Raven Lake

by Rosemary McCracken

  It was a beautiful day, and I wanted to get out on the water too. Away from my worries. “I’d like to go for a paddle while the two of you are fishing. I won’t be more than an hour.”

  “Take your time,” Bruce said. “I’m in no rush.”

  I sat straight-backed and centered, and focused on thrusting my paddle deep into the lake. As the kayak skimmed over the water, I tried to purge my mind of thoughts and worries.

  But the image of Ella paddling a silver canoe popped into it. What was she doing in the township if she didn’t like this part of the world?

  Ten minutes later, I found myself in front of Nate and Zoe’s home. Nate was seated on a wooden chair on the dock, his eyes closed, a paperback on his lap. A silver canoe was tied to the dock beside Zoe’s yellow one.

  “Nate,” I said.

  He jerked awake and looked around him.

  “Down here,” I said. “Sorry to startle you.”

  He peered over the edge of the dock. “Why it’s Pat Tierney in her kayak. A nice surprise.”

  “Is Zoe at home? I have something to ask her.”

  “She’s in the house with her aunt. Come on up.”

  I tied the kayak beside the canoes and followed him up the path.

  “They’re watching a video,” he said when we were on the veranda. He opened the door, and I heard the voice of Tom Hanks.

  “Sleepless in Seattle,” he said. “One of Zoe’s favorites.”

  Zoe was curled up on a sofa, a bowl of popcorn in front of her, her eyes fixed on a wide-screen television. A woman sat with her back to me. Her dark hair was stylishly cut. Ella!

  Zoe turned to look at us. “Pat, come in. We’ll be with you in just a moment. The movie’s nearly over.”

  The other woman turned around as well. She had the same hairstyle and hair color as Ella, but she wasn’t Ella. She had a leathery face and neck, and well-defined muscles in her arms.

  This was the woman I’d seen in the silver canoe.

  When the credits started to roll, Zoe turned off the DVD. “Pat, this is my Aunt Riza.” She turned to Riza. “Pat Tierney ran the Norris Cassidy branch before Nate took over.”

  Riza smiled at me. “Rizalina Santos. I am pleased to meet you, Pat Tierney. I hear you’ve met my sister, Ella.”

  “Pat told me she’d seen Ella around here,” Zoe said to her aunt. “It must have been you she saw because Ella never comes up here.”

  Riza chuckled. “We look alike, Ella and me. But poor Ella, she’s terrified of bugs and bears.”

  “Riza has a cottage on Raven Lake and we hang out together,” Zoe said. “We Filipinas like running in packs, don’t we, Riza?”

  “I come over in my canoe,” Riza said. “Across the lakes.”

  She had been paddling home when I saw her on Raven Lake on Friday.

  “Pat has something to ask you, Zoe,” Nate said.

  I blurted out the first thing that came into my mind. “My son and I will be alone this week, and we’d enjoy some company. How about coming over for dinner? The three of you. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, whatever works best for you. Talk it over and give me a call.”

  Running in packs. The words lingered in my mind as I paddled back to the cottage. I pictured Ella, Riza, and Zoe cruising down a highway in a white convertible. Traipsing through shopping malls, laden with bags and boxes. Pampering themselves at spas and beauty salons.

  My thoughts turned to Ella. Her first visit to Frank’s house after he died must have been heartbreaking. She would have been grieving for her son, and going through his belongings would have been terribly upsetting. She would not have gone there alone.

  I found Bruce and Sergeant Bouchard sitting on the low stone wall near the waterfront, watching Tommy trying to catch a frog.

  “The listing on VacationSpots is down,” Bouchard said as I climbed out of the kayak.

  “That’s good news,” I said, “but how many other people have wired money to stay here?”

  He nodded. “I hear you.”

  “The ad may be on other rental sites.” I named a few that I knew. “Can you check those out, and have it taken down if you see it?”

  He didn’t reply, so I wasn’t sure if I could count on him to do that.

  They got up to leave, and I walked them to their vehicles.

  Bouchard turned to me at the door of the police cruiser. “You and the kid shouldn’t be here. As you said, how many people have already sent their money? Pack your bags and get out of here. Now.”

  With that, he climbed into the cruiser.

  “Have you come across a Riza Santos?” I asked Bruce when Bouchard had driven off. “She’s a cottager on Raven Lake.”

  “Never heard of her. Should I have?”

  “No reason to, I guess.”

  He took a ring of keys from his pocket. “Bouchard is right. You and Tommy need to get out of here. You know that.”

  I shrugged.

  “You’re a stubborn woman, Pat. But think about Tommy.”

  “What about me?” the boy asked, coming up beside me.

  I ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe it’s time you visited your grandmother again.”

  They were right, I thought as we watched the Chevy disappear down the lane. Tommy and I couldn’t stay there any longer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I was pondering where Tommy and I could go when the telephone rang.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you for the past hour.” Tracy’s voice was pitched higher than usual.

  “What’s happened?”

  “We’re at St. Justin’s Hospital. It’s Laura.”

  My heart beat in my throat. “What’s the matter?”

  “She started to hemorrhage when we were on the road. I took her straight to the hospital when we got to Toronto. She’s having an ultrasound right now.”

  “I’m on my way. I’ll drop Tommy with his grandmother.”

  “Mom,” Tracy said, “Laura may lose the baby.”

  Ten minutes later, we were headed south on the highway, pushing the speed limit. In the rearview mirror, I saw Tommy nod off to sleep with his arm around Maxie. I put my iBuds in my ears, and thoughts of Laura flooded my mind as Glenn Gould played Bach’s “Goldberg Variations.”

  Was my little girl okay? I was well aware that bleeding during a pregnancy can signal a number of problems, some of which are life-threatening.

  And there was the baby. Laura might lose it.

  Over the past few weeks, I had come to accept that my daughter would be a mother in a few months, and that she and her child would be with me for several years. I’d decided that the baby would have Tracy’s old room, and I’d planned to help Laura decorate it in September. I had also been thinking about child-care arrangements for the following year when Laura would be at school. My grandchild already had a place in our family. We couldn’t lose this baby.

  Two hours later, Norah Seaton greeted us at the front door of her Rosedale home. She enveloped Tommy in a hug. “We’re going to the zoo tomorrow,” she told him.

  I couldn’t picture Norah, dressed to the nines, visiting the lions and the polar bears. But I kept that thought to myself. “You don’t mind taking Maxie tonight?” I asked. “I’ll pick her up tomorrow.”

  “Maxie is welcome to stay here as long as you like.”

  Mr. Bonokowski, Norah’s chauffeur and general factotum, came down the hall and took Maxie’s leash. Then I was back in the Volvo, driving too fast into the city’s downtown core.

  I asked for Laura Tierney at the reception desk in St. Justin’s emergency wing. The clerk spoke to a woman wearing a badge with the word Volunteer on it. She went down the hall and returned with Tracy.

  “Mom.” Tracy kissed my cheek.

  I hugged her. “Laura?”

  “She’s okay, and so is the baby. Come with me.”

  Laura was in a bed behind curtains across the hall from the main emergency treatment room. She opened her eyes at the sound of our voices. “Mom
ma,” she cried. She looked younger than her 18 years and very frightened. I gave her a kiss and took a chair beside the bed.

  “I told you Mom would get here,” Tracy said as she took the chair on the other side of the bed.

  “I started to bleed in the car,” Laura said.

  I reached for her hand.

  “I was sure I was going to lose the baby.” She closed her eyes for a few moments. “They did an ultrasound. The baby has a strong heartbeat and they said he—or she, I don’t want to know the gender—seems to be fine.”

  “Do they know what caused the bleeding?” I asked.

  “A subchorionic hemorrhage,” Tracy said. “A tiny tear in the placenta. The doctor said it will heal on its own.”

  “She said many women have had healthy babies after bleeding like I did.” Laura gripped my hand hard. “I don’t want to lose this baby.”

  I leaned over and hugged her. “I want this baby, too.”

  “Mom?” Her eyes were pleading.

  I nodded. “I do.”

  Tracy said the doctor would look at Laura in the morning. If all seemed to be well, she could go home. “She’s booked for another ultrasound in two weeks,” she added.

  “Will she go upstairs tonight?” I asked.

  Tracy shook her head. “Shortage of beds. She’ll be right here.”

  “I have to stay in bed for two days, and take it easy for the next week,” Laura said. “I’ll need to tell the Harrisons that I’ll be taking another week off.”

  “I’ll call them when I get home,” Tracy told her.

  “Everything will be fine,” I said to Laura.

  She held up both hands, with all the fingers crossed. “I sure hope so.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Tracy dropped me off at the hospital early the next morning, and I was with Laura when the doctor told her she could go home. I bundled her into a taxi.

  We found Farah Alwan, our housekeeper, stretched out on our living room sofa, a mug of coffee and a stack of magazines on the table beside her. She jumped to her feet when she saw us.

  “I finish bathrooms, now I take break,” she said.

  I nodded at her and helped Laura upstairs. I put her in my room, which has an ensuite bathroom, because I wanted her off her feet as much as possible.

  I made tea in the kitchen, noting that Farah had her work cut out for her there. Dishes were stacked in the sink and the floor still needed scrubbing.

  Laura was asleep when I brought a mug of tea up to her. I took my tea into my study and turned on the computer. After I’d scanned and deleted dozens of emails, I picked up the telephone.

  “Have you found out who was working with Vi Stohl six years ago?” I asked Foster when I reached him at the Braeloch detachment.

  “Ms. Tierney—”

  “I know. I should let you get on with your investigation. But money was missing at that Bank of Toronto branch and Vi took the blame. Now she’s been murdered, and it stands to reason that the murder and the missing money might be related. A mild-mannered homebody like Vi…It would be a huge coincidence if two people had it in for her.”

  “Let it go. You’re obsessed with this missing money.”

  “Did you find out who was working with her at the bank?” I asked again.

  “That’s police information, Ms. Tierney,” he said and hung up.

  I found the web page for the Bank of Toronto’s Beach branch. I punched in the phone number that was listed and asked for Irene Hounsell.

  “I wanted to talk to you again, but I didn’t catch your last name,” Irene said when I’d told her who I was.

  We arranged to meet at a Queen Street bistro at 6 p.m.

  I reached Bruce at The Times and updated him on Laura. I said I’d be in Toronto for a few days.

  “I hope everything goes well for Laura and the baby,” he said. “While I have you on the line, can I ask you a few questions for the article?”

  “Fire away.”

  “What was your reaction when would-be renters showed up at your cottage last Saturday?”

  “Surprised, shocked, horrified. But what really blew me away was when I saw the listing on the Internet with photos of the cottage’s interior. There was a photo of my son’s bedroom with his teddy bear on the bed. The photographer broke in when we weren’t there.”

  When I told him how vulnerable I felt, I was speaking for Chuck and Gracie as well as myself. “I don’t know who will turn up at the cottage,” I said, “and they may think I’m behind the scheme. I don’t feel safe there.”

  I spent the rest of the morning at home. After lunch, I did a grocery run and bought magazines for Laura.

  “The kitchen floor needs washing,” I told Farah when she was about to leave for the day.

  She threw me an injured look, and I knew it would be days before she washed the floor.

  At five forty-five, Kyle arrived and I took him upstairs to Laura.

  “I’ll be out for a few hours,” I told them. “Kyle, make sure that Laura stays in bed.”

  “I will, Mom,” she said. “I want this baby.”

  At 6 p.m., I was seated at a window table at Café Quatre Saisons with a glass of merlot in front of me. The door opened with a tinkle of chimes and Irene hurried in, patting her halo of gray hair.

  I waved at her.

  “Am I late?” she asked as she approached the table.

  “Right on time.”

  She took the chair across from me. “I’m so glad you called. When you were at the bank, you asked if I’d kept in touch with Vi.”

  “I thought you might have been in contact.”

  “I called her every month or so, and we met for lunch a couple of times. Then she had trouble remembering who I was when I called. When her home phone number went out of service, I assumed that she and her husband had moved.”

  The waiter came over, and Irene asked for a glass of chardonnay. I pointed to the menu and told him to bring us an appetizer plate.

  “You don’t need to buy me dinner,” Irene said.

  “It’s just a snack. I’m keeping you from your family.”

  “My cat’s the only one waiting for me. I live alone.”

  “Have the police spoken to you about Vi?” I asked.

  “Two officers came to my home last week. They asked me about Vi, and they wanted to know who worked at the branch when she was let go.”

  “You gave them their names?”

  “Yes.”

  “Money was missing,” I said. “Do you know how much?”

  “We were never told, but the rumor mill put it at ten thousand dollars.”

  The waiter brought Irene’s wine to the table. When she had taken a sip, I continued. “Did Vi take the money?”

  “No way.” She wrapped her hands around her wineglass. “It never would have occurred to her. She didn’t need the money.” She frowned. “And she couldn’t have pulled off something like that. I assume that small amounts were taken over several months, maybe even a few years. Probably from clients who didn’t look at their bank statements. That would have required planning and Vi was too scattered to do that.”

  “Why was she blamed?”

  “I don’t know. Something must have pointed to her, but I don’t know what it was.”

  “Someone at the branch may have framed her,” I said. “Who was working there at the time?”

  “There were six full-time tellers, three part-timers.” She dug a notebook out of her purse and flipped through the pages. “The full-timers were Vi, Susan Smith, Nico Pappas, Serge Junot, Deb Petrovic and myself. Vanessa Thompson, Fran Reardon, and Doug Thomas worked part-time. Ed Patterson was the branch manager.” She tore the page out of the notebook and handed it to me.

  I’d never heard any of those names before. “Did Vi get along with all of them?” I asked.

  “Vi got along with everyone.”

  “What about the manager? What was Ed Patterson like?”

  “Ed was a good manager. He was
fair to everyone and he liked Vi. He felt badly when she was let go.”

  Before we left the bistro, I wrote down Irene’s home phone number and her email address.

  On the way home, I stopped at Norah’s house to pick up Maxie. Mr. Bonokowski came to the front door, dressed in chinos and a polo shirt instead of the navy blazer and gray trousers he usually wore. Tommy greeted me as if he hadn’t seen me for a year and gave me a detailed account of his visit to the zoo.

  “Did you enjoy the zoo?” I asked Norah.

  She gave me a half-smile. “I wasn’t up for it today. Mr. Bonokowski took Tommy.”

  Tracy and I had just sat down to dinner when the telephone rang. I was about to let the call go to voice mail but something whispered to me to pick up.

  Bruce was on the line. “I went over to your cottage this afternoon,” he said. “Two women were sitting on the porch, waiting for Donald Simpson to let them in.”

  More disgruntled renters. The image of Tommy’s teddy bear flashed through my mind.

  “I drove to town and brought Maria back,” Bruce went on. “Bouchard came out as well. They explained the situation to the women.”

  “How did they react?”

  “They weren’t happy, but they got in their car and drove away.”

  It was no longer my problem. Tommy and I were out of there.

  “How is Laura?” Bruce asked.

  “She seems to be okay. She’s taking it easy this week.”

  “What are your plans?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I now have a phone at Raven Lake.”

  I wrote down the number he gave me.

  Back at the table, I told Tracy that more renters had arrived at the cottage. “I’d like get back up there,” I said.

  “Bad idea.” She shook her head. “Renters are turning up every other day. It’s only a matter of time before someone takes his frustration out on you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “I’m going back,” I told Tracy the next morning. “Bruce offered to put us up. I’ll take him up on it, but Tommy will stay in Toronto with his grandmother.”