Hunter told him about walking the docks with Elena, about the safety patrols the community had organized because of the crap that had been happening. “And so when I saw a man in a row boat headed towards Maggy’s place I ran. I went into her houseboat and was talking with her and her friend. We heard Elena scream. When we came out we saw the dead body floating in the water. Face down.”
Peterson didn’t flinch. No way to know what thoughts were going on in his mind. He tapped his notepad with his pen. “Lot of stuff going down.”
Hunter tilted his head and nodded. Maybe, the cop did get it.
“I’m keeping my eye on you.” Peterson closed his book.
Hunter laughed. “You can’t seriously think that I would murder a guy and then be stupid enough to dump him where I live?”
“Stupid enough, or drunk enough. Doesn’t matter. Both theories work for me.” Peterson turned to watch the medical assistant zip up the body bag. The finality of the sound made Hunter’s gut twist.
“It bothers me,” he continued, “when a guy with a record is near two murders.”
Wanting to tell the inspector where to stick his theory, Hunter pushed his hands deep into his pockets where they couldn’t get him into trouble. He looked at the black sky and forced another yawn. “Believe what you want, but watching me is a waste of your time. There’s a murderer running around.”
Peterson’s mask cracked. His nostrils flared. But he said nothing. “So your story is that someone is sabotaging your life down here on the Granville Island docks, so you and goldilocks over there were um patrolling in the middle of the night.” His eyebrows lifted. “Like you couldn’t think of better things to do with her.”
Hunter pushed his hands further into his pockets.
“You saw a man in a rowboat, chased him and found a dead body.”
“You left out the part where I went into Maggy’s houseboat, but otherwise, yeah, that’s what happened.” The memory of finding her half naked crossed his mind. It wasn’t a moment he wanted to relive.
“You don’t know the dead man.”
“No.”
“And you didn’t know Jimmy Daniels.”
“No.”
Peterson did his deep, cop scowl. He should be on TV. Hunter relaxed his hands.
“You’re free to go, Mr. Hunter. I’ll see you in my office at nine tomorrow morning. We can put your full statement on paper then.”
Hunter turned to leave.
“But remember . . .”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re watching me.” What an asshole.
It was time to go home. The Rat wouldn’t strike again tonight with so many around. Maggy had gone home. Logan would probably follow her after he was questioned and they’d be together again. Shit. Why did she want to be with Logan? The guy looked like a walking suit. The memory of her round breasts flickered through his mind.
A gust of wind moved the dock. Boats banged against it and the clanging of the masts became louder. Hunter looked up. A sliver of moon peaked through the fog sending a chill up his spine
As he passed Smokey she said, “There’s strange things going on around here.”
21
For me, singing sad songs often has a way of healing a situation. It gets the hurt out in the open into the light, out of the darkness. Reba McEntire
“Maggy, let me in.” It had to be Logan. His clipped vowels and deep voice made him sound like a lawyer at a trial. Nobody in her circles sounded like that.
Sliding out of bed naked, she donned a midnight-blue, silk robe, edged with delicate lace. She opened the door. Under the warm entrance light she watched him take a second look. This she didn’t need right now. Edgar’s murder had put her feet firmly back onto the ground.
She tried to stand taller, but still felt diminutive beside his height. “It’s time to get serious.”
“Serious?”
“Logan. I’m going to talk straight. I’m attracted to you.”
His eyebrows rose.
“Okay, very attracted.”
His arms reached towards her.
She stepped back. “But the timing’s all wrong.”
“I know it’s awkward, but . . .”
“No buts.” She ran a hand through her hair damp from the night air. “I can’t handle buts right now. Not even a handsome one whose kisses drive me wild.”
He rubbed his chin and looked genuinely confused. “Can I come in and we’ll talk.”
The rising heat inside her said, ‘Oh yeah,’ but her mind screamed, ‘Hell no.’ She hadn’t been with a man since she left her husband Adriano six months ago. Six months is a long time to be without a man in your bed. She hesitated for a moment with her hand resting on the cold door handle, and then she turned and motioned him to follow her inside. With a wave of her hand she directed him to a chair.
Logan sat. She took the couch, leaving them a few feet of space, but that air between them flooded with desire.
He took her hand in his. “Okay. I agree. The timing is wrong.” His molten, chocolate brown eyes melted her insides. “But I’m attracted to you, Maggy, and I’d like to think that when this is all over, you’ll give me another chance.”
Maggy nodded slowly.
“I’m not looking for a quick hook up. I’m strongly attracted to you. I think we could be more.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know that when I’m with you, I feel more myself than I have for years. There’s a freedom about you that’s contagious. Give me a chance.”
His words sounded sincere, but so had her husband’s, in the beginning. “Are you involved with anyone?”
“My wife left me a year ago. I’m more attracted to you than I’ve been to a woman for a long time.” He stopped. “But right now is not our time. Jimmy comes first.” His voice broke on his brother’s name.
Definitely not the time for a roll in her loft. The rawness of his emotions pulled her. Their affair would not be one of bodies colliding for release. Damn. What happened to her dream of an uncomplicated one-night stand?
Maggy raised her chin. “So let’s get the bastard who killed Jimmy.” She pulled her robe tightly around herself.
“Shouldn’t we leave the murderer to Peterson?”
“He’s a cop.”
“That’s my point. They know what they’re doing.”
Maggy exhaled slowly. “Even the best cops are hampered by rules we can ignore. Trust me. I know. The way I see it, my life’s in danger. I’ll do whatever I have to, to stay alive. Screw the cops.”
Logan nodded more slowly than she would have liked. “I’ll do whatever I have to, to avenge my brother’s death, but. . . . I want the cops to know everything we do.”
Maggy snorted. What was it about this guy that made her want to be with him?
Leaning back in his chair with long legs, lean body and a chiseled face, he looked more handsome than a man had a right to be, but that’s not what drew her to him. The longer she was with him, the more she liked him. Little things. The way he could be tough, yet sensitive and open about his feelings, blew her away. Adriano had been tough both physically and emotionally. Logan’s complexity stirred her and scared her. Logan was steady and sweet. Hell—she needed to concentrate. “So tell me what Jimmy’s message means.”
“The Emer-Old ? Easy.” Studying his hand for a minute as if the answer was there, he slowly replied. “The Emerald Empress is our boat.”
“Then let’s check out the boat.”
“Now? It’s seven in the morning.”
“I can’t sleep.” Maggy stood up.
“You might want to put some clothes on.” He grinned. “Not that I mind seeing you in silk lingerie.
***
Pre-dawn light peaked above the horizon as they drove to the Kitsilano Marina, ten miles as the crow flies from Maggy’s dock. A veil of mist blanketed the city. The autumn rain dribbled like a leaky faucet over everything. Sea gulls squawked and crows gathered on telephone lines to goissip. The paus
e before dawn held a palpable feeling of expectation.
It took twenty minutes to get there. Jimmy and Logan’s boat, the Emerald Empress, was twenty-seven feet long and broad in the beam. Painted a dark green, its chrome-work shone brightly. All its ropes were coiled perfectly. It looked well-maintained and sea-worthy.
Logan jumped onto the mahogany deck first and offered his hand to help her aboard. She took hold of a stanchion and hopped up.
“Just trying to be polite.”
The tiny cabin smelled of cedar. The charts and sailing gizmos were organized and neat. Why do men keep their boats neat, but have difficulty putting their dirty underwear in the laundry?
Logan scanned his cabin.
“Anything out of place?” she asked.
He grumbled and kept looking.
Maggy went to the wall of the cabin with lockers. She opened the first and found tools, the second held chart containers, the third, bottles of drinking water. “A place for everything and everything in its place.” Sailing with Logan would be safe and predictable. What would it be like to screw him? Did she really think that? She looked at the back of his wide shoulders and a fleeting image of mounting his body crossed her mind. Concentrate.
Logan went on deck and stood at the bow. He looked back over the boat.
Continuing her search below, she opened a fourth locker and found board games and a Louis L’Amour western. She flipped through the yellowing paperback. No notes inside, or handwriting of any kind. It smelled of mould and she sneezed. Tossing it aside, she looked at the games. There were three: a Vancouver version of Monopoly, Scrabble and a Ouija board. She took a second look at the Ouija board. Her stomach clenched.
“Logan,” she called.
In a flash, he came to her side, his face full of anticipation.
Holding up the Quija box, she lifted her left eyebrow.
“Oh my God.” He grabbed the old box. “I haven’t seen this since we were kids. I thought we got rid of it years ago.”
“Why would you get rid of it?”
“Oh shit.” Logan looked out the port-hole for a moment. He rubbed his chin.“Not a great memory,” he said after a moment.
“Tell me.”
“We played it twice. We were just kids. Everything was a game back then, you know. I’d have been about ten. Jimmy was eight.” Moisture beaded on his brow and he held the box as though it contained some horrible secret.
“Yeah?”
“The first time was fun. We laughed for hours. I thought I’d pee my pants at some of the crazy answers it gave us.”
“And then?”
“The second time, a week later, we decided to have a full séance with two of our buddies, Alex and Stan. I remember wanting to do it up big.”
“A full séance, eh?”
“I’ll never forget that night. We gathered in a circle inside our family’s dome ten in our backyard in Burnaby. We were all expecting to play a spooky game, something that would scare us a bit, but only in a fun way. We had bottles of Coke, and chips and my mom’s double-chocolate brownies. It was supposed to be a blast.”
“And . . .”
He swallowed. “And at first it was fun. But then . . .” More sweat on his brow.
“You got scared out of your minds?”
“Yeah, to put it mildly. A spirit or something warned us . . . “ He looked out the port hole again, as if the answer hid outside the cabin. “This can’t be. It just can’t be.” He shook his head.
“What?”
“It spelled out on the board. You know.” His face paled.
“Logan, what? What did the spirit say? Just tell me.”
“Murder.”
Murder? Oh great. Her stomach did a few somersaults. He may not have believed in spirits, but she sure as hell did. “Did you ask the spirit who would be murdered?”
He nodded, “It said, ‘One of you.’” Logan dropped the box as if it were alive.
His words echoed oddly in the small space and a shiver rose up her spine. She balled her hands and used the pain of her sharp nails cutting into her flesh to steady herself. She could almost feel the spirit in his story. As if he or she were present. Get a grip Maggy.
It was his fear and the story and the . . . She pulled her coat closer to her body. She could swear the cabin had grown colder. Her imagination must be getting the better of her. They were alone. Absolutely alone. All the rest had to be her imagination, mixed with a side of post-traumatic stress from finding dead bodies.
Logan picked up the Ouija box from the table. With great care he lifted the top as if it contained a wild beast.
Maggy watched.
Inside there were a playing board and a planchette, the heart- shaped wooden indicator the spirits use to spell messages. No beast. Just an inexpensive, children’s version of a spirit board. All the same, it could have the power to summon ghosts and their messages from beyond.
“Look underneath,” she said. She had a feeling. She closed her eyes.
Lifting the board, he found a folded piece of paper.
“How did you know?”
“What’s on the paper?”
A sudden gust of wind rocked the boat and the Ouija board clamored to the ground. Maggy grabbed the locker door more tightly and held on. A flash of light cut through their space, like lightening. Had a storm brewed up that quickly?
Logan’s eyes widened.
“I think we’re disturbing things,” she said.
“Disturbing what exactly?”
“Let’s get out of here.” She headed for the cabin door. “This place gives me the creeps.”
Logan picked up the box.
“And leave that damn thing.”
He put it down again and held up the piece of paper. “We need this.”
On the way out Logan grabbed a tube of charts that lay on the table. As they sped away from the sailboat, Maggy began to relax.
She didn’t understand the spirit world, but she respected it. Swirls of sensibility, feelings, anger, confusion . . . and, finally, a flash of light. It couldn’t have all been in her head. But it happened so quickly part of her wanted to dismiss it. She wanted to ignore all the strangeness that entered her mind, but she couldn’t do that.
Logan broke the silence. “So you felt a spirit?” Though his words sounded fantastical, he didn’t seem to be making fun of her.
“Yes.”
“You’re psychic?”
“No, at least I don’t think so. I haven’t won a lottery yet, or found a missing child.”
He nodded. “But you feel the undead?”
“Not usually.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes.
“Sometimes I get déjà-vu moments, like everyone else.” She rotated her shoulders, trying to loosen them. “Maybe a bit more than others. But that’s all.”
“Ghosts?”
“Never, but . . .”
“What?”
“You’re going to think I’m crazy.”
“Try me.”
“On Tuesday night, when Jimmy looked at me, something happened. His eyes were kinda wild looking and they reached out to me. They pulled me in. I felt like something snapped inside my head, and nothing’s been the same since.”
“Like an attraction?”
“No, it was more than that. It was like a part of him entered my head.”
Logan swallowed slowly. “Jimmy could do that or at least he said he could. He said if he concentrated hard he could connect with some people inside their heads. I never believed him.”
“I believe him.”
“So, you made a connection. This is weird stuff.”
“I’m not a medium. But I’m beginning to think I’m linked somehow to Jimmy and maybe to his murderer too.”
“Not a cool psychic power, like in the movies.”
“Definitely not.” A shudder ran down her spine. “I feel things more clearly than other people. Always have. It’s like some people eat spaghetti and can tell yo
u five spices in it, because they have a heightened sense of taste. I can eat the same spaghetti and only detect garlic. I believe people have different abilities to perceive reality. I’m hyper-sensitive to the world around me. I was just born that way, or at least that’s what my grandma told me. I experience life so deeply that I catch an awareness of things around me that other people miss. Jimmy tapped into that.”
“Did the spirit on the boat tell you anything?”
“I sensed it wanted to, but I just wanted to get out of there. I just wish we could find the murderer and all of this stuff would end.” She didn’t want to tell him about the dark sense of foreboding that was pooling in her stomach.
“I think having extra information about what’s going on around you would give you an advantage over the rest of us.”
“Nah uh. It’s partly what drove my husband Adriano crazy. He’s the sort of man who likes everything drawn in neat, straight lines, drawn in solid strokes. I’m not like that.”
“That’s why you sing the blues.”
Logan not only got her, he didn’t judge and make her feel like she lacked something vital. Cool.
Adriano had tried for five years to understand her; or, at least he put in the effort during commercials in televised soccer games It’s powerful mojo when a man cares enough to look into the hidden corners of who you are and tries to understand what he finds between the cobwebs, and even more powerful when he accepts it.
“Yeah,” she said, “that’s part of it. The blues, well the blues are everything to me. But, enough about me and my spirit-dar. Where are we going?” His finely tuned car moved through the growing morning traffic as dawn broke on the horizon.
“We’re here.” He pointed to the right. “My place.” They were in the west end. He turned into a parking lot beside a tall, gray cement apartment building with ivy growing up its sides. It fit him, tidy and expensive.
***
To call his apartment austere would be putting it mildly. An espresso-scented bachelor pad with no heart but lots of light. The living room flowed into the kitchen and dining area. On top of a navy-blue IKEA couch, a Sports Illustrated magazine lay open at a picture of a smiling football player. His bookshelf held an assortment of paperbacks and an old, hard copy of the Oxford Dictionary. Dominating the room a soft, brown- leather recliner faced a fifty-inch TV screen. In between sat a beat up metal trunk with three mugs and one beer bottle on top of it. The kitchen area, in contrast, looked barely used. The bedroom door stood ajar.
Black Cat Blues Page 9
