Prairie Hardball (17 page)

Rather than get both of us wet, I got out of my car and got into Ruth Fernie’s.

“I’m so glad I found you,” she said. “I was just driving around trying to figure out what to do when I saw you. It was like a sign.”

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s my nephew, Nathan Rowley,” she said. “The police think he’s the one who killed Mrs. Wilton. They have him at the police station right now.”

“Your nephew’s been arrested?”

“He’s there at the police station again this morning. But he never did it, I promise you.”

“I wish I could help, Mrs. Fernie, but I don’t see how.”

“You can talk to your friend the policeman and tell him about Nat. How he’s not the same as when he did those crimes before. He learned his lesson.”

She began to cry.

“I just don’t know what to do. He’s all I’ve got. My late husband and I never had any children. Nat was my sister’s boy. She died when he was a teenager. Her husband shot her, then took his own life. After that Nat went wild. But now he’s settled down and is a good boy. I know it.”

“Did you talk to the police? Tell them this?”

“Yes, but I just got him into more trouble.”

“How?”

“They asked me if I heard him come home that night, and I said yes. Then they asked me what time, and I said the wrong time. I said half past twelve and he told them one o’clock.”

“So you didn’t really hear him.”

“No, I was asleep,” she said. “But I believe him when he says he didn’t do it. He wouldn’t lie to me.”

“I think you should get him a lawyer, right away,” I said.

“He has one. From before. He drove out from Saskatoon this morning.”

“Then you can be sure that his rights are being protected,” I said. “Another thing you can do is find some other people who can vouch for him. Like his employer, or your minister.”

Giving her a project was the most helpful thing I could think of. It took her mind off her fears and gave her something to occupy herself. I promised her I would pass on her messages to Andy when I saw him and got back into my own car for the drive back to the hotel.

My parents and Edna were waiting for me in the lobby. Despite the weather, I suggested an outing to the place Deutsch had taken us to the night before, just to combat everybody’s cabin fever.

“A capital idea,” my father said. “A new menu is just what the doctor ordered.”

“Where are the Denekas?” I asked. “Should we invite them, too?”

“I don’t think so,” Edna said, quietly. “Meg isn’t up to it today. He ordered food up to the room.”

After a certain commotion with umbrellas and discussion about who would drive and whether or not Edna would need her walker or just her cane, we got the show on the road. There was a table just finishing when we got to the restaurant. By the time we had ordered, we were all feeling a bit more cheerful than we had in days.

Probably so that mood wouldn’t end, no one brought up the murder or the investigation. I led the conversation back to the old days of the All-American Girls. All I had to do was ask a couple of questions and my mother and Edna were unstoppable for the next hour. With Edna’s prompting, my mother loosened up and told some of the stories that hadn’t made it into the official histories.

“Remember the time in Fort Wayne when we kept Max Humphreys up all night in the lobby?” Edna asked, and they both laughed.

“He was the manager that year, and no one liked him,” my mother explained. “He was very strict about curfew. Two hours after the game his girls had to be tucked into bed. So one night some of us went to get something to eat after the game, and when we got back, we could see that he was sitting in the lobby watching the door.”

“Meg put us up to this,” Edna interrupted. “We sneaked around to the fire escape at the back of the hotel and got in that way. He waited all night to catch us coming in.”

“In the morning, we just waltzed down to breakfast,” my mother said, “and there was nothing he could do. He was some mad. And the funniest thing was, we hadn’t even missed curfew. We were back well before time.”

“Oh, we had some good times,” Edna said.

“What kind of money did you make?” I asked.

“The starting salary was fifty-five dollars a week,” Edna said. “And believe it or not, that was darned good pay back then.”

“Easy for you to say,” my mother said. “Sluggers like you could supplement it. The rest of us had to make do.”

“What do you mean?” Andy asked.

“Oh, nothing illegal,” Edna said. “After a home run, I would run down the first-base line shaking hands with the fans, and darned if there wouldn’t be a little folding green in some of the hands. But I always shared, didn’t I, Helen. Be honest.”

“That’s true. Edna was always kind with her tips. She’d buy beer for the rest of us back at the rooming house.”

“I thought drinking and smoking were forbidden,” I said.

“In public, sure. But no one had to know what went on in the rooming house,” Edna said. “Including, by the way, what your mother isn’t telling you, which is how she made her extra money.”

She paused for effect.

“At the card table. Helen was the best poker player in the whole darned league.”

I looked at my mother, stunned. She smiled.

“Well, I was pretty good,” she admitted.

“Virna, too,” Edna said. “They used to clean out all the rookies on pay day, until the chaperone got wise to it.”

“After that, we had to keep the money off the table and pretend we were playing rummy if the chaperone came in,” my mother said. “And we didn’t gamble any more with anyone who couldn’t afford to lose.”

“Now I find out my lady wife was a card shark,” my father laughed. “If I’d known, I could have sent you to Las Vegas once a year to supplement the parish income.”

“Oh, those were good times,” Edna said. “I’d give anything to go back. Wouldn’t you, Helen? Back to when everything was a big adventure.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, then smiled at my father. “I’ve had a good life since then, too.”

I looked at my watch.

“I should get you all back to the hotel so I can get in a couple more hours at the Hall of Fame and finish the piece I’m writing for the weekend. These stories were just what I needed. Now all I need to do is fill in some of the stats.”

“We’re glad to help,” Edna said. “Just don’t forget to send me a copy.”

“I won’t. I bet you could help me solve another little mystery I’m working on, too. Just out of my own curiosity.”

“What’s that?” Edna asked.

“Who Jack Wilton’s parents are.”

“What do you mean?” my mother asked. “Virna was his mother, and his father was killed during the war.”

“Oh, Helen, you always were so naive,” Edna said.

I told them what the autopsy report had said.

“Well, well,” Edna said. “I must say, I always had my suspicions.”

“Do you think he could have been Wilma’s son?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t that be something?” Edna asked, clearly intrigued. “But wait a minute. She wasn’t close to Virna until after the baby appeared. Those first few years—I remember because we were rookies together in ’44—that year Wilma was friends with what’s her name, Marilyn Dyck from Manitoba. Remember, Helen? So that can’t be it.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s any of our business anyway,” my mother said. “With both Virna and Wilma passed away, that secret’s gone to the grave. I think we should leave it there.”

“Oh, I’ll figure it out, Mother,” I said. “That’s what I do best.”

When I got back to the Hall of Fame, it was locked up tight, and the key was back on its hook. Once inside, I left my raincoat to drip by the front door and went back to the desk. Everything was as I had left it, with one exception. I had left Virna’s scrapbook open to the article about the flower shop. Someone had taken a ballpoint pen and scribbled over the picture of Virna and Wilma with an angry-looking scrawl.

I checked the rest of the files and nothing was missing. There had been two people around when I left the museum earlier: Ruth Fernie and Morley Timms. Mrs. Fernie had more pressing things to concern her than an old clipping. It had to be Morley. At least he might know something about it.

I found the phonebook and looked up his address. My tourist map showed me that his house wasn’t far away. In Battleford, nothing is far away. I locked up, then took a drive.

He lived on 16th Street, on the edge of town in a sort of jumped-up trailer park. All the trailers were grounded, set in small yards on paved streets. There were air conditioners sticking out of most of the units. It was nicer than a trailer park, more permanent, but it was as if it was only pretending to be a neighbourhood.

I went up the path to Morley’s door past neatly tended flowerbeds filled with brightly coloured nasturtiums.

I knocked on the door. Nothing happened at first, but I saw a sheer curtain move at the window, and Morley’s face peered out. I waved and smiled, and a moment later he opened the door. What hair he had was ruffled as if he had just got out of bed.

“My goodness, I’m sorry to keep you standing out here in the rain,” he said. “I couldn’t imagine who it was.”

He fussed as I came through the door.

“I don’t get many visitors, and those that do come don’t knock,” he said.

His living room was amazing, crammed full of more stuff than I had ever seen before, things, objects, doo-dads, all arranged in an obsessively tidy fashion. Shelves covered three of the four walls, well-built shelves that held collections of what to others might be junk, here treated with the respect usually reserved for precious art.

“I could make some coffee,” Morley suggested, breaking an awkward silence. “Or tea. Would you like some tea?”

“I’d love a cup of tea, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“I’ll put on the kettle,” Morley said. “You just make yourself to home.”

I looked around. A faded brown corduroy reclining chair sat directly across the room from the television set. A radio was playing on the shelf next to it, and a reading lamp stood beside it. It was obviously Morley’s favourite. A loveseat upholstered in a yellowish plaid fabric clashed with the moss-coloured shag carpeting. There were also a desk and chair. I wandered around the room, looking at his things, looking for clues to Morley Timms’s peculiar life.

There was a three-shelf library: Pierre Bertons, military histories, and novels set in the old west, arranged in alphabetical order. There were no records or CDs or, at a glance, anything to play them on. Each shelf seemed to have a theme. One held a box full of tickets to sporting events, arranged chronologically since 1947; back issues of the
Saskatchewan Historical Baseball Review;
and an old-fashioned glove, clumsy and overpadded. God knows how anyone caught a ball with one of those things. A photocopy of the picture Morley had shown me at the museum earlier, the one of the Battleford Mounties, was tacked to the wall behind the shelf.

Continuing the sporting motif in the next shelf was a tackle box full of lures, leaders, lead weights, and fishing line. Old fishing and hunting licenses were stacked in a neat pile. Photos of him with Garth Elshaw and a dead deer, ditto with dead geese and dead fish. A curling trophy from 1979. I saw his broom propped in a corner, next to a shotgun.

I moved to the next section, nearest to the desk, which was full of stationery supplies: pens and pencils held together in bundles with elastic bands; a box of paperclips and those brass doohickeys you poke through holes in paper and bend back; a plastic container of thumbtacks and pushpins; a pad of pink message slips; a stapler sitting between a box of staples and a staple remover; a stack of empty used file folders and a box of labels. A three-drawer filing cabinet stood next to the door. I looked at it longingly, but I could hear the kettle whistling in the kitchen. I looked back at the shelf, then picked up a bundle of marking pens and ballpoints, in a whole range of colours from ordinary black and blue to red, purple, lemon-yellow, hot-pink, and a lurid bright green that rang a small bell of recognition somewhere in my brain.

I replaced the bundle of pens, just as Morley returned carrying a tray, on which there were a teapot with strings from two bags hanging out, two mismatched cups and saucers, and a cream and sugar combo from two different sets. He put the tray down on the table and smiled, warily. I smiled back.

“Shall I be Mum?” I asked, picking up the teapot and pouring. We busied ourselves with sugar and milk, then sat down, Morley in his recliner and me on the two-seater.

“What I came to talk about, Morley,” I began.

“I’m glad you came,” Morley said quickly. “Like I said, I don’t get many visitors. It’s a change. Is the tea all right?”

He took a sip of his, slopping some of it in the saucer when he replaced his cup.

“Don’t be nervous, Morley,” I said. “I just wanted to ask you if anyone else came into the museum after I left. Ruth Fernie, maybe?”

“No one came in,” he said, shifting uneasily in his chair.

“When did you leave?”

“After I finished mopping the floors.”

“Not long after I left, then.”

“I guess not.”

“Well, when I got back from lunch, I found this.”

I took the defaced clipping out of my purse and held it out to him. He looked away.

“I shouldn’t have done it,” he said.

I almost didn’t hear him, because I had just remembered where I had seen that bright green ink before, the bright green and all the rest that had been used to write the threatening letters. I looked at Morley, wondering if I should confront him about it.

“Are you mad at me for scribbling on the picture?” Morley asked.

“No, I’m not mad, just confused. Why?”

Morley shrugged.

“I don’t know. I just did.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“She was my sweetheart, once,” he said.

“Yes, we talked about that. You were engaged.”

“I didn’t tell the truth before, when I said I was sick after the war. I was sick in the head. I just ruined everything.”

“The war hurt a lot of people, Morley. Not just physical injuries. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I wasn’t brave. I was a coward over there and people died because it was my fault. I couldn’t marry her. I wasn’t good enough for her anymore.”

“Did she say that?”

“No. But I knew, and that’s why we didn’t get married.”

“Maybe you should have told her. You don’t know what she would have said. Things might have turned out very differently for you. That must make you sad.”

“No, I’m not sad. Only when I think about that time. When she went away. When she left me and went to play baseball.”

“So memories about her upset you,” I said. “That’s understandable. Is that why you scribbled on her picture?”

He nodded his head.

“But you knew I might guess it was you, didn’t you?”

“I almost took it away, but I thought you needed it for your article.”

“Or maybe some part of you wanted to be caught,” I said, carefully. “Is there something else you’d like to tell me?”

“No, I just got mad, seeing that picture. It brought back bad memories. It was stupid, I guess.”

“Yes, but you still did it,” I probed, “and you brought attention to yourself.”

Silence.

“Is there something else you’d like to tell me?” I asked, one more time, not wanting to push too hard.

“No, there isn’t anything else.”

“You know, Morley, I was just looking at your things here,” I said. “You’ve got quite a collection of pens. Coloured pens.”

“People throw them away,” he said. “Good things they just throwaway. I keep them. That’s all. No crime in that.”

“Mr. Timms, some of the women from the league, like my mother, like Virna Wilton, got letters before they came for the induction,” I said, gently. “Letters telling them not to come. Letters written in all different colours of ink, like yours.”

Morley drank his tea, looking miserable.

“Those letters,” I continued, “said that women like my mum don’t deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. Is that what you think?”

“She’s not like the rest,” he said. “She’s a nice lady.”

“Yes, she is,” I said. “But those letters she got frightened her. Why do you think the person that sent the letters wanted to frighten a nice lady like her? Or Mrs. Deneka, the poor old soul. Why would he want to frighten her?”

“Maybe he just wanted to make them not come. And, see, it would have been better if they stayed away. If they did what the letters said, because look what went and happened.”

We were getting into some uncharted territory. I should back off and call Andy. But I didn’t want to lose the moment.

“Yes, Morley,” I said. “Look what went and happened. Virna Wilton died.”

“I didn’t mean it to happen,” Morley said. “I never meant it to happen. I swear it.”

“Why don’t you tell me about it,” I said.

He hunched in his big chair, his hands clasped between his knees, looking like a guilty, frightened child, rocking slightly back and forth.

“Go ahead, Morley,” I said. “You’ll feel better when you talk about it.”

“I didn’t know what was going to happen, I swear it,” he said. “I didn’t want them to come is all. Like I said, it brings back memories, bad feelings. I thought if I scared them they would stay away, and then I wouldn’t have to have the feelings.”

“So you wrote the letters,” I said.

“Yes. I’m sorry. It was wrong. Will I have to go to jail?”

“That depends, Morley. It depends on what else you have to tell me.”

“That’s all. That’s all I have to tell.”

He looked up, suddenly, with a new fear on his face.

“You mean you think I killed Virna myself?”

“Did you? Maybe not meaning to?”

He shook his head wildly.

“Did you see Virna Wilton that night? After the banquet was over? Did you talk to her?”

“No, I swear to God I didn’t.”

“I saw you in the bar that night. Virna was there, too.”

“I was just there to keep Garth company. No harm.”

“I believe you, Morley,” I said, and I did. The poor old man was terrified. I put out my hand and patted his. He burst into tears.