Long Gone Man

by Phyllis Smallman

“She told me she wanted to divorce John and marry me,” Chris said.

  “I told him something else. John was going to fire his ass and have him disbarred.”

  “She did it.” Ian shook his hand at Lauren. “She killed Uncle John.”

  “Why would I kill him?” Lauren asked. “Why wouldn’t I just divorce him?”

  “He’d never let you,” Ian sneered. “Or he’d make sure you didn’t get a cent. Easier just to shoot him and blame it on one of us.”

  Wilmot didn’t like this little pisshead hijacking his interrogation. “Mrs. Vibald, did you meet anyone on the path when you went down to Mr. David’s?”

  “No,” she said. “But the fog was so thick I could only see about three feet in front of me.”

  “And you had a flashlight?” Wilmot asked.

  “Of course. You can’t get about at night without one.”

  “My god,” Chris broke in. “If there was no one on the path, then none of us murdered John. There was only one person on the mountain who wouldn’t have gone to Syuwun by the path, only one person who came along the road.”

  They were all looking at Singer with hope and relief on their faces. They wanted it to be her, wanted there to be one crime, one sin, that hadn’t been committed by them. It had to be an outsider, their faces all said. We would never have done this.

  Wilmot didn’t let them relax for long. “Mrs. Vibald’s flashlight would have shone down the path. Anyone with a flashlight coming up the path was less likely to be seen because their light would have shone into the path. They could have just turned off their light, stepped off the path, and waited for Mrs. Vibald to go by. She never would have seen them.”

  Eager hope faded in their eyes.

  “Or perhaps the person coming up the path had already gotten to the top when Mrs. Vibald started down. Maybe the person who went up through the woods was already there, waiting.”

  Now the thing that had been bothering him blossomed in his mind. “Mr. David, I asked you if you had seen or heard anything unusual that night. Do you remember?”

  “Not really.” Steven David shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

  “Mr. David, when I asked if anything stood out about that night, do you remember what you said? Do you remember what was odd about that night?”

  “The perfume,” Steven replied. “When I went outside for a piss, I smelled her perfume.”

  “The perfume, yes, that’s what you said. And who is it who wears a heavy fragrance?”

  “Thea,” Steven said. “I smelled her there in the fog.”

  “Did you speak to her?”

  “No. I didn’t really think about it, didn’t say to myself, Thea is here. I just smelled the perfume and thought it was odd that I could smell her scent.”

  “But you were there, weren’t you, Mrs. Pye? You were on your way to Syuwun to see John Vibald.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Thea said. “Steven must have been drunk. Why would I be out in the woods on a night like that? I was in bed.”

  “Yes, I gather from your husband’s and your son’s statements that you go to bed quite early. But that night you didn’t drink as much as you normally do. That night, you planned on seeing John Vibald. Your husband was in the bedroom working on your closet. I remember your statement saying that. And you had gone into the spare room. But you didn’t stay there, did you?”

  “Nonsense! I’m going home now.”

  “Why that night?” Wilmot asked. “Why did you decide to confront Mr. Vibald that night?”

  Ian broke in. “Uncle John was at our house that afternoon. He stopped on his way back from town to tell me that he’d just had a call from a concert promoter and we were on our way. So my mother had no reason to go up to the house to see him that night. She saw him that afternoon.”

  Wilmot nodded his head. “Oh yes, I see. Your mother learned that Aaron Pye was being left behind, no longer part of the band, and you and John Vibald were going away. Mr. Pye, who else knew you had a gun?”

  Sixty-three

  “Thea?” Aaron Pye whispered. The horror on his face said it all.

  Thea turned on Wilmot. “This is just plain stupid. Foster Utt killed John. You found the gun in his woodshed.”

  Wilmot smiled. “And how do you know that, Mrs. Pye?” There may be leaks in his force, staff running home to share their day with spouses, but no way they’d give away that detail. “Tell us how you know where we found the gun, Mrs. Pye.”

  “You told me, didn’t you, Ari?”

  “Oh, Thea, what have you done?” Aaron Pye was begging her to deny what he knew to be absolutely true.

  Wilmot said, “The only person who would know the murder weapon was in the Utts’ shed was the person who put it there, the murderer.”

  Thea started to cry, reaching out for her husband, seeking comfort.

  Wilmot knew it all now. “Mrs. Pye was on the path the night John Vibald was killed. She knew about the gun and she took it with her and killed John Vibald. The next morning, when everyone else was up at Syuwun and Mrs. Utt was working, Mrs. Pye went down the path and hid the gun in the woodshed.”

  “Why?” Ian Pye turned to his mother. “Mom, what’s he talking about?”

  “I did it for you, don’t you see?” Thea lifted her head from her husband’s shoulder and looked into Aaron’s eyes. “That afternoon, I went out to the truck and asked John again for money to start our business. He just laughed and said no. He enjoyed doing that. He said he and Ian were going on tour and you and I were staying.”

  Thea was telling her story only to Aaron. “Ari, he said he didn’t care what happened to us and that we weren’t getting anything more out of him.” She smoothed her hands across his chest, as if to keep his attention, but there was no way Aaron could look away. “John was never going to sell Syuwun. But Janna would. If John lived, we would be stuck here. But with John dead, we’d have the money to do whatever we wanted. And we’d have Ian back.”

  Her hands reached out for her husband’s face. “I went up to the house with the gun. I went around to John’s office, didn’t want Lauren to see me, wanted to talk to John alone. I went in through the French windows. He laughed when he saw the gun. He opened the drawer of his desk and took out his own gun.” Thea’s voice faltered. “Can you imagine that? John was going to shoot me.”

  “But you took a gun with you,” Wilmot pointed out. “You must have considered using it.”

  Thea swung around to face him. “No, no. I just wanted to scare him, make him give us the money. I didn’t mean to shoot him, not really, the gun just went off.” She didn’t seem to realize her story had changed.

  Aaron Pye pulled Thea to him. “Don’t say anything more.” He put his arm around her, comforting her.

  “I didn’t mean to kill him, honest,” Thea said, looking into his eyes. “You believe me, don’t you, Ari?”

  Aaron Pye nodded.

  “What did you do after you shot him?” Wilmot asked.

  “I just ran away . . . didn’t think about the gun. I was almost home when I saw I still had it.” She was talking to Aaron again. “I should have left the gun there, shouldn’t I? No one would ever have known I killed John if I’d just left it there in his office. I was at the cutoff to the Utts’, at that big rock, when I realized it was still in my hand. I hid it behind the boulder and the next day, when you went up to Syuwun, I went back for it, took it down to Utt’s shed. Foster Utt doesn’t matter.” She sank against her husband, sobbing uncontrollably.

  Wilmot began to inform Thea of her rights.

  Sixty-four

  “I’m going in here for coffee and something to eat,” Lauren said and opened the door to the Yukon. “What do you want?”

  “Nothing like ordering three dollar mocha lattes that taste like shit to make you feel rich,” Singer said.

  “
So what do you want?”

  “A mocha latte of course.” A melody was going around in Singer’s head, the first one in a long while. “And bring some muffins.” She retrieved her guitar off the back seat as the door slammed behind Lauren.

  Singer pushed back her seat and fingered the strings. Her fingers were still tender, but the song in her head wouldn’t wait. Hesitantly at first, and then growing as she gained confidence and found the correct chord progressions, the song swirled and climbed and expanded beneath her fingers.

  Words came. “Mine for a little while . . .”

  Memories swept her.

  A knuckle rapped on the window. Singer jumped in surprise but she was even more shaken when she saw who waited outside the door. She bit back a curse and reached for the crank to lower the window, then remembered it was power all the way for the Yukon. She turned the ignition key.

  “Nice ride,” Wilmot said, as the window slid silently down into the door.

  “I didn’t steal it. It’s Lauren’s. She’s with me, just getting coffee while we wait for the ferry.”

  Wilmot leaned in through the window and checked out the back, which was piled nearly to the roof with recording equipment. “Going on a little road trip?”

  “Naw. Lauren is just dropping off some of her stuff at a friend’s. She’ll have to move out of Syuwun soon, so she’s starting to shift some things. Only be gone a day or two.”

  “So a new life?”

  “Looks like it,” Singer replied. “But we’ll be in Victoria for the trial, like we promised.”

  “Sure.” Wilmot turned his back on her and leaned against the door to stare at the waterfront. Out at the mouth of the harbor, the long, white ferry slid into view.

  “Ferry will be here soon,” Singer said. “Did you come to arrest me for something or just to say goodbye?”

  Wilmot still didn’t face her. “What could I arrest you for?”

  “Don’t know. How about littering?”

  He sighed. “This is against my better judgment.”

  Singer laughed. “I’d say I understand, but according to anyone who’s ever known me, I never had any better judgment.”

  He turned around and leaned on the window ledge with his forearms. “Come back.”

  She started to speak, but he raised a hand to stop her. “Come back.” He leaned in the window and kissed her. When he pulled away, he looked deep into her eyes and said, “Don’t be gone long.” And then he straightened, slapped his hand on the roof, and walked away.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks for all their hard work to the wonderful TouchWood Editions team: Ruth Linka, Emily Shorthouse, Pete Kohut, and Cailey Cavallin.

  An award-winning author, PHYLLIS SMALLMAN was a potter before turning to a life of crime. She is the author of the popular Sherri Travis mystery series and was the first-ever recipient of the Crime Writers of Canada’s Unhanged Arthur award. She was shortlisted for the Debut Dagger by the Crime Writers Association in the UK and nominated for the Malice Domestic Award in the US. Phyllis divides her year between Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, and a beach in Florida. Long Gone Man is the first book in the Singer Brown mystery series. Please visit phyllissmallman.com.