“Goodbye, Ms. Tierney.”
My mind was clicking as I drove into Toronto. Ella must have found the rental contract, the key and the keycard in her son’s home. And she would have seen the notices of the missed payments. Surely she would have wanted to see what was in the locker.
I left the Don Valley Parkway at the Eglinton Avenue turnoff. Ten minutes later, I was parked on a residential street behind my favorite bistro. It was just after five, and there were still tables available at Milo’s. I claimed my usual spot at the bay window and sat down to wait for my daughter.
When Tracy arrived, a few heads turned to look at her. A pretty girl, she looked especially attractive in her pale yellow suit, with her wavy brown hair held back from her face with combs.
She gave me a big hug. “Jamie sends her love. She’s working late tonight.”
She sat down across from me and slipped off her jacket. “How’s Laura?”
“I was the last to know.”
“Parents usually are. It goes with the territory.” She took my hand in hers. “I’m sure your parents were the last to know some of the things you got up to.”
I gave her a wobbly smile. “She’s decided not to go to Guelph this fall. She and the baby will live with me, and she’ll go to the University of Toronto next year.”
“Kyle still pushing marriage?”
“Oh, yes. Along with his mother.”
“I hope Laura doesn’t cave in. The last thing she and Kyle should do is get married.”
“Laura has other options,” I said. “A place to live—”
“And someone to help raise her child. But what about you, Mom? You took Tommy in few months ago and now you’ll be raising a grandchild.”
“I intend to make Laura independent. She’ll get an education that will hopefully lead to a good job.”
“It’s still a lot for you to take on.”
Tell me about it, I wanted to say.
The waitress handed us menus, and I ordered a bottle of wine.
“Fill me in on the woman who was murdered in Braeloch,” Tracy said when we’d looked at the menus. Her eyes were twinkling. “Are you playing detective again?”
“Vi Stohl was Bruce’s mother. No one knows why she was murdered, or why her body was put in a storage locker.” I told Tracy that Frank Prentice from Bracebridge had rented the locker, and that he’d died in a highway accident weeks before Vi went missing.
The waitress returned with the bottle of wine. After she’d filled our glasses and taken our dinner orders, I clinked glasses with Tracy.
“Go on about Frank,” she said.
“His home has been up for sale for the past eight weeks,” I said. “His mother had it listed.”
“And you talked to her, right?”
“I visited her this afternoon. Ella Prentice lives in Newmarket, and she was at home when I came by.”
“Do you think she…?”
“I can’t imagine why. But she claims she didn’t know that Frank had a storage locker, which I find hard to believe. The woman who runs the storage business sent notices to his home when he missed his payments.”
“The police must have talked to Ella by now,” Tracy said.
“They have.” My mind sped back to something Ella had said. “Her mother-in-law lived in Braeloch.”
Tracy looked thoughtful. “There may be a connection between Ella and Vi. Ella’s mother-in-law probably knew Vi, and Ella may have met her.”
I shook my head. “Vi and her husband spent more than forty years in Toronto. They returned to Braeloch a few years ago, but Vi was suffering from dementia by then. Her husband placed her in Highland Ridge.”
“You told me that Bruce’s parents lived in Braeloch before they moved to Toronto,” Tracy said. “They may have known Ella’s in-laws back then. And Ella’s husband. Are Ella and her husband still together?”
“Ella’s a widow.”
A light went on in my head. Jamie grew up in Braeloch, and her mother still lived there. “Would Jamie’s mother—”
“Have known Ella’s husband and her mother-in-law? I’ll ask her. What were their names?”
“Ella called her mother-in-law Carrie so I assume she was Carrie Prentice. I don’t know her husband’s first name.”
Our meals arrived, and Tracy told me what she was up to at work. Earlier that month, she’d joined the law firm where she had spent her articling year. I was bursting with pride as she told me about the case she was working on.
Over dessert, our conversation returned to the murder in Braeloch. “Who would want to kill Vi?” Tracy asked. “A confused old lady.”
“Vi had a life before her illness,” I said.
“What do you know about her, Mom?”
I told her what Bruce had told me, including that she’d been let go from the bank.
“Someone at the bank might remember her,” Tracy said.
“It’s been several years since she worked there.”
“There may be people there who were her friends. Or who know who her friends were,” Tracy said.
We were grasping at straws. The truth was we knew very little about Vi.
Tracy took a taxi to the condo she shared with Jamie on The Esplanade. I drove over to my home in Moore Park. Everything was in order, except for the kitchen where unwashed dishes filled the sink and the floor needed scrubbing. Our absence had given our housekeeper an opportunity to slack off. I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and went out on the back deck.
Whoever had killed Vi knew that Frank had rented a locker at Glencoe Self-Storage. That person had been in Frank’s home, before or after his death, and had got hold of his key. His keycard had been deactivated long before Vi’s body was put in the locker so her killer had used someone else’s card.
I sighed in frustration. Other than Bruce, who had rented Glencoe’s storage lockers?
I sipped my water and went over everything Bruce had told me about Vi. She had been working at a bank in Braeloch when she met Ted. Later, when Bruce went off to boarding school, she took a job at a Bank of Toronto branch in Toronto. She held that job for twenty years. Then there was a problem, and she was let go.
Twenty years on the job. The bank would have a file on Vi’s work performance. I thought of Marnie MacRae, a senior executive at the Bank of Toronto who’d been my tennis partner a few years before. Could she access those files, or did she know someone in Human Resources who could? I quickly dismissed that idea. I wouldn’t help anyone who asked me to pull a file on a Norris Cassidy employee.
Tracy thought that someone at the bank might remember Vi. It was a long shot but I couldn’t come up with a better idea.
A glance at my watch told me it was five to eight. I didn’t like to leave Laura and Tommy alone at Black Bear Lake. Now if Kyle had been there…
I had to smile. A week earlier, I would have raced up north because Kyle was there with Laura. What a difference a week can make.
I went into the house and picked up the telephone in the kitchen. “How did it go today?” I asked when Laura answered.
“Kyle wasn’t happy when he left, but I told him I’d be back in Toronto in two weeks.”
His mournful face flashed through my mind. “I’m sure Kyle will be fine. How did you and Tommy spend the day?”
“Nothing too exciting. We went for a swim after lunch. We worked on the dog paddle today. He’s getting the hang of it.”
Tommy hadn’t spent much time around water, and he needed swimming lessons. I was pleased that Laura was teaching him the basics.
“Then I sat in the shade, and Tommy played on the shore,” she went on. “A woman paddled by in a canoe. Her name is Zoe. We talked for a while.”
“Someone your age?”
“Older than me, but way cool. Hey, where are you, Mom?”
“In Toronto. I have something to do here in the morning, so I’ll spend the night at the house.”
“Okay. We’ll see you tomorrow?”
&
nbsp; “Yes. Lock the doors, and make sure the ground-floor windows are closed.”
“Mom, we’ve got AC here. Remember? We keep the windows closed.”
“Don’t open the doors for anyone.”
CHAPTER TEN
I called Laura at eight the next morning. She and Tommy had survived the night at Black Bear Lake without me, but Tommy had developed a bad case of sunburn. Laura said his back and shoulders were red and painful.
“Why didn’t you tell me this last night?” I asked.
“He didn’t complain about it until this morning.”
“You didn’t make him wear sunscreen when you were down by the water?”
“I made sure he wore a hat,” she said. “The top of his head and most of his face are fine.”
“Is he running a fever?”
I drummed my fingers on the table while she went to check Tommy’s forehead. She should have known better than to let him play by the water without sunscreen.
“Doesn’t seem to have a fever,” she said.
“His forehead’s cool?” I asked.
“Yup.”
“Spread aloe vera gel over his sunburned skin. Gently. No swimming lessons today. Have him stay in the shade with a shirt and a hat on.”
“Anything else, boss?” There was an edge to her voice.
“He needs plenty of fluids. Orange juice, lemonade, water. I should be there around noon.”
I groaned as I put down the receiver knowing that I’d be running interference for years while my grandchild grew up.
My next call was to Bruce. I wasn’t sure whether he’d be at The Times that early in the morning, but he picked up on the first ring.
I told him that I was in Toronto, and that I planned to visit the bank where Vi had worked. “Have you told the police about her job there?” I asked.
“It never occurred to me that it was important. It was a long time ago.”
I wanted to remind him that Vi had been let go because of a problem at work, and that we needed to know what that problem was. But I thought that should be obvious to him. “Someone may remember her,” I said, “and that may lead to something.”
“Maybe.” He sounded doubtful.
“I might as well give it a try. Where is the branch located?”
“Corner of Queen and Paxton in the Beach. If it’s still there.”
At five past nine, I walked into the Bank of Toronto branch on the Beach’s bustling Queen Street strip. I gave the redhead at the information desk my business card and asked to speak to the manager.
Peter Demetriou was studying my card when the receptionist brought me into his office. “Pat Tierney,” he said when I was seated across from him. “We met at the Socially Responsible Investing Conference last year. We sat at the same table.”
I recognized the flashy dresser. “I remember.”
I told him I’d been out of town for several months running a new Norris Cassidy branch in cottage country. In the town of Braeloch, where a woman had recently been murdered. A woman who had worked at this branch six years ago.
Peter looked startled. “The woman who was found in that storage locker up north?”
“Yes.”
“She worked here?”
‘That’s right. Her name was Vi Stohl, and I’m helping her son look into her death. You can talk to him if you’d prefer.”
“Go on,” he said.
“We thought someone here might remember her. She was a teller here for twenty years.”
“What exactly do you want to know?”
“The kind of person she was, her interests, that sort of thing. Vi suffered from dementia in recent years, and I haven’t been able to locate any of her friends in Toronto. She and her husband moved up north a few years ago, and she was living in a nursing home. She didn’t have a chance to make friends in Braeloch.”
He looked thoughtful for several moments. “I’ve only been here for two years, but Irene Hounsell may be able to help you.”
He picked up his telephone receiver. “Have Irene come to my office.”
A few moments later, a woman appeared in the doorway. She was in her fifties, her gray hair fluffed out around her head like a dandelion gone to seed.
“Come in, Irene,” Peter said.
When she was seated, he introduced us and asked if she remembered Vi Stohl.
A cloud passed over her face. “I heard what happened to Vi. Terrible.” She turned to me. “Are you with the police?”
“No, but I’m asking a few questions on behalf of her son. I’m trying to get a sense of who Vi was. Peter said you worked with her.”
“We were both tellers here. I transferred to this branch a few years before Vi left.”
“What was she like?” I asked.
“Quiet and reserved,” Irene said. “Our clients liked her. She was a good listener, and she did her best to help people.”
“Excellent skills to have,” Peter put in. “This is a people-centered business.”
“She was well liked by the staff?” I asked.
“Very much. Vi brought in homemade cookies and squares. Offered to stay late if she had to.” Irene’s face fell. “I can’t imagine who would want to hurt her.”
We were silent for a few moments as we thought about that.
“What were her interests?” I asked.
Irene smiled. “Vi was a homebody. Her husband, her son, her home and her garden were her main interests.”
“I understand that there was a problem here,” I said.
Peter sat up straight in his chair and searched my face.
Irene took a deep breath. “Vi had started forgetting things. I was able to cover for her a few times, but there are lots of details to a teller’s job. Not to mention the continual learning curve. New products, new computer systems…”
Peter was looking worried. I figured that he was concerned about employee confidentially—even though the person in question hadn’t been a bank employee for years and was no longer alive.
“Vi Stohl was murdered,” I said to him. “There may be a connection between what happened here and her murder.”
“I need to talk to head office,” he said.
“Money went missing,” Irene went on. “I’m not sure how much it was, but I heard it was a considerable amount. Vi was let go. We all assumed it was because of the missing money.”
Peter held up a hand. “We can’t go any further with this. Irene, please return to your workstation.”
“Did you keep in touch with Vi after she left?” I asked her.
Peter spoke first. “Irene.” He inclined his head toward the door.
She got up from the chair and left the office. Peter followed her to the door, and held it open for me.
I considered returning when the bank closed for the day and approaching Irene as she left the building. I wanted to know the names of everyone who was at the branch when Vi worked there.
But what would I do with those names, I asked myself when I was out on Queen Street. The police needed to know about the missing money and that Vi may have been let go because of it. They could make the bank release the employees’ names.
But first I had to check on Tommy and get back to work. I had a meeting with two clients that afternoon.
I called Laura as I walked down Queen Street. She told me that Tommy’s face was flushed and his forehead felt warm.
I didn’t like the sound of that. I told her I was on my way.
I hit the pharmacy a block over from the bank. Then I got into the Volvo and didn’t stop driving till I reached Black Bear Lake.
I found Laura chatting with a tanned brunette on the deck. I smiled at our visitor and turned to Laura. “Tommy?”
“He’s on the sofa,” she said. “I was about to make his lunch.”
The brunette unfurled her long legs and stood up. I remembered seeing her at Highland Ridge. Bruce had held the door open for her as we left the building.
“I’m Zoe Johnston.” She
held out her hand. “Laura told me you worked at the Norris Cassidy branch in town so I knew right away who you were. Nate’s my husband.”
I shook her hand. “Nate said you’re spending the summer on this lake. Where’s your cottage?”
“Over there.” She turned to face the lake and pointed to the right. “It’s set back from the water so you can’t see it from here.”
“You’ll have to excuse me,” I said. “I need to check on my son. He got too much sun yesterday. We’ll talk more at the party tomorrow night.”
Tommy was indeed running a fever. I consulted the instructions that came with the medicine I’d bought. “It’s cherry-flavored,” I told him. I gave him a spoonful of syrup, and he washed it down with water.
I had chicken noodle soup warming on the stove when I heard Laura call out. I went over to the sliding doors and saw Zoe waving from a yellow canoe.
Tommy managed to eat half a bowl of soup and drink some lemonade. I settled him back on the sofa and returned to the table.
I put the thermometer and the bottle of syrup in front of Laura. “Take Tommy’s temperature in an hour.” I showed her how to do it. “You can’t expect him to remember to put on sunscreen. He’s eight years old.”
She looked repentant, so I asked, “Did you have plans for the day?”
“Zoe wanted to take me out in her canoe.”
“Another day.”
Soupy was seated at Ivy’s desk, talking to a woman with wavy silver hair. “Pat,” he said when he saw me, “I sent Ivy off for lunch. Would you mind her desk while I…” He inclined his head in the direction of his office.
I was no longer the branch manager, but I wasn’t the receptionist. I turned to the woman. “I’m Pat Tierney. You’re…?”
“Tess Watson,” she said. “I stopped by two days ago, and I’m back with my investment portfolio.”
Tess was the vendor of the property Bruce had bought. “You met with Nate Johnston, our branch manager.” I caught the look on Soupy’s face and it wasn’t pleasant. “Nate has a lunch appointment, but he’ll be back at two. Would you come back them?”
Raven Lake Page 8
