Still Waters (28 page)

He was aroused through his entire being, ready to burst into an annihilating orgasm that would leave him in a pool of fluids on the floor. Morgan hadn't focused on his penis until then, and now it seemed an absurd appendage, isolated and vulnerable. He half twisted against Anne's lap to see if he had caught her interest down there. She adjusted her weight and pressed her pubic bone against his skull, and he settled back.

Nancy must have tuned her subliminal sensitivities in his direction. She danced over lazily and dropped slowly to his side, examined him without touching, then rose on tiptoe like a dancer and spread her legs over him, languorously descending, holding herself open and tilting him back as she settled firmly with her bottom against his pelvis. Nancy stayed squatting over him like that without moving except for the slight quivering strain of her thighs. She gazed at him eye to eye, and at Anne, smiling fondly, conspiratorially, then back at Morgan, staring deep into his eyes until the incomprehensible stillness that closed around him began to send waves through his entire body and he shuddered, the two young women like sculpture enfolding him in their cunning stillness. In a slow explosion of pure sensation, he exploded inside her, inside both of them, inside himself.

No one moved. They swayed, Nancy's thighs quivered, Anne's lips were moist in the lamplight. Almost on cue, as Morgan struggled between apprehension approaching dread and the pleasures of utter depletion, the dryer bell sounded. Nancy rose over him, draining across his torso, smiling down, standing for a moment, then moved away. Anne smiled with her voluptuous lips and said with affection,
“Come on, old man, it's over.” She slid gently out from under him, stood, and moved away.

He lay back on the Gabbeh, examining the ceiling of the loft, able to recognize details in the patina of paint on the drywall. He wasn't stoned; he had never been stoned. But he was spent. He felt physically and emotionally and morally spent.

Anne squatted beside him, fully dressed, and kissed him squarely on the lips, sharing her succulence for a long moment, then stood while Nancy, also dressed, leaned over and covered him with his jersey, across his depleted private parts. She knelt by his head and gave him a soft kiss, hardly touching his lips.

“Happy Canada Day,” she said.

At the door Anne called back in a low voice, “Happy Fourth of July.”

The door swung open and clicked shut, his beautiful door. Morgan lay on the Gabbeh for a long time, contemplating.

The next morning Miranda returned to the house in Wychwood Park, the most coveted residential enclave in Toronto and a fitting place from which Molly Bray could negotiate her life with Eleanor Drummond. Past tense, she reminded herself. What was it about Wychwood Park that made Miranda feel good about her own limited resources, about the complexities of a fractured identity? It wasn't about money but taste. Perhaps it was the absence of fences, how one neatly appointed property flowed into the next and into the common grounds shaped by the contours of the ravine. Maybe it was the huge trees standing at random like the towering remains of a natural-growth forest. Or perhaps it was the houses themselves, all of them reflecting the Edwardian precepts of their common era, but each very different, each having reached the present in its own way. It wasn't about privilege but class.

Wychwood Park nestled in the lee of Casa Loma, the Victorian monstrosity devoted like the Taj Mahal to a
beloved wife, in this case one still alive while her memorial was being erected. The woman's husband, as a bankrupt widower, eventually shared quarters in the carriage house with his valet. Miranda loved that such follies existed, but like most Torontonians she had never been inside, though it was kept open by public subscription.

The previous evening, when she arrived to see Jill after dropping off Morgan, the girl was already asleep. It was barely past nine. Miranda had talked with Victoria in the kitchen.

“How's she doing?” Miranda asked.

“She's fine. I think she just wants to sleep more than anything. Sometimes you have to, I suppose.”

Miranda liked Victoria. The woman seemed comfortable in the rambling house, moving through its spaces as if it were her own. At the same time she broadcast a subtle disinterest in her artful surroundings. Victoria seemed self-sufficient, and that appealed to Miranda, who suspected self-sufficiency and self-reliance were traits undermined in herself by her admiration for them in others.

Victoria was maternal, but home was a quality she projected more than a place she inhabited. She gave Miranda confidence that Jill was well cared for and loved.

“Have you always been with Molly and Jill?”asked Miranda.

“I was here from day one. I took them in for Mr. Robert Griffin. I used to clean for him. After the baby was born, we searched out this place. Molly thought it was just right, so Mr. Griffin bought it and we moved in. We've been here ever since, for fourteen years. Just over there is where Marshall McLuhan used to live.”

A brief look of defiance crossed her face, which immediately softened to forbearance. “I don't know if
we can afford to stay. Molly paid the bills. But don't you worry. I'll look after the girl. Molly counted on me.”

“You'll be all right, Victoria. This is your home.”

“I come from Barbados,” she said. “I speak Barbadian with my friends. Lord, you wouldn't understand us. No, you wouldn't. We speak Canadian dialect here.”

“Do you know who Eleanor Drummond is?”

“Never heard of her before yesterday, the night when you brought the girl home. Jill asked me about that — did I know Eleanor Drummond? I don't think there are any relatives or otherwise out there, not at all. There's not anyone but me and the girl. Miss Molly never got a Christmas card in her life.”

“Tell me about Molly Bray.”

“Oh, dear, it's hard to believe she's gone.” Victoria lifted her hands to shoulder height and gestured into the depths of the house. “She's everywhere here. She was so young, too young, you know. There's no good age for dying, but there are some worse than others. She was too young to be dying on us.” She looked into Miranda's eyes. “She never took something for nothing, nothing that wasn't rightfully hers.”

Victoria smiled almost wistfully. “But, boy, oh, boy, if it was hers, she was fierce.” She wasn't crying. Her eyes glistened with pride. “Boys,” she declared as if there was an argument. “She could be as cool as a breeze from heaven, and hot as the fires of hell.” She nodded in affirmation to herself, evidently pleased with her summary description, enjoying the familiarity of her own words. She had clearly said them before. “The hellfire was all inside,” she clarified. “She was serene, a lady, out where it counted.”

“And you never even heard the name Eleanor Drummond before?”

“No, ma'am, I never. Like I said.”

“Was Mr. Griffin a part of your life?”

“Oh, no, ma'am. Molly hated old Robert Griffin. I never thought there was enough of him to make any difference.”

“How do you mean?”

“He wasn't much of a human being, one way or another.”

“He certainly had an impact on her,” said Miranda. Victoria suddenly became wary.

“All this,” said Miranda, indicating their surroundings.

“Don't you believe it. This was Molly Bray's doing. From the time she was sixteen she was who she was. This is what she set out to make for herself.”

“Tell me about Jill.”

“She's sleeping now, or as good as asleep.”

“What's she like?”

“She's family, Miss Quin. Family is family.”

“And was Molly Bray family?”

“Well, she was and she wasn't. She was Jill's momma, and Jill is my very own child, like the child of my womb. We loved her no matter what, so I guess we were all family.”

Miranda picked up on the phrase “no matter what.”

“Was she difficult sometimes?”

“Jill or Molly? Molly wasn't difficult, Detective. Distracted maybe. Sometimes Molly Bray was, like, here and not here.”

“Distracted?”

“Like she was following another agenda, you might say. You know, in her head. She was a loving mother. She was my very good friend. Nobody should die so young. Nobody should die if they can help it.”

“I'll call in to see Jill in the morning,” said Miranda,
getting up and moving through the central hallway toward the panelled vestibule by the front door.

“It's Saturday tomorrow. She'll be here. She went to school today. I wanted her to stay home, but she's headstrong like her mother. She was going, and that was that.”

Miranda noticed the rug in the vestibule. It was like one of Morgan's, a Gabbeh, a thick weave from Anatolia done with old-style vegetal dyes. She could hear his voice, expounding. “It's a Gabbeh,” she said. “The rug's very beautiful. It fits in perfectly.”

“Maybe so. I don't know about Gabbeh. It's the last thing she did, buying that, the last thing to make this house like it is.”

Before leaving, Miranda had reached out and given the woman's hand a reassuring squeeze.

“Now don't you fret, Detective, and I won't worry too much myself, just enough. Jill and I, we'll manage fine.”

Now, the next morning, at the large front door with a full night's sleep behind her, Miranda felt good about coming back to see the girl. For now Miranda was content with getting to know this strange woman-child who, like herself, was a link between Molly Bray and Eleanor Drummond, and who was virtually, as events were unfolding, Miranda's ward.

Jill came to the door and opened it wide. She welcomed Miranda with a flourish, then turned and walked purposefully toward the kitchen. Miranda followed, thinking the outfit Jill was wearing, prescribed to make young girls feel sexy, made her look as if she were playing dress-up — pretending to be women without quite developing the knack.

“Hello, Victoria,” Miranda said when they reached the kitchen. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Lady Detective. We're just having breakfast. Pancakes or French toast?”

“Scrambled eggs,” said Jill. “Let's have scrambled eggs and brown toast and coffee.”

“You don't drink coffee,” said Victoria matter-offactly. “You can pour Miss Quin a cup. We're having French toast.”

After breakfast, Miranda and Jill sat out on the front steps. A few people strolled by, walking dogs, exchanging pleasantries as they passed one another without stopping.

“How are you doing?” Miranda asked.

“I don't like my mom being dead.”

Miranda waited.

“She left me. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I've got to look after Victoria. Do you know that she's got three kids in Barbados? They live with her mother, and she sends them money, but they'd rather live here. She's going to go back some day and be a family again.” The girl looked resigned. There was nothing to count on for certain, not in the end.

“Jill, we'll have to talk about your mother's funeral.”

“I told you, I don't want a funeral. There's no one but us.”

“We could have her cremated and just have the ashes placed in a vault.”

“Do they make little vaults just for ashes?”

“I don't know. I'll make the arrangements. Do you want to speak to a minister, or have someone say a few words?”

“Who? About what? That's not my mother at the morgue.”

“Because she's Eleanor Drummond?”

“It's Eleanor Drummond's remains, and it's my
mother's remains.” She looked up into Miranda's eyes ingenuously. “Will they need two caskets?”

Miranda blanched.

“My mom's gone. I want to forget that she's dead. No funeral, no words over ashes, no fuss. Please, okay?”

“Forgetting's not easy, Jill. And maybe not right.”

“I don't want to think about dead!” She took a deep breath. “Not a dead body, a corpse, a cadaver, ashes formerly known as …” Miranda put her arm lightly over the girl's shoulders, but Jill sat upright, untouched. “I just want her to be inside my head. You know what I mean?”

Miranda understood. She remembered when her father died, trying in bed to summon up good memories only, or to avoid him entirely in the dark. She couldn't bear images of absolute stillness, silence, and decomposition.

Thinking about murder victims, Miranda tried to maintain the fine line between clinical disinterest and common humanity, a line occasionally erased by a personal detail, an imaginative leap, and then there was loneliness in the dead of night and fear that was both visceral swarming through her mind.

“That pin you were wearing …” she said to Jill.

“At the morgue?”

“You said your mother gave it to you.”

“Why are you asking?”

“It was pretty.”

“Yes. She didn't like fish, but she liked the design.”

“How did you know what kind it was?”

“A Shiro Utsuri? She told me.”

“Jill, did you know Robert Griffin?”

“No.”

“Does the name seem familiar?”

“I've heard it. Like, that's where they found my mom. At his place.”

“Did you ever go there?”

“I didn't know him. He was an associate of my mother's.”

“As Eleanor Drummond?”

“I guess. I'm not sure. Could you take me to where she died? I would like to see where she died.”

“I don't think so, Jill. Why?”

“It's just — she was alive, and then she wasn't alive. I need to see where that happened, where she changed from one thing to another like that. Do you know what metamorphosis means?”

“Yes, I do,” said Miranda.

“We read stories about metamorphosis in school, stories from Rome a long time ago. And we studied metamorphosis in science. I just want to see where it happened.”