Flush

by Sky Curtis

  I nodded back, compressing my lips in what I hoped looked like a knowing line, as if I were familiar with ballistic results and silenced rifles. But underneath this lie, I was secretly pleased; my instincts about the van were accurate. Later I would restrain myself from saying “I told you so” to Cindy.

  “That was quick.” Really? I had no idea how long ballistic reports took. But it sounded good.

  “Misener.” Ralph bobbed his head, pleased with his guy. “But the van? Not a lead after all. It was great that you had that picture of the license plate; that saved us tons of time. Misener told me all this in that phone call about van Horner’s death.”

  We both were silent for a second or two with only the sound of the water lapping against the hulls of the boats docked on our left as we headed west. “I’m so glad you weren’t shot at, Robin, when you were in front of Richard’s house.”

  “Me, too. But do you think I’m in danger now? I know about the wasp allergy.”

  “Well, now the media,” he strummed out the word while looking at me, “could possibly print that Radcliffe died of an allergic reaction to a wasp sting. Once that’s public knowledge you would be safe. Perhaps the murderer doesn’t know that the new testing methods can isolate wasp venom and thinks you are the only risk for the whole concept to be exposed. But if it were common knowledge? I don’t think you’ll be at any risk.”

  I looked sideways at him as we rambled together along the lake side of the street. I enjoyed the connection between us as we dallied in a comfortable quietude, with only the sounds of the harbour in the air. I felt at peace listening to distant seagulls cawing and marvelled at them soaring on the light breeze. I wondered how Ralph was feeling about me. I loved the way he had moved that bit of hair off my face. He was gentle and yet so strong. Did he like me? He actually looked a bit uncomfortable. Awkward even.

  “You coming with me? To the morgue?”

  “Oh, you sweet talker,” I laughed to hopefully put him at ease. “What a fun date.” He frowned. So that fell flat. “Unfortunately no, I can’t make it, I have other plans.” I stopped walking. “There are a few things I have to do at work, and I just, coincidentally, happen to be at my office.” I thumbed at the building over my shoulder. We were standing at the revolving doors of the Express. The umbrella on the fast food card was flapping in the breeze off the lake just a few feet away.

  “If you say so.” Ralph was shuffling his feet and looking down.

  What was going on with him? Did he want to kiss me? I took a step closer so if he got his courage up he could do the dastardly deed without too much effort. I watched in amazement as suddenly his arms flapped like a bird’s and he enveloped me in an awkward hug while pecking me on the cheek. I gave him a small squeeze back, to let him know I was receptive to the idea of more. Hardly what I would call a passionate embrace.

  And then Ralph dashed off without a word, back in the direction of department-issued Ford that he had dumped sideways on the sidewalk. I watched all this with bafflement. Such odd behaviour. Didn’t he just say he wanted to get some food?

  But I had things to do. I had to talk to Cindy. I pushed through the revolving doors, walked across the glassy marble floor in my squeaky running shoes, and punched the button for the elevator. I felt so happy. My morning with Ralph had left me up up up. So far this was one great day.

  My euphoric balloon was immediately punctured with Cindy’s needlelike stare when I entered the editorial room. “Where have you been?’ she hissed accusingly as I sat down beside her and turned on my computer. What a downer to my good mood. “Doug’s in a lather.”

  I looked into Doug’s office and saw him staring out at the landscape of buildings to the west. Funny way to show a lather. The guy looked downright depressed. “What about?”

  “We’ve been trying to get hold of you all morning. What’s with your phone?’

  I checked out my phone. Shit. In the chaotic frenzy of fear in the morning and then all the running around, I hadn’t turned the ringer on. I made a show of activating the sound, shrugging my shoulders so she would know what happened. It was a mistake, get over it, the gesture implied. “I guess I had better go talk to him.”

  “Yes, you better,” said Cindy, fuming.

  “Look, I have good reasons for forgetting to turn my phone on, and I’ll tell you all about it. Come with me?” I hoped she would. Her presence would save me from repeating the story twice.

  She pretended to be irritated, but I could tell she was far too curious to let me go into the lion’s den alone. Sure, I had been remiss in not getting in touch with her for so long.

  “Listen,” I said while exhuming my iPad from my purse. “I’m really sorry. I know you’ve got my back and it’s been pretty crazy and a little bit scary lately. Sorry. I’ll do better to keep in touch.”

  She touched my arm as we walked together, “That’s okay, Robin, but you look too damn cheerful to be contrite and besides, you’re my best friend and I was worried.”

  “I know,” I said, then walked into Doug’s office.

  Doug turned his chair around from the view. He looked tired to me. I had so little experience in reading men. Who knew what was going on with him? But I didn’t want to be the object of his wrath. Not today. I’d had enough emotion for one day already and it was still before lunch. I jumped in with an apology right away, “Sorry I was out of touch for the better part of the morning. I did text Shirley, but I guess you didn’t get the message. I didn’t turn on my ringer until just now. I didn’t realize it was off. A mistake and I won’t do it again,” I blabbered.

  “No, I didn’t get the message,” he said irately. “Crime reporters can get in trouble, Robin, and I need to know where you are at all times.” His head was nodding at the points he was making. “Especially if you’re working on a tricky story. If you go AWOL I get very worried. As I said earlier, you know things that others don’t want you to know and when this happens, there’s danger.”

  “Yes, sir.” If that was the extent of his lecture, I could handle it. Besides, I knew he was right. I just didn’t know that the paper was watching out for me. Somehow I was touched. “I’m truly sorry. I didn’t understand the seriousness of this job and the potential danger. I really understand that now. I was terrified this morning. Turning on my phone and keeping contact with the paper slipped my mind.”

  Doug sat up, his face suddenly animated. “You were terrified? This morning? What of?”

  “Of exactly what you are talking about. I realized I knew something that someone wouldn’t want me to know and I felt in danger.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I called the police.”

  “From your cell?” Cindy asked sharply.

  “No, I was worried about it being tapped so I went to a neighbour’s and used his.”

  Cindy visibly relaxed.

  Doug tented his fingers, a now familiar gesture of his that I figured meant he was thinking. “What did you realize you knew?”

  “I remembered reading on Radcliff’s profile that he was allergic to wasps. That was the one detail I couldn’t retrieve from my memory. Well,” I coughed discreetly, “the one detail I can remember now that I had forgotten then.”

  Doug smiled encouragingly. “Why do you think this one detail was an important one?”

  “Radcliffe died with his hand half way up to his throat. People who are dying from anaphylactic shock feel like their throat is closing in and they can’t get enough air. It’s a horrible death.” Poor Todd. He might have been a sexist prick, but he sure didn’t deserve to die like that.

  Doug looked bewildered. His eyebrows were drawn across his forehead in a straight line while he frowned. “Again, why do you think this detail is important? So, his hand was up by his throat. Was he stung? It sounds accidental to me.”

  And I thought Creston was a hard sell. “I doubt it was a
ccidental. Somebody took down his profile after he was dead. This morning I figured out while I was eating my granola that someone was trying to conceal something on his profile, and given the way he had looked when he died, that one detail, that he was allergic to wasps, was the something.”

  Doug shook his head. A patronizing look flickered across his face. A bubble of anger got trapped in my gut. “An interesting hunch, but Robin, Robin,” he sing-songed, “just because someone possibly dies from a possible anaphylactic reaction from a possible wasp sting doesn’t mean they were murdered. It could have been a complete accident. Anyway, you were frightened. So you called the police? Not the paper? The police.”

  Cindy butt in, “She was right to call the police. She could have been in serious danger. One man was dead and the other had been seriously wounded.”

  I corrected her. “Actually, two men are dead. Van Horner died of his injuries today. He got a blood infection.”

  Doug jumped on this. “Who else knows about van Horner? When did you find this out?” Doug was paying close attention now, his body tilted forward and his hands flat on his desk.

  “I found out just twenty minutes ago, from Creston, when we were at the waterfront.”

  “Okay, back up the truck. You were at the waterfront. With the police. Why were you there?” Cindy’s anger had returned. She had been left out of the action.

  “When I called the police, well Ralph actually, I was in quite a state. You know, crying. Anyway, he came over to my house—”

  Doug jumped in, “Creston came over to your place? You called him Ralph. What’s going on here?”

  “He’s just a nice guy, okay? That’s all.”

  Doug looked meaningfully at Cindy. She angled her head back at him, just enough that I could catch it. The clock on Doug’s desk flipped to the next minute. It was getting close to lunch. And then I got it. Did they think I was going to be a mole for the paper? They could just think again.

  “It’s not what you think, so forget it.”

  Doug spread his hands. “And what were you doing at the waterfront?”

  Cindy nodded. She had really hated not being part of the activities. “I should have gone with you. It’s not safe to do things on your own.”

  They were ganging up on me. “I wasn’t on my own, I was with Creston.” I looked at their incredulous faces. “He asked me to come with him to interview the captain of the boat that had installed the pump.”

  Cindy sneered. “So, just a nice guy, huh?” She coughed dismissively, “Right. He hates journalists.”

  I couldn’t believe how she was treating me. First she was mad, then supportive, then mad. Ascot too. I was being batted around like a balloon. Hot tears formed behind my eyelids. “Look, believe it or not, he asked me to come with him to the waterfront to talk to the captain of the ship that installed the pump for the cooling system. Somewhere in all this mess is a motive for killing Radcliffe. Creston thinks it has something to do with the international theft of fresh water. The guy was murdered.” I held my head up high. I wasn’t going to be bullied out of my story.

  Doug was looking vacantly over my shoulder. I was tempted to turn my head to see what he was staring at, but held my ground. “You mentioned England yesterday,” he said. “That you were going to see him. What does England say about all this?” he demanded. “Did you meet with him last night?”

  “Yeah, I did. Cindy came with me.” I looked right at her. Did she need brownie points? Is that what was going on with her? Would coming with me to my meeting with Jack count as a brownie point? Why was she being such a bitch? “I was glad she did because he makes me nervous. He is one odd duck.”

  Cindy was picking at her nail polish. Had I made amends?

  “And what did he say?” Doug was visibly reigning in his impatience.

  “He said that Radcliffe was planning to steal Lake Ontario’s fresh water.”

  Doug hooted. “This is ridiculous. There’s no subterfuge. It was an accidental death. Cindy?”

  Cindy sat on the fence. “I think we need to wait for more evidence to come in.”

  “There! See Robin? She’s a seasoned reporter who doesn’t rely on hunches.” Doug paused for a minute to let his biting words sink in. “And what else did you do with Creston?” He was bug-eyed in his zeal to put me down.

  I outwardly composed myself but anger was frothing in my chest. “Well, we were going to interview all the people on the boat who were involved in installing the pump.”

  “That must have been quite a few.”

  “No, not really, just two others. Two summer students. No one else working on the project laying down the pipe knew exactly where they were.”

  “So, based on one of your many hunches, you think these three killed the two men. With a wasp? Is that what Creston thinks? That it wasn’t an accident?”

  I decided it wasn’t worth the energy to address his stupid hunch comment. “No, I really don’t think so. They seem to be upstanding types. You know, busy with other things in their lives. I can’t imagine why they would want to kill Everwave executives.”

  “Let’s get back to this wasp hunch of yours.”

  Okay, now I’d had enough of the hunch crap. I didn’t care that I had to impress my new boss. I was not going be treated like a bimbo. “Listen, you can be as critical as you like, Doug. Wasps don’t fly at night. Radcliffe being stung at ten p.m. was not an accident. His profile was taken down. Radcliffe was murdered by a wasp. Wasp venom killed him.”

  “Right. Is that a fact?” He busied himself with some papers on his desk, dismissing me.

  I’d had it. I spat, “The autopsy results came back about half an hour ago. There was wasp venom in his blood.” I held the winning hand.

  Doug shrugged this off and glanced at Cindy, his tone sarcastic. “Well, that could indicate something. Like he was accidentally stung.”

  Since when had the nice new boss turned into such an asshole? I punched back, “I’ll bet you any money that the autopsy will show that he was stung in his right hand because a wasp was put in his pocket. The jacket is at the lab now. There will be evidence that a wasp was in that pocket and that it was put there. If you need more evidence, I’ll give you more. My hunch, as you call it, will be well on its way to being proven. Someone hid a wasp in his pocket, trapping it, and when Radcliffe put his hand in his pocket, the wasp stung him. He was murdered.” I stood up. “I will also discover who did it and their motive.” I was done here. I didn’t care if this was my first assignment and I was the new girl on the block. Besides, I felt like I was going to cry, I was so bloody angry. I would not be dismissed. There was a roaring in my ears. “I recall that you, Mr. Ascot, were the one who told me to trust my instincts. Well, I do.”

  I turned on my heel and stalked out of his office, head held high. Fuck him.

  26.

  I BOLTED OUT OF DOUG’S OFFICE with my chin up and made a beeline for the washroom at the end of the hall. Dammit. I would go it alone. I went into a cubicle and blew my nose. I would not cry. The door of the washroom swung open and shut. I peered under the stall door: black sandals with a beaded open toe. Cindy.

  “So, do you like him? Really?”

  “Who?” I said through gritted teeth. “Your asshole boss?”

  “No, idiot. Creston.”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I’m your BF. Why are you being so mean to me?”

  Cindy was hurt? What was going on? This was such bullshit.

  I let loose, my shrill voice echoing off the tiles. “You’re the one who didn’t support me in Doug’s office. Like the two of you were in collusion, thinking of using me to be the paper’s spy with the police. You’re the one who didn’t give me any support for the wasp theory.”

  “Well, you called the police, not me. You went running to Creston.”

  Oh. Now I saw. This
wasn’t about the story. She was jealous of me and Ralph. She was feeling threatened in our relationship. I opened the cubicle door and saw her standing by the porcelain sink, looking utterly dejected and miserable.

  “Listen, you are my best friend. By far. BF times two.” I swept her into my arms. This was no easy task as she towered a foot taller over me. She leaned down and put her head against my cheek, allowing me to console her. “I called the police because I felt in immediate mortal danger. It was awful. I thought someone was in my yard, watching me. Poisoning Lucky. I could hardly breathe, I was so frightened. I had to get help, right away. So I went to the Blakelys’. Brian was still home, and I borrowed his phone. I even took a measuring cup with me so it would look like I was on a legitimate errand.” I said all this into her red hair.

  Cindy gave me a squeeze back. “I understand. It sounds horrible. I hate being frightened.”

  I adjusted my feet as I hugged her more tightly. As I did this, my running shoes dragged on the tiled floor, making a fart noise. Neither of us said a thing in the following silence, just holding each other in the tiled bathroom. And then we both burst out laughing. We were going to be okay.

  At that moment the door opened and Hannah Weiner walked in, her swanky suit swishing around her knees, her fancy patent leather purse clutched in her left hand, and her expensive shoes, probably purchased at one of the up-market shoe stores on Bloor Street, completely silent as she walked. Little Miss Perfect. She was a business reporter, always looking up the current financial trends. And always wearing the current fashions.

  “Oops, sorry,” she said, seeing us laughing together and in an embrace, “didn’t mean to intrude on your little tête-à-tête. Or should I say, tit-à-tit.”

  Cindy and I hastily parted, “It’s not what you think,” I laughed.

  “I don’t think,” said Hannah archly, her eyebrows raised high on her forehead and her lips spread over her teeth in what could be construed, by some, as a smile, “I read graphs and look at facts. I analyze data. The data in here is very interesting.” She swung open a cubicle door and shut it behind her, the latch making a resounding click in the small room. Cindy and I snuck out.