The Geranium Girls (11 page)

“Could you drop by the shop after you finish your route today?” Hermione asked.

It was the first time she had ever phoned Beryl at work. She had managed to get put through to the head office supervisor’s desk and Ed shouted Beryl’s name out at the top of his lungs.

She made her way to his desk amid much hooting and carrying on from her fellow workers. Any excuse to let off a little steam.

“What’s up, Herm?” she asked, breathless. She was always breathless at work. There was never enough time for her to get her mail sorted up satisfactorily.

“I’d rather not talk about it on the phone,” Hermione said, “but I’m pretty sure it’s important.” She didn’t like phones any better than Beryl did. “There are two things, actually, and I’m starting to feel that they’re connected.”

“Could you give me a hint?” Beryl asked.

She could barely hear her friend with all the clanging and banging going on around her at the post office. There was an added high-pitched whir this morning, coming from overhead. It wouldn’t let up. The skin on Beryl’s face felt too tight for the bone structure underneath and her eyes ached with the sound.

Plus, one of her fellow letter carriers was throwing a fit.

Apparently, one of the people on his route had phoned in to say she was pretty sure she’d seen him throwing something into the Assiniboine River and she wondered if it might be mail. She had been expecting a letter from her cousin in Medicine Hat for a couple of weeks now and was worried that it might have been in the ill-fated bundle.

The letter carrier in question was shouting. “I haven’t been anywhere near the river! I haven’t thrown anything anywhere! And you can tell that douche bag to stick her head up her own ass! I’m so fuckin’ sick of being blamed for things I didn’t do! Don’t tell me. I bet I can guess who it was. It was old lady Griswold, wasn’t it?”

“I’ve got to go, Herm,” Beryl said. “I’ll be over as soon as I’m finished work.”

She hung up and stood around with the others to watch.

Ed looked at the piece of paper he was holding and said, “Yes, it is Mrs. Griswold who made the complaint.”

“Christ, Ed!” said Jeff, the carrier who was throwing the fit. “You know she’s a nut job. Why the motherfuck do you even bother me with this crap? I’m going home. I’m sick. I don’t know when I’m coming back.”

He was out the door before anyone could stop him.

“It’s probably just as well,” Ed said. “He needs a chance to cool down. Okay, let’s get back to work. Any offers to sort up Jeff’s mail for him?”

Beryl hurried back to her desk. She wanted to make short work of her route today and find out what Hermione had to say. With three sets of heavy flyers she doubted she’d be making very good time, but at least the weather was good. Sunny and comfortable; the heat had let up some.

By the time she got to the shop it was late afternoon. Hermione was leaning on her desk staring into the middle distance.

“Diane Caldwell was also a customer of mine,” she said.

“Who’s Diane Caldwell?”

Hermione showed Beryl the
Free Press
. A short article on page three revealed the identity of the second murder victim. Beryl sat down heavily in one of the easy chairs.

“We have to tell the police, Herm. It’s too much of a coincidence.”

“Yes, I know. I just thought I’d talk to you first because you were saying that one of the cops was nice. Maybe he could be the one I talk to. I don’t want to talk to any nasty cops.”

“Good idea. I’ll phone Frank. He’s really great. He doesn’t think much of me, but he’ll be nice to you for sure. I don’t think he could not be nice, unless he was dealing with a really nasty person.”

“Why doesn’t he think much of you?”

“Because I’m a stupid…twisted…wiener,” Beryl said. “You said there were two things you wanted to tell me. What’s the other one?”

“Something else happened.”

“What?”

“Someone tried to wreck my geraniums.” Tears welled up in her eyes and one or two spilled over.

“Oh, Herm.”

Beryl looked around her at the lush growth in the clay pots and outside at the window boxes overflowing with healthy plants.

“No, those ones are okay. It’s the ones hanging on the stairway up to my flat. They were smashed down on the ground.”

“Oh, my God. When did this happen?” Beryl asked. “Did you hear anything?”

“In the night, I guess. I slept really well last night. Of all the nights to have a good sleep!”

Hermione opened her desk cupboard and got out the bourbon.

“I found them when I got up this morning. They were strewn all over the cement down below.”

She poured herself a long drink and one for Beryl too.

“I saved all but one of the ones that were left,” she said, “replanted them right away in new pots and brought them inside. I put them in the kitchen window. They should be safe there. Do ya think?”

“What do you mean, of the ones that were left?” Beryl asked.

“Some of them were gone. Not the pots, just the plants.”

“That’s very weird.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have touched anything,” Beryl said.

“I couldn’t just leave them.” Tears ran down Hermione’s face.

This was the first time Beryl had seen her cry and it frightened her a little.

“I’m so sorry, Herm.”

“I left the pots,” Hermione said. “I just touched dirt and plants.” She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “My good-natured little geraniums didn’t deserve this.”

Beryl got up and put her arm around her friend’s shoulders for a moment. Skin and bones. Didn’t anyone eat anymore?

“I didn’t think it was anything more than just horrible children at first.” Hermione sniffed. She hauled out a huge white handkerchief and blew her nose, a great honking sound.

“Then when I read the paper, I started thinking it might be connected to me personally and not just be random assholedness. I thought the geraniums and Diane and Beatrice might all be part of the same thing.”

She looked at Beryl. “Do you think I’m being paranoid?”

“No, I don’t.” Beryl told Hermione about the deadheading of her lobelia and Jude’s pink collar and her own uneasiness. Then she said, “Let’s phone Frank.”

She remembered that she had his handkerchief, freshly laundered and even ironed in a kitchen drawer. She wasn’t sure how to go about giving it back to him, but she didn’t want him to think that she planned to keep it.

After talking to three separate people, Beryl finally heard the now-familiar voice, the one she wanted, the one that would help to make everything okay.

“Frank Foote speaking.”

The next day Beryl stopped by Hermione’s shop again on her way home from work. She found her out back. There was an old moss-covered picnic table set up as a sort of work station, and Hermione was puttering around with cuttings from plants, setting them up in shallow sandy pots till they took root and she could plant them anew.

Beryl sat for a few minutes with her feet up and watched.

“Go inside and get yourself something to drink if you like,” Herm said.

“No, I’m good, thanks. I won’t stay. I just wanted to see how you were getting along.”

Hermione smiled. “Fine. Good.”

“It was me who talked you into putting your geraniums outside,” Beryl said.

“Don’t even start, Beryl. This is not your fault.”

“But if I had just kept my big — ”

“Ssh! I mean it!”

“But I — ”

“Ssh!”

Beryl laughed. “Okay. So how did you like Frank?”

She had gone home yesterday after reaching Frank on the phone. He said he would drop by Hermione’s shop and Beryl didn’t want to muddy up the situation by being there when he arrived.

“Yeah, he was really nice, just like you said.” Hermione scratched her nose with the back of her hand but got sand on her face anyway.

“I don’t know how seriously he took the flower pot smashing, but he was pretty concerned about both women being customers of mine.”

“Yeah. That’s good. It should be taken seriously. They were both shaped like you too, Herm, tall and thin. Shouldn’t you be careful?”

“Frank certainly seems to think so. But what am I supposed to do? Hide?”

“Maybe. You could come and stay at my house for a while.”

“Beryl, there’s strange stuff going on at your house too! You should be being careful too!”

“But my stuff doesn’t seem vicious like this and I’m not tall and thin. This tall thin business worries me.”

“Yeah, but you are a customer of mine and you’re certainly not short and fat.”

“No. I’m medium.” Beryl stood up. “Anyway, I have to go home and soak my feet.”

“They were strangled,” Hermione said. “Frank said the women were strangled with scarves.”

Beryl sat down again, while her friend told her everything that Frank had described to her about the way the women had died.

“I guess it’s not really secret information, if he told you about it,” Beryl said. “But it wasn’t in the paper.” She wished Frank had told her more. She was jealous of Hermione’s knowledge.

“No, but I wouldn’t go blabbing it. I think that’s the type of thing they don’t put in the paper because of false confessions and copycat crimes and things like that.”

“I won’t go blabbing! I wonder why he told you and not me.”

“He didn’t mean to, I’m pretty sure. It was just sort of out there before he knew it. I think your Frank is a wee bit troubled. Or preoccupied, anyway.”

“He’s not my Frank,” Beryl stood up again and fastened on her mail bag. “And I won’t go blabbing,” she added quietly.

“How’s your new bag working out?” Herm asked.

“Good. It makes all the difference in the world,” Beryl said sadly.

She stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of Hermione’s shop and saw Wally standing across the street staring at her. He waited for a break in the traffic and crossed the road.

“You’d think geraniums were the only flower in the world,” he said in that hard-done-by way of his, as he took in the window boxes and gigantic flower pots.

“What have you got against geraniums?” Beryl asked. “I think they’re beautiful.”

“She’s a weirdo, ya know,” Wally said, gesturing with his head in the direction of Hermione’s shop. “Why do you hang around with her?”

“What kind of a thing is that to say?” Beryl stared. “You’re way weirder than she is, Wally. Way weirder. How do you know Hermione, anyway?”

“Is that her name? That figures. I don’t know her. I’ve just seen her.”

Beryl started walking and Wally followed along.

“She’s a lesbian, you know,” he said.

“So what? You’re an ignorant simpleton. What are you doing around here, anyway? Don’t you live in some stupid part of town?”

Beryl knew she was behaving terribly, but something in Wally brought out the junior high in her. She wanted to hurt him. Certain by now that she didn’t like him, she didn’t want to see him here on her turf. Maybe he was the guy smashing pots of geraniums and killing people.

“Really, what are you doing here, Wally?”

“Gettin’ my hair cut,” he said. “No, not with her,” he added when Beryl’s eyes opened wide in disbelief. “I go to Larry, the barber. He’s cheap and good and he doesn’t make me talk.”

Beryl left Wally at the door of Larry’s and walked home. Her new bag did make a difference in the way her neck and back felt. Neckwise and backwise it was very good thing.

“I don’t think I like Wally very much,” Beryl said to Stan.

He chuckled. “Beryl, you don’t really like anyone very much, do you?”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “I really like you. I like Dhani, except he makes me really mad sometimes, I like Frank Foote, I like Hermione a lot…”

“Who’s Frank Foote?”

“The policeman.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“There are lots of people I like,” she started to insist. “At least there used to be. I don’t know what’s happened.”

Sometimes Beryl wished she were married to Stan. They got on so well together. He was already married, though.

“I like Raylene,” she said quietly.

It was Stan’s second marriage. He had a grown daughter from the first, whose ass he thought the sun shone out of. Of course, Stan thought the sun shone out of everyone’s ass. That was perhaps the thing Beryl liked best about him. Maybe she could learn it from him.

He was walking her home. He did this sometimes if he’d had a good day and wasn’t too tired. He lived in Norwood too, on the other side of St. Mary’s Road. In the sticks. At least that’s what people had called it when Beryl was a kid: the sticks, where Stan lived and the flats, where she lived. Lived both then and now; they had both moved to Norwood as small children and neither of them had travelled very far.

Beryl watched withered leaves skittering down the boulevard. The day before, in a high wind, they had blown from some of the trees that the aphids had struck. One of those trees was in Beryl’s yard, her willow. She worried about its health; if it was in good shape, why wasn’t it doing a better job of fighting off the aphids?

Silence screamed down the length of the lane. She wondered for a moment if she had gone deaf. Shouldn’t she be able to hear the dry familiar rustle of fallen leaves as they swept along the boulevard?

“Stan?”

“Yes?”

“Nothing. It’s just so quiet. I wanted to hear a sound.”

“Yeah, it’s strange, isn’t it?” Stan said. “It’s like we’re the only two people on earth. Did you ever see that episode of
The Twilight Zone
where there was only the one man left in the world after a nuclear explosion, but he came to terms with it because he discovered he was sitting on the steps of an undamaged library? And he loved to read?”

“Shh!” Did you hear that?”

“What?”

“I don’t know. You were talking. It sounded like a groan. Or a moan maybe.”

They had almost reached Beryl’s house by now and they stopped and listened to the quiet.

“I don’t hear anything,” Stan said.

“Shh!”

A breeze swirled dry leaves around the bottoms of their hideous postal pants and Beryl could hear them now. But it wasn’t until they entered her back yard that she heard another moan.

“There,” she whispered. “Did you hear it?”

“Yes, actually. I did,” Stan said. “It sounds like it’s coming from Clive’s yard.”

“Is that you, Beryl?” Clive’s voice called over the low cedar fence.

“Yes it is, Clive. Is everything all right over there?”

“Very much so, thanks.”

Clive’s long, deeply lined face appeared above the fence like a misshapen jack-o’-lantern.

“Candy, meet my neighbour, Beryl Kyte, and Stan Socz. They’re mailmen.”

A face appeared next to Clive’s, only higher up. Beryl realized now that the moans she had heard were connected to this pair’s sexual shenanigans and she started to suspect they were naked on the other side of the fence.

They were both kneeling, but even so, Beryl could tell that Candy was very tall. She thought about the tall woman that Mrs. Frobisher had reported seeing in their yards. But that woman had been old. Candy was young. And a hooker. All Clive’s girlfriends were young hookers and they were also all tall. He requested tall, long-legged.

He had told Beryl that one night when she hadn’t been able to sleep. He’d joined her on her deck with a bottle of tequila and they’d decided to share a secret, one each. That had been his.

Beryl’s was that she’d eaten eleven doughnuts once, back in 1983. All on the same day. She’d flushed the twelfth one down the toilet after breaking it into small pieces.

“Weren’t you out of town, Clive?” she said now. “I’m surprised to see you.”

“Yeah, I was. I just got back last night.”

Beryl had been wanting to speak to Clive, ever since the day she talked to Rachel Frobisher, to ask about the tall old lady and other things, like if he’d noticed anything unusual at all around his home, but she didn’t suppose now was the time.

So all she said was, “Did you find everything at your house as it should be?”

“Hmm, I think so. Shouldn’t it be as it should be?”

“Well, yeah, I guess. Anyway, nice seeing you, Clive. And you, Candy. We have to go.”

Beryl didn’t want to see either of them naked. She looked at Stan and saw that he wouldn’t have been in agreement with her over this. He would have liked very much to see Candy naked, though probably not Clive. She gave him a little push.

“See ya, Clive,” Stan said. “Nice meeting you, Candy.”

“Later,” Clive replied.

Candy didn’t speak. Maybe speaking wasn’t part of the package.

“I wonder if the tall woman Mrs. Frobisher talked about was just one of Clive’s prostitutes.” Beryl spoke quietly when they had settled themselves on the deck. She didn’t know where her neighbour was now, in or out, front or back. And there was also young Russell. He often crept up out of nowhere.

“Hmm, I doubt it,” Stan said. “The person she described didn’t sound much like a hooker.”

“Unless she dressed up like that especially for Clive, like if it’s some twisted thing he’s got going.”

Beryl had told Stan everything by now, so there were three friends that were totally in the picture. Hermione, Stan, and Dhani. Two friends, if you took into account that Dhani didn’t know certain things, like that the women were Hermione’s customers. Four, if you took into account that Stan had probably confided in Raylene.

“But Clive may well not have even been here,” Stan said, “when Mrs. Frobisher saw the old lady.”

“Yeah. I just don’t know, I mean, when he’s here and when he isn’t. He just sort of pops up and then disappears again.”

“Literally pops up,” Stan said, and took a long swallow of his Fort Garry Pale Ale.

“Yeah.”

“Your willow tree doesn’t look so good.” Stan batted at the mosquitoes.

“I know,” Beryl said. “I’m just sick about it. What if it dies?” She handed him her mosquito repellent.

“It won’t.” Stan slathered the lotion on his neck and arms.

“Anyway,” he said, “that
Twilight Zone
episode I was telling you about?”

“Yeah?”

“The guy’s glasses didn’t survive the nuclear disaster and he was blind as a bat without them, so it ended up being a very sad story.”

Stan left after one beer and Beryl went inside to shower and change. From her kitchen window she watched Candy leave in a taxi.

After a supper of yellow beans, new potatoes, and chocolate chip cookies she went outside again to fool around in the yard.

There was Clive carrying his recyclables out to the lane.

“Hi, Clive.”

“Hey, Beryl. How’s it goin’?” He was sweating profusely in spite of the cool evening and his face was grey. But he smiled; Clive always smiled.

Beryl noticed that his newspapers were thrown in with his cans and bottles. Plus, his recyclables stunk. He didn’t rinse anything out very well, if at all.

“Do the recycling guys not complain to you about the state of your blue box?” Beryl asked.

“So far, not,” Clive said. “Why, what’s the matter with it?”

“It stinks.”

“Garbage is supposed to stink.”

“Recyclables aren’t garbage.”

Maybe he doesn’t understand the principle of recycling, Beryl thought.

“Clive?”

“Yes?”

“Does anyone ever housesit for you?”

“Whaddya mean?”

Clive set his blue box down by the curb and wiped his hands on his jeans.

“I mean, does anybody ever stay in your home when you’re out of town?”

She gestured toward his house.

Clive looked at it. “God, what a mess it is,” he said.

Beryl followed his gaze.

“I guess it could use a little work here and there.”

You could see an actual hole in one corner of the house if you looked closely and that’s what Clive was doing now. And there was absolutely no paint left on the trim around the windows and doors.

“I have squirrels in the attic, or something, anyway. I can hear them scrambling around.”

“Oh, boy.”

“And Beryl?”

“Yes?”

“I saw a mouse in the basement when I was doing the laundry. At least, I hope it was a mouse.”

“Good heavens, Clive. Be sure not to mention any of this to the Kruck-Boulbrias.”

“Who?”

“The Kruck-Boulbrias. My next-door neighbours on the other side. They’ll have you arrested or quarantined or something. You’re going to have to do something about some of these things, Clive. Start with the mouse, with the live things. They shouldn’t be in your house.”

Beryl didn’t want mice or rats or whatever they were getting tired of Clive’s place and setting their sights on hers. She pictured herself asking Mort Kruck-Boulbria if she could borrow his rodent trap. After her nasty comments to him about squirrels.

“Phone somebody,” she said to Clive. “Phone Poulin’s. And get someone to patch up the holes there in your foundation and wherever.”

“But I’m never here. For instance, I’m going out of town again tomorrow.”

“Then give me a key, Clive, and I’ll do it.”

“Really, Beryl? I don’t want to impose.”

“It’s no trouble, honestly,” Beryl said. “At least not compared to the trouble an infestation of giant killer rodents would be.”

“Just a sec,” Clive said and went into the house.

He came back with a key. It looked like the key that Beryl had worn around her neck when she was a kid. To unlock the big front door of the empty house on Ferndale Avenue.

“This key looks like it was cut to fit the original lock on the original door of this house seventy years ago,” she said.

“I guess it probably was.”

“Wow. Most people would have new doors by now, Clive, or at least new locks, new keys.”

“This one still works, I think.” He stuck the key in the old-fashioned lock on the door.

“So, you don’t usually lock your doors?”

Beryl was reminded of the reason she had started this conversation in the first place.

“It fits!” he shouted. “Sometimes I do. I mean, I have locked them, at times. There’s not a heck of a lot in there to steal. I keep my drums somewhere else. My stereo equipment and stuff isn’t exactly state of the art. I’m not sure anyone would want it.”

Beryl had thought that a musician would have a really great sound system.

“Don’t you listen to music?”

“Not very often.”

“That’s odd, Clive.”

“I don’t like anything anymore. The last thing I liked was probably recorded in 1972.”

“Well, why don’t you listen to that?”

“I’m never here,” he said, impatience beginning to creep into his voice.

Beryl could see that she was starting to irritate Clive, so she brought the conversation back to the subject she was really interested in before she lost him again.

“Clive, does anyone ever stay here while you’re away?”

“No. Not that I know of. Why?”

“You mean you don’t know for sure?”

“Well, it’s just that one or two things have seemed out of whack to me on occasion when I’ve come home…this time, for instance.”

“What?” Beryl opened Clive’s milk shute and a pile of junk mail fell to the ground. “What was out of whack?”

“My bed smelled funny. Like dirt. And…” Clive stopped.

“And what?” She knelt to tidy up the mess.

“Well, there was this funny little newspaper under my bed.”

“Funny little newspaper? What do you mean a funny little newspaper?”

“It’s a
Pilot Mound Sentinel
.”

Beryl stood up and tried to hand Clive the pile of flyers.

Clive kept his hands in his pockets. “I don’t want that shit. What do I want with all that shit?”

“Clive, if you don’t want junk mail, you should put up a sign that says so. Your mailman would be glad not to deliver it. A pilot mound sentinel. Is that what you said?”

“Yeah. It’s a weekly newspaper from Pilot Mound, Manitoba. That’s a town. I’ve actually been there, believe it or not. Or by it, anyway. I had a gig in Crystal City when I was in another band for a while, way back, in 1966 or something. Crystal City is, like, the next town over. I remember nothing about Pilot Mound other than that it was there.”

Beryl dragged a dusty nylon weave lawn chair over and sat down on top of the flyers to keep them from blowing away.

“May I see it, Clive, the newspaper?”

“Sure. Do you want to come in or should I go get it?”

“What the heck. Why don’t I come in? Do you realize I’ve never been in your house?”

“Well, you’re not missing much. Come on, then. But excuse the mess. I’m not much of a housekeeper.”

Clive grinned sheepishly, but nothing prepared Beryl for what hit her when he opened the door.

Hot rank air enveloped her as she stepped tentatively forwards. She had felt this before. Sometimes, when she knocked on the door of a downtown apartment with a registered letter or priority post the thick foul air knocked her backwards just as it did now. Some people live and breathe inside that air. She hadn’t known that Clive was one of them.

How would he even know if his bed smelled like dirt? Clive looked okay outside the house. A little shabby, maybe, and his hair could use a wash. But nothing to warn her of how he lived on the inside.

Beryl didn’t want to go in. And she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to make him feel bad. They were in the kitchen now and Clive pulled out a chair from the chrome kitchen set.

“Here, sit down and I’ll go find the newspaper. Would you like a drink?”

The chair was sticky and Beryl perched on the very edge. The counter was a mess of filthy glasses and liquor bottles, some empty, some with dregs. At least it was a surface where she could put down the flyers. Beryl noticed a cigarette butt floating in the bottom of a vodka bottle. It had turned the booze a russet colour. She shuddered, remembering a long-ago party, when she had taken a swig from a beer bottle she had thought was hers, and had gotten a mouth full of tobacco and cigarette paper.