Innocent Murderer (27 page)

“So she needed something real, to make her feel sad.”

“Except it wasn't real, but she could imagine how she would feel if I left her and her acting took it from there.”

“She must have been very passionate about her work.” What an understatement.

I waited, but Arthur just stared ahead at the stage.

“What about Terry?” I said. “Were you pretending to be her lover?”

“Yeah, but that was the most difficult part because she wanted none of that. But Sally thought it would be a hoot. The closest we ever got to looking like lovers was when I flung my arm around her shoulders. I could feel her stiffen under my touch, but at least she didn't fling me off. But I got the message. Unfortunately, it gave the police a motive for me. I dump the old girlfriend, who won't leave me alone, but the new girlfriend doesn't want me and in a furious rage I kill both of them.”

“But surely you've told them the real story?”

“Yeah. They said they'd take it under consideration, but between you and me I think they thought I was just lying, making up a good story to save my skin. It is a crazy thing to do. But actors can do some crazy things.”

“Like being a peeping Tom?”

Arthur looked confused for a moment and then smiled ruefully. “I was worried about her.”

“Sally?” I asked, remembering his piercing stare at Terry.

“Yeah, Sally. I was pretty sure she was hiding some
–
thing from me, but I didn't know what. I was checking up on her and pretending to be a besotted lover as far as Terry was concerned. I was just trying to get some answers, that's all. There's no harm in that.”

“You didn't like Terry, did you?”

He hesitated and then made up his mind. “No, I didn't. Sally had told me enough about her that I instinc
–
tively reacted against her.”

“Well, it looks like you're off the hook now anyway.

The police aren't interested in you anymore.”

“Yeah,” said Arthur, but he didn't look too relieved about it.

“When you realized Sally was dead what did you think?”

“Besides being devastated? I thought that she'd been playing the part of a suicidal person and that somebody had taken advantage of that to make it look like she killed Terry and then killed herself.” He paused. “She was just trying to save someone who was already dead.”

“You mean someone framed Sally?”

Arthur nodded. “They planted the suicide note to make it look as though Sally had killed herself after kill
–
ing Terry because of me.” He was about to say some
–
thing more when we were interrupted.

“Alright, people,” the shrill voice cut through our conversation. “Time's up. Break's over.”

Arthur turned and shook my hand. “If I can do any
–
thing else….” he said and then turned and walked away.

Chapter Twenty-One

W
hen I got to my office the next day I saw an unfa
–
miliar pair of legs stretching out from behind the door, which was hiding the rest of the body. Martha was nowhere in sight and I thought it awfully brazen of who
–
ever it was to waltz into my office and sit down like that. I walked in.

He was out of uniform and the authority that went with it seemed to have vanished and been replaced by a carefree, slightly chaotic man. Captain Jason Poole. I'd forgotten that I'd asked Martha to set up a meet
–
ing. My mind was mush these days. He quickly rose to his feet and held out his hand. His other was gripping a familiar pink raincoat. Martha's. She must have left it on the ship.

He followed my eyes and laughed. “The girl at head office asked if I'd drop it off for Ms Bathgate, since I was heading this way anyway.”

I nodded, both at what he was saying and at the chair he had commandeered, then sat down behind my desk. We did the usual inane bantering, talked about the weather and how
The Farmer's Almanac
was predicting a mild winter, talked about the ship and how it would soon be on its way to its wintering grounds in South America and the Antarctic.

Suddenly he said, “I heard you're looking into Terry's murder. I was just interested in what you had found, par
–
ticularly since the police say it was Sally.”

Why would he be interested? I wondered. But I was grateful that he'd started this line of conversation.

“Did you know Sally?” I asked.

“No, never met her before.”

“Then why are you interested?”

“Because of Terry.”

“Terry?” I asked, bewildered. “But you said you hated her.”

“I never said I hated her.”

“But the polar bear incident….”

“Was stupid and I could have wrung her neck, but that doesn't mean I hated her.”

“What does it mean?” I asked, remembering him hunched over and crying on the bridge when he thought no one was there. He didn't answer so I continued, “How well did you know her?”

He leaned forward in his chair and said nothing.

“You were crying over her, weren't you?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because I saw you. Because it wasn't Sally you were crying over and there were only two people who died.”

He laughed then and I waited. “We do have outside communication you know. Ship-to-shore. It could have been bad news. My mother could have fallen ill.”

I took a chance. “It wasn't that though, was it?”

“No, it wasn't.”

“So why were you crying over someone you seemed to hate?”

“Because I loved her once.” He looked out the win
–
dow. He seemed to see something there that interested him because he stared at it for a long time. I resisted the urge to turn around and get a better view.

“I met her five years ago. She took my breath away.

We lived together until six months ago, when I came home after a trip abroad to find all her things gone and a terse little note that simply said, ‘Bye Forever.'”

“You both seemed to be very bitter about it,” I said, then added, “I mean, neither of you seemed to like each other on the ship. It was quite palpable.”

“That often happens when relationships go sour.”

“Sour enough to kill for?”

He laughed. “I had no need to kill her. She wasn't part of my life anymore — just a memory, that's all.”

Before I could say anything else he pointedly changed the subject and gestured at a picture of a cardinal on my wall. It was one that Ryan had taken but there were other, better, ones in two folders behind him. I debated on whether to point them out to him but in the end the pride I had for my brother won the day.

“My brother's a professional photographer,” I said.

“The green file folder behind you? Take a look inside.

Forget the red one. It's older work.”

I saw a strange look cross Jason's face as he turned to retrieve the folder, his hand reaching out, hesitating, and then grabbing the red folder.

I couldn't help myself; I gasped.

He jerked around to face me, the fear evident in his face. Dear god, a colour-blind captain.

I was speechless and so was he. Could someone be so pas
–
sionate about their job that they'd endanger an entire ship?

I pictured one of his ships in the shipping lanes on an inky black night. The only thing telling him whether a ship was coming at him or moving away from him was the red port light and the green starboard light. Radar would help him, but not instantaneously. How had he passed the eyesight tests?

He finally said, “I was in an accident eight months ago in the U.S. that damaged my optic nerve and left me colour-blind.”

“Surely the doctor …”

“I lied about my profession. It was easy to do. No questions asked and I didn't go blabbing it. They didn't know me from Adam. What can I say? I love my job. I don't know how I'd survive without it.”

“But all your passengers …” I was feeling like a broken record, what with Elizabeth's epilepsy and now colour-blindness.

“Why do you think I stick to the Arctic and the Antarctic?”

“Yes, but you'd still run into traffic.”

“My second mate covers for me. It works well.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He owed me a big favour. I saved his daughter's life.”

“Did Terry know?”

He didn't say anything, but then he didn't have to.

It was written all over his face. And I remembered how Terry had told him to take care of his eyes, that day on the bridge. Her tone of voice had not been solicitous, more like malicious.

“That gives you a motive for murder, doesn't it?” I said.

He scraped back his chair and cleared his throat. “I can see you haven't got anywhere on this case if you're looking at me as a murderer. I'm sure there are plenty of others with better motives than mine.”

He stood up but I stayed seated. “Such as?”

He brushed some lint off his pants. “Owen, for starters.”

“He's her brother, for god's sake. Why would he want her dead?”

“I heard they were fighting over their parents' estate.

They went down in a plane crash about three months ago. Money can turn blood to water, even with the best of us, and Terry was no princess.”

“Owen told me he stood to gain nothing from her death.”

Jason raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

“They were fighting and still working together?”

“Yeah. Weird, eh? They seemed to feed off each other.

There was a need there that wasn't altogether healthy.

She didn't treat her brother very well, which was surpris
–
ing considering without him her writing career would've been dead in the water.”

I looked at him curiously. “That sounds somewhat extreme since he was really just a glorified gofer.”

“Ah, but no, he wasn't.”

“What is he then?”

“Her ghostwriter.”

I took a deep breath and said nothing, hoping he'd fill in the silence, which he did. “The book she wrote about her trial and being in jail. It was all Owen. I over
–
heard them arguing about it one day. She was mad as hell because he was demanding money. I don't know if he was blackmailing her or what, but they were always fighting about something. I don't know why they put up with each other.”

“What about all the courses she teaches, the novels she's written. He doesn't help there surely?”

“No, I don't think he does. I'm not sure how she's managed it, but what she writes now is good and dif
–
ferent. I've read her work and while Owen may have ghostwritten the non-fiction book, he sure as hell didn't ghostwrite the others.”

“Why are you so sure?”

He shrugged. “I'm not. She must have just reached that point we all long for that breaks us through to another level.”

He was looking out the window again and this time I turned and looked too. There was a spider in the corner weaving its web, hoping to snare itself a meal on the fifth floor. How the hell had it climbed so far and why did it think my window was a good place?

I turned back to Jason. “Why did you really come today? You didn't have to agree to a meeting.”

He stood there biting his upper lip, chewing it half to death before he let it go. “Because I thought you should know that I don't think Terry was who she seemed.”

I waited.

“She was a schemer and there was a side to her that scared me.”

“The sleepwalking side?”

He nodded. “When she went off her medication she'd walk and sometimes she would get violent and throw things around the room.” He sighed again. “It was an animal violence that scared me. But you know what scared me more?”

I shook my head.

“I don't think Michael is the only one she murdered.”

A few days later I was taking a break from work and going through the stuff that Derek had sent. There was an amazing amount of press coverage and lots of pic
–
tures of the murdered Michael. Turns out he had had a wife, Beth Grady, but there was almost no mention of her and no photos. I wondered why. I made a mental note to get Derek to find out more about her.

I picked up another clipping; a photo of a group of people outside the courtroom. My eye was drawn to a dark-haired, good-looking man, clean-shaven and hov
–
ering on the edge of the picture as if he was waiting for something. I looked more closely. He seemed familiar. I groped around for a pen on my chaotic desk and slowly scribbled in a beard and mustache. I leaned back in my chair, looking at the photo, and put my legs up on my desk. Couldn't be, I thought. I read through the clippings and then found the spot in Terry's book about the first man on the scene being a good friend of Michael's. Only she had used the name Lex. I knew him as Peter. I let the photo drop and looked out the window at a little chicka
–
dee that had sought shelter on my window ledge.

I was lost in thought when I heard a female voice outside my door. Before I could get my feet onto the ground, in walked Martha. “How's it going?” she asked as if there was nothing wrong.

“Okay.”

“Cordi, you're as transparent as cellophane.”

“I just don't like to lose you, that's all.”

But it wasn't all. Having to go through finding some
–
body new was proving more difficult than I thought, and not just because many of the candidates weren't good enough, but because the three of us couldn't agree on any who were. Martha's last day was fast approaching and I was beginning to panic.

Martha moved some file folders off my only chair and changed the subject. “What's the latest on Sally?”

“I talked to Owen and Jason.” I brought her up-to-date and then showed her the picture that now sported a beard and mustache.