The Suspect (20 page)

The phone was ringing as she came into the house after work on Tuesday. It was Alberg, asking if they might have dinner together.

Cassandra didn't want to see him. He was a policeman. It took enormous effort, as she listened to him, to think of him as anything but a policeman. And she had absolutely no desire to have dinner with a cop: not today. Not after George.

Gradually she became aware that he sounded hoarse and dispirited.

"'What's the matter?” she asked, despite herself. "Just tired. Not a good day. That's all.”

She had a quick mind; she could have thought up all sorts of excuses. But in the end she didn't. She invited him to have dinner at her house.

* * *

She set the table with candles and a low bowl of flowers. For dinner they would have a stew from her small freezer. It was already in the oven and she was tearing romaine into a bowl when Alberg drove up.

She went to the door to greet him. "What did you do," she said, as he appeared in his jeans and rubber boots, "take the day off and go fishing?"

He came onto her porch carrying a bottle of wine in a brown paper bag. "Sort of," he said. He glanced at the monkey tree. "I hate those things. They look like they've been put together by somebody who's deranged."

"Don't be rude,” said Cassandra. "I presume this is for me," she said, taking the bag from his hands. "I might be very fond of that tree, for all you know."

Inside, he pulled off his boots and left them on the mat. "I hope I'm not making myself too much at home, but they'd leave marks all over your floor."

She looked uneasily at his sock feet. "A shoeless policeman in my house.” She took the wine into the kitchen. "Does this have to breathe or anything?"

"Yeah. Let me know when it's half an hour before dinner. I'll open it then.” He went restlessly into the living room and looked at the prints on the walls.

"I have to finish the salad," said Cassandra from the kitchen.

"Why don't you go out back and have a look around?" She heard the patio doors open and relaxed a bit. She hadn't realized she was nervous. Maybe I'm even frightened, she thought, chopping tomatoes and throwing them into the bowl. She would have to be very careful what she said to him, and she wasn't a practiced equivocator.

The door to the patio closed and he joined her in the kitchen. "No garden out there. Only grass. How come?"

"I don't like digging around in the dirt much. I get to look at my neighbors' garden. Sometimes they give me flowers."

He went over to the kitchen door and looked through its window.

The garden next door was terraced up the incline all the way to the woods, which also backed onto Cassandra's property and extended around it to meet the gravel road. Next door there were bushes covered with blossoms, and vegetables growing in neat rows, and banks of flowers near the house.

"Yeah, I see what you mean,” said Alberg. "Nice.” He wandered over to the counter and ate a slice of cucumber.

"Not too good living back-to-back with a forest, though.”

"Why on earth not?” said Cassandra, the paring knife poised over an avocado.

"Hard to keep the place secure.”

"Good God,” said Cassandra. "Secure from what? The deer? They're the only things that come down from those woods. They ate my neighbors' scarlet runners last year. Well, not the beans. They ate every leaf on every stalk, and left all the beans. I guess deer don't like beans." She had peeled the avocado and was now slicing it into the bowl. "Would you like a drink?”

"Oh, God,” said Alberg gratefully. "I would.”

"Help yourself. There's a cabinet in the living room."

"Can I fix one for you?"

"A small scotch, please, lots of water. There's ice in the top of the fridge."

"I'm serious, you know, Cassandra," he called from the living room.

"About what?” she said, slicing. She wasn't nervous any more. There was no earthly reason why the topic of George Wilcox should even come up. It was herself she had to watch, she thought—not Karl. She was the one who couldn't get George out of her mind, and part of her wanted very badly to talk about him, to someone. But this man was absolutely the wrong person.

He came into the kitchen and rummaged around for ice.

"You don't even lock your door when you go out, do you? I noticed that when I brought you home on Sunday.”

"All right, all right, I'll lock my door if it's so important to you. But there's nothing you can do about the woods. I'll never be safe from the deer." She washed her hands, dried them, and took her drink from him.

In the living room he sat on the white sofa and she sat in a chair by the window.

"Your face,” said Cassandra, "is as red as a lobster.”

"It's painful as hell,” he said modestly.

She got some ointment from the bathroom and tried to give it to him. He wouldn't take it, protesting feebly. Cassandra took the top off the tube and began applying it gently to his sunburn. He closed his eyes and moaned. She jerked her hand away. "Am I hurting you?”

"No, it feels wonderful. Cool.”

"It won't last. But it'll help for a while.” She smoothed it over his high wide forehead, his long straight nose, across his cheeks, around his mouth; it was a generous mouth, and there was a slight cleft in his chin. She screwed the top on the tube. He opened his eyes. They were wintry blue, and probably specially trained to spot a lie or an evasion a mile away. She thrust the tube into his hand. "Here. Take it with you. Put some more on tonight, before you go to bed.”

"Maybe you'd do it for me," he said, looking up at her. "Before I go to bed.”

Cassandra ignored this and sat down again. She picked up her glass. "How did you get that burn, anyway?”

"I was out in a boat all day.”

"Playing? Or working?”

"Working.” He drained his glass. "May I get myself another one?"

"Of course. I heard there was some kind of search going on,” she said casually as he got more scotch and went into the kitchen for ice. "What were you looking for?”

He put his glass on the coffee table and dropped onto the sofa. "Oh, we took it into our heads there might be a murder weapon out there. "

"And was there?"

"Don't know yet. They're still looking. Doesn't look very encouraging, though.”

'Has this—uh, got to do with Mr. Burke?”

He looked at her curiously. "Yeah, as a matter of fact.”

"Well he's the only person I know of who's been murdered around here lately," said Cassandra defensively. "If you don't want to talk about it, just say so.”

"Sorry. I can't talk about it, really. I shouldn't, anyway.”

Cassandra got up to freshen her drink.

"How's your friend George?” said Alberg.

She turned quickly from the fridge; he was-out of sight, in the living room. For a moment she couldn't think of a single thing to say.

"Not very well, I think,” she said at last, and was surprised at how calm she sounded.

She went back to her chair. She couldn't have denied seeing him. They had been observed by all sorts of people.

"He came to the library today," she said. "He seemed very tired. I drove him home. " Stop, Cassandra, she told herself; stop right there.

"Tired," said Alberg.

Cassandra's heart was thudding. This man had her ointment all over his face, his sock feet on her carpet; this man had come to her for food and, presumably, affection; this man worried about her unlocked doors and burglars creeping down on her from the woods: He was not her enemy, after all, she told herself.

But she had to keep her loyalties straight, because that's what duty was, after all, wasn't it? Loyalty. She had known George Wilcox for years, and an affectionate regard had grown between them; she had met this policeman less than a week ago.

"Yeah," said Alberg, looking at the glass in his hands. "I imagine he's pretty tired, all right.”

Cassandra didn't respond. He didn't seem to expect her to.

"It's half an hour until dinner, now," she said.

In the kitchen he opened the wine and Cassandra put rolls in the oven to warm. They were standing back to back, almost touching. She felt the heat from his body, and smelled the sea, and sunburn ointment, and sweat.

"There's no dessert, I'm afraid," she said.

"You warned me I'd be taking pot luck.”

He was observing her thoughtfully, standing only a couple of feet away. She slipped past him into the living room.

"Don't you ever wear a uniform?” she said, sitting again in the chair by the window.

"Sure." He was looking beyond her, out toward the highway.

"When?”

He sat on the sofa, holding his glass between his knees, where the denim of his jeans looked thin enough to fray. "I wear it when I go to talk to kids in the schools, or to service club meetings, or when somebody from Vancouver's coming over to inspect. Gotta look shipshape for the brass." He took a drink.

"What about the red one? Do you ever wear that?"

"You mean boots and breeks?"

Cassandra laughed. "Is that what you call it?"

"The red tunic, the boots, the Sam Browne, the breeches—yeah, that's what we call it. Review Order. It's only worn for ceremonial things. I look pretty good in mine,” he said comfortably.

She laughed again.

"Well, most people do, I guess," said Alberg with a grin.

"Not so much the women. They don't get to wear the Stetson or the breeks—just skirts and a kind of a pillbox hat."

"What a chauvinistic bunch,” said Cassandra. "You're undoubtedly a chauvinistic man."

"We're a paramilitary outfit," said Alberg. "What the hell do you expect?" He put his glass down and fell back into the sofa, stretching his arms along the top. "I feel better.”

"Three scotches," said Cassandra dryly. "That'll do it.”

He sat up. "Two. I don't think it's the booze. I just like it here.”

The timer on the stove began to ring, and Cassandra got up to serve dinner.

She lit the candles.

He complimented her cooking, and she complimented his choice of wine.

"What are you doing here, anyway?" said Alberg suddenly. "In Sechelt?"

"Why don't you tell me what you're doing here, first,” said Cassandra. "I know you people get moved around. But by the time you're a staff sergeant, surely you have something to say about where you're going to go next."

"I don't know how much to tell you." He looked at the candles and the flowers. "What the hell." He put down his fork and leaned his elbows on the table. "In Kamloops it got to be time for my annual review. Personnel evaluation. I was a sergeant there, in charge of my first detachment. And it was also time for promotion to staff sergeant. There were several places I could have gone. Sechelt was one of them.”

He picked up his fork and started pushing salad around on his plate. "Sechelt's what we call a 'jammy' posting. Nothing heavy, a nice place to live, nice people to deal with, for the most part. A quiet place, not much happening. And yet it's close to Vancouver.”

He looked up at Cassandra. "My wife and l had decided to separate. I didn't tell the review team. They'd have wanted me to stay in Kamloops, try to work things out. The force gets uneasy about divorce. They feel guilty. And it's true that in a lot of cases it's the job that does it."

"Was it the job in your case?"

He started to rub his forehead, winced from the pain of the sunburn, and drank some more wine instead. "I thought it was, yeah. Maura thought so too, I think. But now—lately—I don't know. Anyway. I was feeling a bit—well, low, and battered." He laughed a little. "A jammy posting sounded like just the thing. And it was on the water, too. So I asked for Sechelt.” He spread his hands. "And here I am.”

"How long will you be here?"

He looked directly at her. His eyes looked warmer in candlelight, and his hair was the color of wheat. "It's up to me. If I don't screw up, I could probably stay until I retire. I don't think I'm going to screw up. I usually don't.”

"Would you want to stay, though?” She made herself take a sip of wine, slowly. "It's pretty dull around here. Especially for a policeman.”

"I don't know yet,” he said reflectively. "Sometimes I think if I stay in a place like this, a little place, with a lot of ordinary people in it and not a whole lot of—well, hardcore creeps, let's say . . . maybe in a place like this, where most people don't feel uneasy around police officers, some of my cynicism will wear off. Eventually."

"I hadn't really thought of you as a cynic,” said Cassandra gently.

"Thank you, ma'am." He smiled. "But you don't know me very well. Yet." There were hollows beneath his eyes—but maybe that was the candlelight, she thought. "Also," he went on, "I think I'm tired of change. I think I want things in my life to stay pretty much the same, for a while.”

"You like your job though, don't you.”

"Yeah, I do. I sure as hell wouldn't want to do anything else.”

"What do you like about it, exactly?”

"Figuring things out," he said promptly. "Talking to people, thinking, finding out what happened, who did it, why they did it—that kind of thing.”

"What about. . . justice?” said Cassandra tentatively.
 
He looked at her quizzically, not quite amused. 'justice isn't up to me. Getting the answers, that's my job. And making sure the Crown prosecutor has enough to go ahead with. And that,” he said grimly, "is the toughest part of it all."

Cassandra got up to clear the table. Alberg helped. In the kitchen she reached to switch on the light, but he stopped her.

"No, look,” he said, taking plates from her. He put them on the counter and turned her toward the window, his hands on her shoulders. The moon had broken through the clouds to shine bright above the water.

"It's beautiful,” she said. I

"Is that why you're here? Because it's beautiful?”

"I'm here because my mother's got heart disease,” said Cassandra, looking at the moon, which was being obscured once more by cloud. "She's lived in Sechelt for more than twenty years. When my father died, my brother and I decided one of us ought to live near her. Not with her, I told him I wouldn't do that, not under any circumstances. But near her was okay. He's married, has kids, lives in Edmonton. I was in Vancouver. It was easier for me.”