Cathy stared at her.

“I’m just hoping there’s something, some loose thread at the edge of your mind that might point somewhere.”

“I told you,” she said. “He had to pick up some filters. He left the house at ten at night. It was a little strange, but you knew Henry. If he had to go do something, he went and did it.”

“Do you know who his friends are, Cathy?”

“Sure, some of them. Half of them were in the Business Improvement Association. They’re normal guys.”

“Okay,” said Hazel, and she sighed. “Where do you want to be right now, Cathy? Is there someone you’d like to go to? You’re welcome to stay on with me, as long as you wish, I’m not kicking you out.”

“I can’t be around people right now.”

“Well, my mother will leave you alone, so do stay on if you want, okay?”

She nodded quickly, hiding her eyes. “Thank you.”

“Constable Bail is your personal driver. If anything comes to mind …”

Emily was asleep on the couch when Hazel returned to Pember Lake for lunch. Cathy was in the guestroom on the second floor, resting, Hazel hoped. There were faces on the television nattering mutely. Her mother had lately taken to turning the sound off, but she seemed to like the presence of movement somewhere in the house, even when she was asleep, as if her mind lacked the energy to make its own dreams. Hazel switched the TV off and sat in a chair across from Emily. In sleep, her cheeks were sunken and her mouth gaped. There was no detectable personality to an unconscious person: her mother was a mere creature, not a woman with a history and a character, and Hazel was saddened by the sight of this insensate figure on her couch. This animal that was her mother was coming to the end of her time on earth. Hazel moved from the chair to sit beside her, and she took one of her mother’s hands in her own and just held it. It was cool and light and made her think of the frightened bird in the Wiest house.

Police work had trained her to live in the present, but it wasn’t good discipline for being with others, where you had to be more alert to the future and the time you had left with them. She knew it was natural to ignore how time was stealing the present from you, how it lent itself to the illusion that you’d be able to get to all those important conversations you were meant to have with children and parents and friends.

She let her mother sleep another ten minutes and even drifted off for a moment herself before snapping awake. She shook Emily gently and her mother opened her eyes and stared out into the room. “How are you feeling?” Hazel asked her.

“Tired,” her mother said.

“You got my note?”

“What note?”

“The one I pinned to the back of your door.”

“The one that said we have a guest who may or may not be at high risk of being murdered in my house? I got that one.”

“She’s in no danger. And neither are you. Consider it a good deed.”

“I’m not going to be unkind or anything, Hazel. But if she’s visited by a maniac, I’m running out the door.”

Hazel understood the source of that sentiment and let it go. “We have an appointment with Gary Pass tomorrow morning,” she said.

“There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“Let him decide that. It’s been a while since you had a checkup anyway.”

Emily stifled a yawn. “This house is too hot.”

“It’s not hot at all, Mum. It’s very comfortable. Feel your own hand: it’s cool.”

She touched her hand absently. “My circulation was never very good. But this room is warm.”

Hazel got off the couch and held her hand out to her mother, who took it and levered herself up. “Go for a walk, okay? Or go work in the garden a little. Get your heart pumping. You’re not active enough these days and it’s making you sluggish.”

“You want me to get a job?”

“Just do something with your time.”

] 11 [

Afternoon

Constable Roland Forbes, dressed in a pair of slacks, a windbreaker, and a homburg, drove in a leisurely fashion down RR26 – Queesik Bay Road – in the detachment’s only unmarked police car, looking for Eagle Smoke and Souvenir. There were smoke shacks littering the side of the road the moment he turned off the 41a and onto the 26, but the one he was looking for was the largest and brightest of the lot. A neon sign announced its location two hundred metres before he saw it, and the building itself was like a western storefront, with a wooden porch and a wide, triangular gable above it. A wooden eagle with little white bulbs for eyes stuck out of the gable with the legend THE EAGLE above it in bright red neon. There was parking in front, as well as on the north side of the building, and there was a taxi stand with a single cab waiting in front of the store, under a lamppost. A small trailer by the roadway served as a drive-through for cigarettes. The store itself looked more like a saloon than a smoke shop, and although he was in civilian clothes, he entered with caution. His wife, Janice, had often told him that even in the nude, he looked like a cop.

Inside, the store was fairly busy. Directly in front of him was a section of clothing, mostly sweatshirts and T-shirts adorned with the crest of the Five Nations, and a couple of browsers (tourists? On a Thursday? Perhaps in the middle of August) being helped by an Eagle staff member. Deeper in the store was a rack of books on native life and local history, a candy counter, some magazines, and a series of shelves stacked with knick-knacks like you’d find in any Canadian airport: maple candy, little stuffed animals with Canadian flags, Mountie banks, and so on. Behind it were assorted leather goods and a glass case full of fine art made from bone and antler and local stone.

The cigarette part of the business occupied the entire south wall. Forbes had once smoked a pack a day, but he’d been quit of the habit for more than three years. Looking at cigarettes didn’t bother him anymore, although corner stores had once given him a frisson. The brands were stacked in cartons, ends out, in little cubbyholes along the wall. The boxes mimicked the look of national brands. The red carton, which looked like it contained his brand, DuMaurier, was called DKs. He remembered coming down here in the 1990s to get the cheap ones when he was short of cash. There was a row of glass counters in front of the cubbyholes, showcases of cigars, bongs, rolling papers, and pipes. Good to show the product, not so good if it walks out. A man was coming down along the counter, in front of the cubbyholes, letting the ring on his middle finger clack on the metal division between the glass counters. He was tall and moved with jerky movements, as if he suffered from the beginnings of some motor illness, or he was drunk. His skull was shiny and bald. A sew-on badge on his shirt read Tate, but Forbes wasn’t sure if it was a vintage bowling shirt or a uniform. He wondered if he should have taken some notes already. “Can I help you?” the man asked.

He’d come down here with a general approach in mind. If there was anything illicit available in this place, he wanted the guy to know he was interested. People he personally knew had bought corn liquor, Viagra, painkillers, knockoff perfumes and electronics, native hunting licences, and a lot of other things on reserves. He knew that half the convenience store owners off the reserve came down and bought skids of smokes. They weren’t allowed to sell these off the reserve, but many stores sold them under the counter anyway, for cash, and cops turned a blind eye because half the force smoked.

Forbes said, “Don’t see what I’m looking for, yet.”

“Well, what’re you looking for?”

“I’ll know it when I see it,” he said.

“All right, I hope we got it then.” The man walked away. Hard to call the interaction suspicious, he thought. Forbes lingered in the store, trying on some hats. Tate sold a man two cartons, and then the couple who’d been in the front of the store paid for a T-shirt and some magazines. They asked where the casino was, and Tate directed them six kilometres down Queesik Bay Road. “Can’t miss it,” he said. “Even more neon than us.” They all laughed.