A Nose for Death Page 2

  “I’m driving to Madden this weekend.” Joan watched for her mother’s response.

  Vi lived in the basement suite of her sister Heather’s house in East Vancouver. It had been her home for over twenty-seven years. Name-brand lemon cleaners didn’t completely mask the underlying mildew and the apartment was in its usual state of colourful disarray, made worse by the ceramic knick-knacks and garage sale treasures. The dust collectors that gave her mother pleasure drove Joan crazy. The living situation had been a godsend for Vi, In the early days she had lived rent-free in exchange for babysitting Heather’s children. It had been crowded back then, when Joan’s brothers, Anthony and David, were still living at home. Now, though, the two elderly widows were good company for each other in the faded and aging splitlevel home.

  “That’s nice, dear. Do you have a safety kit in the car? I heard on the radio the other day that you should always carry one.” Vi went off on a tangent about the recommended contents of an auto safety kit, avoiding asking why her daughter was returning to their old hometown for the first time in three decades.

  “You were younger than I am now when we left Madden, Mom.”

  “Uh huh.”

  How many times had Joan felt that she was the one who had had to deal with the real world in her mother’s place? She felt the energy sap from her body. Then, just as she was wondering why she’d even bothered to tell her mother, Vi veered back.

  “You’ll have to say hello for me.”

  “To who?” asked Joan.

  “Well, to whoever you come across.” Vi smiled. “After all, it was our home for nineteen years. Remember all the good times we had? Picking berries by the river, the outdoor skating rink, your dad barbequing steaks the size of tires. Oh, he was good on the barbeque, that man. Those long summer nights. Oh! And the northern lights.”

  Joan watched her mother stare wistfully. That had been Vi’s time, so fleeting.

  “I’m going to my thirtieth high school reunion,” Joan stated flatly.

  “Oh?” Vi’s response left Joan hanging. She didn’t know if her mother remembered that she hadn’t graduated in Madden.

  “I have no idea why they sent me an invitation.”

  Vi looked her straight in the eye and spoke with clarity and vehemence. “You’re better than any one of them. You remember that.”

  That pointed insistence gave Joan an unexpected boost. As she was leaving, Vi gave her a list of people to see, including Joan’s old English teacher, Mr. Fowler.

  During the week she prepared for her trip. Months in the lab had left Joan looking as though she belonged in the morgue. She made her first trip to a tanning salon. As a fake ‘n’ bake virgin, she got the willies sitting in the waiting room, flipping through a People magazine. It reminded her of the dentist’s office. She sniffed discreetly and was relieved not to smell burning flesh. After the tanning session she broke down and bought a rinse to hide the needles of grey in her hair. She grabbed a box of royal plum henna, later wondering if the choice had been bold or batty. How could a respected, upwardly mobile member of the science community do these things unless she was utterly deranged? A fraud? Those feelings gradually passed when she discovered that she hadn’t been cooked alive on the tanning bed and that the hair colour had turned out quite well. A couple of visits to Tropic Tans and a decent haircut calmed the nagging feeling that the invitation was a ticket to disaster.

  Before going to bed on Thursday, Joan called Mort and got his answering machine. It was probably his turn to work late. Or was he out seeing someone? Another woman? Joan dismissed the thought. If he was, he would have told her. Despite the mountain of differences between them, they’d never told lies. She fell into a comfortable sleep, a whisper of coconut tanning oil reminding her that she was actually going on a holiday. As she slept she dreamt. She was on a bicycle, not her own mountain bike, but the old-fashioned kind where the rider sits upright. She was barreling down the long hill leading into the river valley where Madden was situated. Her mother was perched on the handlebars and Joan had no control over how fast they were moving.

  CHAPTER TWO

  FIRST THING IN THE MORNING JOAN called Mort but, again, there was no answer. A few minutes later he rang her doorbell. When he stepped into her front hallway, he handed her a brown paper bag.

  “Thank God. We have to leave by eight-thirty. It’s an eight-hour drive.”

  “I can’t go.” He looked tired and rumpled, as though he hadn’t been home all night.

  “What do you mean you can’t come? I’m not going without you.”

  “One of the stores had a fire last night. Nobody was hurt but there’s no way I can leave town.”

  What a switch, she thought. It had always been her putting off their life because of work. “Just as well. I didn’t want to go anyway. Sit down.”

  She ground coffee, and while the aromatic dark roast was brewing they argued. Mort insisted that she face her demons. Joan denied that she was avoiding anything. He was the one suffering a crisis. The harder she tried to divert the conversation to the fire, the more resolute Mort was that she make this trip. They lost track of time. It was almost ten when the phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m calling for Joan Parker.”

  “Speaking.” She didn’t recognize the girlish voice on the other end of the phone and braced herself for a charity pitch.

  “Joannie! It’s Peg. Peg Chalmers née Wong.” She sang it out as though she’d been announcing herself that way a lot lately. “I’m just making sure you’re going to be here in time for the welcome buffet and dancing tonight.”

  Joan suddenly felt trapped.

  “Peg . . . ” She hesitated then decided to face it head on. “I thought there had been a mistake. The invitation, I mean.”

  “Heavens no! I’m the reunion coordinator and head of the invite committee. I was in charge of the list. We were all thrilled, just thrilled, to get your RSVP . . . even though, technically, it was late.”

  Memories of Peg Wong came rushing back. In the days when fake fur and leather looked more ‘fake’ than anything else, Peg always wore pink in layers of nylon pile and shiny fabrics. As Joan listened to the sixty-second recap of Peg’s life over the past thirty years — moved to Calgary, studied nursing, married, bred a couple of kids, divorced, then moved back to Madden sixteen years ago — she could see the Chinese-Canadian Marilyn Monroe wanna-be, too fluffy to be sultry. The constant gob of strawberry-flavoured gum hadn’t helped. Peg had been one of the harmless ones. Although she had hung out with Marlena Prychenko and Candy Dirkson, she didn’t have their mean streak.

  “I’ve thought of you so much, Joannie, and wished I would have done something. You know, to make things easier.”

  Joan couldn’t believe what she was hearing — that anyone had thought of her for a minute after she’d left Madden. Her throat tightened when Peg asked after Vi and the boys. She seemed sincerely glad that everyone had done okay.

  “What time will you be here? The welcome desk closes at seven.”

  Joan listened to the silence. “I’ll be there by then.” She glanced at Mort. He was smiling. To her surprise, so was she.

  When she got off the phone, she opened the bag he had brought and laughed with gusto.

  “If you’re going to face your demons, you may as well do it all at once.”

  The bag contained a mickey of lemon gin, the poison she’d avoided since high school.

  On the Labour Day weekend of her grade twelve year there’d been a bush party to outshine all others in its debauchery. Joan and Daphne Pyle, the prettiest girl in school and one of the nicest, had pitched for a forty-ouncer of lemon gin. Joan had become sicker than she’d ever been in her life. Now, to her surprise, the thought of that perfumed smell no longer nauseated her. Maybe she was more prepared for this journey than she’d believed.

  Within half an hour she was on the highway. A small cooler sat in the passenger seat, filled with her travel favourites: fresh f
ruit, water, Cheezies, and licorice. A thermos of coffee was tucked behind the cooler and the invitation rested on the dash. The dread of going to Madden had been replaced by a tingling thrill. The sky was cloudy and the air signalled approaching rain. It would make the trip refreshing. Once past the stretching suburbs and pungent industrial areas, Joan cracked her window to welcome the spring air, sweet with the first scents of early clover. While the pounding beat of Credence Clearwater Revival propelled her down the highway, she allowed herself to remember.

  Those first few months after her dad had died were a blip now. At the time, the long days and nights had passed with aching slowness. Vi, having no skills, had finally taken a job as a chambermaid at the Twin Pines Motel. Despite her inability to deal with the world, her mom refused to go on welfare. Joan put in twelve-hour shifts at the gas bar. Dan Prychenko usually hired boys and had been wary of having her work by herself at night, but Joan hadn’t been afraid for a second. What she found more hurtful was the change in the way she was treated by her peers, and the worst was Marlena, Dan’s daughter.

  Marlena was the main attraction anytime she walked into a room with Candy Dirkson, her shadow, and Peggy Wong. She had a firecracker wit with an atomic kick. While others laughed, someone was always the victim. Marlena sold nickel bags of pot, which she acquired on regular overnight shopping expeditions to Vancouver with her mother. This gave her a worldly caché in Madden. It was after one of those trips that Marlena targeted Joan for the first time. It was a Monday night. The aroma of muddy footwear blended with the stench of gasoline in the confined gas bar. Marlena and Candy pretended to be shoplifting. Joan played along with the joke. Then the bell above the door jingled and two young guys entered, Junior B hockey players who had been at Madden High a couple of years ahead of them. As often happened when Marlena had an audience, especially a male audience, she went for the jugular.

  “Nice boots, Parker.” Marlena smiled at the boys. “But I thought your grandmother was buried in that pair.” The boys gave her an odd look and left. But Marlena didn’t stop. “How are your new Pine Tree sheet sets fitting?”

  Joan stiffened at the suggestion that her mom was stealing from the motel where she toiled as a chambermaid. “Is there anything I can do for you, Marlena?”

  “Let me get this straight. Is your mom making beds or getting made?”

  Candy laughed and made an obscene motion, poking her index finger through a circle formed with her other hand.

  “She paying back all the men your dad screwed?” continued Marlena.

  “Get out,” Joan said quietly.

  “Do you forget who owns this place?”

  She wanted to wipe the sneer off Marlena’s smug face but all she could do was stare. Her eyes watered and her throat tensed. The doorbell rang again. A local farmer came in, greeted Joan warmly, and asked after her mom. With a final contemptuous snort, Marlena left. Joan didn’t know what had brought on the attack but she knew something for sure. Her family would have to leave Madden.

  Joan slowed for the exit from the main highway. The last time she’d been through this way the secondary highway had been two lanes of bumpy pavement that had made the second half of the journey to Madden painstakingly slow. But that was the past. This road was a smooth slash of grey, four lanes of new highway headed north that would cut the travel time. Nothing looked familiar. The old farms that had squatted around this major turnoff were long gone. An industrial park had replaced them. Joan brightened at the thought that she might get into Madden earlier than expected and have time to get her bearings. She wasn’t going to let the memory of Marlena ruin this trip. Her mom was right. There had been wonderful times and people.

  She smiled as she remembered Gabe and Hazel. She’d admired Gabe who would fight for the underdog and stand up to any authority. Joan had had the desire to be an anarchist, but the courage of a dandelion gone to seed. One puff and her resolve disappeared on the breeze. Gabe was born for a fight; Joan was bred to follow the rules. And then there was Hazel, who embraced her sexuality in a town where adultery was a parlour game but lesbians were vilified. Joan had learned from both of them how to be brave, and they had sown part of who she was. She doubted that either Gabe or Hazel would be at the reunion. Gabe’s family moved a year after hers and she’d heard that Hazel’s mom and dad had passed away. They had no need to go back, but Joan had to go. She’d never said a proper goodbye. Maybe there’d be a bonus. Maybe someone would have news of her two high school friends. Maybe she’d find them again. Since she and Mort had officially separated, there had been a void, too many lonely nights. She filled her nostrils with the humid air then glanced up at the clouds. Rolling and black, they threatened to unleash a storm. She checked her odometer then sniffed again. If the weather held off another half hour she’d beat the rain.

  After Vi Parker had left Madden with her three kids, things became easier. The real estate market was strong when they sold the house and that little bit of equity helped them to rent an East End apartment. They staggered to their feet in Vancouver. Joan still couldn’t afford to return to school full-time, but eventually completed high school through correspondence courses. Life had given her a more serious outlook. When she wasn’t working she was studying. She knew that university was her way out, her step up, but she was undecided about a major. In a Bachelor of Arts holding pattern, she enrolled in chemistry as a required science class. Proving herself a quick learner, she was offered a lackey job in the chem lab, which worked around her schedule much more readily than slinging burgers.

  It was in the dim glow of lab lights that she first appreciated the beauty of chemicals and compounds. They were so simple, yet had the potential to alter the world. She switched faculties and threw herself into chemistry. Above-average grades entitled her to scholarships in her second and subsequent years of study. The first scholarship she received was an unexpected legacy from her father. He’d been a loyal Rotarian and offspring of members could apply to have part of their tuition paid. As time passed, the wound of their Madden exit became a faded scar. She was proud that she’d survived it and chided herself that it had ever bothered her that she had never worn a grad dress.

  Her first reaction to the violent thumping from the rear of her Accord was the thought that her back wheel had hit the rumble strip. It took her another few seconds to realize that she had a flat. She veered to the shoulder to avoid traffic. Pulling on her jacket to protect herself from the drizzle that had started to fall, she got out to inspect the damage. Sure enough, the rear tire on the driver’s side had blown. She couldn’t be more than a couple of miles outside of Madden. Just her luck. It had been years since she had changed a flat and she considered calling the auto club, but she was already racing the clock. Scrounging the jack and spare from the trunk, she clumsily started the job, getting sprayed every time a vehicle drove past.

  After giving the lug nuts a final hard twist, she heaved the blown tire into the trunk and threw the jack after it. Her coat and slacks were now splattered with mud. Her hair and skin looked as though she was testing some roadside spa treatment, a shrapnel mudpack. A gleaming champagne-coloured car, with an A-1 Rental sticker on the bumper, reduced its speed as it passed. The driver looked directly at her. There was something familiar about the woman with big, coal black hair, but before Joan could register anything further, the car sped up and was gone. Certainly the woman was too young to be one of her classmates. Joan groaned. What if she had aged worse than everyone there? Should she turn back now, before it was too late?

  She climbed into her car, waited for a break in traffic then pulled back onto the highway heading for Madden.

  The Twin Pines Motel was the recommended reunion accommodation. It was also the center of activities, including registration. When Joan turned into the parking lot she was taken aback by the changes. In the days when her mother had worked there it had been a respectable but modest establishment. Now it was a full-sized resort. The small cabins, which had formed the origi
nal motel, had been completely renovated and re-faced in gleaming logs. The new hotel addition stretched up six stories. Clearly the tallest structure on the Madden skyline, it housed a dining room, conference centre and a cavernous grand ballroom, the location of the evening’s Welcome Soirée. The clock on Joan’s dashboard read 6:56 pm If she hurried she’d still make it to the registration desk, but wouldn’t have time to change out of her muddy clothes. When she reached to grab the invitation from the dash, it wasn’t there. Damn it. She felt around the shadows of the seats but could only find loose cheese snacks and a tepid apple core. It must have fallen out when she stopped to change the tire.

  A lump rose in her throat as she pushed the lobby door inward and entered a crowd dressed in their casual best. Madden High had served the entire region and there had been over seven-hundred students when she had been here. The huge size of the crowd wasn’t the only jarring aspect. Joan had expected people to look older, but not this much. Nobody looked familiar at all. Maybe they were here with some other event, a wedding or powerboat convention? Joan did a quick reality check. Vi and Leo had been her age when they’d lived here thirty years earlier. These had to be her peers. Avoiding eye contact, she braced herself and walked directly to the ornately decorated table below the sign that read MADDEN 30th HIGH SCHOOL REUNION. If she was fast, maybe she wouldn’t see anyone she knew until she’d had a chance to change her mud-caked clothing.

  A stern woman with salt-and-pepper hair looked up. “Can I help you?”

  “Joan Parker.” She felt as though she’d just crawled out of a dumpster, but smiled meekly, wondering if her name would ring a bell. Had she known this stiff-looking woman as a laughing teenager? But Salt-and-Pepper showed no sign of recognition and went directly to the box of registration cards marked N–Z. Nothing. She riffled through the A–M box. Still nothing.