Flush

by Sky Curtis

  Melissa hated Cindy. “Well, you were pretty stupid, weren’t you? What do you think a bullet hole meant?” Her mood had flipped; the deeply grieving widow was now spitting mad. I knew this was a precursor to her breaking down all together. Clearly, she loved her husband. And maybe she didn’t. I knew what that was like. I had to even out her energy with a diversion, and quickly.

  “No, no. I know this neighbourhood is very safe. But still, Cindy and I, we aren’t used to being in a neighbourhood like this. We had no idea how long the hole had been there. We didn’t know how significant a bullet hole was.” Why not grovel and make Melissa feel superior? She seemed vain enough that it might calm down her ragged edges. It was the closest I’d come to an apology for why we didn’t act to save him sooner. Cindy and I had been in terrible danger and it was only through quick thinking and some acting that we hadn’t been shot as well. “We truly did not hear a shot. And we couldn’t see through the frosted glass.” I changed the topic. “You mentioned that Todd had been depressed lately?” What did she know?

  Melissa eyed me shrewdly under her clumped mascara. She dabbed at the streaks of black that had run down her cheeks. “Yes, he had been acting low. I think it was money trouble.”

  This woman was not to be toyed with. She had moxie. I wanted to investigate that aspect of her personality. “Really?” I said factually, implying I didn’t believe her. I didn’t. “Do you know any martial arts?”

  “What?” Her head flopped suddenly to the side and looked as if it might roll off her neck if lightly touched, she was so startled by the quick change in the conversation. Two could play this game. To cover up her discomfiture, she opened her mouth, letting out a delicate rill of laughter, “You think I killed him with a chop, chop? I was miles away when he died. Looking after my children.” Her hand sliced drunkenly through the air in a parody of a karate chop as her girlish twitter tinkled across the patio like a wind chime.

  I wasn’t fooled. Did she really say that she was miles away when he died? How did she know when he died? She had already admitted she didn’t know he was dead. “No, I was just wondering. You look so fit, and toned.”

  “Yup,” she smugly looked at her bicep while flexing it. “I take kick boxing.”

  “Really? I never would have guessed.” I didn’t have to guess. The stomp on the cop’s foot gave it away. “What gym?”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t know it. Not one of those namby-pamby joints.” She pointed her toes and admired the calf on her leg. “His poor wife.”

  She caught me off balance as much as I had her. “Whose wife?”

  “Todd’s. I mean, she really loved him.”

  What? He had a wife? I was going to leave that alone for the time being. He told me he was divorced. That the wife took everything. What a schmuck.

  “You know her?” Cindy asked.

  Melissa looked at Cindy with contempt but then decided to reply. “Yes, I know her. The four of us would get together for dinners and stuff. Meet at each other’s houses.”

  He had a wife and a house? What about his condo? Oh, that’s why there were two listings for Radcliffe at 411.ca. Liar.

  “We went to new restaurants together. Last week we tried out one on College near Bathurst. The Elephant. Indian. She and I were the trophy wives, even though we both made more than our husbands. She and I were friends, but I guess now that the guys are…” she paused and didn’t say the word. “I guess that’s over. Bye bye, Crystal.” Melissa’s eyelids were drifting down.

  She slumped back in her chair and a wasp landed on her arm. She sleepily brushed it away. “If you don’t bug them, they won’t bite,” she drawled without opening her eyes. I could see a long plastic cylinder filled with flying wasps hanging from the branch of a maple tree in her yard. “They don’t bother me at all. You have to know how to handle them.” Melissa let out a small giggle. I didn’t want to know what thoughts were floating about in her pickled brain.

  It seemed a good time to get to the nugget of truth about Todd’s marriage. “I didn’t realize Radcliff was married.”

  Cindy was restless. She fiddled around with her purse. She wanted to go.

  “Yup! But he, you know, he liked guys too.” Melissa then covered her mouth with her hand, “Oops.”

  Cindy was packing up her phone and keys while I kept asking Melissa questions. “He did?” So, she knew that about him. I wondered how much she knew. “Did your husband? I mean, they were good friends, right? How good?”

  Cindy was ready to go and tapped her watch. She needed to get back to the office. Her Vipers story wasn’t finished.

  Melissa was off in la-la land. “Oh yes,” she let out a bitter bark. And then she suddenly tugged her body up, realizing what she might have given away. Her mouth turned down and she whined, “My poor little Richie. We were so in love and now he’s gone. I really don’t know how I will get by without him.”

  Give me a break. Did she love her husband? I thought so. But love could be so complicated. As I well knew. “I’m sorry Ms. Mowbray, I truly am. I know exactly how it feels, but you will survive.”

  “Oh, I’m a survivor all right.” Melissa took a shuddering breath and put her hands on the arms of her chair to push herself up. It seemed to take an enormous amount of will. “Time for you two paps to skedaddle.”

  “Skedaddle?” Who said that anymore? Where was she from? “Just out of curiosity, where did you grow up, Mrs. van Horner?”

  “Mowbray,” she corrected automatically. She wove her way across the patio, tottering on her three-inch heels, her arm flopping about in the air like a wet spaghetti noodle as she waved it in a generally western direction, “I grew up in downtown Hamilton.”

  Well, that explained a lot. It was pretty rough by the steel mill.

  Cindy was following Melissa to the front door as I rapidly gathered up my belongings. I could hear them chatting, with Cindy making gushing noises, trying to repair the relationship or at least pretend the animosity didn’t exist. Then I heard her mention antibiotics and infection. So, she was correcting Melissa about the cause of Richard’s death. I wondered how she would take that. Melissa didn’t strike me as a woman who would like to be contradicted.

  I looked back at the wasp trap and knew it meant something. Melissa Mowbray, successful real estate agent for a top-notch firm, kick boxer extraordinaire, mother of three cuties, was guilty of something sinister. She was not afraid of wasps and had plenty at her disposal. I couldn’t wait to leave this house.

  Cindy and I drove away at a far more leisurely pace than we had a few nights previously. “She was right, you know. We could have got help to him sooner.”

  Cindy’s knuckles turned the colour of bone as she gripped the steering wheel. She hated being challenged. “No, actually, Robin, no, we couldn’t have.” She looked at me, her green eyes on fire. “First of all, he died of an infection, not a loss of blood. Secondly, if either of us had pulled out a cell phone as soon as we saw that bullet hole, we would have been shot. We saved our lives, Robin, by pretending we hadn’t seen it.”

  I remembered my whispering to her to shift her eyes to look at the hole and not to turn her head. I remembered telling her to act normally and to proceed with knocking on his door as if nothing had happened. I had followed my instincts. “You’re right.”

  “I’m always right.” We both laughed, her louder than me.

  The conflict was over. But still, Cindy and I weren’t exactly getting along today. What was that about? Something to do with my gratitude exercise? I made a mental note to think about that later. With a glass of wine.

  Cindy was racing across town. She said, “You know what I can’t believe?”

  “What’s that?”

  “That Radcliff had a love nest. A bolt hole. A fancy downtown condo. That he had a house. That he was still married.”

  I was wondering about the same things. “Y
eah, well, I guess I’m a stupid mark.”

  Cindy went on. “I think Melissa’s guilty of something. Did you notice that she didn’t bat an eyelash when you mentioned his condo? She knew he had a condo. The guy had tons of secrets. With the main one being that he was gay. Or at least bisexual.”

  “I’m an even stupider mark.”

  “If your name had been Mark you would have had a better chance with him.” Cindy chuckled at her joke.

  I was puzzled. “How could I miss that bit about his condo? No wait, I must have been thinking about something else.

  Cindy was curious “You think she’s hiding something?”

  “Yeah, well I think Melissa Mowbray killed Todd. She has wasps. She has a motive. She’s feisty.”

  “Melissa? How did you get that? A motive?”

  “She knew that her husband and Todd were having an affair.”

  Cindy shook her curls. “I must have missed that.”

  “It was in a small sound bite of a laugh, a short sentence or two, but I was watching her carefully. She was pretty drunk, and I think stoned as well, but not as much as she was letting us believe. I think she was using it as a cover to dig out information from us. But she let that one thing slip.”

  “I got the part about her not being that drunk, but not the affair. Must be losing my touch.”

  I gave her an excuse. “You were anxious to leave. And you were probably trying to make amends. Man, did she hate you! What that was that about?”

  “Homophobic is my guess.”

  “Really? She could tell you were gay?”

  “Most people can. Whatever, Robin, it is what it is. Call Alison, will ya?”

  “Alison? What for?”

  Cindy looked at me patiently, “The other wife. Not fair to grill one but not the other. Let’s talk to Todd’s wife. See what she knows.”

  When Alison picked up, I asked, “Hi Alison, listen, would you mind finding out the name and address of a software company that’s run and owned by Crystal Radcliff? Cindy and I want to interview her about these deaths.”

  “Hang on for a sec.”

  I heard her clicking away, her fingers flying over her computer keys. “Okay, here goes.” Alison read off from her computer, “Softwareit. All one word. A pun, I guess.” She gave me the address of the company.

  I whispered the company title a few times until I got it. “Oh, sort of wearing software like clothing. Good name for a woman’s firm.”

  “And her name isn’t Crystal Radcliff. It’s Crystal Riker.”

  “How did you find that out?”

  Alison laughed, “Need to know anything else?” and clicked off. Such a sassy young thing.

  “Okay.” I got out my iPad and Google-mapped the address Alison had given me. “We want to go across town to a street north of Lawrence that runs west off Dufferin.”

  “Right.” Cindy did a left onto Yonge from van Horner’s street, drove past the grocery store we had called from, and then took a right onto Lawrence. “I’m starving. Those salads were useless. Time for afternoon tea? Want to get some unsubs?”

  I laughed. We bought some six inch sandwiches from a Subway on Dufferin and unwrapped them in the parking lot of Softwareit, chomping them while looking at the scraggily weeds growing out of the cracks in the pavement. Still chewing her last mouthful, Cindy opened her car door and said, “Let me do the talking here.”

  “Only if you don’t talk with your mouth full.” I muttered to myself. That girl really had to get some manners. I wrapped the remainder of my bun in the waxed paper it had come in, stuffed it back into the Subway bag, and got out of the car.

  The steel door of the company had three deadbolt locks and a wired alarm tape running around its perimeter. There was not one but two security cameras, one focused on the door and the other on the parking lot. I guess we’d been watched shovelling our Subways into our gobs. “Pretty good security,” I whispered, not moving my lips.

  Cindy pushed a yellowed button on the door frame and the discombobulated voice of a receptionist crackled. “Can I help you?”

  “Hi, we’re from the Express and were in the neighbourhood. We’re writing a front-page story on female entrepreneurs who have created successful startups. I think Crystal Riker would want to be included in the article.”

  “Press passes.”

  Short and to the point. We both reached into our bags and held up our laminated passes to the overhead camera. There was a buzzing noise as the latches electronically unlocked. We were in.

  29.

  THE STEEL DOOR SILENTLY GLIDED SHUT behind us. Three separate clinks of locks homing into place signalled that it was not only closed, but that we were trapped inside. I felt a quiver of trepidation as I thought about fire. We found ourselves standing on a slate tiled floor in front of a receptionist who was sitting behind a large teak desk. She had wiry grey hair tightly pulled back from her pointy face into a stubby knot on top of her head. A few bristly hairs escaped from a multitude of bobby pins. And I saw, as I got closer, also from her chin. Her sharp nose jabbed towards us aggressively, somewhat like a snake’s tongue tasting the air for the smell of prey. Her nameplate on the marble counter in front of her said this was Ms. Nelson. She looked more like a warden than a receptionist. The place was giving me the willies.

  Cindy seemed unperturbed. “Hi, we’re from the Express and we’re doing an article on female entrepreneurs.”

  “So you said.” Ms. Nelson was not a friendly sort.

  “Is it possible for us to see Crystal Radcliff?”

  “Riker. Her last name is Riker.”

  “Right. I knew that. Sorry. Does Ms. Riker have a few minutes to spare?”

  Ms. Nelson dropped her piercing gaze and pushed a button on her desk phone with a tight little peck while arranging her headset. “Some press here to see you, seems legit.” She waited for a response and then clicked of. “She’ll be out in a minute. Have a seat.”

  Cindy and I sank into buttery soft leather chairs and waited, thumbing through glossy magazines that had been neatly positioned on a glass table. Ten minutes went by, with the only sounds being the rustle of pages turning and the electronic hum of some sort of air filter. When a door to the left of us opened I had to prevent myself from gaping. Crystal Riker was not at all what I expected. Not that I really had any idea at all about what Todd’s wife would look like, but the woman who appeared at the doorway leading into a long hall behind her was not what I had envisioned. At all. She was as wide as she was tall.

  Her facial features had been buried long ago in folds of flesh and her extended hand was covered in what appeared to be small balls of pastry dough. A wedding ring was barely visible on her left hand that was hanging like a sack of potatoes down her side. She was wearing a bright red muumuu that flowed around her like a boiling pot of spaghetti sauce, jiggling while it bubbled. Todd’s wife smiled engagingly, setting off a small tsunami over her jowls. Her voice, when it escaped from the mounds of her chest, was a high squeak, wildly at odds with her bulk. “Welcome,” she squeezed out the word. “I’m glad you’re interested in Softwareit. I have built up this company from nothing and I’m happy to tell you how I did it. Might be inspiring for young girls.”

  I stood up and shook her hand, noticing that underneath the squishy skin there was a strong grip. We introduced ourselves and Cindy took the lead. “Thanks for seeing us, Ms. Riker. I know you must be a very busy woman, but this article, as you say, is important in that it will be inspiring to young girls entering the work world. You are a great role model for them”

  Crystal beckoned for us to follow her. “Let me give you a quick tour of my little empire.” She waved her arms as she lumbered down an aisle through about thirty desks, all occupied by fresh-faced kids wearing jeans and smiling at their boss as she chuffed by. I could see in a flash that they thought the world of her. “This is
my think tank area. I employ wonderful young talent from all over the country. My top criteria for working here is creativity. Hard to assess in an interview, but I look at their resumes carefully. I pick young people who have a well-rounded background, not purely scientific expertise. Painters, singers, camp counselors. Most companies would reject them as being misfits. I want the misfits. I am personally involved in the hiring. No HR person for me. I know how to find the qualified odd duck in the hundreds of applicants.”

  Takes one to know one.

  Geez. I had to stop being so judgmental. Here I was, being critical of a woman who had given back to society, in spades. And her staff adored her.

  At the end of the aisle was her office, the glass door wide open. We settled into her workspace, a modern poured concrete shoebox with a floor to ceiling window that overlooked a small knoll of landscaping, some grass and a few bushes. Not unattractive, but not exactly a green space. She stuffed her rather large bottom into her black desk chair, opened her arms expansively and smiled, “First off, I’d like to apologize for Ms. Nelson. She’s very protective of me. Now, what would you like to know?”

  Cindy took the bull by the horns. “We’re sorry to hear about the loss of your husband, Ms. Riker. It must have come as a terrible shock.”

  Crystal’s eyes narrowed, the top eyelid almost touching the bottom. Her wide mouth flattened into a tight white line. I could hear her breathing come in small shallow breaths. I couldn’t read her emotion. Angry, yes. Suspicious? Maybe. Curious? Perhaps a little. I settled on angry. She was probably thinking that we had got into her fortress under false pretenses. But she said nothing. Cindy watched her and seemed frozen in expectancy.

  Damn it. Cindy really had to finesse her interviewing technique. I stepped in, figuring that if we were going to get anywhere with this battleship disguised as a comfy grandmother that we would have to send out a few decoys. “So, exactly what sort of projects helped launch your company and what are you working on now?”