Torch Song

by Jo A. Hiestand

  But there was more to the illusion of night for McLaren. Night had been the time of his great childhood terror, when the shadows had crept toward him, covered him, overpowered him to cut off his sight and left the sounds of mice. They had surrounded him, gnawing at the wooden walls of the closet he’d been locked in. He heard their claws and teeth on the studs, envisioned the dozens of sharp, chewing teeth, prayed that the walls were thick enough to keep them out. He had banged on the closet door, rattled the unyielding doorknob, screamed until he could barely hear himself sob in his fright. Yet, no one came.

  Time had ceased to flow. Trapped in the claustrophobic darkness, he had set his mind as best he could on other things: music, walking through the wood, baking with his mother. When he had finally been found and rescued, he had slept outdoors for weeks, afraid of dark, interior spaces. Mice still frightened him, bringing back the scene and emotions in petrifying reality. Dena was one of the few people who knew his vulnerability.

  But right now, with Janet’s voice washing over him and the darkness of the land soothingly thick like a blanket, he could concentrate on Janet’s case. The curved indentation on her skull whispered to him, drew him with a coaxing finger. If she hadn’t been hit on purpose and left in the burning studio, he’d go back to dry stone wall work full time.

  He punched up a cushion behind his head, rolled over on his side, and fell asleep with midnight stars in his eyes and Janet’s voice in his ear.

  FOURTEEN

  McLaren blinked awake Wednesday morning, unsure where he was. His bedroom had evidently been exchanged for another room, but what it was and how he got there he didn’t know. He slowly sat up and looked again around. His guitar sat on the coffee table; sheets of paper sprouting from a manila file folder—dented from where he had lain on it—sprawled at the end of the sofa. Dena’s photograph smiled at him from the wall.

  Groaning and rubbing his scalp, he got up. It was a hell of a way to start the day, stiff from a night on the sofa. He shuffled over to the stereo cabinet and turned off the amplifier and CD player, grabbed his guitar, put it back in its hard-shell case, then showered and dressed. After his second cup of hot tea he phoned Nora.

  Her voice, steady and positive, responded without hesitation. “I don’t know what Janet usually kept in her studio, Mr. McLaren.” If Nora thought the question odd, she didn’t challenge it. Best not to look a gift horse in the mouth; someone finally took her seriously.

  “Because she kept shuffling things about, you mean?”

  “No. Because I hardly frequented the place. Not because I wasn’t interested in Janet’s art—that’s not the reason. She’d take me in, show me a work in progress sometimes, but her finished pieces she’d either have leaning against the sofa in her house and I’d see them that way, or she’d tell me to sit down and close my eyes and she’d bring the painting out from her bedroom or some place and hold it while she stood before me. I don’t think she really wanted people, even me, to go to her studio. It was the intrusion into her creative world, I think, that bothered her.”

  “So you can’t tell me what might or might not be missing from that building.”

  “Nothing specific, no. Not like a certain lamp or mug or file of paper.”

  “She kept files in her studio? What…like correspondence from art galleries?”

  “Could have done. I know she kept bills and receipts for art supplies there. She told me once that it was logical to keep the art things all together. You know—bills for art supplies in the art studio. I don’t know if she did that with her music bills and correspondence, though. I can’t say how much she used the studio for practice sessions.”

  “Her band rehearsed there?” He tried to keep the surprise from his voice.

  “I don’t think very often. You’ll have to ask her pianist about that. Do you have his name?”

  “No. You have it?”

  “Dan Wilshaw. Wait a moment. I’ve his phone number right here.”

  The thud of the phone receiver rattled in his ear as Nora laid down the phone. Her footsteps tapped across a wooden floor, growing fainter in her retreat. Seconds passed before he heard the footsteps again, increasingly louder this time. The receiver slid across the hard surface on which it rested, there was a muttered ‘Sorry’ and Nora’s voice rattled off a phone number. “He may not be able to tell you details, but you can ask. I know he’d do anything to help, Mr. McLaren.”

  “He’s worth talking to. Thanks.”

  “If he doesn’t know, perhaps Janet’s former boyfriend might. He and a friend built the studio and he helped Janet move her things in there. He could remember. Or her fiancé might, of course.”

  “Her former boyfriend’s name…?”

  “Tom Murray.” She gave McLaren both men’s phone numbers. “I never was too keen on Tom.”

  “Didn’t like the way he treated Janet?”

  “I suppose he was good enough to her. I never heard anything to his detriment. Not that Janet would divulge that, particularly.”

  “Private about her life, I expect.”

  “Being an only child may have had something to do with it. Of course, I had her late in life and already had my own career. Her father did, too. We were busy, but we made as many school plays and music recitals and hockey games as we could. We missed some. Well, that’s to be expected, isn’t it? But we tried. No one could fault us for that. So I suppose Janet found it simpler to keep things to herself, or confide in her friends.”

  “Did she have a diary? Many girls do. It would be a natural outlet for her, kind of like talking.” To parents who weren’t always there, he wanted to add, but didn’t.

  “I never heard her mention one, and there was never one on her Christmas list. She could have bought a notebook, though.”

  “Well, maybe she was just a private person.”

  “A girlfriend or boyfriend usually takes on that role, I believe.”

  “Did she have a close girl friend?”

  “In primary school, but we moved around, either for my husband’s work or for mine. She never formed another close attachment with a particular girl after that.”

  “And she has a current fiancé and a former boyfriend.”

  “Yes. I am quite taken with her fiancé, Miles Tyson. I-I’m sorry he had to go through losing her.”

  “What about the former boyfriend, Tom Murray?”

  Nora hesitated, as if carefully choosing her words. “No warm and cuddly feelings for him. I don’t know why I never liked him much. Just one of those vague feelings, you know?”

  McLaren nodded, all too familiar with unexplained reactions.

  “It’s not because he was named in her will, either. She named a few friends and organizations in her will, including me. There was just something I didn’t like.”

  I’m beginning to get that feeling, too, McLaren thought as he thanked her and rang off.

  * * * *

  Tom Murray looked at McLaren as though he were from another planet. Or that Tom, himself, had somehow ended up in the cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Seeing an ex-cop on his doorstep didn’t facilitate this angst; it emanated from being asked if he had been Janet Ennis’ boyfriend.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  McLaren thought the man could have been a construction worker. Or a firefighter. Or a boxer. Any profession requiring shoulder and arm muscles. Not height, particularly, though the man stood nearly as tall as McLaren’s six foot-plus frame. But strength. He seemed to have the quick reflexes of a cat and the darting eyes of a criminal. Light on the balls of his feet, McLaren noticed and mentally put Tom in the amateur boxer league.

  “I’d like to ask you a few questions about Janet’s death,” McLaren returned, keeping his voice even.

  The town of Bakewell seemed to stretch and yawn and rouse itself from sleep as McLaren waited on Tom’s doorstep. Several roads west of Tom’s residence, cars and trucks threaded their way through Matlock Street and King Street, around the traffi
c circle, and then onto Rutland Square and over the bridge or else onto Granby Road to the car parks. The town center stirred with pedestrian traffic, too—shoppers making for the supermarket or other retail shops. Or residents calling in at the town hall or library. McLaren knew Bakewell well enough to know that this traffic was just the beginning of the non-ending stream. The town was big on tourists’ lists.

  A car’s motor sounded nearby, followed by the yap of a dog. McLaren’s stare never left Tom’s face.

  Evidently sensing the man before him was not going to leave, Tom said, “Why? What questions?” He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt—a light blue pin stripe with button-down collar—and finished tucking in his shirttail. He looked as though he’d just woken, with his damp, dark hair and morning stubble darkening his face. He squinted into the low-lying sunlight already warming the air, then shielded his eyes as he looked at McLaren. “What’s going on? All that was five years ago. The cops have already been through it all. It doesn’t do any good to dredge it up again. Only brings back hurtful memories and opens old wounds.”

  “Both of which you have, evidently.”

  Tom’s gaze raked McLaren sideways, as though sizing up the consequence of his answer. “Well, sure. Yeah. Everyone knows that. Her mum, her friends, her fans. I guess even the manager of the club where she used to sing a lot knows that. I didn’t keep in the background.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to, being her boyfriend. Had you two been engaged?”

  “We were talking about it. Did all the preliminary stuff. You know—decide where we would live, how our careers would mesh, philosophy on bringing up kids… All the usual.”

  “But you never were officially engaged.”

  “No. What’s this in aid of? Why’s Nora stirring up everything again?”

  Again McLaren got the half-hooded, half-skeptical stare, as though Tom didn’t quite believe Nora was behind this.

  “You can ring her up if you don’t believe I’ve got her blessing on this,” McLaren said. His mobile vibrated in his back pocket but he ignored it. “You need her number?”

  “I’ve still got it, thanks. So why are you asking around about the fire? I thought it was all done with.”

  “Just a few questions still unanswered. You helped with the construction of her artist’s studio, I understand.”

  Tom nodded slowly, his gaze still on McLaren.

  “Helped her move her things in, too.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing. It’s commendable. I wonder if you recall what she kept in the studio.”

  “What she kept in it? Like…?”

  “I don’t need a detailed inventory. That’d be impossible. Just a general idea would be helpful. Did she have anything she especially valued in there? Or a small safe, perhaps?”

  “Nothing like that, no. She had a small filing cabinet, but that held nothing of real value. Just bills for her art supplies, letters from gallery owners. That sort of thing.”

  “When did you and Janet part ways?”

  “Now, what kind of question is that? That’s none of your business, McLaren.”

  “I ask merely to understand the time frame.”

  Tom wiped the back of his hand across his lips. “June. We broke up in June.”

  “A few months before the fire, then.”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Were you two still friendly?”

  “Well, we weren’t as matey as we had been—who would be after a breakup?—but we didn’t send each other hate mail, either.”

  “Did you still go to hear her sing?”

  “Not at first. I was still hurting from being dumped.”

  “She broke it off, then.”

  “Yes. I didn’t believe it at first. Well, it sounded like a joke. She realized she really didn’t love me and didn’t want to marry me and she’d found someone else. It hurt.”

  “It would.”

  “I didn’t want to see her again or have anything to do with her. I used to flip the newspaper page fast if I saw her photo in the entertainment section. I didn’t want the reminder that we’d been friends. But a month or so later…well, I had accepted it. You have to, don’t you, if you want to retain your sanity.”

  “You go to her singing gigs, then.”

  “Some. Sure. She was a smashing singer. Even if we weren’t headed to the altar I couldn’t deny she had a super voice.”

  McLaren forced a lyric of one of Janet’s songs from his mind. He had to concentrate on his job. “Where were you the time Janet died?”

  The question caught Tom off guard, as McLaren had intended.

  “You don’t suspect me of her death, do you? We loved each other. I wouldn’t harm her.”

  “I’m just asking a question.”

  “Well, it’s a hell of a question. I was at a concert. I can’t prove it, but I was. With some friends, so you can ring them up if you need confirmation. It was at one of the clubs Janet used to sing at.” He gave McLaren the name of the club. “You want names and phone numbers?”

  “Maybe later. Were you and Janet friendly enough that she’d ask you over for after concert drinks or dinner or anything?”

  “No. She may have done, but I would’ve felt uncomfortable. You know how it is. That was a part of her life she shared with her good friends. I didn’t want to intrude.”

  “But you two had been good friends.”

  “Sure, but you have to cut the cord sometime. She couldn’t keep on having me over. That’d be like we were still together again.”

  “You never went to her house, then, after your break up.”

  Tom shook his head and stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets. “I struggled a lot with that, wanting to be included just like I had been when we were going together, but realizing she had someone else in her life. That would have hurt me more than anything, to be at a house party and see this new bloke with his arm around her. It would’ve killed me.”

  “Were you aware at the time that you had been named in Janet’s will as a beneficiary?”

  If McLaren thought the statement would evoke shock from Tom, he was mistaken. Tom nodded, said in a rough voice that she had told him about it and that he had tried to talk her into changing it.

  It was McLaren’s turn to ask why.

  “Because,” Tom said, his words rushing quickly, “if anything would happen to her, I’d be suspect for having caused it so I could get my portion of the money.”

  “Why would you think anything might happen to her? Had she some disease, like cancer?”

  “No. Nothing that I know of. But there was that death threat—”

  “When did she receive that?”

  “In June, I believe. Somewhere around then, at any rate.”

  “In what form did it come…phone call, letter, email?” If it had been a mobile phone, there would be a phone number Jamie could trace for him.

  “Letter. Kind of old fashioned, with the message spelled out in words cut out of a magazine or newspaper.” His upper teeth pulled at his bottom lip. “I guess the bloke figured out that phone calls and emails can be tracked.”

  Bloody bad break for our side, McLaren thought. “What did the letter say? Do you know how many she got?”

  “I saw only the first one. It said ‘Pay Up or Die,’ or something like that. There may have been others…I don’t know. We broke up a few days later.”

  And you were conveniently out of the way, McLaren thought, staying in the background because you didn’t want to see her with another guy.

  “I asked her what it meant,” Tom said. “But she just laughed it off and said it was a game a chum and she played.”

  “Do you think that was true? You knew Janet.”

  “Yeah, I knew her, but I couldn’t tell if she was telling me the truth. She didn’t seem bothered, at least around me. She may have received more after I left. I don’t know.”

  “What did the message refer to? Why should she pay someone? Had she don
e something in her past that was, shall we say, shady or might cause her embarrassment now?”

  Tom shrugged. “If there was, I didn’t know about it. But I guess she could have paid off the demand without too much trouble. And keep up her life style.”

  “Without her altering her will, I assume.”

  “You’ll have to ask her lawyer. I’ve no idea. I just knew I didn’t want any part of being a beneficiary. It made me nervous.”

  “She was fairly wealthy, then,” McLaren said, the astonishment evident in his tone.

  “Maybe not by film star or sports star status, but she had money.”

  “What are we talking about, then?”

  “From what she said, I reckoned I’d get around ten thousand pounds.”

  McLaren left, thinking maybe that had been enough to kill for after all.

  * * * *

  Sitting in his car, McLaren looked at the Caller ID display on his mobile. While he’d been talking to Tom, his friend Jamie Kydd had called. McLaren punched the Missed Call option and seconds later asked Jamie what was up.

  “Not the jig, if that’s comforting,” Jamie said. McLaren could hear the warmth of friendship in it.

  “So, why the call? You’ve learned something, I gather.”

  “Nothing to win itself a headline in The Sun, but something interesting.”

  “Stop toying with me. It’s not your strong suit.”

  Jamie laughed. “Do you know who the beneficiaries are in Janet’s will?”

  “Her mother and father, I assume. And her former boyfriend Tom Murray had been, though I’d think in three months she would have changed it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She and Tom parted ways in June and she took up with a new bloke in August. They were engaged. She lived through most of the month of September, so she had those three months after dropping Tom Murray and before her death to change her will. You’re not telling me fiancé Miles Tyson isn’t named.”

  “Seems odd any boyfriend or fiancé would be named for just this reason. Who’s so certain before a marriage that you’re going to stay on terms good enough to warrant inclusion in a will? That’s bloody major, Mike. I don’t know anyone who names their friends in their will.”