Fit to Kill (2 page)

She must remember to take the dahlias in before the frosts came. The rains could stop any day now. Then the frost would come.

When had she started feeling revulsion watching her husband eat? She watched Albert's lips, pouting in repose, wriggling in action. She tore her eyes away from his mouth and read his upside-down newspaper instead. A skill she had acquired over thirty years of silent breakfasts.

A murder in the West End, on Haro, only a block away. She shivered. The killer chopped off her head and—what? Buried it? Took it away with him?

Matty must have cried out, for Albert was watching her over the tops of his glasses with those black eyes and that familiar sarcastic look on his face.

“What?”

She nodded at the paper. “A woman—”

He blinked, staring at her, saying nothing, waiting for her to finish her sentence. As though she were a child struggling with new words. Or an Alzheimer victim like poor old Ellie Benson on Comox Street, who couldn't even remember her own name from one day to the next.

“Murdered!” said Matty.

“Ah.” Albert's upper lip curled in a pink sneer as he returned to his newspaper.

She was born Matilda Harrison sixty-two years ago in this same Nelson Street house where she had lived all her life. Her father died when Matty was in her mid-thirties. Her mother followed him a year later. Matty then met and married Albert. Albert Kayle was

thirty years old. She was thirty-seven. He had burning dark eyes and dark hair. He worked as a lineman's assistant with the telephone company, where Matty worked in the typing pool. He proposed to her almost immediately.

She was overwhelmed. Nobody had ever proposed to her before. They were married that same year. Matty hoped she wasn't too old for children. She looked forward to raising a family in the house where she'd grown up and known so many happy times.

That was twenty-five years ago. Now she was an old woman.

She refilled Albert's coffee mug. He didn't look up. He was now absorbed in
The
Globe and Mail
.

He looked young for his age and still had most of his hair. His face, unlike Matty's, was relatively unlined. Matty put his youthful appearance down to his regular exercise.

Matty had never been a beauty—she was “plain,” she would be the first to admit—and had never been smart enough for college. She wondered what Albert had ever seen in her. After a few years of marriage and one miscarriage, she had discovered Albert's true nature. His blind, red-hot anger if crossed. He bore no love or affection for her. He had married her only for the mortgage-free house. And the bit of money left her after the death of her mother.

Albert was often out of work. There was a pattern: he would work at whatever job came along for a while, and then would be let go or fired. Then he would sit about the house for a month or so before looking for something else. Garbage pickup, road repair, gardening, swamping, janitoring—anything that came along. In his time off between jobs, he puttered about in his basement workshop making ugly rustic furniture. Or he took long naps on the livingroom sofa.

She carried her cup to the sink and rinsed it absentmindedly, gazing out the window at the backyard. What a fine place it would have been for children to play. The children she'd never had.

She would like to have a dog—a puppy— or even a cat. But Albert forbade animals. This was typical of him, acting as though the house were his. He took over most of the basement for his workshop, filling the house with horrid smells of varnish and paint. She never went into his workshop or his den. Both were kept locked. Only Albert had keys. Matty wasn't welcome there.

If she suggested that he might help with household chores, he flew into a frightening rage.

She was safe upstairs. She had her own bedroom, thank goodness. Albert stayed away and never bothered her there.

She put her cup away in the cupboard. Once again she gazed out the window. Tiny water globules hung like teardrops from the leaves of the hydrangeas and from the withered clematis vines near the back door. She glanced at the stove clock:
6:55
. She had a chiropractor appointment at ten. For her back pain. She rubbed the small of her back. Lumbar vertebra number five, or L5 as Dr. Malley called it. Why couldn't she have married someone like David Malley, a kind man with enough tender affection for every lonely, unloved soul in the West End? She pressed her hands around her waist to her stomach, still flat and slim. And barren.

She came to realize much later that it wasn't because she had been too old. Many women had babies later in life. The reason she and Albert had never had children was because he'd never loved her.

She tidied the kitchen, rinsing out the coffeepot, putting things away, brushing Albert's bran buds—he always spilled some— into the sink.

She went downstairs to the basement and loaded the washing machine. The front door rattled upstairs. Albert was off for his walk. She set the timer and closed the lid. Then she went outside and started sweeping leaves and branches off the walk, debris from last night's windstorm.

CHAPTER THREE

“G
'morning, Matty.”

“G'morning, “Good morning, Casey. I'm just about to put on the kettle.”

“Sounds like an invitation.”

Casey sat at the kitchen table while Matty made tea. The office could wait. He liked the solid feel to this house. Its smell of furniture polish and cracked leather excited a sharp and satisfying nostalgia in him. It evoked childhood memories of his Aunt Maeve's house in Belfast, a veritable museum of Edwardian bric-a-brac.

Matty placed the tray on the table. “Albert's out.”

“Yes, I saw him set off. Y'know, I've always liked that coffee table of yours, Matty.” Casey nodded toward the living room. Made from a burl, a wart-like knot cut from the bole of a tree, the table was finished with what Casey guessed was probably a polymer resin. Its unique grain swirled in surreal patterns under its clear glassy surface.

“Albert's hobby. He spends a lot of time in his workshop. It's a terrible thing, the murder of that poor woman,” she said, changing the subject as she poured the tea. She pointed to her newspaper on the table and sighed. “Will you be writing a report about it in your paper, Casey?”

“Not likely. My colleague, Jack Wexler, is on the police beat. I take care of the politics and the human-interest stuff.”

“It must be a very interesting job, being a newspaper reporter.”

“The
Clarion
is only a weekly community paper, Matty, as you know. I like my job, but I don't cover great events or important issues. Just the small stuff. A tiny brick in the huge skyscraper world of journalism is all I am.”

“Every brick is important, Casey, if the building is to stand. Help yourself to a butter tart. I made them yesterday.”

Casey thought again about his waistline as he helped himself to a tart.

“So what's the story, Doc?”

“For an old guy of forty, you're doing not too badly.” Tom Watterson frowned.

“But—”

“But?” Casey buttoned his trousers.

“It's the weight. Two years ago you were a few pounds over. But now?” Watterson's black eyebrows disappeared under his untidy gray mop. “Now you're twenty pounds over.”

“Hmmph.”

“Still happy at the
West End Clarion
?”

“You're asking me if I'm a contented man, Tom. You know I am. The job's fine. So what is it you're trying to tell me? Out with it.”

“Exercise. That's what you need, regular exercise. And plenty of vegetables and fruit. Cut out the cinnamon rolls and the pizza. And—” He paused. “You still living alone?”

“I am.”

“People live longer when they have a partner.” He smiled. “Maybe you could find a good woman.”

“Thanks, Tom.” Casey made for the door.

“And come back in a year. Regular checkups would do you no harm either. You're too young for a coronary.”

He walked to the office.

Too young for a coronary!

Find a good woman!

“Hmmph!”

This time of the day, the
Clarion
's other two reporters were usually out doing legwork. Interviews, story follow-ups, what they called “face-to-face” work. He didn't expect to find any of them in.

Brenda at the front desk smiled when she saw him. “Messages for you, Casey.”

“Thanks, Brenda.” He examined the yellow slips. “Here. I brought you a Mars bar.” Which wasn't quite true. He'd bought it for himself to eat while working on his piece about the infighting at the parks board. But chocolate didn't exactly come under the doctor's prescription. He should try to shed a few of those extra pounds. Take some of Tom's advice. The parts about eating sensibly and exercising anyway. The good woman he definitely did not need. He was a loner, always had been.

He'd thought about jogging last summer, but had never got started somehow. He wasn't sure if he possessed the will or motivation. It was as simple as that. Why struggle? You lived, you died. Who cared if you were a few pounds overweight?

“Thanks, big guy,” said Brenda. “Jack's been looking for you.”

Jack Wexler was at his desk. Their third reporter, Debbie Ozeroff, was out. Debbie covered the arts, fashion, women's issues and the environment. There was also a part-time photographer, Doug Duchesne, who was mostly out. The four of them shared an office the size of a jail cell. When the three reporters were all there, the place reminded Casey of the farmer's market back home in Belfast—noise and chaos unlimited.

Wexler stood and grabbed his jacket off the peg when he saw Casey. “Come on, it's lunchtime. I'll buy you a bagel.”

Wexler was over sixty. Lately he'd been telling anyone who would listen that he couldn't wait to retire and sell his overpriced West End condo. He and his wife Midge would buy a small place near sunny Victoria at half the price. Short and wiry, he looked much younger than his age, even with his balding pink head. He always dressed smartly. Today he wore a dark houndstooth jacket, dark green V-neck sweater over a white cotton shirt, green cords and a pair of brown oxfords. Wexler had been married for almost forty years.

They were early, so they got two seats at the window counter of Hegel's Bagels looking out toward the beach and seawall at English Bay. Wexler ordered coffee and a gypsy salami bagel. Casey took only a house salad and a glass of water.

“What's with the rabbit food?”

Casey shrugged. “Doctor says I should lose a few. What's on your mind, Jack? Anything new from Cop Shop on the murder?”

“Cop Shop” was the daily police information service at police headquarters, held weekday mornings.

Wexler wiped cream cheese off his chin. “Not a thing. Kind of hard to identify someone who's missing a head.” He bit into his bagel. His glance fell to Casey's middle, bulging slightly over the belt of his cords. “Look, you wanna lose some weight, you buy yourself some barbells.” He propped his elbow up on the counter and offered Casey a bicep. “Feel that.”

Casey looked into Wexler's eyes to see if he was serious. He was. He prodded the older man's arm gingerly with a fingertip.

“Hard, huh? And lookit!” Wexler slapped his stomach. “Steel drum.”

“I didn't know you lifted weights.”

“Four years. Work out three times a week, mornings at six, before breakfast. Try it for three hours a week, Casey, and you'll look like me.”

“No comment.”

“I'm serious.”

“Exercising is hard work, Jack. I'll have to think about it.”

CHAPTER FOUR

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9

L
unch hour. Hegel's Bagels.

Casey toyed with his salad, wishing it was a ham-and-egg bagel.

Wexler consulted his Cop Shop notes. “Woman's name was Julie Dagg, white, twenty-five, secretary. Lived at 1976 Haro with roommate Beryl Gibb, who goes by the name of Billie. Julie was on her way home from the West End Fitness Center about half an hour after it closed. That would put the time of the murder around ten thirty. Her naked body was found in the minipark next to Pearl's Restaurant around midnight by a guy on his way home. He cut through the park and saw a dog eating—”