Grave Concern, page 16
3
The Grave
Something seized Kate in a merciless grip. A lobster of giant proportions clasped Kate’s skull in its pincers, squeezing for all it was worth.
Now it spoke in Bubble language: “This one’s too old. Look, too calcified to crack.”
A still larger lobster moved in to help. “Let me try,” it burbled.
The vise around Kate’s temples probed and squeezed, pressing flesh on bone. The cage of her brow, jelly eyes in their sockets, her neatly coiled brains — set to explode …
Kate awoke sitting up and halfway out of bed.
“Ohhhhh,” she groaned, holding her head.
There was no question of lying back down. Her bladder was too full in any case — she was condemned to the bathroom trek. Gently, gently, Kate tried to stand up, but her body could not support her thrumming skull. Down, down she went to hands and knees, crawling across her room and down the hall.
The bathroom door was closed — odd. Odder still, a note was Scotch-taped at what would normally be knee-level, now at perfect reading height:
In order to shower, Kate had to move Ludmilla to the kitchen sink, which she accomplished slowly, with eyes half-closed so as to see as little as possible of the general wreckage. Back upstairs, Kate stood a good twenty minutes in a hot shower, but it was like running the dear old Impala through Poppy’s Carwash downtown. You could hose down and buff up the exterior all you liked, but the hard-used interior was still grimy and grit-caked.
Kate dressed and ventured to the guest room. Receiving no reply to soft taps on the door, she turned the knob and tiptoed in, suddenly fearful Leonard might have succumbed to Foxy’s punch. To her relief, Leonard stirred. Kate was about to turn and flee, when his hand shot out and caught hers.
“It’s okay, I need to get up. Gotta work in a couple of hours,” he said. He said all this with his eyes still closed, as though it would pain him to open them. Kate had to admit he was a beautiful specimen, long dark lashes twitching on his cheek as his eyes turned beneath their lids. The cheek itself was as smooth as a woman’s and the most gorgeous golden colour. It was all she could do not to stroke it with a knuckle.
Instead, she exclaimed, “Work! You were out cold, you realize. How’s the belly?” Leonard’s hand, warm and dry, held on to hers.
“Queasy, but all right.”
Kate was suddenly embarrassed. How had this come about — Leonard sleeping in her house, not exactly in her bed, but close enough?
“Not exactly how I’d pictured our first night,” Leonard said.
Whoa. Kate didn’t know where to rest her eyes — anywhere but on the man lying there in her guest bed.
She babbled, buying time. “So you had pictured it,” she said.
“Hadn’t you?” Leonard replied.
“Okay, yes, I guess I had. Have.” Kate laughed. “It’s complicated. Uh, can I get you anything? Water?”
“Sure, thanks,” Leonard said. Kate pulled away and headed across the hall.
“Quite a party, Kate!” Leonard shouted over as she filled a glass.
“Yes, well, it didn’t go quite according to plan.”
“Do they ever?” Leonard said.
Kate handed him the glass. “Well, that’s a jolly attitude,” she said. “But at the moment, I see what you mean.”
“I guess I’m not a big one for parties, not my style.”
“I kind of figured, when you wouldn’t quit wiping those bloody glasses and serving drinks. Uh, listen, someone took a power sander to my guts overnight and there’s a lobster living in my kitchen sink. I don’t even want to think about the state of this place. Can we talk tomorrow or sometime? Have a shower if you like, there’re clean towels in the bathroom.”
Leonard nodded and smiled. “Thanks for this.”
“What, for my guest laying you low with a punch? And it was Mary, I think, who put us to bed. I don’t recall much after Madge Fitzgerald spanked the mayor with my guitar.”
Leonard laughed. “Wish I’d seen that.”
Kate laughed too. “One off the bucket list, that. So, Mr. Ho Lam,” said Kate, moving to the door, “I’ll leave you to it.”
Kate and Leonard sat in Kate’s kitchen, staring into their coffee mugs. That is, Leonard was staring. Kate furtively watched him, wondering what had possessed her, in a state of decent sobriety, to open the can of worms that was J.P., the errant grave and her own pitiful history.
It all started when Leonard mentioned he’d seen a girl he used to babysit at the party.
“You’re kidding me. You mean that Natalie? The only one young enough, I figure,” said Kate.
“Yup, that’s the one. Nice kid. Always was.”
“Maybe too nice,” replied Kate. “She offered me cod tongue. I think that’s what set me off.” She nodded toward the bathroom door down the hall, still sporting its lipstick scrawled message. “Oh my God.” Kate’s head dropped into her shaking hands. “There’s still that to clean up.”
“Yeah, I wondered last night why you were in there so long,” Leonard smiled.
“I was trying to reach you, believe it or not,” Kate said. “I just kept getting interrupted.”
“Party girl, interrupted.”
“Oh, man. It all seems like a bad dream now. That Natalie, I met her before, well, sort of through a bathroom door. At Longshots. She’s a friend of — ” Kate stopped abruptly.
“Of who?” Leonard asked.
“Whom. Uh, it’s complicated. Actually the friend of the niece of a friend. Just someone I sort of knew a long time ago. Not much to tell, really. Pretty lame. You wouldn’t be interested.”
Leonard cast a shrewd eye upon his hostess. “Methinks Kate doth protest too much,” he said.
“Whaddya mean?”
“That you’re a lousy liar?” Leonard’s voice rose in a question, but his point was clear.
“Ouch,” Kate said. “How did I get so far in PR then? Must have lost my touch.”
“Listen to yourself!” Leonard laughed, and Kate laughed too until forced to stop by the unbearable throbbing in her head.
“Oh Leonard, never chase screech with champagne. I’m just not myself. Whoever that is.” Kate took a large slurp of coffee. “Ahhhh. Remember Java man?”
“Ah, Kate. Changing the subject again. So what about this friend slash niece slash friend thing? Wanna spill?”
“Not really.”
“C’mon, Kate, it’s a topic of conversation. That party exhausted my small talk for a year.”
And so Kate had come clean, in limited fashion, about Sylvie and Guy and J.P. and John Marcotte and her own continuing quest to find out what the hell was going on.
“Why would anything be going on?” Leonard asked.
And Kate, not knowing why, running merely on hunch and feeling, had not replied.
And now Leonard was staring into his coffee, and Kate, sick at heart, was staring at Leonard, wishing she could take back every word. The doorbell rang, and Kate jumped up, thanking her stars for Mary, come to save Kate from herself, or at the very least Ludmilla from her sink. She flung the door wide.
Standing on the doorstep was a well-built, shortish man she’d never seen before, unless it had been last night, which was as good as. He stuck out his hand. “Good morning. My name is Neville Freeland. I’m looking for an old friend, Hille Hatter. She gave me this address.”
Kate walked up her steps with cold fear in her heart. She didn’t know the exact time, but it was early. One thing in a small town: she knew the door would not be locked. She turned the knob slowly, remembering as she did so the coat she was wearing. Quickly, she shuffled it off and balled it up under her arm. The trick would be to reach her bedroom without bumping into walls, waking her parents.
Kate stuffed the bundle under the bed, and hearing a clunk, hauled it out again. What to do with the empty bottle? Every means of disposal was fraught. She pushed it back in the pocket.
As Kate was grasping the implications of a man named Neville standing on her doorstep, a scream emanated from the kitchen.
“Come in, come in!” Kate said to Neville and ran back to Leonard, who was dancing around the kitchen avoiding a very agitated lobster fed up with captivity and starvation, not to mention a close call with death by boiling.
“I didn’t see it till it was out of the sink and ready to drop!” Leonard’s breath was fast and shallow, his chest heaving like he’d run a race. “Sorry, bad experience as a kid. I’m crustaceo-phobic.”
“Okay, okay, don’t hyperventilate,” said Kate. She grabbed the irritable lobster off the floor with an oven mitt and placed it back in the sink, where it continued trying to claw its way out.
“Just like Sisyphus, he is,” observed Kate.
“She,” Neville said, peering in.
Kate and Leonard stopped dead and stared at the stocky stranger.
“Worked a summer off PEI on a lobster rig,” he said. “About a hundred years back. Lady lobster, no guff. Got any frozen shrimp?”
No one said a word.
“Or uh, a can of crabmeat, that’s good too. Even spinach, if you got some. I’d say she’s hungry.”
No one moved.
“May I?” said Neville, indicating the fridge.
Still stunned by the turn of events, Kate nodded, wide-eyed.
Neville approached the fridge.
Kate found her tongue. “L- look in the freezer,” she said. “I think there’s some shrimp or prawns I bought at Christmas. Will that work?”
“Sure,” Neville said, fishing through frozen peas and orange juice. “Got it! Here, I’ll just run ’em under hot water for a sec, that all right?”
Kate nodded again. “Thanks.”
Leonard, safe in the table nook, managed a smile. “That’s going to be one expensive pet.”
“Nah, not at all,” said Hille Hatter’s ex. He wandered over and peered in the sink. “You can feed ’em just about anything. Look, I’d say this one’s not even full-grown. Jeeeez! Things must be bad, if they’re sending the young ones up here like this. You got one of those Brita filter things? They’re not fussy about chlorine.”
Kate fetched the pitcher of filtered water she used for tea.
Neville poured it all in the sink and refilled the chamber. “She’s a feisty one, all right. But the fight won’t last forever. You should get her into a salt-water aquarium ASAP. That is, if you’re not going to have her for lunch.”
“Now, about Hille,” Neville said. “She live here, or — ?”
At this awkward juncture, Kate looked desperately at Leonard, who returned a look of unconcealed surprise.
Kate considered Luck: conception and reality. Between the two, there was quite a difference. More than its better-mannered siblings — say, Love or Loyalty — Luck flaunted its black-sheep status by choosing the moment when it was most needed to up and leave. And right now, Luck had abandoned Kate in a very dark place.
Now, as per its fickle nature, with no prompting and less reason, Luck spun on its heel and came back. How did Kate know this? Straight from her front door and through to the kitchen walked Mary.
“Hi, gang!” she said, to the passel of shocked faces hanging there. She turned to Kate and Leonard, “I see you two are finally up. Sorry I didn’t knock. Thought you might still be in bed.”
You two. Kate didn’t know whether to hug Mary or run her through with the kitchen scissors. She was tempted to remind Mary that her job in this town was to give babies, not rumours, their start in life.
“Mary,” she said pointedly, “this is Neville Freeland, a friend of Hille’s, up from the city. Hille gave him this address, but she’s not here. You wouldn’t happen to have seen her, uh, at work?”
“Mary, good to meet you.” Neville held out his hand, which Mary limply took.
Mary’s head swivelled to Neville then Kate and Neville again, in a valiant attempt to follow the bouncing ball. “Uh, no,” she said, “can’t say as I’ve seen Hille.” Mary’s eyes shot daggers at Kate, who kept nodding encouragement. “But … I was pretty busy …” Kate’s nodding grew downright maniacal. “… I s’pose she might have come in while I was on another case.”
“Come in where?” asked Neville.
“Oh,” Kate jumped in, “to the hospital Emergency. Mary’s a doctor.” Kate silently pleaded with Mary for help.
“Uh, yeah,” Mary said. “As a matter of fact, I think a case came in while I was busy in the OR. Uh, middle-aged woman. Plenty of bleeding. Possible involvement of alcohol. That’s all I know, dear.”
“Oh, my God,” said Neville. “Was it Hille? Is she all right?”
“I think it was pretty serious,” Mary continued to Kate’s obvious approval. “If she’s not where she’s s’posed to be, like Kate said, maybe you should go and check it out.”
Drat, thought Kate. As Hille’s erstwhile friend and roommate, this meant she was part of this thing. She’d have to go to the hospital too, to keep up appearances. “You go on ahead,” she said to Neville, already buttoning his coat, “we’ll be right behind.”
“Silly goose,” said Mary in her doctor voice, the most benign epithet Kate had experienced from her friend. “He won’t know where the hospital is.”
“Right!” said Kate. “We’ll go ahead, then. Neville, you follow us.”
Leonard reluctantly drove, and Kate explained the sticky situation of the money and the boob job to him and Mary as they drove. Then she and Mary got on their separate phones. Mary contacted the doctor on call to explain the unfolding situation, while Kate, for Leonard’s benefit, went on speakerphone to Hille.
“Hille, where the hell are you? Neville’s just shown up at my door! What the hell were you think — ”
But at the word Neville, Hille had already broken down. Now she wept uncontrollably on her end, and Leonard’s car filled with rasping sobs.
“Oh my God, Kate! What am I gonna do? He wants them back. Oooooh, Kate, what am I gonna do?”
“He wants what back?”
“The implants. Last time, he said if I don’t have the money, he’s taking them back. The implants.”
“Whaaat? He’s going to rip them out of your chest, or what?”
“I don’t know, Kate. Helllp!”
Mary, off her phone now, grabbed Kate’s. “Listen, Hille, there’s a few of us over here going to a lot of trouble for you. You better get down to the hospital, pronto, like five minutes ago, and make like you’ve just tried to kill yourself. Ask loudly for Dr. Lyon, and he’ll do the rest. Go! now!”
Mary turned to Leonard. “Leonard, take the scenic route, okay? We have to give Hille time to get there before us.”
Kate flumped back in her seat. “Wind’s from the east and it smells like manure,” she said.
“Say what?” Mary said.
“Something my mother used to say. An expression. When the shit was about to hit the fan.”
“Didn’t she grow up on the Prairies?” Mary said.
“Sure did,” said Kate.
When they arrived at Emergency a good twenty minutes later than was called for, Mary bustled out of Leonard’s car and over to Neville’s. She motioned Neville to roll down his window and leaned in with a serious look. “You just go in with the others,” she said. “I’ll go see what’s up.”
In Emergency, Kate turned to the shaky Neville. “It’s a good thing you showed up when you did, Neville, or we might not have noticed anything wrong. There was a bit of a wingding at the house last night, and we’re all a little the worse for wear. I should have paid more attention. Poor Hille.”
Neville’s level of agitation increased. He unbuttoned his coat and buttoned it again. He reached in his pocket for his phone, and began poking its keys. Kate could see he was putting on a little farce of his own, hiding the fact that, in this particular matter, there was no one to call.
Kate threw caution to the winds. “So, what brings you here to our little town?” she said. “Just a friendly visit, or …”
Neville sighed, pecked twice at his phone, making it beep, then snapped it shut with authority. “Frankly, I’ve come to a time in my life when I want to wrest back control. You know how it is. Too much work for too many years and too little to show for it.”
And now he wanted the implants. “Ah,” said Kate. “Do I sniff a plan?”
“In a manner of speaking. And, to answer your original question. What brings me here, is, well, I’m considering my options. And hoping for at least some help from Hille. All the research in the world can’t match hands-on experience, when it comes to this kind of thing.”
“Thing?”
“Decision. As in how to proceed.”
Proceed.
Mary appeared in a white doctor’s coat, a stethoscope stuffed in the breast pocket.
“Sorry it took so long,” she said. “There was some difficulty about the transfusion. But that’s all taken care of. Hille’s quite comfortable now, dear. I’ve persuaded Dr. Lyon to let visitors in, no more than two at a time,” she said, glancing meaningfully at Leonard.
“You two go ahead in,” said Leonard, looking relieved. “I’ll just stay here and read my magazine.” Shooting Kate a dark look, he mumbled, “Uh, give Hille my best.”
Hille lay propped on the hospital bed, wrists bound in multiple metres of gauze, blood visibly seeping through. Dr. Lyon, his medi-mask pulled down like a paper beard, stood by the bed with a look of severe concern. He motioned the visitors forward.
“Hiya,” said Neville gently.
“Hi,” said Hille weakly. “They told me you were coming.”
“How could I not, when I heard?”
