A Year Less a Day (19 page)

“Take it back and exchange it, then.”

Trina has the VW almost full by the time she hits the garden centre, then heads for the supermarket, with the BMW still in tow.

Filling buggies on the run and dumping them at strategic spots, Trina darts around the supermarket like the winner of a monster-grab competition.

“All four buggies ma'am?” says the guy on cash, and she scratches her head.

“I thought I had five,” she says, and is threatening to dash back into the aisles to search when the mumbling of an insurrection in the ranks behind her changes her mind. “Don't worry. As long as there's at least one turkey, that'll do.”

Trina's car was already sprouting gifts, with a tree and an ornamental concrete birdbath tied to the roof rack, but by the time two bag boys have helped her to empty the second cart, the small Volkswagen is completely full. “If you get in, we could pack it in around you,” suggests one of the youths, but Trina has a better idea. “Taxi,” she yells, and five minutes later she has a convoy snaking behind her as the black BMW follows the cab.

“She's f'kin bonkers,” says the BMW's driver, Mort, the one-handed English creep from the porn studio, as Trina scorches her way through intersections and past patiently waiting traffic jams, with the cab racing to keep up. The two goons in the back of the Beemer snort agreement, while Tom sits in the front passenger seat concentrating on the fleeing VW as they weave through Vancouver's maze of one-way streets.

“Leave her to me, Mort,” says Tom, puffing himself up. “It should be easy enough to get her to back off.”

“I don't wanna see no more stunts,” warns Mort.

“'Course not.”

“No more titties on the front page of the dailies. Know what I mean?”

“Don't worry, Mort. I can handle her.”

“You'd better.”

“We could always pull the plug on Ruth,” suggests one of the goons in the back.

“Be subtle, my boy. Be subtle,” says Mort. “Tom here is gonna take care of everything, aren't you?”

“Sure, Mort. You can trust me.”

“We'll just see where she lives,” says Mort, ignoring an angry horn blast as he runs a red light. “Maybe she's got kiddies at home. It's always useful to have a backup plan. Know what I mean, boys?”

“Sure, Mort. Whatever you say, Mort,” says Tom, mindful of the loaded pistol by the side of Mort's seat.

“Hi, guys—where's your dad?” shouts Trina as she opens the front door into the spacious hall. The taxi driver is anxious to unload, and already has his hands full of groceries as Trina rushes back to the car to help.

“Hi, Mom,” comes the delayed response, but Trina is temporarily distracted by the black BMW that is slowly cruising by.

“Ma'am?” says the cab driver, holding the bags out for her.

“Oh, sorry,” she says, getting her mind back in gear and giving the driver her sweetest smile. “Put that straight in the freezer, would you?” Then she rushes back inside to yell up the stairs. “I said, ‘where's your dad?'”

“It's not really my job ...” the driver tries as he staggers past her with a month's supply of meat, but Trina bolts back to her car muttering, “Teenagers,” as she wrenches a boxed bicycle and a snowboard from the trunk.

“Grab this,” she says, handing the cab driver the bike. “Stick it in the garage will you?” Then she races for the front door with half a dozen food bags and a DVD player.

“I still don't know where your dad is,” she yells, as she rushes up the hallway and trips over a pair of frozen turkeys.

“Where is the freezer ...” the driver starts as he struggles in with the bike.

“Basement,” she shouts, then backs off. “Sorry. Thought you were one of the kids. Freezer's in the basement. You can't miss it.”

Dumping her bags on the kitchen table, Trina is shouting, “We could use a hand here, kids,” as she sprints back to the car and starts piling boxes onto the driver.

“This isn't my job really ...” he's protesting, and Trina has nothing but empathy. “I know it isn't. This is really kind of you.” Then she yells past him. “Rob and Kylie will you please help? And where is your father?”

“Thanks ever so much,” she says, as the driver staggers into the house with boxes of assorted slippers and a Christmas tree. “Just put the tree in the family room,” she adds, then shrieks, “Rob ... Kylie. Santa won't come if you don't help.”

“Do you want me to decorate it as well?” the driver snarls as he dumps the tree in the hallway.

“Oh, you needn't ...” Then she pauses. “You were joking, right?”

“Yes ma'am, but ...”

“OK. One more load,” she calls, undeterred, and scurries back to the cab to dig out the rest of the food.

Plastic grocery bags slice into her fingers as she gallops back into the house, with the driver running behind her, but she stops at the bottom of the stairs to shriek, “Rob and Kylie. This is your last chance. Where is your father?”

“I already told you twice,” yells Kylie, putting her friend on hold.

“I didn't hear,” screeches Trina.

“Where does this go, Ma'am?” asks the driver, toting a guinea pig cage.

“Just drop it round the back and plop him into it, would you sweetheart? Where did you say, Kylie?”

Kylie gives up with a sigh, saying, “I'll call you back Deirdre. Mom's having a fit,” as she puts down the phone. Then she appears at the top of the stairs. “I'm here, mom.”

“Oh. There you are, love,” says Trina. “I just said, ‘Where's your dad?'”

“Mom, will you please just stand still and listen? I already told you twice. He's gone Christmas shopping 'cuz he says you forgot again.”

Half a world away, the experience of Christmas in the Lovelace household is the antithesis of the Buttons'. Daphne has orchestrated the event with military precision and, by the time the turkey is nicely sizzling, she is putting on the final touches.

“Dinner's at one o'clock, so I told the old fogies to come at about twelve,” she tells Bliss as she blows on a table knife and gives it a shine. “By the time they get their coats off, their slippers on, and their teeth in, you'll be ready to carve.”

“Me—carve?” queries Bliss.

“Of course, David. I may not look it, but I'm old enough to remember the days when every self-respecting man could wield a knife at the table.”

“Usually in Agatha Christie's novels,” chuckles Bliss as he stabs himself in the chest with a pen and expires histrionically, exclaiming, “Murder in the dining room.”

“Oh David, you are funny,” she says as she heads for the kitchen. “By the way, I invited Mavis Longbottom. I thought it was only fair after the way you've been using her and Freddie.”

“Didn't you invite Freddie as well?” calls Bliss, seeing an opportunity to shove a copy of the Beatles' picture under his nose, asking, “D'ye recognize anyone, lad?” just for kicks.

“No. I told you, he's dead.”

“Oh,” says Bliss, disappointed. “I thought you'd made that up.”

“Freddie was her first,” Daphne explains as she bustles in with a table decoration. “But she's been through a couple more since him. None of 'em lived very long. Can't say I blame them.”

“Daphne,” laughs Bliss, and he takes another look at the email from Liverpool. In addition to the four broody-looking men in black at the front of the photograph, the remaining seventeen faces now have names, although, according to the accompanying letter from the newspaper editor, eight are believed dead and four are women.

“At least that cuts the odds to one in five, if he's one of the lucky ones,” Bliss had told Daphne when he'd printed it out from his laptop, though he still has no plan of action to find Ruth's father.

“I've a feeling we're going to be distinctly out of place with all these oldies,” natters Daphne as she starts setting the table. “It's a pity Samantha and Peter could-n't make it. They really should get flu shots like me, then they wouldn't have this trouble.”

Bliss keeps his eye on the picture, knowing that Samantha had been working on an exit strategy from the moment she'd been invited.

“Daphne's really with it,” his daughter had told him. “But I'm fucked if I want to sit around all afternoon
with the rest of 'em and talk about the war and the price of incontinence pads.”

“Oh, Sam ...”

“And you needn't bother with the guilt thing, Dad. Anyway, we're going to Peter's. His parents want to give me the once-over.”

“OK,” he'd said, giving in without a fight, knowing that every argument he believed he had won in his daughter's twenty-six years had generally been an exercise in self-deception.

The Joneses and the Elliotts, sharing a cab, arrive at eleven-thirty, but spend five minutes digging through pockets and purses for precisely ten percent of three pounds fifty-seven.

“He would have been lucky to get tuppence in my day, the way he drives,” bitches Blossom Jones as the taxi speeds off.

“You're early,” says Daphne opening the front door.

“Didn't want to be late meeting our famous detective,” whinnies Beattie Elliott, and all four stand in the hallway staring at Bliss as if expecting him to spontaneously combust.

“You'd better start taking your coats off,” says Daphne, breaking the spell. “Dinner will be ready in an hour.”

Phil and Maggie Morgan, the next-door neigh-bours, arrive on time, on foot, and are exhausted. “That bloomin' garden path gets longer every year,” moans Phil. “Still, it won't be long before they're carrying me down it, I s'pose.”

“I hope someone shoots me if I ever get like that,” mutters Daphne in Bliss's ear as she scuttles around, collecting coats and shoes.

Mavis Longbottom's arrival is a surprise for Bliss, as she nimbly jumps out of a sporty little Fiat and drags her “latest” toward the house. “Come along, Gino,” she says, pulling an elderly shrew as if he were a recalcitrant child.

“I'll be surprised if he lasts very long,” Daphne mordantly mumbles to Bliss as she prepares a welcoming smile for the couple.

Minnie Dennon is the final arrival, stumbling over the doorstep, and flinging herself into Bliss's arms as he stands in the hallway readying a handshake. “Oh, sorry. Didn't know you had guests, Daphne,” says Minnie, wearing more makeup and jewellery than Elizabeth Taylor, and Bliss laughs as Daphne quickly drags her off. “You did that on purpose, Minnie,” mutters Daphne under her breath.

“I did not ...” protests Minnie, but Daphne drives her toward the kitchen. “You can help me with dinner, if you wouldn't mind.”

“I was just going to talk to ...”

“Later, dear. I want your opinion on the Brussels sprouts first.”

“So, David,” says Phil Morgan, as the remaining guests crowd in on him with their sherries in hand. “Daphne tells us you got the Commissioner's commendation for solving murders.”

Murders, robberies, frauds, and rapes ... Daphne's friends may look fragile, but they suck up the gore of London's underworld with relish, as Bliss of the Yard fills them in on some of his more interesting cases. “It's pretty gruesome,” he warns several times, and they grimace with glee as they urge him on.

“Dinner,” calls Daphne, on time to the minute. “Find your seats.” Then she whispers to Bliss. “I put you at the end, next to me, David.”

The table, replete with a holly centrepiece topped with slender white candles in a silver candelabra, is a picture that would be welcome in the pages of
Victorian Dining
. Daphne has even inscribed place names in calligraphy on hand-laid vellum and, as Bliss sits, Minnie slips into the dining room with the final steaming plates of vegetables and plumps herself into Daphne's seat.

“I put you over there, Minnie,” scowls Daphne as she makes an entrance with the bird.

“Oh. I'm here now,” Minnie says, hanging on to Bliss's arm. “Unless David minds me sitting next to him, of course.”

“Minnie,” snaps Daphne, using the turkey as a weapon. “I have to sit next to David to help him carve.”

“I suppose you're used to slicing up bodies,” says Don Elliot as Minnie moves, but Daphne cuts him down. “David's a police inspector, not a mortician, Don. He leaves the gory stuff to others.”

Turkey, ham, stuffing, sprouts, and four varieties of root vegetables are garnished with clove-scented bread sauce, chipolatas, bacon rolls, cranberry jelly, and the thickest gravy Bliss has ever spooned out of a gravy boat.

“Minnie made the gravy,” announces Daphne like a schoolyard snitch. “I think she did it quite well, considering. Don't you?”

Daphne's assertion that the oldies would eat little proves entirely wrong as the gang stuff themselves, but later, when Bliss mentions the point over the washing up, Daphne scoffs, “They're like a bunch of toddlers. They were just showing off because you were here.”

“David made the pudding,” Daphne insists volubly once the dinner plates are cleared, and, despite Bliss's protestations that he merely stirred, she declares that everyone must try some.

“Oh, I'd do anything for a man who cooks,” grovels Minnie from the other end of the table. “You simply must give me the recipe, David.”

“It's a secret. Isn't it, David?” snaps Daphne before he can respond, and Bliss is forced to accept everyone's congratulations as Daphne douses the candles while he flames the brandy.

“I think we should hold a seance,” suggests Mavis in the eerie blue light. “They always do that in the presence of great detectives.”

“Back to Agatha Christie again,” moans Bliss, but Daphne seems keen. “Maybe we could solve one of your mysteries for you, David.”

“As long as we don't have to take off our clothes this time. I'm getting past that now,” moans Beattie Elliott.