A Nose for Death

by Glynis Whiting

“Could it have been a mix-up at the pharmacy?” asked Gabe.

  “Hey, man, don’t diss the pros. This was a lame-o fubar,” replied Chin.

  Occasionally Gabe had to go through a thesaurus, not for the interpretation of chemical compounds, but to unravel Chin’s metro hip lingo. In this case, however, the message was crystal clear.

  “And Chin, her doctor, he’s local?” Gabe held his pen, ready to write, but he didn’t need to.

  “That’d be a Dr. Rimmer, Dr. Thomas Rimmer.”

  Gabe thanked Chin, hung up the phone, then gave himself a minute to absorb the information. The spring groaned as he tilted back in his chair. This would be another blow to Tom Rimmer. The old doc had delivered half the town. Peg had probably been his patient all her life. He made a mental note to stop in on the doctor, maybe distract him with a game of chess and ask him a few questions at the same time. He held the photo from Roger’s room up to the fluorescent light. What was the link that delivered death to both Roger and Peg? It didn’t look good for Joan: Marlena’s claim that Roger visited her room on the night of his death, even if he hadn’t gone inside; Roger’s attempt to rape her in 1978; Peg, the only person who could have cleared her regarding the invitation. He’d delayed reporting the near rape, but sooner or later he’d have to share the information with Smartt.

  He stared again at the fresh faces of the class of ’79. Which one of these kids had grown into a murderer? As he studied the photo, he noticed something that had escaped him before. Gabe dialed the Twin Pines Hotel and asked to be connected to Joan Parker’s cabin.

  Joan turned into the crescent of the Elgar subdivision, checking house numbers against the address scribbled on the back of her grocery receipt. The urgency in Gabe’s voice had kept her from asking questions on the phone, but she’d been surprised when he insisted that she come to his place in the middle of the day. The second surprise was his home. The large lot was dominated by an impersonal two-car garage and driveway, and the house was a cookie-cutter suburban design, indistinguishable from the hundred or so surrounding it. Gabe had been a fanatical environmentalist long before curbside recycling had been conceived. As a teenager, he’d picked up litter as they walked, and he had lectured their peers on the dangers of beer cap pull-tabs to wildlife. He’d been fearless in his commitment. Once he’d approached a large pickup truck at a stop sign to lecture the burly driver on the harmful air pollution caused by the blue smoke billowing from his exhaust. Gabe had convinced her that they could truly make a difference. Joan had continued to ‘walk the walk’ into adulthood. Although she owned a car, she shopped for fuel-efficient models and preferred to cycle or walk when distances permitted. Her neighbours referred to her as the recycling Nazi. Okay, there were lots of people making a bigger difference, but over the years, she had always heard Gabe’s voice in the back of her mind, bringing her in line. So where had he become derailed? Now he lived in a house that was an environmental eyesore, with a gluttonous footprint for only three people. Was the house a product of his wife Betty’s ideals, or had he changed that much? She toyed with the question, but it didn’t dampen her desire. She pushed the doorbell. A long, loud chime echoed through the house. She waited, imagining the eyes of the neighbourhood on her back.

  Calling on Gabe had been a daily routine when she was growing up. They’d been best friends since the sandbox and that hadn’t changed once they hit puberty. His basement bedroom had been their hangout, When Gabe was twelve he saved for a year to buy his own portable record player from the Eaton’s catalogue, chalking up hours babysitting and pushing the mower over every lawn in the neighbourhood. She remembered the day it arrived as though it was last Christmas. They’d walked downtown to pick up the parcel then had run all the way back to his bungalow. With the lid closed, the record player was a small suitcase with a baby-blue faux-leather finish and a white handle. They would sit for hours on the carpeted floor, playing monopoly and listening to forty-fives. As they graduated from singles of the Beatles to long-play albums by Moody Blues and Led Zeppelin, the yellow plastic adapters that fit into the centre of forty-fives became their tiddly-wink collection. Gabe’s room was also where she’d hallucinated on acid for the first time and where she’d recovered from her lemon gin poisoning, Gabe and Hazel watching over her, unaware of the violent attack she had survived.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” she whispered, waffling between the guilty anticipation of being alone with Gabe and the urge to drive off, fleeing while she still could. It was stubborn determination that kept her there. More than anything she wanted to solve this murder. Maybe Gabe’s marriage was held together by a mere thread, but he loved his career. He could lose it all if they were caught together. She’d find out what was so private that they had to meet here, then she’d leave. She was discreetly picking a poppy seed from between her teeth when she saw the tall silhouette through the opaque side panel.

  “Thanks for coming, Joan.” Gabe led her past the living room where she caught a glimpse of family photos along the mantle. Based on the suburban utopian house, she had expected Betty to look as though she came off the rack at Sears. Instead the pictures revealed her to be fit and stylish in a comfortable, friendly way. She was also exceptionally pretty. Their son, tall and lanky, was the doppleganger of Gabe thirty years earlier. He’d inherited Gabe’s acne. Instead of rebellious black, though, he wore a preppy striped shirt with pressed jeans. His hair was clipped and clean.

  Gabe opened a door at the end of the hall. The space, a den-cum-library, was all Gabe. He’d transformed a corner of this suburban world into a private retreat that would have been suited to a clearing in the woods. The scent of warm cedar panelling and shelves that reached to the high ceilings blended with the musk of old books. It all wrapped around Joan like a down comforter. She collapsed into an inviting leather armchair. Robertson Davies’ The Cunning Man lay by the phone beside her, bookmarked toward the end.

  “I didn’t want to meet at my office. I shouldn’t be talking to you unofficially at all,” he reminded her. His hair was unruly. The stress of concern pulled down the corners of his mouth. For the first time, she saw the years hanging on his face.

  “Did you tell Staff Sergeant Smartt about Roger attacking me?” She thought this might be the reason for the secrecy.

  “No.”

  “Gabe, I know it won’t look good.”

  “That’s an understatement.” He chewed his lower lip, a habit that he’d had since boyhood. “I wrote up the report. It’s in a file on my desk. But I need more time.”

  “Why?”

  “It gives you a clear and compelling motive.”

  “But I’m not the only one, surely?” she asked.

  Gabe took his time answering. He swivelled his desk chair around so that it faced her then lowered himself into it. It was like watching a heron settle. His knees touched hers. He leaned forward, as though the walls might have ears. “Do you know a good lawyer?”

  She felt a chill as Gabe explained the toxicology results. “There’s not much of a chance that it was an accident. There was no reason for her to have cimetidine and no record of a prescription.”

  “I’m not afraid, Gabe,” she said, but it made her sad to hear that Peg’s death, in all likelihood, was murder. That warm, animated woman, with her joyful dark eyes, had made her feel welcome in Madden. It was Peg’s invitation that had reconnected her to her past. She also knew that her murder would resonate beyond the Wong family and the local community. Joan had misjudged the scope of Peg’s world. The nurse, mother, and friend, comfortable in her hometown, had devoted months of time and her own funds to bring all of their class together for one short weekend. Peg had touched so many.

  “She did this for all of us and it may have been what killed her.”

  “The status change to suspicious death isn’t public yet,” said Gabe.“I wanted you to look at this.” He placed the photocopy of the class picture into her hands.

  In Hazel’s hotel room, she hadn’t paid it much
attention. Seventy-some kids, some of the worst hair she’d ever seen, all standing on the stairs of the old school. On either end of the back row were the twelfth grade homeroom teachers: Mrs. Bednarski, who was old then and had long since passed on, prudish Miss Lange, and Mr. Fowler, staring proudly at the camera. The photo had been taken just prior to the spring grad celebration. “May 1979” was written on the lower border, five months after Joan had moved to Vancouver.

  Gabe asked, “Does anything jump out at you?”

  “Besides the fact that I’m not in it?”

  “Look again. Concentrate on the rip.”

  She studied the vertical tear that divided the image in two just to the right of centre. The clear tape, yellowed with age, blurred some of the detail. As Joan’s eye reached the second row from the top she saw that the photo hadn’t been randomly destroyed. It had been carefully torn around Roger, separating him from the students on the other side of the page. Below Roger was petite and perky Marlena. Instead of facing the camera, she was coyly looking up at the dreamboat rock ‘n’ roll star of Madden High. To the left of Roger, directly on the other side of the jagged rip, but distanced by the barbed-wire effect of the torn photo, was Daphne. The years had treated her more kindly than all the others but she had definitely changed. My God, thought Joan, how they had all changed.

  “So, what does this mean?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Well, I’m surprised that Daphne is in the picture. Hadn’t she left?”

  “She left just before the end of the school year,” said Gabe.

  “Anyway, I need you to help me find out what this means. People will talk to you, Joannie, in a way that they won’t talk to me. I’m the law.”

  She glanced up at him. “Don’t remind me.” Gabe was easy to spot in the picture, standing slightly apart from the others. His long hair fell over his shoulders and he wore a shirt with billowing sleeves. Then she realized that the “guy” standing next to him was Hazel, decked out in a full tux. They wore matching bow ties. “You look happy,” she said. “You and Hazel.”

  Gabe moved behind her. “Yeah. We danced the last dance together. We were happy to get out alive. We took off from Madden so fast.” He shook his head. “Our shadows didn’t know we were gone for two days. It was bad after you left, Joannie. We were so lonely for you. Somehow, with three of us, there was protection.” His hand moved to her shoulder.

  “How was I supposed to know? Why didn’t you tell me that when we connected in Vancouver, when we were at university?”

  “You’d become superwoman by then, kicking ass at school, cleaning up with the academic awards, plus taking care of your mom and working. What, I was going to whine about how hard it was for me?”

  She had no response. In truth, she’d been too busy getting on with life. She turned her attention back to the photo and something caught her eye. “Do you have a magnifying glass?”

  Gabe rummaged over the surface of his desk and handed her his reading glasses. “Next best thing.”

  “Thanks.” Joan tilted the glasses over the rip in the photo until the image of the tape repair came into focus. It hit Joan like a bullet. “Are Roger and Daphne holding hands?” She had thought that beautiful, elegant Daphne had been somehow beyond Roger’s reach.

  Gabe shared what Ray had told him, that Roger and Daphne had dated, then he grasped her hands. “Joan, you’re twice as sharp as the officers on my team. Don’t get me wrong, they’re good men, all of them but I need your help with this. I thought I could do it without you, but nobody on my squad has the history to solve a murder that was motivated by events that happened thirty years ago.”

  “I wasn’t there either,” she reminded him.

  “But you know the players. Besides, you’ve always had an uncanny ability to get inside someone else’s head. Call it empathy.”

  “Or dangerous curiosity.” She smiled, but couldn’t admit that she’d started her own sleuthing twenty-four hours earlier.

  He remained serious. “I have to resolve this before anyone else gets killed.”

  “Okay, I’ll help, but there’s one condition.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You have to share everything about the case, even the details that don’t seem important. That’s what it would take,” she said. He was nodding in agreement, without hesitation, and it made her uncomfortable. “Except that’s not ethical, Gabe. I’m a suspect.”

  “Nobody has to know. Not Des, definitely not Smartt. Just you and me, Joan.” He was holding her gaze.

  Why should she be taken aback by his disregard of the rules? In truth, he hadn’t changed much. When he placed his hand on her knee and gently squeezed, she looked at him. His eyes were glistening. The business part of the meeting was over. He leaned over and kissed her. He moved his lips to her ears and neck, letting his kisses slide farther down.

  “Not here,” she said.

  “Then where? When?” He brushed the hair from her face and, again, she tingled, tiny electric currents beneath her skin reminding her that she was alive, so alive. “What if you leave and I never see you again?” he asked.

  He could be right. She knew herself too well. Once she left Madden, when would she make the trip again? Could these be the last moments of their own private reunion? She shyly entwined her fingers in his, kissed the back of his hand. He led her to the sofa then pulled her down on top of him. The taste of his lips was becoming so familiar. She felt his fingers fumbling with the buttons on her blouse. Working downward, she unbuttoned his shirt, then reached for his heavy belt buckle. Suddenly she thought of Betty. She could now conjure the image of Gabe’s wife from the photograph in the living room. But despite a distant voice urging her to stop, she couldn’t.

  The Stanfield family van slowly rounded the corner into the crescent, idled briefly beside Joan’s Honda then sped away.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE SUN HAD SHIFTED SO THAT late morning light cut across the den. Joan inhaled Gabe’s scent. She could chart his day from the bath soap and toothpaste mixed with oranges, to the coffee and gasoline. His quiet snores rumbled. Barely moving, she stretched her fingers toward her bra on the floor, praying that she wouldn’t wake him. The first time that they had slept together it had been gracefully dark in her motel room. No man, besides Mort, had seen her naked in a very long time. Even her gynecologist allowed her the Victorian dignity of a blue paper jacket. She was in relatively good shape, not great, but good for her age. It was, however, all relative. At forty-eight, some of the blush had definitely come off the peach. As a matter of fact, she reflected, the fruit had fallen from the tree, bounced a few times, and started to compost.

  Gabe stirred and she froze. When his breathing settled again she fastened her bra and was just slipping into her panties when he opened his eyes.

  “You’re beautiful.” He smiled at her.

  She was so glad that she’d spent the extra cash on good underwear.

  The day had turned chilly so Laura Rimmer threw a cardigan over her shoulders before answering the door. A pretty, dark-haired girl stood on the steps. Something about her seemed instantly familiar, but Laura couldn’t put her finger on it. The girl appeared nervous, or maybe she was just cold.

  “Hello. My name is Daphne Pyle. I went to school with your son.”

  Laura let her in then busied herself in the kitchen making tea and setting out sandwiches for an early lunch. Their freezer and fridge were jammed with the generous offerings of the funeral brigade. She’d done her own years in service, providing freezer cakes to households in mourning. Cherry walnut squares were her specialty. Tom had locked himself in his basement office after breakfast to review patient files. The stream of people coming to pay respects had slowed, and this morning had been quiet until now. There was some confusion about when they’d be able to hold Roger’s funeral since the police hadn’t yet identified the person who had taken his life. When she returned to the living room the young woman had one of the family photo a
lbums on her lap. It was opened to the pages of Roger as a baby. He had been such a beautiful child.

  “I hope you don’t mind me saying so, dear, but you don’t look old enough to have graduated with Roger.”

  “Roger had it rough, Laura. You know that.” Her husband stood in the doorway. He kindly took the tray and held it out to Daphne. “Our son had aged beyond his years.”

  Laura smoothed her skirt as she sat and smiled. “I’m not daft, Tom. I know that the drugs were hard on him.”

  They’d always skated around the topic of Roger’s addiction. Tom looked at her aghast now that the elephant in the room was doing back flips on the carpet. She turned her attention back to Daphne.

  “No, you definitely look younger than the other girls. What’s your secret?”

  Tom interrupted to say that he knew Harold Pyle, who lived at the lodge and asked if she was related.

  The younger woman muttered, “My dad,” then made abrupt excuses to leave, abandoning a half-eaten egg salad sandwich on her plate. The etiquette of mourning is acquired, Laura thought, but nobody had taught this girl.

  Gabe placed a steaming cup of coffee in front of Joan, who was perched on a stool at the kitchen island. Although the front of the house was stereotypical suburbia, the view from the back more than made up for it. The expansive lawn sloped down to a ridge of trees and wild grasses on the edge of a fast-moving creek. Strains of Bach played from an IPod dock. Gabe had given her his robe. His clean-soapy smell, she knew, would transfer to her body and she welcomed the thought of wearing his scent. The adolescent idea that she wouldn’t bathe for days caused her to smile. Gabe had slightly eased her discomfort of being in Betty’s house when he showed her that the sofa was a hide-a-bed and the closet in his den contained his clothes. He’d been sleeping there since before Christmas. As she sipped her coffee she wondered how many marriages devolved in that direction, couples maintaining the illusion of togetherness long past the expiry date. Then there were those, like Mort and her, who appeared to have made a clean break but continued the conjugal visits.