A Match Made for Murder

by Iona Whishaw

  “The purse isn’t necessarily a bad sign, sir,” Terrell said.

  “It’s hardly a good one.” Ames, who’d been leaning back, clumped his chair down heavily and picked up the phone. He heard it ringing on the other side. “I’m sure the blonde in the car wasn’t Tina. It’s too much of a coincidence that the blonde buying the clothes wouldn’t be the blonde who killed him. But still . . .” He heard it picked up. “Van Eyck garage.”

  “Miss Van Eyck. It’s Sergeant Ames. I need you to answer a question. Do you own a little change purse with your name embroidered on it?” He looked over the receiver at Terrell, who was looking askance at him, forming an unspoken “What?” with his mouth.

  A long silence followed. Finally, in a voice as far as possible from the confident voice of the Tina he knew, she said, “Why?”

  “Is it yours?” Ames was insistent.

  “Yes. I mean, it was. I lost it before the war. It was something my grandmother gave me. I don’t understand. Why do—”

  “When before the war? Do you remember exactly?”

  Another silence.

  “Tina, this is important.”

  “I lost it the night—the night I went out with Watts. He pushed me out of the car at the top of my road. I had to try to straighten up before I got to the house, and that’s when I knew it was gone. It must have fallen out of my pocket when . . .”

  “You didn’t keep it in your purse?”

  “No. I always put it in my pocket. What’s going on?”

  Ames felt his anxiety spiking into fear. “Look, Tina, I don’t know what is going on, but your father has been to see us. I won’t explain now, but he’s on his way home. He’s going to come back, and I want you to come back with him. Do you understand?”

  “Of course, I understand. I’m not an imbecile. Why was he there, anyway?”

  “I can explain later, just come back with him, okay?”

  “All right, all right. I hear a car. Customer. Gotta run.”

  “Tina!” But she’d hung up the phone.

  A young officer knocked and put his head around the door. “Sarge, that car at the back you wanted the trunk fixed on and keys made, so it could be driven back across the lake? It’s gone.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Martinez sat at his desk, the photographs splayed before him like a bad hand of cards. They’d been delivered by a cab driver shortly after the assistant chief had left to pick up Darling. A couple of nice pictures of Inspector Darling and his wife out at the mission. These he had set aside. The rest. He shook his head, unbelieving. Paul Galloway with his arms around a couple of girls at the club, on the game he was sure. Galloway and James Griffin at the bar in the restaurant. Galloway and Griffin in what Martinez assumed was Galloway’s house. Galloway and Griffin, Galloway and Griffin. A couple of pals. Had Galloway’s wife taken these without her husband knowing? She must have. He’d never have allowed such compromising photographs. He shook his head. What must have been going on in that marriage? The ticking of the clock on the wall seemed loud in the silence. It had been hours since Galloway had gone to fetch Darling at the hotel. What could they be doing? Galloway had distinctly said he was bringing Darling back to the station so they could begin to plan the search. It was a quiet night for a change. Only one drunk had been brought in, and it was already ten at night. God bless Tuesdays. He found Bevan leaning back in his chair, putting in some procrastination, while a partially written report stared back from the desk.

  “Hey, Bev, have you heard from Galloway? He was picking up that Canadian inspector because his wife went missing. He told you about that?”

  Bevan produced a puzzled expression. “News to me. Boss said nothing about a missing woman. Just hightailed it out with his usual cheerful and charming good night. I lie, of course. He took off without a word, as usual.”

  “He said,” Martinez began. “Never mind.” He turned and started back to his desk, and then on an impulse, he looked right and left, opened the door to Galloway’s office, and slid in. He stood for a moment in the dark taking in the enormity of his invasion. It felt like a monstrous violation, after all that he owed Galloway. But nothing added up anymore. He looked behind him at the closed door. Who was he kidding? Nothing had added up for a while. Not Galloway lying to him about having alerted everyone, or saying he was bringing Darling right back, not all those chummy photos of Galloway and Griffin, and he thought, with a thump in his chest, not his missing evidence and notes.

  Crossing himself quickly and offering up a prayer to the Virgin, Martinez darted around Galloway’s desk and sat in his chair. There was a small desk lamp and he switched it on, his head beginning to fill with the excuses he’d use if Galloway found him there. But it was unthinkable, what he was thinking. Galloway couldn’t have spirited away his paperwork. The one thing he was always going on about was the importance of putting Griffin behind bars finally and for good.

  In the end it had been simple: Galloway had exercised caution and opted not to destroy the evidence—after all, he might decide to terminate his partnership with Griffin, but he had exercised no caution in the storing of it. Martinez had found it tossed at the very back of the lowest drawer of his file cabinet. He hadn’t even bothered to lock the cabinet, so confident was he that no one would dare breach the sanctity of his office.

  Martinez looked at it and then put it back. What should he do? Anxious now about the amount of time he’d spent in the office, he pushed the drawer shut quietly and then turned out the desk lamp and felt his way to the door. Taking a deep breath, he opened it a crack. He could see Bevan’s back and no one else on the floor. He breathed a sigh of relief and returned to his desk. It was time to try to understand what it meant and what, if anything, it had to do with the disappearance that afternoon, a lifetime ago, of the beautiful wife of the Canadian inspector.

  “Good. Now I feel we’ll get to the bottom of this.” Galloway pulled his car up behind that of a tall man with a cowboy hat and a penchant for loud music. “Turn off that racket!” Galloway commanded.

  The tall man leaned into the car slowly and switched off the engine. He bent to brush some dust off the top of his cowboy boots, deliberately not looking at Galloway. “Whatever you say, Chief.” He didn’t appear to like being ordered around by a policeman.

  Darling bounded out of the car and rushed up the stairs. A cold grey light heralded the coming dawn, and it made the log cabin seem as abandoned as any he’d ever seen in the Kootenay valley. What had they done with her?

  “Where’s my wife?” he demanded. “Lane!” He turned the handle of the locked door.

  “Don’t get excited, there, partner. She’s fine. I put her in a very nice room with a sandwich and a glass of water,” the tall man drawled. “I even found her some aspirin. I mighta hit her a little hard. It took her a while to wake up and she did have a bit of a lump.” He chuckled and then moved in front of Darling and unlocked the door. Galloway was standing by his car, smoking.

  Supressing a desire to punch the man, Darling pushed into the empty living room calling furiously, “Lane? Are you all right?”

  The tall man strolled to a closed door and put the key in, turning it with a smile. “It’s a shame we have to wake her. Here you go.” He held the door open for Darling to precede him, but in the same instant saw his prisoner was not there. A dress, some pens, a lipstick, a compact were scattered across the unmade bed, lying near an open and empty handbag. Lane’s dress. Lane’s handbag.

  Darling lunged for it and then threw it back onto the bed, turning to say something to her jailer, but he was already outside—shouting. “She ain’t here!”

  Darling ran to the porch. Galloway had launched himself off the car and was tossing his cigarette into the bush.

  “What have you done, you bloody moron?” Galloway shouted, pushing angrily past the tall man to look into the empty house.

&n
bsp; “Look, I did exactly what you told me to do. I locked her in that room and gave her something to eat. She couldn’t have got out without someone helping her.” At this, the tall man turned and began to look through the living room and kitchen, trying to find any disturbance in things as he had left them the night before.

  Galloway was back outside, walking along the road, looking for evidence of anyone passing, but then he shook his head. They’d passed no one on the road down to the cabin. With an oath, he ran back and began to look around the yard, searching for evidence his guest had gone somewhere on foot, but the scrub, dried pine needles, and rocky terrain gave nothing away.

  Darling was looking as well, trying to imagine what she would do if she really had gotten away. He could very nearly smile at the thought of her doing a Houdini act and fleeing into the night, if he weren’t so terrified. He glanced sideways at Galloway who was kicking the tyre of the car. He seemed completely unhinged.

  Darling thought about where Lane would go, and he tried not to look toward the south, through the stand of evergreens and down the side of the mountain. She certainly wouldn’t go back up the isolated road that had brought them here. Too much danger of meeting her jailer on his return. The quickest way to put distance between herself and the cabin was south, straight down the mountain. He was sober in an instant. What would this mean? He knew Galloway was armed, and he suspected the tall man was as well. And, though they had not said so, he was effectively their prisoner.

  Galloway strode back into the bedroom, pulling up the bedclothes and scattering things onto the floor. He pulled open the wardrobe and uttered another curse.

  “My flight jacket is gone! And Priscilla’s fur jacket. Someone must have come here and let her out.” He shouted for the other man. That means they must have planned to hike down, he thought. “You go down the mountain on foot. When you find her, march her to the road. We’ll pick you up. She wouldn’t have left in the dark, so she hasn’t gone far. And try not to kill her! What a bloody waste of time!” He took out his revolver and pointed it at Darling. “You’re coming with me. Who the bloody hell is with her?” he said, almost to himself.

  The sun was up now, and the long shadows began to give way to a blanched landscape. The steep descending gully they were in fanned out finally, and they could see more of the city below. Lane stopped to assess where they were and how far from the nearest road.

  “I’m tired. Can we rest?” Meg said.

  Lane was about to point to a ledge just below them but the shot and then the bullet striking an outcrop not five feet away from them wiped every thought away.

  “Down!” she shouted, grabbing at Meg and hauling her to the ground. Her heart pounding, she waited, unconsciously spitting dust out of her mouth. Meg was lying next to her, her eyes wide with fear, her handbag over her head. Lane put her finger to her mouth and lifted her head; she saw they were lying behind a slight rocky rise. Could she risk trying to see where their attacker was?

  They were on the eastern side of the narrow, steep-sided gully they’d been descending, which now seemed like folly. She wished they’d picked the other side, as they’d have had more of a chance to escape to the road. Nothing for it. She pushed herself partway up with her arms and looked up at the terrain they had descended. The gunman was much farther away than she had imagined, still a small figure.

  But he was a small figure, who by his movements carried a rifle in one hand and field glasses in another. “Damn. He’s still far from us but he has field glasses. And a rifle. We’re like fish in a barrel.”

  “Wonderful. I’m lying here with a fur and an expensive purse getting shot at instead of sitting in comfort on a Greyhound bus getting out of here.”

  “Damn! I can’t bloody see him now.” Lane swivelled her head to look directly down from where they were. There was an outcrop that rose like a great wall of rock some fifteen feet below and to the east of their position. If they could get behind that, there’d be a reprieve.

  Another shot, this time striking much farther west, on the other side of the gully. Lane frowned. What had he seen? She strained her eyes and then, with jolt of panic, saw what he was looking at. Below them, and farther to the west on more open ground, she could see a group of about seven riders following a trail. She looked back up the valley. The shooter was a little closer but still far enough away that he might have mistaken the riding party for his fleeing prisoner—or perhaps he had thought she might be among them.

  “See that ridge? We have to get behind it. You go as fast as you can. Keep low. He’s distracted by that riding party.”

  Meg shook her head as if she were going to refuse to move, then she got on her hands and knees and began to crawl toward the ridge. There was another shot. It sang into the echoing space. A bird rose in a frightened flutter from behind them somewhere. Meg had stopped and then resumed crawling toward the ridge, moving more quickly.

  The shots had spooked the riding party, which was now whirling away in a cloud of dust. The shooter was watching them, perhaps realizing his mistake. It would take only a moment for him to begin looking for them again. Lane looked down and saw that Meg had nearly gained the ridge and was now on her feet lurching toward cover. Her foot slipped, sending a cascade of pebbles down the hill that seemed to Lane as loud as the gunshots they were trying to avoid. She glanced quickly at the figure with the gun. He was still looking away toward the west, perhaps trying to ascertain if one of the riders might be her. It was now or never. She crawled backwards down the incline toward the ridge, trying to keep him in sight and then lunged the last steps and collapsed next to Meg.

  They sat silently, waiting for another shot. None came, but now they could hear the faint crunch of his descent.

  “Why is he trying to kill us?” Lane asked in a whisper, more rhetorically than not.

  “Because that’s what he does,” Meg whispered back with irritation. She was looking at the palms of her hands, which were scrapped and abraded. “Ow!”

  From where they were, they could see plainly that the riding party was beating a hasty retreat and disappearing over a hill toward town. Lane had a sinking feeling. It was as if they were being abandoned, for they were now trapped on the side of a hill with a gunman getting closer and no help from anywhere. The next shot was closer. Had he seen them? She had to think of a way out.

  Martinez had watched the dawn come and tried to imagine what had happened. Why had Galloway not returned with Inspector Darling? Had they gone off on their own to try to find Darling’s wife? They hadn’t taken one of the police vehicles. He picked up the phone and called the hotel. There was no answer at Darling’s room. Should he call Galloway’s house? This threw him into a quandary. He didn’t want to wake and alarm his wife. He hardly knew how to think about Galloway now. He would have to keep things clear in his head. Galloway had sounded concerned when he told him about Darling’s wife being missing. And Galloway had no idea that Martinez had found the missing evidence, so in theory there should be no overt change in their relationship. He could deal with Galloway as he always had.

  Telling himself to forget the hidden Griffin evidence for the moment, he looked at his watch, picked up the phone again, and dialled Galloway’s number. Maybe there was a maid. After four rings, a woman who sounded as if she’d made a laboured run to the phone answered. “Galloway residence.”

  “This is Sergeant Martinez. I need to get hold of the assistant chief. Is he there?”

  “I will check. One moment.”

  The woman spoke with a Spanish accent. He heard the phone receiver put down on a hard surface and then receding footsteps, slow receding footsteps. He pounded a pencil on his desk anxiously. After what seemed an interminable delay, the receiver was taken up.

  “He’s not here. I don’t think he slept here last night, either. Have you tried the station? He spends a lot of time there since his wife has been gone.”

 
; Martinez blinked. Gone? His wife left him? Galloway had said nothing about this. But he had heard the assistant chief had been burning the midnight oil down at the station the last few nights.

  He spoke to the maid in Spanish. “I’m at the station. He left here last night to pick someone up, and he was supposed to come back. When did his wife leave, again?” It wasn’t entirely relevant, but Martinez couldn’t help asking.

  “I shouldn’t really say, but it was a couple of days ago. She left the hospital, and God go with her. I knew she would be strong enough one day. I think her friend from Canada maybe helped her. She sure doesn’t have any other friends.”

  “Listen, I’m sorry, I didn’t ask your name.”

  “Fernanda Alvarez.”

  “It sounds like you might be worried about him, yes? Listen, Miss Alvarez, do you know if he took his car?”

  She reverted to English. “I couldn’t care nothing about him. I was going to give him notice today anyway. With his wife gone, there’s not so much a point in my being here. She wasn’t the nicest person, but with what he was doing to her, I wouldn’t be either. His car, that new one he’s so proud of? It isn’t in the carport, so I guess that’s the one he’s in.”

  Martinez hung up the phone and sat in a daze, his hand resting on the receiver. He tried to put what he had learned into some kind of order. Galloway’s wife had been in the hospital. Why? Fernanda implied Galloway was “doing” something bad to her. Had he been hurting her? He suddenly knew it was entirely possible. And then she left the hospital, possibly helped by Darling’s wife. Helped how? Had she helped her escape from Galloway?

  And now, Darling’s wife was missing. Had Galloway found out and spirited her away somewhere?

  Martinez shook his head. It made no sense. How would he do it? Would he take the risk of somehow making someone disappear? Darling had said they’d been eating, and she’d gone shopping and she hadn’t come back. Wait. He also said she thought they’d been followed. Had he hired someone? The photographs and the missing Griffin evidence weighed on him. What was Galloway getting out of the deal? Suddenly the car they’d all admired so much when he first drove it to work came to mind. He’d wondered at the time how much money an assistant chief might make to belong to a country club and drive a car like that. Unless he was taking money for services rendered. Or money and services? Did these include the use of Griffin’s henchmen when he needed them?