The Wandering Soul Murders (10 page)

“Don’t you use the upstairs?” I asked.

“No,” Kim said, “they’re afraid we’ll set the place on fire. You know, from our unhealthy habit of smoking.” She gave me a deadpan look. “When you’re dealing with a dysfunctional population, you can’t be too careful.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“That was a joke,” Kim said. “Come on. I gotta get lunch started.”

I followed her through a large front room filled with overstuffed furniture that had obviously been rescued from a dozen different basements. In the corner Big Bird was singing about his neighbourhood on a large-screen
TV
. No one was watching. We walked down a dark hall to the kitchen. Money had been spent here. The floor shone, and the industrial-sized appliances were new and expensive. Kim went to the sink and washed her hands, then she took a slab of hamburger meat from the refrigerator and threw it in an iron frying pan on the stove.

“Chili,” she said. She began breaking up the meat with a fork. “I never knew anybody like Theresa in my life. She was like a person on
TV
, pretty and smart, and she had such great clothes, and that little red convertible of hers was so amazing.” She jabbed at the still frozen centre of the hamburger viciously. “Maybe she liked me because I admired her so much.”

“There are worse reasons,” I said.

The meat sizzled and Kim stirred it. A splash of grease flew up onto her Popsicle-coloured blouse.

“Shit,” she said. “Shit on a stick.” She looked at me sadly. “Theresa would never say anything like that. She was a lady like Julia Roberts in that movie
Pretty Woman
. I musta rented that video twenty times.” Her voice fell. “Anyway, Theresa wanted to make me a lady, too.”

Kim began opening tins of kidney beans and tomatoes and throwing them into the pan with the meat. She stirred the mixture with a wild, hostile energy.

“She told me she was going to teach me about clothes and hair, and we were going to talk about going back to school. She had this business and she was going to, like, train me …”

Behind me a voice, smooth, professionally understanding, said, “Kim, you know the rules about visitors.”

The first thing I noticed about the man in the doorway was that he had the kind of unvarying mahogany tan he could have achieved only in a tanning salon. “Fake-and-bake tans,” Mieka called them. In fact, he looked like a fake-and-bake kind of guy: he was about Keith’s age, mid-fifties, but he was dressed like a fashion magazine’s idea of a college kid,
UBC
sweatshirt, designer jeans, white sport socks, white cross-trainers. His hair had been professionally streaked, and whoever did it had done a better job than the hairdresser who did mine.

“No visitors in the kitchen, Kim,” he said pleasantly. Then he turned his smile on me. It was as dazzling as the gold chain around his neck. “I’m sorry Kim forgot to share our rule with you.”

“You run a tight ship,” I said.

“We have to,” he said.

Kim turned away without a word. Her face as she stirred the chili was impassive. She had withdrawn again. She was back in that detached and distant zone where nobody could dick her around. I touched her on the shoulder.

“Thanks for telling me about Theresa,” I said. “I still can’t get used to calling her that. I never told you my connection with her. She wanted to marry my son, and she felt very close to me. I never knew her.”

Kim took a bag of chili powder from the cupboard and began shaking it into the pan. “You blew it,” she said.

The man raised his eyebrows. “I think we should let Kim get on with her cooking. There are a lot of us looking forward to her famous chili. We all have our jobs here at the Lily Pad.”

“What’s yours?” I said.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kim grin. I was glad she knew I was on her side.

His smile widened, but as he looked at me his eyes were appraising. “Why, I’m Helmut Keating, the co-ordinator,” he said. “If you’d like to step into my office on your way out, I can share some information with you about how we operate here at the Lily Pad.”

Behind Helmut’s back, Kim carefully mouthed the word
“asshole.”
I nodded in agreement. Then I smiled at Helmut.

“Let’s get in there and share,” I said.

When I left, I was carrying a manila folder with some photocopied diagrams of the administrative structure of the Lily Pad and a half-dozen slick brochures to hand around to people I thought would be interested in making a contribution. “We rely on our friends,” Helmut said smoothly as he walked me out the door and down the front steps.

It was a little after eleven-thirty. It was still muggy and overcast, and the kids were still sitting on the lawn smoking. None of them looked as eager to have their lives transformed as the attractive kids in the Lily Pad’s four-colour brochure.

I drove to Taylor’s playschool. She was waiting in the doorway with her teacher. When she saw me, she came running, and I felt a rush of pleasure. She was carrying a cardboard egg carton.

“Look,” she said breathlessly. “The other kids started theirs before I came, so I was late, but teacher says it’s never too late. Look at them. They all sprouted.”

There were twelve bean plants in the dirt that filled the indentations.

“Do you know the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, Jo?”

“Maybe you could tell me while we plant those. If we hurry, we’ve got time before lunch. I thought we’d make something special. Pete’s going back to his job today, remember?”

“Holding cows for the animal doctor,” Taylor said seriously.

“Right,” I said.

An hour later, beans planted, the kids and I were sitting down to gazpacho and warm sourdough bread. Pete had always been strong and resilient – “Peter is unflappable,” his kindergarten teacher had written in a report-card comment that became a family joke. But that day as I watched him eat lunch, I wondered if there’d been too many blows. The visit to the people he and Christy knew in Saskatoon had been painful; the funeral had been worse. But it was the news that Christy had committed suicide that devastated him. He felt he was responsible, and nothing any of us said could convince him otherwise.

I didn’t believe in keeping secrets from the kids. Most of the time, I thought it was best to know the truth and work from there. But as I looked at Pete across the table, pale and unnaturally quiet, I knew this wasn’t most of the time. I decided not to tell him about my visit with Kim Barilko. And so we were both quiet, and I was glad Angus and Taylor were there to fill up the silences.

When Angus went back to school, Taylor went out to sit with her bean garden, and Pete and I were alone.

“I don’t want to go back there,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “But it’s the best thing. You’ll be busy doing something you like, with people who didn’t know Christy. And you’ll be in those beautiful, beautiful hills. That’s healing country down there.”

He pushed his chair away from the table. “This’ll put it to the test,” he said grimly.

As his car turned the corner, I closed my eyes, crossed my fingers and prayed that time and distance would work their magic.

I could hear the phone ringing as soon as I went back in the house.

It was Jill. “Guess who just phoned me?” she said. “Bernice Morin’s boyfriend.”

“That little punk Darren Wolfe,” I said.

Jill laughed. “That’s a bit harsh for you, Jo.”

“One of the cops who came to Judgements the morning Bernice died said it. I guess it just stuck in my mind.”

“It’s probably accurate enough,” Jill said mildly, “but punk or not, Darren’s in big trouble. He got arrested for Bernice’s murder this morning. He says he’s innocent, that somebody’s framing him. Of course, guys like Darren are always being framed.”

“How come he called you?” I asked.

“He needs money for a lawyer. He says the lawyers the court provides are either dykes or dweebs. He heard on the street that the network was working on the Little Flower case, so he’s offered to give me the real story – in return for compensation, of course.”

“Are you going to do it?”

“I can’t,” she said, “but I am going to talk to him. If he really is innocent, there are other ways to help him. Jo, I probably won’t be able to get to see him till tomorrow, but I thought you might want to come along.”

I thought, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to step to the edge of the abyss again. Images flashed into my mind – the teddy bear tattoo on Bernice Morin’s left buttock, the single entry under “Identifying Marks” in Christy’s autopsy report – “left buttock, tattoo, 3 cm, bear-shaped, not recent.” I knew I didn’t have a choice.

“Yes,” I said, “I’ll come. Just let me know the time and place. I’ll be there.”

I hung up and walked to the kitchen window. Taylor was sitting cross-legged in her garden, looking at the place in the ground where she’d planted her beans. For a long while, I watched her. Suddenly, she looked at the window. When she saw me, her face was bright with happiness, and she jumped up and came running toward the house.

“I think they’ve already grown more, Jo,” she said.

“We’ll probably be able to have beans for supper,” I said.

For a split second, she believed me, then she grinned. “Oh, Jo,” she said wearily. “Another joke.” She came over and put her arms around me. As I held her close, I remembered other times when it had happened just like this, times when, at the very moment when I was sure the darkness was going to swallow me, there would be a moment of pure joy. I kissed Taylor’s ear.

“Come on,” I said. “Time to get the bean dirt off. We have to go help some ladies sew Mieka into her wedding dress.”

CHAPTER

7

When I awoke the morning after Peter left, my bedroom was filled with light and birdsong, good omens. The digital clock on my radio read six o’clock, early, but when I looked at the sun streaming in, the waking world seemed to have a lot to recommend it. I brushed my teeth, pulled on my swimsuit and went down to the pool. The dogs, ever optimistic, followed at my heels in case I decided to change course and take them for a run. I disappointed them, but it was worth it. When I dived into the pool, I felt the thrill of physical well-being, and after twenty minutes of laps, the heaviness of the day before had left my body, and I was full of hope.

It was, I decided, time to get back to work. Lost in the mountain of unpacked cartons in the garage was a box of newspaper clippings, political articles I had saved during the past year because they seemed worth thinking about again. I could start there. We were due for a federal election in the fall. I could write a book about the campaign from the provincial viewpoint. I switched from the breast stroke to the crawl. “Sky’s the limit,” I said. “All you need to do is start. The time is now.” I pulled myself up on the side of the pool, ready to go.

Taylor was just coming out of the house. Her face was still rosy from sleep, and she was ripping off her pyjama top with one hand and trying to pull on her bathing suit with the other.

“I’m coming, Jo. Wait for me. I’ll show you my dog-paddle.”

She put her arms around my neck, and the groundbreaking book on the upcoming election was temporarily on hold. By seven o’clock, Angus had joined us and we were all sitting at the picnic bench in our bathing suits eating cereal. When he finished, Angus went in to watch the sports news on
TV
.

I turned to Taylor. “We’ve got time to do a little work before you go to school. Why don’t you bring out your drawing stuff while I read the paper?”

She brought her sketch pad and her case of coloured pencils, always so carefully arranged and sharpened, sat down opposite me and began to draw. Today it was baseball players, and as I watched the blank page fill up with kids in baseball uniforms pitching and hitting and leaping off the page to catch a hard-hit ball, I was humbled by her ability. Even her face seemed to change when she made art. The ordinary little girl who couldn’t sit still for a story or remember to flush the toilet was transformed into someone else, a disciplined person who loved her work and knew it was good. When Taylor was drawing, I could see her mother in the set of her mouth and in her stillness. It was a good feeling.

I still hadn’t read the front page of the
Globe and Mail
when Jill called.

“Two things,” she said. “One, we can see Darren Wolfe at nine o’clock this morning. Two … No, I’m not telling you about two till I see you. I want to watch your reaction.”

It was a little after eight-thirty when Jill rang our front doorbell. She was wearing a white silk blouse, a navy blazer and grey slacks.

So was I.

“We look like the Bobbsey Twins,” I said.

“Nah,” Jill said. “One of the Bobbsey Twins was a boy. We’re just fashionable – the faux prison guard look is really hot this spring.”

When we turned onto the Albert Street Bridge, Jill said, “Are you ready for the big news?”

“As long as it’s good,” I said.

Jill laughed. “I think it is. How would you like to be one of the panellists on
Canada Today?”

Canada Today
was a new show Jill’s network was trying over the summer months, nightly at seven, half an hour of national news, then half an hour of a political panel. There were five proposed panels, one from each region, one for each night.

“I thought that was all set,” I said, surprised. “Wasn’t there an article in the paper last week saying you were going with the presidents of the provincial parties?”

“That was last week,” she said briskly. “Today the presidents are ‘too narrowly partisan, too likely to be idealogues.’ At least that’s what the fax says. Today what we have in mind is Senator Sam Steinitz, Keith Harris, and you.”

“God, Jill, let me catch my breath. That’s pretty high-powered company. Am I there as the token female?”

“No, you’re there as the token person with a progressive mind,” she snapped. “Say yes.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “Listen, I’m going to produce the first few shows myself. The network’s got big plans for this show. There’s bound to be an election in the fall, and they think
Canada Today
could grab an audience. Not much of what we do here goes national, so I want to make sure this doesn’t look like Aaron Slick from Punkin Crick.”

“When do we start?” I said.

“June third. That’s a week from Monday,” she said. “Soon, I know, but you’re a quick study. I’ll have some specific topics for you by the weekend, but if you can’t wait to get started you can spend the afternoon thinking about something general, like where you think the country should be heading.”

“Whither Canada?” I said. “Hasn’t that been done?”

“Not by you,” Jill said.

“Okay, whither Canada it is,” I said. “And Jill, thanks.”

“For what?”

“For thinking of me.”

“It wasn’t me, Jo. When I went into my office this morning, there was your name. It had arrived miraculously, by fax.”

“Miraculously from where?”

“On high,” she said. “On highest. The fax came from the office of Con O’Malley himself. The president of the network.”

“How would the president of NationTV know about me? Jill, doesn’t this seem a bit weird to you?”

She shrugged. “Not so weird, Jo. Your publisher’s in Toronto, right? He and Con were probably hoisting a few at the Boys’ Club last night, and you know how these things work. This morning when somebody got the bright idea of changing the panel, your name was front and centre in Con’s mind. He prides himself on being a hands-on guy. Being able to suggest a name in Saskatchewan is just the kind of thing that he’d get off on. Believe me, Jo, whatever the explanation is, it will be that simple. Now, relax and give yourself up to the pleasures of life in the fast lane of
TV
journalism.”

We drove north along Winnipeg Street, turned right at the heavy-oil upgrader and rolled up our windows as we passed the city dump. When Jill’s ancient Lincoln started bumping along the country road that took us to the Regina Correctional Centre, I tapped her on the arm.

“So this is life in the fast lane,” I said.

I had been to the correctional centre before. I remembered it as a depressing and forbidding place. It still was. After we were cleared through security, a guard took us to the visitors’ area. Everything about the room was uniform, drab, institutional. Everything, that is, except Darren Wolfe. He was waiting for us on the prisoner side of the Plexiglas divider, and he was one of a kind.

His blond hair was parted in the centre, and it fell almost to his waist. His eyes, eyebrows and the roots of his hair were black. A gold cross hung from his left ear. He wore black leather pants, skin tight, a black leather vest taut against his bare chest and a kind of Edwardian smoking jacket of red and black velvet.

“They let them wear their own clothes till after sentencing,” Jill whispered.

“Just as well,” I said. “I think Darren would be pretty lost without his plumage.”

There was a speaker phone on our side of the Plexiglas, and as soon as we were all seated, Jill leaned forward and introduced me to Darren Wolfe. She said I was the mother of the woman who had found Bernice’s body.

Darren looked at me without much interest. “Yeah?” he said. “That must’ve been a bad start to your daughter’s day.”

Ingratiating, saying what he thought I wanted to hear. I felt a chill.

“It was a tragedy for us all. From what my daughter said, Bernice was an interesting young woman.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, “she was that.” He nodded his head, remembering. “She was her own worst enemy. She was just a kid when I met her, but she’d already hustled for a coupla years. That mouth a hers had got her thrown out of her last setup. They couldn’t intimidate her.”

I looked at the preening boy across the table from me, and my mind started to float. Bernice had gotten her prize tattoo the morning after he beat her up. She had endured three hours of agony to get a picture of unicorns etched into her upper back because unicorns were her totem; like her, they were too proud to get intimidated.

“Anyway, I didn’t do her,” Darren Wolfe was saying. He had turned his attention to Jill. Conversation with me was pointless; I couldn’t get him a deal with the network.

He leaned forward so that his forehead was almost touching the glass divider. His mouth was sullen, and his eyes were angry. “They haven’t got anything,” he said. “I knocked her around a few times, but it wasn’t personal. Jesus, everybody fought with that bitch. Anyway, I don’t do girls.” He looked quickly around the room to see who was there. Then he lowered his voice. “Look, the truth is, I haven’t got any bodies.”

“What?” I asked.

He looked at me, exasperated. “I haven’t got any bodies.” He moved closer and dropped his voice. “I’ve never killed anybody.” Having confessed the worst, he was restored. He straightened up, and his mouth curled into arrogance. “So, Jill,” he said, “I’ve got some things to say that you oughta hear.”

For the next twenty minutes Darren Wolfe gave us a conducted tour through the world of the Little Flower murders. I felt as if I’d stepped through the looking glass. The world Darren described, casually violent, retributive, vicious, seemed in every way alien from my own. But it wasn’t. The streets Darren Wolfe drove on in the course of his business day were the same streets I drove on; the street corners his girls worked were the street corners I walked past; the hotels and apartment blocks where they turned tricks were part of my landscape. By the time he finished, I was badly shaken, and he saw that.

One thing Darren Wolfe knew was women. He wanted me on his side, and he knew I wasn’t. When Jill and I stood up to leave, he reached toward me, flattening his fingertips against the Plexiglas the way prisoners do in movies.

“Look,” he said, “I know you think I should be all broken up about Bernice. I can live with that, but before you write me off, you’ve gotta understand one thing. Bernice wasn’t like the kind of girls you know. Girls like Bernice, they ask for it.”

“Girls like Bernice …” As I walked to the car, Darren Wolfe’s dismissal pounded in my head. As I opened the door on the passenger side, I remembered another judgement. Hours before she died, Christy Sinclair had sounded the same chord of death, justice and dismissal: “When girls like Bernice die,” she had said, her voice trembling, “it’s just biological destiny … They’re born with a gene for self-destruction.”

Jill didn’t say anything till we were pulling out of the prison parking lot. “Sorry you came along?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Just in a state of shock. How does a boy like that live with himself?”

“He sees himself as a businessman, Jo. Out there like the other guys, showing a little hustle, operating in accordance with the laws of supply and demand. I’ll bet you a hundred dollars he sleeps like a baby.”

“I’ll bet his girls don’t,” I said. I was wearing the silver bracelet Christy had given me, and my finger traced the lines of the Celtic letters. “Wandering Soul Pray For Me.”

“How do you break the cycle?” I said. “How can you make it possible for people to have good lives?” Kim Barilko’s face, mascara-streaked, defiant, flashed before my eyes. “Every time I wear this goddamn stuff, somebody makes me cry.” How many times, I thought. How many times had someone made Kim Barilko cry?

I remembered the light in her eyes when she’d talked about all the things Christy Sinclair was going to teach her. Then I remembered the derisive curve of her lip as she talked about how stupid she had been to believe anything good could happen to her.

Fifteen seemed pretty young to be giving up on life. I turned to Jill. “How would you like to be a mentor?” I asked.

“Yours, Jo? Finally admitting you need some guidance? I’d be delighted. You can start by throwing out all those sensible shoes you’re so fond of.”

“I’ll do that,” I said. “But actually the person who needs someone to be her teacher, guide and friend is a lot more adventurous in her clothing than I am.”

When I finished telling her about Kim Barilko, Jill didn’t hesitate. “I’d be honoured, Jo. I really would. But not today. Listen, I’ve decided I’m going to really move on this Little Flower case. I’ve tried to get Toronto to give me a budget for this, but they say, with restraints and all, we should be doing upbeat stories with wide audience appeal. ‘Celebratory’ was the word my immediate superior used, I believe. Anyway, give me the weekend to see if any of Darren’s leads pan out. First thing Monday morning I’ll go over to the Lily Pad, and we can get started.”

“Jill, would you mind if I went over there after lunch and talked to her? I hate to think of Kim going through the weekend without some good news.”

“Of course I don’t mind. Maybe she’d like to come to my office Monday. I could show her around and take her for lunch in the cafeteria. Most kids get a kick out of watching the people they’ve seen on
TV
eat their tuna fish sandwiches.”

“Thanks, Jill.”

“For what? Trying to redress the balance a little? Don’t you think it’s about time?”

I picked Taylor up at school. “Samantha’s birthday party,” she said as she got in the car. “It’s today. Do we have a present?”

“Wrapped and on the dining room table,” I said.

“What is it?”

“An onion tree. Every time Sam takes off an onion, two more will grow in its place.”

Taylor looked into my face. “That’s a joke, right?”

“That’s a joke, right!” I said, and we both laughed.

After lunch I was in the front yard watering the geraniums when Taylor came out. She was carrying the birthday present, and she was wearing a pink party dress, her baseball shirt, baseball socks and runners.

“How would you like a mentor to advise you about your clothes?” I said.