“Joan, are you still there?”
Before answering, she took a deep breath. “Sorry, Tony. You're going to have to deal with this one on your own for now.” She gave him a list of instructions and said she'd call in a couple of days to see how they were doing without her. Just before she hung up, she added, “And get Rosy to help.”
“Rosy? The receptionist?”
“She's enthusiastic and smart. She deserves a chance.”
On the way to the hotel restaurant, Joan slid a copy of the
Madden Monitor
from the stack on the reception desk into her purse then frowned into her wallet when she went to pay. A lonely twenty remained. She mentally revisited her purchases since leaving home yesterday, added in her poker loss, and calculated that she was missing about forty dollars. It was too much to have accidentally overpaid. It must have fallen out of her wallet, or maybe she'd bought something and forgotten. She'd physically retrace her steps this morning and at the same time, start to gather information on who killed Roger Rimmer.
“Why the hell did they haul her out of the house before we got there? Is everyone in this town trying to make rat shit out of this case?” Staff Sergeant Smartt's fury hung in the air like an avalanche ready to rumble down a mountain. He cursed the local ambulance service then screamed at Gabe.
Gabe knew that if Smartt didn't keep his mouth shut, or at least his voice down, nobody would get this job done. Why did the yellers so often rise to the top positions?
“It appears to have been a stroke, natural causes.” Gabe said calmly.
“She was a goddamn witness in a goddamn murder investigation that's not even two days old. That makes it a suspicious death. Period. I want an autopsy and I want to know where her classmates were this morning,” demanded Smartt.
Again, they had an audience in the office, and this time Gabe wished they hadn't. He knew that Smartt was right. Nobody should have touched Peg's body. He hadn't been called until after she'd been moved. It had been dealt with as a normal death, despite her involvement with the reunion and Roger Rimmer. No matter, Smartt lacked the sensitivity to work in such a small community. There was barely a person in town that didn't know either Roger or his parents, and everyone knew Peggy. This situation touched everyone.
Smartt wasn't finished. “And what about that woman from Vancouver, Parker? Do you have any more on her?”
“Nothing of interest,” replied Gabe.
He had been uncomfortable running a check on Joan. Part of him had been afraid that he'd find information that he didn't want to know. Not criminal activity, but personal stuff that she had a right to keep private, like the fact that her car was still registered in her husband's name. What made him feel particularly awkward was that another part of him wanted to know.
He wondered just how separated Joan and Mort were. But who was he to question her personal circumstances? Betty would be home by tomorrow evening, and all he could think about was how he could arrange to see more of Joan before then. It all seemed impossible with the murder investigation and now Peg's death.
“The dead woman, this Chalmers, she said Parker contacted her and asked to be included in this reunion,” said Smartt.
“Where did you get that?”
“I interviewed her myself, yesterday at her home.”
It irritated Gabe that Smartt was duplicating their efforts. “When she was at the school yesterday she was confused. She was sick, obviously worse off than we all knew, and she'd had a lot on her plate for the past few months with this reunion.”
Smartt grumbled as he skimmed through his notes. “Says here Cardinal called her late yesterday. He was going to her place today to go over her statement one more time, get it all straightened out.”
“
My
notes say Peg contacted Joan Parker by telephone and insisted that she come to Madden.”
“You're certain?” Smartt asked.
Gabe nodded but didn't mention that it was Joan who had explained to him the sequence of events that got her to the reunion.
“How close are the two of you?”
Gabe thought he knew where the Superintendent was going with this and that he'd be ordered to avoid her. “We were friends in high school, but we haven't spoken in almost thirty years.”
“Good. I want you to make a point of talking to her. Keep tabs on her as long as she's in town,” ordered Smartt.
“Done,” said Gabe then he turned away so that Superintendent Smartt wouldn't see him smile.
Joan walked into the arts centre to find several teenagers in the hallway running lines from
Little Shop of Horrors
. A good-looking boy with shaggy hair and a tight T-shirt broke into song to the appreciative swooning of the all the girls and at least one of the boys. He reminded Joan of Roger. How little the world changed. She found the door to the games room open and went inside.
One window blind was up so there was plenty of light to guide her to the table where they'd played blackjack the night before. If she'd dropped her cash while playing cards, it might still be there. She passed the couch and stopped. A chill ran down her spine. Mr. Fowler's motionless body was stretched out on the floor. She calculated what to do first, call the police or check to see if he was still alive, then she stepped toward him and bent to feel his pulse.
Suddenly his eyes shot open and she screamed.
“Oh, Joan, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to scare you.” Mr. Fowler clambered to his feet as quickly as his aging joints would allow. “My back's bad. I like the floor for a nap.” As she gasped to catch her breath, he continued. “It's nicer here than at my place.” He smoothed his hair and buttoned his sweater. “There's nobody there since my wife passed on.”
“I'm sorry I woke you,” Her heart was still pounding. “I've misplaced forty dollars.”
“Oh, dear.”
“I thought it might have fallen on the floor when I was paying Candy out last night.”
He grinned impishly. “She's quite the shark. Wouldn't have expected it.” He shook his head. “I tidied up this morning but I didn't find any cash. There were other things people forgot. In the old days it was faded jean jackets and textbooks. Now it's reading glasses and cardigans.”
They both smiled then spent a few minutes together looking under tables and the old, sagging couch. Finally they gave up. The money wasn't here. Joan said goodbye and turned to leave, but Mr. Fowler stopped her.
“Joan, I have something I need to tell you.” His tone was serious. He directed her toward the couch. “It's about me, my life. But it's also about you.”
She perched on the edge of the sagging sofa and Mr. Fowler closed the door. She wondered what could be so important. He stood before her, as though at the front of a classroom, cleared his throat and began to tell her a story.
In 1973 Ed Fowler was a twenty-eight-year-old Madden schoolteacher with radical ideas. Half-a-dozen years earlier he'd left Portland at the height of the Viet Nam War. “That war was unconscionable. But it wasn't just the war, it was the number of people in my country who supported it and refused to listen with grace. It's a sinking, lonely feeling when you realize you don't belong in the country of your birth.”
“I can't imagine,” said Joan.
“It was a horrible era for the United States of America, no question, but leaving it was the best thing that ever happened to me. It set me free.” He paused for a moment to wipe his glasses. “I left with a duffle bag and a degree from Oregon State and I crossed the border into Canada.”
“You dodged the draft?” asked Joan.
“Technically, although I don't think they were that interested in someone my age, at least not at that point in the war. Eventually I wound up in Madden. Property was cheap and I knew they got a good deal of sun. I met Suzette, my future wife, through friends. She had the skills to live an alternative lifestyle; she gardened and sewed and made the most whimsical quilts on a frame that dominated our living room.”
“Hippies. You were hippies,” said Joan.
“I suppose we were, although we never would have described ourselves as such. Labels were verboten back then, a sign of the establishment.” He chuckled at the memory, but she detected melancholy in his voice. “A dozen of us like-minded souls plotted out a communal farm where we would become self-sufficient. Our cropland was cultivated in a large circle with pie-shaped plots. I can't quite remember why we did that,” he said shaking his head, “but we grew everything imaginable: potatoes next to beets next to carrots next to soybeans, and so on. In the centre of it all was a large ramshackle house that we built mostly from found materials. At any given time there were seven or eight adults and a half-dozen or more children living there, including our twin girls, Sky and Summer. The revenue from the farm was paltry, not enough to pay for gas or sugar or to buy shoes, so I took a job teaching math and science at the school in Madden. One of the first parents I met was Vi Parker.” He looked up at Joan with watery blue eyes. “I was smitten. Immediately and irreversibly smitten.”
Joan was stunned. “My mom?”
Fowler nodded again. “Vi was a few years older than I was, but to me she was eternal youth. I found reasons to talk to her whenever she came to the school, and that was often since you and your brothers were there.”
“I don't remember her being so involved with the school,” said Joan.
He stopped for a moment and stared out the window as though it framed a view of Joan's mother as a young woman.
“Oh, she wasn't one of those parents who sat on committees to demand newer equipment or more library books. She was more likely to appear in a flowing skirt with crepe paper and balloons to decorate the gym for a spring dance, or with a towel, bathing suit, and a bucket of chicken to lead a group of kids to the swimming pool. She'd be right in there, splashing and playing while the other mothers lounged on the sidelines.” As Mr. Fowler spoke, the years fell away and Joan was transported back to those hot June days at the pool, a memory so visceral that she could smell the chlorine and coconut oil and see her mother in her bright-skirted bathing suit and turquoise bathing cap, snapping the caps off Coke bottles, and encouraging their burping contests. She couldn't remember Mr. Fowler at the poolside, but then she'd been so absorbed with her own life.
“Do you remember that, Joan?”
She nodded slowly. “I do.” She remembered her mother, and an image of the young schoolteacher began to emerge from a corner of her memory. They had all admired him, but never suspected that he had passion beyond his social causes.
“I made excuses to be around your mother whenever I could.” He described her sparkling energy and the sound of her melodious laugh. “I grew as a human being from watching her.
She lived her values, Joan. I never heard her pass judgment on another person. She went out of her way to be kind to everyone.”
“She still does,” added Joan.
He nodded with a sad smile. “Within a very short time, I fell deeply in love with her and she knew it. I began creating elaborate, transparent opportunities to be near her. One time I wrangled an invitation to a party where I knew she'd be. My grand plan was to insinuate myself into her social circle.” He chuckled. “How odd I must have looked, the left-wing teacher among the blue-collar workers of Madden. I'm sure they all thought I was a communist.”
“Weren't you?” asked Joan.
He shrugged, then, as though it was an afterthought: “I guess maybe I was.” He looked at Joan. “Once I even danced with her.” His eyes shone. “I still remember the feel of my hand on her waist.” He stared down at his hand, now crisscrossed with blue veins. “Your mother broke my heart gently. She reminded me that I had a beautiful wife, and she rhapsodized on Suzy's best qualities, even though she hardly knew her. She talked about your father, about how he was her one true love. After he died, I thought I'd have a chance. I offered to marry her, to take care of all of you. Once again, she reminded me about my dear Suzy. She was right.” His next words caught Joan off guard. “Your mother is one of the bravest people I've ever known.”
All of her life Joan had tallied her mother's weaknesses. The person Fowler described was definitely Vi, but from a different angle, illuminated by a shift in light, through a prism that gave her image a thousand sparkling colours. Her mother might have had an easier life and not lived the past thirty years in poverty as a single woman. Joan felt a weight lift. Her mother had chosen her life.
Marlena Stanfield scrutinized her reflection in the mirror, silently cursing herself for eating garlic toast with her salad at lunch. It wasn't just the carbs that angered her. For the first time in years she had come close to having sex with someone whom she found intensely desirable and Roger had to go and get himself killed. She kicked herself for not acting faster, for all the missed opportunities, for her miserable life. She felt stuck.
She turned sideways to better examine her shapely biceps. She was more powerful than a lot of men she knew. Did her physical strength scare them off? Whatever sexual opportunity was going to happen in her life, she'd have to make the first move. And she'd have to act fast while there was all this party action in town. It amused her that the man who tickled her erotic imaginings the most this weekend, besides Roger, had been living down the highway in Elgar all this time. Betty Theissen was out of town for a few days. If Marlena played her cards right, she might end up with a hole in one, so to speak. Maybe a little handcuff action. She smiled to herself then posed in front of the mirror for one last look to see if she could still pull off a convincing wet-lipped pout, then she carried an armload of fresh linens to the guest room.
“You're welcome to stay as long as you like.” She relished the look of awe as Daphne set her small suitcase on the king-size guest bed. Marlena swept open the curtains for the full effect of the view of Madden below. “You won't be disturbed down here at all. The other bedrooms are all two floors up. You can make all the noise you want. Ray leaves early and I sleep like the dead.” She was momentarily embarrassed by her insensitivity after what Daphne had been through this morning. “I just about fell over when I got your message. It must have been horrible, walking into that house with a dead body lying there and all those police.” She gingerly placed an arm around Daphne's shoulder. The physical connection felt stiff, but she knew it was probably the appropriate thing to do.