by Elka Ray
Colin hesitates. “Ah, Louise Dobson suggested you were more than just friends.”
I feel myself blush and shake my head in bewilderment. “I don’t see how she could have gotten that idea.” I break off another chunk of scone. Was Louise deliberately trying to mislead the detectives? But why? “When were Josh and I supposed to have dated?” I ask.
Colin shrugs. Along with curiosity, I see a flash of humor in his eyes. “Recently.”
“Well, Louise is delusional, I say. “Josh is my client.” I know I sound defensive, but I can’t help it. “I’m single,” I add, then wonder why I’d felt compelled to say so.
Colin gives me a big smile. “I find that hard to believe.”
I’m about to reiterate my single status when I realize he might be teasing me. Or does he not believe me about Josh? I wonder if I look guilty. Should I mention that Josh and I shared a few moments back at camp? But surely, it’s not worth bringing up. We held hands and kissed a few times—and that was nineteen-plus years back. I take another sip of my latte. I can feel Colin watching me.
“So the first time you saw Josh again was when he came into your office, the day before his wife was reported missing?”
“Yes.” I give an involuntary shake. “Did Louise tell you about Tonya’s ex-boyfriend Cage? Did she mention that someone was calling Tonya and hanging up and that she’d been sent a bloody Barbie doll?”
Colin nods. “She did,” he says. “We don’t know if Cage was involved, but the guy is definitely trouble.” He hesitates. “He has a history of violence toward women.”
I can’t help but take this as positive news.
Seeing my expression, Colin gives me a warning look. “Don’t get too excited. We don’t even know if he was in town the night Tonya died. He came and went a lot, and the dates are hard to match up. We’re still trying to find the guy.”
“So he’s gone?” I ask. “You don’t know where he was staying?”
“A cheap motel in Esquimalt,” says Colin. “The Sea—.” He clamps his lips shut and narrows his eyes. “Don’t you go looking for him,” he says. “Like I told you, he’s bad news. Stay away from this guy.”
I open my eyes as wide as they’ll go, as though the thought hadn’t even occurred to me. I figure I may as well ask if he’s followed up about Alana Mapplebee.
“What about her?” asks Colin. There’s a mosquito bite on his right wrist and he scratches at it. Despite the recent sunny weather, his skin is very fair. I guess he’s been working long hours. He drains the last of his coffee.
“Remember how Josh said she was stalking him?” I say, and Colin nods. I remind him about the black-painted roses stuck onto Josh’s SUV, and his suggestion that Alana might have killed Tonya.
He makes a face. “It seems a bit farfetched, doesn’t it? I mean, yes, Alana’s kind of extreme but . . .” He waves a hand. Something about his expression makes me pause.
“Do you know Alana Mapplebee?” I ask. And I mean know, in the biblical sense. Colin shrugs. Recalling Alana’s overdone smile, hair, and boobs, I feel my stomach sink. If Colin has been with Alana too, I may as well enter a nunnery. Do men really want someone that artificial? I know it’s none of my business, but I can’t help but ask if he dated her.
Colin’s dark eyebrows wiggle. “Me and Alana?” He looks as surprised by this concept as I had at his earlier suggestion that Josh and I were an item. “No. She went out with Quinn’s brother Dan a few years ago.” He brushes some crumbs off his pants. “Dan’s an old friend so that’s how I met her.”
I smile weakly with relief. I’d forgotten that Colin and Dan were friends. “And?” I ask. Based on Colin’s thoughtful expression it’s clear he has a story to tell.
Colin shifts in his seat. He looks uncomfortable, like he’d love to divulge all but knows he shouldn’t. He shrugs. “Let’s just say it was a volatile relationship.” He checks his watch and frowns, which reminds me that I’ve got an appointment at ten thirty and had better be off shortly. I wait and Colin meets my eyes. “Alana seemed pretty nuts,” he admits.
I give him an encouraging smile. “How nuts?”
He scratches his ear. “Like not long after she and Dan got together, Alana saw Dan with Quinn. She didn’t realize Quinn was his sister and thought Dan was seeing another woman.”
I picture the scenario. “And?” I ask again.
“And she went apeshit and smashed all the windows on Dan’s car.”
“Wow,” I say. “That is nuts. And Dan didn’t break up with her?”
“Well, she claimed she was drunk and said she was really sorry.” Seeing my face, he raises his hands in an expression of surrender and laughs. “Hey, it’s not like I dated her,” he says. “I don’t know what Dan was thinking.”
I use my spoon to scrape out the last of my milk foam. “So maybe Josh has a point.”
Colin shrugs. “We haven’t charged anyone yet,” he says carefully.
“But Josh is still the prime suspect?” Given that the murder weapon was found on Josh’s boat, I’m guessing the answer is yes. But why hasn’t Josh been charged? I insert my laptop into its case and zip it.
“He’s a person of interest,” says Colin. He studies my face for a moment, the green of his eyes seemingly darker than just moments ago. A glance out the window reveals the sky remains blue, the sun unshadowed. Colin frowns. He runs a hand through his silky dark hair. “I don’t like that you and Jackie are working for this guy.” He clamps his lips shut, as though he’s said too much. The way he’s looking at me makes me uneasy.
“Why not?” I get the weird feeling that Colin’s jealous. While Josh must inspire jealousy in a lot of guys, I wouldn’t expect this from Colin. He’s obviously not as rich as Josh, but he seems to have a job he loves and is good at. Plus he’s extremely attractive. So maybe it’s not jealousy that I’m sensing but something else, like worry. I wonder if Colin knows something scary about Josh he can’t tell me. I recall Chantelle’s claim that he’s a sociopath. Being married to his brother, she’d be in a position to really know him.
Colin bites his bottom lip, which is full and pink. “Forget I said anything,” he says, gruffly. “I just . . . well, guys with that much cash are used to getting whatever they want. The guy seems like an absolute narcissist to me . . .” He shrugs. “But like you said, he’s just your client.”
I shove my crumpled-up napkin into my empty mug. Quinn said more or less the same thing, I recall. And Chantelle. I struggle to remember what I learned in Psych 101, regarding narcissism versus sociopathy. Both are bad but sociopaths are worse. But lots of people use those terms for people they don’t like. I bet loads of people are jealous of Josh.
I tell Colin I have an appointment and thank him for the scone.
He laughs. “Next time, I’ll buy you a whole scone for yourself.” When I stand to go he stands too. There’s a brief awkward moment when we’re both figuring out what to do, but then he leans forward and kisses my cheek. He smells like he looks: fresh and healthy.
Next time, I think. As I maneuver around a young mother with a tiny baby in a stroller the size of a Smart car, I realize I like the sound of that.
Looking back, I see Colin watching me. I raise my hand and he waves. The young mom gives him an appreciative once-over. Those clean-cut good looks coupled with that naughty grin are hard to ignore. And he seems like a great guy. Or was he just trying to charm me in hopes of digging up dirt against Josh? My client.
As I exit Starbucks, I chide myself for being so suspicious. Even though Colin and I are on opposite sides of this case, I really like him. Sticking to the sunny side of every street, I find myself smiling all the way back to Greene & Olliartee.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN:
MOTEL SEX
After my 2:00 p.m. client has left, I get out the phone-book and search through all the motels in Esquimalt. It doesn’t take long to pinpoint the Seabreeze. I update Jackie, who sounds worried, despite my reassurances that I won’t actually
try to talk to Cage—just work out if he was in town when Tonya vanished.
It’s close to four when I leave the city center and drive through a run-down neighborhood of low, aging strip-malls. The Seabreeze lies between a 1950s-style laundromat and a false-fronted appliance repair shop, its dusty window crammed with TVs and stereos that have been obsolete for decades. Opposite the motel lies a used car lot, its faded triangular flags hanging limp for want of a breeze. There’s no sign of the sea either.
The Seabreeze is an old-style, two-story motel, its rooms arranged in an upside-down U around the almost empty parking lot. I pull into a visitor’s slot. Built in the 1970s, the motel hasn’t been changed since, its orange and green paint now faded to dull tones of peach and pistachio. A neon VACANCY sign is struggling to glow in the bright sunlight, an arrow pointing to the room that serves as reception. Dusty lace curtains fill the windows. Someone has stuck a Grateful Dead sticker onto the OPEN sign.
When I push open the door a bell jingles. Behind the counter stands a blonde woman with the tight clothes of a teenager and the tired face of a forty-five-year-old. If I had to bet, I’d wager she’s my age. Sucking on a cigarette, she eyes me suspiciously. “You here about the chamber maid job?” The room smells of stale cigarette smoke and hairspray.
“Ah, no,” I say. I start to reach for my card but stop. She doesn’t seem the type to appreciate lawyers. “I’m looking for someone,” I say, and the woman nods. She doesn’t look surprised. I doubt there’s much that’d surprise her.
“Oh yeah.” She takes a long drag of her smoke. In the room next door someone turns on a TV. I hear canned laughter.
“An American guy named Lewis Flice,” I say. “But some people call him Cage.”
Her mouth tightens, just for an instant, and she stubs out her cigarette. “Cage. Yeah, he was here.” She tugs at one of the three gold hoops she has in each ear. “You a cop?”
“No.” I hesitate. “A woman got murdered,” I say. “And the cops think my friend might have done it.”
The woman stares toward the parking lot. “Who’s your friend?” she asks.
“It’s not important,” I say. “But this guy, Cage, was the murdered woman’s ex-boyfriend.”
The receptionist snorts. “So what?” she asks. “You think Cage killed her?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “But it’d help to know where he was the night of August 27th. That was a Monday.”
She fingers her hair, which is piled in a plastic banana clip. I wait as she taps on a computer keyboard and squints at the screen, pulls a fresh cigarette out of a pack on the counter. She lights it, then gives me a grim smile. “August 27th. He was here,” she says. “And he wasn’t murdering nobody.”
“How do you know?”
Smoke writhes out of her nostrils. “Because he was with me,” she says bluntly. “All night long.” She inhales again, studying me through eyelashes caked with mascara. Despite the lines around her eyes and mouth, she has a hard-edged sexiness.
“Did you tell the cops?” I ask.
She taps ash from her cigarette. “Why would I?” Her tongue flicks around her lips. “I don’t need no trouble.”
I nod. I wonder why she decided to tell me. Or is she lying to protect Cage? I meet her eyes, which are a pretty shade of blue. Periwinkle. For some reason, I believe her. “Do you know where Cage is now?” I ask, and she throws back her head and laughs.
“It’s not like we made plans to meet up in Paris,” she says. “I was just a fling.” Her voice isn’t so much bitter as tired. Clearly, this lady isn’t counting on happy endings. She sucks on her cigarette and eyes me speculatively. “This girlfriend of his, the one who was murdered, you wouldn’t happen to have a picture of her, would you?”
I pull a photo from my purse. It’s one of Tonya and Josh, dressed up for some wedding or ball. Tonya is in a shiny turquoise gown and Josh is wearing a tuxedo. Jackie instructed me to pass this photo around the spas, shops, and bars where Tonya was a regular in hopes that someone would recall seeing her with another man. So far, nobody has remembered seeing her with any men at all, just with various girlfriends, including a pale one with short blonde hair who must be Louise Dobson.
“Why?” I ask, and the woman shrugs.
“Just curious. He talked about her.”
I hold my breath.
Seeing my hopeful expression, she shakes her head. “Didn’t say nothing important. Just that she had nice tits.” She gives a harsh laugh. “What a romantic, eh!”
I hand over the photograph and her mouth opens. I can see her crooked bottom teeth. She runs her tongue over them. “Her?” She lays the photo on the desk and taps it with a chipped teal fingernail. “That’s Cage’s girlfriend?”
“That’s her,” I say. The woman adjusts her bra strap.
“Well I’ll be damned,” she says. “I know her.”
When I ask how, she responds with a sly smile. She might not tell me, or might demand money. A truck pulls into the lot and her attention shifts. She flicks back the lace curtain and frowns. I see a big guy with lots of tattoos and a beer gut climb out of the cab. His jeans are so tight he has to move slowly.
I recall Colin Destin’s warning about Cage being dangerous. “Is that Cage?”
“No,” says the woman, obviously amused by my error. “That’s my boyfriend, Mitchell.” The truck door slams and she turns back to the photo of Josh and Tonya. “I’ve seen her here,” she says flatly. “She was a regular.”
“Here?” I ask, unable to keep the skepticism from my voice. “You saw Tonya here?”
“Uh huh,” says the woman. “She’d come in once, maybe twice a week. Starting, oh, about a year ago.” She leans forward to study the photo more closely. “Haven’t seen her for a while though.”
She hands me back the photo and I replace it in my purse. “Who was she with?” I ask.
The woman runs a hand through her bangs to fluff them, then lifts a powder compact to her nose and swipes on another layer. “She was with him.” She nods toward the photograph. “That cute guy in the tuxedo.”
After leaving the Seabreeze I call Jackie and tell her what I’ve learned: some lady in Esquimalt swears Josh and Tonya were enjoying clandestine get-togethers at a low budget motel. Jackie groans. “Huh. Just when we thought this case couldn’t get any weirder,” she says. “I’m at Quinn’s place. Can you meet me here?”
I drive straight over there.
Quinn opens the door with a glass of milk in one hand. “My mom’s in the nursery, putting the crib together,” she says. “Don’t distract her!”
I roll my eyes. “This is important, Quinn!”
“So’s my crib,” she says.
Quinn instructs me to help myself to a drink, which I do. Bruce stocks my favorite brand of beer, brewed right here on Vancouver Island. While Quinn is foraging for snacks in the kitchen, I walk down the hall to the baby’s room. Sure enough, Jackie’s wheelchair is surrounded by disassembled crib parts. She’s staring at an instruction booklet with a frown on her face.
“Hey. How’s it going?” I ask.
Jackie looks up and sighs. “Not well,” she says. Seeing my beer, she brightens. I hand her my can and go to fetch another. “Can you figure this out?” she asks, when I’m back. She passes me the instruction booklet.
I take a seat on the floor and flip through pages full of tiny text. If there was ever an English version, it’s now missing. I look in the box. Nothing. “This totally figures,” I say. “There’s a choice of Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, and what I think is Korean. No English. Or French.” With our schoolgirl French we’d have a shot, at least.
“Well, between the three of us, surely we can figure it out,” says Jackie. “How hard can it be? Two lawyers and a professor . . .”
I peer at the diagrams and shrug. The crib has a lot of parts. The main drawing bristles with arrows. You’d need an aerospace engineering degree to even know where to start. “I don’t think so.” I
hand her back the leaflet and pop my beer’s tab.
She squints at the instructions for another minute before tossing them onto the pine floor. “Let’s let Bruce deal with it,” she says. “Quinn’s doing more than her share, and you and I have other things to think about.”
I drink a little of my pale ale. “We sure do,” I say. I lie down on the floor. The ceiling, like the walls, has been painted a nice gender-neutral yellow. There are cheery orange curtains with a white bird print. In the center of the yellow ceiling hangs a colorful jungle-themed mobile. Jackie finds the remote and pushes a button. A tinkly rendition of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” starts up and the mobile starts spinning. I stare up at it, my thoughts turning back to the Seabreeze Inn.
Jackie must be thinking about my latest discovery too. “So this motel receptionist,” she says. “You believed her?”
“I think so,” I say. Again, I wonder why the woman decided to tell me about her and Cage’s tryst. A weird sense of pride, perhaps? Or did she view cheating on her tattooed boyfriend as such a minor deal she saw no reason not to tell me? I replay my recent visit to the Seabreeze in my head. “I don’t get it,” I say, admiring a fuzzy lion on the baby mobile. “Why would Tonya and Josh be meeting at a cheap motel? They were married, for God’s sake. And they had a palatial house in Uplands.”
“Maybe they found it exciting,” says Jackie. She takes a swig of beer. “You know, role-playing or something?”
I make a face. “What?” I ask. “They enjoyed pretending to be poor? And even after they separated they still met twice a week for sex?” I shake my near-empty beer can for emphasis. “It doesn’t make sense, Jackie.”
“You just never know,” she says. “Maybe the sex was still good. As a divorce lawyer, I imagine you hear all kinds of craziness.” She takes another gulp of beer. “I sure as hell do.”
“Maybe the receptionist was wrong,” I say. “Maybe the couple just looked like Josh and Tonya.” Even as I say it, I realize the chances are slim. Neither of them would exactly blend into a crowd, unless they were at a casting call for a Baywatch remake.
