Foul Deeds: A Rosalind Mystery

by Linda Moore

  “Thanks for the ride.” I opened the door, still blubbering.

  “See you at the opening. Wait! Don’t forget your bag.”

  He drove away and I stood on the doorstep blowing my nose. I was completely overcome with emotion. What an idiot I am!

  It took me forever to find my keys but when I finally let myself into the house, I put down my bag and went immediately to the hall phone and dialed McBride’s number, hoping he wouldn’t be in his door yet. I left a message.

  “It’s me. God! Sorry about all that. I must be really messed up. I was just so overcome with…anyway…enough about me. Congratulations McBride!”

  I hung up, went into the kitchen and reached up into the cupboard for the last of the Scotch. I poured the shot into a little glass. “Here’s looking at you, kid,” I said to the cat as I knocked the drink back.

  The preview ended at 10:40. Not a bad length for Hamlet, I thought. The show had grown enormously. There were a few line confusions, but for the most part the text was solid and clear. The entrances and exits still needed more alacrity—both actors and technical cues. But that would come with practice. The preview audience had responded warmly, and I was sure that was what the cast had really needed—the opportunity to have someone there to tell the story to.

  I walked over to Michael’s little tucked-away stage-management table from which he called all the sound and light cues.

  “Everything’s good, Michael,” I said. “The lights are going to be fine. The music’s fantastic and the costumes are beautiful.”

  “Was I quiet enough calling the cues? Could you hear me?”

  “No, I didn’t hear a thing. You were really quiet and your timing on the cues is good too. I can’t believe how much you’ve all done since I saw it on Friday.”

  “Oh, I know. They’ve worked hard. So this must be strange for you Roz—your work on Hamlet is done. Do you feel good about it?”

  “I feel great, but you’re right—I’m really going to miss the rehearsals.”

  “Well, I wanted to talk to you about something.” He explained to me that they were forming another independent co-op in the new year to produce Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love. “Sophie’s going to be in it…so we want you to come on board to help us out with that.”

  “Are you serious? I’m definitely interested. I’ll take a look at it.”

  “I have a copy right here. Why don’t you borrow it?” As he reached into his knapsack to get the play, I could tell that he was pleased and excited.

  “Thanks, Michael. I’ll get it back to you as soon as I read it.”

  ”You’ll love it. And it’s a lot shorter than Hamlet,” he said laughing. “Oops, I’d better get backstage and give them tomorrow’s call before they all disappear.”

  “I’ll come backstage with you.”

  “You’re off and running!” I said to everyone. “It’s powerful—and beautiful. Shakespeare would be proud.” I gave Tom a much-deserved hug. “I even cried.”

  “You always cry, Roz. I’ve seen you cry in rehearsal,” George said, putting his arms around the two of us.

  “I do? I always think of myself as being tough and cynical.”

  “Are you kidding?” George said. “We know you’re a total softie.”

  “Even you got to me, George, with your perfectly delivered ‘flights of angels’ line.”

  “Really?” He looked chuffed.

  Sophie came out of the little curtained area they had improvised into a separate dressing room for the two women in the cast.

  “Oh my god,” she said. “It was just so good to have an audience. It’s like you start hearing the play in a completely new way. You can feel it landing on people.”

  “And that will get even stronger,” I said. “It’s amazing how much the audience teaches you about the play, isn’t it?”

  Sophie looked at me. “Are you okay?”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. You look…like something’s on your mind. Is it an acting note?”

  “No no, not at all. It’s all there, Sophie. It’s great work.”

  “Well, what then?”

  “What are you doing—are you going out?”

  “God no. No going out until after it’s open. But tea, maybe. Do you want to come back for a chai?”

  “Perfect.”

  We got into Old Solid and talked about the performance all the way across town to the North End. As we were walking upstairs to Sophie’s apartment, I realized I hadn’t been there since the day she was abducted.

  “How’s your place?” I said.

  “You’ll see. It’s pretty much back in order.”

  “Yeah, McBride mentioned he was coming over the other night to help you put the bed together.”

  “I know. The bed frame was actually in pieces. It was crazy.” She opened the door.

  The apartment had been restored to its familiar Bohemian charm.

  “I’ll put the kettle on.”

  “So, how are you, Sophie? Are you going through feelings of violation or side effects from everything that happened to you?” I said, watching her and leaning on her kitchen door.

  “I’ve been so distracted by Hamlet, I haven’t had time to dwell on it. I mean, you hear about trauma and things coming back on people for years. I hope that doesn’t happen. Once was enough.” She poured the water over the tea and the familiar spicy aroma filled the kitchen.

  “So,” I said.

  “So?”

  “Do you have some news for me?” I observed her closely as she took her attention away from the tea things and looked up at me with a little grin. She raised her eyebrows.

  “He told you.”

  “Yup—earlier today.”

  Now she was beaming. “So what do you think?”

  “I seem to recall warning you about this very thing not so long ago.”

  “Listen Roz, I took that warning seriously. And I’m not going into this lightly. But with everything that just happened—me thinking I was going to die down there in that freezing excavation site, and then really seeing what a good guy McBride is, discovering how much we cared about each other…We’re bonded. It’s really happening. Suddenly life is short, my eyes are open—and this feels right.”

  “When McBride told me today, I was really taken by surprise—shocked actually. I thought maybe it was a little impulsive. I care about you Sophie and I don’t want you to get hurt, or disillusioned. But you know what? Everything you’ve just said makes sense. So, I’m there, I’m with you, and you’re right—life is short. So congrats!” I hugged her and actually managed to refrain from crying.

  As we clinked our teacups in a toast she said, “Keep it under wraps. We’re going to announce it at the opening night party and completely surprise everyone!” She got that familiar mischievous look on her face and rubbed her hands together in anticipation of telling everyone. I told myself I would get used to the idea, and resolved to keep any reservations to myself. Who was I to spoil their happiness? Besides, they were grown-ups. I changed the subject.

  “So Michael told me about this Fool for Love idea. What’s that all about?”

  “Oh it’s such a cool play, Roz. It’s about these two completely obsessed lovers, May and Eddie, who are actually half-brother and sister. I would play May, who is determined to start a new life on her own. But Eddie always tracks her down. And their father, the Old Man, is ever-present, but he’s really a ghost.”

  “Not another ghost!” I said.

  “—and then May’s date, Martin, arrives and it all gets pretty crazy and pretty funny too. The whole thing takes place in a motel room in the Mojave Desert and we’re thinking about doing it in this little storefront on Agricola Street, so the audience is kind of compressed into the motel room with them. And you’ll love the language—gorgeous writing. It’s very mythic too—brother and sister—like Isis and Osiris. Symbols. Magic realism. Passion, fire, horses—lots to think about. So there you go! Will you do it? Maybe you
could actually direct it, rather than just working on the text.”

  “You think?”

  “I think you’d be a wonderful director, and we’ll really need one.”

  “I’ll think about it Sophie—that would be amazing.”

  I didn’t stay any longer. I was exhausted and I knew that Sophie always tried to get to bed early when she was performing. I was exhilarated by this notion of working on Fool for Love, possibly as a director, and was thinking about Sophie’s description of the play as I drove home. I could feel the idea of the play drawing me in and I felt compelled to read it immediately. So when I got home, I fed the cat and changed into my coziest pyjamas. I put the old chenille robe on over them and pulled on my sheepskin slippers. On the book cover was a compelling, sexy photo of a man and woman touching tongues. Sitting in the kitchen next to the radiator, I devoured the whole play in less than an hour. When I finished reading it, my brain was on fire. All my worlds were colliding.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The Spiegle interview had been set for eleven o’clock. I spent the earlier part of the morning pouring over some of the notes Peter King had been compiling on the Aqua Laben deal that Spiegle was connected with.

  At 10:45 I walked over to the police station. I took my place in the observation room and watched as they brought Spiegle in. McFadden was next—slowly hauling his sizable girth into the small room. He sat at the end of the table and heaved a sigh as though he were extremely hard done by. His dramatic entrance made me smile.

  Arbuckle entered last. “Okay,” he said, “let’s get rolling.” He set up the recorder and identified the date and the participants.

  McFadden pronounced that he was expecting something new and exciting to take place in the interview, and Arbuckle ignored him and jumped in.

  “So, on that day in October when you visited Peter King, did you go to the front door or did you just go straight into the garden?”

  McFadden bleated. “Did you hear what I just said? This is not new!”

  “You’re welcome to leave if I’m keeping you from something more important.” Arbuckle turned back to Spiegle and asked if he should repeat the question.

  Unlike his lawyer, Spiegle seemed unperturbed and confident, as though he had nothing to hide. “King had told me on the phone he would likely be in the garden, so I just went through the gate at the side of the house.”

  “And at any point during the visit did you go into the house?”

  “King and I went in not long after I arrived.”

  “And when you went into the house, you saw Mrs. King for the first time that day?”

  “No. When I first got there, she was in the garden too.”

  Arbuckle, clearly surprised by this new information, asked what she was doing there.

  “Cleaning up the yard, I suppose.” Spiegle continued in his unruffled manner. “She was carrying around a bucket of clippings or something. But just after I arrived she went into the house.”

  “What kind of a bucket was she carrying around?”

  “A bucket is a bucket!” This was McFadden.

  “It was one of those collapsible canvas buckets from garden stores.”

  “What did she do with this bucket of clippings?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “So then a few minutes later you went into the house with Peter King.”

  “Wait.” Spiegle sat up straighter and leaned forward. “Now I do remember what she did with it because when we went in to the house, the bucket was sitting on the walk just by the side door. In fact, King asked her what it was doing there, and she said something about taking it to the compost, and then he instructed her not to do that because he was planning to incinerate it.”

  “I see. And then you entered the house?” As the questioning continued, I found my mind going back to the bucket of arils sitting just outside the kitchen door.

  “We went up into the kitchen. He said he was going to wash his hands, and he went into the hall, to the water closet out there.”

  “So you must have had a conversation with Mrs. King at that point?”

  “She wanted me to try this winter tonic she had cooked up with rosehips. She had it in the blender.”

  “In the blender?” Greta had not said anything about a blender. Arbuckle was intrigued with this new development. I leaned forward on my stool. Things were getting interesting.

  “Yes. She said she had added apple juice to sweeten it. She poured me a glass and handed it to me. She told me to drink it all—that it would be good for me. Then the doorbell rang. She went out into the hall to answer the door.” Arbuckle nodded. This corroborated what Greta had said about the Mormons. He then asked, “Did you drink the tonic?”

  “I’d had rosehip tonic before—when I was kid. I never really liked it. I just set it down on the counter.”

  “And she returned to the kitchen?”

  “No, Peter King came back then and he asked me if I’d gotten coffee. I said no, that she’d offered me the tonic but I told him I would prefer coffee. So he poured me a cup of coffee and then picked up the glass and drank the tonic himself, right down. Then we went back outside, and while he worked, I helped him with this and that and tried to talk with him about the project in Germany.”

  “Did the conversation become heated? Were you arguing?”

  “I was frustrated. But I had come over to try to make him see reason and so I just kept trying. And then he suddenly stopped talking and sat down on a bench and said he wasn’t feeling well. He seemed a bit shaky. Then he grabbed his chest and looked like he was in terrible pain. That’s when I rushed to the house and told his wife to call the ambulance.”

  “And did she do that?”

  “She became very distraught when I told her. But yes, of course, she called.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “She just kept saying, ‘No, oh no, oh no.’”

  Arbuckle stopped the interview at that point and suggested a short break.

  McFadden leaned back in his chair and stretched. He loosened his tie. “Well Arbuckle, I hate to disappoint you but what I heard during that interview was the testimony of an innocent bystander.”

  Arbuckle came into the observation room and said, “Let’s go to my office.”

  When we got there, we sat down and looked at each other.

  “So Spiegle didn’t do it?” I said. “What are you thinking?”

  “It looks like a real fluke—she was trying to get Spiegle but Peter ended up drinking the poisoned tonic. She inadvertently killed her husband.”

  “So, she would have taken the arils from the bucket outside the kitchen door and put them in the blender with the tonic and apple juice. That would have been an efficient way to grind the seeds and release a maximum amount of taxine.”

  We continued hashing it over and tried to figure out why, if Greta had intended to kill Spiegle, she would help him later by retrieving the file and trying to get Aziz out of the way. Arbuckle also wondered why, if Spiegle hadn’t killed King, he would go to such risky extremes to try and get Aziz’s evidence.

  “Time to get back in there. Why don’t you join me this time?” Arbuckle said.

  “You’re on,” I said. “I do have a few queries.”

  “I thought you might,” Arbuckle said.

  Just as we were leaving Arbuckle’s office, Harvie appeared.

  “What’s happening? They let me out of court early and I thought I’d plug in.”

  “Good timing. The observation room is all yours,” Arbuckle said. “We’re both going in to interview Spiegle.”

  As I entered the interview room with Arbuckle, he said to them, “This is Roz. She’s going to join us for this session.”

  “Who’s this exactly?” McFadden asked.

  “I’m working with the Prosecutor’s Office,” I said. “Nice to meet you too, Mr. McFadden. You’re a legend.” I held out my hand to McFadden. He looked wary, but shook my hand. His hand felt kind of damp an
d meaty.

  Arbuckle set up the recorder again, entering the time and adding my name to the list of people in the room. He looked at me and gestured for me to begin.

  I said, “Mr. Spiegle, do you have an official business connection with Aqua Laben, the bottled water company in Germany, that you were trying to talk with Peter King about that day?”

  “No. I have a moderate financial investment in that company.”

  “Really? So you’re not on the Board of Directors or anything.”

  “No.”

  “That company is attempting to secure the rights to Canadian bulk water, aren’t they?”

  “They were, until Peter King got a temporary injunction.”

  “As an administrator working for our fair city, would you think it inappropriate to also be a member of such a board?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Where’s all this going? My client has just told you he’s not on the Board of Directors of that company. Are you deaf or stupid?”

  I levelled an unflinching look at “the Pugilist” and started firing my imaginary rockets in his direction, one by one.

  “Well, I think there’s a reason why your client hired those so-called security boys to prevent Mr. Aziz Mouwad from passing his file of information to the private investigator and a reason why the information in that file could be dangerous to your client if it got into the wrong hands.”

  “Okay. Cut the drama. What’s the reason?”

  “That file contained many pertinent facts about your client which Mr. Mouwad got from Peter King’s office back in August, and there’s one tiny detail in that file that could almost go unnoticed.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “It’s the suggestion that your client Carl Spiegle conducts some if not all of his business affairs in Europe under another name. And under that name he is—are you ready?—a prominent member of the Board of Directors for Aqua Laben.” There was a moment’s pause while the bomb dropped.

  “That’s the most—What do you think you’re talking about?” McFadden sputtered, hitting the table with his meaty hand. “A suggestion, you say? A suggestion is not proof. Where’s the proof?”