The Memory Book (22 page)

There were no responses. Then I remembered that Professor Bett told me something about a village of that name, but I couldn’t remember enough of what he had said to add anything.

After a polite pause, Sykes picked up the story. “It’s a tiny place; used to be on the main CN line to Owen Sound, but that went for scrap metal years ago. There’s a
creamery, a blacksmith, and a feed mill. Across from the mill, which is still worked by water, there’s a funny-looking house set into the bank of the Beatty Saugeen River.” He took a breath. “Steve, the missing professor, was being held inside.”

“But you couldn’t have followed Samson all the way by car. He would have seen you,” I said.

“Hell, we had to drop back after he left the 400. Fellow from Brampton named Red Cavers picked him up from the air. He has a couple of copters he uses for God-knows-what-all. He followed him west on 89 and then north to Holstein. He kept me informed by cell phone, so I wasn’t too far away when Samson stopped at Holstein.”

“But from the air, don’t all cars look alike? How did Cavers know he was following the right car?”

“If you were a
real
cop, Benny, you’d know that this is standard procedure. We put a tracking bug in his car while it was still here in Toronto. Your hunch about that professor, Benny, got us moving.”

“Wasn’t a hunch, it was more like a feeling I get at the back of my knees when I know I’m on to something.”

“Oh, I wish I’d known that. I thought you had something a little more substantial.”

“My knees have never let me down. And that nightmare I told you about clinched it.”

“That nightmare. This case has everything. Can’t you work in a Ouija board, Benny?”

“Look, Jack, you got your murderers, didn’t you? You found the professor in the house on the Whoozis River. What was it called again?”

“The Beatty Saugeen. Okay, the point is well taken. We followed your suggestion and we got lucky. If we admit your hunches and super-sensitive knees, you have to allow for Lady Luck playing a hand.”

“Sure.”

“But, Benny, how did you settle on that couple as the people to go after? The professor has a faultless rep at Simcoe College.”

“The girl, Heather, had been wearing a lot of studs. The dishwasher at Barberian’s remembered seeing them.”

“But, Benny, wasn’t she trying to get you to find Steve and Rosie?”

“Yeah, she wanted me to check myself out of the hospital so that I could more easily be dealt with. You see, she and Samson didn’t know how much I remembered about my earlier visit to the university. They weren’t sure I wasn’t suddenly going to recall everything. And it was too chancy to try something at the hospital.”

“Was that all?”

“No. Heather’s visit to the hospital confused me. She put the idea in my head that
both
Steve and Rose were missing. That slowed me down. Then Samson said that Steve had a missing tooth. According to his wife, that tooth went missing the day he disappeared. Only someone who had seen him at the time of his abduction or afterwards would know that the tooth was missing.”

“Where can
I
get hit on the head like
that?”
This was Sykes, who was looking at Anna.

I kept rolling. “Dr. Samson made a similar mistake; he said Steve had been worried about what to get his little girl, Dympna, for her birthday. He didn’t know I’d talked to Dympna herself on her birthday, which was many weeks after Steve disappeared. So, there
had
been some recent contact.”

“So that’s it?” Sykes groaned.

“You still don’t know the wackiest part of this whole business!”

“What’s that?” said two voices at once.

“It’s my recurring nightmare. I was hit on the head by a flying suitcase in an upsetting railroad car.”

“I think this is where I came in. I’m beginning to feel as though I bought your ticket.” Sykes was out of beer and took it out on me.

“You see, I went with Rose Moss to question the people who knew Steve. That was before I got hit on the head. I talked to Dr. Samson. He told me something that made me suspicious. I must have had my suspicions when he clubbed me from behind. They used to call him Gauche when he played football.”

“If he was gauche, how did he make the team?”

“Touchdowns mostly. Lots of them. So I’ve been told. Gauche means left-handed as well as awkward.”

“How did you begin to suspect him?”

“We may never know. His must have been the last face I saw before I was brained. Don’t look at me! All we
have is my recurring dream. It kept poking his name at me.”

“It took you long enough to figure it out!” Sykes added.

“Yeah,” added his partner, “and you kept it to yourself until you brought it up in front of Samson and the rest of the people involved.”

I muttered, “Sour grapes,” under my breath, and then asked, “Was I wrong?”

“He’s right,” Sykes said to his partner through his teeth. “You would have laughed yourself pink if he’d told you earlier. The only time to admit to a clue like that is when the suspects have been booked for the crime,” said Boyd, grinning.

“And when stronger evidence will support the unprovable.” This from Anna.

“Yeah. I don’t think we’ll have much more trouble from the professor. He’s quite tame now. Told me to tell you that if the muffler on your damned car hadn’t attracted a police car, he’d never have had to park it behind the steak house,” Boyd said, then continued, “You worked it all out, Benny. And you did it from the hospital. That’s so amazing even I have to admit it.”

“No, I’m not your complete armchair sleuth. Remember, I’ve had two shifts of nurses working for me around the clock. And I even went out one day.”

“Well, next door to armchair, then.”

“I’ll accept that, Jack. Now, when am I going to get my suitcase packed, escape out of the hospital, and end up back home?”

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” It was Sykes. We looked at him until he caught his breath. “What about Flora McAlpine? The woman in the Dumpster with you. We checked her out, Benny. She went to high school with you in Grantham. How do you explain them apples?”

“She was in school with me? That’s right; you told me. Flora McAlpine?”

“Yeah. Wiggle out of that. We ran her past history. You did time in grade nine together.”

“Flora Mc—
Scotty!
Yes, I remember her now. Two heavy blond braids and glasses. Blue eyes squinting at the blackboard through thick lenses. I’d forgotten all about her.” It was Flora’s face that the television hostess had reminded me of. “Twin ramparts of blond hair,” I said out loud.

Anna smiled, and took my hand.

“And she died coming to your rescue,” said Jack. “We now have two witnesses who saw Flora, your old schoolmate, watching through her apartment window. They were doing some sort of committee work. Flora suddenly turned, saying, ‘But I
know
him!’ and rushed out. They expected her to come right back. When she didn’t, they went home. I talked to both of them this morning.”

“Poor Flora! I guess that’s as close as we are going to get until I get my wits back.”

“Yeah, she could have seen you
before
you got clobbered and arrived at the Dumpster
after
you were inside. Samson then got rid of Flora the same way.”

“Poor Flora,” Anna said, and we nodded. We indulged in a few seconds of silence, watching the scraps of paper blow across the floor.

TWENTY-EIGHT

I finally met Dympna, Clea, and their parents, Laura and Steve Mapesbury. It was early September, as close as I can figure it, and the occasion was the wedding of Stella Seco’s daughter, Rosie Moss, to a young American with a degree in business administration. The place was the lawn in the quadrangle at Simcoe College. I liked the irony of that. The ceremony had been held in a little chapel on St. George Street, a couple of blocks from the Gothic-revival college. It was a well-attended affair; people from Stella’s TV network were everywhere, some of them signing autographs. Someone told me that the Ontario government was represented by three ministers among the guests. The father of the bride, looking lost in the glare of celebrity-spotting, was taking photographs with a small Japanese camera. In spite of Stella’s best attempts at upstaging the bride, Rosie was the undisputed star of the afternoon.

The weather cooperated beautifully and the sun failed to dry out the canapés. A breeze riffled the white tablecloths from time to time, but they were well anchored with platters of cheese and crackers. I soaked up as much sunshine as I could; it was the only bit of summer I was
going to get. The speeches were unmemorable but perfect in the context. Turned out in a light seersucker suit from a couple of years ago, I allowed myself a glass of red wine and talked to several people who actually knew the happy couple. I faked my way through several conversations in which I pretended to be a friend of the bride or groom, as it took me. On the lawn, the large gathering of men in suits and women in hats and dresses, with sheeplike clouds overhead, made me quite giddy. I wasn’t used to the wine; I’d been on the wagon all summer. All around me, women were slowly sinking into the well-tended turf to the length of their high heels, and as they grew shorter the men they were talking to grew steadily taller. I wasn’t sure whether the fun of that observation was me or the wine.

By then, I had been out of the hospital for a few weeks and had been looking out for myself with some help from Anna and a few Grantham-based social workers, who were concerned about my reading, my physical wellbeing, and whether or not I could cope with making my bed and taking out the garbage. I still carried a Memory Book, but it had now shrunk to pocket-notebook size. It still kept track of my days and nights, reminded me about renewing my medication and other exciting things. In the grocery store I still sometimes mistook grapefruits for oranges, until I smelled or handled them. Since I liked and ate both, I didn’t waste my money. Anna was a godsend in all of this, but she didn’t simply look after me,
she saw to it that I learned to look after myself. And, in fact, I was getting pretty good at it.

The saddest thing about leaving the rehab was leaving my nurse, Rhymes With. We exchanged addresses and met for coffee once. I hoped to see her from time to time on the outside, but I didn’t. She was in Toronto, I was in Grantham. On a trip back to the hospital to give one of those talks about surviving, I found that she had moved on from the rehab. We were old war buddies; we’d survived the same bombardments together, hunkered down in the same dugouts. With her help I’d got my life together again. It was the sort of debt you never can repay. I felt that the thanks owing on my recall to life belonged to her.

Anna and I are closer than we ever have been. It was Anna who drove me to Toronto for the wedding. She would have come with me, but had to go to the races with her father. She promised to join me after the last race.

The most astonishing thing to happen that afternoon occurred when Stella, the mother of the bride, dressed in a rich burgundy summer dress, intended to dim the bride’s white, came up to me and planted a firm, wet kiss on my lips. I was blindsided! As I began to get my wind back, Stella told me all about her knowledge of my recent hospital stay. She encumbered me with details of the anguish this knowledge had put her through.

I never could trust Stella. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t work with her or exchange friendly greetings. For instance, when she denied knowing Professor McAlpine,
I didn’t believe her. She’d used the feminine pronoun, referring to her as she, when I hadn’t hinted at her sex. So she’d fed me information, even in the act of lying. I grinned at her and gave her a hug. Stella was still all smiles when she launched herself upon me one more time, then dived back into wedding festivities.

Having been warmed up by her mother, I stood in line to be greeted by the bride. While I waited my turn, the couple ahead of me talked about their summer vacation up north; talk of fishing and canoeing. I’d missed this summer completely, except for a few afternoons like this. From last summer, I remembered Stella’s little cabin in the woods. The sudden cry of crows, the glimpses of the lake through pine and cedar. I remember walking along a track, heavy with pine needles, and the marina dock across the lake. To this memory, I added the picture of Anna in a canoe waving a paddle against the setting sun. I imagined listening to the sound of a camp breakfast snapping and sizzling on the wood fire.

Then, I was at the head of the reception line. Rosie grabbed me and hugged me while her eyes betrayed her emotion. It was like Stanley and Livingstone all over again, but with hugging.

“Hey! You shouldn’t be crying today, young lady!”

“Oh, Benny, I’m just so glad to see you.
She
wouldn’t let me talk to you. Are you all right?”

I laughed and, through an assortment of winks and grins, tried to indicate that I had survived intact. A wedding is no place for speaking the truth.

It must have been convincing, because she stopped crying. “It was my mother,” she said, looking me in the eye. “I’m
so
sorry, Benny.” Now she wiped away the tears and pressed a damp kiss on my cheek. “How can I thank you?”

“Forget it. Just tell me how your mother got you off the case.”

“She packed me off to her brother in LA, where I met Hugh. You’ll
love
Hugh, Benny. It never would have happened without you! I’ll never forget what you did. Really, I won’t.”

“When did you see me last?”

“I came to the hospital once, as soon as I heard, but they wouldn’t let me in.”

“Before that. Did you take me to see Flora or Fiona? You know.”

“No. I left you on campus. I went home with Heather. But I really did try to see you at the hospital.”

“And Dr. McAlpine?”

“She was a high-school friend of Mom’s. She was my keeper twice over—as don and as Mom’s eyes and ears. I still feel bad about her.”

“You had nothing to do with her death. You weren’t even there. Flora came to my rescue. She knew me from Grantham, too. How did your mom find out about me?”

“I went home after I heard about you and Flora. She could see it in my face and winkled the rest out of me. I’m sorry.”