The Minstrel & The Beagle

by Lila K Bell

  “What purchase agreement?” he asked, though in every line of his face, I saw that he knew exactly what I was talking about.

  “The one lying on Coleman’s desk beside the contract the night he died and missing the next day,” I said, staring him in the eye.

  The tightrope under my feet grew thinner. Giving this man any kind of leverage over me, whether he realized the extent of it or not, was not in my best interest, but the way I saw it, if he told me what I needed to know, the result outweighed the risk. What could he tell the police that they didn’t already know? I hadn’t killed Coleman, and Fraser had no idea why I’d been in the house that night. There was nothing he could use against me except for the knowledge that I tended to be where I wasn’t supposed to.

  With every word I uttered, Fraser’s gaze grew sharper. It had taken a confession of my direct association with this case and an outright accusation, but it appeared I’d finally caught his interest.

  “Yes,” he said, steepling his fingers under his chin. “I admit, when I found it on my desk the next morning, I hoped I could use it as leverage against Coleman, proof that he had money he wasn’t passing over to me. Also evidence that he was engaged in less-than-ethical behaviour he might not want the police to know about. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to confront him with it. Coleman’s death was announced a few hours later.”

  I sat back, surprised. He could have given me whatever excuse he wanted, but instead he’d given me a counter-balance. A confession for a confession: my sneaking around to his intended blackmail. I wasn’t sure what his reason might be, and part of me hoped I’d never find out.

  Even as this thought settled over me, another one rose up to pique my imagination. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure the door was still closed, then turned back to Fraser. “You really believe Daniel when he says he didn’t kill him? In a fit of passion or something?”

  The possibility stirred a frisson of excitement through my chest. Daniel had already proved that he was willing to go to great lengths to get things done. What if Coleman hadn’t dealt well with being threatened in person? Coleman would have fought him, I knew him well enough to believe that. And Daniel wouldn’t have known what to do or how to react. He might have grabbed the scissors and attacked in what he believed was self-defense. When he ran into me, it was on his way out, maybe a panic over what he’d done?

  Ed’s eyes narrowed. “No, I don’t think so.” The certainty with which he spoke crushed the scene playing out in my head. “I asked him about the papers that morning when I came in and he told me some of what he confessed today.” He frowned. “Not nearly all of it, obviously, but enough that I believed he’d come by the documents… perhaps less than ethically. But he was calm. Excited to have done something he thought would please me, perhaps a bit on edge, but nothing to that extreme. I would have known if he’d committed murder. He’s like a jumpy dog under stress.”

  I frowned and rested my hands on the armrests of the chair. Everything had been explained, but I felt like I hadn’t moved forward at all.

  “If you really want to speak with whoever might have wanted him dead, you should speak with his friend, Roger Hardwick. The owner of the boat.”

  At Roger’s name, I sat up straight. “I did speak with him. He seemed genuinely distraught.”

  Fraser laughed and rose from his desk to open his cabinet. He flipped through the files and frowned when he reached Coleman’s. I hadn’t exactly put it back the way I’d found it. But he said nothing as he pulled out a sheet of paper from the file and handed it to me.

  “This was under the purchase agreement. Daniel didn’t realize it was there when he brought back all the papers.”

  I scanned over the page. It was a letter, written in a messy but legible scrawl.

  Barnaby, it read. I don’t know why you thought you could do this to me. As some kind of joke? You’ve ruined me. I want to give you a chance to put things right. Return my book, and I’ll give you back the boat. We can tear up the purchase agreement and pretend it never happened.

  You betrayed me, Barns. We’ve known each other for forty years. I was the best man at your wedding and you at mine, and this is the payment I get for always being by your side?

  Put this right or I don’t think I can find it in myself to forgive you.

  Roger

  I tried to hand the letter back to Fraser, but he shook his head. “You might as well hang on to it. It wouldn’t look good if it were found in my possession.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  At least it was something. I still wasn’t convinced Daniel couldn’t have done it, and if Roger was this upset about his friend’s betrayal, I imagined how livid some of the other victims of Barnaby’s con game were. People he hadn’t grown up with. But it was one more start. I would talk to Roger before going to the police station. Maybe he knew who else Coleman had ripped off.

  I rose from my chair. “I appreciate your help, Mr. Fraser. I’m sorry you lost an assistant out of it.”

  He stood as well and offered his hand. “Me, as well. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in the job? I suspect you’d be good at it. You know how to hound a person.”

  Was that respect glinting in his calculating blue eyes? Maybe I’d misinterpreted his intentions in telling me the truth. Not a trick, but an offering of a clean slate.

  I couldn’t help but smile. “I’ll keep that in mind. You never know when my good luck will end.”

  14

  I left Fraser’s office with a weight in my stomach. The letter in my pocket felt as though it were burning into my skin, and I wished I could fold it into a paper airplane and ship it off on a breeze. I didn’t like what it suggested: either that such a long friendship could have ended in such a deep show of betrayal, or that Roger might have taken his revenge as a result.

  Although I’d only met him once, I liked Roger. He was grandfather material with his boisterous laugh and full beard. The memory of him puttering around on his boat had struck me as an example of a man content with life, having achieved his goals and looking for his next adventure.

  I guessed that had been his hope, trading his prize possession of On the Origin of Species for The Beagle. He’d wanted to move from reading about the world to experiencing it for himself and considered it a fair trade. But the dream had turned out to be ephemeral. He’d inherited a rotting lump of wood that I was amazed was still afloat.

  I eased into Mercy’s driver’s seat and spread the letter open across my lap. Put this right or I don’t think I can find it in myself to forgive you. A threat or just a statement of fact?

  I looked at the clock. I’d promised Sam I would make it to the station first thing in the afternoon, but I felt the need to speak with Roger. The letter was my way out, my guarantee that all suspicion would be deflected off me, but it didn’t seem right to try and pin the murder on him if he’d written the letter in a fit of rage and hadn’t done anything more about it. Roger was already dealing with the loss of his best friend, a loss that death had prevented them from repairing, the loss of a valued book, and the loss of whatever future he’d hoped to gain out of its sale. To put him in the spotlight for Barnaby’s murder if he hadn’t done it was just cruel.

  Another hour before checking in with Detective Curtis wouldn’t really matter in the pursuit of the truth.

  I did, however, believe it was a courtesy to Sam to let him know I’d be a bit late.

  It took me a few minutes to figure out what I would say — Hey, Sam, I won’t be able to make it in quite when I said I would. I’m going to go speak with a man who might have murdered Barnaby Coleman. But I’ll be in as soon as I can! — but finally I dialed his number.

  “Robinson,” he said on answering.

  “Sam, it’s Fiona.”

  “Fi, thank God. Where are you?”

  I stiffened. “I’m still downtown, why?”

  “Because you should probably get in here pretty quick. Curtis has been pushing me on wheth
er I think you were telling the truth about why you were in Coleman’s house that night. You know the papers that went missing? She suspects you might have been the one to break in and take them. She got an anonymous call that said someone saw you snooping around the house long before you say you were jogging by. That’s not true, is it?”

  I curled my fingers around the letter in my lap.

  Would Fraser have turned me in to keep the heat off his own back? No, that didn’t make sense. Not when I could so easily explain why he would have wanted them.

  Daniel on the other hand… The malice in his eyes when he’d walked out of Fraser’s office put him right in my crosshairs. He had no reason to think it was me — while I didn’t put it past him to eavesdrop at the door, I would have spotted his shadow through the crack if he’d been there — but my presence in the room, my witness to his shame, on top of my curiosity with the case might have triggered the idea.

  I was starting to think Fraser had been smart to get rid of him when he had. Who knows what other games he might have tried to pull in the future.

  “Of course not,” I said. “What need would I have for a bunch of Barnaby’s papers?”

  “Then why were you seen going in to speak with Ed Fraser the other day?” Sam asked. “And you can’t chalk this one up to mistaken identity of some nosy neighbours, Fi. Our people saw you.”

  My blood froze. I hadn’t even thought to look over my shoulder to check if anyone was watching Fraser’s office, though in retrospect I should have. I’d known Coleman’s debts weren’t a secret, so obviously the police would have followed the same clues I had picked up on. Likely, someone had even gone in to speak with Fraser, which he’d failed to mention to me. Hardly a surprise considering how reticent he was about everything else.

  I looked down at the paper in my hand and the weight in my stomach grew heavier.

  My visits with Fraser combined with Daniel’s twisted interpretation of events really didn’t cast me in a fantastic light. And if they suspected I was the one who’d run out with Coleman’s papers, how could I go into the station waving Roger’s letter around? They wouldn’t believe I’d stumbled across it on another late-night jog. They’d take it as confirmation that Curtis was right — that I’d stolen something while I was there. How much of a hop, skip, and a jump would it be to go from theft to murder?

  I realized now why Fraser had been so eager to get rid of it, and how I had played right into his trap by accepting. Damn the man. He was good, I had to give him that.

  “So are you going to come in?” Sam asked.

  “Soon,” I said. “I have one more errand to run and then I swear I’ll be there.” I hesitated. If I told him what my one errand happened to be, there was a good chance I wouldn’t make it as far as the marina before he tracked me down and dragged me in to speak with his superior.

  On the other hand, I was going to speak with a man with a lot of restrained rage. To keep it to myself would likely be one of the stupidest decisions I ever made.

  Let’s face it, who was I kidding? Getting involved in this murder to begin with had been pretty stupid.

  “There’s something you should know,” I said. “Have you spoken with Roger Hardwick again?”

  “The friend? No. Why?” The suspicion in Sam’s voice didn’t do much for my confidence.

  “I’m going out there now to see how he’s getting on,” I said. “I have reason to think he and Barnaby weren’t on such good terms as he might have claimed they were.”

  “What are you talking about?” Sam asked. “How do you know — hang on.”

  There was the sound of the receiver being muffled, and voices coming from a distance. Then Sam came back, “Fi, I’ve gotta go. Stay away from Roger and get your butt to the station, all right? Trust me, it’s in your best interest to talk with Curtis.”

  He hung up before I had a chance to say anything else, leaving me alone in the car, staring up at the roof.

  This was not good.

  Maybe if I’d gone to the station the day after I’d discovered Coleman, I wouldn’t be in this mess now. I would have explained my reason for being there, and Curtis would have set me aside as an unimportant player in the game. By not coming in, I’d left room for other theories and questions to come to the fore.

  And I couldn’t go in now. The evidence I’d gathered would mean nothing in the eyes of the police, and would only serve to make them look more closely at me. I’d set myself up and, from what I could see, there was only one safe way to get myself out.

  Backup or no, I would go and speak with Roger and find out what he knew. Hopefully, he would give me the answers I needed to clear my name. If not… well, it had been a good run. I would just have to hope that my ability to tell the truth was as convincing as I knew my lies to be.

  15

  I arrived at the marina and took a minute to decide how I was going to proceed. I won’t deny I kind of felt like a bull in a china shop, the way I was running into this man’s life and planning to manipulate him for answers about his best friend’s murder when I knew he was broken up about it, but I honestly didn’t see any other way forward.

  Detective Curtis was looking at me for a crime. I had to deflect her interest and hope my good deed of helping her uncover the murderer would be enough to set aside her suspicions about my being in the house. I’d broken in, sure, but for once I hadn’t walked out with anything except a horrible memory, an upset stomach, and a headache. Why should I be punished for that?

  So I would speak with Roger.

  There would, of course, be the question of what I was doing here and how I knew to be here, but I was sure by then I’d be able to come up with a believable story. I’d learned of Roger’s involvement innocently enough by paying my respects to Jeremy, which was also how I could have learned about Ed Fraser. No one needed to know about Ryan and Troy’s involvement or a certain late-night excursion.

  I rested my hand on the door handle and sucked in a deep breath. If I was going to do this, it had to be now. Another two minutes of waffling, and I was sure my courage would fail. Or reason would kick in.

  As I climbed out of the car, a wind picked up that blew the door shut and forced me back a couple of steps. Storm clouds were rolling in, dark, layered, and angry. The rain would be here in half an hour at best, I figured.

  Better get a move on.

  The docks were pretty much empty as I made my way along the marina. A few of the larger vessels were out on the lake, unafraid of the incoming storm, but most folks had been smart enough to give today a miss. The water was already uneven, the white-capped waves coming in choppy and quick, hitting the coast with enough force to send up a frothy spray.

  I hugged my jacket around me and continued on my way to the houseboat at the end. The Beagle rocked precariously on the waves, water coming up along its sides as it listed to starboard. No lights showed through the cabin windows with their ratty curtains, and I didn’t spot any movement on deck.

  Had Roger been one of the smart ones not to come out to the marina? It had been an assumption that I would find him here. I hadn’t even considered that he might be at home — or even know where home was for him.

  My hair blew around my face, and as I brushed it behind my ears, I spotted a dark-clad figure moving behind the Beagle’s cabin. A shot of relief ran through me. He was here. Just hiding.

  I took a few careful steps across the slick wooden boards and paused at the edge. Water swelled beneath my feet, and I noticed a few patches in the hull where the rust and rot had eaten through. For a minute, I simply watched Roger work, wondering if he planned to use the rain to help him clear off the stains on the deck.

  Surprise replaced interest when I realized he was preparing the boat to sail out.

  “Good afternoon, Roger,” I called.

  I expected his jump at the sound of my voice, but I didn’t expect the flash of horror on his face when he turned around and found me standing there.

  He covered his
reaction quickly under a bright smile, but I’d already recognized that he’d hoped to drift away unnoticed.

  “Miss Gates, this is a nice surprise,” he said. “What are you doing out here on a day like this?”

  “Just going for a walk,” I said, projecting my voice over the rising wind. “What about you? Shipping out? Are you sure the boat is in good enough shape to get you away?”

  I thought of the invoice I’d read in his file. Close to eighty thousand dollars worth of work needed to go into this boat to salvage it, including replacing or patching the bottom to repair holes and rust.

  Roger shrugged. “It’s good enough to get me where I want to go.” He looked over his shoulder and up at the clouds. “I hate to be rude, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to get started. I don’t think the rain will hold off much longer.”

  I wondered about his rush. Either way, he’d be caught in the rain. One would think he’d prefer to be close to the docks in case the weather turned worse than expected.

  “Making a getaway?” I asked.

  It was a roll of the dice, but I’d made enough of those today that I doubted one more would ruin me. The state of The Beagle wouldn’t let him get far, but if he kept to shallow water, he could probably make it one or two ports over. Then he could leave the boat and disappear, never to be found again.

  It was a wise move he was making, all things considered. With his letter in my pocket and the purchase agreement safe in Fraser’s cabinet, things didn’t look good for Roger.

  He didn’t answer my question, though his tension crept up his back, his shoulders hunching closer to his ears. I crossed my arms against my chest to hold my jacket down and met his soft brown gaze.

  “How far do you think you’ll need to run to avoid your guilt over murdering your best friend?”

  I didn’t want to see the truth so clearly in the rising storm, but there it was, right in front of me. His need to disappear, his grief over the loss of the friend that had betrayed him. It broke my heart that he had taken it as far as he had, but I couldn’t let him leave when my own life was on the line.