by H. P. Bayne
“Am I to understand then that you don’t want us to investigate?”
“What I want is irrelevant. Carlene clearly wants this and, if I’m any judge of the man I married, Thomas wants it too. The closer Thomas gets to the end, the more I think he wants to know someone will be there waiting for him. As much as I wish I could tell you to leave, it’s what Thomas wants that’s important now. He needs this, and it would be wrong of me to deny him. So though it pains me to say it, I will give you whatever help you need.”
“I appreciate that, ma’am,” Lachlan said. “And I can assure you, we will handle this with all the sensitivity we possibly can. At some point, I would like very much to be able to speak with your husband. If you could endeavour to let me know when he is up to talking, I would be grateful to you.”
Dez resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow. Rarely had he seen Lachlan so tactful, and sensitivity all too often seemed a feature he sorely lacked. Dez imagined money had something to do with it. If Lachlan could impress the Debenhams—a couple who lay at the heart of KR’s elite—he might be able to find a way to even more lucrative cases down the road.
Given his own financial security rested on Lachlan’s, Dez couldn’t begrudge him that.
“Perhaps we could begin with your taking me through what happened back then,” Lachlan said.
“Carlene is the best one to ask. Lonnie was living there at the time.”
Dez decided he should enter the conversation at some point, even if he was risking breaking Lachlan’s interrogative flow. “We’ve spoken with her already. She gave us her version of events. We’d like to hear yours.”
“All right. But you understand I wasn’t there at the time, when Lonnie left, I mean. Thomas and I only found out about it later, when Carlene called us to say he hadn’t come home.”
“Actually, I think what we’re more interested in is what might have happened to lead to his disappearance,” Lachlan said. “We understand he wasn’t himself for a while beforehand. Can you shed any light on his emotional state?”
Rose gave a slight shrug alongside a smile that bordered on apologetic. “Honestly—and I’m ashamed to admit this—Thomas and I didn’t see Lonnie and Carlene all that much during that period. They were very busy with their family. Young kids do that, take a lot of energy and care. And they insisted on doing it alone. We offered to pay for a nanny, or at the very least a housekeeper, but they turned us down. They were always very independently minded.”
“So you don’t know what was bothering him?” Dez asked. “Carlene said he seemed depressed for two months before he went missing, and she said it seemed to start one day after he got home from work. Was there something going on at the bank that might have caused it?”
“It’s possible, I suppose. Now I don’t know much about the day-to-day workings there, but Thomas would tell me sometimes how he thought other employees were jealous of Lonnie. He was quite young, and he was advancing quickly with his career. You have to understand: Lonnie was a very bright young man. Thomas built his business from the ground up, relying on nothing but ambition, intelligence and good salesmanship. Lonnie was his father’s son; he possessed the same characteristics. He was excellent at his job, and any promotions he received, he earned himself. Thomas was concerned others might have believed Lonnie received the promotions simply because of who his father was.”
Lachlan scratched at his temple. “Did anyone act on their jealousy?”
“Not that I know of. If such a person valued his or her job, they would have done well to leave Lonnie alone. His father didn’t coddle him at work, but at the end of the day, Lonnie was Thomas’s son, and he would have protected him if he felt there was a true threat.”
“That’s no doubt true,” Lachlan said. “But could it be someone bore a grudge—one significant enough to cause them to act?”
“The police looked into that, back when they considered it could have been a kidnapping scheme. As far as I know, they didn’t come up with anything that panned out.”
“Well, I’m looking into it now,” Lachlan said. “I’d like to explore some of the same territory, eliminate certain theories for myself.”
“What makes you think you’re going to achieve anything different this time around?”
“Because,” Lachlan said with a broadening grin, “it’s me.”
“I can’t believe she bought that ‘it’s me’ crap,” Dez said as the two returned to the SUV a little more than an hour later.
“Hey, I can’t help being this brilliant.”
“Or this cocky.”
“Watch it, Braddock. Don’t forget who signs your paycheques.” The comment had come through a smug smile, and it was clear the man hadn’t taken offence. With someone else, all this ribbing might have ended badly; Lachlan thought too much of himself to be put out by someone’s half-hearted attempts to deflate his ego.
One thing about Lachlan: he dished it out an awful lot, but he was a big enough man to take it in return. Dez had to admit, it was something he liked about his boss.
Not that he’d ever say it out loud, of course.
Just before they reached the SUV, Dez’s phone rang. The “S” on the screen indicated it was Sully.
“What’s up?”
“How was your meeting?” Sully asked.
“Long. For someone who didn’t want to see us, Rose had an awful lot to say. Her husband wasn’t well enough to talk to us, but she spoke to him on our behalf for a while. They put together a list for us, containing the names of several people who Thomas thought might have had a grudge against Lonnie or himself. It’s pretty much the same list the police had thirty years ago, but they gave us one additional name. Some woman named Eleanor Kilpatrick had been up for the same promotion as Lonnie, but it went to him. I guess she wasn’t on police radar at the time because she didn’t make much of a stink about the situation back then—not publicly, anyway. It wasn’t until a few months after Lonnie went missing that Thomas started to hear stories that Eleanor was talking trash about Lonnie. Thomas confronted her, and inevitably fired her.”
“For talking about his son?”
“Unprofessionalism, apparently. The bank had a code of conduct, and she was found to have breached it.”
“But she was fired after Lonnie disappeared. She had a motive, but not until after Lonnie went missing, right?”
“That’s the question,” Dez said. “Maybe the fact she didn’t get the promotion was motive enough.”
“Seems like a stretch,” Sully said.
“I know, and that’s why the Debenhams never bothered to tell investigators about her. No one really figured she’d have it in her to hurt Lonnie.”
“But you do?”
“Lachlan wants to look into it. Makes some sense, I guess. We’ve got the file from the investigation. It seemed pretty thorough. Background checks, surveillance, phone records—the Major Crimes unit did a lot of digging back then into anyone who might have been a potential suspect. I don’t think there were many stones left unturned. Maybe Eleanor is the stone we’re looking for. How about you? What were you up to?”
“I went to the library, and I hit a bit of a jackpot. I think I know who Faceless Flo really is.” He grinned as Dez’s eyebrows lifted.
“Who?” Dez asked.
“Her actual name is Sarah, or Sadie Marquill. She disappeared in 1927, and I can’t find any record that she was ever found. Her disappearance was mentioned in the Loons Hollow newspaper at the time, but there was no major follow-up. I’m not sure why. I mean, there was one story that ran about a week after the initial search, but it only said she hadn’t been found, and that the search had been abandoned. I searched historical obituaries, but I couldn’t find one for her.”
“You realize this is a pretty big deal, right? People have been looking for proof of Faceless Flo for as long as I can remember. You might just have cracked it.”
“No one really knew what they were looking for. Everyone was operating under th
e assumption her real name was Flo.”
“So how’d you manage it, then?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Oh no. Don’t tell me you met the Phantom Librarian.”
“ ‘Met’ is a strong word, given I couldn’t see her. But, yeah, Prue Longquill was a huge help.”
“I can’t take you anywhere.”
Dez paused the conversation to pass along Sully’s information to Lachlan.
“Put him on speaker,” Lachlan said at the end of the summary. That done, Lachlan leaned toward the phone to speak. “I might be completely out to lunch on this, but I wouldn’t mind learning more about this Sadie Marquill and her disappearance. I mean, no way the two disappearances are directly connected given the amount of time between them. But if she’s in some way responsible for something happening to Lonnie, I think we have to know what we’re dealing with. Are you still at the library?”
“Yeah, just about to leave.”
“See if you can find some information about her family. Maybe there are some descendants we can talk to.”
“Already on it. The library has a bunch of books with local histories. I found a couple for Loons Hollow, and the Marquill family has a write-up in each. One was from before Sadie went missing, and the other was written about a decade after. The later one doesn’t say much about her. They mention she was one of the kids, but there’s nothing about her disappearance. I’m not sure why.”
“Not something a family wants to write about, I guess,” Dez said. “One thing, though. According to legend, she went to meet her boyfriend in the woods. That sort of thing would’ve been frowned upon back then. Could be people thought that’s what happened, and she was effectively disowned.”
“Even if she was dead?”
“It was a different time,” Lachlan said. “People didn’t think progressively back then. If she brought shame on her family, they would feel justified in writing her out of their history. The fact she was mentioned at all in the later write-up might be the unusual part. Here’s what I want you to do. Get onto the internet and start plugging in the names of any siblings or cousins; see if you can find any obituaries. Those will have a pretty decent list of relatives and descendants, and it will hopefully give us some names of people we can talk to.”
“Actually, I’ve already done that. I found an obituary for Sadie’s younger sister. She had five kids. I’m going to start checking for addresses and phone numbers, see if any of them live in the area.”
Dez met Lachlan’s eye, watched as his boss’s eyebrow lifted. “I’m impressed. You’ve got a decent head for investigation under all that hair.”
“I was raised by a police officer,” Sully said. “It comes with the territory.”
“Okay, start running those names. I’ll send your brother over to you. Once you’ve got somewhere to start, Desmond can look after the phone calls and door-knocking. I want you nearby, in case our ghostly dame makes an appearance. I’ll hire a driver for today, in case I have luck tracking down Eleanor or any of our other possible suspects. Keep in touch.”
“Hire a driver?” Dez asked once they’d disconnected with Sully. “Who’s going to pay for that?”
“I’m taking it out of your wages. You know, since you’re abandoning me and all.”
“What?”
Lachlan laughed, the sound erasing some of Dez’s indignation. “Relax, Braddock. I was kidding. Jesus, you need to learn how to take a joke. Look, every private investigator can claim costs. The Debenhams have hired one with a concussion. It follows I’m going to need a driver from time to time. And, hell, if someone in that family can’t afford it, I’d be hard-pressed to find one who can.”
When Dez pulled up to the library, Sully was waiting on a park bench, hood pulled up to conceal his features. The phone in his hand made him look less conspicuous, more like a sulky college student than a creepy guy plotting something unpleasant.
Dez didn’t have long to wait before Sully spotted him, tucking away his phone and approaching the SUV.
“You didn’t bring anyone with you, did you?” Dez asked as Sully dropped into the passenger seat.
“I left Pax with Emily.”
“I meant someone less substantial.”
Sully chuckled. “Prue Longquill? Don’t worry, she’s attached to the library. I don’t think she gets out much.”
That would have to be good enough for Dez. “Did you find some names and addresses for us?”
“A couple. Lots of people aren’t listed in the 411 anymore, what with cellphones and all. And there really aren’t very many Marquill descendants left around here, but I did find one. Or two, actually. Sadie’s father was quite a bit older than his wife. Apparently, he’d been married before, and he had a son from that relationship. The son was already married and had a young daughter when Sadie went missing. The daughter is alive, but she’s almost a hundred years old. Near as I can tell, she lives with her daughter in Kimotan Rapids.”
“You have an address?”
Sully pulled out his phone. “I’ve already plugged it into the map app. It’s in the Springvale neighbourhood, so not that far from Riverview.”
“Maybe we should phone first. I’m not sure two old ladies are going to be all that thrilled to see me turn up on their doorstep, asking questions about their missing relative.”
“Already done. They’re expecting us.”
“What do you mean ‘us’?”
“You and Oliver Chadwell.”
“Sully….”
“What? I thought the whole point was for me to be close by in case Sadie’s around somewhere. She seems to be attached to Hollow Road, but lots of ghosts can move between places. If she feels any connection to her family, she might be there.”
“And you think a pair of grannies won’t mind some scruffy guy in a hood sitting in their living room, drinking their tea?”
“First off, I trimmed my beard this morning, and if I pull my hair back, I’m not that scruffy. And second, I think I’m okay going in without a hood. I don’t know either of them from a hole in the ground.”
“Maybe you’re forgetting you made the news when that cave supposedly collapsed on you.”
“Two years ago. Look, I don’t consider this taking chances. No one’s going to remember my face from some bit on the news and, even if they do, I look different now. I’ll be fine. I think they’ll be more likely to talk to a face than a hood, don’t you?”
The logic was sound, no point in arguing—in all honesty, he didn’t think two retired ladies posed much of a threat—so Dez focused on setting a course for the Springvale neighbourhood.
The house belonging to Stella Pinter was a two-storey on a street lined with trees almost as old as the neighbourhood itself. Stella had opted for shrubs instead of a fence, and they’d been left to grow wild, obscuring much of the lower floor from the sidewalk. The house itself was in need of a paint, and judging by the peeling back of a handful of shingles, it could probably do with some roof repairs as well.
Dez didn’t imagine home maintenance was a simple matter for a pair of senior ladies. He hoped they had a family who could help them out.
“Place could do with some work,” he said.
“You offering?”
“I’m not exactly qualified to replace a roof.” Dez gave the house another once-over, then returned his attention to Sully, deciding to make a final attempt. “Listen, when Lachlan suggested you tag along, I’m not sure he meant for you to come inside.”
“I don’t really care what he meant. He’s got his job to do, and I’ve got mine. If Sadie’s around, and if she’s behind these guys going missing, I need to figure it out. At some point, that’s going to mean talking to her.”
“Bloody hell,” Dez said. “Talking to Faceless Flo? I can’t say that sounds like one of your better ideas, Sull.”
“Maybe not. But the fact remains if she has something to do with these men disappearing, she might be the only one who can lea
d us to them.”
“Or maybe she does more than lead us to them,” Dez said. “Maybe she’ll want us to join them.”
8
If the front yard of Stella Pinter’s residence was in need of a cleanup, the home’s interior looked like the before image on one of those renovation shows.
The furniture clearly hadn’t been replaced since the nineteen eighties, and nothing had been dusted in a good long while. The living room curtains, almost completely drawn, cast the room in shadow but for a streak of light forcing its way through. Dust and cat hair drifted through the lone sunbeam, the daylight barely revealing an elderly woman sitting in an easy chair. Two cats cuddled on her lap, their purrs audible even from across the room as she stroked knobby fingers through their fur.
The woman who’d shown them into this room—a younger version of the woman in the chair—ushered Sully and Dez toward the sofa before claiming a second recliner for herself.
“You’re sure you won’t have tea?” Stella asked. “It would just take me a few minutes.”
Sully carefully lifted a cat from the seat of the couch, then shifted a second to allow a space for Dez to sit.
“No, thank you, ma’am,” Dez said. “We’re fine.”
A healthy amount of cat hair coated the cushions, but it seemed impolite to try to sweep it aside. Resigned to being covered in dander, Sully sat, once again removing a particularly persistent feline from the spot next to him, allowing Dez to join him.