“Water, please,” Yvonne said. “Bottled. You can’t be too careful about water out in the country.”
I got bottles of water for the Shinglers and took a seat on the sofa in front of the fireplace.
“We’re going to be grandparents, Pat,” Yvonne said, sitting down beside me. “We need to get the kids settled. In a nice condominium, Russell and I thought.”
She looked at her husband, who held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
“And we need to nail down the wedding plans,” she went on. “A small, tasteful wedding. Around fifty people. A short ceremony followed by a luncheon.”
I gave them a smile. “This is the first I’ve heard about a wedding.”
“We’ve been talking about getting married for weeks,” Kyle said.
“I understand that you’ve been talking about getting married,” I said.
Yvonne put a hand on mine. “I know they’re young, Pat, but young people can make a go of it. I was just twenty when I married Russell.”
From what I’d gathered from Laura, Yvonne had never earned a penny in her life although her clubs and charitable causes kept her constantly on the go. But I hadn’t brought my girls up in that lifestyle. I wanted them to have careers and be able to pull their own weight.
I heard a car door slam outside. The front door opened, and Laura, Bruce, Tommy and Maxie trooped into the house.
“Laura,” Yvonne cried. “How are you feeling, my dear? Morning sickness over?”
“Hi, Mrs. Shingler. Mr. Shingler.” Laura introduced them to Tommy and Bruce.
Tommy came over to me and I put an arm around him. “Heard you went fishing,” I whispered.
His brown eyes sparkled. “Kyle put a worm on my hook, but a fish took it off.”
“Your mother and I have been talking about the wedding,” Yvonne said to Laura.
Laura looked gobsmacked. “Mom?”
I held up a hand. “Laura has something to say to you, Yvonne.”
Bruce headed for the door. “I’ll be outside.”
“Young lady, you’re going to be a mother in, what, six months?” Yvonne’s voice had climbed an octave. “Of course, you’re going to get married. And you couldn’t do better than Kyle. He’s a kind, generous boy who will take good care of you. One day, he’ll run his father’s company.”
“Kyle’s cool,” Laura said, “but I don’t want to get married yet…to anyone. Not till I finish school and have a good job. And I don’t want to be taken care of.”
“You and Kyle need to be settled before the baby comes,” Yvonne went on as if Laura hadn’t spoken. “Russell and I have been looking at condominiums in Guelph, and we found one you’d like. It’s close to the university so Kyle won’t have to spend a lot of time commuting.”
“Mrs. Shingler.” Laura’s voice was strong and decisive. “I’ll be living with my mother in Toronto for a few years. I’ll take this year off and start university next fall.”
“So, you see, everything’s settled,” I said.
Yvonne stared at us, her mouth open. “Everything is not settled. In fact—”
“So what can I pack, Mom?” Laura asked.
“You’ll have to excuse us,” I said to Yvonne and Russell. “We’re moving. We’re taking clothes and books over to our new place right now.”
Yvonne was still fuming, but she recovered her composure as she stood up. “I’ll call you in a few days, Pat. When you’ve had time to think about what Russell and I have said.” With that, she turned on her heel.
Russell and Kyle followed her out of the house.
Laura rolled her eyes. “‘What Russell and I have said!’ Russell doesn’t say a word when she’s around. Neither does Kyle.”
We went to the front window. Russell was seated in the Ferrari. On the driveway, Yvonne was saying something to her son. Kyle was listening in silence, his head bowed.
“I told you,” Laura said.
We piled suitcases and boxes into Bruce’s Chevy and my Volvo. Kyle rode with Bruce, and Tommy sat with Laura in the back of the Volvo.
“Pretty small place,” Laura said when I pulled up in front of the gray clapboard cottage that I’d rented from Maria and Ross Dawson.
Tommy raced through it, inspecting every nook and cranny. I followed him upstairs. “This room’s mine,” he said, standing in the doorway of the smallest bedroom. I peeked in and saw a large, framed Star Wars poster on the wall.
I ruffled his hair. “Good choice, Tommy.”
The cottage didn’t impress Laura. “Pokey,” she said. “And I assume there’s no Internet here.”
“There’s no Internet,” I replied, “but there are three bedrooms and a great screened porch. We’ll spend most of our time out there.”
There were also plenty of screened windows to let in the breeze from the lake. And I didn’t see any signs of mice.
I hung up my clothes in the bedroom that faced the lake. It had twin beds so Tommy could bunk in with me when we had a guest. From the window, I spotted a shed near the waterfront that I hadn’t looked into on my previous visit. Laura and Tommy followed me out to it.
The shed door was locked, but one of the keys on the chain Maria had given me opened it. Inside, a red kayak on foam blocks took up most of the space.
“A kayak,” Kyle said.
“Paddle’s on the wall.” Laura pointed to a wooden paddle resting on two metal brackets.
I made a mental note to ask the Dawsons if we could use their kayak.
“Can I go fishing in it?” Tommy asked.
“We’ll need a two-person boat for fishing,” I said. “We can rent a rowboat.”
As we walked back to the house, I saw houses through the trees on both sides of the property. I wondered where on the lake Nate and his wife were staying.
At dinner that evening. Laura was still keeping her distance from Kyle and they ate in silence. She seemed to have forgotten her intention of spending the day with Bruce.
Fortunately, the cabin he’d made an offer on was at the top of Bruce’s mind. “I’ll move in as soon as the sale goes through,” he said.
Tommy couldn’t wait to move across the lake. “D’you think there’s fish over there?” he asked.
“It’s the same lake that we’re on here,” I said. “Same fish, I expect.”
After we’d finished eating, Bruce and Kyle took Tommy for a ride in the motorboat.
“Yvonne won’t rest till Kyle and I are married,” Laura said as we stacked the dishwasher. “She has to have everything her way.”
Another good reason not to marry Kyle, I felt like telling her.
“I never realized till today that she’s the one who’s been pushing marriage,” Laura said.
“She’s afraid she won’t be part of her grandchild’s life. You need to tell her that won’t be the case.”
Ten minutes later, the kitchen was in order and Laura retired to her room. Bruce opened the sliding doors and came into the house. “Thought I’d give Amy a call. She can’t reach me on my cell out here.”
I pointed to the phone beside the sofa and left him to make his call.
“I’m a property owner,” he said when I returned with two mugs of tea. “Or I will be if the bank approves my mortgage.”
I handed him a mug and sat down beside him. “Congratulations. Don’t forget to arrange for a property inspection.”
“Amy is setting one up.” The anxiety lines had returned to his face. “It’s been quite the day. I said goodbye to Mom and bought myself a home. Six months ago, who would have thought I’d be a newspaperman and a homeowner?”
He gave a hollow chuckle. “And a suspect in a murder investigation. My life’s been full of ups and downs. Learning about my parents was definitely a turning point.”
I looked at him closely. He’d never spoken to me about his real parents.
“By some miracle,” he said, “I bumped into Soupy the night I found out about my other family, and we spent hours talking. A
ctually I did the talking and he listened. No opinions, no advice, just a solid presence.”
Soupy had been a good friend when Bruce needed him.
“I didn’t sleep much that night, and when I did I had weird dreams,” Bruce went on. “The next morning, I resolved to get myself together. Soupy had told me about Dr. Reynolds, a relative of his with a practice in Huntsville. I made an appointment with him, and Soupy’s dad let me use his spare car. I started seeing Reynolds once a week, and he gave me a letter asking my family doctor to get me on Prozac. Well, I didn’t have a family doc, but I took it to Mom’s doctor and he gave me a prescription.”
He paused. “Hope you don’t mind me unloading on you like this.”
Bruce was usually a man of few words. He’d said more in the past few minutes than I’d ever heard him say at one time. “Go on,” I told him.
He looked down at his hands and spread his fingers. “I’d been depressed for years, suicidal on a few occasions, but Reynolds said I’m not manic or psychotic.” He looked up at me with a sad smile.
Suicidal? My head was spinning.
“Ted’s death freed me to become myself,” he continued. “I wanted his love, I couldn’t understand why he was cold to me. It finally made sense when I found out I wasn’t his real son. He must’ve thought I was a poor replacement for the boy who’d died.”
He gave another hollow laugh. “I’ve survived both my families, and I’ve managed to turn my life around.”
But he didn’t look at all happy. He had also survived Vi, who he’d loved. I thought of the log cabin above Raven Lake, and how happy he had looked there. The sooner he made it his home, the better.
CHAPTER NINE
The next morning, I decided to find out how long Kyle would be with us. “Laura told me you have a summer job,” I said. “When does it start?”
“Next Tuesday.”
That sounded like he’d be with us for the next six days.
“I’m working at Dad’s company,” he said. “I could ask for the whole week off.”
“Kyle, remember what we talked about? Laura is overwhelmed by what’s ahead of her.”
“I’ll help her get through it.”
“Let her have some time to chill. She’ll be back in Toronto in two weeks. You’ll see plenty of each other this summer.”
He looked at me mournfully. “Does that mean you’re asking me to leave?”
“I’d like you to give Laura some space. She needs a breather before she starts her job.”
He lowered his eyes. “When do you want me to go?”
“Today would be best. Talk to Laura when she comes down for breakfast. Keep it upbeat, and she’ll have happy thoughts of you when you’re in the city.”
I smiled as I headed out to the Volvo. I never thought I’d be counselling couples.
I spent an hour with Nate. Then I went into my office, closed the door and sat down at the huge mahogany desk that took up almost the entire room. I starting dialing the numbers I’d found on Canada 411. As Noreen had said, the late Frank Prentice’s phone had been disconnected. I reached voice mail at two of the numbers, but I didn’t leave messages. A third was answered by a young man who said he thought Frank was “a cousin or something,” but that I should talk to his mother when she got home. Alicia Prentice said she was a distant cousin of Frank’s. I asked her how I could reach Frank’s mother.
“Last I heard, Ella lived in Barrie,” she said, naming a city north of Toronto.
“Do you have her phone number?”
“I haven’t seen her in years. She never took to our side of the family.”
“You don’t have her phone number?” I persisted. “Or an address?”
“Afraid not.”
“Would she be listed in the phone directory? Or would the listing be under her husband’s name?”
“Ella’s a widow or she was the last I heard of her. She might be listed as Eleanora Prentice. Ella is short for Eleanora.”
I scribbled Eleanora in the notepad on my desk, then tried another question. “Did you see much of Frank? He lived in Bracebridge.”
“I saw him around town from time to time, and we said hello. But as I said, we’re distant cousins—our fathers were first cousins—and we didn’t see much of each other when we were growing up. I only found out he’d died when The Examiner ran an article about his motorcycle accident.”
I’d learned two things from Alicia: where Ella lived, and how Frank had died.
I called up Canada 411, and searched for listings of Ella, Eleanora or E Prentice in Barrie. Nothing came up for any of those combinations.
A search for Frank Prentice on The Bracebridge Examiner’s website brought up an article dated April 20. Eight weeks earlier, around the time Frank’s house went up for sale.
A color photo of a tanned, smiling man astride a massive motorcycle accompanied the article. He was squinting against the glare of the sun.
Two weeks before the article ran, Francisco Prentice had taken his Harley-Davidson Road King for a weekend spin through Ontario lake country. He was on his way back to Bracebridge on a Sunday afternoon when he skidded on a patch of oil on the highway south of Algonquin Park. He lost control of the machine and was thrown over the handlebars. He died before an ambulance could get to him.
I skimmed the paragraphs about Frank’s volunteer work with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada and Habitat for Humanity, but read the tributes from his friends more carefully. One of them said Frank “loved the Toronto Blue Jays, the Boston Bruins, good food, and the stray cats that found their way into his life.” He sounded like a nice guy.
The last paragraph said he was survived by his mother, Ella Prentice, of Newmarket, Ontario. Newmarket, another city north of Toronto. Not Barrie.
Canada 411 gave me Ella Prentice’s address in Newmarket. It provided a map of her neighborhood and a link to driving directions. I made printouts of both.
I spent the rest of the morning with Nate. Laura called around noon, saying that Kyle had left for the city. “Thank you, God!” she added.
Ivy was up to her elbows at the photocopy machine in the kitchen, so I scribbled a note, and propped it against her computer screen. I left the building by the back door.
Ella had been a beauty in her prime, and she was still an attractive woman in her early sixties. The tiny Filipina’s colored and coiffed hair, her buffed skin and her toned body told me she did her share to keep the beauty industry running.
She sized me up with shrewd eyes as I rattled off the reason for my visit at her front door. “The real estate agent said you wanted to speak to me,” she said.
But she hadn’t bothered to contact me.
“You knew the woman they found in Frank’s locker?” she asked.
“No, I didn’t, but her son is a friend of mine. I’m trying to help him.”
She pursed her lips and held the door open. “Come in.”
I follower her Spandex-clad figure to a room at the back of her bungalow where an exercise bike and a treadmill looked out on a lush garden. We went through a set of sliding doors onto a shady deck. She took a chair at a round table and pointed to another.
“I’m sorry about your son’s passing,” I said when I was seated.
A flash of pain crossed her face. “How can you be sorry? You didn’t know Frank.”
“You’re right, I didn’t know him. But I’m sorry for your loss.”
She gave me a curt nod, took two glasses off a trolley and filled them from the jug on the table. “Iced tea. No sugar.”
“Thank you.” I took a sip from the glass. The tea was strong and tart with plenty of lemon. I gulped down half the contents of the glass.
Ella sipped her tea, clearly waiting to hear more from me.
“Vi Stohl lived in a nursing home in Braeloch. She suffered from dementia,” I said. “It’s a mystery why she was strangled, and why her body was put in a locker outside of town.”
“Well, Frank didn’t put her there
. That’s what I told the police.”
“No, he didn’t. He died in April, and Vi was killed last week. Did you check out his locker?”
“I haven’t been to Braeloch in years. And I didn’t know Frank had a storage locker up there until the police told me last week.”
“Frank lived in Bracebridge. Why did he rent a locker that was miles away from his home, in another township?”
She waved a hand impatiently. “He told me he’d been given some furniture that belonged to Carrie, my husband’s mother, after she died. Carrie lived in Braeloch. That must’ve been why he stored it there.”
Noreen had mailed reminders to Frank when he’d missed his payments, and a final notice about the auction. Ella must have seen them.
“You didn’t find a rental contract for the locker in his house?”
“I went through all Frank’s stuff. I’m his executor.” Her voice was frosty. “There was nothing about a locker.”
“Glencoe Self-Storage mailed reminders to Frank when he missed two payments. And a notice that the locker’s contents would be auctioned on June 21. You didn’t come across them?”
“I just told you, no.” She rose from her chair. “You’d better leave now. My personal trainer will be here any minute.”
On the way to the front door, I tried one more question. “Did Frank have a girlfriend?” The article in The Examiner hadn’t mentioned a wife.
“Frank always had some babe on his arm, but would he settle down? Give me grandchildren? No!” She didn’t look happy about that.
“Did any of his friends have keys to his house?”
“Ms. Tierney, the only people who have been in Frank’s house in the past two months are real estate agents. And the people they’ve showed it to.”
“Anyone go through it before you put it up for sale?”
She opened her mouth to say something, then looked down at her polished fingernails. “I had a woman in to clean before it went on the market, but I’d removed anything important by then.”
“I don’t know why you didn’t receive the notice about the auction.”
Raven Lake Page 7
