by Jay Forman
Jack quickly closed down the media player and opened the Word file. Just like Kayla’s suicide note, it had been typed in italics.
You tread upon my patience.
Mark now, how a plain tale shall put you down.
Another $15,000 on March 24
“Shakespeare again?”
I nodded. “I recognize ‘You tread upon my patience’. It’s from Henry IV, but I don’t know where the next line came from.”
“The question is – who wrote the last line?”
“Blackmail?”
“It looks like it.”
“Would Kayla have access to that kind of cash?”
“Probably.”
“So she jumped because she was ashamed of this?”
“Maybe somebody threatened to put in online? It probably would have gone viral because of who she was.” He pulled the USB key out of the computer.
“I have to let Will see that.”
“I know.”
George and I got Jack into his seat in the cockpit, but this time I sat in comfort in the passenger section.
I looked down at the sea of light that was Toronto and was glad to watch it get smaller and smaller as we left it behind. Torontonians proudly boasted that their city was bigger than Chicago. Why would anyone boast about something like that, or want to live in such an overpopulated place? Despite the city’s extensive parks network, they were basically encased in cement, all the time. That wasn’t my definition of living.
My phone vibrated in my pocket again and I pulled it out to see who’d been buzzing me.
The first four texts were from Auntie Em, all of them telling me that Will wanted to get in touch with me, each one more urgent than the one before it.
The last text, the one that had just come in, was from Will.
How far inside will that hall pass take you?
I answered immediately. All the way – going to fill in for boarding don. Why?
He replied almost instantly. Breakfast tomorrow? We need to talk.
My place at 7? Bring food – I don’t have any.
Deal. Just you. No Jack.
I didn’t like the idea of keeping secrets from Jack, but I’d give Will the courtesy of hearing what he had to say before I decided whether or not to tell Jack.
Deal.
*
My phone started shimmying with texts for a second time after I’d curled up in bed. I would have just turned it off, if I hadn’t recognized Jack’s cha-ching ringtone.
You still awake?
No
Just realised – there was a Board meeting on March 24
And?
Could man in video be Board member?
Not Dick or Andre – white skinny legs – not fat or black
Lang? Three other men on Board, too.
Get them to drop their pants
Dick and Andre would happily do that for you
Goodnight Jack
Goodnight Lee
I turned my phone off and rolled over onto my side. The moon was lighting up the bay, turning the ice into a tear-shaped spotlight. Through the glass door to the little balcony off of my room I could see all the way down to the mouth of our bay and beyond the opening to the solid darkness on the far side of the lake. How much man-made light would ruin that view if we sold even just one of those lots? And what about my loons? They came back to the same rocky shallow just around the point every summer. If new people moved in, especially people who liked to make waves (literally), their nest would be ruined. They’d stop coming and I wouldn’t get to meet their babies. The loons were used to me, they trusted me enough to let me kayak right up to the shore where they had their nest. I had to find a way to keep earning their trust, to keep their home safe. To keep my home safe. The cross-Canada tourism contract would bring in enough money but, as a matter of principle, I tried to avoid writing promotional pieces. The pay was always good, especially if it was a government contract, but the employer only wanted me to write about the good things and nowhere, not even the country I loved dearly, was all good.
I flopped over onto my back, closed my eyes, and tried to go to sleep.
But Kayla’s face from the video kept looking at me.
Looking at me. No, looking at the camera. Did she know it was there?
That didn’t make any sense. If she knew it was there ... did that mean the man didn’t know it was there? He wouldn’t have been able to see it when he was lying down.
It might have been a very small camera, the kind creepy guys put on their shoes to look up women’s dresses in the subway or stick in air vents in girls’ change rooms.
Kayla didn’t need to blackmail anyone. She was loaded. Seriously, seriously loaded. Her weekly allowance could have equalled our yearly property tax bill. If she got an allowance, that is. Maybe she just had some monster trust fund that she could dip into whenever she wanted?
I was tired, but my mind was refusing to shut down for the night. “Tired with all these thoughts, for restful sleep I cry.” Hearing myself misquote the line from Kayla’s suicide note made me wonder about something else – why Shakespeare?
If she was so embarrassed about being blackmailed that she was willing to kill herself over it, why would she quote from the same source as the blackmailer? To send a message to him? A ‘This is your fault’ message? How could she be sure that he’d even see it?
Holy crap!
I grabbed my phone, turned it back on and pushed the speed dial button for Jack’s number.
He mumbled a greeting.
“What if Kayla wasn’t being blackmailed? What if she was the blackmailer? It would explain why both her suicide note and the blackmail note were written in the same style.”
“I thought you were going to bed?”
“I’m in bed, but I couldn’t get to sleep. So? What do you think? It makes sense...,”
“No, it doesn’t. Kayla didn’t need to blackmail anyone, especially for such a small amount.”
It wasn’t a small amount in my world.
Jack was right, though – Kayla didn’t need the money. “Okay. Goodnight.”
“Go to sleep.”
I couldn’t. So I plugged my headset into my phone, scrolled through my playlists and clicked on one of my favourites.
But I’d forgotten that the first song on the list was Ben Broussard’s “Hitting the Ground”; definitely not a song that would make me stop thinking about Kayla. I clicked to start the next song, but it only took Greg Lake a few strums on his guitar for me to recognize Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s “Watching Over You”. Oh, hell no! Not going there. Berkshire had already stirred up enough bad memories and I definitely didn’t need to add any more to my day, especially ones of Dad singing me to sleep. I clicked on next again and let Don Brownrigg’s “How Are You Supposed to Know” play all the way to the end of the song. It asked a good question, about everything. Maybe someday I’d find some answers, about something?
Chapter Eight
Someone was in my house.
I could hear his heavy footsteps walking around in the kitchen. I pulled the curtain open just enough to poke my head out of the shower. The footsteps stopped. Was he listening to see what I was going to do? Whoever it was must have heard the loud death rattle that the pipes made when I turned the water off. It was so loud that it sometimes scared the birds off the hydro line outside.
I slowly stepped up and over the edge of the tub and grabbed a towel. The cold air against my wet bare skin wasn’t the only thing that was making me shake from head to toe, though.
My cellphone was in my room. The landline phone was closer, in what had been Dad’s room. But I couldn’t get to either of them without stepping on the creaky floorboards at the top of the stairs. I couldn’t call for help; nobody was close enough to hear me. I looked around the bathroom for something I might be able to use to defend myself, but the only thing that came even close was the plunger. Maybe I could scare him off?
I took a deep breat
h and shouted with all the artificial self-confidence I could muster. “I’ve got a gun!”
“So do I!” His deep voice boomed back.
Oh God!
“I’ve got your breakfast, too.”
Thank God. “Not funny, Will! I’ll be right down.”
I bent over and wrapped my hair up in the towel, then grabbed another towel and dried myself off on the go as I went to my room to find some clothes.
“You know you have a lock on that door, right?” Will asked me when I stepped into the kitchen. He was standing at the table, a big brown paper bag from Jack’s diner sitting in front of him.
“I guess I forgot to lock it when I came in from my run.” I should have taken the time to rub my hair more with the towel. The back of my sweatshirt was getting soaked and it was sticking to my skin.
“Just because you act like you’re invincible doesn’t make it so,” Will chastised me as he lifted two Styrofoam cups out of the bag and put them on the table. “What would you have done if it hadn’t been me?”
“I would have thought of something.” I walked over to him and took the little cardboard tub he’d just pulled out of the bag. “Oatmeal?”
He nodded. “With mixed berries. They said that’s what you usually order.”
I lifted the plastic lid off the tub. They’d forgotten the brown sugar.
“I’m serious, Lee, what would you have done? How would you have defended yourself?”
“I get it, okay? I’ll get some pepper spray or a taser or something.” The brown sugar in the bag in my cupboard had hardened into one big rock. I used the handle of my spoon to chip off a few chunks of sugar.
“You get either of those things and I’ll have to arrest you.” He came over beside me and held out his cup. “Give me some of that. The coffee at Jack’s place is potent.”
I dropped a chunk into his coffee. “Why will you have to arrest me?”
“Because any device designed to be used for the purpose of injuring, immobilizing or otherwise incapacitating any person is a prohibited weapon in this country.”
“Thanks for the lesson on the Criminal Code, Officer Friendly.” I dropped two medium chunks of sugar into my Styrofoam cup of tea. “What would you suggest instead?”
“Lock your bloody door!” He sat down and bit off a huge mouthful of his fried egg sandwich.
“Okay!” I leaned against the counter, scooped up a spoonful of oatmeal and blew on it to cool it down a bit. I wanted the subject changed. I didn’t know what I would have done if it had been someone else in my kitchen, and I didn’t want to think about it. “So? What’s up? Why are you here?”
“Some of what you said in my office made sense,” he said, in-between bites of his sandwich. There was a little bit of egg yolk stuck in his moustache, reminding me why I didn’t like facial hair.
“You mean about us sharing information?”
“Partially. And about how the people at Berkshire pull ranks, not opening up to outsiders.”
“You’re hitting an ivy covered stone wall, right?” I handed him one of the paper napkins that he’d taken out of the bag.
Will nodded. “And now another student has gone missing. Ethan...,”
“Horscroft. I know.”
Will looked surprised. “I thought you were in Toronto yesterday. How did you hear about the Horscroft boy?” He rubbed, more than wiped, his moustache with the napkin.
It was my turn to be surprised. “How do you know where I was? Are you keeping tabs on me?”
“Not on purpose. We had a radar unit near the airport and they saw you pulling in with Jack. His new jet makes an impression when it takes off; everybody in town was talking about it. When I couldn’t reach you I put two and two together and guessed that you got on the plane with him, so I called the airport to get your flight plan. Knowing you, you could have been high-tailing it to Cheyenne or Singapore. So? How did you hear about Ethan?”
“We were in Erica Talbot’s house when Ethan’s mother called to tell her about him going missing.”
“Wow,” Will exhaled. “I can’t even get Ms. Talbot on the phone and you manage to get into her house.”
“It was more Jack than me...,”
“Doesn’t matter. You still got in. That’s why I’m here asking for your help.”
“You want me to share everything I hear.”
“Yes.”
“And in return?” I scraped out that last puddle of melted brown sugar on the bottom of the little cardboard tub.
He ran his hand over his moustache. Was he looking for more remnants of his breakfast sandwich hiding in the furry creature above his upper lip? “I’ll have to play that one by ear. You have to understand, Lee, that I’m not asking you in an official capacity. You won’t be an agent of the force. You’ll just be an informant. And I’d prefer it if you didn’t inform anyone of this discussion.”
“I have to tell Jack. I didn’t tell him about you coming over this morning, but I won’t keep secrets from him. He’s the one who started this and he deserves to know everything.”
“I’d rather...,”
“Tough. It’s non-negotiable. If I agree to help you, you accept that Jack will know about our arrangement.”
“I can’t jeopardize the investigation. I won’t be able to tell you a lot of things.”
“But you’ll be able to give me something, right?”
“I’ll do my best, within reason. And you have to promise me that you’ll listen to me if I tell you to get out of there, if I think it’s getting too dangerous for you to be there.”
“You think Kayla was pushed?”
“It’s a very real possibility.”
“And Ethan?”
“Put the kettle on.”
While I got out two mugs and one teabag and searched for the almost antique jar of instant coffee that I knew was somewhere in a cupboard he told me about the OPP dive team from Gravenhurst that would soon be arriving at Berkshire.
“There’s reason to believe that Ethan went into the water.”
“What reason?”
“I can’t tell you that.” He came over to stand beside me at the counter and we both stared out at the lake through the big window over the sink as we waited for the kettle to boil. “The air would have been knocked out of him the minute he hit the water and he would have been instantly disoriented. He would have thrashed around to grab onto anything. He would have lapsed in unconsciousness within minutes.”
“Wouldn’t somebody have heard him or seen him?”
Will shook his head. “Not unless there was someone down at the shore with him and, if someone was there, they haven’t come forward.”
I loved the isolation of the lake, but isolation was just another way of saying that you’re completely alone. Being alone, fighting for your life... I couldn’t imagine how terrified Ethan must have been. If Will was right. The kettle whistled and I turned away from the window to fill our mugs. “What about the fancy security system at Berkshire? Don’t they have cameras watching everything?”
“Not everything. Not yet. They’re in the middle of upgrading the system, switching over to wireless.” He blew on his hot coffee to cool it down.
“Wouldn’t he have floated in one of the channels between the ice slabs?”
“Bodies sink. Even quicker if he was wearing a heavy coat. He was wearing a PFD but he must have been too panicked to remember to pull the tab to inflate it.”
What a horrible way to die. Then again, was there a good way to die? And the opposite of dying in ice – burning to death – sounded even worse. “You really think that’s what happened to him?”
“I hope not, but right now it’s looking likely.”
We sipped our drinks in silence.
“We’ll be pulling out Old Pete’s truck today, too. Your turn. I showed you some of my cards.”
For the first time I began to realistically question just how much danger I might be putting myself in. Maybe I’d talk to one of th
e Petes about borrowing a can of bear spray? It wasn’t designed to injure, immobilize or otherwise incapacitate a person, but I’d sure as hell use it on a person if I needed to.
I brought my computer down from my bedroom and let Will watch the video. I sat across from him at the table and stared at the back of my computer screen. I didn’t want to see the video again.
“You’re telling me that four people knew about this and not one of them had the sense to tell us about it?”
“Erica told them not to.”
He pulled the USB key out of my computer and pushed it into his pocket. “Where did Jocelyn tell the French teacher she’d found it?”
“In Kayla’s things when she was packing them up.”
“I’ll have to ask her about that. Kayla didn’t like Jocelyn.” He stood up and took his mug over to the sink to rinse it out. “She and some of her friends texted some pretty nasty stuff about her.”
“You’ve been through Kayla’s phone and computer?”
“Yeah, but there wasn’t anything close to that video. No mention of it either.”
Wait a minute.
The police went through Kayla’s things at Berkshire, but they didn’t find the USB key? Jocelyn told Mademoiselle that she’d found it when she was packing up Kayla’s things after the police had gone through them. How could the police have missed something like that?
They couldn’t have, wouldn’t have. So where did Jocelyn really find it?
“Emma told me you’re going to be moving into Berkshire for a bit. When’s that happening?” Will slipped his coat on.
I never, ever, could have imagined wanting to speed up my re-entry into Berkshire, but that was exactly what I wanted. “I’ll find out.” I grabbed my phone and typed a text to Jack at lightning speed.
How soon can I move into Berkshire?
He replied almost instantly and it struck me, for the first time, that he always did that. I never had to wait for him to get back to me.
What’s the hurry?
Will explain later. Can I move in today? This morning?
Will call - brb
“I’ll know in a minute,” I told Will.
He zipped up his coat. “It’ll be interesting to get your read on how everyone reacts to our dive team showing up.”
