Murder At The Mendel (5 page)

I leaned forward and traced a line in the stitchery. “Did Hugh Rankin-Carter earn a spot on the Wall of Fame?” I asked.

Sally grinned. “Not on my wall,” she said, standing up. “He was pretty taken with Stuart, though. God, speaking of Stu, guess what I caught him doing last night at the gallery? Measuring his penis – the one on the wall. For comparative purposes, I guess,” she said mildly. “Listen, class doesn’t start until noon. Shall we go to the coffee shop and get in a little goof and gossip time?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

The coffee shop at Maggie’s was deserted. By the cash register a cardboard Mrs. Santa held up an announcement that the restaurant would be closing at noon for the staff Christmas party. The manager gave us a drop-dead look when we came in. She didn’t warm to us when we refused menus and ordered a pot of Earl Grey and a bottle of mineral water.

She was back almost immediately with our order, as if to impress us with the importance of moving along quickly. But Sally wasn’t in a mood to be hurried. As the woman stood behind her, Sally fished around in the new leather bag and pulled out a bottle opener and a package of rice cakes.

“Allergies.” She shrugged, looking at the manager. The woman turned on her heel and left us alone.

“I’d forgotten about your allergies,” I said, “or maybe I just thought you’d left them behind somewhere.”

“No, I’m worse than ever. The world seems to get more dangerous every year.”

I shuddered, and Sally looked at me curiously.

“No use worrying about it,” she said. “I just have to be careful.” She ripped the cellophane from her rice cakes. Her nails were unpolished, and her hands looked strong and capable. “Anyway, it could be worse. This doctor I saw in Santa Fe told me about a patient of his who was allergic to semen. Died on her wedding night. She started going into acute anaphylactic reaction: wheezing, gasping for air. Her husband just thought she was having this incredible orgasm, and he kept pumping away like crazy – super stud.”

She held out a rice cake to me. “Here, eat. These things are guaranteed to make you live forever.”

“Or make it seem like forever,” I said, grimly. “God, poor woman … poor man. How did they figure out what happened?”

“Apparently she had a history of allergies, and Jo, when the ambulance came, the husband was sitting stark naked on the side of the bed with his weapon still smoking.”

For a beat, we just looked at each other and then we both burst out laughing.

“Oh, Sal,” I said, “it’s so good to be together again. Now that we’re in the same city, maybe we can make up for all the years we lost.”

Sally reached across and patted my hand. “We’ll make up for them, Jo, but not in Saskatoon. I’m not going to stick around here too much longer.”

I was surprised at the sense of loss I felt, but I tried to sound philosophical. “Considering the welcome you got at the gallery last night, I can’t say that I blame you.”

Sally took a long sip of her mineral water. “Oddly enough I’d decided to leave before all this happened. When I approached Stu about doing the Erotobiography, I told him I wanted it to be a kind of parting gift for the city. You know I’ve lived here on and off for twenty-five years.”

“At the moment, I don’t think this city deserves a parting gift,” I said.

“I’ve done some good work here. You know, Jo, it’s going to be tough leaving. I’ve owned that studio on the river bank since I was twenty. Anyway, it’s time. That last year I was with Stu, I made such bad art. Everything just turned grey: me, my work, the world. I wish I could buy back everything I did that year and burn it. It’s so choked. You can’t breathe when you look at it.” She shook her head in disgust.

“I never should have married him. Stu’s a nice guy and all, but he’s such a stiff. I must have been crazy.”

“You have Taylor,” I said.

Her face brightened. “Yes, I have Taylor, and since I left Stu and that house, I’m making some decent art again. The pieces seem to be falling into place. Did you ever see that gallery I own on Fourteenth Street?”

“All the time. In fact, just last night I was telling Clea Poole how much I admire the lady lion with the Christmas wreath you’ve got out front.”

Sally raised an eyebrow. “The lion’s about the only thing worth admiring at womanswork now. The place is an embarrassment – all that seventies clitoral epiphany stuff. Clea’s really lost her judgement. Anyway, there’ll be something new there soon. There’s a new owner.”

“A new owner?” I repeated.

“Yeah, a surgeon. I got a call while I was in Santa Fe from the real estate people. They were desperate to track me down. This woman I’ve sold it to wants the gallery as a Christmas present for her husband. Cash. No dickering. I stopped off to sign the papers on my way in from the airport last night.”

“What about Clea?” I asked. “Doesn’t she have to agree to the sale?”

Sally looked puzzled for a minute. “Why? She just manages the place. I’m the owner. Anyway, it’ll be good for Clea – get her out of her warm little cocoon and give her a chance to see what’s happening in the big bad art world. Don’t look at me like that, Jo. I’ve been carrying Clea Poole for twenty years. If the good doctor hadn’t come along, I probably would have carried her for another twenty. But this offer came out of nowhere. It really seemed like a sign that the time had come to make some changes.”

“A providential nudge?” I asked.

Sally grinned. “Yeah, that’s it – a providential nudge.”

“Well,” I said, “Robertson Davies says it’s spiritual suicide to ignore these pushes from fate.”

“Sounds good to me,” Sally said. “I wish Robertson Davies, whoever he is, would tell Clea I sold the gallery. When she hears about womanswork, I’d rather he was in the line of fire than me.” She stood up and stretched lazily. “But that’s this afternoon’s problem. Right now, let’s get into the gym and do it, Jo. You never know when you’re going to meet the man with the smoking gun.”

When Maggie’s had opened, much had been made of the fact that the woman who designed the building had muted the light in the changing rooms “to forgive what we perceive as the imperfections of our bodies.” As I inched my leotard on, I thought how humane that architect had been. And then I looked at Sally Love.

Naked, forty-five years old, Sally’s body still didn’t need forgiving. She was tanned golden everywhere, perfect everywhere. No stretch marks. No sags. No cellulite. Perfect. She pulled up her body suit and turned to me.

“Ready?” she asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” I said.

“So,” she said, “let’s get in there and shuffle it around a bit.”

As soon as I walked into the gym, I knew we’d be doing more than shuffling it around. The room was filled with women whose bodies were like Sally’s: sleek, hard-muscled, shining in spandex. And they all seemed younger than either of us by at least a decade.

The instructor, a tiny redhead in peppermint-striped cotton, slid a tape into her ghetto blaster and said, “This is a super-fit class, but if you can’t cut it, all I ask is that you women keep moving. By the way, my name is Charlene.”

I leaned across to Sally and whispered, “Did you ever notice how many aerobics instructors are named Charlene? I think it’s kind of menacing.”

Sally grinned and started to say something, but then the music soared and we were away.

By the time we came to the last song, an aerobic “Joy to the World,” I was slick with sweat and exhausted, but Sally was glowing. On the wall of the gym were signs: “If It’s the Last Dance, Dance Backwards,” “You Can’t Turn Back the Clock, But You Can Rewind It.” As I watched Sally high kicking to the beat of the music, her blond hair tied back in a ponytail and her face set in concentration, I thought that she didn’t need any inspirational signs. All on her own, she’d discovered a way to make time stand still.

When we finished our floor exercises, Sally stayed behind to do some relaxation technique she’d picked up in Santa Fe. That’s how it happened that I was the first one to see Clea Poole.

She was sitting on a bench in the changing room, with her back ramrod straight and her hands folded in her lap. She was wearing a handsome grey wool coat. All around her, young women were peeling off brightly coloured body suits, laughing, gossiping; Clea in her cloth coat was set apart, a moth among the butterflies.

When I went over and said hello to her, she looked at me with dead uncomprehending eyes.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

She didn’t answer.

I knelt beside her and touched her hand. “I’m Joanne Kilbourn. Remember? Sally’s friend.”

She pulled her hand from mine. “I remember,” she said thickly. “Where’s Sally?”

“She’ll be along soon,” I said. I waited, but Clea didn’t seem to have anything to say, so I opened my locker, picked up my towel and went off to shower. When I came back, Clea was still there, sitting, waiting. She had the look of someone who would wait forever.

Sally had apparently gone straight to the showers. When she finally came in, her hair was dark with water and she had a blue towel wrapped sarong-like around her. Clea Poole jumped up and ran over to her. It seemed to take Sally a moment to focus on the situation.

“Clea, what are you doing here?”

Clea Poole’s voice was tight with anger. “Where else would I be? This morning a total stranger walked into womanswork – our gallery, Sally, the one we built up together – and she told me she’d be bringing her husband around Christmas Eve to see his present.” Her composure was breaking. “This person had a big red satin ribbon with her and she asked me if as a favour I’d mind tying it across the door when I closed up Christmas Eve. Sally, do you hear me? She wanted me to tie a ribbon on the front door of womanswork because you sold it to her. You sold it without telling me, Sally. Our gallery is a fucking gift for a fucking husband.”

“Clea, I didn’t want it to be like this. I’m sorry, truly I am, but things just happened too fast.”

Clea Poole had begun to cry. As the tears spilled onto her cheeks, she wiped at them with the sleeve of her coat.

“Remember our dream about a gallery where women from all over the west could come? What am I going to do if I don’t have …” The end of her sentence dissolved in a sob.

Sally’s voice sounded tired and sad. “You’re going to do what everyone else in the world does. You’re going to cope. Look, Clea, it really is time for a change of direction. Nobody does all that vaginal stuff any more.”

“Including you?” sobbed Clea.

“Oh, Mouse.” Sally reached out to comfort Clea. The blue towel that had been wrapped around her body fell to the floor. Confronted with Sally’s nakedness, Clea Poole’s face grew soft. Then she bent down, picked up the blue towel and draped it over Sally’s shoulders.

“I don’t want you to be cold,” she said simply.

It was a terrible and intimate moment. For a split second the two women stood connected but apart, then Sally enclosed Clea in her arms.

It was a ludicrous coupling: the small woman in the drab wool coat clung ferociously to Sally’s naked body, as if somehow by an act of will she could penetrate that amazing Amazon beauty.

The changing room was silent except for Clea Poole’s muffled sobs and Sally’s voice, gentle and weary. “There, there, Mouse. It’ll be all right. You’ll see. It’s just been a shock for you. Let me get dressed, and we’ll find some place to have a quiet drink and we can talk.” Her eyes swept the changing room, so carefully designed to forgive human imperfection. The air was heavy with the tension that comes after a public scene. On the pastel benches, women were hooking bras, pulling on stockings, zipping boots – trying not to be there.

Sally smiled ruefully across at me. “Thanks for coming, Jo. Let’s not wait so long for the next time.”

As I drove home through the snowy city streets, I couldn’t shake the image of Clea Poole clinging to Sally. It
was a disturbing picture. Then as I turned from Spadina Crescent onto the University Bridge my car hit an ice patch and, for a heart-stopping ten seconds, it spun lazily toward the oncoming traffic, until I gained control again. By the time I pulled into the driveway in front of my house I could feel the pins-and-needles pricks of anxiety on my skin, and I was beginning to think that maybe Sally was right. Maybe the world did get more dangerous every year.

The fear started to melt the moment I walked in the front door. The tree lights were plugged in, there was Christmas music on the radio, and my daughter, Mieka, was sitting at the dining-room table behind piles of boxes and wrapping paper and ribbons. She was wearing a green knit sweater with a bright pattern of elves and Santas, and her dark blond hair was tied back with a red ribbon. She was twenty years old and had been living with her boyfriend, Greg, in a place of their own for a year and a half, but in that moment she looked twelve, and I felt a surge of happiness that she was home and it was Christmas.

“Help,” she said, “I’m three days behind in my everything.”

I sat down beside her and picked up a box. “For whom? From whom?” I asked.

“For you. From me. No peeking. Now choose some nice motherly paper. Something sedate.” She looked at me. “Are you okay? You look a little wiped out.”

“I had a rather unsettling morning,” I said, and I told her about the scene in the changing room.

When I finished, Mieka ran the edge of the scissors along a length of silver ribbon. It curled professionally and she looked thoughtful. “It sounds as if Clea/Mouse was talking about more than art. Is Sally a lesbian?”

“I don’t think so … I think she’s just someone who likes sex with an interesting partner.”

“Or partners,” Mieka said. She picked up a piece of red
tissue and began to wrap some baseball cards for Angus. “I went over to the Mendel this morning.”

“Sally’s show is turning us into a city of art lovers,” I said. “So what did you think?”

“Well, the crazies were out in force. A woman stopped me on my way in from the parking lot and asked me if I was a virgin. She was pushing her dog around in a shopping cart.”

“Poor dog,” I said. “And poor you. Was the show worth the trip through the parking lot?”