“I’m not really seeing the problem with that.”
“Yourself included,” she added.
“Ah. Is that if I mention the strangeness here to family or if I call the RCMP?”
“Both.”
“Okay,” he said. “So the logical conclusion is that grandmother was involved in some sketchy stuff. Which… kind of makes sense, given the type of people that’ve owned the house or married into the family.”
“That’s the gist of it.”
“Well now I’m more curious. It couldn’t be drugs. Prostitution doesn’t make sense. Counterfeiting? No, counterfeiting wouldn’t get the attention of the sort of crazy people you’re talking about. Wouldn’t make this many enemies. Stop me if I’m getting too close.”
“Tantamount to giving you the answer,” Alexis said.
“Well, yeah. So this level of crazy has to be rooted in something. Something with history, even. Ideology. Nothing militant, probably not racist or cultural, it’s a white bread small town here. Not political, I don’t think, maybe religion. Religion gets people pissed off and acting funny, but religion wouldn’t piss off the RCMP unless it was scary religion. Something extremist or bordering on a cult. But what’s a cult without cultists?”
“If you want to talk to yourself, can I leave you here while I go have a smoke?” she asked.
“You’ve got me curious now,” he said. “I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about this.”
“Be curious, then.”
“Super curious, as a matter of fact,” he said. “All put together, though? Not sure I’m buying it. It’s a little over the top.”
“Wait until dark,” I murmured.
I saw Peter’s head turn. “I could swear I heard something there, and it wasn’t the T.V.”
“Maybe the craziness you’re talking about is infectious,” Alexis said. “You want proof we’re for real about all this?”
“Yeah,” Peter said.
“Then sit tight. Spend the night here. Then decide.”
“Giving you a chance to pull something.”
Ty walked by, carrying a piece of plywood and a hammer.
Alexis sighed. “I’m starting to see where Rose got to be how she is. I need a damn smoke.”
“Trying to run from me again?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere, only taking a break. You hold onto that thought, or maybe even take a fucking second to think that you don’t lose anything if you wait and see. You might even get something out of it, find some way to leverage it, I dunno.”
“Waiting was always part of the plan,” Peter said, shrugging. “You sound annoyed.”
“I am annoyed, and tired. I’ve barely slept and now I’ve got this garbage to deal with.”
“Aw. Poor girl,” he said.
“Okay,” she said. “That’s it for this conversation. Gonna go have my smoke. You go do whatever it is you do.”
“I’ll come with,” he said. “I could do with a smoke too. Can I mooch one cigarette off you?”
“Um, no, and no,” she said. “You guys are going to get me chain smoking again, just when I was stopping. Fuck. This is a mess.”
“Yeah, keep pretending you have it bad,” Peter said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “It’s kind of hard to muster up any sympathy for you.”
“Don’t presume to know who I am,” she said.
“I don’t. I know about us though, about the family. You think it’s bad dealing with me? I’ve had to spend my whole life dealing with a dozen people who’re just about as bad as me. And most of them? They got a better end of the bargain than Ellie and me. I was never going to get the property. But I still had to wade through all the shit and crap that came with the fight for the inheritance. My sister wasn’t much better off. She never had much of a chance either. Most of us thought Ivy had a better shot than Ellie.”
“You saying my name?” Ellie called from the next room.
“Yes, I’m calling you a miserable loser! Now fuck off!” he shouted back.
“Fuck you!” she called back.
Peter smirked.
Standard sibling interaction for the two, apparently.
“The gist of your argument, then, is you’re using crazy to deal with crazy because shit is crazy and my grandmother was into crazy illegal stuff,” Peter said. “And I’m supposed to just hang around and wait to see how crazy it really is, for proof? Are you seeing the pattern here?”
“I see it, I don’t care. You can do what you want,” Alexis said. “I’m going to have a smoke, alone.”
She stalked off, thoroughly agitated. Evan took off from her shoulder and joined Ty, who summarily headed upstairs.
Peter remained where he was.
I, too, stayed.
“So?” Ellie asked.
Peter craned his head to one side, checking down the length of the hall, to see if anyone was at at the bend of the stairs. “One second.”
He took a second, walking part of the way upstairs, returned, then headed around to the back of the house.
“Well?” Ellie asked, as he came back.
“Cigarette girl is legit scared,” Peter commented. “For her life.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, think so. She was just about ready to swing a punch at me, on nerves alone. She’s got a good poker face, too. I don’t think Rose was fucking with us. Or she was including a whole lot of truth with the occasional lie.”
“You mean Rose isn’t crazy?” Roxanne asked. A part of me felt like Roxanne was playing up her role as the ‘child’. The baby of Uncle Paul’s family, clinging to her position. She was starting to approach the point where she couldn’t trade on ‘cute’ alone. I wasn’t sure where she’d go later, from a strategy perspective.
“Not ruling anything out when it comes to Rose,” Peter said, taking it in stride. “But a lot of stuff doesn’t add up here.”
“I had that feeling, talking to Molly,” Callan said.
“Hey, that reminds me,” Peter said, “when you talked to her, did your sister ever act guilty? Ashamed?”
“I don’t like what you’re implying.”
“No, fuck that, Cal,” Peter said. “This is important, and I’m not implying jack shit. Did she seem guilty? Like she was up to something or grandmother roped her into something sketchy?”
“Nah, she didn’t seem guilty,” Callan said, reluctantly. “Mostly scared. Like these guys are.”
“That’s a clue,” Peter said. He stretched, yawning, and checked again to see if there were any eavesdroppers, “They’re probably telling the truth about something coming up tonight. We should have a plan.”
“Whatever you’re thinking, don’t rope us into it,” Kathryn said.
“You know you have to get on board. We need the numbers advantage, or we won’t manage anything,” Peter said.
“I started my own business, I run a restaurant, and I’m a mom. I think you’d be shocked at just how much I can manage on my own,” she said.