Becker is just finishing up here at the scene, and he asked me to call to inform you that we would be there shortly. It’s the only house on the Dunbar sideroad, is that right?”
“Yes. Watch out for the potholes, Detective.” I could imagine the frame of the police car groaning as Morrison’s bulk jounced around inside. I caught myself hoping that he had eaten a huge breakfast (which was likely) and would find the trip as uncomfortable as possible.
After I hung up the phone, I felt a trifle disappointed. I had been looking forward to seeing Becker again, but I hadn’t bargained on Morrison. I guess you can’t expect Laurel without Hardy.
I ran my fingers through my hair and made myself sit calmly at the kitchen table, like a debutante waiting for her prom date. I was wearing chore clothes and I hadn’t taken a bath recently. I probably looked like hell and anyway, developing a crush on a cop was really, really stupid. I counted the reasons.
One: Becker thought I was George’s girlfriend, and the concept had obviously put him off—I saw the sneer. So he wouldn’t be interested. More likely, revolted. Some people are like that about age disparity. Not me. Aunt Susan had a twenty-one year old boyfriend once and I thought it was incredibly hip.
Two: He was a police officer, which would mean that if we were to get involved, I would have to quit smoking dope. Some people drink cognac, I smoke dope. No big deal, but I imagine it would be to him.
Three: I had not had a romantic relationship since Drew, the actor, had stormed out of my apartment after throwing a three-hundred dollar Audrey puppet against the wall. (The puppet bounced back. I didn’t, and swore off men for life. I thought.)
Three strikes, you’re out, I said to myself, as the cruiser pulled up outside.
There was no sign of George, but way off in the distance I saw a black bird, wheeling. Poe, doing the funereal raven bit.
Becker got out of the car to meet me on the steps. I glanced at the third finger of his left hand (oh, you idiot) and there was no ring. Great.
“You okay?” he said.
“I’m fine. Sorry about fainting all over you. I’m not usually so girly.” I was babbling already. “You call Francy yet?”
“No, ma’am. There are some things you can’t do over the phone.”
“You sure this is okay? Me coming with you?”
“It’s better this way,” he said. “Informing families of a death is never easy, and I usually take a woman police officer with me if I’ve got to tell a wife about a husband, or a woman about a child. But there aren’t any women available right now, so I’d appreciate you being there.”
“As a woman-substitute?” Defensive. Real smooth, Polly.
He raised an eyebrow. “You know what I mean,” he said. “No offense intended.”
What was I trying to do? Get him to say “Oh no, ma’am, you’re all woman. No question.”
“I was joking,” I said.
“Oh. Hard to tell these days, ma’am. Political correctness seems to have killed humour dead.” We both let the word “dead” just hang there.
“Anyway,” he said, after a moment, “you’ll be better in this situation than my partner. He doesn’t do sensitive.”
“So I noticed.” We had reached the cruiser, where Morrison waited in the driver’s seat, looking a little green. Good. The road had done its worst.
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to go in the back,” Becker said. He opened the door for me, and I half expected him to put his hand on my head as I climbed in, like they do in the movies to protect the prisoner from getting bumped. It was not a pleasant feeling back there. There were no handles on the inside of the doors.
Morrison grinned at me in the rear-view. “You want to cuff her too, Becker?” he said.
Becker was no more amused than I was. He turned around in his seat to talk to me, his face distorted by the mesh separating us. I leaned forward to remove myself from Morrison’s view. Our faces were very close.
“Tell me about Francy and John Travers,” he said.
Four
The foam-choked howls of starving wolves
are background music—nothing more
when weighed against that drunken man
who staggers past my flimsy door.
—Shepherd’s Pie
“I met Francy and John two years ago at the Shepherd’s Pie barn dance in the village,” I said. I didn’t have to explain about the dance. It was an annual event, a local tradition. The Laingford cop shop always sent a couple of guys out our way on account of it, just to keep an eye on things. Becker had most likely been there himself at some point. Everybody went.
Ruth Glass and Rose Shelley are the lead musicians for Shepherd’s Pie, the folk band that’s been getting so much press lately. I’ve known Ruth since public school, when we were both considered a little strange. I wrote a lot of poetry back then, and Ruth started setting my stuff to music. When it began to pay off, Ruth hired me as her lyricist. I don’t write as many songs for her as I used to, but I like to keep my hand in, because the money’s good and it gives me a kind of secondhand glamour.
The band spends a fair amount of time on the road, touring, but every year around harvest time, Ruth and Rose throw a big party, opening up their barn and roasting a side of beef. They always bring in a couple of kegs of ale from the Sikwan Brewery and lots of people bring their own mickey of sipping whiskey. It gets pretty rowdy, sometimes, but it’s Ruth and Rose’s way of keeping in touch with the community and avoiding what they call the “uppity star syndrome”. It works.
“I had only been there for half an hour or so,” I said to Becker. “It was around eleven o’clock and the party was only just starting to cook. Shepherd’s Pie usually plays a set after midnight, but before that all the local musicians take turns getting up on the platform to jam. Rico Amato was up there playing old fiddle music and there was a crazy square-dance happening, except that nobody around here knows how to do it and nobody was calling it so there was a lot of milling around. It should have been really good energy, but something was wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Becker said.
“Well, you know how a crowd can turn ugly in a second? Like one moment everyone’s best friends and the next moment there’s a fight?”
“Been there. Done that,” Becker said.
“Well, it was like I was watching it change in slow motion. I got there right at the crucial moment when things were okay, then a tension rose in the air, like a smell, near the back door. So I went over to see what was going on.”
“Everybody loves a fight,” Morrison said.
“It wasn’t that,”
