A Chill Rain in January (24 page)

Sandy McAllister backed away into the fog, and when she was certain he was gone, Ramona hurried around the house and headed up the beach for the promontory, and the cottage.

Z
OE
, in the kitchen, turned to see the boy watching her from the hallway. She shook her head, thinking about Benjamin and his second wife going to such a lot of trouble to acquire this child. It's beyond me, she thought, looking at him, why on earth they wanted him.

“Come in here,” she said, pleasantly enough. “I'm about to make your lunch.”

She sat him down at the kitchen table, beneath the small square window that was set so high in the wall that he couldn't see anything through it without standing on a chair.

Zoe looked around the kitchen, frowning. “I can't remember what I'd planned to have.” She would prepare the boy's meal and sit with him while he ate it. She preferred to eat alone and would wait until he was back in his room, watching television. “I think I was going to cook some pork chops,” she said. “And scalloped potatoes.”

She sat down at the table, opposite Kenny, and smoothed her hand over its surface, first the right hand and then the left, in slow arcs; she did each hand five times. “It's important that I find those little books,” she said.

Kenny didn't respond.

“I'm getting very tired of saying that to you.”

He wiggled on his chair. “I told you. I don't know where they are.”

She told herself that it was important to think things out slowly and carefully, in order to forestall the emotional turmoil in which anger might flourish.

“Where were you going this morning?” she asked him.

“I told you. I wasn't going anywhere. I was just walking around. Exploring.”

“Exploring? In the fog?”

He shrugged.

“It was extremely thoughtless of you to leave the house without asking. I was very worried about you.”

He kicked at the table leg, not hard but stubbornly. She didn't like his attitude.

“I'm responsible for you right now,” she said. “You could have fallen on the rocks. Or into the sea.”

“I was just looking around.”

She arched her spine and rubbed at the small of her back with her fists. They were probably in the safe-deposit box in his damn bank, she thought. But they might be in the house. They could still be in the house. She might have missed them. It was certainly true that the boy popping up like that had rattled her. “He had hiding places when he was a boy,” she said. She laughed. “All over the house, he had them.”

“But how do you know that he even had them? If they're yours, why would Dad have them?”

She smiled. “I know he had them,” she said softly, “because I saw it in your face.” He started to protest; she clicked her tongue and shook her finger at him. “Don't argue. I know what I saw. But you're right about one thing. He shouldn't have had them. He most certainly should not have had them.” She leaned across the table. “He stole them. That's how he got them.”

“My dad wouldn't steal. You can't say things like that.” His face was red and angry; even though Zoe could tell that he was still afraid of her.

She looked at him impassively. She sat back. “Maybe you're right. Maybe he just found them somewhere. In an old trunk or something. Anyway, it doesn't matter. He was going to give them back to me. That's the important thing. And it isn't fair that I shouldn't be able to get them, just because he died before he could give them to me.”

“How do you know he was going to give them to you?” There was a perpetual whine in the boy's voice that grated badly on Zoe's nerves.

“Because he said so,” she snapped.

Kenny looked uncertain.

“When he came to my house,” she said. “That's why he came to my house.”

“How come he didn't bring them with him, then?”

“Oh, for heaven's sake.” She stood up and went over to the refrigerator, wrenched open the door and got a package of pork chops from the freezer. She tossed them onto the counter next to the microwave oven. She went back to the table and squatted down next to him. “Your business is to help me find my scribblers. They're somewhere in that house. Your business is to help me find them.”

“I don't know where they are,” he said. “I really don't.”

She gazed at him. “I have a long-standing aversion,” she said, “to children. That means that I don't like them.”

“I could—”

“Yes yes. I know. You could go stay with Roddy.” She stood up and got potatoes from a drawer in the fridge. “Not yet.”

“When are we going to have my dad's funeral?”

“Ask that policeman, next time you see him.”

After a while she put down the potato she was peeling and sat again at the table. “You know,” she said thoughtfully, “I don't think I've told you what's in those little books.”

“I don't care,” said Kenny. “It's all right.”

“They're books I wrote things in when I was a child.”

“You don't have to tell me anything.”

“I called them my scribblers. That's what they were. Scribblers. Exercise books.”

The boy became silent.

“I wrote stories in them. You know? Do you understand? Made-up stories. Like stories you read in books.”

He stared at the floor and didn't speak.

“Not true things, you idiot child. Pretend things. Made-up things. Do you understand?” She realized she was shouting at him. He looked tense and brittle, and he didn't speak.

B
Y
late afternoon, as Alberg was returning once more to the house on the promontory, the whole town knew that Ramona Orlitzki had been found.

And lost again.

Alberg had spoken to Isabella by phone from West Vancouver and with Sid Sokolowski on the radio as he drove up from the ferry at Langdale. He hoped Sandy McAllister had enjoyed his ten minutes of glory, because he was now in complete disgrace. Isabella wasn't speaking to him anymore, and Sid wanted to charge him with something. Sid was enraged. And Alberg sympathized. It was damned embarrassing, the whole detachment outwitted by a seventy-five-year-old woman whose mind wasn't supposed to be working right.

At least they knew she was still alive, he thought, pulling into Zoe Strachan's driveway. And apparently well. At least her idiot son Horace knew she was alive; that, thought Alberg, was very satisfying indeed. He hoped the PI had charged old Horace an arm and a leg.

He climbed out of his car and advanced wearily upon Zoe Strachan's house. He knew very little more than he'd known that morning. He had no reason, really, to come here—except that he'd promised Kenny.

He knocked on the door, and she opened it and smiled, as though she'd been expecting him.

In the living room the sun slanted low through the French doors, laying great swaths of light upon the carpet, glittering in Zoe Strachan's black hair.

“Has it been decided yet,” she said, stroking the arm of the leather chair in which she sat, “whether an inquest will be held?”

“Let me ask you something first,” said Alberg, from the sofa. “Why were you trying to get into your brother's safe-deposit box?”

She studied him for a long time. He thought again of a searchlight, but this time he knew himself to be inscrutable. He gazed back at her placidly, and saw in his mind Kenny's face imprisoned between the slats of the venetian blind.

“His will,” she said at last. “I wanted to know what was to be done with the boy.” She shifted position, arched her back slightly. “How did you know?”

Alberg grinned at her.

“She let you into his safe-deposit box?”

He shrugged, careless.

“Gestapo,” she said, absentmindedly, still staring at him.

“It's my understanding,” said Alberg, “that Kenny's to go to his grandparents.”

“Yes,” said Zoe. “I talked to the lawyer.”

“So did I,” said Alberg.

“Did you,” said Zoe.

Alberg felt suddenly weightless, as though the air had thinned drastically.

“You haven't answered my question,” she said. “About the inquest.”

Alberg hesitated. Then “No,” he said. “I don't think there'll be an inquest.”

She remained impassive, but Alberg experienced a disengagement of something. He realized that Zoe had let go. For a moment he felt lost; abandoned.

“I expect you'd like to see the boy,” she said, and stood up, effortlessly, in a single movement, like an athlete. “I'll get him.”

He watched her go, and felt an unaccountable sadness.

Kenny curled quickly up on the bed when he heard her coming down the hall. She opened the door without knocking, the way she always did. She was looking very cold in her face.

“The policeman's here,” she said. He already knew that; he'd heard the doorbell ring and had peeked out into the hall and seen him.

He followed her to the living room.

“I phoned Roddy,” said the policeman, smiling at him. Kenny sat on the edge of the wing chair.

“Well, I phoned his parents,” Alberg amended. “I talked to his mom. She's very sorry about your dad, Kenny.”

“Did they say I could stay with them?” He had to clear his throat in the middle of the sentence; it was so dry the words just barely squeaked out.

“You don't need to stay with them,” said Zoe. “You're staying with me. You can't stay in two places at once, now can you?”

Kenny and the policeman looked at her, then at each other.

“We'll see,” said Alberg. “Your aunt and I will talk about it.”

Kenny felt a little better.

“I called your grandparents, too,” said Alberg. “They'll be here on Saturday.”

“Wonderful,” said Zoe, and sat down in her leather chair.

“They liked your brother,” the policeman said to her. “And they're very fond of Kenny.”

“Yeah,” said Kenny. He rubbed at his right eye with the back of his hand.

“They want you to live with them from now on,” said Alberg.

Kenny felt his eyes fill suddenly with tears.

“It's what your dad wanted, too,” said Alberg.

Kenny slid out of his chair and went to sit next to the policeman on the sofa. “I wanted to go with him,” he said. “I asked my dad to take me with him. But he wouldn't.” He looked quickly over at Zoe, then down at his hands.

“I guess he didn't want you to miss school,” said Alberg.

Kenny leaned closer. “He didn't want anything bad to happen to me, ever,” he said, so softly that Alberg almost couldn't hear.

Across the room, his aunt stirred in her chair. “When did you say his grandparents are arriving, Staff Sergeant?” she said. She got up and came over to Kenny and rested her fingers in his hair. It felt as if some flying bugs had landed there, on his head.

“Saturday,” said the policeman, looking at Kenny. “I've got an idea. They'd like to talk to Kenny, Miss Strachan. Why don't I take him to a phone and let him give them a call?”

Kenny could tell she was looking down at him, right at the top of his head.

“When do they leave?” she said.

“Tomorrow. Noon,” said Alberg.

She lifted her hand from Kenny's head, stepped back, and folded her arms. She put a playful look on her face. “I don't see why not,” she said, and for a minute there was a big surge of happiness in Kenny's chest, and then she said, “I'll tell you what. Come for him early in the morning. Take him out for breakfast, if you like.”

“Is that okay, Kenny?” said the policeman, looking carefully at his face, into his eyes. Maybe he'd be able to see for himself that it wasn't okay, thought Kenny.

“Sure,” he said.

The policeman gave him a one-armed hug around the shoulders.

“Seven o'clock, then. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Kenny. And maybe it would be.

W
HEN
Sandy McAllister scampered into the detachment Wednesday morning, he dumped the mail on the counter, and blurted out the news about Ramona, and girded himself for herohood.

It was much later in the day that Isabella, tired and distraught, scooped the mail from the counter onto her desk and sorted it. The brown envelope addressed to the head of the detachment had “PERSONAL” written on it in big letters, so she took it into Alberg's office and placed it, unopened, on his desk.

Alberg found it there in the evening, when he stopped in on his way home from Zoe Strachan's house.

There was no return address on the envelope. He opened it cautiously, but found inside only three dog-eared exercise books and a note. “Please read these,” said the note, which was written in pencil, on ruled paper, “and look after the boy at the Strachan woman's house.” “Please” was underlined twice.

Alberg looked again at the envelope. He opened one of the exercise books and felt a lurch in his stomach: “PRIVATE PROPERTY OF ZOE STRACHAN. DO NOT READ. ON PAIN OF DEATH.” He called Isabella at home.

“Where did it come from?” he asked.

“It came in the mail,” said Isabella.

“I don't think so,” said Alberg. “There's no stamp on it. No postmark.”

“I'm sure of it,” said Isabella. “It was in the mail.”

“Okay,” said Alberg, thumbing through the yellow scribbler. He hung up and found Sandy McAllister's number in the directory. But Sandy either wasn't in or had decided not to answer his phone.

Alberg began to read.

A half hour later, he put the exercise books and the note back into the envelope. With the side of his hand he pushed the envelope to the edge of his desk. He sat quietly, looking at the envelope, but his hands were pressed hard against the surface of the desk in front of him, as if he might suddenly push himself upright.