by P. A. Wilson
I mouthed his name to Lu. “Can we meet?”
“I have to try to get bail for Viola. They’re keeping her in the station. They haven’t charged her yet, but I want to be ahead of them.”
That meant he couldn’t take the time to talk to us in person. “Okay. Did Viola tell you why she was there in the building?”
“She had a meeting with the victim.”
“Her boyfriend,” I said. “Dick, she had the meeting an hour before the cops found her covered in blood. Either she was there when it happened, she came back for something, or she was there for an hour and didn’t call the police. It looks bad.”
“She came back,” Dick said. “He wanted her to rent an office in the building. She likes working from home. They fought and she left. When she’d cooled off, she called and he was still there. The murder happened between that call and her arriving. Between nine and nine thirty this morning.”
Two hours before we were in the building. That was critical information. I hated that I couldn’t get access to my client, it felt like there was a critical piece of information in someone’s hands that I just didn’t think of asking for. “Is there anything else I should know?”
“She’s innocent, you know that right?”
I glanced at Lu who was nibbling her cookie patiently waiting for me to finish the call. “I thought lawyers didn’t care about that.”
“Usually no, but Viola is a friend too. There’s no way she stabbed this guy. She’s more a walk away from the situation type than a violent reactor.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s what happened with the stalker,” I said, still convinced that in the right circumstances Viola would kill, anyone would. “I’m going over to the scene. Let me know if anything else happens, Dick?”
“Sure,” he ended the call.
I gave Lu the information and we tossed our garbage ready to leave.
“She would have been hurt if she’d stabbed someone, right?” Lu asked.
“Not necessarily. Did you see any wounds on her?”
“No,” Lu said. “What was happening to her for the two hours between the police arriving and her phone call?”
“They were probably processing her. It takes time and she wouldn’t have been able to make a call until it was done. It’s not unusual.”
“I guess I’m just fishing for ideas.” Lu pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the Gardiner Building.
* * *
Before we headed up to the tenth floor, I dug into my PI supply bag and handed Lu a pair of Latex gloves. “Stick them in your pocket. If we get to snoop around, then you can put them on.”
“Do you think we will get a chance?”
“No. See that van over there?” I nodded at a black van parked near the elevator. “That’s the crime scene team. There’s probably an unmarked car nearby.”
“Then why?”
“Because there’s always a chance and I like to be prepared,” I said. “And maybe we won’t be allowed to poke through the scene, but there’s no saying we can’t just look around the floor.”
“Now I feel like an investigator,” Lu said stuffing the gloves into a pocket.
As expected we were not allowed to go into the office where Bob Vickers met his end. I did manage to see the edge of a pool of blood at the office door. The young constable guarding the doorway was committed to his duty of keeping out the riffraff, which now included us.
“Any objection if we check out the other offices on the floor?” I asked.
“We’ve searched them, so if you can get access then knock yourself out.” He bulked up a bit more and looked past my shoulder.
I recognized the stance. He wasn’t going to acknowledge our presence any more. Good, that meant he wouldn’t notice a little lock picking. I could have called Maisie, but I didn’t want to wait, or to listen to her sales pitch.
“Stand between me and the cop,” I instructed Lu when we stood at the first of two doors closer to the stairs than the crime scene. “It won’t take a second to pick the lock, but I don’t want him to see me actually do it.”
Lu leaned against the wall and watched as I slipped my picks into the lock. A twist and the door swung open. As far as I knew all of the offices on this floor were empty, but it was a relief to see an empty space rather than empty furniture.
“There’s nothing here,” Lu said, disappointed.
“Be patient,” I said. Anything out in the open would be obvious and been taken by the cops. They would have opened any unlocked cabinets, but not have broken any locks. If they needed access, they would have called someone like Maisie. I hurried into the kitchen area and saw that all of the cupboards were open. “There’s nothing here.”
We slipped out of the door and moved onto the next office space. Nothing in there either.
“So, we struck out?” Lu asked.
I was thinking. The floor only had three doors. If the murderer did have access to these empty spaces, would they stop? “Maybe we can try the next floor down, and up.” I said.
“If I were looking to escape, I’d go down. I never understand why people run up to get away. That’s how you get trapped.” Lu pushed the door to the stairwell as she spoke.
“There’s a way down on every floor, Lu,” I said nodding back to the elevator.
“Yes, but I have a feeling down is better.”
There was no reason not to start with the floor below. I held the door from closing while I checked for a card reader. We didn’t want to get stuck going to street level and then having to come back up. Fortunately, there were no card readers so access wasn’t going to be a problem.
The ninth floor was the same as the tenth except one of the offices was rented. A sign on the door identified it as a web design company. People worked all hours in those so it wasn’t worth a try. I picked the lock on the first empty office and walked in. This one was divided into a front reception and a large open space behind. No desks, no walls, but in the middle of the floor was a first aid kit and a plastic bag that looked like it held bloody towels.
Lu reached for the bag and I grabbed her elbow. “Put on your gloves. We don’t want you locked up for murder.”
After snapping the gloves on, she gingerly opened the bag. It contained exactly what I suspected. Our murderer was injured and it wasn’t Viola.
“Okay, put it back exactly how you found it,” I said. When Lu moved away from the bag, I took a bunch of pictures and sent them to Dick. He’d use them to get Viola off the hook.
I wasn’t going to share the pictures with the police unless I had to, but calling Leigh was the next task. She’d get the cops down here.
“Charity,” Lu said, and then poked me in the arm.
I looked up from my phone to tell her to wait a second and dropped my purse. Maisie was standing in the entry holding a gun on us.
“What’s going on?” I asked as if there was nothing unusual about us being held at gunpoint.
Maisie gestured with the gun for us to move away from the bag and first aid kit. “Just leave everything there, and we’ll be fine,” she said.
I joined Lu by the window. Trying to keep Maisie occupied at the same time as I tried to figure out how to escape was tricky. We couldn’t rush her, and we couldn’t just let her shoot us. If I’d just sent the email to Leigh before I looked up it would be a matter of stalling. But no one knew where we were.
“Give me my business card back,” Maisie said. “I don’t want any connection to me when they find your bodies.”
I retrieved my purse and held it out. “I have to dig around for it.”
She jerked her chin. “Go ahead. Bring out anything but the card, take too long to find it, or do anything to make me nervous, and I’ll shoot your friend’s kneecaps.”
“The police will hear the shots.” I kept my voice reasonable, just a friend pointing out a flaw in her plan.
“I’ll be gone before they find you. Get the card.”
If I were a teenager, I could probably have sent an S
OS text to Leigh while I was trying to find the business card, but I’m not and so I didn’t even try.
The card had fallen to the bottom and then slid to the corner of my purse. I turned it over as I dragged it out from the rest of the contents and saw the name.
Maisie Vickers. All along I’d thought of her as just Maisie.
“Are you Bob’s sister?” Talking would pass time. Eventually someone would come looking. Eventually wasn’t the best plan but it was the best I could come up with. Lu was waiting for me to deal with this so I didn’t have to worry about her jumping in.
“He. Was. My. Husband.” Maisie said purposefully.
I couldn’t believe that Viola would date a married man. She had strong rules around her private life. Rules that she’d learned as the wife of a celebrity. “Viola didn’t know.”
Maisie seemed to be biting back words. “She should have known.”
Lu shifted a little and placed herself between my right side and Maisie. “Did he cheat on you before? I know what it’s like marrying a cheater.” Lu shifted a little more as she spoke. Now I was almost standing behind her. Maisie either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
“Once. He only cheated once. He promised he’d never do it again.” Maisie straightened her arm keeping the gun pointed squarely at Lu.
Since her first husband never looked at another woman, I assumed Lu had a plan. Now I just had to figure out what. Her movement kept me protected and I realized my purse was completely out of Maisie’s sight. And I was holding it with both hands.
Trying to keep the movements small enough not to be noticed, I shifted my grip and slid my hand in to the side pocket where my phone lived. I sent out a prayer to the universe that I was touching the right buttons. I unlocked it with the pattern and pressed send on the email to Leigh. It was already set up, but I could have pressed delete as easily as send.
It felt like an hour, but it could only have been a few minutes later, when there was a banging on the door. Lu and I dove for the floor and screamed. The cops had the door smashed in before we ran out of breath. Maisie fired the gun. The bullet hit the wall to my left and I felt something hit my cheek.
I watched as two uniformed constables grabbed the gun and put Maisie in a submission lock. I’m sure that wasn’t regulation, but they were wearing Kevlar vests and no one was hurt so who was I to question their tactics.
* * *
They let us drive to the station to give our statements. It took Lu a few deep breaths before she turned the ignition and carefully pulled out of the parking stall.
“If I ever say I want to see how you work again, just ignore me.”
If it hadn’t been for Lu, we would both be dead. “You did great. Now, what exactly are you going to tell Matthieu?”
She kept her eyes on the road, but a small smile broke the tension on her face. “We should get our stories straight, right?”
“We should tell the truth. Matthieu already has friends on the force, they’ll tell him.” I hoped he would be reasonable about me putting Lu in danger, but I figured whatever happened he’d eventually forgive both of us.
* * *
After giving our statements, we found Viola waiting for us in the lobby of the station. She ran up and hugged us, touching the scratch on my cheek and wincing. “Oh, I’m so sorry that happened.”
“It’ll heal,” I said. “So, what exactly do you know?”
“That’s why I was waiting for you,” she said. “I wanted to make sure you got the facts. Bob wasn’t married to Maisie. They divorced two years ago. She’s crazy. I guess that’s not kind, but she was in a facility and Bob had no idea she’d been released.”
I was glad to know that my assumption about Viola was right. A PI needed to trust her gut. “I’m sorry about him. You must be devastated.”
She sighed. “I was going back to tell him we were over. He was a control freak and I’d had enough.” Viola blinked back tears. “I guess that doesn’t matter. It still hurts that he’s gone. It’s still hard when the image of his body pops into my mind.”
Lu put her arm around Viola. “It’s hard to lose people. Do you have someone you can talk to about it?”
Viola gave a sad laugh. “My therapist will be making a bundle on this.”
Preview
If you liked Buying Into Death, you’ll love the rest of the Charity Deacon books.
Following is an excerpt from her first case, HUBRIS.
One
I’m a P.I. I know that sounds cool and dangerous, but mostly it’s just seedy. Every now and then I feel like chucking it all in, but then someone asks for my help, and I get back in the groove. When I’m in the groove, I follow wandering spouses, dig into employees’ finances, and occasionally track down a missing person.
When I’m not doing the PI thing, I do a little journalism. I’ve also waited tables, driven a tour bus, and put in a few shifts at a retail store. That’s me, Charity Deacon, five foot eight inches of black haired, blue eyed, Renaissance woman.
I was sitting on the patio of the Starbucks on the corner of Robson and Thurlow. It was fall and the pumpkin lattes were in season. Just as I started to zone out, a screeching crash broke the mood.
The noise came from a white Jeep bouncing off the back of a bus across Thurlow. I dropped my latte and grabbed my camera, clicking pictures as I ran.
Sirens wailed closer.
I could see that the bus was empty. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the driver running from the Starbucks across the intersection – yes there are two – carrying a coffee in one hand, and pulling his mobile phone out of his pocket with the other. He threw the coffee in the middle of the street when it got in the way of dialing.
As I reached the Jeep, a police car pulled up. One of the cops jumped out and ran to yank open the driver’s door. A body fell sideways and hung from the seatbelt. I could tell it was a body, and no longer a person, because it flopped and there was white powder from the airbag all over its face. The powder stained red from the blood oozing from the hole just below his ear.
I took pictures then ran around to the other side before the police could stop me. The passenger door opened, and a man stumbled out before folding at the knees, and planting his face on the asphalt. I kept snapping for a dozen more shots and then focused on the street action.
“Miss, please step back.” One of the cops walked into my camera range, a blurry flesh colored barrier between the action and me.
I obeyed. Well, technically the small step I took was back. Switching to video mode, I started panning the crowd. The cop put his hand in front of the lens.
“Step farther back,” he said.
I tried not to sigh. I knew from my history with the cops, it would just antagonize him. “I’m not in the way. I’m not interfering. What’s the problem?”
“Can I get your name and address, please?”
“Why?”
“You were a witness.” The cop looked at my camera. It felt like a threat. Maybe that was because I’d been threatened by the cops before. They didn’t like it when people pointed out their failings.
I reminded myself to keep my tone even. “That doesn’t mean I can’t take pictures.”
The cop sighed. “Look, you can give me your details now, and I’ll let you take the pictures while we get the other statements. Or, you can wait over there until we get around to taking your statement and you lose your photo op, your choice.”
“Fine. Charity Deacon, number 9 Dock B, 1525 Coal Harbour Quay, 604 555 5555.”
He wrote it down, and then I went back to videoing the bystanders.
“Don’t go anywhere without giving us your statement.”
I ignored him and swept my camera over the gathering crowd, recording the cop’s head as he walked across my line of sight. “Asshole,” I muttered.
I shot a video of the people on the sidewalk, mostly people trying to see and not see at the same time. Turning, I scanned across the street. A few cars were backed up at
the intersection, but one in particular caught my attention. Two men stood beside a black SUV, both well dressed, and well built. What made them stand out were the smiles they wore; identical and smug.
I swung the camera past to get a panorama before checking the battery level, almost out. I flicked back to photo and snapped pictures of as many people as I could. The two men climbed back into their vehicle and drove away as I took the last few shots.
When I got back to the Starbucks patio, the bus driver was talking to one of the constables. “I’ll get fired for this,” he moaned. “I’m not supposed to stop there.”
“Look at it this way,” the cop answered. “If the bus wasn’t there to stop the Jeep, we’d be carting a few more bodies to the morgue, and a lot more to the ER.”
I made a mental note to call Transit and commend the actions of the bus driver. The cop was right, and the guy shouldn’t get shit for taking a quick break.
There were three other uniformed cops taking statements from the twenty or so people who had stopped to see what was going on.
While I waited, I had some time so I tried to add a little to my bottom line with my photos. I made some calls, the Vancouver Sun and Province, the Courier, and the local TV news station. The newspapers told me they would take my pictures if I could send the files by the evening deadline, but the TV station already got their footage from someone else.
* * *
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Also by P.A. Wilson
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* * *
MYSTERIES
* * *
SCIENCE FICTION
* * *
URBAN FANTASY
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FANTASY