The Satanic Mechanic (8 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

As I drove my blue Nissan along the dirt road to Route 62, I thought it was probably crazy to invite Henk to stay the night again so soon. But I'd been to see a counsellor and a doctor, and started two sorts of medication and a diet. And now I had the phone number for a satanic mechanic. So maybe I was ready.

I turned onto the tar. There were three other cars ahead of me on the way in to Ladismith. Morning rush hour. I wondered what I would cook for my Friday night with Henk.

Hattie's Toyota Etios was already under the jacaranda, so I parked a little further away in the broken shade of a thorn tree. In the autumn weather, it would be cool enough.

I walked up the path lined with pot plants to the office of the
Karoo Gazette
. Hattie's fingers were running around her keypad like mice, and she paused for only a second to greet me.

I went to my desk and the pile of letters that was waiting for me.

‘Tea?' I asked Hattie, as I prepared my own coffee and rusks.

‘Hmm? No thanks. Just finishing off some last-second copy.'

I looked through my letters; there were quite a few new ones. Including some email printouts. I didn't have my own email address, but they were sent to the
Gazette
for my column. Most people send letters; they're more anonymous.

I reread that letter I hadn't answered, from the teenager whose boyfriend wanted sex. I wrote:

If he cares about you, he will wait until you are ready. If you care about him, you will move gently in the direction of getting ready. It's not something you must force yourself to do. Your heart and your body must both be happy
.

In the meantime, you can make him the Venus Cake. Made with coffee and peanut butter and melted chocolate. It is very satisfying and will keep him interested for quite a while. If the waiting goes on a long time, let me know and I will think of something else. Though you can't get much better than this cake
.

As I wrote out the recipe, I wondered if a teenager was ready for the responsibility of an out-of-this-world cake. Should I make that same cake for Henk tonight? I hoped we wouldn't be needing it. The problem with the Venus Cake was it disagreed too much with my diet. And my diet was moving me in the direction of getting ready.

I picked up another letter on the pile, one that looked impatient to be opened. It was a plain white envelope with a George postmark. George was quite a big town, further away and bigger than Oudtshoorn.

Dear Auntie Maria
,

My boyfriend says he wants to have two girlfriends. He has a story about how he loves me but you can never find everything you want in one person. He wants us all to have dinner together some time (me and his other girlfriend). What should I do?

Miss Helpme

I finished my coffee, and answered:

Dear Miss Helpme
,

Tell your boyfriend that is fine, so long as you have two boyfriends as well. And each of your boyfriends has two girlfriends. And those girlfriends need two too, and so on. It will be like a chain letter
.

The problem will be having dinner together. How do you plan numbers for catering? It would be safest to have a picnic in the park or on the beach and ask everyone to bring their own food
.

Not far from George is a nice beach called Herold's Bay. I pictured them all on this beach and smiled.

‘Rightio,' said Hattie, brushing her hands together with a clapping sound. ‘Done and dusted. I'd love that cup of tea now. And how are you doing, Maria darling? Have you heard from Jessie?'

‘Just a quick call,' I said, putting on the kettle. ‘She was meeting Slimkat's cousin, Ystervark, at the hospital.'

‘She has a nose for news, does our Jessie.'

‘She spoke to the people at the Kudu Stall. But it sounds like it wasn't much help.'

‘Of course we want a good story, but I do hope she doesn't end up in trouble again. Don't think I could bear another kidnapping or coma.'

I hoped the same, but I also wanted Jessie to find out what happened. Slimkat's eyes might haunt me for ever if she didn't. I gave Hattie her tea and offered her a rusk.

‘No thanks,' she said. ‘It hasn't been proven yet, has it, that Slimkat was poisoned?'

‘No results on the sauce bottle yet,' I said. ‘Well, nothing official anyway.'

‘Do you know something unofficial?' asked Hattie. ‘You or Jessie, through one of your saucy sources?' She laughed at her own joke.

I shook my head and settled back down at my desk. I thought I'd better write a bit more to Miss Helpme. She might not have found the chain letter idea that funny.

It may be true that you cannot find everything you want in one person. But it's also true that your most important needs must be met by yourself
.

If your boyfriend does not like the chain-letter plan, and does not want to be faithful to you, you may find you can meet your needs better without him. It is more lonely to be with someone who cannot love you right, than to be on your own
.

I though about giving her a cold picnic recipe, but instead gave her Annemarie's amazing brandy tart recipe, which should be eaten hot and at home. I wondered again what I should cook for Henk that night.

‘I've got some errands to run,' said Hattie. ‘Toodle-oo.'

I couldn't decide which letter to open next, so I shuffled them and just picked one. I got a fright when I read it.

Dear Tannie Maria
,

My new boyfriend and I have been getting on very well for a few months. Then he told me he loved me. It scares me! Does this mean there is something wrong with me? Or that he is the wrong one for me?

He is coming for lunch this weekend. I don't know what to do
.

Mariana

The woman's name even sounded like my own. Had I written a letter to myself? The postmark on the letter was from Ladismith. Was I going mad? No, I couldn't have written it myself, because Henk was coming for supper not lunch.

I made myself a cup of coffee and went and sat outside on a chair in the shade of a karee tree and looked at the pots of succulents. They were not flowering yet, but their leaves had such interesting fat shapes. I don't know their English names, but their Afrikaans names describe them nicely: toontjies – little toes, and worsies – little sausages, and bababoudjies – little baby bums.

When I'd finished my coffee, I went back inside and wrote my reply.

Dear Mariana
,

Maybe he said it too soon. Time will tell
.

Maybe you feel you do not deserve love. This sometimes happens if you have not had good love before. Or if you have done something you are ashamed of. Is there something hiding in your past?

You might need to decide if
you
really love
him.

One way to decide this is to see whether you feel like making him a toasted sandwich or a three-course meal that takes half the day to prepare. Although if you choose the sandwich it could just be that you don't like cooking, in which case you need to sit quietly and look inside your own heart
.

Yours
,

Tannie Maria

I gave her recipes for a delicious toasted sandwich (with cheese, tomato paste, sliced biltong, banana and peppadew) and for a three-course meal. The toasted sandwich I would make for myself for lunch, and the three-course meal is what I planned to prepare for Henk that night.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The meal I prepared was butternut soup with sour cream, my ouma's Karoo lamb pie and buttermilk pudding.

When the soup was in the hotbox, the pie in the oven and the pudding in its dish, I washed and dressed. First I put on my lacy white underwear, then the special cream dress that my friend Candy had sent me from New York, and the matching shoes with low heels. I thought about painting my toenails with pearl nail varnish but decided that was going too far. I brushed my hair and put on fresh lipstick and sat on the stoep and watched the sky turn from pale turquoise to pink to purple. The soft green shapes in the veld became silhouettes. There was no sign of the kudu at the gwarrie tree, but I saw a small grysbokkie moving through the bushes.

Henk was late. We hadn't said a time, it just felt late. I watched the first planets appearing in the big Karoo sky. Before the stars appeared, I heard his bakkie pulling up, into my driveway.

I sat very still and watched his dark shape move up the pathway towards the stoep. He only saw me when he was quite close.

‘Sorry,' he said. ‘Kosie needed settling.'

I was still a little cross with him, not for being late but for convincing me to leave Jessie in Oudtshoorn. I was cross with myself, really; I shouldn't let a man tell me what to do.

He stepped onto the stoep and gave me that big smile, and his neatly waxed chestnut moustache smiled too. I stood up.

‘Hello, Henk.'

He pulled me against his warm chest, which smelt like a hot cross bun, and my anger melted away. He made me feel hot, not cross.

He breathed out a sigh, and I felt it go right through me. I looked up to see what was going on, but he was staring out into the darkness.

‘Would you like a beer?' I said.

I fetched a Windhoek Lager from the fridge, then I lit a lantern on the stoep table and went back inside to get the soup from the hotbox. We had a few courses to get through before we could go to bed.

We ate the soup in silence, and I wondered if he even wanted to go to bed. He hadn't kissed me hello and wasn't looking into my eyes. He didn't look at me much at all. I was glad I hadn't painted my toenails.

‘Venus is bright tonight,' he said, gazing out at the night.

‘Ja,' I said, because it was. ‘Are you okay?'

He looked at me and gave a sad kind of smile.

‘Fine,' he said. ‘A bit tired. Sorry.'

‘I'll get the pie,' I said.

I put the buttermilk pudding in the oven and brought out Ouma's Karoo lamb pie with peas and potatoes (mashed with butter and cream).

‘That smells good,' he said.

He ate without his usual appetite, although it was an excellent dish.

‘It's my ouma's recipe.' I said, ‘You stew the lamb first, with onion, bay leaves and peppercorns . . .'

‘Mm,' he said.

Not
Mm mmm
like when something is yummy, but
Mm
like his thoughts were somewhere else. Something was wrong. Maybe he didn't want to spend the night with me; he remembered what a mess it had been last time. Maybe he wanted to break up with me; he'd made a mistake saying he loved me. I was maybe-ing myself into knots. What I liked about Henk was I could be myself with him.

‘This is good,' he said, after he'd eaten some buttermilk pudding.

Which was rubbish. It was not good – it was perfect. The best buttermilk pudding that had ever been made.

‘If you don't want to be with me,' I said, ‘maybe it's better you just say so.'

He stopped chewing and looked at me, his eyes wide.

Now that I had started, I thought I'd better finish, even though I felt a fool. ‘I know it hasn't been easy for you.' I said. ‘But I stayed out of
the case, like you asked. And I'm working on my other . . . problems. I really am.'

‘No,' he said. He dropped his spoon on his plate and stood up and came and sat next to me and held my hands between his palms. ‘No, it's nothing to do with you. It's me.'

Oh, no, I thought, not that break-up line. He must be upset about the sex after all.

‘I'm cross with myself,' he said.

I'd been cross with myself too. Maybe relationships just didn't work unless you changed who you were. But I didn't want to do that. It hadn't turned out well the last time.

I stroked Henk's fingers. The thought of being without him made my heart feel like a lemon cut in half and the juice squeezed out.

‘We did our best,' I said.

‘It wasn't good enough,' he said.

I shook my head.

‘We tried,' I said, ‘we really did.'

‘It wasn't your job,' he said. ‘It was mine. And I failed.'

He looked out again at the darkness, which was now full of stars.

‘And now a man is dead,' he said.

‘What?' I said.

‘It sits so heavy on me, it's almost like I killed him myself.'

What was he talking about?

‘Of course we should have blerrie watched what he ate. We should have kept him in a safe house. We were warned, but we didn't protect him. We didn't do our job properly.'

Slimkat, he was talking about Slimkat.

‘Oh,' I said. ‘Yes. I mean, no. You did your best. Slimkat didn't want to hide or run. He said his time would come when it came.'

‘Ja, well, it came with that blerrie kudu sosatie.'

‘Did they prove that? Was it poison in the sauce?'

‘Ja. You were right. But that's off the record,' he said, frowning. ‘Oudtshoorn police will decide what goes public. Please.'

I ignored the hidden scolding. ‘Doesn't the responsibility lie with the Oudtshoorn police?' I said.

It was a stupid question. Even I felt responsible for Slimkat's death. If I'd been there just a bit earlier, I might've smelt the sauce wasn't right . . .

‘They're responsible for the investigation,' said Henk. ‘But they brought us in to help with protection – and we failed.'

‘You weren't expecting poison,' I said.

‘We were stupid. There are many ways to kill someone.'

‘I'm sure you'll catch the murderer,' I said, thinking of that huge crowd and not feeling at all sure.

‘It's not my case now.'

‘If they could find that other woman who asked about the sauce . . . Did you talk to the blonde girl from the Kudu Stall?'

‘I interviewed her myself,' he said, shaking his head. ‘A terrible witness. She says she was looking at the food not the people. She thinks the first woman who asked was short and maybe wearing a scarf and sunglasses, and she described you – the second tannie who asked for the recipe – as curvy with blonde hair, though she can't be sure.'

‘Jinne,' I said. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘Again, this is all off the record.'

‘Ja, ja,' I said. ‘Jessie was also asking questions. I'm sure she'll tell you if she finds anything. She had a long talk with Slimkat, you know, just before he died.'

‘She told Reghardt all about it, and the Oudtshoorn lieutenant.'

Henk pulled me onto his lap. ‘Enough of my moaning,' he said.

He rubbed his hands slowly up my arms. His fingers ran along my shoulders, at the edge of my cream dress.

He kissed me, which started a different kind of moaning.

‘Let's go inside,' he said, nuzzling my neck, ‘it would be unfair to make Kosie suffer for nothing.'