Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle

by H. Mel Malton

  “Who told you?”

  Oops. “Uh… you just did.”

  “No, I didn’t. I just told you we had her.”

  “Never mind that. Anyway, you don’t ‘have’ her—she came in of her own accord, right? That should weigh in her favour.”

  Becker sighed. “What do you want, Polly? Is there something else you only just found out’ that you want to tell me?”

  “As a matter of fact, there is, Mark. I found the truck.”

  “What? Where?”

  “It’s sitting under a tarp in John Travers’s garage. There’s a bloodstain on the seat and I think there’s a gun in there, too.”

  “Holy Toledo.”

  “Holy Toledo?”

  “I’m trying not to swear around you.”

  “Oh. Thanks. So, how come you didn’t search the garage when you were detecting the scene of the crime?”

  “Oversight,” he said.

  “I’ll say.”

  “When did you discover it? What were you doing over there?”

  “I went to pick up Lug-nut, remember?”

  “Who?”

  “The dog. The one you were afraid might starve.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, after a pause.

  I exhaled loudly into the phone. “When Morrison pulled me over this afternoon on the highway he said you said I should go pick up John’s dog because there was nobody to look after him.”

  “This is all news to me, Polly. You sure you’re not just making this up?”

  “You have a wonderfully retentive memory for a cop, don’t your?”

  “No need to get nasty. So you went to save the dog and did a little snooping around, did you? What did I say not long ago about getting involved? Don’t you listen?”

  “The dog went into the garage and wouldn’t come out, so I went to get him and I found the truck. No snooping. A baby could have found it if he’d thought to look.”

  He ignored the dig. “Thanks for the tip,” he said. “We’ll go check it out and I’ll have to come out to get a statement after we’re done. Don’t go anywhere.”

  “You know where to find me,” I said.

  After I hung up I thanked George for the tea, but didn’t stick around. I was still mad at him for holding out on me and mad at myself because I understood why he had done it. I borrowed a wheelbarrow to haul the dog food up to the cabin, called to Lug-nut and headed home.

  Sixteen

  Old Rebecca’s telling me

  leave them bugs be,

  let them bugs mate and live and die

  their day or two,

  part of the plant that’s healing you.

  —Shepherd’s Pie

  There are a lot of things to be said for living alone, not the least of which is that you only have to do the dishes when they start moving around in the sink by themselves. I hadn’t had lunch yet and I was starving. I wanted to fix myself a big tuna and lettuce sandwich, but I had to clean up first because a bunch of ants was trying to make off with the bread knife.

  I am not a bug-killer. When I see an ant, I do not shriek and whack it with a magazine. The only bugs I kill are the ones who are biting me, which limits my insect murder to a few hundred thousand every spring and summer, during blackfly and mosquito season.

  I really like the concept that the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings in Fiji affects the air-flow of the world just a tiny bit, which affects something else, etc. So, generally speaking, I don’t kill things. Especially not ants.

  I put my nose down to the counter, coming face-to-face with a burly worker-ant who was carting off a breadcrumb the size of a Mack truck, in Ant. He stopped, waving his antennae in distress.

  “It’s okay, buddy. No fear,” I said. “I just wanted to ask you to tell your work-crew that I’m about to do the dishes, so you’d better clear out or somebody’s going to get drowned by mistake.” He scuttled away, escaping from my monstrous breath, which to him was probably the equivalent of standing downwind of a week-old massacre.

  It worked, like it always does. By the time the water was boiling, there wasn’t an ant to be seen.

  Lug-nut had been reluctant to come indoors, but had finally agreed after I put his food and water bowls inside. I knew that the local squirrel population would treat his kibble the same way they treated the seed I put out for the birds, and though I tolerated squirrels, I wasn’t willing to contribute to their winter larders any more than I could help. Let them get their own stuff. There were plenty of pine cones around.

  The dog spent his first half hour at my place just sniffing at things. I hoped he was sensible enough to know that crapping or peeing indoors would not endear him to the management, but apart from that, he was welcome to make himself comfortable anywhere he liked. Anywhere, that is, except the futon. I showed him the bed.

  “Lug-nut,” I said, pointing, “this is a NO. Got that? Anywhere else, you can sprawl and sleep, but NO on the bed.” The word NO he certainly seemed to get. His ears flattened against his skull and his eyes rolled in his head like two pingpong balls.

  I had a big, ugly cushion which I had inherited from an old room-mate in Toronto, and I dragged it from the closet and arranged it in the corner beside his food.

  “This is yours,” I said, patting it. He came forward and sniffed it, then pounced on it, kneaded it with his forepaws, turned around three times (why do they do that?) and flumped down, taking one corner of the cushion into his mouth like a pacifier.

  “Okay,” I said, “just don’t rip it apart.” I felt suddenly smug and protective, at the same time. My dog. My god. I had acquired a dog. How prosaic.

  I washed the dishes quickly, vaguely aware of an unusual compulsion to clean. Then I attacked the work table, straightening the scattered tools, dusting and putting things away. I swept the floor, pausing only for tea and my sandwich, then getting right back at it. I went outside to chop wood, discovering in the process that Lug-nut had never played fetch before, which I found heart-breaking. It was like meeting a child who has never had a birthday party.

  He gambolled about like a puppy, trying to help, until I was forced to place him off to one side and tell him to sit. Chopping off his paw at this point would have been a great pity, seeing as we were getting along so well.

  When I tossed him a piece of bark, the perfect size for fetch, he just looked at it, dumbfounded.

  “It’s okay, Luggy,” I said. “Okay.” He whined and nosed the bark, perhaps wondering if I expected him to eat it.

  I put the axe down and picked up the bark.

  “Fetch!” I cried and threw it. He stood there, his tail waving just a little.

  “Okay. Wait a sec.” I retrieved the bark myself, wondering if he knew perfectly well how to play the game, but was making the damn human go get it for once. I brought it back and let him sniff it.

  “C'mon, Lug-nut. This is supposed to be fun.” He grasped it tentatively between his teeth and tugged.

  “That’s it.” I whipped it away and threw it. “Fetch!”

  The mental block in his furry mind gave way all at once. He leaped to his feet and fetched. And fetched. And fetched. I abandoned the woodpile and devoted myself to Lug-nut and the first recreation he had probably experienced since puppyhood. I felt like a Big Sister. Or a hospital volunteer. There should be big brownie-points for stuff like that.

  I stowed the wood in the closet behind the stove and then got to work on the puppet. The arm I had made was dry now, and I made a second one, forming the hand in such a way that it could be made to hold something. A nightstick, maybe, or a gun. Or my thigh.

  I didn’t want to sculpt the face yet, not until I saw the subject-model again and firmly implanted his looks in my mind. As I sat working, I realized that my uncharacteristic cleaning binge had been brought on by the knowledge that Becker would be coming up to the cabin at some point to take my statement about finding John’s truck. This was embarrassing. I might just as well have put on an apr
on and baked a cake. What was I trying to prove? That I was actually a little Suzie Homemaker in waiting?

  It was an old story. Despite Aunt Susan’s influence, despite my life-long struggle for independence, despite what I thought was my deeply ingrained feminism, I had still absorbed the Cosmo-Imperative.

  “To get a man, impress him with your femininity. Ask him questions about himself. Be interested in his answers. Always be well-groomed and keep your living space immaculate.”

  In reality, I was, not to mince words, a slob. I always would be. I had made myself seem what I was not, many times before, in order to attract the interest of a particular man. It had never worked. Pretending was always exhausting and invariably ended in disappointment as my cover slipped. I would find myself tiring of the charade, and the man I had struggled to impress realized, poor sap, that I was not girly after all. I don’t know why I did it, but every time the hormones kicked in I would start playing the same old game.

  I suppose, looking back, it just never occurred to me that my problem lay in the kind of man I was attracted to. Beefy macho dudes don’t generally want to get involved in romantic relationships with beefy macho women. End of story.

  I had worked myself up into a lather of self-loathing by the time Becker showed up. Lug-nut was asleep on his pillow by the door and didn’t even notice the man’s approach until he knocked. The Great Watchdog woke up, shook himself, inhaled and commenced barking.

  I grabbed Luggy’s collar and opened the door, inviting Becker inside. The policeman eyed the dog apprehensively and remained standing near the exit until things calmed down. I didn’t blame him. Lug-nut, in full bark-mode, was pretty convincing. I managed to convey to the dog, through a series of gestures, then sharp words, then soothing, “goodboy” type rubbing behind the ears, that our visitor was persona grata. Lug-nut subsided and returned to his cushion, where he sat, keeping Becker under close surveillance.

  “Well,” Becker said. “You’re well protected.”

  I smiled. Protected up to a point, I thought. “Thanks for reminding me about him,” I said. “He seems to like it here. Better than the pound, anyway.”

  “That was Morrison’s doing, not mine,” he said. “He was the one who remembered the dog. I’ve been too tied up with the case to be thinking about animal welfare.”

  “Oh. He said you suggested it.”

  “I know. I asked him about that and he mumbled something about you not wanting to hear it coming from him. He has a dog of his own, eh?”

  “A pitbull?”

  Becker chuckled. “Don’t tell him I told you, but it’s actually a poodle. A little fuzzy white one.”

  “Holy Toledo.”

  “My words, exactly. There’s a lot about him that makes no sense.”

  “I noticed that,” I said. “Hey, can I offer you a cup of something, or a beer, even?”

  “Coffee would be good, if you have it.”

  “You don’t drink, eh?” I should have known. A teetotaller. We were incompatible. It was hopeless.

  “I don’t drink on duty, that’s all.” He sounded defensive.

  “I thought that was a TV-thing.”

  “It’s also a regulation-thing.”

  “Too bad.” I meant it. I wanted a beer myself, but having one if Becker was going to have coffee wouldn’t be very ladylike. Of course, offering him a beer wasn’t particularly ladylike either, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. He was wearing aftershave and it was driving me crazy.

  “You trying to corrupt me?” he said. I held his gaze. We had one of those moments again, and according to the rule-book, he had just issued Opening Flirtation Gambit Number One. Golly.

  “Oh, no, Officer. I wouldn’t dream of being so forward.” I practically danced over to the kettle. “It’ll take a while, though. There’s no electricity and I have to boil water the old fashioned way over a candle flame.”

  “I’m in no rush,” he said. “Now, talk to me about this truck. When and how did you find it?”

  I told him the details, leaving out the bit about going into the house to get the dog food and neglecting to mention Eddie Schreier’s appearance and retreat. I liked Eddie and I didn’t want to get him into trouble, at least not until I’d talked to him myself.

  “You said you thought you’d seen a gun in the cab of the truck, right?”

  “Right. I just saw the barrel, sticking out a couple of inches. It was on the floor, I guess, leaning against the seat.”

  “But you didn’t touch it.”

  “God, no. After the way you acted in Francy’s kitchen, I almost didn’t look at it at all. Didn’t want to mess up the evidence, eh?”

  “It was dark in there, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, but I switched on a trouble-light and brought it with me to the truck.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Because it was dark, of course. I wanted to make sure it was John’s truck, first, before reporting it. I lifted up the corner of the tarp with my fingertips and shone the light in.”

  “Could you describe the gun?”

  “Well, I figured it was John’s gun from the kitchen. It’s an old shotgun, I think. I don’t know much about them, but that’s what it looked like. I really only saw the barrel.”

  “You sure it was a gun barrel and not just a stick or something?”

  “Of course I’m sure. It was long and metallic and—wait a second. You didn’t find a gun in the truck?”

  “Nope.”

  “Oh, great. Well, I didn’t touch it.”

  “Somebody did.”

  “Who would do that? Why?”

  “That’s what we want to know. Having the murder weapon would have moved the investigation along. So now it’s gone.”

  “It was there. I swear.”

  “Right. I’ll have this statement typed up so you can sign it. In the meantime, you keep your door locked. Whoever shot John Travers and dumped his body, also hid the truck and the gun, which you found. He was probably watching when you went in there. Then he panicked and grabbed the gun, and he knows you saw it. You should probably plan to stay with Mr. Hoito for a while, Polly.”

  “This doesn’t make any sense. I mean, hiding the truck in the garage was just a stalling measure, wasn’t it? It would have been found eventually. There’s no reason for the killer to think that finding the truck and the gun would necessarily lead to him, is there?”

  “Sure there is. We’ve got DNA testing now. Even if he wiped the gun, there’s still hair and fibre samples we can get from the truck. It’s not as easy to get away with murder as it used to be.”

  “Still, how come he would be after me, just because I found the truck?”

  “People who murder other people don’t think straight. If some guy shot Travers in his kitchen, moved the body in the man’s own truck, then hid the truck in the man’s own garage, I don’t think he’s the kind of criminal who’s going to find it illogical to attack a woman who sticks her nose into his business.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you suspect Francy anymore, anyway.”

  “I haven’t ruled anybody out. I talked to Mrs. Travers today and she’s cleared up some of the personal details, that’s all. We would be progressing quicker if you and your aunt hadn’t decided to play Underground Railroad, though.”

  “Have you talked to Freddy yet?”

  “I’m on my way to do that now,” he said. “You haven’t, have you?”

  “No. I was going to have a chat with him after talking to Spit at the hospital, but then I stopped off at the Travers’ to get Lug-nut and I found the truck instead. I can’t do everything for you.”

  He frowned. “You’re not involved with him in some way, are you?”

  “Freddy? Hardly. Why?”

  “Just something you said. Never mind.” He fidgeted and looked at his notebook.

  I cast my mind back to our heated conversation in the hospital corridor. Then I laughed, remembering.

  “Oh, you mean my fiancé?
That was a joke. A Spit-joke. He knew what I meant.”

  “You’re always joking about things like that. First Mr. Hoito, then Freddy. You’re one very confusing lady.”

  “I like to be unpredictable,” I said. “I like to play with people’s expectations of me. What amazes me is what people will believe, once they decide you’re different. It’s fun.”

  “It’s fun being different, is that it?”

  “More or less. The problem is, once you get a taste for the unconventional, the normal becomes absurd.”

  “Like having a phone or electricity? Or co-operating with the police? You find these things absurd?”

  “If you can manage without them, yes,” I said.

  “If you co-operated with us more, we’d be solving this thing quicker,” Becker said. “And if you had a phone, then we could call to check on you instead of me hiking up here every damned day.”

  “Why does everyone suddenly have this thing about me being okay?” I said. “I’ve been living alone for three years with no trouble at all, and now everyone suddenly thinks I’m this soft, fluffy, vulnerable little cream-puff. What is it with you guys?”

  “And if you had a phone,” Becker went on, ignoring what I was saying, “I could call to ask you out instead of having to do it in person.”

  “What?”

  “But that would probably be too conventional for you and you would just write me off as another one of those absurd normal guys you joke about.”

  “Are you asking me out?” I said.

  “Well, yes.”

  “Are you allowed to do that?”

  “Not really, seeing as you’re involved in the case. If you’d just keep out of it, it wouldn’t be so far out of line.”

  “Oh. That’s why you want me to mind my own business? So you can ask me out? Holy shit.”

  “Watch your language. How about tomorrow? I’ll pick you up.”

  “Tomorrow? I—well, sure. Yes. Thanks. What time?”

  “Seven-thirty. I’ll bring the statement for you to sign and I won’t come in a police car, unless you think that might be fun and different.”

  “No police car.”