Innocent Murderer (32 page)

I scanned their faces looking for, what? Guilt? It was there in spades. How could it not be when they had sent an innocent woman to her death with their harebrained plan? But I was looking for something more. “Every single one of you had a good reason for wanting Terry dead. Elizabeth, Tracey, and Peter wanted revenge for a lost lover, sister, and friend; LuEllen for what was done to her in Terry's name; Owen for Terry's share of their parents' estate; and Arthur because he was still in love with Sally and wanted revenge. Jason wanted her dead because she knew about his being colour-blind, an afflic
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tion that would end his career as a captain.”

I looked at their blank faces as they all just stared at me. No denials, no admissions of guilt, no nothing. It was very unnerving.

My evening with Patrick went by in a whirl. We'd prom
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ised each other that we wouldn't talk business or Lon
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don or anything ugly, so things had been good between us. He wanted me to stay the night but I didn't want to

— it was just too painful and, truth be told, I really had started to distance myself from him and I think he could feel it. Before I left he couldn't not ask me about the mur
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der case, so I told him everything.

“So let me get this straight,” he said when I'd finished.

“Terry faked it and murdered Michael in cold blood for a non-fiction bestseller and then for his book.”

I nodded. “Or she really did murder him while sleep
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walking and then took advantage of the fallout. She gets a non-fiction bestseller out of the ordeal, hoodwinks her brother into ghostwriting it, and gets a bonus murder mystery. Perfect.”

“Then, once she makes a name for herself she realizes she can't write the books so she stalks and kills Heather to get her next fix,” said Patrick. “What about Owen?

Was he simply blind to all this or did he help her? Do you think he knows?”

I told him what Duncan had said about Owen being a doormat. “I think Owen just blindly does what his sis
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ter tells him.”

“Would that include murder?”

I shook my head, but it did make me wonder. “And then Terry falls for Sally. She could have killed Sally before being drowned herself.” I told him about Peter's theory We went over some more details and then I left him standing on the threshold hoping I'd change my mind.

But I didn't. The instinct for self-preservation; that's all it was.

I left for work early the next morning and got in before anyone was around. I worked for a couple of hours and then at 9:00 I picked up my list of people to call. Owen was at the top. Shit. He was so hard to talk to and I had no idea how much he did or did not know, but I needed to find out whether Terry had used a pseudonym and whether Owen knew anything about his sister's double life. I'd have to be careful though. He was her brother, after all. He might not take too kindly to my questions.

I phoned him anyway and told him what I wanted to talk to him about.

“Terry?” he said, the exasperation in his voice travel
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ling down the wires. “We've been through all that.”

“I just need to ask….” I said.

“Look. You've caught me at a bad time.”

“When would be a good time?”

“Next year?”

There was a long silence, which I succeeded in not breaking.

“Look, I'm taking up a couple from New Jersey this evening. There's room for you. We can talk while they ooh and ahh over the beauty of the Outaouais.”

I was totally at a loss as to what the hell he was talk
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ing about. Where was up? “I'm not sure I follow you. Where are you taking this couple?”

“Up in a hot air balloon.”

“You're a pilot?”

“Of course I am. You can't pilot those things without a pilot's license.”

“Will we be able to talk?”

“I wouldn't be asking you if I didn't think we could. They'll be too busy clicking photos to care what we're talking about. Take it or leave it.”

Sounded fair enough. We arranged a time to meet early that evening and I spent the rest of the day miss
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ing Martha, worrying about Patrick, and working on a research paper.

I arrived at the field in the late afternoon, following Owen's excellent directions to a field near Carleton University. That and the presence of a number of bal
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loons gave it away. I was early so I stood and watched as Owen and his crew readied their balloon. They'd already spread it out on the ground close to the wicker basket, which had some sort of contraption attached to it that I figured must be the burners used to heat the air. Two people were attaching the basket to the balloon using carabiners that I hoped weren't as flimsy as they looked.

A big burly guy then took a rope — or was it a line? — that was attached to the very top of the balloon and had some kind of wicker ring on the other end. He walked it straight back from the crown of the balloon and waited.

Meanwhile, Owen had manhandled a big fan so that it was facing the little opening of the balloon that was being held open by two other crewmembers. I wondered how many crewmembers were normally needed to make this thing work. It was nowhere near as easy as I had thought it was. You earned your flight with these things.

I watched as the balloon began to move, the air from the fan swirling around inside and the gossamer red cloth billowing out. The burly man, now a long way out in the field, was holding the rope's ring, had planted his feet, and was attempting to keep the motion of the balloon to a minimum. Once the balloon was about two thirds full of cold air Owen started the burners and hot air began flowing into the balloon. Slowly, gracefully, it began to rise from the ground. Fire and fragility. The cloth so thin that it didn't look possible for it to lift the little wicker basket. I glanced at my watch then looked around and saw others like me, hovering in the wings, waiting for their rides or just watching.

Owen's balloon was now fully inflated with a line tethering it to the truck that I presumed was going to fol
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low us by land. I started forward and stood close to the balloon while Owen did whatever he had to do to ready the balloon for takeoff — a slightly different set of rules from a plane but the same basic training. Two of the crew came over to the basket and leaned on it as human anchors. When Owen finally noticed me he gave me a smile and waved me over.

“The couple from New Jersey are a few minutes late. They should be here any minute. You can come aboard if you want.”

The basket looked so flimsy! I'd never been near a hot air balloon, much less been in one. I climbed into the basket. It was smaller than I expected, perhaps because of the propane tanks, fuel lines, and naviga
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tion equipment, and everything was padded like an iso
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lation cell. I looked up. The burners above my head were supported by a four posted metal frame and fired by propane. When I looked beyond them into the mes
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merizing softness of the balloon it reminded me of all the tents I'd ever slept in. Of course, none were ever as big as this.

I dragged my eyes away from the balloon and watched the big burley guy coming in from the field. He handed Owen the rope and then became another human anchor. Owen was busy with the burners and absent-mindedly dropped the end of the ringed rope into the cor
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ner of the basket. I wondered if there were two kinds of balloonists, the way there are two kinds of sailors: those who secure or neatly stow all their ropes and those who don't. I watched as the balloon next to us took off and saw that they hadn't even bothered to bring their line in; it was dangling beneath the basket like a loose thread.

I took my camera out of my pocket and snapped a bunch of artsy-fartsy shots while I waited for Owen and the people from New Jersey. They were taking their own sweet time. I hoped they wouldn't be too talkative and make it hard for me to talk to Owen, but I didn't really have much to say.

I'd read all there was to know about the accident with Heather. Terry had been at the wheel and it had seemed pretty cut and dried. She hadn't seen her; the bow of the boat was riding high because of the weight of people in the back. But I knew that Owen knew more about Terry than he was letting on. He was her brother.

He had to.

I was leaning on the basket, watching another bal
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loon take off, when the balloon moved and I glanced back to see Owen fiddling with the burner. Suddenly he yelled “Hands off!” and let the tether line go. We immedi
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ately began to rise, our three human anchors fading from view. I instinctively stepped back from the edge but there wasn't really anywhere to go, the basket was so small.

“The New Jersey couple?” I said, as I tried to calm an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“Couldn't make it. Just got the call. Might as well go anyway,” he said.

I cautiously looked over the padded edge of the bas
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ket. We were already forty feet up. Too high to jump. But maybe I was jumping to conclusions.

“Pretty impressive, eh?” he said. “Look over there. The Parliament Buildings.”

And there they were, stalwart stone edifices of another era, soaring towards us, the clock tower like a finger beckoning. We were low enough that I imagined I could see the eternal flame on Parliament Hill. I could clearly see the library at the back of Parliament, its many windows reflecting the sun as it sat perched on the cliff overlooking the Ottawa River. I wondered if we were actually allowed here. It seemed like such an easy thing to fly over and drop a bomb. Between blasts from the burner it was quiet, no rushing air because we were mov
–
ing with the wind. I was mesmerized by what little lay between us and annihilation. A little wicker basket, like an oversized picnic basket, yards and yards of gossamer cloth that reminded me of a spinnaker, and the flames licking up into the balloon.

Owen brought the balloon down quite low as we cruised over Gatineau, then silently flew over the trees to Meech Lake. By now I trusted the little basket and was actually leaning up against it and watching the land fly by us. I could see little wavelets on the water but felt no wind on my own cheek. Weird. I had totally forgotten the reason for being there, I was so mesmerized by the whole experience. We were really close to Harrington Lake, the Prime Minister's summer retreat. I wondered if he was in residence and if there was a no-fly zone over his place — but how can you enforce that on a hot air balloon driven by the wind?

I suddenly remembered why I was there and turned to look at Owen. But as I began to ask him about Heather he handed me a paperback book. I looked at him questioningly.

“Look at it. It's an advance copy,” he said. “I need you to know what a mess you've made of things for me.”

I looked at him curiously and then took the book;
KillJoy
by Terry Spencer. I looked up at him, uncertain what he wanted me to do.

“Read the back.”

The little blurb said it was a book about black mar
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ket organs and then it quoted some of the book.

“Now read the first page,” he said.

I opened the book and felt the skin crawl on the back of my neck as I read. “Drenched in oil and blinded by blood, she held her breath and jumped.”

My heart did somersaults in my throat. Dear god, I was alone in a little basket way up in the sky, with the man who had been trying to kill me. Had it been Owen all along? Trying to safeguard his investment? In cahoots with his sister? Did he know it was a book that had already been published? Sweet revenge that.

“Is that why you tried to kill me?”

He smiled at me and said, “You ruined everything the minute you picked up the manuscript on the plane and I saw you reading the first page. Unfortunately, I couldn't know how much or even what pages you'd read.” He reached out and took the book from me. “You know, you've been particularly difficult to kill. When I visited your cabin on the ship I was sure that I could knock you out and throw you overboard. And that polar bear was a gift that didn't quite work out.”

“And the Zodiac?”

“You are so impressionable, but you were barking up the wrong tree when you thought someone had cut the ropes. They really were frayed.”

“So you had no hand in the Zodiac fiasco?”

“I didn't,” he said. “But Terry did.”

I waited impatiently for him to continue.

“I'd told her about you reading the manuscript and she was livid, with me and with you. When she stood up in the Zodiac she was aiming directly for you.”

“To knock me overboard,” I said slowly.

Owen nodded.

“And what about the dog?” I said.

He smiled. “Everybody just thought you were nuts. I played into that and took advantage of circumstances.”

“And the fire?”

“Yeah, well, that took a little more thought.”

“I'm glad you're so lousy at murder,” I said, keeping my distance, trying to formulate a plan, any plan at all. “Why did you stop trying?” I was playing for time.

“Because I could afford to wait for the perfect oppor
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tunity. I never had to be good. If it worked, it worked. If it didn't there was always another time. It just had to look like an accident and happen sometime before the book came out.”

“But you told me you didn't stand to gain anything from Terry's death.”

“The book contracts were in both our names and I earned every penny. She agreed to it before she started making money because she was so grateful that I ghost
–
wrote her book. She tried to renege but our agreement was solid.”

“What happens to her share now?”

“It goes to her estate.”

I kicked myself for not getting back to Derek but I hazarded a guess. “Which, since she has no will, will go to you.”