She Felt No Pain (26 page)

“Kin do that, dear. Or they used to.” Her milky blue gaze grew distant, and Ann could see that her jewelled cat’s eye glasses had very thick lenses. Some drops sat on a nearby table. Glaucoma? “To be honest, my sister Clare was not my favourite person. She was downright mean when she had a few, and she never missed a day. Used to keep a glass of wine in the cupboard and nip at it, as if Tom weren’t to know. Disposition of an asp, too. Marilyn was a very sensitive girl. More like myself way back when. In truth, she was better off with me, though I’d never confess that to a soul.”

“It was kind of you.” Ann summoned up a quizzical frown of concern. “What happened to Clare, if I may ask? I didn’t want to pry.” Using words like
pry
wasn’t her style. Would it strike the right chord?

“Fell down the basement stairs. Now mind you, with the drink, I wasn’t surprised. And the stairs were very steep in that old house they rented on Booster Avenue, Number 125, it was. No handrail. Poor lighting. And after Tom died, she’d hit the bottle full steam ahead.”

Trying to sort out the timeline, Ann sat back in the chair. From down the hall, the smells of a strong disinfectant met her nose, and she heard the vague swish of a mop. “What a tragic and unusual accident. But I suppose with the older houses, codes weren’t what they are today.” Fred Troy had been a builder in the beginning and had taken his young daughter to a few sites.

Dee held up a crooked finger. The nails were clipped but nearly blue. “Not at all. Most accidents take place in the home, where you’re off your guard. Bathtubs. Ladders, roofs, that’s men’s domain, but anyone can take a tumble down the stairs.”

“Oh dear. Was it quick or did she...linger?” Ann squirmed inside at the approach, this womanly clucking. Proceeding one inch at a time, she wasn’t sure how far she could go. Dee seemed like an intelligent woman.

“She went down every night after dinner for another bottle of her homemade wine. Made it a hundred bottles at a time. Disgusting stuff, not like our mother’s elderberry, a tonic. You could set your watch by it. The stairs were not only steep, they were uneven.” Dee smacked her fist into her hand. “Bang. Didn’t stand a chance. Broke her neck. But to look at her, you’d never know. Serene as an angel in her casket. The head wound wasn’t even visible. That was one blessing.”

“What an awful accident.” Ann made an effort to shiver.

Dee pulled her cardigan closer. Though it was stuffy in the room, the elderly had poor circulation. “I was right next door that night, helping the neighbour can peaches. She put up acres of them every summer. Marilyn was with me.” She squeezed her eyes shut as if unwilling to remember.

Ann touched her hand, a bold risk. “Don’t go on. It’s clearly distressing.”

But there was no stopping the woman. It was as if she had been waiting for years to tell her story. And perhaps she had. “We heard this dreadful cry, you see. Like a wounded animal, but muffled, like it was in the basement. And Marilyn rushed out. She got there first, poor girl. Found Clare at the bottom of the stairs. Not a spark of life in her.”

“Wasn’t there a brother in the family?”

Aunt Dee flushed with an unexpected rage. Her tiny hands balled up in fury as she growled an answer. “Don’t talk to me of that devil. Clare let him get away with murder all his life, especially after his dad passed. He was seventeen when he came to me, Marilyn two years younger. Then I gave that little heathen some honest Christian rules. School, chores, prayers, sensible things.”

“I have a son, so I know what you mean. It’s tough raising a child alone.”

“Indeed. And I had intended to stay single. Me and my dog and my job.” She pointed to the stuffed animal. “That’s Haggis. Minds his business.”

“What a responsibility, though.” Ann let a slight frown of womanly support cross her brow.

Dee waved a hand. “Clare left a very small insurance policy, and of course she had a tiny bit from Tom, though he’d been laid off from the shipyard in tough times. I was enough to help Marilyn with her schooling after she graduated. I came down from Campbell River when Clare died and started a house cleaning service here. Easier to set my own hours.”

Ann cast a surreptitious look at the clock. She needed to get back to work. On the hard chair without lumbar support, her back was beginning to throb. But things were progressing. “Go on.”

“Anyway, one night after I grounded him for coming home drunk, Joel stole everything I had in my purse, about a hundred dollars, a week’s salary in those days, and I never saw him again. Good thing I didn’t believe in those newfangled charge cards, or it might have been worse. He took my little car and abandoned it in Medicine Hat or Moose Jaw or Swift Current. Can’t ever keep those prairie places straight.”

“And yet he turned up here just a few weeks ago.” Ann cocked her head to judge the woman’s response. She realized that she had given Dee a rather feeble explanation for her presence. Perhaps one of the facts of living here was people coming and going without stated reasons.

“That’s no surprise. To get what he could out of Marilyn. Told her he read about her lottery win in the paper. He always was a sneaky little bastard.” Dee’s face was growing red with the exertion and excitement. “Can you get me some of that water on the table?”

“Did Clare work?” A few empty slots needed filling. A picture was beginning to emerge.

“In her mind, she did. Claimed to be an interior decorator. Ten-buck magazines up the wazoo. Took a course at Camosun. Not much came of it. Then she used her looks to hook up with an operator called Mitch Garson.”

“Operator?” At the interesting new tack, she tried to keep surprise out of her voice.

“One smooth-talking snake. Investments in third-world mining companies. Probably a Ponzi scheme, like they call them today. He was moving to Toronto, and she was going with him. Had a few connections, or so he said.” A contemptuous cough left no mystery about her opinion.

“That sounds like a serious adjustment for the children, going all the way across the country.” Ann’s son had staged a major rebellion when she’d been posted to Wawa with nothing to do but look at snow seven months a year. A threat to turn him over to the Children’s Aid after he’d come home drunk sobered him up fast and set him on the right path.

“Joel was all for it. More action. No more sleepy island life. Marilyn was heartbroken. She didn’t like leaving her...her friend Shannon.” The old lady marked her page with a piece of yarn then closed her book and put it on a table next to her.

Ann took a breath full of hindsight, vowing to use neutral language. “They must have been very close.”

“Inseparable. Even I remember sometimes. Passions run high in the young. In those days, well...not like now. Clare said it was a silly phase, and moving was the best answer. When Marilyn held her ground one night and threatened to run away, Clare slapped her silly. It was Christmas, and I was visiting. The girl came to me with a hell of a bruise. One eye was half-closed. I told Clare to smarten up, but she just laughed.” She looked up at Ann. “Sometimes young people know when they belong together. After they finished their university studies, they moved in together in Fossil Bay. Shannon had her nursing job at the hospital. Marilyn started her massage business.”

“Marilyn seems to have turned out very well. A credit to you.”

“She was the light of my life. I can’t imagine my own daughter being better. The girls had me to every holiday dinner all these long years. And visited regularly...until Shannon fell ill.”

“That was very sad,” Ann said.

The old lady was winding down, her words slower and slower, her eyes blinking. Small hands nestled together like sleepy puppies. “I’m very tired.”

Ann rose slowly and moved to the door saying goodbye as the woman’s head began to nod. She made a quick exit, avoiding the dining room. Mother would want to know everything that had happened.

Back in her car, she pulled out a pad of paper and jotted down what she remembered. She’d never even asked about that play and why Joel might have had the pages. Sounded like Marilyn had had a rough life with a bitch of a mother, a beloved father and partner who had died too young. She felt as if she were spying on a decent person. The tension made her back throb. When she got home, it was going to take an entire bottle of red wine to relax.

F
IFTEEN

D
on Yates, former English teacher at Edward Milne High School, lived in nearby Shirley. Yates had been Marilyn’s English teacher in Grade Ten, Sister had said on the phone.
“Entre nous
, of course, now that you are an adult and with law enforcement, I must tell you that Mr. Yates was urged from his career by the discovery of his predilection for young men. Not that such might have a bearing on his testimony on other matters.”

“Was he prosecuted?” Holly asked.

A bitter chuckle answered without words. “Those were very different days. And he was extremely careful. An errant hand. A close whisper. On the third offense, the principal took him aside and suggested in no uncertain terms that he was due for a very early retirement. He cleaned out his classroom that Christmas and marched down the steps. He was only forty but had a cushion from his parents’ investments.”

A small frown crept across Holly’s brow. “I feel uncomfortable that you’re telling me this. So he’s been living in the community for decades? I’ve never seen his name on a list.”

“For good reason. It was my understanding from the principal that the warning was sufficient. He was forbidden to have any contact with young people, and he’s not a stupid man.”

A candidate for using underage porn sites, Holly thought. Maybe she should run a check. “Do you think I can trust his word?”

“Donald was never a liar, just in the wrong profession. Far too many temptations. He was his own worst enemy. He’s probably never forgiven himself. The worst sin of all.”

That Friday Holly kept the arranged appointment with Don Yates, preferring a face-to-face meeting, for obvious reasons. Calls to the detachments in Sooke and in Langford had turned up nothing new. Apparently the man was minding his business and didn’t even have Internet access.

At Invermuir Road, she made a right towards the ocean. The rugged dirt road coiled through second-growth forest until it ended at the historic Shirley lighthouse. Now on an automatic system, the site was maintained by a faithful support group that raised money selling shirts and mugs. Holly noted the bulldozing devastation of yet another new housing development connected all the way to Seaside Road at French Beach.

Then she turned down a drive of overlapping cedars with a sign long fallen into a tangle of berry bushes. It read “Manderley”. The Prelude’s front-wheel drive lapped up the steep, winding hill. She stopped at an unprepossessing bungalow. Its wooden roof was scrofulous with miniature ecosystems of moss and sprigs of future saplings. The stucco was stained and chipped, the place merging with happy slugs in the deep and dark.

Don was seated in a single pool of sunlight, looking out at the waves. Haloed by the sun, he was a frail man, his chino pants almost empty on his crane-like legs. His head rode forward on his neck and thin shoulders as though from osteoporosis. Far away, a freighter full of logs plied the choppy strait. Despite its steep cliff instead of beachfront, the property was worth a fortune. The taxes would be enormous.

“Welcome,” he said, reaching for a tray with a sweating pitcher, his sharp elbows jutting from sleeves of a linen shirt with bow tie. “Corporal Martin, is it? Please sit. I put out some lemonade for you. I don’t often get visitors.”

With a thanks, she settled into the uneasy depths of a Muskoka chair. The tart lemonade slipped down well. She suspected he had a mind to match, judging from the
Harper’s Magazine
and
Atlantic Monthly
beside him. A faint English accent favoured by radio announcers tinged his speech, not unusual in a place “more English than England”.

“Sister said you were interested in a former pupil of mine. Is there a question of a crime?”

She didn’t know how much to explain. That depended on what he told her. “I’m not really sure.” That sounded sinister.

His rheumy eyes sparkled. With evil or mischief? “Did you bring this document she spoke of?”

“Yes, but please don’t touch it.” She opened an envelope, and with tweezers, set it on the table.

He picked up a large magnifying glass. “Sherlock Holmes style,” he said with a wry grin.

After no more than a few minutes, he glanced back at her. “Of course I recognize it. The eccentric handwriting’s a dead giveaway. It’s Marilyn’s work. Marilyn Clavir.”

“I see.” Or did she? Holly scratched her chin, where a mosquito was tickling. In the dense forest, away from the sea air, the bugs reclaimed their territory. “What can you tell me about Marilyn and Shannon? You knew them in high school. What does this all mean?”

He sputtered with phlegm then pounded his birdlike chest with a liver-spotted hand. “Arcadia.”

“Pardon?”

“It was a world they created. An escape from reality. The concept thrived long before Sir Phillip Sidney and his opus. Every society looks back, however purblind, to a Golden Age.”

“I know Marilyn’s life was hard. She lost both parents. What about Shannon?”

“Shannon’s father was a minister, what some would call a talibangelical today.”

“Tali...oh, I understand.” The man had a sense of humour. Perhaps a charm of sorts, but she hadn’t forgotten his predilections. Sociopaths were excellent conversationalists.

“A wee joke. Anyway, he was a remote and demanding man. Her mother bowed to his wishes, and Shannon was an only daughter. In a small school, you get to know this.”

“Was the play, or this plan, an assignment?”

“Yes,” he said. “For creative writing. They were very precocious, you see. Always reading ahead of their age. At the time all we had were the old classics,
Wizard of Oz
, the Narnia series. Tolkien. Very male-oriented. The idea of a female knight intrigued them. Galvanized their thoughts. That’s how they latched onto Spenser’s
Fairie Queene
. It wasn’t the historical politics of the poem at all.”