Burying Ariel (21 page)

Fraser Jackson seemed grateful to hear from me, but as I extended Molly’s invitation and ran through the travel arrangements, he was mercifully to the point. The trip north would be heavily freighted with emotion, and it was apparent we both wanted the logistics handled with dispatch. After we had arranged the details about where to meet the next morning, I thought I was home free, but Fraser had one final question.

“Is the service a burial?”

“Of the ashes,” I said. “Ariel will be cremated later today.”

There was silence, then a gentle correction. “Ariel
and the baby
will be cremated later today. When we fly north, we’ll be taking them both, Joanne.”

As I pulled onto Albert Street, I shrank at the thought of the next day. There was no getting around the fact that, in the words of that long-forgotten play, it would be filled with love, pain, and the whole damned thing, but for me there would be an extra agony, one that was both personal and shameful. I would be spending much of the next day in airplanes of one size or another, and I was terrified of flying. I went to embarrassing lengths to avoid even the most routine commercial flight, and the idea of being in a tiny float-plane hovering over the vast, unforgiving water of Lac La Ronge filled me with dread.

I had no choice about the flight north, but it was still in my power to make the next few hours bearable. If I could manage an afternoon in the sun, a pleasant dinner with the kids, a stiff drink, and an early night, I might just survive.

I parked in front of Pacific Fish, paid Neptune’s ransom for five tuna steaks, then walked across to the supermarket for new potatoes, baby carrots, asparagus, and a jar of giant olives. To complete the meal, I needed a bottle of Bombay Sapphire and a good Merlot; the liquor store had both. Finally, obeying my old friend Sally Love’s dictum that “Life is uncertain; we should eat dessert first,” I drove to Saje Restaurant, and bought a chocolate truffle cake. As soon as I got home, I put the gin in the refrigerator, made a marinade of soy sauce, ginger, and rice vinegar for the tuna, scrubbed the potatoes and carrots, snapped the woody parts off the asparagus stalks, and went out to the deck with a cup of Earl Grey and a stack of essays from my Political Science 101 class.

For the next two hours, I sniffed the lilacs and wandered through the maze of freshman prose. It wasn’t fun, but it was familiar turf, and I felt my mind slip into cruise control. Halfway through the stack, I came upon something that pulled me up short: a truly original paper titled “Funkional Politix.” The essay took issue with the idea that in our post-ideological age, it was savvy to be without either ideals or ideas. It called for a new politics, characterized by civility, co-operation, and commitment. I read the paper through twice. It was the work of a student named Lena Eisenberg. Surprisingly, considering I had only met the class twice, Lena’s name conjured up a face, that of a whip-thin, tightly wound girl with dreadlocks and clever eyes. I was grateful to her. For almost an hour, her obvious delight in the workings of her mind kept
my
mind from thoughts of hurtling through space in a pressurized metal tube.

I was halfway through a turgid analysis of the role of the Speaker in the Provincial Legislature when Taylor peeled out the back door.

“There’s a lady on the phone,” she announced breathlessly. “She says she wants to talk to you about Barbies. I told her she must have the wrong number because you hate Barbies, and she said she had the right number and nobody hates Barbies, and I’d better get you lickety-split.”

Bebe Morrissey was direct. “Who was that kid who answered the phone?”

“My daughter, Taylor.”

“How old is she?”

“Seven.”

“Aren’t you a little old to have a seven-year-old?”

“Probably,” I said. “But I do my best. So, Bebe, what’s up?”

“You are,” she cackled. “You’re up to bat. I’ve gone through the paper and discovered three garage sales with Barbies.”

“Okay,” I said. “Give me the addresses and I’ll be there first thing Saturday morning.”

“You really are a babe in the woods,” she said. “By Saturday morning, even the Barbies with their legs chewed off to their kneecaps will be gone. You should get there tonight. The paper says six-thirty, but six would be better. What time do you feed your kid?”

“Kids,” I said. “I have three at home.” I looked longingly at the refrigerator with its bottle of Bombay Sapphire chilling. The gin would have to wait. “I could be at the first garage sale by six. Can you give me the addresses?”

By 5:55, Taylor and I had inhaled our barbecued tuna and were pulling into Braemar Bay, a swank crescent of shining mock-Tudor homes on the east side of our city. The owner of number 720 told us she had only one Barbie, and it had been sold, but that she had some grapevine wreaths and wickerware we might be interested in. Taylor picked out a Thanksgiving wreath with fake Chinese lanterns and plastic turkeys, and a wicker cat-carrying case for Bruce and Benny, who were never carried anywhere except in Taylor’s arms.

Our next stop was an estate sale. One glance at the gleaming oak, bevelled glass, and paper-thin teacups and saucers led me to conclude that Bebe was a woman who savoured a practical joke. The woman in charge of the sale was a person of such pearled refinement that I was certain Barbie wasn’t even a figure in her cosmos. But she did have a tiny Lalique sparrow for sale. It wasn’t a nightingale, but it was the best Lalique bird I could afford, and Ed and Barry had been generous in lending us their cottage.

At number 982, Taylor and I finally hit paydirt: nine Barbies. Their hair showed evidence of brutal attempts at styling, but their toes were pristine. They were four dollars each, but the buxom brunette with the moneybelt said twenty-five dollars could buy the lot.

As I was paying, Taylor arranged the Barbies carefully in a cardboard box that was lying in the corner of the garage. She chattered about garage sales all the way home, and when I dropped her off she leaped out of the car with her wicker cat-carrier and a satisfied sigh. “That was so fun. Let’s do it again tomorrow night.”

My cellphone was ringing when I pulled up in front of
EXXXOTICA
. It was Howard Dowhanuik.

“Amazing timing,” I said. “I’m on my way to visit Charlie’s next-door neighbour?”

“Kyle Morrissey? What the hell’s that all about?”

“Unfinished business,” I said. “When you had me playing Nancy Drew, I talked to his great-grandmother. She asked me to run an errand for her.”

“Still working on stars for your heavenly crown.”

“How about you?” I said.

“No crown. No stars,” he said curtly. “So what’s happening out there?”

I glanced over at the perfect fifties house that Charlie and Ariel had shared. The vision of them happily planning, choosing the colours of paint and trim, the kinds of flowers that would fill the hanging baskets, made me drop my guard. The words tumbled out. “Howard, there’s something you should probably know. Ariel’s being cremated tonight. There’s a service up at her family’s place in Lac La Ronge tomorrow morning.”

I could hear his intake of breath. “Cremated. God, it’s hard to believe that she can just – cease to be.” For a beat, he was silent. “Are you going to the service?”

“Yes.”

“Say one for me, will you?”

“I will,” I said.

The penny dropped. “Jo, if you’re going to the Warrens’ island on Lac La Ronge, you’re going to have to fly.”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Then I’ll say one for you.”

EXXXOTICA
was looking remarkably shipshape. The front window had been scraped clear of the last remnants of the handbills, and two giant pots had been chained to steel poles and filled with those hardiest of floral survivors, dwarf marigolds. When I came through the door, Ronnie Morrissey was at the cash register facing a man in a sports jacket made out of some shiny synthetic. She glanced up, raised a finger to indicate she’d be with me soon, and went back to business. Her customer lowered his head when he saw me, but I had time to notice that his hair was freshly cut, and that he had doused himself with Obsession. The title of the video on the top of his pile was
Hot and Saucy Pizza Girls
. Judging by the way he bolted up the stairs and out the front door the moment Ronnie handed him his movies, he was a hungry man.

Ronnie watched him leave, then came out from behind the counter. Today she was a western belle wearing a denim halter top, matching ankle-length skirt, and hand-tooled cowboy boots. Her hair was almost to her waist and sun-streaked. A skeptic or a stylist might have suspected extensions, but the wild profusion suited her. So did her manicure: each of her nails was painted in a different pearlized colour – I knew the names of the shades were ultra-cool because of Taylor’s unrequited longing for them: Bruise, Urban Putty, Raw.

Ronnie caught me staring at her fingers, and she wiggled them obligingly. “Make quite a statement, eh?”

“My younger daughter would love them. She’s always wanting to paint her nails.”

“It was the same for me when I was a kid,” Ronnie said huskily. “Of course, given the circumstances, it was out of the question.” She shrugged. “Well, better late than never.”

As she had before, Ronnie led me to the back of the video store and unlocked the back door. When she opened it, I found myself face to face with a young man I recognized from the newspapers as Kyle Morrissey. He was soap-star handsome with bulging pecs, a trim waist, a mop of black curly hair, and what we used to call bedroom eyes, languid and long-lashed. He was wearing a T-shirt that cautioned “Think Long and Hard Before You Take Me Home,” but there was a vacancy in his sexy eyes that gave the warning an unsettling edge.

“That’s quite the shirt,” I said.

Kyle smiled obligingly. “Ronnie gave it to me. It’s sort of a joke, but not really.” He adjusted his features to an appearance of solemnity. “You’re here to see Bebe,” he said. He looked at the cardboard box in my hand. “I hope there are Barbies in there.”

I smiled. “Nine of them.”

“Great,” he said. This time the smile was as open as a prairie sky. “Bebe will be really happy.”

He led me up the stairs, but stopped outside Bebe’s room.

“Wait here till I get our snack,” he said.

“Thanks, but I just ate.”

His brow furrowed. “Bebe said we’ll need a snack.” He looked confused.

“Okay,” I said. He disappeared into a room on the right and reappeared almost immediately with a tray upon which were a litre of milk, a bag of Dad’s cookies, a cow-shaped plastic container of chocolate syrup, and three glasses. I followed him into Bebe’s big front room.

As she had on my first visit, Bebe was sitting in the wing chair by the window. In the early-evening shadows, the sea of bubble-gum-pink Barbies had muted to dusky rose, and Bebe herself seemed softer, an old woman who welcomed the gentle embrace of the gloaming. It was a scene from a Hallmark card, and just as remote from reality.

The second she spotted me, Bebe flicked on the powerful standard lamp beside her, and the illusion shattered. “Let’s see them,” she barked.

I handed her the cardboard box. She lifted the flaps and examined the dolls with the professional squint and unerring fingers of a veteran customs inspector. When she’d checked out the last one, she smacked her lips. “Not bad,” she said. “How much did you pay?”

“Twenty-five dollars.”

Bebe made a hissing sound through her teeth: whether it was a hiss of approval or opprobrium was impossible to tell. “Better you than me,” she said finally. “Let’s visit with Kyle for a bit, then you and I can talk business.”

Kyle passed around the cookies and mixed the chocolate milk with exquisite care. When he handed Bebe hers, she turned up her nose. “You know I like a double.”

He picked up the plastic cow obligingly and poured syrup into Bebe’s milk until she held up a palm to indicate that he could stop.

“That’s more like it,” she said, then she raised her glass. “To justice,” she said.

“That’s a surprising toast coming from you,” I said. “Has something happened?”

“You bet your sweet bippy something’s happened. The cops have finally figured out our boy couldna done it. Proving once again that, as soon as you put a blue uniform on a person, they have a harder time adding two plus two than a normal person does. But I’m getting off track. The point is the cops finally found themselves the truck driver who gave Kyle the wrong directions. Of course, Kyle told them about this lady driver on day one, but they didn’t exactly bust their humps looking for her. Anyway, on the morning in question, this lady truck driver was dumping off a load of wiring in the sub-basement – no connection with what Kyle was doing, so of course no one pursued her. Kyle asked this driver where he should go to fix the air conditioning, and she got turned around and pointed him towards the room where, unbeknownst to her or Kyle, that girl Ariel was already dead.” Thrilled by the vagaries of fate, Bebe Morrissey rocked back and forth in her chair. “The one lucky thing for Kyle was that the truck driver was a lady.”

“Why was that lucky?” I said.

Bebe rolled her eyes. “Because there’s never been a woman born who, once they saw Kyle, forgot him.”

Bebe’s great-grandson lowered his head in embarrassment.

I turned to him. “You must be so relieved,” I said. “These last days must have been a nightmare.”

Kyle furrowed his brow. “Ronnie always says you have to take the crunchy with the smooth, and it’s been crunchy. All the same, I’m not mad at anybody. Not even the police. I know why they thought it was me. Ariel was so pretty and so smart. They couldn’t believe she’d want to be my friend.”

“She was a good person,” I said.

“Whoever killed her didn’t mean to.” Kyle’s voice rang with conviction. “They just loved her so much they made a mistake.”

Bebe gave him a thin smile. “Go watch
TV
,” she said. “The Jays are playing, and you like them. Come back in ten minutes and get our snack dishes. If you don’t wash the glasses quick enough, all that chocolate gunk sticks to the bottoms.”