Raven Lake

by Rosemary McCracken

  “It wasn’t Bruce,” Jamie said. “You said last night that he was with a photographer. No one would shoot him in front of a witness. With all that banging and popping going on, the man could have been shot anytime during the show.”

  I was sure it was Bruce. “He was on his own when I last saw him. He’d told the photographer to take some pictures.”

  “Does he have a cell or a phone at his cabin?” Jamie asked.

  “I don’t think his landline is connected yet.” I rummaged in my handbag and pulled out a notebook. “Here’s his cell number.”

  “I’ll check it out.” Laura took the notebook and went into the house.

  I was right behind her. I poured myself a coffee in the kitchen and listened as she left a voice mail message.

  “He’s not answering his cell,” she said when she got off the phone, “and there’s no listing for him on Raven Lake. I called The Times, but no one’s there. Don’t newspapers always have reporters around to cover the news?”

  “The Times is a weekly,” I told her. “The next issue won’t be out for five days.”

  “Well, I left a message, telling him to call us.”

  Lunch was a quiet meal. We were all thinking about what had happened the night before. The phone rang as we were clearing the table. We looked at one another.

  “I’ll get it.” Laura ran into the house.

  “For you, Jamie,” she called.

  Jamie joined us on the porch a few minutes later. “Mom’s in the hospital. She had terrible abdominal pains during the night—she’s had gallstones before—and she took a taxi to the hospital. The staff there sent her to Peterborough.” Her shoulders slumped.

  Tracy reached for her hand. “I take it that Peterborough has a larger hospital than Braeloch.”

  Jamie nodded, and gave her a weak smile. “She’s going for tests now. I thought we could drive down to Peterborough.”

  “I’ll get a bus to Toronto from there,” Tracy said. “You should stay with your mother.”

  “They may have the test results when you get to the hospital,” I said.

  I went for a paddle after Tracy and Jamie had driven off. It was another quiet afternoon on the lake, so I ventured away from the shoreline. My arms were soon working up a steady rhythm with the paddle, but my mind was speeding along in another direction.

  Bruce wasn’t at home, he wasn’t at the newspaper. I tried to focus on the rhythm of the paddle dipping into the water.

  I remembered that Crystal was a regular at storage auctions. She would have known that when Frank hadn’t paid his rent on the locker, the storage company would have sent reminders to his home. And, later, a notice about the contents being put up for auction. She must have known that his mother would have seen those notices and cleared out the locker. So why did she bid on it?

  And what about Ella, who had claimed she hadn’t received an auction notice. Why had she lied to me?

  I entered the bay where Nate and Zoe’s cottage was located and passed the Norris Cassidy vacation property. A new family was in residence. A woman was sunbathing on the dock, and two kids were in the paddleboat.

  I paddled over to the creek that links Black Bear to the next lake. The kayak floated down the creek and came out on the other lake. I couldn’t remember its name.

  I had travelled this route on a snowmobile four months earlier. A network of creeks links Black Bear to four other lakes, and the last lake in the chain is Serenity Lake where Braeloch is located. Turning the kayak around, I promised myself that I would explore the chain of lakes that summer. Then I paddled back up the creek and over to our cottage.

  Bruce was on my mind the whole time.

  “Feel like going for a drive?” I asked Laura, who was reading on the porch.

  “Where to?”

  “Over to Raven Lake.”

  “You’re really worried about Bruce.”

  “I guess I am.”

  “Let’s go.”

  The cabin looked exactly as it had that morning. The door was locked, and Bruce’s Chevy wasn’t in the driveway.

  “He may be visiting friends,” Laura said as we stood at the top of the stairs looking down at the beach.

  “No. He moved in yesterday morning, and he worked last night. He wanted to settle in here today.”

  “He may be with the police,” Laura said. “They probably think he had something to do with the shooting.”

  She’d put her finger on the other worry I’d been pushing to the back of my mind.

  We’d just opened cottage door when the telephone rang. It was Jamie, calling to tell us that her mother was scheduled for laparoscopic surgery the next morning to remove her gallbladder. She sounded tense and worried.

  “Your mom will recover faster after a laparoscopy than with open surgery,” I told her.

  “That’s what the doctor said. Tracy took a bus to Toronto, and I have her car. I’ll drive Mom to Braeloch when she’s discharged, which may be Tuesday morning. I’ll stay with her for a week.”

  “Jamie will be in Braeloch for a week,” Laura cried when I relayed what she had said.

  “She’ll be helping her mother.”

  “I’ll give them a hand.”

  “Tommy will back tomorrow,” I reminded her. “He won’t want to be indoors when he could be out on the lake. The rowboat I rented will be delivered around ten in the morning.”

  “We’ll go out on the boat tomorrow,” Laura said. “But Tommy may want to go into Braeloch on Tuesday.”

  She was getting bored with her vacation.

  Mara Nowak was in her element on The Highlands Tonight that evening. More big news in the Glencoe Highlands.

  “Wilfrid Mathers, a lifetime resident of the Highlands, was found dead at the Canada Day fireworks show last night,” she said looking solemnly into the camera. “Police are calling his death a homicide.

  “An employee at The Highland Times for sixteen years, Mathers was taking photos at the fairgrounds for the newspaper. His body was discovered at the edge of the grounds at approximately 10:15 p.m., and police questioned everyone who was there until the early hours of this morning. The investigation continues, and Bruce Stohl, The Times’ publisher, is assisting the police with their inquiries.”

  Relief washed over me. Bruce was alive.

  But he was with the police, which wasn’t good.

  Mara vanished from the screen. She was replaced by a close-up of Wilf’s smiling face, with the years of his birth and his death under the photo.

  “The cops will really be on Bruce’s case now,” Laura said.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I stopped at Bruce’s cabin on my way to work the next morning. Nothing had changed—no Chevy, no answer when I pounded on the front door.

  When I got to Braeloch, I asked for Bruce over the intercom at The Times building.

  “Mr. Stohl hasn’t come in yet,” a male voice said.

  “Is Maria Dawson there?”

  “I’ll buzz you in,” he said, and a buzzer sounded.

  “Good morning, Ms. Tierney,” the security guard said when I entered the lobby. He pressed a button on the telephone. “Pat Tierney here to see you.”

  He pointed to the elevator. “Second floor.”

  In the newsroom, a dozen men and women huddled in chairs they had drawn into a semicircle. A heavy, gray-haired woman was crying into a tissue. I waved to Maria, a slender woman with closely cropped dark hair, and she came over to me.

  “We’re all in shock,” she said. “Wilf...he was like a brother to us.”

  I grasped her hand. “A terrible thing.”

  “It is, but that’s not why you’re here.” She didn’t say it unkindly.

  “I’m worried about Bruce. Did you speak to him yesterday? Or this morning?”

  A frown creased her face. “No. I tried to reach him when I heard about Wilf yesterday, but he wasn’t answering his cell.”

  “I went over to his place twice yesterday, and again this morning
,” I said. “He wasn’t there.”

  “That’s odd.” She frowned. “He said he’d be working on his new home on Sunday. But he should be here soon. I’ll have him call you when he comes in.”

  My next stop was the OPP detachment. The officer at the front desk told me that Foster was on his way in from Orillia.

  I gave the officer my card. “Tell him that I’ll be at work.”

  At the branch, Soupy had pulled up a chair beside Ivy’s desk. “Saturday was the first time we played it,” he was saying as I walked in.

  “Morning, Pat,” Ivy said.

  Soupy gave me a smile and turned back to Ivy. “So what did you think?”

  “Hmm, why did you stutter when you sang it?”

  “Ivy, the stutters in ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet’ are famous. Randy Bachman never intended to release the song. He was poking fun at his brother, Gary, the band’s manager. But when the record company heard—”

  Ivy folded her arms across her chest and gave him a stern look. “I’m sorry, Soupy, but Wilf Mathers was killed on Saturday night. That’s all anyone will remember about this year’s Canada Day celebrations. Not any of your songs.”

  Soupy got out of the chair, deflated.

  “Let’s get a coffee at Joe’s, Soupy,” Nate said from his office doorway. “I’ve got forty minutes before the Robinsons arrive for their appointment.”

  I watched them leave, happy to see Nate reaching out to Soupy.

  “I don’t know why anyone would want to kill Wilf,” Ivy said to me.

  I took the chair Soupy had just vacated. “Tell me about him. I know he worked at the newspaper for many years, but what was Wilf like?”

  “A nice, ordinary man. That’s what makes it so weird. He was a Scout leader, belonged to the Rotary Club and he grew up here in Braeloch. He had a freelance business doing wedding photos. My mom says he never harmed a soul in his life.”

  A nice, ordinary person like Vi Stohl. “Wilf was taking pictures for the newspaper on Saturday night,” I said. “Maybe he took a photo of someone who didn’t want to be in the paper.”

  “Everyone likes to have a photo in The Times.”

  “The news reports didn’t say whether the police found Wilf’s camera on him.”

  As if on cue, the front door opened and Foster walked in, brandishing my card. “You were looking for me, Ms. Tierney.”

  I led him down the hall to my office.

  “Well? Where is Stohl?” he asked when he had seated himself across from me.

  “The Highlands Tonight said Bruce was helping the police with the investigation. That meant he was with you.”

  “We questioned Stohl on Saturday night. But we haven’t been able to locate him since then.”

  My heart sank. “I’ve been out to his house three times. He wasn’t there. And he wasn’t at the newspaper when I stopped by on my way to work.”

  “Is that what you came to tell me?”

  “No. I ran into Bruce and Wilf at the fairgrounds on Saturday night.”

  That got his attention.

  “It must have been about fifteen minutes before the fireworks ended,” I added.

  “And?”

  “Bruce wanted to talk to me so he sent Wilf off to take photos.”

  “Where did Mathers go?”

  “I wasn’t watching.”

  “Did Stohl say what kind of photos he wanted? People shots?”

  “He told him to get photos of the fireworks.”

  “Then you and Stohl talked.”

  “We lined up and bought ice cream,” I said.

  “I don’t care what you ate. What did you talk about?”

  “He told me you came by his place that morning.”

  “Did Mathers come back while you were with Stohl?”

  “No. We watched the fireworks for a while, then Bruce went off to look for Wilf. I was on my way back to my family when Mara Nowak announced that there’d been an accident.”

  Foster sat there in silence.

  “What I’m saying,” I went on, “is that I was with Bruce from the time Wilf left to take photos to just before Mara made her announcement. He couldn’t have killed Wilf.”

  “That’s for us to decide, Ms. Tierney.”

  Of course it was. “I’m worried about Bruce. Where could he be?” I was thinking out loud.

  “That’s what we want to know.”

  “Did you find Wilf’s camera?” I asked. “Was it on him?”

  Foster’s face shut down, but I pressed on. “He must have taken a photo of something or someone his killer didn’t want to appear in the newspaper.”

  “Let me know as soon as you hear from Stohl.”

  If I hear from him, I wanted to say.

  Ivy came into my office as soon as Foster had left the building. “Did they find the camera?” she asked.

  I looked at her round, earnest face. “Detective Foster wouldn’t tell me.”

  “They didn’t find it,” she said. “The killer didn’t want anyone to see a picture that Wilf took.”

  “The police may be looking at what’s on the memory chip.”

  “No,” she said. “They didn’t find the camera.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  Who or what did Wilf photograph? And where the hell was Bruce?

  “How did it go with Soupy?” I asked Nate between appointments that morning.

  “He started out being his usual abrasive self.”

  “I told you he thought he was in line for your job,” I said. “He can’t seem to accept that he needs more experience.”

  “I’m aware of that, but it doesn’t make it any easier to work with him.”

  “I can’t figure it out. He’s headstrong, but he’s not stupid.”

  “Well, he left Joe’s happy. I gave him two of the accounts you turned over to me.”

  I must have looked surprised because he added, “The Callows and Mike Molloy.” Neither investment account had much in the way of assets, but both had plenty of potential.

  “Don’t let Soupy get to you,” I told him. “Whatever’s bothering him may have nothing to do with you.”

  As soon as we broke for lunch, I walked over to The Times building. Another security guard was on duty, this one a tight-lipped blonde. She told me that Bruce wasn’t available.

  I was turning to leave when the old elevator came grinding down from an upper floor. Its metal doors opened with a clang, and Maria Dawson stepped into the lobby.

  “Has Bruce been in?” I asked her.

  “Not yet. Detective Foster was here this morning.” She exhaled loudly. “He asked us about the camera Wilf was using on Saturday. Whether we had it. We don’t.”

  So the police didn’t find Wilf’s camera.

  “Wilf had a camera with a zoom lens when Bruce introduced us on Saturday night. Did it belong to The Times?”

  “It was probably his Nikon D4. He preferred to use his own equipment.”

  “If the police were asking whether you’d found the camera, that means they’re looking for it.”

  “That’s right.” Worry filled her eyes. “I drove out to Bruce’s place after you left this morning. No one’s there. I’m afraid whoever killed Wilf…”

  I held up a hand. “Don’t even think that.”

  I was seriously worried. As Maria had been about to say, whoever killed Wilf may have wanted Bruce out of the way too.

  Or had he gone AWOL? Bruce had left a tenure-track position at a university a few years before and wandered aimlessly for months before coming to Braeloch where Ted and Vi had relocated. Had he dropped everything and hit the road again?

  I decided to eat lunch at my desk in case Bruce, or somebody who knew where he was, called. I’d taken the first bite of a sandwich I’d brought from home when the telephone rang.

  “I’m back, Mrs. T!” Tommy cried at the other end of the line. “Maxie’s really happy to see me.”

  “Did you have a good time with your grandmother?”
>
  “It was okay, but I missed Maxie.”

  “I’ll give you a big hug when I get home. Put sunscreen on before you go into the water.”

  I had just returned to my sandwich, when Ivy brought Russell Shingler into my office.

  “Please go on eating,” he said when I put the sandwich aside.

  I covered it with foil wrap and dropped it into its paper bag. “How can I help you?”

  He sat back in the chair across from my desk, a smile on his ruddy face. He was a handsome, fair-haired man who looked as if he spent a lot of time on the golf course.

  “I’ve come to a decision, but I haven’t run it by Yvonne yet.”

  I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like whatever it was.

  “We couldn’t have more children after Kyle was born, and that saddened Yvonne immensely. Laura isn’t ready to raise a family, so I’ve decided that Yvonne and I will raise our grandchild. We’ll pay Laura a substantial sum of money when the baby is born.”

  “You want to pay my daughter to give up her child?”

  “And we’ll take care of Laura’s education expenses. University tuition, residence or rent, and living expenses until she finds a job in her chosen field. All she has to do is make Kyle the custodial parent.”

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or throw my paperweight at him. “You want to buy my daughter’s child.”

  “I want to compensate Laura for any inconvenience.”

  “You want my daughter to give up her baby. For money.”

  He shifted in his seat. “I wouldn’t put it that way. I just want what’s best for our son, your daughter and their child. I want to secure their happiness. I don’t want to ‘buy’ the baby.”

  I had to bite my tongue to curb my outrage. I hadn’t been happy to learn that Laura was pregnant, but I had come to accept that there would be an addition to our family at the end of the year. Now Russell Shingler was flashing his money and talking about procuring a baby for his wife. And it wasn’t any baby he was talking about, it was my grandchild.