Gatekeeper

by Natasha Deen

“Frank the Intrepid strikes again?” asked Serge as I disconnected the call.

  “I’m going to have to move out of this town sooner rather than later. Between you, Kent, and now the fire, Frank thinks I’m more suspect than victim.”

  “Think he’ll look into this?”

  I shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe Frank’s right and this is just some camper with too much fire-starter—”

  “But it doesn’t smell like it and given the stuff’s that’s been going on in town with the vandalism…”

  I filled Serge in on my theory of Kent’s involvement in the property destruction and finished with, “Nancy was able to take a bunch of buildings off the list, but that still leaves a bunch of unexplained property damage and graffiti. This area isn’t on Kent’s loop, and he’s a total creature of habit. I can’t see him going out of his way to burn a park. I bet the same guy who did this, did the other stuff.”

  “Might be a girl,” he said.

  “Maybe, but arsonists are usually male.”

  Serge sighed and scrubbed his forehead. “None of it makes sense. Why would there suddenly be a fire in the middle of snow-packed ground and why someone would destroy a park?”

  Good questions. I wish I had the answers. I headed back to the car. Time to confront Dr. Pierson and try to solve one mystery.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ten minutes later, the car was parked, and Serge and I were walking into the hospital. “Hi,” I said to the nurse at the reception desk. “I’m wondering if I could see Dr. Pierson.”

  Her dark eyes gave me the once over. “Are you his patient? You have an appointment?” She said it like she was challenging me to prove Dr. Pierson saw patients at night.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Then I’m sorry. Unless you have an appointment, I can’t help you. Dr. Pierson’s on rounds and—”

  “Oh, of course. I’m Maggie.” I paused, waited to see if there was a flicker of recognition. All I got was a flare of irritation. “I’m one of the kids who found Rori Pierson.” I gave her a split-second to process. “I’m one of the girls who saved his daughter’s life—”

  “Oh! Honey!”

  “—and I just wanted to see him during one of his breaks, maybe get an update on how his family is doing.”

  She went from ice queen to melted milk chocolate. “Sure thing, honey. Let me just check his schedule.” Turning from me, she flipped through some sheets. “It looks like he’ll be free in an hour. Did you want to wait? There’s a staff lounge I can take you to—”

  “Sure, thank you.”

  She pushed back from her rolling chair, then came out from behind the glass partition. “That was a great thing you did.”

  “Right place, right time.”

  “Well, thank the Lord you were there.”

  I smiled.

  She led me down the hallway, the air sharp with the smell of disinfectant, then turned down the second corridor.

  “Ma’am, did you know Kent Meagher?”

  She chuckled. “That kid was a shadow in this hospital. You’d have thought he was one of the doctors.”

  “It must have hit hard, then, finding out about him.”

  The nurse slammed to a stop. “Little Kenny. Dead.”

  Serge snorted. “Little Kenny. Nice. You think that’s what his other nurse girlfriends nicknamed him?”

  Down boy. To the nurse, I nodded.

  “I was in Calgary visiting my sister when I got the text... Oh my Lord, what is going on in this town?” She put her hand to her chest and leaned against the wall. “Sergei Popov, Rochelle Pierson, Kent Meagher. What is going on with this town and its children?” The recitation in names must have triggered her memory because she was suddenly looking at me like she knew me. “Maggie. Lord, honey, you too. I’m sorry. When you said your name, I didn’t put it together with—”

  “It’s okay.”

  “You found Serge.”

  “It’s keeping me awake at night.”

  “Is that a dig at all those late night movies I make you watch?” asked Serge.

  “And Kent.” She stared at me for a long—too long—moment. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  I hate it when adults ask me that. I never know how to answer. “Oh, uh...good as can be, I guess.”

  “What was it like? Finding both boys?”

  “Horrifying.” Realizing she was in control of the conversation and I was in danger of becoming the hot topic around the water cooler, I said, “Especially with Kent. Coming so soon after Serge.” I shivered. “You said you knew Kent?”

  “He was such a good kid. A real favourite with everyone—”

  “Especially the nurses,” muttered Serge. His eyes went wide as I shot him an exasperated side-glance. “What? You think being dead means I’m not going to have petty moments.”

  You know he’s dead, right? That you’re both dead. You’d think the pettiness would have died with you.

  “I know,” he sighed. “But as far as the cool dead guy goes, the do-gooder model about to be doctor has way more fantasy appeal than some jerk.”

  C’mon. You’re the bad boy.

  “Yeah?”

  Yeah.

  His shoulders went back. “Okay, nice to know I can hold my own with something. He’s smarter, nicer, and for sure, he’s made way more progress as a ghost than I have. Capitan Canuck can turn himself solid enough to ring a doorbell. You know what happened when I tried to go solid yesterday? I made a bunch of sparks and almost set fire to the toaster.”

  We’ll talk about your pyrotechnics, later. I turned back to the nurse. “I heard he was a favourite with some of the nurses.”

  “And easy to—” Serge added.

  I shot Serge a death glare and he put his hands up in surrender.

  “He was always willing to help with anything. Some of these pre-med kids, they turn their nose up if you ask them to do ‘nurse’ stuff, but not Kent. He used to help the janitor with the garbage sometimes.”

  “But the nurses—”

  She chuckled. “Yeah, he was like the little brother we always wanted.”

  “Wait.” Serge slammed to a stop. “What?”

  “What?” I asked. “I thought he was dating one…”

  “Kent? Dating? No. That kid was way too busy with school to worry about girls.”

  “Maybe he was super discreet,” Serge said to me. “Kept everything on the down low.”

  Maybe. I turned my focus back to the nurse. “I’m sure I’d heard he was seeing a nurse.”

  She shook her head. “He really wasn’t that kind of kid. Trust me. I know a nurse or two that tried, but he was all about the schoolwork and getting into university.” The nurse leaned in dropped her voice. “He wasn’t supposed to do anything but the bare minimum because he wasn’t trained to do anything really worthwhile. Technically, he was there to help with paperwork, hold some babies, read to the older folks. But he was such a nice kid and worked so hard, even the guys in research used to let him help out in the labs.” She straightened. “A couple of the men told me he had a real talent for it.”

  “Did that ever make for bad feelings with the other kids? The other ones that worked here and were also trying to get into med school.”

  “Nah, not really. There are some people that come along who are so far above and ahead of everyone else, you just can’t even feel jealous. Like Gretzky or Hawking.”

  Great. Once again, Kent the Saint had no one who had anything bad or negative to say, which meant I was still motiveless when it came to his death, and he was still stuck in this plane of existence. Way to go, Maggie. Way to really help the dead.

  “Go ahead and wait in here.” The nurse swiped her key card and let me into the doctor’s lounge.

  I stepped inside, expecting leather chairs, potted plants, and a high-end cof
fee maker. Instead, there was a ratty-looking couch, some plastic chairs scattered around a couple of scarred, pressboard tables, and a regular coffee maker. “Thanks so much.”

  “No problem, honey.” She sighed. “So sad. I hope the cops figure out what happened to Kent.”

  “Do you think there was anything Captain Canuck wasn’t good at?” Serge asked when the nurse left.

  “Making and keeping friends.”

  “That’s not true. Everyone liked him.”

  “Yeah, but no one knew him. Didn’t you hear what the nurse said about him?”

  “Sure but—”

  “But it’s what everyone says about him. He was smart, he was good, he was kind. No one has any really personal stories about him. No one saying anything like, ‘gee one time, Kent helped me carry my groceries to the car’ or ‘he used to tell terrible jokes.’”

  Serge frowned. “So what do you think it means?”

  “It means Kent’s got a carefully crafted image, and that makes me wonder about him.”

  “Don’t wonder,” said Serge. “It’s just his childhood reaching forward.”

  “Huh?”

  “Come on, Mags. Mommy and Daddy spend all their money fighting. So much so, they’re still married ’cause they can’t afford to get divorced. And because they’ve wasted their money on hate, there’s nothing in the pot for Kent’s school. Which means when other kids were playing video games or hanging out, he’s schlepping garbage because it’ll help pay his way. His parents cost him a childhood and a future. Plus, Daddy leaves town just to get away from Mom? That’s a special kind of dysfunction.”

  “Not really. You heard what Kent and his dad said. It was better for Kent—”

  “To not have his dad around? You don’t have your mom. How’s that working out for you?”

  “It’s not the same thing—”

  “He was a kid and I don’t care how smart he is. At his core, he wonders what was so wrong with him that his dad would rather have left than stayed and fought for him.”

  That argument hit close to home because it was something that kept me up at night with thoughts of my mom.

  “No kid wants to think they’re so unimportant their parent would choose the easy route over the hard route.”

  And I bet that hit close to home for him.

  “If I were Kent, I would’ve done the same thing. Put on a brave, nice face, keep all my worries and insecurities inside, and never let anyone close to me so they wouldn’t know the truth.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “What?” he asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Just thinking about how sensitive you are.”

  “Is that code for calling me a wuss?”

  “No! Not at all. I just—there’s so much depth to you.”

  He wiggled his eyebrows. “Wanna find out how much depth there is?”

  “Trust you to ruin a moment. And to think, I was going to say how much I wished things had turned out differently. That we could’ve been friends in life.”

  That wiped the humour from his face. “Yeah, me too.”

  “Thanks for sticking around.”

  “Thanks for letting me.”

  We sat and waited for Dr. Pierson, and to prove I appreciated Serge, I let him choose the TV show to watch. The two of us were watching a classic episode of Scooby Doo when Rori’s dad came in.

  “Hey, Dr. Pierson.”

  His eyes widened in surprise. “Maggie! This is the last place I expected to see you.”

  “I told the nurse I was looking for an update on Rori—”

  “Nell’s over all the time. I’m surprised she doesn’t tell—”

  “Really, I wanted to talk to you about Kent.”

  His shoulders dropped and he gave me a patient smile. “Maggie, we’ve talked about him before and I told you, I didn’t really know him.”

  “Right. Only, I can’t find any information on his scholarship.”

  “Why are you looking into his scholarship?”

  “His parents need help with sorting through his affairs.”

  “And they asked you?”

  I nodded.

  “Sorry, I’m definitely out of the loop when it comes to school bursaries or scholarships, but if you like, I can put you in touch with a couple of our residents. Those guys would be able to help.”

  “Right.” It was now occurring to me that confronting him about the scholarship and doing it in a closed room with no witnesses was probably in the top five of my stupidest decisions.

  And that included the time at the donut factory.

  “Only, I couldn’t help but notice that if you rearrange the letters of the Le Lorche scholarship, it spells ‘Rochelle—”

  “You’re a smart person,” said Dr. Pierson. “Really smart. And I was stupid to use Rochelle’s name.”

  “If he says ‘...and I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids,’ I’m stopping his heart.” Serge moved to stand by the doctor and put his hand in front of the man’s chest.

  If he starts quoting Scooby Doo, I think we have bigger problems.

  Dr. Pierson sank into one of the chairs. “Don’t tell my wife. Please don’t tell anyone.”

  “Huh,” said Serge. “That wasn’t the plan of action I expected from a murderer.”

  “If you can tell me what happened?”

  “Rochelle’s mom a good lady and she’s a great mom, but...” He sighed. “We aren’t...we live different, separate lives. When I met Kent, he had such promise and talent. It didn’t seem right that he couldn’t become a doctor because his parents didn’t know how to spend their money.”

  “So you thought of setting up a scholarship?”

  “Not at all. Those things can get complicated and besides, I saw potential in Kent. He was a good kid and I wanted to do everything I could to help him. I gave him a letter for university, set him up with my buddy in Edmonton so he could have a doctor as support for school and work, and I helped out with the money.”

  “So...you made up a scholarship? I don’t understand.”

  “My wife would have flipped if I gave or lent money to anyone. She can be…possessive about our finances…” He waved his hands like he could push away his words. “She’s a good person, she can just be self-involved sometimes. It wasn’t a lot of money for us, but it was our money and I wasn’t giving her a say in how it was spent.”

  “You couldn’t tell her what you were doing with your money?”

  He nodded. His eyes looked sunken, his face gaunt. “Giving it away or waiting for someone to pay back a loan…my wife would’ve made my life a living hell if I’d done something like that. We already fight all the time. It just wasn’t worth it. Kent and I quietly made arrangements for the money. He’d help me out with research, do his residency here when he graduated...that’s it.”

  “Not that I’m suggesting this happened,” I said, eyeing the closed door, “but is it possible that Kent wanted more money from you?”

  That made the doctor laugh. “That kid lived like a monk. I tried to give him more money but he was worried that Loni would notice.”

  There was a beat of silence. “I know all you have is my word, but Kent never blackmailed me. I don’t think it would ever have occurred to him. He was a good kid, and he would’ve made a once-in-a-lifetime kind of doctor. I hope whoever’s responsible gets caught, and caught soon.”

  I thought about the damage to the Piersons’ property. “Is there anyone you can think of who would have wanted to hurt him? Jealous students? Ex-girlfriend? Someone who found out about your arrangement and wanted to hurt both of you?”

  His mouth pulled down. “There are always petty jealousies in any organization. No one would kill him. Not here. It had to be someone from out of town.”

/>   “What about your property and the vandalism?”

  His laugh was dark. “The line will form out the door. I dabble in the stock market but I’m not a professional. Risking my money is one thing and I’ve been successful at it. Risking other people’s finances is something I’d never do. Not everyone understands that. There are people in this town that think I’m selfish for not helping them invest their money, that all I want is to be rich and for them to be poor. I’m not surprised people are using the unfortunate events of the Popov family and Kent as a cover to vent their anger.” He gave me a quick smile. “But other than breaking my windows, I doubt they’ll do anything else. I don’t expect to end up on the morgue table.”

  I’d been hoping for something juicier than an unhappy marriage. I suppose Kent and Mrs. Pierson could have gotten into a fight, but she had a shoulder injury. Whoever killed him had tried to drag his body to another location. She didn’t have the strength to that. I thanked Dr. Pierson for his time, then left the hospital, feeling no further ahead and like I was failing in every respect.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The next morning, I got up too late to catch Nancy before she left for work. After a quick shower and some toast, I headed to the station. I caught her up on Dr. Pierson—survived the tongue lashing for confronting him without talking to her, first—and why I didn’t think Mrs. Pierson was a suspect. Then I told her who I thought the killer was. Or at least, where I thought he was hiding.

  “Run that by me, again.” Nancy set down the police file and swivelled the office chair to face me.

  “The murderer’s in Edmonton.”

  “Because…”

  “Because there’s no one here who had a motive. According to Dr. Pierson and Nell’s dad, Kent was one round away from being nominated for sainthood at the hospital.”

  “Didn’t we talk about this? If there had been someone new in town—”

  “We would have known because an unfamiliar vehicle would have been noticed,” I said.

  “Right.”

  “But what if there wasn’t a car?”

  Her eyebrows went up. “He walked here?”

  “No, what if he hid the car—”