by Ted Wood
'Gutless,' I said automatically. 'Can you take it to your yard? I'd like to look it over before the owner has it picked up.'
He agreed and waited for Peter, who was towelling himself off and slipping his T-shirt back on, then drove off with the Honda trailing.
I took ten minutes to check with the neighbours, making sure nobody had heard anything. Nobody had. The only help I got was that there had been a ballgame on TV until close to eleven, after that all the residents had been asleep, except for Ms Tracy who had not got home until after twelve and had read for an hour or so before turning off the lights.
'You're sure you heard nothing?' I was a bit surprised that the noise hadn't woken her up. The splash would have been loud enough to have startled people. And if kids had done this, there could have been some yelling going on.
'I have an air-conditioner in the bedroom window,' she explained. 'It's pretty noisy.' Then, surprisingly, she added, 'Come and see for yourself.'
'OK.' I walked with her, weighing up the facts. Allowing that the noise might have reached her before she went to sleep, there were two windows of time in which someone could have driven the car into the lake, just around midnight or after two in the morning. The only snag was that if everyone within a couple of hundred yards had air-conditioning they would all have been deaf to the noise. Ah well, no big deal, the car was intact, more or less, my job was over when I'd reported it found.
I had an odd feeling about Ms Tracy. She was cool to the point of rudeness and I wondered why. She had never crossed my path before and had no cause for resentment. Maybe she had some old militant attitude towards the police. A lot of people got that way in the 'sixties. All I knew was that she owned the cottage and came up here on and off all summer. There didn't seem to be any men, or women for that matter, in her life. She seemed to be one of those people who pass through life without touching the sides.
Today she was wearing blue jeans and a cotton top knotted around her waist offering the occasional flash of firm brown belly. Not exactly erotic but attractive. And she wanted to help me. A minor mystery.
I followed her to the back of her cottage, the kind of winterized place that a lot of our long-time visitors build with plans for retiring here. Most don't. They stay in Toronto where the stores and their grandchildren make the winters more congenial.
The only concession to country living was a big screened verandah with comfortable chairs and a radio tuned to a classical music station. She opened the door and ushered me in. I stepped up on the porch and waited while she opened the main door of the house and said, 'Come on in, see for yourself.'
That was when my cop's instincts began to tickle. This was above and beyond the call of good citizenship. But I followed, keeping my hat on to show this wasn't a social call.
Her bedroom was comfortable, a queen-sized bed and a good shelf of books. There was a pile of bound typescripts on the side table. I'd seen my wife studying books like them. She's an actress.
The air-conditioner was running and it was as loud as she had suggested. She raised her voice slightly. 'See what I mean? I couldn't have heard a head-on crash.'
'True enough. Thank you.' I turned immediately and went back through to the porch. She followed. 'I love this heat, don't you?'
'It helps to make up for the winters.' I paused and she leaned on the doorjamb, on one foot, the other raised on tiptoe behind her, a dated pin-up shot. 'Would you like some iced tea?'
'No, thank you. I have to look in at home. My wife's expecting a baby just about any minute.' I smiled to show I wasn't being standoffish. 'Thanks anyway. The reason I came with you is that I thought you might have something you wanted to tell me without the neighbours hearing.'
'Oh?' she cocked her head. 'Like what, for instance?' She looked the way she might have done in her office in town, exercising good control of some subordinate.
I raised my hands. 'No idea. But people have funny ideas about the police. It's unfashionable to be any more helpful than is absolutely necessary.'
'And you have me pegged for a feminist, lesbian maybe, because I'm Ms Tracy, not Mrs.'
'I've been a policeman too long to generalize about anybody.'
'This place is my hideaway.' she said softly. 'In Toronto I work like a dog. I'm a feature film producer and I deal with every variety of bastard. Rich creeps who want to put money into movies so they can get next to the actresses, actors with egos the size of Czechoslovakia, unions, bitchy gay beauticians, every kind of headache you can imagine. But here I can be alone, be myself.'
It was more impassioned than I needed and I wondered why she was telling me. 'Well, thanks for the help. Enjoy your stay. When are you going back to town?'
'Next week sometime. When's the baby due?' Tit for tat. If I'd been exploring the possibility of a little dalliance she was carrying the ball.
'Any moment.'
'Mazel tov,' she said and smiled as if she meant it. 'Let me know when it happens. I don't always drink tea. We'll wet the baby's head.'
I didn't answer, just smiled and left, with the ripe summer warmth on my bare arms, feeling aroused. Chill out, I told myself. She was playing games.
I called in on Fred who was sitting on a chaise-longue by the back door, knitting. She got up when I arrived. 'Hi, honey. Like some iced tea?'
'You should be resting.' I wagged a finger at her. 'All this energy is getting me nervous. Sit still. I'll make it.'
'I phoned my mother this morning. She tells me the energy means today's the day,' she said cheerfully. 'Can't be soon enough for me, I'm tired of looking like the side of a house.'
'It's still the nicest-looking house in the neighbourhood, even with the bay window,' I said. She threw a cushion at me.
She likes an instant tea mix, so I chopped up a lemon and threw in the ice cubes and had the whole thing ready in a couple of minutes. She put her knitting down when I carried the tray out to the back yard and poured. She laid the cold glass against her cheek. 'Mmmm,' she said happily.
'Just had a lady make a veiled pass at me,' I said.
'Not surprising. You're almost attractive in a roughcast sort of way.' She sipped her tea. 'Who was it?'
'Woman called Tracy. Don't know her first name. She lives, summers anyway, across the lake, about half a mile south of the bridge. Says she's in the film business in Toronto.'
Fred frowned. 'Not an actress?'
'Production, she said. Was telling me this place is her hideaway, away from terrible people like actresses and people wishing to have their wicked way with them.'
Fred wrinkled her nose at me. 'Look where it gets us.' She patted her stomach. 'Would it be Marcia Tracy, I wonder? She's head honcho at Northland Productions in Toronto.'
Thirty-fiveish, trim, not much make-up, blonde.'
'Did she have a mole on her left buttock?'
'Right,' I said and Fred laughed.
'She's a ballbreaker. Two ex-husbands and a string of hopeful young studs behind her.'
'Fear not. I retreated with my honour intact.'
'Good for you, dear,' she said. 'Not much longer and we can make the bedsprings sing their old sweet song.'
'You're having a private room at the hospital?'
'You're a terrible man, Bennett,' she said.
I finished my tea and kissed her before heading down to Kinski's to look at the car. We've got a good thing going and I guess I'm one of nature's monogamists. It's my second marriage. My first was a girl I met in college. I dropped out but she got a degree in math, which has led her into computer sales. I was probably grating on her from the time I joined the Toronto Police Department and it fell apart completely when I cancelled a couple of bikers who were raping a variety store clerk. I was arrested for manslaughter and even though the case was dropped, Amy was long gone. There had been other women before Fred but not since she came into my life a year ago. I guess I'm terminally married.
Paul Kinski had the Honda in his pound. He does the tow work for the Ontario Prov
incial Police in this area and his yard is half filled with wrecks he's scraped off the rocks and roadways for fifty miles each way, rusting gently while the insurance companies and the courts dispense their decisions. The Honda looked almost new among them.
I called the Parry Sound detachment and reported the car recovered. The dispatcher read me off the name and address of the owner, then stopped. 'Hey, here's a thing. He's from your neck of the woods, Reid. Says he's staying at Pickerel Point Lodge, Murphy's Harbour. Be there for a week.'
'Pickerel Point? I wonder why he reported it stolen to you guys? Did he come into the office or call in?'
'No idea. No sweat anyways, cross it off your worry list.'
I hung up and called Pickerel Point Lodge. The manager put me on hold while she went out to the tennis court and dragged the owner in. His name was John Waites and he sounded like a yuppie.
'Mrs James said this was important.'
'Police chief here. We've recovered your car. It's at Kinski's Garage, Petro-Canada station on Highway 69, half a mile south of the Harbour.'
'What kind of condition is it in?' An unusual reaction.
'Well, it wasn't cracked up but it's been in the lake and somebody has ripped off the radio and slashed the seats.'
'Slashed the seats?' There was a flutter of sound as if he had changed hands on the receiver. 'Well, goddamn it,' he said. 'When did that happen? After it was pulled out?'
I didn't like him, I decided. 'It was done when the car was recovered from the lake.'
'Very well. I'll come down and look. Stay there.' He hung up before I could tell him it wasn't driveable. Serve him right, I thought, he sounded like a creep.
There was nothing else going on, so I accepted Paul's offer of a cup of coffee and went into his little diner to enjoy it. He makes good coffee and I was OD'd on iced tea. I sat and savoured it until a Mercedes pulled into the lot, avoiding the pumps, and a young guy got out of the passenger side. He was wearing tennis gear that revealed he had a good build and a tan. He was around five-nine and had neat, yuppie hair, dark and a little long but immaculately sculpted over his round head.
He came to the door and I checked behind him, trying to recognize the driver of the car, a woman who left without looking back.
He spoke to Peter at the pumps and followed the boy's finger to the coffee shop. I sat and waited for the grand entrance. He came up to me. 'John Waites. You called me about my wife's car.'
'The blue Honda, licence MW?'
'Right. Where is it?'
I got up and led him out to the car. I saw Paul shaking his head. He has European manners and hates impoliteness. Waites wrenched the door open and swore. 'Look at that. Vandalism.'
I said nothing until he got in and turned the key. Nothing happened. 'You would have been smarter to hold your ride for a while,' I said.
He swore again and banged the wheel with his hand. It all seemed a little too keyed up. Most people who get their cars back are sullen but they don't explode. 'Was that your wife in the Mercedes?' I asked.
He glared at me. 'No, it wasn't. If it's any of your damn business my dear Moira walked out yesterday, taking this car with her.'
'And then she called you from Parry Sound and told you it was stolen?'
'No. I did that.' He got out of the car and slammed the door. 'I was mad at her and I knew she was going up there. She has a friend there, some other dippy painter. The car is in my name and I was so angry when she left I reported it stolen, just to embarrass her.'
'That constitutes public mischief,' I said. 'You could be summonsed.' I was stretching it but only slightly, he had certainly bent the law although nothing would be done about it.
'I wonder what else they took,' he said. 'I had my golf clubs in the back.'
'You didn't take them out when she packed the car and left?'
'She did it while I was out. Left me a note.' He took the key out of the ignition and undid the trunk. I looked over his shoulder as he did it and then shoved him aside before he could reach in. A woman's body was coiled in the trunk, her fair hair pasted over her face with the water that had drowned her.
CHAPTER 2
Waites reeled back, covering his face with both hands. I held him by the elbow until I was sure he wouldn't collapse and he stood rocking up and down from the waist. When I was sure he wouldn't keel over I turned my attention to the dead woman, going by the book, checking for a pulse. There was none of course, and she had a slight froth around her mouth. She had drowned.
Waites came back to the car. There were tears in his eyes and he made as if to lean on the rim of the trunk but I didn't let him touch it, putting my hand on his shoulder, propping him. 'I'm sorry, Mr Waites. Your wife is gone. Come inside.'
He shambled beside me to the diner. Paul Kinski looked up in surprise. I raised one finger to him and he bit down his questions and waited while I sat Waites in a booth. 'Do you have any liquor, Paul? Vodka, something?'
'Rye I got.' He raised an eyebrow at me and I held up one hand where Waites couldn't see it.
'Rye'd be good, can you get a shot for Mr Waites, please. This is an emergency.'
He went back into the house and came out with a bottle of Black Velvet. I took it off him and sloshed an ounce or so in a coffee cup and took it over to Waites. 'She was alive yesterday,' he said in a puzzled tone. 'Then we had a fight. Over nothing at all, really. She wanted to paint, I wanted her to play golf. Stupid. And it got kind of nasty and I went out for a walk and she left. And now she's never coming back.'
Paul Kinski was trying hard to overhear. I looked across at him. 'Can you get Mr Waites a cup of coffee, please? And can I use your phone?'
'Sure, come in back.' He walked out from behind the counter and drew back the curtain that led to the private section of the house. I went through and he followed me, his Polish accent coming out in his anxiety. 'What's happening, Chief? He's upset about the seats so much?'
'His wife's body is in the trunk. Make sure nobody gets into your yard. I've got to call the doctor.'
We went into the kitchen, where Paul's wife was stirring something on the stove. She hasn't learned much English yet but young Peter has taught me a couple of words of Polish so I smiled and said 'Djen dobrie' and she smiled back, showing a European gold tooth.
I took the phone and called Dr McQuaig. Fortunately he was in and promised to come right over. Next I called Carl Simmonds, the local photographer. He was just heading out on a wedding shoot but he said he'd come to the garage first. Finally I called McKenney's funeral parlour and asked them to send a hearse.
Then I went back out to the front and sat down across from Waites in the booth. 'What are you going to do?' he asked in a dull voice.
'There's going to be a full investigation. I have the doctor coming and the photographer. I'm going to fingerprint the car and the doctor will do what he has to.'
'You mean he'll see if she's been raped. Why don't you talk straight?' He was angry. There were no tears in his eyes.
'We'll want to talk to this person she was going to see. Do you have a name?'
'Carolyn Jeffries and her husband, of course. They run a framing gallery, sell paints and frames and crap in Parry Sound.'
'Did your wife tell you she was going to see them?'
'She goes there all the time. She and the woman were in Art College together. I think Moira has— He stopped and corrected himself. 'I think she had a soft spot for the husband. He's an American hippy, bearded pinko type.'
'You don't like these people?'
'What's that got to do with anything? They weren't my friends, were they? Anyway, what's not to like? Granola and sandals and all that 'sixties garbage.' His bereavement hadn't made him any more charitable.
'When did your wife leave? What time?'
'Four o'clock was the tee-off time.' He fixed me suddenly with a bleak stare. 'You can check that if you want to. At the Pines.'
'And you had a fight and she left. What time was that, do you remember
exactly?'
'It went on,' he said vaguely. 'I'm not sure when it finished except that it was too late for golf and anyway, by the time I came back she was gone and my clubs were missing.' He was wearing a Rolex and looked like the kind of guy who measured out his day in fifteen-second intervals, Why was he being vague.
'Sorry for asking but did you and your wife argue a lot?'
He snorted mirthlessly. 'The reason we came up here was we were trying to get something going again. Things have been rough. This holiday was kind of one last try before she went home and called her lawyer.'
'It was that bad?'
'I don't know why we ever got married except maybe she needed a meal ticket. All she cared about was painting and I was dumb enough to let her sit home doing it while I worked.'
'But it didn't work out?'
'No.' He pursed his lips. 'It didn't work out. I got tired of coming home at nine, ten o'clock at night and finding the breakfast dishes in the sink while she sat in front of one of her stupid bloody paintings with no thought of time in her head. No dinner ready, not even dressed tidily enough that we could eat out anywhere reasonable. She was a slob.'
'The clothes she's wearing now look tidy.'
He looked at me with something like a sneer. 'Up here she'd've fit in like feet into shoes. That was the best she ever dressed.'
'You say she left a note. Do you still have it?'
'No. I flushed it down the john. I was angry.' Disappointing but in character.
Dr McQuaig's station wagon pulled into the lot and I stood up. 'The doctor just got here. Excuse me a minute. If you need more coffee, another drink, Paul will bring it to you.' He shook his head. I could see he had barely tasted his rye.
McQuaig is a tall old Scot and he was wearing paint-stained grey slacks and a check shirt. He had a beat-up hat on with a small Mepps spinner hanging on the band.
'Hi, Reid. An odd place for a drowning? Did Mrs Kinski slip in the shower?'
'No, this one's a homicide, Doc. Found a woman's body in the trunk of a car that spent the night in the lake.'
