Cut Off His Tale: A Hollis Grant Mystery

by Boswell Joan

  “You could have knocked me over when Paul phoned from Halifax and told me you’d been married. For a confirmed bachelor, and especially for a man like Paul, to be swept off his feet and marry within three weeks blew me away.”

  “You knew about our upcoming divorce?”

  Marguerite’s eye widened. “No. I had no idea. Since when?”

  “Christmas. It was Paul’s idea. Things hadn’t been great, but I thought we could work out our problems.”

  Marguerite started to speak and stopped.

  “What were you going to say?”

  “This is absolutely none of my business, but why did you marry Paul?”

  Talking about Paul helped, but how much should she tell? Minister or not, Hollis didn’t intend to reveal her forty-four-year-old soul. But, given Paul’s tall, commanding presence, his magnetic blue eyes and his smile, it was easy enough to explain in terms of his sex appeal, to admit lust had played a role. “It mortifies me to admit it, but physical attraction . . .” Unable to finish the sentence she changed the topic. “The question is, why did he marry me? He said it was time to settle down . . . I think he believed marriage would give him more freedom.”

  “Physical attraction.” Marguerite nodded her head. “He certainly had that, and he used his sexual magnetism to exert power.”

  “You’re right about the power. Although I’m realizing how little I knew my husband, I do know power motivated him. I suspect he maintained his compartmentalized life to prevent any one person from finding out enough about him to exercise power over him.” They sat for a moment in silence. “Did he try to control you?”

  “Tried, but didn’t succeed,” Marguerite said with a wry smile.

  “Maybe control and power were the factors attracting him to counselling?”

  Marguerite’s face froze. She rose and paced slowly. The third board squeaked every time she stepped on it. She stopped in front of Hollis.

  “It’s a shocking thing to say to anyone let alone his widow, but I’m relieved Paul is dead. A situation arose recently. I had to act, but I procrastinated.” Her eyes filled, and she collapsed into her chair, slumped forward with her head in her hands. Her voice was muffled. “God, if only I’d been decisive.”

  Her dramatic emotional reaction alarmed Hollis. “What happened?”

  “I don’t want to think about it, let alone talk about it . . .” For moments, Marguerite didn’t say anything. Finally, she lifted her head and revealed eyes filled with pain.

  Hollis couldn’t imagine what Marguerite would reveal and didn’t know if she was strong enough to hear whatever Marguerite was going to say.

  “Almost a month ago,” Marguerite said in a low voice, “a woman who’d been seeing Paul professionally came to me in a terrible state. She said Paul had initiated sex during a counselling session and, although she hadn’t wanted to because she felt it was wrong, she gave in. She’d ended the counselling sessions and wanted me to know what had happened.

  “I believed her charge, agreed he’d been way out of line and said I’d speak to him and report what he’d done. I intended to confront Paul immediately, but I put it off. He would have challenged the woman’s story, said she was unstable, made light of the allegation. I did intend to act, to take the matter to Presbytery.” Marguerite’s voice quivered. “It’s no good saying what I would have done, I didn’t do anything and she committed suicide. If I’d acted promptly and reassured her Presbytery would consider her complaint, she might be alive.”

  A sexual predator. Hollis wanted the words to go back in Marguerite’s mouth. “How horrible,” she said and thought what an inadequate word it was.

  “The problem didn’t end with her death. I’ve considered what I should do—she probably wasn’t an isolated case—and I knew I had to track down other victims and bring Paul to justice. It’s cowardly of me, but you realize why I’m relieved.”

  Hollis swallowed the bile that had risen in her throat. She thought of Paul in his office, seducing an endless line of needy, damaged women and felt sick. Not now. Time to share her suspicions. “I think he also was having an affair.” She avoided Marguerite’s eyes. “He often stayed out all night. The first time it happened, I asked him where he’d been, and he told me it was none of my business.” Hollis met Marguerite’s gaze. “Do you know who she was?”

  “Hollis, you don’t want to know. What good will it do?”

  “Yes, I do. Everything. I have to know everything.”

  Marguerite peered at her moccasins.

  “Really, it will help me,” Hollis said in what she hoped sounded like a reasonable tone of voice.

  “I can’t imagine how, but I suppose if I don’t tell you, someone else will.” Marguerite leaned forward and addressed her moccasins. “Sally Staynor.” She concentrated on drawing a circle with her toe. “And there’s more. She made a scene in church this morning when I informed the congregation of Paul’s death.”

  Great. Anyone who hadn’t heard would figure it out. Who was she kidding? Probably she’d been one of the few not to have heard about Sally and Paul’s relationship. “Is there a Mr. Staynor?”

  Marguerite, looking as if she regretted telling Hollis, bent forward to pick up their glasses and place them on the tray. “He’s a butcher and owns the Chop Shop.” Marguerite shivered. “It isn’t summer yet. Now that the sun’s gone, it’s chilling down. Let me scramble or boil a couple of eggs. My mom always made a soft-boiled egg with toast fingers when we were sick or unhappy.”

  Get up. Go. No more talk, no more revelations. She stood. If she didn’t get out of here, she’d explode, howl—she didn’t know what she’d do. How could he have done what he’d done? How could she have been so stupid, so unaware? She pulled her pink jacket tightly around her as if to contain her rage. Taking a deep breath, she relied on forty-four years of training in civil behaviour. “Thanks, but if you’ll loan me the keys, I’ll check Paul’s appointment calendar.”

  Marguerite’s eyes widened. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked, reaching forward to touch Hollis’s arm.

  Was she? No, definitely not, but she had to keep going and find out everything. “Not great, but I’ll be fine.”

  Marguerite looked into her eyes for a minute. “Okay. Bring the keys to St. Mark’s tomorrow morning. Barbara always arrives before I do. I’ve been a night owl since I was a baby.” She finished loading the tray. “Hollis, don’t get mixed up in the investigation. Leave it to the police.”

  “Taking a peek at his calendar isn’t going to do any harm.”

  At St. Mark’s, Hollis unlocked the green door and let herself into the vestibule of the church annex. In the eerie light of the low wattage bulbs, she peered up half a flight toward Marguerite’s office and down half a flight to a hall leading to a warren of rooms and Paul’s office.

  The building didn’t feel empty.

  Spooky.

  She was being stupid—overreacting. Too much had happened to her in one day. Of course the building was empty. No one would be in the church late on a Sunday night.

  Telling herself not to be ridiculous, she forced herself to march downstairs to the lower hall.

  When the total darkness inside the first open door seeped out and wrapped its tentacles around her, she walked faster and gave herself instructions. Eyes forward. Don’t look left or right. Go straight to the end of the hall.

  Yellow police tape stretched across the doorway to Paul’s office.

  Retracing her steps was impossible. She couldn’t pass those yawning doorways again. She had no choice but to rip the tape, fumble for the lock, rush into the office, flick on the light and collapse against the door when the lock clicked shut.

  Her only other visit had occurred shortly after her marriage three years before. She’d dropped in to invite Paul out for lunch and been told, in a pleasant but non-negotiable tone, that his office was off limits. If she wanted him, she was to phone.

  A room with a split personality. Cheap mismatched off
ice furniture crowded the front. A couch, three upholstered chairs, a scarred coffee table, and a beleaguered split-leaf philodendron reaching frantically for light, huddled at the rear.

  In the office section, everything on Paul’s desk reflected his obsession with order. Two books bristling with slips of paper marking particular passages sat precisely in the middle of the perfectly centred brass-cornered desk blotter. An empty “out” basket beneath an “in” basket stacked with papers awaiting the attention they would never receive anchored the left corner of the desk. A pen and pencil set in an onyx-based holder centred above the blotter lined up with Paul’s appointment calendar next to the phone at the top right corner of the desk. Hollis imagined him aligning each item before he got to work and thought how it had annoyed her when he’d insisted on realigning his cutlery before he ate a meal.

  Her eyes were drawn upward to the black windows threatening her like the eyes of a loathsome creature staring down at its prey. Anyone might be peering down, watching what she was doing—a blob of matter under a microscope. She lurched across the room, snatched the dangling cords and yanked the curtains shut.

  This panic was ridiculous. Taking deep breaths, concentrating on the air entering and leaving her lungs, focussing on meditating, she worked to clear her mind.

  Impossible.

  She told herself as long as she was able to breathe she was fine; to stop being an idiot and do the job—read Paul’s calendar. She dropped into the high-backed pseudo-leather office chair and, wrecking the symmetry of the desk, picked up the calendar, flipping back to March and forward to late May. No names—only initials. Today’s entry. Paul had been meeting SS at seven. SS. Sally Staynor.

  So many entries. So many repeats. She made a two page list, ticked each time the same ones appeared and replaced the calendar. Tilted in the chair, she surveyed the room. What else could it reveal?

  The drawers of the desk and the filing cabinet were unlocked. She sifted through the contents and realized why—the minutes of church council, congregational and presbytery meetings as well as his clerical correspondence deserved a triple dull rating and contained nothing of a confidential nature. Crammed with dry reference books—concordances, biblical analyses, famous sermons, dictionaries—the bookshelves offered no clues.

  She concluded Paul had stowed his personal papers in his locked bedroom.

  Time to go home.

  While she’d worked, her heartbeat had slowed to normal, as had her breathing. The idea of facing the silence and shadows in the hall elevated her heart rate and caused her breath to catch in her throat.

  To fool any onlooker, she’d leave the curtains closed and the light on. If it hadn’t been her imagination and someone really was watching her, this would give her an advantage. Whoever might be lurking out there wouldn’t be aware she’d left, unless “they”, no not “they”, “he”, waited outside the door.

  At the thought of someone in the hall, she considered sleeping in the chair and slipping home in the morning when daylight and Barbara Webb arrived. But she couldn’t subject MacTee to a night of discomfort.

  Nothing for it. She had to go.

  Hollis flung the door open, assured herself the hall was empty, sped past the dark gaping doorways, raced up the stairs and wrenched the outside door open.

  A door closed somewhere behind her.

  The sound froze her hand on the half-open outside door. She must have dreamed it—too much shock—her imagination was running away with her.

  She bolted.

  While Hollis searched Paul’s church office, Rhona toiled at the station. Sometime after one AM, she allowed herself to go home.

  When she arrived, the first thing she did was check the message machine.

  “It’s me. It’s three thirty, and I’m heading out. I’ve got the night shift this week. Pretty dull Sunday. Wish you’d been here. By the way, I talked to a friend on the Toronto Police. They’re recruiting women and visible minorities. Think about it. Toronto is a great city—you’d love it here, and I’d love it if you were here. Call me when you can.”

  She could buzz him on his cell phone. Not a good idea. Toronto was looking better and better. She wasn’t exactly a visible minority. Having a Cree grandmother didn’t precisely qualify her, although she knew people looked at her and wondered about her genetic mix. In Toronto, the city of hundreds of languages and nationalities, she’d be part of the majority, not the minority.

  In her bedroom, she stripped off her clothes and reached for a flannel night shirt. She brushed her hand over the soft comforting fabric and knew it was one thing she’d have to give up if she moved—Zack was a guy who liked sexy lingerie.

  She tried to relax but had her usual trouble shutting down. Warm milk, the time-honoured soporific, did nothing. Back in her bedroom, she popped Casablanca in the VCR. Together she and Opie snuggled down under the down-filled comforter. She lip-synched the dialogue but fell asleep before Bogart did the noble thing.

  The demands of a murder case leave detectives severely sleep deprived, and Rhona was no exception. At seven thirty in the morning, her aching body and gritty eyes demanded more sleep. Instead, she reviewed her day’s schedule. The day seldom evolved as she wished, but she preferred starting with a plan.

  At St. Mark’s, she’d talk to Barbara Webb and make a quick sortie through Paul’s files. Already she thought of him as “Paul” and his wife as “Hollis”. She’d have to be careful to use formal terms of address and maintain her distance.

  Following her stop at St. Mark’s, she’d review the race program with Hollis and attend Paul’s autopsy. Finally, after lunch, she’d interview JJ Staynor at the Chop Shop.

  Up and dressed in a black pantsuit and hand-tooled black cowboy boots, she scooped Meow Meow Chow Chow into Opie’s bowl. He rewarded her with a disdainful sniff. Opie preferred fresh cooked salmon, or a lesser but acceptable substitute, canned salmon. Rhona smiled at him. “If you’re hungry, you’ll eat it,” she said.

  Opie sneered, raised his tail, swished it from side to side and stalked from the room.

  In the St. Mark’s church office, Barbara Webb, hair upswept and fastened with a rhinestone comb, cradled the phone on her shoulder and murmured sympathetically while she did paperwork. She waved a greeting and changed the tone of her voice. “I have to go, Sandra. A police officer is here to talk to me. I’m terribly sorry about your Herbert. I know what he meant to you, how much you loved him.”

  After replacing the receiver, she said, “Being the secretary is like being ‘Dear Abby’ without ten million readers.” She grimaced, “Poor Sandra Gardner has suffered a double blow. First Paul and now Herbert, her beloved budgie.”

  Rhona smiled, “I bet your contract and your job description don’t say a word about sympathetic listening.”

  “You’re absolutely right—it takes hours every day. But it’s important, and I love doing it. By the way, call me Barbara—everyone does.” She stood up. “A friend is waiting to substitute for me. I’ll fetch her, then we can talk.”

  “I thought we’d use Reverend Robertson’s office. By the way, did you make his appointments and keep his calendar?”

  “He mostly did his own. I informed him of upcoming church meetings, and he notified me of the ones he planned to attend.”

  “Since you’re familiar with the congregation, would you go over his calendar with me?”

  Barbara nodded and clicked out of the room on her red snake-skin high heels. She trotted back with a myopic, wren-like woman who acknowledged introductions and settled herself behind the desk, saying, “Go on. I’ll be fine, not as good as Barbara, a disappointment to the callers, but just fine.” The phone rang.

  Jaunty in a red wool suit with a nipped-in waist, Barbara preceded Rhona down the stairs to Paul’s office. Strands of yellow tape trailed from the doorframe. The door was open. Barbara stopped abruptly, seemingly unaware of her ring of keys, which might have belonged to the chatelaine of a medieval castle, rattling like a c
handelier in an earthquake. Inside the room crowded with furniture, chaos prevailed. Someone had dumped the drawers from the filing cabinet and the desk.

  “Oh my goodness, it was locked yesterday,” Barbara said. “What a mess. Whatever was he looking for?”

  Rhona gripped Barbara’s shaking arm reassuringly and turned her away from the doorway.

  “A good question and one we’ll talk about in a minute, but not here. This is a crime scene, and we won’t go in.” She released Barbara’s arm and, remembering how Barbara had responded to the challenge of solving practical problems, asked a question. “What documents did Reverend Robertson have here?”

  “Church records, research material for sermons, nothing secret.” Barbara closed her hand around the keys to stop the jangling. “Paul was a strange man in many ways. I always suspected he had secrets and believed everyone, me included, intended to discover what they were. I did his filing, and I can tell you with absolute certainty there was nothing significant in those drawers.” She released the keys and allowed them to swing from the ring. “Whenever he left his office before I finished for the day, he would stick his head in to say goodnight, and he almost always carried a lawyer’s briefcase. I’d guess he took home anything personal or confidential.”

  Rhona removed her cell phone from her shoulder bag. “Give me a few minutes to report this. You’ve had a shock. Why don’t you make yourself a cup of tea? I’ll join you upstairs after the team arrives, and we’ll chat in whatever quiet corner you choose.”

  When Barbara trotted off, Rhona surveyed the room. Stained beige furniture badly needing re-upholstering, flaking institutional green paint and dark oak-framed reproductions of third rate religious paintings. What a cheerless stage for Christian living.

  She jumped when a hand touched her elbow.

  “What on earth happened here?” Marguerite Day asked.

  Rhona observed Day’s soft-soled shoes and realized why she hadn’t heard her approach. “The intruder wanted something. I don’t suppose you have any idea what he might have been searching for?”