Killer Cables

by Reagan Davis

  “Sounds like you had your hands full,” I say.

  “You can say that again, Megan!” he agrees. “They’re so much alike, those two. Dr. White reminds me of Laura with her red hair and fiery temper.”

  “Do you volunteer there, too, Anne-Marie?” I ask.

  “No!” she says, flicking her wrist and letting her hand go limp.

  “I’m trying to convince her,” Brian interjects, taking her hand.

  “The AC is Brian’s thing,” Anne-Marie explains. “I prefer the company of people over animals. I used to be a nurse, and I like caring for people. I’ve been volunteering with Meals on Wheels since Brian’s dad died. Two days a week I deliver warm meals to infirmed local residents, stop in for a visit, keep them company, and make sure they have everything they need.”

  “What a lovely way to give back,” I say.

  I look at Brian.

  “Someone from the AC called Laura at home the morning she died,” I tell him.

  I watch him for a reaction, but he doesn’t have one.

  “Only Laura’s side of the conversation was overheard,” I elaborate, “but it sounded like she was planning a visit with the caller. You wouldn’t happen to know who might have phoned her, would you?”

  “Let me think.” He looks up at the ceiling. “I was there. Archie Wright’s boy, Ryan was there installing the new safe. Dr. White was there. The rest of the veterinary staff were there and some other volunteers.” He looks from the ceiling to me and shakes his head. “It could’ve been anyone.”

  “Ryan was there? Why was the AC getting a new safe?”

  Ryan Wright is Archie’s son. He and Archie are The Wright Men For The Job, Harmony Lake’s father-son handyman team. Archie is mostly retired now. Ryan handles most of the jobs, with Archie helping out on occasion.

  “Didn’t you hear?” he asks.

  I shake my head, and he and Anne-Marie move in closer.

  “Just before Christmas there was a break-in at the AC, and they stole all the medication,” he whispers. “All of it. So, Laura ordered a bigger, better safe. It arrived while she was in the hospital, and Ryan came to install it the morning she died.”

  Do animals use digoxin? Maybe this is where the killer got their weapon?

  “It was lovely to meet you, Megan,” Anne-Marie says. “We need to get on the road to Harmony Hills. Furniture and paint colours won’t pick themselves.”

  We all laugh.

  “It was lovely to meet you, too,” I say. “And it was nice to see you again, Brian.”

  They say goodbye and turn to leave.

  As Brian and Anne-Marie reach the end of the aisle and turn toward the door, she reaches into her coat pocket to pull out her gloves, and a piece of paper falls out.

  I place the brand name ibuprofen back on the shelf, pick up a bottle of the store brand pills, then walk over and pick up the fallen paper.

  It’s their shopping list. The left side of the page is a list of stores they’re planning to visit, and the right side is a grocery list.

  I hurry to the door to catch up with them, but when I get there, they’re pulling away in a grey, four-door sedan, with Brian in the driver’s seat.

  Who knew grey and silver four-door sedans are so popular in Harmony Lake?

  I hate shopping without a list, I always forget some things and purchase extra things I don’t need because I can’t remember what was on the list.

  While I’m waiting in line to pay for the ibuprofen, I take a photo of the list and text it to Connie, asking her to text it to one of the Sweeneys.

  This might be far-fetched, but could Dr. White be Laura and Brian’s secret love child? She’s around the right age, and Brian says she reminds him of Laura.

  If she is, maybe she found out and was so angry she killed Laura. Or maybe she endeared herself until Laura included her in her will, then killed her so she could sell the AC land to her uncle, the CEO of Mega Mart.

  No, that wouldn’t make sense. Laura was a smart lady. She was vehemently opposed to Mega Mart opening a store in Harmony Lake; there’s no way she would have bequeathed the land to the CEO’s niece.

  I pay for my purchase and shove the receipt and the Willows shopping list in my wallet.

  Chapter 14

  I stop at home to drop off my purchase and take Sophie for her midday walk before I head over to Laura’s house.

  On my way to the car, I check Phillip’s driveway to see if Glenda is still there. We could drive over together. There’s no point in taking two cars, but her car isn’t there, so I drive over on my own.

  I pull into Laura’s driveway, next to Glenda’s car. We get out of our cars at the same time. She says she waited outside for me because she’d rather not go inside by herself.

  “Do you have a key?” I ask.

  “No,” she replies. “Phillip says he uses the spare.”

  I walk over to the large foliage-filled urn on the right of the door and rummage through the snowy sprays of evergreen, dogwood branches, and juniper sprouts until I find the pinecone. I twist and pull the pinecone until the semi-frozen soil underneath it cracks and gives way, allowing me to pull the pinecone out of the urn. The pinecone is glued to the cap of an old prescription pill bottle, and inside the pill bottle is Laura’s spare key. I turn to Glenda and shake the bottle to show her I found it.

  I open the pill bottle, remove the key, and unlock the front door, trying not to focus on the flashbacks I’m having to the last time I opened this door and found Laura’s dead body.

  We step into the small foyer, and I put the pill bottle and key on the table by the door. Glenda is taking off her boots and coat. I take a deep breath and repeat the mantra, heavy shoulders, long arms in my head, in an effort to release the tension I’m feeling. I take off my boots and coat.

  “Phillip said to tell you to put the package of dog sweaters in your bag as soon as you get here so you won’t forget them when you leave,” Glenda tells me.

  I put the bag of dog sweaters in my cranberry-coloured tote bag and tell Glenda she can tell Philip it’s been taken care of.

  Glenda leads the way upstairs, and I follow.

  Laura’s house is tasteful. Her decorating style is neutral, practical, and tidy; a conventional blend of beiges, greys, and creams.

  Until you get to the master bedroom and step into the purple palace.

  Remember the movie, The Wizard of Oz? The moment right after Dorothy and her house land in Munchkin land, when Dorothy opens the front door and crosses the threshold from her black and white world into the world of vibrant technicolour? That’s what it’s like to cross the threshold from Laura’s neutral, conservative décor to her polychromatic purple paradise.

  “Purple was her favourite colour,” Glenda says.

  You don’t say. Glenda and I are both smiling. It would be impossible to walk into this room and not smile.

  Three walls are painted lilac, and the wall behind the bed is a vibrant violet. The bed linens are a geometric pattern of various shades of purple, and the windows have orchid-purple curtains. The dressers and nightstands are black with purple knobs on the drawers.

  I peek into the master en suite where the toilet lid has a plush lavender cover with matching floor mats in front of the sink and bathtub. The walls are the opposite of the bedroom. Three walls are vibrant violet, and the accent wall is lilac. Three purple towels, light, medium, and dark, hang from the towel rack. The countertop is purple faux-marble.

  In a million years I would never have guessed that Laura Pingle’s bedroom was a shrine to purple. His purple highness himself, Prince, would have been proud.

  Glenda pops out of the walk-in closet holding up a lilac sun dress with spaghetti straps.

  “This is her favourite dress,” she says, smiling wistfully and looking at the dress with a hint of nostalgia in her eyes. “Now I just have to find her purple cardigan to go over it.”

  We go through Laura’s drawers, marvelling at her enviable collection of hand-
knit sweaters, until we find the short, fitted, purple cardigan with mother-of-pearl buttons. Glenda lays the dress and cardigan on Laura’s bed and stands back to admire the outfit.

  There are some creases in the dress, and I offer to iron it. I ask Glenda where I can find the iron and ironing board, and she directs me the linen closet inside the en suite washroom.

  They’re exactly where she said they’d be. I scan the purple walls of Laura’s bedroom for an electrical outlet and set up the ironing board. The iron’s water reservoir is empty, so I take it to the sink in the en suite washroom to fill it.

  While the reservoir fills with water, I look around, taking in all the purple, and something sitting on top of the amethyst-coloured garbage pail next to the sink catches my eye. A box with the Let Me Take A Cellfie logo on it.

  Let Me Take A Cellfie is the online DNA company that provides the who’s-your-daddy DNA results on those horrible daytime talk shows. Why would Laura have a box from a DNA test? I pick up the box and inspect it to make sure it is what I think it is, snap a pic of it with my phone, and place it back on top of the garbage pail where I found it.

  While I iron the dress, Glenda collects underwear and shoes for Laura to wear and looks through Laura’s jewellery box for their mother’s pearl earrings and matching pearl necklace.

  “Glenda, what happened between Laura and Brian Sweeney? I heard they had a falling out during their senior year of high school,” I ask casually while I iron.

  “I don’t think it was so much them falling out as it was our families falling out,” she explains. “Specifically, I think it was between our mothers, but I don’t know sure. We were never allowed to talk about it.”

  She finds the pearl earrings and necklace and lays them on the bed next to the cardigan. They complement the mother-of-pearl buttons on the sweater beautifully. She disappears into the walk-in closet.

  “Our families were best friends before I was even born,” Glenda says loudly from the closet. “We celebrated holidays and birthdays together and even took vacations together. Then one day, we weren’t talking to them, and they weren’t talking to us. That included Brian and Laura.”

  “Do you remember anything from around that time that might explain what happened?” I press.

  I take the dress from the ironing board, place it on its hanger, and lay it on the bed with the cardigan, shoes, and jewellery. Glenda puts a garment bag on the bed next to the outfit.

  “I do remember one thing,” she says. “You have to remember, I was much younger than Laura, there are ten years between us, so I was only eight when it happened.”

  Glenda begins carefully covering the dress and sweater with the garment bag she found in Laura’s closet.

  “I remember being sick that winter with one sore throat after another. I missed a lot of school and took a lot of antibiotics,” she recalls, laughing.

  “After my third or fourth sore throat and fever, the doctor diagnosed me with tonsillitis and told my mother that my tonsils had to be removed. A few weeks later, they were and my throat infections stopped. I felt better, but I had to go back to the doctor for a post-surgery follow-up appointment.”

  I return the ironing board and iron to where I found them while she speaks.

  “It must have been early April by the time I went for the follow-up appointment. My mother and I were sitting in the doctor’s waiting room when Brian and his mother came in. Brian had been sick with a sore throat and fever, like me. Our mothers were best friends, so they were talking, gossiping, and giggling until the nurse called Mum and I into the exam room.”

  Glenda sits down on the edge of the bed, and I sit in the royal-purple, velvet chair in the corner.

  “I sat on the exam table, and Mum sat in the chair beside the doctor’s desk. He came swooping in with his billowy white lab coat and my file tucked under his arm. He sat at his desk, opened the file, perused it, then said, ‘wrong file,’ and spun his chair around. He looked at me, said, ‘you don’t look like Brian Sweeney,’ patted the top of my head and said, ‘Excuse me ladies while I find the correct file.’ Then he and his billowy lab coat swooped back out of the office.

  “He left the wrong file, what I assume was Brian’s file, open on his desk, and Mum craned her neck to look at it. She flipped the pages, and while she was looking at it, she went pale as a ghost. She went quiet and became sullen. It was like her spark went out.

  “The doctor came back in with the correct file, examined my throat, took my temperature, said the surgery was a success, and declared me healed. Then we left, and as far as I know, that was the last time we ever spoke to them.”

  “Wow, I wonder what she saw in his file,” I say.

  “I don’t know, but when my father came home from work that night, I was allowed to eat my dinner in front of the TV—a big deal in our house—and there was a lot of hushed yelling coming from their bedroom, mostly by my mother. It was still going on when we fell asleep that night. Laura and I could feel the tension between them for a long time after that.”

  Could there have been a note in the file about Laura being pregnant? Would something like that even be noted in the father’s medical file?

  “Glenda, are you aware that there were rumours about Laura and Brian?”

  I’m hesitant to ask her my next question when she’s already dealing with so much, but this could be the key to finding out who killed Laura.

  “Back in the day,” I say slowly and deliberately, “some people suspected Laura and Brian were more than friends and that she may have been pregnant at the end of their senior year. There was a rumour that her quick departure for secretarial school right after graduation was an excuse for her to go away and have the baby.”

  “Really?” she asks, her eyes wide. “I had no idea. I was only eight, those types of rumours would have gone over my head. But I can assure you, my sister wasn’t pregnant. My parents and I went to Montreal that summer to visit her, and she was her normal, slim self. She wore form-fitting dresses and showed us around the secretarial school she was attending.”

  She stares off into the distance for a moment. “We went back at Christmas so we would all be together for the holidays, and she was still thin and not-pregnant. There’s no way she had a baby.” Then she adds, “She and Brian were best friends, there was never any hanky panky between them.”

  Hanky panky, there’s a phrase I haven’t heard in years.

  Laura’s outfit is packed and hanging on the hook on the bedroom door, ready to be delivered to the funeral home.

  Glenda sits on the floor beside the bed, crosses her legs, and pulls a long, shallow plastic storage bin out from under the bed. She takes the lid off the box, and it’s full to the brim with photos. They aren’t organized or filed, just scattered all over the bin. Glenda begins picking through them.

  “I’m making a collage for the funeral and for the reunion-fundraiser,” she explains.

  She pats the purple carpet next to where she’s sitting.

  “Help me choose some photos, Megan.”

  I join her on the floor, and we go through photos of Laura, Glenda, their parents, and a bunch of other people I don’t recognize. Rooting through the photos, Glenda pulls out a small stack of pretty, light purple envelopes that are tied together with a snippet of thin, ivory lace.

  “An envelope exactly like these was on the kitchen table the morning Laura died,” I tell her.

  “Really?” she replies. “I’ve never seen these before.”

  She unties the ribbon and opens the top envelope from the pile. The envelope and the folded sheet of paper inside it look old; the faded and curled edges give them a vintage look. Glenda opens the folded sheet of pale purple paper to reveal a handwritten note.

  My Dearest L,

  I love you. I miss you. I think of you constantly. Everything reminds me of you. My dreams of a life where we are together have become my haven, and dreaming of you is the only thing getting me through the long days and nights without you.


  What I wouldn’t give for us to runaway together, somewhere where we can be alone together forever. Happy and at peace.

  My heart aches for you, and my arms long to hold you.

  Your Darling,

  B xoxoxo

  “So romantic,” I say. “The handwriting is beautiful. It looks like calligraphy.”

  “In our day, handwriting was important, it said a lot about a person. We wrote everything by hand: homework, letters, phone messages. We didn’t have computers, and typewriters were only in offices for secretaries.”

  “May I take a photo of the handwriting?” I ask.

  “Of course,” she says as she lays the letter flat on the floor beside us.

  I pull out my phone and take a photo. She folds the letter, slides it back inside the envelope, gently places the envelope on the floor next to the bin of photos, and carefully opens the next envelope in the pile, revealing another light purple, aged, handwritten love letter.

  We open every envelope and read every letter. Each letter is a flowery, romantic declaration of undying love. All of them are written in the same beautiful calligraphic handwriting, none of them have a date or even a reference to the time period when they were written, and none of them refer to either L or B by name. None of them mention a pregnancy or a baby.

  Glenda carefully returns the last letter to its envelope and adds the envelope to the pile beside the bin, being sure to stack them in the same order we found them. She delicately ties the snippet of lace around them and returns them to the bin of photos.

  “I guess there was something between Laura and Brian, after all,” Glenda acknowledges quietly. “I had no idea. But I’m still certain she was never pregnant.”

  Glenda collects the photos she’s chosen for her collage, and I put the lid on the storage bin and slide it back underneath the bed.

  As we’re putting on our coats and boots, I offer to take the outfit to the funeral home for her, but Glenda says she wants to do it herself.

  “Will your husband be driving up from Ottawa for the funeral?” I ask.

  “I wish he could,” she replies, “but our daughter is pregnant, and he’s on baby watch.”