Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle

by H. Mel Malton

  The old waterfront building which houses Steamboat Theatre has quite a bit of history attached to it. In the thirties, when it was a working marina, the owners had run a notorious speakeasy in the upstairs room we now used as a rehearsal hall. There had been a lot of trouble there, in the old days, according to the History of Steamboat Theatre tourism pamphlet in the lobby. Legend had it that Al Capone himself had paid the place a visit during a secret vacation in Canadian cottage country. The booze had been kept in a tiny attic room above the rehearsal space, accessed by a metal ladder bolted into the wall above the main stairs. I was tempted to climb up there and check the attic to see if they’d left any bottles behind. I figured I could use a pre-Becker snort.

  I fixed the puppet quickly with a bit of wire and duct tape. Then I locked the serpent in a storage cupboard, just in case the prankster was planning to drop in, and curled up on the couch in the lobby to wait for my date.

  I was awakened from a light doze by the ear-thumping racket of Lug-nut in full bark by my side. The bag of laundry was making its way down the stairs, slowly and horribly, end over end, like a big, sluggish slinky.

  Thirty-Three

  DRAGON: I’m hungry for something—I don’t think it’s food / Though I like to eat maidens and boys who are rude.

  -The Glass Flute, Scene ix

  As luck would have it, Becker showed up at the lobby door, just as Luggy pounced on the laundry bag. Becker knocked politely while my dog summarily ripped open the green garbage bag with his bare paws and snarled at the sweaty cotton. Then he apparently started eating it, but I was too distracted to stop him.

  I let Becker in, my heart thumping horribly, not because of the policeman, but because there was no doubt in my mind that someone had heaved the laundry bag down the stairs and that whoever it was, was still up there somewhere.

  Lug-nut ignored Becker completely.

  “What’s with the dog?” Becker said, as I locked the door behind him, then had second thoughts and unlocked it again, in case we needed to make a quick escape.

  “Thank God you’re here. More weirdness. Someone just threw a bag of costumes down the stairs. We have to go up and see who it is,” I said.

  “Whoa there, hold on,” Becker said. I was pulling on his arm. “Explain first. What costumes? What somebody?”

  “I’m alone here,” I said. “At least, I thought I was. I packed up the show laundry in that green garbage bag and left it in the dressing room. Then I flaked out here waiting for you. Luggy just went nuts barking, and I opened my eyes and the laundry bag was coming down the stairs by itself.”

  “You didn’t leave it at the top of the stairs?”

  “Nope. Dressing room. Miles away.”

  “Why would somebody throw a bag of laundry down the stairs?” Becker said, reasonably.

  “I don’t know, Becker. To scare me, maybe. There’s been a lot of that, lately. Now c’mon.”

  He accompanied me on a tour of the studio. We didn’t find anything, of course. The rehearsal hall, the bathroom, the dressing room—they were all empty, and I felt like an idiot.

  “Been putting in long hours, Polly?” Becker said, gently.

  “Some,” I said, trying hard to remember whether or not I’d carried the laundry out to the stairs with the serpent puppet. I could have, I supposed.

  “Have you eaten?”

  “I had a ’Dozer around six,” I said, gathering up the costumes that Luggy had scattered around the lobby. “The onion rings were cold. They’re really gross when they’re cold.”

  “Have you finished here?”

  I tied the laundry bag up again. It was ripped in a couple of places, but its contents didn’t deserve much better. “Yup.” My nose hurt, and I felt dizzy and bewildered.

  “Then I’m taking you to the Rock Cut for some food and you can tell me what you need to tell me and I’ll tell you some things too,” Becker said. “Jason McMaster’s parents identified his body. It could have been an accident, but now I don’t think so.”

  “It’s about time,” I said, thinking of the quiet intimacy of the Rock Cut Steak House, the fact that Jason was officially terminated, and the list of suspects, including, presumably, me.

  “We could go to the Falls Motel Pub, where everybody is,” I said. “You could arrest them all right there.”

  “No need,” Becker said. “I sent Morrison over there a little while ago. Don’t worry, you won’t be missing anybody tomorrow. He’s just going to ask some pointed questions. Get this thing cleared up.”

  “Who dunnit, Becker? Do you think you know?” I knew his record. He’d been wrong before. Did he still secretly think it was only an accident and was just humouring me? My stomach, which had admittedly been melting at the prospect of Rock Cut chicken wings, a beer or two and a pleasant chat with what appeared to be a mellow Becker, tightened.

  “We don’t know who dunnit,” he said, “but we have a pretty good idea. Now why don’t we lock up this place and I’ll meet you out there at the Rock Cut?”

  “Fine.” I was planning to take a detour first. To the Falls Motel.

  Things were rocking at the motel pub. The flashing electric sign over the crowded parking lot proclaimed that a local band, Baggy Chaps, was playing. The lead singer was a relative of Earlie Morrison’s, and they played the kind of New Country stuff that sounds like all the rest until you listen to the lyrics. I probably drove faster than I’m supposed to. I didn’t even notice the cruiser on my tail until I stepped out of the cab, telling Luggy to stay put.

  “This isn’t the Rock Cut,” Becker said, right behind me. He was pissed off, I could tell.

  “That’s the next stop,” I said. “You wouldn’t have had time to have more than a sip of your beer before I got there, Becker.”

  Another cruiser was parked near the door. Morrison was getting out of it, and when he saw us, he looked pissed off too.

  “I thought you were going to leave me to do this, Mark,” Morrison said, when we got close enough. “You two think I can’t handle it or something?”

  “Of course you can handle it,” Becker said. “Perhaps you’d like to explain to Ms. Deacon here that her presence isn’t required in there.”

  Morrison made an annoyed little “tsk” sound. “Polly, there are times when we’ve got to do our jobs without you,” he said. “You shouldn’t be here. You’ll just get upset.”

  “Who are you taking down, Morrison? Shane? Meredith? The technical director?”

  Morrison glanced inquiringly at Becker.

  “I haven’t talked to her yet,” Becker said.

  “Well, take her away and talk to her then,” Morrison growled. “I don’t want her here.” He gave me the kind of look you give a small, yippy dog who wants up. “Scram,” he said.

  To say I was hurt would be putting it mildly. Morrison had never spoken to me like that. He was my friend, for Pete’s sake, and the honorary uncle of my aunt’s ward, Eddie. We’d gotten drunk on scotch together, and Morrison had a marionette I’d made of Becker hanging in his bathroom. I looked up at him with what I imagine were kicked-puppy eyes, but he didn’t flinch. What was he planning to do in there that I wasn’t supposed to see? Beat his suspect to a pulp? Who was it?

  “The only way you’re going to know what’s happening is if you get in your van and follow me to the Rock Cut,” Becker said. “Either that or you can get in the cruiser and come with me to Laingford, where I’d be happy to talk to you about obstructing a police officer in the course of his duty.”

  “So this is like, date me or I’ll arrest you?” I said.

  “Any chance that we could have sat down like two adults and enjoyed a friendly conversation about this case is long-gone,” Becker said. “A date this ain’t. I’m just offering you a choice about the location of our interview.”

  “Cop shop or chop shop,” I said. “I guess I pick the chop shop.”

  “Good choice,” Becker said. “Now let’s go. And if you try to elude me, I’ll pull you
over.”

  “I wish you’d stop threatening me,” I said. “It’s getting to be a habit with you, and it’s not very attractive.”

  “I can’t help it,” Becker said. “You bring out the bully in me. I don’t like it either.” It was the most honest thing Mark Becker had ever said to me, and I mulled it over as I followed his police car all the way to the other side of town. I imagined him checking his rearview mirror every couple of seconds to make sure that my headlights were right there. I resisted the temptation to put my high beams on and leave them on.

  So, I brought out the bully in Mark Becker, did I? How disturbing. People who bully, according to those popular social-worker studies, are individuals who need to have control over their environment and the people in it. Was Becker being pushy just with me, or did he treat everyone he knew that way? Had he tried to control his ex-wife? Is that why she left him? Did I bring out the bully in him because we shared some sort of complicated mutual attraction? The old “If we’re going to be lovers, I need to be the one in charge” trip? The most disturbing thing about his last remark had been the way it made me feel.

  I have always been an advocate of equal partnership—of a healthy, level, shared intimacy. I had thought for a very brief time the previous fall that there was potential to have that with Becker. All my relationships with men have started out like that, offering the perfect balance of partnership and pleasure, give and take. So far, though, the guys I’ve been involved with have, at some point, required more “give” than I’ve been prepared to cough up. Every time I’ve been on the point of dumping someone (I’m more often the dumper than the dumpee), I’ve examined my own behaviour and battled with the notion that I might, just possibly, be more demanding than the guy is. Why am I not able to make compromises with Bob, or Colin, or Albert, or whoever he is? Why am I unable to devote as much of my precious solitude as it takes to maintain a relationship? Am I a selfish person? In dump-land, I’m usually the one heaping garbage on my own head. The dumpee usually helps. It’s not a good place to be.

  I found myself appreciating the warning Becker had given me. If I brought out the bully in him, then I should stomp very heavily on the little fluttery, libidinous creature that appeared in my brain whenever he was around. I had a feeling that he brought out the bully in me, too. Not a partnership destined for success.

  The Rock Cut Steak House, built on a cliff overlooking the town of Sikwan, is the place where businessmen take clients at lunchtime, and young executives takes their wives at night. The decor leans towards the baronial, dark beams overhead and red flocked wallpaper, candles flickering in glass goblets and heavy linen napery. The patio is more casual than the dining room, and that’s where we sat. It was chilly and buggy, which is probably why nobody else chose to join us. We kept our jackets on.

  Becker ordered a big plate of wings and a Blue, and I asked for an ashtray and a half pint of Kuskawa Cream. If I had to endure a sit-down session under duress on a chilly patio with Detective Constable Mark Becker, to whom I wasn’t allowed to be attracted because I brought out the bully in him, then by heavens, I was going to smoke.

  “Thanks for choosing to cooperate, Polly,” Becker said, after the beer came. “What have you got to tell me?” I brought out my weird occurrences list and let him read it.

  “So there are eight things you think are related here,” he said. “Your transvestite friend gets pushed down the stairs, McMaster’s vest is found in the pool tangled up in a bunch of audio cable—”

  “Tied to it,” I put in. “In a neat knot.”

  “Okay, the vest is knotted up in a bunch of audio cable. An actress accuses an actor of being a prostitute, another actress says she’s pregnant, and somebody searches the pockets of the vest. Am I with you so far?”

  “I don’t know. You sound a little sceptical,” I said.

  “Uh-huh. Then somebody plays a couple of tricks with your puppets and leaves a scrap of a photo for you to find.”

  “And number nine, which we should write in, is that someone threw that bag of laundry down the stairs,” I said. Okay, I know it sounded stupid, especially coming at the end of my long list of totally meaningless and mostly trivial incidents, but I said it anyway. Then I told him about Jason’s notebook and the things that he had written in it about the people at Steamboat Theatre.

  “What are your thoughts on this?” Becker said. He was treating me with a mock seriousness that I found hard to take. Stalling, I guess, while Morrison arrested somebody back at the motel pub—unless they were all over there signing the forms to have me committed to the North Bay Bin for the Barking Mad.

  “First tell me what you found out about that death at Laingford High,” I said.

  “It happened in 1989,” Becker said. “You’re right. They do call it ‘The Incident.’ The teacher was a very friendly guy, mid-forties, very tight with his students. One of your cast members, Shane Pacey, was questioned about it, but then you knew that, didn’t you?”

  “He told me yesterday,” I said.

  “The investigation was inconclusive,” Becker said. “The medical examination revealed that the teacher, who all the kids called ‘Mr. A.’, asphyxiated. He was found in his office with an audio cable tied around his neck. Nobody was ever charged with anything.”

  “Shane told me that part. He said the students were really freaked-out about it.”

  “Some were more freaked-out than others,” Becker said. “The administration tried to keep the details quiet, but some kids knew more than they ever told. Jason McMaster was the boy who found the body.”

  “Poor kid. That must’ve been awful.”

  “The teacher wasn’t just strangled, Polly. He was naked from the waist down and appeared to have been engaged in a sexual act just before he died.”

  “Oh, Lord.”

  “His name, in case you’re wondering, was Amato. Tony Amato. He had a son, Rico.”

  Thirty-Four

  CAT: Hurt yourself, did you? Is that why you’re crying? / The noise that you’re making, you’d think you were dying.

  -The Glass Flute, Scene vi

  It was a close fit. Rico Amato, my latest best friend, had the means, the motive and the opportunity for most of the weird stuff that had happened.

  Rico had been at the theatre since the first day of rehearsal, and he knew the schedule, the ins and outs of the building and where things were kept. He could easily have defaced the daisy puppet while we were rehearsing. He could have been harbouring a smouldering anger at the person (if there had been one) who had strangled his dad, or at least at the situation that had robbed him of his father. I knew he had grown up in Laingford, moved away and then moved back. That was really all I knew. Rico didn’t talk about his family very much.

  Maybe Rico had arranged the whole seduction scene with Shane on Sunday night, to set the stage. Maybe he had somehow managed to go back to the theatre after I had dropped him off at his antique shop in Cedar Falls. Maybe he thought Jason, being the one to find his father’s body, was responsible, too, so he killed Jason and tried to implicate Shane. A lot of maybes, though.

  “It does make sense, Polly,” Becker said, as I thought it through out loud. “If McMaster and Pacey were somehow involved in Amato’s death, it makes a sick kind of sense for his son to avenge it and clear his father’s name. Nobody likes to have their Dad branded a pedophile, even if it is true. Pacey never spilled the beans about what was going on, but McMaster did. Seems this ‘Mr. A.’ was a bit of a kiddy diddler, and Jason and Shane were his favourite little friends. Pacey denied it.”

  Becker produced a folded paper from his jacket pocket. “Look,” he said, “this is from the Laingford High School yearbook, 1989.” It was a photocopy of an “In Memoriam” page. A school staff headshot of Rico’s father was ringed in black, along with a poem written by one of his drama students, and a cast photo from Hamlet: The Rock Musical. Front and centre in the photo was “Mr. A.,” with his arms around the shoulders of Jason McMast
er and Shane Pacey. I pulled the scrap of paper I’d found in the puppet-mouth out of the back flap of my notebook. They matched, of course. Now that I knew the circumstances, the look in the eyes of the boys was no longer full of teenaged fun, the way it appeared in the torn-out scrap. Now, they both looked haunted. The problem is that the haunted look may easily have been in my imagination, or in Becker’s. The power of suggestion is a dangerous thing. Look at any newspaper photo, cover the caption at the bottom with your hand and tell yourself that the photograph is of a criminal. Immediately, the eyes go shifty and the face takes on a sinister aspect. Just because a young Jason McMaster had told the police that Rico’s dad had molested him, it didn’t necessarily make it true.

  “I guess Earlie’s talking to Rico right now, is he?” I said. “How are you going to prove any of this?”

  “We can’t,” Becker said. “All we can do is try to find out if Amato went back to the theatre after you dropped him off that Sunday night. Some of the other incidents—the things you call ‘weirdness’ may or may not have been Amato’s doing, but they’re not crimes. One thing’s for sure, though. We’re not falling for the trick of being made to suspect Pacey.”

  “He’ll be relieved,” I said. “And Rico—he’ll be free to go after you talk to him?”

  “I imagine so,” Becker said. “Unless he confesses.”

  “He’s not likely to do that,” I said. Privately, I knew he wouldn’t confess, because he hadn’t done it. But I wasn’t planning to say so to Becker. It might bring out the bully in him. If Rico was safe for the time being, then I’d just have to work a bit harder, trying to figure out who really had killed Jason McMaster.

  Becker paid our tab and stood up. I stood up, too, so I could look him in the eye.

  “Morrison will have taken Amato aside, first,” Becker said. “I told him not to break up the party, but talk to each person individually. You know, ask if anyone saw Amato back at the theatre after you left. All we need is one ID and we’ve got him.”