Serpents Rising (32 page)

T
he dinner preparations were proceeding well.

I'd altered the menu a little. I decided that
carbonara
must be an Italian word that meant
some-really-bad-shit-is-going-to-happen-to-you
so I switched up the pasta course to a pesto primavera over spaghetti. I stayed with the mussel appetizer and a similar green salad to the first time around.

I'd cleaned the apartment to within an inch of its life, bought flowers for the table, and set them between two bottles of Amarone. I wore a light orange sweater I had bought in Vancouver a year before, over designer jeans and new sneakers and wondered, like Tom Hanks's character in
Sleepless in Seattle
, if I was trying too hard.

This time there were no visitors during my preparations and I was relaxed when Jill arrived — promptly at six, apparently not worried this time about the whipped cream going scoodgy.

We sat on the couch with glasses of wine. Shania Twain was soft in the background. It felt comfortable. Jill was wearing a brown, bulky knit sweater and Cruel Girl jeans. She tucked her legs up under her and with her bare feet and ponytail she looked casual and in a word, good.

“How are things at the inn? Is it okay if I call it the inn? The actual name's a little long.”

“Only those who have actually sorted food bank items and stocked shelves get to call it the inn, so you're … uh … in.” She smiled the smile that I was getting to like more all the time. “And things are good,” she said. “I saw Jay and Zoe yesterday.”

“How're they doing?”

Small shrug. “Both clean as far as I could tell. Jay's hanging in there with the program for the moment, saying all the right things but … it's hard to know for sure.”

“What do you think are their chances?”

“Reality? Maybe seventy-thirty against, at least for Jay. I'd say Zoe's going to make it okay unless he goes back to the stuff and takes her with him.”

“Seventy-thirty,” I said. “Not great odds.”

She shook her head. “What happens with a lot of these kids, adult users too, is they start out trying real hard and maybe even do okay for a while until there's a bump in the road. Something happens; they lose a job or they get dumped by the boyfriend or girlfriend or somebody they're close to dies, and they're so fragile that they just fall back to the old ways. So we'll see what happens with Jay when some of the garbage life throws at us comes his way. With Zoe there, he'll have a better chance than if she wasn't. But the whole thing's a crap shoot; unfortunately when someone does break the cycle and actually takes their life back, it comes as a pretty big surprise. Sad that it has to be that way.”

We sipped wine and sat for a couple of minutes without talking.

“How are you doing?” Jill asked me.

I set my wine glass down and looked at her.

“It's getting better, I think. Having the answers is helping even if some of the answers are painful.”

“Like what?”

“Are you sure you want to talk about this stuff?”

She nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “I went to talk to Donna's mother. I guess I was upset … not angry really, but upset that she had known about the abuse but hadn't told me. She said Donna had made her promise that she would never tell anyone —
anyone
— what had happened.”

“And you think she should have broken that promise with you?”

“I guess after Donna was killed I thought … I don't know what I thought.”

“Tough position for a mom to be in.”

“Yeah.”

Jill reached over and put her hand on mine.

“Adam,” she said softly. “If it had been me, I would have honoured my daughter's wishes.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

We sipped our wine then, each of us lost in thoughts of our own.

“Okay, enough melancholy talk,” I said and stood up and headed for the stereo. “Time for some mussels and dinner music.” As Shania was wrapping up “Rock This Country” I hit the eject button and said over my shoulder, “k.d. lang, okay?”

“k.d. lang is wonderful.”

As the music began, I took Jill's hand, and led her to the table. I topped up our wine glasses and set the mussels on before I sat down.

“A toast,” she said.

I raised my glass. “What should we toast?”

“Well, ‘to us' is such a cliché,” she said.

“Absolutely.” I nodded.

“To us.” She smiled.

“To us.”

During dinner we talked about Kyla (she loved
The Spoofaloof Rally
), what the Flames should do in the off-season, horses (Jill knows a lot — I know only how to bet on thoroughbreds), and we talked again about Delores Bain.

“There's still so much I don't understand,” she said.

“Me too.”

“The part that's hardest to figure is that she hated the victims. If you want to kill someone, why not kill the guy who brought all the pain to the school?”

“Maybe she thought he paid his debt to society for the shame he'd brought on the place. And the girls hadn't.”

“That's crazy.”

I nodded and took a sip of wine. “It is crazy. I don't know what defines insanity, but I think to be so obsessed with your school's reputation that you'd kill … that has to be getting awfully close.”

Neither of us spoke for a few minutes.

I said, “I guess there's one thing I wish I knew the answer to.”

Jill looked at me. Waiting.

“The note. Why the note?”

I watched her think about it for a while, then shake her head. “Part of the hate, I guess. It wasn't enough to destroy the girls, she had to cause as much pain as she could to the people they were closest to.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe that's it.”

We sat, sipped our wine, and felt the warmth of each other. And slowly, some of what had been my life for the past few years ebbed away. Not all of it. But some.

“Okay.” Jill stood up. “I say we clean up.”

“No need,” I said, “I can do it in the morning.”

“Uh-uh. Come on, it'll only take us a few minutes.”

She was right and after the dishes were in the dishwasher and everything was put away but the second bottle of Amarone, she headed for the stereo.

“Okay if I pick the next music?”

“Absolutely.”

She sat cross-legged on the floor next to one of the speakers and studied the CDs and albums that covered, some would say
littered
, the floor along the wall next to the front window. Apparently Jill attached considerable importance to the music selection because she spent quite a long time at it. I sat on the couch, drank wine, and watched her. I liked watching her.

She put two CDs into the stereo unit, stood up, and returned to the couch.

“Well?”

She pressed her index finger to her lips. “Shh, it's a surprise.”

I didn't have to wait long. The Deep Dark Woods's “The Place I Left Behind” slipped through the speakers and into the room. Jill had started the album on the title track.

“You know those guys?” I asked. It surprised me a little. The Saskatoon band had a pretty solid following but weren't really a household name. At least not yet.

“Know those guys, love those guys.” Jill grinned as Ryan Boldt's gentle vocals insisted on our undivided attention. Jill joined me on the couch, sitting closer this time and we let the music take us.

“That's such a great CD. I keep saying I have to get it but I just haven't done it so far.”

“And now there's no need. You can come here and listen to it any time you want.”

We listened for a long while before either of us spoke. It was “The Ballad of Frank Dupree,” a song about a murder that got us talking again.

“You want to know something strange?” I asked. “Everything that Delores Bain did — even killing Donna, the note, all of it — I'm not glad she's dead.”

Jill didn't answer right away. But she moved so that her body was against me.

“I like you better for that,” she said.

I reached around her and pulled her still closer and we sat like that through the rest of the CD.

“And now part two of the surprise recordings,” I said.

“Uh-huh.”

I listened as the CD player made the change and Leonard Cohen's
The Future
filled the room. I tilted my head down and brushed my lips against her cheek.

“You remembered,” I said.

“I did.”

She stood up, crossed the room, and turned out the light.

I set my glass down and stood up. Darkness filled the room, broken only slightly by the lights of Drury Avenue and the rest of the city outside my window. I could see only Jill's shadow. She was moving toward me, slowly, soundlessly, and as she came closer I could smell the gentle apple scent of her hair, feel again her warmth as she moved against me.

“If you were to kiss me …” she said softly.

I put my arms around her and held her, neither of us moving for a long time. I thought of other times, other places, and other people.

And I knew that at
this
time, in
this
place, she was the person I wanted to be with.

And I kissed her.

T
hanks are due to the following for their invaluable help: Mike O'Connor, long respected, now retired member of the Calgary Police Service; Dr. Adam Vyse, dedicated and gifted physician in High River, Alberta; my editor, Jennifer McKnight, for her perceptive and always thoughtful comments and suggestions; my agent, Arnold Gosewich, for believing in me; Sylvia McConnell, for opening the door and guiding me through it; my wife, Barb, for her spot-on insights and never-ending support; and the Saskatoon Public Library, where I served as Writer in Residence while much of this book was written.

While I have been fortunate to have twenty-three previous books published, this one is special because it is the book I have always wanted to write and frankly never thought I could. I owe so much to the mystery writers I have admired and read with such delight — from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Earl Stanley Gardner, whom I first encountered, to Christie, Dixon, Stout, Hammett, Chandler, Buchan, James, Parker, Hillerman, Kellerman, Connelly, Rankin, Robinson, and Bowen. I am indebted to all of them.

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Copyright © David A. Poulsen, 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

All characters in this work are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The street names in this book have been altered to reflect common usage.

Editor: Jennifer McKnight Design: Laura Boyle

Printer: Webcom

Cover Design: Jesse Hooper

Image credits: Snakeskin ©1joe/iStockphoto. Cityscape ©ImagineGolf/iStockphoto.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Poulsen, David A., 1946-, author

Serpents rising : a Cullen and Cobb mystery / David A. Poulsen.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-4597-2172-2 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-4597-2173-9 (pdf).--

ISBN 978-1-4597-2174-6 (epub)

I. Title.

PS8581.O848S47 2014 C813'.54 C2014-901031-1

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