Puppet Read online

  “Somebody has to know something,” Amanda mutters, unwrapping the cellophane from the top of the glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, and swallowing the juice in one long gulp. She looks at the clock. Eight thirty. Four and a half hours before she’s supposed to meet Ben in the lobby. What’s she supposed to do till then?

  “I can’t even go shopping,” she pouts, knowing that the stores don’t open until noon. She flips on the television set, browsing so quickly through the channels that the remote seizes up, its fading batteries unable to keep time with the speed of her thumb. Eventually, she succeeds in shutting the damn thing off and tosses the now useless remote to the floor, finishing her breakfast in silence. She then brushes and flosses her teeth until her gums are sore and stands under a long, hot shower, scrubbing mercilessly at whatever skin she has left after last night’s bath. It takes her almost forty minutes to dry and style her hair so that it looks as if she hasn’t styled it at all, and almost as long to apply her makeup so that it looks as if she isn’t wearing any. Then she tugs her black turtleneck sweater so roughly over her head she practically has to start the whole process all over again. “What the hell am I doing?” she asks her reflection in the mirror, seriously considering packing up her overnight bag and catching the first plane out of town.

  There is a knock on the door. Ben? Amanda wonders, hearing a noise in the hall. Is it possible the man at the reception desk slipped Ben a key card? That he would use it? “Ben?” Amanda asks, coming out of the bathroom as the door to her room opens.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” a woman in a neat blue uniform exclaims. “I didn’t think anyone was here. I’ll come back later to make up the bed.”

  “No, that’s okay. You can do it now.” Amanda steps back, allows the woman from housekeeping entry. “I’m leaving in a few minutes.” She is? Where is she going?

  The woman props her supply table against the open door. She is in her mid to late thirties, small and round, and her skin shines like rich black satin against the pale blue cotton of her uniform. “You sleep well?” she asks, scooping the remote-control unit off the floor.

  “Very well, thank you. No dreams.” No ex-husbands chasing her through snow-encrusted streets, no mothers waiting in opulent lobbies to ambush her with a gun.

  “You saving these?” The housekeeper holds up the crumpled newspaper clippings littered among the sheets.

  “No. You can throw them out.” What’s the point in saving them? She’s read them so many times she can almost recite them by heart.

  “Nasty business.” The housekeeper shakes her head as she tosses the papers into a plastic garbage bag.

  “Were you here when it happened?” Again Amanda tries to sound casual, as if she’s merely making polite conversation.

  “No. I was finished for the day. But one of my friends, she was just coming in for her shift, and she saw the whole thing.”

  “She did? What did she see?”

  The woman from housekeeping leans in, whispers conspiratorially, “She saw this older, well-dressed woman walk across the lobby and shoot poor Mr. Mallins.”

  “Poor Mr. Mallins,” Amanda repeats. “You sound like you knew him.”

  “I cleaned his suite a couple of times.”

  “He was staying in a suite?”

  “I think he was pretty flush. Dressed real nice. Rumor has it he was wearing a two-thousand-dollar suit when he was shot.”

  Amanda absorbs this latest bit of information. The only men she’s ever heard of who wear two-thousand-dollar suits are gangsters. Is it possible her mother has some connection to organized crime?

  “Besides, his wife and kids were with him,” the housekeeper continues, oblivious to Amanda’s inner musings. “They needed two rooms.”

  “Yes, I hear they’re still at the hotel.”

  “Guess they have to wait until after the autopsy to take the body back to England. Such nice people. Kids are so well-behaved.”

  “What’s Mrs. Mallins like?”

  “Quiet. Doesn’t say much. Just real polite.” The housekeeper rolls the bedsheets into a giant ball, looks contrite. “The management says we shouldn’t discuss what happened, but it’s hard not to, you know. Everybody wants to talk about it.”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s funny. People are always worrying about young black men causing trouble, when it’s the old white women you gotta watch out for.” She laughs.

  Amanda tries to join in, but the laugh catches in her throat. “I better go, let you do your work.” She grabs her purse and coat from the closet, throws both across her shoulders.

  “Have a nice day,” the housekeeper calls after her.

  The elevator is empty when Amanda steps inside, but it stops on the fourteenth floor to admit a middle-aged man lugging a heavy suitcase, and again at the tenth floor for a woman and her two young children.

  “Mommy,” the little girl whines as the elevator doors draw to a close. “Tyler’s stepping on my toes.”

  “Am not,” her tow-haired brother responds, deliberately pushing against his younger sister.

  “He’s pushing me.”

  “Am not.”

  “Tyler, that’s enough.”

  “I’m not doing anything.”

  “Well, stop it anyway.” His exasperated mother smiles wanly at Amanda.

  Attractive woman, Amanda thinks, although she already looks exhausted, and the day has barely begun. Amanda returns the woman’s smile, silently congratulating herself for her decision not to procreate.

  “Where’s Daddy?” the little girl demands, tugging at her mother’s skirt. “I want Daddy.”

  It suddenly occurs to Amanda that she is standing in the elevator with Mrs. Mallins and her two children. A million questions instantly fill her brain: What was your husband doing in Toronto? Did he come specifically to see my mother? What was the relationship between them? Is there anything, anything at all, you can tell me, that will make sense of all this craziness? “Mrs. Mallins,” she begins softly, the name a whisper.

  The woman turns toward her. “I’m sorry. Did you say something?”

  The elevator door opens at the lobby, and the man with the heavy suitcase barrels his way out first. “I’m sorry to bother you,” Amanda begins, hanging back.

  “Daddy!” the little girl shouts, flying into her father’s waiting arms.

  “Daddy!” Tyler shouts louder, throwing himself against the man’s legs.

  “Yes?” The woman in the elevator looks expectantly at Amanda.

  Amanda feels instantly foolish. “I’m sorry. My mistake. I thought you were someone else.”

  “What took you so long?” the woman’s husband asks, as he guides his family toward the exit.

  “Tyler had to go to the bathroom, and then Candace said she had a tummy ache.”

  “It’s okay now,” Candace assures her father, leaning into the revolving door. “Mommy, Tyler’s pushing me.”

  Amanda watches them disappear into a waiting taxi. What’s the matter with you? she asks herself impatiently. Are you going to spend the next few days imagining every woman with two children that you see is Mrs. Mallins? It’s not like you to jump to such ridiculous conclusions. You have to get a grip. “This is so not like you,” she whispers into the collar of her coat.

  She walks toward the sitting area to the left of the hotel entrance, stands for several minutes staring at the empty seats. This is where my mother sat, a gun in her purse, waiting to kill a man. Amanda lowers herself into one of the chairs, sinks back, tries to imagine her mother’s arms resting where hers are now, her legs crossed in the same careless fashion. What was she thinking as she sat here, waiting? Was her gaze directed at the elevators or the door? Was John Mallins returning from a day of sightseeing or was he on his way out? Was his family with him? Had her mother been so heartless as to shoot him down in front of his wife and children?

  Amanda jumps to her feet, startling a woman who has just sat down on the nearby sofa. This is
silly. You’re making yourself nuts. The papers didn’t say anything about her mother killing John Mallins in front of his family. Although, yes, her mother is that heartless. Amanda laughs out loud. The woman on the sofa immediately gets up and moves to the bar.

  Amanda takes a deep breath to calm herself down and approaches the reception desk. An attractive young woman with dark olive skin and a soft Indian accent smiles up at her. “Can I help you?” she asks, absently tucking her chin-length black hair behind her left ear.

  “I wanted to inquire about your suites,” Amanda hears herself say, wondering what the hell she’s doing now. “Can you give me some information?”

  “Certainly. We have three hundred and eighty guest rooms in the hotel, and nearly half of them are suites.” The clerk slides a white piece of paper across the top of the desk. “This is our price list.”

  Amanda scans the Daily Tariff list, noting the list of options: Moderate Queen; Superior Room; Deluxe Room; Premium King; Four Seasons Executive Suite; Deluxe Four Seasons Executive Suite; Two-Bedroom Suite. “The two-bedroom suite,” she says, seeing that the price is $795 a night.

  “We have two kinds of two-bedroom suites,” the clerk tells her. “One with a king-size bed in each room, and one with a king-size bed in one room and twin beds in the other.”

  Amanda feels her pulse quicken. “That’s the one I’d be interested in.” Surely there can’t be too many such suites. “Some friends are coming to Toronto next month. I said I’d try to get some information for them.”

  “Perhaps this will help.” The young woman produces a small brochure. “This tells you a little bit about the hotel and—”

  “The two-bedroom suite,” Amanda interrupts. “Does it have a nice view?”

  “Oh, yes. Our suites start on the twenty-third floor and face south, so there’s a lovely view of the city all the way down to the lake.”

  “And how many two-bedroom suites are there on each floor?”

  “Just one.”

  Amanda smiles, drops the brochure into her purse, then pushes herself away from the desk. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure. Have a nice day.”

  Amanda walks toward the exit, feeling inordinately self-satisfied. A gust of bitterly cold wind hits her square in the face as she steps outside, slapping her quickly back to reality. So, big deal, the wind taunts her. So you wormed some information out of an eager-to-please receptionist. So you figured out how to find Mrs. Mallins. You’re a lawyer, aren’t you? You’ve been trained to ask the right questions. The more important question is, What are you going to do now?

  The doorman signals for a taxi, and Amanda climbs inside. “Where to, miss?”

  Amanda leans back against the cracked brown vinyl of the seat, catches a hint of stale body odor emanating from its surface. She hesitates, changing her mind several times before she finally speaks. “Mount Pleasant Cemetery,” she says.

  “Can you wait for me a few minutes?” she asks the driver, whose identification card on the back of the front seat gives his name as Abdul Jahib.

  “Meter’s running,” he tells her with a shrug.

  “I won’t be long.” She directs him along the winding road that cuts through the cemetery, an enormous property that sits smack in the middle of the city, bordered on the north and south by Davisville and St. Clair, and on the east and west by Mount Pleasant and Yonge. It’s a beautiful space, even in the snow, with its rolling hills and wide variety of trees. Everything you could ask for in a final resting place. Peaceful. Quiet. Close to everything. A great view. People are just dying to get in here, she hears someone say, then looks skittishly over her shoulder, as if checking for ghosts. “Turn here,” she directs the driver. Then: “Turn right.” Seconds later: “Down this way.”

  Abdul Jahib pulls the car to a stop in front of a small gray monument, guarded over by a large stone angel. Amanda gets out of the car, casually absorbing the information inscribed across the monument’s surface as she walks by. VERA TRUFFAUT, 1912–1998. Which made Vera eighty-six years old when she died, Amanda calculates. A perfectly respectable age to die.

  She continues down the row of graves, wet snow dusting the tops of her decidedly nonwinterized boots. Already she feels water seeping through the soft leather to settle uncomfortably between her toes, although she suspects this sensation is more imaginary than real. Still, it won’t be long. These boots are more decorative than practical. They weren’t designed for trudging through snow-covered cemeteries in the dead of winter.

  STEPHEN MOLONEY, 1895–1978, she reads. Dead at eighty-three. Right next to MARTHA MOLONEY, 1897–1952. Dead at fifty-five. “Somebody got the raw end of that deal,” Amanda comments, picking up her pace and almost slipping on a patch of black ice. JACK STANDFORD, 1912–1975. “Sixty-three.” ARLENE HILL, 1916–1981. “Sixty-five.”

  She comes to an abrupt halt in front of a rose-colored granite tombstone. EDWARD PRICE. 1933–1992. LOVING HUSBAND AND FATHER. “Dead at fifty-nine,” Amanda whispers, feeling her mother sneak up behind her, scream in her ear.

  Well, with a daughter like you, no wonder your father had a heart attack!

  IN OUR HEARTS YOU LIVE FOREVER.

  “Hi, Daddy,” Amanda says, tears filling her eyes, freezing on her cheeks.

  Hi, Puppet, she hears him say.

  It’s been a long time, she continues silently.

  Not so long really.

  Eleven years.

  That’s not so long.

  I’ve been away. I live in Florida now. I’m a lawyer. Did you know that?

  Of course. I know everything about you. And I’m so proud of you.

  Really? Why? You never showed much interest in me when you were alive.

  You have to understand that your mother was going through a very rough time. She was drinking. She was depressed. She needed my attention, my support.

  I needed you too.

  You were always so strong and independent. Your mother—

  My mother is a crazy woman. She was crazy then, and she’s even crazier now.

  She needs you.

  Amanda laughs despite her tears. When has her mother ever needed her? “I’m not licensed to practice law in Canada, Daddy. Besides, she already has a good lawyer. I’m sure you remember Ben. Mom said he was the final nail in your coffin.”

  She didn’t mean that.

  You once said there were things you needed to tell me, things that would explain everything, that when I was old enough to understand, when the time was right … Amanda wipes the tears from her eyes. The time was never right, was it, Daddy?

  EDWARD PRICE. 1933–1992.

  LOVING HUSBAND AND FATHER.

  IN OUR HEARTS YOU LIVE FOREVER.

  Time runs out, and people die, Amanda thinks, walking back to the waiting cab. It’s guilt that lives forever.

  TEN

  SORRY I’m late,” Amanda apologizes, settling into the passenger seat of Ben’s white Corvette. “I decided to buy some winter boots, and the stores didn’t open until twelve.” He seems a little distracted, so she doesn’t tell him about her impromptu visit to the cemetery. Instead she stretches her long legs out in front of her, proudly displaying the new leather boots that cover her black pants up to her knees. “They’re even lined.”

  “Very nice,” he says without looking. “I hope you’ve eaten. We don’t have time to stop for lunch.”

  “I had a big breakfast. Bacon, eggs, toast. The works. It should hold me till dinner.” She wonders if he’s annoyed with her for being late, and if that’s the reason he avoids looking at her. “Is everything all right? I mean, my mother … Nothing’s happened, has it?”

  “Nothing’s happened.”

  “Okay.” She pauses, stares out the side window as they pull out of the hotel driveway and turn south onto Avenue Road. “I read the clippings you gave me. They were pretty vague.”

  “The picture of John Mallins didn’t ring any bells?”

  “I’ve never seen him before
in my life.”

  Ben shrugs, nods without turning his head. He says nothing, the silence continuing as Avenue Road morphs into University Avenue. They speed past the Royal Ontario Museum and what used to be the Planetarium, then continue around the circle at Queen’s Park, past the Parliament Buildings and the downtown campus of the University of Toronto.

  “So, how was your date last night?”

  “Fine.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “Dinner at a friend’s house.”

  “Really? Anyone I know?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “No friends from the old days?” she asks playfully, despite the tone in his voice telling her to back off.

  “You were my only friend,” Ben reminds her, stopping at the red light at College Street, and swiveling around in his seat, looking at her for the first time since he pulled into the hotel driveway.

  “Not a very good one,” Amanda is forced to admit.

  He shrugs again, the motion bringing his black leather jacket up around his ears. “Water under the bridge.”

  “We were very young.”

  “We still are.”

  Amanda nods, although she doesn’t feel very young these days, hasn’t in some time. “You think we could be friends again?” she ventures. “I mean, it’s not for very long. After I leave, you can go back to hating me again.”

  “I don’t hate you, Amanda.”

  “You should.” The light changes to green, and the Corvette instantly takes off, zipping past the mirrored Hydro building and the row of hospitals that line both sides of the wide street. The car hugs the road, the vibrations from the various potholes and crevices traveling back and forth between Amanda’s toes and the base of her neck. “I’d forgotten how you feel every bump in the road with this thing.”