Innocent Murderer (23 page)

I said yes. The cute little restaurant right on the Rideau Canal.

“5:00?”

“Yes,” I said, and she hung up.

My comparative anatomy course ended early, so I got to the restaurant at ten to five so that I could get a table outside by the water. The inside is really nice, but it's dark. Tracey arrived at 5:00 exactly, but she went directly inside and I debated about getting up to get her.

From where I sat I could see into the restaurant proper and I saw her talking to a waiter who pointed in my direction. We greeted each other and as she sat down a bullet-shaped speedboat came whizzing down the canal.

She looked up at it, her face rippling with emotion, and suddenly got up and took the other seat with her back to the canal.

“Don't like speed boats?” I asked lightly.

“My sister died when she was hit by one,” she said, her face white and drawn.

Oops. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said it like that.”

She didn't respond so I asked her what had hap
–
pened, but she wasn't going there.

I waited until our orders had been taken before bringing up what was on my mind. “I was there when Terry was so ruthless about your writing.”

She turned away and I watched a swan paddling down the canal amongst a bunch of ducks.

“You must have been pretty angry.”

She looked up quickly. “I wouldn't use the word angry. She humiliated me in a mean-spirited way, that's all.”

“The police think Sally killed her, drowned her in the tub, threw her in the pool when someone chanced upon her, and then committed suicide.” I was watching a hot air balloon lazily drifting over the canal.

“And you don't think that's what happened?”

“I don't think Sally killed her. I think someone else did.”

“You think because I was humiliated that I might have done it?” Tracey asked, without a trace of emotion.

I hazarded a guess. “I think someone in the creative writing group knows something and is hiding it.”

She brought her napkin up to her mouth and said, “I wouldn't know anything about that,” but she wouldn't meet my eye.

I didn't get anything more out of her and I let her leave while I paid the bill. As the waiter came back with my credit card he was followed by a man who looked vaguely familiar.

He strode up to my table, planted his hands on the table cloth, and said, “What have you been telling my wife?”

George. The man with the temper. The man trying to control that temper and not doing a very good job.

I asked him to sit down but he preferred the advan
–
tage of looking down on me.

“I'm looking into Terry's death.”

“The police have been all through it.”

I just stared at him and waited.

“Look,” he said, “Tracey had no involvement in those deaths.”

“But someone in the creative writing group may have.”

His right eye twitched and his hands pressed harder onto the table before he straightened up.

“Why did she keep going to class when Terry was so mean about the quality of her writing?”

“Her writing means everything to her.”

“And Terry had the right contacts?”

“Yes. My wife kept hoping. But the bitch undermined her, took away her self-confidence, and finally, on board the ship, refused to help her find an agent. Said her writ
–
ing stank.”

“She ridiculed your wife's writing in front of all those people.”

“My wife's a good writer.” George's voice had become loud and defensive. “She'd do anything for her writing.”

“Including murder?”

George made a sudden move toward me, but just then the waiter appeared to take my credit card slip and George stayed his hand. He glared at me before striding through the restaurant and out the door.

When I got back to my office the next day there was no sign of Martha, but there were four boxes blocking my way with a note stuck to one of them.

I yanked it off and read it.

This is just for starters — do you want me to keep going?

Call me,
Derek.

I opened the boxes and discovered court transcripts and newspaper articles, lots of them. I pulled one out: “Sleepwalker Acquitted of Murder.”

“Accused Pleads Sleepwalking as Defence.” Terry's face loomed out at me.

“Michael Grady Murdered in his Sleep.” Michael had been a very good-looking man.

I flicked through some more until I read “Juror #9 Injured.” There was a picture of a pretty young woman, presumably juror number nine, but it wasn't the picture that caught my attention — not at first anyway. It was the name: LuEllen. I looked back at the picture and saw what she had lost.

I picked up the phone and got through to LuEllen, but she wasn't very enthusiastic about speaking to me after I told her why. In fact, she had been as guarded as Tracey until I asked her if she really believed that Sally could kill Terry. That seemed to change her mind. We arranged to meet at her house in Chelsea, just outside of Ottawa on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River, later that evening.

I put in four hours of work — I was wrestling with some of the sonograms that seemed to indicate that the birds allowed to interact vocally with a male learned twice as many songs as the isolated birds, corroborating other research. At one point Martha came in and inter
–
rupted me with my mail. I took it from her but she still said nothing, just looked around the office like a lost waif.

I couldn't stand it any longer. Into the silence that felt like a ten ton weight I asked, “Are you going to take the job?”

She reacted as if I had bitten her and I realized with chagrin that she still didn't know I knew. I had assumed Duncan had filled her in. Shit.

At that incredibly crucial moment the phone rang and we both stared at it. I had to get it. It was Rose. I watched as Martha left in what looked like a huff and I felt like a heel. But I was more angry at Dean, who should have told her he'd spoken to me instead of mak
–
ing it look like we were talking behind her back.

“Cordi, he's coming home today. He said you're to come and stay with us, and if you'd prefer to be on your own you can use his studio.”

I started to protest. I was still worried about endan
–
gering my brother and his family, but she said, “We need you, Cordi. Ryan won't be able to milk the ladies for awhile and Mac can't do it alone. I can do some of it, but with the kids it's difficult.”

I thought about our farmhand Mac and couldn't believe I had not thought about my brother's predica
–
ment sooner.

“Has Mac been doing it all?”

“Pretty much.”

I told her I'd be back that evening.

“For supper?”

“No.”

I hung up and went in search of Martha, but she was nowhere to be found. I called the police about my wreck of a house and they confirmed that it was a pot of oil on the stove. When I mentioned that I had not left a pot of oil on the stove the officer said, “Look, every
–
body can be forgetful sometimes. Or maybe a member of your family left it on the burner. That's what the evidence tells us.”

“So that's what you've sent to the insurance company?”

“Unless you can prove otherwise, yes.”

I then spoke to the insurance company but nobody seemed to be able to tell me anything. They were still waiting for the police report.

I pulled myself together and headed across the Ottawa River, through Hull, now Gatineau — one of those name changes that have stationary stores and let
–
terhead designers rubbing their hands in glee — and headed up the highway to Chelsea. It was a twenty min
–
ute drive, half the distance I drive to and from work, and it landed me right in the heart of the country with the Gatineau Hills rolling all over the place and the Gatin
–
eau River rushing down to meet the Ottawa. The tree studded hills afford remarkable privacy for the myriad houses that have been built in their valleys and dales. They come in all sizes, shapes, and expense accounts.

I zipped off Highway 5 and made my way along the old highway that skirts the Gatineau River to find

Rosemount Place, a grandiose name for an unpaved, pot
–
holed road that climbed up into one of the Gatineau Hills.

I drove past mansions and modest two bedroom homes, although the smaller houses were definitively older than the bigger, more ostentatious homes.

LuEllen's home was right at the top at the end of the road. It was tiny; from the outside it looked like little more than a wooden shingled shed with three enormous freezers lining one side. She'd painted her wooden shutters a coral colour to match the door, but there were no flowers, mostly because the house stood on bedrock and was surrounded by trees, except on the far side, which I could not see.

I walked up the flagstone walkway and took the little brass knocker, shaped like a dolphin swimming around a circle, in my hand and let it go. It didn't make much noise, but then it didn't have a big job to do. The door had two glass windows in it and I could see LuEl
–
len sitting on a sofa facing an enormous picture window.

Scruffy came flying around the corner of the sofa, yap
–
ping so hard it made it impossible for him to stay still, each yap jerking him sideways.

She turned as I knocked and got up and grabbed a baseball cap, but not before I'd seen her head. I thought I was prepared, but without her ball cap and her heavy winter jacket her disfigurement was frightening in its com
–
pleteness. I tried to keep my features steady as I gripped her one good hand. She led me inside. It was a simple room, maybe fifteen by twenty feet, dominated by an enormous loom and a piano, with a bedroom off to one side and presumably a bathroom. There was a modest granite fireplace festooned with pictures.

What made the room was the view from the pic
–
ture window. In front of the house the bedrock dropped away into a forest of trees and cliffs that landed far below on the shores of the Gatineau River. Her view encompassed the cliffs, the river, and the far side where the land was flat before it rose into another Gatineau Hill. She was very isolated and I wondered if she had lived here before the accident, or if the accident had caused her to seek solitude.

We took a seat at either end of the little sofa.

“You have a beautiful home here. Very isolated.”

“I like it that way. I don't usually invite anyone here,” she said, staring at me.

I found it very disconcerting and wondered why she had made an exception with me.

“You see? Look at your face. Pity, that's what's there. People find it uncomfortable to be with me, and because of that I find it uncomfortable to be with them. So I avoid people most of the time.” She smiled a rictus smile and I tried to hide my discomfiture. “I'm self-contained here. I buy all my food once a year, I have satellite, and I have my weaving and my writing. No one needs to pity me.” Her words echoed around my head. I thought of the three freezers and the loneliness that suddenly envel
–
oped me was cold and hard, like a lump of ice.

“Sally was a good woman. I'm sorry she's dead,” she said changing the subject so fast that it took me awhile to react.

“I don't believe that she killed Terry,” I said, coming straight to my point.

“Is that what the police are saying?”

“Yes. They think she killed Terry and then committed suicide by drowning.”

I was at a disadvantage. I couldn't read her face, it was so scarred and stretched. She reached over and picked up Scruffy, who began slathering kisses onto her face. “I think that's best left to the police,” she said.

I changed tack. “Why did you take Terry's course?”

“I'd heard that she was a good teacher and I thought writing would be a good thing for someone like me. It's an isolating profession and that's the way I live.”

“I don't understand. You go to great troubles to avoid people, but then you not only take a creative writ
–
ing course, you go on a cruise.”

She was still and Scruffy began to whine. LuEllen got up and put him on the floor, asking if I wanted some tea.

“I know you're juror number nine,” I said.

She whirled to look at me. “How did you find that out?” she whispered.

I told her about the newspaper coverage of Terry's trial.

“But that was years ago.”

“What happened?”

“You read the papers. You know.”

“They said you were going to convict when the rest of the jury wasn't.”

She didn't say anything.

“But you had an accident and Terry was acquitted.”

She held the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger and said nothing.

“Was she guilty?”

“What do you think? She sleepwalks and murders a man, then walks? What kind of justice is that?”

“Justice by jury.”

“Yeah, but I was missing.” She had raised her voice. “It would have ended in a hung jury and then gone on to another trial. She would have lost.”

“Except that you accidentally tripped and fell down a twenty-five step flight of cement stairs.”

“It was no goddamned accident,” she yelled. “Some
–
one pushed me.”

She stopped then and stared at me, her eyes wide. “Please get out. I've said too much already.”

Chapter Eighteen

I
stopped at a St-Hubert restaurant for some chicken and fries, then headed back to Martha's apartment after wrestling with the option of going straight to Rose's and calling Martha from there. Cluck, cluck, I thought. By the time I got there it was already dark. She opened the door to me all sweaty and dressed in a black leotard.

Even before I saw it I could hear the TV intoning, “Stretch your arms. Good. Hold them for ten, nine, eight, seven, good, keep it up, four, three.”