The Dells (10 page)

“Gimme the dollar.”

Heart hammering wildly, he gave her the dollar. She smiled triumphantly as she shoved it into the pocket of her shorts. She fingered the upper edge of the stretchy tube top. There was an almost unbearable tightness in his chest.

“Well,” he croaked.

Suddenly, she jumped up from the sofa and bolted up the basement stairs.

“Hey!” he shouted, starting after her.

Rachel came downstairs from the kitchen just as Marty flew out the back door. She frowned down at Hal from the landing. “What's wrong with Marty? What'd you do to her?”

“Nothing,” Hal grumbled, then went into his room, locked the door, and masturbated into a dirty gym sock.

The train pulled into Union Station and he queued at the door to disembark. Without paying him the slightest attention, the four girls brushed past him as soon as the doors opened. He had ceased to exist for them, if he had ever existed at all.

After breakfast, Shoe and Rachel walked to the small park behind the houses across the street. Shoe had never known its name, but a shellacked wood sign identified it as Giuseppe Garibaldi Park, a testament, he supposed, to the many people of Italian descent who'd lived in the area, and did still. He carried the heavier of a pair of file boxes of pamphlets and papers, and the rolled-up woven blue polypropylene kitchen shelter he'd helped Rachel get down from the rafters of the garage. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and, despite the omnipresent yellow haze of pollution, the mid-morning sun had a savage bite. Fortunately, the humidity had dropped a bit more overnight and there was a slight breeze, insufficient to disperse the pollution, however.

The park was a hive of activity. Where the outdoor skating rink had been every winter when he was growing up, a group of bare-chested, sun-baked men with bandanas tied around their brows was erecting a big white open-sided tent, driving two-foot metal stakes
into the hard ground with sledgehammers, and stringing wire-rope guys to sturdy metal poles. A white five-ton truck stood nearby, “Rain or Shine Party Rentals” emblazoned on the sides, from which two men off-loaded folding tables and stackable chairs. Dozens of men and women and kids bustled about, setting up community action kiosks and crafts tables, portable garden gazebos and more camp kitchen shelters; dragging gas barbecues into position; lugging picnic coolers and boxes of hot dog and hamburger buns and cases of soft drinks from the backs of minivans and SUVs parked along the street on the south side of the park; and dumping bags of ice into a child's plastic wading pool next to which stood tall stacks of shrink-wrapped flats of single-serving bottles of spring water. Pennants fluttered and clusters of balloons bobbed from the Victorian-style lampposts scattered throughout the park. There were waste receptacles and recycling bins everywhere. Supertramp's “Breakfast in America” blasted from a huge boom box on a table in front of a first aid station manned by teenaged boys and girls in scouting scarves, shirts encrusted with merit badges.

“What can I do?” Shoe asked.

“You can help me set up the shelter,” Rachel said. “Otherwise, everything seems to be under control.”

Between them, they put up the kitchen shelter, banging the pegs in with his father's carpenter's hammer, unzipping and rolling up the bug-screen sides to let in some air. Between the extra-long poles of the door fly, Rachel strung a banner that read “Welcome to the Umpteenth Annual Black Creek Weekend in the Park.” When Shoe commented on it, Rachel said, “Saves us from having to paint a new banner every year.”

Shoe unfolded the legs of a rental table inside the kitchen shelter. Rachel laid out the contents of the file boxes. It was good to get out of the sun. Rachel placed
an IBM laptop on the table, opened it, but did not turn it on. She placed a cellphone beside it.

“Tim Dutton is supposed to hook up a solar-powered battery charger for the computer and my phone,” she said.

“I'm surprised he still lives around here,” Shoe said.

“He likes being the big fish in a small pond,” Rachel said, frowning. She shook her head. “I shouldn't be so hard on him. He contributed a lot of money and materials for the homecoming. But he's as big a jerk as he ever was. Wait till you see his house. When he took over his father's business, he moved his parents into a retirement home, a nice one, of course, then bought the houses on either side of his parents' house, tore all three down, and built a new place. It's hideous. A dog's breakfast of architectural styles. God knows who the architect was. It wouldn't surprise me if Tim designed it himself. Patty hates it.”

“Patty?”

“Tim's wife. His second, actually. Wait till you meet her. She's absolutely stunning and smart as a whip. Tim doesn't appreciate her at all. She even calls herself his tarnished trophy wife. She and I have become pretty good friends. She's the chairperson of the homecoming committee. Patty's worked her ass off to make this weekend a success.”

“Nevertheless,” a woman said, as she came into the shelter, “it's still far too big.” She placed a file box on the table next to Rachel's laptop.

“It is like hell,” Rachel said with a smile. The woman was attractive, with fine, even features, medium-length blonde hair, and an excellent figure, albeit perhaps slightly too long-waisted. Rachel and she exchanged quick kisses. “Patty, meet my brother Joe. Joe, meet Patty Dutton.”

“Joe,” Patty Dutton said, taking Shoe's hand and gazing up at him with cool green eyes. “Pleased to meet
you. Rae talks about you all the time.” She held his hand a little longer than necessary. “What do you do for a living, Joe? Crush rocks with your bare hands?”

“Not quite,” Shoe said. His hands were large and strong, like Shoe himself, but he'd been doing a lot of masonry and carpentry work on the marina and motel lately and his hands were harder and rougher than usual.

Patty smiled and released his hand. “Rae wasn't exaggerating about your size. How tall are you?”

“A fraction over two metres,” he said. Patty Dutton crossed her eyes comically. “Six-six and a bit,” he translated.

“You're what, Rae?” Patty said. “Five-four, five-five? You got shortchanged.”

“There wasn't enough fertilizer left over for me after Mum and Dad grew Hal and Joe,” Rachel said.

“It's quality that counts, eh, Joe? Not quantity,” Patty said.

“That's right,” Shoe said.

“Speaking of quality,” Rachel said, grasping Patty by the shoulders and turning her around. “Tell her that her ass is just fine.” Patty blushed and laughed and waggled her backside at him.

What could he do? “It is fine indeed,” he said.

“Thank you, kind sir,” Patty said, placing a finger under her chin and performing a quick curtsy.

“Where's Tim?” Rachel asked. “He was supposed to bring some stuff to hook up the laptop.”

Patty lifted the lid off the file box she'd placed on the table. “I brought it, but I haven't a clue what to do with it. How about you, Joe? You're a guy. Guys know about these things.”

“Not this guy, I'm afraid,” Shoe said. “I'm a Luddite when it comes to computers.”

“Modest, as well as handsome. How come you're not married?” She smiled. “Tim should be along soon.
When I left the house this morning he was still going on about that man who was killed in the woods the other night. Tim says he used to live where the Tans live now. He was a pedophile, Tim said. Is that true?”

“It's shit,” Rachel snapped. Patty Dutton's eyes widened. “Sorry,” Rachel said. “No, it's not true. Marvin Cartwright was not a pedophile.”

“You knew him?” Patty said.

“Yes,” Rachel said. “He — ”

She was interrupted as a burly elderly man and a strikingly handsome middle-aged woman came into the shelter.

“Hullo,” Rachel said brightly. “Welcome to the Umpteenth Annual Black Creek Weekend-in-the-Park.”

“Thank you,” the woman said, smiling.

She was in her mid-fifties, Shoe guessed, slim and elegant. The man was older, in his late seventies, grizzled and bear-like. They both looked familiar, but Shoe couldn't place them. Rachel handed them each a photocopied list of events and map of the park and asked them if they'd like to sign the guest book. The haunting strains of Carlos Santana's guitar introduction to “Samba Pa Ti” began to wail out over the park from the boom box by the first aid tent. Patty Dutton half closed her eyes, hummed softly to herself as she arranged material on the table. Her fine backside began to sway with the music.

The kitchen shelter was getting crowded, so Shoe went out into the hard, hot sunshine and purchased a bottle of water for two dollars from a Girl Scout sitting beside a plastic wading pool of ice in the shade of a beach umbrella. Most of the ice in the pool had already melted. He was standing in what shade there was outside the shelter when the man and the woman came out. The woman looked at him and smiled. He felt he should recognize her, but he didn't.

“You're Joseph Schumacher, aren't you?” she said. She had a faint British accent. “I thought so. You don't recognize me, do you?”

Suddenly, he did recognize her. Something in the way she'd spoken his name. He didn't recall that she'd had a British accent when she'd been his ninth-grade English teacher, however.

“Miss Hahn,” he said. “It's good to see you.”

“And you, Joseph,” she said. They shook hands, his hand engulfing hers. She turned to the older man standing quietly beside her, whom Shoe had also recognized. “Jake,” she said, “you remember Joseph Schumacher, don't you?”

“I'm afraid I don't,” the man said in a rough, gravelly voice as he and Shoe shook hands. “But my memory isn't what it used to be. My apologies, Mr. Schumacher. I assume you were one of Claudia's students.”

“Yes, sir, I was.” Jacob “Nine Fingers” Gibson had been the principal of Black Creek Junior High School when Shoe had been a student there. He had been called Jacob Nine Fingers because he was missing the ring finger of his left hand. The legend was that he'd lost it during a school fire drill when he'd fallen on the stairs and his wedding ring had caught on a railing.

“There were so many students, Mr. Schumacher. And only one of me.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Joseph,” Miss Hahn said. “Perhaps we could get together later and talk. Catch up. I expect you've led an interesting life.”

“I'd like that very much,” he said.

“Good,” she said. She took Mr. Gibson's arm and walked him toward a craft table featuring hand-painted ceramic figurines.

Rachel came out of the welcome tent and stood beside him. “
That's
your old junior high school English
teacher?” she said. “No wonder you had a crush on her. She's beautiful.”

Patty had taken the Navigator, so Tim Dutton drove the Audi to the store. The heat and humidity had put him in a crappy mood, which wasn't made better when he saw the Harley-Davidson motorcycle parked by the employee entrance. He didn't especially like motorcycles, or generally have much use for people who rode them. He made a mental note to find out who it belonged to and tell him to park it somewhere else. Better yet, not to ride it to work at all.

Marty Elias was at her desk in the outer office when he went upstairs, pounding away at the keyboard of her computer. Even on a bad day she typed ten times faster than he did, and he was no slouch, if he did say so himself, but she was death on keyboards. How many had she gone through in the two years since they'd put in the new system? Three, at least. Still, it was worth it; she did the work of three people. She understood the business, too. Her father had been a general contractor and it had
rubbed off. In the three years she'd worked for him, she'd become almost indispensable. She had other talents, too. She didn't usually work Saturdays, though.

“What're you doing here?” he said.

“Tim,” she said, snatching off her reading glasses as she swivelled her chair to face him, as though she were embarrassed to be caught wearing glasses. “I thought you were supposed to be setting up Rachel's laptop at the homecoming this morning.”

“I came to pick up the manual for the solar charger.”

“I've got it here,” she said. She rummaged through the papers on her desk, found what she was looking for, and handed Dutton a small booklet.

“Thanks,” he said. He hesitated, then said, “Did you hear the news?”

“What news, Tim?” she said. “I don't have time to listen to the news, you've got me working all the time. Don't tell me they've finally repealed indentured servitude.”

He scowled. “About Marvin the — about Marvin Cartwright?”

“Marvin Cartwright? No. What about him?”

“He was killed in the Dells the night before last.”

For a moment, Marty stared at him, expression blank, then her eyes went wide and she raised her hand to her mouth. “No,” she gasped. “Killed? How?”

“Beaten to death,” Dutton said. “In the woods behind his old house.”

“My god,” she said. “That's awful. Why would anyone want to kill him? He was so nice.” She took a breath. “He used to make Rachel and me and the other kids hot chocolate after skating.”

“Oh, come on, Marty,” Dutton said irritably. “He was a rapist and a murderer and a child molester, for Christ's sake.”

The heat rose in her face. “He didn't rape anyone, Tim,” she said angrily. She was immediately contrite. “I'm sorry,” she said meekly, looking at her hands as they rested in her lap, fingers toying with the earpieces of her glasses. “I didn't mean to snap at you.”

“Forget it,” he said.

“Just don't let it happen again, eh?” She smiled tentatively.