Never Sleep With a Suspect on Gabriola Island

by Sandy Frances Duncan

  Noel stood, then Kyra. “We won’t take any more of your time,” Noel said, “but if anything comes to you, please give us a call.”

  “Of course.”

  He gave her his number. His notebook was thinning. Should he get cards made up? She followed them down the hall. Crouching to tie his shoelaces, he asked. “Did Roy work anywhere else?”

  “He was caretaking someone’s garden while they’re away. The United Arab Emirates, he said. But I don’t recall their name.”

  In the car, Kyra announced, “Dentures as art.”

  “False Teeth In Water Glass.” Noel laughed.

  Kyra pulled out the map. “This Steve Bailey lives on Harrison.” She showed him.

  Noel backed out the driveway. “She sure has the venoms for Marchand.”

  “She’s the first person who’s been down on him. Except for the Lucille article.”

  “Lucille would know who from the island has gone to the UAE. I could ask her.”

  “Good.”

  “No investigation untried, right?”

  They drove in silence for a couple of kilometres. Kyra said, “Listen, try this. Charlotte gets angry at Roy, they fight, she kills him—accidentally, on purpose, I don’t know. She dumps his body at the Gallery to blame it on Marchand.”

  Noel scowled.

  “At least it’s a hypothesis.”

  A deer darted out of the bush and froze halfway across the road. Noel slammed on the brakes. “See? Like I said yesterday. Deer.”

  The deer stared at the car, trotted to the shoulder, turned and stared some more. “Point taken,” Kyra said.

  Noel drove on. Okay, start thinking hypothetically. He slowed and stopped behind three unmoving cars.

  Kyra said, “Remind me who this Steve is.”

  He looked in his notes. “Another buddy, Patty said. Non-F.B. friend.”

  “Oh yeah.” They were stuck at a stop sign while cars, trucks and a school bus roared up the hill from the disgorging ferry. “What a drag,” she said.

  Noel made a note about Roy’s other job. “With luck we’ll have time to check out Jerry Bannister too, the guy Bourassa mentioned.”

  “If not today, tomorrow.” Kyra popped the glove compartment button. “What’ve you got for music?”

  “Not much.”

  She rummaged, and pulled out a computer floppy. “What’s this?”

  A wry grin from Noel. “Backup of the Chung book.” She didn’t respond. “In case the condo burns down. Just leave it there.”

  She rummaged some more, came up with a caseless tape. “Holy schmidt, this Grateful Dead’s thirty years old!”

  The ferry unload ended and they turned left. Past the museum, right at the cop shop, left and a final right. Noel cruised slowly. Kyra peered at addresses.

  Bailey’s turned out to be a mobile home, double-wide, with attached workshop and woodshed. Four tall cedars shaded the trailer. Summer-brown grass on all sides; no mower had visited it this year. On the far side stood a limp apple tree.

  Noel’s knock was answered by a man in shorts and a faded T-shirt. “Steve Bailey?” The man nodded. “We’d like to ask you some questions. About Roy Dempster.”

  “We’re making some inquiries.” Kyra held out her hand and introduced herself and Noel.

  They waited for Bailey to ask the usual, Who hired you? but he didn’t. “A real tragedy about Roy. Come on through to the deck. It’s pleasant out there.”

  They passed a shabby couch in a comfortable living room. Kyra noted maybe a dozen clocks. Bailey slid open the screen and shut it behind them. On the shaded deck stood a picnic table scattered with wood, metal gears and pieces, and a clock face. He sat. “Ask away, I’ll just keep working.”

  “You making a clock?” Noel asked, with real interest.

  Bailey smiled. He was in his late forties, thinning reddish hair, blue eyes and florid cheeks growing today’s stubble. “Yep. From a kit. This one’s an authentic fourteenth-century replica, it only has one hand. Two hands didn’t come in until the sixteenth century.”

  “I like clocks,” Kyra stated. “My father’s an antique dealer.”

  “Kits are way cheaper than antiques,” Bailey stated, picking up a half-inch gear. “I have one antique, a nineteenth-century spring-wound Westminster chimer. I wouldn’t part with it,” he added hastily, as if Kyra’s father were making an offer.

  “Was Roy into clocks too?” Noel, conscious of the ferry, reclaimed the conversation.

  “Nope. Damn, I miss him. He was a good head. He tried so hard.”

  “We hear he put people off sometimes, trying too hard.”

  “Yeah. He couldn’t get it through his skull that everybody didn’t share his enthusiasm for turning themselves into perfect people.” Bailey fitted the small gear against a larger one.

  “What about Roy’s fight with Tam Gill?”

  “Oh yeah. Roy got mouthy. We all got the boot for it. But you know, after he went to work at the Gallery he changed his attitude to Gill. Apologized for that ragtop stuff. Gill isn’t, of course, but anyway turbans are no weirder than crucifixes. In my book.”

  “Steve,” Kyra said, “do you have any ideas who might have killed Roy?”

  Bailey picked up an oblong gear, sat still and stared into space. “None.”

  “However far-fetched.”

  Bailey shrugged. “I wish I did. For whatever good it might do Roy. Who’d want to kill a birdwatcher, for god’s sake? Birds and the clearcut, that’s what mattered to Roy—well, this religion stuff now too. He was broken-hearted when they logged it, he made the loggers leave an eagle-nesting tree standing. For a few years he wouldn’t drive down South Road so he didn’t have to get close to that bare hill. Then, about the time he got religion, he started going back. The alders were already maybe fifteen feet high, the arbutus and fir were getting tall too. Also some new birds were using it, rails, he said, and something else.” Steve laughed mirthlessly. “The tree with the eagle nest is still there, but no eagles. Poor old Roy.”

  “Do you know whose house he was looking after?” Noel interjected.

  “No. Didn’t know he was.”

  Kyra asked, “What about Roy in his drug days? Did you know him then?”

  “Sure. Ten or twelve of us arrived the same time, most from the East or the States. We grew good dope, had a couple of nude beaches, fished, beachcombed, built houses where we wanted to. The living was easy.”

  “We hear Roy gave up drugs,” Noel said.

  “Oh yeah. Most of us have, except the occasional joint. Can’t cope the way we used to. But there’s still some damn good weed growing on this island.”

  Noel looked at his watch. Kyra smiled; he could have glanced through the door at any of the clocks. “Oh, Bourassa said Roy sometimes hung out with a Jerry Bannister. Do you know him?”

  “Yeah, part of the old crowd.”

  “Where’s he live?”

  “First road past Bertha off North Road, Bridie, I think. A brown trailer.”

  “If you remember anything else, phone, okay?” Another sheet from his notebook.

  “Sure.” Bailey stood. “But I been thinking and thinking and I’ve got no place.”

  • • •

  Rose had arrived home seething. In the kitchen she found Artemus chopping onions. A moment of memory: Artemus cooking, meal upon meal, for nearly two years after her accident. And most meals since. She stared at him in silence.

  He turned. “What’s wrong?”

  “Your detectives, Artemus, that’s what’s wrong.” She wheeled into her bedroom.

  Artemus blinked, suddenly remembered an important phone call, and rinsed his hands. Onion flakes glistened on the block, but two of his wife’s understated furies in two days were two too many.

  Rose left a message on Tam’s answering machine in town. She phoned his number at the cabin, left the same message. Dialed his karate club, gone, another message with the dulcet-toned receptionist. Drummed her fingers on the chair ar
ms and sighed. She felt studied and sullied by the woman detective. She needed a shower.

  When they had designed the house to accommodate her wheelchair, Rose decided they’d have separate bedrooms and baths. At the shock on Artemus’ face, she added, “With visiting privileges of course, darling.” Artemus had not been happy but agreed it was best. His suite upstairs included his office. Rose’s bathroom, tiles sloping to a central drain, allowed her chair to roll easily from toilet to vanity to shower, the latter separated from the rest of the room by a tiled wall. She could wheel up to the shower bench, hoist herself onto it, and push the chair to dryness just beyond the wall. Afterward, she retrieved it with the Extendiarm, her own patent. The bathroom design gave her an independence that had encouraged her slow journey out of depression.

  No, no shower now. She changed from town clothes into an old T-shirt and greenhouse skirt. Back in her chair she pressed the remote, and the door opened. She wheeled over the threshold and heard the door squeak closed. She remembered she’d been going to ask Roy to fix it. She whipped across the deck up the short side path that led to the pergola and greenhouse. She unlocked the two deadbolts, ran the wheels of her chair through the trough of disinfectant and busied herself with stamens and pistils. Forget the detectives. She listened for any sound to suggest Tam had returned.

  She’d buy him a cellphone. Stripped people of their privacy, he said. So what. He’d get used to it. Everybody did.

  Concentration on microscope and miniaturized tweezer probes drew her in. Hours went by. The phone startled her. “Yes?”

  “Hi, I’m home. What’s up?”

  “I’ll be right over.” She closed the phone, put it in her pocket and, with a fond smile at her chrysanthemums, bolted the inner door. Outside she turned and locked the greenhouse door. A fast wheel along the path gave her the momentum to carry the chair up the ramp onto Tam’s deck. He was waiting with two bottles of uncapped beer. He held one out. “Thanks.” She took a sip. “That detective snoop accosted me on the ferry today. She wanted to know about my van’s alterations and my flowers and,” Rose give full vent to her ire, “did I study botany and at what university?”

  “Which ferry?”

  “Eleven-forty.”

  “I’d just left her.” He stretched out in his deck chair, raised his arms over his head, yawned, lowered his beer and drank. “Don’t worry, BSR, she’s going home to Bellingham soon. We won’t see them again and A.’ll feel he’s done something when he pays their bill.”

  Rose drank and considered. “The woman was tenacious today. I hate being questioned. What did she ask you?”

  “Oh, about Roy.” He grinned. “And if I was a successful painter.”

  “What did you say?” Rose was suddenly curious.

  “‘Moderately,’ I believe is what I said. ‘Moderately’ covers a lot of ground.” Tam sat up.

  Rose gazed into middle distance, her focus blurring the brown of a log boom, wanting to be convinced.

  “Rosie, stop worrying. They’re inept.”

  “I worry.”

  “Okay.” He threw one hand up in mock concern. “Phone your friend, discuss it with him.” He nearly added, Rab won’t say anything different from me.

  She finished her beer. Rab would not want detectives around. Sticking their noses into everything. “I dislike that woman.”

  “I think,” Tam stroked his mustache, “she’s sorta cute. If you like Renoir.”

  “And you do,” his sister declared.

  “Oh you know me,” he smiled, mocking, flirting. “I like ’em in lots of different styles.”

  She thought about Rab, hoped he’d always remain her friend. She did need to speak with him. But not about this.

  EIGHT

  NO TROUBLE FINDING Jerry Bannister’s brown trailer. It hadn’t traveled over any macadam in a couple of decades. Once-yellow latticework in front of cement blocks anchored it to the ground. Someone had built a fifteen by ten deck along the front by the entryway. A blue canopy covered the right half, picnic table and benches underneath it. These, together with a gas barbecue, gave the exterior of the Bannister residence an air of aging comfort. The garden was limp with spent daisies, and the grass and weeds, uncut, showed the usual September burn.

  Noel stopped the Honda behind a recent model long-box Sierra. He checked his watch; the ferry left in forty-two minutes. They walked toward the deck.

  “Yo!” The voice came from the side of the trailer. A tall man with sloping shoulders, sweatshirt hanging from them, dirty jeans, brown ponytail poking through the back of the ball cap, waved their way.

  “Hello,” Noel called.

  “You folks doin’ okay?”

  “Fine,” Kyra answered. And whispered to Noel, “Stoned.”

  The man walked toward them. He could have been fit for fifty-five or wasted for forty. He scraped the smoking tip of a lit home-roll against his jeans, and stuck the butt over his ear. “What can I help you with?”

  Noel asked, “Are you Jerry Bannister?”

  “Yep.” He gave a little laugh.

  “You were a friend of Roy Dempster?”

  “Hey, I am a friend of Roy’s.” He scowled. “Roy’s a good guy.”

  “You do know Roy Dempster was killed?”

  “Yeah yeah yeah, I heard all that. But death don’t take away friendship, right?”

  Kyra said, “I suppose not.”

  “Glad we see eye to eye, Miss.” The lines at the edges of his eyes deepened. “Care to sit?”

  “Uh, sure.”

  “On the grass,” he swept his hand across the weeds, “or up there,” he pointed to the deck, “or inside.”

  Kyra’s medicine-cabinet curiosity took over. “Inside, I think.”

  “Place is a mess but if that’s what you want.” Bannister led the way. They entered a kitchen that affirmed his promise: just enough light to show no surface without litter—half-empty bottles, piles of cans, packaging on the floor, chairs overturned, sink full of dirty dishes. A stench of low-level decay permeated the dead air. Bannister righted two chairs, took a pizza box from another, found a bare spot on the floor, and they sat at the table, inspecting each other over dirty glasses and desiccated pizza now of interest only to a whorl of sow beetles.

  Kyra introduced herself and Noel. “We’re investigating Roy’s death, Mr. Bannister.”

  “Jerry, my name’s Jerry, you say Mr. Bannister and I look over my shoulder for my old man.” He stared at her. “You guys want a beer?”

  “No thanks,” they chorused.

  “I do.” He headed for the fridge. Kyra tightened, fearing what might be dead, or worse, living inside it. She looked away. Her eyes, now more accustomed to the grey of the kitchen, swept the walls. From counter height to the ceiling, in fact tacked to part of the ceiling, were dozens of girlie magazine centerfolds, dim glossy pink skin in startling curves, featuring wide apart red lips, raisin nipples, haired or shaven pudenda, clothing limited to an occasional pair of stiletto heels. She took Noel’s elbow and gestured with her head. He nodded, he’d noticed. They heard the fridge close, and Jerry say, “It’s my collection.”

  Noel said, “The posters?”

  “Yep. I got three from the first year of Playboy. They’re in the bedroom. Wanna see ’em?”

  “That’s okay,” said Kyra.

  “Got a real treasure in there, hold on, you don’t wanna go in there, I’ll get it.” He took his beer down a hallway.

  Kyra said, “Let’s finish double quick and get out of here.”

  “Meantime, just don’t breathe too deep.”

  Jerry marched toward them. “Here she is.” He handed Noel a scantily clad figure with 1940s permed hair, holding a bottle of pop. “Recognize her?”

  “Rita Hayworth?”

  “Hey, you’re good. Gorgeous, eh? She’s older than my mother.” He giggled. “But Ma never looked like that.”

  “Now, about Roy Dempster.”

  “Yeah, I miss him every day.” Je
rry took a swig of beer. “A real good head.”

  “Were you a member of his church?”

  “Fruitcakes.” Jerry snorted. “Tuttifrutticakes. Nope. I know which half of my head to shave. Nope. Roy and me did jobs together, you know, painting, bucking, splitting.”

  “Did you ever work together at the Eaglenest Gallery?”

  “Yep, cleanups and so on. But I don’t like gardening, making things neat and clean.” He swept his arm around the room, showing it off. “See what I mean?” He giggled.

  “Can you think of any reason why anybody’d want to kill him?” Maybe, Noel surmised, Roy came in here to clean the place up, slipped on some pasta and cracked his head open.

  “Nope nope nope. Nobody’d want to kill Roy.”

  Kyra took over. “Did he have any enemies?”

  “Ha!” Jerry gave the tabletop a grim stare.

  “Did he get into fights?”

  “Come on, Roy didn’t fight.”

  “What about the fight in the pub with Tam Gill?”

  Jerry gave Kyra a long stare. “The son of a bitch provoked Roy.”

  “How?”

  “Picked on him. Called him names, like. Listen, what’re you asking?”

  Noel stepped in. “Roy sometimes put people off by trying too hard to help them, right?”

  “Shit. Why’d you have to come here? I was feeling good. Now I feel like shit.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “’Cause he’s dead, don’t you get it? Christ.” He took a long swallow and drained the bottle. “Great guy.” He fumbled at his ear, and located his weed. He found a match in his pocket, lit it, and breathed in deep. Seconds of silence and he released the smoke. He nodded, more serene, and offered the butt to Kyra. She shook her head. As did Noel. Jerry said, “But he’s still dead.”

  Noel pushed his chair back. “You and Roy never argued?”

  “Don’t get me wrong, he’s got a right to be dead. If he wanted to he’d still be alive.”

  “How so?”

  “I wish I knew,” Jerry said.

  “Well, yes.” Kyra stood. “Thank you for your time.”

  Jerry took another long toke. “Thank you for yours, too.”

  “We’ll see ourselves out.” Noel followed her to the door.