The Diamond Dust on Dragonfly Wings: A Jeffry Claxton Mystery Novel

by Michael Yudov

  “Yeah, one for sure, and maybe a second one later, I’ll let you know.” When George’s voice came back at me there was a trace of irritation.

  “Jeff, it’s been a long, long day. I’m still doing the paperwork, so please pal, don’t screw around, just give, Okay?”

  “Cool your jets, man. It doesn’t blow it wide open, and with this case I don’t know if it’s even possible for any one person to carry the key to the whole thing. Anyway, here’s a couple of things I know for a fact. One. Therese didn’t tell us everything. Flat and simple. There was something she found out that made her so scared, she wouldn’t just approach the police when she drove back from the cottage that morning. And she had to find out that information between the time she heard the news on the radio while she was eating breakfast, and when she pulled up in front of her apartment and saw the cruiser. Kind of narrows it down, don’t you think?”

  “Wait a minute Jeff. Where’s this from? Left field? We had our hopes up with Therese, and they got shot down, that’s all. She’s just another victim of fear in a traumatizing situation. Shock.”

  “’Afraid not mon chéri. This is not your average lady. You’re the man on the spot, figure it out. Find out where she went to school, how far she went, and what degrees she has. Ask her what she knows that we don’t, because there’s something. She went to the bloody Sorbonne, man. She got a master’s in psychology before she went into the arts. The arts, right? Now she’s with the National Ballet Company, for God’s sake. She only graduated last year. You know what it takes to walk out of your Alma Mater and get exactly what you want when you ask for it? Guts, smarts, and enough determination to lead the charge on San Juan Hill. This babe could have given us any story she wanted to, and it would have worked.” This time the pause on the line was what you might call ‘pregnant’.

  “Okay, I’m listening.” I could hear him sigh.

  “So, first, I had some help, I have to admit. When Therese first sat down, she had a little tête-à-tête with Cynthia, and according to her, Therese was scared out of her mind. And the accent was Sorbonne, not Montreal. But when Therese talked with me, Cynthia was sitting on the other side of me, and I kept leaning close to talk with her. You observed the same thing that I did, at least initially. The accent was Montreal. So, she can turn it on and off. What about that rapid-fire exchange in the van? The one I couldn’t follow ‘cause you guys were talking so fast. What was I thinking? Everybody in Montreal can do the same thing, but I still follow fairly well, because I understand the accent. It’s the one I speak with. Think back to the van. Am I right?” He came back at me faster this time.

  “Yeah… yeah, definitely not Montreal, but I didn’t think about it at the time. I thought it was just University French.”

  “Uh-uh. These things are important in the appropriate circles, apparently, and that was a Sorbonne French, pal o’mine. I know because I made a call to Walter, my info broker, about two hours ago, and the e-mail was waiting for when I got home, which was when I called you. All of this is not some big leap of intuition on my part, I’m reading it off the screen as we speak.”

  “I see. Damn it Jeff, every time I think I’ve got it covered, you surprise me again. Good one.”

  “Not that good. I still don’t know for sure what she was holding back. But I have a guess.”

  “Umm… hang on a sec’…” He started working it out. I let him go for a few minutes. It was only fair. I’d had help and time both. I could almost hear him thinking. I knew he was going over his notes. “Jeff?”

  “I’m here.”

  “It has to be something to do with the brother, Ted Dawson. He’s the only other link that we can say for sure isn’t a figment of our imagination. Right?”

  “Right. I figure he called her, well not her, he was calling his brother but he got Therese. Either at the cottage that morning, or, in the Jag on the way into town. It is what Ted said to her that scared her, otherwise… why the fear? Shock, Okay. Tears and sorrow, Okay. Fear? She either knows everything J.D. knew, and it is a conspiracy of sorts, or at least they were mixed up with some dangerous people, and she’s hiding everything, or she got a telephone call that scared her witless. I think she got a call, and I vote for Ted Dawson. If the call came through on either the Jag’s cell ‘phone, or the cottage number, we’re in clover, we can pull that info from Ma Bell, or whomever, if he’s not on Bell Cellular. Being a banker, I bet he was with Bell. Conservative roots. Now it’s up to you to get it out of her, and you have some pretty heavy leverage on your side, buddy.”

  “Right, if she doesn’t come clean I can turn her loose on the streets to be killed. I’m sure the chief will go for that tactic right away. If it’s true, then there’s no way I can turn her out. It would be tantamount to being accessory to murder.”

  “She doesn’t know you George. She won’t be sure that you will or won’t. That’s if you’re careful. Remember, she does have a degree in psychology.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll be sneaky, Okay? As it happens that ‘phone check is already in progress. Routine stuff. I’ll see if I can get the results ASAP. Then get back out to the house and go over it with her. It’s been a long day, and now it’s looking like a long night. I’ll try to have more for you before you leave in the morning. This sounds like a break to me. I’ll sort it out. If I don’t call before you leave, I’ll talk to you when you get there. Good work, and now get some sleep. Oh, and you can tell me all about Cynthia when you get back.”

  “Fine, one more thing though, the fish tank?”

  “Oh, right. Nothing there really, hang on while I get the report.” He put down the receiver. I could hear papers rustling on his desk, then, “Okay, there was a dead Piranha… in the tank,” he paused just long enough to take credit, and nothing else. “The fish had fallen to the bottom of the tank, behind his little sunken pirate ship, so nobody noticed at first pass. The plug had been pulled on the air pump, and it was the opinion of forensics that the tank had been tossed by the same individual who did the apartment. There wasn’t a single print on the tank. So, it had been wiped clean too. Which means whoever it was probably killed the fish before rooting around in the tank. Which is interesting in itself, because not everyone knows what a Piranha fish looks like, or what they can do if you try to tickle one under the chin. Doesn’t give us anything, really. Seems like it was more symbolic than anything else. Unless there was something there, and it was taken. No way to know at this point.” I conceded that he was right about that, and my getting some sleep. He rung off, and I slowly laid the receiver in its cradle, letting out a big sigh. What a day, what a day. I did a quick printout of the e-mail attachments, with all the info Walter had gotten for me, and put it together with the rest of the stuff in the manila envelope George had given me earlier at the safe house. I posted a couple of e-mails and then shut down the system. It was after midnight now. I had about half an hour’s worth of preparation to do yet, then it would be time to get some shuteye.

  I packed carefully, sorting down and sorting down, until I had only the essential luggage I would need for the week. Carry-on. That was the kind of traveling luggage I preferred. I had a change of casual clothes, jeans, white shirt, rumple-free sport coat, as well as lots of socks and shorts, my shaving kit, a pair of Nike Airs, my Canon AT-1 camera with a 50mm & a 70-340 mm Zoom lens, and high resolution low-light film. Lastly, my Toshiba notebook. Before packing it, I had copied all of my working files over. It all fit nicely into my black nylon sport bag. With some room left over. You always have to make allowances for presents on the way back. I set the alarm, and hit the sack. For once I went out like a light. No thinking, no tossing and turning, just oblivion.

  There was something wrong. It bothered me but I didn’t get it right away. The ringing was like someone yelling at me from the other side of a football stadium. In the middle of a game. It was there, but I didn’t catch on that it was aimed at me, but it went on and on incessantly. It wasn’t someone yelling, it was something
ringing. Why was that important? I felt myself coming awake, surfacing slowly, like a deep-sea diver trying not to get the bends. I tried sinking back down into the depths of sleep. It didn’t work. Finally, the ringing registered. It was a telephone. My telephone. I groaned and rolled over. The clock on the bureau across the room said 4:10 AM, and I was awake. I picked it up, and George was on the other end.

  “Jeffry, wake up.”

  “What, ‘wake up’, I answered the phone didn’t I?”

  “I know you better than that. Go make some coffee, I’ll call back in ten minutes to make sure you did. I’m on the way over now. I should be there in about a half hour.” He sounded serious.

  “Okay, right. Coffee. I suppose you’ll fill me in when you get here?”

  “That’s a big 10-4 good buddy.”

  “How can you talk like that at four in the morning? Never mind, I’m up, I’m up. See you soon.”

  I slowly drew the covers back and groped for my robe in the closet. I found one of my old terry cloth bathrobes and tied the sash as I shuffled into the kitchen turning on lights as I went. I learned early in my life to turn on the lights when I got up in the middle of the night, because I had a tendency to bump into things. Like walls. I once got out of bed at three in the morning, and tried to go to the kitchen for a glass of water. I walked straight into the wall five feet from my bed and broke my nose. Then, of course, I woke right up.

  I was sitting at the kitchen table with the phone next to me, watching and listening to the coffee machine to while away the time. Burble… gurgle… psshhh… what fun. The phone rang, and it was George. Just checking. He gave me a revised ETA of ten minutes. Then he asked me to go downstairs and activate the garage door for him. Great. I checked the clock, and put on my watch. Ten minutes. I threw on a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt, and slipped on my moccasins. Genuine Moosehide, they were the closest thing to slippers I had. Grabbing my keys, I headed for the garage. The remote control for the door was where I always kept it, in my van in the overhead console space provided for that purpose. I sat in the van for a couple of minutes, waiting for the ten-minute countdown to pass. It did, and I hit the remote. The garage door started cranking open, and before it was all the way up George came through. As he hit the sensor at the bottom of the ramp, it started to close again. George was in the back seat, and Len was driving. McMurtry was in the front passenger seat. Unusual.

  The car pulled up short in front of the van, and McMurtry stepped out before the car had fully stopped. He stood with one hand under his jacket and his head swiveling to cover the garage as George opened the back door and got out. With Therese. Hmm. As soon as George, Therese, and I stepped into the elevator, Len and McMurtry took off. George kept his hand on her arm the whole way back to the apartment. She didn’t look very happy, but I probably looked crummy too, it was closing on dawn, and I don’t think there’d been four hours of sleep between the bunch of us. I knew better than to ask what was going on until we’d gotten to the kitchen and everyone sat down. I served up coffee and broke out a pack of good old Peak Freans cookies, then sat there munching and sipping while I got filled in.

  It turned out that I had been right. Surprise.

  Therese sat slumped in the chair, seemingly resigned to whatever was going to happen. She didn’t look up much, and I checked. Every few moments, all the while George was talking, I would glance her way. Her hair was falling down in wisps at the sides, peeking out from beneath the baseball cap she was wearing. She focused intently on her coffee cup, holding onto it with both hands, yet managing to make her sipping motions seem dainty despite the double-handed grip and the forlorn look on her face. I couldn’t help analyzing her as she sat there.

  Therese was twenty-three, and a prime example of divine intervention in the city of her birth. She would look good even after being lost in the wilderness for a week or two. It was something she had no control over, it was a genetic thing. She was French Canadian, and she was born in Montreal, in the Province of Quebec. I’d retrieved that info from the package of e-mail from Walter earlier that night.

  Montreal has the privilege of many distinctions, not the least of which is the fact that it is the world’s second largest French speaking city. As in first there’s Paris, then Montreal. But then it gets spooky. Everybody knows that Paris women are supposed to be so beautiful, and that the women of New York and Rome will take your breath away. Well, all of that may be true, but in Montreal, they would be just background scenery. The city of Montreal has more beautiful women than all of the other major cities of the world. They don’t take your breath away. They take your heart. Again, and again, and again. It defies all logic, but it’s a fact. I knew about Montreal women, having lived there almost continuously until the age of twenty-one. I had certainly come of age there. The men are spoiled rotten.

  George noticed that I was drifting away. I had started to drift too far. Too far back. Memories are an amazing thing. They can make you laugh, and they can make you cry. Sometimes they can make you feel very much alone, even when you have people around you who care. Sometimes the loneliness is so deep that you run the risk of drowning in it. That’s when you should turn the memories off, but it doesn’t always work that way. George brought me back by sharply rapping his knuckles on the table. It jolted me out of my reverie. Some of my coffee slipped out of the cup and puddled beside it. I didn’t look at him, but I got up and walked over to the ‘fridge. The pack of Camels in the freezer were wrapped in a vacuum-sealed plastic wrap. They would take about fifteen minutes or so to reach room temperature, but I didn’t feel like waiting. I found a small Zippo in the cupboard over the ‘fridge. There was still enough fuel in it to do the job. I lit the cigarette and slipped the lighter into my front pocket. The smoke was cool and strong. I breathed it in deep, and held it for a few seconds before letting it out. I sat back down with an ashtray, the spilled coffee forgotten.

  “I’m Okay George. Where were we?”

  “Did you hear anything I said?”

  “Yeah, I did. Just back off, alright?”

  “You can’t keep doing this to yourself, man. Especially right now. We have a dangerous situation on our hands, and you’re going to have to be sharp.” He gave me one of his ‘stern but concerned looks. George knew me well enough to know where I’d just been. He was one of only two people who would know, my sister being the second. I never let anyone else get that close, and sometimes I resented the fact that George knew me that well. It was a feeling that came and went with the memories.

  We got back on track. Ted Dawson had called her, and had really scared her. He called the car phone while she had been on her way into town from the cottage. What he had said to her then was quite intelligent, considering everything else that had been going on. He had told her to pull over and stop the car. When she had, he had asked her where J.D. was. When she told him what had been going on, he had cried. It was obvious at that point that he was pretty much in touch with what was going on, and what could have been going on. Why he waited to call with his warning, only he could say. And that was where I came in. And Therese, apparently. ‘The Mission’, had changed. Ted had been calling from a bank of public telephones in an office of the Swisscom, quite close to his new bank branch, and all of his new money. This was information that wouldn’t have come our way without George’s connections, and the added pull accorded to Mr. Wilson Lapierre of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The respect shown to the RCMP outside of Canada was more in line with their actual capabilities, and not tainted by the in-country screw-ups that gave them such an unwarranted reputation among their own countrymen.

  Anyway, the account was known to us not because Ted Dawson had been careless, he hadn’t. The name on the account had been verified as an outright theft, Mr. Frederick C. Halliwell, of the city of St. John, New Brunswick, Canada. Businessman and Entrepreneur.

  All the I.D. had been in hand for the bank people when the account had been opened, including one perfectly good Canadian pa
ssport, replete with various international entry and exit stamps to back up his business claims. Only through the virtue of George’s authoritative investigation did we determine that the track the money took on its way out of Canada ended, after three intermediary stops, in this named Swiss account. The real Mr. Frederick Halliwell, it turned out, hadn’t done much traveling since he had become deceased at the ripe old age of eighty-seven, about six months ago. He also had never had a passport issued to him. Stay at home kind of guy.

  The bottom line was that the account was still active, and since we now had proof from as close a source to the family as we were ever going to get that Ted was still active as well, the name of the game had definitely become ‘Find Ted Dawson’. He claimed to have known in advance of the danger, but his warning had come a bit late for his brother John. That seemed a little bit suspect to me. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. According to him, he would be able to finger the killer, or at least to finger the person or persons who had sent the killer. We would see what we would see. The first order of business would be to get our hands on him, then we could discuss it in a civilized manner. Back in Toronto. The RCMP had gotten a pre-authorized extradition paper with Ted’s name on it. I would pick it up in the RCMP office at the airport in a few hours, just before departure for Zurich. Therese was coming along to I.D. Ted, and at the same time to convince him that we were on his side. It seemed he was a bit touchy about who he hung around with these days. I might find that if I was alone, I would have a harder time getting him to sit still long enough for me to convince him of my sincerity. Therefore, Therese came with me. Seeing that Therese was now being considered as a material witness in this affair, and that the papers I was going to be carrying were of such an official nature, there would be some paperwork regarding myself in particular, and the mission in general, that would have to be processed prior to departure. Swell. Now I had to follow George downtown and fill out paperwork until the start of rush hour. Which would signal the time for me to join the rush, and spend the hour and a half before the flight just getting to the airport. So much for sleep.