Death in the Garden City

by Jeanne M. Dams

Plainly he knew nothing about the latest trouble involving Silas and his birds. The word hadn’t spread yet. Nowhere in town did I sense any of the unease there surely would have been if rumours about a gruesome death were circulating.

  I went to look for Alan.

  TWELVE

  I found him in the car, in the driver’s seat. ‘I was ready to come in search of you.’

  ‘And I was looking for you.’

  We sat in the car for a little while, wanting to compare notes where we couldn’t be overheard.

  ‘The only thing I learned for sure,’ I said, ‘was negative. Nobody’s talking about any recent tragedy, or gossiping about Silas or his birds.’

  ‘No. Of course the body was discovered in quite a remote area, and so far as I know has not yet been identified.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘I may have a clue to her identity. I hope I’m wrong.’ I told him about the brilliant young Cowichan woman. ‘It’s probably nothing. I hope it’s nothing.’

  ‘I’ll call John,’ he said briefly, and pulled out his phone. He passed along what I had told him, waited for a response, and then said a few yesses and nos and ended the call.

  ‘And?’

  ‘There’s some dental work. They’re trying to find a likely dentist. They were concentrating on this area, Duncan and environs, but now they’ll broaden it out to Victoria. If the woman lived and worked there, she probably would have seen a dentist there.’

  ‘Which will take much longer. Couldn’t they check the IT firms for a missing employee?’

  ‘They’ll do that, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ I was suddenly very tired. ‘And there’s nothing we can do to help with any of it.’

  Alan gave me a long look and then started the car, but drove only a couple of blocks and then parked in front of the café where we’d had our lunch. ‘Let’s talk about it over a cup of coffee.’

  I didn’t want coffee, but I wasn’t in a mood to argue. I followed him, feeling old.

  Without consulting me, he ordered coffee and a piece of pie, and didn’t say another word until I had polished off the pie and a second cup of coffee. Then he gave me an appraising look. ‘Low blood sugar, that’s what was the matter with you.’

  ‘You always think food and/or drink will cure everything.’

  ‘And how often am I right?’

  ‘Most of the time. Which is what’s so maddening! Okay, I do feel better. But do you honestly think we’re doing anything useful here? It’s costing Edwin and Judith a bundle, and we’ve done so little.’

  ‘Yes, I think we’re doing what we came here to do. And I think we need to keep on doing it. And let’s continue this discussion in a less public place. Care for a walk?’

  We walked away from the centre of town and found a convenient park bench.

  ‘Part of your problem,’ Alan said, continuing where he left off, ‘is that you don’t like where all this is leading, but think of it this way. If your speculation about the victim’s identity is correct, and our idea that this was a deliberate murder is also correct, don’t you want to help find the person who took a young, intelligent woman’s life?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do. If I can. And find out who’s at the bottom of all the rest of the nastiness, too. If it’s the same person. This last seems not quite in character with the other events.’

  ‘I agree. The others seemed to be designed simply to spread unrest. They were “safe” crimes, if you will. Annoying, irritating, certainly not good for the community, but not important enough to warrant a full-scale investigation. If this does turn out to be murder, the villain is now in a much different position.’

  ‘From yesterday, really. Those attacks on us. Stupid, unproductive, and risky for the guiding hand, whoever that may be.’

  ‘Yes.’ Alan ran a hand down the back of his head, a gesture I knew meant he was thinking hard. ‘Is it possible that Bub set his goons on this woman as a punishment for their stupidity? Or not exactly that.’ He tented his fingers in lecture mode. ‘We agree he – or she, but one pronoun is easier – he didn’t intend us to be attacked, and he was almost certainly furious at his henchmen. If he sent them out, then, to do something to further discredit Silas, and if they encountered this woman walking alone, and they had the means to harm her in a way that would simulate a raptor attack, might they not be stupid enough to do it? Not intending to kill, perhaps, only to hurt her badly enough that Silas would be … well, seriously inconvenienced, at best.’

  ‘Alan, that makes sense! Bub would keep his hands clean, apparently, and if his goons got caught, well, it was only what they deserved after being so foolish about us. And then things went wrong again, and the woman died. So now Bub is doubly incensed. But Alan, why would anyone be so determined to get Silas in serious trouble? I mean, the release of his birds does fit in with what we think is the underlying purpose of the nastiness. But this latest horror seems directly aimed at that poor old man.’

  ‘We’re speculating ahead of our data, as Sherlock Holmes warned Watson never to do. I say again, we don’t know that the victim was attacked by birds.’

  ‘But we know, at least John knows, what it looked like,’ I insisted, ‘and when that gets out to the general public, Silas is in for it.’

  ‘John said the RCMP posted a guard.’

  ‘Right, and that will probably keep a mob from attacking him physically. But it won’t stop the neighbours going to court and forcing the destruction of the hawks. And that means the destruction of Silas. He lives for those birds.’

  Alan lifted his hands in the classic gesture of resignation and stood. ‘We’d better go back to the car and call John for further orders. I think we’ve accomplished just about all we can here.’

  Which is next to nothing, I thought. But I didn’t say it out loud.

  Alan placed the call, but it went to voice mail. ‘So what now?’ I asked, starting the car.

  ‘Back home, I think. No, not to England. We could use a little time for reflection, don’t you agree? We’ve been running as fast as we could, but rather like Alice.’

  ‘Indeed. Not only staying in the same place, but sometimes going backwards. Oh, shut up!’ This last was to Sadie, who was insisting that I turn into what was apparently a driveway.

  She was right, of course, and I retraced my steps harbouring no good thoughts about electronic devices that were smarter than I.

  I had just made it back to the condo, with Sadie’s annoying help, when my phone rang. It was in my purse, so Alan obligingly pulled it out and answered it while I parked the car.

  ‘No, you didn’t get the number wrong. Dorothy was busy driving, but here she is.’ He handed the phone to me. ‘Amy.’

  ‘Oh, I suppose she wants to know how things are going with the car and the house.’ I answered as we walked inside. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello, Dorothy. No, that’s not why I called, but how are things going, while we’re on the subject?’

  ‘The car’s working out fine, though Sadie may drive me crazy! But she gets us where we’re going, which is the main thing.’

  ‘And the house? Any problems?’

  ‘Not so far, except I’m not used to an electric stove, and Sue’s such an amazing housekeeper that I live in terror of spilling something.’

  ‘Good.’

  She hadn’t really been interested in the house or the car, had she? I waited for her to tell me why she called.

  ‘Look, Dorothy.’ She had lowered her voice. ‘Can Alan hear what I’m saying?’

  ‘No.’ He had left the room, probably headed for the bathroom. We’d had quite a lot of coffee, and I needed to run that errand, myself. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I need to talk to you. Just you. Can you come to the library this afternoon? I’m at the Central Branch, right downtown, and there’s a little room where we’d be quite private.’

  ‘Sure. What should I tell Alan?’ He was still out of earshot. I hoped.

  ‘Just say it’s a secret. Can you i
mply that I’m cooking up a surprise for John? Without actually saying so?’

  Alan was back in the room. ‘Sure, I can manage that,’ I said into the phone.

  ‘Good. In an hour or so, then?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘What can you manage?’ Alan nodded at the phone.

  ‘Getting over to the library to see Amy. She wants to talk to me about … something.’ I grinned and let my voice sound conspiratorial.

  ‘You’re up to something.’

  ‘Of course. Right now I’m up to making sandwiches. I’m not hungry for much, after that pie, and Amy wants me there in an hour.’

  ‘Just you, not both of us?’

  ‘Just me. Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. Ham or cheese, or both?’

  It took me a moment to look up the library on my phone and find the address. Then I had Alan program it into the GPS, and I was off.

  I’d tried to hide my anxiety in front of Alan, but I was sure he’d picked up on it. His natural talent for keen observation was honed by his police training, and we’d been married long enough to be pretty well attuned to each other.

  On the whole I was happy to think he might smell a rat. If there should be trouble ahead, he’d be quicker to come to my rescue if he were already uneasy.

  And why should I be thinking in those terms? There had been nothing in Amy’s phone call to prompt such a response. Nothing, at least, except a certain tension I thought I detected in Amy’s voice.

  Balderdash! You don’t know the woman at all, really. How can you tell her mood? And on the phone, yet!

  And then, said that insidious inner voice that so annoys me, there’s always the fact of the nastiness, up to and including murder, that seems to be surrounding us like a cloud. Of course that wouldn’t make you nervous, would it?

  ‘Shut up!’

  This time it wasn’t directed at Sadie, but she responded anyway, with a chilly little ‘Excuse me. I didn’t quite catch that.’

  It’s fortunate that God apparently ignores instructions issued in a fit of temper, or the entire electronics industry would at that point have fallen into the nether pit.

  There was a handy parking garage very near the library. I hoped I had the right money to get myself out, but Amy could doubtless help if I didn’t. I had to ask how to get out of the garage and up to the library, and found Amy waiting for me just inside the doors.

  ‘There’s a study room no one’s using; we can be quite private there.’

  She led the way. We closed the door and sat down, and I waited for her to begin.

  ‘I suspect you think I’m being very melodramatic about all this,’ she said with an attempt at a laugh. It wasn’t very successful.

  ‘I did wonder if something had happened. You sounded a bit strained.’

  ‘Yes, well.’ She looked down at her lap, then up at me again. ‘I don’t know how much John has told you about my former husband.’

  Whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t that. ‘Very little, except that he was quite wealthy, working in the tech field, and that your divorce was not … um … amicable.’

  Her smile was bitter. ‘You could put it that way. Paul fought me every step of the way over the settlement. He could afford to hire a really good lawyer. I could not. He has millions in assets, perhaps billions by now. I had only my income. It is not inexpensive to live in Victoria.’

  ‘Why, if you don’t mind my asking, was he so difficult about the money? Unless you were asking for some exorbitant amount, it would surely have seemed insignificant to him.’

  ‘It had nothing to do with the money. He had to win. He always has to win every battle. And this one was especially important, because it had to do with my rejection of him. That was simply not acceptable. He is the most egocentric person I have ever met.’

  I guess she read my next question in my all-too-mobile face, because she shrugged and smiled that non-smile again. ‘So why did I marry him? He can be very charming. I was flattered that he paid attention to me, because he was An Older Man, and he was so important. He is, you know. He throws his money around, supporting this, endowing that. Every good cause in the area looks to him as Santa Claus.’

  ‘All right. I understand. What I don’t understand is why you’re telling me all this. I’m virtually a stranger.’

  ‘But you’ve befriended John and me. You’re living in my daughter’s house and driving her car. You are connected with me, however tangentially. And that could make you a target of Paul’s attention.’

  I frowned. ‘How would he know?’

  ‘Oh, my dear! Nothing goes on in this town that he doesn’t know. He has methodically cultivated contacts everywhere, and people tell him things. He’s getting into politics, so he has a finger on the pulse of the community. John has been fairly visible in his investigation of the odd things that have been going on, so Paul certainly knows about that. I just … I’m uneasy. Paul is a vengeful person. Anyone who offends him is anathema, forever. I offended him. In fact, I defeated him, in the matter of the settlement, and also in the custody battle for our daughter. That was many years ago, but it still means that I am cast into the outer darkness, along with all my friends and acquaintances. And now that includes you and your husband.’

  ‘And you didn’t want Alan to hear all this. Why?’

  ‘You’re a woman. You would understand the way I feel. Alan might have brushed it off as the ramblings of an unbalanced woman.’

  I shook my head. ‘You don’t know him, but I assure you he would not brush you off. Would John?’

  ‘Well, no, but—’

  ‘John is an experienced policeman. So is Alan. They’ve both seen just about every variety of human behaviour, much of it unpleasant. A senior policeman is as impossible to shock as a priest. They’ve heard it all. I can’t speak for John, but Alan is almost infallible when it comes to judging character. May I tell him about our conversation? I seldom keep anything from him.’

  ‘Oh, I never meant to ask you to hide it from him! I just thought it would sound more reasonable coming from you. Uh-oh!’

  She was looking toward the room’s glass door. I turned and saw a man walking toward the front lobby. I couldn’t see his face, but he walked, strode, with the air of one who owns the world, exuding confidence.

  ‘Paul?’ It wasn’t really a question.

  She nodded. ‘I hope he hasn’t seen us.’

  ‘Would it matter? If he already knows we’re friends?’

  ‘He’d know we weren’t just chatting. For that you would have come to my office.’

  ‘Ah. Point taken.’ I stood. ‘Well, my dear, it’s time I got back to my husband and our mission. Take heart of grace, as some Gilbert and Sullivan heroine said. We’ll be in touch.’

  The man was still in the lobby, schmoozing with a couple of women at the front desk. I remembered the line about the best defence being a good offense, and walked up to him. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt, but I’ve just been talking with I believe your former wife? We haven’t met, but you are Paul Hartford, are you not?’

  I was nearly undone when he turned to face me. He was, without doubt, the handsomest man I’d ever seen off the screen. And he would outdo most of Hollywood, at that. Bronzed face, piercing blue eyes, hair just touched with grey at the temples, a dazzling smile.

  Tanning bed, I told myself, firmly building up resistance. Contact lenses. Touch up job on the hair. Dental implants.

  Those blue eyes did a quick scan. I had the uneasy feeling that my appearance was now filed in his brain, under Antagonist. ‘And you … you must be Amy’s new friend from the States.’ Charming voice, too.

  ‘Via England, but yes. Dorothy Martin.’ I put out my hand, and he took it in a warm, firm grasp. Not a knuckle-crusher, not limp. Perfect. Practiced.

  I seldom dislike anyone at sight. I wondered if my reaction would have been the same if Amy hadn’t warned me, and decided that it probably would. I mistrust charm, and this man laid it
on with a trowel.

  ‘But this is delightful!’ The smile, incredibly, brightened by a few megawatts. ‘I have been longing to meet you and your husband.’

  That was a mistake. A minor one, but it pleased me that the man showed some signs of human frailty. ‘Oh? How is it you knew about us? Neither of us knows much of anybody in the world of computer technology, certainly not in this part of the world. Amy did say that’s where you work?’

  His smile dimmed again. ‘Yes, in a manner of speaking. I own a concern that’s working in AI. Artificial Intelligence,’ he added, patronizingly.

  ‘Yes, I am familiar with the term.’

  ‘As for how I learned of your visit, I really can’t recall. Victoria is not a big city. One hears things.’

  ‘I’m sure. Rather like my city in England. Except there, of course, everything revolves around two centres of information, the Cathedral and the university. Human Intelligence, genuine intelligence, I suppose one could say.’

  His eyes shifted from my face to something behind me. ‘Ah, James! If you’ll excuse me, Mrs Martin, I must just—’

  I smiled and turned away. Plainly someone more important had turned up, and I could make my escape.

  THIRTEEN

  ‘Really, I don’t know where I came up with such an acid tongue,’ I said to Alan as we sat around the kitchen table sipping tea and I finished describing my encounter with Hartford. I had not minced words. ‘Something about that man brought out the worst in me.’

  ‘You’ve never liked obviously charming men. Except for me, of course.’ He raised his teacup in a salute.

  ‘You’re not charming. Not in that sense. You’re real. You’ve always cared more about other people than about yourself, and you don’t waste time planning how to impress them. Which means that, in the end, you do impress them.’

  He was embarrassed, as Englishmen usually are by a compliment. He grunted something and finished his tea before he spoke again. ‘At any rate, I hope Mr Hartford wasn’t offended. If Amy is right about him, he might be a bad enemy.’

  ‘But he’s already our enemy, if Amy’s right. She may not be. A woman is seldom completely impartial about a man who has treated her badly. No, what worries me is that I might have made him reassess me as an adversary.’