Plots

by Sky Curtis

  He guffawed, covered his nose with a tissue—not that that would work—and drove me to the porch steps. “Tell me how you got covered in that shit.” Over the tissue, I could see that his blue eyes were laughing.

  “Sparling. He threw a bottle of pheromones at me.”

  Ralph went perfectly still. “Oh. I see. That’s not funny. That’s attempted murder.”

  “He’s going to say that he was showing the pheromones to me and I slipped on the wet grass, grabbed his hand, and made the bottle dump all over me. He told me that’s what he was going to say. And he’s famous. I’m a Home and Garden reporter.” I burst into tears. It was all too much. “It’ll be his word against mine.”

  Ralph patted my hand awkwardly. He didn’t want to touch me and I didn’t blame him. “You’re safe now. It’s okay.” Pat, pat. He got a whiff of his hand and stopped patting. “But I can disprove that.”

  He could? “How?” I stopped crying. “Why are you even here? You’re meant to be in Toronto.” Where my kids were, worrying about the land beside their cottage. I could only do so much. Hopefully, nothing would happen to it.

  “When I left here, I was bothered by that bottle. I decided to take it to the police station in Huntsville. They ran the prints on it right away through their computer system. Sparling’s showed up. Once Kowalchuk saw Sparling’s fingerprints were on the spray bottle, he was convinced to take a serious look at Darlene’s phone and saw the emails. He offered his lab as well. It doesn’t have a backlog like ours. We’ll know the contents of the bottle in a day, max. Anyway, while I was there, your call came in.”

  “I didn’t call.”

  He brushed that aside. “Whatever, it was this address. Anyway, I’m going to get out of the car now. I will watch you as you run up the steps. And, I mean, run.”

  “I can’t run. I hurt my ankle.”

  “Go as fast as you can. Go straight upstairs and take a quick shower. Put your clothes into a plastic bag. When you’re done, bring me the bag. They’re evidence. Don’t take too long. Speed is important. I don’t want Sparling to have time to convince the others of his innocence.”

  After my shower I limped downstairs on my sore ankle. My living room was packed full of people, all, it seemed, expectantly waiting for me. Perhaps Ralph had told them not to talk until I was present. I had hurried, as Ralph had asked, but there were consequences of this. My wet hair was plastered against my skull. One sock was inside out. My buttons didn’t line up. What a way to make an impression. Sparling did an eye-roll and sat back, allowing a tickled expression to settle on his pretty lips. Kowalchuk raised his unibrow, sighed, and got out a pen and paper. I found an empty cushion on the couch beside Cindy and settled onto it. She moved an inch or so away. I guess I still stunk. Lucky, my faithful pet, came up to me, sneezed, and went back to his bed, head hanging low. Would they believe me? Not a chance in hell.

  Ralph had come back in and he was now standing behind his chair at the dining-room table and began what was going to be a very interesting meeting. I was guessing Kowalchuk let him take charge because Ralph had proved him wrong. “Robin here,” he gestured at me, “was outside when she was covered with bear pheromones a little while ago. I am trying to figure out how it all happened.”

  Andrew butt in. Naturally. “My good friend,” he looked at me pointedly so I would know whose side he was on, “Dave Sparling, the lead in many stage shows, kindly offered to bring in some wood after he deposited his shopping from this morning in his car, a new BMW.”

  Andrew was impressed by cars. I wasn’t. Obviously. Sparling drove a sleek BMW i8 and me? I drove an clunky old Sentra.

  “He didn’t know where the woodpile was, so I asked my sister, Robin, a Home and Garden reporter for The Toronto Express, to show him where it was. That’s why she was outside.”

  At least he left out the bit that I had my outdoor shoes on. But he was setting up the Who’s Who parameters.

  Then Cindy came to life. “Robin is an investigative crime journalist for a major Toronto daily, the largest in Canada. She single-handedly solved two mysteries last year due to her investigative abilities. She is now in the process of solving the murder of Darlene Gibson.”

  Kowalchuk harrumphed, “Attacked. She was attacked by a bear.” Until the lab results on the contents of the bottle came in, he was sticking to his story.

  “Murdered,” insisted Cindy.

  “Mauled to death. Misadventure.” It was a sparring match.

  Sparling interrupted, waving away the topic of Darlene’s death as if it were irrelevant. “While I was taking my shopping to my BMW,” here he paused, making a point about how rich and famous he was, “Robin asked me about hunting and my hunting purchases from town. She was very curious about bear hunting in particular and wondered how I got bears to come out of the bush. I told her about bear bait and she wanted to smell it. Before I put the shopping bag in the car, I opened the bottle and the smell must have been so overwhelming that she slipped on the wet grass, grabbed my arm as she went down, and tipped the contents all over herself. That’s how the bear pheromones got on Robin.” He sniffed and looked at his manicured nails.

  I hated him.

  Ralph was standing by his chair, his head tilted, as if trying to visualize the scene. He turned toward Sparling and said, “You opened the bottle beside your car, put it under her nose, she slipped on the wet grass, grabbed your arm, and it dumped on her. Is that the general gist of it?”

  “Yes, you heard me accurately.” Sparling seemed fascinated by his nails.

  Ralph proceeded to nail him. “To be clear, you were standing right beside your car, your BMW, when this happened. And she slipped on the grass?”

  “Yes,” he lifted his head. “I was right beside the car door when she slipped on the grass and fell, grabbing my arm. I was worried she had sprained her ankle.”

  “And she got covered with pheromones.”

  Sparling was getting irritated. He snapped, “Yes.”

  “You were worried that she had twisted her ankle.”

  Sparling now looked a little wary. I could see he was trying to figure out where Ralph was going with this. “Yes,” he nodded. “She’s the younger sister of a very good friend of mine.” He nodded at a preening Andrew. “I didn’t want her to be hurt. But she was hurt, you saw her limping down the stairs, poor thing.” He was Mr. Compassionate. “It all happened so quickly, but I could see from the tracks in the muddy grass beside the car that her foot had slid quite badly from under her.”

  Ralph nodded his agreement. “Good observation.” He turned to me. “Robin did you hurt your foot?”

  I had, but later, when I was running in front of the car. Suddenly, I got it. There was no wet grass beside Sparling’s car. It’s gravel. “Yes, I slipped on the grass.” I smiled sweetly, giving Sparling a sense of security. He was safe. I was collaborating his story. His fucking pack of lies.

  Kowalchuk stopped writing in his notebook and looked up at Sparling. “We will get your statement later, Mr. Sparling.”

  “Of course,” he blustered.

  Cindy had sensed the change in me and gave me a little smile. She knew Ralph was onto something, but still didn’t know what. She hadn’t been there.

  “So, Dave, I can call you Dave, can’t I, being a family friend and all,” he drawled, looking at my brother’s arrogant face. “You were very worried about Robin. She had a twisted ankle and you were especially concerned because she was covered in a substance that potentially could cause her immediate death.”

  “Oh, I know,” said Mr. Know-It-All. “They are very strong, those pheromones.”

  “I see.” Ralph stared hard at him. “I’m curious. Why didn’t you let her, with her twisted ankle, get into your car, which was closer?”

  Mr. Smarty-Pants looked away. A small gotcha.

  Ralph continued, looking at me. “Where did
you slip on the grass, Robin?”

  Here we go. “In front of Mr. Sparling’s BMW.”

  “Not beside his car?”

  “Why would I slip there? It’s gravel. The parking area is gravel, not grass. No, I definitely slipped in front of his car.”

  Kowalchuk looked up at this, the truth of what happened today beginning to dawn on him. It was sliding through small cracks in Sparling’s story. I watched his mind process the details. First of all, why hadn’t he let me into his car, the closer one, if he were concerned about my injury? Secondly, there was no way I could have slipped on grass where he said I had, beside his car. There was no grass there. It was in front of his car. I would have been nowhere near him, so how did I grab his arm and cause the bear pheromones to spill on me? Sparling stopped looking at his nails and was eyeing me with a tiny flicker of fear on his face. Or so I hoped. Cindy elbowed me in the ribs.

  “But Robin, why,” Ralph was doing his best to look flummoxed, “were you running in front of his car? Why not get into the closer car, Mr. Sparling’s, Dave’s? Was his car locked?”

  “It was.” I was just answering his questions, offering nothing more. I was enjoying watching the two fat cats in the room squirm. My brother was finally figuring out that all was not as it seemed. He was picking specks of dust off his jeans, a clue to his level of distress. Sparling’s fixed smile was faltering. And Kowalchuk was sitting forward, listening hard.

  “Where was Mr. Sparling?”

  “Inside his car, on the passenger side. He’d locked the doors. I couldn’t get into the back seat. The doors were locked.”

  “He’d locked the doors leaving you outside his car, far from yours, covered in an agent that would attract bears.” A large gotcha.

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s why you had run to your car.”

  “Yes.” I smiled. We’d got him.

  Kowalchuk had made a decision. It was his territory and his collar to make. He heaved his colossal body out of my father’s reading chair and stood in front of Sparling. “You’re under arrest for the attempted murder of Robin MacFarland.”

  Sparling’s eyes bugged out. “What? She tripped and grabbed my arm. It was an accident. I wasn’t trying to kill her.”

  Kowalchuk snorted. “Tripped? On what? The gravel beside your car? I doubt it. I’m betting you tossed the contents of the bottle at her. In any event, you deliberately put her in mortal danger when you locked your car doors. You might think it’s your word against hers and that you will win because of your fame. But I saw where you were. Inside your car. I saw the locked doors. I saw where she was. Inside her car. Many steps away. It’s your word against mine. The police. You put her in mortal danger. Get a good lawyer. And fast, because I’m shortly going to be charging you for that Darlene Gibson business as well.”

  “Who?” Sparling looked wildly around, the whites of his eyes flashing. “That kid who charged me? That was already thrown out of court.”

  Andrew, the legal authority in the crowd crowed, “He can’t be charged again for that.”

  “Oh, I know. But, this time, it’s a murder charge. When Detective Creston here gave me Darlene’s bottle of insect repellent to check for prints we found Sparling’s. They were on file from the sexual assault charge. And once the lab gets back to us, I’m sure we will find it contained bear pheromones. You’ve used the same murder weapon twice. Bear bait. Darlene sprayed herself with it before your little promenade with her in the woods.”

  “What walk in the woods?”

  “Don’t act the innocent with me. You’re a good actor, but the evidence won’t lie. We have her phone, which tracks all her emails to you. They give us motive and they prove you were planning to see her. This was premeditated. I’ll bet if we ask around town we’ll discover that you’ve been here before. Planning it all out. There’s closed-circuit surveillance footage in the Swiss Chalet where you met her for lunch. I have no doubt it will show you rummaging in her knapsack and doctoring her insect repellent while she’s in the can. Just because this is a small town, don’t mistake us for yokels.”

  I wanted to roll my eyes, but Ralph had made a small gesture with his hand. Let it go.

  As soon as Kowalchuk said “planning,” I remembered that Elisa had told us he’d been at the Town Hall, asking about the properties near ours.

  “He had been planning this.”

  Kowalchuk looked at me as if I were an irritating gnat.

  “Talk to Elisa at the Town Hall. She can confirm this.” He could eat shit. “And,” I added, “I bet Darlene’s computer, work phone, and bear spray are in his house somewhere.”

  Cindy was taking notes on her phone and then pretended to read them while holding her phone up in front of her face, tilting it this way and that. She was secretly taking photographs for the story. The story that I was already composing in my head. Shirley and Doug would love it. Sexual assault. Violence. Murder. Wealth. Wilderness. Wild animals. Famous actor. It was front page all the way.

  Kowalchuk handcuffed Sparling and led him out the kitchen door and down the porch steps. Andrew trotted behind him, promising to help find him the best criminal defense lawyer in Toronto. He was probably worrying about the loss of his income. Niemchuk and Andrechuk followed mutely. Niemchuk’s silence I could understand. He’d been severely traumatized because he’d used Darlene’s insect repellent and nearly died. Andrechuk was quiet, probably because of the tension between her and Cindy. She’d get over it. As they headed to the police cars, I could hear Sparling complaining about the bugs swirling around his head. Andrechuk smacked his ears with a little more vim than she had to.

  “Well, I’d better get going,” Ralph said easily, as if it was all in a day’s work for him, which of course, it was. “Dinner with my kids, you know.”

  Cindy hopped off the couch and plunked herself down on a chair at the dining-room table. “I’m going to make a timeline for the story. It’ll help.”

  “I guess I’ll let you,” I said to her. I put my hand in Ralph’s. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  “No, rest your foot.” His finger brushed my lower lip.

  “It’s fine. Much better.” I loved looking in his eyes. We were standing so close together that the energy between us was palpable.

  “Get a room, you two,” Cindy chortled.

  Ralph grinned. “Okay, we’ll stop. I really have to be off.”

  “You are off.” Cindy held her nose. Hard to tell if she meant it.

  “Robin is the one who’s off.”

  “Come on you two. Stop it. Let’s go, Ralph.” I pulled on his arm.

  He stopped at the kitchen door. “You can’t go out Robin, not until that smell wears off.”

  “You really do care about me, don’t you?”

  His brows knit. “Of course I do. We’ll work out our issues, Robin. I’m up for that.” He bent over and kissed me firmly on the lips and I felt my skin melting into his. Yes, he certainly was up for it. What did they say about the foundation of a good relationship? Sex and money? We’d got the sex part down pat. We’d be fine. He put his lips right by my ear. “I love you, Robin.”

  My stomach clenched. Why did he have to ruin everything? Fuck. I kissed him.

  Andrew was walking toward the porch after seeing Sparling to the police car. Always the perfect host. “Germs,” was all he said as he scurried around us, head down.

  I watched Ralph through the kitchen window as he headed to his Jeep. He must have felt my eyes on his back because he turned and gave me a small nod as he opened the car door. Then he repeatedly opened and shut the door while waving his hand under his nose. I guess I’d left a lingering odour in his car. I stood still, waiting until his car disappeared down the driveway, my thoughts swirling. When I went into the living room, Cindy was still sitting at the table, tapping on her iPad.

  “Where’s Andrew?
” I said.

  “Upstairs packing.”

  “Oh good.” I watched her writing the timeline, my stomach still clenching.

  “What?” she said. She always knew when I was upset.

  “Ralph used the L-word.”

  “Don’t you hate that shmaltzy shit?” She brushed an auburn tendril from her green eyes. She tapped away and looked up again. “Are you going to help me with this timeline or what?”

  I laughed. “Okay, bossy.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “Fuck off.”

  But I did love her. And I loved Ralph, too. Maybe.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank the people at Inanna Publications for all their editorial and promotional support for this book, with a special thanks going to Editor-in-Chief Luciana Ricciutelli and Publicist/Marketing Manager Renée Knapp.

  I am deeply grateful to my Buddhist friends for their constant encouragement, positive outlook, education, and inspiration. I would like to give a special acknowledgement to Silvia Granata who introduced me to the Nichiren Buddhist practice.

  Thanks also to my friends and family who love me with very warm hearts.

  Photo: Phil Brennen

  Sky Curtis divides her time between Northern Ontario, Nova Scotia, and Toronto. She has worked as an editor, author, software designer, magazine writer, scriptwriter, poet, teacher, and children’s writer. Sky has published over a dozen books and is passionate about social justice issues and the environment. Her poetry has appeared in several literary journals, including The Antigonish Review, Canadian Forum, and This Magazine. Her debut novel, and the first in the Robin MacFarland Series, Flush: A Robin MacFarland Mystery, was published in 2017 (Inanna Publications) and was short-listed for the 2018 Arthur Ellis Award for Debut Crime Fiction.