Grave Concern (26 page)

Meanwhile, Leonard was back to work at what he called Ho Lam Vacuous Viewing. Kate stopped in to see him, full of tender feeling.

“So, Leonard, how's it going?”

“Okay.”

“You're looking well. Much better than Saturday night.”

“Mmmm.”

“Tongue sore?”

“Tongue?”

“You're not talking much. I thought maybe your tongue was giving you trouble.”

Leonard abjured reply. Dark feeling hovered like cumulonimbus clouds.

“Well, I guess you're busy, then,” Kate said. “I'll be going now. 'Bye.”

“ 'Bye.”

All day, from then on, Kate pondered the depth of the hole she'd obviously dug. Her thoughts took a dark turn toward Mary. Hadn't the party been Mary's idea? Hadn't Mary been cross-eyed, missing a man in her life? And Kate, thinking Mary over a barrier in her grieving — had enthusiastically hosted the event. Well, Mary got her social life, but Kate got a manure pile's worth of trouble.

There was one bright spot, however: since the faux wrist-slitting, Neville, due to move to town within the year, had presumably come to some kind of arrangement with Hille.

It was a limp afternoon toward the end of June. Kate had retreated to Grave Concern's fan-cooled semi-darkness, wherein she was totting up payables and receivables. Seeing Grave Concern's numbers naked and revealed, Kate was forced to admit a discouraging plateau in business, even a slight decline. First Corinthians popped into her head: “For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” The problem was simple: though her existing clients remained loyal, new ones were lately proving difficult to come by. Whether this was due to a cyclical falloff in dying, the superior ministrations of Krebs Life Passages Services, or some other cause eluded Kate completely.

As Kate thus contemplated corporate cause and effect, a single, very thin envelope dropped through the slot into her office mail basket. With not a little excitement, Kate roused herself to fetch the latest missive from the outside world. The letter was unstamped and therefore hand delivered. How nice. Perhaps an invitation of some kind. With any luck, a Rotarian lunch (much coveted hereabouts), or a free trial coupon for the soon-to-open pedicure place beside Pussy Cat Palace. When Kate tore open the envelope, all such hopes were rudely dashed. Well, well, what a surprise. Bill Chambers — Grade 3 repeater, cougar-hunter, break-and-enter specialist, and corporate landlord — was raising her rent.

Not for the first time, Kate racked her brains for some way to rise above her troubles, which just sent her mind on the usual wild goose chase. It was ever the same. First, she would consider the revival and expansion of the Grave Concern Head Shop, the Lucy van Pelt-style counselling service she'd practised only the once — on Hille. But considering Kate's recent Saturday night infamy, not to mention the unassailable laws of physics concerning the speed of sound as applied to the wagging of tongues in a small town, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that further unlicensed, unprofessional, under-the-table counselling would be ill-advised.

Next, Kate would consider a complete change of career — offering balloon rides to valley tourists, say, or driving taxi, or expanding her grave-tending business to graveyards up and down the valley — before dismissing these as unrealistic, in that she was fond neither of heights nor of extended periods spent in cars. These options thus dismissed, Kate would then consider how long Gwyneth Waters could possibly hold out at Flower Power. Maybe Kate could buy out Gwyneth and do what was needed: a much better job. Sadly, though, other than perpetual exasperation with suppliers (and everyone else), Gwyneth had shown not the least desire to quit. Corporate takeover, indeed.

And thus was Kate inevitably led to a very dark place: the prospect of a salaried job. She'd try to picture herself in hospital administration or ensconced in the clerk's taupe leather chair up at Town Hall. But these scenarios just didn't ring true. Why? The simplest explanation was the jobs were taken. But the nut of it was that Kate, at this stage of life, could no longer bear the thought of working for someone else.

Thus was Kate's mental course run, ending predictably where it had begun.

Having completed the circle yet again and with the same depressing result, Kate, like any unhappy addict, found herself falling off a suddenly rickety wagon. In Kate's case, that wagon was abstention from the past. Launching her web browser, Kate informed Herr Professor Google of her wish to examine the local scene between 1976 and 1992, that is, between when she'd met J.P and his death. Of the dog's breakfast that came up on the screen, Kate chose one of several links to
The
Pine Rapids News
, hoping to find stories related to the King's Hotel fire and subsequent trial. What turned up was a mishmash of front-page articles — titles only, neither archived nor indexed — and little else. Where were the librarians when you needed them?

And then the strangest thing happened. The cursor began moving
on its own
. She kept trying to click a link, but the cursor wouldn't co-operate. It had a mind of its own. Kate had experienced this once before, when her computer guy down in Valleyview had somehow tapped into her screen to show her how to use the tools there. Like magic, the way he'd moved the little arrow around, pointing out boxes and opening windows. But this was different. Kate hadn't called anyone. A rogue cursor was loose in cyberspace, closing out links as fast as she could open them. Each time she tried to reactivate a link, it disappeared. Kate returned to the original web page. Not a single link remained.

Kate nearly jumped out of her skin. Someone barging in her office door. Gupta stuck out his hand. “Mr. Prakash Gupta. We met each other at Longshots; you remember?”

“Oh. Right.” Kate wiped a swirl of drool from her cheek. She must have fallen asleep on her desk.

“Listen, Miss Kate. I will not beat around the bush.”

“Thank God for that,” Kate said.

“May I?” Gupta indicated the chair.

“Be my guest.”

Gupta's his eye caught the poster on the wall behind her head. “ ‘Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.' Ha! You write that?”

Kate smiled in an energy-conserving way; that is, not too much. It was just too hot. “Only wish I did.”

“Oh.” Gupta looked disappointed, but forged on, “Miss Smithers, I am cognizant of fact we are not knowing each other well. My family is quite new in town. Only three years. Perhaps you are remembering us at Gupta Gas-and-Wash.”

Kate, feeling overwhelmed, did not acknowledge this either way.

“I am coming here to do you a favour, I hope so. At Longshots Bar, I was trying to warn you off, you see. To keep you away from the graveyard. It might be dangerous, you see, Miss. We are a group that is concerned about some wild beast in the area.”

Kate's yawn, this time legitimate, could not have been timed better. “Tell me something I don't know.”

Gupta looked surprised, but went on. “I'd like to tell you, if I could, a little story.”

“Day's shot anyway,” Kate said rather rudely. “Go right ahead.”

With some caution, Gupta proceeded with his tale. “In the town where I came up, in India, when I was about twelve years old, an old woman with a bad leg my mother knew was on her way home under a load of fuel, when she was most cruelly attacked and killed. Even some of her body was eaten. A man-eating tiger, you see, stalking our village. Everyone was afraid. Oh, extremely afraid, terrified. They sent out a hunting party to look for the offender, to try to kill the beast. I begged to go with them but unhappily my father wouldn't allow.

“Now it so happens Uncle was a falconer. He kept a number of falcons for bird-hunting, as a sport, you see. One of them once caught a bird, a raven, which had gone astray from its course, blown down from somewhere up in high Himalaya. This bird was not dead but half-alive. My uncle had no use for it, and therefore my aunt, taking pity, nursed it up to good health.”

Kate was half-intrigued, half-stupefied. Her eyes began gently to close, which Mr. Gupta politely ignored.

“Meanwhile, another victim, this time a child, was taken by that ravenous tiger. The village went beyond terror. Now the people were like fire, white-hot with tiger-anger. My aunt was known in those parts as having some special power. Not a witch, exactly. But she could talk to the animals, make crops and flowers grow better than the neighbours. Hunters tried with no success for a week to locate the tiger. My aunt whispered something into that raven's ear and off it flew into jungle. The villagers could hear it calling, and followed it, as my aunt told them to do.

“That very day, the village men returned triumphant, the tiger slung on a heavy pole on their shoulders, dead.”

Kate opened her eyes, incredulous. “That's it? The end of the story?”

Gupta inclined his head and blinked his eyes, which Kate took as a yes.

“And what am I supposed to take from this?” she said.

“As I told you, I was not allowed along with the men. But I believe the hunters' success was due to raven. My mother told us children that raven called tiger to its tree. All the men had to do was wait.”

“And why are you telling me this?” said Kate.

“That young boy swore at that time he would never let another such opportunity slip by,” Gupta said. “And indeed he has not.”

“But — ”

Gupta hastily interrupted Kate's half-voiced objection. “But I myself am not bloodthirsty,” he said. “I am not in favour of killing for its own sake. Oh no. It is the hunt, the chase, that interests me. And this beast, this whatever-it-is, has done no harm here in Pine Rapids.”

Hmmm
, thought Kate, Ned Nickers of the bloody
withers
would beg to differ. But Gupta wouldn't know about that. And she was not about to enlighten him.

“I'll ask again,” said Kate. “Why are you telling me this, fascinating as it is?”

“I wanted to explain, you see, about our group. Some of them are going one way, some the other.”

“You mean, some want to shoot to kill.”

Gupta bobbed his head again. “And then there is Nicholas Enderby.”

“What do you mean ‘then there is'?” asked Kate.

“He is what you call here a ‘loose cannon.' Do you agree?”

“Didn't we cover this already at the bar?” Kate said, confused. “You said he's a CO.”

“Conservation officer. Indeed. But is he more, is what I'm eager to know.”

Kate's headache, which had abated during her nap, now came roaring back. Her suspicion meter oscillated like mad. What was Gupta getting at?

“I believe,” Gupta went on, “from what others say, you knew him well as a child. You knew his connections, his motives. A man's true nature can quite often be read in who he was as a young man.”

Kate perked up. “ ‘The child is father of the man.' ”

Gupta's eyes lit up. “Wordsworth! We learned in school back home!” He began to emote, and Kate found herself joining in:

“My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man;

I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.”

There was a long pause as each was moved to reflect on their separate poetic pasts. Kate was the first to break the silence. “Yeah, I hear ya. But let's face it, it's been years. I don't know Nicholas that well anymore.”

“Miss Kate Smithers, I'm asking you. Begging. What does this Nicholas have up his sleeve?”

“Well, I hate to disappoint, but with Nicholas I'd guess mainly an arm,” said Kate. “What I knew of him, he's pretty genuine. He's probably just doing his job. Saving the wildlife, or whatever.” Kate watched Gupta's earnest face. “Why? What's so urgent?”