None So Deadly

by David A. Poulsen

  “Right,” I said. “I had forgotten. Maybe because it’s the dead of winter. You guys planning spring training in Phoenix?”

  She laughed. “I wish. Gotta run, babe. See you later tonight.”

  We ended the call. I checked my wallet for Detective Landry’s business card. I called her number, got voicemail, and left a message detailing my alibi for the night Kennedy was murdered. “I was at my girlfriend’s home for dinner; then we went to the launch of a book I’d written at Owl’s Nest Books. Forty or fifty people saw me there; I’d be happy to provide names. In fact, Mike Cobb came in partway through the event and told me about Kennedy. I’m not sure why I didn’t remember that earlier — probably just flustered at being a person of interest. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you.”

  While I was talking to Landry’s voicemail, I received a text. It was from Cobb.

  Heard back from lab guy. He checked lines on trash can platform. Made with a common pocket knife. Same knife for all? Can’t tell, but similar. T Maughan not in jail — here or anywhere else in Can. BTW we get an hour in Kennedy’s house tomorrow 9:30 AM. The cops haven’t released it to the executor yet; I’m not sure why. But the good news is we can still get in there. The bad news is Chisholm will be our watchdog. C U there.

  SEVENTEEN

  I arrived at Kennedy’s old place at 9:25. Both Cobb and Chisholm were already there, standing outside on what was less than an ideal morning for being anywhere but next to a roaring fire. I parked behind Cobb’s Cherokee and joined them on the sidewalk. It was hard to tell if either of them had actually spoken before I got there.

  “Mike,” I said and nodded. He returned the nod. “Detective Chisholm.” He ignored my greeting.

  “Okay, let’s get this over with,” the detective barked. “Here’s the rules. Nobody goes anywhere without me. None of this splitting up, one upstairs, one down. I’m in the room you’re searching at all times.”

  “Going to take longer that way,” Cobb said.

  “Might take longer, but it won’t take long. You get forty-five minutes. Your time may not be valuable, but mine is. And rule number two is whatever you come up with, I see it. Rule number three — nothing leaves the house.”

  “How about we give our word that we share anything we find that might be at all relevant?”

  “The word of a cop who couldn’t cut it and a fake media guy. I don’t think so. Let’s go.”

  Until that moment I had Chisholm pegged as someone who was naturally surly but who could be effective as a homicide detective. This morning changed all that. He was just a jerk.

  I noted that the police tape that had been in evidence for quite a while was now gone. We moved through the snow on the unshovelled walk and Chisholm unlocked the door. We stomped around getting snow off boots and shoes. The furnace had been turned way down in the house, and the forty-five minutes that had seemed way too short a time now looked like a frigid eternity.

  “What are you actually looking for?”

  “Not sure.” Cobb shrugged. “Evidence that someone might have been in the house at some point and found out about the surveillance equipment — knew enough to find and take the tape of himself killing Kennedy.”

  “Look no farther than your partner there. Ran this shit for a while. Knew all about it.”

  “Yeah. How about we get started.”

  “Be my guests.” Chisholm stepped back, arms folded.

  “Let’s start upstairs,” Cobb suggested and we headed up to the room where the surveillance cameras were trained on the alley behind the murder house. I had spent a lot of hours in this room while I pinch-hit for Kennedy when he’d been with his dying wife. It looked different without the stacks of tapes everywhere — the tapes that were now in my apartment.

  There weren’t many places in this room that could possibly yield anything that might help us. Cobb checked the table while I concentrated on the shelves. We moved fast, and once we determined there was nothing there of interest, we moved on to the two upstairs bedrooms.

  We found nothing useful in either, made a quick pass through the upstairs bathroom and a hall closet. We were twenty minutes into our forty-five minutes allotted time. We moved downstairs as Chisholm, following us, chortled and said, “Well, I’m sure glad this isn’t a waste of time.”

  The second of the two surveillance areas would have been a living room in a normal home configuration. As was the case the first time I had come to the house, I was startled by a large blow-up photograph of a young girl on one wall. I knew the girl in the photo was Faith Unruh. My guess was that the photo had to have been taken in the year prior to her death. Again, there weren’t many places to check out in that room, and I was glad that we were in and out quickly. The hall, downstairs bathroom, and dining room got cursory looks at best, but that was probably sufficient in that there were few places that might house the kind of thing we were looking for.

  That left the kitchen. I figured if we had any chance at all, that’s where it would be — the elusive clue that might tell us if someone had been in the house for some commercial venture, a renovation, a carpet cleaning … furnace maintenance. I was wrong. Though there was a drawer that was clearly where Kennedy had kept receipts, bills, bank statements, and miscellaneous papers, nothing in that drawer or anywhere else yielded anything interesting.

  Shivering and disappointed, I turned for the front door, where Chisholm was already looking at his watch. Cobb and I exchanged looks. He shrugged. We’d tried; there was no use dragging our heels. The only good thing about leaving that house was the Accord’s reliable heater, which beckoned and promised to thaw frozen body parts.

  Chisholm, unable to keep the gloating off his face, opened the door and stepped back to let us exit. Cobb led the way.

  “Wait,” I said. “There’s one place we didn’t look.”

  Cobb and Chisholm both looked at me, Cobb’s face questioning, Chisholm’s a mask of scorn.

  “What the fuck are you trying to pull? I told you —”

  “The basement. I know it’s unfinished from my time here before, but I just need a quick look. Just give me a couple of minutes.”

  “Your time’s up. Let’s go.”

  Cobb said. “Hey, it’s a basement. Just let him have a fast look. How long can it take?”

  “I’ll tell you how long it will take. Two minutes. If your ass isn’t back up here in one hundred and twenty seconds, I’m coming to get you. And you don’t want that.”

  I turned and raced down the stairs. There was no furniture, drawers, shelves, or even cardboard boxes down there. But none of that would have interested me if there had been any. I was looking for only one thing — the furnace. I remembered that my dad used to keep the user manual for our furnace resting on the main duct leading away from it. If someone had done maintenance on the furnace, real or bogus, could Kennedy have done the same thing with the paperwork? Maybe maybe maybe.

  I got to the framed-in room where the furnace, hot water heater, and a smaller soft water tank were located and wasted thirty seconds trying to find the light switch. When I did, I started my search, the seconds ticking off in my head. I didn’t know if Chisholm would actually come down here after me, or if Cobb would let him, but I didn’t really want the answer to either of those questions.

  Come on. Come on. Come on.

  Chisholm’s baritone boomed from upstairs. “Thirty seconds, bud. Don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m kidding.”

  And suddenly there it was — a nondescript piece of paper the size of a restaurant bill. Four lines — handwritten.

  Record of Service.

  Foothills Furnace Maintenance.

  May 18, 2016.

  $157.50 including GST.

  It was held in place by a single tired piece of Scotch tape. I tore it off the outer wall of the furnace and stuffed it in my pants pocket.

  Now the tough part. I had to reign in the elation, walk up those stairs and onto that main floor looking like
my dog had died. I turned off the light and started up the stairs just as Chisholm appeared at the top. I trudged up and past him and headed for the front door. Cobb was leaning against the doorframe watching me. “Sorry, Mike,” I said. “If there was anything down there, I didn’t have time to find it.”

  Behind me Chisholm snorted. “You wouldn’t have found shit if I’d left you down there all day. Let’s go.”

  Cobb and I moved out of the house, off the step and onto the sidewalk, the snow again surrounding our boots. As we got to the front sidewalk, Cobb turned to Chisholm. “Thanks, Detective,” he said. “You’re a pleasure to work with.”

  “Fuck you, Cobb.” Chisholm climbed into his car and raced away from the curb, eager to report back on our lack of success.

  “Maybe we should get us a coffee,” I said to Cobb. “I’m pretty close to hypothermia.”

  “What did you find?” Cobb asked.

  “What are you talking about? I told you I struck out. Besides, don’t you remember Chisholm’s rules two and three?”

  “Yeah.” Cobb grinned. “That hangdog act might work on Chisholm, but you’re not good enough to fool me. What did you find?”

  “Maybe we should have coffee,” I said again.

  We were sitting in the Phil and Sebastian’s in Marda Loop, one of my favourite people-watching places in the city. But on this day I wasn’t interested in watching people, other than maybe Cobb, to gauge his reaction to my find in Kennedy’s house.

  “I feel bad about not inviting Chisholm to join us. He makes every day brighter,” I said as Cobb looked over the furnace maintenance receipt.

  “There are a hell of a lot of good cops. Chisholm isn’t one of them,” Cobb said, without looking up from the faded writing on the paper in front of him.

  “Foothills Furnace Maintenance,” he mused.

  “It fits the time frame,” I said. “It wasn’t long after that that the first shadows began to appear on the surveillance tapes.”

  Cobb nodded. “Checking the furnace might have taken whoever wrote this to other parts of the house and a view of the surveillance set-up.”

  “It’s possible,” I agreed. “I know this isn’t the smoking gun, but it just might have put Terry Maughan in Kennedy’s house at least once.”

  “I’d really like to find this guy,” Cobb said. “We need to talk to him.”

  “Any idea how we do that?”

  “I’ll check with Motor Vehicles, see if they’ve got a vehicle registered to him.”

  “I missed the neighbour across the street when I went by his place in McKenzie Towne. He hasn’t called me back, so I’ll give him a call, see if he can give us anything.”

  “How about where he grew up? We know it wasn’t far from the school or from Faith Unruh’s house. I wonder if he ever pops around to the old stomping grounds at all.”

  “More than that. He rented a suite in a house in the old neighbourhood. He’s not there now but he was in the last year. If he is the moving shadow in the videos and the guy scratching the marks on the platform, then obviously he’s been in the area. Maybe I should ask around. I’ve got the picture of him. Maybe somebody’s seen him.”

  “Worth a try.”

  “I haven’t got a lot going on this afternoon. I’ll get started after lunch.”

  “Okay. See how you make out. And if you’re at it again tomorrow, you’ll have to start a little later in the day, because you do have something in the morning.”

  I looked at him. “What’s up?”

  “Come by the office about ten. I’ve got something I want you to see.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Care to give me a hint?”

  Cobb shook his head. “I don’t think so. Don’t want to spoil the surprise.”

  Lunch was a fast-food burger that reminded me why I seldom do that. I started with a call to Jay Keeling, Terry Maughan’s friend from across the street when he’d lived in McKenzie Towne. This time I got Keeling. He was fine with talking to me, apologized for not getting back to me, but added next to nothing about Terry that I hadn’t already learned from his ex-wife and the bartender at the Kilt & Caber. That is, until near the end of our conversation.

  “It’s funny he doesn’t come around anymore; we were pretty good friends,” Keeling told me. “I figured he must have left town. That was Terry, too, always talking about greener pastures — maybe he’d have better luck in Vancouver or Montreal, places like that. But then I actually thought I saw him not that long ago, so I guess he didn’t go anywhere … or if he did, he’s back.”

  I perked up at that. “You saw him? Where?”

  “On the Deerfoot. I was stuck in traffic. And so was he, going the other way. I’m not one hundred percent sure it was him. He was talking on his cellphone, which is another thing Terry was doing all the time. Chasing a buck however he could get it.”

  “When was this, Mr. Keeling?”

  “I don’t know, a few weeks, maybe a month ago.”

  “What was he driving?”

  “Well, if it was him, it was a white van, kind of dirty.”

  “Any writing on the van?”

  “Yeah, there was, but there were other vehicles between him and me, I couldn’t make it out. I thought it might have been something Furniture. Sorry, I wasn’t sure.”

  “Did you actually see the word furniture?”

  “Hell, I can’t remember. Maybe, or maybe part of it, I’m not sure.”

  “Any chance the word might have been furnace?”

  He thought about that. “Could have been, I guess. Which would make sense, because he was hustling some furnace cleaning and maintenance deal last time I saw him. Tried to sell me a package.”

  “He have the white van back then?”

  “No, he had an old beater SUV — Chevy Blazer. That thing had been through the wars. Anyway, he was pissed at me because I didn’t buy the furnace package, and that was the last time I saw him.”

  “And he didn’t say where he was living that last time you guys talked?”

  “Just somewhere downtown,” he said. “Didn’t say exactly.”

  After I ended the call with Jay Keeling, I drove around the neighbourhood, stopping at convenience stores and gas bars, showing Terry Maughan’s photo to clerks and cashiers, getting the occasional might have seen a guy that looks like that but I’m not sure. Finally, just after four, I lost heart and gave up for the day.

  Three texts and a couple of phone calls later, dinner with Jill and Kyla at Redheads Japa Café in the Beltline was on. Donna had spent time in Japan before we were married and had introduced me to Japanese cuisine and Redheads. This would be the first time Jill, Kyla, and I had been to the place, and it was also my first time there without Donna. The plan was for me to pick up Kyla and meet Jill at the restaurant after she got off work at the Inn. The arrangement left me time to run, shower, and change clothes.

  Kyla was outside waiting for me when I got to the house. We talked baseball all the way downtown, but I didn’t like her colour. I asked her if she was feeling okay, the dreaded spectre of her Crohn’s disease always embedded in my consciousness. She swore she was fine and deflected my concern with a question: Who’s going to bat cleanup for the Yankees?

  And while the evening was pleasant, it was less so because Kyla didn’t eat much, excused herself to go the bathroom twice, and just wasn’t her perky self. During her second washroom absence, Jill said what was on both our minds.

  “I don’t like it, Adam, she’s not quite right.”

  We both knew that there would be down times in a disease that was as cyclical as Crohn’s. I hoped that that’s all this was — a temporary bout with an illness that would always be there but, with care, could be managed. I suggested we pack up the remaining food and take it with us.

  When Kyla returned from the washroom, she didn’t fight that suggestion, further evidence that she was a long way from a 100 percent. There was a tacit agreement among the three of us that on those days that Kyla wasn’t
feeling well — thankfully there had been relatively few of those — I would stay at my apartment. One of the effects of Crohn’s was difficult diarrhea, and when that was the case, Kyla preferred privacy and the company of her mother only. And though I would rather have been there for her, to do whatever I could, I respected her wishes and understood the embarrassment she would feel if I were there. I hoped that if Jill and I were to become a permanent partnership, Kyla would be okay with my being present during the unpleasant moments we all knew would recur from time to time.

  Once the two of them were in the house with Kyla in her pyjamas, the leftovers in the fridge, and chicken noodle soup warming on the stove, I gave them both hugs and got ready to leave.

  “Chin up, sweetheart, and bounce back soon, okay?” I said as I gently hugged the girl who’d become like a daughter to me.

  “Sorry I ruined the evening,” she whispered.

  “None of that,” I said. “The only thing you did wrong all night was to pick Judge to hit fourth for the Yanks when any sensible baseball person knows it’s going to be Stanton.”

  She stuck her tongue out at me and headed off down the hall.

  “Keep me posted,” I instructed Jill, as I gave her a quick embrace and turned for the door. “I want to know how she’s doing. I need to know how she’s doing.”

  “I will, babe. I love you.”

  I had made a habit of looking around the yard and street whenever I came out of Jill’s house. I did that now and saw nothing out of place — no suspicious characters leaning against light standards, no dubious vehicles idling in the street, no unsavoury men with turned-up collars and pulled-down hat brims sneaking peeks at the house.

  I eased myself into the Accord and pulled away from the curb. I was restless, partly because of the lack of progress in finding Terry Maughan and partly because I always felt that way when Kyla was feeling the effects of her illness.

  For a few minutes I drove aimlessly, before finally heading toward the house once occupied by the Maughan family. I’d wanted to drive by the place and maybe even see if there might be a neighbour or two around I could ask about the family, a bit of a long shot, as Terry Maughan had probably moved out of the house in the mid- to late ’90s, his father then succumbing to a heart attack in 2008. So it had been a while. Still, it was only a few minutes away.