The Geranium Girls (14 page)

Beryl phoned Frank at work.

“I was wondering if you could tell me who discovered the body of Diane Caldwell,” she asked.

“Pardon?” Frank sounded as though he were three thousand miles away.

“If you could tell me who found the woman in Whittier Park?”

Beryl knew that her deadheading experience, the pink collar on her cat, and now the changed furnace pegs had everything to do with her being the one who found the mushroom girl. She had no rational reason for believing this, but she knew it anyway.

Maybe whoever found the second dead person was having peculiar stuff happen at his home as well.

“Frank, could I talk to you in person, please? I think I may have something that will help.”

Beryl wondered what her criminal would have done next if she’d had an old-fashioned thermostat.

Several years ago, when she’d had her furnace replaced, she had sprung for a new thermostat. It had a clock and little red and blue pegs to fasten in place at the times you wanted the furnace to warm up or cool down — red for warm, blue for cool. She could use them in the summer, too, for her air conditioner.

Beryl was fond of her thermostat pegs. During a heat wave, like the one that was suffocating southern Manitoba right now, she could set her air conditioner to come on half an hour or so before she figured she’d be home from work. Then, when she walked in the door, she would be greeted by a blast of cool air. Her cats would be huddled together on the couch for warmth.

Today, Beryl hadn’t noticed that her yard was quiet when she entered it, that there was no hum from the air conditioner beneath her kitchen window.

Plus, her house was hot and she didn’t notice that. She was thinking about Stan. And Wally. Would she have been able to save him if she had been there? Would she have had the confidence to perform the Heimlich on him? She could do it in her mind but she doubted if she’d be able to pull it off in real life. Maybe she could get someone to allow her to practise on him. Like Stan. Or Herm. Maybe Dhani. He’d probably let her. He’d probably even think it was a good idea.

She had just decided to give Dhani a call when she did notice something: Jude and Dusty had raced to the door to meet her. They ran around like kittens when they should have been snuggling on the couch trying to keep warm.

It was then that Beryl realized the air conditioner wasn’t on. She checked the thermostat, turned it down and heard the click of the machinery as it began to work. So it wasn’t broken, thank God. Next, she lifted up the flap to check that her blue and red pegs were in place. They were there all right, but they had been moved to times that made no sense. The blue peg was placed at three o’clock in the morning, for instance — the middle of nowhere, timewise. Someone had moved them. Someone had been in her house!

Now Beryl wished that the thermostat was just broken. At least then she could phone Winnipeg Supply and wait for them to come and banter with the repairman and talk about how jesusly hot it was.

She sat down at the kitchen table and cried. Tears of frustration and fear. He had been in her house, but it was like with the flowers and Jude’s collar: she couldn’t phone the police and tell them that the pegs on her thermostat had been moved. They would exchange glances amongst themselves and know that she had done it herself. Or worse, that she craved attention.

Had she done it herself? She didn’t sleepwalk as far as she knew and surely that would be something that you’d know. No. This was not her doing.

Beryl looked around at her stuff. It looked as though nothing else had been disturbed, but she couldn’t really be sure; her house was fairly messy. She checked the doors and windows and nothing looked wrong.

That was when she had decided It was time to confide in Frank.

He came right over. Beryl made iced tea and they sat outside on the deck, in spite of the heat and mosquitoes. She didn’t want to be in the house. The guy had a key.

She told Frank everything — from her lobelia to her cat to her thermostat. She talked about the strange woman that Mrs. Frobisher had seen hanging around the house next door, and Clive’s funny-smelling bed and the
Pilot Mound Sentinel.

He didn’t question her sanity or her memory or her intelligence. He believed her and she wished she had told him sooner.

Frank went to talk to Rachel Frobisher and Beryl phoned Noble Locksmiths to come and change her locks. She had decided too late to be careful with her key. But never again. She had vowed that it would never come to this, that she wouldn’t buy into the fear that was advertised daily in the papers and on the tube. But now she found herself pondering an alarm system and bars on the windows.

“Dang,” she said quietly and looked over her shoulder.

Frank came back and they went over to Clive’s place to have a look around. This made Beryl nervous; she felt like a traitor. No one was home, as usual, and the door was locked for once. Frank considered breaking in and then decided not to.

Beryl remembered that she had a key; Clive had given it to her when she offered to phone someone about the vermin running rampant in his house. She hadn’t done that yet.

She didn’t offer the key to Frank, not after Clive’s reaction to the idea of having police in his house. Frank didn’t seem like a real cop to Beryl, but he was. That’s why she had phoned him.

Guilt nudged her a little, but she decided if she was going to invade Clive’s privacy she should at least warn him so he could tend to whatever contraband he was harbouring. In the meantime, she would go in after Frank left and gather up whatever she could find, in case he got serious about breaking in.

Beryl regretted involving Clive. It had been stupid and she felt her head heating up. She just hadn’t been thinking. He’d never trust her again.

“Let me know when this Clive character comes back to town,” Frank said, when they were back on the deck. “I think I should have a talk with him.”

“Yes, all right,” Beryl said.

“Do you know him very well?”

“Pretty well, I guess.”

“The newspaper he gave you, do you still have it?”

“Yes!” Beryl leapt up. “I’m sure it’s important. I’m just not sure how. When I went through it I couldn’t find anything much except stories about 4-H Clubs and fiftieth wedding anniversaries and whatnot — ads for tractors and seed.

“Only one thing stood out for me, a sinister little obituary, but I can’t for the life of me figure how it would connect to all this.” She gestured around her.

“And I’m sure it has nothing to do with Clive,” she added. “He didn’t know what to make of it.”

“May I see it?” Frank asked.

“And the pink collar?” he called after her when she headed inside to get it.

The collar was gone from its hiding spot in the north window well. Beryl shuffled the rocks around and wasn’t surprised when she couldn’t find it.

“It’s gone,” she said, handing the newspaper to Frank. “The collar’s gone. I should have hidden it better. Like my house key.”

“Yeah, it was pretty stupid of you to have a key outside like that. Anyone could have whisked it away and made a quick copy. Can I take this paper? I’d like to have a good solid browse through it.”

“Sure.” Beryl wished Frank hadn’t said the word stupid in connection with her. Even if it was true.

“And I’ll take the furnace pegs too. Maybe we can get something off them. Did you touch them?”

“No.”

“I guess you and Clive have both touched the newspaper quite a lot.”

“Yeah. I guess that was dumb too.”

“Of course it wasn’t. Neither of you would have been thinking in terms of fingerprints.”

“No.”

“Are you all right, Beryl?”

“I guess so. I just feel a little…unsafe. And stupid.”

“Well, you’re definitely not stupid. You are vulnerable. I’ll stay with you till after the locksmith comes.”

The air was still and heavy with moisture. The ice had melted in their glasses. Beryl was uncomfortable in her clothes.

“Frank?”

“Yes?”

“Would you mind if I went in and had a quick shower and got out of my postal outfit?”

“Go ahead. I’ll be sitting right here.” Frank looked sadly at his plastic chair. It was too small for him, looked as if it might stay attached to him when he stood up.

“Thanks… You can come in if you like — get away from the skeeters.”

“That’s okay. They don’t bite me very often for some reason.”

“Okay. I’ll just be a few minutes.”

Beryl didn’t want to have to worry about having
Psycho
-type thoughts in the shower and at least for today she could avoid it. Unless, of course, Frank Foote was a policeman and a murderer as well, too evil even for mosquitoes to come near.

After her shower Beryl put on a pale yellow dress. Her feet were bare and she felt marvellously cool for a little while. When she joined Frank on the deck he was gazing off into the uppermost branches of the willow. She had expected to find him reading the
Pilot Mound Sentinal
and felt slightly let down. He sat with her till the locksmith arrived. And promised to stop in the next day, after she got home from work.

“I have a funeral tomorrow,” Beryl said, “so I won’t be here till a little later.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“No. It’s okay. It isn’t someone I was close to. I’m going more out of closeness to his relatives.” And because it’s my fault he’s dead.

“Well, I’ll phone first.” Frank stood up.

“This Clive that lives next door, is he the same Clive Boucher that used to play with Crimson Soul?”

“Yup, that’s him,” Beryl said. “And he still plays with them. That’s why he’s never home. He’s always out on tour.”

“I had no idea they were still together. I used to really like their music.”

“It’s not the same guys,” Beryl said. “In fact, I think Clive is the only original band member. But they do play the old songs. They’ve got a young guy singer who’s almost as good as Donny Swythins was. Still, it wouldn’t be the same, would it?”

“No. I guess not,” Frank said. “Remember that song…it went: ‘Somebody said somebody saw you crying.’ Something like that?”

Beryl smiled. “Yeah. It was laughing though. Somebody saw you laughing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. And I’m afraid it wasn’t Crimson Soul who sang it.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“Well, it’s a great song anyway,” Frank smiled.

“Yeah,” said Beryl. “I love that song too. It’s by a group called Man.”

Frank hummed the line as he stepped down into the yard. At least that’s what Beryl figured he must be doing. He couldn’t carry a tune very well.

“I guess you’ve been fingerprinted,” he said, “what with working for Canada Post. They did you, didn’t they, when you first started there?”

“Yeah, they did,” Beryl said. “Would my fingerprints have become part of some giant file, or will you have to go to the post office to get them?”

“No. They’re part of a giant file.”

“Good. I hate to think of you asking anyone at the post office for them. No matter how well you explained it, they’d think for sure I was a criminal. They wouldn’t get it.”

“We just need to discount them on the newspaper and the thermostat pegs.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

“Clive should come down too, so we can discount his as well.”

“Does he have to?”

“Why? Will that be a problem for him?” Frank sounded very much like a policeman.

I mustn’t forget that, Beryl thought, wanting to take the little newspaper back from Frank so she could roll it up and hit herself on the head with it. Nice as he is, this man is a cop. Clive doesn’t need anyone searching his house or his past. For all she knew, his prints were already on file.

On the other hand this could be — probably was — a matter of life and death, especially death.

“No,” Beryl said. “I’m sure it won’t be a problem for him.”

“Well, next time you see him, could you tell him to give me a call? It’s possible this person may have left something else behind.” Frank waved the
Pilot Mound Sentinel
in the air as he followed the crooked path into the back yard.

“Yeah, I’ll tell him.”

Beryl decided that after she went through Clive’s house to hide his drugs and pipes and things that would connect him to hookers, and whatever the hell else, she would “remember” that she had a key and let Frank know. Or not.

“We won’t be looking for anything else, Beryl,” Frank said. “You can tell him that, too. If we find a little bit of pot or whatever, it doesn’t matter. I’ll make a point of being the guy who goes in, so that it won’t get screwed up.”

“Oh. I’m sure Clive leads a pretty clean life at this point, Frank. I mean he must be at least fifty-five.”

“What’s age got to do with it?” Frank chuckled.

Beryl liked his quiet chuckle. He stared off into space a lot, though, and she wasn’t crazy about that. She was sweating now and it was only partially because of the heat. She wanted him to go. What kind of guy chooses to become a cop, anyway?

“Thanks, Frank. Thanks for everything. Especially understanding about how I think the stuff going on around here is connected to Beatrice Fontaine.”

“That’s okay, Beryl. Even if it isn’t, someone has broken into your house for sure and probably Clive’s.”

Beryl remembered the question she had phoned Frank with in the first place.

“Who found Diane Caldwell?” she asked.

“Kids. Three young boys on their bikes — about eleven years old.” Frank shook his head and looked at the ground. “Hell of a thing.”

“I wonder if any creepy sorts of things have been going on at any of their houses,” Beryl said. “That might be worth looking into.”

“Yeah. That’s a good idea. I’ll call Katy Woodside in the Victims’ Services Unit. She was going to be keeping an eye on the boys.”

“They must be freaked,” Beryl said.

“Yeah, I’m sure they are. Have you given any more thought to calling someone in the VSU?” Frank asked. “To talk?”

“No.”

He slid behind the wheel of his vehicle. It was a different car today: a cop’s car.