A Match Made for Murder

by Iona Whishaw

  As if on cue, Meg Holden came through the door and, like the young man, stopped dead at seeing Lane and Chela. “Oh,” she said. “I . . .” She looked toward the gate. “I came to see if you found my . . . my bracelet. I think it fell off the dresser, and I can’t find it.”

  “I didn’t clean your room, ma’am, but I can ask the girl who did,” Chela said.

  Meg Holden, who had been glancing nervously toward the street, seemed only to be half attending, but at the last moment she looked at Chela and then blanched, putting her hand to her chest. She opened and closed her mouth as if to speak, but no sound came out. Her eyes were riveted on the photo Chela was still holding.

  That evening on the rooftop patio, Lane and Darling stood together with matching gin and tonics, looking at the setting sun.

  “Would a person get tired of having to see that every evening?” he wondered.

  “We should ask a local. I don’t think I would. I don’t get tired of looking at the lake in its many moods. In fact, I almost miss it, cold and dark as the winter is up there. You know that moment on a cold morning when the air is fresh on your face and you are looking at the skeleton of a tree against the grey, brooding sky?”

  “I confess I have not parsed the winter views so finely. In town, I have been used to looking at murky smoke rising from my neighbour’s chimney across the alley. It is not as uplifting as what you are describing.”

  “Look, there’s Mr. Holden all on his own. I wonder if Meg has had the vapours and taken to her bed. I’ve never seen anyone so shocked as when she saw that mug shot of Mr. Griffin. I don’t think we need any more proof they’re connected somehow.” Lane began to move toward Holden.

  Darling wanted to utter a warning, but it was too late. There she was, smiling and wishing their neighbour a good evening.

  “You remember Mr. Holden, darling? His wife is feeling quite unwell, so I’ve asked him to join us for dinner.”

  “Splendid,” said Darling, raising his glass with feigned enthusiasm.

  Inside the dining room, dinner ordered, Lane rested her chin on her hands and smiled at Rex Holden. “I’m sorry Mrs. Holden can’t be here. But I’m sure they can take something to her room.”

  “I guess she’s still upset over watching that poor fellow get shot,” Holden said. “I thought she was getting over it some. She loves to shop, so I’ve been encouraging her to go. It seems to cheer her up.”

  Lane paused. She could think of no suitable response to Meg being cheered up by shopping. “You know I never asked where you are from,” she said.

  “Just up the road in Phoenix. Meg’s got an aunt down here who’s not doing so well, so I thought we could make a little vacation out of visiting her. She’s been seeing her quite a lot. She’s not well off, so fortunately I’m able to help out. Meg’s moved her into a better house and made sure she gets regular medical care.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Lane said, smiling warmly. She studiously ignored Darling’s penetrating gaze. “Lovely dinner,” she continued. “I’ve never had chicken fricassee before.”

  “I know people wonder,” Mr. Holden said. “I’m sure you must. She is younger than me, I’ll give you that. I was happily married for forty years, and I don’t mind saying I was lonely when Velma died. Meg came along just when I thought I’d be alone for the rest of my life. She’s a little rough around the edges. I can see my pals at the club looking at her. They can’t decide whether to look down on her or be jealous!”

  “Well, I think it’s rather wonderful, don’t you, darling?”

  “Do you think you’ll marry again if I die?” Lane asked, sitting in front of the mirror in her new silk dressing gown. She’d been urged to buy it by her friend Angela in King’s Cove, who had said no woman should be without a trousseau on her honeymoon. It was fine in this climate, but Lane wondered how useful it would be in the dead of a snowy Kootenay winter. Her warm, thick flannel dressing gown was more the thing.

  Darling, who was already in bed with a book on his chest—one he wasn’t reading because he found the sight of his wife brushing her hair quite transfixing—shrugged thoughtfully. “Only if I can find a woman with hair that colour. And as much as I look forward to that, I’d urge you to reconsider putting yourself in any position likely to lead to your death. You have a weakness for it that I don’t approve of.”

  The banging on their door made them both jump. Darling looked at the clock: ten after ten. Lane pulled her dressing gown across her and tied the belt as she hurried to answer the door.

  Rex Holden was standing on the mat, looking distraught and breathing heavily in a way that didn’t sound at all healthy. “She’s gone,” he managed. “Packed up everything and gone.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  June 1936

  Jane Van Eyck contemplated her two hours of sleep. She was slumped at the kitchen table, feeling as if all the curling pins she’d put in her hair the night before were boring into her skull. She lifted the mug of black coffee she’d had cooling in front of her and drank. It was bitter. She pulled the curtains to watch the gentle coming of dawn along the lake, pink and fresh, the sun hidden by the mountains but already casting a warm glow into the sky. Nature goes on, she thought, in spite of our little human troubles. Deriving no comfort from it, she turned away from the view and looked down the hall toward where her family slept. There was no getting around it: she was dying.

  She wondered now if she’d been right not to tell him. It might have been less lonely. But then he would have had a whole year of anxiety and misery, said a practical voice in her head. It was better this way. In fact, if only she could manage to go away and die on her own, everyone could be spared. As it was, she didn’t really know how it would come. She had known all along. She knew the doctor would want to tell her husband and not her, but she demanded to know and swore him to secrecy. She couldn’t bear the thought of her husband having to cope with her death.

  The doctor had told her she would become weak and that would be the time to go into the hospital. They could make her comfortable there, ease her passing. The doctor had disapproved in the strongest terms of her decision not to tell her husband. He’d said he had half a mind to break his promise and do it himself.

  At least put your affairs in order, he’d said. Jane looked around the small kitchen and through into the sitting room, where light was beginning to colour the walls. She had so few affairs to put in order. The biggest affairs were her husband and Tina, and they were in order. Tina seemed, though Jane could not for a minute understand it, to enjoy working on cars alongside her father. That would be especially good when she had gone. They had a bond. They could support each other.

  The one affair to put in order, she thought, was telling him what had happened to Tina. She wouldn’t ask permission to break her promise. Someone on this earth needed to know in case, one day, Tina wasn’t as okay as she so defiantly claimed to be.

  Ames was spending dawn at the beach, a quiet place with only the whispering lap of water to accompany his confusion. He sometimes came here to think after a sleepless night, and he usually had sleepless nights over some rocky problem with a girl. He picked up a handful of sand that wasn’t covered with a patch of freezing snow from the late-night fall and tossed it into the still water along the edge, watching the wavelets moving out in a circle. Elephant Mountain, across the narrow band of water, was just beginning to light up. Topmost in his mind was that nothing could ever again be on the same footing with Tina Van Eyck. He thought of the day it had all started when he’d gone out to the garage on a flimsy pretext in the hopes of getting her to go out with him again. She’d rebuffed him completely, but then had laughed, made a joke, as if it still might be possible.

  Now nothing was possible. The dress-shop keeper had looked at the photo and said, “Nope, not her. This woman had a thinner face.” His own anxieties had been relieved by this proof that she had been
telling the truth, but he had delivered a deathblow to any regard she might have for him. Had he done the right thing? Yes, he thought, he had. But had he done it the right way? He didn’t think so. He’d failed absolutely to maintain the polite distance Darling seemed to manage so effortlessly.

  Darling had arrested Miss Winslow on the suspicion of murder when they’d first met but had been so professional that a year and a half later they were actually married. Would he ever be like Darling? He’d been angry and afraid. Why? He’d felt betrayed, as if Tina had lied to him about who she was, and his resentment came out in every word he’d said to her and every look he’d given her. There would be no coming back from that. He stood in front of the lake now, pulling his overcoat tightly around himself, his heart wrestling with the conflicting feelings of uplift at the beauty of the morning and confusion about why it mattered so much to him that Tina would never speak to him again.

  “Poor man,” Lane said. “He’s really in shock.” They were the only people on the outside patio. The other guests were breakfasting inside because of the lingering chill in the morning air.

  “Why would he keep that amount of money on him? Eight hundred dollars will get her quite far,” Darling said.

  Lane pulled her cardigan around her. “Brrr. I feel like we are putting on a brave Canadian face. It’s not that warm out here.”

  “Buck up! The sun will start doing its job in no time. Look, I think you ought to tell Holden what you know.”

  “It’s going to sound as if we’ve been spying on her the whole time, but of course, you’re right. It’s not fair to leave him ignorant of his wife’s activities.”

  “And you haven’t been spying?”

  They found Holden’s suite door open, and Lane knocked gently on it.

  “Mr. Holden?”

  Holden came to the door with a folded shirt in his hand. “Just packing up. Might as well head back to Phoenix.” He motioned them in. Two large leather suitcases were open on the bed. He tossed the shirt into one of them and then put his hands in his pockets and looked listlessly around the room. Even in his grief, he looked dapper, with a pressed white Egyptian cotton shirt and a dark blue silk scarf carefully tied at the neck.

  “I just have to admit I’ve been had. My friends warned me, but I wouldn’t hear a word said against her. My fault. What I don’t understand is why she took off. She knew I was fond of her, and I would have supported her and left her nicely set up for that matter. I’m an old man. I don’t pretend she really loved me, but I’m sure she appreciated the security I gave her. She’s had a dreadful life. Grew up in awful poverty in Chicago. I can’t help worrying about where she will go. Of course, if she runs out of money and comes back, I will probably take her back. I’ll try to understand her a little better. We can make up, I’m sure of it.”

  Darling looked at Lane, and Lane cleared her throat.

  “It is possible she did have somewhere to go,” Lane began gently.

  Galloway woke feeling groggy. His eyes were swollen and blurry, and he had a headache. He’d drunk too much and he knew it. In the light of the morning, he was unable to recapture the clarity he’d had the night before and now felt only a kind of messy confusion. He tried to stave off the growing sense of alarm this feeling was engendering.

  Standing at the kitchen sink, he poured a glass of water and winced at the acrid taste it had in his mouth. Morning sunlight was beginning to saturate the patio wall, and for a moment, he was comforted by what he had. He’d made it after all: assistant chief of police and, without a doubt, next in line for chief. He’d done that. He’d managed this house, his job, his wife. He’d done everything he had to. It had been laughably easy.

  He turned away from the view of the patio with its orange trees and Talavera tiles and reached for the coffee pot. Immediately his mood darkened again, and for one moment he was almost able to name what he was feeling— he recoiled from it as he would from a burning building.

  He started with the easy part of his list. He had Griffin. That wouldn’t change, provided Martinez didn’t mess the whole thing up. There was a promotion he shouldn’t have encouraged, he thought bitterly. He’d go in today and nail down the loose ends. His confidence began to assert itself with the smell of the coffee percolating on the stove. He had always managed to get what he wanted, what he needed. That ability would never leave him. After that, he’d tackle the hospital. Someone there knew something—he was sure of it.

  The day before

  “Hey!”

  Startled, Hidalgo scrambled up clumsily and knocked over the chair, trying to shake the shock and sleep out of his head. What was she doing there?

  “I’ve seen you, you know. What do you think you’re doing?”

  In desperation he pointed toward the field. “Yo soy—”

  “Uh huh. Don’t try that Spanish stuff on me. You work for him, don’t you?”

  “Who?” he tried.

  “My husband. You think I don’t see you following me around? How long have you been spying on me?”

  Hidalgo looked anxiously across the road to see if anyone had come out to listen. Mr. Griffin would kill him as it was for blowing his cover. She was pretty when she got mad. Her blue eyes were flashing, and her blond hair fluttered around her face like a halo. She was wearing a red sundress that certainly did justice to her figure.

  “I’ve been here since you and him,” he nodded his head toward the hotel, “came down here.”

  To his amazement she blanched and stepped back, nearly unbalancing on a rock. She looked up and down the road. “The whole time?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And you report to him, everything you’ve seen?”

  “The truth is, I don’t see much, so not much to tell.” He wasn’t going to tell her he’d seen and reported the young man.

  “You’re lying. I can see you are.”

  “He’s just looking after you, miss. Making sure you’re all right.”

  “And you’re lying again. Well, I bet he’d be interested in the fact that I’ve seen you. Sticking out like a sore thumb isn’t a good quality in a mob spy. But we ain’t going to play it like that.” She began to pace, covering up a growing panic. “You stay here. I’m coming out with an envelope with one hundred dollars in it. And then I’m going to tell you what you’re going to say him.”

  Meg was really frightened. After talking to her husband’s man, she had sought refuge in a little lounge off the silent, carpeted hallway. She had to get away. She knew that now. He couldn’t be trusted. He’d kill her next. Taking a couple of deep breaths, she closed her eyes and tried to still the pounding of her heart. She couldn’t do this sort of thing anymore. Her eyes flew open. She looked at her watch and put her hands firmly on the arms of the chair she was in. She knew where his money was. He was going out to meet, God, she couldn’t remember who, but that gave her time. She’d leave here, hide out for a day in case they checked the bus and train stations, and then she’d be off, away from him for good. With a new resolution, she pushed herself out of the chair and walked quickly back to the villa. Chicago. She could start there.

  Griffin frowned at the memory of his shock and subsequent rage. It hadn’t been his finest hour. That’s when you make mistakes.

  He thought about her now. It wasn’t like he hadn’t enjoyed a fling or two. There was a lot of temptation when you ran a popular restaurant with entertainment. He and Meg, they’d been partners right from the get-go. She’d been good at the job. What was a little transgression in the bigger scheme of things? The idea of Florida rose again. Just the two of them in an apartment looking out at the ocean, enjoying a retirement they’d more than earned. Or he could start a little restaurant there, legit. She could be at the front till she started to lose her figure.

  Almost laughing, he straightened up. The answer was right in front of him the whole time. He’d put his mone
y into Florida real estate. Get a start on that retirement plan. He put his Cuban out carefully, saving the remains for later, and pulled open a drawer, looking for his notepad. He found it under a pile of papers on the desk. Just as he managed to locate a pencil, he heard someone in the hall, followed by a tentative knock.

  “Yes, what is it?”

  Hidalgo pushed the door open and hesitated. “She’s left, sir. She got in a cab outside the hotel with two suitcases. I did follow it, like you asked.”

  Griffin frowned. “And you followed the cab to where?”

  “I lost them.”

  “You lost them? Are you a complete imbecile? No one could lose a cab in Tucson!”

  “I must have been speeding. I got pulled over. By the time the cop had written the ticket it was gone.”

  Galloway leaned against the car with his arms crossed, his dark glasses protecting his eyes from the glare of the sun. The hospital loomed before him. He hadn’t been on the beat for years. This was a job for a rookie. A guy like Bevan. Taking in a deep breath, he made for the back entrance.

  The older maintenance man working there looked at his badge expressionlessly. “What can I do for you?”

  “I want to know who was on the early shift last Sunday”

  “Can I ask why?”

  Feigning an affability he did not feel, he said, “We’re pursuing a missing persons case. Last known to be at this hospital.”

  The man, who had been the shift supervisor that very day, nodded. “I think you want Smitty. He mentioned seeing someone leaving before it was even light. None of our business what they do up there, but it might be something. He’s not on shift till Thursday, though, if you want to talk to him.”

  “I’ll take his address, thanks,” Galloway said. He was feeling the same sense of growing satisfaction he always had when he knew he’d get what he needed. He was like a damn Mountie, he thought. He always got his man.