Never Sleep With a Suspect on Gabriola Island

by Sandy Frances Duncan

  Noel gave her an eye-raise of a mental nudge: sympathy, and cool it.

  Marchand returned and handed the tumbler to Noel. “Do sit down, please.” They did, Noel and Marchand on the sofa, Kyra in a chair. “Mr. Franklin, Ms. Rachel, I have to apologize. My follow-up call was to say I wouldn’t need your services. But on further reflection, I do.”

  “I see,” Noel said. “Go on.”

  “The RCMP has been on the case for ten days. Every day people suggest the Gallery might’ve been involved in Roy’s death. But damn it,” he shook his head, “what Lucille writes in her column is all mixed up. Most Islanders don’t take her seriously. But still, I worry.”

  “Let me get this clear,” Noel held up one finger. “This morning you were upset about the Gallery’s reputation and called me,” a second finger, “and later you called to cancel our appointment,” finger three, “but right now you’re worried again.”

  “That’s right.” Marchand nodded.

  Kyra nudged him on. “And gossip should be taken seriously?”

  “Well it’s not really serious.” Marchand blinked. “Just—a nuisance.”

  “Particularly on a small island.”

  A bite to Kyra’s words. Noel liked it.

  “Yes. On this island you have a lot of privacy but very little secrecy.”

  “Islands are great places but people do like to talk. Have you lived here long?”

  The question seemed to catch Marchand off guard. “Why?”

  “Curious.”

  “Sixteen years.”

  “So you must have experienced a certain, well, chattiness in your fellow islanders.”

  Marchand sat forward. “You’re right, yes. It’s a community. People care about each other. But what you say is also true.”

  “Two sides of the same coin.” For someone like Marchand, Noel had to use his clichés ironically.

  “It’s important to keep the Gallery’s reputation untarnished. And see justice done. So could you learn what you can? For, say, a couple of days?”

  Noel said, “You mean, prove the Gallery’s non-involvement.”

  “Yes, right.”

  “It could take more than a couple of—”

  Kyra stood up. “Could I have that glass of water now, please?”

  Artemus turned to her, not understanding. Then he too rose. “Of course.” He headed for the kitchen.

  Kyra cocked her head toward the deck. Noel followed her outside. “Just let him talk. He’s got to convince himself that hiring you is a really good idea.”

  “But he’s already said—”

  “He shilly-shallies. But he spoke his real intention when he phoned you. Let him convince himself.” She heard Marchand step out onto the deck. He handed Kyra her water. “Thank you.”

  “Shall we go back inside?”

  They took their earlier seats. “Okay now,” Noel said, “what can you tell me about Roy Dempster.”

  Marchand looked relieved. “Roy was with us for just over a year. We hired him first as a general handyman and now he’s our groundskeeper. Sorry. Was. He helped my wife Rose with her flowers.” He smiled. “Rose is a marvel with flowers. She’s grown everything from Angel’s Trumpet to Zantedeschia.” An increased grin showed his pleasure at ranging the flower alphabet. “You’d call that a calla lily, the Zantedeschia.”

  Oh, Kyra nearly asked, do they have those in Florence too?

  Noel said, “Did Dempster keep regular hours?”

  “He was here as the garden needed him.”

  “But he worked most closely with your wife?”

  “And she found his body.” Marchand’s expression softened into sympathy. “She admired Roy. He planted her greenhouse flowers in the outside beds. Sometimes where Rose suggested. But often where he thought best. Rose said he had an eye.”

  “That newspaper article you faxed me talked about his earlier life, drugs and so on. Did Roy—”

  “No. I’ve spent years supporting the war against drugs. A drug user couldn’t work at Eaglenest. Years ago Roy realized drugs were a huge mistake.”

  Noel opened his notebook. “Did he drink?”

  “I don’t know. Not on the job. He’d joined a men’s group, they insist on living clean lives, Faith Bearers. Bunch of wackos, but they helped Roy.”

  “Did he live by himself? Have a partner?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Close friends?”

  “Danny Bourassa. Roy brought him in sometimes for seasonal clearing. Another ex-hippie, I think. And someone else too. Jerry something.”

  Noel scribbled in his notebook. “Any relatives?”

  “A sister. Charlotte Plotnikoff. A so-called painter.”

  Kyra said, “Any enemies?”

  “None that I know.” He smiled. “But we didn’t socialize.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “The day before we found him here. About mid-afternoon.”

  “What else?”

  Marchand shook his head.

  “We should see where Roy’s body was found.” Kyra got up.

  “Yes. Of course.” Marchand stood.

  “And,” she slung her purse strap over her shoulder, “we should talk to your wife.”

  “Oh. Do you have to?”

  “She found Roy’s body, right? So yes.”

  “You mean now?”

  “Now would be best.” Kyra said. “Or rather, when I come back from the bathroom. May I?”

  “Over there.” He pointed down the hall. “The door’s open.”

  Kyra stepped inside and closed the door. She chose not to lock. One time in a strange house she’d locked, then hadn’t been able to get the door open again. Anyway she wasn’t here to pee. Time to snoop. Bathrooms tell you a lot about people. Medicine cabinet over the sink: first aid kit, small bottle of hand lotion, two combs, unused toothbrush, new razor. No perfume, medication, make-up. The guest bathroom? Floral cotton hand towels. Terracotta tiles. Clean toilet. One of the sparer bathrooms. What did she learn from this room? The Marchands have guests rarely. Somehow too sterile.

  In the living room, Marchand said to Noel, “Then you will look into this problem for me?”

  Noel plunged. “You still want me to what? Prove Roy didn’t die here.”

  “Yes please, and thank you. What do you charge?”

  From plunge to scramble— “A thousand a day. That’s for both of us. Plus expenses. And we need a retainer of a day’s fee.” Making it up as he went along. A thousand suddenly sounded excessive. Well, not compared to lawyers’ fees.

  “I’ll get a check.” Marchand took the stairs to his office two at a time, as if afraid Noel would change his mind. Kyra returned from the bathroom. Marchand came back with a check.

  “Thank you, Mr. Marchand.” Noel slipped the check into his shirt pocket.

  “Let’s go meet your wife.”

  “Of course. And as we’re working together, please call me Artemus. This way.”

  Okay, Kyra realized, they were linked. Time to ask some obvious questions. “Just out of curiosity, Artemus, where were you the evening before your wife found Roy’s body?”

  “What? You think that I might have— You’re being ridiculous.”

  “Which doesn’t answer my question.”

  “Do I have an alibi? I was right here. In my office, reading files. Ask Rose.”

  “I will. Was she here as well?”

  “Of course. And I find you insulting.”

  “Think of it as doing our best for you. Not insulting, just thorough.”

  Marchand glared at Kyra, then nodded. “Okay.” He led Kyra and Noel out the front door and around the house to a pergola-covered asphalt path that ran from a side door to the greenhouse. Thick wisteria drooped from the pergola slats. As they passed the two white vans, Kyra noted each passenger door said, Eaglenest Gallery. A white and blue handicapped symbol hung in the front window of the second van. They reached the greenhouse, heavy opaque plastic stretche
d over curved metal ribs.

  “My wife designed it,” Marchand said. “Many of her tools too. Because of her disability, you know.” He knocked on the wooden door. Silence. He knocked again. He opened the door a few centimetres. His body blocked their view. “Darling?”

  The inside smelled humid as well as hot. Marchand pushed the door open a little wider and called, “Are you there?” Kyra and Noel saw splashes of color.

  A woman’s head at the far end turned to face them. It moved smoothly their way between the rows of flowers. Noel spotted a raised bed of carnations.

  “Close the door, dear,” she called. “I’ll come out.”

  Marchand pulled the door closed. “Ah, there’s a danger of bringing contaminants in. On one’s clothes. She doesn’t let other people in there.”

  Noel and Kyra backed away.

  “She’s protective of her flowers,” Marchand continued. “She wins prizes everywhere. She’s named lots of new hybrids and two are named after her.”

  The door opened and the woman, head now attached to a body in a wheelchair, exited. She stopped, reached behind and pulled the door closed. Greying black hair in a chignon, high eyebrows over dark eyes, lips tight beneath narrow nostrils: a handsome face. She wore a faded T-shirt that read, Picture Yourself At The Hermitage, and a denim skirt to her ankles.

  Tragic accident, Noel remembered. Disability, Marchand had said. She looked athletic. Mediterranean blood? East Indian? The chair would have done Rick Hanson proud. From each side hung panniers.

  A metal apparatus protruded from the right-hand bag.

  “And who are these?” She addressed Marchand.

  “Oh, the investigators I told you—”

  “My husband is being too careful.” Her eyes flicked from Noel to Kyra, back again. “We don’t need your services, excellent as I’m sure they are. The RCMP will manage.”

  “Rose,” Marchand said. “We have to consider the Gallery’s reputation.”

  Noel turned to Marchand. “Yes, I understand you had some trouble a couple of years ago. That forged picture at the Salmon Arm Gallery?”

  Marchand looked startled. “How do you know about that?”

  “Research.”

  “That was a blow. I do know my art—just as my wife knows her flowers.” Noel noted the plea—warning?—Marchand sent her. “I donated that picture in good faith.”

  “Do you need me further?” Mrs. Marchand turned her wheelchair to the greenhouse.

  “I’m Kyra Rachel. My partner, Noel Franklin. We’d like a few minutes of your time.”

  Marchand said, “Oh, sorry. My wife. Rose Gill. That’s her professional name.”

  Rose turned, eyed them, nodded, and ran her hands along the wheelchair’s turning rails.

  The sun reflected off the plastic greenhouse wall. A good-size place, Noel thought.

  “It must have been terrible finding Mr. Dempster’s body,” Kyra said to Rose Gill Marchand.

  “Yes.”

  “Would you show us where he was?”

  “Why?”

  “It’d be helpful.”

  Rose took off to her right along the circular drive, wheeling hard. Noel marched after, nearly running to keep up. Kyra and Artemus followed.

  With a firm grasp on the wheel Rose halted and pointed. “There. His head was over there, his feet here.” She pointed to some grass by a broad path that took off into a little wood.

  “Can you show us exactly where?” Kyra took a camera from her purse.

  Rose smiled tightly. “I can’t quite get up and walk the site, you know.” But she drew the metal apparatus from the side sack, elongated it and rolled off the asphalt. Her chair easily accommodated a few bumps. Using the metal stick’s end-knob to point, she circumscribed the area. “About here.”

  “And he wasn’t here the evening before?”

  “No.”

  “Were you here, Mrs. Marchand?”

  Artemus broke in. “She’s asking if you have an alibi, Rose.”

  Rose glared at Kyra. “I didn’t leave the property. And yes, Artemus was with me.”

  “Was Dempster on his stomach?” Kyra asked. “His back?”

  “Stomach.”

  Marchand said softly, “There was a lot of blood on the back of his head. I saw it.”

  Kyra glanced at Marchand. “The blow that killed him?”

  “That’s what the police said.”

  Kyra pointed her camera, then clicked shots of the ground where the body was found, and of the surroundings. Another click, and the film rewound automatically. Damn. Wouldn’t have happened with digital. But real film had higher quality. “Where does this path go?”

  In his notebook Noel sketched the lay of Roy’s body on the grass.

  A pause. “My brother’s cabin.”

  “Oh. We should talk with him,” Kyra said.

  “He’s not here,” explained Marchand. “He’s gone to Nanaimo. Just back from a trip.”

  “Was he around when Dempster died?”

  “Yes,” said Marchand.

  “Then we better hear what he has to say.”

  Noel asked, “How do we find him in Nanaimo?”

  “Oh. Likely at his condo or his karate club.”

  “Artemus,” Rose broke in. “Leave the boy his privacy.”

  Noel said, “Perhaps you can show us his cabin, Mrs. Marchand.”

  “I don’t go in when he’s not here.”

  “And I don’t go in at all. Tam is an artist. We don’t invade his space.”

  Some kind of threat in Marchand’s voice? Noel wasn’t sure.

  “We just walk down this path, do we?” Kyra started off.

  More trees here, suddenly heavily wooded, already out of sight of the Gallery. It smelled like Bowen Island at years-ago Thanksgivings, a dying-leaf smell Kyra could all but taste. Rose rolled reluctantly behind Kyra down the hard-packed path, Noel and Artemus following.

  “What’s your brother’s name?” asked Kyra.

  “Tam. Gill.” A neutral tone.

  About a hundred and fifty feet along the path Kyra reached a low house, clad in cedar siding over a poured-concrete foundation, set among close-growing firs and a few ruddy arbutus. Shady, almost cool. Kyra liked it. What might she find in its medicine cabinet?

  Some stairs and a ramp against the wall allowed access to a wide oceanview deck and side door. The ground sloped downhill toward the cliff. The deck, at its highest, stood about five feet above the ground. Kyra started up the stairs.

  “Please,” Rose Marchand said, “not unless Tam is here.” She turned her chair.

  Kyra shrugged, and stepped back down.

  FOUR

  AN EXCHANGE OF goodbyes. Noel and Kyra headed for the Tracker and got in. They drove out the gates.

  “Well,” said Kyra, “what do you think.”

  “Not very much, just yet.”

  “At any rate, you’re working again.”

  “We are.” Was she backing out? “You pushed me into this.”

  “Let’s talk about it. I’d like a beer.”

  “That’d be good.” He scanned his printout. “There’s that pub by the ferry dock, and one at the south end.” She’d better not be backing out.

  “The south end pub.” Kyra accelerated. “Get an overview of the island.”

  Noel checked the map. “Turn right. Looks like about twelve kilometres.” He shoved a Nina Simone CD into the player to keep his imagination away from slashed tires, and her elegant rendition of “Wild as the Wind” kept night phones from ringing. Back to the ferry dock, up the hill, past the post office and the museum. They passed a house with a duck pond and a greenhouse that wasn’t open today before Kyra said, “What about Roy and that religious group? Ever hear of them?”

  “Bearers of Eternal Faith? I did a story on them years ago. A hint left of Jerry Falwell and somewhere to the right of the Promise Keepers. Upright stalwarts for Jesus. Human perfection and celibacy unless married. Not even lip kissing.”
r />   “Back to medieval times.”

  He grinned. “The dark ages were way raunchier than that.”

  They passed a golf course. They wound down through a forest of mainly fir to the water’s edge, a flat beach. Noel pointed to the land across a narrows, “That’s Mudge Island, population fifty-one. No ferry or bridge.”

  “How do you get there?”

  “Row or outboard, I’d guess. Islands are like that, you see.”

  “Thank you, Noel.” They were both smiling.

  Away from the water again, flat fields, sheep grazing, a pretty bed and breakfast place. Oh the pleasure he and Brendan had found in sneaking away for a couple of days, staying in little places like this. And their vacations, country inns in the Dordogne or in Tuscany, museums by day, fine local food in the evenings—

  Kyra swerved the Tracker around a hard left curve. Noel grabbed the door handle. The speedometer said 50 MPH. He said, “Uh, are we late?”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then why’d you ask?”

  “You’re driving too fast.”

  “I’m only doing fifty.”

  “That’s miles per hour. The limit here is 60 KPH. Remember what country you’re in.”

  “Oops.” She slowed to forty-two.

  “You don’t want to hit a deer. We need a driveable car.”

  “You’re right.”

  Close to the ocean again, past a graveyard, past the island Community Hall, at last the south end, large pastures with more sheep, turning right at the drive to Silva Bay Marina and Pub. Nina Simone intoned, “Please don’t let me be misunderstood . . .”

  On the deck overlooking the water, protected and warm enough to sit outside, each a foaming pint in hand, Kyra offered, “To islands and marinas.” They sipped.

  In the harbor two dozen substantial yachts lay at anchor, as many more tied up at the marina. Noel said, “Maybe there is enough money on this island to buy a Titian.”

  “Yeah.” Kyra took another sip.

  “Okay. Are you going to do this job with me? You said you would.”

  “If I said no now?”

  “I guess I’d do it myself.” He leaned toward her. “But it’d be way better if we worked together.”

  “Well— Yeah. Okay. A deal.” She lifted her hand to shake. He took it. A firm double squeeze. Clear Eaglenest’s reputation together, then Noel’s going to be fine on his own.