The Suspect

by L. R. Wright

  “Just fine, thank you, Rosie,” said Cassandra briskly.

  “You two gonna have a drink? Maybe a bottle of wine?”

  “I was thinking more of coffee,” said Cassandra. “And then maybe some food.”

  “Oh. Right. I’ll go get a couple of menus, then.”

  “Librarians,” muttered Cassandra as Rosie turned away, “can’t slink among the stacks smelling of gin.”

  Alberg was observing with interest Rosie’s undulating progress across the room.

  “She’s studying psychology,” said Cassandra.

  Alberg looked at her. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Rosie. She’s a psychology major. At U.B.C. Her parents own this place. She works here in the summers.”

  “Ah.”

  Rosie returned with menus. “The clam chowder’s good today. So I’m told.”

  “I’ll have it,” said Cassandra promptly. “And coffee.”

  “Me too,” said Alberg. He smiled at the waitress as he handed back the unopened menus, but at least this time he didn’t goggle at her as she walked away.

  “I hate this,” said Cassandra with passion.

  Alberg leaned forward politely. “What do you hate? Having lunch? Restaurants with ferns? Or meeting strangers?”

  “Meeting strangers.” She took a drink of iced water, wishing it were wine.

  “I liked your ad,” he said after a while.

  “Why? What made you like it?”

  “It had a nice, sunny sound to it.”

  Rosie returned with two bowls of clam chowder and a basket of rolls and butter. “Have a nice lunch, you two,” she said sentimentally.

  Cassandra stared indignantly at her back.

  Alberg laughed. “Hey, look,” he said. “Relax. Enjoy yourself. You never have to see me again, if you don’t want to. Meanwhile”—he waved his spoon at her—“she’s right, it’s good clam chowder. You can tell by the smell.” He closed his eyes and leaned over the soup and sniffed, blissfully.

  “I’m sorry,” said Cassandra, smiling. “You’re right.” She began to eat.

  “Tell me about yourself,” he said.

  “I’m a librarian. Here in Sechelt. That’s what I meant in the ad, when I said—”

  “‘Books are my work, my comfort, and my joy.’”

  She looked at him curiously. “What did you think of that?”

  “I thought you were probably a librarian.” He took a spoonful of soup.

  Cassandra laughed. “I could have been a writer. Or a bookbinder.”

  “You could have been. But it seemed unlikely. What else?”

  “What else? Well, let me see.” She broke open a roll and buttered half of it. Then she put the roll back on her plate and her hands in her lap and spoke rapidly. “I’m forty-one years old, financially secure though not much more than that, never been married, came here from Vancouver almost nine years ago—God, I can’t believe that—I’ve got a mother who lives in Golden Arms and a brother who lives in Edmonton, I go back to Vancouver once a week if I can to remind me that these villages up and down the coast are not all there is.” She picked up her soupspoon and the buttered roll.

  “Golden Arms? Oh, that senior citizens’ place.”

  “Yes, that’s right. They live there on their own, but somebody’s there to sort of watch over them. Now you. Tell me about you.”

  “I’m a police officer.”

  She looked at him blankly. “A police officer. A cop. Are you a Mountie? Up here, you must be a Mountie.”

  “R.C.M. Police. Yeah. I hate ‘cop.’”

  “A policeman. R.C.M.P.” She chewed her roll thoughtfully. “I use marijuana sometimes. Nothing else, though, not for a long time. I’ve had a few speeding tickets, too.”

  “This is obviously not going to work out.” She looked up to see him smiling; she hadn’t heard a smile in his voice. The smile altered her entire impression of him. There might be some exuberance in there, after all.

  “What else?” she said. “I mean, there’s got to be more to you than being a policeman.”

  “Not much.”

  “Well, what do you like to do,” said Cassandra patiently, “when you’re not on duty?”

  “I think I like having lunch with librarians,” he said. “Or dinner.” It was the first thing he’d said that sounded awkward. He pushed away his bowl. “Do you mind if I smoke?” She shook her head, and he lit a cigarette. “I don’t read much. I like to go to the movies, sometimes. I like to travel. I like to sail.”

  “Are you separated, or divorced, or something?”

  “Divorced.”

  She felt considerable relief. “Why are you divorced?”

  “We get moved around a lot. My wife finally got tired of it. I don’t blame her. We were in Kamloops before I came here. We’d been there five years, and she’d started a little business, a boutique. She didn’t want to give it up.”

  Cassandra waited, but he didn’t go on. “Do you have any kids?”

  “Two. They’re in university now. In Calgary. That’s where their grandparents live. My ex-wife’s parents.”

  Cassandra looked out over the water. She wondered why his children hadn’t wanted to go to university in Vancouver, where they could be near their father. “Where did you learn to sail?” she said.

  “On Lake Ontario. That’s where I grew up. Toronto.”

  “What kind of a policeman are you? You don’t give out traffic tickets and things like that, do you?”

  “No.” He smiled again. “This is my detachment. Sechelt. I do whatever comes along.”

  “If this is your detachment,” she said hesitatingly, “then you must be involved in that awful thing, that poor old Mr. Burke.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The man who found the body—he’s a friend of mine.”

  “George Wilcox?”

  “He comes into the library a lot. We’ve become friends.” She felt an uneasy sense of caution. “He was quite upset, I think.”

  “I’m sure he was.”

  She finished her lunch in silence. He doesn’t talk about his work, she thought. She wondered if this was because she was a stranger to him, or if he hadn’t even talked about it with his wife. She’d read somewhere that a lot of cops—police officers, she corrected herself—were like that.

  Over coffee they discussed the Sunshine Coast, and Vancouver, and sailing. Cassandra kept trying to imagine him brandishing a revolver and shouting, “Stop in the name of the law!” He looked a bit old to be doing that sort of thing, actually. Maybe he just did administrative work and delegated all the other stuff.

  “How many ads have you answered?” she asked him.

  “Oh, two or three. Maybe four.”

  She wanted to ask how successful these other meetings had been. “Have you put in an ad of your own?” she said instead.

  “No.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’d get more replies than I have,” said Cassandra glumly. “There are hordes of women out there, just hordes of them.”

  “Yeah,” said Alberg, “but they all want to get married.”

  Cassandra looked at him with interest. “Oh, do they?” she said casually. She glanced at her watch. “My God, I’ve got to get back to work.”

  “Me too,” said Alberg. He put his cigarettes and lighter in his pocket and laid money on top of the bill. He got up and pulled back Cassandra’s chair for her.

  Outside the restaurant he walked her to her car. “How long have you had this thing?” he said, looking critically at the Hornet.

  “All its life. Nine years.” She put an affectionate hand on its hood.

  “I’d like to see you again,” he said. “But I won’t call you if you’ve already made up your mind that you don’t want to see me.”

  Cassandra lowered her head to fish her sunglasses from her purse. “Go ahead and call,” she said carelessly.

  He opened the door for her. �
�You ought to lock it, you know.”

  “I ought to exercise, too, and eat more salads.” She climbed in and slammed the door.

  “Thank you,” said Alberg through the window. “I enjoyed myself.”

  “Are you off duty?” said Cassandra. “Is that why you’re wearing that suit? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “I don’t mind your asking. I’m going to a funeral.” He smiled. “I’ll call you.”

  She watched him drive away. She didn’t know yet whether she liked him or not. She certainly didn’t dislike him.

  She started the car. It wouldn’t hurt to see him again, she thought, driving back to the library. Even though she’d never been all that fond of blonds. And she’d certainly never imagined herself dating a cop. A police officer.

  8

  “HELEN MORRIS, please.”

  “This is she.”

  “Mrs. Morris, I’m Staff Sergeant Alberg of the R.C.M. Police in Sechelt.”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Alberg.” Her voice was thin, gray. “I think I remember you. Tall and fair-haired.”

  “Right.”

  “You paid your respects, as I recall. When I was there to make the arrangements.”

  “You didn’t stay for the funeral,” said Alberg.

  “No.” There was a pause. “It was today, wasn’t it.”

  “I kind of expected to see you there. I’ve got a few questions—I’d hoped you’d be able to help us out a little more.”

  “I don’t see how I could,” she said. “As I told your sergeant on Wednesday, I hadn’t seen my brother in more than twenty years. I haven’t the faintest idea what he’s been doing, who his friends were.”

  “Not even Christmas cards?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “You didn’t even exchange Christmas cards?”

  “No, Mr. Alberg. We didn’t.”

  “Were you surprised to hear that he’d died?” Alberg leaned back in his chair and put his feet on the desk. He shifted the phone to his other ear.

  “Not particularly. He was eighty-five, after all.”

  “How old are you, Mrs. Morris?”

  “I’m seventy-six. But healthy.”

  “Were you surprised by the will?”

  She laughed. “As you’ve just discovered, he never even sent me a Christmas card. Why should I be surprised that I don’t figure in his will? I wouldn’t have taken anything from him, anyway.”

  “Were you surprised to hear how he’d died?” Alberg squinted his eyes almost closed, as though by diminishing his vision he could make his hearing more acute.

  He heard her sigh. “Of course I was surprised,” she said irritably. “I’m not accustomed to having acquaintances who get themselves murdered.”

  “Acquaintances?” Alberg let his voice fill with amazement.

  Another silence. “He wasn’t much more than that, Mr. Alberg. I regret having to say so, but it’s true.”

  “Do you have any other brothers? Any sisters?”

  “No. There were just the two of us.”

  “So he was your only living relative.”

  “In the sense you mean it, yes. I have three children. My husband died several years ago. Forgive me, but I really don’t see the point of your questions.”

  “I was just thinking that it must be very sad to have been estranged for so long from your only brother. It must have been a great sadness in your life, and in his.” He winced, telling himself not to overdo it.

  “Estrangement, Mr. Alberg, implies a previous affection. There was never any affection between Carlyle and me. Therefore we were never estranged, and the situation was never a sad one.”

  Alberg removed his feet from his desk and sat up. “What was the situation between you, Mrs. Morris?” He went on quickly, before she could tell him it was none of his business. “You see, so far we don’t have any suspects in your brother’s homicide. In order to try to find out who did this to him, it’s necessary to know something about him. What kind of man was he? Did he, for example, make friends easily?”

  He waited, and the long-distance seconds ticked by, but she didn’t reply.

  “He lived here for five years, Mrs. Morris,” he said. “Played the piano at the old folks’ dances, sang in the men’s choir down at the Old Age Pensioners’ hall, played bingo nearly every week, even went on a couple of bus tours to Reno.” He paused; no response. “Quite a sociable fellow, your brother.” He picked up a pen and began doodling on a routine letter from division headquarters. “Yet you know, the funny thing is, he doesn’t seem to have had any particular friends. He only did things in groups. Does that sound like your brother to you?”

  “I keep telling you,” she said sharply, “that I hadn’t seen him in twenty years. You could tell me anything at all—I’d have to believe it. The man was a stranger to me.”

  He liked the sound of her voice, as he had liked the brief glimpse of her which she had permitted the village during her quick trip to arrange for her brother’s burial. She was tall and straight and thin, well dressed, with coiffured white hair and a lift to her chin. She had been brisk and businesslike, in Sechelt.

  “It wasn’t that people didn’t like him, exactly,” said Alberg thoughtfully. “Most people described him as the life of the party, that sort of thing.” He tossed the pen aside and leaned back. “But there were a couple of people who told us they felt kind of uncomfortable with him. And this interests me, as you might imagine.”

  “Really,” said Carlyle Burke’s sister, politely.

  “Yeah. That’s all we’ve got. Some people felt uncomfortable with him. They said things like…”—he shoved the defaced letter aside and ruffled through the file on his desk—“I’m quoting, now. ‘He made me nervous with all his boisterousness.’ And, ‘It was like he was always acting a part, and you’d wish and wish he’d give it a rest now and then but he never did.’ And, ‘I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but whenever he asked me to dance I’d try to find an excuse; the way he liked to fling people around when he was dancing—well, it was too much for me, I’m seventy-eight years old.’” Alberg rubbed his forehead and closed his eyes and waited. “Nothing serious there,” he said absentmindedly. “It just got me thinking, that’s all.”

  “No,” said Mrs. Morris. “No, it doesn’t sound particularly serious.”

  Alberg sat up. “In the twenty years since you saw him,” he said amicably, “who did you talk to about him, and what did you tell them?”

  “What makes you think I ever talked about him? To anyone?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m sure you did.”

  He imagined her sitting at a small desk under a window. There would be white curtains at the window, the kind that hung straight to the floor. Maybe the desk had pigeonholes. It was probably made of dark wood, and it probably shone in the light from the window, or the lamp that would be standing next to it. He saw her fidgeting with the telephone cord, wrapping it around her fingers, unwrapping it, wrapping it again around her fingers, marking them.

  “I can fly out to Winnipeg to see you,” he said softly, “if that would be easier for you. Maybe talk to your children, too, while I’m there.”

  “There’s no need for that,” she said coldly. “They never met him. They never laid eyes on him. I made sure of that.”

  He waited again, and when she finally began to speak her voice was toneless. She spoke quickly, and Alberg gave an inaudible sigh of relief.

  “He was nine years older than I. He taunted me when I was a child, baited me when I was an adolescent. My parents punished him, but it didn’t do any good. He didn’t like me, that’s all. Maybe if I had been born when he was younger, or older… I’m trying to be charitable. Really, I don’t believe it would have made the slightest difference. He just didn’t like me, that’s all. So of course eventually—it didn’t take long—I didn’t like him, either. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Was he physically cruel to you?”

  “Oh, not really. It was
nothing like that,” she said quickly.

  “Did he get into trouble at school, for the same kinds of things?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember. I was nine years younger than he; that’s a big difference, when you’re children.”

  “Was he ever married?”

  Another pause. “Good heavens, Mr. Alberg. He was married to George Wilcox’s sister. I’m astonished that you didn’t know.”

  Alberg stared blankly at the photograph of his daughters that hung next to his desk. “Jesus. So am I.”

  “But perhaps it isn’t so surprising after all,” she said, almost comfortingly. “It was a long time ago—thirty years ago. And the marriage only lasted two years. Audrey was killed in a car accident.”

  “Thirty years ago. You mean he was fifty-five before he got married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did he wait so long?”

  “I really haven’t the faintest idea.” She sounded cool, now.

  “Did you go to his wedding?”

  “I hadn’t any choice. My mother was still alive—it would have upset her if I’d stayed away.”

  “You met his wife, then, and her brother?”

  “I met Audrey. I don’t remember meeting George. I remember that she spoke of him with great affection, and that he gave her away, but I don’t remember him.”

  “Did you see him this week, while you were in Sechelt?”

  “No.”

  Alberg frowned, irritated. All this was very interesting, but what the hell did it mean, if anything?

  “Tell me about Audrey,” he said.

  “I only saw her a few times, over a period of a couple of days. She was lovely.” Alberg could hear her smile. “Absolutely a lovely person. Not so much in the way she looked, although she was very pretty. It was more—oh, a kind of singing in her, if you know what I mean.” Alberg wished he could see her face. “I was amazed that she was going to marry Carlyle—she was twenty years younger—and that she behaved so fondly toward him, and seemed so happy.” She gave a bitter laugh. “But nothing lasts, does it, Mr. Alberg? Two years later, she was dead.”

  “Some things last, Mrs. Morris,” said Alberg gently. “You hated him, and that sure lasted, didn’t it?”