by Susan Calder
“Detective Mike?”
“He’s taking his nephew to the grounds tomorrow. We figured we could squeeze in a little business talk, but it can wait a day.”
“I didn’t know you and Mike were such friends.”
“Not as friendly as you and Walter.”
“Walter’s so looking forward to the fair. He’s gone every year since he was a baby.”
Paula pictured Walter’s grizzled face framed by a bonnet and peeking out of a British pram like one she had glimpsed in Florence Becker’s apartment.
Her mother shifted the subject to this morning’s brunch at Erin’s house. Leah’s boyfriend couldn’t come. He’d arranged to go dirt biking with friends and refused to change his plans. Leah had seemed furious with Jarrett over this. She’d told him that with her work schedule, his opportunities to see her grandmother would be limited, while he could go riding any time. Jarrett insisted this dirt bike location was special, and it wasn’t often his whole gang could get out together.
“I can see both of their points,” Paula’s mother said.
“I imagine this is Jarrett being his usual selfish self,” Paula said. But Leah’s anger about it was surprising. If Leah was growing away from Jarrett, couldn’t she wait until Brendan was gone from the scene?
“According to Walter you can’t cover everything at the Stampede in one day,” her mother said. “At my age I’ll want to take a lot of rests.”
“Really, Mum, I don’t care if I miss it. As Sam says, Stampede will be here next year and be exactly the same.”
“So will the mountains. How often do we get a day with Mike?”
“Mum, do you have a crush on him?”
“I had so much fun with the young people at Erin’s this weekend. Why not get acquainted with another one?”
“Two if you count Mike’s nephew.”
“Children are what fairgrounds are all about.”
“Funny, but I don’t think of Mike as young,” Paula said, although he was only about eight years older than Leah. What about Leah and Mike? That would be too strange, even if it could possibly work.
Inside Paula found a message on her cell from Cynthia Hawryluk asking her to phone right away.
“Did you call the appraiser yet?” Cynthia asked.
“I told you I’d phone him tomorrow.”
“Could you do it tonight so I’ll know if I need to book time off work?”
“I don’t want to bother him at home. I’ll call first thing in the morning.”
“What if he wants to come to The House tomorrow afternoon? I can’t get time off on such short notice.”
“He won’t be available that soon.” Besides, Paula would be at the Stampede.
“I hope it’s not later than Tuesday.”
“With other appraisers on summer vacation, we’ll be lucky to get him this week.” Paula signed off with a promise to phone Cynthia the minute she arranged the appraisal. While she had the phone in her hand, she called Mike.
“I was about to call you,” he said. “Still a go for the Stampede?”
“My mother’s as eager as punch.”
“Is it okay if my nephew brings a friend? I owe my neighbour a babysitting turn. The kids will keep each other occupied.”
“The more young people the better, my mum would say.”
“The friend’s mother is making us all sandwiches. Are you both good with egg?”
“Egg is great, but she doesn’t have to do that for us.”
“She wants her daughter to eat something there besides junk food.” In the background a child shrieked.
“Sounds like your nephew is in Stampede spirit already.”
“You don’t know what you’ve got yourself into.”
“This is my day with my mother,” Paula said. “When we’re at the grounds, she and the kids come before business.”
“Absolutely.” A shriek drowned out his next words. “Noon at the Coca-Cola stage, past the Victoria Park entrance?”
“We can’t wait.”
Chapter Ten
Teenagers dressed in red shirts and cowboy hats took Paula’s and her mother’s tickets and gave them a map of the fairgrounds and a list of the day’s events. Paula looked for Mike among the people seated on the grass facing the Coca-Cola stage. She phoned his cell.
“We got here early,” he said. “I figured the kids’ midway beat chasing Eli and Zora all over the grounds.”
Paula studied the map and located the children’s midway between the Saddledome and Agriculture Centre. She guided her mother past food venders selling minidoughnuts, deep-fried Coke and whatever gross concoction they had come up with this year. Aromas of popcorn and sizzling meats tempted, but egg sandwiches would be healthier for lunch. Show band music belted from the Saddledome steps. ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ followed them to the mechanical minirides. She spotted a cream cowboy hat above the crowd. Mike was dressed western from top to boots.
He clasped her mother’s hand in his two huge ones. “I’m glad you could make it, Mrs. Savard.”
“Call me Theda. At a fair we’re all the same age.”
“You two look sporty today.” His gaze shifted between Paula’s red bandana and the blue one she’d loaned her mother.
Paula eyed his fringed leather vest, checked shirt and jeans. “You’re the last person I’d have expected to see in cowboy gear.”
“Why’s that?”
“You always seem so serious and focused on your work.”
“When I was a kid, my dad would use half his vacation time for family trips to the Stampede. It brings back memories.” He glanced at a ride with swings whirling around a centre core.
“Is your nephew on that?” Paula said.
“And his friend Zora.”
“Of the egg sandwiches?”
“Her mother says Stampede food makes her hyper. Trust me; we don’t want that. She keeps me hopping more than Eli.”
Paula’s mother edged toward the swings that looked like upside-down lollipops. This seemed an opportunity to sneak in some business.
“Anything new with the Becker case?” Paula asked.
“We caught Florence at home and interviewed your friend Garner,” Mike said. “We’re still investigating it as a suspicious death, but”—he looked at the swings, which were slowing down. The evidence is pointing to an accident. Classic case of careless smoking in bed.”
“Garner doesn’t think Caspar was suicidal.”
“None of his neighbours noticed signs of depression. He sure wasn’t giving his possessions away, as suicides tend to do.”
“Did he have a life insurance policy?”
“None has been found. Johnny and Florence weren’t aware of one. Caspar didn’t have a safety deposit box.”
“Florence says she gave you Caspar’s will and his brother’s.”
“Not me. I’ll ask the guys who questioned her.”
“I’d like copies. Do they confirm the nephews and niece inherit all?”
“I haven’t heard otherwise.”
Two dark-haired children hurtled toward them. Mike introduced Eli and Zora to Paula and Theda, who leaned over and asked them how old they were. Eli held up four fingers. He had Mike’s olive skin tones. Long lashes framed Eli’s brown eyes. Zora stood a few inches shorter than him. Slim and of Asian descent, she wore her hair in pigtails tied with polka-dot ribbons.
“Wacky worm!” Eli yelled, and the pair was off to the roller coaster.
Paula’s mother smiled up at Mike. “You’re close to your nephew.”
“He lives with me and my sister,” Mike said. “There’s no father on the scene. Lucy and I raise Eli together as best we can.”
“I’m sure you do a fine job,” Paula’s mother said. “Does your sister work?”
“She’s a cop, like me. We fit Eli around our schedules, with Zora’s mother and my cousin and nursery school filling in the gaps. It works, more or less.”
Their roller coaster ride done
, Zora skipped toward them. Eli staggered behind, exaggerating his dizziness.
“Faker,” Mike teased.
“Can we ride Wacky again?”
“I’m sure these ladies have something they want to do or see.”
“I’m happy to watch the children enjoying themselves,” Paula’s mother said.
“We could look for a place to sit Mrs.…Theda,” Mike said.
“Do you live in an apartment or a house?” she asked him.
“The home I grew up in,” Mike said. With Paula’s mother prompting, he spent the next ride time explaining that his father died when he was sixteen, shortly after Lucy, who was two years older than he was, had moved out on her own. Mike stayed in the house with his mother and through inertia remained there after her death. When Lucy became pregnant, she moved in, refusing to say who the father was. Mike suspected it was someone on the police force but didn’t know who. Lucy hadn’t told the man about Eli and wanted nothing to do with him.
“I’m sure she had her reasons,” Paula’s mother said. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
Paula looked away, hoping Mike had missed her startled expression. She was so stuck in her work relationship with him that it felt weird to grill him with personal questions. He didn’t seem to mind answering these ones from her mother, though. At eighty you could ask people anything, it seemed.
“We broke up this spring,” Mike said. “She couldn’t tolerate the situation.”
So, Mike had chosen Eli over the girlfriend.
Wacky roller coaster and a half dozen rides later, Eli and Zora were eager to see the children’s show on the Coca-Cola stage. Mike jogged after them. Paula took her mother’s arm as they wove by people in cowboy hats and jeans.
“I’m not fond of sitting on the grass,” her mother said. “You go ahead while I take my time savouring the atmosphere.”
“I can’t leave you alone.”
“I won’t get lost; the stage is near where we came in. If I do, I’ll ask for directions.”
There was no point in giving her mother her cellphone since she didn’t know how to use one. Paula suggested that if they got separated, they should meet under the giant clock in the middle of the grounds. Both looked up at the clock beside the bungee jump. The clear blue sky made today’s forecast for possible rain seem impossible. Paula was glad she had worn capris and a light shirt rather than jeans. Western wear might be practical for ranch work, but this pavement crammed with people sizzled the city temperature up five degrees. She had been equally wise not to weight down her backpack with umbrellas. If the rain arrived, they could always duck into the BMO Centre and browse the booths selling miracle gadgets.
She spotted Mike on the sidelines of the Coca-Cola stage viewing area. He chatted with three fellow police members, who were patrolling the grounds, his cream-and-beige clothing a contrast to their black uniforms and cowboy hats. Mike soon noticed her and broke away. While Paula briefed him on her interviews with the Beckers, his attention didn’t leave Eli and Zora on the grass.
“I agree with you. There’s anger beneath Johnny’s showman act,” Paula said. “Some of it might be about the family favouritism toward his cousin, the one who died, and later to Brendan. Garner thinks Caspar was closest to Brendan. Johnny may have resented his uncle for that.”
“Enough to kill him?” Mike asked.
“If he’s twisted enough. And with the money he inherits, he won’t have to live with his mother.”
“He only does that about three months of the year.”
“How much would he earn from his stunt work job? He probably lives from paycheque to paycheque and could use a financial windfall. As for his summers, he told me living with his mother isn’t so great all the time.” She hoped Mike didn’t take that as a dig at his prolonged stay with his mother. Mike’s stay wasn’t that long, since he’d have been under thirty when she died. “But Johnny’s sister, Cynthia, may also be finding her finances tight. Does she get support from her ex-husband?”
“We’re looking into her finances. According to Florence, Cynthia works part-time at a low-paying office job.”
“Did you get the names of her two former husbands?”
“We’ve arranged to talk to them both. The first is a figure skating coach. The second, who’s the father of her children, is a businessman.”
“A failed one, I gather, like her father was.”
“Cynthia still hasn’t returned my calls.”
On the stage people dressed in flower costumes danced to a loud, lively tune. The children watching clapped and cheered. Some whistled.
“I’ve been wondering about the Becker family cleaning business,” Paula said. “Florence told me she took over handling the financial records from her mother-in-law.”
“Our guys collected the books. I hear it took some digging to get them out of a bedroom heaped with children’s stuff, but they’re all there and look comprehensive. The forensic accountant should send his report in a few days.”
“While I was at the house yesterday, Johnny found some jewellery in Caspar’s apartment. Wouldn’t your crime scene guys have removed valuables like that?”
“If they’d found any. They reported seeing nothing of real value.”
“Johnny said they were in the den desk drawer.”
“The den’s clear enough. Unlikely our guys would have missed checking the desk.”
A horn blast called her attention to the grassy viewing area. A clown pranced through the audience. Eli and Zora jumped up and bounded toward him.
“Brendan returned my message,” Mike said. “He agreed to come to the station this week.”
Should she tell him about Brendan and Leah? That was personal and not a police matter. “Brendan will welcome his inheritance as much as the other two,” she said. “He wants to start up a business that will make him rich. He’s the most like his father in that respect. Johnny and Cynthia seem less ambitious, aside from their earlier skating careers, which seem to have largely been driven by Florence. The thing is, the Beckers might be just a normally dysfunctional family with money the siblings were fortunate to inherit, or one of them might have killed to get it. Do any have alibis?”
“The fire started in the middle of the night. Johnny was alone upstairs, his mother out in the mountains. The guys who questioned her couldn’t figure out where or who she was with.”
“She refused to identify her hiking mate to me, too,” Paula said. “But Florence doesn’t have her children’s motive.”
“She might have done it for them.”
“To give them a better life, as she tried to do with their skating.”
“I assume Cynthia, when we do talk to her, will say she was home with her children, and all of them were asleep.”
Paula spied her mother winding around a gaggle of teenagers. “During the summer holidays a lot of teenagers stay up half the night. It might be worth questioning Cynthia’s children about her activities.”
“We will if it comes to that.”
“Brendan is living in his van until his apartment is habitable. I suppose he’ll say that when the fire occurred, he was parked on some undetermined street.”
“Have you arranged for the building appraisal?” Mike asked.
“I talked to my appraiser this morning. He’s squeezing us in tomorrow afternoon. Cynthia Becker should be glad about that.”
Paula’s mother drew up behind Mike. “Don’t let me disturb your police talk.”
“I tried,” Mike said. “Couldn’t keep your daughter away from work conversation.” He cast a teasing smile at Paula.
After the show ended, they grabbed a picnic table behind the Coca-Cola stage in Weadickville, a replica frontier town street named for Guy Weadick, who proposed the idea for a Calgary Stampede over a hundred years ago. Surrounded by Old West store fronts, they devoured their egg sandwiches. Mike gave in to the children’s pleading for ice cream on the condition that Paula and Theda choose the next activity.
&n
bsp; “Whatever the little ones want to do,” Paula’s mother said. “I’m spending a second day here tomorrow, and Paula will be back with Sam.”
“Not Sam,” Paula said. “He calls this a nostalgia delusion, a throwback to an era that was already dead when the Stampede began.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Mike leafed through the fair brochure. “I miss the old pig and duck races.”
“Whatever happened to tradition?” Paula raised her hands in mock dismay. “I vote for ice cream. The kids can choose what comes next.”
“Horses and cows.” Zora grabbed Eli’s hand. “Horses and cows.”
“Mind if we save your ice cream for later?” Mike doffed his cowboy hat at Paula. “It’s time I got to pick, and I say you and Theda need proper headgear.”
“I wouldn’t mind a souvenir hat,” her mother said.
In the Weadickville western wear shop she tried on a pink one that looked surprisingly attractive on her grey curls. “If I’m going to have one, I might as well go wild.”
Mike left them alone to go stop the kids from touching everything in the store and help them choose their straw hats. Paula modelled a turquoise one that brought out her blue eye colour, but the material was too cheap. If she went cowgirl, it would be classy.
“The better ones are over in the main stores,” Mike said. “We’ll look there after the agricultural barns.”
Paula’s mother studied herself in the mirror. “This hat’s comfortable and would be handy for my gardening, although twenty dollars is more than I want to spend.”
“I’ll treat you, Mum.” Paula got out her wallet.
“This one’s mine,” Mike said.
“That’s far too generous,” her mother said.
“It was my idea.”
“Really, Mike,” Paula protested all the way to the cash.
Mike thrust his credit card at the cashier.
If Paula were inclined to be suspicious, she’d wonder if he had suggested the hats to challenge Sam’s objections to Stampede. That was nasty of her to question Mike’s kindness. Her mother was accepting his gift. Why couldn’t she? Too many years in the insurance business dealing with claimants trying to put one over on her. She’d look for a way to avoid the main stores so Mike wouldn’t pay for her hat, which would likely cost much more than her mother’s.