The Bay of Love and Sorrows (20 page)

He heard the fridge’s motor running and turned and saw a note on it that Karrie had written: “Home in an hour — K.”

The house was in darkness, the blinds drawn and the gas-bar light shut off. The only light in the den came from the streetlight across the highway that her father was so proud of.

“They don’t put a streetlight just everywhere,” he had said to Silver one afternoon. “They only do it with more ‘portant people on the road.”

It was that streetlight that frightened Silver. It was casting his shadow on the couch where Emmett was sleeping, his arm over his head much like Karrie’s was now. The man didn’t wake, even though Silver had his screwdriver ready just in case.

Silver’s hands were shaking and he heard Dora turning over in bed inside. So he became afraid and started to leave.

When he turned he saw the tin box on the small table below the lightswitch, where Karrie had left it.

He took it and brazenly walked back into the dark. As soon as he closed the patio door he heard Dora’s voice: “Karrie — get in the house now!”

But there was no other sound, and he turned and went home.

He put the screwdriver back on the tool board. Everything had been done, almost.

He opened the tin box. It was filled with money — fourteen or fifteen thousand dollars. For a long time Silver had suspected that they were rigging their pumps, and this money must have been collected over a two- or three-year period.

He counted the money that had been inside Karrie’s panties. There was some eighteen hundred dollars.

Then keeping the money in his left hand and looking at it as he tossed the tin box on the wood pile, he went into the house.

Madonna had just come home. He looked at her for a moment.

“Where were you?” she said. “Everette needs to meet with you.

“Just out,” he managed. Suddenly he broke out sniggering. Then he told her that he was laughing at a joke. He told a joke that had no meaning to it, and passed her, his body moving sideways. He turned and, unable to help himself, said, almost shouting, “I hope Michael treats Karrie Smith better than Tom did. I feel sorry for her. I think she thinks she’s going to go to Spain with him — probably saved the money to go.”

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t — I just-”

But Madonna had gone to her room.

A minute later he came downstairs and went outside.

Wearing his work gloves he took the tin box, and went up along the path to Arron Brook towards Donnerel’s farm. The trees waved in the wind in a constant howl now, and the sound of the brook roared in his ears, as he managed to cross it.

By the back fence of Donnerel’s property he was frightened by the mare, who twisted about in the dark and started to bolt, whining a short loud burst, kicking up her hind feet so a clot of soil flew in the night wind.

“I’ll kill you too — you scare me,” he thought as he unhooked the back gate. Then crossing to the oak tree he lay the tin box down and made his way home.

The feeling he had was one all murderers have. He felt he would be able to forget that this had happened to him, and try to get on with his life. That he would be able to forget it. After the funeral he would tell Michael that everything was taken care of, and to make sure he cleaned the sailboat of any dust or seed.

“A hard night,” he said as he passed the tombstone of his great-great-grandfather, who had run away from the English in 1821, and he burst out singing.

He calculated that he could pay back Everette Hutch, get in the clear, and still have four hundred dollars for himself. Though some of this money had blood on it, he knew that would never matter to Everette.

Walking all the way to Gail’s he found that Everette had gone to Chatham and so, after one in the morning, Silver went to Chatham.

The earth was soft and warm, and in a large, faded white house behind the park, and behind two other houses, Everette sat. He was a man who looked completely comfortable being who he was, with his large bald head, and his huge moustache.

As Silver entered the room, with its floor uneven and the smell of marijuana, he thought again of Karrie, and how cold her body must be, and he shuddered because moonlight becalmed the room and the table where Everette sat, his jeans covered in motorcycle grease.

“Is this it?” he said.

“This is it all,” Silver said, “so you don’t have to bother us any more. You leave Michael and Madonna alone.”

“How did you get the money?” Everette said now.

“I’ve got connections too,” Silver said, and he tried to sound put-out.

“You’re as white as a ghost,” Everette said, turning on the light, discounting the blood with a slight smile.

After he counted for a while he took seventy dollars and handed it over, because this had once been done to him when he was a boy, by a man in Newcastle, and he had always been awestruck by it.

“What else have you got?” Everette said suspiciously

“I’ve got a diamond too if you want it,” Silver said nervously, taking it out of his pocket. “Just to show no hard feelings.“

“Put it down,” Everette said shrugging.

Silver did. He put the diamond in front of him on the table. Then he sniffed as men do when it’s just been proven that they’ve had far more resources at their disposal then they were ever given credit for.

The next morning, September 10, the farrier came by. The mare had got out on the road and was wandering about, cars had backed up, honking their horns. He woke Tom, who, lying face down across the couch in the TV room, looked as if he had been drinking most of the night. In fact he had been at a bar downriver where he had spent over two hundred dollars, celebrating, he had said, “the end of a relationship.”

“You’ll wind up just like yer dad if you don’t put the booze away,” the farrier said. “The Donnerels can’t handle it — why, I’ve cleaned up more after the Donnerels than anyone — if yer going to drink I won’t come about — I took a beatin once from yer father for no reason — I won’t start it with you, Tom,” he said. “A man can take a beatin and still be brave — and I’m braver than the lot of youse,” he said, his eyes darting here and there about the room.

Tom leaned up on one arm and looked at him.

“Yer back gate was left unhooked — pretty soon you’ll let the place burn to the goddamn ground.”

Tom brushed him aside and ran to the barn to get a halter and lead while the farrier followed. Then from inside the door he said: “Don’t come in — “

But the farrier went in. He saw Karrie’s body, with her arms folded, and a pair of old shorts on, and Vincent, covered in blood, standing beside her with a cup of tea.

The farrier went back outside and sat on the wheel of the tractor. He took a deep breath and looked at the gulls in the grey sky, far away, and cars on the highway trying to manoeuvre around the mare. Everything was very quiet and he could hear faraway laughter from children.

“You’d better call the police,” he said.

Constable John Delano was the first to arrive. Tom was sitting on the hay-baler talking to himself. Vincent was standing in the middle of the field under the oak tree, looking at everyone as if something was expected of him, or of the teacup still in his hand. The dog was whining on its chain, and Vincent went over and picked it up.

The farrier was talking to a group of young men who had come up from the road. The traffic had backed up all the way to Oyster River, and people were cutting across Tom’s field, which was the colour of mud, while someone Tom did not know was proudly walking the mare along the lane on a lead, as if this was what the excitement was still about.

After speaking to Vincent, who was finally able to tell him he found the body, Constable Delano went down and walked the area where the murder had taken place. He found a tiny shred from a torn bill off the far back path near a tree, where he thought someone might have stood in wait. However, there was nothing to prove that.

But he looked at Constable Deborah Matchett. It was as if the uniformity of the case now had a crease in it. He took the piece of money and wrapped it in plastic. When he stood he brushed off his pants, and walked towards the shore. He walked down the path all the way to the water. There were some motorcycle tracks, and a broken bait box sitting upside down in the sand.

To his left he could smell Jessop’s cows. On his right the smell of mud and a rotting clam bed. He turned back and came to the spot where the body must have lain. There was a pool of blood four feet from the path that turned towards Michael Skid’s.

Sergeant Brendan Fine was at the scene drinking coffee out of a styrofoam cup. He had retraced the steps Vincent had taken when he carried the body back, found where he had rested against the pole near Donnerel’s front field, where the girl’s hair left traces of blood.

“Did you find the money?” Constable Delano asked.

“No — the Donnerels must have it,” Sergeant Fine said. “But we will find it, I suppose.” He said “I suppose” in a way which meant he believed that the case was well on the way to being solved, and he arched up on his toes, and had another drink from the cup.

John Delano’s eyes gave a slight discernible start in the mild end-of-summer air. And his eyes suggested this:
They are upon a course of least resistance — everything could he proven, the case closed. If I mention any doubt about the Donnerels’ involvement, it will start another course that might lead nowhere.

But Constable Delano had written in his notes: “Imprint of money on victim’s skin.”

At the Smith residence, yellow ribbons crossed the path behind the store and up to the patio door. Dora had been outside once, to shut off the gas pumps. Then she had gone back and spoken in a grave tone to her husband, who didn’t seem to understand what was happening. He sat in the far room, at the back of the house, within view of Karrie’s bird feeder.

When the police had first notified him of his daughter’s death, saying there was indication that the motive was robbery, he nodded his head. “The thieves found us out,” he said. “They were watching us.”

Constable Matchett asked what he meant.

“We had a little tin box with some money,” Dora said.

“Yes, we found the box — how much was in it?”

“It’s what we donate every year to the Salvation Army,” Dora said quickly.

“And how much is that?”

Dora’s face turned crimson. She did not know how much money the police might have found. She looked sternly at her husband, who had turned in his seat to look at her.

“It wasn’t much,” she said, quickly picking up a shawl that Karrie used to put over her shoulders and folding it exactly as it had been folded, then impulsively throwing it.

“Over two hundred dollars?”

“It was a large amount,” Emmett said, shaking his head.

“But what do you mean — large amount?”

“He means a few hundred dollars — we donate it — but not always to the Salvation Army — sometimes to the Children’s Stocking Fund — here and there, you know, anonymously,” Dora said. “I like helping people.”

“Did anyone know you had this money?”

“No one — besides Karrie,” Dora said.

Emmett remembered laughing at a story Karrie had told at supper the night before. But already the body was at the morgue, and was soon to be transferred to Saint John for the autopsy. And realizing this, and seeing birds fly down to the bird feeder, he burst into tears.

“Vincent killed her,” Dora said suddenly. “Vincent and Tommie — the bastards — they said they were going to — all summer long they bothered us, didn’t they, Emmett — didn’t they!”

“Yes, they did,” Emmett shouted, convinced absolutely that he had heard them both.

Outside, cars slowed down and people looked in as they passed the house. It gave Dora a grand feeling, especially since she always felt superior to the Donnerels. Especially since it was realized, and mentioned by everyone, that she had donated money.

Constable Delano had what he felt was the unpleasant task of interviewing Michael Skid.

Michael came to the office, early on September 11. The day was bright and windy, and sunlight flooded the room. The tree-tops and the hedges waved, Michael’s eyes were watering, from the walk, and his face was red. He seemed sure of himself. He was smoking a cigarette and offered John Delano one. Delano felt a profound disrespect coming from Michael’s gaze. Delano looked through his notes and turned sideways in the swivel chair.