Grave Concern (41 page)

THE PROBLEM OF NICHOLAS

Knowns

1. Nicholas is a straight-ahead guy, and wouldn't lie to me.
   
2. Nicholas seemed very stressed while he was here.
   

Unknowns

1. Would
   he? (refer to no. 1 previous)
   
2. Was N's stress to do with the cougar/MNR work, J.P.'s legacy, or something else?
   
3. Did N have an agreement with J.P. over something — say, what should happen to J.P.'s belongings if something should happen to him?
   
4. What did they really talk about that day behind the shed?
   
5. Did Nicholas hang around when the Angels came for altruistic reasons, or to get his hands on the strongbox?
   
6. Could Nicholas have changed so much morally that he could do the above?
   
7. How happy is Nicholas's family life? Could impending divorce provide motivation for N needing some quick money?
   

THE PROBLEM OF JOHN MARCOTTE

Knowns

1. He's living off not very much, and has obviously had to downsize and down-market his life.
   
2. He was pissed off with J.P.'s shady past.
   
3. He seemed genuinely upset when he saw J.P.'s grave.
   
4. Which suggests he did have some feelings still for his son.
   
5. All this has aged him quickly and obviously caused him much stress.
   
6. Yet he recently bought a car, and probably not too cheaply, at Croker's Motors.
   

Unknowns

1. Why the change of heart about knowing the grave's whereabouts? Genuine remorse or a desperate need for money he knew/believed/guessed might be buried there? Or both?
   
2. What was his relationship with J.P.'s older brother, Guy? What was the family dynamic that led Guy to beat on his brother?
   
3. Freudian slip: Was the “John” on Adele's tongue John Marcotte?
   
4. Where did M. get the cash for a new car?
   

THE PROBLEM OF ADELE NIEDMEYER

Knowns

1. Adele knew Mom well in their early years, but the friendship fell off.
   
2. Adele was Madama Della (I'm almost sure) at the summer fair. She seemed to know something she wasn't saying even then.
   She knew I would come back.
   
3. Same as when we had our day out at the grave. She
   knows
   something.
   

Unknowns

1. But
   what
   does she know? And why keep it back?
   
2. Why did her friendship with Mom falter? Was it as she said, just being busy with kids? Or something else?
   

THE PROBLEM OF GRETA

Knowns

Greta's words months ago at the graveyard as I was pulling out: “You liked him, didn't you … I mean, a lot.” There was something in Greta's voice I've never heard before …

Unknowns

… a tiny pulse of Greta's heart? Metaphorically speaking. A clue to where Greta's interests lay? Lie. Not with Foxy, subject of our mutual prepubescent desire and now her husband. Could our taste in boys, once similar, have remained so into adulthood? When Greta insisted to Annabel that day behind the school that she hated J.P. for riding her bike into the river, I, Kate Smithers, supreme idiot, took her at her word. But suppose Greta loved J.P. too?

Kate needed air. She flipped the shirt off her sweltering head. All of this was either good work or totally useless and exhausting. She closed the laptop and put it with the empty beer can in her pack, stood up on her rock, and looked around.

A pair of mallards, the male colourful and confident, the female determined and drab, chose that moment to swim by. Kate stood very still. The female slowed and dipped her beak in some floating muck. Then, as though suddenly irritated, she screwed her neck around and poked at her back feathers. Apparently oblivious, the male slowed his pace as well and swam aimlessly about. Where had Kate seen this before? Of course! At Mega-Mall out west: the bored husband and window-shopping wife. Kate laughed aloud, and the pair squawked into sudden flight.

Was it the avian connection? Kate felt a sudden urge to tweet. She pulled out her phone. “@graveconcerninc Nothing in the world could induce me to leave this place.”

Kate poked about in the shallows in bare feet. The water was cool but comfortable, still far from the bone-chilling cold that would presage freeze-up. She stepped carefully, wary of freshwater clams that lurked in the sand, ready to cut her feet. Reeds caught her toes and then wrapped them up like packages, forcing her to patiently unwind the long grasses strand by strand. As giant Kate wandered this tiny world — inciting sleeping minnows to mass panic, stirring up miniature mud volcanoes — a story, a possible scenario, began to write itself in her head:

When the bikers arrived at King's Hotel, they'd gone straight for the shed, easily setting alight the old wooden structure. J.P., alerted by the commotion, ran out and straight into the hotel, thinking if more was coming, he was damned if he was going to let his life savings go up in smoke. If Raw-Raw was around, he'd rescue her, too. But by the time he retrieved the strongbox from its hiding place in his bedroom, the place was on fire. Miscommunication among the bikers themselves, perhaps, as to what they were supposed to be doing. The bikers, having done what they came to do, had disappeared already, and J.P. believed he was alone.

The front door was blocked by a fallen beam. He ran to the side. But that entrance was even worse, being nearest the shed, now pretty much destroyed, and surrounded by the dry summer grasses that grew unchecked and uncut along the beaten path between the two. Now he really was scared. His only hope for escape was a window. Pure fear drove him to yell for help, and this was the yelling Nicholas heard. Nicholas yelled back, and hearing him, J.P.'s hopes surged.

The old windows were small, as Adele had said. Made up of four panes, divided by thick wooden mullions.

“Watch out!” J.P. screamed, and heaved the heavy strongbox through the window.

But it took out just a single pane, and the mullions remained undisturbed. The box was outside. J.P., now engulfed in smoke, staggered away from the window's puff of fresh air, back into the bar's interior, and grabbed a stool. He came back, bashed the remaining panes out with the stool, but the mullions refused to budge. He would need a tool of some kind. An axe. Where was the axe? In the shed.

By this time, he was heaving, gasping, seriously weakened. Smoke billowed throughout the tavern — from both front and side. It seemed as anxious as he was to get out the window — by rolling right over him. He flopped to the floor, looking for fresher air. He found a bit, but then hadn't the strength to rise and fight. He laid his head down — his warm brown curls blending seamlessly with the maple planking, his smoker's lungs doing their best, the flames working their way toward him — and passed out.

The volunteer firefighters hacked out an opening with their axes. It was the young fellow no one knew well, the one who had arrived from several miles up the highway, who, in his smoke blindness, literally tripped over the victim and called out. J.P. was carried out the new opening and loaded into the just-arrived ambulance. This same young volunteer, on his way back from delivering the victim to work a hose, noticed the metal box lying on its side in the dirt. He noted the surrounding broken glass, and guessed what had occurred. He tucked the box under his firefighter gear, with a mental note to get it back to the victim, or if worse came to worst, to the family — and gave it little thought after that.

Sometime later, but well before the fire's cause was known to be arson, this firefighter, having discovered the victim's identity, and having had a passing acquaintance with the older brother, Guy, took it upon himself to personally deliver the strongbox, the sole effect not destroyed by the fire, to the family home. J.P.'s own home, of course, had been the hotel itself, and so the Marcotte home was the next best thing.

Wasn't this young man surprised, when right there at their front door, the grateful tears he was expecting failed to materialize. Instead, an ugly scene played out, old man Marcotte and his wife slagging each other off. It was downright embarrassing. By the time he extricated himself, the firefighter had gathered three things: one — the contents of the box were somehow tainted; two — John, the husband and father, was ready to dispose of the box then and there, while Rita, the wife and mother, wanted to save it; and three — Rita appeared to be gaining the upper hand.

By the time the matter came to trial, this young firefighter had perhaps gone off to college in the city. There was no particular reason anyone could divine to bring him back for the proceedings. A few details of the rescue and J.P.'s vital signs were nailed down over the phone; otherwise, everything seemed straightforward. The strongbox never came up. That left just the family, sworn to secrecy by Rita, and Nicholas, who knew of its existence.

Days later, after delivering the ultimatum regarding his burial (despite — or because of — the Catholic background, he insisted on cremation), J.P. died. In a cruelly ironic twist, the ashes were delivered to the door (by Greta Krebs's father, Heinrich) in much the same manner as the strongbox. This was the moment John Marcotte repudiated his son once and for all. Having struggled through the agony of hospital visits, having wrestled with the guilt and anger the strongbox had evoked, John senior simply could not carry on. He could not live with his son when he was alive. He could not live without him, dead and gone. The pain would only subside if he washed his hands of everything. Everything. He did not want to bury the ashes. He did not want to know where someone else buried them. He did not want to speak or think of this most infuriating offspring to be visited on a man. The one who might, if he'd had any guts or sense, have taken what John and Rita gave him and made himself into something. Something more than his old man rotting among his rotten old antiques, by the side of a highway to nowhere.

The dam in Kate's head gave way completely, and a flood of detail poured from her frantic fingers:

Raw-Raw had escaped the fire, hadn't even been there, playing instead with the local children at the park. Plucking shiny things dropped from their upside-down pockets, gathering, building her treasury of delights. When she had her fill and returned to the hotel, she sensed a dark change in the world. She flew around and around — could, in fact, fly perfectly well — cawing out her distress. By now, only a handful of firemen and cops were left, standing firm in a storm of whirling ash. The place had burnt to the ground, leaving only a surprising foundation. Someone looked up at the raven's calling, recognized Raw-Raw and said as much, but no one replied or paid much attention. The historic building gone, the proprietor as good as, nothing much to be done. Who cared about that mangy bird?

To soothe herself, Raw-Raw headed for the other place associated with Jaypee: the house over town where his Old Ones lived. She hung out in the lane behind the Marcotte home, pecking desultorily at this and that, unnerved and uncertain.

One morning, perched high in a tall poplar, Raw-Raw noticed a gathering of Walking Ones. Jaypee's Old One, the female, was among them, carrying a shiny. Two shinies. Cradled carefully, protected in the Old One's wings. The Walking Ones entered the great shiny nest that growled and stank and moved them about. Raw-Raw followed the moving nest to a place on the edge of the forest, where the nest stopped. The Walking Ones were regurgitated. From high above, Raw-Raw spied the two shinies still tucked in the Old One's wingtips.

Raw-Raw watched the proceedings below. The Walking Ones pushed a long stick in and out of the ground, over and over, bringing up dirt, opening the earth. Then low, endless garbling came out of the Walking Ones' mouths. Then Jaypee's Old One, still holding the shinies, folded down on her backward knees, opened her wingtips —
and put the shinies in the ground!