Death Spiral (21 page)

Someone was climbing up the stairs.

Wilf got up and waited. The door pushed open and Carole was standing there. He thought it was quite probable that he wasn’t making a good impression, bottle in hand and dressed in nothing but his underpants.

Carole looked stunningly beautiful. Her cheeks were glowing from her trip through the cool March wind. She walked across the room and with her back held characteristically straight, sat down in a chair. It reminded Wilf of something, maybe some old Dutch Master’s painting, she was sitting so still in the thick yellow light.

Woman in Chair
, Wilf thought to himself.

“I’m ashamed of myself,” she said.

“Why?”

“Leaving like that. I can’t believe I did that.”

“I thought you showed very sound judgment.”

“It was the last thing I wanted to do. It was against everything I was feeling.” Her eyes began to glisten.

“Not everything you were feeling,” Wilf said. “And once again I have to say you exhibited sound judgment.” He undid the top on the bottle of rye, “Would you like a drink?”

“No. I want to talk.”

“About what?” Wilf screwed the top back on and sat down.

“About what you were saying. About what happened to Sylvia Young. And those experiments in Germany. Germany is over there somewhere and we’re here. So that can’t be true. I mean, physically. It’s impossible.”

“I know.”

“And you told me the other night that you somehow thought that you were the connecting link. But Adrienne O’Dell had been planning to kill Mr. Cruikshank long before you arrived home, so how could you have anything to do with that, and you didn’t even know who Duncan was, and you don’t know anything about what happened to Sylvia Young. You have no connection to her at all.”

“You’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”

“Yes, I have. But I didn’t come here to tell you that. I’m sure you know all that. I came here to tell you it doesn’t matter.”

Wilf could feel his chest tightening. He looked away.

“We both know what it is, don’t we? I don’t know how I could have left like that.”

He could hear her getting up; he could feel her sitting beside him on the bed.

“It’s the war. All the terrible things that happened to you. It’s only been a year or so. What could anyone expect? What could you have expected from yourself? Wilf?”

Wilf glanced her way.

Her lips were trembling. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.”

“But I am. And I wanted to come here and tell you, I’m hopelessly in love.”

“With who?”

“Shut up. And I won’t leave again. Unless you throw me out.”

“I won’t throw you out.”

Carole took off her hat. Her hair came tumbling down. She looked irresistible. She broke his heart. When he kissed her, her lips felt cold.

“I’ve just taken three sleeping pills,” Wilf said.

“Then you’re not drinking.” She took the bottle out of his hand and walked back into the hall.

He could hear the phone being lifted off the receiver and Carole giving the operator a number. After a moment he heard her speak again. “I just wanted to let you know, I won’t be coming home tonight. No. No. Wilf McLauchlin.” A long silence. “Bye, Mom,” she finally said.

Carole came back into the room.

“I think you just did it,” Wilf said.

“I know.”

“We’ll have to find someplace to live.”

Carole began to unbutton her coat. She looked flushed of face and a little bewildered.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Carole shook Wilf awake early the next morning.

He had a vague memory of her sitting beside him after she’d taken off her coat, of them holding hands, lying down close together, talking, and then the sleeping pills had kicked in.

She was leaning over him in her slip, so apparently she’d stayed the night. She was saying that he had to get up right away and drive her home so she could change her clothes in time for work. And he had to prepare himself for his father’s arrival later that day. She was looking a little hysterical.

Wilf ran his hand up her leg to the top of her nylon. She removed his hand as if it were a wayward kitten. “It’s past eight o’clock already,” she said.

Wilf drove her home. Carole sat in silence beside him until the car turned on to her street and then she began to talk about a friend of hers who’d been renting a country house, but now she and her husband had just bought their own place in town. If Wilf wanted her to, she could speak to her friend and find out if that house had been rented again and if not, how much it might cost.

“It’s not very big. It has a small bedroom, a small living room, a kitchen and a really tiny bathroom, but I was out there last summer and it’s made out of field stone and it overlooks the river and there are wild vines climbing over this old rail fence and there were birds and butterflies all over the place.” Carole paused to catch her breath. “I think it would be really peaceful out there.”

Therapeutic, Wilf was about to reply but he cut himself off. There was no question that Carole was the best thing that had happened to him for some time. He didn’t want to think, since forever. He still wanted to cling somewhat wistfully to the allusive ghost of that other Wilf McLauchlin, the one who’d been sound of body. And mind. And heart.

He knew she was right though. The thought of a cottage and Carole and the sky miraculously full of birds and butterflies seemed the correct choice. The safe altitude. The perfect air speed. And Nurse Carole with her long, lean, acrobatic body ministering to him every night. And more than that, of course. The whole of herself. The sound of her throaty voice that always made him want to smile. Her watchful grey eyes, relentlessly and restlessly moving from tenderness to quizzicality and back again. Her unasked for, her undefended love.

Wilf smiled at her. “Sounds like a great idea,” he said.

Clarence McLauchlin disembarked from the train at a little after two that afternoon. He’d phoned ahead and Wilf had driven up to meet him. As soon as his father had settled himself in the passenger side of the car, having grudgingly reconciled himself some time ago to Wilf’s continued insistence on driving, Wilf began to tell him that there’d been another incident in town and once again, unfortunately, he’d found himself in the middle of it.

Clarence swung around to look at him, his sharp eyes already alarmed and searching. “What incident?”

“A client of yours. Sylvia Young.”

He told his father the few details he knew and with some effort restrained himself from calling Sylvia’s apparent suicide a double homicide. All he really wanted to do was get to the other side of his father’s inevitable barrage of questions. And his father’s palpable anxiety, his searching sideways glances.

“Why, though?” Clarence was saying. “My god. What would have driven her to do such a thing?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the police know. I’ve been staying away from Andy. He’s still in hot water from the last time we got involved.”

“You’re not involved in this one though. You just found her.”

“That’s right.”

Wilf kept his eyes on the road.

Carole was sitting primly at her desk when they came through the door. “Welcome back, Mr. McLauchlin,” she said with a pleasant smile.

“Thank you, Carole. It’s always good to be back.”

Wilf peeked at her from behind his father and wiggled his eyebrows up and down like Groucho Marx. Carole blushed and went back to her typing. Clarence walked through to his office. Usually he would have spent a moment or two exchanging pleasantries with Carole and then asked to be brought up to date with anything that might have happened in his absence. Wilf sat down at Dorothy Dale’s desk.

“Just another day at the office,” Wilf said.

Carole whispered, “Did you tell him anything?”

“I told him about Sylvia Young.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“Oh.” She resumed her typing.

Five minutes later Clarence came out of his office and went back out the front door without a word.

“I know where he’s going,” Wilf said.

“Where?”

“To the police station. To see what I’ve got myself into this time.”

“He has to ask some questions because she was a client of his.”

“He was acting for her on the real estate deal. That’s all. She doesn’t have a will with us. Nothing else on file. I looked.”

“Anyway, I’m glad your father’s back. Everything just feels better when he’s here.” Carole played with her typewriter keys. “When are you going to tell him?”

“About what?”

Carole’s eyes narrowed. “Never mind.”

“I’m teasing. Tonight.”

“Really? Oh my god. Don’t.”

“When do you want me to?”

“I don’t know!”

That evening Clarence invited Wilf out for a decent restaurant meal. He didn’t discuss Sylvia Young. He didn’t bring up Wilf’s continuing problem with the Crown attorney’s office in Brantford concerning the evidential piece of ice he’d unlawfully removed from the scene of the crime in the Duncan Getty case. He talked about the trial in Windsor and afterward he asked about Wilf’s plans for returning to college. Wilf replied that he thought he’d take his fatherly advice after all and not worry about rejoining his law studies until the fall semester. Clarence nodded. Wilf could tell that he was doing a fast calculation. Delaying to the fall. Was that a good sign or a bad sign?

“How are you feeling? I mean, generally?” Clarence asked. Though he had a number of positive attributes, he was not famous for subtlety.

“Good. I’m really feeling better than I have in a long time.”

“Even after having dragged a dead body out of a gas-filled house?”

“Yes.”

“That’s great,” Clarence replied, though his voice seemed to trail off at the end.

They returned home and sat in the study and had a couple of drinks. Two or three times during a gap in the conversation Wilf thought of telling him about the amorous adventures of his legal secretary. Those moments passed by. Carole was supposed to be finding out about the availability of the cottage that night. Better to wait. And anyway he didn’t feel up to having that particular conversation, or any conversation of substance for that matter. He felt more comfortable just staring politely into the middle distance, listening to his father’s voice, letting his mind go. He felt adrift.

When the grandfather clock struck ten Wilf yawned extravagantly and excused himself, climbed up the stairs, chased the drinks he’d had that evening with two sleeping pills and fell almost immediately into a deep and dreamless sleep.

The next morning he was standing on the bridge staring down at the racing water below his feet. The flood level had crept higher overnight. Store basements were getting wet. The dam a few hundred yards up the river had all but disappeared. Only a line of frantic waves marked its place.

Tree branches swept past him, disappearing beneath the bridge. Blackened logs reared up, sped by. Not so many pans of ice as the day before though. Wilf could feel the heat of the sun on the back of his neck. He let his eyes go glassy, his mind empty out. The water slowed to a stop. The bridge began to make its way through the muddy water, churning upriver in search of the dam.

Wilf stood across the street from Sylvia Young’s house. It looked almost the same as it had the day before, windows broken, shattered pieces of glass clinging to the frames. The front door had been closed though. He crossed the street and walked along the side of the house. The puddles had grown larger and patches of grass were showing through. The snow that had been left behind crunched under his feet.

He turned the back corner. No one was waiting for him in the backyard. He stood there, mesmerized by nothing, his thoughts spooling out. Carole had been absolutely right, of course. Her logic unassailable. He was ill.

That was all.

Something shuddered deep inside him. He turned away.

The chubby boy from the day before was standing out on the front sidewalk. He was still wearing his windbreaker and running shoes, but then the weather was warmer than the day before.

“Hello,” Wilf said.

The boy started walking away.

Wilf watched him go, and as he did he realized that regardless of Carole’s peerless logic he knew for an absolute certainty that someone had murdered Sylvia Young and her son. It had to do with the vulnerable way in which this boy had turned his back, the weakness of his slightly waddling walk, the emptiness of the street. It had to do with a tremulousness in the air. It had to do with a tremulousness in himself.

“I guess Mrs. Young’s son was a friend of yours,” Wilf called out, walking up behind the boy.

The boy looked nervous. “Yeah.”

“What was his name? Bradley?”

“Yeah.” The boy walked faster.

Wilf walked faster too. “And I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Tommy.”

“Right. Tommy. Is your mother home, Tommy?”

“No.”

The boy crossed the street toward a small park squeezed in between two houses. Wilf could see a woman pushing down on one end of a teeter-totter, giving a ride to a small child who was perched on the other end.

Tommy hurried across the park. Wilf followed along. He had to skirt around a puddle the size of a small lake. “Hello again,” he called out.

Tommy’s mother looked a little surprised. “Hello.”

“This must be the brave girl who had the measles.”

“Marsha, say hello. She wouldn’t stay in today. She just had to come out.”

“Well, it’s too nice a day to stay in. Hi, Marsha.”

The little girl, suspended in mid-air, stared back at him.

“My name’s Wilf.”

Marsha continued to stare.

“She’s shy.”

“The reason I was at Sylvia’s yesterday, she was selling her house. I had some papers for her to sign.”

“Your father’s the lawyer.”

“That’s right.”

“I’m still in shock.” The flesh around the woman’s eyes looked puffy and bluish. “It’s been hard on Tommy.”

Tommy, hearing his name, looked away.

“I’m sure it has.”

“Someone was saying you’ve had a run of bad luck yourself,” she said.

“Oh?”

“Or maybe it’s good luck. I don’t know. That old man that was killed by Adrienne O’Dell and her sailor friend? And then weird Duncan Getty?”

“I don’t know what to call it either. Good luck or bad. I’m sorry. I don’t know your name.”

“Catherine. Cathy Shepherd,” she smiled.

“Wilf.”

“I know.”

“To tell you the truth I feel a little bit in shock myself. I wouldn’t mind talking about it, unless you’d rather not. We could sit over there.”

The woman hesitated for a moment. She glanced toward the street. “Tommy, take Marsha over to the merry-go-round and give her a push, would you? Don’t let her get her feet wet.”

Tommy pulled his sister off the end of the teeter-totter and they headed toward a small merry-go-round.

Wilf began to walk toward a bench on the other side of a flooded sandbox. “He’s a good big brother.”

“Yes, he is. He’s great with her.”

Cathy hesitated a moment longer and then followed along. The wooden seat looked dry enough in the sun. Wilf was standing there, waiting. She sat down, pulled a package of cigarettes out of her coat pocket, took one and held the package out for Wilf.

“No thanks,” Wilf said, sitting down.

“That’s unusual.”

“Why?”

“Just that all the vets seem to smoke.”

“Well, I never did take to it. And now, with one hand, it just seems like too much work.”

“I’m sorry.”

Wilf smiled. “I didn’t mean it that way. Some of the fellows with one arm, or none, smoke like chimneys. I’m just too lazy.”

Cathy smiled back at him. She was pretty in a plain sort of way. Thick tangle of dark hair. Wide nose. Freckled face. She lit up her cigarette.

“I’ve been wondering if I knew Sylvia Young from somewhere. Met her somewhere. I mean, since I’ve been home.”

Cathy looked toward the street again. She turned to watch Marsha and Tommy. “I wouldn’t know.”

Marsha was sitting on the floor of the merry-go-round. A pool of water gleamed underneath it. Tommy, running with his head down, was pushing it around and around.

“Not so fast!” she called out.

“We don’t know quite what to do with the disposition of the house. There were a few things left unsigned. And no will, as far as we know. My father was wondering, did Sylvia have any relatives?”