Hippie House (19 page)

“But I saw her. Malcolm wouldn't do that. Malcolm—he couldn't do that. I know him. He hardly ever even gets mad.”

“Alright, son.” Dad had an arm around Eric. “Get your coat. I'll take you into town and we'll see what's going on.”

Eric spent the day with Jimmy at his house in Pike Creek, where they waited for word from Miles, who was at the hospital
with his parents. By late afternoon, according to the doctor who admitted him, Malcolm's condition had not improved. He was becoming increasingly disoriented. It wasn't something he had meant to happen, Malcolm had told Miles, his parents and Detective Mather earlier in the day. The murder that is. He didn't plan it. It's just that he happened to see Katie when he was driving home.

When Detective Mather asked him where he was driving home from on November 9, Malcolm answered, “From Jimmy's. We'd been working out some chords. You know, for some songs.”

“What were you driving?”

“I was driving my van.”

When Mr. Fritz pointed out that Malcolm didn't own a van, Malcolm didn't reply. Instead he continued with his story. It was shortly after ten o'clock, maybe closer to ten thirty, when he stopped and picked Katie up. It was dark, of course, and she was on her way home from work.

“Do you remember why you stopped?” asked Detective Mather.

“No, I don't.”

“But she got in the van willingly?”

“Yeah, she did.”

“She didn't struggle?”

“No, she didn't struggle. I didn't have to drag her in or anything like that. I didn't even get out of the van.”

“She just opened the door freely and got in?”

“Yeah. We talked for a minute and that's what she did. Ask Mr. Gillespie.”

“Mr. Gillespie was there?”

“Well, yeah. He was standing across the street. By the arena next to the streetlamp. He watched her get in and he stood there watching us drive away.”

“You saw him watching you?”

“Yeah.”

“In the rear viewmirror as you drove away?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Miles told Eric that Malcolm's story rapidly disintegrated after that. He had no recollection of his conversation with Katie or why he drove out to the Hippie House. He described where they had parked and the path they had walked along to reach it, but he spoke as if it had happened in the summer. He recalled the night sounds of Fiddlehead Creek and the wild chirping of crickets and bullfrogs that had drifted to their ears.

According to Miles, Malcolm then stopped talking entirely. After he described their walk to the Hippie House, his eyes remained fixed on the floor. Detective Mather attempted to prompt him into speaking again. “Malcolm, when did you rip the curtain off the window facing the road?”

Malcolm looked up at the detective and then over to Miles. “Why would I do that?”

“Well, it was a black night. You would have needed the light of the moon to see what you were doing.”

“No,” Malcolm answered, “I didn't need a light. I didn't need any kind of light. I knew that place like the back of my hand.”

Miles told Eric that his brother then withdrew completely. Despite the detective's questioning, he could not, or would not, tell them what prompted the killing or when or how it had occurred.

T
WO DAYS AFTER
he was hospitalized, Malcolm was moved from Pike Creek to Toronto, where he underwent a psychiatric evaluation. He was still confused, paranoid and withdrawn. This was despite having been in the hospital where he had no access to street drugs. Some of his friends figured he was suffering one long flashback or that he had taken hallucinogens one too many times and it was now the permanent state of his brain.

Eric didn't know what to think, but he was quick to come to Malcolm's defense. It upset him that many people had already convicted Malcolm. Yes, Malcolm had said that he killed Katie, but so far none of the circumstantial evidence added up. He said he picked her up at ten thirty, yet both his mother and younger sister recalled he was home by eleven o'clock that night. They did not remember him looking the least bit disheveled, like he'd been involved in a struggle or anything like that. And he was in a good mood they insisted. The three of them had watched a movie together and he had laughed at all the right parts.

There was also the question of the van. No one in the Fritz family owned anything that even remotely fit the vehicle's description.

And Malcolm could still not recall details of the actual killing. Detective Mather had questioned him several more times.

“There are certain things,” he told Eric, Miles and me at the farm, “that we don't tell the public. These are details about the crime or the crime scene that only the killer would know. Problems he might have run into. How he dealt with them. Under questioning, these details might come out. Malcolm has not alluded to any of them. What he tells us he could have read in any newspaper.”

“You don't think he did it?” Miles anxiously asked.

“We still haven't ruled it out, but no, not from what he's told me. And so far we have no physical evidence to suggest that it was him.”

“What about Mr. Gillespie? He saw Malcolm drive away with Katie. Did you ask him if what Malcolm said was true?”

The detective nodded. He had spent many hours talking to Mr. Gillespie, everybody knew this. The Dairy Bar had been closed on a day when it was normally open and Mr. Gillespie's car had been parked outside the police station.

“Did he say he saw them?”

“He said he saw the van stop and Katie get in.”

“But did he say the driver was Malcolm?”

“Yes,” Detective Mather answered. “Yes, he said he was pretty sure it was.”

“How could he tell?” asked a frustrated Miles, who sat next to me on the chesterfield. He got to his feet. “How did he know it was Malcolm when it was black out, and why would he suddenly say he saw him when he hadn't said anything before?”

“Miles,” the detective said in a calming way, “Mr. Gillespie gave us four possible colors for the van. He listed a number of possible makes. He's not the most reliable source I've come across.”

Miles slumped down on the chesterfield again. “Did he say why he was there?”

“Yes. He had met Katie after work and he was walking her home. At least as far as he dared. They were afraid of being seen together. Just before the arena, where the street was well lit, they said goodbye. She had passed the arena and was halfway down the next block when he saw the van pull over.”

My brother then asked the question people were asking all over town. “But Miles is right. Why didn't he say anything? Everybody thought old Mrs. Bolton at the nursing home was the last person to see Katie alive. Why didn't Mr. Gillespie set them straight and tell them it was him?”

Detective Mather clasped his hands together. Holding them as if in prayer with his thumbs pressed to his lips, he thought for a minute.

“He was concerned that if people knew, they would think even less of him than they already did. He felt he was already having enough trouble holding his head up after his relationship with Katie became common knowledge. He didn't think it was important enough to bring up.”

“How could he have not thought it important?!” Eric exclaimed.

“Because Katie got in the van willingly. He said he just assumed she was getting a ride from a friend. He believed the murder took place after she left whoever was in the van. He didn't think enough of the incident to mention it.”

Detective Mather was not making excuses for Mr. Gillespie. He was only telling us what he had been told himself. But his retelling made it clear that he obviously did not think Mr. Gillespie's story was all that credible or that his reasons for keeping what he knew a secret were all that sound.

I arrived home around five o'clock one afternoon. Megan and I had hung around the Dairy Bar before getting a ride home with Carl. Hearing me in the kitchen, my mother called me into the living room where she and my father sat reading. Eric was
lying on the chesterfield, trying to teach Halley to retrieve the TV guide. He'd managed to get her to bring it to him, but she refused to let it go. Finally, after bribing her with a potato chip, he was able to pull the soggy magazine from her mouth.

Mom glanced up when I appeared in the doorway. She lay the book she was reading in her lap. She had discovered a new author, Margaret Laurence. No, she did not write mysteries, she'd told me in answer to my question the previous day. I was prompted to ask by the illustration on the cover of
The Fire-Dwellers
. Unaware she'd given up on murder mysteries, I'd been surprised at the painting of a melancholy woman rather than some well-dressed dead body lying in a lavish hall. She'd gone on to explain that it was Laurence's characters she found so absorbing. She just related to them, that was all.

Mom removed her reading glasses. She sat them on her head at the base of her highly teased hair. She did not want me or Megan to go to the Dairy Bar after school anymore. Mr. Gillespie was unstable. “First we learn of his illicit affair, and now we find out that he saw Katie drive off in a van. Regardless of whether it was Malcolm who was driving or not, there's something wrong with the man.”

Dad folded the
Pike Creek Banner
and asked me to sit down. He was a little more forgiving than my mother. He tried to explain Mr. Gillespie's behavior. This was mostly, I think, because he seemed to feel he owed us an explanation for everything that went on in our world. But even we knew there were some things that couldn't be explained away. He began by saying that Mr. Gillespie was not thinking straight and therefore he couldn't be held wholly responsible for what he said or did.

“But why is he not thinking straight?” I asked.

“Why?”

“Yeah, why would he be sane and then suddenly go crazy just like that?”

“Well—I guess the reason he went crazy was, well, because his wife is a nag and his marriage had gone bad.”

Eric laughed.

Mom gave Dad a look—like he had a lot of nerve blaming his crazy behavior on his wife or his marriage.

And since it was the only explanation he appeared to be able to think of, and it wasn't a very convincing one at that, Dad gave up. “Perhaps your mother is right. You'd better just stay away from the restaurant until this whole thing is cleared up.”

Many people felt the same way. While we waited for word of Malcolm's official arrest, Mr. Gillespie lost what little business he had left at the Dairy Bar. This was not much of a crowd, anyway. It had not been a pleasant place to eat in the preceding few weeks. The quality of food had become unpredictable and Mr. Gillespie seemed to have lost the will to clean. The same coffee spills and stuck food lingered on the countertop and booths for days at a time.

He closed down completely and indefinitely when Mr. Russell, shaking with rage and shouting obscenities, stormed into the restaurant one morning shortly after Malcolm's story became known.

Mr. Gillespie tried in vain to calm him down. After all, he told him, they were in this together. Didn't he know that he had loved Katie too?

This comparison—the sheer nerve of Mr. Gillespie to even suggest that they had shared a similar affection for Katie—got Mr. Russell spitting mad. He grabbed a chair and, swinging it above his head, advanced on Mr. Gillespie. Lucky for Mr. Gillespie, both Maury and one of the undercover police officers happened to be picking up coffee at the same time. They managed to disarm Mr. Russell of the chair and wrestle him to the floor, where the police officer handcuffed him.

Mr. Russell was at fault, but considering all he'd been through, the image of him nose to nose with week-old ketchup splatters and squashed fries seemed unfairly undignified.

As a result, Mr. Russell was legally required to stay a minimum distance away from Mr. Gillespie, who, after the assault, willingly confined himself to his apartment above the Dairy Bar. Walking in town we would often see his face behind the lace curtain. He rarely moved but stared pensively through the window onto the street.

“It's spooky,” Megan told me as we walked to the library. “The way he's always just sitting there like that.”

I agreed that it was very spooky. We changed our route, walking two blocks out of our way so we didn't have to walk by him anymore.

THE AMERICAN ELM TREES
that grew along the lane next to the lower pond became infected with Dutch elm disease that spring. Many branches did not bud at all, and those that did drooped, and the leaves that unfurled quickly turned brown. This was a terrible heartache for my father, who adored the forty-foot trees. Not all the branches were sickly, but it was progressing. To stop the disease from spreading to other farms he had no choice but to cut them down.

The scream of the chain saw woke me early one morning. It was not normally a sound I minded hearing from a distance—it only meant that Dad was building or perhaps altering something, creating or repairing. Some part of Ruddy Duck Farm was always being constructed or maintained. But that morning the sound was painful. I did not want to get up and I lay with the pillow over my head. Finally the sound bore deep enough that I realized my father would never leave us on our own to do something as agonizing as this must be for him.