The Dead Don't Get Out Much. Mary Jane Maffini
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Alvin. She didn't want someone to find it.”
Alvin goggled. “That means she knew it might happen.”
“Exactly. Let's go get the box, Alvin.”
“What if we bring it back and whoever broke in is watching?”
“Now that's just plain…” I stared at Alvin. “The guy in the hall.”
“The innocent bystander,” Alvin said.
I kicked the leather chair. “He was coming right down this hallway, carrying a goddam box. I never even gave it a moment's thought.”
“Yeah, and his suit was all rumpled,” Alvin said.
“Did you smell aftershave when he passed?”
“Holy shit,” Alvin said. “He's the burglar! No wonder he looked like he was about to have a heart attack.”
* * *
Alvin lives in the tangle of narrow streets in old Hull, now called the Hull sector of the city of Gatineau. Downtown Hull had been off-limits when I was a teenager. With the seedy bar strip, the tangle of old streets, the availability of drugs and booze, it was no place for a nice Catholic girl from across the river in Ontario. Naturally, I've always liked it. Alvin chooses to live there, finding a campy charm in the area. No one could have followed us, as we looped around the old streets, changing direction every time we went over a hill. We gave it one extra whirl before we parked behind Alvin's latest apartment.
“I'll stay here, in case he comes by and spots the car. Safer that way,” I said. I was avoiding any decorating innovations Alvin might have made to his apartment. Could be an autumn theme with crackling leaves, or maybe a simulation of Flanders Fields, with wall to wall poppies and a hidden bugler playing Taps around the clock. Whatever, I just wasn't up for it at the moment. “Bring the box, and we'll check it at my place. If we have to hide it, I have a zillion other boxes to throw someone off the scent.”
* * *
Half an hour later, we parked on Third Avenue in the Glebe and opened my front door. The house is new to me, as anyone could tell from the stacks of packing boxes from my apartment, the battered filing cabinets and the two government surplus desks from Justice for Victims which were squished into the living room. My old furniture was stacked on end in the hallway, so you had to inhale to get through. The living room was being converted to the new Justice for Victims office, which would solve my office eviction problem and keep me from rambling around in a house that had far more space than I needed. Since the upstairs was about the size of my former apartment, I planned to live there as soon as I got rid of the surplus furniture. I had a good, workable plan, but for a variety of reasons, I wasn't getting far. My favourite social activist, Elaine Ekstein, had located a battered women's shelter that needed the duplicate furniture, particularly the sofa stacked in the hallway, and the extra bed, chairs and dining room table. Too bad Elaine was at a women's issues conference in Australia, so that wouldn't happen until she got back.
For the moment, Alvin and I perched on the sofa, tuning out the chaos around us and ogling an unassuming cardboard box, about the size of a toaster oven, which it had once contained. Gussie, the large and fragrant dog, who is with me temporarily until Alvin or one of the other Fergusons arranges a permanent home for him, was sitting on the floor between us. Mrs. Parnell's little calico cat, also a long-term visitor, paraded on the back of the sofa, her long, expressive tail swishing our necks. It would have been quite the homey scene if we hadn't both been so wrecked.
“Go ahead, open it,” I said.
“You open it.”
“Fine.” I scissored through the duct tape sealing the box and pried back the flaps. I lifted out a couple of smaller boxes, shoeboxes as it turned out. None of the boxes was big enough to contain Mrs. Parnell's laptop. “She sent you her shoes?”
Alvin lifted out the Rockport box from the top and lifted the lid. “Look at that. Letters. They're all tied up in bundles.”
“Hey, they're still in their envelopes. Are they to Mrs. Parnell?”
Alvin snatched one of the bundles and ruffled through it. “Stop breathing down my neck. These are addressed to Miss Violet Wilkinson. Looks like a woman's writing.”
“1940,” I said. “That's incredible. The paper's all brown. And three cent stamps. Can you believe that?”
“I like that King. He looks so sad,” Alvin said.
“This batch is from 1944,” I said. “Different writing. Hang on, some are from 1945, too. And even later. Look, there's a few from the fifties.”
“These here are typed,” Alvin said.
Alvin opened another box. “These are 1942 and 1943. You can sure squeeze a lot of letters in one box.”
“She kept these letters for more than sixty years,” I said. “Why would she hide them now?”
“You think it's connected with this dead man she was talking about?”
“Maybe something in these letters caused her to lose her grip.”
“She didn't lose her grip, Camilla. Remember what the doctor said?”
“I'm just trying to understand.”
“Don't forget her place was tossed, and we did see that guy in the hallway.”
“We don't know for sure that he's really connected. Anyway, we shouldn't get distracted. There's one box left. It looks like the one my Sorels came in. Remember when Mrs. P. gave me those boots? They probably saved my life.”
“That's just one of about a million things she did for you,” Alvin said as he lifted the lid of the Sorel box. Silver frames gleamed at us. The photos were intact. Alvin lifted the first one out of the box, then the others and set them on the coffee table. Clusters of people in military uniforms stared back at us. There were two shots of the late Major Walter Parnell, and one of Mrs. P. in her CWAC uniform.
“Violet told me those uniforms were considered really swell at the time.”
I said, “Mr. Parnell wasn't bad looking, in an intense way. I'm not sure how I feel about the mustache.”
“He sure doesn't look like a barrel of laughs,” Alvin said.
“Who are these people?”
“I've never seen this one before. This picture is not even framed.” Alvin sounded slightly miffed, as though Mrs. P. had been keeping secrets from him.
In the black and white photo, three young men and three girls were clustered around a leafy oak tree in front of a brick house. By the look of their clothing, it was late nineteen thirties or early forties, summer. There were a couple more taken on the same day, same people.
I squinted at the images. “I'd say it's small-town Ontario. See the pale brick on those buildings?”
Alvin discreetly wiped his eye behind the cat's-eye glasses. “Hmmm. Violet looks great, doesn't she? I love the dress.”
“Is that…? Oh my God, she does. She looks…”
“Full of beans,” Alvin said.
“I was going to say almost beautiful. And full of beans too, now that you mention it.”
“She had a great figure. And the hair is definitely retro.”
I said, “How the hell did they do those roll things? It must have been a lot of work.”
“You know what, Camilla? Even though those other two girls are really pretty, the one you would notice and remember is Violet.”
“Who are they? She never mentioned them to me.”
“Me neither,” Alvin said, letting the miffedness creep into his voice again. “The little blonde looks like she could have been in movies, musical comedies. Get a load of the legs. I can see her