Plots

by Sky Curtis

  “Too late,” I trilled.

  When we got to the main road, I pulled over, put my head back, and howled with laughter. Cindy was not amused. “What are you laughing about? You didn’t ask a single question. We know nothing about that Darlene. Who she was. Why she got attacked. Not even if she was familiar with bears and how to avoid them. I was stuck with Harry and you were upstairs, mollifying that kooky woman. What the fuck were you thinking? I was warming him up. In another minute, I would be able to ask him some real questions.”

  I lifted a bum cheek, reached into my back pocket, and pulled out the phone. With a flourish I presented it to Cindy. “Ta-dah!”

  18.

  “WHOA. YOU FOUND HER phone? Amazing! Why didn’t the police find it? Surely, they searched her room when she went missing. Where was it?” Cindy took the phone from me and turned it over in her hand. “An iPhone 6. Where exactly did you find this?” She fixed her green eyes on my face.

  “It was up the bear’s ass.” I laughed and laughed. It was hysterical. Killed by a bear. And then this.

  Cindy stared at me. Her head was tilted and puzzlement scooted around her eyes. She didn’t find this funny. “What? I don’t understand. Did they stuff the bear that killed her? They were certainly eccentric. Something is really off-kilter about them. They seem capable of anything. Was there really a stuffed bear upstairs? Sort of like a testimony or something? An altar? And then you put your hand up its butt? Was the bear all stiff?” She made a face at the image. “But wait a sec. I thought the bear was alive and well and attacked Niemchuk.”

  “Not that bear. It was a stuffed bear, for sure, but it was Spooky.” I was having so much fun, laughing away, the adrenalin from my theft bubbling out.

  “I know her parents were spooky, but spooky enough to stuff a bear? Were there crosses and candles around it? Was it like a religious sacrifice? No wonder you were gone so long. How bizarre is that? A stuffed bear. How did they get it upstairs? I knew those people were strange.”

  Okay, enough was enough. Time to come clean. I swallowed my roars and said, “Darlene had a stuffed teddy bear. She named it Spooky. It was the kind of bear that had a pouch in its seat for hidden objects. Remember those? I hid cigarettes in mine.”

  “Oh-h-h. It was a stuffed toy bear named Spooky. I get it.” Cindy nodded with dawning comprehension. “And the phone was up its ass?” She started to laugh. “Like where toys are meant to stuffed? It’s not an eye phone. It’s a bum phone. A bum phone 6.”

  I grabbed it back from her. “Here, let me see it. Maybe it turns on. I held down the two buttons to turn the phone on, but the screen remained dark. It needed a charger. If we had a phone that matched this one, we could power it up. We needed an iPhone 6, according to Cindy. “We need a charger. What kind of phone do you have?”

  “I recently got an iPhone X Plus. Mine’s too new, won’t work.”

  I took out my phone from my purse and compared the two. “Looks like I have the right one.” I held it out to her for confirmation. I wasn’t really into technology.

  Cindy glanced at my phone for less than a second. “Yup, yours is an iPhone 6. So, do you have a charger?”

  I slid the phone back into the side pocket of my purse. “Duh. Of course I do. I know a phone needs to be charged every day. It’s at the cottage.”

  “You charge your phone once a day?”

  I was confused. “Yes. Why not? Is that too much? Have I harmed my phone by overcharging it?”

  “I can’t believe it. Most people have to charge their phones at least twice a day. Don’t you ever use yours?” She was looking down her nose at me.

  Shit. I was tired of her judgment. So what if I was a techno dud? I snapped the key in the ignition on and stormed away, kicking up loose gravel from the shoulder of the road. I wasn’t going to defend myself, especially after my great find. I snipped, “Let’s get this baby charged up.”

  We drove along in silence for a few minutes. The air was a little thick with tension. Cindy had figured out she had crossed a line. She warily said, “I think it’s best that we don’t tell the police we have the phone. Not right away. Let’s see what’s on it.”

  “I agree.”

  We drove along in silence for another few minutes.

  “You agree?”

  I looked at her.

  “Watch where you’re driving.”

  “I have eyes out the back of my head. Ask my kids.” I kept my eyes on her.

  “You agree?” she asked again, not breaking the stare.

  “I know we’re withholding evidence. And I know my boyfriend is a cop. And I know the right thing to do is to hand it in. But I also know something very odd is going on here. And I want to know what it is. So,” I took a deep breath, “I agree. Let’s go home and see what’s on the phone.”

  “You’ll make a crime reporter yet.” Cindy smiled. “And watch where you’re going.”

  I turned my head and focused on the road. “What if the phone is locked?”

  “Then we’re shit out of luck.”

  “Shit out of lock.”

  She didn’t laugh at my joke. “But I’m pretty good at guessing passwords. I had kids, too.”

  “I never read my kids’ phones.” I was a little shocked that she did this.

  “I didn’t say I read their phones, just that I could guess passwords.”

  “You’re such a good liar, Cindy.”

  “I didn’t lie.” She beamed.

  I left it alone. Besides, I was the one who had stolen the evidence. This, I knew, was a criminal act. God forbid that I should accuse her of something as trivial as lying. “Maybe she didn’t lock it.”

  Neither of us believed that. Everyone locked their phones.

  “Maybe.” She looked out the window as we made our way back to my cottage. We were okay.

  As we drove down the long narrow lane to Pair o’ Dice, I wracked my brain for passwords that Darlene might have used. I didn’t know her at all, not even her birthdate or the name of her boyfriend. Well, maybe Sparling was an option. Or perhaps the name of her cottage. What was it again? Right. Moot Point. Cindy was working her phone. Maybe she was looking up the prison sentence for stealing evidence or obstructing justice.

  When we arrived, I carried the phone into the cottage, holding it out in front of me as if it were the crown jewels and putting it down carefully on the dining-room table. Lucky jumped around and then followed me, tail wagging, up to my bedroom where I had left my phone charger. “What are you? My little shadow?” I crooned to him. He leapt onto the bed and tossed the pillows into the air with his nose. His idea of play. I took a second to pat him to calm myself down. What on earth was I doing? Me? Stealing evidence? In a potential murder investigation? I had never done anything like that before. Lucky looked at me with his big brown eyes. To him, I could do no wrong.

  Downstairs, I could hear Cindy opening and shutting drawers. What on earth was she looking for?

  I grabbed the charger and headed downstairs, Lucky following my footsteps. “What are you looking for? Redemption?”

  “Haha. No, paper. I want to make a list of possible passwords. I think we’re allowed three tries before the phone shuts down. Or maybe that’s only for a bank password. Whatever. I want to make a list.”

  “There’s paper in the sideboard. Open the centre door, you’ll find it. Put ‘Sparling’ and ‘Moot Point’ on the list.”

  “Good ideas. You’re not just a pretty face.” She bent over and opened the sideboard door and pulled out a huge roll of brown paper. “Geezus. I only needed a scrap. Like the back of an envelope or something. What the fuck do you use this for? Roofing the Taj Mahal?”

  “Kids. They go through paper. It’s been there for years.”

  Cindy thumped the roll on the dining-room table and tore off a teensy-weensy corner. She was making a point. Then
she rolled it all back up and lugged it to the sideboard, grunting melodramatically, and hoisted it in with two hands.

  “And you could try her parents’ names. ‘Sandraandharry.’ All one word.”

  “Good thinking, Robin. Plug the damn thing in.”

  “There’s an outlet behind the sideboard. I’ll get an extension cord so we can look at the phone together at the table.” I left Cindy writing busily at the dining-room table, her red hair framing her face as she bent over the miniscule scrap of paper, and went to the kitchen to look for the extension cord.

  Suddenly, the screen door flung open and Ralph entered, brushing bits of wood bark off his chest. What the hell was he doing here? He was supposed to be in town, schmoozing with the local cops. We were caught, red-handed. I was rooting around in a kitchen drawer for a cord for stolen evidence. Shit. “What are you doing home? I thought you were going to the station?” I sounded shrill, even to my ears. I watched as his cop radar turned on.

  “And what are you looking for? I thought you’d gone to Darlene’s parents.”

  An impasse. As I coolly stood up from the open kitchen drawer, I tossed a hand in the air, hoping it looked casual as it floated by me, somewhat detached from my arm. My ears began to hiss. The snake was back. “Oh, we went all right, but they are very unusual. Creepy. I gave her a lasagna and we beat it of there. Hard to take, you know how it is.” I could tell he knew something was up.

  “I don’t know how it is. Tell me.” He leaned against the fridge and looked straight into my eyes. I knew he was trying hard not to look amused.

  Oh God, the phone was in the next room. I could see the cord in the drawer. Shit. Deflect. I decided on a frontal attack. “Why didn’t you go to the station?”

  Ralph picked some bark off his sweater and put it carefully in front of him on the counter. He then picked off two more pieces and started building a mound. “When I got to the station, I called Kowalchuk on his cell. He was out at a site, so we made a plan to get together for lunch. I came back to do some outside chores.” He folded his hands in front of himself like a chairman of the board. Like a dog with a bone, he didn’t give up. “What’s going on? What are you trying to find? You seem jangled.”

  Could he hear that rattlesnake shaking its tail, too? “Oh, nothing. I’m a bit discombobulated because of that visit. They are one doozy of a couple.”

  “How do you mean?”

  He was looking at me earnestly. I was fooling him. Maybe. I tried not to think of the phone on the dining-room table, one room away, or the cord in the drawer, in case he had ESP. I could do this. But I needed a plan. I needed him to think I was hiding something else from him, something I was working on for a story. That way I could veer him away from discovering the truth. When did I become so devious? I needed a foolproof theory. He was the fool and I was the proof. Wait. Did I get that right? Dyslexia strikes again. I was the fool and he was the proof? No, that wasn’t right either. Whatever. Maybe I could act as though I was worried about him discovering that I was compiling evidence to support an alternative theory that a bear didn’t kill Darlene, that her body was dumped and a bear ate her carcass. Dumped by her parents. Or someone else. Right. Perfect.

  “Well, they didn’t look at each other. They didn’t talk to each other. They didn’t touch each other. Plus, they had this thing going on where they would be full of grief one second and then be normal the next. I’m wondering about them as, well, sort of violent people.”

  “They were sort of normal?”

  “Well, not normal normal, angry normal. Bitter or something.”

  Ralph cocked his head. He was the expert when it came to grieving parents. “Everyone grieves in their own way. People react differently to bad news.” So, he wasn’t buying my story. Not yet. But I had more ammunition.

  “I know that, Ralph, believe me. Remember, my husband was killed by a drunk driver.” I couldn’t believe I was playing that card. It worked. He fiddled with a hangnail, thinking. I hoped my plan was working. This had to be his idea.

  “They do sound pretty off. Do you really think that maybe they killed her?”

  Now to solidify the idea. Reverse psychology. “No, not really. It was pretty obvious that a bear did. Isn’t it?”

  He continued to think. He was pretty cute with his furrowed brow. But I wasn’t too happy. I didn’t like that I could pull the wool over his eyes so easily. He said, “Well, I don’t know about that. Maybe they killed her and put her in the woods, making it look like a bear killed her.”

  And just like that, he discovered what he thought I was trying to hide. But I wanted to cement the concept.

  “Really? Would a bear eat a dead person?” I asked innocently.

  Cindy walked into the kitchen, flourishing her tiny scrap of paper.

  “Where’s the cord? I have the pass…” She saw Ralph, “the pasta recipe.” She tucked it into her back pocket. “Hi Ralph. You back already from the station?”

  “Kowalchuk wasn’t in. We’re going out for lunch instead. I was doing some chores. Wood. Got it all over me.” He indicated the small pile of woodchips built into a pyramid in front of him. “What did you need a cord for? Anything I can help with?”

  Cindy smiled at him, sweetly, “Robin and I were going to look at some pictures on my phone, so I needed an extension cord. My battery is almost dead, and I wanted to download some images and videos.”

  God, that girl could lie. I had to admire it.

  “Oh, what of?”

  Once a cop, always a cop. This was an interview.

  She gazed at him, eyes wide. “My parents and I took a trip to Italy in March and Robin wanted to see the photos. Like I said, my phone’s almost dead, so rather than wait for it to charge, we were going to look at them together at the dining-room table while it was plugged in.”

  “You were in Italy? Robin said you were working hard on a gang story.” He had such a suspicious mind.

  Cindy was unfazed and said deliberately, “Italy. You know, Italy. Mob? Connection?”

  She was good. A complete lie, from beginning to end. It wasn’t her phone we were going to look at. She had no parents. They were both dead. She hated travelling to foreign countries. And she told all these lies absolutely convincingly. He completely believed her.

  Ralph tilted his lanky body off the fridge and scraped the pyramid of woodchips into the palm of his hand. “Okay, I’m off. I’m going to hang around with Kowalchuk this afternoon. He’s taking me to that Greek restaurant in town for lunch.”

  Cindy said, “Fantastic. You’ll have a great time. Report back what you find out.”

  He looked at her, his mouth a jagged line and an eyebrow raised.

  “Off the record, of course.” Cindy gave him that sweet smile again.

  Oh, how that girl lied.

  “Sure, Cindy.”

  “No, I mean it. We know she was killed by a bear. We need to know when she died and you know, the circumstances. Why she was in the woods, that sort of thing.”

  Ralph said, “I don’t know she was killed by a bear. Maybe she was murdered and her body dumped in the forest for some animals to chew up the evidence.”

  I winced at the word “evidence.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Who thought that one up?” I tried to give her a warning glance. “Who would want to kill her? I interviewed her for the Sparling case and she was such a sweet kid. I can’t imagine someone killing her. It was an accident.”

  “Robin says her parents were weird. That they had unusual reactions to her death.”

  Cindy shook her curls. “Nope. Everyone reacts differently to hearing about the death of a loved one”

  “That’s what I said to Robin.”

  Cindy finally noticed that I was sending her the hairy eyeball. She figured out that I had been trying to distract Ralph from the phone on the dining-room table with
a different theory. She changed her dance with lightning speed. “I mean, yes, they were edgy, and there was something odd going on, for sure. Who knows? Maybe she was killed and then dumped. But by them?” She pretended to think. “Well, maybe.”

  “I’ll run the idea by Kowalchuk. Who knows what he’ll make of the idea that Darlene was already dead and left in the forest for the animals to consume. We’ll know more after the complete coroner’s report. Pasta for dinner, did you say?”

  I looked at him blankly. “Pasta?”

  Cindy patted her back pocket. “Yup, I got the recipe. Off my phone.”

  Oh, right. The password pasta.

  Ralph frowned. “I thought your phone was dead.”

  He really was being a pain in the ass. I said, “Dying. It was dying. Not enough power to download large files. I’m looking for a cord so she can download videos while we look at the photos. That takes a lot of power.” Did it? I was guessing here. I knew nothing about phones. This lying business was tricky.

  “Oh, I see. So, I won’t order pasta at lunch. Maybe liver. Rare. I’ll chew on it while asking Kowalchuk about my ‘dumped in the forest eaten by bloodthirsty animals’ theory.”

  I punched him in the arm. “You’re a sicko.”

  “Everyone deals with death in their own way.”

  With that, he walked out of the kitchen, laughing. Cindy and I didn’t say a word until we heard his car start. I slumped over the open kitchen drawer and pulled out the damn extension cord. “Phew. That was a close one.”

  “Pull yourself together. Let’s plug that phone in and see what we got.”

  19.

  EASIER SAID THAN DONE. Plugging this sucker in was going to be a trial. Pair o’ Dice was a century-old cottage and the living room only had two sockets. One was behind the sideboard and another was behind the couch. The sideboard outlet would be somewhat easier to get to than the couch one. The wooden buffet was full of stuff and too heavy to move. I groaned while stretching over it and felt the air being pushed out of my lungs as my torso got squashed against the wood. I finally managed to reach halfway down the back of the piece of furniture to touch the electrical socket with my fingertips.