Reluctant Detective (19 page)

3
7

The mail comes at nine-thirty, sometimes at ten, and precisely at ten-thirty each day Delia McKay takes the long walk to the mailbox at the end of her driveway. She had just stepped off her front porch
when her phone began to ring. She ignored it. Whoever it was would
know enough to call back, if it were a friend or neighbour, and if it weren't a friend or neighbour, then she wouldn't be fussy to talk to
them at all. So she plunged ahead into her daily ritual without giving the caller a second thought.

Even though her mailbox was several hundred yards from her front door, she relished her walk. Others her age, and some a lot younger, drove cars from house to mailbox and back again. Not
her. She attributed such behaviour to “plain laziness,” and then she
would puff up with a shot of pride in her ability to walk the walk
unassisted.

Of course, her joints ached when she started, but they loosened
up some after ten minutes or so. Then the glories of morning itself
became a soothing balm for any discomfort which remained. A playful wind swept the stands of grain. The sound of it reminded
her of the sea. The breeze was both warm and bracing. She enjoyed
the caress of it on her face and the way it pulled at her dress, and
she could taste the sweetness of it. Summer weather like this made her feel alive, like a woman again.

There was scant in her mailbox: a bill from Maritime Electric, a packet of flyers advertising Canada Day sales, and
The Guardian
.
Bill O'Connor's old truck rattled by. She didn't have to look to know
who it was. She recognized the gasp of the engine and screeching
shimmy of a loose chassis. He tapped the horn, and Delia let a hand
fly in his direction in recognition. She watched his rig disappear into a hollow and rise on the uphill slope past a grey car parked
alongside the road.

“How long do I leave the biscuits in, Aunt Delia?” Jacqui called from the kitchen when she heard the slam of the front door.

“Ten more minutes,” said Delia.

“Can we try pies tomorrow? I love pies.”

“Rhubarb… and maybe we can scare up some strawberries,” Delia
said and picked up the phone in the parlour. “Pansy, is that you?”
she spoke into the mouthpiece.

“Of course it is. Who else would it be?”

“Doesn't sound like you,” she said gruffly. “Could be anybody.”

“Well, you caught me with a mouthful… and after sixty-five years of listenin' to my gossip, you should be able to tell whether it's me,
with or without a mouthful…,” and added with a little chuckle, “with teeth… or just beatin' my bare-naked gums together.”

Delia and Pansy had known each other forever. Delia lived on the
crest of one hill; Pansy on the one just south. Before the trees had grown up, they had been able to see each other's houses. That was before Pansy began calling herself Hazel. Hazel was her name, her
middle name, but when she was being courted by young Henry
Potts, she couldn't have borne the romance advancing to the point where anyone might start thinking of her as Mrs. Pansy Potts. That would have been too scullery an image for a country girl with grand dreams. So, Hazel she'd become, and the only person who continued to call her Pansy was Delia McKay, her best and oldest friend.

“Did you call me a while ago?” asked Delia.

“Can't say as I did. Why?”

“There's a car in the hollow,” she said as if that would explain
everything.

“Yes, Henry spoke of it.”

“Is he broke down?”

“Henry thought no. He's just sittin' there. Bird-watchin'.”

“Bird-watchin',” Delia said incredulously.

“Yes, Henry said he had binoculars.”

“Did the binoculars come with a straw hat?” Delia demanded.

Pansy hollered for Henry. There was muffled talking. Then Pansy
returned.

“A straw hat,” she said. “Yes.”

Delia hung up the phone and sat down in one of the proper but un
comfortable chairs in the parlour. She felt butterflies in her stomach,
and a chill trickled its way up her back and across her shoulders.

A few minutes of quiet reflection followed. Then she picked up the phone and dialled Pansy one more time. She talked quietly with her
friend so no one would overhear her, put the receiver down, and
called out to Jacqui:

“Take the biscuits out now, Jacqui. Set them on the counter. Then pack your bag.”

“Where we going?” Jacqui asked, caught off guard at Delia's
peculiar change in routine.

“Vacation,” said Delia.

“I thought this was vacation,” she replied. Now she was confused.

“We're going on vacation… from vacation,” she said and smiled at Jacqui.

Delia tied a wink to her smile and wrapped her remark in an air of mystery.
Vacation from vacation
. The enigma had enormous appeal to Jacqui, and the question
why
drowned before it surfaced. A thrill of spontaneity and a spirit of adventure now captured her imagination, as well as her acquiescence.

“Cool,” she said excitedly.

Thanks be to God for that
, thought Delia, as she packed her own small suitcase.

Twenty minutes later they were putting their luggage in Delia's car. The rattling thump-ump-ump of Henry Potts tractor echoed
along valley road. An irregular klink-a-klank blended with it, a loose hitch jolting against the long empty hay wagon he was towing.

Delia stopped the car at the mailbox and looked down toward
Henry's tractor. He had just started a wide swing onto a grown-over
access to his north field when the tractor stalled. When he tried to restart it, the tractor and wagon slid backward. The highway was blocked. No car could get around it. Nevertheless the grey sedan
attempted it just as the tractor's brakes slipped. Tractor, trailer, and all rolled to the rear and the car was forced into the ditch.

Delia turned onto the highway and left the traffic in the hollow behind. She figured she had at least ten minutes before the grey
sedan could remove itself from the ditch and find an alternate road. By then she would be on her way to her next destination – Jacqui's
vacation from her vacation. For the next half-hour Delia kept to
lesser travelled roads and worked her way north and then east.

Finally, Jacqui could contain herself no more. “Where
are
we going, Aunt Delia?”

“We're going to a magical place far, far away,” she teased.

“You're beginning to sound like the Disney channel.”

When they entered the town of Souris near the eastern tip of PEI,
Delia said, “We're here, almost anyway.”

“Souris! Souris isn't magical… How can a town named after a
mouse be magical, anyway? That's gross… and it isn't ‘far, far away' either. That's really false advertising, Aunt Delia.”

“Hush, girl. You're giving me a headache. We're going to visit a
cousin, a kind of surprise visit, and, for your information, we're not going to Souris, even though it is a lovely place. We're going there,” she said and pointed to a road sign.

It read:
Ferry to Magdalen Islands.

38

Frances Murphy was seated on a straight-backed chair in front
of the oak roll-top desk in her study. A natural light brightened the room. It filtered down through the branches of her backyard
elms and reflected up from the mirror-like sheen of Charlottetown Harbour.

A flicker of satisfaction put a flush in her cheeks and lent a softness
to her eyes. She would have had the same expression if she were
revelling in the accomplishments of her children, but she had none.
What filled that empty space in her heart instead was her review
of the accounts of three foundations she chaired. Each of them was enriched with a goodly sum of cash. Gala fundraisers and generous benefactors like herself had added a glitter to their financial bottom lines, and tomorrow, beginning with Canada Day, she would begin
to dole out grants to worthy causes around the world. Naturally,
she didn't bear that responsibility alone. Each foundation had board members. Still, she wielded significant influence over which charities should benefit and which individuals should be entrusted with the day-to-day disbursement of funds.

Trust was a word which had hung heavily on her mind in recent
weeks and become even more pressing in the last few days. Robert Somerville was at the root of her concern. He had made an application for funding of a mission in Cameroon, one that would improve
the living conditions of the natives and provide the infrastructure and training to make it self-sufficient, perhaps even a model for further development in that poverty-stricken region of Africa.
Without doubt it was a noble undertaking and worthy of substantial
support, and Somerville's business plan was a professionally assembled, compelling document.

Personally, she was fond of the man, and had told Anne Brown
so in just those words. Privately, however, she was in love with
him, and that secret she had told no one. In fact, she had difficulty
admitting it even to herself.

Some of his qualities had instant appeal for her. He was charming,
of course, and everyone who met him was taken with his ease in their company. He was well-read, educated, and widely travelled, and he spoke of ideas, dreams, and aspirations that earned him
enviable respect and dignity. Most of all, though, Frances loved his eyes. They were clear and bright, and suited his public image, but
there was a sadness about them as well. Not a sour or regretful sadness. Rather, it was one that held kindness, experience, and
wisdom. His eyes touched her deeply, but they also reminded her of the disappointments that had muted the lustre in her own life.

Frances Murphy's disappointments had begun with her marriage.
She'd married too young and for reasons she could never quite
reconcile. Whenever she thought back to those times, she thought of herself as falling into marriage, rather than falling in love. She'd
imagined that it was the right time to do it, and William Murphy had seemed an appropriate person to wed. It was only later that
she'd felt the loneliness of it and the emptiness of its promise. And her guilt. Everyone knew that the wealth her husband had accrued
was tainted with often questionable dealings. He was long dead
now, and memory of those misgivings was fading in the community. They were being eclipsed by her own benevolence and community service.

Frances Murphy's great dread now was that she would someday be exposed as just “an old fool” and, love him though she may, there
was something about Robert Somerville that didn't add up. She
couldn't isolate one specific thing.
Is it instinct… or is it fear?
she wondered.

Time was short. She couldn't deliberate any longer. Somerville's proposal and business plan were the best of the best. She had no
reason to deny his request for the $100,000. For his mission to
achieve its goals, planting had to begin almost immediately and the drilling of irrigation wells soon afterwards.

Mrs. Murphy's face looked more grave than ever as she grasped
the pen. She had approved and signed the paperwork for seventeen
projects that morning. All the pertinent cheques had been written
but one.

The name, Robert Somerville, stood in her mind, as it had for many
days. Now it wanted to tumble down to the nib of her pen and give life to his mission in Cameroon. Her fountain pen hung over the
chequebook.

Write his name and watch good works spring from it, or write his name and be betrayed?
she fretted.

She hesitated. She couldn't bring herself to write it. Instead, she picked up the phone and called Anne Brown's office. There was no
answer today. There had been no answer yesterday. She left another
message and hung up. Murphy stared at the approved application and the blank cheque on the desk before her. She grabbed the pen
from its holder and in a neat but hurried hand wrote Robert Somerville's name and her signature to the cheque.

“An old fool I may be, then,” she said to herself.

39

Anne stared at the undulating dark form at the bottom of the pool.

It's Dit
, she thought. There was nothing else it could be, and the
thought of it transformed into an unheard shriek in her mind.

Then she dove in. The water was cold. Her clothes clung to her body. The weight of them felt like someone was clutching at her,
struggling against her effort to reach him. In the deep end she
took in a lungful of air and drove herself under the water. Her legs
fluttered. Her arms swept back in powerful strokes. And as she
drew near the bottom, the dark shape became clearer. She reached out for it. It was the black chassis of his wheelchair. She braced her feet against the pool wall and levered the wheelchair aside. There was no body beneath it. There was no body anywhere.

Gasping for air, Anne broke the surface of the pool and beat
through the water until she reached the ladder. Standing near the edge, she surveyed the depths of the pool again for any sign of him.
Then she circumscribed the patio and, finding nothing there, she
searched the grounds nearby. Nothing there either.

Not finding his body should have been a relief, but it wasn't. The uncertainty remained, and the questions surrounding it were just
as horrifying. Where was he? Was he crawling about somewhere
farther away? Was he unconscious? Was he dead? Had he been
taken away? And, if so, by whom? And why?

Her first instinct was to call 911. She reached for her cell phone. It was dead. The pool water had killed the signal. She went to the house phone and started to dial. Then she hung up and redialled
another number, this one for a friend.

“Ben? I need your help. It's Dit. I think something terrible may have happened.”

Ben arrived less than fifteen minutes later, but it seemed an extraordinarily long time to Anne. He found her outside, leaning
against the patio doors, shivering, a puddle of water under her feet.
She filled him in on the details of her discovery. Then he looked around himself, outside first, then inside, the ground floor rooms,
and upstairs as well.

When he returned, Anne was where he had found her. She hadn't moved.

“Here's what we're going to do,” he said. Then he paused as if he hadn't yet pulled his thoughts and a plan together. “I'll phone it in. You go home, get some dry clothes. There's no point in getting you
involved right now. You've already raised eyebrows downtown, and you might distract them from what really went down here. I'll meet you later at The Blue Peter.”

“What are you going to tell them?”

“The truth. I dropped over to see a friend, and I found the place
looking like a squall had hit. Now take off. We'll talk later.”

Ben sounded officious, sympathetic, and cold, all at the same
time. It was a tone of voice she had never heard him use before. It sounded foreign.

Anne looked at him as if he were someone she had met but
couldn't remember the circumstances. Then she nodded, walked numbly toward the door, and drove away.

Anne tried unsuccessfully to shake loose the worry that hung
about her. The drive home didn't help, even though she took a slow,
scenic run along a shore road to clear her head. She kept picturing
Dit, and running varying scenes of what might have happened over and over until she felt like a caged mouse on an exercise wheel. At
home she slipped out of her wet clothes and wrapped herself in
a robe. She still felt cold. She toasted a bagel and poured herself a cup of coffee, but food was a mistake. It settled like a wad of sodden cardboard at the bottom of her stomach.

Finally she threw off her robe and donned shorts, a tank top, and
running shoes and set off, down the street, across the lawn of the provincial buildings, and along the boardwalk of Victoria Park. It
was a short run – two miles out – before she rounded back toward home. By the time her apartment came into view she had slowed into a cool-down walk. Her cheeks had flushed with colour. Her
muscles were sore. Perspiration beaded on her forehead. Her
clothes were damp.

In spite of all that, however, she realized that the clutter had fallen
away. Her body felt more fresh, healthy, and energetic, and the
cares which burdened her were subdued, rendered unimportant, or washed away during the long shower which followed.

Anne found cross-town traffic heavier than usual, but it was Saturday, the beginning of the Canada Day long weekend, the traditional start of summer on the Island, and the leading edge
of tourist season. License plates were more exotic; travel trailers peeked above the lines of cars. Traffic was thickest as she got close
to the waterfront. That's where the fireworks displays would be
set off, and that's where tents were being erected for the musical venues, beer concessions, and patriotic souvenir sales. Tomorrow was the big day.

Anne parked and walked a block to her office. The sky was blue,
but duller than earlier in the week or even earlier today. Wispy cirrus clouds brushed the sky and added a dull white tone to the
blue. There was a coolness in the air as well, and Anne wished that
she had worn a light sweater instead of a short-sleeved top. By
contrast, her office was stuffy.

Anne cracked open a few windows for fresh air and, while doing
so, she noticed that the office was not as she had left it. It was Cutter's doing. Cutter had broken in the day before, waiting for her, and watching out the window. He had seen her head into the
Confederation Centre with the suitcase intended for the Client. The day had ended unhappily for Cutter, taken down by the RCMP, who probably had been following Anne.

The evidence of Cutter's visit showed: papers strewn about Billy
Darby's inner sanctum; desk drawers ajar; small things toppled
over. No doubt she would find his fingerprints all over the big safe.

Cutter had made a thorough job of tossing Billy's office, but he had
left the waiting room alone, for the most part. He had rummaged
through a large wardrobe cabinet there. Both of its doors were wide open, but Anne's desk seemed undisturbed.

Anne sat at her desk and double-checked the drawers and files. Nothing was amiss, and that was very peculiar, she thought, but
perhaps Cutter simply dismissed finding anything useful in a receptionist's desk. Luckily he didn't know that this was Anne's
work station. Otherwise he would have found the nine, loaded and ready to go, in Anne's desk drawer. Having to report the loss of that to the police, Anne thought, would have been more than embarrassing. She took it out and returned it to the safe.

The few minutes Anne spent restoring order to the office helped
put her into a businesslike frame of mind. Two jobs topped her
things-to-do list: finding Dit, and dealing with the Client.

Then again, she wasn't even sure of that. What if Dit and the Client
were different sides of the same coin? Dit, most likely, had been taken away. If it were the Client's doing, what did he have to gain? She had already agreed to deliver the suitcase of money. Using Dit
as insurance would be a good hole card, but he didn't need the extra leverage. And holding Dit was more of a liability than an advantage.
Dit would be a witness and, so far, the Client had taken great pains not to be identified or directly connected with the counterfeit
money. Anne couldn't imagine an upside to any connection between Dit and the Client. Besides, the incident at Dit's house had all the markings of a sloppy job. That didn't fit the Client's style.

Confident that the Client didn't kidnap Dit, she decided to make
her play. She picked up the phone and called the cell phone that the Client had given to Devon MacLaren. It rang twice before MacLaren answered.

“Yes?” he asked. His voice sounded weary and frightened.

“You know who this is. Got a pencil and paper?”

“Yes.”

1“Tomorrow night. Nine-thirty. Charlottetown waterfront. There's a large gazebo between Memorial Park and the Peake's Quay Marina.
Tell him to be there alone. No funny stuff. I have what he wants. He
knows what I want. Pass the message.”

Then she hung up.

That went well
, Anne thought.
If the Client or MacLaren had Dit, then they would have played that card, but they hadn't. So the game goes on as usual
.

Afterwards, Anne ran through her voice mail. There were half a dozen messages. The first was from Sister Jeanine: “Anne, dear, how are you today? And happy Canada Day. I finally made contact
with my colleagues in Cameroon. They don't know of any proposed
mission like you described, at least nothing associated with the name Robert Somerville, and, if there was, I'm sure it would be
popular gossip in the region. The Methodists are opening a satellite
to their main mission. Reverend James Hanover from Pittsburgh guides that flock. Then there's talk of some kind of project in the northeast. It's headed by a Brit called Bobby Dill. And our own
nightingales are opening our third school. You can read about that on our website if you have time. See you soon, I hope.”

Both the second and third calls were from Frances Murphy. She
wanted a progress report if one could be made. Her voice was even and tranquil as always, but sad, almost mournful.

She would have to get back to her, but she didn't want to do it just yet. Anne was sure that Somerville was a con man, and she had some
evidence that undermined his story of being a British lord, but nothing conclusive, and nothing that a smooth-talking con man couldn't
wiggle through or lie his way out of. Anne preferred to wait and club
the rat while he was climbing out of his hole. So she phoned Mrs.
Murphy and left a message summarizing her activities. She withheld
specific details, but stated that her results were inconclusive and
that she would have a more accurate report in two more days. She
also warned that it would be imprudent to make any monetary
decisions regarding Somerville before that report was concluded.

“Happy holiday, bitch.”

The voice came from the doorway. The head that poked through belonged to Sean McGee. His one hand gripped the half-open door; the other hand held the frame. Most of his torso was concealed by
the wall. His grin was malicious.

Anne's right hand opened the side drawer of her desk, slipped in,
and sought out the cold metal of the Berretta, but the only cold steel she grasped inside was an old stapler. The gun had been put away.

“Did you miss the door to The Blue Peter or do you want me to fry you up some breakfast? I'm sure I can find a sturdy cook pan around here someplace.”

Anne's hand in the drawer of her desk hadn't escaped Sean's
notice. He stayed where he was. Anne's hand remained where it was.

“We've got something for you. It comes in brown curly hair. It's in
need of repair.”

“Where is he?”

“We'll box him up and send him over when you deliver my suitcase.”

“Is he hurt?”

“Cuts and scrapes… oh, and he doesn't walk so good.” Sean
laughed
noiselessly. One eye squinted; the other was discoloured. Anne
grinned back.

“Dit gave you that shiner, didn't he?” Sean's self-important glare
turned sour. “Beat up by a girl and a cripple in two days,” she
continued. “You must not have any balls left.”

Sean twitched suddenly as if he were going to jump her, but Anne
jerked her gun hand, and the stapler clanked solidly against the
inside of the drawer. Anne wished she had kept her mouth shut, but her bravado and the threat of a gun kept Sean at bay, and he eased back into his protected position just outside the door.

“I have no problem with an exchange,” she said, “but it's not going
to be in some dark alley with a bunch of creeps around. It'll be out in the open. In public.”

“You aren't calling the shots this time.”

“Neither are you. I'm not an idiot. How does this sound? I bring the
valise tomorrow evening to the waterfront. Lots of people around
for the fireworks. I'll have to see that he's alive. Then I give you the money.”

“Tomorrow,” he repeated as if it were a threat.

“Quarter to nine? You and your crew can work out the details. A
girl's gotta take care of herself, ya know.”

“Nine o'clock.”

Anne nodded. “Okay, where?”

Sean thought for a moment. “There's a circle on the north end of
the park. Along the walkway. It's got bricks with people's names on them. That's a good spot.”

“Not a chance. Too many bushes and trees.”

“The end of the first dock at the marina then. Just inside the breakwater.”

Anne nodded compliantly. Sean vanished out the door.

Anne's hands didn't start trembling until she left the office and
had gone downstairs and entered The Blue Peter restaurant. That's
when the jolt of adrenaline hit her. She could scarcely turn the
doorknob.

Mary Anne was inside, standing in front of a
Please Wait to be Seated
sign. Mary Anne stared at her for a second and said, “Which do you need worse – a comfy seat or a stiff drink?”

“I'll take the combo,” she said with a strained smile.

“The round table's free. White wine?”

“Something with a bit more punch.”