Never Sleep With a Suspect on Gabriola Island

by Sandy Frances Duncan

  “I’ll come with you,” said Jerry. But he didn’t move.

  The Honda backed to the road and headed for the ferry dock. Noel drove for a couple of minutes before either spoke. Then he said, “Why didn’t he tell us about that falling out he had with Roy?”

  “Didn’t Patty say they made it up after?”

  “Mmm,” Noel agreed. “Waste of time, talking to him.”

  “I don’t think so.” She smiled. “We now know some of Roy’s friends aren’t neat and tidy and religious. What made Roy and Jerry friends? A side of Roy we don’t know.”

  “Why didn’t we ask him if he had an alibi?”

  “We don’t care who has an alibi. We’re not trying to find who killed Roy. We were hired to clear Artemus, and we’ve done that. In spades.”

  Ten minutes later they arrived at the ferry lineup to find no cars, the Quinsam still at the dock. They drove on. “Just made it,” said Noel. “Lucky.” They waited. And waited. “Weird. Why doesn’t it go?” Suddenly they heard the screaming of a siren.

  “Aha,” Noel realized, “an ambulance run.”

  “With us as a bonus,” Kyra added.

  The ambulance loaded, and the ferry pulled away. Noel said, “Pass me your phone. I’ll call Lucille.”

  Kyra dug it out of her bag and snapped it open. “You know her number?”

  He pulled out his notebook and took the phone. “In here.” He looked at the phone, handed it back. “It’s so damn small. You dial.” He gave her the number.

  She heard the ringing and handed it back. Noel made a face at it, then put it to his ear. “Hello Lucille, this is Noel Franklin . . . Dempster was caretaking a house . . . Somebody now in the United Arab Emirates . . . Know who that would be?” Lucille’s voice came through as tinny squawks. “Taggart, eh?” Noel repeated and made scribbling motions to Kyra. She wrote the name and the address he repeated. “Where’s that?” He nodded. “Thanks, Lucille.”

  • • •

  In the Coast Bastion lounge they found Albert Matthew sitting at a window table. A short man but, he liked to say, Mountie-height when the recruiter signed him up. His broad face, greying slicked-back hair, and gentle brown eyes suggested an open, generous man; his flat nose and the thin white jag of a three-inch scar on his right cheek called for a more complicated reaction.

  To Noel the generous side had long ago won out. They’d met ten years back when Gabby Bingden disappeared from her parents’ summer home on Thetis Island and Noel was covering the story for the Vancouver Sun. When the girl wasn’t found the story died as news but Noel was familiar with similar cases so saw a pattern at work, and he kept up his investigation. Gabby’s mother Clara thought the RCMP were doing nothing to find the girl. By nothing, it turned out, Clara meant she didn’t think those First Nation natives the Mounties were forced to hire knew the first thing about where a respectable suburban-Vancouver upper-middle-class kid like Gabby might disappear to. If Clara had been his mother, Noel figured, he’d have disappeared too. As it turned out, Albert Matthew knew a lot about suburban kids running from island to island. With Noel’s alternative-press research they tracked her down to Hornby Island, where she was hanging out with a bunch of other middle-class kids who thought slumming meant breaking into houses during the week while the owners were away and living on the beach from Friday to Sunday. They brought the girl home, filthy but alive. Noel wrote the story, “Suburbia, Runaways, Islands,” giving Albert great credit, adding some stinging comments about Clara. Gabby ran away again the next year. As far as Noel knew the girl hadn’t been heard from since.

  Albert stood as Noel approached. Each opened his arms to a flirting width, a half second later they shrugged the other away—a lost cause—each laughed. Each took a light affectionate punch at the other, and the ceremony ended. “Inspector Matthew. Congratulations.”

  “We are such a liberal bureaucracy.”

  Noel shook his head in dismay. “Once you let those Sikhs wear their rags, anything’s possible.”

  Albert nodded. “Least we’re still free of fairies.”

  “You sure?”

  “Hey!” Kyra grabbed them both. “Bend your heads so I can see whose neck is redder.”

  “Don’t be upset.” The dark brown of Albert’s eyes sparkled. “We let the babes in. Babes is just like guys.”

  Noel said, “Kyra, my friend Albert. Albert, my friend Kyra.”

  They shook hands and made pleased-to-meet-you noises. They all sat.

  “So,” said Noel, “this is where Inspectors water, eh? A step up from the pubs of old.”

  “I’ve got serious responsibilities now.” He turned to Kyra. “Got to live up to the image.”

  “In that case,” said Kyra, “I’ll have a margarita.”

  “You know, my dear, I’d love to buy it for you, but the taxpayers wouldn’t approve.”

  Noel sighed. “Civilians to the rescue once again.”

  “Great. Margarita sounds pretty good,” Albert said to the waiter as he arrived with a bowl of peanuts.

  “Make that three,” added Noel. “So. How is it being a Goose?”

  “Has its moments. More positive policy-making, less positive time on the beat.” They dug into the peanuts and talked about Victoria and Bellingham. Their drinks arrived. They sipped. “You’re on the Dempster death, are you? You going to make a business of this?”

  “Just research,” Noel said. “Kyra investigates for an insurance company. I talked with Jim Yardley this morning. All the details, all the correct talk. No new information.”

  Albert smiled. “So. Where are you?”

  They told him what they knew, Kyra appending Noel’s narrative, Noel developing Kyra’s.

  “So you’re stuck.” Al nodded. “No hard evidence your client had nothing to do with Dempster’s death but a pretty good surmise, no way to know who killed him. But Marchand got his money’s worth so you’ll be signing off.”

  Kyra leaned forward. “And you’re not stuck?”

  Albert said, “You didn’t speak with Carl Pocock, the Pastor.”

  Noel shook his head. “He’s gone off birding. Upcountry. You had a talk?”

  “Before he left,” Albert said. “He knows the woods. He spotted a pair of Virginia rails in the clearcut. He told Roy about them.”

  “So?” Noel sipped his margarita. “You figure Roy was killed for following birds?”

  “Possibly. But a better question is, where was he killed?”

  “Maybe in the clearcut,” Noel suggested. “Roy was caretaking for a family named Taggart. They’ve been in the UAE since April. They have five acres in the middle of the island, near the clearcut.”

  Albert scooped up some peanuts. “Yeah. Jim Yardley took a look around but didn’t find anything. Of course it had rained that night.”

  “Would it be the right sort of dirt?”

  Albert nodded. “A lot of the island’s the right sort of dirt.” He caught Kyra’s glance at Noel. “And you two,” Albert said, “watch your snooping. Don’t get hauled in for trespassing.”

  “No sir,” Noel mock-saluted.

  At six-thirty Kyra left them to line up for the seven o’clock Vancouver ferry. Chat had turned to old times, Albert telling investigation stories. Noel and Albert figuring where they’d go for dinner—aha, Noel, willing to eat out! Both had tried to persuade her to join them. But she’d promised her father she’d be back in Vancouver tonight, and she’d already canceled yesterday.

  At the end of Stewart Avenue she bumped into the lineup poking out of the parking lot. “A one-ferry wait,” the worker directing traffic told her. “You’ll be near the head of the line for the nine o’clock.” The woman grinned, too cheery behind dark-tinted glasses. She handed Kyra a color-coded bit of cardboard. “Pay when you get to the booth, ma’am.”

  Kyra called her father to apologize, left a message not to stay awake, they’d have a long catch-up in the morning. She sat in her car in the line. Damn!

  Stop. You like
ferry lineups, right? Waiting for a ferry forces you to slow down. Nowhere to go till your ferry gets in. So chill out.

  For five years, age ten to fourteen, ferries had meant Bowen Island and Noel in the cottage next door, eighteen when they met, Noel who took her questions seriously. Handsome, intelligent, exciting Noel. He taught her about salmon and tides, currents and seaweed. They built a birdhouse, he made her listen to birdsongs and how to distinguish them. And every summer three or four times the two of them had walked onto the ferry and ridden across to Horseshoe Bay for fish and chips at Troll’s.

  Then came the worst summer of her life—yes, it still qualified, she thought now. The summer she was fifteen William had moved in with Noel. They’d sat on his deck with their arms around each other and there was no room for her. Oh he was still friendly but he wasn’t her Noel. She felt All Of Life pulling away on a train and she was left in the station. She hated William, she hated Noel, she hated her parents and most of all she hated herself for feeling this way. She couldn’t remember talking to anyone the whole summer. Corroded by jealousy. Noel and William took her fishing, took her over to Troll’s; she hated it. Years later she realized that she really liked William all the time she was hating him, which had made it worse.

  She reached over to the passenger seat and flicked open a small leather case. In padded pockets lined with blue velvet, six red balls each an inch and seven-eighths in diameter. She squeezed one. She’d started to juggle as an escape from girl’s gym. To graduate from high school she had to pass a swimming test—no problem—plus one more gym course. She waited till her last year. She wanted sailing but signed up too late. Which left only basketball and soccer. Yuck! But wait: juggling was still open. She discovered she had good eye-hand coordination. She also discovered that four young men she knew each insisted she was his girl. She liked them all. Choosing one would eliminate the others. As a joke she named the balls Terry, Dave, Tommy and Gordon. All in the air, which would fall first? But none of them did! She could keep them all in the air at the same time.

  Last year before she and Sam split, they’d argued about everything: the toothpaste lid, the time for dinner, where to go on vacation, risky investments, soggy washcloths in the sink, her job. Afterwards, she’d juggle. Even now she heard Sam’s voice: Why do you always juggle when things get tense? She had claimed she juggled any time. But his words continued to niggle at her.

  She dropped the ball into its pocket. The truth was, juggling kept her hands busy; in her smoking days, she couldn’t juggle and light up at the same time.

  What could she juggle in this investigation? Dempster dead. Marchand and his gallery. Rose and her flowers. Kyra and Noel, private investigators. Yes, working with Noel had given her a neat quick high. Too bad it ended.

  • • •

  Noel got home from dinner with too much wine in his brain. The conversation with Albert kept returning to Dempster’s death, and Eaglenest Gallery. So he visited the Gabriola Gab website and tracked down references to Artemus Marchand. Passing an article about a possible bridge to Gabriola from Nanaimo via Mudge—a bridge!—he found:

  A BRILLIANT GABRIOLA INVENTOR

  IN HER OWN RIGHT

  By Lucille Maple

  Yesterday I had the extreme pleasure of interviewing Ms. Rose Gill about her brilliant inventions to aid and succour handicapped gardeners like herself. Ever since she fell into that category (a diving accident left her “paralyzed from the waist down”), she has swelled the ranks of passionate Gabriola gardeners, but with a twist, to make gardening easier and therefore more enjoyable to the Disabled.

  Arriving at the gates of the Eaglenest Gallery [See Gab article on Artemus Marchand and his Gallery, November 20, 1993. Rose Gill is Marchand’s wife. Ed.] and driving through to their beautiful grounds, I was met by Ms. Gill, who wheeled out to meet me in her wheelchair that she has specially modified and now patented. (Readers: I knew of Ms. Gill’s inventions two years ago and asked to interview her then, but she made me wait until the patents were secured, that joyful event happening this past spring.)

  Ms. Gill’s inventions were spread on a table outside her large greenhouse for my perusual and delectation. It was a good thing it was not raining. Ms. Gill does not let anyone into her greenhouse because of the “dangers and diseases” strangers might unwittingly transport on their apparel. (Gabriola Gardeners, take heed!) She had, however, kindly taken photos of the interior. These were available to me.

  One is struck by the raised beds lining each wall and down the middle, easily accessed by the wheelchair gardener. I did not dally over the bright splashes of color however, which attest to Ms. Gill’s “green thumb” since my task was the implements. Ms. Gill assured me that for the non-wheelchaired gardener (including us ablebodied folks), she could easily design a little motorized railway car which would run up and down the aisles on a rail. I was assured that a wheelchair is just as mobile as a rail car.

  I examined the first invention, a long-handled trowel, hoe and rake combination, useful, I was told, for weeding, although Ms. Gill was quick to point out that greenhouses not troubled by visitors were weed-free.

  Next came the lightweight tools in bizarre and intriguing shapes, for garden implements. Arthritic gardeners (like we all may one day be) should “flock” to these. Or should that be “phlox?”

  Rose Gill’s final invention (and her most interesting, in my own personal humble opinion, but I’m sure it will be the general consensus of all before long) is her Extendiarm. “It’s like having your own personalized Canadarm. It opens, shuts, twists, grabs, rotates, holds, tilts and picks up, it will do anything you need to do but can’t reach to do it,” Ms. Gill assured me. She demonstrated by picking up ONLY ONE blade of grass. The Extendiarm would be indispensable when you’re recovering from your hip or knee replacement or when you’ve broken your leg. Short people (or should I say “height challenged”) would love it for reaching overhead cupboards.

  I asked when her inventions would be on the market for ordinary folk and was told Soon, but she didn’t know how much they’d cost.

  Gabriola is a fortunate community indeed to have such a brilliant and dedicated inventor. After a companionable cup of tea in their elegant living room overlooking Northumberland Channel, we parted. Good luck, Rose Gill, with your Future Inventions!

  • • •

  The distance from Lucille Maple in person to the tone of her prose was impossible to fathom. Noel turned off the ringer of his phone, lay his watch on it and went to bed. Only when his head hit the pillow did he realize he’d eaten at a restaurant. Was he moving away from total bereavement?

  NINE

  LUCAS HERSCHEL FELT a disappointment he knew Kyra didn’t share: she’d arrived too late for the concert. She loved him, but not his music. And he loved her too, but not her ever-present psychologizing, as if the pleasures and injustices of life could be explained by the workings of the human mind. As if one could ever discover more than a detail or two of these. As if history didn’t exist. As if one could avoid politics, the evils of the right, the dangers of the left.

  It was 9:30 am and Kyra still slept. He’d returned the living room to its usual state, couch under the window, Bösendorfer realigned with the wall—how well Brina had played last night, her fingers leaping through the Trout Quintet, he’d not heard a single false note. He stored the folding chairs away.

  He squeezed some oranges. As he hoped, the old juicer’s whirring woke Kyra. She came out of his study rubbing her eyes, wearing only a black T-shirt and her underpants. “Good morning, Little One.” A long time since she’d been small enough to deserve the name but for him she’d always be that.

  She hugged him. “Morning, Dad.”

  “Breakfast?”

  She nodded. “A quick shower.” Her father, ever a skinny man, had put on some weight. His tennis tan showed how much his hair had receded. Lucas. She’d begun addressing her parents by their first names the summer she was fifteen. Sometime later Luca
s had reminded her he was the only person in the world she could call Father.

  The hot water woke her. Noel’s study couch, her father’s study couch—she looked forward to a real bed tonight, alone at home. She felt a little guilty about the concert, but missing it was a relief. Lucas’ group was adequate at best and her father as violist the weakest of the five. The strongest player was Vera the cellist, an antique dealer like the others. Her keeping Lucas as part of her quintet had long made Kyra assume more than music was involved here. She didn’t have much of an ear but she could hear timing and when Lucas came in a sixty-fourth of a beat late, it jarred. She dried, pulled on clean underwear and the new clothes she’d bought yesterday—her father liked to see her well-dressed. She sat down with him at the table. Through the window she noted that the vine maple was tinged with fall.

  “Fresh coffee?”

  “Yum.” And an omelet aux fines herbes, and toast. Pretty good compensation for the lumpy couch. And she knew how pleased he was that she didn’t step outside for a cigarette any more. She took a bite of omelet. “Yum.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Love you, love your omelet.”

  Lucas patted her hand. “And how’s Noel? Still suffering?”

  “Actually, he’s pulling himself together.”

  “I’m glad you spent the extra day there. Noel cares for you greatly.” And vice versa, he thought. Oh, what might have been . . .

  “I know that!” She laughed a little as she heard her adolescent tone.

  “And what happened with Mr. Marchand?” Lucas raised his eyebrows.

  They were done with the case so she could tell Lucas, and did. “There’s no motive for Marchand to be involved in any of this.”

  Lucas smiled. “The man I met didn’t seem capable of killing. But he’s most able to find lost schools-of paintings.” Lucas poured them more coffee. “I’ve seen them, they’re often fine work. Dealers who locate schools-of usually come up with pieces that should remain lost.”