Mazie Baby (24 page)

“Ah, of course it does.” He smiled
and piled their luggage into the trunk of his rusty old Buick LeSabre. He
opened the back door and gestured to Ariel. “Mademoiselle.” He gave a slight
bow then turned to Mazie. “And the front of the carriage for madame.”

Mazie squinted.

He clicked the door closed and
walked around the front of the car.

“He’s got a crush on you,” Ariel
said in a sing-song voice.

“Yeah, right. That’s just what I
need.” Another bloody man to mess up her life even more.

Norman pulled out onto the highway.
His headlights cut through the growing darkness. He cleared his throat. “So,
where are you coming from?”

Mazie stared straight ahead.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to pry.” He
slowed at a red light and tapped the steering wheel with his fingertips. “Are
you just passing through?”

Mazie glanced sideways at him. “No.
We’re planning to stay for a while.”

“So, you have a place?” He turned
to look at her, his cheeks pinked and he looked ahead again. “No, of course
not. That’s why I’m driving you to a hotel.”

Ariel snickered.

“I’ll have to look for something.
And a job.” Mazie rubbed one palm down the front of her pants. How long was
this quick drive going to take?

“A job?” He made a quick left and
pulled into the parking lot of a small hotel in the middle of nowhere. “I could
help with that.” He parked the car and turned in his seat. “The company that
cleans my office building is hiring. It’s not glamorous, but it would be a
start.”

Mazie looked back at Ariel who
shrugged her shoulders. “What office building?”

“A small group of businesses,
marketing and the head office of a trucking firm. I have a law practice.”

Mazie’s chest hollowed. Law
practice. She’d be working in the belly of the beast, in plain sight right inside
the system. That wasn’t hiding. It was suicide. She shook her head. “I … I don’t
know.”

“Come on, let me set you up with
them. It’s decent pay.”

She stared at him. Was this guy for
real?

“And a fellow I know owns an
apartment building downtown. Kind of run down, but passable. He owes me a
favour.”

She furrowed her brow. “Why are you
doing this?”

He straightened in his seat. “You
look like you could use a leg up. That’s all.”

She eyed this man who looked like
he spent more time behind a desk than in a gym, his hands callous free and his
nails clean and trimmed. He reminded her of Allan, the accountant she’d dumped
for Cullen. They could use the money and a place to call home. If he wasn’t who
he appeared, she could cut and run.

Cut and run.

She was getting good at that.

She nodded her head. “I’ll take you
up on the job offer.”

His face lit up. “Great.” He drew
his wallet from the inside pocket of his tweed jacket pulled out a business
card. “Call me tomorrow. I’ll get you their number.” He handed her the card.

She took the card between her thumb
and index finger. Norman Day. Criminal Defence Attorney.

Son of a bitch. He was on her side.

~~~~~~~~

Mazie and Ariel settled into an uneasy
calm. The musty apartment was liveable, despite the body odour and exotic
spices that clung to the walls. Norman fixed a leaky tap and hired someone to change
the locks. Ariel dotted the rooms with air fresheners and scented candles in
the hopes that fake cinnamon and orange blossoms would over-perfume the stink.

Mazie worked evenings and Saturdays,
dusting and vacuuming when the offices were closed and the normal people had
gone home to their normal families. Except Norman. He was there most of the
time, working well into the night and through the weekend. He was dedicated. Or
he had no other life.

The cleaning company paid her cash
under the table. No tax returns to worry about, no bank accounts required. And
no need to show identification.

She used her old trick, a false
back in a drawer — just enough room for a stack of cash, the photos, and her
journal — to keep the money she’d drained from the bank accounts hidden and
safe. With the money she made scrubbing strangers toilets, she could afford to
let that sit. An emergency fund. Her stay out of jail not-so-free stash.

The work was menial, grimy, and so
familiar. But she was damn good at it. It kept her body busy and her mind at
peace.  She hadn’t earned her own money since Ariel was born, and didn’t have
to account to anyone for one cent she spent. In an unsettling way, life was sort
of good.

But the peace that manual labour
brought only lasted while she dusted shelves and emptied trash bins, vacuumed
behind desks, and polished a myriad of DNA and fingerprints from door handles
and telephones and windows. Outside the relative sanctuary of that office
building, she spent every moment with her eyes cast down, casting furtive
glances to assess if strangers on the bus, in the grocery store, walking the
sidewalks, were in fact evil enemies waiting for the opportunity to out her.

In early August, Ariel turned
thirteen. She was letting her hair grow, and dying it regularly. Purple first,
like she’d always wanted. Then blonde like Mazie. But the home dye jobs were
nothing like the professional ones, and the result was never what she expected.
The latest, back to the deep maroon that started it all, had turned a muddied pink.

As the stifling summer wore on, an
ever-growing sense of panic set in. Ariel would have to go to school. Mazie had
to enrol her. Without identification. With a fake name. How the hell would she
do that? Two months of dodging the law had done nothing to turn her into a savvy
crime maven.

She dusted the shelves next to
Norman’s desk for the third time since she’d entered his office just twenty
minutes before. He glanced over his shoulder at her, returned to his computer
screen, glanced at her again.

“Charlie, are you okay?”

She plastered a casual smile on her
face. “Me? Sure. I’m good.”

“Really? Because I think the dust is
not only gone, but future dust is afraid to land.”

She flopped into the chair across
from his desk. “Sorry. I do have a problem.”

He pushed aside a folder and rested
his forearms on his desk, his fingers entwined. “Let me help.”

“You’ve done nothing but help. I
don’t want to bother you.”

“Nothing you do bothers me.”

She tried to contain an
affectionate smile. He’d become her closest friend next to Rachel, and her fondness
for him grew each day.

“I have to enrol Clem in school.”

He raised his eyebrows and spread
his hands out, palms up. “And?”

“I left all her identification
behind. I have nothing, no birth certificate, no immunization record.”

“Well the birth certificate is
easy.” He typed on his keyboard and clicked his mouse. “We can just ask for a
replacement. You can enrol her without it. Just get the school a copy when it
comes in.” He wrote on a pad of paper and tore a piece off. “Here’s the
website.”

She leaned forward. “Right. Of
course.” Tears threatened and she bit her lip.

He pushed back in his chair, tented
his fingers and rested them against his lips. “Why are you here, Charlie?”

“Excuse me?”

“In Cornwall. I’m curious. Why here?
You never speak of your ex. You have a daughter, there had to be a father.” He
leaned forward, his elbows on the desk. “You can trust me, Charlie. Honest you
can.”

“What about you? You have an ex?”

“I’m a widower.”

She swallowed. “I’m sorry. You seem
too young for that.”

“Yeah, well, drunk drivers don’t
give a good God damn how old the person they mow down in a crosswalk is.” Red
blotches blossomed on his face. He took a gulp of cold coffee.

“How long ago?”

“Twelve years. She was four months
pregnant.”

“Oh, Norman. I am so sorry.”

He cleared his throat. “Your turn.”

She pulled the cloth through her
closed fist, her eyes trained on the cloud of dust that wafted from it. “I’m
divorced. He didn’t take it well. I wanted to get as far away as I could.”

He stood and stretched. “Can you
type?”

“Can I what?”

“Type. On the computer.”

“It’s been a while. I’m not that good
anymore. But I used to be, back in the day.”

“I’m in a jam. I have to finish
going through this discovery, but I need something typed up for first thing
Monday morning. I was going to break down and call Dory, but she hates it when
I do that after hours. Especially on a Friday night.”

“Sure, I can do it. Nice break from
dust and dirt. You won’t tell on me, right?”

“Your secret is safe with me. They
must be happy with you. You clean better than anyone they’ve ever had. Like the
magic feather duster woman. She’d come in the office, smile at me, wave her duster
in the air and leave.”

“Cullen would have killed me —” She
put her hand to her mouth.

He nodded. “Ah. One of those guys.”

She nodded and stared at her lap.
They sat in silence, the weight of her outburst like a thick fog between them.

“Well, let’s do this, shall we?”
Norman’s voice shattered the tension. He showed her to Dory’s desk in the front
of the office, booted up the computer, and pulled pages from a manila folder.
“These are the questions I need transcribed.”

She sat in Dory’s chair, seat of the
infamous receptionist. Or secretary. Assistant? Whatever she was, Mazie had
heard her name many times but not set eyes on her. Dory didn’t do overtime.

Mazie stared at the monitor. She
placed her right hand over the mouse, the silver paint worn through where
Dory’s thumb and index finger spent many hours a day clicking and dragging. She
moved the cursor to the right spot, clicked it into place, and poised her
fingers over the keyboard. With a deep breath, she set her eyes on the document
to her left and began to type.

“See? You got this.”

“I’m rusty, but it’s like riding a
bike, right? Never forget?” She twisted around and smiled up at him.

He nodded. “Yeah. Never forget.” He
put one hand on each of her shoulders and squeezed.

A jolt of energy shot through her
shoulders, and not the static electricity kind from shuffling across the old
polyester carpet. No, no, no, she couldn’t be attracted to him. There was too
much at stake. And sex remained twisted together in a ball of pain and horror
and pending death. No, her relationship with Norman had to remain as it was. Comfortable.
Like a faded pair of old Levis.

“Coffee?” He let his hands fall to
his sides.

“Sure.” She pushed her chair back
and stood. “How do you take it?”

“You sit and get started. I’ll make
it.”

She put one hand on the back of the
chair and hesitated before sitting down and facing the computer.

Her fingers found the keys and she
focused her mind on the task, blocked out stupid thoughts of romance with a
kind, sweet man. In no time, she was typing like in the old days, with speed
and accuracy. It really was like riding a bike. Would love be like that? Sex?

No. Stop it. Focus.

At first it was just anonymous
words, meaningless letters strung together. Soon some of them started to jump
from the page.

Struck. Broken. Beaten
.

When
choked
popped out of
her fingertips she froze. The cursor blinked to the right of that word, like a
flashing light on a movie theatre marquis advertising the horror show within.

She picked up the paper, scanned
through his loose, neat cursive. She swivelled the chair around. “What is this?”

He looked at her through the
doorway. “It’s for a case.” He took something from his desk drawer, came out and
stood beside her. “It’s a woman who killed her husband. Took a shotgun to him.”
He flashed a pack of cigarettes at her. “You mind?”

She shook her head.

“She’s charged with murder.” He lit
the cigarette and took a long drag, blowing the smoke straight up. “Don’t tell
Dory. She hates it when I smoke in here.”

“So, you’re her lawyer?”

“Yup. There’s no question she shot
him. But the bastard had it coming. Maybe killing him wasn’t the right way to
go, but he’d brutalized her for years.” He shook his head and sucked on the
smoke. “Can you imagine?”

Her eyelids fluttered out a slow blink.
“What will happen to her?”

“Not sure yet. We’re in discovery.
Our defence will be battered woman syndrome. There came a point when it was
just too much and she snapped.”

Mazie nodded.

Snapped
.

“She’s in a psychiatric hospital in
Kingston. I asked that she be put there. Better than jail. She really couldn’t
function, and her kids, grown fucking adults, pardon my French, abandoned her.
They blame her.” He shook his head. “Idiots.”