“No splintered wood on the door or jamb, and the dead bolt isn’t bent.” He knelt beside the door and took a magnifying glass from his raincoat pocket. I didn’t think anyone used magnifying glasses these days, outside of Sherlock Holmes movies.
“Scratch marks.” He looked up at me, standing beside him. “See the scratches on the key plate? They’re shiny, which means they were made recently.”
“Keys can leave scratches,” I said.
“Not fine ones like these.” He stood up and wiped his hands on his raincoat. “No need for a forensic locksmith. Someone picked this lock with a shim.”
He looked at Bruce. “Piss off someone at the newspaper?”
He went into the kitchen, where Bruce had set up a card table and two folding chairs. “I’ll have that coffee now. Black, two sugars.” He took a cardboard box off a chair, set it on the table and sat down.
“The lock on Frank Prentice’s storage unit,” I said as I put a mug of coffee in front of him. “Had it been picked?”
I expected him to tell me that was police business. He stared at me for a few seconds, then said, “No.”
He took a sip of his coffee. “So why am I here?”
“Someone picked the lock and came in,” I said. “I believe that’s a crime called break and enter.”
“Anything taken?” Foster asked Bruce.
“Not unless they helped themselves to my lecture notes.”
“That’s what those papers are?” Foster asked.
Bruce nodded. “Yup.”
“Some missing?”
Bruce smiled. “I doubt it. There’s not a big market for Philosophy 101.”
“Will you dust the boxes for fingerprints?” I asked Foster.
He shrugged. “Nothing’s been taken.” He turned to Bruce. “You might consider a home security system with a camera. Anyone who tries to get in will be caught in the act.”
He looked into the box he’d placed on the table. “Speaking of cameras…Is this yours?”
He tilted the box so we could see into it. It held a camera with a large zoom lens. To my untrained eyes, it looked like the one Wilf was carrying on Saturday night. “Well?” he asked.
Bruce went over to the box. “A Nikon D4. Could be Wilf’s.”
“The missing camera turns up here.” Foster pushed his mug aside and stood up.
In no time, he had Bruce and the box with the camera out of the cabin. I followed them to the Chrysler.
Inside the car, Bruce held up a set of keys. He turned to say something to Foster. The passenger window slid down.
“Will you lock up, Pat?” Bruce handed me his keys.
“Bruce didn’t know about the camera,” I shouted into the car. “If he’d killed Wilf, he wouldn’t have left his camera in an open box when he was expecting you here. Just like the cardigan on his porch—”
The window rolled up. Foster revved the motor and the Chrysler charged down the lane.
As I locked the front door, I thought about where a home-security camera could be mounted to capture the image of an intruder. On the doorframe? Or above it?
That made me think of the surveillance cameras at Glencoe Self-Storage. The cameras hadn’t captured anybody in the yard the night before the auction. So when had Vi’s body been dumped in the locker?
I burned rubber when I left the cabin. Not a smart way to navigate a narrow, winding lane in the rain. I slowed down on the side road and came to a full stop at the highway, wondering whether to turn left and drive into Braeloch. But what more could I say to the police?
I pulled a right onto the highway. Five minutes later, I braked in front of Glencoe Self-Storage’s office. The Open sign was in the window. Noreen Andrews was behind her desk.
She looked up at me and adjusted the Toronto Blue Jays cap on her head. “What’s the matter with the cops around here? It’s been two weeks since a body was found on our premises, and they still haven’t figured out how it got here.”
I held out my hands palms up.
“They got any suspects?” she asked.
“They haven’t told me.” I pulled up a chair and sat down in front of her desk.
“And now Wilf Mathers has been killed,” she said. “That’s got to be related.”
“I’d say so.”
“Folks are gettin’ knocked off and the cops are just scratchin’ their bums.” She groaned. “What do we pay them for?”
“Ms. Andrews, you said the surveillance cameras didn’t capture any unusual activity in the yard the night before Vi Stohl’s body was found.”
“A family of racoons and a fox came through that night. But they didn’t put that body in the locker.”
“So it wasn’t put in that night. When could it have got in there?”
“The cameras go on when we close the office at six. They turn off at eight in the morning when we open up again.”
“And they’re not on during the day?”
“What’d be the point? People break in at night. We got someone here in the office all day.”
“You can’t watch every locker from here.”
“No, but renters come and go all day long. No one breaks into a locker when people are around.”
“Someone got into Frank Prentice’s locker during the day.” I thought of what Foster had told me. “And that person had a key to its lock. Detective Foster told me the lock hadn’t been picked.”
“Frank had been dead for weeks by then,” Noreen said. “That’s why he hadn’t made his payments.”
“That’s right. Vi’s killer—and I assume that whomever put her in the locker killed her—knew that Frank wouldn’t be using the locker. And other renters wouldn’t think twice about seeing someone going into the locker.”
Her eyes shifted and I could see that she was processing what I’d said.
“The killer wouldn’t have needed a keycard because the gate is open during the day,” I continued. “But he may have had one because he was familiar with your business and its hours of operation. Who had activated cards two weeks ago?”
Noreen whipped the cap off her head and flung it on the desk. “Can’t tell you that. If word got out that I ratted on clients, my business would tank.”
I wanted to shake her. She was running a storage business, not a high-level military operation. But I kept my cool. “Can you show me what the cards look like?”
She pondered that for a few moments, then opened a desk drawer and took out a stack of plastic cards. She handed one to me. On one side was the company’s name, Glencoe Self-Storage, a photograph of its two buildings with their orange metal lockers, its location and an URL to its website. A magnetic strip was on the back of the card.
I put the card on her desk and thanked her for her time.
I slipped into our first client meeting of the day just minutes before it ended. As I had expected, Nate had things well in hand.
We met with three more clients before we broke for lunch. When I left Nate’s office, Ivy called out to me. Bruce was seated in the reception area.
I was elated to see him. He hadn’t been charged.
“I’ll grab my handbag and we’ll get some lunch,” I told him.
He was chatting with Ivy when I returned. His relaxed posture told me everything I needed to know about his visit to the detachment. But I couldn’t resist asking a few questions.
“What happened?” I asked as we left the building.
“I gave a statement about what we found at the cabin.”
“Then?”
“Foster asked me what Wilf had been working on recently. We’d already gone over that on Saturday night and I couldn’t think of anything else to tell him.”
“And that was it?”
“That was it. Foster told me to go to work. He’s having the cabin dusted for fingerprints this afternoon.”
I saved the rest of my questions for Joe’s.
“Was there a memory chip in the camera?” I asked when we had given Sue our orders. “Wit
h the photos Wilf took at the fairgrounds?”
“If there was, I wasn’t told about it,” Bruce said.
“Whoever left the camera in your kitchen may have removed the chip.”
We said nothing for a minute or two. I was thinking about who or what Wilf might have photographed before he died.
“The camera was Wilf’s?” I asked.
“I think so but I’m not certain. Darlene, Wilf’s widow, will know. She helped Wilf with his freelance photography business.”
Sue set mugs of coffee on the table. I smiled my thanks and turned back to Bruce.
“When we stopped by your place yesterday was the box with the camera in the kitchen?”
“I didn’t notice,” he said. “I was too upset about the break-in at the time.”
“Whoever picked your lock must have left Wilf’s camera there.”
“If it is Wilf’s camera.”
“An expensive camera turns up in your home after a photographer has been murdered. Who else would it belong to?”
Our sandwiches arrived. I was halfway through mine when something niggled at the back of my mind. “Don’t I need to give a statement to the police? That I was with you when you discovered the break-in?”
“Foster didn’t mention it, maybe because I said you were with me in my statement.”
I decided it was Foster’s call. I was happy that he seemed to be letting Bruce get on with his life.
“How is everyone at The Times?” I asked.
“Shaken. Wilf was well liked.”
“When is his funeral?”
“Friday morning at the Anglican church here in town.” He looked down at his mug. “Maria’s writing the obit for this week’s paper. The article on the funeral will run next week.”
“You have a good team.”
“I’m lucky to be part of it.” He took a sip of coffee. “What Laura was saying about her baby last night…She and Kyle are right to stick to their guns.”
He had been listening to us from the porch. “I think so,” I said.
“If I had a child, I wouldn’t let anyone take that kid away from me,” he went on. “If the mother and I weren’t living together, I’d want us to have equal time with our son or daughter.”
I stared at Bruce, surprised. It had never occurred to me that he might like to be in a relationship or have a family. But he had clearly given it some thought.
I left Bruce tucking into a piece of blueberry pie. I’d covered a block on Main Street when Chuck Gibson hurried down the sidewalk toward me. “Pat,” he said when he saw me. “Something terrible’s happened.” His breath came out in ragged gasps.
I took his elbow and guided him to a bench in the parkette between Stedmans and the bookstore. “Catch your breath for a minute.”
He drew a deep breath. “This morning I went to Canadian Tire to buy oil for my lawnmower. I don’t usually leave Gracie alone in the house now that these renters are showing up but she was tired, she didn’t sleep well last night. I told her not to let anyone in.”
He took a few more deep breaths before continuing. “When I got back around ten thirty, the side door we use was unlocked, but Gracie wasn’t in the kitchen or on the porch. I called her name and I heard banging in the basement. She was lying on the couch in the rec room. Her wrists and ankles were tied with rope, and she had a gag in her mouth. She’d banged her feet against the wall when she heard me upstairs.”
“Is she okay?” I asked.
“She was terrified.”
“Of course, she was. Was she hurt?”
“Rope burns on her hands and a cut on her leg.”
“You called the police?”
He tipped his head to one side. “Bouchard and a deputy came out right away. They told me to take Gracie to the hospital.”
“And?”
“Doc gave us a prescription for the rope burns and another for some sedatives. He said she was lucky—no broken bones, no head injuries. She just needs to rest.”
“And she’s resting—”
“At her friend Sally Beaton’s place here in town.”
“What did Gracie say happened at the house?”
“Not long after I left, a woman came to the side door. Gracie opened it but kept the screen door locked. The woman waved a piece of paper and said she’d rented the house for two weeks. Gracie informed her it wasn’t for rent. She told her about the Internet scam and she said she was very sorry, but we had nothing to do with the con.”
His face was drawn with worry. “The woman asked Gracie if she could have a glass of water. She was polite and nicely dressed so Gracie didn’t think there’d be any harm in letting her in.” He shook his head. “As soon as she was in the door, she grabbed Gracie from behind, and shoved her down the stairs to the basement. Then she tied her up.”
Gracie was a tiny woman. It wouldn’t take much muscle to get her into the basement but why had this woman wanted to frighten her?
“Did Gracie say whether this was one of the renters who came to your home in the past few weeks?” I asked.
“She said she’d never seen her before.”
“Did she tell you or Bouchard what she looked like?”
“No and we didn’t ask her. Bouchard didn’t think it was a good time to question her further or get a statement.”
“Was anything taken or damaged?”
He shrugged and I knew he was beyond caring about that.
“You’ve both had a terrible day,” I said.
He ran a hand over his brow. “I don’t know what we’ll do, Pat. We can’t stay there any longer. The next renter could really hurt us.”
I was angry. Whoever had rigged the scam had put this elderly man and woman out of their home. Chuck and Gracie couldn’t afford two residences, and with their property on Raven Lake targeted in a rental racket, it wasn’t a good time to try to sell it.
“Can you stay with Sally Beaton a while?”
“We’ll stay there tonight,” he said, “but we don’t want to impose on her any longer.”
I racked my brains as we left the parkette but there was nothing I could think of to help them. Not a single thing.
I took out a business card and scribbled down my phone number at the cottage. “I’ll be leaving Norris Cassidy at the end of the week. This is the number where I’m staying.” I handed him the card. “Let me know where you’ll be.”
Nate was waiting for me in his office. I closed the door and collapsed in the chair across from him. “What’s happened?” he asked.
“Remember Chuck and Gracie Gibson, the elderly couple on Raven Lake?”
“Of course.”
I told him about the renters who had been turning up at the Gibsons’ place. And what had happened to Gracie that morning.
“Can’t the police do anything?” he asked.
“Apparently not.”
“Is there anything we can do?”
I shook my head. “Maybe this will spur the police on…before something really bad happens.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
I stopped at Joe’s the next morning for a latté. From the lineup at the short-order counter, I scanned the tables and booths, and spotted Bruce at the back of the room. I recognized the woman with the mane of wavy red hair who was seated across from him. Crystal.
Bruce waved me over to their booth.
“You again,” Crystal said. “Why do I always meet Pat Tierney when I’m in Braeloch?”
I smiled at her. “Maybe because Braeloch is a very small town.”
“Join us, Pat?” Bruce asked.
“Sure.” I slid into the booth beside him.
Crystal puffed out her substantial chest. “Bruce is interviewing me for an article. We have a lot to talk about.”
“Nothing Pat can’t hear,” Bruce said. “And the entire township will read about it next week.”
Her face fell. “I won’t be in this week’s paper?”
“Afraid not,” he said. “This week’s issue is just
about wrapped up. It goes to press tonight.”
But there was no keeping her down. “Can I see the article before it runs?” she asked. “I want to make sure everything is okay.”
Bruce shook his head. “No can do. If we showed articles to everyone we talked to, we’d never get the paper out. Now, if you don’t want to be interviewed…”
“No, no. I was just asking,” she said.
I was impressed by how well Bruce was handling Crystal. She’d bullied her way into this interview but he was running the show.
“Now where were we?” He scanned his notes. “Right. You were saying the antiques weren’t in the locker. What made you think there’d be antiques in there?”
“My friend stored some pieces at Glencoe Self-Storage last fall.”
“Your friend, Frank Prentice.”
“Yes. Frank was killed in a motorcycle accident in April. Two months later, I saw that Glencoe was holding a contents auction. I figured it had to be Frank’s locker.”
“But you couldn’t be sure, could you?” Bruce said.
Crystal sat up straight. “Sure enough to sink nine hundred dollars into it.”
Bruce gave her a half-smile and let her go on.
“I get a newsletter that lists storage auctions,” she said. “It was the first auction that Glencoe held this year. It had to be Frank’s locker.”
“But he’d taken the furniture out of it,” Bruce said.
She snorted. “No way. Frank was counting on me to find him a good buyer, but I’d just opened my shop last fall. I was busy, and he told me it could wait till spring.”
“What do you think happened to those pieces?” Bruce asked.
“Frank’s mother took them,” she said.
I nodded. Ella had been lying when she’d told me she didn’t know that her son had rented a storage locker. But why would she lie about that?
“We can’t put that in the paper,” Bruce said. “It’s speculation.”
“Speculation?” Crystal cried. “It’s common sense.”
“Why did you bid on the locker?” I asked. “You knew that a notice about the auction would have been sent to Frank’s home. You knew that his mother would have checked out the locker and removed anything of value.”
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