“Good. I bet it shows she was drugged before she was hanged.”
“What would that prove? We found her stash. She was a regular dope-smoker and a pretty heavy drinker. If there’s evidence of drugs in her system, it’ll just indicate that she doped herself up before she did it. Pretty sad.”
“Sure, Francy smoked dope, but then so do I,” I said. “It was no big deal. Neither of us did coke. Neither of us took pills.”
“We only have your word on that. Don’t forget the note.”
“Are you going to look for the notepaper?”
“Already did. Found a big pile of it in the desk in the living room.”
“That’s crazy. It must have been planted by the killer. And besides, any handwriting expert will tell you it’s not her.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I just am, okay? Are you guys checking it?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Becker. You have a sample of her handwriting?”
“Yup. A note she left for me recently.” There was the “we’ll be fine” thing she left in my stash-box. It felt awful to think what optimism in her had written it, now. “But there’s probably stuff she’s written in her house. Thing is, I know for sure that there was no lilac paper there yesterday.”
“What makes you say that?”
I explained how Francy and I had torn the place apart the day before her death, looking for the money.
“I searched that desk myself. There was no lilac notepaper there then.”
“So your theory is that somebody went over there, got her drunk or stoned enough not to put up a struggle, hanged her, left a suicide note, planted the notepaper and left? That it?”
“That’s it.”
“Huh. You’ll have a hard time convincing Becker. He thinks he’s got the case all sewn up. He thinks she was nuts. I finally got him to agree with me that any woman who stays shacked up with a guy who beats her has to have a couple of screws loose.”
“There’s always way more to it than that. It’s not a case of just stay or go. Don’t you ever read about it? Don’t you guys ever do training courses?”
Morrison glared at me. “Of course we do. Sensitivity training and all that. Still doesn’t help when you come up against some poor girl who’s had her arm broken in three places and still won’t make a statement against the guy who did it.”
“Sometimes they stay for the sake of the kids,” I said. If we were going to hash the whole issue out at Tim Horton’s, we’d need another couple of donuts and a whole pot of coffee.
“Listen, Polly Deacon. I got all the training courses I could handle when I was a kid.” Morrison stared at me fiery-eyed for a moment and then looked away, out to where the lumber trucks were whizzing past on the highway. I didn’t say anything, just waited. Then he started talking quietly, as if he and I were the only people in the room. “The Honourable MPP who ran up against your aunt in that election way back then isn’t my real father, eh? He adopted me. My real Dad was a drunk—hit all of us every goddamn night and used my mother for a punching bag. She never left, never made the break, until Dad set fire to the couch one night. We all got out, but he just lay there in front of the goddamned television and burned to death. Mom snapped like a broken twig, and I spent two years bouncing around from one foster family to another. Now, tell me again how staying with a fucked-up wife-beater is good for the kids. Go ahead.” He had said it all very quickly, sending his words like darts straight into my gut. Francy’s story had been like that. Gut wrenching. Leaving me feeling inadequate, like my own deal wasn’t nearly as bad, so who the hell was I to talk? There was so much tension coming at me over the table that the air crackled.
“Oh, man, Earlie. I’m sorry. That’s horrible.”
“Damn right. Francy Travers just made me mad. I talked to her, and she just said the same things my mother used to say. Her, with her face half burned off. Did Travers do that to her? She didn’t tell me—not that I asked, eh.”
“No, that wasn’t John. It was her father a long time ago, back when she was a teenager living in the States. She didn’t talk about it much.”
“Did you ask her right out?”
“Nope. When you carry scars like that, everyone who knows you probably has it at the back of their mind all the time, but there’s just no opening to ask, you know? Like 'So, Francy, how about telling me who burned your face off?’ I don’t think so.”
Morrison nodded.
“Francy told me just after she got pregnant,” I said. “We were up at the cabin, partying a bit, and got to talking about fetal alcohol syndrome and ‘smoking can harm your baby’—that sort of stuff. Francy was having a hard time quitting the old vices, but she said that at least her kid wouldn’t inherit the scars. She just came out with it and then laughed. I waited and she told me what happened. Her father was like your Dad was, except he didn’t torch the couch. He torched his daughter.”
“Why?”
“Why? Does there have to be a reason? Like maybe she did something to deserve it? Like maybe you did something to deserve getting beat up by your dad? I don’t know, Earlie. She didn’t tell me that. All I know is that after the accident, as she called it, he hanged himself. She moved up here to stay with a family as a nanny, and she never went back. She said that after a childhood like hers, she could handle anything. I guess that’s part of why she stayed with John. She compared her early experience to the stuff he doled out and figured she was in heaven.”
“Poor kid.”
“Uh-huh. She had a blind spot where John was concerned. But after he was killed, she certainly wasn’t consumed by guilt, as that stupid note apparently says. She was getting on with it. She was happy.”
“Becker wont buy it.”
“Then how come he’s at Kelso’s trying to talk to John’s friends? He must have some doubts.”
“Loose ends, mostly.”
“And so if he finds out something that points the other way, he’ll ignore it, right?”
“That would be unprofessional.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well. It might just get him thinking. He knows I don’t think Francy Travers killed her husband, but what I think doesn’t count for nothin’ with him.”
“How come you guys don’t get along?”
“He always gets the girl, eh?”
“Quick, Earlie. Very quick. But really. How come you dislike him so much?”
“I was up for promotion, and he swings in from the city and snatches it away from me. How about that? Or, he’s a hundred and fifty pounds of muscle and I’m a slob. How about that? Or, he hates my dog. How about that? I got my reasons.”
Morrison’s face was red, and his tone was vehement enough to turn a head or two.
“Hey, hey. I’m sorry. Rude question. It’s none of my business anyway.”
Morrison took a swig of cold coffee and grimaced.
“Okay, let’s go,” he said. “Next stop Kelso’s.” He looked at what I was wearing. “Couldn’t you have worn a mini-skirt or something?” he said.
Twenty-Five
Hey, boys, those boobs would do that
even if they all just lined up