“No.”
“Ever dress up a drone as a ghost, scare people with that?”
Dezi blinked, and almost smiled. “He did that, yes! But just for fun. He put a little skull on it, and gauze, and made it fly around, chasing after me.”
“Not just for fun if you’re a driver on the highway and it comes flying at you.”
Dezi lost the grin. “He never said anything about that.”
“I think you’d better run through that night again, your drive to Squamish and back.”
“I told you.”
“And I’m not buying it. We think Scott Mills caused that crash. You’re his friend. Just a wild coincidence that you happened on the crash that he caused?”
Dezi’s eyes were searching the corners of the room, maybe looking for an escape hatch. But there was no way out, and she placed her hands over her eyes and groaned.
“Tell me,” JD urged.
The hands came down, but Dezi wouldn’t look up. “Grey Man,” she said. “That’s who did it.”
Grey Man? The words brought a memory and a shiver to JD: darkness and rain, and a figure standing across the street cloaked in shadows, only to slither away before she could confront him. But grey had other meanings. “You’re saying a senior citizen did it?” she joked.
Dezi stared at her, then gave the briefest smile. “No, Grey Man, that’s what I call him, because that’s all he wears. I don’t know his name. Him and Scott are friends, I think. And he likes me.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Maybe like three months ago Scott and I were at Deer Lake,” Dezi said. “And he pointed and said that guy over there had the hots for me. I saw a man sitting on a bench watching us. I hadn’t noticed him before. He had a hat on, and a coat, and I couldn’t see his face. And I thought Scott was just being a dick, but then a week later I saw him talking to that same man downtown — I’m pretty sure it was him — and when I came near, the guy kind of turned and walked away, fast. I asked Scott who he was, and he said, ‘Just a car salesman,’ and laughed. He said the man was going to get him a deal on a sports car to die for.”
“Scott had enough money to buy a sports car?”
“Not judging by that old truck he drives. Maybe his mom was going to buy him a new car, I don’t know. But he wouldn’t tell me about it, so I felt like there was something illegal about the deal. Scott’s stepdad is rich, but he doesn’t like Scott much. That’s what Scott says. His stepdad’s a lawyer, and he’s got a really big house in Lions Bay, and Scott has his own place there — well, it’s a guest cabin, actually — which I’ve been to once. It’s all in a big park, almost.”
“Does Scott work?”
“No, he’s going to school, at Cap U. So he never has much money to spend, and whatever he gets he blows on his dumb toys. So I don’t know why he was talking about buying a sports car. And then what happened next is he asked if I wanted to go for a drive with him and this guy, in the guy’s car. ”
“And did you?”
“I didn’t want to at first, but Scott said it would be fun and we’d get a free meal out of it. So we did, a couple days later. That was in October. It was a nice car, but nothing fancy.”
“Make, model?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know. It was a black four-door, and that’s about all I can tell you.”
“So you saw the man, finally. Describe him for me.”
“Again, I can’t. Scott drove, and the guy sat in the back seat and didn’t say much. I couldn’t see his face, and I wasn’t about to stare, was I? I didn’t really want to talk to him, and he didn’t say anything, either. It was weird.”
“No conversation at all?”
“Just him and Scott, just a word or two I couldn’t hear. And later he told Scott to pull over. We got out, and he gave Scott money so we could go for a nice dinner, and said he hoped we could do this again. And that was all, that time.”
“And did you do it again?”
Dezi nodded. Her face pinkened with what JD took to be shame. “Just once, the night I went out to Squamish, the night I stopped at the crash. I didn’t tell you the whole truth, JD. I’m sorry.”
“Well, you’re telling it now,” JD assured her. “And that’s what matters. Go on.”
“We’d gone for a drive again that day, and this time, when it was over, Scott pulled over where we’d left our cars, and I got out, but Scott stayed in the car with him. I should have minded my own business, but I was so curious about what they were up to. It was kind of exciting. Like being a detective. I drove around the block, then parked farther back, where I could watch them. They talked for a long time, then Scott went to his truck and took off, and I followed Grey Man.”
She glanced at JD as if expecting anger, saw only patience, and went on. “I wanted to know where he lived. Instead he drove out to Porteau Beach. I drove in, too, and parked. There were two cars in the parking lot — one was Grey Man’s — and down by the water I saw him and a girl. They looked like they were arguing, and my heart was just pounding. I didn’t know what to do. Then the girl came running up toward me, and she looked scared. She jumped into one of the cars and tore out, practically burning rubber. Grey Man was walking up the beach toward me, and now I was scared, too. I could see he was talking on a phone as he walked. I peeled out of there, hoping he didn’t see me. I got back on the highway, and I came upon the crash, and you know the rest.”
“You came upon the crash of the girl you’d seen arguing with Grey Man?”
“I didn’t even put it together then. I didn’t know it was the same girl on the beach. But now it all seems connected, now that you told me about Scott. If that was her, and Scott really does use his plane to make cars go off the road, then I don’t know. He lives right close by to where the crash happened. So is he sitting there doing that to people? What’s going on, JD? I don’t understand.”
Dezi was hugging herself, and there was nothing false about her dread. She looked so pale and shaky that the source of her fear might have been sitting in the room with them.
JD took a short break to go over the latest with Dion. There would be more questions for Dezi, but more than likely she would have to be released. Scott Mills, on the other hand, was going to be tracked down and shackled, now that they had Dezi’s incriminating statement about the van. Not great, but at the very least, it was fuel for a warrant.
Thirty-One
HEIDI
December 25–26
IN REACTION TO THE WORD takedown, Dion’s heart was beating fast. He paced the room and made a call to Leith, who was far away on the Island, but wanted to be kept in the loop. “Are you busy?”
“We’re all heading out for a walk on the beach,” Leith said. “Then the women will prepare dinner, while us guys get to sit around drinking brandy and watching them work. A good old-fashioned Christmas. How’s it going at your end?”
“We’re putting on Kevlar. Going to arrest Scott Mills. Desiree Novak gave us grounds for a warrant. And this being Christmas is perfect, ’cause we’ve established that there’s a family gathering at the Gold-Seton residence, and Novak says Mills hasn’t got much of a social life besides family — he’s close to his mother, anyway — so we’re pretty sure he’ll be there.”
“Great. Well, I’ll be waiting for the news,” Leith said. He sounded a little wistful, Dion thought. As he ended the call, he realized that he wished Leith was here to take part in the arrest — then he wondered why he wished it. But he was interrupted by JD letting him know Bosko had given the go-ahead, and the action was about to get underway. He jumped to it.
* * *
In the end Kevlar wasn’t necessary, because Scott Mills wasn’t at the Gold-Seton residence, neither in the main house nor in his guest house at the back of the estate. A lot of people were present in the mansion, but at the moment their babble of conversation was blocked out by a heavy door. Dion stood in somebody’s study — probably Karl’s — looking at Karl’s angry wife, Maria. The little
white dog at her feet was also angry, backing up its mistress with steady growling and the occasional warning yap. The woman herself was well-dressed in black satin and high heels, a little overweight, polished and shiny, and smelling of perfume and fragrant liquor. Her earrings swung and sparkled as she expressed her anger. She made a stark contrast to the three quiet cops in dark blue, all doing nothing at the moment but listening to her speak.
“Of all the days, you pick this one to swoop in and embarrass the hell out of us,” she was saying. “Is that some kind of wicked sense of humour on your part, or just systemic sadism?”
“Time was of the essence, ma’am,” JD said. “We understood Scott would be here, and we wanted to speak to him right away. He’s not, so we’ll make it nice and quick and be out of your hair, as I said, if you’ll tell us where he is.”
“And as I told you, I do not know where my son is. He’s an adult. He doesn’t have to report his every move.”
“You must have a few ideas of where he could be.”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“When did he call to say he wouldn’t be at your party?”
“This morning, about ten a.m.”
“No discussion as to why, ma’am?”
The ma’ams were delivered coldly, JD hitting hard. Dion and Urbanski were playing the steely-eyed backup men, ready to get mean if called upon. Of course they wouldn’t get mean. If asked to leave, they would. But it didn’t hurt to put on a show.
“No discussion. I suppose he had something more exciting to do than hang around with his mom and stepdad and a bunch of their aging friends.”
JD put to Maria the night of Amelia Foster’s crash — any idea what Scott was doing then? The woman consulted her phone, presumably looking at her calendar app. “That was a night Karl was out,” she said, and put the phone down. “And since Karl and Scott don’t get along, Scott took advantage of our eighty-inch 4K television. He watched some godawful wrestling competition. You’re going to ask what time. I’m sure he came over when he smelled dinner, hoping to be fed, and stayed until Karl’s headlights showed up in the driveway, which would have been around one a.m.”
“When did he smell dinner?” JD asked, with no trace of humour.
“Between six and seven.”
“Who else was here then?”
“Just myself. We ate, talked a bit, then he went to his TV show, and I went to the den to read.”
“I guess the godawful wrestling must have been pretty loud. Didn’t that bother you?”
“I was one floor up, and the floors are solid, and he kept the volume down, as I told him to. No, the noise hardly reached me.”
“You weren’t watching him, then. He might have stepped out at some point?”
“Well, I could see his vehicle from where I was reading, and it didn’t move. If he stepped out on foot, it wouldn’t have been for long, and he wouldn’t have gotten far. I suppose he could have dashed around the grass for a bit. It’s a large estate. But more to the point, why? If he wants exercise, he has a pass to the gym. How silly. No, I can assure you, he was here that night, glued to his TV and his snacks.”
“Watching sports alone?” JD said doubtfully.
“Yes. What’s wrong with that? He’s smarter than the average joe,” Maria said. She was trying hard to be classy, Dion noticed, but sometimes her working-class roots showed, along with a fierce protectiveness of her son. “Sometimes being smart drives people away. He doesn’t have a wide circle of friends.”
“Who is in his narrow circle of friends?” JD asked.
“I don’t have a clue.”
“Any women in his life?”
“They wish.”
“You never saw him with a girl?”
“There is a girl in his life, but he’s trying to ‘shake her loose,’ is how he put it to me.”
Dion and Urbanski shared a look. Wow.
“Yeah?” JD said. “What’s the name of this girl he’s trying to shake loose?”
“I don’t know her name and I’ve never seen her. I mind my own business, unless he wants to confide. And he doesn’t do a lot of that, so there you go.”
“So he’s kind of smart but anti-social, would you say?”
“Smart and self-contained.”
JD ploughed on. “Where was your husband that night?”
“Is he suspected, too?”
“No, ma’am. Just in case I need to confirm your information.”
“My story, you mean,” Maria hissed. But she referred to her calendar again as her little dog rumbled with hatred and stared daggers at JD. She found the entry. “It’s not in my calendar, but I recall he visited Heidi in the early afternoon, till about six, likely. He then attended a planning committee meeting downtown. He’s involved in a New Year’s fundraiser event we’ll be attending. If you want the particulars of that, you’ll have to ask him.”
“Who’s Heidi?”
“His mother. She lives just down here at Skyview Manor.”
“The assisted living place?”
“That’s right.”
JD nodded at her steely-eyed backup men. Time to hit the road. As Urbanski had informed Bosko in his initial phone report, the arrest was an epic fail.
“Not only that,” Urbanski complained as they drove back to the detachment to take off the riot gear, “We blew Christmas Day harassing high society.”
“Awesome way to spend Christmas, seems to me,” JD said, from the passenger seat. She looked at Dion, who was driving. “Not a bad way to celebrate the birth of Jesus, right, Cal? Harassing the lawyers?”
Dion heard the question but didn’t answer. He was thinking about Karl’s mother, and he didn’t know why.
JD sighed and addressed Urbanski in the back seat instead. “So Scott wants to shake Dezi loose, hey? That one bowled me over.”
“Don’t bet on it,” he replied. “Could be the classic she wants to dump me so I’ll dump her first kind of manoeuvre. See it all the time.”
“What d’you think?” JD asked Dion. “Who’s shaking who?”
“Right,” he said absent-mindedly. Whatever it was swirling in his mind was important, he felt. But oh, so elusive.
* * *
Boxing Day, and the malls had sucked nearly all of humanity off the streets and paths of North Vancouver. Dion took advantage of the quiet to cycle along the Spirit Trail, half hoping he would run into Kate again, preferably on her own this time. But even if she was walking with Patrick, he would do a better job of leaving an impression. On both of them. He would boldly suggest a coffee date to Kate, just as friends, while transmitting to Patrick that it wasn’t over till it was over. She would say yes, of course. Patrick would be obliged to show how little he cared, but he would be knocked off balance a bit, and that would make him edgy, maybe even start an argument when they were home alone, and Kate would see her latest boyfriend wasn’t such a prize after all.
But he didn’t run into Kate or Patrick. He leaned his bike and stood on the path to study the waves. Being near the ocean still opened wounds, but now at least he had figured out why. Memories were bittersweet, and it was the delineation that bothered him — the past so sweet, the future so bitter. The sea’s scents and sounds, its wheeling gulls, its wide openness that suggested great power and endless possibilities, all closed to him now. The sea was a kind of background music to what had been the time of his life.
Himself and Kate on the beach, soaking up the rays. Or swimming, the cold splash and gasp with the first plunge. Salt on the tongue and sand underfoot. Grit as he ran his palms down her back. As they dried in the sun, the sand fell away like a shed layer. She felt different in bed after a swim in the sea, her hair tangled and ropey, but clean in a cleaner way. They slept better and fought less. Everything tasted great after a day by the sea.
That’s why it hurt to look at the waves.
He looked anyway. The sea tried telling him it was time to give up on Kate, focus on somebody new. He never had trouble meeting
women, on one level. The trouble was the second level, which never seemed to happen.
“It’s because I don’t want it to,” he said, trying to figure it out. “I just have to want it more.”
A beautiful woman cycled by. They smiled at each other, and he watched her go, half convinced. As she disappeared, another woman filtered through his thoughts. Faceless, and a lot older. Eighty-nine, Karl had said.
Dion couldn’t imagine being eighty-nine, the bulk of life behind him. Karl had said his mother could run a marathon, even after a stroke, but Dion didn’t believe it. It was probably just a way of saying she would be okay.
But would she? The concept of being eighty-nine, in assisted living, and recovering from a stroke made his own troubles seem petty. But that wasn’t why he was thinking about Heidi Gold-Seton, a person he’d never met, never seen, who was nothing to him but a name.
Nothing but a name …
“Wait a minute!” he shouted at the gulls. “Whoa!”
He picked up his bike and got back on the path, standing on the pedals to go faster. He needed to be at his desk, write it down, be certain about it — then make some calls.
Thirty-Two
IN THE WINGS
December 26
WITH JD BESIDE HIM, Dion drove to Lions Bay and the assisted living facility, Skyview Manor, where Heidi Gold-Seton lived. “It seems like kind of a stretch,” JD said, as they joined traffic on the Sea to Sky. She said it again, sounding it out. “Heidi Gold-Seton, hide-and-go-seek. Crazy. Crazy but brilliant.” She stared at Dion as he drove until he had no choice but to ask her what was on her mind.
“You’re so different,” she said. “But you’re so the same. I can’t figure you out.”
“Having your head bashed will do that,” he said. “I’m getting over it.”
“Going to be your old self pretty soon, you think?”
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