The Fortunate Brother (8 page)

“But she was home all night,” said Wade.

“That's what her sister Karen told the cops, right, Wade? That Bonnie was home all night.”

“Right. But nobody seen her car.”

“Nobody seen her, either. Floyd Murphy's sitting by his window with a sprained foot since yesterday and he never seen her coming or going. Or her car. But it was too foggy last night to see much.”

“But
Mrs.
Murphy seen her this morning looking through her room window.”

“So she's home but nobody sees her car.”

“Perhaps she lent it to somebody,” said Kyle.

“We'd know it if she did. Right?”

“Ye fellows going to trim that plastic?”

“Right, Uncle Syl,” said Wade. “Three-quarter-foot strips.”

“Don't take your eyes off them clouds. If she starts raining when we starts pouring, you gets it covered fast.”

“Else it's like fish on a flake, hey, Uncle Syl? A drop of rain and the whole thing's dun. Get it? Dun? Done?”

“Dun?”
asked Kyle.

“Dun. Dun, b'y. Mould on a fish. If they gets wet drying on the flakes,” he said to Kyle's blank look. “Jaysus, b'y, where you been?” Wade winked at Kyle as Sylvanus started back to his shovel,
muttering something about them all being too smart for him. “Some mood, ain't he, Kyle, man?”

Kyle gave a commiserative nod and picked up the ends of a couple of two-by-twelves. He dragged them over to the corner his father was working on. Murdered. Clar Gillard was murdered.

He threw down the wood and picked up his spade and started digging.

“How come you never spoke about the fight?” asked Sylvanus.

“Wasn't a fight.”

“It was something.”

“Fucker clocked me one.”

“How come you never spoke about it?”

“Would've. Had time.”

“You could've got that in.”

“That's it now, was nothing to it. I come out of the club and he cracked my jaw. Woke up in the ditch.” He looked to the road as the whine of a faulty alternator preceded Kate's old Volvo. Throwing down his shovel, he started across the site, rubbing his hands on the sides of his jeans.

Kate was getting out of her car, her grey braid trailing beneath a wool toque and her fingerless gloves a grey arc as she waved in greeting. She closed her car door and he felt again that patient, expectant air around her as she watched him approach. Her grey-green eyes appeared to be twinkling behind the lenses of her wire-framed glasses, but up close he saw they weren't twinkling at all, just light dancing on glass. He didn't see Kate much outside her nightly fire. How many times, he now wondered, was he tricked into thinking she was smiling when she wasn't?

His jeans were creeping down his hipbone like he was losing weight and he hooked his finger through a belt loop, jerking them back up. “Looking for the inspector's job, Kate?”

She waved towards the cousins fumbling with the roll of plastic they were spreading out. “Expect you got all the help you need.” She pulled a pack of smokes from her back pocket and lifted one to her mouth and offered him one.

“Still quit.”

She struck a match to her cigarette and pushed back tendrils of hair flickering about her face from the wind. “Clar Gillard got a hole in him,” she said, tossing the match aside.

“They know who done it yet?”

“Nope. The cops are out from Corner Brook, questioning everyone they sees on the road. Thought I'd tell you what I told them. That I picked you up in my car around eleven-thirty last night, walking home from the club. And we built a fire and talked till past midnight when your father showed up with Hooker. And that you went home shortly after. Your father followed around a half hour later. Oh, and I happened into your mother earlier—she was taking a walk. She says she don't' remember when either of you got home, she was sleeping.”

Kyle was staring at her in surprise. “That's nice of you, Kate. But why the hell would you tell lies to the cops? And would Mother bother telling you—”

“The cops talked to her before me. It's fine,” she said to his sudden look of consternation, “they're talking to everybody. That's how they learned about your fight with Clar. They spoke with Hooker first and he come to me and we fixed up the details, smooth it all over.”

“Smooth what all over? Jesus Christ, you thinking I need an alibi?”

“No, b'y, calm down. I'm just following along with Hooker. He told the cops your father was passed out in the truck behind the club all night…picked it up from there.”

“So—why wouldn't I have drove the old man home in his truck? Why would I have walked?”

“You weren't thinking straight. Took a punch to the jaw and a blow to the head when you fell. Hooker went looking for you in your father's truck. Look, this is Hooker's blabbering and that's what we're stuck with. Go with it—beats having your old man drinking and driving.” She got back in her car, tossing the better part of her cigarette into the ditch. Kyle went after her.

“What's all this to you? Lying to the cops, that's a bigger rap than the old man's driving record.”

“Perhaps I'm just thinking about your mother, Kyle. Looks like she got enough on her mind these days. Go tell your dad where he was last night.”

Kyle stood himself before her car door, keeping her from closing it. “You thinking I put the hole in Gillard?”

“Not thinking nothing. Word is you left the bar between eleven and eleven-fifteen. Then had a fight with Clar and nobody seen you after. So happens I seen you. Around eleven-thirty.” She started backing up. He let go of her door and she drove off, pulling it shut.

“Eleven-thirty-five,” he yelled after her. “More convincing when it's specific!” Least, that's what he'd learned from watching cop shows.

Sylvanus was bent over, digging. His cousins were hunched over the sheet of plastic they'd stretched onto the ground, readying to cut. They looked at him curiously as he strolled past. “What did you do last night?” he asked, bending down beside his father.

“You going to work today?”

“Asking what you done last night.”

“I done nothing. I done what you done.”

What I done
. Kyle rose. Rocked back on his heels.
What I done. Right. Drunk and bawling in a ditch. That's just the size of it,
now, isn't it? Me drunk and bawling in a ditch and you drunk and bawling in the truck. Some loopholes ought to be drawn tight. God bless Kate.

“The cops are coming,” he said to his father. “Hooker said you were passed out in your truck all night. Behind the club.”

Sylvanus placed the tip of his spade against the curved side of a rock embedded in the footing and levered it out, his face wincing as though he'd levered it from his ankle bone.

“Is that where you were?” asked Kyle.

“Must have. I woke up there.”

“And Hooker drove you to the gravel flat around midnight. I was already there having a beer with Kate. I left and went home and you came home after you finished a beer with Hooker—around a half hour later. We better stick to the story else Hooker will be nabbed for lying. Making you look good—drinking and driving. You got all that?”

Sylvanus looked at him hard. “What's there to get? Truth, isn't it?”

“Sure, b'y. By the way, the cops after talking to Mom. She told them she don't' know what time we got home, she was sleeping.”

Sylvanus went back to digging.

“She's thinking like Hooker, I suppose. Don't want you hauled in for drinking and driving.”

“Bit late for that.”

“Whatever. That's what they're after saying. Better go along with it.” Kyle looked up the road. A blue and white police cruiser hummed into sight. “Yup. Dogs getting run over around here this morning. Not used to this kinda traffic. We better go talk to them.”

“They wants me now, they can come here. Get their shoes dirty.”

“Suppose, b'y. Wouldn't want to seem too eager, hey.” Kyle picked up his spade and jabbed its pointed tip into the soil, half
watching the police car pull up alongside the truck and park. Two cops got out and started across the muddied floor of the site towards his cousins. They were square shouldered and sober faced, walking the bow-legged walk of just about every cop he'd ever seen on the tube—like they had a billy bat reamed up their arses. His cousins let go of the plastic and stood big-eyed and nosy as the cops came up to them. Kyle couldn't make out what they were saying, a garble of sounds. Wade's voice tense with excitement, Lyman giggling too loud over something Wade was saying.

The cops took their leave of the cousins, and Kyle bent himself around his shovel as they approached. One was portly around the belly and with heavy jowls and a wattle starting to droop over his tightly buttoned shirt collar. His pants sagged at the knees as though he'd been called away from a comfy desk job. The other was younger, leaner, with small raisin eyes and a crooked nose that had been broken once, maybe twice. Probably why he's a cop, get the bastards who squished his snout.

“How you doing,
bays
,” said the elder, taking on the outport talk. Jaysus. Kyle forced himself to stand at attention. His father kept on digging and the cop spoke louder.

“Sylvanus Now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sergeant MacDuff here, sir. Few questions for you. Might I have your attention, sir?”

“I'm listening.” Sylvanus kept on shovelling.

“Your
full
attention, sir?”

Sylvanus straightened, raising dark eyes onto MacDuff and pointing his spade at the cloud starting to fill in.

“I got fifty bags of cement to pour before
she
starts pouring. You do your job,
b'y,
as I does mine.”

MacDuff turned to Kyle.

“You're Kyle Now? Would you go with Constable Canning, sir?”

Kyle laid aside his shovel and followed Constable Canning across the site, trying to think of a cop show where a sergeant rode in a cop car with a constable. His cousins were staring openly and he motioned for them to keep working. Coming to the police car, he faced the constable who was already scribbling in a notebook, eyes shaded by the brim of his cap. He looked back at his father who was still shovelling as MacDuff stood beside him, scribbling in his own notebook.

“I understand you were in a fight with Clar Gillard last evening?” asked Constable Canning.

“No, sir.”

Constable Canning looked up from beneath the brim of his cap.

“He sucker-punched me.”

“Why did he do that?”

“You'll have to ask him.”

Constable Canning raised his cap with the butt of his pen and spoke in a bored tone. “We would, son. But he's dead. Why did Clar Gillard hit you?”

Son? Jaysus, the fucker had but ten years on him. “I don't know.”

“Somebody smashes his fist to your jaw and you don't have any indication why?”

“Not when it's Clar Gillard. Too much pressure on the limbic system, they says. But looks like it's cured now.” Kyle smiled.

“Murder's not something to be grinning about, son.”

“Call me Kyle.”

“Had you seen Clar Gillard earlier that day, Kyle?”

“Yes, sir. He was blocking a public road with his truck while he played with his dog. So, I waited till he was done and then drove home.”

“It's been reported that you had words before you drove off.”

“No sir, I did not.”

“Your father?”

“You can ask him that.”

“Kyle, you and me can drive to Deer Lake and we can talk about it some more if you like.”

“My father started pushing Clar's truck off the road to clear it. Clar got the message. He stopped playing with his dog and got in his truck and drove off.”

“Were there words exchanged?”

You move it, buddy, or I'll drown it and you in it.

“I don't remember none.”

“When did you see Clar Gillard after that?”

“Outside the club around eleven. He was standing in the shadows and fisted me in the face. I woke up in the ditch.”

“What did you do then?”

“Started walking home.”

“How long were you knocked out?”

“A minute. Boys were still singing Creedence. Clearwater,” he added at a blank look from the constable. Jaysus. “It's a band. They were singing the same song when I woke up.”

“And then what did you do?”

“What I just said. I went home.”

“Why didn't you go tell somebody in the club what happened?”

“Don't need nobody fighting my battles.”

“So you went after Clar Gillard yourself?”

“They calls that putting words in your mouth in cop shows.”

Constable Canning looked up as though pained by an abscessed tooth.

“This is a murder investigation, Kyle. Not a fool's game. Just answer the question.”

“What is the question?”

“What did you do after you woke up?”

“I started walking home.”

“Did you go after Clar Gillard?”

“No. I did not go after Clar Gillard. I started walking home.”

“You went straight home after the altercation?”

“There weren't no altercation. I was sucker-punched.”

“You went straight home after Mr. Gillard hit you?”

“No. I started walking home and Kate picked me up.”

“Kate—?”

“Kate Mackenzie. You spoke with her earlier.”

“She told you that?”

“There's not a soul in this outport don't know it.”

“Does anyone know who knifed Clar Gillard?”

“I imagine the person who done it.”

“Do you know who that might be?”

“No. I do not.”

“At what time did Kate Mackenzie pick you up last night?”