Innocent Murderer

by Suzanne F. Kingsmill

  I waved at both of them and left the office, feeling as though I had just been bitten. I didn’t know Dean well enough to know if this was his normal behaviour or the behaviour of a person worried about losing a new employee back to an assistant professor before he’d even hired her.

  I went back to my office and killed a couple of hours working on a research project, then made another appointment to see Tracey. Judging from her behaviour she was hiding something and I wanted to know what it was. How I was going to do that I didn’t know, but it would come when I needed it.

  It was after 4:00 when Martha finally appeared, looking tired and harried. She plunked down in my chair and we eyed each other in silence.

  “It’s a promotion,” she said uncertainly.

  “Yup.”

  “He’s just a little eccentric.”

  “Yup.”

  “It’ll get better.”

  I didn’t answer and she looked away.

  “Elizabeth is Michael’s wife.” I threw it at her like a curve ball — to get her attention — and it worked.

  She jerked her head back and stared at me. “That’s an awful lot of people in the writing course or on the ship who had something to do with Terry’s sleepwalk–ing murder.”

  “Exactly what I thought.”

  “What did she say when you asked her about it?”

  “She clammed up.”

  I told Martha all I had learned since we last talked.

  “So they all have motives.”

  “That’s right. LuEllen was nearly killed and badly disfigured, so you could imagine her anger and need for revenge; Elizabeth lost a husband she loved dearly; and Peter lost a best friend. Owen potentially stands to gain from his sister’s death. Who have I missed of the writ–ing group?”

  “Tracey. She was so humiliated by Terry that either she or her firecracker husband killed Terry out of fury.”

  “Yeah, that’s possible, but not likely. I mean, who kills over a bunch of lousy writing?”

  “I don’t know. Humiliation is a pretty strong emo–tion. And her husband said her writing was supremely important to her. She’s also the only one of the writing group with no known connection to Michael’s murder. Besides Sally.”

  “And Peter and Jason are the only ones who are not part of the writing group but have reason to have killed her.”

  “What about me and Duncan? We’re part of the writer’s group.”

  I looked at her and laughed. “Friendship has its perks,” I whispered. “You are not official suspects.”

  “Official?”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake, you know what I mean.”

  “Well that leaves only four — LuEllen, Elizabeth, Tracey, and Owen — who were part of the writing group in some capacity and who were on board.”

  “Exactly. I think you should get them all together for a meeting on the pretense of having a little bit of a reunion. All the members of the writing group, plus

  Peter, Jason, and Sandy. I don’t think we have any other suspects, do we?”

  “What about Arthur?”

  “Right. Arthur. He seems genuinely to have been in love with Sally so murdering her seems unrealistic. And he has no connection to the trial. He doesn’t seem to have a motive that I can see.”

  Martha was looking at me in a strange way.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I should call it?” said Martha, my comment sud–denly sinking in.

  “It’s only logical. You’re a member of the writing group.”

  “And you were on the ship.”

  “Aw, but you were both.”

  “But my apartment is too small.” She had a point, but maybe being in close quarters would loosen people up.

  “No one will drive all the way out to my place.”

  I could tell that she thought I had a point. “Alright.

  I’ll call and set it up for Wednesday after work.” She made a face that left me in no doubt that she really didn’t want to do this. “What’re you hoping will happen at this meeting, Cordi?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll catch us a murderer.”

  After Martha left I looked through the second box that Derek had sent. Half an hour later I came across a clipping about Terry Ballantyne and a Heather Dunne McNeil. I studied the picture of the woman whose middle name was the same as Tracey’s. They didn’t look at all alike and I wondered how they were related. Heather had been killed in a speedboat accident. The driver had been Terry.

  Two days later I found myself standing in front of a small, pale green bungalow with pale yellow shutters and some straggly cedar trees rounded to look like cones. Tracey had told me that George would be at work, but I still glanced around nervously as I walked up the front walk. The door was shiny jet-black with a big brass knocker. I raised it and let it thud onto the metal thud maker then listened as the sound reverberated around the neighbourhood.

  Tracey opened the door just as I was beginning to feel impatient. She was wearing a bilious green sweater that made her look quite sickly. She asked me in and then took me through a dark living room furnished, as far as I could tell, with navy blue and black furniture, to a little sunroom off the back of the house. Compared to the darkness of the rest of the house this little room felt like a floodlight. It was pretty nondescript, with a green plastic table and four molded plastic chairs in matching colours.

  She offered me some water and while she was get–ting it I prowled around. There wasn’t much there, just a bookshelf with a few photos on it. I went to take a closer look. There were a couple of George, and of George and Tracey, and there was one of a younger Tracey with Heather. I picked it up to look more closely and nearly jumped a mile when I heard Tracey say, in a quiet, gentle voice, “Please put it down.”

  I felt embarrassed, quickly replaced it and muttered sorry. She handed me my glass of water and then we both sat at opposite ends of the little table.

  “How were you and Heather related?” I asked.

  She looked at me over the rim of her glass and sighed.

  “We were sisters.”

  “I’m sorry about the accident,” I mumbled. What else do you say in answer to that?

  “They were drunk. Roaring down the canal. Didn’t even see her in her little scull. At least, that’s what the police said.”

  “Terry was on board wasn’t she? In fact, wasn’t she driving?”

  She gazed out the window at the little garden out back and nodded, as if in a dream. “Everybody said what a horrible accident it was.”

  I took advantage of that and said, “But you never believed that, did you?”

  She refocused her eyes on me and for a moment didn’t seem to register who I was. When she did her eyes widened. “Please don’t tell George. He’ll be so mad that I’ve spoken to you.”

  “Why did you take her course?”

  Tracey looked at me and then looked down at her shoes.

  “You must have been very angry at Terry.”

  Tracey looked up at me again, her face suffused with anger. “There isn’t a word for what I felt about her.” She hesitated, fighting some inner demons. “I could have killed her,” she said suddenly and then clamped her hand over her mouth. “But I didn’t. I didn’t kill her.”

  When I drove home after work the lazy summer sun was burnishing the surface of the Ottawa River. When I turned down our road I could see the rows of August-tall corn. Ryan and I used to play hide-and-seek in there when we were kids. It was like our very own private Jack and the Beanstalk, the dark green corn stalks towering over our heads, blocking out the sun as we ran and ran and ran. The first time we ever did it we got lost and Dad had to yell us out by letting us follow his voice. After that he taught us about the direction of the sun. But we still got lost lots of times because the cornrows are so close together.

  The red light was on over the barn so I continued on to my place. The workmen had made a lot of prog–ress and as I walked inside the acrid smell of smoke ha
d receded to just a whiff. I’d be able to move back in soon.

  I walked out onto my front porch and stared out at the fields of corn and at the cows grazing in nearby fields. It felt good to live here. I didn’t want to go to England. I belonged here. I sat down on my porch chair and must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew it was dark and something was rubbing against my leg. I sat up suddenly and Paulie bolted, but not completely. She stopped at the top of the stairs and looked back at me.

  “Hey ya, Paulie,” I said, reaching out my hand. The cat stared at me and I reached out for her, a tableau of indecision and hope, and the hope won. Paulie slowly and carefully retraced her steps until her head was just under my hand. She reached up and butted my palm. I began to scratch her ears.

  “Friends?” I asked and she answered with a purr. I left her shortly after and headed back to Ryan’s. I was going

  to be happy to be back in my own place. As much as Ryan and his family mean to me I missed my own home.

  When I walked into the house there was no sign of Rose or the kids. I had just gone into the kitchen and got myself a glass of wine when the phone rang. I debated answering but finally did because it might be for me. It was. “Hey, Cordi,” said Patrick, his voice sounding strained. “How are you doing?”

  Since I wasn’t doing very well at all as far as he was concerned I just mumbled a “Hi.”

  “No one stalking you?” He forced out a laugh but it didn’t work.

  I replied bitterly, “No.”

  There was a pause and then he said, “I leave in four days. What about dinner tonight, tomorrow, and the night I leave?” We’d both been too busy to get together, but it was more than that, of course.

  I said yes, but I wasn’t looking forward to any of the dinners, not because I didn’t love him but because I did.

  I’d already started to distance myself, out of an instinct for survival.

  “What about tonight? Can you drive in, sleep over?”

  I thought about it. I was really tempted, but Rose might need some help with the kids and Mac with the milking so I told him that. Pretty lame excuse since Ryan was pretty much up to par and Rose didn’t really need my help with the kids. He wasn’t very happy with it, but neither was I. After I hung up I had second thoughts and called him to say I’d be there in a couple of hours.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  We ate a candlelit dinner with scalloped potatoes swimming in garlic and cream, Portobello mushrooms, and baked Atlantic salmon that Patrick had made. We toasted each other and he caught me up and we kissed inside the moonbeam that splashed across his floor. It felt like I was caught in a raging river, my senses magnified to catch every sound, every touch, every taste, every sight. His hand on my skin made my body feel feverish and my mind go to mush as we intertwined like honeysuckle and bindweed, lost in the beauty and the rhythm of love.

  I hardly slept at all that night, thinking about him as he lay beside me, thinking about us, about the Atlantic Ocean and how big it is. The next morning Patrick was fast asleep when I had to leave, so I gave him a kiss on the nose and left a note on the kitchen table. When I got into work I caught sight of Martha as she scurried down the hall and almost yelled out to her, but the fact that she was scurrying made me stop. She never scurried. At lunch she dropped in to tell me that she had tracked everybody down and most of them were able to come. She was flustered because she wasn’t going to have time to buy drinks and snacks, and could I do it for her? I told Martha that she could leave everything up to me and she turned to leave.

  “You okay?” I asked, but she was gone before she could hear my question.

  My graduate student and I spent the afternoon going over his thesis to see what he still needed to do before he had to defend it. I remembered my own defence — four male professors peppering me with questions. After it was over I was sure they had spent hours coming up with the most difficult ones they could find. I had come out feeling sure I’d flunked. But I’d passed with much praise. It made me realize that just because you believe something bad is going to happen that doesn’t make it so.

  But it was unnerving to be so sure — I mean, where did that come from? As I said: unnerving.

  I left work in plenty of time to get the food and drinks, sit in rush hour traffic, and get to Martha’s twenty minutes before the writing group. I was getting nervous about how I was going to handle my questions and I sat in the car outside for five minutes, pulling myself together.

  I managed to juggle all the groceries and drinks so that I could take them all in one trip, except that I forgot about the door into the apartment building. I waited a bit, hop–ing someone would come and was just starting to bend down to put some of the groceries on the walkway when a man’s voice said, “Here, I’ll get the door for you.”

  I couldn’t look over the paper grocery bags to see who it was but I was thankful. I felt my way up the step and through the door with my feet, while trying to pin–point the voice, which was familiar.

  “Taking the elevator?”

  I mumbled “Yes,” and he asked me if he could take some of my groceries. I wasn’t so keen on giving them up to a strange man, especially a strange man I couldn’t see, but as I shifted them in my arms one of them slipped and the stranger grabbed it before it hit the floor. At that moment I could see who it was: Jason. He broke out into a nice smile and said, “Cordi, how nice to see you.”

  I smiled back as we stepped into the elevator and he pressed twelve. By the time we got to Martha’s apartment Jason miraculously had both shopping bags and the case of pop, and he made them look about as big as pincush–ions. I rapped on Martha’s door and waited. And waited. We looked at each other and I rapped again. No answer.

  “She must be stuck in traffic,” I said.

  Jason put down the groceries and we stood awk–wardly in the hall until I said, “What exactly did you mean when you said there had been others; that Michael wasn’t the only one?”

  Jason sucked on his lip and stared at me.

  I stared back.

  “Just little things that only a lover would understand. Sometimes she’d be distraught for days on end for no apparent reason, and other times I’d catch her poring over the newspapers as if her life depended on it.”

  “Are you talking about Heather?” I asked.

  “You know about her? Terry swore it was an acci–dent, that the wheel had jerked suddenly and the boat had mowed Heather down. Owen said so too. I was there as well, but I didn’t see anything until it was all over. But she was hiding something from me. I know that it had to do with Heather.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “I don’t know, but I got the feeling there was more to Heather’s death than Terry was letting on.”

  We were interrupted as first LuEllen, then Tracey and George (who hadn’t been invited), Elizabeth, Sandy, and Peter all arrived. Arthur and Owen had had to beg off, but I’d follow up with them later.

  By the time Martha arrived everyone was sitting on the floor nursing a beer and talking about all the good times on the ship. I had to endure joke after joke about being seasick and telling everyone that someone was out to kill me.

  I was more than a little relieved to see Martha. I hadn’t wanted to start asking questions in the hallway.

  We all trooped into her little apartment, which had been transformed into an apartment full of chairs and one sofa. There wasn’t room for anything else and everyone stood awkwardly on the threshold wondering what to do. Martha made a big show about getting everyone to sit down and after some fairly complicated gymnastics everyone finally found a seat.

  When I figured everyone was settled I moved to a position where I could see all of them and called their attention to me. I could tell by the way they looked at me that they were expecting a little speech about the trip, and maybe a tribute of some kind to Sally and Terry. But that’s not what they got. Instead they got this:

  “Arthur and Sandy tell me Sally was p
retending to be someone she wasn’t. I want to know why.”

  I looked at all their faces. No one said anything but there were a few shakes of the head.

  “Cordi, where do you come up with these scenarios?” asked Elizabeth.

  “The same place you do.”

  She looked confused. “Meaning what?” she asked.

  “Meaning you’ve all been lying about something and I want to know what it is.”

  No one spoke. I tried again. “LuEllen.” She jumped at her name. “Elizabeth.” She looked straight at me. “Tracey.” She avoided my gaze. “Peter.” He tilted his head. “Jason.” He returned my stare. “Owen and Arthur. Three of you are members of the writing club. At least five of you are connected to Michael’s death in one way or another. And at least two of you are connected to the death of a woman on the Rideau Canal. Both deaths are connected to Terry. Coincidence? I don’t think so. So what are you all hiding?”

  Still no one spoke.

  “I don’t know what you were up to, but I believe Sally was an innocent woman and I don’t think she deserves to go down in history as Terry’s murderer.” I stopped speaking and let the silence pull them out of their guilt.

  Tracey was the first to break. “She was a monster!” she blurted. George tried to stop her but she shrugged him off and the surprised look on his face was comical. “She killed Heather in cold blood. Planned it perfectly.”

  “There’s no proof of that,” I said.

  “Of course not. She was too good. She planned the perfect murders. Turned the steering wheel at the last moment, that’s what I think. And my sister had been so excited because Terry was sure her book was going to be a bestseller.”

  “Heather was a writer?” I asked, surprised.

  Tracey looked at me and then at the others as if look–ing for help. She bit her lip. “Yes.”

  It hit me as if I’d been punched in my neurons. “So she was working on a manuscript at the time of her death?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it good?”