The Wandering Soul Murders (8 page)

By the time I came out of the pool, I’d decided against McDonald’s. The mindless rhythm of swimming had always relaxed me. By seven o’clock, my heart still felt leaden, but I was ready. Mieka had suggested I find something sensational to wear. I didn’t have anything sensational, but I did have a cotton dress that was the colour of cornflowers. Every time I wore it, good things happened.

As I met Keith at the front door, I hoped good things were going to happen again.

“No car?” I said.

“This place is in walking distance,” he said. “Actually, it’s my house. Our housekeeper got some food together and left. The rest of the evening is going to be a clumsy seduction scene. You can bolt out the door whenever you want.”

“I’ll let you know,” I said.

The streets were quiet, and the air was sweet with the scent of flowering trees: chokecherry, lilac, crabapple.

At the corner of Albert Street there was a cherry tree in full bloom. We stopped under it and looked up into branches heavy with rosy blossoms, thin as silk.

“I feel like I’m standing in the middle of a Chinese watercolour,” Keith said.

Just then a gust of wind came and the cherry blossoms drifted down on us, pink and fragrant.

I reached over and brushed the petals from his shirt. “Is this part of the seduction?” I asked.

He smiled. “Is it working?”

Suddenly I felt awkward. “Keith, it’s been years since I’ve done this. There hasn’t been anybody for me since Ian died.”

He shrugged. “I’m not a teenager. I’m fifty-three years old. I’ve learned how to wait.”

Keith lived in a two-storey apartment house on College Avenue. It was white stucco with a red tile roof, vaguely Spanish and immaculately kept up.

“Second floor,” Keith said and we walked up an oak staircase, opened the front door and went in. It was a comfortable-looking apartment, airy and cool, with chairs and couches that looked as if they were meant to be sat in, gleaming hardwood floors covered here and there with hooked rugs, and a scarred pine table set for two in front of doors that opened onto the balcony.

Keith looked at me. “I’m not a cook,” he said, “but don’t worry. My housekeeper says everything’s ready. I just have to follow her instructions about what to heat up and what to leave alone. Dead simple, she says.”

“My youngest son would call it a no-brainer.”

He grinned. “He’d be right. Would you like a drink first?”

“Gin and tonic would be great,” I said. “It’s been a rotten day.”

Keith brought the drink. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“In that case,” he said, “why don’t you have a look around while I follow my instructions.”

“Need help?” I asked.

“Relax,” he said. “Have a look at the art. It’s my one extravagance. All Saskatchewan, you’ll notice.”

“So I see,” I said. On the coffee table a Joe Fafard ceramic bull, testicles glowing like jewels between his flanks, sat proudly beside clay six-quart baskets filled with brightly glazed vegetables: potatoes, carrots, tomatoes.

“Victor Cicansky,” I said looking at the vegetables. “My dream is to have a kitchen filled with these some day.” On the walls an Ernest Lindner watercolour of a peeling birch hung next to a brilliantly coloured blanket painting by Bob Boyer. Over the mantel was a magically realistic painting of a horse, so black it seemed blue, leaping into the arc of the prairie sky. Underneath was a title plate: “ ‘Poundmaker Pegasus’ by Sally Love (1947–1991).” Sally was Taylor’s mother. I was standing looking at the painting, remembering, when Keith came, slipped his hand under my elbow and said, “Come on, I’ll show you the rest of the place.”

He led me into a room that looked like a working office. There was a desk that Keith said had belonged to his father covered with files and papers, shelves of books and a wall full of political pictures. I moved closer to the pictures. They were all there, my chamber of villains, the men and women I had spent much of my adult life trying to turn out of office. Blaine Harris was in some of the pictures; Keith was in all of them, smiling with presidents and prime ministers and premiers. All the pictures were inscribed affectionately and fulsomely.

In the lair of the enemy, I thought.

Keith touched my arm. “Was this a mistake?” he asked.

“No, not a mistake,” I said. “Just a reminder. What is your status these days, anyway? I remember hearing that you came back to Saskatchewan because you wanted time away from Ottawa. Is it just a summer holiday or a permanent thing?”

He shrugged. “It depends, I guess.”

“On what?”

“I don’t know. Just stuff. Come on, let’s get out of here. It’s killing the mood. Besides, I’m hungry.”

“Me, too,” I said. “Would it be rude to ask what we’re having?”

“Probably,” he said, “but you’re with a friend, so you get an answer. Cold lake trout, some sort of green salad, cornbread and Chablis.” He dropped a disc into the
CD
player, and the room was filled with the shimmering sounds of the Goldberg Variations. Keith held out his hand to me. “And Glenn Gould is going to play until we decide we’ve had enough.”

“Which will be never,” I said.

“Which will be never,” he agreed.

We brought the food to the table, and he lifted his glass to me.

“To music,” he said.

I sipped my wine. “Good,” I said. I tasted the fish. “In fact, more than good. Everything’s wonderful. Do you know this is only the second seduction meal of my life? When I was sixteen, the boy across the street invited me for dinner. His parents had left him alone overnight for the first time. I guess the temptation was too much. He made the most romantic evening – vodka and orange juice and candlelight and his mother’s tuna fish casserole and, of course, music. Guess what he played during dinner?”

“ ‘Bolero,’ ” Keith said.

“That was later,” I said. “During dinner he played ‘Rhapsody in Blue.’ ”

Keith smiled. “What happened?”

“He told me about George Gershwin’s tragically short life, trying, I guess, to impress me with the need to gather our rosebuds while we could. And I drank my screwdrivers and ate my tuna casserole and cried like a baby, because George Gershwin died so young and because I wasn’t used to vodka.”

“And then?” Keith asked.

“And then he walked me home. It was 1961. People took virginity seriously in those days. He ended up studying math and physics at U. of T. Last I heard he was a high-school teacher.”

“I’m too old for a change of career,” he said.

“I’ll bear that in mind,” I said.

Dinner was wonderful, and I could feel the darkness lifting. Keith Harris was easy to talk to, and it was fun to trade stories about political battles. When we were finished, Keith said, “Do you like Metaxa? I have a bottle I brought back from Greece for a special occasion. Let’s have a little and I’ll put on the wisest piece of music I know.”

He took Gould’s 1955 recording of Goldberg out of the
CD
player and dropped in another
CD
. “This is the version of the Goldberg Gould did in 1981,” Keith said.

We took our Metaxa out on the balcony. Across the park, the lights from the legislature shimmered in Wascana Lake. The air was cool and smelled of fresh-cut grass and damp earth. We sat side by side in the stillness and listened as Glenn Gould played Bach. The interpretation was very different, not brilliant and risk-taking, but mature, rich and thoughtful. It was the work of a man who had learned a few things about life and about death. Good music to make love to when you were closer to the end of life than the beginning. I felt the familiar stirrings of sexual desire, and moved closer to Keith.

“Ready?” he said softly.

“I think I am,” I said.

He took my hand and together we walked down the hall to his bedroom. Suddenly, I was unsure. I walked across the room and looked at the framed photographs on Keith’s wall. They were unmistakably pictures of the north: the sun boiling on the horizon while the pines reached dark fingers into the red sky; a wood grouse standing one-legged on a piece of driftwood floating in shimmering water; a close-up of wildflowers growing through dead leaves.

“Beautiful,” I said.

Keith came and stood beside me. “Blue Heron Point,” he said. “I’m the photographer. I’m not exactly Alfred Stieglitz, but with the north as a subject, you don’t have to be. I have a place up there. It’s not much, just a cottage on the lake.”

“A squeaky screen door and sand on the floor and dishes that don’t match?” I said.

Keith smiled. “And a wood stove where you can boil your coffee and fry your eggs too hard and a woodbox filled with old
Saturday Nights
. Best of all, it really is away from everything. Not like that palace of Lorraine’s on Echo. But I guess she had enough of the north growing up. Anyway, sand and squeaks and all, I love it.”

“Angus is going to camp at Havre Lake in July,” I said.

“Good, let’s take him up together, and we can stay at the lake.”

“Just like that?” I asked.

He looked at me. “Yeah. Remember George Gershwin. No use waiting around.”

“Right,” I said. Keith took me in his arms, and I felt as if the broken parts of me were coming together. When he caressed my breasts and kissed the hollow of my neck, the darkness that had been hanging over me lifted.

I kissed him. “Remember that Marvin Gaye song ‘Sexual Healing’?” I said.

Keith’s hands slid over my hips. “I remember.”

“I’m beginning to believe in it,” I said.

When the telephone rang, shrill and insistent, we looked at each other.

“Damn,” said Keith. “Do you want to let it ring?”

“Yes, but I’d be worried all night it was one of my kids.”

Keith picked up the receiver and said hello. He listened for a while then he said, “Just keep him quiet. I’ll be right there.”

Keith turned to me, “My emergency, not yours. Apparently, Blaine was trying to get up and he fell. I’d better go down and have a look. Why don’t you come along?”

“I don’t think I feel like going anywhere,” I said.

“It’s just downstairs,” he said.

“Downstairs here?” I asked.

“Yeah, I thought you knew. This building is sort of a family place. Lorraine owns it and she has the bottom floor. I have this. And since my father had his stroke, he and the nurse who takes care of him have stayed in the apartment at the back. It’s been great, really – he has his privacy but we’re close.”

We walked downstairs and knocked at the door at the end of the front hall. A man in his mid-twenties wearing sweatpants and a very white T-shirt answered. He had the powerful shoulders and upper arms of someone who worked out. Keith introduced us, and the man, whose name was Sean Gilliland, shook hands with me, then turned to Keith.

“Your father got out of bed and fell,” he said. “I’d bathed him and brought his bedtime snack and we watched the news together. Then I turned out the lights and came into the living room. I was doing my stretch and strengthens when I heard this crash. I went in and he was on the floor. Mr. Harris, he’d been trying to make a phone call.”

Keith looked at him incredulously. “A phone call?”

Sean shook his head. “I know. But that’s what he was doing. He was over by that little table with the telephone. He must have dragged himself over on the furniture. He still had the receiver in his hand when I found him.”

As we passed through the living room, I glanced at the
TV
. The sound was turned off; on the screen, six men as muscular as Sean were silently working on their abdominal muscles.

Blaine’s room was cool and dimly lit. I stayed in the doorway and Keith went to his father. The old man looked pale and shaken; even across the room I could see the ugliness of the purplish knot rising on his forehead. Keith talked to his father for a while, soothing words I couldn’t hear, and Blaine seemed calm. Then he saw me.

As soon as he caught sight of me, the old man tried to push himself up to a sitting position. All the while he was pushing himself, he was trying to talk. The sounds that came out were garbled and desperate. Finally, he got out a single word, “Killdeer.” As soon as he said the word, he fell back on the bed exhausted. But his eyes never left my face.

“Killdeer?” I said. “Do you mean my name, Kilbourn?”

He began to push himself up again. Sean came over to me quickly. “Would you mind staying in the other room? Mr. Harris isn’t supposed to get upset.”

I went into the living room. Keith came out almost immediately. He put his arms around me. “I’m going to call the doctor. Do you want to go upstairs and wait for me?”

I shook my head. “I think I’ll take a cab home. The day seems to have caught up with me.”

He kissed my hair. “Damn,” he said. “This evening shouldn’t end with your going home alone.” He smiled. “Jo, if I can find a copy of ‘Rhapsody in Blue,’ will you give me another chance?”

“I’ll bring the tuna casserole,” I said. “Call me later and let me know how your father is.”

Keith called the doctor and then he dialled a cab for me. While I waited for it, I watched the strong young men on the television stretch and strengthen their already perfect bodies.

When I got home, Mieka was sitting at the kitchen table in her nightgown working on her business accounts.

“Can I retire yet?” I said.

She made a face. “Not unless you have a source of income I don’t know about.”

“Is it going to be okay?” I asked.

Mieka smiled. “It’s going to be fine. Lorraine’s going to set up a line of credit for me on Monday.”

“She’s really good to you, isn’t she?” I said.

“I don’t know what I’d do without her, Mum.” Mieka took off her glasses. “Are you warming to her at all? I know she’s not the kind of woman you cozy up to, but you know, Mum, she hasn’t had an easy life. She kind of manipulated the wedding with Greg’s dad, and I think she got more than she bargained for. Alisdair had pretty well gambled away all their money by the time he died, and Lorraine had a little boy to support. She’s had to work hard to get where she is.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said. “I knew Greg was just a baby when his father died, but I always thought it was the Harris money that kept things going there.”