The Dead Letter

by Finley Martin

  “Sorry,” said Jacqui. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  Anne smiled weakly. “You had a pretty rough night, too,” she said.

  Jacqui had already related most of the details of her babysitting fiasco to her mother. That revelation had been intended less as a confession and more as a distraction from her mother’s truly horrifying evening.

  “How did Madame Desjardins take it?”

  “She didn’t explode. She looked around a bit. Checked on Luc. He’d slept through the whole thing…but she didn’t say much of anything. It was kind of weird, actually.”

  “And Rada?”

  “I asked Sig to walk her home. I didn’t know who might be lurking around after the party. I was worried…and Bobby was helping me clean up. Later she told me that Mr. Shadi, the teacher, had seen her walking with Sig…”

  “You’ve been talking to her?”

  “She phoned this morning. Mr. Shadi called her father and reported it. She had sneaked out of her house last night. I didn’t know that. Her father is very upset, her mother is ashamed and disappointed with her behaviour, and they say she’s forbidden from associating with me anymore.”

  Tears filled Jacqui’s eyes. Her lips quivered, and her composure quickly disintegrated into sobs.

  “She was my best friend, Mom.”

  Jacqui’s voice had become broken, pitiful, and pleading. Anne beckoned with her hand, and Jacqui rushed across the room. Jacqui’s arms enfolded her, and Anne held her close, and slowly, silently, rocked her.

  “World’s finest brew of coffee. Straight from Mary-Anne-land,” said Mary Anne, strutting into the living room with a tray of cups and a carafe. She stopped short. The china tinkled. Her words stammered to a halt.

  Mary Anne’s cheeks blanched. Displays of emotion always unnerved her. Each time she found herself in the midst of a teary crisis, she felt stupid, powerless, and awkward.

  Mary Anne’s face reddened self-consciously. Hurriedly, she set the tray on a table, turned, and fled back toward the kitchen.

  “You’re gonna need sweets to go with that, too,” she said on her way out. “Don’t get up. I’ve got it.”

  “What did I tear you away from?” asked Ben.

  Mary Anne had just rushed in through the front door of her restaurant. Her wait-staff was busy preparing and serving Sunday brunch. Eight tables were occupied. The special was waffles with raspberries and whipped cream and scrambled eggs.

  “Coffee and angst,” said Mary Anne. Ben’s face mirrored his confusion. “Don’t ask,” she said. “What was it you needed?”

  “I’ll have one of those,” he said, pointing to a passing plate of waffles and eggs.

  “Anything else?”

  “The big file that Anne left in your office for safekeeping.”

  “That you can have. The waffles not so much. Sarah says you’re on a diet.”

  “Then hold the whipped cream and add a coffee. I’ll be over there,” he said pointing to a booth.

  “You know I’ll have to tell Sarah,” she said. “Our safe server policy obliges us to report anyone over the legal limit.” Mary Anne gave his stomach a poke.

  “It’ll be worth it,” said Ben.

  Ben took his seat and set the silver candy tin that had been clutched in his hand on the table. He eyed the front door expectantly.

  A few moments later Mary Anne set a fresh cup of coffee in front of Ben. A cumbersome package followed. It was the copy of the police file on Simone’s murder. He dug through the contents, sipped his coffee, and stopped at the page he was searching for—the description of items reportedly stolen from the victim. One of the items not recovered during the investigation was an eighteen-karat red gold necklace with a heart pendant. Ben opened the tin box. Inside was an assortment of junk jewellery, rings, necklaces, trinkets, coins, as well as a couple of cell phones. Among them was a gold necklace. It matched the one that had gone missing. He checked the report again. The missing necklace had been a gift from Simone’s then-boyfriend, Jamie MacFarlane.

  Ben’s cup was empty when the waitress slipped a plate of waffles in front of him. Ben pushed the file and the tin to one side and dug into breakfast. He was famished. When he glanced up again, his coffee had been replenished, and Anne was standing alongside his table.

  “You should be ashamed,” she said, “and you know I’ll have to…”

  “I know, I know…you’ll have to ‘tell Sarah.’ What is it with you women? Can’t you leave a guy alone for one minute? Okay, so go ahead, tell her, but you’ll have to wait in line. There’s apparently a whole line of snitches ahead of you. Anyway, this stuff is delicious. It will be worth it. I suppose Mary Anne called you, did she?”

  “Why didn’t you call me?” Anne slid into the booth across from Ben.

  “I figured you’d need a bit of time. I still think so. Go home, get some rest.”

  “I don’t need rest. I need answers, and it looks like you’re putting something together…with my file, by the way. Want to fill me in?”

  “That’s my question too, Ben,” said Dit Malone.

  Dit loomed over the table. Ben thought he looked taller than he remembered. His arrival took Anne by surprise. It was the first time they had been in each other’s company since their falling-out at his place almost a week before. She glanced self-consciously at her hands. The gauze that covered her cuts and stitches had been replaced with several small bandages. She let her hands slip beneath the table and into her lap.

  “Glad you could make it,” said Ben. “I’ve got something I’d like you to take a look at. A cell phone…an old one…might be evidence in a crime. I need to know everything forensics can tell me about it, but I need to keep it hush-hush for the time being. What do you think? Possible?”

  “If it hasn’t been damaged, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “What’s the story?” asked Anne.

  “It was hidden in MacFarlane’s home…with this,” he said, showing off the necklace. “I’m thinkin’ it belonged to Simone Villier. That and her cell phone were never recovered.”

  “So MacFarlane killed his girlfriend?” said Dit.

  Ben nodded.

  “It’s lookin’ like it, but someone was trying to get their hands on MacFarlane’s dirty laundry. I know who. I need to find out why. The cell phone might help.”

  “So Anne was on the right track all along,” he added and nudged Anne with his elbow. Anne smiled sheepishly.

  “I’ll check it out.” Dit slipped the cell phone into his pocket. “But now I’ve gotta run. Jet lag. A few more hours of sleep and a bit of time for the fog inside my head to lift, and then I’ll tackle that cell phone,” he said, getting up. “Oh, by the way, we’re having a get-together at our house next Saturday night. Eight o’clock. Consider yourselves all personally invited.”

  “Sounds great,” said Ben.

  “I’ll see,” said Anne.

  “Gwen specifically asked for you to come, and I insist,” said Dit. “No excuses. She says to bring Jacqueline, too. It’ll be fun. You’ll see.”

  Anne’s face flickered with a half-smile and then ebbed into an uncomfortable, noncommittal gaze that followed Dit as he shifted his crutches, walked to the door, and exited The Blue Peter.

  “You’ve got your eye on somebody. Who is it?” Anne’s tone had suddenly became resolute and businesslike.

  “Peale. He admitted that MacFarlane was holding evidence related to some dodgy political shenanigans and using it as leverage against him. He was very, very anxious to get inside MacFarlane’s house. He and a couple of cops from Stratford bullied their way past the RCMP constable guarding it. I had to get tough with them.”

  “How tough?”

  “I locked them up. Temporarily, anyway.”

  “Peale?”

  “Him, too.”

  “Holy sh
it! That’s sticking your neck out. Do you think Peale had something to do with MacFarlane’s death?”

  “There’s something there. I don’t know what it is. But him killing MacFarlane? Can’t see it. He doesn’t have the know-how or the balls to pull it off. And there’s nothing to indicate that it was anything but what it appears to be—a careless accident.”

  “Ben, I just can’t get the idea out of my mind that it wasn’t an accident.”

  “Who had motive?”

  “First name that pops up in my head, though I hate to admit it,” said Anne, “is Dawson. If anyone had a hate for the guy, it would have been him. He’s younger than MacFarlane, clever, maybe just as strong, and in prison he would have picked up a trick or two. Then again, he didn’t strike me as the killer type. And there was a possibility that he could get the conviction overturned. He was aware that my investigation was leading that way.”

  “If he’s innocent. If not, all bets are off. And you should never underestimate the effect of a festering rage. Hatred confuses good judgment.”

  “There are other possibilities, too,” said Anne. “Considering his criminal connection with Cutter, it could have been some crook he jammed up. Maybe the ex-wife he screwed out of property settlement, a bitter politician with an axe to grind, or some cop jealous of his fast track to the top. And I told you that MacFarlane got a cell call that took him away from the cabin. Connection or coincidence?”

  “I recovered his cell phone, too. We’ll check his calls and see where that leads. If it’s a murder made to look like an accident, then it was organized and carried out by someone with a brain, but that’s a big ‘if.’”

  Both Ben and Anne fell silent. Ben gazed numbly into his coffee cup. Anne stared into the ebbing sea of customers in the cafe. Both weighed the possibilities.

  “Are you convinced that it’s not Peale?” said Anne.

  “Can’t say that I am,” said Ben.

  “Does he have an alibi?”

  “I don’t know. Does Dawson?”

  Anne shrugged her shoulders.

  “What say we find out?”

  76.

  Anne felt the weight of the last two days bearing down on her. Coffee didn’t lift her high enough, but it would have to do. She needed to push through another few hours. So much was happening so quickly. Everything seemed to be coming to a head. Even the weather. Wind had come up in the afternoon. A stiff northeasterly breeze. Air grew damp and cold. Sky darkened. Now light rain stung sharply with each lash of the wind.

  The strongest coffee she could find was at Starbucks. She left the corner shop and ran to her car, her free hand guarding her eyes from the painful rain. She sipped and drove. The cogs in her brain picked up speed, but the blood in her veins moved like gelatine, and her stomach turned sour as stale buttermilk. She still felt like hell as she pulled into the driveway at Jacob Dawson’s boarding house. A slit slowly parted in the curtains of a downstairs window. Anne rang the doorbell. It opened almost immediately.

  “He’s not here, if he’s the one you’re looking for.”

  Irene MacLeod stood in the doorway. One hand gripped the door; the other locked onto the frame. She shifted a restless arthritic leg. Her face was resolute, her stance feeble, and her demeanour unwelcoming. Anne danced uncomfortably in the chilled wet wind on the doorstep.

  “Do you know where he is, Mrs. MacLeod?”

  “He could be at the library again. Could be at an AA meeting. Or with that girl of his,” she said. A sharper edge to her voice carved out her mention of the girl.

  “Do you recall her name?”

  “Another student. Sami Smith. Queer name for a girl if you ask me.”

  “And his meeting?”

  “Sunday evenings at the community centre,” she said, and stepped back with a hobble and a drag and fastened the door shut.

  The neighbourhood community centre at one time had been an elementary school, decommissioned, sold off, hauled down the frozen North River by teams of horses in the 1930s, and relocated at the edge of Charlottetown. The wooden-frame building was partitioned into several smaller meeting rooms for public use. A few cars and a truck had parked on the street in front of it. Anne pulled up nearby and made her way inside. It was eight o’clock when she arrived. A few people passed her on their way out. They gripped their hats and dragged jacket collars tightly about their necks as they met the windy night.

  The main room off the front door was high-ceilinged. Painted wainscoting skirted the wall. Above it and at the front of the room were several posters. One listed twelve steps to recovery. Two men and a woman were stacking chairs and straightening tables. The woman was first to take notice of Anne and approached her. Anne was staring at another poster:

  God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

  The courage to change the things I can,

  And wisdom to know the difference.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” said the woman.

  Anne nodded slowly.

  “Have you come for the meeting? I’m afraid it’s just finished, but I could give you some information,” she said, pointing toward a neat stack of brochures on a plywood table.

  “Thank you, but I was just looking for someone. Jacob Dawson. I thought he might be here.”

  “He often is, but not tonight. Is there something I can do?”

  Anne left the community centre with no more information. Her next stop—and hopefully her last, she thought—was the university library.

  The library was busier than usual for a Sunday night. Students were on the verge of mid-term exams and the deadlines for papers and reports and group projects. Anne swept through the library one room at a time searching for Dawson. No sign of him on the ground floor. None on the second.

  Anne returned to the foyer, took out her cell phone, and dialled.

  “Edna? Anne Brown. I’m trying to locate a few students in regard to some work I’m doing. A Jacob Dawson and a Sami Smith. The Sami is probably short for Samantha.”

  “Jacob Dawson and Sami Smith,” she said. She spoke the names slowly and thoughtfully. “Isn’t Dawson the name of the one who killed that girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s a student?”

  “Yes.”

  “How extraordinary. But I’m afraid I can’t be much help. I’ve never met either of those people…nor taught them. You might get their class schedules from the Registrar’s Office tomorrow or you could check with Student Services.”

  Anne heard the signal for an incoming call on her phone, thanked Edna, and switched to the new caller. It was Ben.

  “Any luck?”

  “No. You?”

  “Fenton’s wife, Veronica, says he left on some business trip to Nova Scotia. Won’t be back ’til tomorrow night. But she confirms that he was home before midnight last night. I didn’t press her, but I think she was on the level. So I don’t see how he could have done anything directly related to MacFarlane’s death.”

  “Right. I’ll track Dawson down tomorrow.”

  77.

  A late-model white Honda Civic followed Fenton Peale’s Lexus along the Trans-Canada Highway west from Charlottetown. The driver wore a blue rainproof coat. A hood covered the black ball cap on his head. Raindrops beaded the windshield, wind buffeted his car, and his hands clenched the wheel.

  Peale had packed hurriedly and lightly. He had told Veronica that he would be returning tomorrow evening at the latest, but that was a lie. He had planned never to return—not to his family, not to Charlottetown, not to the Island or even Canada. He slipped Veronica’s picture and a photo of the kids from the dresser and packed them in his valise next to his passport. He had already drawn out as much cash as he could from the bank without raising red flags, and he retrieved a stack of negotiable bonds from the wall safe in his bedroom.
There was no more to do, nothing he could do. The curtain was closing on his deceits and crimes. The time had come. His flight from Halifax to Havana had been booked, and from there he would arrange passage to Caracas.

  The driver of the Civic had been sitting in the car outside Peale’s home for several hours. He had been waiting for his chance to kill Peale, but there had been no opportunity. He was ready to call it a night when the upstairs light clicked off. Moments later, the garage door raised. Peale slipped behind the wheel of his car, and he pulled away.

  At seven o’clock, the evening was growing dark, and it was doing so more quickly than usual because of the thick, low clouds and rain. Both drove west for nearly an hour before Peale’s objective became clear—boarding the ferry at Wood Islands and heading for Nova Scotia. Peale purchased a ticket for the passage and entered the embarkation compound. The Civic stopped short and pulled over onto the shoulder of the road. A transport truck and a pickup hauling a travel trailer entered the compound behind Peale. The Civic followed them.

  A few minutes later, the vehicles in the compound crept forward in a queue toward the steep ramp and the open stern doors of the ferry. Deck hands waved the vehicles in alternating paths, port or starboard, toward the bow. The cars and trucks were packed tightly together. A few inches separated bumper from bumper, and narrow corridors squeezed between each of the four rows on both sides of the ship.

  A large superstructure divided the car deck and separated the two streams of traffic boarding the ferry. Several doors and companionways led to storage lockers, crew quarters, and maintenance rooms or to the engine room below; stairs and elevators led up to the lounge and restaurant on the passenger deck; further up was the wheelhouse.

  A whistle sounded from the bridge. Massive steel doors clanged shut. The thump of the engine grew, dock hands cast off mooring lines, and crewmen manned the winches hauling them aboard. Within seconds, the vessel shuddered as a 3,600 horsepower engine lay into the propellers and broke the ship’s inertia. The ship slid from its berth, slowly gained way, and glided through the breakwater.