Destination Murder

by Jessica Fletcher

  “Reggie hasn’t mentioned it, but I’d like to see it, too. I’ll ask him about it. See you later.”

  I started to walk away, but she pulled me back.

  “Jessica, ah know ah’m bein’ nosy, but have you heard any more about the murder investigation? Just this morning, Junior was saying that he saw a photograph of Theodora Blevin in the paper and read that the police are looking into her husband’s death. I said to him, I’ll ask Jessica what she knows because, of course, you and the detective on the train might have solved the case by now.”

  “Unfortunately, it’s not quite that easy,” I said. “I hope you’ll excuse me. Reggie is waiting.”

  She started to object when Winston Rendell interrupted us. “A moment of your time, Mrs. Fletcher?”

  Maeve flashed Rendell a look of annoyance and quickly fled.

  “May I offer you a drink?” Rendell asked.

  “Much too early for me,” I said.

  “Not even a Bloody Mary?”

  “Maybe another time,” I said, starting to see this wasn’t going to be a friendly chat. “My friend is waiting for me, Mr. Rendell.”

  “I won’t be but a moment.” He’d been leading me through the Fleuri Restaurant toward the Gerard lounge, but we stopped where the lunch buffet would be set up in a couple of hours, and the chocolate buffet later that evening.

  “I probably shouldn’t feel the need to bring this up to you, Mrs. Fletcher, but circumstances compel me.”

  I waited for him to explain.

  “I was contacted yesterday afternoon by members of the Vancouver police department,” he said, his voice mirroring the gravity he was assigning to the event. “A persistent bloke, a detective from the homicide division.”

  “I’m not surprised,” I said. “The investigation into Mr. Blevin’s murder is now in their hands.”

  “That may be, but you see, I didn’t appreciate the tone the detective took with me.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “To be direct, Mrs. Fletcher, he referred to certain circumstances that the detective on the train told him I was involved in.”

  “Oh?”

  “That unfortunate incident where you almost lost your life when the vestibule door swung open. Did you tell him about that?”

  “I don’t see why I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” I said.

  “But I had nothing to do with that—did I?”

  “I certainly hope not.”

  “And then there was that phone call you eavesdropped on,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “When I was on the phone with a business associate back in London. I saw you listening.”

  “I think a correction is in order here,” I said. “I didn’t eavesdrop on you, Mr. Rendell. You were speaking loudly, and I happened to be standing nearby. If you don’t want people to hear your conversations, you should find a more private location in which to conduct your calls.”

  “But you reported my phone conversation to that detective, Marshall.”

  “Yes, I did. I thought it was relevant.”

  He’d been relatively pleasant until that moment. Now he turned nasty, his face reflecting his antagonism. “Mind your own bloody business, Mrs. Fletcher. Blevin might have been a conniving bastard who buggered me in our business deal, but I don’t need some fantasy-loving novelist pointing fingers at me.” He turned and stomped off before I could respond to his insult.

  I felt my face reddening and took a deep breath to calm myself. I was halfway to where Reggie waited for me in the lobby when Martin and Gail Goldfinch, walking in the opposite direction, stopped me. “We were hoping we’d find you. Time for a cup of coffee?” Martin asked

  “No, I’m sorry. I’m already late for an appointment.”

  “We’d really like a word with you,” Gail added.

  “Another time, please,” I said, and continued on my way.

  I hated to be short with them, but I was still fuming at Winston Rendell’s arrogance and wasn’t in the mood to speak with anyone at that moment, especially a member of the Track and Rail Club. It seemed that half the people in the group had decided that if they convinced me of their innocence in the murder of Alvin Blevin, they wouldn’t have to worry, while others wanted to gossip about the details.

  Reggie saw the tension in my face. “What’s wrong, Jess? What did they say to you?”

  I repeated the conversation with Rendell and told Reggie what I’d been thinking as we waited for the elevators to take us upstairs.

  “I know some of them can be a little difficult,” he said, “but most of the members of the Track and Rail Club are really nice. Besides, you have to take into consideration that being there when Al Blevin was poisoned was pretty upsetting to just about everyone.”

  “I know that,” I said, taking a deep breath, “and I also realize that by allowing myself to be singled out by Detective Marshall, my original intent of just wanting to help has ballooned into a larger role. Unfortunately, I seem to be a target for attack by those who resent my involvement and a center of attention for the curious. Rendell has been particularly unpleasant. I’m still shaking my head over the fact that he had the temerity to follow us from the restaurant in Prince George. I hope he’s not planning to do it again here in Vancouver.”

  Reggie laughed. “Winston certainly turned out to be a blowhard, Jess, but I’ll bet he’s all bark and no bite.” He paused and his eyes grew wide. “You don’t think he’s the killer, do you?”

  “Reggie, not right now, please.”

  He smiled sheepishly. “I suppose we’re all caught up in the mysterious aspect of Al’s death. We want to find out what’s going to happen next.”

  “I understand the interest, Reggie, but it’s not a game. A man was murdered. The person who killed him had no compunctions about taking a life and might not be averse to killing someone else if he or she got in his way.”

  “Are you in danger, Jess?”

  “Now, don’t you worry about me. I’ll take care. The best thing for all of us is to see that the killer is apprehended.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  During my previous visit to Vancouver, I’d spent an idyllic day at famed Stanley Park and had taken a boat to Victoria, where I’d basked in the beauty of that city and its harbor, the lights of the Empress Hotel and the legislative buildings reflected in the water. I’d also ridden the Skyride, an aerial tram, up Grouse Mountain, from which the panoramic views of the city and surrounding mountains and sea were breathtaking. There were other sights to be enjoyed to be sure, but the one place I’d missed, and wanted to see, was the Capilano Suspension Bridge. Others who’d experienced the popular tourist attraction had waxed poetic about the thrill of crossing the narrow, swaying, wood-and-wire footbridge, the Capilano River and gorge twenty-five stories below.

  The Track and Rail Club had arranged for a van to take interested parties over to North Vancouver and up the mountain to the bridge. Initially, I’d been eager to sign on, but considering my irritation with the club’s members, I briefly debated skipping the tour. But Reggie was right, I told myself, these people were nice—well, possibly Mr. Rendell was an exception—and their curiosity was understandable.

  I went to my suite, where I packed a few things into a fanny pack and pulled a slicker and hat from the closet. It had turned rainy, par for the course, I was told. We’d been lucky with our sunny days as the more common forecast for this time of year was for wet weather.

  At the entrance to the hotel, the doorman pointed me to the club’s hired van. I climbed aboard and was surprised to find I was the sole occupant.

  “Must be the rain,” the driver said, checking his watch. “We’ll give it another few minutes, if you don’t mind, to see if anyone else wants to come.”

  I was beginning to think I might have a private ride to the bridge—and was not unhappy at that prospect—when, at the last minute, Marilyn and Samantha Whitmore joined me in the van.

  Our trip
took us on what was by now a familiar route, through Stanley Park and over Lions Gate Bridge, into North and West Vancouver, and past the station from which the Whistler Northwind had departed and where we would board the Pacific Starlight Dinner Train that evening.

  Although I wouldn’t characterize the Whitmores as being chatty during the ride, Marilyn commented on how the rain never stopped her from doing what she wanted, and raved about last night’s dinner at the Blue Water Café—“It was always one of my husband’s favorite places”—and Samantha managed to add that the Capilano Bridge was her favorite place in Vancouver and that her mother should try walking across it once. Marilyn shuddered at the thought. Before we knew it, we were paying our admission to the park.

  The bridge was part of Capilano Park, a wilderness area marked by hiking trails that wound through a misty rain forest, a salmon enhancement facility below Cleveland Dam, and the home of 500-year-old Douglas fir trees and abundant wildlife.

  “The conditions are pretty nasty today,” the attendant at the entrance told us. “They may decide to close the bridge.”

  “We came all this way,” Samantha told her sternly. “I’m not turning around now.”

  “Just letting you know.”

  Once inside, we followed signs through exhibits on early settlers and their Indian neighbors and wandered past colorful examples of totem poles, more correctly called story poles these days, to the platform leading to the suspension bridge. Marilyn left us to go talk with the carvers of the story poles, with whom she had arranged a memorial carving for her husband.

  Samantha and I stood at the top of a short staircase anchored to the hill and looked down. A heavy mist had formed below in the gorge and had risen above the decking of the bridge, obscuring portions of it for moments at a time until a breeze dissipated the wispy haze. I felt a chill and ran the zipper of my yellow rain slicker up to my neck and tugged down on my hat. The rain and wind had kept tourists away; Samantha and I were among only a handful of visitors. We could hear a few people on the bridge, a couple of boisterous teenagers and a young couple whose laughter echoed back to us from the center of the span. I half expected the park’s management to close the bridge at any moment, at least until the weather improved, but that didn’t happen. We were free to go down the steps and cross to the other side.

  “Are you ready?” Samantha asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. Although I don’t suffer from a classic fear of heights of the sort Samantha’s mother admitted to, I’m not insensitive to danger. Crossing a wobbly footbridge in the fog where you can’t see your next step—a situation of that sort might make me uncomfortable. This, I realized, could be one of those times. The slender bridge swung in the wind, which seemed to have picked up.

  “Come on,” Samantha said, starting down the steps. “It’ll be fine.”

  I took tentative steps down and stood on the first plank of the bridge, feeling the pulsation caused by the steps of other people walking. The teens reached our side and headed up the stairs toward a concession stand. The voices of the young couple grew fainter as they made their way to the other end, and the vibrations from their footfalls faded.

  Samantha stepped onto the bridge, creating a strong throb of the decking under my shoes. She held on to one of the thick steel cables that ran along the top of a side barrier made of metal mesh, and moved forward with determination. The bridge swayed in the wind and she yelled, “Wheee!” She looked back at me. “Come on,” she said. “It’s great.”

  With her a few paces ahead of me, I started across, gripping the steel cable tightly, at times with both hands when a gust caused an especially rough movement of the bridge. I looked back; no one had joined us from that direction. I looked ahead. The bridge seemed interminable, stretching into an ever-narrowing strip, encased in mist and floating above the deep gorge and the raging river I could only hear below.

  I felt more than saw someone in the distance step onto the bridge from the opposite end and was glad of another person nearby. Samantha had continued walking while I stopped and caught my breath and refueled my resolve to complete the crossing. I moved, one step at a time, hand wrapped around the cable, the rain and wind stinging my eyes and dripping from the top of my hat onto my nose. Samantha had stopped at midspan and was leaning over the cable. I reached her and stood at her side.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said in a strangely disconcerting voice.

  “Beautiful, yes,” I agreed, “but also treacherous.” The wind caught my words and my rain hat, carrying them into the atmosphere.

  The boardwalk bounced as a park attendant who’d come from the other side paused near us. “Better head back, ladies. The wind is increasing. We’re going to close the bridge soon.”

  “In a minute,” Samantha said.

  He nodded and continued walking. I held tight to the cable as he passed, and gave a little sigh of relief when he gained the stairs and the shudder of the planks under my feet stopped.

  “You know what this reminds me of?” Samantha whispered.

  “What?”

  “Elliott Vail falling off the train into Fraser Canyon.”

  “What makes you think of that?” I asked.

  “I just wonder what it’s like. To let yourself go and fling yourself into the air,” she sang out, her arms held wide as she turned slowly in a circle, “falling, twisting, spinning, maybe shouting, knowing you’re seconds away from oblivion. Do you think that’s what he was feeling?” She sat down in the middle of the bridge, breathing heavily.

  Her words were more chilling than the weather. It was impossible not to imagine the scene she’d described, whether it was Elliott Vail or—or me. And I was reminded vividly of the desperation I’d experienced, hanging from the train’s vestibule door as it swung out over the void.

  There was a break in the mist, and I poked my head over the steel cable and peered down into the sort of wildness that only nature can provide. The rain had caused the normally placid river to churn with white water, spume rising where the waves crashed into jagged rocks. I felt Samantha stand, sensed her presence next to me, and turned. She was staring at me. What had been a docile, pleasant expression was now stone-hard, the same threatening demeanor I’d seen in the pool at 100 Mile House.

  “Thinking about falling?” she asked, and flung her body against the opposite side of the bridge, causing it to rattle and groan as the force of her action made the suspended walkway swing violently.

  “It would be so easy, wouldn’t it?” she said in a singsong, little girl’s voice. “Just let the bridge dump you over into the abyss.”

  “Cut it out, Samantha,” I said. “This is not funny. You’re endangering others as well as ourselves.”

  “Scared? Don’t you like the feeling? I let you ride once before.”

  So it was Samantha. “You released the latch on the train door. You might have killed me.”

  She shrugged. “I saved you, didn’t I? Swinging is fun. Daddy used to like to go on the swings with me,” she said, bending her knees and pushing up, as if she were pumping on a swing in a playground. “Daddy? Wanna go on the swings again?”

  “Samantha, stop fooling around.” I used my sternest tone. “We have to go now.”

  “Up we go. Down we go.”

  “Samantha!” Marilyn’s voice, calling from the end of the bridge, held a note of panic.

  “Look down, Jessica. See the rocks? If we jumped down there we’d be dead, just like my daddy. Then I could see him again.” Although she was losing her hold on sanity, she looked at me with such sadness in her eyes, it broke my heart.

  “Samantha, you couldn’t have saved him. His heart wasn’t strong. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I should have been there,” she wailed. “I could have helped him.”

  “Please, Samantha,” I said, holding out my hand. “Come back with me. Hurting yourself is not the solution. Come on now.”

  She started to sob; then abruptly, her misery became rage. “I
could have helped Blevin, too, but I didn’t want to. He killed my father. Let him die.”

  “Did you poison Alvin Blevin?” I asked.

  A hysterical laugh erupted from her lips. She rocked the bridge again, hurling herself against the metal barrier, cackling and hooting. The violence of her action and its reverberation through the footbridge threw us both down on the wooden boards. Samantha panted, holding her side. “Oh, I wish I had,” she said fervently. “Thank you. Thank you, whoever killed him.”

  On the cliff, Marilyn’s pleas to her daughter were faint over the rising wind.

  Samantha collapsed against the mesh sidewall, tears and rain dripping down her cheeks, but the mad look was gone from her eyes.

  I appealed to her. “Your mother is calling for you. It’s time we went back.”

  She pouted like a petulant child and folded her arms. “Tell her to come and get me.”

  “You know she can’t. She won’t walk on the bridge. She’s terrified of heights.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Well, I do,” I said, refusing to let her play out her misbehavior. “I’m tired of your games, and I’m tired of getting wet out here.” Maybe without an audience Samantha would pull herself together, I thought. If I didn’t indulge her theatrics, she might stop acting out and follow me back to where her mother was waiting.

  It was a calculated move. As wretched and sick as she was, I was betting that Samantha didn’t really want to die. She was distraught and irrational. She had wanted to save her father and in her mind’s eye had failed. Now she grasped at ways to control the world around her—and I might have died when she’d played out that need on the train. She was desperate for help. And she wouldn’t get it until we were both off the bridge.

  Struggling to my feet, I prayed it was the right decision. “I’m leaving now. I think you should come, too,” I said, walking away from her as quickly as I dared. She rose and followed me, but with little grace. My arms snapped out to grab the cable as I lurched to one side of the narrow bridge, then to the other, my hair flying in the whipping wind and my knees buckling every time Samantha purposely stomped on the suspended walkway. I made it back to the side of the bridge we’d started from and was relieved to climb onto the fixed steps to the platform, and from there to solid ground.