“What am I going to do?” Roberta wailed as she reached for another Kleenex. “I can’t just stay here.”
“Yes, you can. As long as you like, Roberta.” Sasha patted her hand, then glanced across the table at Margo, who was drinking coffee from a hand-thrown pottery mug.
“No, I can’t. What about my goats? Erik can’t milk a goat to save himself. Who’s going to take care of them?” Roberta drooped like a rag doll brought in from the rain.
“You need to talk to a lawyer and find out where you stand,” said Sasha.
Margo put down her mug. “I have a niece who does law. She’ll know of someone.”
“I don’t have any money. How am I supposed to pay for a lawyer?”
“Isn’t half the farm yours?”
“I don’t know. It belonged to Erik’s family. I don’t even know if we own the land.”
Margo caught Sasha’s eye again and raised an eyebrow. She found it frustrating when women like Roberta knew so little about their own financial status.
“Erik’s the one at fault here, Roberta,” Margo said. You shouldn’t be the one that has to suffer.”
“But I am! I’m the loser all round! That’s what’s so awful about this.” Tears poured down Roberta’s face once more. Sasha passed her another tissue.
It was Thursday morning, the first day of February. Roberta had spent the night on Sasha’s sofa bed, the one she kept for occasional visitors. Roberta blew her nose.
“How could I have been so stupid?” She scrunched the tissue between her fingers. “Why didn’t I see what was going on? You know what? I think I did see, I just didn’t want to. I didn’t want to believe that he’d fallen for Stella. That he didn’t love me anymore.”
Margo reached out and touched her shoulder. “You mustn’t think that. You and Erik are a great couple. Of course he loves you. This is all Stella’s doing.”
“Not really.” Tears continued to course down Roberta’s cheeks. “He liked her. He did. I watched them, years ago, at StarFest. It was a rehearsal, they were doing sound checks, and they were laughing, him and Stella, like no one else was there. Like I wasn’t there. There was just the two of them. And you know, I kind of knew, but then I thought, don’t be stupid, this is Erik, you can trust Erik. But I guess I was wrong. It must have been going on for years.”
“You don’t know that for sure. Have some more coffee.” Sasha poured another cup.
“It wasn’t just that. There were little moments. We’d go to Stella’s for meetings, back when StarFest was just getting started. She hadn’t fixed up the office yet, so we’d get together in her house. And it looked like Erik belonged there. He was so relaxed, like it was a second home for him. You know, Sasha, when I had that row with her, when I quit StarFest, I don’t think I was mad at her because of what she was doing with the festival, I think, now, on a gut level, it was really about her and Erik.”
“But she cut Erik out of StarFest too, didn’t she?” asked Margo, trying to make sense of all of this.
“Well, yes. And I thought that we were done with Stella, both Erik and me, but I guess that wasn’t true. Not really.”
There was a knock at the door. Panda and Annie entered. Bob the dog got up from the floor and padded over to greet them.
Sasha’s house was tiny and cluttered. The table hardly had enough room around it for four chairs. There was a large, sagging armchair and the sofa, which was covered with a heap of bedding and Lenny, who wagged his tail at them but stayed put. Roberta reached for another tissue and blew her nose loudly. Panda kicked off her boots, hung her parka on a coat stand at the door and flopped into the armchair.
“Are you sure about this, Roberta?” Annie left her boots neatly on a patch of linoleum, avoided Bob the dog and took a seat at the table. “Erik and Stella?”
“Yes! I figured it all out, after he left to go to the police station. It all came back to me. I remembered things. He’d go out, sometimes in the afternoon, more often in the evening. He’d say he was going to practice at Mike’s but one night, Alice, Mike’s wife, called to see if Mike was at our place and of course he wasn’t, and when Erik came home he said he and Mike hadn’t gone to his house after all, they’d gone to the pub to talk to someone about a gig, and stupid me, I believed him. I didn’t want not to believe him. I loved him, I really did.”
Margo watched her gather herself together as she told the story. She told it well. Roberta was a bit of a drama queen.
“But he told you? About Stella? He admitted it?” Panda asked.
“Well, yeah. After he got back from talking to the police. He was pretending it was just nothing, but I could tell he was shaken up. I poured him a cup of tea and I just kind of blurted it out. ‘Have you been seeing Stella?’ I asked him. And he got this evasive look on his face. And I knew. ‘You were!’ I said. And he got all defensive. Tried to tell me it was nothing. ‘You were fucking Stella Magnusson and it was nothing!’ I yelled at him. ‘How long has this been going on?’ And, you know, he didn’t know what to say. He just stood there, looking at the floor, shifting from side to side. And that was it. Over, him and me.” Roberta paused for breath. She picked up her coffee cup. It was almost empty again. “I need a refill,” she said, dehydrated from weeping and talking. “I am so thirsty.”
“He’s been phoning.” Sasha refilled Roberta’s mug. “He wants Roberta to go home.”
“What will you do, Roberta?” asked Panda, swinging a leg over an arm of the chair.
“I don’t know yet.” Roberta gulped down the coffee. “But I’m not going back there. I’m not going back to him. He’s been lying to me for years. Screwing Stella behind my back.” She had stopped crying and sounded like she was beginning to get angry.
“And now she’s dead,” said Panda.
There was a moment’s silence.
“You don’t think Erik did it?” she asked.
Roberta shot her an accusing glance.
“Well, he’s bound to be a suspect.” Panda pointed to a plate of cookies on the table. “Are those oatmeal and raisin?”
“He wouldn’t,” said Roberta, still challenging her. “He might be stupid enough to mess around with Stella, but he wouldn’t kill anyone. Not Erik.”
“He’s got a bit of a temper on him, Roberta.” Sasha passed the cookie plate over to Panda. Bob the dog came to investigate.
“Well, yes. He has. But he’s not violent. Not Erik. He just mouths off. He’s all talk.”
Sasha’s phone rang. She moved to answer it.
“Could you go and stay with your daughter in Winnipeg for a while?” said Margo. Sasha’s house was too small. She wondered if Roberta was going to end up in her own spare room. She’d need to offer, but would she get any work done with Roberta in the house, in this kind of state?
“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to her yet. I left a message. That’s maybe her now.”
Sasha came back with the phone. “Mike Little’s wife, for you.”
Roberta took it and went off into the next room with it clamped to her ear. The three heads at the table leaned together. Panda clambered out of the chair and came closer to listen.
“This is really bad,” said Margo, almost in a whisper. “Do you think the police will arrest him?”
“I still think Roberta should talk to a lawyer and get some advice. Figure out where she stands, legally,” said Sasha. She had divorced two husbands already.
“She’ll never do it. She’s still nuts about the guy.”
“What a jerk!”
“What about the farm?”
“She can stay here for now, but there’s not much room.” Sasha appeared anxious.
Roberta returned. They all went silent, pretending they hadn’t been talking about her. “Alice went over and milked the goats. She’s offered to look after them. Maybe I should go home.”
“Really?” Sasha sat back, surprised. “You said you wouldn’t go back to him.”
“I’m not. I’m going to kick the bastard out. That’s my home. Why should I have to be the one that leaves? He can go find somewhere else to live.”
“Is it safe for you to do that?” Margo asked.
“Safe? Me? Erik would never hurt me.”
“You don’t know that. Someone killed Stella, and Angus Smith. There’s a murderer on the loose and, whether you like it or not, Erik will be a suspect.”
Roberta sat down again. “I’m starving,” she said. “I didn’t eat last night.”
Panda moved towards the kitchen. “You’ve got eggs in the fridge, Sasha?” she asked. Soon they could hear her clattering pans around.
“Even if you do persuade him to go, you’d be all on your own, out there in the middle of nowhere,” Margo continued.
“So what. You live by yourself, Margo. So does Sasha.”
“We’re in the village. There are other people around. And Erik might come back,” Margo responded. She really was concerned for Roberta’s safety.
“Erik’s maybe been stupid,” Roberta said, “but he’s not a murderer.”
“You didn’t think he would be unfaithful,” Panda called from the kitchen. “But he was. With Stella!”
Roberta took a deep breath. “I still want him out. I want my house back. And my goats, and my chickens. It’s where I ought to be. I’ll be okay. And anyway, there’s a shotgun, if I need to protect myself.”
“What? You’ve got a gun?” Margo was incredulous. Panda came through and put a plate of scrambled eggs in front of Roberta.
“Sure, there’s a gun. Everybody out here has one. To scare off coyotes,” said Roberta.
“Do you know how to use it, Roberta?” asked Annie.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sasha protested. “Nobody is going to be using a gun. If you’re going back, I’m coming with you, for the first few nights at least. Me and Lenny.” The dog was still dozing on the sofa. Panda sank back into the armchair and rolled her eyes in disbelief. Roberta was devouring the eggs.
“Phone Erik first, and tell him he has to leave,” said Margo.
“I need to tell him to his face.”
“You are not going alone,” Sasha insisted.
“I don’t need you there!”
“You need someone. If only to be a witness,” Margo said. They all stopped and thought about that.
“Maybe we should all go. We could spell each other off. In pairs. It might be safer that way,” said Annie.
“No.” Roberta pushed the empty plate away. “Those eggs were good, thanks, Panda.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’ve made up my mind. Margo’s right. I’ll phone him first. No, I’ll phone Mike, maybe he’ll be able to talk some sense into him.”
“Maybe he could go and stay at Mike’s house?”
“No way. Alice won’t have him. She’s pissed off with him too.” The phone rang again. “Maybe that’s Liz.” Liz was Roberta’s daughter by her first marriage, the one she had left, fifteen years earlier, to live with Erik. She went back to the bedroom to take the call.
“I hope she goes to Liz’s for now,” said Margo. “Just until she figures things out.’
“We need to convince her to do that,” said Panda.
Over at the Axelsson house, an RCMP car had pulled into the driveway. Erik’s silver Ford truck was nowhere to be seen. Roxanne and Matt checked the outbuildings. The chickens had been fed. The goats and the sheep were munching placidly. There was no sign of Erik. That was too bad. Now that it seemed more likely that he actually had been Stella Magnusson’s lover, they wanted to talk to him again. Matt tried the front door. It was unlocked.
“What do you think, Corporal?” Roxanne walked past him into the house. “Let’s have a quick look.” She didn’t have a warrant to search, but this was too good an opportunity. “Don’t touch anything,” she said, just to be on the safe side.
The house phone rang. Roxanne ignored it. They walked from room to room. A mug, almost full of cold tea, milk scum on the surface, sat on the kitchen table. Two loaves of bread rested on a rack on the counter. In the living room a book lay on a side table, turned over at the place where it had last been read. The ash in the wood stove was cold. A big bed in the bedroom was unmade. Roberta’s discarded clothes lay on one chair, Erik’s on the other. Nothing was disturbed. Everything looked as it might have been when Roberta had stormed out the night before.
“Let’s go back to the car and phone the detachment,” said Roxanne. “Where does his friend Mike Little live? Who else does he hang out with?” They closed the door behind them and were soon heading back to Fiskar Bay.
Back at Sasha’s, progress had been made.
“All right, all right. I’ll go to Winnipeg, just for a few days. Stay with Liz.”
“Want one of us to drive you in?” Sasha offered.
“No, I can do it. And anyway, I’ll need my car.”
In less than an hour, Roberta had washed her face, borrowed some makeup to camouflage the red bags under her eyes, brushed her hair and was heading out the door. “Liz never did like Erik,” she said. “I think she’s kind of glad I’ve left him.”
“What about the goats? And the chickens?” asked Margo.
“I’ll call Alice and get her to look after the goats. Erik will feed the rest. They’ll be okay.” Now that she had made the decision, Roberta couldn’t wait to be gone. It wasn’t long before her friends watched her drive away.
“They’ve been married for fifteen years?” asked Margo, as they turned back into the house.
“Something like that. They were both married to other people when they met. Their kids were on the same basketball team. The way Roberta tells it they took one look at each other and that was it. Happily ever after. They left their partners and their kids, everything, and moved out here. It took some time for Liz and her brother to come around, but now Roberta sees them and her grandkids quite often.”
“What about Erik’s family?”
“I don’t know. There was a daughter, around the same age as Liz. I don’t know if he ever sees her.”
“But he started an affair with Roberta while he was still married to his first wife,” said Margo. “What a jerk.”
Panda surveyed the room. “Where’s Phyllis? How come she’s not here?”
“She couldn’t make it. She’s sick. Throwing up.” Sasha went to the kitchen to make more coffee. Panda cleared the dirty dishes from the table and found clean mugs.
“Again?”
“I know. And God knows what that idiot George is giving her to try and cure it.”
“He says he’s qualified—as a naturopathic doctor,” said Margo, sitting back at the table.
“Doctor my foot,” Sasha called from the kitchen. “He’s a quack. Him and his herbal remedies. Maybe it’s him that’s making her sick.”
“You two should have come for George’s chili,” Margo laughed. “We got some kind of brown brew to drink with it. You’d have hated it.”
“I tipped mine into that aloe plant of his when no one was looking,” Sasha said, coming back into the room. “Maybe we should stop by and take her some real food.”
“Chicken soup,” said Margo.
“Aren’t they vegan?” asked Annie.
“She isn’t. I cooked her up a plate of sausage and egg over here last week and she gobbled it. Who wants more cookies?” Sasha put another plateful on the table.
Lenny finally got off the sofa and joined Bob. Both dogs looked interested.
Roxanne and Matt had not been back long at the RCMP detachment when the front door flew open and Erik Axelsson lurched in, looking the worse for wear. His eyes were red and bleary, his ponytail was undone and his hair hung lank to his shoulders. From where Roxanne stood, behind the counter, she could smell beer.
“You! You meddling bitch!”
“Hey, Erik, stop right there!” Sergeant Gilchrist strode out of his office. Roxanne stood her ground. Izzy stuck her head over the banister to see what was happening. Erik leaned against the counter and pulled some loose papers from his pocket.
“January 19th, eh? Want to know where I was? Here you are!” He picked a scrap of paper from the pile and slammed it down on the countertop. “Fixed a car, all day long. Tricky job. Call this guy. He’ll tell you. I was at his place until almost six.” A second piece of paper followed the first. “See this? Receipt. Brake shoes, bought them at the garage. Look here, January 19. Got that, bitch?”
The sergeant moved forward again. Roxanne gestured to him to wait. A third piece of paper joined the other two.
“Receipt for $475. Copy, signed by me. And you want to know what else? It was a Friday. I played a gig that night. People saw me. So I couldn’t have killed Stella fuckin’ Magnusson and now you can get right off my back. Got that?” He turned, swayed and almost fell.
Matt and the sergeant both moved to grab him. “Hold on there, Erik,” said Gilchrist, as Matt reached for Erik’s arm. “That’s enough.”
“Is it, you think? No, it’s not.” He whipped his arm away and turned back to glare at Roxanne.
“Why don’t you check your facts first, you stupid interfering cow, before you go around wrecking people’s lives?”
“Let’s get some coffee into you, Erik,” said the sergeant. Izzy’s voice rang out across the room
“Should have thought about that before you screwed Stella Magnusson, Erik. Guys like you piss me right off.” She disappeared back upstairs.
“Get him sobered up, Matt,” said the sergeant. “And if you don’t need him anymore, Corporal, we’ll send him home.”
Roxanne was leafing through the pieces of paper Erik Axelsson had left scattered on the counter. He had indeed repaired a car on January 19.
“I’ll just get Izzy to call and check these, Sergeant. If everything’s all right, we’ll let him go.”
“Too fuckin’ right you will,” muttered Erik Axelsson. An hour later, he was sent home in a taxi.
Izzy watched him leave from the window of their office upstairs. “They should have made him walk,” she said. “Or locked him up for the night. Drunk and disorderly.”
His story had checked out. He had worked on a car in the morning of the day Stella Magnusson had died, picked up the brake shoes at noon, had finished the job just before six. Mike Little had been at Erik’s house to pick him up by seven. They’d been together right through until 2:00 am. It looked like Erik was in the clear.
Roxanne put on her city coat. She would get to Winnipeg in time to eat with her boy. They’d have a whole evening together. Maybe watch a movie. She watched Izzy pull the sticky note with Erik Axelsson’s name on it from the board.
“We need a new lead,” Roxanne said. “Can you get me a number for Leo Isbister? I wouldn’t mind talking to him while I’m in town.”