The Birthday Lunch (15 page)

Hal doesn’t answer; he is busy stamping out a cigarette ember he dropped on the floor. Before either of his children warn him to be more careful, he says “I know. I know. Smoking is a bad habit.”

Later, when Claudia is sitting beside Matt on their way to the police station, she says, “Dad’s exhausted.”

Matt says, “Corrie Spears told me that Dad came along in the tow truck and saw Mom lying on the road.”

“Corrie didn’t tell me Dad saw her.”

“Probably because she knew it would be difficult for you to hear,” Matt says.

The police station occupies the same building as the fire hall and the library where, as a teenager, Claudia volunteered on Saturdays. The library is above the fire hall, the police station at the rear. Leaving the Mazda in the parking lot, Claudia and Matt enter by way of a back door that takes them past the prisoners’ cell block. Through the barred door Claudia glimpses an inmate sleeping off a bender. Directly ahead, POLICE is painted in black letters on a battleship-grey door. Inside the station, a pimple-faced corporal is eating a sandwich at his desk. Matt asks to see the deputy chief. “Is he here?”

“He’s here.” The corporal says between mouthfuls of sandwich.

“Do you want to tell him we’re here or will I?”

“I’ll tell him,” the corporal says, and squeaking across the waxed yellow floor, he taps on a door. “A couple are here to see you, Deputy,” he announces through the crack.

“Oh yeah?” They hear the rustle of newspaper. “Send them in.”

Matt and Claudia enter and stand in front of the deputy chief who continues reading the
Telegraph-Journal
until Matt asks if they are keeping him from his work. Unfazed, the deputy chief says, “Take the load off your feet.” After they are seated, he introduces himself. “Chuck Carruthers,” he says. “What can I do for you?”

“We are here to talk about our mother,” Matt says. “Lily Anne McNab. She was killed on Monday.”

“Oh yeah.” The deputy chief shakes his head. “A real shame.” He folds the newspaper in half and sets it aside.

“Can you tell us about the investigation?” Matt makes a show of taking out the notebook and pen.

“There is no investigation,” Chuck says.

“Why not?”

“There is nothing to investigate.”

“How did you come to that conclusion?”

“Your mother walked into the path of an oncoming truck.” The deputy chief tips back the swivel chair and crosses his hands over his belly.

“You have witnesses to prove that?”

“There were no witnesses.”

“You mean no witnesses that you know of. As a matter of fact there were two witnesses: Corrie Spears who lives directly across from the Creamery, and Stanley Price from Quincy, Massachusetts, who was in the Creamery parking lot when our mother was killed.” Matt leans toward the man. “But you wouldn’t know that because by the time you arrived, one witness had taken our father and aunt home and the other witness had left the crime scene.”

“Crime scene hardly describes an old lady walking into a truck.”

Claudia jumps in. “An old lady,” she says. “How old are you, Deputy Chief?” Going by the substantial paunch and broken blood vessels on his nose, he is definitely on the other side of fifty, maybe sixty.

“What’s my age got to do with anything?” he says.

“Our mother was killed on her fifty-eighth birthday and if she was an old lady then you’re an old man.”

“I know you’re upset but don’t take it out on me,” the
deputy says and fixes his gaze on the provincial map tacked to the wall behind Claudia.

Matt asks him if he has measured the tire tracks in front of the Creamery.

“No,” the deputy chief says without taking his gaze from the wall.

“You should.”

“Are you telling me how to do my job?”

“The skid marks run over eighty feet. Clear evidence that the driver was going at least twice the speed limit in a thirty-mile-per-hour zone,” Matt says. “Why haven’t you taken away his driver’s licence?”

Deputy Carruthers yanks open a desk drawer, grabs a fistful of pink slips and waves them at Matt. “See these unpaid speeding tickets?” he says. “Doctors, lawyers, teachers, even Judge MacIntyre. None of them pays attention to the speed limit and none of them pay up. If I took away the licences of everyone who drives over the speed limit in this town, there wouldn’t be a vehicle left on the road, including your father’s.”

Changing tack, Matt asks, “Why were you an hour late arriving at the accident scene?”

“A personal matter. None of your business.”

Matt refuses to let up. “By the time you got there, the paramedics had taken our mother to the hospital, which is against the law. And the truck driver had left the accident scene, which is against the law. Two laws broken and no investigation.”

By now the deputy’s eyes are bulging and his cheeks are a splotchy red.

“I’m a lawyer,” Matt says, “so you had better do your job. When the Chief returns from his holiday, I’ll make sure he has Stanley Price’s telephone number.”

Claudia is on her feet. “Let’s go, Matt,” she says. “We’re wasting our time.”

Matt waits until they have reached the parking lot before he says, “That man is a caricature of the bad sheriff in a B-grade western.”

“More like an F-grade than a B-grade,” Claudia says. “Let’s get out of here.”

They arrive home to find Sophie’s basket of supper and two flower arrangements on the doormat.

“Dad must be asleep,” Claudia says, “you carry the basket and I’ll bring the flowers.”

“Yes, Miss Bossy Pants.”

When they were little, Claudia would try ordering Matt around. He seldom did what she told him to do but that didn’t stop her from trying. In the kitchen she tries again when Matt tells her he is off to Northrup’s Garage to check on the Impala. Claudia reminds him to deliver the obituary to the newspaper office. This time he follows orders.

Matt parks the Mazda beside the service station and asks the kid at the counter if Joe Northrup is in. Opening the door to the back bay, Frankie shouts, “Someone to see you, Dad.”

Frankie tells Matt to go on in and Matt finds Joe at the workbench, overalls hanging on his skinny frame like clothes pegged to a line. It has been more than five years since Matt
last saw Joe Northrup but he remembers him looking much the same.

Joe recognizes Matt at once and after wiping his hands on a rag, he offers a hand and says how sorry he is about what happened to his mother.

“Thanks, Joe,” Matt says and asks about his father’s car.

“I looked at the Impala just after Roger towed it in. Thought I’d wait to phone you.”

“Why did the car need towing?”

“Because there was water in the gas tank.”

“Water?”

“Yup. Someone must have put it there.”

“I’ve heard of sugar being put in a gas tank, but never water.”

“Better water than sugar. Once sugar works its way into the engine, it seizes, scoring the pistons so bad they have to be replaced. Water dilutes the gas so after the car is driven a ways, it stops and won’t go anywhere on its own until the gas tank is drained. I drained the tank and it’s drying now. She should be ready to drive in a couple of days.”

“Who would do such a thing?”

“Dunno. But my guess is it’s one of the young bucks that take off without paying for their gas and race around town half the night.”

“The young bucks who kept me awake my first night home,” Matt says.

“I’m used to it,” Joe says, “but some nights my wife moves to the bedroom in the basement so that she can get a decent night’s sleep.”

——

The doorbell chimes and Claudia opens the door to Squank O’Donnell, the doctor Lily worked for. The last time Claudia saw the doctor was thirteen years ago when her mother insisted she consult him about birth control. Amazingly, Squank remembers her name. “Hello, Claudia,” he says, “I thought I would stop by and see how you are all doing.”

There is something reassuring about this bandy-legged, rumpled man. Claudia tells him that she and her dad are drinking tea in the kitchen and asks if he would like to join them.

The question seems to require some thought and Squank strokes his moth-eaten mustache before he says, “I believe I would.” Though he left Ireland thirty-five years ago, the Belfast accent lingers. He follows Claudia upstairs to the kitchen where the air is wreathed with cigarette smoke.

“Hello there, Squank,” Hal says and asks if he would like a cigarette. Again, Squank says, “I believe I would,” and the three of them share a companionable silence smoking and drinking tea until Claudia nudges the plate of Sophie’s date squares toward the doctor. “Thank you,” Squank says, and extinguishing the cigarette he demolishes a date square in two bites, leaving crumbs on his mustache. He asks Hal how he is sleeping. “All right, with the sleeping pill,” Hal says.

“Claudia?”

“The same.”

“What about Matt? Margot told me she saw him downtown.”

“He has trouble sleeping. Some of it is jet lag.”

Squank opens the worn leather bag, its corners bare as an old dog’s elbows, and takes out a prescription pad. “I’ll leave a
prescription for a month’s supply of trazodone for the three of you.”

“Trazodone,” Hal says. “I’ve never heard of that one.”

Squank tells him that the drug has only been recently approved. “Take one at bedtime if you need it and go easy on the alcohol.”

“When I was selling for Merck, Lunesta was the drug,” Hal says.

“The clinical trials show trazodone outstrips Lunesta.” Squank scribbles the prescription, lays it on the table and snaps the bag shut. “Call me if you need me. Otherwise I will drop by next week,” he says. “No need to see me out.”

But Claudia follows the doctor downstairs, thanks him for coming and tells him about the reception at Adair’s on Sunday. “I’ll be there,” Squank says, and opening the door, he pauses, the late afternoon gloom shadowing his face. He tells Claudia he examined her mother soon after the paramedics brought her to the hospital. “I want you to know that given the nature of her injuries, death was instantaneous,” Squank says. “It may not be of much help but in my job you look for mercy wherever you can find it.” Claudia leans against the closed door. Mercy wherever you can find it, the doctor said, the mercy of being spared a long and protracted death.

From her casement window Laverne watches Dr. O’Donnell descend the veranda steps and drive away in a Buick without so much as a glance in her direction. Soon after she moved from Middle Musquodoboit to Sussex, on Lily’s recommendation,
Laverne made an appointment for a checkup with Dr. O’Donnell. Disgusted by the smell of alcohol on the doctor’s breath at four o’clock in the afternoon, Laverne never went back and made an appointment with Dr. Guptil, the clean-living young doctor in town.

Matthew’s car is not in the driveway and Laverne closes the window so that her nephew will not see her when he returns from wherever he has gone. If Matthew sees her he might come to her door and she has resolved to have nothing to do with him until he apologizes for this morning’s behaviour. How dare he humiliate her and one of her former students. Curtis Parlee was a poor student but he wasn’t a troublemaker and he always tried his best. Furthermore, Matthew was thousands of miles away when his mother died. And he dismissed Laverne’s comment that Lily could be careless crossing the street and sometimes didn’t pay attention to where she was going. Even as a little girl Lily didn’t always pay attention. She was a woolgatherer and often her thoughts were far away from where she was. Apparently Matthew did not know this either.

It disturbs Laverne that Matthew is no longer the gentle, considerate young man she trusted to guide her through the shivering darkness of the mountain to Le Salon noir, but a hard-nosed, aggressive man, indifferent to the feelings of others. According to Lily, Matthew has worked himself up the corporate ladder and now oversees four lawyers, two of whom are older than him. Unfortunately, success seems to have gone to Matthew’s head.

——

Larry McIntyre’s office, on the second floor of the late Victorian house on Maple Avenue, was where his own father practised law before being called to the Bench. Matt sits opposite Larry in a studded red leather chair. Behind Matt on the wall is a street scene painted by Molly Bobak and on the wall behind Larry is a portrait by Goodridge Roberts; over the wrought iron fireplace is a Tom Forrestall watercolour. Going by the quality of these paintings, Matt can see that Larry has done well for himself. Making small talk, Larry tells Matt that he and Karen live in Roachville in a renovated eighteenth-century house built by one of the Dutch United Empire Loyalists. And there is the Grand Lake cottage. Karen and the boys spend the summer at the cottage; Larry is there most weekends and if the workload at the office isn’t too heavy he might stay an extra day or two longer. Matt beats back the envy, but not for long. He and Trish want to stay in the West and Matt enjoys the travel perks that come with his job. Larry tells Matt that he and Karen spend two weeks every winter golfing in Sarasota. Sarasota would bore Matt out of his mind. A
pied-à-terre
in France is more to his liking.

Because he was at the cottage on Monday, Larry didn’t hear about the accident until yesterday, and Matt lays out the facts: that the police did not show up until after the paramedics had removed his mother’s body, that the truck driver seemed to have left the accident scene; that Deputy Chief Carruthers claimed that his mother walked into the path of an oncoming truck even though she was just entering the crosswalk and that no investigation was necessary; that the truck driver’s licence was not taken away; that the truck driver,
Curtis Parlee, came to the house and apologized for hitting Matt’s mother.

“The truck driver came to your father’s house?”

“He did and he apologized for hitting my mother. Then Mom’s sister, Laverne, stepped up and told Curtis Parlee that the accident wasn’t his fault because Mom ran in front of the truck.”

“Your aunt said that?”

“She did.”

“It’s not uncommon for someone to see a traumatic event the wrong way around,” Larry says.