Misery Bay: A Mystery (8 page)

“Don’t look like no cop,” said Big Margaret. “Whataya want?”

“I’m looking for Hank,” he said.

“What’s that loser done now?”

“He here?”

“Naa. I haven’t seen him in weeks.”

Garrett managed to slide past her into the apartment.

“Hey, I didn’t invite you.”

“How’s business?” he asked.

“What are you talking about? I live here.”

“Your phone number is listed for Sweet Angels Escort Service.”

“We run a legitimate business. It’s completely legal. We provide escort company for people who need a date to attend some function or somethin’. ”

“Right.” He looked around the room and found the telephone on a coffee table in front of a couch facing a huge flat screen TV. Also on the table was a pile of address books. He went over and began to leaf through them.

“You can’t do that without a warrant,” Big Margaret said indignantly.

“I’m investigating the deaths of several young girls—you may have heard about it on the news.”

“What? Those babies? We don’t hire no one ’cept young women over twenty-one.”

“You won’t mind then if I take these address books of yours and just make sure of that.”

He watched her anger rise, but she controlled herself. She’d been in the business a long time and was used to a roust by the police.

“There’s nothing in there but friends of mine, and none of it would be permissible in court without a warrant.”

“Maybe,” he replied. “You want to take that chance?”

She waddled across the room and sat in a fancy gilded chair. She said nothing and just stared at him, waiting.

“I’m not interested in you, Big Margaret.”

Her eyes grew large as she realized he knew her name—her phone name. Her Madame name.

“I said it before … whattaya want?”

“I don’t see any Chinese names in your book.”

“Don’t have any Chinese. Our girls all come from Europe, Russia mostly. They’re working to support their families back home.”

“Where would I go for a Chinese girl?”

She looked away.

“All right.” He began to gather up the books. “I’ll be sure to have these returned to you if there’s no illegalities, as you said.”

“Madame Liu,” she said quickly.

“Where is she?”

“I don’t keep track of every one of my competitors. And if she finds out you got her name from me, I’ll deny it.”

“What’s she call her agency?”

“Madame Liu’s Lulus.”

“Cute.” He stood up. “I’ll be back if you’re lying to me or if I decide you called Madame Liu to warn her about me. Understood?”

She nodded, relief washing over her that he didn’t intend to take the books.

He left without another word, taking a deep breath once clear of the building. How people could make a living this way always seemed incredible to him. Big Margaret operated solely through her telephone. The girls were lodged somewhere else. Madame Liu, he felt certain, would be closer to her young girls in order to have better control over them. Before he went for her, however, he needed some backup.

10

S
ARAH DROVE SLOWLY PAST ROLAND’S
house. She was returning from shopping in the city. It was a rare, hot summer afternoon, the sun high in a crystal sky, the ocean sparkling with reflected light. She’d been enjoying the day until she got here. The Cribby household—mother and son Roland—always left her with the creepy sense that she’d suddenly been transported to a third-world country. Over the years, she and her husband had been friendly to Roland and his mother, but it was an effort that paid few dividends.

She pulled into Ingrid and Grace’s driveway just past Roland’s and got out of the car. At once the sound of Roland’s refrigerator cooler assaulted her. It was hot and the compressor was working overtime and overloud. Evidently, Garrett hadn’t had time to deal with this particular problem.

Ingrid came out the door and waved. She and her husband Leo were in their fifties. Along with Grace, a much younger thirty, the three had pooled their resources to purchase their elegant home in what was supposed to be a peaceful fishing cove.

“Hi Sarah. Welcome to paradise!” she said, yelling to be heard over the generator. Ingrid was silver-haired. She wore a bikini and sported an all-over leathery tan that she had probably started working on in high school. She was a freelance writer and illustrator. Her husband still taught art courses at Acadia part-time, and Grace was a self-employed artist.

“I wanted to tell you,” Sarah said, “that our new RCMP officer, Garrett Barkhouse, told me he would get Roland to stop with the motor.”

Ingrid’s face lit up. “Do you really think he will?”

Sarah looked out at the bay. “I’ve only known him a few days, but yes, I really do.”

“Well hallelujah! Let’s have a drink to that.” She turned and led the way into the house.

Although the home was beautiful, with a spectacular living room, a circular wall of windows facing the island view, and high-priced art and sculpture, it nonetheless was always a bit of a shock to Sarah. She’d known the picturesque little fisherman’s house that had once graced the spot on the inlet.

When the cottage was sold, everyone speculated over who had bought it and how they might spruce the old home up, since it had been empty for several years. It was a shock when the dozers came in one morning and flattened the place. The building that rose in its stead was modern, full of glass and redwood decking, and, most disconcerting of all to the others who lived in the cove, round. That fact alone caused endless speculation and derogatory comments.

Still, she supposed it was progress of a sort. The tiny little homes of the fishermen were cold and drafty, the living rooms, kitchens, and bedrooms tinier still. The Germans had set the trend when they arrived, building new, modern homes with thermopane windows, super insulation, and high-efficiency furnaces.

They passed through the living area and out a sliding glass door to the deck, where Grace, a petite, startlingly beautiful blonde, greeted Sarah warmly. She also had a bathing suit on. It was practically a required uniform whenever the sun made its all-too-infrequent appearances this wet summer.

“Roland’s going to be made to stop with the engine,” Ingrid announced with a flourish. “We’re going to drink ourselves into a stupor to celebrate.”

“Oh my God,” said Grace. “What’d they do? Threaten to take away his fishing license?”

“Nope,” Sarah said, collapsing on a chaise lounge. “Our new Mountie’s going to reason with him.”

“Well he’ll be a bloody magician if he can pull that off,” said Ingrid. “Like reasoning with a ball-peen hammer.”

“A very skinny ball-peen hammer,” said Grace. She giggled and shook the ice in her drink. Evidently, they’d begun the celebration before the arrival of the good news.

Ingrid handed Sarah a Manhattan. It was the house drink and Sarah had never been here when there wasn’t a pitcher standing by.

“Have you heard from Ayesha?” Grace asked. “I haven’t seen her in almost a week.”

Ayesha was the daughter of Ali Marshed, the Iranian who ran the grocery. She was fifteen and going through something of a teen-age crisis. Grace had taken a liking to the girl, immediately recognizing that she was depressed. She hired Ayesha to help in their garden. The pay was good and the girl’s father hadn’t objected. For the past several weeks, she’d arrived in old jeans and chamois shirt and seemed to revel in getting herself as dirty as she possibly could. Seeing how much escaping from the dreary little store meant to Ayesha, they had all taken to her.

“Hmmm,” Sarah said. “I saw her in the store yesterday and she was kind of quiet, barely said hello. I wonder if something’s happened.”

“I bet that bastard Roland has been bending Ali’s ear again about what a bad influence we are on the girl,” said Ingrid with a snort.

“You
are
kind of a scary looking broad, Ingrid,” said Grace with a laugh, but Sarah could tell she was concerned.

“I’ll see if I can talk to her when I stop at the store tomorrow,” Sarah said. “Usually Ali’s not there late in the afternoon.”

Conversation turned, as it inevitably did, to the neighbors.

“I actually saw Rose the other day,” said Grace.

“You didn’t!” said Ingrid.

Grace raised her right arm in a mock two-fingered salute. “Scout’s honor. She hobbled out onto the back deck with her walker. First time I’ve seen her in a year. I think it’s actually the first time she’s been outside in all that time. God, she was even bigger than the last time I saw her.”

“Did you talk to her?” Sarah asked with interest. The houses had rear decks that were close enough for conversation.

“You could call it that, I suppose. I called hello. I think she grunted. Or maybe it was a wheeze. I’m not sure. Anyway, soon as she saw me, she galumphed back inside like she was afraid I might contaminate her.”

Sarah sipped her drink and stared out at the islands. A fishing boat was coming in on the late afternoon tide, its engine chugging in a slow, repetitive thrum. The boat turned around Dougal’s Island and angled obliquely toward them.

“Christ!” Ingrid swore, sitting up. “Here he comes again. Looking for an eyeful.” She jumped out of her chair. “Well, I’ll give him one.”

She jumped up, went to the deck railing and tore off her bikini top. She put her hands above her head and did the bump and grind.

The boat was now less than thirty yards out and Sarah could clearly see Roland at the wheel. He had a pair of binoculars up to his eyes.

“Oh, come on, Ingrid,” Sarah said. “You’re just encouraging him.”

“No, I’m pissing him off,” she replied, still bobbling her large breasts. “He’d rather see Grace doing this, so I’m just irritating him.”

Grace got up and went over beside Ingrid. For a moment Sarah thought she was going to take her top off too. But she just put her hands on her hips and glared out at the boat. After a moment, Roland put down the eyeglasses and turned the boat around the little headland that separated them from the wharf.

“Guess he didn’t like the show,” said Ingrid, putting her top back on. “What an asshole.”

Sarah wasn’t sure she cared for the show either. She finished her drink, made her excuses and left. She hadn’t realized how tense the whole relationship between Roland and his neighbors had become. She made a mental note to tell Garrett to get to work on the generator issue soon or there was going to be real trouble.

11

L
ONNIE BACKUS WAS GARRETT’S COUSIN.
One of more than a dozen, not counting second cousins. They’d grown up together, hung out since they were kids, and gotten into trouble as teenagers. They once set fire to an abandoned barn in the winter, then drove a Ski-Doo far out onto the frozen bay and watched it burn to the ground. The two boys had never been caught for any of their escapades, which was fortunate, since if they had, it would likely have preempted any career in law enforcement for Garrett.

Both of them had gone into enforcement, of a sort. Lonnie was a longshoreman on the docks in Dartmouth and had become an enforcer for the unions. Strong-arm stuff, though generally all anyone had to do was look at Lonnie and they’d do whatever he said. He was six-foot-four and solid muscle with a bull neck that emerged from his shirt collar like a wedge of oak.

When Garrett entered the military, Lonnie tagged along, because, he said, he had nothing better to do. In the army, he was the go-to guy, the strongest and most reliable. Garrett once saw him strike a member of the Taliban, a giant of a man in his own right, so hard during close hand-to-hand combat that he killed the man. Another time, in a dispute with a member of their unit who had a black belt in karate, he watched Lonnie simply stand and take every blow the guy could throw at him. He hadn’t even grunted. Then he picked the guy up and threw him twenty feet. That was the end of the fight.

They served together in the same unit and fought in the mountains around Kandahar. It was Lonnie who fashioned a tourniquet and cradled Garrett’s head after his foot was blown off. Ever since, the big man had helped Garrett out whenever possible. Everything from chiding him over his phantom pain to offering backup when Garrett got in over his head with the RCMP and needed to stretch the legal limits.

So it was hardly surprising that once again Lonnie had offered to go along on a legal-limit-stretching bit of after-dark sleuthing.

Garrett had decided to try a different tack with Madame Liu’s Lulus. Instead of confronting Ms. Liu directly, they staked out the brothel, which was located in an upscale part of Bedford Basin. Set back on extensive grounds, the house fronted on the basin, which was filled with small pleasure craft. The building was a spectacular, rambling Victorian with at least a dozen bedrooms, if he had to make a guess. Very posh accommodations. The clientele was certain to be upscale.

Lonnie sat in the car sipping a Keith’s Ale and watching a cold rain spatter the windshield. “How long we going to sit here?” he asked.

“You got someplace better to be?”

“Kandahar would be someplace better.”

Garrett felt a twinge in his phantom foot. “Every time you mention the war, my foot starts to ache.”

“Suck it up,” said Lonnie. “I can’t mollycoddle you along the rest of your life. Besides, you don’t even have a foot. So how can it hurt?” He refused to accept the concept of phantom pain. Lonnie dealt in the world of real pain.

“Mollycoddle?”

“Let me know if I use words too big for you.”

“Car coming.”

They sank into their seats, which in Lonnie’s case meant that his entire head and shoulders still showed. But the car brushed past them in the rain and turned into the sweeping driveway. It was a black limo, the windows heavily tinted.

“That’s a clue,” Garrett said.

“Funny, I thought it was a limo,” said Lonnie. “What are we going to do?”

“Take a hike.”

“Shit. These shoes are brand new.”

“Little mud’s good for them—help break ’em in. You carrying?”

Lonnie stared at Garrett as though he’d asked if he had a left nut.