The Reluctant Detective

by Finley Martin

  “Perhaps Eli knows,” he offered.

  Anne turned toward the open door to the workshop. From there she could see Eli watching the security monitor that was watching Anne. Even seeing him from behind, Anne could tell that he was giggling shyly. She waved. His shoulders hunched up like a blanket. His head shrunk halfway beneath it.

  “Eli, do you know where Dit is?” she shouted into the workshop. Eli’s head gave a quick, minute shake.

  Anne called Dit’s cell phone. No response. It was turned off. “Where on earth did he go?” she muttered to herself as she got into her car. “Maybe he’s home… sleeping in… swimming… or avoiding me.”

  Anne hoped the latter wasn’t so, and by the time she crossed the Hillsborough Bridge on her way to Dit’s house, she had convinced herself that there was little likelihood of him trying to avoid her. Dit didn’t avoid problems or people. If he didn’t like someone, they knew it.

  It was a relief to see Dit’s car in his driveway. She drew alongside it and beeped her horn to let him know she was here. Then she went to the front door. The door was open, but the house was quiet. Too quiet. No background music from his sound system. No splashing from the pool. But the patio doors which led to it were wide open.

  Anne walked outside onto the patio. The sun had grown terribly strong, glaring even. The marble tiles gleamed, and the stainless steel glittered. The strength of it hurt Anne’s eyes. So she cupped a hand to shield them. Then she stepped on a wet patch and almost slipped. Ahead she came across an overturned table. Splinters of glass from its shattered top were scattered about. Another wet patch, a red sticky smear, led to the rim of the pool. A wicker chair had been upset there; another bobbed listlessly in the water. But what most caught her eye was a fractured image beneath the rippling surface. Something motionless lay at the bottom of the deep end of the pool, and the sight of it drew a disquieting, almost inhuman moan from deep inside her.

  37

  The mail comes at nine-thirty, sometimes at ten, and precisely at ten-thirty each day Delia McKay takes the long walk to the mailbox at the end of her driveway. She had just stepped off her front porch when her phone began to ring. She ignored it. Whoever it was would know enough to call back, if it were a friend or neighbour, and if it weren’t a friend or neighbour, then she wouldn’t be fussy to talk to them at all. So she plunged ahead into her daily ritual without giving the caller a second thought.

  Even though her mailbox was several hundred yards from her front door, she relished her walk. Others her age, and some a lot younger, drove cars from house to mailbox and back again. Not her. She attributed such behaviour to “plain laziness,” and then she would puff up with a shot of pride in her ability to walk the walk unassisted.

  Of course, her joints ached when she started, but they loosened up some after ten minutes or so. Then the glories of morning itself became a soothing balm for any discomfort which remained. A playful wind swept the stands of grain. The sound of it reminded her of the sea. The breeze was both warm and bracing. She enjoyed the caress of it on her face and the way it pulled at her dress, and she could taste the sweetness of it. Summer weather like this made her feel alive, like a woman again.

  There was scant in her mailbox: a bill from Maritime Electric, a packet of flyers advertising Canada Day sales, and The Guardian. Bill O’Connor’s old truck rattled by. She didn’t have to look to know who it was. She recognized the gasp of the engine and screeching shimmy of a loose chassis. He tapped the horn, and Delia let a hand fly in his direction in recognition. She watched his rig disappear into a hollow and rise on the uphill slope past a grey car parked alongside the road.

  “How long do I leave the biscuits in, Aunt Delia?” Jacqui called from the kitchen when she heard the slam of the front door.

  “Ten more minutes,” said Delia.

  “Can we try pies tomorrow? I love pies.”

  “Rhubarb… and maybe we can scare up some strawberries,” Delia said and picked up the phone in the parlour. “Pansy, is that you?” she spoke into the mouthpiece.

  “Of course it is. Who else would it be?”

  “Doesn’t sound like you,” she said gruffly. “Could be anybody.”

  “Well, you caught me with a mouthful… and after sixty-five years of listenin’ to my gossip, you should be able to tell whether it’s me, with or without a mouthful…,” and added with a little chuckle, “with teeth… or just beatin’ my bare-naked gums together.”

  Delia and Pansy had known each other forever. Delia lived on the crest of one hill; Pansy on the one just south. Before the trees had grown up, they had been able to see each other’s houses. That was before Pansy began calling herself Hazel. Hazel was her name, her middle name, but when she was being courted by young Henry Potts, she couldn’t have borne the romance advancing to the point where anyone might start thinking of her as Mrs. Pansy Potts. That would have been too scullery an image for a country girl with grand dreams. So, Hazel she’d become, and the only person who continued to call her Pansy was Delia McKay, her best and oldest friend.

  “Did you call me a while ago?” asked Delia.

  “Can’t say as I did. Why?”

  “There’s a car in the hollow,” she said as if that would explain everything.

  “Yes, Henry spoke of it.”

  “Is he broke down?”

  “Henry thought no. He’s just sittin’ there. Bird-watchin’.”

  “Bird-watchin’,” Delia said incredulously.

  “Yes, Henry said he had binoculars.”

  “Did the binoculars come with a straw hat?” Delia demanded.

  Pansy hollered for Henry. There was muffled talking. Then Pansy returned.

  “A straw hat,” she said. “Yes.”

  Delia hung up the phone and sat down in one of the proper but uncomfortable chairs in the parlour. She felt butterflies in her stomach, and a chill trickled its way up her back and across her shoulders.

  A few minutes of quiet reflection followed. Then she picked up the phone and dialled Pansy one more time. She talked quietly with her friend so no one would overhear her, put the receiver down, and called out to Jacqui:

  “Take the biscuits out now, Jacqui. Set them on the counter. Then pack your bag.”

  “Where we going?” Jacqui asked, caught off guard at Delia’s peculiar change in routine.

  “Vacation,” said Delia.

  “I thought this was vacation,” she replied. Now she was confused.

  “We’re going on vacation… from vacation,” she said and smiled at Jacqui.

  Delia tied a wink to her smile and wrapped her remark in an air of mystery. Vacation from vacation. The enigma had enormous appeal to Jacqui, and the question why drowned before it surfaced. A thrill of spontaneity and a spirit of adventure now captured her imagination, as well as her acquiescence.

  “Cool,” she said excitedly.

  Thanks be to God for that, thought Delia, as she packed her own small suitcase.

  Twenty minutes later they were putting their luggage in Delia’s car. The rattling thump-ump-ump of Henry Potts tractor echoed along valley road. An irregular klink-a-klank blended with it, a loose hitch jolting against the long empty hay wagon he was towing.

  Delia stopped the car at the mailbox and looked down toward Henry’s tractor. He had just started a wide swing onto a grown-over access to his north field when the tractor stalled. When he tried to restart it, the tractor and wagon slid backward. The highway was blocked. No car could get around it. Nevertheless the grey sedan attempted it just as the tractor’s brakes slipped. Tractor, trailer, and all rolled to the rear and the car was forced into the ditch.

  Delia turned onto the highway and left the traffic in the hollow behind. She figured she had at least ten minutes before the grey sedan could remove itself from the ditch and find an alternate road. By then she would be on her way to her n
ext destination – Jacqui’s vacation from her vacation. For the next half-hour Delia kept to lesser travelled roads and worked her way north and then east.

  Finally, Jacqui could contain herself no more. “Where are we going, Aunt Delia?”

  “We’re going to a magical place far, far away,” she teased.

  “You’re beginning to sound like the Disney channel.”

  When they entered the town of Souris near the eastern tip of PEI, Delia said, “We’re here, almost anyway.”

  “Souris! Souris isn’t magical… How can a town named after a mouse be magical, anyway? That’s gross… and it isn’t ‘far, far away’ either. That’s really false advertising, Aunt Delia.”

  “Hush, girl. You’re giving me a headache. We’re going to visit a cousin, a kind of surprise visit, and, for your information, we’re not going to Souris, even though it is a lovely place. We’re going there,” she said and pointed to a road sign.

  It read: Ferry to Magdalen Islands.

  38

  Frances Murphy was seated on a straight-backed chair in front of the oak roll-top desk in her study. A natural light brightened the room. It filtered down through the branches of her backyard elms and reflected up from the mirror-like sheen of Charlottetown Harbour.

  A flicker of satisfaction put a flush in her cheeks and lent a softness to her eyes. She would have had the same expression if she were revelling in the accomplishments of her children, but she had none. What filled that empty space in her heart instead was her review of the accounts of three foundations she chaired. Each of them was enriched with a goodly sum of cash. Gala fundraisers and generous benefactors like herself had added a glitter to their financial bottom lines, and tomorrow, beginning with Canada Day, she would begin to dole out grants to worthy causes around the world. Naturally, she didn’t bear that responsibility alone. Each foundation had board members. Still, she wielded significant influence over which charities should benefit and which individuals should be entrusted with the day-to-day disbursement of funds.

  Trust was a word which had hung heavily on her mind in recent weeks and become even more pressing in the last few days. Robert Somerville was at the root of her concern. He had made an application for funding of a mission in Cameroon, one that would improve the living conditions of the natives and provide the infrastructure and training to make it self-sufficient, perhaps even a model for further development in that poverty-stricken region of Africa. Without doubt it was a noble undertaking and worthy of substantial support, and Somerville’s business plan was a professionally assembled, compelling document.

  Personally, she was fond of the man, and had told Anne Brown so in just those words. Privately, however, she was in love with him, and that secret she had told no one. In fact, she had difficulty admitting it even to herself.

  Some of his qualities had instant appeal for her. He was charming, of course, and everyone who met him was taken with his ease in their company. He was well-read, educated, and widely travelled, and he spoke of ideas, dreams, and aspirations that earned him enviable respect and dignity. Most of all, though, Frances loved his eyes. They were clear and bright, and suited his public image, but there was a sadness about them as well. Not a sour or regretful sadness. Rather, it was one that held kindness, experience, and wisdom. His eyes touched her deeply, but they also reminded her of the disappointments that had muted the lustre in her own life.

  Frances Murphy’s disappointments had begun with her marriage. She’d married too young and for reasons she could never quite reconcile. Whenever she thought back to those times, she thought of herself as falling into marriage, rather than falling in love. She’d imagined that it was the right time to do it, and William Murphy had seemed an appropriate person to wed. It was only later that she’d felt the loneliness of it and the emptiness of its promise. And her guilt. Everyone knew that the wealth her husband had accrued was tainted with often questionable dealings. He was long dead now, and memory of those misgivings was fading in the community. They were being eclipsed by her own benevolence and community service.

  Frances Murphy’s great dread now was that she would someday be exposed as just “an old fool” and, love him though she may, there was something about Robert Somerville that didn’t add up. She couldn’t isolate one specific thing. Is it instinct… or is it fear? she wondered.

  Time was short. She couldn’t deliberate any longer. Somerville’s proposal and business plan were the best of the best. She had no reason to deny his request for the $100,000. For his mission to achieve its goals, planting had to begin almost immediately and the drilling of irrigation wells soon afterwards.

  Mrs. Murphy’s face looked more grave than ever as she grasped the pen. She had approved and signed the paperwork for seventeen projects that morning. All the pertinent cheques had been written but one.

  The name, Robert Somerville, stood in her mind, as it had for many days. Now it wanted to tumble down to the nib of her pen and give life to his mission in Cameroon. Her fountain pen hung over the chequebook.

  Write his name and watch good works spring from it, or write his name and be betrayed? she fretted.

  She hesitated. She couldn’t bring herself to write it. Instead, she picked up the phone and called Anne Brown’s office. There was no answer today. There had been no answer yesterday. She left another message and hung up. Murphy stared at the approved application and the blank cheque on the desk before her. She grabbed the pen from its holder and in a neat but hurried hand wrote Robert Somerville’s name and her signature to the cheque.

  “An old fool I may be, then,” she said to herself.

  39

  Anne stared at the undulating dark form at the bottom of the pool.

  It’s Dit, she thought. There was nothing else it could be, and the thought of it transformed into an unheard shriek in her mind.

  Then she dove in. The water was cold. Her clothes clung to her body. The weight of them felt like someone was clutching at her, struggling against her effort to reach him. In the deep end she took in a lungful of air and drove herself under the water. Her legs fluttered. Her arms swept back in powerful strokes. And as she drew near the bottom, the dark shape became clearer. She reached out for it. It was the black chassis of his wheelchair. She braced her feet against the pool wall and levered the wheelchair aside. There was no body beneath it. There was no body anywhere.

  Gasping for air, Anne broke the surface of the pool and beat through the water until she reached the ladder. Standing near the edge, she surveyed the depths of the pool again for any sign of him. Then she circumscribed the patio and, finding nothing there, she searched the grounds nearby. Nothing there either.

  Not finding his body should have been a relief, but it wasn’t. The uncertainty remained, and the questions surrounding it were just as horrifying. Where was he? Was he crawling about somewhere farther away? Was he unconscious? Was he dead? Had he been taken away? And, if so, by whom? And why?

  Her first instinct was to call 911. She reached for her cell phone. It was dead. The pool water had killed the signal. She went to the house phone and started to dial. Then she hung up and redialled another number, this one for a friend.

  “Ben? I need your help. It’s Dit. I think something terrible may have happened.”

  Ben arrived less than fifteen minutes later, but it seemed an extraordinarily long time to Anne. He found her outside, leaning against the patio doors, shivering, a puddle of water under her feet. She filled him in on the details of her discovery. Then he looked around himself, outside first, then inside, the ground floor rooms, and upstairs as well.

  When he returned, Anne was where he had found her. She hadn’t moved.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. Then he paused as if he hadn’t yet pulled his thoughts and a plan together. “I’ll phone it in. You go home, get some dry clothes. There’s no point in getting you i
nvolved right now. You’ve already raised eyebrows downtown, and you might distract them from what really went down here. I’ll meet you later at The Blue Peter.”

  “What are you going to tell them?”

  “The truth. I dropped over to see a friend, and I found the place looking like a squall had hit. Now take off. We’ll talk later.”

  Ben sounded officious, sympathetic, and cold, all at the same time. It was a tone of voice she had never heard him use before. It sounded foreign.

  Anne looked at him as if he were someone she had met but couldn’t remember the circumstances. Then she nodded, walked numbly toward the door, and drove away.

  Anne tried unsuccessfully to shake loose the worry that hung about her. The drive home didn’t help, even though she took a slow, scenic run along a shore road to clear her head. She kept picturing Dit, and running varying scenes of what might have happened over and over until she felt like a caged mouse on an exercise wheel. At home she slipped out of her wet clothes and wrapped herself in a robe. She still felt cold. She toasted a bagel and poured herself a cup of coffee, but food was a mistake. It settled like a wad of sodden cardboard at the bottom of her stomach.

  Finally she threw off her robe and donned shorts, a tank top, and running shoes and set off, down the street, across the lawn of the provincial buildings, and along the boardwalk of Victoria Park. It was a short run – two miles out – before she rounded back toward home. By the time her apartment came into view she had slowed into a cool-down walk. Her cheeks had flushed with colour. Her muscles were sore. Perspiration beaded on her forehead. Her clothes were damp.

  In spite of all that, however, she realized that the clutter had fallen away. Her body felt more fresh, healthy, and energetic, and the cares which burdened her were subdued, rendered unimportant, or washed away during the long shower which followed.