One Way Ticket (A Smith and Hughes Mystery Book 1)

by Jay Forman

  “I’m not leaving.”

  “No point in arguing with you. You’d better get going. Jack will be waiting.” He got out of the car and walked back around to my open window. “Now give me your licence and insurance.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Nope.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I carefully laid Blaze’s painting on my kitchen table and then made sure that the door was locked before going upstairs to have a shower. The communal dons’ bathroom at Berkshire had better water pressure than my bathroom at home, but it didn’t have my view. Some of the channels between the ice slabs were widening by the minute. The carcass of a deer that some wolves had taken down in the middle of the lake was gone; it had sunk through the thinning ice, leaving behind a small circle of black open water. I couldn’t help but think of Ethan sinking below the surface as I looked at that opening. God, I hoped he’d been knocked unconscious before he went under. I shivered just thinking about the icy temperature of the lake water and turned the tap to bring more hot water my way. Maybe Ethan hadn’t even seen the strike coming? And what about Kayla? Had she seen her attacker coming? Her death would have been faster than Ethan’s if she was pushed, much longer and more painful if she’d jumped. Had she replayed every hurt, every humiliation, over and over again in her mind before taking that last step? Or had she been oblivious to the strike that would push her out? I closed my eyes and tilted my head back to let the hot water rinse the shampoo out of my hair. The water was so hot that my skin was turning red, but it wasn’t hot enough to wash away the chill I felt just thinking about those two kids dying.

  I spent too much time thinking in the shower and had to race to get dressed and out the door. My foot slipped on the fourth step from the bottom when I ran down the stairs, but I managed to regain some control of my stumble by the time I hit the kitchen floor. I took the time to double check that the door was locked before running to the car. Then Auntie Em slowed me down. She was walking up my driveway. I was tempted to get in the car and drive away without talking to her.

  “I came over to apologise. I was only trying to help,” she said as she got closer to me. She had to walk slowly, though. The sudden jump in temperature had turned the spring melt into a flood plain of running water and my driveway into a mud field. Her Wellingtons were almost completely coated in mud splatter. “If I thought Steve would call Jack I never would have called him.”

  “You shouldn’t have called him at all.” I tossed my backpack over the driver’s seat into the back seat and pulled off my sweater. It was warm enough in the bright sunshine to be long sleeved T-shirt weather. “We don’t need his help. I told you, I’ve got it covered.”

  “I don’t doubt you do. When you say you’ll make something happen it happens. But I think it’s high time that your brother started sharing some of the responsibility for this place. You shouldn’t have to shoulder all the responsibility for everything. That’s not fair to you. If Doug were here you know he’d have a thing or two to say about it.”

  He’d only say it to Auntie Em, though. Uncle Doug had a huge blind spot when it came to Steve. He couldn’t see the dirtbag behind the shiny badge on Steve’s uniform. “Steve didn’t ask Jack for the money.”

  Auntie Em looked surprised. “But when Jack called he said...,”

  “Jack called you?” It was my turn to be surprised.

  “How else do you think I found out about Steve calling him?”

  My surprise was quickly turning to anger. “Please tell me that Jack didn’t offer to give you the money for the taxes?”

  “He didn’t and I wouldn’t have taken it from him even if he had. He simply called to warn me that you might be on the warpath. We both know how obstinate you can be, and neither one of us get any pleasure out of kicking that hornet’s nest.”

  I preferred the word determined over obstinate, but at least she hadn’t used stubborn this time. Her word choice wasn’t worth arguing about, though. “Steve wanted Jack to talk me into selling the lots.”

  “Why that sneaky SOB!” That was the closest Auntie Em ever came to swearing. “Well, we’ll show him! We’re not selling, that’s for darn sure now.”

  And she wondered where I’d learned how to be so independent? Or, to use a different word, self-sufficient.

  “I’m sorry, Lee. I shouldn’t have called him.”

  “Thank you.” Jack could learn a thing or two about apologizing from Auntie Em. “I have to go. Jack’s getting his walking cast today.”

  “Give me a ride back to my place,” she said as she walked around to the other side of the car. “There must be a big storm brewing. My knee can read dropping pressure better than any barometer and it’s been aching something fierce today.”

  I barely touched the gas pedal as the car slithered along the short distance between our two homes.

  “Someone else called me today, too.”

  By the tone in her voice I knew that that someone could only be one of two people – my mother or my father. “Who?”

  “Suzie.”

  The lesser of the two evils. “What did she want?”

  “Steve called her.”

  It didn’t surprise me. He was forty-three years old, but he still called Mummy whenever he wasn’t getting his way with his determined (and obstinate) little sister. “And?”

  “Suzie wanted me to understand how much easier it would be for you if we sold the land. She was being motherly.”

  “She was being greedy; she’s hoping Steve will share his bounty with her. Business must be slow at her shop.”

  “I doubt it. Sex toys are a recession proof business. Maybe she needs some extra money because she’s running through too many batteries? She’s been between husbands for awhile.”

  That made me laugh. Auntie Em was no prude. “What did you tell her?”

  “That she should talk to you about it, that you’re perfectly capable of deciding for yourself what’s best for you.” She opened her door once I stopped the car as close to her house as I could get it. “I was lying through my teeth, of course, but we’ve already had one Jack discussion this week so I won’t push it. Oh, I forgot, Merle’s flower shop called. Your Australian paramour sent his standard ‘thanks for putting out’ bouquet.”

  “Auntie Em!” She was really feeling feisty today.

  “Well, I don’t know what else you’d call it.”

  “Did you have it sent to the hospital?”

  She nodded. “For someone who apparently knows you, you’d think he’d know about your pollen allergies. Tell him to send chocolates next time. I like the strawberry cream ones.” She finally got out of the car and started walking toward the house.

  *

  Mrs. Dawson insisted on being the one to push Jack to the car. She fussed over him like the old biddy she was and Jack’s jaw was clenched with annoyance. He still hadn’t been able to shave and the sex appeal that I’d noticed at the hospital was now buried under an almost beard. It was definitely too much facial hair for my liking.

  “She’s driving me nuts,” he whispered in my ear as I helped him into the car while she manhandled the wheelchair into the trunk. He didn’t speak again until his door was firmly closed and I put the car into reverse. “Thank God I’m getting this stupid thing off today. I don’t think I could take another second of her mothering.”

  “That bad?”

  “She actually offered to give me a sponge bath!”

  “Well, you did say you wanted one...,”

  “Not from her! Oh, FYI, change of plans on the driving. I took a pain pill about an hour ago, so you’re going to be doing all of it today.”

  “Fine by me. Will you be up to going to the school after, or do you want me to bring you back home?”

  “School. I’ve already called ahead to tell them that I’ll be joining them for lunch, sitting next to Derek the gym teacher.”

  “Smooth move, Mr. Hughes. How did you arrange that seating plan?”

&nb
sp; “I got Mademoiselle to set it up for me. I told her we were getting close and that I needed to talk to Derek about Ethan.”

  “But we’re not anywhere near close.”

  Jack shrugged his shoulders. “She doesn’t have to know that. I knew she’d be thrilled to be involved in some way, so I gave her some fake inside information. Now give me some real information. What’s been happening?”

  I kept to the speed limit without meaning to. Instead, I concentrated on telling Jack everything I’d learned and let cruise control propel us toward the hospital and stayed quiet while he read the note in Kayla’s notebook. “How about you? Did you find out about Jocelyn’s finances?”

  “She doesn’t have any. I called Grace to find out if she had a bank account synced up to her tuck account at the school, then pulled a couple of favours in the banking world and got her statements for the last year. She gets regular deposits from her father, but that’s it.”

  “Well, she got money from somewhere to buy that dress, and you just saw what Kayla wrote to her in the notebook. Jocelyn was obviously expecting money from Kayla.”

  “I got Kayla’s statements, too. Erica set up the same sort of monthly deposit system as Jocelyn’s father. Kayla didn’t have much more money than Jocelyn and her trust fund wasn’t supposed to kick in until she turned twenty-one.”

  “So where did they get the money for the dresses? And why did Kayla need so many of them?”

  “I know that the upper forms eat out most weekend nights and they’re always dressed like they’re going to a red carpet event. They’re all members at the Muskoka Lakes Golf and Country Club and they go to the Lake Joseph Club and Chez Nicole a lot, too. And being Alfred Talbot’s only grandchild everyone would expect Kayla to look the part. So that’s probably why she had all those clothes at Berkshire.”

  “And Jocelyn? She only showed me the one dress.”

  “Maybe she has more?”

  “Which brings me back to my first question – where did they get the money for the dresses? The only explanation that works is that Kayla and Jocelyn were working together on the blackmail.”

  “And the only way we’re going to be able to prove that theory is if we find the guy with the scarred knee. Hopefully, we’ll have a name to go with the knee by the end of lunch.”

  “If it was a boy at the school. And speaking of the boys at the school...,” I told him about the fall sex video that Jeff had told me about.

  “Marcy was furious about that! She was so disappointed in Glen for being involved in it. She wanted the other two boys expelled, but Dick and Andre scared enough people on the Board about the potential damage a scandal like that could do and got the votes to keep them in.”

  “You knew about it? And you didn’t think to tell me?”

  “It never occurred to me that it could be related, but if Ethan thought it might be it would explain why someone would want to silence him before he came forward.”

  “Which would put Dick and Andres’ sons at the top of the suspects list.”

  I pulled up to the hospital’s emergency entrance, got Jack into his wheelchair and drove off to find a legal parking spot while he wheeled himself into the building for his appointment.

  Dr. Ross had just finished cutting off Jack’s cast by the time I found my way to the treatment room.

  “Hi, Lee. How’s the knee holding up?”

  She’d fixed my meniscal tear two years earlier. And my broken arm the year before that. A different doctor had repaired the damage I’d done to my hand when I accidentally stapled it to the gazebo while trying to replace a screen. “The knee’s great. How’s this patient doing?” Jack’s ankle looked horrible! In fact, his whole calf looked pretty gross. His skin was sickly white, except for the yellow and green bruises. There was a big scar running down the outside of his calf and I couldn’t watch as Dr. Ross removed the stitches. I stared at his toes instead.

  “Everything looks good, Jack,” Dr. Ross said in-between the snipping sound her scissors made whenever she cut a stitch. “The scar won’t be as noticeable once your hair grows back. That’s probably the only benefit of having hairy legs.”

  “Speaking of scars...,” Jack immediately started pumping her for information about the scarred knee in the sex video, without telling her about the sex part of it. “Because the legs were fairly small I’m thinking that it was probably a teenager who had a scar like that.”

  “Not unless he’d completely obliterated the joint,” Dr. Ross disagreed with Jack’s assumption. “Most knee surgeries are arthroscopic now, so there wouldn’t be scarring like that. I’d look for an older man, someone who’d needed knee surgery at least twenty years ago.”

  “But the size of the legs didn’t look full grown, right Lee?” Jack looked to me to agree with him.

  “They were small, but some men have small legs.”

  “Jockeys, for example,” Dr. Ross suggested.

  Jack and I instantly looked at each other, and I knew that we were thinking the same thing.

  *

  “Let’s go see a man about a horse,” Jack said needlessly as I pulled out of the hospital parking lot.

  I was already planning on heading in that direction. The only problem was, I didn’t know the directions to the Horscroft’s stables and Jack was being a real butthead about giving them to me. He only gave me one direction at a time, turn left here... then nothing, no warning or idea when the next turn would come, now turn right... I had to drive slowly because I never knew what would be coming next.

  My phone was charging and resting on the console between us. I heard it buzz to tell me that a text had come in, but I didn’t bother looking down at it. I was concentrating too hard on trying to spot the small wrought iron sign that Jack had told me was at the entrance to Chestnut Stables.

  “Did you like the flowers?”

  “What are you talking about?” Where was the blasted driveway?

  “Hunter would like to know – did you like the flowers?”

  I slammed on the brakes, stopped in the middle of the road and grabbed my phone out of his hands. “Do you mind? I don’t snoop into the text messages and emails you get.”

  “I wasn’t snooping. His message came up on the screen and I glanced at it. That’s all.”

  “Don’t glance next time.” I put the phone back down on the console, screen side down, and pushed down on the accelerator.

  “Why did he send you flowers? Doesn’t he know about your allergies?”

  “Butt out.”

  “Fine.” Jack shifted in his seat and looked out his side window, even though the driveway to Chestnut Stables was supposedly on my side of the car. “He sent you a photo, too. It’s of him pretending to ride a shark that’s in a sidewalk. You didn’t tell me he was old.”

  “He’s not old ... why am I even telling you this? You had to do more than glance to see that photo and you know it.”

  “I accidentally swiped his message sideways. It’s not my fault that that opened the whole message.”

  “You didn’t accidentally do anything.” Why did I feel so guilty? I hadn’t done anything wrong. Jack and I weren’t in a romantic relationship, so I was free to do whatever I wanted with whomsoever I wanted. “And he’s not old. He went prematurely grey.”

  “When? In his late fifties?”

  “He’s forty-two! He just looks older because of all the time he’s spent outdoors. There’s a hole in the ozone layer over Australia, you know.”

  “I thought Australians kept their sharks in the water, not their sidewalks.”

  “He’s not in Australia. I told you, he’s doing a series of blog posts on Route 66.” Finally! I spotted the Chestnut Stables sign and turned left. “He must be in Pontiac, Illinois. That’s where the 3D shark mural is. Pontiac’s murals are famous.”

  “I’ve never heard of them.”

  “Why don’t you read his blog then? You can learn all about them.”

  “I just might. What’s it called?”


  “A Dingo Ate My Passport.”

  “Is he a good writer?”

  “I don’t know, I’ve never read any of his posts.”

  “How does he travel so much if he doesn’t have a passport?”

  I floored the accelerator and let the back wheels spin out on the gravel for just long enough to shut Jack up.

  The long driveway was lined with chestnut trees, of course. We drove past two mammoth buildings that were presumably indoor arenas for the horses and behind them I could see pastures that had been cleared of any trees and stretched out until they reached the forest several hundred metres away. There wasn’t any snow left in the pastures and only small patches of it in the forest. A couple of Blood Bay thoroughbreds with thick dark manes were milling about, enjoying the beautiful warm day, watching two men working on the fence. We found two large stable buildings after a slow sloping right turn in the road, and I parked in front of the first one. Further down the road I could see a large, very large, Arts and Crafts style wood and stone home that could have been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. (And it may very well have been.) Beyond it, on either side of the house, was a spectacular elevated view that looked south down Lake Rosseau, almost all the way to Windermere.

  “We might be in luck,” Jack said, as he slipped a crutch under his left arm and started to hobble toward the building. “Did you notice what the men in the field were wearing?”

  “Shorts. I noticed.”

  The first stable was empty of both human and equestrian life. I started to sneeze before we got to the second stable, but my sneezing wasn’t the only sound breaking the silence of the secluded property. I could hear horses snorting and shuffling about in their stalls. And I could hear someone coughing.

  She was at the far end of the second stable, standing in front of a stall, tenderly caressing a horse as it hung its head over the gate to its stall. The horses in the other stalls arched their necks, pointed their ears, and took big snuffy breaths to check us out as we walked down the length of the stable. The horse that the woman was rubbing had a white star on his forehead and was a rich chestnut colour. At first I thought the woman must be someone’s grandmother. She looked frail. Despite the warm weather, she was wearing a thick sweater, wool pants that were too big for her, and heavy boots. Her head was wrapped in a brightly coloured silk scarf. She didn’t make a move to come to us, simply turning to face us as we walked to her.