Prairie Hardball (7 page)

“What do you think that cop meant about it being an unusual evening?” I asked Andy on the way home.

“Just what you suspect,” he said. “Before you got there he was making some remarks about the suitability, or lack of it, of women in the hallowed Hall of Fame.”

“I’m glad I wasn’t around then.”

“So am I. Believe me, so am I.”

“It wasn’t such a bad night, was it?” I asked. “Didn’t you manage to sort of enjoy yourself?”

“Not half as much as you did. But then, I didn’t have anyone at the table to flirt with.”

I looked at him, waiting for some sign that he was only kidding. It didn’t come.

“Andy Munro. I can’t believe you’re jealous.”

“Who says I’m jealous? I just thought you were coming on a bit strong to Jack Wilton. In front of your family, too. I was surprised, that’s all.”

“I was only being friendly. I was being polite. This may be a foreign concept to you, but that’s the way we do things in Saskatchewan.”

“Oh, I see. Draping yourself all over some good-looking guy is just manners on the prairies. I’ll try to remember that.”

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” I said.

“I guess you’re just a different woman when you come home to your roots,” Andy continued, sarcastically. “I guess I’ll just have to get to know this new, what’s your euphemism?—oh, yes,
polite
—woman who homes in like a heat-seeking missile on the best-looking guy in the room and takes it upon herself to make sure that he won’t forget his visit to the Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame.”

“All right, whatever this is really about, let’s drop it,” I said. “We’re almost at the hotel. But, for the record, I am not
after
Jack Wilton. I think he’s nice, sure. I thought you did too. But you’re the only guy I want. You have been since the first day I met you. And if you don’t believe that, too bad for you.”

The silence lasted until we pulled into the hotel parking lot and Andy shut off the car.

“I’m sorry,” he said; finally. “You’re right. It’s not about Jack. I’m not sure what it’s about, if you want to know the truth. I guess I just feel a bit out of place here. I don’t know how to fit in. And I’ve probably had too much to drink. So, let’s just drop it for now.”

“That’s a deal,” I said. I undid my seat belt and turned towards him. “Besides, you’re cute when you’re jealous.”

I leaned over and kissed him. He put his arms around me awkwardly in the tiny car and turned the kiss into something more urgent, more passionate, until stray headlights lit us up.

“Maybe we better stop with the free show,” I said, pulling back. “It’s probably my parents.”

“Oh, well, we wouldn’t want to scandalize them,” he said.

We got out of the car to the sound of giggles. There they all were: my parents, my sister, and the two little girls, plus Edna Summers and the Wiltons, just getting out of another car. I was glad for the darkness that hid my blushes.

“Kate and Andy, sitting in a tree,” Claire chanted, in full sugar overload, “K-I-S-S-I-N-G! First comes love, then . . .

Sheila got her hand over her daughter’s mouth before she got any further.

“Good party, eh, Mum?” I asked, when they caught up with us.

“It was wonderful to see all the girls again.”

“See, you were worried for nothing.”

“I wasn’t worried. Whatever gave you that idea?”

“I can’t imagine,” I said. “Who was it, Daddy, just the other day, who said that all the women wouldn’t have anything to say to each other? It couldn’t have been Mum.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It must have been some other person, because nobody was lacking for words tonight.”

“Some of them wouldn’t shut up,” Sheila teased. “They had to be practically dragged out of the room.”

“Stop it, all of you,” my mother said. “I let my hair down for once in my life, and you aren’t going to ruin it for me.”

Sheila hugged her.

“No one is trying to ruin anything. We’re proud of you.”

“Thank you, dear. I can always count on you.”

We headed for the door, and caught up with Virna, Edna, Jack, and some of the other women in the lobby.

“Come on, Helen, the girls are going to the bar, just like the old days,” Virna called. “Ditch the hubby, ditch the daughters and the grandchildren. It’s All-Americans only.”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” my mother said to us.

“Why not?” my father asked.

“Sure, Mum, go ahead,” I said. “It’s your night.”

“Well, maybe just for a few minutes.”

“That’s the spirit,” Virna said, ushering her towards the bar.

The rest of the family got on the elevator, leaving Andy and me with Jack.

“Would you join me for a drink?” he asked.

I looked at Andy.

“You go ahead,” he said. “I’ve had enough.”

“Please don’t make me drink alone,” Jack said.

“I’m sorry, Jack. It’s awfully late. I should go up, too.”

“No, Kate, go ahead,” Andy said. “It’s not even midnight, but I’m going to be asleep in about ten seconds anyway.”

“Are you sure?”

He smiled at me and nodded his head.

“I’m very sure.”

He kissed me and hit the elevator button.

“Just don’t wake me when you come to bed.”

When Jack opened the door to Shooters, the hotel lounge, the noise was formidable. It was Saturday night in small-town Saskatchewan and the joint was jumping. Prairie Oyster was playing on the jukebox, fighting to be heard over the general racket of conversation and the electronic bells and whistles of the gambling games. I saw Garth Elshaw and Morley Timms in the crowd of locals, native and white, young and old, most in advanced stages of inebriation. It was no place for a lady, but there the whole crew of them were, in the middle of the room, having laid claim, somehow, to the best table in the house.

We made our way to the bar and grabbed a couple of empty stools as far away from the speakers as we could get. Jack got the bartender’s attention, and I ordered a beer.

“Whatever’s on tap and local,” I shouted.

“Great Western okay?”

“Sure.”

“Scotch for me,” Jack yelled. “Double, lots of rocks.”

“This is wild,” I said, when the bartender had left. “Look at those crazy women. I can’t believe my mother’s with them.”

“How come?”

“It’s not the kind of thing she lets herself do. Fun is not her middle name.”

“My mother loves a party,” Jack said. “She’s having the time of her life.”

I looked over at the table. Virna was holding forth to some young men at the next table. I couldn’t hear what she was saying over all the racket in the bar, but, judging by her gestures, she was clearly teasing them. They were spellbound and the women at the table were all laughing.

“She’s probably bragging about her career,” he said. “Probably challenging them to a softball game tomorrow.”

“You seem fond of each other,” I said.

“We’re all each other has got. Especially since Aunt Wilma passed away. But even before then, we were close.”

“You had an unusual upbringing, I guess.”

“Yeah. It wasn’t easy without a dad in the fifties.”

“At least you had someone to teach you baseball,” I said, “which is more than most kids of widows have.”

“Oh, yes, I had that,” he laughed. “Parents’ sports day at school was a gas. All the other mothers were on the sidelines. Mom and Aunt Wilma were out on the field kicking butt.”

I laughed.

“Other than that, it was like the conventional fifties small-town life you used to see on TV. Except ours was the Harriet and Harriet Show. No Ozzie. People were pretty tolerant, mainly. Most of them, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind. It’s not important,” he said. “What about you? Where did you grow up?”

“In a little town called Indian Head, near Regina. Population 1,000, give or take. It was about as dull as you could get. I had a normal daughter-of-the-preacher kind of upbringing, and got out of there as fast as I could.”

“Now you’re a big-city woman.”

“All the way.”

“Do you ever think about coming home?”

“For about ten minutes every visit. Then something reminds me of why I left.”

“It’s funny. I’m the opposite. I went to the big city—Chicago—and crashed and burned. I guess I turned out to be a fish that’s happiest in a smaller pond.”

“Where do you live now?”

“Back home again in Indiana,” he said. “Good old Fort Wayne.”

“That’s not Indian Head, by a long shot,” I said.

“No, it’s a good-sized town, over a hundred and fifty thousand.”

“What do you do there?”

“I took over my mother’s business.”

“The flower shop?”

“What? It seems a funny job for a guy, you mean? A straight guy?”

“Whoa. I’m the last person to make gender-based judgements, remember?”

“Sorry, I guess I’m a bit defensive,” he said. “Yes, I run the shop, in theory. She is supposed to be retired, but she still lives upstairs, and it’s hard to keep her out of things.”

“This is a problem?”

“There are certain clashes in business style, shall we say.”

He signalled the bartender for another. I put my hand over my half-full pint and shook my head.

“She doesn’t like change. I happen to believe that the nineties aren’t the same as the fifties. We’re both pretty strong-willed, so it gets tense from time to time.”

“But you’re obviously devoted to each other.”

“Of course we are,” he said. “It just doesn’t look like it, sometimes. But we provide lots of amusement for the staff when we get into one of our knock-down, drag-outs.”

His mother chose that moment to come and say good night.

“Look after my boy, Kate. Don’t let him stay up too late.”

“I’m going up soon, Mom,” he said, kissing her warmly. “Sleep well. I’ll see you in the morning. I’m proud of you.”

I stood and held out my hand.

“I’m so glad to meet you,” I said.

She ignored my hand and kissed me on the cheek.

“That goes double for me,” she said. “And it’s nice to see you two kids getting to know each other after all these years.”

She walked away as if she had never touched a drink, head high, ignoring the other patrons, who were goggling at her Belles uniform as if they had just seen a pink elephant.

I looked at my watch.

“God, it’s almost one,” I said. “I’d better get going.”

I took a last swallow of my beer and set it down on the bar. Jack knocked back the rest of his drink and signalled to the bartender for the bill. He insisted upon signing it to his room, then put his hand on my waist to guide me out of the bar.

“I’ve got a bottle in my room, if you’d like a nightcap,” he said, while we waited for the elevator.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I said.

The elevator arrived. I pushed the button for the third floor. He leaned across me to punch four.

“It’s up to you,” he said.

The elevator stopped at my floor with a shudder. The door opened. Jack reached out and held it back with his hand.

“Well, good night,” I said. “It was nice talking to you.”

He touched my cheek with his free hand and kissed me gently on the mouth, lingering for a moment before letting me go.

“It was very nice,” he said then, and smiled his killer smile while the elevator doors shut. It took me a moment to decide whether I was offended by his pass. I decided, somewhat to my chagrin, that I wasn’t. While I stood there regaining my composure, a door down the hall opened a crack, as if someone was peeking out. Embarrassed, I hoped that my indiscretion hadn’t been observed.

I let myself into our room as quietly as I could. Andy was on the far side of the bed, asleep with his back to me. I undressed in the bathroom and crept in beside him. After a few moments, he rolled over, asleep, and curled himself around me, pinning me in his arms.

The Hall of Fame Museum was still locked when we arrived the next morning just after eleven. Andy and I in the purple rental and my parents in the Chrysler had travelled from the hotel in convoy with the Goodmans, the Denekas and Edna Summers in Peter’s minivan. There had been no answer in either Virna or Jack Wilton’s rooms, so we expected to find them waiting, but there was nobody to greet us but a big ginger tabby.

“Maybe they went to church,” my mother said, probably guilty that her family had been delinquent just this once.

“Neither struck me as the church-going type,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll be here in a minute.”

“But we agreed to all go in together,” Mum fussed.

“Maybe they’ve gone to pick up Garth Elshaw,” I said. My father went over and peered in a window.

“There’s no one inside,” he said. “You know, I’ve been here before, when it was still a church. It was a lovely one, too. Very historic. It was the first church in the Battlefords.”

The date over the door was 1886.

“Built thirty years before St. Andrew’s,” my mother said.

“I’m surprised it’s still locked,” Shirley Goodman said. “It’s seven minutes past 11:00, and the sign says it opens at 11:00.”

“Oh, be patient,” her husband said.

“It is rather bad, though,” Shirley continued. “I mean, inducting us into the Hall of Fame and then keeping us cooling our heels out here like this.”

“I’m sure someone will be here to open it soon,” my mother said.

“I’m so excited,” said Meg Deneka. “I can’t remember when I’ve been so excited. But then I can’t remember anything anyway. Can I, Peter?”

Her husband, who seemed distracted, smiled wearily.

“Where are your grandchildren?” Edna asked. “I thought they’d be here.”

“They’re long gone,” my mother said. “They were on the road just after breakfast. Amy had a birthday party she couldn’t miss, and Sheila doesn’t like to be away from Buddy too long. They don’t care about a bunch of dusty old bats and balls anyway.”

“Now, dear,” my father said. “You know they would have stayed if they could. They were here for the important part, anyway.”

“Yes, wasn’t that a nice evening,” Edna said.

“I was just glad there was no trouble,” Shirley said, “and that letter writer didn’t get up to any tricks.”

“Look, this is probably Virna now,” Peter Deneka said, as a station wagon pulled up and parked at the curb in front of the giant baseball bats.

But it wasn’t the Wiltons. I recognized Ruth Fernie, one of the volunteers from the banquet. She came up the front walk with tiny quick steps, apologizing all the while.

“With the excitement last night, we all slept in, and I’ve been running behind all morning. I am so sorry to have kept you waiting. What will you think of our hospitality?”

We assured her that we had not been inconvenienced.

“Mr. Shury will be very annoyed if he hears I kept Hall of Famers waiting.”

We told her he wouldn’t hear it from our lips.

“Well, I’ll just get the key, and you can have your tour.”

She bustled around the side of the building, and reappeared in a moment, holding up the key and smiling.

“Secret hiding place,” she said. “Really, I don’t know why we bother locking it. There’s nothing worth stealing. Don’t tell Mr. Shury I said that.”

She unlocked the door and opened it wide.

“Shall we wait for Virna?” my mother asked.

“We agreed on eleven and it’s almost a quarter past,” Edna said. “I spent half my playing career waiting for Virna Wilton, and I’m not going to do it now.”

She was first through the door, rolling her walker ahead of her, the rest of us following. We paused inside the door to let our eyes adjust to the shadowy room after the brightness of the morning.

“I’ll just go get the lights,” Mrs. Fernie said. “Maybe you could sign the guest book while you’re waiting.”

Shirley Goodman picked up the pen first, and had just begun to write her name when two things happened in quick succession. First, the lights went on. Then Ruth Fernie began to scream.

The sound froze us for a moment, then Andy ran towards the front of the church. I was right behind him. Ruth was standing to one side of what had been the altar, in an area that was clearly the museum’s library, hands over most of her face, with only one eye peeking out. When we came to her, all she could do was point, wordlessly.

Andy stepped in front of me quickly, but not before I’d glimpsed the garish tableau. At first I thought it was one of the plastic mannequins that were posed around the museum in the uniforms of long-defunct teams. But this one, in its jaunty yellow Racine Belles outfit, was more lifelike than the others. Or, more to the point, more
deathlike
. Even from the brief look I got, there was no doubt in my mind why Virna hadn’t made her appointment that morning.

“Get the rest of them out of here,” Andy said, urgently. “Then find a phone and call the police.”

I turned in time to intercept my mother coming around a display case. I grabbed her roughly by the shoulders and turned her around.

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

“Kate! Whatever are you doing?” she complained.

I handed her off to Daddy.

“Take her outside,” I said. “Get everybody outside and don’t let them back in.”

Andy helped Mrs. Fernie to the front of the museum and found a chair for her, then went back to the body.

“Is there a phone?” I asked her. She pointed to a cabinet displaying Hall of Fame souvenirs. I found the phone behind it, on a small shelf. I dialled 911, not sure if the service existed in the boonies, but it was answered immediately. I told the dispatcher the situation, and she told me to stay on the line. She was back in a moment.

“There’s a car on the way,” she said. “How many people are on the scene?”

“There are, let’s see, around ten, I think.”

“It’s important that no one touches anything.”

“Most of them are outside,” I said. “The one that’s inside is a Toronto police detective. He knows about crime scenes.”

I hung up and went back to join Andy.

“They’re on their way.”

I looked over at the organ. I could see now that Virna had been propped up into her grotesque pose at the organ, as if she was playing the thing. There was even sheet music on the stand, but I couldn’t make out the title.

“What happened?

“I can’t tell,” he said. “I didn’t want to disturb anything once I’d established that she was dead. We’ll have to wait for the medical examiner.”

“Where are the police? They should be here by now.”

“You go on outside with the others,” he said, gently.

“I don’t mind,” I said.

“I do. One of us with nightmares is enough.”

I went outside. My mother, father, and Edna were comforting Ruth Fernie, who was in tears. The rest didn’t look too hot either. The Goodmans were sitting on one of the baseball bats. I could see the Denekas in their van. I went to talk to my parents.

“The police are on their way,” I said.

“Is it Virna? Is she dead?” my mother asked. “It can’t be true.”

“I’m afraid it is,” I said, then turned to Ruth Fernie.

“Mrs. Fernie, that hidden key you used, how many people know about it?” I asked.

“Well, all the volunteers know. It’s not much of a secret.”

“The murderer must have known,” I said. “Don’t forget to mention that to the police.”

I went to speak to the others. Shirley Goodman was on me with questions the moment I got within earshot.

“My God, Kate, what happened? I’m just sick.”

“They don’t know that yet, Mrs. Goodman. We have to wait for the police and the medical examiner.”

“But you think it’s murder? She didn’t just have a heart attack or something?”

“This definitely wasn’t natural causes,” I said.

“Poor Virna,” she said. “Why did it have to be her? She was just so much fun. She was so alive. And now . . .”

She burst into tears. Her husband put his arm around her.

“Does this have anything to do with those letters the women got?” he asked.

“One of us might be next on the list,” she wailed, and looked around, as if expecting an attack.

I reassured her as best I could, then went over to the Denekas. Meg looked confused. Peter held her hand, stroking it.

“I don’t understand,” she said, querulously. “Why can’t we go inside? I want to see the museum.”

“Not right now, Meggie,” Peter said. “We’ll come back another time.”

“We’ll have to go in without Virna, that’s all there is to it. We can’t wait all day, can we?”

Her husband smiled sadly at me, then turned back to his wife.

“They won’t let us in right now,” he said. “There’s been some sort of accident. We’ll just wait here until the police come. Then we’ll go to the hotel and have a nice cup of tea.”

“But I want to go inside. Why won’t you let me go inside?”

I turned away and started back over to my family. A car pulled up and parked behind Ruth Fernie’s station wagon. I expected to see Inspector Digby, but Jack Wilton got out, smiling sheepishly, and walked over to me.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “You should have gone ahead without me.”

I stared at him stupidly. My brain seemed to have seized up.

“I’ve got to say I’ve got quite a head on me this morning,” he continued, ruefully. “I didn’t even come to until twenty minutes ago.”

He stopped and looked closely at me.

“Is something wrong?”

Before I could answer him, we heard the sirens, coming around the corner.

Jack looked wildly around the yard.

“Where’s my mother? Where is she?”