Enter, Night

had laughed and asked her mother who she thought would support them? Lucien couldn’t even support himself, let alone a child. But Madeleine knew her daughter, and she knew that behind the dismissal of the notion, there was genuine sadness.

Lately, too, Donna had been talking about getting older and wondering aloud what she had to show for it, which was ridiculous since Donna was still as pretty as a picture and as popular as she ever was. But she was still a small-town woman in her late forties in a town full of married people.

Madeleine unlocked the front door with her extra key and called out, “Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo! Anybody home? You home, honey?” There was no reply from anywhere in the house, except for Samantha’s plaintive wailing. “I’ll get to you in just a minute, puss. I promise.”

The sound of her own voice in the stillness of the house startled her.

She went down the hall to Donna’s bedroom and found the door halfway open. She peered inside. The bed was made, the blinds were open. Nothing appeared to be amiss. Donna’s make-up (she used a little too much, Madeleine thought) was lined up on the dresser alongside her bottles of Jontue and Muguet des Bois.

The bathroom was likewise empty-the sink and the bathtub were both dry, as was the mat.

In the kitchen, Madeleine opened a tin of cat food and scraped the can into Samantha’s bowl, which was blazoned with the slogan Frankly, I deserve 9Lives! and a photograph of a supercilious- looking yellow cat that looked nothing like Samantha, who was adorable. As she dropped the can into the garbage, Madeleine caught a whiff of something in the hallway that reminded her of the smell of a dead mouse behind a refrigerator. She fished the empty can out of the garbage and sniffed it to see if it had gone bad. It smelled awful, but that was cat food for you.

She stepped out into the dim hallway and sniffed again. She thought she smelled the mouse-smell, then she wasn’t sure. She felt a prickle of fear as she had a notion. Madeleine walked back through the kitchen to the back stairs, where the entrance to the cellar was. She opened the door to the cellar and peered down into the darkness. She flicked the switch. No light. She flicked it back and forth a couple of times. Still no light.

“Donna?” she called. “Honey, you down there? Hello?”

Of course there was no reply. Donna wouldn’t be in the basement. She hated going down to the basement for any reason at all. And if the light was burned out, forget it. Donna had always been afraid of the dark. She didn’t even have a washing machine down there. Madeleine closed the door to the cellar and went back through the house. She was going to feel pretty darn silly when Donna called her this afternoon and told her she was-well, wherever she was. She felt the prickle of fear again, but forced it down. She was a practical woman, if nothing else.

Madeleine filled Samantha’s water dish and left the house, closing the door behind her. She thought briefly of locking it, then decided not to. No one locked their doors in Parr’s Landing. Then she drove back across town to her home on Blossom Street to make some phone calls.

Billy sat in a back booth at the Pear Tree Cafe and Breakfast Nook on Main Street eating his breakfast when the young cop parked his cruiser outside and walked up to the counter. Billy heard the cop order two coffees to go: one black, and one double-double.

What Parr’s Landing needs is a doughnut shop, Billy thought dryly. He would have liked to make the joke to the cop’s face, but suspected that Constable McKitrick was lacking a sense of humour where Billy was concerned. He went on eating his breakfast and hoped McKitrick wouldn’t notice him. But the cafe was small and McKitrick was a cop, and you didn’t get to be a cop-even in Parr’s Landing, Ontario-without at least rudimentary observational skills, so he braced himself.

McKitrick gave the room a once-over. His glance lighted on Billy at the far table and he walked over, leaving the takeaway coffee cups on the counter.

“Dr. Lightning,” Elliot said.

“Constable McKitrick.” Billy replied with cool politeness. “How are you this morning?”

“Very well, sir. Thank you. Still here, I see.”

“Well, I try not to rush my breakfast, constable,” Billy replied. “At my age, it’s not good for the digestion.”

Two red spots appeared high on McKitrick’s cheekbones. “I mean in Parr’s Landing, Dr. Lightning,” he said stiffly. “How long are you planning to stay, exactly?”

“I don’t know, constable.” Billy had already taken as much of this as he was going to take from this stupid redneck cop. “As I understand it, it’s a free country, and I am a citizen of that free country. Are you enacting the War Measures Act in Parr’s Landing, constable? Has there been another October Crisis, except involving visitors to Parr’s Landing this time instead of rogue French Canadians? Or is it just that I’m an Indian?”

“Think you’re tough, do you, sir?” Elliot said, too softly for anyone at the surrounding tables to hear. He leaned in close to Billy’s face. “I’m warning you-”

Billy raised his own face to Elliot’s level and met his gaze. “No, constable, I’m warning you. If you continue to harass me, you’re going to find out the hard way that your harassment is a mistake on your part. I’m sure that in this town, your word is law. But I’m not from here, Constable McKitrick. I’m a tenured professor at a major university. I am also well connected. There’s a telephone in my motel room that makes long distance calls. Unless you want to find yourself transferred to some shit ass northern outpost that makes Parr’s Landing look like Paris, France, my advice to you is that you back off.”

Billy was bluffing a little bit, but he was gambling on the cop not knowing by how much. Apparently, it worked: Elliot dropped his eyes and took a half step backwards. Billy leaned back in his seat.

So intent on their standoff were the two men that neither noticed the blonde woman in the dark green sweater until she tapped Elliot on the shoulder and said, “Excuse me, are you Elliot? Elliot McKitrick?”

Billy looked up, surprised, and Elliot turned around.

“You don’t recognize me, do you?” The woman smiled at Elliot and said, “I used to be Christina Monroe. Now I’m Christina Parr. You know- Jeremy’s sister-in-law? I think you’re a friend of Jeremy’s, aren’t you?”

Billy, whose first thought had been that this woman was too beautiful to be a local, was watching Elliot’s face for a reaction, wondering how anyone who looked like Christina Parr-presumably some member of that family of Parr’s, the local gentry-could have any possible connection to a buffoon like Elliot McKitrick. He was surprised by Elliot’s reaction. In lightning-fast succession, the colour drained from the cop’s face, then returned with a vengeance, rising from the line where his uniform collar met his neck to the top of his hairline. Elliot hadn’t made a sound. But if his reaction had been audible, it might have sounded like the sharp, automatic intake of breath the human body makes when it’s plunged into a lake that’s colder than expected on a hot summer day. Billy immediately liked Christina Parr, if only because she’d inexplicably managed to ruffle this smug bully’s veneer of authority. Billy wondered if they’d ever been a couple, but dismissed the notion, as much out of enlightened self- interest as his growing conviction that Christina Parr was so far out of this cop’s league as to render the notion beyond absurd.

“Oh, hey-of course,” Elliot said, recovering some composure. “Chris! Good to see you. I was sorry to hear about Jack.”

“Thanks, Elliot.” Her neutral gaze never left Elliot’s face. “You look well.”

“Thanks, Chris,” he said. “You, too. It’s been-what, fifteen years?”

Christina nodded. “About that. So,” she said. “You joined the police force. I’m not surprised. Good for you. I knew you’d make something of yourself.”

“So-how's Jeremy? It’s been at least as long since I’ve seen him. How’s he doing?”

Christina smiled again, but Billy noted that there appeared to be subtitles to the entire conversation between her and Elliot. This particular smile didn’t seem entirely friendly.

“He’s fine, I guess. I could have sworn he told me this morning that you and he had a beer together last night at O’Toole’s, out on Davenport Road? Did I get the name wrong? Was it one of his other friends he ran into?”

Again, Elliot blushed. “Oh, yeah, right! Sorry, Chris-yeah, I did run into him there last night.” He indicated the takeaway coffee on the counter with a sideways jerk of his head. “Long day yesterday. Not enough coffee yet today.” He laughed, as though he had made some sort of joke. When Christina said nothing in reply but only continued to smile that peculiar, knowing smile, Elliot cleared his throat and said, “Well, back to the station. Good to see you, Christina. Welcome back. I wish it were under different circumstances, though. Again, I’m sorry about Jack. He was a good man.”

“Yes, he was,” she said. “Thanks, Elliot. I’ll tell Jeremy I ran into you.”

This seemed to fluster the cop even more. He nodded briskly and went back to the counter to collect the two