A Chill Rain in January Page 7

  Zoe could see that this was hard for Mrs. Nelson to believe, so she threw another one, which hit the old woman on the shoulder. It must have landed harder than the first one because Mrs. Nelson said “Uh,” and bent over, one hand fumbling out to the side until it came in contact with a treetrunk. She hobbled over and leaned against it, holding on to her shoulder.

  “Who’s there?” she said in a quivery voice. “Is there somebody up there?”

  Zoe wanted to shout, “No there’s nobody up there it’s God throwing apples at you!” But instead of shouting she threw another apple. This one struck the brim of Mrs. Nelson’s hat, making it go all crooked on her head.

  Then Zoe got very angry with herself. Why had she done this? Now Mrs. Nelson was squinting hard up into the trees, her little eyes poking into all the branches, sniffing and poking into every single apple tree, and—there! They hit Zoe right in the face, those beady little old-woman eyes.

  “Zoe,” said Mrs. Nelson, sounding amazed.

  “Zoe Zoe Zoe!” yelled Zoe.

  She climbed fast down from the tree and ran to the top of the hill and down the other side and over the fence into the Bradleys’ yard, where Henry Bradley was mowing his father’s lawn. She ran clear across the Bradleys’ property, screaming, “Damn you Henry damn you Henry!” until she reached the road, and then she ran along the road until it curved and went in front of her own house. She ran inside and up the stairs to her room, where she opened her windows wide and threw herself onto her bed and, hot with humiliation and rage, thought about putting a curse or something on old Mrs. Nelson.

  That night then was another Zoe meeting. They always had them right before dinner.

  “Mrs. Nelson said you were throwing apples at her today,” said Zoe’s mother, sounding tired and sad.

  Zoe shrugged. “I was up in a tree. Maybe some apples fell off it.”

  “You mean it was an accident?” said Zoe’s father.

  Zoe shrugged again. “They could’ve hit her. I don’t know.”

  “She says you yelled at her,” said her mother.

  “I don’t remember. I might have. She scared me.”

  “How did she scare you?” said her father.

  “By sneaking up on me.”

  “I can’t imagine Mrs. Nelson sneaking up on you, Zoe,” said her mother.

  Zoe didn’t say anything.

  “What happened to your face? It’s all scraped.”

  “I rubbed it against a tree.”

  “Zoe, for God’s sake…”

  “What were you doing in her orchard anyway?” said her father.

  “Playing.” Her stomach was growling. “I’m hungry. Can’t we eat now?”

  Her mother gave a big sigh.

  Zoe looked at the floor. She was standing on a rug that was mostly dark red, with lots of big flowers all over it. The rug was lying on top of a beige-colored carpet, which covered almost the entire house. “Can we have dinner now?” she said.

  “Mrs. Nelson doesn’t want you to go into her yard anymore,” said Zoe’s father.

  I don’t care what she wants, said Zoe inside herself. Outside, she let her head nod up and down.

  Her father stroked her hair. “Okay,” he said. “Go find Benjamin. Tell him it’s dinnertime.”

  The next day she saw that the old people had had the tall grass in the orchard cut down. This was to make it easier for them to see Zoe. They knew she wouldn’t stay out of their yard.

  They must have spent all their time from then on watching out the windows. The second Zoe started to climb one of the apple trees, they came out onto the back porch and shouted at her to go away. And then they phoned up her parents.

  But she kept on trying, even though her mother and her father got very upset about it.

  They caught her every time, but it was interesting to see how far she could get before she heard their screen door bang open and one of them began hollering at her.

  But soon it wasn’t interesting anymore.

  It made her more and more angry to be kept out of that yard.

  Every day she got angrier about it, until one day she was so jammed full of anger it made her shake. She wanted to hit things, chop things, smash things. But there was nothing in her hands to do it with. So she ran and ran and ran, across her own backyard and around the house and over the front lawn to the road, and down the road until she couldn’t run anymore and had to fall down on some stranger’s grass, where she lay panting and panting, watched by a big dog sitting under a tree, until finally her heart stopped beating so fast and she could feel the hot sun on the backs of her legs, and she pushed herself up and went home.

  She couldn’t go tearing around like this all the time. She’d wreck her body. She had to think of something.

  A curse, or something.

  Chapter 18

  “HOW do I know you’ve actually got them?” said Zoe to her brother on Friday afternoon. They were sitting in her living room.

  “How else would I know what’s in them?” said Benjamin.

  “I’d like to have a look at them. Just to be certain.”

  He wagged a finger at her. “Don’t be silly, Zoe.”

  “It is very much against my principles,” she said crossly, “to buy anything, anything at all, sight unseen.”

  He shook his head. He watched her for a moment. “Well? How about it?” he said. “Do we have a deal?”

  “Yes, Benjamin,” said Zoe. “We have a deal.”

  He put on a very wide grin. She thought it might split his face in two.

  “You won’t regret it,” he said. He massaged his hands, hideous hands, red and lumpy with eczema. Perhaps they caused him pain. She hoped so. “I’ll bring them to you tomorrow,” he said.

  “No,” said Zoe flatly.

  Benjamin reached for his wineglass and saw that it was empty. “One more for the road,” he said, picking it up by the stem, “and I’ll be on my way.”

  “I don’t want you here, again,” said Zoe. “I’ll go to your house.”

  “I…actually, that’s not very convenient,” said Benjamin.

  “Fine,” said Zoe. She stood up. “Let’s forget it, then.”

  “All right, all right.” Benjamin waved his hand impatiently. “I’ll work it out. What time?”

  “In the evening,” said Zoe. “The early evening.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Now how about my drink?”

  “You’ve finished the bottle,” said Zoe.

  “I’ll go get another,” said Benjamin, and he put down his glass. “Where do you keep it?”

  “No,” said Zoe. She stared down at him for a moment. “I’ll do it,” she said.

  After all, she thought, he didn’t have many more drinks left to drink.

  She turned on the light at the top of the stairs and made her way down into the basement. The wine was kept in a small room on the left, and she headed for that door but then changed her mind and went for a moment into a large room, half of which was a workroom. A fifty-year-old sideboard with silverware drawers and candle slides awaited her here. Someone had painted it dark brown. Zoe could hardly wait to strip it down and see what its real skin looked like. She checked the shelves to make sure she had everything she needed—several grades of sandpaper, large tins of stripper, chisels, steel wool, the finishing sander, furniture oil.

  “Hey,” called Benjamin, from the top of the stairs. She gritted her teeth at the sound of his voice.

  “I’m coming,” said Zoe. She turned off the light in the workroom and closed the door.

  “What are you doing down there?”

  As soon as he left she would open all the doors and windows, never mind the weather, to let clean air sweep the memory of Benjamin from her house.

  “Getting the wine,” she said.

  She’d scour every surface he’d touched, scrub every floor he’d walked upon.

  She went into the small, cool room where she kept the wine and selected a bottle of inexpensive California re
d.

  “You’re not up to anything, are you?” Benjamin was hanging on to the open door, peering down the stairs, his face slashed with shadow.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Zoe. She mounted the steps.

  When she had almost reached the top, he stretched his arm across the doorway so that she couldn’t pass. She looked up at him, astonished. He was grinning at her. Her heart began to pound.

  “Will you kindly get out of my way?” she said, struggling for control.

  “Say please,” said Benjamin, smirking.

  “You’re being childish,” said Zoe, and there was such anger in her that her voice shook.

  “Pretty please,” said Benjamin.

  Zoe realized when she thought about it later that what happened next wasn’t a defeat: she hadn’t lost, she hadn’t surrendered; she’d made a decision, that was all. She stared up into Benjamin’s face and decided to stop struggling; to let anger take her…

  She hadn’t had these feelings for years and years and years; she hadn’t had them since childhood.

  And Benjamin saw it, saw something, in her eyes. Benjamin would have done anything, given anything, to take back those two small words.

  “Pretty please,” he’d said, like a stupid child.

  It happened very very fast.

  Zoe’s right foot was two steps from the top of the stairs, and her left foot was one step lower. She was holding the California red at the shoulder of the bottle. Elated, she swung the bottle back; savagely, she drove it cork-end first into his stomach.

  “Oof,” said Benjamin, as he let go of the doorjamb and clutched at himself. Zoe pulled back against the banister, to her right. Benjamin sank forward against Zoe’s left thigh, and she could have saved him from falling just by keeping her leg braced.

  Rage electrified her. She had forgotten how voluptuous it was, her anger. She lifted the bottle high and brought the bottom of it down on the back of his head, and at the same time pulled her left leg out from under him.

  “Ahhh,” said Benjamin, and he crashed clumsily, noisily, all the way down the stairs.

  Chapter 19

  ZOE, hanging on to the doorjamb for support, lowered herself to the top step to wait for her heart to stop its banging. She stared down at Benjamin, lying on the concrete floor at the bottom of the stairs. It was a wonder he hadn’t smashed against the banister and broken it to smithereens, she thought, grateful for small mercies.

  He was very still.

  After a while her heartbeat was almost normal, and the trembling in her arms and legs had subsided. She set the wine bottle on the floor in the hallway and made her way cautiously down into the basement.

  She stepped over him and hunkered down, her slim skirt pulling up over her thighs. She noticed a gleam of blood trickling out from under his head. His head was attached to his neck at an angle that was manifestly odd.

  She licked her dry lips. “Benjamin? Benjamin.” She was almost certain that he was dead. But she gave his shoulder a poke. Here we have a completely useless individual, she thought, good for absolutely nothing at all, not even terribly bright. But he did have one thing going for him, and that was tenacity.

  She poked him again. She took his wrist in her fingers, feeling for his pulse. She stood up and gave him a gentle kick in the ribs, watching as his body spasmed, listening for a moan of protest and not hearing one.

  Yes, she thought, nodding. He’s dead, all right. The man is dead.

  The trickle of blood had formed a small pool.

  “Well,” said Zoe, looking at the blood, at his twisted neck. “That’s that, then.”

  She wouldn’t have enjoyed killing him so much, if she’d been merely carrying out her plan. Doing it on an impulse, feeling reckless and intemperate, had been enormously exciting. She had been sexually aroused. She hadn’t expected that.

  But she had a problem now. She had to consider carefully what to do.

  Her sense of satisfaction began ebbing away.

  It was almost three o’clock. Half an hour to the terminal—she could catch the three-thirty ferry if she got a move on. Half an hour from Horseshoe Bay to the house—maybe twenty minutes, if she was lucky. An hour to search the place. Then half an hour back to the terminal, catch the six-thirty ferry—she could be home by seven-thirty.

  She went through his pockets, being careful not to move him around much or disturb the placid puddle of blood. She found his keys and took them. Then she hurried upstairs and grabbed a jacket from the hall closet.

  She went outside, locked the front door, and rummaged through his car, just in case he’d brought the scribblers with him, but of course he hadn’t.

  She felt herself rushing, and tried to slow down, tried to think clearly.

  Four and a half hours he’d lie here, at the bottom of her basement stairs. And then what would she do with him?

  Try to dump him in the sea?

  Get the police, tell them there’s been an accident? Of course she had to say it was an accident. What was the alternative?

  But they’d want to know why she hadn’t reported it earlier.

  I’ll think of something, she told herself, trying to unlock her car door. Eventually she realized she was attempting to open it with Benjamin’s keys.

  She fished her own keys out of her handbag with hands that she saw were shaking.

  “Damn the man,” she said, getting in the car. “Damn him to hell.”

  Okay, she told herself as she drove off her property and turned onto the highway.

  Work it out.

  He was drunk. You wouldn’t let him drive in that condition. You told him to sleep it off, and you went out to buy some food for dinner.

  She checked the time and pressed her foot down on the accelerator. If she missed the three-thirty ferry she might as well forget it; she couldn’t leave him lying there for more than four and a half hours.

  Where could she say she’d been, even for only four and a half hours? It wouldn’t take more than an hour to buy food.

  Think, Zoe, she told herself, flexing her hands on the steering wheel.

  That damn stupid man, she thought, furious.

  She was in Sechelt now. Thank God there wasn’t much traffic. And she wouldn’t have to worry about lineups at the ferry terminal, either, not on a weekday in January. The roads were dry, too; it was another gray day, but not a rainy one. And there was no fog, thank God.

  She heard a siren and in the same moment saw flashing lights in her rearview mirror. Damn it to hell, thought Zoe, slowing and moving to the side of the road so it could pass her, whatever it was, an ambulance or a fire truck or something, but when she slowed down it did, too, and she saw that it was a police car. Incredulous, she brought her car to a stop and saw the police car pull in behind her.

  She clutched at her forehead. “I cannot believe this,” she said. “I refuse to believe this.”

  She looked into the rearview mirror and saw the policeman climb out of his car, taking his own sweet time about it, and she glanced at her watch, and she knew that she was not going to make it to Langdale in time.

  And then Zoe felt her serenity emerge, resolute and glacial, from wherever it had temporarily hidden itself.

  Okay, she thought.

  This is it, then.

  This is how it’s going to be.

  The police officer was tall and young, and as he walked toward her car Zoe saw that he enjoyed having broad shoulders and narrow hips and muscular thighs. She rolled down her window and watched his face as he met her eyes and recognized her. A few people in town recognized her. But not many of them had the nerve to look at her the way this police officer was looking at her. A frisson of something—sexual desire? Lustmord?—rippled along her spine. But it was too late to make any use of this, because it was too late to catch the ferry.

  She waited, watching him. He took off his hat and ran his hand over his hair, which was black and curly. Zoe almost laughed, but she managed not to; she didn’t even smile. She
just pretended for the moment that she was in a bar, dressed up, camouflaged, hungry.

  “Miss Strachan, isn’t it?”

  Zoe nodded.

  “I’m afraid you were exceeding the speed limit back there.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Zoe, gazing straight into his extremely blue eyes. He was cocksure, all right; she felt an urgent need to whittle him down a little. But instead she lifted her hands from the steering wheel and held them out toward him, diffidently, so that he could see the tremor in them. “I’m afraid I’m a little upset.”

  “I’m going to have to give you a ticket,” he said with a smile, showing her his teeth, which didn’t interest her in the slightest.

  “My brother’s had an accident,” she said. She turned away to fumble in her handbag for a Kleenex. “I think—I’m afraid he’s dead.” She buried her nose in the tissue and permitted herself to weep.

  “What kind of an accident? Where? Miss Strachan?”

  Zoe felt his hand on her shoulder and sobbed harder. His dismay was almost palpable. Before he could pull himself together and become decisive, she turned her wet face to him and said, “He’s fallen down my basement stairs. There’s blood…” and began again to weep.

  The policeman gave her shoulder a hasty squeeze. “I’ll call for an ambulance,” he said, and hurried back to his car.

  Zoe sat stony and sullen, staring out the windshield.

  After a while she heard him crunching across the gravel shoulder toward her, and she sighed, and straightened, and dabbed delicately at her cheeks with the sodden Kleenex.

  “They’re going to meet us at your house,” he said.

  “Oh, good,” whispered Zoe. “Thank you.”

  “Why didn’t you phone somebody?” he said, leaning against her car.

  “I don’t have a telephone,” said Zoe. “I hate telephones,” she explained, giving him a smile. She started her car, and he drew back quickly. “You can give me the ticket when we get to my house.” She put the engine in drive, signaled, and pulled out onto Sechelt’s main street. In the mirror she saw the police officer trotting hastily back to his vehicle.