Grave Deeds (5 page)

“Let's go, then.” He took the picture and replaced it on the
table. One hand on my elbow, he steered me out the door.

Gianelli was standing on the front porch. He locked the door behind us, and put the key in his pocket. “I've got your address,” he reminded me. “We'll be in touch if we need to talk to you again.”

The two men sauntered across the lawn. I heard Wilson laugh again as they reached their car and Gianelli's explosive curse. I wondered if the younger man was ribbing him this time about his hair or about the cats.

I pulled my jacket tight against the small wind that had sprung up with the setting of the sun. I was now a person of property, though still without family. Shadows lay thickly on the street under streetlights that glowed with faint jaundiced light. More cars were parked along both sides of the street. In many houses the curtains had already been drawn and lamps lit. I could hear quite clearly the grumble of traffic on Queen Street and the shriek of a streetcar's tired brakes. Far off, a siren whooped. Behind me, the house seemed to hunch itself over its secrets, nursing its empty rooms as a cat worries a flea bite. I shivered. Somewhere nearby a door slammed and the Doberman began to bark, an anxious menace. It was time to go home.

Although the streetcar was packed, I was surprised to see a seat empty except for a bulging green garbage bag. I edged towards it. The other half was occupied by a woman dressed in a tattered gray tweed overcoat, a red polka dot scarf tied so tightly around her head that no hair showed at all. She was bent double, her forehead nearly resting on the bar of the seat in front, her arms wrapped tightly around her middle. She wore gloves without fingers and the scarlet paint on her bitten nails was chipped and worn. I was about to ask her if I could put the bag on the floor when she looked up, her face a mass of wrinkles, her mouth sunken over gums she bared in a vicious grin. I stepped back, nearly colliding with two schoolgirls who were chatting in the aisle.

“Watch out,” one said, pulling her leather knapsack away from my feet.

I looked down at the old woman. She was bent over again, swaying back and forth, singing without words a high-pitched complaint. At least Great-Aunt Beatrice had had her house and

her cats, as well as neighbours who watched her with attention, if not with love, who may have called her a witch but noted her comings and goings. I wondered what fortune she would have told for me.

Bonnie Hazlitt came out of her apartment when she heard the sound of my key in the door across the hall.

“How's the mystery aunt? I've been waiting and waiting for you to get home. Come in and tell me all about her.”

“She's dead.”

“Dead?” She sagged back against her door.

“It's not that big a deal,” I said hastily. “It happened before I got there. She'd fallen down the stairs in her house and died. A neighbour called the police. Her lawyer turned up while I was talking to some detectives and he knew about me. He wanted to talk. That's what took so long.”

“So you never got to meet her? That's awful.” Bonnie rushed across the hall to hug me. Although I'm by no means tall, her head barely reached my shoulders. I don't like being hugged, especially by casual friends. There's something about touch, the too easy assumption that it means intimacy and love. I stood stiff, hands at my side.

Bonnie dropped her arms. She sniffled and swept her fist across her eyes. “Look at me, crying again. I hate it, the way I'm always bursting into tears. My heart's too soft, that's what Robin always says.”

Or too bruised, I thought, not for the first time and not out loud. “I have to phone Will. I promised I'd call as soon as I got back.”

She looked at her watch. “He'll still be working. Why don't you come in and have a cup of tea? You look like you need it.”

“I don't feel that bad,” I insisted. “It's not as though she meant anything to me. She never wanted anything to do with me until it was too late. If you want to know the truth, I feel like I've won a lottery, sort of.”

“You're the long lost heir, right? You've come into a fortune.” She clapped her hands.

“Not exactly.”

“You can't leave me in suspense like this.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me into her apartment. “You've got to tell me the whole story.”

I gave up. There was no stopping Bonnie once she determined on some course of action. She was a friend of a friend, a graduate student like me, but of Art History, not Literature. She had come to one of our pub gatherings last year, one of those nights when we let off steam about our thesis supervisors, the slim chances of employment when (if) we finished our degrees, and the difficulties of our varied living situations. I was then trying to find an affordable apartment downtown to escape the horrors of suburbia. She knew a neighbour who was getting married and needed to find someone to sublet his place; she invited me to visit the next day, introduced us, and arranged the deal.

The fact that she lived right across the hall seemed a piece of luck at first. Absorbed as I was with classes, research, and papers, I was sometimes lonely. My friend warned me that Bonnie could be a bit demanding, but I figured that, since she was working part-time at the Royal Ontario Museum as well as studying, and had a live-in boyfriend, she would be pretty busy herself. However, her boyfriend worked long shifts and she would, too often, come across the hall, looking for company. Sometimes, when she came knocking at the door, I would sit frozen in my chair, pen poised over paper, breath held as if she could hear my heart pumping. She'd go away, but ten minutes later would be back, the soft repeated rapping insistently upsetting. If I answered her second or third attack, she would assume I'd been in the bathroom or on the phone. She was not good at taking hints that I liked my own company. For her, solitude was isolation.

Her apartment was the twin of mine. I went straight to the dining table which was positioned in front of the picture window that looked down on Spadina. Only three floors above the street, the traffic noise was a constant hum and occasional heart-stopping squeal. I pulled out one of the high-backed chairs and sat.

“What are you making for dinner?” I asked. “It smells delicious.”

Bonnie plunked down a tray laden with tea pot, cups, and a plate of chocolate brownies. The pot and cups were glazed in gradations of blue, from almost black at the base to a nearly white rim. Each handle was a braided twist that incorporated all the shades in an intricate interplay of strands.

“Ratatouille,” she said, “one of Robin's meatless favourites. I thought I'd surprise him with it.” She sighed. “There's lots of it. You want to stay to eat? No sense in it going to waste.”

“He has to work late?” I asked her.

“Yeah.” She poured the tea.

“Again?”

“You know how it is.”

I knew. “It goes with the territory. We're lucky, being in school. We may have to stay up all night writing papers, but at least we can sleep in in the morning. Clock-punchers don't get much choice.”

“It's nothing to joke about. He works far too hard. They take advantage of him.”

“Who?”

“The kids, the other social workers, the administrators. He cares too much. He even brings them here, you know, kids just off the street: hookers and drug users, it doesn't matter to him. He'll say the hostel's full and they need a place to stay. Some of them have lice.” She shivered.

“Isn't that what you fell in love with? His goodness?”

“Taking in strays, you mean? Like me?”

“You weren't exactly needy.”

“But straying,” she tried to laugh. “Harold would say I'm getting my comeuppance. My mother says, if you make a bed, you have to lie in it.”

“How is your mother?”

“You're changing the subject.”

I sighed. “You knew what he was like when you decided to move here with him. And you know he only works so many extra shifts because you need the money.”

“I didn't leave Harold and the kids to sit in this dump weekend after weekend by myself.”

“You've got your thesis.”

She poked the stack of papers piled on the end of the table so viciously that they teetered. I caught them before they fell.

“Sorry.” Bonnie bit her lip. “I don't know what good it's going to do me. There are no jobs anyway, with the recession.”

“Tell me about it.” I readied myself to stand. “There were only three tenure-track jobs advertised in all of Canada in my field this past year and they were all in the prairies. Sometimes, I wonder why we bother.”

“Don't go yet.” Bonnie grabbed my hand across the table. “I won't talk about myself any more, I promise. You haven't had a brownie yet. Try one.” She picked up one herself and licked at the icing. “I'm supposed to be on a diet, you know.”

“Why do you keep doing this to yourself? It's a roller coaster: you lose a few pounds, go back to eating normally, and the weight just comes back.”

“I know, I know. You and Robin are the same.
You look fine the way you are.
You wouldn't say that if you were me.” She grabbed a handful of flesh from her midriff and shook it in disgust. “I hate the way I look. You should have seen me when I was sixteen.”

“Isn't that the year you were anorexic?”

“I just didn't like to eat. My mother's a lousy cook.” She ran her fingers through her blonde hair, lifting it high and then letting it cascade down her back. “And I'm thinking of cutting my hair all off too. Get one of those mushroom cuts, you know?”

“So you and Robin will look like the Bobbsey Twins? Come on, Bonn, that long straight hair suits you.”

“I just want a change.” She rolled her hair into a tight knot and held it on top of her head. When I smiled, she let it go. “Anyway,” she continued, “tell me everything. Your aunt first. No, the fortune.”

I circled the rim of my mug with one finger. “This is beautiful,” I stalled. “Who made it?”

“Me.”

“I didn't know you were a potter.”

She shrugged. “Ryan was into making mud pies, so I thought I would too.”

“You shouldn't put yourself down like that.” I picked up the pot and turned it to admire the wildflowers delicately etched into the glaze. “These are really special. I love this shade of blue.”

“Everything I made is blue: dishes, bowls, mugs, what-have-you. Harold likes to have things match and his house has blue carpets. Besides, my mood then was always blue, sometimes a little lighter, mostly like this.” And she traced the navy lines that underlay all the pieces, the dark shadow behind every daisy.

I sipped the tea. It was fragrant with cinnamon and had a strong cidery aftertaste. Bonnie put her cup down and shook her hair free of her face.

“Enough about me. Now, tell.”

“There's not much. And the fortune's not money, but land.”

“In the city? Her house? Lucky you.”

“No, no, not the house. It's in pretty bad shape, anyway, probably cost more than it's worth to fix up. She had fifty cats living with her, can you imagine?”

“Fifty? How big was the house?”

“Not big enough. There were litter pans everywhere. It'll be impossible to get the smell out.”

“So where's this land?”

“In Haliburton. Have you ever heard of Cook's Lake?”

“You're joking! Are you sure you've got the name right? Cook's Lake?”

“Apparently it's named for the family.”

“It seems amazing, but I've been there, you know. Harold's sister's husband has a friend who has land up there and we went to visit a couple of times before the kids were born. And one of Robin's runaways…” she paused.

“Yeah?” I encouraged.

She shook her head. “I shouldn't have said that. It's confidential. Robin's always warning me I talk too much. But it's one of the places he's been visiting lately. On business,” she added, hastily. “You're really lucky, Rosie. It's beautiful country up there.”

“With my luck, I've inherited all the swampy bits,” I laughed.

“You never know. It could be worth a fortune. Cottage land is at such a premium these days. My brother-in-law was always talking about how his friend's property could be developed; it had enough shoreline for a whole subdivision of cottages.”

“Which are probably there by now. What I've got is one hundred acres of family land. My grandfather left it to my aunt with the understanding that she was to pass it on to me. And if I don't want it, I'm supposed to give it to the government. For the birds.” I giggled, stifling a yawn. “What a day.”

“Boy, if I came into land like that, I'd sell it and take the money, and leave.”

“Where would you go?”

“Paris, the south of France, Tahiti. I'd go to a real art school. I've always wanted to be an artist.”

“What about Robin? The kids?”

She shrugged. “It might be nice to be really free…” Her voice trailed into silence. She shook herself. “What do you mean: if you don't want it? If you don't want to live there, you could sell it.”

“It's all very complicated. I don't know if I should take it.”

“Do you have any idea what land up there is worth these days? Especially if it has waterfront. Does it?”

“Markham said something about a thousand feet of shoreline.”

“Wow! You're in the money!” She reached over and shook my hand, then blinked, puzzled. “Did you say Markham? Not Roger Markham?”

“Don't tell me he's your brother-in-law. Ex-brother-in-law, I mean.”

“Small world.” Bonnie's lips twitched in an awkward grin.

“You're kidding.”

She shook her head. “I can't seem to get away from Harold, no matter how much I try. How is old Roger these days? I haven't seen him or talked to him since Harold and I split up.”