Grave Concern (23 page)

“Exxxcuse me,” Kate mumbled, “… must go and — ” She peeled around the corner into the bathroom and whammed the door closed. In the harsh light, the toilet bowl gleamed and heaved. Seconds later, it was obliterated in mess and stink. Kate gazed down in amazement. Had all that come out of her? Kate leaned on the sink and stood up, and the copycat hag in the mirror did the same.

Kate splashed her face and neck. She washed her hands with soap and water. She lowered cheek and mouth and chin to the waterfall's cool caress. As Kate hung there under the flow, the gushing sound took its place in the happy jig emanating from the ad hoc band, spinning an auditory thread that reconnected Kate to the world. Taking the guest towel she herself had neatly folded so long ago, she mopped herself up, ran a comb through her hair. Not perfect, but it would have to do.

Someone thumped on the door.

“Just a minute!” Kate called. What a stupid thing she'd done.

Think
,
Kate
,
make a plan
. Flushing the toilet took care of approximately half the mess. Now, what? Kate remembered the paper towel stashed under the sink. She hauled it out and found an old lipstick in the vanity. “SORRY, OUT OF ORDER,” she wrote in the lurid red, “USE UPSTAIRS LOO.” Okay, time to roll. Kate opened the door a crack, pushed the button to lock automatically, and peered out. In the dim hallway, Kate saw no one. Whoever had knocked was apparently gone. She scooted out, stuffed the paper towel note in the crack, and pulled the door firmly to. A satisfying
click
. So far, so good.

Kate didn't so much see as
feel
the body until she'd tumbled over it. With a sick feeling that brought back all-too-recent events, Kate crawled back to see what had tripped her up.

Nicholas Enderby lay curled on his side, leaking blood from his head on the carpet, to all appearances dead.

Several tissues of the many that comprised Kate's layered inebriation now disintegrated. She grabbed Nicholas's wrist. Nothing. She leaned down. Warmth wafted up her cheek, steady and deep. Breathing, thank God. Kate was so relieved she laughed aloud — well, she never had been much good at getting a pulse.

Now Nicholas groaned and stirred, lifting a hand to his face.

“Who did this!” demanded Kate.

“Ooouchh, don't yell,” Nicholas said.

“Who did this?” hissed Kate.

Nicholas did not reply. Tentatively probing his bloody nose, he kept struggling to rise. Kate watched, reluctant to help, suspecting this was going nowhere good. Finally, bracing himself on the wall, Nicholas wobbled to his knees, then gained his feet. Next thing Kate knew, he was staggering back into the mob, parting the partiers with an outstretched arm.

Kate reached the other room just as Nicholas's fist connected with Bill Chambers's jaw. Bill staggered back, displacing in consequence a large segment of the throng, which reconstituted itself like a battered seashore after a storm. Foxy Raymond materialized (who invited him?) and took a drunken swing at Nicholas, missed, and accidentally caught Leonard square in the gut. Leonard folded and crumpled to the floor.

“Idiots! Numbskulls!” Kate screamed, and crouched beside Leonard, asking was he all right.

“Been better,” Leonard said, and passed out.

The band, ceasing musical efforts, now waded in. Eamon signalled to Mary and the two of them dove to the floor, grabbed one each of Foxy's legs and held on. Thus entrapped, Foxy continued swinging, throwing numerous useless punches but mostly himself off balance. In a final exertion, he heaved his puny weight toward the passing Gwyneth Waters, who swivelled with lightning rapidity and kneed him neatly in the groin.

Still on the ground beside Leonard, Kate looked up for help. Her child's-eye view up whirling skirts and flaring noses left her less than entranced. All around, partygoers had exploded in a riot of punching, slapping and kicking. A glass shattered, then another, and something cold sprayed the back of her neck. The sea of bodies parted for an instant, and Kate saw Buck Miller, on the other side of the room, sweep Ron up in a fireman's carry. Ron wriggled and kicked and pounded Buck's back. Defending her man, Hille ragged Buck like a wildcat, clawing and scratching unmindful of manicure, and finally biting deep in the shoulder. With a howl, Buck turned, spinning the hapless Ron around, his swinging head barely missing the bevy of bystanders who drew back as though choreographed. Now Buck got a boot on Hille's backside and shoved her unceremoniously into the kitchen. An almighty crash and splinter of wood suggested one of two eventualities in Ludmilla's crustaceous existence: happy liberation or violent demise. Garbling incomprehensibly, Leonard started to sit up. Kate pushed him back down and held him there with one arm, using the other to fend off swirling feet and fists. At this juncture, Mayor Hinks set down Kate's guitar, and finding all regular exits blocked by sparring constituents, looked about wildly for escape.

Kate watched, incredulous — how had her lovely party come to this? Credulity, however, was to be still further tested. For at that moment, Madge Fitzgerald grabbed the guitar by the throat and, mad with rage and grief for Max, deceased poodle-cross, ran up behind the mayor, who had begun, in desperation, to tiptoe up the stairs. By the time little Madge swung, the unwitting Hinks had mounted several steps, and Madge's lofty aim fell short of its target, the guitar connecting rather lower down.

With the meeting of guitar and mayoral backside, there rose an unearthly howl up the cavernous stairwell to the ceiling at the second level, from where it sharply rebounded, conferring a stony silence, if not peace, upon the assemblage.

3

The Grave

Something seized Kate in a merciless grip. A lobster of giant proportions clasped Kate's skull in its pincers, squeezing for all it was worth.

Now it spoke in Bubble language: “This one's too old. Look, too calcified to crack.”

A still larger lobster moved in to help. “Let me try,” it burbled.

The vise around Kate's temples probed and squeezed, pressing flesh on bone. The cage of her brow, jelly eyes in their sockets, her neatly coiled brains — set to explode …

Kate awoke sitting up and halfway out of bed.

“Ohhhhh,” she groaned, holding her head.

There was no question of lying back down. Her bladder was too full in any case — she was condemned to the bathroom trek. Gently, gently, Kate tried to stand up, but her body could not support her thrumming skull. Down, down she went to hands and knees, crawling across her room and down the hall.

The bathroom door was closed — odd. Odder still, a note was Scotch-taped at what would normally be knee-level, now at perfect reading height:

In order to shower, Kate had to move Ludmilla to the kitchen sink, which she accomplished slowly, with eyes half-closed so as to see as little as possible of the general wreckage. Back upstairs, Kate stood a good twenty minutes in a hot shower, but it was like running the dear old Impala through Poppy's Carwash downtown. You could hose down and buff up the exterior all you liked, but the hard-used interior was still grimy and grit-caked.

Kate dressed and ventured to the guest room. Receiving no reply to soft taps on the door, she turned the knob and tiptoed in, suddenly fearful Leonard might have succumbed to Foxy's punch. To her relief, Leonard stirred. Kate was about to turn and flee, when his hand shot out and caught hers.

“It's okay, I need to get up. Gotta work in a couple of hours,” he said. He said all this with his eyes still closed, as though it would pain him to open them. Kate had to admit he was a beautiful specimen, long dark lashes twitching on his cheek as his eyes turned beneath their lids. The cheek itself was as smooth as a woman's and the most gorgeous golden colour. It was all she could do not to stroke it with a knuckle.

Instead, she exclaimed, “Work! You were out cold, you realize. How's the belly?” Leonard's hand, warm and dry, held on to hers.

“Queasy, but all right.”

Kate was suddenly embarrassed. How had this come about — Leonard sleeping in her house, not exactly in
her
bed, but close enough?

“Not exactly how I'd pictured our first night,” Leonard said.

Whoa.
Kate didn't know where to rest her eyes — anywhere but on the man lying there in her guest bed.

She babbled, buying time. “So you
had
pictured it,” she said.

“Hadn't you?” Leonard replied.

“Okay, yes, I guess I had.
Have.
” Kate laughed. “It's complicated. Uh, can I get you anything? Water?”

“Sure, thanks,” Leonard said. Kate pulled away and headed across the hall.

“Quite a party, Kate!” Leonard shouted over as she filled a glass.

“Yes, well, it didn't go quite according to plan.”

“Do they ever?” Leonard said.

Kate handed him the glass. “Well, that's a jolly attitude,” she said. “But at the moment, I see what you mean.”

“I guess I'm not a big one for parties, not my style.”

“I kind of figured, when you wouldn't quit wiping those bloody glasses and serving drinks. Uh, listen, someone took a power sander to my guts overnight and there's a lobster living in my kitchen sink. I don't even want to think about the state of this place. Can we talk tomorrow or sometime? Have a shower if you like, there're clean towels in the bathroom.”

Leonard nodded and smiled. “Thanks for this.”

“What, for my guest laying you low with a punch? And it was Mary, I think, who put us to bed. I don't recall much after Madge Fitzgerald spanked the mayor with my guitar.”

Leonard laughed. “Wish I'd seen that.”

Kate laughed too. “One off the bucket list, that. So, Mr.
Ho Lam
,” said Kate, moving to the door, “I'll leave you to it.”

Kate and Leonard sat in Kate's kitchen, staring into their coffee mugs. That is, Leonard was staring. Kate furtively watched him, wondering what had possessed her, in a state of decent sobriety, to open the can of worms that was J.P., the errant grave and her own pitiful history.

It all started when Leonard mentioned he'd seen a girl he used to babysit at the party.

“You're kidding me. You mean that Natalie? The only one young enough, I figure,” said Kate.

“Yup, that's the one. Nice kid. Always was.”

“Maybe too nice,” replied Kate. “She offered me cod tongue. I think that's what set me off.” She nodded toward the bathroom door down the hall, still sporting its lipstick scrawled message. “Oh my God.” Kate's head dropped into her shaking hands. “There's still that to clean up.”

“Yeah, I wondered last night why you were in there so long,” Leonard smiled.

“I was trying to reach you, believe it or not,” Kate said. “I just kept getting interrupted.”

“Party girl, interrupted.”

“Oh, man. It all seems like a bad dream now. That Natalie, I met her before, well, sort of through a bathroom door. At Longshots. She's a friend of — ” Kate stopped abruptly.

“Of who?” Leonard asked.

“
Whom
. Uh, it's complicated. Actually the friend of the niece of a friend. Just someone I sort of knew a long time ago. Not much to tell, really. Pretty lame. You wouldn't be interested.”

Leonard cast a shrewd eye upon his hostess. “Methinks Kate doth protest too much,” he said.

“Whaddya mean?”

“That you're a lousy liar?” Leonard's voice rose in a question, but his point was clear.

“Ouch,” Kate said. “How did I get so far in PR then? Must have lost my touch.”

“Listen to yourself!” Leonard laughed, and Kate laughed too until forced to stop by the unbearable throbbing in her head.

“Oh Leonard, never chase screech with champagne. I'm just not myself. Whoever that is.” Kate took a large slurp of coffee. “Ahhhh. Remember Java man?”

“Ah, Kate. Changing the subject again. So what about this friend slash niece slash friend thing? Wanna spill?”

“Not really.”

“C'mon, Kate, it's a topic of conversation. That party exhausted my small talk for a year.”

And so Kate had come clean, in limited fashion, about Sylvie and Guy and J.P. and John Marcotte and her own continuing quest to find out what the hell was going on.

“Why would anything be going on?” Leonard asked.

And Kate, not knowing why, running merely on hunch and feeling, had not replied.

And now Leonard was staring into his coffee, and Kate, sick at heart, was staring at Leonard, wishing she could take back every word. The doorbell rang, and Kate jumped up, thanking her stars for Mary, come to save Kate from herself, or at the very least Ludmilla from her sink. She flung the door wide.

Standing on the doorstep was a well-built, shortish man she'd never seen before, unless it had been last night, which was as good as. He stuck out his hand. “Good morning. My name is Neville Freeland. I'm looking for an old friend, Hille Hatter. She gave me this address.”

Kate walked up her steps with cold fear in her heart. She didn't know the exact time, but it was early. One thing in a small town: she knew the door would not be locked. She turned the knob slowly, remembering as she did so the coat she was wearing. Quickly, she shuffled it off and balled it up under her arm. The trick would be to reach her bedroom without bumping into walls, waking her parents.

Kate stuffed the bundle under the bed, and hearing a clunk, hauled it out again. What to do with the empty bottle? Every means of disposal was fraught. She pushed it back in the pocket.

As Kate was grasping the implications of a man named Neville standing on her doorstep, a scream emanated from the kitchen.

“Come in, come in!” Kate said to Neville and ran back to Leonard, who was dancing around the kitchen avoiding a very agitated lobster fed up with captivity and starvation, not to mention a close call with death by boiling.

“I didn't see it till it was out of the sink and ready to drop!” Leonard's breath was fast and shallow, his chest heaving like he'd run a race. “Sorry, bad experience as a kid. I'm crustaceo-phobic.”

“Okay, okay, don't hyperventilate,” said Kate. She grabbed the irritable lobster off the floor with an oven mitt and placed it back in the sink, where it continued trying to claw its way out.

“Just like Sisyphus, he is,” observed Kate.

“
She
,” Neville said, peering in.

Kate and Leonard stopped dead and stared at the stocky stranger.

“Worked a summer off PEI on a lobster rig,” he said. “About a hundred years back. Lady lobster, no guff. Got any frozen shrimp?”

No one said a word.