earlier that evening had suddenly descended on his shoulders again.

He walked slowly into the house and turned on the light in the study. The first thing he saw in the flare of light was the Nuremberg transcripts and a thought suddenly struck him that the whole war was somehow contained in that little room. All the mad dreams. The feverish expectations. The Nazi mirage of a new civilization of appalling grandeur. And all the pain.

Wilf picked up a sheaf of transcripts. He was surprised to feel tears in his eyes. It had been a long day. He sat down and let the transcripts fall to the floor. He felt for Mary’s key. It was still safely in his pocket. His spirits lifted.

He’d known what Frank Cruikshank was up to the moment Mary said he’d asked to borrow her key. He’d wanted to make a copy of it. But where? If he’d been smart, he would have taken it out of town.

Wilf tried to recapture an image of Frank Cruikshank rushing past him in the store but all he could see was Adrienne. She was standing close to him in the crush of clothes, her small face perfectly still in the warm perfumed air. And now he did reach out and touch her cheek. Her neck. Trailing his hand over her blouse, trying to feel the coolness of the material, the rise of her hidden breasts. She of the fathomless violet eyes. She, who seemed to be waiting.

And so was he. After nearly two years of forced abstinence. Waiting for a miracle to happen, to feel a sudden, familiar tightness electrify his stomach, the delicious push of blood.

He rested his head back against the chair. He was unbuttoning her blouse. Slipping his hand inside. Her skin felt warm. Her dark nipples.

It wasn’t happening. His body was refusing to respond. Distracted by trauma. Confused by steel plates and pins and god knows what.

Wilf left the study and struggled up the stairs. He went into the bathroom, swallowed his pain pills and chased them down with a sleeping pill and then took one more. He walked into the bedroom, pulled off his clothes and sprawled out on the bed. Downstairs the grandfather clock was striking twelve. He lay there and listened.

He’d have to stay away from women. That was all he could do. If he didn’t want to cause a scene. Embarrass himself.

It was hopeless.

He began to drift. Sleeping pills as big and fluffy as pillows were floating through his mind. No panic in his chest now though. No shadows in any room. He wondered why he hadn’t been taking his sleeping pills more regularly long before this. Stupid of him. Stupid.

Drifting, drifting away.

He was standing in a shadowy warehouse. He could see a large wooden tank some distance away. He could hear the hollow sound of water dripping. Dripping. He drew nearer, reached up and pulled himself over the damp slippery edge. Mr. Cruikshank was floating on his back in chunks of ice. He was wearing a flight suit. A tangle of wires were attached to his stomach.

Wilf opened his eyes.

CHAPTER SIX

It was just before nine o’clock the next morning when Carole pushed open the door to the office. It was unlocked, the lights were on and Wilf was sitting at Dorothy Dale’s desk.

“Morning,” Wilf mumbled. He was looking through a file.

Carole wondered if he’d had any sleep. Or if he’d slept in the office. Anyway, he seemed to have forgotten to brush his hair, parts of it were standing up on end.

“Good morning.” Carole took off her hat and coat carefully. She’d been looking forward to seeing him, telling him what she’d found out, but now she wasn’t so sure.

“Just checking the date on Cruikshank’s will,” Wilf said.

He looked feverish. Carole had spent at least ten minutes that morning staring at the sweater Wilf had given her, deciding whether to wear it or not. Now she was glad she hadn’t. She pushed through the little gate, took the cover off her typewriter and sat down opposite him. “What’s it say?”

“July twenty-third of last year. He must have been head over heels in love.”

“Or thought highly of her, anyway.”

“Thought highly of her?”

“Yes. And then he died of a heart attack.”

Wilf looked over at Carole. She was sitting as erect as a schoolteacher. Her long straight back. If only there were more to her, Wilf thought to himself, she’d be attractive. Not that it would do him any good. Or her, either.

Carole pushed her unruly lock of hair back and began sorting through her work.

“Did you find anything out?” Wilf asked

“Well, yes and no. Do you remember Nancy Dearborn from school?”

“She’s a telephone operator.”

“She’s also my cousin and when I thought about it I realized that my uncle’s house is just across the street from where Mr. Cruikshank lived. So I called Nancy and of course it’s the talk of the neighbourhood. I got the feeling that no one liked Mr. Cruikshank very much, he wasn’t very neighbourly, but everyone’s feeling sorry for what happened to him anyway.”

“That someone drowned him in his tub?”

“No,” Carole replied.

More firmly than necessary, Wilf thought.

She went on. “I told Nancy that he’d been a client of ours and we were just feeling bad about it and she started talking about Adrienne O’Dell without me even having to mention her name. They saw her around there a lot. For the last year or so anyway. She helped him with his garden, took him grocery shopping, took him to his doctor appointments.”

“He wasn’t an invalid.”

“But he was elderly and he had a bad heart and so she was just helping out. That’s all. All the neighbours thought that it was a very nice thing for her to be doing, particularly since she was an O’Dell. They never saw any of his own family there.”

“And we know why, don’t we?”

“So did all his neighbours. Everyone knew there was a big fight going on. The courthouse is in Brantford, but you can’t keep a secret in this town. Everyone knows everything. You can’t keep anything private.”

“Right,” Wilf said and remembered. Poor Carole Birley.

Carole glanced toward the front door, looked back at Wilf and dropped her voice. “But the most interesting thing was, my aunt saw Mr. Cruikshank on his front porch arguing with someone. Someone tall and blonde and middle-aged. She hadn’t seen him before but with all the swinging of arms around and all the angry talk it was obvious they were really fighting. And then the man went away. That’s what everyone’s talking about, that it’s no wonder poor Mr. Cruikshank had a heart attack after such an ugly scene. My aunt thinks that that man should be charged for contributing to Mr. Cruikshank’s death.”

“When was this?”

“Last Saturday afternoon.”

“It sounds like Frank Cruikshank.”

“I know, but even if it was, it doesn’t mean what you think it means.”

“What do I think it means?”

“You know what you think it means.”

“Then why do you think Frank Cruikshank was in the store arguing with Adrienne?”

“They were probably discussing the terms of the will.”

Wilf looked out the window, past the faded gold lettering. A car passed by on Main Street. A truck passed the other way. “Carole, do you really think that all Adrienne did was help Mr. Cruikshank go shopping and look after his garden and he said, ‘You’re such a sweet kid. Here’s my whole estate.’ Do you really think that?”

Carole’s face reddened a little because in her secret thoughts she hadn’t thought that. She hadn’t thought that at all, but she’d been trying to push them away. Such thoughts seemed to say more about her own questionable state of mind than Adrienne’s.

“Saturday night was the night of the snowstorm. And he had a key,” Wilf went on.

“Who did?”

“Frank Cruikshank had a key to the house. He borrowed one from Cruikshank’s housekeeper because he said he needed to get in to make sure his father wasn’t ill.” Wilf got up, picked up his cane and headed for the front door. “He was lying. He wanted the key to make a copy.”

“Where are you going?”

“To make sure.”

“I’m just wondering,” Carole called out after him.

“What?”

“Is that your father’s car parked out front? Sort of sideways?”

Wilf began to pull on his coat. “As a matter of fact, yes it is.”

“Didn’t you say that Doc Robinson was going to examine Mr. Cruikshank more thoroughly? Could you do me a big favour? Before you do anything else, could you drive up to his office and ask him what he found out? If Mr. Cruikshank did die of a heart attack then everything’s all right. And it’s just us. We’re the ones going crazy.” Carole looked at him hopefully.

“All right. I will,” Wilf said and went out the door.

Carole sat there for a moment. She picked up a legal form and rolled it into her typewriter. She looked at it. She’d already typed in the required information. It was already signed.

She pulled it back out and tried to study her notebook. She couldn’t think of what it was she was supposed to be doing. There was so much work and Mr. McLauchlin would be back by Monday. The Conacher file. Yes. The business partnership papers. Of course. As she turned to her side table for the file, the front door opened and Frank Cruikshank walked in.

“My father’s passed away,” he said, his voice hoarse and full of some kind of complicated emotion that Carole couldn’t identify. He walked right up to the wooden railing. “Sometime yesterday.”

“I’m sorry,” Carole said.

“They found him yesterday, I mean.”

He was wearing a long leather coat with a dirty wool lining. He looked even taller than he had in court, his face highly coloured from being out of doors all the time, his hands as wide as they were long and permanently swollen from a lifetime of work. Carole could hardly take her eyes off his hands.

“My name’s Frank Cruikshank, if you don’t know.”

The railing was supposed to protect her, separating the public from the rest of the office but it only reached a little above Frank Cruikshank’s knees.

“You’d know my mother. McLauchlin’s been fighting her for years.”

Carole easily resisted the temptation to say that it wasn’t Mr. McLauchlin who had been fighting his mother, it had been his own father.

“Did he have a will?” he asked.

Carole found her voice. “Mr. McLauchlin is out of town until this coming Monday. At such time I’m sure that Mr. McLauchlin will deal with everything that needs to be done and he will be in contact with you as soon as possible.”

“I just asked if he had a will.”

“That’s not my job. I have no idea.”

“Look in his file.”

“I’m sure Mr. McLauchlin will look in the file as soon as he returns.”

The man’s pale eyes turned hard. “You don’t know anything about it?”

“No.”

“You’d think he’d have a will.”

“Yes, you would.”

Frank Cruikshank was beginning to look increasingly upset. He ran his hand through his thinning blonde hair. “What’s your name?”

“Miss Carole Birley.”

“Well, Miss Carole Birley, maybe you can tell me this. Has anyone else, some young woman say, come in here asking about a will?”

“You mean your father’s will?”

Cruikshank just stared at her.

“No.”

The man’s face went cold. He looked out the window and then turned back. “As far as I’m concerned, his goddamn corpse can stay wherever the hell it is. Goddamn him to hell!” He slammed out the door.

Carole got up from her desk, pushed through the gate and turned the lock on the front door. She looked out the window. Cruikshank had already gone past the wrought-iron fence. He was turning onto Main Street.

* * *

“This belongs to an expensive lock,” Tony Gillo announced, standing in his cluttered shop and holding up Mary’s key in his grimy hand. “You see the difference?”

“No.” Wilf leaned across the equally grimy counter and looked more closely.

“It’s longer than your ordinary key. This is how it works. You put it in halfway, you make a quarter turn to the right, say, if you’re opening. Quarter turn the other way if you’re locking, see? And then you push it all the way in and turn to the left or the right as the case may be. Do you know why?”

“No idea.”

“Because,” Tony’s watery eyes peered triumphantly over his thick glasses, “if you can’t go straight in, you can’t pick a lock.” A grin spread over his grizzled face.

“I get it.”

“Like a woman with a chastity belt, eh?”

“Right.”

“Very nice. Expensive. Who would need a lock like that?”

“Could you make a copy?”

“Sure. But I don’t have the right blank for this. It needs to be cut special, give me an hour.”

“I don’t need a copy, Tony, I was just asking if it was possible. Theoretically.”

“Theoretically?”

“If you did make a copy of a key like that, say within the last two months or so, would you remember?”

“Now I got to remember?”

Wilf grinned. “So no one’s come in here and wanted a copy of a key like that?”

“This is a special job. Take an hour or so. I’d have to explain all that to the customer, why it was special, why he couldn’t just wait for it.”

“Right.”

“Right.” Tony handed the key back, “So, mister lawyer’s son, I think I’d remember.”

* * *

By the time Wilf had driven back into town it was the middle of the afternoon. It had seemed to make sense that Cruikshank would take the key out of town but Wilf had visited all three locksmith shops in Brantford and two shops in Woodstock, and just like Tony Gillo, no one had remembered.

He pulled the car up to Doc Robinson’s home office. He had somehow made it, though his left leg felt like it was on fire from depressing the clutch all day and his shoulders ached from straining to see over the dashboard. He tried to rest for a moment but his mind refused.

Why had Frank Cruikshank been in the dress shop in the first place? Because of the will. Even if Adrienne hadn’t known anything about it, Frank had found out somehow. But that didn’t make any sense. If he’d known about it the last thing he would have done was murder his father. Unless, of course, he and Adrienne had had an understanding.

Wilf looked down the hill toward the double line of storefronts, the dress shop hidden in amongst them, and the steeper hill beyond. Everything looked wintery, misty and grey. But what if the thing Frank had found out had nothing to do with the will? What if he’d found out about Adrienne herself, that she was always at the house, always around his father? He’d become suspicious. More than that. Paranoid. That’s why he’d asked Mary for her key, and by last Saturday he couldn’t stand the not knowing any longer. He banged on the front door expecting that his father, as usual, wouldn’t answer, but the old man stepped out on the porch and all the suspicion and paranoia and hurt spilled out of Frank, and his father began to shout back that if he didn’t quit haranguing him he damn well would leave everything he owned to Adrienne O’Dell, she was the only one who really cared a damn about him anyway. How would Frank like that? Him and his cow of a mother? How would they like that?

Wilf opened the car door. He had to lift his burning leg over the ledge. He sat there sideways, staring up the steps toward Doc Robinson’s house and seeing instead the old man on his porch and his furious son and snowflakes beginning to fall all around.

What Frank didn’t know, of course, was that his father, in his resurrected passion, in his dotage, had already done exactly that. He’d written out a new will. But Frank was more than alarmed now. His body felt charged. Overcome by something.

Wilf pushed himself out of the car and began to climb the steps. The waiting room was filled to overflowing. After an hour it was Wilf’s turn. Doc Robinson was standing in his examining room fixing something with a strip of white tape.

“I just stepped on my glasses.”

Wilf eased himself down into a chair.