Raven Lake

by Rosemary McCracken

  “I have errands to run,” Tess said. “I’ll be back to see him at two.”

  As soon as she’d left, Soupy got up from his chair.

  “Sit down,” I said.

  He did as he was told, but with ill grace.

  I locked the door and hung the Closed sign in the window. I sat on Ivy’s desk, and we stared each other down for what seemed like minutes.

  I was the first to break the silence. “You were trying to poach Nate’s client.”

  “Tess isn’t Nate’s client. She talked to him the other day because he was the only advisor here at the time. But he didn’t sign her up.”

  I threw him an exasperated look. “How many times do I have to tell you that we are a team? You’ll handle some of the business Nate brings in. And vice versa. What don’t you get about that?”

  He smirked.

  I struggled to control myself. “You’re in this for the long term, Soupy. You’re building a business, not grabbing quick sales. To do that you need a strong team of people you trust, and who trust you. You make a move on Tess behind Nate’s back, and you’ll alienate him. Don’t forget that he’s the manager. Any new clients you sign up go through Nate and he sends that information to headquarters.”

  I thought of Soupy’s new Porsche, his Rolex watch, and his spiffy suits. His wedding was coming up with all the expenses an occasion like that entailed. He was probably carrying hefty credit-card debt.

  “Money problems?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I’m waiting for those juicy commissions and fees to roll in.”

  Norris Cassidy paid him a small salary, and it was up to him to supplement it with commissions for selling investment products. It probably didn’t generate enough income to support the lifestyle he wanted.

  “You left a good job to come here. You knew this was a start-up operation.”

  “My girl lives here and so does my family. This is my turf.”

  “Soupy, the more clients this branch attracts, the better you’ll do.”

  His green eyes flashed. “I’d do just fine if Nate Johnston wasn’t standing in my way.” With that, he got to his feet and went into his office.

  Ivy came in then. “Chuck and Gracie Gibson will be here to see me in a few minutes,” I told her.

  In my office, I brooded over how I could turn the Soupy situation around. Tess would meet with Nate at two, so one disaster had been averted. But there was nothing I could do about Soupy’s feelings of entitlement or his spending habits. When I left the branch, its two advisors would be yoked together for better or for worse. Probably for worse.

  But it wasn’t my problem, I told myself. I was out of there in another week.

  I was booting up my computer when my telephone rang. “Mr. and Mrs. Gibson are here, Pat,” Ivy said.

  The Gibsons had retired to their vacation home on Raven Lake ten years earlier, but the last time I saw them they were talking about moving back to Toronto. “Growing old is the pits,” Gracie had said. “I’m afraid of falling on the uneven ground. And we need to be closer to our doctors.”

  Ivy brought them into my office. Chuck helped Gracie into a chair in front of my desk and he took the chair beside her.

  I smiled at them. “Have you reached a decision on your home?”

  “Gracie wants one last summer at the lake,” Chuck said.” We’ll put the property on the market next spring.”

  Gracie sighed. “We have another problem.”

  “Someone’s advertised our place on a vacation rental website,” Chuck said. “On Sunday, a woman from Cleveland showed up with her kids. She thought she’d rented our house for a week. Wired money to some guy who’d posted the ad on Cottage Getaways.”

  “They were so disappointed after coming all the way up here,” Gracie said. “I felt sorry for them, but what could we do? We pointed them to the tourist office. Hope they found something.”

  “But another family drove up yesterday,” Chuck said. “They weren’t as understanding.”

  “The husband certainly wasn’t,” Gracie said. “He was waving his arms, said he’d punch out Chuck. He threatened to call the police and sue us. I called his bluff. I held out my cell phone and said, ‘Go ahead.’ He backed off, and they left in a huff.”

  She glanced at Chuck. “I hope they don’t come back.”

  “We looked up the listing on our computer.” Chuck took a printout from a plastic case he was carrying. “It has photos of the exterior and the interior of our house.”

  The Gibsons had Internet access on Raven Lake, while Black Bear Lake was still in the dark ages, I thought as I looked at the printouts of their fieldstone fireplace, their country kitchen, and the view of the lake from their porch.

  “Did you take these photos?” I asked. “Post them on a website or on Facebook?”

  “No,” Gracie said. “We don’t have a camera, we don’t have a website and we’re not on Facebook. Whoever took them came into our home when we weren’t there.”

  “We want this to stop,” Chuck said.

  “You told the police?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Gracie said. “And a lot of good that did. Sergeant Bouchard told us this is a popular scam. He said they’ll be looking into it. Looking into it, ha!”

  “I emailed Cottage Getaways,” Chuck said. “The fellow who runs it has pulled the ad, and he says he’s blacklisted the person who placed it. But how many others have been taken in by it?”

  “Some hothead will think we’re behind the scam,” Gracie said, “and goodness only knows what he’ll do to us. We’re isolated at the end of our long lane.”

  The Gibsons no longer felt safe in their own home.

  I went over their investment portfolio with them. Little had changed since the last time we’d looked at it.

  “We’re real sorry to see you leave, Pat,” Chuck said as they got up to go.

  I heard Nate’s voice in the hall. “I’ll introduce you to Nate Johnston, the new branch manager. You’ll be working with him when I leave.”

  Tess Watson arrived soon after the Gibsons left, and Nate took her into his office. When the door closed behind them, Soupy stormed out his office and left the building.

  I considered going after him, but I didn’t know what more could I say to him.

  I called Black Bear Lake. Laura told me that Tommy was sleeping, and his forehead felt cooler. I told her to give him a drink when he awoke.

  My work at the branch was nearly finished. The following week, I’d introduce Nate to the rest of my clients and that would be it. He didn’t need any more hand-holding. I knew he’d make an excellent branch manager if Soupy would let him get on with him his job.

  The police had to be told what had happened at the Toronto bank where Vi had worked, but I didn’t want them thinking Bruce had withheld that information. It was Thursday afternoon, and I knew Bruce was busy putting The Times to bed. Editing and page layout, he’d told me, sometimes went on into the early hours of Friday morning. I considered waiting until the next day to talk to him, but I decided against it.

  I said goodbye to Ivy and walked down the street to The Times building. At the front door, I asked for Bruce over the intercom and the door buzzed open. I told the security guard in the lobby who I was and that I wanted to speak to Bruce. He picked up the telephone on his desk.

  “Mr. Stohl will see you.” He pointed to an ancient elevator. “Second floor.”

  The Times newsroom held about a dozen desks with computers. Bruce and Maria Dawson sat at an arrangement of six desks in the center of the room.

  “Pat,” Bruce said as I approached them, “is something wrong?”

  “I know you’re on deadline,” I said, “but could we talk for a minute?”

  He motioned toward an office at the back of the room. When we were seated, I told him about my visit to the bank, and what Irene had said about the missing money.

  “Mom would never have taken money,” he said. “Ted had a good job; she was just working to
pass the time.”

  “The police have to be told about it. Vi may have seen or heard something that got the thief worried. That could have been a motive for murder.”

  “That money went missing years ago. If the thief thought that Mom knew he’d taken it, why would he have waited until now?”

  “I don’t know. But there’s another reason why police need to know about the missing money. If they find out about it from someone else, they’ll say you were withholding information.”

  Bruce squared his shoulders. “You’re right. I’ll go over to the detachment now.” He threw me a sidelong look. “Would you come with me?”

  “It can wait till tomorrow. This is your busy day.”

  “I should do it now. Wouldn’t want to get into any more trouble with Foster.”

  Foster had set up shop in the conference room at the Braeloch detachment. Whiteboards were mounted on two walls. Photos and newspaper clippings were taped to them, and lists of names and places had been written with black and red markers.

  He looked up from the papers on his desk and glowered at us.

  “Detective Foster,” I said as Bruce and I took chairs facing his desk, “we’ve found out something you should know.”

  “You have, have you? I told you to look after your clients’ investments.”

  Bruce and I exchanged glances.

  “Well?” Foster barked. “What did you find out?”

  “I got to thinking about the people my mother knew before she got sick,” Bruce began. “As I told you, she led a quiet life. But when I went off to boarding school, she got a job at a bank in Toronto.”

  “What bank?” Foster asked.

  “Bank of Toronto. She was a teller at one if its branches for twenty years.”

  Foster glared at him. “You didn’t tell us this.”

  “I didn’t think it was relevant,” Bruce said. “She took the job for something to do, and it was close to home. Then her memory started slipping, and she was let go.”

  “She was let go?” Foster asked.

  “There was a problem before she left,” I said. “I visited the branch today—”

  Foster’s face turned an unhealthy shade of red. “You did what?”

  “I was in Toronto this morning. Bruce had told me his mother worked at a bank in the Beach, so I went over there to see if anyone remembered Vi.”

  I told him I’d talked to Peter and Irene, and what Irene had said about the missing money. “Vi was let go, and Irene assumed it was because of the missing money.”

  I let Foster digest that for a few moments. “The bank will give you the names of everyone who worked at that branch six years ago,” I said. “Maybe one of them was in Braeloch last week.”

  “What makes you think Vi Stohl didn’t take the money?” Foster asked.

  “Mom would never have taken money,” Bruce said. “Someone else did.”

  “You should look into it,” I said. “Peter Demetriou, the manager, wasn’t there six years ago, but Human Resources will have employment records.”

  Foster glared at Bruce. “You’re the one with the motive, Stohl. With your mother gone, you inherit Ted Stohl’s entire estate.”

  As we got up to leave, I couldn’t resist asking, “Have you spoken to the people who have keycards at Glencoe Self-Storage?”

  His eyes darted to a list of names on the whiteboard on his left. Then he turned his head and fixed his eyes on us. “Will you let us get on with our work?”

  As soon as we were outside the building, I asked Bruce, “Did you catch any names on that list he looked at?”

  “Doug Beecham and Ray Otter.”

  “The first two names on the list. The third is Meredith Hunter, but that’s all I caught. Do you know these people?”

  “Ray Otter is a maintenance guy at The Times. Never heard of the other two.”

  Someone on that list had a card that opened the gate on the night that Vi was put into Frank’s locker.

  Bruce took me down to the basement of The Times building where a wizened man with a leathery face was tinkering with a computer tower. Bruce introduced me to Ray Otter.

  “Do you have a locker at Glencoe Self-Storage?” I asked.

  Ray looked startled, and for good reason. What right did I have to throw questions at him?

  But he answered me. “I’ve had a locker out there for the past year. Sold the house after my Molly died, and I’m storing the furniture till my daughter finishes college. She may want it when she sets up her own home.”

  He looked at Bruce. “This is something to do with what happened to your mother, right?”

  “We have the names of a few people with keycards to the gate,” Bruce said. “We were wondering…”

  “If one of them put your mother in that locker,” Ray said. “The police asked me what I was doing the night before she was found. I told them I was playing euchre at the Legion, and that Tom McKinnon gave me a lift back to the room I rent here in town. I don’t have a car no more so I would have needed another ride to get over to the storage place.”

  I asked if he knew Doug Beecham and Meredith Hunter. I said they were also renting lockers.

  “Don’t know either of them,” he said.

  We thanked him and climbed the stairs to the ground floor. “I think we can eliminate Ray,” I said.

  I was driving down Main Street ten minutes later, when I saw a small woman in a smart white suit hurrying along the sidewalk.

  It was Ella Prentice and she looked worried.

  I drove around the block and parked in the public lot behind the Dominion Hotel. But by the time I returned to Main Street on foot, Ella had vanished.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Shirley Corcoran arrived at the house early the next morning. She and her husband Hank were the caretakers of Norris Cassidy’s vacation home, and I had hired them to help with the party to welcome Nate. Shirley had gone shopping the evening before, and we carried boxes of food and beverages into the house.

  “I should be back here by five,” I told her when we’d got everything into the kitchen. “The guests will arrive around seven.”

  Tommy’s temperature was normal, but his sunburned skin was still sensitive. His grandmother had called the night before, asking if he could spend the Canada Day weekend with her. I’d jumped at the chance to keep him out of the sun for a few days. She told me her chauffeur would pick him up early on Friday afternoon.

  I gave Tommy a hug and told him I’d see him on Monday. “We’ll be at our new summer home,” I said, “so you’ll be swimming on the other side of the lake.”

  The Friday before the Canada Day weekend was a statutory holiday, but I found Nate in his office when I arrived at the branch at ten. He handed me the schedule of our client meetings for the following week. I went into my office and phoned Lainey Campbell.

  Soupy’s mother said she would be delighted to meet me for lunch. I spent the next hour tying up loose ends on my computer. At eleven, I headed over to the Winigami Inn.

  Lainey was seated at a table with a view of the lake. A handsome woman, she looked particularly attractive in a deep purple summer jacket that highlighted the silver in her salt-and-pepper hair.

  “I’m worried about Bruce,” I said when I sat down across from her.

  She looked troubled. “We should have had him over to the house these past few evenings, but I’ve been helping Mara’s mother with the bridesmaids’ dresses. That’s no excuse but...” She held up her hands.

  “You’ve been busy.” I leaned over the table. “Lainey, the police don’t seem to be looking any further than Bruce in their investigation. Whoever put Vi’s body in that locker needed a keycard to get into the yard after hours.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “Noreen Andrews won’t give me the current renters’ names, and neither will the police. But I know the names of two people who were renting lockers when Vi was found. Doug Beecham and Meredith Hunter. Do you know them?”

  She shook her h
ead. “Never heard those names. They may be cottagers.”

  “Maybe they are. There’s something else I need to know,” I said. “Can you tell me more about Vi? You knew her when she was a young woman.”

  “She was a sweet girl back in high school, always tried to do the right thing. I was more of a hell-raiser.”

  “Did she have a particular interest? A hobby?”

  “She liked kids, and she did a lot of babysitting when we were in our teens.”

  That didn’t tell me much. “Other than you and Burt, who were her friends before she left Braeloch?”

  “Are you looking for a friendship that went sour? That would be a long time to hold a grudge, and I honestly can’t think of anyone who didn’t like Vi.”

  “Not necessarily someone she didn’t get along with,” I said. “Someone who could tell me more about her. Perhaps a different side of her than you knew.”

  Our roast beef sandwiches arrived, and we tucked into them. After a minute or two, Lainey looked up from her plate. “I know who you can talk to,” she said. “Ronnie Collins.”

  “Ronnie…Veronica Collins? Jamie’s mother?”

  Lainey smiled. “Of course, you know Ronnie’s daughter.”

  “And I’ve met Veronica a few times.” Like Lainey, Vi would have been in her late sixties, but Veronica was a good ten years younger. She would have been a child when Vi and Ted married.

  Lainey must have read my thoughts. “Ronnie was younger than Vi,” she said. “Vi was her babysitter. She looked after Ronnie and her brother Harlan in the summer while their mother was at work. Harlan was older than Ronnie and he got summer jobs after a few years, but Vi continued to take care of Ronnie. She asked Ronnie to be a flower girl at her wedding.”

  “Did they keep in touch when Vi moved to Toronto?”

  “I doubt it. Vi and Ted cut all their ties when they left Braeloch.”

  We looked at each other for a few moments remembering why the Stohls had turned their backs on Braeloch.

  “Ronnie and I have never been close,” Lainey went on. “There’s the age difference, of course, and she was uppity when she came back from secretarial school in Huntsville. Got herself some new clothes, and an assortment of airs and graces.”