by Vicki Delany
“No,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said at the same time. “Go back to your program, Leslie,” he told his wife. “I’ll handle this.”
The woman nodded and slipped down the hall. A door opened and I could hear the sound of a tv. Then the door shut and all was quiet.
Malan turned to the boy. “Jason, when I interviewed you at school you said you didn’t know Maureen Grey other than as someone you saw around.”
“Yeah.” The boy glanced at his father out of the corner of his eyes.
“Is that true?” Malan asked.
“If my son said it, then it’s true,” Fitzpatrick said. “Now, it’s getting late and Jason has school tomorrow. He’s in grade twelve, and we have hopes of a good scholarship. He has to keep his marks up.”
“Football player, are you?” Malan asked.
I shifted the heavy weight of my gun belt. I was very warm in the overheated house in my winter uniform jacket. No one paid any attention to me.
“Yes,” Jason answered.
“Pretty good player, I hear.”
“That has nothing to do with anything. Good night, Sergeant,” Brian Fitzpatrick repeated.
“Pretty good, yeah,” Jason said with a touch of pride in his voice.
“What was your relationship with Maureen Grey?”
“They had no relationship,” Fitzpatrick said quickly. “They went to the same school. They were not even in the same grade. My son was kind enough to go to the girl’s funeral and pay his respects. Why are you making something out of that? You should be arresting the girl’s father. She was a cheap slut, and her father’s a drunken bully.”
“She wasn’t a slut,” Jason said. His handsome face turned dark with anger.
“What I mean”—Fitzpatrick took a deep drink from his glass—“is that the unfortunate young woman was not friends with my son. You’ve taken up enough of our time.” He moved to open the door.
“Is your father right, Jason?” I said. Malan shot me a look. It wasn’t my place to say anything. But I couldn’t just turn around and leave.
Jason let out a sob. His voice broke as he said, “No. He’s not right. I loved her. I loved Maureen. We were going to be married.”
“That’s nonsense,” his father shouted. “You’re seventeen years old. You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Now you.” He turned to Malan. “Get out of my house.”
“I can leave,” the sergeant said. “And take Jason down to the station to finish this conversation. Is that what you want?”
“You gave her the ring,” I said. “Didn’t you, Jason? The ring with the blue stone.”
Jason nodded. Tears ran down his handsome face. “It was just a cheap thing. Something for her to wear until I could buy a real diamond.”
“And where the hell did you think you were going to get the money for a diamond ring?” his father snapped.
Jason ignored him. “I know what they said about her. The kids at school. They were wrong. She was a wonderful person. A beautiful girl. I loved her.”
“Did you kill her?” Malan asked, very softly.
Jason shook his head. His father sputtered.
“We planned to be married when I finished university,” Jason said. “I’d decided not to go to the States to play football. Even though it was what my dad wanted. I’ve been accepted at Queens University in Kingston. That way I wouldn’t be too far away and could come home and see Maureen on the weekends. She’d graduate next year and get a job. Or something.”
“Or something,” his father spat. “That’s a great plan. Or something. How the hell long do you think it would be before the slut started sleeping around on you? A week, a month? While you worked your ass off to support her and her brat. What about football, eh? A top-ranked college in the States. The NFL. All our dreams and hopes.”
“Your dreams, Dad. Your hopes. I like playing football, and I’m good at it. But I plan to go into law. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do.”
“She got pregnant,” I said. “That changed things didn’t it, Jason?”
He nodded. “She was having my baby. Our baby. We talked about abortion or adoption, but neither of us wanted that. We wanted to keep it. We. We were going to love it and raise it.” He looked at his father. Then he leaned against the wall. His broad chest moved with his sobs. “None of it matters anymore. Maureen’s gone. The baby’s gone. I’ll go to your damned college and play fucking football. You can brag to all your friends what a hotshot your son is.”
Brian Fitzpatrick lifted his glass and finished the rest of his drink in one gulp. The edges of his mouth turned up in a sly smile. “Of course you will, son. You’ve got what you wanted, Sergeant. Now, please leave us alone.”
“No,” Malan said. “I don’t have what I wanted. There’s still the question of why Maureen died. Jason, do you know anything else you’re not telling us?”
Brian Fitzpatrick threw his glass against the wall. It shattered. “Get the hell out of my house,” he roared.
Malan nodded to me. I opened the door. A gust of snow and icy wind blew in. “Very well,” Malan said. “But this case is still open. Someone killed that young woman and I intend to find out who it was. Someone who had dreams and hopes and ambitions. And a pregnant schoolgirl from a poor family was standing in the way.”
“I didn’t kill her, Sergeant Malan,” Jason said. His voice was low and very sad. “I loved her. I wanted to be with her forever.”
“I’m not thinking of your dreams,” Malan said. “Your dreams included Maureen.” He looked directly at Brian Fitzpatrick. “But someone else’s didn’t.”
Jason gasped. All the blood drained from his face.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Fitzpatrick said.
“I told you,” Jason said. “That night, at dinner. I told you I was accepting the offer from Queens and turning down the American ones. I told you Maureen was having a baby.”
Fitzpatrick shrugged. “I knew you’d come to your senses soon enough and see that I’m right.” He tried to look unconcerned, but a vein throbbed in his forehead. It was cold, standing in the open door while the snow blew in. Fitzpatrick was starting to sweat.
“I’d been afraid to tell you,” Jason said. “I figured you’d yell and carry on. Threaten to cut me off. I told you Maureen was pregnant and we were going to get married in the summer. Mom cried a little bit. She left the table before we were finished. You just kept on eating. You said I’d change my mind.”
“And you would have, soon enough.”
“Pregnancies have a way of continuing while people make up their minds,” I said. “University scholarships don’t. Was there a deadline from the American college, Jason? If you turned them down, they wouldn’t make the offer again.”
Malan lifted a hand, telling me to be quiet.
Jason looked at his father. “The deadline’s this week. Now that Maureen’s dead, it didn’t seem to matter anymore what I did. I sent in my acceptance yesterday. Mom took pictures of you posing while I signed the papers.” He let out a roar. A cry of pure rage and pain.
He flew across the room.
He punched his father full in the face. Fitzpatrick’s nose broke in a spray of blood, and he dropped to the floor. Jason pulled back his foot and aimed a kick at his father’s head. Before he could connect, I was on him, pulling him off balance. I slid my leg between his, twisted and brought him crashing down.
I stood over him, expecting him to try to get back to his feet. But he rolled up into a ball and lay there, sobbing.
Malan had Fitzpatrick by the arm. He pulled the man to his feet. Mrs. Fitzpatrick stood in the hallway. Her eyes were wide with shock and her hand was pressed to her mouth.
Brian Fitzpatrick spat out a mouthful of blood. More blood streamed down his face. “I did it for you,” he shouted at his son. “Don’t you understand? You were going to throw your life away on a no-account slut and her bastard. The kid probably wasn’t even yours. She probably spread her legs for every boy in that sch
ool. Got herself knocked up. Figured you’d make a good meal ticket.”
“Brian Fitzpatrick,” Sergeant Malan said, “I am arresting you for the murder of Maureen Grey. It is my duty to…”
I snapped handcuffs on Fitzpatrick’s wrists. He did not look at his son or his wife.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mrs. Fitzpatrick ran for the phone. I gripped her husband’s arm and led him outside. I stuffed him into the back of the cruiser. He didn’t say anything. Jason lay on the floor and cried.
When we left the Fitzpatrick home, heavy snow was falling. I could hardly see the road in front of my headlights. As I pulled into the police station, we got a call. Another accident. A bad one. A car had gone off the road in Bloomfield and crashed into a group of people coming out of a restaurant. At least one dead.
Some people just can’t drive in the freakin’ snow.
Johnstone radioed to say he’d take it, but I knew he’d need backup.
I helped Sergeant Malan get Brian Fitzpatrick into a cell. Then I left. I was sorry to have been called away.
* * *
I was off the next day and slept until noon.
I made coffee and a bagel with peanut butter and sat down at my computer. Outside my window a bright sun shone in a blue sky. Fresh snow sparkled like chips of glass. We’d gotten more than a foot in the night, and trees sagged under the weight. I finished my breakfast and was checking the news in The Globe and Mail when my cell phone rang.
“Are you up?” Paul Malan asked.
“Yes.”
“You deserve to hear the results of our interview with Brian Fitzpatrick. Can I come around?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. I rushed to get into the shower and get dressed. I was tying my wet hair back when the door buzzer sounded.
Malan had stopped at Miss Lily’s Café. He carried two cups of hot coffee and a bag of fresh pastries.
“What happened?” I asked, before he even sat down at the table in my tiny kitchen.
“You did a good job, Nicole. Your instincts were spot-on.”
I blushed with pleasure.
He took the top off his coffee cup. Steam rose. He ripped open the paper bag and took out a couple of Danishes and two muffins. “Fitzpatrick made a full confession. By the time his lawyer arrived, he’d told us the whole story. I guess he thought if he explained it all to me, I’d understand.”
I took a bran muffin.
“Jason told his father he was going to marry Maureen. He wouldn’t be taking the football scholarship. Fitzpatrick pretended to understand, but he was furious. He was running out of time. He felt he had no choice but to act. His dreams would be over if Jason stayed around because of her. After dinner Jason went to his room to do homework. He left his phone on the kitchen table. Brian looked up Maureen’s number and called her.
“He says it was an accident. But I think we can get him for premeditated murder. He told Maureen he wanted to make her an offer. Said he’d like to take her for a coffee and talk about it. She waited for him outside Stephanie Reynolds’s house. Brian picked her up and drove her to a quiet spot near the Picton airfield. He offered her money to tell Jason it was over. She was to quit school and leave town for a year. Twenty thousand dollars if she’d have an abortion. Ten thousand if not. He thought Jason would come to his senses if Maureen left him.” He sipped at his coffee.
“I assume Maureen said no.”
“She told Brian she was in love with Jason. They were planning a life together. They and their child. He couldn’t bear to think that his son was throwing his life away for her.
“She got out of the car, said she was feeling sick. She turned her back on him. He reached out and grabbed her scarf and twisted. Next thing he knew, she was dead.”
I left out a long puff of air.
“He says he wanted to take her to the hospital. But he realized he’d be charged with killing her.”
“No kidding.”
“No kidding. So he left her by the side of the road. He wanted it to look like she’d been out for a walk and got picked up by some guy. Anyone going for a walk that night would have dressed very warmly, but Maureen wasn’t wearing her gloves. He tried to make it look like a rape and started taking her pants off. A car came along and frightened him off.”
“No,” I said. “He wasn’t trying to make it look like rape. More like a casual screw in the backseat of a car. One last chance to make Jason believe Maureen was a slut.”
“You’re probably right about that.” He drank his coffee and took a bite out of an apple Danish.
“What’s so sad,” I said, “is that Brian Fitzpatrick was right all along.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jason wanted to study for a law degree. He’d come home after class to a screaming baby. And its sixteen-year-old mother. Tired and lonely. Angry because she wasn’t having fun like other girls her age.”
“What do you think they should have done?”
I shook my head. “Jason and Maureen had nothing but bad choices. It’s a tragedy all around.”
I got up and went to stand at the window. The roofs of the houses were piled with snow. Smoke rose from chimneys. The snowplow pushed its way up the street. I heard a siren getting closer. An OPP cruiser sped by. Its lights were flashing.
I went back to the table and finished my muffin.
VICKI DELANY is one of Canada’s most prolific and varied crime writers. Her work includes stand-alone novels of psychological suspense, the Smith & Winters series and the Klondike Mystery series. Vicki enjoys the rural life in bucolic Prince Edward County, Ontario, where she grows vegetables, shovels snow and rarely wears a watch. For more information, visit www.vickidelany.com.
The following is an excerpt from Orchestrated Murder, an exciting Rapid Reads novel by Rick Blechta.
978-1-55469-885-1 $9.95 pb
Something is terribly wrong at Symphony Hall. Luigi Spadafini, the symphony’s star conductor, has been murdered. With the mayor and several big shots from the symphony’s board of directors demanding a speedy resolution of the crisis, Detective Lieutenant Pratt faces a seemingly endless list of suspects with good reasons to want the egotistical, philandering Spadafini dead. But surely they didn’t all kill him! Or did they?
CHAPTER ONE
Pratt felt like pounding his head on his desk. Why couldn’t McDonnell just leave him alone today?
He felt every one of his fifty-four years as he walked past all the empty desks to the office of the man who ran the Homicide Division. His desk was as far away from the office as he could get it.
“What can I do for you?” Pratt asked.
Captain McDonnell looked up from the papers on his desk. “There’s a problem at Symphony Hall. A big problem.”
“What?”
“I’ve just had a call from upstairs. Appears someone’s murdered the damn conductor.”
“Luigi Spadafini?”
“Yes—if he’s the conductor. I thought it would be right up your alley. You like this kind of music so much.”
“Thanks,” Pratt answered glumly.
What he wanted at the moment was a good nap, not another job. The previous night he’d been wrapping up a tricky case and got exactly three hours’ sleep on a sofa in an empty office he’d found. He had the stiff neck to prove it too.
“The chief wants you to tread lightly. That’s the other reason I’m sending you. You know how to act around the symphony set.”
“Anything else?”
McDonnell shook his head. “Nope. Just hustle down there. Once the press gets hold of the news, all hell’s going to break loose.” As Pratt turned to go, his boss added, “Take Ellis with you. Show him the ropes. This promises to be a little out of the ordinary.”
Just great. Saddled with the greenest member of the squad. Pratt didn’t even know the kid’s first name and didn’t care to. Hopefully the young pup wouldn’t screw anything up.
As he went back to his desk, the captain called, “Good job
last night, Pratt. You did us proud.”
Pratt bit his tongue. Then why not let someone else handle this job and let him go home?
Pratt let Ellis drive across town to the city’s latest municipal wonder. Built four years earlier to a lot of taxpayer squawking, Symphony Hall was beautiful outside but cold and sterile. Inside, though, it was all wood, and the sound quality was lovely. He’d heard Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony there the previous month, and it had been a concert he’d remember for a long time. Spadafini had been very impressive.
Now Pratt’s head felt as if it was stuffed with sawdust. Great way to begin an investigation.
Ellis was a good-looking lad. Tall and still lanky, a lot like Pratt when he’d been that age. Thirty years later, he’d lost most of his hair and put on a good fifty pounds. At least he didn’t need glasses—yet.
Making conversation, he asked, “How long have you been in Homicide?
“Two weeks, sir,” Ellis answered.
“Seen any action yet?”
“Only that domestic murder last Friday. Terrible situation. Mostly I’ve been pushing papers.”
“So I heard.”
“I wanted to say that it’s an honor to be working with you.”
“I don’t need buttering up, Ellis. You’re here to make my life easier. Keep your eyes and ears open and try to stay out of my way.”
“My pleasure, sir.”
“And another thing: stop calling me ‘sir.’ Pratt will do.”
The coast was still clear as they pulled up at the backstage entrance. Surprisingly, the media hadn’t arrived yet. A beat cop Pratt recognized was standing next to the door, looking bored.
“Glad to have you aboard, sir,” he said. “It’s a madhouse in there, I hear.”
“It’s going to be a madhouse out here too. Don’t let anyone in, and don’t tell them anything.”
“Right.”
Later on Pratt was sorry that he had just rushed by. He might have retired on the spot if he’d known about the unholy mess he was walking into.
At the vacant security desk just inside, a sergeant Pratt knew was waiting. Next to him stood a man wearing a suit and tie, even though it was Saturday morning. He looked to be in his late thirties, medium height, slightly overweight.
