Sundowner Ubunta (37 page)

Aw shit.

Robin lifted his gun so that it was in line with Matthew’s heart. This was it. Do or die.

I could not let this happen. I knew there was no easy way out of this, but this was my job. My job was to save Matthew Ridge. I braced myself against the floor, steeled my muscles and prepared to spring up.

Instead, I saw a dark form flying through the air, like some giant bat, aiming for Robin Haywood’s back, and with it came the most ferocious sound I had ever heard. A snarl of undiluted hatred. I could not believe my ears…or eyes.

It was Barbra.

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As my beloved schnauzer landed on Robin’s shoulders, I leapt across the distance between me and Matthew and knocked him off his feet and to the ground. Robin let out a blood-curdling scream as Barbra snapped and bit at his face, his neck and ears, sounding like a dinosaur eating ribs and gravy. With horror I saw that the gun was still in Robin’s hand and he was waving it about wildly.

A shot rang out.

I heard a grunt.

God, no.

Alex! He’d been shot by Robin a third time.

I let out a flood of expletives that included many I’d only heard in gangster movies and never used out loud before, and I meant every one of them. I jumped to my feet. Barbra and Robin were still struggling. I pounded my heel down on Robin’s exposed gun wrist, so hard it might have gone through the floor if it hadn’t been covered with slate tile. Robin let out an agonized shriek, and the gun popped from his grasp like bread from a toaster. I grabbed it.

I let Barbra stay on top of him while I rushed to Alex’s side to see how bad he’d been hurt. As far as I could tell, the bullet had grazed his shin but never entered his body. I yanked the gag off his mouth and looked into his eyes, which were beginning to glaze over. He was going into shock.

I looked back at Barbra who was declining assistance from Matthew. She must have sensed my gaping stare, and the fact that the blubbering man beneath her was no longer much of a threat, because she stopped her nipping and growling and looked up at me with a slobbering, lopsided grin. I had no idea how she’d risen from the dead, but at that moment I didn’t care.

“I love you, Barbra. I love you, girl.”

I’m sure she winked at me with a “Back at ya” look covering her beautiful face.

Constable Darren Kirsch stood near the French doors of my bedroom, looking uncomfortable as he gazed out at the sunny, springlike day in my backyard. I wasn’t exactly sure why he was there. We’d gone over everything several times at the hospital during the course of Alex’s treatment for his gunshot wounds and again later in his office at the police station.

Robin Haywood admitted to using the fake Clara Ridge to hire me to find Matthew. Robin hadn’t hired me himself because the mother angle seemed to be the most plausible scenario to present to a detective, and he wisely wanted no connection made to him after he carried out his intended deed: killing Matthew Ridge.

At first I was unclear about the reason for the elaborate story of Clara Ridge having all that money, but it was the only way Robin could come up with to explain how a poor widow could suddenly afford to hire a detective and spare no expense in finding her son. Robin, in spite of his physical and emotional injuries, had done quite well for himself in business and had decided to dedicate some of his considerable wealth to finding the boy/man who’d ruined his life at the age of sixteen.

After failing to find Matthew himself, Robin had decided his best bet was to hire a professional to do the legwork. His plan was to follow the detective around, and when the opportunity presented itself, carry out his revenge. With both Ethan Ash and the Chikosis, Robin jumped the gun and erroneously thought I’d found the missing link that would lead him to Matthew. He thought he’d cut out the expense of the middleman-me-and at the same time release pent-up rage by beating Matthew’s whereabouts out of them.

In the case of Ethan, the arrival of oldster Frank had sent him scurrying away before he could learn anything of use, but a blinding punch, before he could be identified, had taken Ethan down. In 167 of 170

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Khayelitsha, his assault had had more dire results-not only for the Chikosis, but for me. The people in the township who knew and loved Matthew assumed the worst. They did not believe my arrival to look for Matthew and the attack on the Chikosis was a coincidence. And, in retrospect, I suppose I couldn’t blame them. They set in motion the power of
ubuntu
, from South Africa to Zambia and Botswana, to protect Matthew from me.

Now, two decades after the horrible event that first started this, I could only hope things were finally being set right. Robin Haywood would get the psychological help he needed, and Matthew Ridge/Moxley would reunite with his mother.

Indeed, Matthew was en route to Airdrie, Alberta, for his first visit in twenty years with his mother. I could hardly guess what that would be like or how it would turn out. They had a lot of ground to cover, but if anyone had the right attitude for contrition and understanding, it was Matthew. My hopes were high.

I felt Alex squeeze my hand and gave him a smile.

“How ya doing?” I asked him.

He smiled back. “Good.”

He was like a king being feted by his subjects, lying on my bed amongst fluffy pillows and cozy comforters, Barbra and Brutus like furry brackets on either side of him. On the bedside table was a tray of his favourite food (sent over from Colourful Mary’s by Marushka and Mary), and there were get well cards and gag gifts at his feet.

Sereena was perched beautifully on the opposite side of the bed from me. She was wearing a satiny lounging outfit, sipping at a champagne cocktail and soundly ignoring my mother who stood nearby in case Alex opened his mouth wide enough for her to drop another morsel of food into it (her own home baking, not the much less
smachneh
-according to her-provisions from Colourful Mary’s). Mom was dressed in a faded pink housedress under an orange and blue striped apron, her black and steel grey hair freshly set into tight curls. She was awkwardly nursing her own champagne cocktail, which Sereena’d pressed into her hands knowing full well she’d barely drink it.

Across the room was Kelly Doell. I was still somewhat shell-shocked to see her, standing in my bedroom, back in our lives, as if she’d never been gone. She was enjoying a giggling gossip session with Errall and Jared on the couch beneath the picture window. Kelly’d turned up in Saskatoon just before I went to Africa, and according to my own sources of gossip, she had spent the last few days at Errall’s house (the one they had once shared as a couple) with very few dealings involving the outside world. With all that was going on, I’d yet to hear exactly why she was back, and for how long. By the looks of her and Errall together, I’d say one of the things she’d come back for was Errall. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

Anthony was keeping my other PWC officemates, Alberta Lougheed and Beverly Chaney, enthralled with selections from his never-ending collection of colourful tales. Anthony and Jared seemed okay. For now. But who really knows what goes on beneath the public surface of any relationship? I’d been invited in, briefly, but only as a visitor, not a participant-just the way it should be.

Actually, everyone seemed okay, happy. Today was about welcoming Alex home after his ordeal. My friends and family knew that, and with typical generosity of heart and spirit, they were doing a bang-up job putting aside whatever dramas were affecting their own lives to celebrate the fact that Alex still had one, after being shot three times by Robin Haywood. They were here for Alex. For me. I looked around again at this collection of people, and the phrase I’d first heard in that South African township-“I am what I am because of who we all are,”-repeated in my head. And I knew it to be truer than ever, even here in this little house on the prairies. Saskatchewan
ubuntu
.

I needed it to be true.

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I gave Alex a quick kiss on the forehead and left his side to speak with Darren Kirsch.

“Thanks for coming over,” I said to the big cop. “I know Alex appreciates your being here for his coming out-of hospital- party.”

Kirsch gave me one of his signature looks, the one where his nose and the left side of his mouth crumple together with only his cheesy moustache keeping them apart. Kind of cute in a Troll doll kind of way. “Quant, I know what you’re really thinking. You’re wondering: Why the hell is he here? I don’t remember inviting him.”

I cleared my throat and gave him a contrite nod. “Actually, yes, that’s about right.” There is precious little social politeness between Kirsch and me, which I find really rather refreshing.

“Well, you’re right. I wasn’t invited. And that hurts me in a way I can’t tell you, Quant.”

I swallowed hard. Had I somehow misjudged this guy? “Darren, I’m sorry, I guess I….”

The mocking laughter stopped my blubbering idiocy.

“Kidding, Quant, I’m kidding. Ooooo boy, you are outta practice. You’re more gullible than my two year old. Whassamatter with you? C’mon!” he chided me with great, hateful mirth, and then he came clean. “I showed up at the door and your mother dragged me in here. Figures someone like you would have a party in his bedroom. When does everyone change into their jammies, Sandra Dee?”

“That’s a door right behind you.”

He ignored my suggestion and handed me an envelope.

“What’s this?”

“It’s why I came over. It’s the lab results on Barbra and Brutus. Just what we thought: he fed them steak laced with sedative. Looks like Brutus ate all of his and some of Barbra’s, either that or Haywood simply put more of the stuff in his steak. That’s why Brutus took so much longer to come out of it.”

“And the blood I saw in the snow around Barbra’s mouth was from her eating the raw meat?”

He nodded. “Or she may have tried to regurgitate the poisoned material if it didn’t sit well in her stomach. Dogs are good about stuff like that. That might be another reason why she was able to wake up and attack Robin Haywood before he shot Matthew Ridge. I hope you’ve rewarded her appropriately.”

“Believe me,” I told him, “Barbra is being treated like a queen around here. When Mom arrived the other day she brought more food for her than for me. Have you ever heard of doggie perogies? Instead of mashed potato or cabbage, she fills them with Purina.”

“Anyway,” he said, “I knew you were waiting on the results, so…” He began to move away.

I laid a hand on his beefy forearm. “Hey, wait. You came all the way over here just to give me this?”

He could have mailed them. He could have told me to pick them up at the police station. He could have phoned it in.

“This is Saskatoon, Quant, not Detroit,” he countered a little too quickly. “It’s not like I had to spend two hours in traffic to get over here to your little pajama party.”

“There’s beer in the fridge if you want one,” I offered in a conciliatory way (which I thought was big of me, given the pajama party remarks).

“Gotta go,” he told me, keeping his eyes anywhere but on me. “Treena and the kids are waiting for me 169 of 170

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to take them to Red Lobster.”

“Okay.” I held out a hand. We never shake. “Thanks, eh?”

“Yup.” He took my hand and gave it a quick pump. He waved at Alex as he passed by the bed and left the room.

I sidled back to my place next to Alex.

“Hey,” he said, pulling me in close. “Thank you for the party. I’ve never had anybody do anything like this for me before.”

“You are very welcome. It’s the least I could do for the guy who tried to save my dogs and ended up getting shot-three times-all because of me.”

His face moved even closer to mine and he whispered, “It’s the least I could do for the guy I love.”

Love.

Oooo.

We shared a gentle kiss, and I laid my head on his chest, letting myself be lulled by its gentle up and down motion. I buried my eyes deep into the burgeoning spring outside the bedroom window.

How had this happened, I wondered to myself.

For indeed, I too…perhaps for the first time… had fallen madly, deeply…unaccountably…in love.

With someone else.

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