Tell Anna She's Safe

by Brenda Missen

  The waiter greeted us with a big friendly grin. Quinn ordered a Jack Daniel’s and a steak. I ordered just the steak.

  When his drink arrived, Quinn leaned back in his chair. “So tell me something, Ellen McGinn.”

  “Uh oh,” I said.

  “I think this is a harmless question. As opposed to some others I could think of asking you.”

  I looked at him in wary amusement. I had been right. There was a normalcy here I needed: the people around us talking and laughing, the waiter setting down the drink on a napkin, a relaxed-looking man across the table from me, sipping from his glass and, it was becoming obvious, deriving a personal enjoyment from my company.

  “Shoot,” I said.

  “Why are you so skeptical about psychic phenomena?”

  I shrugged. “I can’t verify it. I can’t prove it or disprove it. It seems better to leave it alone.” Because it’s scary. Because something else has control. Something I don’t understand.

  “But it’s not leaving you alone.”

  “Apparently not. But I can ignore it.”

  “But you’re not.”

  “I told you why not.”

  Quinn put a hand up. “I’m not here to argue with you.”

  “Why are you here with me?” I couldn’t believe I’d let that question out of my mouth.

  Quinn looked at me, his eyes wide. “Because I believe in you.”

  I cringed at the cliché. “Even when I don’t believe in myself?”

  “Especially because you don’t believe in yourself.”

  I shook my head. I had no idea what he meant by that.

  Our steaks arrived. We ate, making mostly small talk. He was attentive, making sure my steak was to my liking, my water glass was filled, was I sure I didn’t want a glass of wine.

  I finished my last bite. “My turn to ask a question.”

  Quinn smiled. “Shoot.”

  “You mentioned the courtroom. Are you guys really going to get Tim?”

  Quinn was shaking his head, a glint in his eyes. “Nope, not going to answer.”

  I looked at him, indignant. “I answered your question.”

  “And I will answer yours. Just not here. Too public. Wait ’til we get back to the car. Do you want dessert? Coffee?”

  “No thanks, I’m fine.”

  Quinn turned in his chair, scouting for the waiter and the bill.

  Outside there was a chill in the darkness. Quinn pulled out onto Hunt Club and headed west to the on-ramp for the Airport Parkway, retracing the route we had taken a week and a half before, up the canal and back to Elgin.

  We didn’t speak until we reached his house. Quinn expertly manoeuvred the car into a tight spot at the curb. He turned off the ignition and settled back in his seat, his body turned towards me. A street light across the road gave his face odd angles of shadow and light. I tried to find the face I knew in the odd angles. I couldn’t. I had to look away. It was too disconcerting.

  “No question Lundy and Roach are going to get him. It’s just a matter of time.”

  “But do they have any evidence?”

  “I keep forgetting you don’t know what they’ve been doing. I’m going to tell you because I think it will alleviate some of your fears. But we are not having this conversation.” The stern expression on his shadowed face made him even more unrecognizable.

  I spoke to the windshield. “Okay. No.”

  Quinn seemed oblivious to my unease. He was working up to his story. “They figure Brennan strangled Lucy Saturday morning in her house. Maybe while she was having a shower. Then he dumped her body somewhere up in the Gatineaus and abandoned her car on River Road. Where you found it two days later. In his witness statement, Brennan said he put the bike rack on the car, and her bike, but that she changed her mind, and he took the bike off. They figure he actually put the bike rack on the car for his own bike, and cycled the rest of the way to town after he ditched the car.”

  “I don’t remember a bike rack on the car.”

  “No, there wasn’t one there. But Stupid mentioned it in his witness statement. Maybe he took the rack with him on the bike. Maybe he ditched it. Maybe he just fucked up.”

  I couldn’t imagine Tim carrying a bike rack on a bike. “It would take him quite awhile to bike to town. It takes me an hour, and I’m on a road bike. I think Lucy bought Tim a mountain bike. That would be a lot slower.”

  “You bike to town?”

  “Well, I haven’t this year because I’ve had this sciatica bugging me, but, yeah, normally lots of times to work in the summer.” I hoped he wasn’t going to make any more condescendingly appreciative remarks about my activeness.

  “Did you ever bike to Lucy’s?”

  I looked at him but I was seeing Lucy in her garden as I wheeled my bike around to the back of her house. “Yes, actually. At least once. Why?”

  “Was Brennan there?” He seemed excited.

  “He came in later.” I spoke slowly, remembering how the three of us had eaten together and how Lucy had told Tim I’d biked all the way from Chelsea. “You think I gave him the idea?”

  Quinn shrugged. “Could be.”

  I tried to imagine Tim parking the car and taking a bike off the back. It seemed unlikely. “Maybe he had someone else drive with him in another car.”

  “Still stuck on the accomplice theory, huh?”

  “I’m not stuck on any—”

  “Hey,” His voice was soft. “Ease up, girl. It’s all theory at this point. But we’ve pretty well tracked his movements through that whole Saturday. His movements don’t match his witness statement.”

  “How did you track his movements? You mean talking to his friends?” I thought about Marnie. If she were involved, wouldn’t she protect him? She’d have to, in order to protect herself.

  “That and a lot more. You’d be surprised.” He ticked items off on the fingers of one hand. “Surveillance cameras at corner stores, bank machine statements that record the time of transaction, pay-per-view movie records. His alibi doesn’t hold up.”

  “Is it enough to prove him guilty?”

  “Not on its own. We need the body. Fortunately Brennan needs the body too.”

  “What d’you mean, he needs the body? Why?”

  “In order to get control of Lucy’s estate. You knew he was the sole beneficiary of her estate?”

  “Oh God, no, I didn’t.” The sole beneficiary. “There’s a compelling motive for….”

  Quinn was nodding. “Damn right it is. Everything is his. The house alone is worth a quarter million. But in order to get it all, he has to produce a body. To prove Lucy’s dead. Otherwise he has to wait something like seven years. And I can guarantee you, Stupid isn’t going to wait that long. He’s already gone through over twenty thousand dollars of Lucy’s money. And since she went missing he’s been pawning off her office equipment.” He grinned. “He brings her fax machine and computer in the front door of a pawn shop and we’re at the back door ready to take it.”

  “Twenty thousand dollars? I don’t understand. How did he—”

  “Twenty-two thousand, actually. He was defrauding her this whole last year. No doubt he was planning it from the moment she made contact in prison.”

  I closed my eyes. For an instant I could feel Lucy’s panic. What had her friend Kevin said? She prided herself on being financially secure. No wonder she’d been so negative last fall. God, it must have been a nightmare.

  “How come she didn’t go to the police?”

  He shrugged. “He said he was going to pay it back. He’d met a guy in prison, Bill Torrence, who got out before him. Or after. I can’t remember. They were going to go into business together. Cattle transport or something. That never happened. But then, suddenly, Torrence is going to giv
e him a big fat loan. Going to wire the money. It was a big fat lie.”

  I’m on the phone with my bank manager and it’s taken me ages to get through.

  “She was waiting for the money,” I said. Right to the end.

  Quinn nodded.

  “But I don’t understand. How’s Tim going to produce her body?”

  “Ellen, Ellen, you disappoint me. You know how diligently he’s been searching.”

  I shook my head, but he didn’t seem to notice. “One of these days, he’s just going to ‘happen’ across it.” He made quotation marks in the air. “And then….” He mimed the motion of hanging himself with a rope.

  Hanging, strangling…. An involuntary shiver crackled the back of my neck. Lucy was so small. I know how easily she can be hurt when we play-wrestle on the living room floor.

  I turned to Quinn. “When I talked to Lucy the week before she went missing, she sounded terrible. She didn’t explain why, but obviously—from what you say—she was upset about the money. But it sounded like something beyond—mental stress. Do you know, or have you guys any theories about what was going on that week? Do you know if Tim was….”

  Quinn was looking at me.

  I tried again. “Detective Godbout asked me if I knew if Lucy was being abused. I just said no automatically. I mean, I had never seen any evidence myself. But I hadn’t seen her.”

  Quinn’s face was inscrutable in the shadows. But he was nodding. “Lundy and Roach have been talking to some of Lucy’s friends. It appears she was being abused, that she was trying to get out.”

  I closed my eyes. It would explain a lot. Lucy’s becoming more and more negative after Tim moved in. The way she had sounded that day. You may not need me, but I need you. I wanted to cry.

  “We are not,” said Quinn again, “having this conversation.”

  I swallowed and made my voice casual. “What conversation?”

  “Okay,” he said. “Now.” His tone had changed completely. “If I promise not to ask impertinent questions about your psychic abilities, will you come up for a coffee before you go home?”

  The idea made my heart pound. “No. Thanks. I really should get home. The dogs—”

  “Those damn’ dogs.” The words were spoken in a low voice. It was a teasing voice. A tantalizing voice. A menacing voice. I had a sudden image of his hands on Belle and Beau. Violent hands. Getting the dogs out of the way. So he could get to me. Where was this coming from?

  I squeezed my eyes shut to block the images. Opened them again and gripped the door handle. “I have to go.” My voice was near panic.

  Quinn put a restraining hand on my arm. “Ellen, Ellen. What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” I was breathing hard. “I can’t explain.”

  He let me get out of the car, got out his own side and came around to me. I was afraid he was going to embrace me. There was a rigid band of steel around me. He couldn’t fail to notice. But if he did, he made no sign. He faced me, his expression full of concern. His concern confused me. It made me want to take down the barrier. I wanted to trust him. I needed to go home.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He put two fingers against my lips. Pressed them gently.

  I couldn’t move. His fingers held me as still as if he’d taken my head in a vice grip.

  He took them away. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have told you all that about Tim while you were alone with me here. Nor about Lucy. I know it’s disturbing. And you don’t know me.” He gave a rueful smile. “As much as I’d like you to. I should have been more sensitive. Call me when you get home. So I know you got there safe. Are you okay to drive?”

  I nodded. I avoided his eyes. He put the car keys in my hand. I walked around to the driver’s side, got in, started the engine. Pulled away from the curb. I think I remembered to wave.

  Heading up the highway into the hills, I shook off the night-time traffic. But I couldn’t shake off my thoughts. My brain turned around and around the theory Quinn had given me, trying to fit it with my own. It was an awkward fit at best. The cops’ theory was so much more logical than the fragments I was piecing together from Lucy’s suspect messages. So much less complicated. Also more disturbing. More violent. More calculated. Had Tim planned this all along? Had he been conning Lucy since the very beginning? The story in my visions made it an accident. Was that just because I wanted it to be an accident? Lucy’s story—my story—was a much gentler, more forgiving version. Who was I kidding?

  There’s violence out there. Evil. Face it. That’s what Quinn was doing. Trying to get me to face it. Those visions of him with my dogs were just my paranoia. It was the situation that was violent; his work was surrounded by violence. But he wasn’t violent. If I could just keep that straight.

  I arrived in my own driveway with the heat still blasting out of the vents. I was still shivering. I took the steps to the lighted deck two at a time. Just short of the top, I felt a sharp twinge in my leg. Damn. I stopped to pick the house key out of the ring. I approached the door, rubbing my leg.

  That’s when I heard it. The faint droning of an outboard motor on the river.

  I limped around to the front of the deck and looked out in the direction of the water. The night was so black there was no distinguishing trees from open water. The air was cold but still. The sound carried clearly. It grew louder until it seemed to be out in the middle of the river, straight out from the bay. But there was no light.

  And, suddenly, no sound either. As if the motor had been killed.

  I stood on the deck, straining my eyes and ears. Hugging myself to stop the shivering. Had I imagined the sound?

  I forced myself to stand there in the chill of the night. Listening. But the silence continued. And in the dark, the images began to crowd my brain: Tim and his hands on Lucy, Quinn and his hands on me, a boat drifting on the water at night, doing God knew what. I ran for the safety of my lighted kitchen and my golden-furred dogs.

  The ringing of the phone woke me up. I picked up the receiver with a groggy hello and some trepidation. There was no call display on the bedroom phone.

  “I’m on my way over with the weekend papers and steaming cappuccinos,” said a familiar British voice. “Don’t even think about going anywhere today.”

  “Coffee and the crossword sound just about like heaven today.”

  I dressed and walked the dogs up the hill to meet the car. In the bright sunshine, the motorboat incident, Steve Quinn’s confusing energy, and my dreams seemed distant and unreal. What remained was a strong desire to see Quinn again. Which I was going to block out in about five minutes. I didn’t want Mary Frances picking up any vibes. Vibes I shouldn’t even have been having. Nor did I want us to go anywhere near the conversations Quinn and I weren’t supposed to have been having in my car last night. I would tell her I didn’t want to talk about Lucy. She wouldn’t pry. The sight of the silver Cressida turning down the hill brought relief. A day off from fear and imaginings.

  On Monday I went back to work and found I could concentrate. Life could go on.

  *

  THE GRABBA JAVA WAS HUMMING with the chatter of patrons and clatter of dishes. Most mornings she loved it. She could tune it out while she wrote in her journal. But today her veins were humming with the caffeine of her second extra-large latte—the one she should never have consumed. She had come here, as she did every morning, to feed two habits—coffee and journal-writing. Today she had also come to escape the house. Not the emptiness, but the noise. The new tenant upstairs was, it turned out, very heavy-footed.

  Be careful what you ask for, she wrote. With Curtis, and then the tenant, moving out, the silence had screamed at her. She had wanted signs of a heartbeat in the house again. She hadn’t bargained on a foot-beat. And a world-weary foot-beat at that. How had she mis
sed it during the interview—the darkness surrounding Denise? But now it was obvious. The unattractiveness of her face wasn’t just the disfavour of Nature; it was her own dark spirit. It emanated now through the floorboards. How was she going to survive a year of that overhead? The Landlord-Tenant’s Act didn’t list “dark spirit” as grounds for eviction.

  The Grabba Java was as wired as she was. She wasn’t going to last much longer.

  She was impatient with herself. Why could she never be satisfied with where she was? Was this a metaphor for her life? It always seemed to be just up ahead of her—just beyond reach—the life she envisioned. Why did she always find herself waiting? Waiting for Curtis to come back. Waiting for Curtis to go. Waiting for Tim to call. Waiting for Tim to get out of prison. Waiting for someone to come and participate in her life.

  Why couldn’t she just accept what was, this minute, right now? Sitting in this café, enjoying the coffee, hating the noise. She couldn’t bring Curtis back. She couldn’t get Tim out of prison. But she could leave the café.

  So much for acceptance. She stuffed her journal in her purse and headed for home.

  10.

  THE NEXT DAY, THE NINTH of May, the chiropractor’s office called to remind me of my four o’clock appointment. I had forgotten. That was a good sign. It meant I was walking without pain. I could probably start running and biking again.

  “There’s no reason you can’t,” said the chiropractor after she’d treated me. “Just don’t go out and try to do a ten-k run tomorrow.”

  There was no risk of that.

  I took River Road home. It had been two weeks since I’d been down this way. My stomach muscles knotted on my approach to the construction zone. The embankment was almost finished. There was no yellow Sidekick parked by the side of the road.

  I pulled off the road and parked my car where the Sidekick had been. I got out and locked the doors. I took my wallet and keys with me. Lucy had apparently taken her keys but not her wallet. Was that likely? I’d asked Tim if he had a second set of keys. What if the ones he had brought had been the only set? What if Lucy had been in no position to take anything with her. What if Lucy herself had never been here?