The Ladies Killing Circle Anthology 4-Book Bundle. Barbara Fradkin
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“Because you won’t find it here.”
“Where then.” More of an order than a question.
“Safe and sound.” I started to head for the wing chair, but he snatched my arm.
“Is this what happened on Wednesday? Did she refuse to give you the money, and you got angry and grabbed her?” He looked worried but didn’t let go. “And then maybe she said something to you, and you got even madder, and pushed her too hard? Is that what happened?”
“You’re crazy.” But he let go of me.
My arm hurt like hell, but I refused to rub it as I moved away from him. “You pushed her too hard and she fell, that’s all. An accident.” If there was any justice, manslaughter.
“I wasn’t even here.”
“They found your fingerprints. You didn’t wipe them all away.” I could practically see the smoke coming out his ears as his mental machinery ground. “How could your fingerprints get into this apartment when you haven’t seen your mother in twenty years?”
His lips started to twitch, and he blinked in what I mistook for confusion. Then he lunged.
He moved about as fast as he thought. Aiming for my neck, he caught my shoulder, knocking me onto the sofa while he continued on momentum, right into Bijou’s cage. They both hit the floor at the same time, and I caught a glimpse of him, wet and chaffy, wiping birdseed and gravel from his eyes as I ran for the door.
Which whacked me right on the side of the head.
I wish I could have seen it, Bernie kicking the door in, gun in two hands yelling “Freeze!” like you see on TV. But I was out cold.
It took three days for the headache to clear. Bernie called on the first to ask how I was. I don’t remember what I answered, but it took him two more days to call back.
“You wouldn’t think he had the brains to find something like that,” he said in reference to the Bank of Canada web page.
Six-year-old kids can find web pages, but like my thought processes, I considered it wiser not to disabuse Bernie. Instead I asked if Frank’s confession had been hard to come by.
“No,” he replied, sounding relieved I was willing to chat. “He believed your lie about the fingerprints. We never told him different.”
Frank DesRochers had called his mother several times from Hamilton, after years of no communication. Then he’d driven to Ottawa to persuade her to claim the money and give it to him—it went pretty much as I’d predicted. After he’d killed her, he’d returned to Hamilton so he could be home to receive the sad news of his mother’s death.
“He said he wanted to start his own business.” Bernie’s tone told me how much he believed him. “Probably drugs, but he needed a stake. Fifty-four thousand would have done it.”
I was thinking how fifty-four thousand isn’t enough money to turn somebody’s life around, let alone end it, when Bernie added, “What I don’t understand is, how could you forget about that much money?”
“It probably wasn’t that much when she originally banked it.” I’d already done some calculating. “Don’t forget, it was earning interest in the good old days of double-digit inflation. It doesn’t take long at eighteen per cent. And she may have assumed it was still sitting there.”
We discussed how well Bijou was settling into his new home; to my undying gratitude, one of Bernie’s subordinates had taken him. Then he asked, “How’re you feeling?”
“A lot better. Thanks for coming to my rescue.”
He made a pfff noise. “You scared the shit out of me, not answering. It was stupid, confronting him like that. Especially when you think a guy’s a killer.”
“You mean my not answering the phone persuaded you he was a killer?”
“You always answer by the second ring,” he said defensively.
“Anyway, he’s not a murderer—not technically, just a manslaughterer.”
“Don’t sound so disappointed. What made you so sure she didn’t just fall, anyway?”
I’d never been sure, I’d just disliked Bernie’s version of her death. “She was my friend,” I said, because it was an easy answer.
Bernie said he understood.
Author’s note: All the web pages in this work of fiction are real. Because the web changes by the minute, your search on Google may return different results.
MELANIE FOGEL is the editor of the Ellis Award-winning Storyteller, Canada’s Short Story Magazine. Her own writing has appeared in publications as diverse as The Canadian Journal of Contemporary Literary Stuff and the Ottawa Citizen. She is also the author of two how-to books for writers.
OLD GEEZERS
ROSE DESHAW
All the time I was washing pots in the prison at Kingston Pen, I was playing golf in my head. Tournament level shots on perfect greens. Birds chirping in a cloudless blue sky and everything effortless, the way it is in those golf videos where the pros make it look so easy.
I had a computerized golf game in my cell. Through that small, barred window I watched the weather grow warmer and made my plans. The morning after my release, I would arise with dew on my spikes, sure-grip gloves on my hands and the name of Mike Weir, that overcomer of setbacks, on my lips. I would play the perfect game. The vision grew as my parole came closer.
Unfortunately, as the loot I’d stashed had been recovered, I would only be able to afford the municipal course. It’s a leftover space, nine holes amid the granite of the Canadian Shield, steep outcroppings of rock over which balls go flying like lovers over leaps. But having caddied it as a kid, I knew every inch by heart.
When that old prison gate finally slammed behind me, I gazed in the direction of the course like a dog from the pound looking towards home.
“Remember, Simmonds,” the guard warned, “be careful. Get your parole revoked, and you’ll be back in here serving the rest of the sentence.”
Return to prison darkness when the fairways were greening and the aroma of golfer’s sweat hung pungent on the breeze? It wouldn’t happen. My downfall has always been my bad temper and hanging with the wrong crowd. During the time inside I had aced the Anger Management course, remaining unprovoked when Squint Hogan swiped the Nerf ball and bed slat I used to practice my swing and when Gooseguts Malloy ratted to the warden about the holes I’d scooped out in the yard to make a putting green. On the outside I would be living with my father, as gentle a golf partner as you could wish for.
The first tiny crack in my plan appeared when Dad asked me to postpone the solitary first game to fill out a foursome with a man he knew and his nephew. “This fellow, Fairbanks, is supposed to be a real pro,” he said. “It would be pretty difficult to get another player at such short notice.”
Impossible would’ve been more like it. It didn’t take me long to discover that nobody in his right mind ever played with Fairbanks twice.
We were a sober little foursome, making our way to the second tee. Fairbanks, his nephew, Fat Freddie, my father and I. Fairbanks hadn’t shut up since we started. “If nature intended women to play golf, they’d be built differently. Longer arms, bigger biceps and more stable personalities,” Fairbanks commented. I would have liked to have Martha Nause, the recent Du Maurier champ, hear that or give the great Marlene Stewart Streit five minutes with the man after those cracks about female players. But I decided he was just an aging buffoon, the dream customer for all those tacky golf gimmicks sold in joke stores: plastic score counters, golfer’s crying towels, tee caddies and club covers with cute little golf sayings on them.
As if to provide an object lesson,