Murder at the Movies (Albert J Tretheway Series)

by A. E. Eddenden

  “We don’t have one of those either,” Tretheway said.

  No one spoke for a moment. Then Addie cleared her throat unnecessarily. Tretheway looked at her sideways. So did Jake.

  “We do in a way,” she said quietly. “I know of a fire. A nice big spectacular planned fire.”

  On December 13, 1889, a meeting was held of those interested in building a railway up the Fort York Mountain (elevation 290’) from the head of James Street. A scheme was decided on, a Board of Directors elected and one third of the capital stock of $20,000 subscribed. Thus began the Fort York Incline Railway.

  The Incline climbed at a forty-five degree angle on two raised tracks, one for up, one for down, laid on creosote-treated wooden ties. An ingenious steam powered cable system (later electric) allowed the two mirror-image cars to pass each other at the midway point. Each twenty-ton steel car accommodated two horse-and-buggies (later automobiles). Approximately thirty passengers sat on the practical bench seats inside a covered side section. At the mountain’s top stood a sturdy, four storey building. It housed a 125 hp engine, living quarters for the engineer and his family, a waiting room and ticket office. Adults or vehicles could take the eighty-second trip up for ten cents, children five cents. Prices dropped for going down. Wooden stairs parallelled the tracks for those who wished to pay nothing up or down.

  The Fort York Incline prospered. People flocked up the escarpment to visit restaurants, summer playhouses, wooded parks or the mountain TB sanitorium. They came just to inhale the famous healthy mountain breeze or, when Stelfy wasn’t puffing black smoke over FY Harbour, to enjoy the stunning view over Lake Ontario as far as Toronto, forty miles away. Even delivery vehicles and ambulances rode the Incline instead of negotiating the slower, circuitous mountain roads, most in need of paving.

  By the thirties however, the blasting of a new mountain access route through the limestone, and the increase of more privately owned, dependable vehicles on the improved roads meant less and less business for the railway. The Fort York Incline withered into bankruptcy. In 1933 the city took it over for back taxes. For the past six years, it had lain unused, rails rusting, ticket office and building deserted, with the two cars, wheels chocked, exposed at the top of the Incline. An adventurous youth out to prove his manhood could occasionally be seen clambering up the deteriorating ties. From a viable transportation service and a tourist attraction, the FY Incline had degenerated into a liability.

  Mayor Phineas “Fireball” Trutt came to the rescue; or really, his trustworthy wife Bertha did.

  “Give us a lemon,” she paraphrased her family motto, “and we’ll give you lemonade.” Bertha suggested to her husband that, “Rather than spend good city money on labour and machines to tear the structure down, why not burn it down? And if you do,” she further suggested, “why not make it an event, a municipal fete, perhaps on a holiday?”

  The mayor wasn’t the brightest person she had ever lived with, but even he saw the money-saving aspects and electoral showmanship of her idea. And as a bonus, he could don his old firefighter’s uniform, with helmet, to safely face once more his loveable enemy, fire. After a quick telephone conference with the Fire Chief and Zulp, he decided on his own authority to call a press conference the next day and announce his surprise spectacular. That evening Bertha Trutt called at least one of her close friends.

  Tretheway and Jake stared at Addie.

  “They’re supposed to announce it tomorrow,” she continued.

  “Addie,” Tretheway said, “what are you talking about?”

  “The Fort York Incline. They’re going to burn it down. On Labour Day.”

  “Who’s they?” Jake asked.

  “Why?” Tretheway asked. “And how do you know all this?”

  Addie pulled her crocheting out from behind a sofa cushion and examined the stitches closely. “Bertha Trutt told me.” She went on to explain the whole story to her attentive audience.

  “I’ll be damned,” Tretheway said when Addie finished.

  “You think we’ve got our location?” Jake asked. “I’d say so,” Tretheway said. “Now we need the two main characters.”

  “Any ideas?” Jake said.

  “When’s Labour Day?” Tretheway side-stepped Jake’s question.

  “Two weeks Monday,” Addie said. “September four.”

  Tretheway frowned.

  “What’s the matter?” Jake asked.

  “Nothing special.” Tretheway heaved himself out of his chair and stepped over to the bookcase. “Didn’t we have an encyclopedia?”

  “Two volumes,” Addie said. “Right in front of your nose.”

  “They’re not very good,” Jake said. “Book-of-the-Month Club bonus.”

  Tretheway plucked both books from the shelf with one hand. He blew dust from their tops. Addie looked away.

  “I think I’ll go read for a while.” Tretheway started out of the parlour, then stopped.

  “This theory,” he said pretending to examine the encyclopedias, “tieing in the burning of Atlanta to the Fort York Incline. We’ll just keep it to ourselves.”

  “What about Wan Ho?” Jake asked.

  Tretheway reconsidered. “He should know.”

  Addie looked as if she was going to ask a question.

  “But no one else,” Tretheway said to his sister. “Even Bertha Trutt.”

  Addie went about her crocheting but nodded imperceptibly. She and Jake heard Tretheway open and close the ice box on his way upstairs. Jake spun the radio dial to “Hollywood Hotel.”

  Close to midnight, by the end of the overseas news broadcast, Jake assumed his boss was gone for the night. Addie had retired an hour earlier, right after “First Nighter.” Jake made the regular rounds of the ground floor checking doors and windows. When he entered the kitchen, Tretheway appeared suddenly and silently from the darkened opening of the back stairs. “Geez!” Jake jumped out of his skin.

  “Did you know that Atlanta is the capital of Georgia?” Tretheway waved the AA to Lavca Bay volume of the encyclopedia in the air.

  “You scared the hell out of me.”

  “Did you know it’s the biggest city in the state?”

  “Not really …”

  “Or that it’s near the Appalachian foothills?”

  Jake shook his head.

  “How about the transportation centre of the state?”

  Jake shook his head again.

  “The end of the rail line. Which would make it the terminal, so to speak. And because of this, it wasn’t even called Atlanta until 1845. Before that it had another name.”

  Tretheway paused. Jake waited.

  “Terminus.”

  “Eh?”

  “The city of Terminus. The burning of Terminus. Not Atlanta.”

  “You mean …”

  Tretheway leaned back against the kitchen counter. A satisfied look spread over his face.

  “You mean,” Jake tried again, “Miles Terminus?”

  Tretheway nodded. “Now we know who. At least, Who Number Two. And we also know when and where.”

  “Who number two?”

  “The victim. Terminus. We don’t know who Number One. The killer.”

  “And we still don’t know why.”

  “Right.” Tretheway went to the ice box. “Want to split a quart?”

  “Sure,” Jake said. He normally didn’t take too much liquid before bedtime but with Tretheway’s idea of a split, he knew there was little to worry about.

  “Let’s talk about the why.” Tretheway drank from the bottle after filling a small tumbler with ale for Jake. “Let’s check into Miles Terminus’ background. Look for a motive. The Beach Strip shooting comes to mind.”

  “Long time ago.”

  “I know.”

  “Right,” Jake said. “We’d better bring Wan Ho up to date.”

  Tretheway nodded. “From there it should be a simple matter. Even if we don’t know who Number One is yet. Just stay alert. And keep an eye on Terminus.
” He frowned at the wall calendar.

  Jake sensed an aura of uncertainty around his boss. “Something still troubling you?”

  Tretheway didn’t answer right away. Annoying elusive doubts nibbled at his confidence. “We’ve got two weeks.” He took a long pull of Blue. “Let’s think about it.”

  On Saturday, August 19, as Addie had foretold, Mayor Trutt announced the burning of Fort York’s Incline Railway to celebrate the Labour Day holiday. The media were impressed. His unprepared colleagues on city council were not.

  On the following Monday Tretheway, with Jake in attendance, laid out all his surprises, guesses, conclusions and plans before Wan Ho in the privacy of his office. Although it went against the bureaucratic system, he had decided not to inform Chief Zulp until later. Wan Ho agreed. For the next few days, a pair of Wan Ho’s most trusted detectives looked into the affairs and background of Miles Terminus.

  In any investigation of the retired police officer, it was impossible to overlook the 1919 shooting incident that had plagued his career. The police file dutifully noted: “FY Beach Strip, 2:10 a.m., Monday June 16, Constable M. Terminus in defense of his own life shot and killed one Vincent Paradiso, burglar.” Terminus’s own neatly handwritten version followed. A copy of Paradiso’s criminal record was stapled to the file folder along with a Police Commissioner’s letterhead explaining Terminus’s exoneration. Almost as an afterthought, a smaller piece of notepaper listed Paradiso’s survivors: two children, a boy, twelve, and a girl, nine.

  Wan Ho’s men pursued the cold trail as best they could through an orphanage and a string of foster homes. They got back to Wan Ho late Thursday. He appeared in Tretheway’s office Friday morning.

  “So the children can’t be found?” Tretheway said at the end of Wan Ho’s record.

  “Not likely,” Wan Ho said.

  “Or traced in any way?” Tretheway persisted.

  “No. Virtually impossible,” Wan Ho said. “Certainly not by Labour Day.”

  “Doesn’t someone keep a record of these kids?” Jake asked.

  “Only until they’re sixteen,” Wan Ho answered. “Hell. We’re talking twenty years ago.” He looked at Tretheway. “Is this important?”

  “Could be. It could become a piece of the puzzle.” Tretheway leaned back in his creaking chair. “Anything else turn up?”

  “No,” Wan Ho said. “Our Terminus led a pretty clean life.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Tretheway said.

  “Should we tell Miles?” Jake asked.

  “Yes,” Tretheway said. “He should know what’s going on.”

  “What about Zulp?” Wan Ho asked.

  “Him too,” Tretheway said. “But not today. For either of them. There’ll be time enough to tell them Monday.” He swivelled his chair to face the window. Pedestrians shuffled past on the sixth day of the heat wave. Cars drove by at the speed limit or below. In the corner, a standup fan whirred ineffectively. “It’s like a huge jigsaw puzzle. We’re close to finishing. But there’s still pieces missing. Out there somewhere. Under a serviette. Or on the floor. Maybe another’s in backwards. Or maybe the dog ate one.” Tretheway continued to stare out the window.

  Jake and Wan Ho exchanged disquieting looks, then slipped noiselessly out of the office.

  Chapter

  12

  Saturday evening passed quietly at the Tretheways’. A pick-up euchre game began about eight o’clock with Tretheway and Jake pitted against Gum and Wan Ho. Miles Terminus looked on. Wan Ho had brought the uninformed Terminus over, ostensibly for a social evening at the Tretheways’, but knowing glances had been exchanged among Tretheway, Jake and Wan Ho when they arrived. Surveillance, however, was still light. The last summer holiday lay a distant nine days away.

  In the back yard, weak moonlight highlighted the motionless boughs of the maples and pines drooping in the heavy air. Cicadas buzzed noisily. Fred sprawled on the cool flagstone patio, her head squidged up against the double screen doors leading to the common room. Wet nose prints covered the lower glass sections.

  Tretheway played cards indifferently for about an hour. Then he excused himself and, giving no reason, carried his ale and cheese sandwich with onion down the hall into the parlour. Addie took his place in the euchre game.

  “You’ll have to forgive Albert,” she said to the table. “He’s got a lot on his mind.”

  Later in the evening when Addie played a lone hand, Jake sauntered down the hall and peeked into the parlour. Tretheway sat in his large chair reading a red, leather-bound volume that Jake recognized as part of a Shakespeare tragedy set. Thick smoke rings hung over his head. A Blue stood reassuringly close. Someone had taken pity on Fred and let her in the house. She lay on the marble hearth beside Tretheway’s empty sandwich plate. Jake stifled an impulse to speak. He returned to the card game. Addie looked at him questioningly.

  “He’s reading,” Jake said.

  “Shakespeare?” Addie asked.

  Jake nodded. “Hamlet.”

  “Just leave him be.”

  The evening wound up early. Gum left first, followed closely by Wan Ho with Terminus discreetly in tow. Addie washed up in the kitchen and went to her bed. None of them said good night to Tretheway. Jake poked his head between the parlour doors and spoke to his boss.

  “Want me to lock up?”

  Tretheway grunted without looking up from his book. Fred padded over to Jake. Jake assumed that the grunt meant Tretheway would lock up when he was ready.

  “Want me to send the dog home?” Jake tried again.

  Tretheway didn’t even grunt. Jake eased himself away and went back into the empty common room. Fred followed.

  “You go home now, Fred.” Jake pushed the dog by her soft rump out through the French doors. Fred looked back over her shoulder, then loped toward the dark neighbouring yard and her own doghouse. Jake went upstairs.

  Despite open windows, the humid air moved hardly at all in the close upper floors of the old house. Jake thought he’d never get to sleep, but lay only minutes before the mesmerizing spin of the window fan and his general contentment with life combined to push him gently into the Land of Nod, the world of dreams.

  Across a verdant fairway, a dozen maidens cavorted, leapt and pirouetted in full colour clad only in golf bags. Vivaldi music swelled. Jake struck pure shot after pure shot to the centre of a velvety green the colour of backlit emeralds.

  “Jake! Wake up!”

  The earth quaked. Grass covered knolls heaved. Maidens toppled. Bunkers collapsed. Jake’s shots became errant. “Find shelter!” He sat up.

  “Open your eyes,” Tretheway said.

  When Jake did open his eyes, a blurry vision of Tretheway sitting on the edge of his sagging mattress confronted him.

  “Are you awake?” the vision asked him.

  “Eh?”

  “Go stick your head under the tap,” Tretheway said.

  Jake stumbled into the bathroom. The head that stared back at him from the medicine cabinet reflected thinning hair standing in unruly spikes, an untidy moustache and bloodshot eyes, caked with sleep, blinking in a wet face. But he was mostly awake.

  Back in the bedroom still towelling himself off, Jake picked up his watch from the side table. The hands showed twenty-five minutes past two.

  “Do you know what time it is?” he said.

  “Yes.” Tretheway indicated that Jake should sit down. “Hear me out.”

  Jake sat on the bed. Tretheway began pacing the bedroom carpet.

  “The when is wrong,” he said.

  “What?”

  “It’s not going to happen on Labour Day. Too many people. Police. Firemen. There’ll be more security than the King and Queen had.”

  “So when …?”

  “Any suitable night between now and the holiday. Probably on a weekend.”

  Jake thought for a moment. “So you’re talking next Saturday? Or Sunday?”

  “Or tonight.”

  “Tonight?”
>
  “That’s why I woke you up.”

  Jake stared at his boss. He was now fully awake.

  “Let’s get over there,” Tretheway ordered.

  “Where?”

  “The Fort York Incline.”

  “Now?”

  “This very minute.”

  “But…”

  “One more thing,” Tretheway said. “I called Terminus. There’s no answer.”

  Jake shivered in the sticky air.

  “I’ll call Wan Ho while you get dressed.”

  Tretheway went downstairs.

  Minutes later Jake joined his boss in the front hall. Tretheway had just hung up the phone.

  “How sure are you about tonight?” Jake asked.

  “Enough to ask Wan Ho to join us.”

  “What about the fire department?”

  “Not that sure,” Tretheway snapped.

  “Just asking.” Jake went out the door.

  Hot air blew around and over the windshield into their faces as Jake wheeled his heavy ’33 Pontiac across the dark city. He had hurriedly put the top down before they had taken off. They passed or saw no one.

  “You want to go to the top or bottom?” Jake shouted.

  “The bottom,” Tretheway shouted back.

  Jake headed up James Street to the mountain’s base. The hard rubber tires bumped over the rutted ground as he turned into the parking lot at the foot of the Incline and parked beside two derelict vehicles and an older pickup truck. He turned the engine off. Sounds obscured by the straight eight’s deep-throated rumble now intruded on the silence; night creatures skittering through the underbrush, the everpresent chorus of heat-loving cicadas, steel slag hissing into FY Harbour, distant highway traffic and overall, the birth of a wind, still unrefreshing, sighing through the tree-tops.

  Tretheway and Jake got out of the car. Their gaze swept the Incline’s spidery latticework as it rose steeply on its steel trellis to the mountaintop, to where the abandoned engineering building loomed blackly against the lighter sky. Clouds formed overhead.

  “See anything?” Jake asked.

  “No.” Tretheway squinted into the night. “Although …”