The Calling (4 page)

'I wouldn't want you to drink alone,' she said.

'Come on then.' They turned and drove through
one of the delivery alleys behind the road toward
the station. 'I can guess what the topic of conversation
is back on Main Street.'

'I doubt there's a person out there on the side-walks
who didn't somehow know Delia. She
worked in the funeral home until she was sixty-five.
There wasn't a death in any family in this
town that she wasn't a part of.'

'Now the town's part of her death.'

He held the station's back door open for her and
went to his desk. The moment Greene appeared in
the pen, though, Hazel could hear a cacophony of
questions erupting from behind the counter – the
station house was the last place they should have
gone for peace and quiet: it was the most logical
place for the local reporters to go. Hazel had an
instinct that the standard arrangements with the
Westmuir press were not going to hold here. The
shouted questions were variations on a theme: did
they have a suspect; what was the murder weapon;
what was the cause of death. Greene stood empty-handed
behind his open desk drawer with a blank
look on his face and pushed it shut with his knee.
He took a moment to collect himself and then she
saw him step forward out of view. 'Detective
Inspector Micallef will be making a statement here
Monday morning at nine a.m. Until then, we have
no comment.'

Please act like small-town reporters
, Hazel said to
herself. She stepped back into the doorway of her
office to avoid being seen in case any of the
reporters (who knew they had that many reporters
in the whole county?) had parked in back. After a
couple of minutes, the footfalls in the foyer died
down. Greene knocked on her door. She saw
through the frosted glass that he was holding up a
bottle and she told him to come in. She ran her
finger around the inside of a coffee cup before putting
it down on her desk.

'Double or triple,' he said, unscrewing the cap.

'I just want enough to keep my hands from
shaking.'

He poured her four capfuls, which she drained
into the back of her throat. 'I better call my
mother.'

'You want me to go?'

'No. Stay there. If I'm still on the line in three
minutes, get up and knock on the door like it's
something important.' She dialled and her mother
answered on the third ring, which meant she'd
made her get up and cross to the kitchen. Hazel
had already told her mother to take the cordless
phone with her wherever she was in the house, but
the elder Micallef didn't want to be stalked by a
phone. She'd already heard the news. 'Delia
Chandler,' she said, as if she were trying to place
the name. 'That took a long time.'

'Don't be like that.'

'You should be seriously considering that the
killer is a woman.'

Hazel blinked a couple of times and wrote
'killer = woman?' on a piece of paper and turned
it to Greene. He looked at it and mouthed,
no
way
.

'You know she never apologized. Not even at
your dad's funeral.'

'Well, that would have been great timing.' Hazel
heard tapping. 'What are you doing?'

'Just writing an email.'

'To who?'

'I have friends, Hazel. I write to them. Don't
worry about me spreading state secrets.'

My eighty-seven-year-old mother has electronic
penpals, Hazel thought. What kind of world is this?
'Is the door locked?'

'Did you lock it?'

'Did you unlock it, Mum?'

'No. When will you be wanting supper?' Hazel
heard a faint gonging in the background – email
arriving or being sent. 'Hazel?'

'I'll be eating here tonight. Then I'm going out
to see Bob and Gail.'

'Poor things,' said her mother. 'Eat some greens
then, dear. And say hello to Raymond.'

She hung up and held her hand up to Greene,
who'd risen and was getting ready to rap on the
door. 'It's fine.' He lowered his arm. 'Why "no way"?'

'Women who kill usually do it out of passion.
The crime scenes are horror-shows.'

She realized there was a gap in Greene's knowledge
of the town's secret life – somehow he didn't
know what Delia Chandler had done thirty years
ago when it seemed to Hazel that even the town's
children were aware of it. But she thought better of
mentioning it to him now lest it somehow convince
him to start liking her mother for the crime.
And no matter what her training told her about
what kinds of people were capable of which kinds
of crimes, she just couldn't see a woman doing what
had been done to Delia.

'We'll keep an open mind for now,' she said. 'But
I guess I agree with you.' The phone rang again.
'Hold that position,' she said to Greene.

It was her assistant, Melanie Cartwright, calling
from her desk. 'Do you know a Carl Stratton?'

'Must be Sandra Stratton's son.'

'Well, he called,' said Cartwright. 'He said he
was up from Toronto for the weekend and that his
mother was scared and wanted to come back to the
city with him.'

'So?'

'He wants you to call her and tell her she's got
nothing to worry about.'

'I've got my own crone to worry about, Melanie.'

'Do you want me to tell him that?'

'In your own words, please.' There was a long
pause on the other end of the line. 'Melanie?'

'Do you think this guy's still out there? I mean
here? In town?'

'No,' she said. 'He did what he came to do. I'm
sure he's long gone.'

Cartwright thanked her and hung up. Hazel
knew she'd already committed to memory the
phrase
He did what he came to do.
She wasn't going
to be surprised to see those very words show up
eventually in the
Record
. Small-town hotlines.

Greene held up the bottle. 'You okay yet?'

'I better not, Ray.' He screwed the cap back on.
'Do me a favour and call up Bob and Gail
Chandler. We should go there now.' He nodded
and left, closing the door behind him. Hazel looked
at the phone and then took it off the hook. The
more she tried to hold the thought in her head that
there was a procedure to be followed, the more she
felt that something uncontainable had happened
to her town, something that would resist all
protocols. She felt a presence behind her, breathing
on her, casting its shadow. Someone had come
through town – without being seen, apparently –
and carried off Delia Chandler. Who was this
person? Why did he kill her the hard way, when it
looked as if she'd already agreed to the easy way?
Where were they going to begin?

Robert and Gail Chandler's house was out in
Hoxley. The entire way Greene stared out the
window at the fall scenery and the failing light, and
that suited Hazel, lost in her own thoughts. Some
of the horror of the morning would have had time
to sink in for Bob Chandler; she dreaded what kind
of state they'd find him in.

When they got to the house, Hazel recognized
Gord Sunderland's car sitting at the curb. 'Gord,'
she said when he rolled down the window, 'we
don't have a comment at this time, and neither do
the Chandlers. You're just going to have to wait for
a statement back at headquarters.'

'Is there
going
to be a statement?'

'Not today,' she said. 'Monday morning, business
hours.'

'That's for the boys from Hillschurch and
Dublin, Hazel,' he said. 'I'd appreciate a one-onone.'
'I can't make any promises, Gord.'

'The
Westmuir Record
is the main source of news
for the people of this county, Detective Inspector.
They expect a thorough report from us, and the
Monday paper was already put to bed Thursday
night. If you don't want me speculating aloud,
you'll call me at my office when you're done here.'

'I'll call you. Will you go now?' He closed his
window without another word and she waited for
him to drive off. Greene came up behind her.

'What'd you offer him?'

'Knitting tips.'

'He's a sucker for the knitting tips,' said Greene.

The Chandler house was a nicely appointed
second home – after their children, Diane and
Grant, had left the childhood house in Port
Dundas, Bob and Gail had bought themselves this
brand new bungalow, the first in a new subdivision.
Now it was surrounded by variations on its theme:
where there had once been the Hoxley farm, there
were now eighty homes, all built in the last fifteen
years, that looked like they'd been assembled out of
a builder's Lego kit with eight different window
types in it, six roofs, twelve front doors, eight
variations on the lintel, a couple of turrets, and a
bunch of gables. Mix them all up and they turned
into homes with a soupçon of individuality, but to
Hazel, they looked like a botched exercise in
architectural cloning.

Inside, the prerequisite Robert Bateman and
Alex Colville lithographs, laminated posters of
different varieties of chilies in the kitchen, and a big
abstract over the fireplace. The Chandlers welcomed
them into the house sombrely, and now Bob and Gail
sat on the couch across from the two chairs occupied
by the officers, each of whom held a glass of ice water
in their hands. After the offering of regrets and after
Gail had dried again a face that had been drenched
in tears all day, Hazel put her glass under her chair
and took out her notebook.

'I know this isn't easy for you folks,' she said. 'But
we do have to ask you some questions.'

'Go ahead,' said Bob Chandler.

Hazel flipped open her notebook and turned to a
clean page, fixing it down with the black elastic.
'First off, Bob, Robert ... how was your mother's
mood recently? Did she seem upset to you about
anything?'

'Well, she had cancer, Hazel.'

'And how do you think she was coping with it?'

'I guess okay. She was resigned.'

Hazel wrote 'resigned' in her notebook. 'So she
wasn't despondent?'

'Did that look like a suicide?'

'No, no, not at all, Bob. And it wasn't. But the
thing is ...' she flipped back a couple of pages in
the notebook.

'The thing is,' said Ray Greene, 'your mother let
whoever did this to her into the house. She knew
him. It's possible she asked someone to help
her ...'

Bob Chandler's face was changing colour. 'To
help her
what
?'

'To ... assist her,' Greene said. 'I know it's not
pleasant to think of, but we have to consider all the
possibilities.' He continued in a measured way.
'What do you think ... the chances are that,
maybe, your mother arranged with someone ...'

'
Bullshit
,' said Chandler. 'My mother was a
churchgoing woman. She would never have ...'
He trailed off.

Hazel held her hand up to Greene, who gratefully
closed his notebook. 'Bob, there was an IV
puncture in her upper inner thigh. We found it
after Cassie Jenner brought you home. The person
who visited your mother put a needle into her vein.
We have reason to think he did it with her
permission.'

'So he, what? He offered to euthanize my mother
but then tried to cut her head off? What are you
saying?'

'We're saying,' came in Greene, 'that your
mother may have picked the wrong person to ask
for help.'

Both Bob and Gail stared at him for a moment.

'People do uncharacteristic things when they're
facing the unknown,' he continued. 'Your mother
may not have been herself when ...
if
... she made
these kinds of arrangements.'

Bob Chandler seemed to subside in his chair. 'I
don't know ... I just don't know.'

'Would it be one of her doctors, maybe?' asked
Gail. 'Although, I just can't imagine.'

'Do you know
all
of her doctors?' said Hazel. 'Did
she have any homecare? Maybe she took a delivery
of something.'

'Bob was her delivery boy,' said Gail. 'He took
her to her doctors, he took her shopping, everything.
She didn't need a stranger to bring anything
to her. Bob once brought her an Aspirin at two in
the morning.'

Hazel thought about this, and realized she could
not remember the last time she'd seen Delia
Chandler in town by herself, and she certainly had
not visited that house, not since Eric Chandler's
wake almost eight years ago. There had been a long
period in Delia's life when she had not felt welcome
in town, and after that, she had retreated,
had closed ranks around herself. Where once
she had been a vivacious woman, even beautiful, she
had become frightened, closeted. Hazel could not
imagine Delia Chandler letting a stranger into her
house. 'We'll talk to anyone she might have had
contact with at the clinic here, Bob. Glen
Lewiston was her oncologist, right? She saw him
pretty frequently?'

'Yes,' said Bob. 'I took her at least once a week.'

'He'll know anyone she got referred to after she
was diagnosed. We'll follow that trail.'

'You honestly think my mother was killed by
some doctor or nurse?'

'We have no idea yet. We're trying to cover all
the bases.'

* * *

At the door, both officers shook hands in turn with
the Chandlers. Hazel held on to Bob's hand a little
longer. 'I'm sorry to have to follow all this procedure,
Robert, when all I want to do is tell you how sorry I
am. Do you know, when Andrew and I had Emilia,
your mother drove over to the house with a lasagna
as soon as we got back from the hospital.'

'She made a fantastic lasagna,' said Bob
Chandler.

'We lived off it for a week. I blame your mother
for Emilia's pasta addiction – she had as much of it
that week as we did.'

'It was the béchamel,' he said, laughing, and
then, just as suddenly, he was crying. Hazel stood
there holding the hand of her friend from childhood,
whom she'd dated twice or three times when
she was a senior in high school and he was a
sophomore, whose mother had had an affair with
her father, whose family had gone back with her
own family perhaps five generations, and to keep
herself from crying in uniform, she stepped back up
onto Bob Chandler's stoop and held him.