Forgotten (23 page)

Follow your instincts.

I stole
several thinking moments. I then looked at the disagreeable man
before me and said, “No,
Detective
Inspector, not a thing. But if anything comes up, I’ll certainly
give you a call.”

Weatherly
threw me a look full of clear cunning. “You do realize, Miss
Cabriati, that your parents lied to me about knowing Alice
Polinski.”

“They were protecting me,” I said.

“
They were
hindering a murder investigation,” he said back, “an indictable
offense.”

Was he serious?

Any past
tension I had, quickly mutated into
anger. I heard a minor shuffle to my left. Saul had
straightened, leveling a solid, threatening glare at Weatherly. And
I recall another earlier conversation, this time between Saul and
Weatherly.

“
I don
’t know who it
is you know, Reardon,” says the newly arrived Detective Inspector,
“but I don’t like any of this.” His voice is typically cold and
smarmy.

“
Not my concern,” Saul replies. “But
Claudia is. So, you are to question her in a respectable manner.
It’s not to resemble the inexcusable tactics you used on her last
time.”

“
Inexcusable tactics?” Weatherly groans
out a non-humorous laugh. “I swear one day….”

“
Is that clear?”

A very disgruntled ‘yes’ follows.

I
immediately motioned Saul to stay put. I clutched onto the lounge
tightly with both hands and arrowed towards the insidious little
man. “You know how difficult any indictment would be for my
parents?”

Weatherly
glanced at Saul. His lips curled but it was an unmistakably callous
curl, almost bordering on a true smile. “Not my concern,” he
parroted Saul’s earlier words. “I’m here to do a job.”

“
Your job?”
I laughed. It came out a little too hysterical but I didn’t care.
My so-called
Italian
pedigree
had now ballooned beyond normal
proportions. “Isn’t it your job to find out who is responsible for
these crimes? Have you
any
leads yet as to who killed
Alice Polinski?”

The
detective’s expression soured. “No, I haven’t.”

“And isn’t it your job to protect the
innocent victims. That is what I teach my students,” I said with an
added flavor of sarcasm.

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

“
Am I not
the
victim here?”

Weatherly
didn’t answer. I didn’t wait for one.

“
Then tell
me, what steps have you taken to protect me? You come here with all
your well-planned questions, all in some twisted attempt to throw
me off balance, but, not once, have you suggested any precautions I
should take, or even sound concerned for my well-being. Don’t you
find that odd for someone in your position?”

His eyes could have sliced cement. “What
would you like me to do?”

My eyes
sliced back. “Not a thing
now
.”

With one sharp, disdainful glare at Saul and
Ethan, Weatherly murmured, “Be careful, Miss Cabriati, very
careful.”

He then stood… quite abruptly. And with a
flippant click of his fingers, he and his posse left.

***

“You did well today,” Saul said, obviously
referring to Weatherly’s interview.

We had just
refilled our coffee mugs and were entering my room. I had spent the
early hours of the morning rifling through the boxes. They sat
against the wall, lined up like disheveled soldiers. On the
shag-pile rug next to the bed, laid eight, pink photo albums.
Beneath them, methodically arranged, were scores of selected
photographs.

I wasn’t
sure about having done well. Really, I had just rebuked an officer
of the law and held back vital information.
An indictable offense
,
as Weatherly had so fiercely put it. I should’ve felt appalled,
remorseful, anxious even.

But, I didn’t.

I felt
incredibly…
okay
.

“Ethan certainly thought so,” I said,
recalling his boisterous reaction.

He had taken
me by complete surprise, grabbed me by the waist and lifted me
high, like I was nothing more than a soft toy with no stuffing. The
extreme swiftness of it made me squeal. Ethan laughed. Then he
mumbled something about Weatherly’s crimson face, about his
agitated expression, about the uncomfortable way
he
wriggled, and it being the
best show Ethan had witnessed in a long time.

One more
squeal saw me back on my feet. I recalled searching for Saul. He
was still leaning against the bar, appearing extraordinarily
distant. He winked at me and then grinned. It lit up his entire
face. I sighed, strangely wishing it had been he, not Ethan, who
had lifted me with such exuberance.

Yin and yang.

“Ethan’s never been one to hold back his
feelings,” Saul said.

Was that a trace of envy I detected?

“
And he does
it with such natural ease
, damn amazing
really.”

I wanted to
say there was nothing
damn
amazing
about it. I wanted to say,
so could you.
But I remained silent as I slipped onto the floor beside my
forgotten memories.

Saul smoothed in next to me, curling his
back against the bed frame. “Nothing from Milo?”

I shook my
head. I recalled how disillusioned I felt at not hearing from Milo.
Nate was also having difficulties reaching him. This wasn’t
uncommon behavior for Milo, but, after his Christmas episode, I
found it strange that he hadn’t contacted me, particularly in light
of the recent Iacovelli incident.

“He’s probably off spreading some Christmas
cheer, totally oblivious to what’s happened.”

If it was an attempt to console me, it was a
poor one. We both knew it would’ve been impossible to escape any
news regarding Iacovelli. It was drawing space in just about every
viable form of media. Whatever Milo was involved in, it was
becoming more of a mystery by the minute.

“How about Nate? Get through to him?”

I had. It
was crucial that I warned him and our parents of Weatherly’s
threats. “My spare car key is on his keychain,” I told Saul. “Has
been there since I gave it to him. And I know Nate. He worships his
car. His keychain would always be somewhere close to him.” I smiled
wistfully recalling Nate’s brave attempt to sound unafraid of
Weatherly, of how he would protect our parents.

“
It won’t
happen.” Saul was looking at me as one reading my thoughts. “The
whole indictment thing. I’ll make sure of it.” He sounded genuinely
confident and I had to wonder, like Weatherly, just whom did Saul
know?

I tucked my
legs to one side and pulled down my flared-out mini-skirt. All of a
sudden, I felt oddly conscious of its extra short length. In the
distance, I heard the unbroken whirring of a vacuum. I steadied my
breathing along with the vacuum’s fluid rhythms and then pressed
forward.

“All these boxes,” I began, “are full of
clothes I apparently wore, toys I played with, books and more
importantly, photos.”

I pointed to
several images of me pictured with different people. The only
person I readily recognized was Alice Polinski, except for the
young man holding me in some of the snapshots. “That, I’m sure is
my father.”

“So he spoke the truth when he said he
visited you.”

I recalled
how delighted I was to discover that fact. At least Papa hadn’t
totally deserted me. “You’d think I would’ve remembered those
visits, especially in the last couple of years.” I shook my head.
“Anyway, this photo disturbs me the most.” I collected it from the
age four section and handed it to Saul.

It showed the central part of a large
mansion, foregrounded by a giant fountain. Two noble lions posed on
either side. I was sitting on the ground near one of the massive
beasts, smiling broadly. My legs were crossed, my head straight and
high, my long hair spilling down over my upright shoulders.

“You were pretty cute,” Saul commented.

The little
girl in the photo was, but I was still having difficulty connecting
her with me. I moved on. “I’ve seen this house before.” I picked up
the small, wooden box that Mel had brought and pulled it opened. On
the top, was a pile of neatly stacked cards. I pulled them out and
passed several to Saul. “Firstly, these are the cards I got every
year on December 3.”

“Celebrating the day that you were given to
Alice.”

“Yes. You’ll notice each one has a similar
message.”

Saul flipped through them. “How old were you
when you got the first one?”

I had been
eight, found it under my pillow and had thought it strange. My
birthday had been just over five weeks earlier. I thought that
maybe someone was playing a joke. So I raced to show my parents. My
mother had flown into a wild rage, seized the card and shredded it
into a mass of tiny pieces.

“I had never seen her so angry, never seen
it since,” I told Saul. “I remembered escaping to my bedroom,
hiding beneath my doona and wondering what I had done that was so
wrong. Papa soon joined me, said it wasn’t my fault. But I was
upset about it for a long time.” I sighed. “Every year the cards
appeared beneath my pillow. I collected them first in an old shoe
box, then later in this.”

“No idea how they got there?”

“Not particularly. But during the same day
of the first card, Milo saw me. He said that I obviously had a
secret admirer and maybe I should keep it just that … a secret.
After that I did. I didn’t think too much of it, but later I
thought that maybe Milo knew more about them than he was letting
on.”

Saul handed the cards back to me. “Did you
ever ask him?”

“
When I was
twelve or thirteen. He was so annoyed that I’d brought it up. Milo
isn’t the easiest person to get along with.” I packed up the cards
and put them back in the box. “He threatened to tell Mama, so I
never mentioned them again.”

“And as far as your parents were concerned,
they just assumed you never received anymore.”

“I guess so.”

“So, what happened when you left home to
live with Simon in Sydney?”

I shot an instant look at Saul and again,
silently questioned how he knew so much about me. “Slipped into our
letterbox.”

“And when you returned here, back under your
pillow?”

“
The first
one, yes. The second, as you know, Alice
delivered in person.”

In one fluid
movement, Saul crossed his arms. The short sleeves of his shirt
pulled tight, accentuating his corded biceps.
They actually rippled like….

I
swore
beneath my breath and told myself
to get a grip. That checking him out, yet again, was acting like
some woeful, pubescent teenager with a hormonal crush on her gym
teacher. I moved on, concentrating on the happy snaps of Alice,
instead. It wasn’t easy.

“
You know, I
can’t stop thinking about her. Can you imagine what it
must
’ve been like for her; to be forced
to give up a child she had reared for so long?”

“I don’t think she ever really did,” Saul
said. “The birthday cards, the house in Summit Road; she bought
that house in 1990.”

“The year we moved here.”

“
Alice was
always near you. The year you moved to Sydney, I believe she moved
there also, returning here when you did. Naturally, she had to be
careful that no one recognized her. But as the years passed, as she
aged, she would’ve felt safer, more comfortable to be seen in
public. And always in the knowledge that as long as she didn’t talk
to you, she never broke her promise.”

I shook my
head. “It’s almost too fantastic to believe. My own guardian angel,
her whole life… for me.”

“She loved you very much, Claudia.”

“Love or obsession? I’m not sure, but the
sad part is that I don’t even remember her. I never even got to
know her.” Something twinged hard in my heart. “It all seems such a
waste.”

Saul stooped
forward and caught my gaze. “You really believe that?”

“Don’t you?”

“Not at all. I don’t believe loving someone
is ever a waste. No matter how long or how short it lasts, or how
it presents itself. It’s only a waste if it’s abused. To Alice, her
love for you was paramount, so she did what she felt she had to do
to be near you. That was her choice, and in some unconventional way
it probably made her happy.”

I wanted to
believe Saul, but it still seemed all too crazy. “The more I think
about it, the more I believe that the person watching me all those
years, and at The Local, was Alice.”

Saul straightened back against the bed.
“It’d certainly fit. Except that it doesn’t explain why you felt
the figure had changed when you returned to Nankari. Anyway, you
still haven’t told me about the house. Where have you seen it?”

This next part was difficult.

From beneath
the birthday cards in the box, I plucked a pile of photographs,
secured by a gold, elasticized ribbon. I pulled at the ribbon with
jittery fingers, knowing that many included my Simon, ones that I
hadn’t set eyes upon in over fourteen months.

It amazed me
how the human mind functioned. To be able to lock away a cast of
memories behind a solid wall of willpower, memories that included
not only those best forgotten but also those that were cherished
and priceless.