Mr Toppit (24 page)

“No one believes her. The police don’t.”

Laurie had held on to her cards for long enough. Now she played them. “They’re so overstretched, aren’t they? They can’t follow up all the things they ought to. That’s what Greg Terpstra thinks anyway.”

“Greg Terpstra?” Mrs. Detweiler barked.

Now Laurie had her attention. “He’s a personal friend. You know he came to see Alma while I was away?” she said. Then she added sanctimoniously, “He’s always been so kind to us.”

Greg Terpstra was the best-known lawyer in Modesto. By no stretch of the imagination could he be called a personal friend. Everyone said he had Mafia connections, though Laurie could not imagine what the Mafia would be doing in Modesto unless it was to take protection money from the hairdressing salons. Alma had asked him to come to Spring Crest because she wanted to change her will again. Laurie had just had his bill. As far as she knew, Alma had not mentioned the assault to him.

Laurie went on, “Why, Greg told me that her hands wouldn’t stop shaking when she was telling him about the attack, said the stress she suffered must have been enormous. In my day stress was something you just lived with. Now it’s something they put a price on. You know what lawyers are like, Mrs. D.”

Laurie couldn’t read the expression on Mrs. Detweiler’s face so she decided to plough on. “You’re right, of course. It’s a fine mess.” She sighed. “I admire you so much,” she said, “all of you who look after the seniors in our community. It’s such a responsibility of care. It’s not like my job. If I screw up—miss a cue or make the wrong dedication for a song—what happens? The world doesn’t end. You look after these folks twenty-four seven. You can’t protect them from everything.”

“We haven’t screwed up,” Mrs. Detweiler said coldly.

“
I
know that, Mrs. D. You do the best you can and the world sits in judgment on you. It’s just not fair.” Then she said it again: “You know what lawyers are like. They love proving liability.”

Something had settled in the room, something calming like a blanket of snow. She and Mrs. Detweiler had evened up. “Here’s what I think we should do,” Laurie said. “Let’s put Alma in a holding pattern, like a big old jumbo jet. Nothing too hasty. You’re so vigilant, Mrs. D. Let’s just watch the situation. Alma steps out of line again, you tell me, okay?” She grasped one of Mrs. Detweiler’s claw-like hands. “Thank you.”

As she was going out of the door, Mrs. Detweiler called her name. Laurie turned round. “You must have had a good trip,” she said, with a tinge of admiration. “You just seem …” She tailed off. She was struggling to find a phrase that could define how Laurie seemed to her.

Laurie gave her a little help. “Well, it’s true,” she said. “I’m feeling just howdy-doody, Mrs. D.”

• • •

Rivers and streams, gullies and inlets and creeks flowing and dividing and reconnecting: that was what had fascinated Laurie as a child. At Los Alamos, in the spring, clear streams trickled and bubbled, then dried into dusty ditches. When the winter came, the dust turned to mud and everything squelched under her feet. She wondered where the water came from and where it went.

For every river was there a spot of earth from which a little trickle came that you could pinpoint as the place where the Mississippi or the Sacramento or the Nile began? That was what she liked to think, and Laurie picked on the day after she had gone to Spring Crest to see Alma and Mrs. Detweiler as the precise moment the trickle had started. She needed everything to be predetermined. Chance was too random. Chance wrote her out of the story. So she always came back to that day in 1981, as she was walking through the lobby heading towards the parking lot after she had finished her afternoon shift at Holy Spirit.

When she heard the beeping, she couldn’t think what it was and looked around her to see where it was coming from. It took her a moment to realize it was inside her purse. About a year before, everyone who worked at the hospital had been issued with a pager. Marge had exploded at the extravagance of giving those she contemptuously called “non-meds” an expensive toy and had made, as usual, a formal complaint. Although at the time Laurie had felt rather defensive, there had been a certain amount of truth in what Marge had said: she had put the pager into her purse and forgotten about it because nobody had ever paged her—until now.

“Call me—Connie” was flashing in the little window, and Laurie felt both excitement and dread. Connie Kooyman was in charge of Special Events, under which the hospital radio station came.

“Laurie, thank God, I thought you might have gone,” Connie said, when Laurie called her on the internal phone at the main desk.

“What is it?”

“The most awful thing’s happened. Ed Corley’s in Intensive. His wife just called.”

Laurie gasped. “That’s terrible!” She didn’t much like Ed, but that wasn’t the point.

“He was in an accident, I didn’t get the details. Listen—can you fill in for him? I’m so sorry, Laurie. Do you have plans?”

“But he does the God slot! I wouldn’t know how to do that, Connie.”

“It’s nondenominational,” Connie said crisply, as if that solved the problem. “You just need to do something inspirational. Ed reads poetry when he isn’t doing one of those awful sermons. It’ll only be for a couple of days—well, no more than this week anyhow. He’s got a bookshelf up there. You might find something in it. Please, Laurie.”

Maybe I should read a passage from
Why Do I Say Yes When I Mean No?
Laurie thought, as she traveled back up in the elevator. That would be inspirational. Marge—the one who really needed them—had endlessly given her self-help books, each one presented with meaningful ceremony as if to tick off yet another of the faults she perceived in Laurie.

She pushed open the soundproof door of the little studio. There was the faint smell of dope. “Travis?” she called. There
was a scuffle in the store room at the back and Travis Buckley came out, looking sheepish.

“Hey, Mrs. Clow.”

“Travis, I don’t care what you do in here but don’t put the butt in the trash and set fire to the place.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Clow.”

She had given up long ago telling him she wasn’t married. He wasn’t too bright, but he treated adults with the mixture of politeness and contempt most young people affected. There was always a kid helping in the studio, setting up the equipment, doing the sliders, and trying to put the records back in the right place. Usually they were connected to someone at Holy Spirit—Travis was Dr. Buckley’s son, the professor of oncology. The kids thought it would lead to a career as a DJ or record producer; Travis was always sitting at the turntables jiggling the discs back and forth, making an awful noise.

“You’ve got to help me, Travis. You heard about Ed?”

He pushed his long blond hair out of his eyes. “Yeah, it’s awful. I thought I’d have to do his show.” He gave a little snort of laughter. “Rappin’ for God!”

“What’s he done the last few days?”

Travis shrugged. “Never listen much, Mrs. Clow.”

“Where does he keep his books, his reference stuff?” Laurie looked up at the big clock on the studio wall. There were twenty minutes to go.

Travis gestured casually with his thumb. “In the back.” As they went into the store room, he said, “Father Corley keeps his things over there,” pointing to the back wall next to the shelves that held the music library.

“Why do you call him Father Corley? You don’t have to be a priest to do the God slot, Travis. He’s an orthodontist.”

“Never said anything to me.”

Travis was so crestfallen at this piece of adult deception that Laurie felt sorry for him. “Actually, he might be a lay preacher at that weird church he goes to up on Burney.”

Travis nodded several times, rallying. “He’s got a lot of faith, that guy.”

“I guess so,” Laurie said doubtfully. If Ed’s reputation was anything to go by, it was all lay and no preaching. “Okay—we need something to get through today’s show, something I can just read. We’ll have time tomorrow to sort out the rest of the week.”

Travis was bending down next to a pile of books. “Hey, what about
The Prophet
? That’s amazing.”

Laurie’s heart sank. “What else is there?”

Travis began reading the spines:
“Campfire Sermons, Cooking for the Soul, Having a Jesus Heart in a Judas World
 …”

“Oh, Travis, I can’t do all that stuff. I just wouldn’t feel comfortable.” Laurie went over and knelt beside him. The first book she saw was
The Bible’s Way to Weight Loss
.

“What about his backpack? Is there something in it?” Travis said, pointing.

Laurie unzipped it. There was a box of Kleenex and a small magazine called
Born-again Swingers
. “I don’t think so,” she said crisply, zipping it up again.

“Maybe you could start off with some kind of safety announcement. You know—rules for the highway, watching for traffic signals.”

Was Travis even more clueless than she’d thought? “What are you talking about?”

“Well, the Bible says we’re, like, meant to follow an example, right? So you could kind of do it the opposite way.
Not
follow
Father Corley’s example.” Travis looked rather pleased with himself.

“Travis …” Laurie’s voice rose in exasperation.

“I mean, you don’t want it to happen to other folks, do you?”

Suddenly Laurie felt something in the air. “What?” she said cautiously.

“Father Corley’s accident.” Laurie felt bemused. “Yeah,” Travis went on, “being run down like that.”

“He was run down?”

“On the corner of Paradise and Third. By a school bus. Wow! Can you imagine how those kids are feeling?”

The oddest sensation came over Laurie, a mingling of torpor and energy, as if she was being pulled in two different directions. There was a moment when she thought she might faint, but it might just have been because she’d got to her feet so quickly. She steadied herself by holding on to the record shelves. Travis wasn’t the clueless one. She was. He was just the messenger.

When she told the story in years to come, in interviews and on her show, she never mentioned the thought that had come into her head at that moment: it was like that movie
The Omen
in which everyone who got in the way of Satan’s master plan had some weird accident. Ed Corley had had to be taken out of the picture, and the method of his taking was a sign: run over by a bus full of kids on a street called Paradise. It couldn’t have been coincidence.

The clock was ticking in the studio. “Here’s what we do, Travis,” Laurie said. “Get everything up and running, get Ed’s ident lined up. I need some time to think.” She shoved him out of the store room. “Now!”

“But what are you going to do on the show?” he squeaked.

“Just get it ready,” she said, pulling the door shut as he went out.

In the windowless, neon-lit store room the only sound Laurie could hear was the live feed coming from the small loudspeakers on the wall. For the gaps between the shows, Connie bought music by the yard that could run unattended after Travis, or whichever kid was helping in the studio, had set it up. Now, enhanced by a light drum beat, “Ode to Joy” was playing. Laurie was trembling a little, but not unpleasantly so. She was holding her purse tightly against her chest, and when she felt calmer she would open it and take out Arthur’s books. She would have to do it soon: there were seven minutes left and she needed to get herself together.

Ed’s show lasted only half an hour, but it seemed to Laurie as if it could have gone on forever or been over in a few seconds.

She had told Travis she wouldn’t need him after he had lined up the top of the show. There were no cues or music to be sorted out and she didn’t want to be distracted by seeing him through the glass as she was reading. When he slipped back five minutes before the end, she didn’t even notice him.

After Ed’s show the station closed down for the night, so when Laurie came out of the booth the live feed had been switched off and the studio was completely silent, except for the fan, which didn’t mask the smell of dope. Travis was sitting at the desk with his head in his hands. He brushed his hair off his face. “That was awesome, Mrs. Clow,” he said. “What a great book. It was like you were reading it just to me.” His eyes were glassy and unfocused.

“Thank you, Travis.”

“That Luke, he’s such a cool kid.”

Laurie cleared her throat. “There’s a real boy named Luke. I met him in England. His father wrote the books.”

“Really? Wow! That dark wood, it’s spooky.”

“It’s called the Darkwood. One word.”

“What’s the difference?”

“That’s just what it’s called.”

“So what happened when Luke found the burning tree? It was Mr. Toppit who did it, right? And the package on the grave—what’s inside?”

“You’ll have to wait till tomorrow.”

Travis laughed. “Hey, I really want to go to England. It’s so cool there.”

Quite suddenly, Laurie had had enough of him. She wasn’t sure she’d wanted to share so much. It was time to be on her own and think about what had happened. “It’s a story, Travis, not a documentary,” she said coldly.

Later that evening, on her porch, she was nursing a Scotch, not the first of the evening, and feeling quite strange. Should she have called England and asked Martha or the children if it was okay to read the book on the air? What would they have said? Anyway, she had been the one with whom Arthur had shared his death—she was the one who had been chosen—and that gave her as much right as them to decide what ought to be done. Besides, she hadn’t had time. She’d needed to act quickly.

But it had left her feeling empty and flat. It was not as simple as making the decision to share the books and letting them go. They were published in England, after all, anyone could read them. It was that what she held inside herself had moved
somewhere else and she couldn’t locate it. She had to take it on trust that it was still there.

She knew she had drunk too much, because she was missing Marge, who was already beginning to take up residence in the newly emptied space inside Laurie, bringing her anger and her clutter and her irritating habits. What would she say if they met? There would have to be some acknowledgment of why they had hardly spoken for such a long time, why Laurie found herself turning purposefully down unfamiliar corridors in the hospital if she saw Marge in the distance, why, if Marge was in the canteen, she would leave with a muffin and an apple to eat in the studio when she had planned to have lunch there.