Almost Criminal Read online

  ALMOSTCRIMINAL

  E. R. BROWN

  For James E. Brown, a true raconteur

  Author’s Note

  The town of Wallace, B.C. — and the surrounding geography, including its Canada–U.S. border crossing — do not exist.

  Chapter 1

  You want gratitude? I don’t think so. You want me to be afraid of you too, I can tell. Not after what I’ve seen. Don’t forget, Officer — is that what I’m supposed to call you now? — I’m a young offender. There’s not much you can do to me. That’s the reason Randle brought me on board. He liked my face. Thought I looked young and innocent. Truth is, I was.

  “‘Hotel California.’” Lucas’s nasal voice was a knife in my hungover forehead.

  I closed my eyes and took a breath, and forced myself to play along with Lucas’s beat-the-tedium challenge. I scanned the coffee shop. No “Hotel California” type in sight. I checked outside, and the spring sunshine twisted the blade behind my optic nerves. And there he was. A smoke-grey ponytail and cream-coloured suit, loping up to the glass door and into the shop with the confident roll-bounce of a man who thought highly of himself.

  “Two o’clock and approaching.” The rules of the game: first, one of us would call out the name of a tune. Then the other would have to spot which customer matched it. You had to know your music, of course, and the two of us were masters. But this time, Luke had a problem.

  “You’ve got no Eagles on your iPod.” I said. The next step was to play the tune on the sound system and see how the victim reacted.

  “Not a problem.” Lucas pointed to the boss’s shelf under the counter. Of course. Jeannie’s midden of oldie CDs. She’d have the Eagles, the Doobie Brothers, Creedence, and all the other bands she forced on customers when we weren’t around. Jeannie owned Human Beans and had an unjustifiably high opinion of her taste in music.

  Lucas didn’t move to the CD shelf immediately. He gave me a meaningful look and did a little air-guitar, swaying his jelly-belly in time to the music playing quietly overhead. It took me way too long. A rockabilly tune from the fifties, Rock and roll rhythm and a bottle of booze — “Rhythm and Booze.” The soundtrack for The Hangover. Zing. A shot from Luke about the morning I was having. Thank you, Luke. Now can I get back to work?

  Mr. Hotel California was a local. He did a jivey thumb-snap finger-gun thing at Anatole — Jeannie’s husband — on his way in. Anatole was out front, trying to get his outdoor sundeck finished. He had dreams of summer customers stopping to sip a caffe latte in the sunshine instead of flashing past like they did every day. Human Beans was a dumpy little place facing the main street of Wallace, a small town in nowhere, British Columbia. The highway to the American border passed just in front, and all day long we watched cars zip past without stopping on their way to or from the States. Hotel California made sure to keep his freshly-pressed threads away from the cloud of sawdust rising from Anatole as he whaled away.

  Lucas said, “Dude steps on a nail, he’ll sue so fast.”

  I waved Lucas away from the espresso machine, and he shuffled to the till, The Very Best of the Eagles trapped in a damp armpit.

  The guy had been in a few times recently. Mostly he cruised past in a yellow Porsche with the top down, a beauty from the fifties or sixties that stood out among the Escalades and Beemers that the local money preferred, and the rust-bucket pickups that kept the rest of Wallace mobile. But I knew him. He was a macchiato. Probably the only customer in this hole who knew what a macchiato was, and of course I was the only barista that could make one, hangover or no. He ordered a sandwich with his coffee.

  Human Beans was the only coffee shop in Wallace. It was only a couple hours’ drive from Vancouver, but the town had no Starbucks, not even a Tim Hortons. We had the town’s only espresso machine, a copper and brass Elektra with a flying eagle on its domed top. A beauty once upon a time, and Jeannie loved it. But after the first few cups, you couldn’t control the heat and water pressure and had to keep a close eye on the gauge to hold it in the sweet spot between too-cold and near-explosive. Jeannie was convinced that its coffee was sweeter than those new stainless-steel things. Which was BS, but fine with me that she thought so. The Elektra was my job security. Nobody else could run the touchy old thing and I needed the money, even though the pay was pathetic and country people didn’t know from tipping.

  I handed Hotel California his macchiato — dark and creamy, with the foam in a perfect little cloverleaf. Even across the counter I could smell the weed on him. Half this strange little town stunk of grass, from the loggers to the soy-latte yogamoms. Not me. I gave the machine back to Lucas and took my hangover away from the squeal of the steam wand. Lucas was happy to reclaim his alpha-dog position on the bar. He was twenty-one, four years older than me, and even though his coffee skills were pretty dodgy, I had to be honest: no one in Wallace, except possibly Hotel California, tasted the difference.

  Less than a year ago my mother dragged me away from the city to this hopeless corner of nowhere. I hadn’t made much effort to bond with the locals. Most of them poured their own cups from the Bunn warmer plate in the back. Too cheap for hand-pulled coffee. I served the tourists and telecommuters mostly, pulling extra-hot skinny lattes for rail-thin Lululemon babes and their executive hubbies in ball caps and Bluetooth earbuds.

  Holding a dish tray high, I squeezed past a circle of jogger-moms who’d parked their all-terrain strollers in my way, right in front of the shop’s wall-high aquarium, a remnant of its past life as a Chinese restaurant. They were loudly debating the merits of lecithin for cracked nipples. I felt a flush rising in my cheeks but acted deaf, and there was Hotel California near the door, catching my eye as he polished off his brie-and-eggplant panini.

  “Fine cup of coffee.”

  I mumbled and nodded and made to clear the next table, but its occupants, a reno contractor and homeowner in a poorly-muted argument over a change order, didn’t want to be disturbed.

  “Hold on.” He raised a hand to stop me. “I have a little favour to ask.”

  I nodded, trying not to twitch at another brain-stab from last night’s Southern Comfort.

  “Randle Kennedy.” He held out a hand to shake.

  I made a my-hands-are-dirty wave with the one arm that wasn’t holding the dish tray.

  “And you are?”

  “Tate.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Tate. Sit down, would you?”

  I sighed and perched on a chair, the dish tray on one knee. Overhead the volume swelled and a languid, unmistakable guitar line drifted down. I knew the words without hearing them: this could be heaven or this could be hell. At the counter Lucas was waggling the dusty CD case, trying to catch my eye. I masked a grin and waited for a reaction from Randle Kennedy. Lucas would be disappointed.

  He reached in his jacket and slid out a long envelope. “I need you to deliver something.” He laid it on the table and tapped it with a slender index finger.

  “For a lady.” His eyes crinkled, seeming to express a sense of regret and a touch of humour at the same time. “Eyes front, Tate. She’s over there, on the other side of the aquarium. This is a matter of some delicacy but I can see you’re a fellow who understands.”

  He leaned closer and the sweet fug of stoner crawled up my nostrils. In my post-alcoholic state the smell was nauseating. His eyes were clear, though, and he was alert and intent on delivering his message.

  “She knows I’m here, this is no surprise. No one’s going to make a scene. I can’t hand this to the lady, not personally, not in public.” His eyes crinkled again. “I know you know what I mean. Don’t pick it up now. After I’ve left, come over to clean up as you normally would, and put the envelope on your tray with everything else. Don’t make a fuss ove
r it, and don’t make a special trip to deliver it. When you’re near there, just passing the table in the execution of your duties, as it were, slip it onto her table and move away.”

  Why not, I figured. Customer service. Plus, it’s less work to do it than to refuse.

  “She’s in the corner table at the rear. Yamaha ball cap?”

  He stood and lightly clasped my upper arm. I resisted the impulse to pull away. I don’t like touchers.

  “Thanks. I don’t know what I would have done. We’ll talk later, Tate,” and he was gone.

  “Counter, dude!” Lucas boomed. A sweaty-looking road crew had arrived and the takeout orders were piling up.

  When I finally returned to the table, there was the envelope, poking out from under a plate, with a twenty folded underneath.

  It wasn’t that easy. The takeaway rush was gone, the shop was nearly empty and she saw me coming from across the room as she patted the pockets of her anorak like she was about to leave. She made momentary eye contact, her head at a questioning tilt, and I felt stupid, the envelope huge in my hand. I just slipped it in front of her and kept moving. She awkwardly dropped her eyes and covered it with her hand, then slid it onto her lap as if she were adjusting her clothes. It fell into a tall plaid bag that leaned against her leg. Her gumboots were muddy to the ankle.

  What her deal was, I had no idea. There was no romantic angle. No intimacy in her look, no anticipation, no blush of guilt. It wouldn’t have been a goodbye-it’s-been-a-slice note, there was nothing about Hotel California that made me feel he couldn’t face a woman. And while she wasn’t unattractive, she was rural, like most of the town, and for me she didn’t mesh, couple-wise, with the cream suit and vintage Speedster. Plus, I’d had the envelope in my fingers, and who’s kidding who, a wad of cash feels like a wad of cash.

  Chapter 2

  The truck’s horn was a heat wave in my back, urgent and close, pushed by the grind of a hardworking diesel. It was big, whatever it was, and I tucked and cut off the lumpy pavement, no time for a shoulder check. I’d had no warning, cruising in the sound bubble of my skateboard’s wheels on the old highway. I dropped off the lip at speed, and the board went nose-down into the sand and pebbles. I bailed, pumping my legs in a high-legged sprint to avoid a face-plant and keep out the path of the black Hummer that blew past, nearly clipping my elbow. The bag of groceries under my arm added to the challenge. I ended up in the roadside brush, no serious damage beyond a sore ankle.

  It was one of the old-school, military Hummers that sits high and wide and fills every inch of the road. Bobbing heads were silhouetted in the smoked glass. Limping back to find where my board had landed, I wanted to heave a rock and let the shit-for-brains wannabe-macho fucktard know what I thought, but he was long gone, and the only people who’d hear me would probably rat me out to Jeannie for bad language. It’s that kind of town.

  The rest of the way home I hugged the shoulder, dodging potholes and rocks and protecting the veggies, probably mush by now anyway. Skated past Don’s Soil Supply, past Anzac Engine Works with the Harleys out front, to my corner and its faded VIEW LOTS AND ACREAGE FOR SALE sign. I turned in and pushed the board uphill. Past the unmanned Heritage Properties security gate, just in front of our place, somebody had parked a dented F-150 pickup, two-tone brown with retreads on rusty rims. In this neighbourhood, street-parkers were there to cut the grass. Except at our place.

  Home was the Templeton mansion, the “heritage” of Heritage Properties, a real-estate subdivision whose developer went bust. At one time, the mansion had stood alone on the hillside, a lord’s manor overlooking the logging town of Wallace. Now it marked the entrance to a series of looping roads that snaked up the mountain, a Disneyland of fake-historic high-end homes.

  Our house wasn’t much of a mansion anymore, with a sagging porch, drunken angles, and a turret pockmarked with missing shingles. Renovation had been in the developer’s plans, along with all kinds of overblown dreams. Row after row of switchbacks zigzagged above us, with every view lot cleared for construction. Down on our level, a half-dozen homes had been built and occupied by people I’d never met. The next level uphill was where the developer had choked. Some of the homes were near completion, others had roofs and tarpaper walls, but no windows. Farther up, skeleton frames dwindled to foundations, and then the street narrowed to stump-filled lots punctuated with stakes in the ground and spray-painted arrows on the Douglas firs.

  Back in the day, as they say, everything in sight had belonged to my grandfather, Everett Templeton. Pop, we called him. From his mountainside mansion, he could look down his mill, his wharves, his workers in their company homes, and the lush green forests on which he held the timber lease. When the old-growth trees ran out, Pop sold the logging rights to a conglomerate from Alabama and a few months later the mill was closed. It had been a bad time for Wallace, although by then I was a little kid in the city and had no idea. I was seven when Pop died.

  Beth held the land for years. When she sold out to the developers, part of the deal was that our home would be pimped out to become the signature building of Heritage Properties. Those promises were as long gone as the backhoes and the money Beth was still owed. The roof was still moss-covered, and the rain-bleached paint was still streaked with runnels of green from the eavestroughs that overflowed every rainfall.

  In all the years we lived in Vancouver, Beth never mentioned that she’d inherited Pop’s mountain, let alone that she’d sold everything but the home itself, until the day she announced that the three of us were leaving the city and moving in.

  In the kitchen, I elbowed an empty nacho-chip bag off the counter (Bree was home) to make room for my bruised groceries. I slipped a Southern Comfort bottle under the counter, into my secret hole behind the drainpipe, and called out a hello. No response.

  Beth was in her studio, perched ramrod straight on the edge of a paint-speckled chair, facing her canvas with an unblinking stare.

  “Supper soon.”

  “Not hungry, darling.”

  Just what she always said. Her skin was bone-white, her eyes a watery grey that seemed to hold all its colour inside. When her hair grew back after the chemo, the wispy blond had turned a dull white with only a hint of yellow.

  “Have you eaten?” I knew what she’d say to that, too.

  “Yes, yes.” Her voice was flat and distracted.

  “What’d you have? There’s nothing in the fridge.”

  “All right.” She exhaled and pinched the bridge of her nose. “You’ve caught me.” It always felt like she was humouring me. “I should have something before it gets too late. Call me when it’s ready.”

  In the art world, Elsbeth Templeton was pretty well known. Her work was in major galleries and the homes of wealthy collectors. Which didn’t mean she was rich. She used the third floor, Pop’s old bedroom, as her painting studio. It was small, what with the angled roof and the dormer windows cutting into the space, and she’d crammed it full of garage-sale tables that she covered with brushes and paint. Canvases leaned against walls — earlier, forgotten drafts of the work in progress. She’d been at this one painting for months, her second since leaving the hospital. It was a floor-to-ceiling canvas, an angle-on view of a kitchen counter, or perhaps a butcher’s counter, with a spring salmon split open, pink flesh spread wide, exposing the length of the spinal column, all the way to a dangling polyp where the head used to be. Chunks of moist flesh, painfully crimson, clung to the ladder of bones, more vibrantly pigmented than anything real. The wooden surface underneath was deeply scored with fresh knife scars and patterned with oozing liquid, translucent membranes and fish scales that sparkled in the light.

  When I was a kid, her paintings had creeped me out so much that I wouldn’t approach her studio. She was scary intense, painting night and day until her hands quivered with fatigue, drifting down to eat only when the stomach pains got too bad. I learned to cook as a survival tactic. There was a time when I wished she’d devote tha
t kind of energy to me, but I got past that. The idea was terrifying.

  For a couple of years Beth painted shirts and dresses that floated in the air, marked with sweat, work stains, or other bodily fluids, empty but fully shaped as if there were a body in them. Then she switched to food, stacks of fruit and cut meat that seemed to excrete blood and juice. “Morbidly sensual,” the press called them. She was some kind of star, as painters go. When she got sick, she stopped. Didn’t paint for more than a year, and just started again recently.

  I washed the lettuce in the salad bowl, keeping food from touching the old porcelain sink and whatever it was that grew in its grotty spider-webbed cracks. If that sink were in the coffee shop, the health inspectors would have a fit. I sliced a tomato, whistling as I tossed it in, whacked the end off a cucumber and chopped it up, and poured on some raspberry vinaigrette that Anatole had given me, leftover from today’s special. He’d told me to take it because it was only going to go bad. He treated me like a charity case sometimes, but I took it.

  The house was enormous for three of us, a rambling warren of worn-out rooms leading off a long, narrow hallway. Depending on our moods, any of us could meet and chat, or avoid each other all day long.

  I found Bree in the piano room, slumped at the computer, her T-shirt hanging loose, headphones snaking though tangled hair. She was busily typing with an index finger and thumb. There was a guy with her. The pickup outside would be his. This was new. As far as I knew, Bree hadn’t made a single friend in Wallace.

  His eyes flicked up, then back to his laptop. I already didn’t like him. She was fourteen. If he drove, he was sixteen, minimum. What kind of loser is interested in a shy, friendless girl that much younger? He was trying to grow some facial hair and had a two-inch wannabe ponytail poking out behind his headphones. He and Bree were playing the same game, each with a cartoonish 3-D forest landscape with knights and castles and battlefields, and a scrolling list of friends and enemies with shields and swords and runic symbols. Bree was humming, out of tune and too loud. I had to rap on the lid of the grand piano to get her attention.