The living room opens out from the hallway. Decorative sayings in white gleam from the dark, aubergine-colored walls: “Life is too short to be anything but happy.” I ask myself what’s she doing now with these pearls of wisdom. “Live in the moment and know there’s a reason for everything.” The biggest motto is mounted over the sofa: “We’re all one family together.”
That’s where I’m standing as Melissa comes in.
She has tied up her wet hair in a knot. Exactly the way I wear mine. She comes up beside me and remarks bitterly: “He didn’t want a family, at least not with me.”
I look at her in surprise. She drops into a black leather armchair—dark leather is the height of fashion in Port Brendan—and stares out the window through its crosshairs.
“I so wanted a baby with him, but he was against it. All he was interested in was his career and the restaurant and his own TV cooking show. He said he didn’t have the time for kids.”
I sit down facing Melissa. She’s not wearing makeup; her face is pale and swollen, her blue eyes are red-rimmed. With her hair gathered up, she looks younger. She’s wearing comfortable, gray sweatpants and a T-shirt with the phrase Life’s a Beach on it. Her house is overheated—like all houses in Port Brendan—which lets the locals wear short-sleeved T-shirts in winter. I’m sweating and take off my jacket. Even in the middle of summer in Vancouver I don’t sweat as much as in the houses here. I hate feeling beads of perspiration under my clothing. To say nothing of a damp face.
“The Inuit love children,” she goes on. “Children are the most important thing for them—but Kris . . . ” She shrugs.
It occurs to me that she could have had children with Gerald Hynes. Kris was her second chance, the second lost opportunity.
“How old are you, Melissa?”
“Twenty-eight. Kris is a year younger than me.”
She talks about him in the present tense, as if he were still alive.
“Women here used to marry at fifteen and have babies. That was common.”
Child brides, I think to myself.
“When was ‘used to’?”
“My mother had her first at seventeen. That was normal back then.”
“And how many after that?”
“Six. The last when she was twenty-eight.”
Which explains Melissa’s panic at the last minute.
I tell her that I also have six siblings. My mother married at twenty-one when she was pregnant with my oldest sister. Mom sometimes asks if I don’t want to have a baby soon. But I love my work. My children are the children in the world that I want to protect. Martin, my ex-husband (how awful that word sounds!), was happy without offspring. Maybe that’s changed now that he and I are divorced.
I sense Melissa wants to confide in me, so I zero in on this opening before it can close up again.
“Was anybody hostile toward Kris?”
She shakes her head slowly.
“Some people are certainly jealous. If somebody like Kris is successful, then not everybody wishes him well. But that’s not a reason . . . a reason to kill somebody . . . ” Her voice breaks.
“Did he ever tell you about any conflicts he had with people?”
She thinks about it, her swollen eyelids hanging heavily over her eyes.
“A childhood friend of his is a drug addict. Kris wanted to give him a chance, a job in the restaurant as a dishwasher. I told him immediately: no way. But he didn’t listen to me. Of course things didn’t go well. Kris had to let him go. The guy was on his case for a while about that.”
I ask for the man’s name and location and write them down. I keep at it, asking for possible enemies and motives, but Melissa can’t come up with anything concrete. Or doesn’t want to. We need to take a closer look at her family.
I pursue another lead in a surprise attack.
“Why did you meet Gerald Hynes at Dr. Perrell’s place Thursday afternoon?”
She sinks farther back in her chair, as if seeking protection.
“I wanted to know if he did anything to our dog.”
“That’s not how he described it.” A bit of a bluff.
Her fingers dig into the leather.
“What did he tell you?”
“You can help us find out who did it as fast as we possibly can, Melissa. We need your cooperation. Please help us.”
I watch her face working. Then comes the breakthrough.
“I went to Gerald because I was desperate. I wanted to pour out my heart to somebody. My mother . . . if I tell my mother, the whole family will know about it afterward. And one of my girlfriends—people don’t have to know everything.”
I wait.
And the confession comes.
“Shannon Wilkey—Kris hoped that she would make him known in America. The two spent so much time together, supposedly talking about fundraising. That’s why Kris and I fought on Wednesday. It was . . . bad . . . I shouldn’t have said certain things. He didn’t come home that night. I first thought he’d spent the night somewhere else.” She pressed her lips together.
Before the pain can overwhelm her again, I quickly interject: “What did you say to him that you regret saying now?”
She hesitates.
Just don’t drop this thread.
“Melissa, everything’s important. I don’t judge you for these things. Anything can happen in a fight that you might wish hadn’t afterward.”
She thinks for a bit, then spits it out. “I threatened Kris and said I’d kill Arrow if he met up with Shannon one more time. But I didn’t do anything to the dog.”
Now she bursts into tears.
I feel pity for her, I admit. This pain of the heart, this abysmal despair—I experienced it. The terrible knowing that you cannot undo something. But it mustn’t cloud my judgement.
Melissa stands up to go get a box of tissues.
When her sobs recede, I move ahead, gently: “Did Kris believe you, that you’d do something to the dog?”
“I don’t know,” she says in a completely different voice. “He gave me the dog as a present, as a substitute for a child. To divert me. But I don’t want a dog. Arrow was his dog anyway. Arrow followed him around everywhere.”
Did the killer want to get rid of the dog first, then Bakie?
“The dog was poisoned. Can you think of anyone who might have done it?”
I watch her closely. She gives me a blank stare.
“Many people would get worked up when Arrow did his business in their garden. Kris always let him run around loose. He didn’t want to tie Arrow up.”
“You told us that Gerald Hynes might have had something to do with it.”
“Yes, I said that because he acted with you as if he didn’t know the dog.”
“So you don’t suspect him?”
“No, Gerald loves dogs.”
He didn’t show it when he was out there on the ice. And denied knowing the dog afterward. I recalled Fred’s words: He’s protecting somebody.
I repeat the question: “So why did you go see him?”
“I wanted to find out what he knew about Shannon. He built her house. There are rumors that he . . . that he sometimes goes to see her and stays for a rather long time, if you get my meaning.”
I play dumb.
“No, I don’t quite understand.”
“I thought Gerald would be interested in knowing that Shannon was interested in Kris.”
“You thought Gerald was having an affair with Shannon and would see Kris as a potential rival and confront him?”
Instead of agreeing, she makes a face that speaks volumes. Apparently I’ve hit the bull’s eye. It’s getting better and better.
“You know, of course, that Shannon’s married,” I say.
Melissa breathes out noisily in disgust.
“Well, that woman is here all by herself, for months on end. So what kind of a marriage is that?”
Not the traditional one that Melissa hoped for with Kris, that’s for sure. The one she never had. It’
s not surprising that many of the locals see Shannon as a suspect. A married woman living alone for months at a time is asking for all sorts of gossip. All the more if she’s attractive.
“Many women, especially artists, need solitude in order to be creative,” I add.
“But they’re just looking for a man!” Melissa exclaims, now more angry than sorrowful. “And that other one, Ann Smith—what’s she really doing here? She walks around for miles, at night, too. People often see her with a headlamp, far away from her home. Why does she slink around at night?”
“Why do you think she does?”
“She’s meeting a guy somewhere and doesn’t want anybody to see her car.”
“Meeting who?”
“No idea. But I can tell you one thing: That’s the reason Ann’s living here.”
She’s not crying anymore. It’s time to ask her about the laptop.
“Thank you very much for your trust, Melissa,” I say warily. “Your information is very valuable for me. You can be sure that we’re doing everything we can to solve your fiancé’s murder. We’re happy for any information that can bring us closer to that goal. That’s why that laptop can be very useful for us.”
To my astonishment, she nods and stands up.
“I’ll go get it.”
So I take the longed-for trophy without the feared resistance. She gives me the passwords for Bakie’s Hotmail account and social media: Arrow1, Arrow2 and so on. Bakie didn’t set one for the computer itself. I can’t fathom how casually many people treat computer security. I suspect Bakie didn’t know that Melissa knew his passwords. Maybe she deleted files last night, but it shouldn’t be a problem for our police techies to retrieve them.
The front door opens. Steps in the hallway. A young man is suddenly standing in the room. Melissa gets to her feet and throws herself into his arms; he puts them around her protectively. She starts sobbing loudly again, and the young man looks at me in reproach.
“I’m Sergeant Calista Gates of the RCMP,” I say.
Melissa frees herself from their embrace.
“This is my brother, Dennis.”
“Are you finished?” her brother asks. “Melissa needs peace and quiet.”
His muscles are so monstrous that they look like they’ve been blown up with an air pump.
“Of course, I fully understand,” I mutter, putting on my gloves and quickly slipping the laptop into my rucksack. Her brother casts a suspicious eye on me. Before he realizes whose laptop it is, I’m out the door.
25
My car is unlocked. Not good. I mustn’t be careless like that. Is my brain deserting me, maybe? As it did with my open basement door? I turn up the heat in the cold car and take a quick look at my messages. A text catches my eye:
We’re still desperately looking for people who can host some athletes in the Winter Games. My husband said you’d offered to put somebody up. Is the offer still on? Two young athletes from Happy Valley-Goose Bay need a room for one week.
Georgina Closs has tracked me down. Can I refuse my boss’s wife anything? Shortly after I arrived, Closs asked everybody in the office if anyone could free up a room for one or more of the participants in the games. This was in keeping with the idea that if we help the community, people will help the police.
I’ve had just one brief conversation with Georgina. In the supermarket. Although it was our first meeting, she knew at once who I was. Maybe she saw my picture when the local paper featured the new policewoman. Two little blond braids peeked out from her pointed cap, which suited her snub-nosed, child’s face. The corners of her mouth turned far upward when she smiled, which she did almost continuously. She was awfully nice to me, almost affectionate. I hadn’t pictured Closs’s wife like that. She was congenial but inscrutable.
Georgina knew about my guest room with a bathroom in my basement. She’d helped find the house when it was decided that the RCMP in Port Brendan needed reinforcements. She’s a nurse at the clinic and knows every Tom, Dick, and Harry in town. I’m not enthusiastic about the thought of having strangers as houseguests for a week. Of course I don’t let on a word of this to Georgina.
Offer still stands. Have room for two, I text her back.
I let my smartphone sink down in my lap. A man and a woman have been murdered, but life goes on. Everybody seems busy with the Winter Games.
The heat’s on, and the car’s warming up. I enter Fred’s number. He’s in a hurry.
“Where’s the fire?”
“I’ve got Bakie’s laptop. Have you seen Hynes?” I ask.
“No, I’m on the highway. A pickup hit a moose. Closs sent me.”
What a weird way of doing things. We’ve got two murders to investigate, but our men are going after traffic accidents.
“Good heavens! Anybody hurt?”
My gaze falls on the passenger seat. Some dirt on it. Has it been here long? I didn’t notice it this morning. Was somebody in my car when I was questioning Melissa? I even locked my bedroom door last night. Hope it isn’t dog shit.
“The moose is dead, but the driver was injured. She’s already in the clinic.”
My thoughts flash to Perrell. Should I tell Fred what Dulcie Stout came out with yesterday? Dr. Carl hurts the dog. I ought to talk to the doctor about it, but I’ve got other plans right now. I tell him I’d like to speak with Hynes again. Melissa told me she poisoned his mind against Kris Bakie.
“Yes, go see him. I’ll call later,” Fred says.
I go to Tim Hortons first—I want a doughnut and coffee. As I’m standing in line at the counter, an elderly lady in a pink down jacket speaks to me.
“Is it true that somebody in Port Brendan is poisoning dogs? I have a dachshund. I keep him inside, but sometimes he just runs out the door at a passer-by. He comes back after a half hour or so. I don’t want anything to happen to him.”
She looks at me expectantly. Completely worried about her dog.
Isn’t she worried about Kris Bakie’s murder?
“Who told you that?” I respond. I gave Melissa the information just half an hour ago, and the whole village already knows.
“I heard it in the clinic. My niece works there.”
In the clinic. Interesting. The lady doesn’t give me any time to think; she wants reassurance. And I give it to her; I mustn’t make the customers in Tim Hortons nervous. Besides, I assume the poisoning was targeted. The bright blue garbage bag on the ice isn’t a coincidence.
I have two cups of coffee in my hands as I go into Dr. Perrell’s house. A grand building with a balustrade and a two-car garage. Not many of these in Port Brendan. Music comes from the kitchen. Classical. My guess is Mozart. I wouldn’t have expected that from Hynes. He’s in a T-shirt and jeans, standing at the kitchen unit and sticking a backsplash of tiles onto the wall. With his arm muscles and tight rear end, he could pass for one of the workmen in the popular renovation series on TV. He’s alone. As he was during those two hours on the day of the murder, for which he has no witnesses.
He can’t hear me on account of the loud music, but he notices me when I move around. A few steps and he’s at the radio, turning the music off.
“You really listen to Mozart?” I ask.
“No, Franz Joseph Haydn.”
He smirks because I can’t hide my amazement.
“Why shouldn’t I like classical music? Because I’m a contractor in Labrador? You probably think everybody around here lives under a rock. Or in igloos.”
Something clatters onto the floor next to him. A box cutter with a sharp blade. He picks it up.
“I played the violin when I was a kid. My mother was a teacher in Port Brendan.”
I remove my jacket. Icy cold and boiling heat live cheek by jowl in Labrador. I hand him the second coffee cup without a word. He touches my fingers as he takes it. He has the upper hand in this situation, and he’s enjoying it. He doesn’t thank me. It occurs to me that people here never thank you for a nice gesture. Maybe it’s because of the fac
t that it’s a given that people will help one another.
“Do you like the new kitchen?”
He looks around with pride.
“I designed and built the cupboards myself. Dr. Perrell more or less accepted my suggestions.”
Hynes astounds me once more. The kitchen is precisely to my taste. Modern and timeless at the same time, in classic blue-gray and white with black accents; the floor is a light color and has a Scandinavian effect. Dr. Perrell must be happy with it. I compliment Hynes and ask where we can sit down. He takes me to the living room, which is less impressive: the same old leather seating arrangement combined with black furniture. Hynes plops into a reclining chair.
“I’ve been expecting you. You were at Melissa’s this morning.”
It annoys me that he knows.
“Did Melissa call you?”
“No, Dr. Perrell mentioned it when he took a quick peek in earlier. Melissa surely told you that she came to see me.”
I don’t disclose to him that it was the foreman who told Fred. I don’t want the guy to have any problems with Hynes.
“I’d rather have had the information from you. You must be more open with us, Mister Hynes.”
“Gerald, to you, Constable Gates.” He drinks his coffee as if it were beer. “I would certainly have told you, but your partner, van Heisen, ended our conversation.”
“Are you and Shannon Wilkey together?”
He looks almost scandalized.
“What gives you that idea?”
“Melissa thought you might be.”
“Why is this important?” He gets up, furious.
That’s the moment I feel it. The tingling in my hands and feet. The tightness in my stomach. Something climbs up inside me, like a thick snake. Dammit. I did take my pill this morning. Or maybe I didn’t?
“Can I have a glass of water?” I exclaim, fumbling around in my jacket pocket. Grab the little bottle. Can’t open because of the child-proofing; my head’s already swimming.
Gerald kneels down in front of me and hands me some water, but I can’t hold the glass.
“Open this, please.”
I press the pill bottle into his hand. My voice is already very weak. I feel him laying the pill on my tongue and giving me some water.
CRIES FROM THE COLD: A bone-chilling mystery thriller. (Detective Calista Gates 1) Page 16