Amateur Night

by K. K. Beck

  “Thank you,” she said stiffly.

  “You're welcome,” he said with unsmiling dignity, as if he were starting their relationship over on a more civil basis.

  She didn't smile either. She wanted to sit down, catch her breath, let all the adrenaline and fear that had been pumping through her subside, maybe even collapse on his shoulder, which would probably irritate him. She didn't let herself. She was wary of him, and paradoxically, she also wanted his respect. She wanted him to think she was competent and able to keep going. She wanted to think that about herself too.

  “We need to talk,” she said. “Brenda, the real one, is in danger.” If his impulse had been to save her, presumably he'd feel the same way about Brenda.

  “We can talk in the car,” he said, scrambling down the other side of the rock wall. “I'm very curious about this guy with the knife. Who the hell is he?” She followed him, skidding down the rock. Her wet canvas shoes squeaked. “And I'm also curious about you,” he added.

  “We can turn the heater on in the car,” he said. “Maybe dry out a little.” When they got to the car, though, her heart sank.

  “That son of a bitch,” said Johnson, pounding the car's roof with his fist. All four tires were sliced up. He'd done it again.

  “That's what he wanted to do with me,” she said.

  He got behind the wheel. “We'll go as far as we can on the rims,” he said.

  She slid in next to him. “Have you got the keys?” she said with alarm.

  “No,” he said sarcastically. “I left them down on that log where I found you. We'll have to go back.” She believed him for a half second, but he pried the keys out of his wet trouser pocket and held them up in front of her face.

  She started to laugh. Her laugh sounded a little giddy. Something about being inside a nice, shiny car made her feel as if she were already closer to civilization.

  He put the key in the ignition. It made a small click.

  She stopped laughing and he went out and popped the hood. She went out and stood next to him. Where the distributor cap was supposed to be, there was a collection of cut rubber hoses.

  “I guess we do walk,” he said. “I trust you're right about the bears.”

  “Whoever he is, he's getting more efficient,” said Jane. “Tires and the distributor.”

  “Overkill. The guy's an amateur,” said Johnson. He rummaged around in the car and came up with a canvas suitcase and a briefcase trimmed with leather. “Who knows when we'll get back here,” he said. As an after-thought, he added the car rental folder from the glove box.

  “How far do you think it is?” she said.

  “Maybe eight, ten miles,” he said. “We might get lucky and run into some logging vehicle. Can you make it? You can stay here if you want. Lock yourself in the car.”

  “You're thinking I'll slow you down,” she said. “I promise I won't.”

  “I'm thinking you've been through a lot and you might not be in great shape. Emotionally, that is.” His stupid remark to the creep in the Regency about what kind of physical shape she was in came back to her. After what she'd been through it didn't seem so important.

  “I'm fine,” she said. “I'm very angry and I want to get to Brenda before he does. I tend to fall apart after a crisis, not during it.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  They started out on the still path. She felt the gravel through the thin rubber soles of her shoes, and tried to walk in the tire tracks where the ground was smoother.

  “Why are you looking for Brenda?” she said.

  “An insurance scam. Health insurance,” he said.

  “So you work for an insurance company?”

  “That's right. Why are you looking for her?”

  “Because I thought she might know something about a murder. Jennifer might have been a witness. Brenda was her roommate. They had a big fight on the day in question. I thought she might know what Jennifer saw. Now I think Jennifer didn't see anything. But maybe Brenda did.”

  “Go on.”

  “Jennifer was a Christian Scientist. Sometimes they go to doctors anyway. But I just learned Jennifer was pretty strict. So what was she doing in a pharmacy, picking up a prescription?”

  “If Jennifer was a Christian Scientist,” he said, “she'd either be miraculously healed or she'd be dead. Because according to her health claims, she was a diabetic. Had to inject insulin every day.”

  “Do you think she let Brenda use her name and Social Security number for the insurance she had at work?” said Jane. “That's what I think.”

  “That's what I suspected,” he said, as they trudged along. “And Jennifer confirmed it when I visited her in Seattle. She broke down in about fifteen minutes. She felt guilty as hell. But she didn't tell me anything about a murder in a pharmacy.”

  She turned to him. “I can't believe the insurance company would send you after poor Brenda just because they switched names. How much money are we talking about, anyway?”

  “The insurance companies don't want anyone to know just how much fraud like this there is,” he said. “They take it pretty seriously. People have been convicted for mail fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy for pulling this same stunt.” He sounded just a tiny bit defensive. She was glad he did.

  “Seems kind of harsh, doesn't it?” said Jane.

  “Someone else has to pay every time someone lies like that,” said Johnson. “Look, everyone knows our health care system is a disaster. But when people lie and chisel it doesn't fix the system and it screws up everything else. Believe me.”

  “You're right. It all turned into something much worse. It all makes sense now,” said Jane. “Brenda was impersonating Jennifer for the insurance. She was a student, sort of vaguely employed now and then. It must have been a shock for a Canadian to come to the States and find out there's no national health insurance. Jennifer had insurance, but she never used it.”

  “Sometimes policies cover Christian Science practitioners,” he said. “So what happened in the pharmacy? Is that how you got involved? And who the hell is that guy in the camper? I got his plate number. It may not be too hard to find out who he is.”

  “I'll tell you who he is,” said Jane. “At first I thought he was a hired thug for a dentist named Carlisle who wanted to keep his kid out of trouble. Now I believe his name is George Cox and he's a pharmacist who killed his wife.”

  Chapter 31

  “He was looking for Brenda too,” said Jane. “That first Brenda MacPherson in Tofino, the forager. She saw someone like that sitting outside her house. A bald guy in a camper. And then I ran into him at the other Brenda MacPherson's herb farm.”

  She turned to him, stopped in the stillness. “He didn't approve of her herbal medicine. He wouldn't. Being a pharmacist.”

  They started walking again. She told him about Kevin, about how he'd gone into the pharmacy, how Mrs. Cox had fired a shot at him. How juror number ten convicted him reluctantly for firing back and killing her, but noticed that magazine on the floor. How the prescription label led to Jennifer.

  Johnson had been very patient, but now he said, “Jennifer, who was really Brenda, and who got scared because she knew if she was questioned they'd find out she was scamming an insurance company.”

  “That would explain why she left the scene—and the country.”

  “But what did she see?” said Johnson.

  “I don't know. Maybe the killer doesn't know, but he's scared enough to have gone to Jennifer's and strangled her soon after Kevin's lawyer told him there might be a witness. We even asked him whose prescription label his wife was typing when she died.” Jane tried not to think about that angle. They'd led him right to her.

  “Maybe he was just trying to find out what Jennifer knew,” Jane continued. “She'd just finished telling you about the fraud, there's no reason she wouldn't have been honest with him. He searched the place. And he took Brenda's picture from the wall. He must have known her by sight. After all, she was a customer at t
he pharmacy.”

  Johnson was blessedly silent. They both kept walking along purposefully. Something about the rhythm of their feet made it easy to think, made it easy to fit all the pieces into place.

  It made a lot of sense. Mrs. Cox scares off Kevin. Mr. Cox comes in from the back room at the sound of the shot. His wife tells him what happened. He picks up the gun Kevin dropped and shoots her at point-blank range.

  Jane described the scene as she imagined it. “Maybe it was just too tempting. There he is. Standing in front of her with a gun. All he has to do is say he came in a second later, after Kevin killed her. He sells off the pharmacy. Gets to go fishing whenever he wants.”

  “Probably collects some hefty life insurance,” said Johnson. “But there are some problems with it. He'd have powder burns. The kid wouldn't. There might be prints on the murder weapon. And you say Brenda was sitting in there the whole time, reading a magazine?”

  “Who knows what she saw?” said Jane. “The point is, it all fits. It wasn't until I started asking around that he went to see Jennifer in Seattle. And he would know right away it was the wrong Jennifer. He knew Brenda by sight, but he knew her as Jennifer. That's why all he had to do in Tofino is sit outside her house. Why all he had to do at the herb farm place was hear her name and eliminate her.”

  Jane frowned and tried to remember. “He was standing there while I gave her my story about finding another Brenda MacPherson. She told me about the one who was stripping at the Regency under the name Stephanie Chantal. And he must have got himself over there just after I did. In time to slash my tires. He heard my name at the herb farm. He knew I was working to clear Kevin.”

  “Mind telling me why you are doing that?” said Johnson.

  “I was afraid you'd ask that,” she said. “Can't it wait? We have to get to Brenda before he does. He could be in Port Hardy, killing her right now.”

  “She's not there,” said Johnson. “She's due in a little place in Victoria. The Tip Top Club. As soon as I figured out she was Stephanie Chantal, it was easy.” He opened his briefcase and pulled out an eight-by-ten glossy photograph. “Her booking agent is in Vancouver. I called him. They bicycle these girls around British Columbia on a circuit. She couldn't get along with one of the other girls in Port Hardy. Took off a few days. We can catch up with her, let her know this Cox character is after her.”

  “And find out what she saw,” said Jane. She took the glossy photograph. Brenda was arched over backward in a modern-dance-looking pose. She had black curly hair, narrow, feline, dark-lashed eyes and good teeth. She was wearing a pair of five-inch spiked heels and a little chain around her waist. She had small, round breasts with dark nipples, which were smartly erect for the photograph, and long smooth haunches and muscular legs. One knee was coyly bent, which had the effect of moving her thigh forward and covering her crotch.

  “What can you tell about her from this picture?” said Jane.

  He looked over her shoulder. “She's not shy,” he said. “And she's probably a pretty good dancer. Because she's more flatchested than most of the women who do this. Hasn't bothered with implants.”

  “So you're saying there's a tit-to-talent ratio in this business?” said Jane.

  He shrugged. “You can judge for yourself when we get to Victoria. We've got a couple more hours on foot here, then we try to rent a car in Port Hardy and head south again. I don't know how long it will take with the RCMP.”

  “The RCMP,” she said. “Why are we going to talk to them?”

  “Because you've been assaulted, a murderer is running around loose, and you think he's stalking Brenda. It's very simple.”

  “I've got to take care of this myself,” she said.

  “Why? We've got plenty of time. Tell me why. Why you're involved in this and what you're doing.”

  “It'll cost me a job if I don't take care of this myself,” she said. “What kind of job?” he said. “Someone pays you to run around solving felony crimes outside the law. Give me a break.”

  “They haven't paid me yet,” she said. She sighed. “It sounds screwy, I know. It was all my Uncle Harold's idea.”

  She told him. She told him about Uncle Harold's will and the board of trustees, and how she'd tried before to find and solve a hopeless case, and how the board had found it wanting. Surrounded by the twisted, alien landscape, completely silent—even, it seemed now, devoid of birds—plodding together down that muddy gravel road, it seemed natural to tell him.

  “It sounds flaky,” he said.

  “I want to do it,” she said, now headily honest, completely unguarded, worn out, “because there doesn't seem to be anything else for me to do. I'm thirty-seven years old, I've had a million stupid jobs, nobody takes me seriously, I've been too broke too long. I want to be a respectable, attractive widow with a mysterious source of income. I want to put in a few weeks a year clearing up somebody's old mess—I'm not bad at it, really I'm not—then I want to relax and lead a pleasant life. Is that too much to ask? I don't mind being alone, I'm used to it. But why should I be broke and alone?”

  “There are other ways to earn a living,” he said.

  “I've faced it,” she said. “If I'd wanted to make something of myself, I would have done it long ago. Basically, without Uncle Harold, I'd just be Euro-trash with a maxed-out Visa card.”

  “So what kinds of jobs did you have?” He had a quirky little smile. He seemed to find her raffish past intriguing. This pleased her, but she found it rather irritating at the same time. It wasn't that cute that she'd never got on track.

  She waved her hand dismissively. “When I bolted during my junior year abroad it was because I got myself a job as a governess. With some very rich French people. I liked that a lot actually. I'm still in touch with my little charges.

  “Then I married, and just kind of racketed around. After my husband died, I found out his manager had siphoned off most everything. And a lot of it was in Brazilian currency. When it crashed, I went down with it.” She shrugged. “I still have a nice old Jaguar in storage in London. And I get a case of Scotch every Christmas. A brand Bernardo endorsed.”

  “Bernardo?”

  “He was a Formula One driver. Very famous in Europe. I got spoiled young. Afterward, I did a lot of things. I was a hand model.” She held up her hands. “Very boring. You hold products—Q-Tips or nail polish bottles or crackers, and you have to move things very precisely if you're doing film or video and hold things very still if it's photography. Holding still like I did when I was pretending to be drowned.”

  She held her hands up over her head. “Right before you shoot, you hold the hands over your head so your veins drain.”

  “You do have nice hands,” he said, inspecting them as she lowered them.

  “Thank you. They were a little big for hand modeling, but the fingers are nice and long. I did a lot of other things too, and finally I ended up singing.”

  “You could do that again,” he said.

  “No I couldn't. I wasn't that good, to tell you the truth. I sang standards—Gershwin, Cole Porter. I got away with a lot because I was an American singing American stuff in Europe. If I tried it here, I'd probably get rolled over by any young kid in beaded chiffon from the lounge of any airport Holiday Inn.”

  She thought about this for a minute. “It's not that I didn't have a certain style. I know a lot about phrasing and making the lyric and the music work together. And my voice is sort of low and soothing. But I don't have a lot of range. And I'm getting older.”

  She looked over at him. “Does it sound like I'm whining?”

  “It sounds like you're at a crossroads in your life,” he said. “Some people can't hold a straight job. It's not in their nature.”

  “I know. I used to feel slick 'cause I made it by on my wits and my charm. Now I think I've been an idiot, but that Uncle Harold stepped in to save me. There's a lot of money at stake.”

  “And that's what keeps you going?”

  “I'd lie if I sa
id it didn't.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “But there's more to it. It sounds kinds of corny, but I do understand what motivated Uncle Harold, al though I think his style was probably a lot different. The fact is, there are a lot of jerks in the world, getting away with a lot. Because most people don't care or don't notice.” She laughed. “Uncle Harold had a big engraving of Saint George wrestling with a dragon over the fire-place. I've kept it there.”

  She turned to him. “Why did you want to be a cop? I take it you did? You weren't lying about that, were you?”

  “I think I wanted to be a cop because somebody has to do it,” he said. “And I figured it might as well be me. I'm a pretty reasonable guy. At first, I actually liked it when I had my own little beat. There was a problem, I could take care of it. On the street, you make the decisions as they come along. Defuse situations. Calm everybody down. Make everything run smoothly. I started out pretty idealistically. Like all kids. But there was something else there. A kind of take-charge thing. I admit it. A feeling you know what's best. It can get out of hand.”