“Where to, lady?”
Vicki opened her mouth and then closed it again. She didn’t actually have the faintest idea.
“Uh, Queen’s University. Life Sciences.” Her mother would have been moved. Surely someone could tell her where.
“It’s a big campus, Queen’s is.” The cabbie pulled out of the train station parking lot and turned onto Taylor Kidd Boulevard. “You got a street address?”
She knew the address. Her mother had shown her proudly around the new building just after it opened two years ago. “It’s on Arch Street.”
“Down by the old General Hospital, eh? Well, we’ll find it.” He smiled genially at her in his rearview mirror. “Fifteen years of driving a cab and I haven’t gotten lost yet. Nice day today. Looks like spring finally arrived.”
Vicki squinted out the window beside her. The sun was shining. Had the sun been shining in Toronto? She couldn’t remember.
“Winter’s better for business, mind you. Who wants to walk when the slush is as high as your hubcabs, eh? Still, April’s not so bad as long as we get a lot of rain. Let it rain, that’s what I say. You going to be in Kingston long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Visiting relatives?
“Yes.”
My Mother. She’s dead.
Something in that single syllable convinced the cabbie his fare wasn’t in the mood for conversation and that further questions might be better left unasked. Humming tunelessly, he left her to relative silence.
An attempt had been made to blend the formed concrete of the new Life Sciences Complex in with the older, limestone structures of the university, but it hadn’t been entirely successful.
“Progress,” the cabbie ventured, as Vicki opened the back door, his tongue loosened by a sizable tip. “Still, the kids need more than a couple of Bunsen burners and a rack of test tubes to do meaningful research these days, eh? Paper says some grad student took out a patent on a germ.”
Vicki, who’d handed him a twenty because it was the first bill she’d pulled out of her wallet, ignored him.
He shook his head as he watched her stride up the walk, back rigidly straight, overnight bag carried like a weapon, and decided against suggesting that she have a nice day.
“Mrs. Shaw? I’m Vicki Nelson . . .”
The tiny woman behind the desk leapt to her feet and held out both hands. “Oh, yes, of course you are. You poor dear, did you come all the way from Toronto?”
Vicki stepped back but couldn’t avoid having her right hand clutched and wrung. Before she could speak, Mrs. Shaw rushed on.
“Of course you did. I mean you were in Toronto when I called and now you’re here.” She laughed, a little embarrassed, and let go of Vicki’s hand. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . well, your mother and I were friends, we’d worked together for almost five years and when she . . . I mean, when . . . It was just . . . such a terrible shock.”
Vicki stared down at the tears welling up in the older woman’s eyes and realized to her horror that she didn’t have the faintest idea of what to say. All the words of comfort she’d spoken over the years to help ease a thousand different types of grief, all the training, all the experience—she could find none of it.
“I’m sorry.” Mrs. Shaw dug into her sleeve and pulled out a damp and wrinkled tissue. “It’s just every time I think of it . . . I can’t help . . .”
“Which is why I keep telling you, you should go home.”
Thankfully, Vicki turned to face the speaker, the calm, measured tone having dropped like a balm over her abraded nerves. The woman standing just inside the door to the office was in her mid-forties, short, solidly built, and wearing an almost practical combination of gray flannel pants and white, lace-edged blouse under her open lab coat. Her red-brown hair had been cut fashionably close, and the heavy frames of her glasses sat squarely on a nose well dusted with freckles. Her self-confidence was a tangible presence, even from across the room, and in spite of everything, Vicki felt herself responding.
Mrs. Shaw sniffed and replaced the tissue in her sleeve. “And I keep telling you, Dr. Burke, I’m not going home to spend the day alone, not when I can stay here, be surrounded by people, and actually accomplish something. Vicki felt small fingers close around her arm. ”Dr. Burke, this is Marjory’s daughter, Victoria.”
The department head’s grip was warm and dry and she shook hands with an efficiency of motion that Vicki appreciated.
“We met briefly a few years ago, Ms. Nelson, just after your first citation, I believe. I was sorry to hear about the retinitis. It must have been difficult leaving a job you cared so deeply about. And now . . .” She spread her hands. “My condolences about your mother.”
“Thank you.” There didn’t seem to be much left to say.
“I had the body taken over to the morgue at the General. Your mother’s personal physician, Dr. Friedman, has an office there. As we didn’t know exactly when you’d be arriving or what the arrangements would be, that seemed best for all concerned. I did have Mrs. Shaw call to let you know, but you must have already left.”
The flow of information carried no emotional baggage at all. Vicki found herself drawing strength from the force of personality that supported it. “If I could use one of your phones to call Dr. Friedman?”
“Certainly.” Dr. Burke nodded toward the desk. “She’s already been informed and is waiting for your call. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She paused at the door. “Oh, Ms. Nelson? Do let us know when the service is to be held. We’d . . .” Her gesture included Mrs. Shaw. “. . . like to attend.”
“Service?”
“It
is
customary under these circumstances to hold a funeral.”
Vicki barely noticed the sarcasm, only really heard the last word.
Funeral . . .
“Well, she doesn’t look asleep.” There was no mistaking the waxy, gray pallor, the complete lack of self that only death brings. Vicki had recognized it the first time she’d seen it in a police cadet forensic lab and she recognized it now. The dead were not alive. It sounded like a facetious explanation but, as she stared down at the body her mother had worn, she couldn’t think of a better one.
Dr. Friedman looked mildly disapproving as she drew the sheet back up over Marjory Nelson’s face, but she held her tongue. She could feel the restraints that Vicki had placed around herself but didn’t know the younger woman well enough to get past them. “There’ll be no need for an autopsy,” she said, indicating that the morgue attendant should take the body away. “Your mother has been having heart irregularities for some time and Dr. Burke was practically standing right beside her when it happened. She said it had all the earmarks of a massive coronary.”
“A heart attack?” Vicki watched as the door swung shut behind the pallet and refused to shiver in the cold draft that escaped from the morgue. “She was only fifty-six.”
The doctor shook her head sadly. “It happens.”
“She never told me.”
“Perhaps she didn’t want to worry you.”
Perhaps I wasn’t listening.
The small viewing room had suddenly become confining. Vicki headed for the exit.
Dr. Friedman, caught unaware, hurried to catch up. “The coroner is satisfied, but if you’re not . . .”
“No autopsy.” She’d been to too many to put her mother—what was left of her mother—through that.
“Your mother had a prepaid funeral arranged with Hutchinson’s Funeral Parlour, up on Johnson Street, just by Portsmouth Avenue. It would be best if you speak to them as soon as possible. Do you have someone to go with you?”
Vicki’s brows drew down. “I don’t
need
anyone to go with me,” she snarled.
“According to your mother’s arrangement, Ms. Nelson, Vicki . . . Ms. Nelson”—the funeral director blanched slightly as his client’s expression returned him to last names but managed to continue smoothly—“she wanted to be buried as soon as possible, with no viewing.”
“Fine.”
“As she also wanted to be embalmed . . . perhaps the day after tomorrow? That would give you time for a notice in the local paper.”
“Is the day after tomorrow as soon as possible, then?”
The younger Mr. Hutchinson swallowed. He found it difficult to remain completely calm under such hard-edged examination. “Well, no, we could have everything ready by tomorrow afternoon . . .”
“Do so, then.”
It wasn’t a tone that could be argued with. It wasn’t even a tone that left much room for discussion. “Is two o’clock suitable?”
“Yes.”
“About the casket . . .”
“Mr. Hutchinson, I understood that my mother prearranged
everything.”
“Yes, she did . . .”
“Then,” Vicki stood, slung her bag over her shoulder, “we will do exactly as my mother wanted.”
“Ms. Nelson.” He stood as well, and pitched his voice as gently as he could. “Without a notice in the paper, you’ll have to call people.”
Her shoulders hunched slightly and the fingers that reached for the doornob shook. “I know,” she said.
And was gone.
The younger Mr. Hutchinson sank back down into his chair and rubbed at his temples. “Recognizing there’s nothing you can do to help,” he told a potted palm with a sigh, “has got to be the hardest part of this business.”
The old neighborhood had gotten smaller. The vast expanse of backyard behind the comer house at Division and Quebec Streets that she’d grown up envying had somehow shrunk to postage stamp size. The convenience store at Division and Pine had become a flower shop and the market across from it—where at twelve she’d argued her way into her first part-time job—was gone. The drugstore still stood at York Street but, where it had once seemed a respectable distance away, Vicki now felt she could reach out and touch it. Down on Quebec Street, not even the stump remained of the huge maple that had shaded the Thompson house and not even the spring sunlight could erase the shabby, unlived in look of the whole area.
Standing in the front parking lot of the sixteen-unit apartment building they’d moved to when her father’s departure had lost them the house in Collins Bay, Vicki wondered when it had happened. She’d been back any number of times in the last fourteen years, had been back not so long before and had never noticed such drastic changes.
Maybe because the one thing I came back for never changed. . . .
She couldn’t put it off any longer.
The security door had been propped open.
A security door protects nothing unless it’s closed and locked. If I told her once I told her . . . I told her . . .
The reinforced glass trembled but held as she slammed it shut and stumbled down the half flight of stairs to her mother’s apartment.
“Vicki? Ha, I should’ve known it was you slamming doors.”
“The security door has to be kept closed, Mr. Delgado.” She couldn’t seem to get her key into the lock.
“Ha, you, always a cop. You don’t see me bringing my work home.” Mr. Delgado came a little farther into the hall and frowned. “You don’t look so good, Vicki. You okay? Your mother know you’re home?”
“My mother . . .” Her throat closed. She swallowed and forced herself to breathe. So many different ways to say it. So many different gentle euphemisms, all meaning the same thing. “My mother . . . died this morning.”
Hearing her own voice say the words, finally made it real.
“Dr. Burke? It’s Donald.”
Dr. Burke pulled her glasses off and rubbed at one temple with the heel of her hand. “Donald, at the risk of sounding clichéd, I thought I told you not to call me here.”
“Yeah, you did, but I just thought you should know that Mr. Hutchinson has gone to get the subject.”
“Which Mr. Hutchinson?”
“The younger one.”
“And he’ll be back?”
“In about an hour. There’s no one else here, so he’s going to start working on it immediately.”
Dr. Burke sighed. “When you say no one else, Donald, do you mean staff or clients?”
“Clients. All the staff are here; the
old
Mr. Hutchinson
and
Christy.”
“Very well. You know what to do.”
“But . . .”
“I’ll see to it that the interruptions occur. All you have to worry about is playing your assigned role. This is vitally important to our research, Donald. It could bring final results and their accompanying rewards practically within our grasp.”
She could hear his grin over the phone as he broadly returned the clichd circumstances demanded. “I
won’t
let you down, Dr. Burke.”
“Of course you won’t.” She depressed the cutoff with her thumb and contacted the lab. “Catherine, I’ve just heard from Donald. You’ve got a little more than an hour.”
“Well, I’ve got number eight on dialysis right now, but he shouldn’t take much more than another forty minutes.”
“Then you’ll have plenty of time. Call me just before you arrive and I’ll have Mrs. Shaw begin making inquiries about flowers and the like. The state she’s in, she’ll probably be able to keep the lines tied up for most of the afternoon. Has number nine quieted?”
“Only after I cut the power again. He’s barely showing life signs.”
“Catherine, it is
not
alive.”
“Yes, Doctor.” The pause obviously contained a silent sigh. “It’s barely showing wave patterns.”
“Better. Did all that banging damage it?”
“I haven’t really had time to examine him, but I think you’d better come and take a look at the box.”
Dr. Burke felt her eyebrows rise. “The box?”
“I think he dented it.”
“Catherine, that’s im . . .” She paused and thought about it for a moment, knowing Catherine would wait patiently. With natural inhibitors shut down and no ability to feel pain, enhanced strength might actually be possible. “You can run some tests after you get the new lot of bacteria working.”