Prized Possessions Read online

  She closed her eyes. Where to look next? There was his closet, and his bedside table, and boxes and trunks in the basement, and there was lots of stuff in the garage too. And they used the upstairs bedroom as a kind of office, so there were filing cabinets and things to go through.

  Emma felt battered and bewildered, drained by the effort it took to resist succumbing to grief. She saw grief as a mountain ledge from which she would plummet into pain, and did not distinguish between this pain and death. Maybe if he’d died, maybe if he’d been lost to everyone, to the whole world, maybe then she would be prepared to grieve.

  She wished she weren’t an orphan.

  She opened her eyes and got to her feet. He was a clever man, Charlie. But Emma was clever too.

  I must keep my mind completely open, she thought, standing in the bedroom, turning slowly around, her hands outstretched, palms down. I must not be looking for anything, at least not at first. I must be able to see everything and resist drawing conclusions, at least at first.

  She moved to Charlie’s side of the bed and opened the drawer in the night table.

  It was empty.

  Except for the gun.

  Emma felt an unpleasant prickling upon the skin of her back. She sat on the edge of the bed. Cautiously, she pulled the drawer fully open. There was nothing else there; only the gun. She thought about the things that were usually kept in that drawer. A notepad and a pen. Whatever paperback book he was currently reading. Before he quit smoking, he’d have had cigarettes in there, and a throwaway lighter.

  But never, never the gun. Never.

  20

  ALBERG SAT IN HIS car as the ferry approached Langdale. Usually he liked to stand near the prow as the ship approached land, watching the delicacy with which it was maneuvered up to the dock. But today he stayed in his car, thinking about nothing at all, as if his mind were in “Park,” like his automobile.

  The docking procedure completed, car engines were coming to life and the two outermost rows of vehicles started to exit, directed by crew members wearing orange vests with luminescent yellow crosses. Alberg wasn’t impatient to get off, as he usually was. He remembered, from some faraway pre-automobile time in his life, getting on buses and riding to the end of the line and staying on while the driver got off to have a smoke and maybe a coffee; then riding all the way back to where he’d come from.

  He’d have liked to do that now, stay on the ferry and go back and forth all day long between Horseshoe Bay and Langdale. He didn’t, though. Not that he could have—his car would have been facing the wrong way for the trip back to Horseshoe Bay; the ferry was a “push-me-pull-you” vehicle.

  Alberg followed the traffic off the ship and down the ramp and up the long driveway that led to the road. He took the hairpin hill that bypassed the town of Gibsons, and then he was on the highway to Sechelt.

  It was a warm, sunny day, so he drove along with his elbow resting on the open window…and this reminded him of summer vacations in his childhood: driving, always driving somewhere, long trips to see relatives in Winnipeg, and at the end of the day his father’s left arm would be bronzed from the sun.

  His parents hadn’t visited him since he moved to the Sunshine Coast. His mother might come this summer; but now his father would never see the place, never see the little house in Gibsons that Alberg lived in and had bought last year, never meet Cassandra, or Sid Sokolowski…

  Why the hell was he heading for Sechelt?

  He kept on driving while he thought about it. Probably he hadn’t had Sechelt in mind at all. He was just driving, because he felt like it. He’d spent half a day at headquarters, after all. His head needed clearing. Maybe he’d go all the way up to Earl’s Cove, and take the ferry across Jervis Inlet to Saltery Bay, near Powell River, and from there take another one across Georgia Strait to Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island; and then he could drive down to Victoria and take a third ferry over to Tsawwassen, and drive into Vancouver, and through the city, and up to Horseshoe Bay, and finally a fourth ferry back across Howe Sound to Langdale… He couldn’t do that all in one day, though.

  He drove slowly past the library and saw Cassandra inside, talking to somebody at the checkout counter.

  He ended up in the parking lot behind the RCMP detachment, so he cut the motor and got out and went inside.

  “What’re you doing here?” said Isabella, the detachment’s secretary-receptionist, flashing her golden eyes at him.

  “I don’t know,” said Alberg.

  She studied him busily for a moment. “Come on over here and sit down at the sergeant’s table,” she said. She pulled out a chair and shooed him into it. “Since you’re here, you might as well have a cup of coffee.”

  She poured some into his usual mug. It was a plain white mug with no words on it, and no pictures, either. Isabella had urged him many times to get himself a more interesting coffee mug, but Alberg had ignored her. Now he was thinking maybe she’d been right; it looked singularly boring, among all the others. Norah Gibbons, who’d recently joined the detachment from Williams Lake, had a huge mug with a drawing of a fiendishly grinning woman on it; the woman was saying, “Men who call women ‘sweetheart,’ ‘baby,’ or ‘honey’…should have their little tiny peckers cut off.” Maybe he’d get himself a male chauvinist pig mug. If there was such a thing.

  Isabella slapped down on the table in front of him a paper napkin and a paper plate on which were displayed a chocolate doughnut and a sugar doughnut.

  “What’s this?” said Alberg, stunned.

  “Enjoy,” said Isabella, and she went back to work.

  He’d finished the chocolate doughnut and had just started the other one when Sokolowski came out of the hall that led to Alberg’s office. Alberg felt guilty, sitting at Sokolowski’s table when he wasn’t even supposed to be in the damn building, and he could see from the look on Sid’s face that the sergeant felt guilty too; probably because he was enjoying being temporarily in charge.

  “How’re things at the Puzzle Palace?” said the sergeant.

  “As puzzling as ever,” said Alberg. “I got us another constable, though, so it wasn’t a total waste of time.”

  “Good,” said Sokolowski.

  There was an awkward silence as Alberg put down the doughnut and brushed sugar from his hand. “Boy,” he said, making a show of looking at his watch. “I’ve gotta get going. Just dropped in for a minute. Had no idea it was getting so late.”

  “Karl, who’re you kidding?” said Sokolowski patiently.

  “Not me,” said Isabella, not looking up from her computer screen.

  “But listen, I’m glad you’re here. I got an idea for you.” The sergeant beckoned Alberg down the hall and into the staff sergeant’s own office, which he was occupying in Alberg’s absence. “Here, sit down,” he said, pushing Alberg into the chair behind his desk. Sokolowski took the black leather chair in front. “I got a project for you.”

  “Sid, please,” said Alberg, “I don’t need a project. In the first place, I’ll be back at work pretty soon. In the second place, I’ve got projects coming out of my ears. I have to clean out the garage, and fix the screen around the sun porch, and find somebody to build me a new fence… ”

  “But this is important, Karl.” The sergeant leaned forward. “I heard about Charlie O’Brea. I heard Emma’s—well, she’s devastated, I guess you’d say.”

  “Yeah,” said Alberg.

  “Charlie… ” Sokolowski shook his head. “Well, what can you say about a man like that? I thought I knew the guy,” he said bitterly.

  “Uh huh,” said Alberg.

  “What you’ve got on your hands here,” said the sergeant with conviction, “is a disturbed individual. To do such a thing.”

  “Uh huh,” said Alberg noncommittally.

  “So I was thinking, Karl, you put your detective hat on, you use your compassionate leave to—well, you use it in a compassionate cause.” Sokolowski looked mildly surprised. “A compassionate cause,” he
said again, pleased with himself.

  “I’m not following you here,” said Alberg.

  “You find Charlie,” said Sokolowski.

  Alberg looked at him intently. “I do what?”

  “You find Charlie O’Brea.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.”

  “No, I’m serious,” said Sokolowski, ponderously earnest. “Think about it.”

  “I told her, and I’m telling you, it isn’t a police matter.”

  “No, it isn’t—but, Karl, you could do it. You could find him for her. While you’re waiting for your leave to run out.”

  Alberg lifted his hands, exasperated. “I don’t think he wants to be found, Sid.” The first thing you’d do, he thought, was flag the guy’s bank accounts.

  “Well, I think you’re right about that, sure,” said Sid. “But I also think he owes his wife an explanation first, before he buggers off on her.”

  “We don’t have the right, and we certainly don’t have the power, to demand that he explain himself to his wife.” And the Lower Mainland airports, and railway and bus stations too. And he’d do a media fan-out. She must have photos of him.

  “No,” said Sokolowski reluctantly.

  Alberg and the sergeant looked at each other.

  “I could certainly…suggest it, though,” said Alberg. “If I found him.”

  21

  BERNIE PETERS WORKED for Alberg Wednesday afternoons, one o’clock through until five. At first he’d left her notes, telling her what he wanted done. But she paid no attention to his notes. Every Wednesday she dusted his small house, vacuumed, tidied, and cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom. Then she did his ironing. And every week she had time for something extra that she decided needed doing, like polishing the furniture, or washing some walls, or cleaning out the kitchen cupboards. And before she left, she made a start on his dinner. She often went out and bought food, apparently dissatisfied with what she found in the house.

  Every Wednesday Alberg’s thoughts wandered home frequently throughout the day. Maybe today Bernie would finally get to the fridge. Or clean the windows. Or the oven. Maybe today she’d make something cold for dinner, instead of corned beef and cabbage, or stew, or chili.

  When he left the detachment on this April Wednesday, Alberg went straight home. He found Bernie in the middle of the backyard. She was wearing one of her white dresses and a pair of sturdy white shoes. The stitches in the seam of the left shoe had been opened to allow a bunion to poke through. Alberg watched her for a moment from the sun porch. Her left forearm was pressed across her stomach, and her left hand cradled her right elbow. She was puffing on a cigarette, her toe tapping the grass impatiently, as though smoking were a duty she discharged with reluctance, part of the regrettable baggage of being herself.

  “Bernie,” said Alberg from the sun porch, and she whirled around. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Smoking,” said Bernie. “You’ve quit the filthy habit, and so I don’t poison your air.” She took another puff. Many little lines fanned out from around her lips. “I heard about your father,” she said formally, “and I’m truly sorry for your trouble.”

  “Thanks, Bernie. Do you want some coffee?” said Alberg.

  Bernie pinched the end of her cigarette between her thumb and first finger, dropped the coal into the dirt of a flower bed, scrubbed it out with her foot. She put what was left of the cigarette into the pocket of her dress. “You don’t pay me for sitting around drinking coffee,” she said.

  “Come on, Bernie. It’s after five, anyway. And I want to talk to you.” He held the screen door open and waited while she climbed the three steps from the lawn to the sun porch and preceded him into the house.

  In the kitchen, Bernie squirted detergent into the sink and turned on the hot water tap. “What about?” she said, starting in on Alberg’s breakfast dishes, which for some reason unfathomable to him she always left until the end of the day.

  “I think you know Emma and Charlie O’Brea, don’t you?” said Alberg. He picked up a tea towel and began drying a juice glass.

  Bernie snorted. “I know them.”

  “I guess you know that he’s disappeared.”

  “I know it. Run off on her, he has.”

  “Sid Sokolowski suggested that I use my leave to try to find him.”

  Bernie sighed and shook her head. She rinsed a plate, a knife, and a coffee mug and set them in the drainer.

  “What can you tell me about them?”

  She gave him a suspicious glance.

  “I’m trying to figure out what kind of a situation I’m getting myself into.” He dried the mug and put it away in the cupboard.

  “He didn’t appreciate her,” said Bernie flatly, unplugging the sink to let the water drain away. “She did everything for him. Looked after him like he was King Tut. But he didn’t appreciate her.”

  “How do you know?” said Alberg, leaning against the counter, the tea towel draped over his shoulder.

  She turned to look at him indignantly. Her red-brown curls, unnaturally bright, were squished beneath a hairnet. Her brown face was corrugated with wrinkles. “Well, he ran out on her, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, but did you know before he left that he didn’t appreciate her?”

  “Okay, I’m gonna give this some serious thought.” She put down the dishcloth, sat down at the table, and stared intently out the window. “He didn’t beat on her,” she said with conviction. “That I’m sure of.”

  “Uh huh,” said Alberg, sitting down opposite her.

  “I would have said they were happy,” she said finally. Reluctantly. “At least I would have said she was happy. I don’t know about him. He couldn’t have been happy, could he? Or he wouldn’t have taken off like he did.”

  “But it came as a surprise to you, did it? That he was gone?”

  She nodded vigorously. “You know, she tells me he didn’t take a thing with him. Not a single thing. Don’t that beat all, now.”

  “How is she? Is she okay? Angry? What?”

  Bernie hesitated. “I don’t know how she is. She acts a little peculiar from time to time. She’s not an ordinary person,” she said seriously, squinting across the table at Alberg.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Just that,” said Bernie, shrugging. “She’s not…ordinary.” She sighed. “Between you and me and the gatepost, I think she’s well shot of him. But of course you can’t convince her of that. So I’m glad you’re gonna find him for her. Ease her spirits. What happens then… ” She shook her head. “It’s in the good Lord’s hands, I guess.”

  “I’m going to try to find him, Bernie. But he won’t want to be found. And I only have a few days.”

  “You’ll do it,” said Bernie. She looked at him searchingly, her beady brown eyes fixed on him. “It must be hard, being a policeman. I guess there’s lots of things you see that you can’t rectify.”

  “Yeah,” said Alberg. “You’re right.”

  She slapped the tabletop and stood up. She swished clean water around in the sink, wrung out the dishcloth, dried the sink with a paper towel, and threw the towel in the trash. “That’s it, then,” she said, surveying the kitchen. She gestured with her thumb to a pot on top of the stove. “There’s some nice lamb stew in there,” she said, reaching for her black plastic handbag, which sat upon the counter. “Eat hearty.”

  22

  EMMA WAS BECOMING very familiar with the shopping mall in West Vancouver that was known as Park Royal. Every time she went there she parked in a different lot. Each time she used a different entrance and focused her attention on different stores. By now she knew the whole place well.

  There were actually two parts to Park Royal—one on the south side of Marine Drive and one on the north—but Charlie’s office had been in a building on the south side, so that’s where Emma had decided he spent his time. Besides, it was in the south mall that people played chess, and she knew—she just knew—that Charlie would have played chess.r />
  This Thursday morning, the last day of April, she had brought along a photograph of him. She’d been dismayed when looking through her albums at how few pictures of Charlie she had. But then he was the one who was good with a camera…

  His camera. Another thing he’d left behind: another prized possession abandoned. He could always buy himself another one, of course. But maybe he’d decided that he didn’t like taking pictures after all. He’d certainly made an awful lot of decisions, Charlie had, all at once, in one fell swoop: reshaping his existence. She felt a stab of envy. Here she was, smothering to death in the detritus of Charlie’s discarded life, while he was busy starting all over again. Had he secretly taken courses while he planned his getaway? Had he learned some other line of work? Even another language, perhaps?

  The photograph in her purse showed Charlie about to get into his car, the very same car he’d driven away in last Saturday morning, five days ago. She’d taken the picture last summer, on the first day of their two-week holiday, which they’d spent at a lakeside resort in the Okanagan Valley. It was a little dim, because it had been taken on the car deck of the ferry, but it was a good likeness of Charlie. He’d unlocked the driver’s door and was about to open it, when Emma called his name and snapped the picture. She couldn’t read his expression, but his features were clear.

  She stood outside the bookstore with the photograph in her hand. Finally she went in.

  Nobody in the bookstore recognized Charlie.

  Emma trudged from store to store. It was odd, she thought, that nobody asked why she was looking for him. Maybe they were too polite. Or else they didn’t want to know. She saw curiosity on their faces, and sometimes their replies were wary or hesitant. Yet she didn’t doubt, when they said they didn’t recognize him, that they were telling her the truth.