The picture switched to an interviewer holding a microphone in front of a woman who was listening to the question the interviewer was asking.
"I last saw my fifteen-year-old daughter, Amelia, three years ago when my ex-husband picked her up for a two week camping trip. He never brought her back."
"Have you heard from her at all?"
The woman shook her head. "Nothing. I phoned all his relatives and friends but no one has seen him since that time either. I even called her friends to see if maybe he had dropped her off with one of them."
The name Sharlet Wesley showed up on the screen under the woman.
"Do you think he would have killed her?"
"I don’t know what was going through his mind at the time," Sharlet said. "We were in the middle of a divorce and had both agreed to share custody."
"Did he like that idea?"
Sharlet shrugged. "He seemed okay with it at the time. Now, I’m not so sure."
"There is the possibility that they may have had an accident."
Sharlet nodded. "I’ve thought of that also and I’ve been listening to newscasts and checking the Internet every day since then watching for any bodies or skeletons or wrecked cars that have been found anywhere in North America."
"Where were they going camping?"
"They started from Castlegar B.C. and were heading into the States, back up onto Vancouver island, and then home. They really didn’t have a clear laid out route, were just going where their whim took them."
"Well, I’m not sure if I should hope that this body belongs to your daughter," the interviewer said.
"I’m not sure if I want it to be either." Sharlet turned away wiping her eyes.
These interviews must have been done during the day while Elizabeth was doing her research because so far she’d only seen the news vans the first day the body had been discovered.
The next person who came up on screen was a man. The interview was short.
"My daughter was a drug addict and prostitute," he said. "She disappeared just before the Olympic Games and I’m wondering if she came here to work and was murdered either during the Olympics or since then."
The third interview was with the couple Elizabeth had talked with a few hours ago on the street in front of the lot. Their granddaughter had come to Whistler last winter with some friends on a ski trip. She never showed up back at their apartment after going to a party.
The picture returned to the news room. "Finding this body under the demolished house is not a unique nor isolated event," the female anchor concluded. "Over the years bodies have turned up in the oddest places." She began running through a list of similar findings. "A mother’s body was walled up in her bedroom by her hermit son for nine years. A young boy disappeared from his home and his skeleton was discovered under the house eighteen years later. A wife’s body was unearthed from under a fishpond five years after her husband reported her missing."
Grizzly, grizzly, thought Elizabeth. She was about to shut the television off when the male anchor cut in.
"We have just received breaking word that starting tomorrow the police will be excavating the whole yard. They haven’t stated if they are working on a tip but they did say they are looking for clues to the young woman’s identity and are checking to see if there are any more bodies."
This is getting more and more interesting, Elizabeth thought. Do I want to get mixed up in it? She’d figured out who murdered a teacher in the city of Red Deer, Alberta, while working on a travel article about Highway 2A which ran south from Edmonton to Crossfield. Then there was the mystery of the bones found in a sceptic tank near Fort Macleod, Alberta. Last year had been Jared’s mother’s murder, plus the death of one of her neighbours. It seemed that no matter where she went to write her articles she became involved in some sort of untimely death. So far, she’d been lucky in that she’d managed to solve them. She would have more time to spend on this one since she was almost finished her research and her transcribing. She would have to think more about it, she decided as she turned off the television and went to bed.
* * *
The next morning Elizabeth heard a noise outside and went out onto the patio to look down on the yard next door. True to what the newscaster had said last night the police had a team working there. They had put up plastic tarps around the yard so no one could see them from the streets. She wondered how long it would be before helicopters with reporters would be hovering overhead taking pictures of the action.
The Vancouver Sun was sitting on the little table when Elizabeth and Sally entered the dining room. The headline read: Whistler’s Murder Takes A New Twist. Elizabeth picked it up and carried to their table. She scanned the article which was accompanied by a picture of the house before it had been torn down.
"Anything new?" Sally asked.
Elizabeth shook her head. "Besides excavating the yard for more evidence the police in Vancouver are checking all the missing girls reports from that age group that have been sent to them from other parts of the country. Since the face is not recognizable and the clothes have basically disintegrated they are getting DNA samples from all the people who have shown up here and think they might be related. Getting the information back could take weeks."
No one else was down for breakfast so Elizabeth didn’t know if that couple had booked a room here and she wasn’t going to ask Beverly, who arrived with the breakfast plates.
"Where are Bonnie and Daryl this morning?" Elizabeth asked, as they ate.
"Probably working hard on their arguments for this morning’s discussion."
"What position did you take?"
"I can’t decide," Sally said, dismally. "Maybe I should skip the class today."
Elizabeth laughed. "You’re not in high school. You won’t be failed if you don’t do the assignment. Maybe Kat Mac needs a moderator or a judge. You could volunteer for that."
"Except I wouldn’t know what I was judging. I really think I am over my head here. It’s not at all what I expected and I think I’m wasting Kat Mac’s and my time, just like Daryl said."
"This is only the third day. Keep at it. You still might learn something that will help you."
"I’m so confused that I probably wouldn’t recognize it anyway."
"Well, do you want to come with me today? We could do the Peak 2 Peak."
Sally took a deep breath, then let it out. "As much as I’d like to say yes, I’m going to put in my time." She stood. “And I’d better go.”
* * *
Sally walked along the short path to the small parking lot in front of the bed and breakfast. She paused when she saw Bonnie sitting on a large rock in front of her vehicle.
"Do you mind if I walk with you today?" Bonnie asked, standing.
"No, not at all," Sally said, as Bonnie fell in step with her. "I didn’t see you at breakfast."
"I wasn’t hungry this morning."
They discussed the weather and then the class. As they turned onto Fitzsimmons Road South Sally saw that the man and his daughter were out in their yard bent over a flower bed in front of the house.
"Good morning," Sally called and raised a hand to wave to him.
They both straightened up and turned. The man smiled and returned the wave. His daughter, however, just stared at them. Was she having a bad day or was she normally that miserable looking? Sally wondered.
"Who’s that?" Bonnie asked.
"I don’t know his name but I talked with him yesterday about his beautiful yard."
The daughter took the man by his arm and began steering him towards the deck. He seemed caught off guard and stumbled a bit.
Bonnie looked at them. "That’s funny," she said.
"What is?" Sally asked.
"He reminds me of someone."
"Who?"
Bonnie shrugged. "I don’t know. There’s just something about the way he was standing there." By that time they were past and Bonnie turned and took another look.
Sally swivelled
in time to see the daughter dragging her father into the house. What was that about?
They walked in silence for a few moments then Bonnie turned to her and abruptly asked. "Would your friend help me find the person who murdered my cousin?"
"What? Oh. Um, I don’t know." Sally was caught totally by surprise.
"Well, you did tell me that she had solved four murders and I was wondering if she would help me."
"You could ask her," Sally said cautiously. "But I do know that she is busy with her article. What about the police?"
"They’re not interested. They ruled it an accident when it happened and they don’t listen to me when I tell them I know she was deliberately killed."
There were a lot of questions that swirled in Sally’s head and she suddenly knew what Elizabeth experienced when confronted with a possible murder.
"Could you help, then?"
"Me?" Sally asked flustered. "I know nothing about murder. I wouldn’t have a clue how to find a killer." Well, that was a stupid way to put it.
"Surely, she’s told you how she’s done it."
"Yes," Sally nodded. "She did tell me about each mystery and what tipped her off to the murderer but that doesn’t mean that I can do it."
They had reached the class room. "Can I at least explain it to you after lunch today?" Bonnie quickly asked, as they parted company.
"Sure." Sally walked slowly to her seat. What should she do now? She knew she couldn’t help Bonnie. Maybe she could tell Elizabeth about it. But that didn’t seem fair. After all, she knew how much Elizabeth was looking forward to just relaxing once her research was done.
"We have pictures of aliens from Roswell." Kat Mac began the lecture. "Many of the aliens in our movies look a lot like those pictures. Were the space aliens in the movies copies of them? Or were there drawing of space aliens for movies prior to 1947 and are those the ones used to depict the Roswell aliens as seen in magazines and on television?"
Kat Mac looked around the room. "What we are going to discuss today is, should stories about space aliens be classified as fantasy or science fiction?”
Sally saw that Daryl Cannon had a pile of papers and books laid out on his table. One of the books was titled The Truth About The UFO Crash At Roswell and another was Alien Landing. Wow, she thought. He’s really into this. He must have gone to the library for the books. Once more she felt out of her league. What’s wrong with me that I find it hard to concentrate on the lectures and really don’t understand why we are doing these assignments?
She’d looked up Roswell on the Internet last night and had been dismayed to see that there were 1.4 million sites. And they weren’t all about the aliens supposedly found there. Some were of the city itself, a television show titled "Roswell", a UFO museum, and much more. She’d browsed through a few of the sites on the aliens.
According to some of them the government and the air force were hiding the truth about the alien crash landing, while others pointed out that there were many contradictions to the stories and that some of the evidence was a hoax. Since she felt she didn’t know enough about it to be able to take a stand, she’d decided to opt out of the discussion. When the time came to choose sides Bonnie and Kendra also refused to pick one.
Sally could feel the disgust emanate from the more serious students. But she’d begun to ignore their feelings. She’d paid her money and she would participate as much or as little as she wanted. Besides, this would give her a good chance to listen to both sides.
Daryl began. "I gathered all I could find on Roswell. According to the books written and the testimony given, the aliens at Roswell were real."
Sally sat back and listened as he talked about the evidence found and who had seen what that night and over the next few months. He must have been up all night working on this. The next person to talk was Kirk on the opposite side. The debate went back and forth and Sally soon began hoping that she wouldn’t fall asleep.
She did look around and saw that one student had dozed off. So it just wasn’t she who found it hard to get into.
At the end of the debate Kat Mac turned to Sally, Kendra, and Bonnie. "Do any of you want to add to what has been said today."
"Yes." After listening to both sides, Sally decided to have her say. "I looked up UFO on the Internet and there have been sightings dating back to the 1800s. In 1886, a director of the Zacatecas Observatory in Mexico took some photographs of objects he observed crossing the disc of the sun. These are supposed to be the oldest photographs of UFOs in the world. Also, in 1886 a bright, humming object appeared over a hut near Maracaibo, Venezuela. Afterwards, the people in the hut had what was thought to be radiation poisoning and nearby trees died. In 1897, there was an alleged UFO crash near Aurora, Texas and the supposed alien pilot was buried in the local cemetery.
“So for almost 130 years UFOs have been reported. It wasn’t until Roswell that pictures of the alleged aliens were published. And, as stated by Reggie Shaw of the fantasy side, these were explained as being dummies used in a United States Air Force experiment. I don’t believe that we can be the only planet in the universe that is occupied by thinking beings. I have no idea what form they take but I do believe that there are aliens. Therefore, I don’t think their stories should be called fantasy writing.”
"Well done," Kat Mac said. "Why didn’t you take a side and state that during the debate?"
Sally felt herself blush and immediately thought about being back in school. How could she explain that she hadn’t had the confidence in her thinking to do it until she had heard the other arguments. She shrugged. "I don’t know."
Kat Mac looked at Kendra and Bonnie. Both of them shook their heads. "Okay, then we shall resume our regular lecture tomorrow."
After the class, Sally went up to Kendra. “It’s been bothering me about what your Angel cards told you. When Bonnie mentioned children you got upset.”
Kendra’s eyes immediately filled with tears. “My sons.”
“Did something happen to them?” Sally asked gently.
Kendra looked away and wiped her eyes. “My first husband got custody of them in our divorce. I get them every other weekend and this weekend is my turn. I really hate that I won’t be seeing them and it will be another two weeks before I do. That’s a whole month between visits with them. I’m so tempted to head back to Revelstoke so I can have my weekend with them.”
“That’s a tough decision,” Sally said.
Kendra nodded and left the room.
“That was a smart take on the aliens,” Reggie said, coming up to her. “It’s a good thing you weren’t on the other side of the debate.”
Sally grinned. “Believe me, if I had stood up and tried to say that in front of everyone, that side would have lost points.”
Reggie smiled and Sally felt her heart flutter. “Are you coming to the dining room for lunch?” she asked. She might was well be bold while she had him.
Reggie shook his head. “I have my meeting with Kat Mac this afternoon and I have to get my material in order.”
Sally swallowed her disappointment and went to the dining room. She loaded her tray with a sandwich, soup, dessert, and an apple juice and went outside to eat. She looked but couldn’t see Bonnie. Where was she? She had said she wanted to tell Sally about her cousin’s death. Sally did see Michael Wolf sitting at one of the outdoor tables. He smiled at her and she walked over.
"How have your first three days been?" he asked.
"Not very good," Sally said, setting her tray down across from him. "I’ve found out that reading science fiction does not mean I know anything about the genre."
Michael laughed. "I totally understand. I was lost for the first week but then in the second week everything fell into place and I began to understand what science fiction really was about and how to write it."
"So I just have to get through two more days and then I’ll see the light." Sally took a bite of her sandwich.
"Something like that," Michael grinned.
"Not really. Again, I think it’s going to take time for more of the information to be given before my mind can shuffle it into an order I can use."
"So what have you learned so far?" Sally took a drink.
"Well, I’ve been told not to send out my idea for a script. I have to wait until I have a script totally done before I start contacting anyone. And I have to format it, too."
"What’s that?" She might as well learn what she could from him. It might help her make up her mind as to whether she wanted to try screen writing.
"That’s putting in the time of day, the place, and whether the scene is taking place inside or outside. Then each character’s name has to be capitalized when they say something and how they say it has to be noted. Then the scene has to be typed out. And there is much more to it."
"Phew, sounds like a lot of work."
"It is, so we were told to buy a software program that automatically does it for us to save us time."
"Ah, another time saver program. I’m waiting for when they develop software where you type in the story idea and it writes the book for you."
"You and me both," Michael laughed.
Sally was enjoying Michael’s company and was a little disappointed when she saw Bonnie wave at her from the doorway. She excused herself and went over.
"Let’s go inside," Bonnie said.
Chapter 10
Elizabeth headed back to where she’d left off the other day and continued on Highway 99 with her kilometres starting from Alpine Way.
"Soon you can see Green Lake to your right," she recorded, then laughed. "You pass Crazy Canuck Drive, which leads into one of the many new housing developments rapidly going up in the Whistler area." She thought of all the estates she’d seen along the highway on the way into Whistler. On impulse she turned onto Crazy Canuck Drive and looked at what she suspected were million dollar homes.
The Travelling Detective: Boxed Set Page 62