“I took the bush path, eh? To the back door? Mr. Travers doesn’t like me being over there when he’s not home, and he wasn’t because his truck was gone, but I didn’t know that until later. If I’d went the road way, I wouldn’t have even knocked. Francy, Mrs. Travers, I mean, said it was okay though. So I gave her the book back and then we had some tea and talked in the kitchen for a while.”
“Tell her what you talked about, Eddie,” Carla said.
“It doesn’t matter what we talked about, Ma. Just stuff, okay?”
“It pays to be truthful.” He glared at her and continued.
“Then Mr. Travers’s truck pulled in and I said I had to go. Don’t get me wrong. He likes me, eh? But, well, he has rules about stuff.”
“What kind of rules, Eddie?” I said.
“Like never being alone with Mrs. Travers. Never touch his dog. Always ask him first before using his tools. You know.”
“Yeah, Eddie. I know.”
“Anyway, he came in before I got out, and I knew he would be mad. He was kinda drunk, and when he saw me he went for me like he was going to kill me. He hit me in the stomach and I fell down, but I didn’t fight back or anything.”
Carla was nodding her head and emitting little peeps of approval, as if she were following along in the script in her head. I wondered how many times she had made him rehearse.
“Did he say anything?” I said.
“No, he was just sort of growling. Crazy. Then he went for Mrs. Travers and started hitting her. I was real scared, eh, so I grabbed a wrench that was sitting there and sort of hit him over the head with it.”
“That was brave, Eddie,” I said. He looked uncomfortable.
“Mrs. Travers said it was stupid. She said when he woke up he would kill me and her both. So we grabbed the baby and got out of there. That’s all really, except when we got in, Ma tried to call the cops or an ambulance or something and Francy ripped the phone out of the wall.”
“Why did she do that, do you think?” I said.
“I don’t know. I was in the bathroom and I heard a yell and when I came out there was Ma standing there with the phone cord in her hand, looking at Francy like she was crazy. Francy was crying. It was awful.”
“Sounds like it. What time did you and Francy get here?”
“They came in about eight o'clock,” Carla said. “I was so worried. Samson’s away at a farming conference and I had to feed the stock all by myself. I don’t like being alone in the house at night, and I’d told Eddie to come right home after dropping off the book.”
“And what did you do after Francy pulled the phone out?”
Carla frowned, trying to remember. “I guess I served up dinner and tried to get things back to normal. Then I made up a bed for Francy in the guest room.”
“Weren’t you afraid that John would come over here?”
“John Travers would never dare come over here,” Carla said. “Samson saw to that.”
“They didn’t get along?”
Eddie laughed. “That’s an understatement,” he said.
“Eddie,” Carla said, a note of warning in her voice. Then she smiled at me. “My husband and Mr. Travers had a disagreement a long time ago,” she said. “They don’t speak to each other, and they both respect each other’s property lines. That’s all. John knew better than to set foot in this house.” Her mouth was set in a prim, pink line. She looked like an illustration for a story about the good girl who gets propositioned.
“Besides,” Eddie added, with a wry grin, “he was dead drunk.”
“So, you just all went to bed,” I said. It made a weird kind of sense. “What about now? Your phone’s still out of order. Haven’t you tried to get it fixed?”
“Samson will see to it,” Carla said. “He’s coming back today.”
“And is this little coffee party in honour of his return?” I said.
Carla looked hurt, and I immediately wanted to take it back. She had gone to all this trouble, her eyes said. The least I could do was to be polite about it. I didn’t doubt that having a near-catatonic Francy in her house was not something that she would have chosen. Especially if Francy had been ripping the place apart. People like the Schreiers prefer things to be predictable.
“I know you’re worried about your friend,” she said, apologetically, as if it were she who had been rude and not me. “I thought she just needed things to be normal for a while, that’s all. We were waiting for the police to get here.”
“Why are you so sure the police are coming?” I said.
“Well, John Travers will probably wake up with a nasty bump on his head and sin in his heart,” she said. She stood up straight and clenched her little fists. “He won’t come alone, but he’ll come all right, trying to blame Eddie for what happened. Eddie’s a good boy, but he did hit John Travers on the head. He’ll have to tell his side of the story to the police, and policemen never say no to a cup of coffee, do they?”
It was a rhetorical question, and to fill the gap, I took a bite out of the pastry Carla had offered me. It was incredibly sweet.
“Why are you here?” Carla asked, while my mouth was full. “If you’ve come looking for Francy, well, you can see that she’s in no shape to go herb-gathering.” Her sarcasm surprised me. I wouldn’t have though she’d had it in her.
I swallowed the sticky mass and cleared my throat.
“I came over here because I wanted to ask Francy what happened last night before the police did. I wanted to give her some support when they told her that John was dead.” I stressed the last word and waited for a reaction.
Carla and Eddie gasped in unison.
Francy looked up. Her eyes cleared, and she began to laugh. It was just a chuckle at first, but it got louder and louder until she was howling, tears streaming down her cheeks. We all watched her, fascinated and horrified.
“Do something!” Carla said. I couldn’t move. Then Eddie strode to the end of the table, lifted Francy’s chin very gently with one hand and slapped her hard across the face.
“Jesus Christ, Eddie!” I yelled, going for him, but it had worked. Francy fell into his arms, sobbing.
“I can’t allow blasphemy in my house, Pauline,” Carla said, softly.
“I apologize,” I said. “Violence of any kind makes me angry.”
“Well, there’s no need to swear,” Carla said. “Eddie, you never, never hit a girl. You know that.”
“You did say to do something, Ma,” Eddie said.
“The police will be here soon,” I said. “Francy, I’m glad they didn’t see your reaction to the news, honey, but you’ve got to pull it together a bit, because they’re going to want to ask you some questions. You too, Eddie. What you told me just doesn’t tally with what we found next door.”
“What do you mean?” Eddie said.
“Broken beer bottles, lots of them. Blood all over the place. You may have conked John over the head with a wrench, but I don’t think that’s what killed him. Someone shot him at point-blank range in the chest and dumped his body at the landfill site. Know anything about that?”
Both Eddie and Francy froze. Francy was definitely coming back to life. Her face wasn’t empty anymore and a bit of colour had worked its way into her cheeks. Beth was quiet, amazingly, considering everything