Body Blows

by Marc Strange

  My frustration is surfacing. “Find the damn driver!” I say. “Am I missing something? They’ve got a dead body, they’ve got a limo with prints over everything, including a cordless drill. What the hell more do they need?”

  “I am assured there is a massive manhunt underway,” he says.

  “All right then,” I say. “Track him down, sort things out. Good.” I can hear the false heartiness in my voice.

  He waves my comment away. He has other things on his mind. “We have to arrange for a funeral,” he says. “For Raquel. She had a church she went to Sunday mornings. Saint Barnabas.”

  “I’ll look into it, sir,” I say.

  “Thank you. I don’t know if she has any family. Except for the husband, wherever he is.”

  The guard is stepping forward. “Is there anything I can bring you from the hotel, sir — towels, cigars?”

  “You know what I want, Joseph. Find out who took her away from me.”

  “We’ve been through this, Leo,” I say. I almost never call him by his first name.

  Leo is standing up. “You’re the only one I’d trust to do the job, Joseph.” He squares his shoulders, smiles at me, and precedes his escort through the steel door.

  chapter seventeen

  A crowd of media people and spectators with nothing more important demanding their participation is gathered outside the police station as I make my departure.

  Not nearly as many as might accompany a Hollywood bad girl to rehab, but sufficient to cover the public arrest of a prominent local innkeeper. Most are there to get a quote or sound bite from Arnold Köenigsberg and I manage to elbow my way through the mob with a few pardon me pleases and no comments. Most of them wouldn’t know me if I wore a nametag, which suits me fine. There is one familiar face, a camerawoman who works on location with Connie. She never warmed to me for some reason. I can feel her lens panning as I cross the street to the parking lot where a tall blonde woman is waiting beside the car.

  “No comment,” I say.

  “Didn’t ask for one,” says Roselyn Hiscox.

  “Force of habit,” I say. “Something I can do for you?”

  “I could use a lift.”

  “The hotel?”

  “Where else?”

  I unlock the passenger door. The camera across the street is still watching me.

  “What’s the matter with your arm?”

  “Stiff.”

  “Want me to drive?”

  “No, no thanks, it’s an automatic, point and steer.”

  She settles herself beside me, fluffs her blonde hair. “How does he look?”

  “Fine,” I say.

  “Really?” She sounds dubious.

  The camera is swinging to follow us. It’s Connie’s videographer, Dee is her name. I resist the urge to stick out my tongue as we pull onto the street.

  “He doesn’t usually wear the same shirt all day,” I say, “but he’s dealing with it.”

  “Sounds like the least of his problems,” says Roselyn.

  “Still no comment.”

  “That’s okay,” she says, “it’ll all come out in the wash as my mother used to say.”

  “Meaning your book.”

  “Maybe two books. It’s a saga.”

  “Leo’s past life is his business.”

  “His past life is likely the reason his mistress was murdered.”

  The word offends me for some reason and I honk at a dawdling pedestrian rather than snap at my passenger.

  The walker flips me the bird. Roselyn appears oblivious.

  She says “He has more than one ghost in his past.”

  “They all in your book?”

  “All? Ha! I wish. But I’ve got a few. Old sins cast long shadows.”

  “Meaning?”

  “No one amasses the kind of money he has without stepping on some toes.”

  “Toes are one thing.”

  “Or stabbing someone in the back, or stealing something, or acting on inside information, or making deals under the table. You know what Balzac said?”

  “Remind me.”

  “Every great fortune begins with a crime.”

  “Is any of this germane to the murder of my friend Raquel Mendez?”

  “Who knows? Could be a hundred things. The shareholders of the AlBrit TV network who wound up with half of what they should have got, or Banff Action Developments which he gutted to buy AlBrit. Hell, the Lord Douglas Hotel, which he got by buying up the previous owner’s IOUs for ten cents on the dollar and then foreclosing.”

  “Sounds like business to me. Not a world I’m familiar with.”

  “You will be when the book comes out.”

  I leave her by the front entrance and drive around to the parking garage, muttering to myself. “Invincibly Ignorant.” A papal distinction for people too far gone in their primitive belief systems to accept revealed truth.

  Margo is looking for me when I get back. Lloyd Gruber has had a heart attack. Better and better.

  “Well, they’re not sure it was a heart attack,” she says. “It could be indigestion, anxiety attack, low blood sugar. He’s been under a lot of stress.”

  “Unlike yourself,” I say.

  “I handle it differently,” she says. “Anyway, we got him an ambulance and they took him off to Vancouver General.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  “Oh, I’ve got a list. I’ll make you a copy.”

  “Give me the top item.”

  “How about getting us off the front page of the newspaper? Everywhere you go your reporter pal’s trotting behind with his sneaky little video phone.”

  “He was helping me track someone down.”

  “Odd how the trail of breadcrumbs always seems to end at this hotel. We’re the media event of the month. We’ve had a murder, a dead body in the lot next door, and the boss taken out through the lobby in handcuffs.”

  “He’ll be out on Monday.”

  “That’s fine for Leo, but it doesn’t really change the situation, does it? I’ve had eighty-three cancellations in the past two days,” she says.

  I can see the lobby through the glass partition that makes up half of her back wall. Things look normal enough, people checking in, people checking out — perhaps a few more out than in.

  “Can you fix it, Joe?” she asks.

  “I don’t work miracles, Margo.”

  “Neither do I.” She puts on her glasses, usually a sign that my time is up. “I’ve had a job offer,” she says.

  “I expect you get a lot of those.”

  “This one’s tempting.”

  “Managing?”

  “Not yet, but it’s a big chain, numerous possibilities for advancement, is how they put it.”

  “Sounds like a great opportunity.”

  She takes off her glasses, rubs her eyes. “I’ve got a headache.”

  “Get you something?”

  “No, I keep a big bottle in my desk these days.” She helps herself to tablets, sips water, rubs her eyes again. “I don’t want to leave here,” she says. “I’ve been effectively running this place for three years, whether Lloyd acknowledges it or not. I’d rather stay — in Vancouver, in my home. I have a mother to worry about, friends, connections. But if this is a dead end … If Leo isn’t going to be able to hang onto the place … Goddamn it, I won’t work for Theodore Alexander, he gives me the creeps.

  And if this place gets sold to Fairmont, or, God forbid, some supermarket hotel chain, I could be out on my ear.

  I’m not going to wait around to go down with the ship!”

  As Gritch said, if Leo goes down, the world as we know it dims and dies. “And if I can straighten it out?”

  “I don’t have a lot of time to decide, Joe.”

  “I’ve got the weekend.”

  “Think fast,” she says.

  “If you’d upgrade your phone and you could send me little movies,” Connie says.

  “Would I have to learn new buttons?”
>
  “I saw one of you today.”

  “Really?”

  “It was lovely.”

  “What was I doing?”

  “Getting into your car with a long-legged blonde woman. Very stylish.”

  “From Dee, right? I saw her taking my picture.”

  “She doubts your fidelity.”

  “She never liked me.”

  “What’s wrong with your arm?”

  “What? Nothing. It’s a bit stiff.”

  “Look, buster, I’m willing to accept that you can behave while chauffeuring leggy blondes around town but don’t try any of that he-man guff with me. I’m a trained observer and I know what I saw. Your arm is more than stiff.”

  “Job-related.”

  “Joe.”

  “I got cut.”

  “Continue.”

  I come clean about the encounter, minimizing the more life-threatening aspects but admitting that the damn thing hurts.

  “How many?”

  “Thirty-six.”

  “I leave town for two days …”

  “I changed the dressing,” I say. “It’s clean, neat sewing job, healing up nicely.”

  “Assuming you don’t need both arms, what’s your next move?” she asks.

  “Handing in a politely worded letter of resignation has become a very appealing idea.”

  “You won’t run out on him, big guy. It’s not your style.”

  “Wish you weren’t so far away,” I say.

  “I wish I had long legs,” she says.

  “Your legs are perfect.”

  “Damn right.”

  “God bless our Guardian Angel.” I say.

  “Ours?” she asks. “Yours and mine?”

  I pick the card off my desk. “It’s on a card,” I say.

  “I’m the guardian angel. At least as far as Madge Killian is concerned. She wrote, ‘God bless our Guardian Angel.’

  Leo just had a birthday. She figures it’s because of me.”

  “It is, isn’t it?”

  “I guess.”

  “Notice anything about the sentiment?”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as, our Guardian Angel?”

  “She was his social secretary.”

  “How social?” Connie wants to know.

  “Maybe I should go to Victoria.”

  “Hey, me too,” she says. “The other one.”

  chapter eighteen

  Madge Killian lives in a rambling cottage beside a river. At the back of her house is a deck built out over the water and a floating dock where a daysailer is moored. Her flower garden is generous. The flagstone path is flanked by every perennial scheduled to show up in Victoria in early spring, which is practically all of them.

  Madge is on her knees planting purple annuals along a border. She doesn’t look much different from when I first met her; a bit plumper perhaps, more casually dressed, but still brisk, cheerful, and efficient. When she sees me her eyes light up and I realize that I’m happy to see her, too.

  I manage to lift my left arm out of harm’s way as she gives me a big hug. “I don’t remember you being this tall,” she says.

  “Must’ve had a growth spurt when I hit thirty-five.”

  “No, that’s not it,” she smacks me on the chest. “Oh, I know, I wore heels back then.”

  She takes a step back. “Have they let him go?” she asks me.

  “Not until Monday,” I say. “He’ll get bail.”

  “How ridiculous,” she says. “That they could even suspect him of such a horrid thing.” She looks at me fondly. “But you’ll fix it, won’t you, Joseph? You’ll look after him. That’s what you do.”

  “I’m trying. He hasn’t given me much to go on.”

  “That’s just Leo. Secretive man. I used to have to pry it out of him if he wanted red wine or white.”

  “This is a lovely place.”

  “Three generations, might have been four if I’d ever found time for children myself. I’ll have to find someone worthwhile to leave it to.”

  “Historical society?”

  “No, no, then you get sightseers. This is a place that should be lived in. Come in, come in, I have coffee and I have cookies.”

  The house is made up of many small rooms flowing in concert through a labyrinth decorated with artifacts and memories — a thousand photographs, many framed, many more leaning and curling, pinned to corkboard or held by magnets, an upright piano, full china cabinets, ceiling-tall bookshelves sagging under the complete works of anyone worthy of more than one volume.

  “He sends his warmest regards,” I say.

  “Hmmm,” she says. “You tell him I’m still waiting for that album. Cream and sugar?”

  “Black, thanks. What album would that be?”

  “Photographs of his ranch.”

  “I’ve never seen any.”

  “It’s a gap in the archive,” she says. “These are ginger snaps. I didn’t make them, my neighbour did. These are date squares. They’re mine.”

  “You used to bring these into the office.” I have a memory of her coming out of an elevator carrying a platter, wearing a ruffled blouse and red high-heeled pumps. “Maiden cake,” she is saying. “But you don’t have to be one to eat one.”

  “You were with him a long time.”

  “Almost twenty-five years. Started as his secretary.”

  “What was he doing then?”

  “Different things, real estate development, he had shares in a television station. He was an adventurer, always looking for something to conquer. I think he was looking for something he could love.”

  “Did he find it?”

  “He loved the ranch. He liked raising horses.”

  “I don’t know anything about that part of his life, I guess.”

  “Lives,” she says. “I think he’s had seven, at least.”

  “Did you know his wife? The one who was killed?”

  “That was Lorraine. Yes, I knew her. She was quite mad you know.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Oh, yes. Ask anyone. Beautiful, but right off her trolley. I think it ran in her side of the family. Her daughter was odd too.”

  “I didn’t know Leo had a third child.”

  “Third? Acknowledged perhaps. I suspect there may be a few of his ‘love children’ in the world — well, they wouldn’t be children anymore would they? Which is one reason I never got involved with Leo Alexander in that way. He made a pass at me. Oh, yes. One day shortly after I started working for him. I said, ‘There’ll be none of that, Mr. Alexander.’ Yes, I did. I said, ‘let’s remain professional.’ He respected me for that.”

  “I understand Leo was a suspect in the matter of his wife’s death.”

  “Not really. He was nowhere near the ranch that weekend.” She deftly slices the maiden cake into neat squares and lifts one onto a plate for me. “Still, it’s an awful coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “I haven’t been able to get much information. What happened?”

  “Well, I don’t know, exactly. I was with Mr.

  Alexander at a meeting in Calgary. We were, well, he was, trying to acquire two new television outlets. There was a bitter round of negotiations. He was a tough horse trader. Then, in the middle of all that, he got a phone call from the ranch that Lorraine had been killed. So he went right back. It cost him the deal he was trying to make, but he didn’t waste a second.”

  “Were Leo and his wife getting along?”

  “She didn’t like living on the ranch. She was always flying off to New York or Europe or somewhere she could spend a lot of money.”

  “Did you ever meet Raquel?”

  “The maid? No, I never did. Of course I haven’t been in Vancouver for quite a few years. Once Mr. Alexander closed up his businesses and moved into the hotel, I was out of a job. I don’t mean that in a bad way. Mr. Alexander was very generous with my severance package, and I had a pension plan, and then when the library was established th
ere was a yearly budget for that. But I was out of that particular job, looking after his appointments and keeping track of his social obligations. I enjoyed that job. I miss it.”

  She settles herself across from me. “Now don’t forget,” she says, “when you get a chance, mention the ranch pictures. I have the sailing years. I have his correspondence. I have just about everything except for Alberta.”

  “I’d love to see that collection. Is it handy?”

  “Oh, Lordy, no,” she laughs. “It just grew too huge. I ran out of room. Four years ago I prodded Leo into buying a nice little building not far from the University.”

  She hands me a brochure with a colour photograph on the cover, a two-storey house of solid Victorian aspect. “The Alexander Library,” she says with pride in her voice. “It’s not open to the public. By appointment only.”

  “I’d like to make an appointment.”

  “Don’t be silly, I’ll give you a personal tour,” she says. “Finish your coffee. Have another piece of maiden cake. You don’t have to be one to eat one.”

  Madge drives a beautifully maintained 1969 Austin-Healey Sprite, British racing green with a badge bar on the grill proudly carrying the insignia of the Victoria Sprite-Fanciers Club. It’s a nimble little two-seater and she drives it well. I’m having trouble keeping up with her. Fortunately for me it isn’t far from her riverside cottage to the Alexander Library.

  There’s a small gravel parking lot at the side of the building and Madge motions me to occupy the space reserved for L. Alexander.

  “Who’s more entitled?” she asks.

  I don’t think the hotel’s shabby sedan rates such a valued place but since Leo hasn’t bothered owning a car for some time, I think I’m safe.

  For a man who would throw his bronze plaque into the first available dumpster, Leo appears to have amassed an impressive collection of framed portraits, testimonials, citations, and numerous awards, medallions, statuettes, and scrolls.

  “You tell Leo I’ll want that Hotelier’s plaque right away. I have a spot reserved right over here.”

  There is an open space at the end of a series of awards; one of them is similar in size and shape to the one currently in the police evidence lockup.

  “You might not get it for a while,” I say. “Someone defaced it.”

  “Why would anyone do that?”