Ice on the Grapevine

by R. E. Donald

  Hunter gave a sigh of relief. "See if you can set it up for tomorrow afternoon. But then... why would they connect you with the studio? You've never even been there."

  She cleared her throat again, and her smile got weaker. "The police caught me there late Wednesday night."

  "What?!"

  "I was just being nosy, parked outside watching to see who was there. I wasn't gonna do anything or talk to anybody, just watch. But then I fell asleep, and when I woke up I had to... uh... go around the back of the building for a minute, if you know what I mean." She ran a hand back over her forehead, leaving a lock of hair standing straight up. "I never went inside. Honest. But I'm not worried about me. It makes me sick that maybe I've made it look worse for Ray and Sharon. If they didn't think it was me, they'd think it was somebody else, and that would take the heat off of Ray and Sharon, right?"

  Hunter took some slow breaths. He hoped Al Kowalski didn't think that El had done these things with Hunter's knowledge. "What did Al say? Did he say anything about your motive for doing these break-ins?"

  El looked aghast. "I didn't do the break-ins!"

  "I know that." He held up his hands to calm her down. "But if Al thinks you did, why does he think you did it?"

  She looked at the floor, swung her chair to and fro a couple of times before she answered, "I told him I was doing a little legwork for you."

  "Shit!" said Hunter.

  El's eyebrows rose, as they did every time she heard him use a four-letter word, a rare and meaningful occurrence. "But I don't know if he believes me. Seems the cops went to see Wally last night, asking him about suspicious shipments, and there were a couple of cops in here this morning going through my waybills." She stabbed the air in the direction of the filing cabinets with an indignant finger.

  Hunter stood up. "I'm going to have to talk to Al." He took a last swallow of coffee and put his mug down on El's desk. "Shit," he said again, and rubbed his jaw. "So they went through your waybills. Maybe they're more interested in who your customers are than in you. Did they search the premises? Or your house?"

  She shook her head. "That's one good thing, anyway."

  "If they didn't take the trouble to search the premises, it would mean that nothing was reported missing from Williams' house or studio. Whoever broke in must have been looking for something neither Williams' wife nor the other band members knew about, or wanted to admit knowing about."

  "I never thought of that. It must've been pretty small, if they pulled out CD's and books off the bookshelf looking for it, don't you think?"

  Hunter shrugged. "Small could be anything from a safety deposit box key to an incriminating photograph. Obviously, if they tossed both places, it wasn't easy to find, and quite possibly wasn't found in either place. I wonder if forensics turned up anything in Greg Williams' car."

  "You could ask Al."

  Hunter snorted softly. "If he'll even talk to me."

  She looked at the floor again. "Sorry," she said.

  Hunter had tried to call Al Kowalski from the Watson office, and although he hadn't succeeded in getting through to him, he did find out that Al was on his way back from the airport and expected at his office within the half hour. Instead of going home to shower and change as he usually did after a week on the road, Hunter drove straight to the Burnaby RCMP detachment. He wanted to find out right away how he stood with Al after El's little escapades.

  Al came out to the reception area to meet him. His face was grim as he signaled Hunter to step outside. They walked across the parking lot, and Al half sat on the hood of a police cruiser, his arms folded across his chest.

  "Jesus, Hunter. What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  Hunter met Al's question with a calm voice and a steady gaze. "I assume you've already concluded that El Watson didn't commit the break-ins, or you would have charged her. Do you consider her guilty of anything other than showing poor judgement by letting her curiosity put her in the wrong place at the wrong time?"

  Al snorted. "How about obstructing a police investigation, possibly tampering with a crime scene? Did you suggest to her that she poke around?"

  "You know me better than that, Al." Hunter's first inclination was not to dignify the question with an answer, but he thought better of it and decided that, as weak as a verbal denial might sound, he wanted it on the record. "Absolutely not. I never asked her to get involved. In fact, I strongly suggested that she not do so."

  "Then why did she?"

  "Because she's El Watson, and she makes up her own mind about things. She's soft-hearted and bull-headed, and she's my boss, so why should she listen to me?"

  "Does she realize what her behavior has done?" Hunter nodded, but before he could speak, Al continued. "She may not have hurt herself much, but she did hurt her friends. I don't know your boss, and I don't know what she's capable of. If she'd taken something - anything - I would've charged her, but it's not worthwhile to prosecute her for breaking and entering because, as far as the complainants can tell, nothing was taken. It would be a waste of our time, and of taxpayer's money. However, we have a witness and fingerprints that place her at the scene, which is enough evidence to make it hard to justify looking for anyone else. You follow?"

  Hunter nodded again. El had been right. "Meaning that the B & E's haven't thrown the case against Ray and Sharon into question, that you're not looking for an unknown person with a motive relating to Williams' murder."

  "Right. Because we've already got your busybody boss, whose motive was to create a diversion to take the heat off her friends." Al shifted his position, still leaning against the fender of the car. "Well, your boss's little scheme didn't work."

  "For what it's worth, I believe her." Hunter smiled wryly. "Somebody else committed the break-ins. She was just in the wrong place at the right time."

  Al stared Hunter in the eyes for a moment, then straightened up, indicated the door. "Let's go inside. You'll find this interesting."

  Hunter looked at him curiously, then followed him inside.

  Standing with his back to the door, hands in his pockets, and gazing at what he could see of the sky out of the window in Al's office was Russell Kupka. He whirled around on a heel as he heard them enter, and his eyebrows shot up when he saw Hunter. "Well, look who's here," he said in a flat voice. "The eighteen-wheeled crusader."

  Hunter looked over at Al, saw him frown as he slid in behind his desk.

  "Okay, where were we?" said Al.

  "What's he doing here?" said Russell. "I don't think it's a good idea to discuss the case in front of civilians, especially civilians with a stake in the outcome."

  Hunter had just pulled over a chair, but he remained standing. He was prepared to leave without argument, for Al's sake.

  Al waved at them both to sit down. "I told you before. Hunter is on the case as a consultant, at my request."

  Russell turned his back to Hunter, and spoke as if he weren't there. "You just finished telling me about the complications he's caused, him and his friends. Until we know just to what extent they're involved, I don't think the guy should be here."

  "I said the suspect was someone Hunter works with. Hunter had nothing to do with it."

  "How do you know?"

  "I know."

  "It's okay, Al," said Hunter. "I'll call you." He started to put his chair back.

  "No, Hunter. I want you here. I'm counting on your help." Then Al turned to Russell. "Now, do you want me to fill you in on what we've found out, or not."

  Russell glared, first at Al and then at Hunter, but yanked his chair aside to make room for Hunter's and sat down. Hunter quietly followed suit.

  Al leaned forward, positioned some notes in front of him on the desk. "Okay, first about the break-ins we mentioned. Our prime suspect for the break-ins is Elspeth Watson, proprietor of Watson Transportation, who was responsible for dispatching Ray and Sharon Nillson to handle the load of frozen beef from Hanratty's Wholesale Meats. As far as the remaining occupants of
both the house and the studio can tell, nothing was taken at the time of the break-ins, so the motive does not appear to be burglary. We don't know if the motive was strictly mischief, to disrupt our investigation, or if someone, either Watson or someone else, was looking for something. We consider it a strong possibility that Watson committed the break-ins in an attempt to divert suspicion from her friends, the Nillsons."

  "Why?" said Russell. "What's her stake in this? Isn't it possible that, whatever is behind this murder, the Nillsons weren't working alone?" He glanced pointedly at Hunter. "Don't bother comparing this Watson broad to Mother Teresa. I've told you before, character testimony doesn't cut it with me."

  Al nodded. "We've been following that line of investigation as well. She's clean. So far, we've come up with nothing that points to illegal activity at Watson Transportation, but we're now running the names of Watson's customers past Narcotics, as well as Customs and Immigration, to see if any of them set off alarm bells."

  Hunter didn't like the direction this was taking, but felt it wasn't his place to object. He did, however, want to make a point about the fingerprints, so he leaned forward and addressed Al. "You have fingerprints from the house, you said. Have you identified any fingerprints besides Elspeth Watson's?"

  "There are half a dozen unidentified prints here and there, plus prints from Williams and his wife, and their friend, Hellen Brooker."

  "Elspeth's were on one item only?"

  "Yes. A cookie jar."

  "She had an explanation for that, I believe."

  "Yes."

  Russell snorted. "What the fuck does it matter?"

  "But her fingerprints weren't anywhere else?"

  "No."

  "And at the studio?"

  "A few partials on the glass of the door, as if she'd been peering inside with her hands against the window, but nowhere else."

  Russell was looking at the floor and rubbing his nose. Hunter nodded for Al to continue. He could tell that both Russell and Al had drawn the same conclusion that he had, whether or not they were prepared to admit it. El had left prints, so she hadn't been wearing gloves. If she'd touched anything else, her prints would be in more than one place. The logical conclusion was that she had not been the one to commit the break-ins. Even if she had, with that scant evidence it would be impossible to get a conviction.

  "The next item of interest," Al continued, "is the victim's car. As you both know, it was found in a restaurant parking lot just off the highway in Mount Vernon, Washington. We had it towed back to Burnaby, and it was gone over by our forensics team. We haven't found any specific forensic evidence linking it to your suspects..." He nodded at Russell. "... but we do have the usual assortment of fibers from the upholstery, dirt and bits of gravel from the carpet, both inside the vehicle and from the trunk. There's also some paint, a metallic green paint, that the lab says was recently rubbed off against the rim of the trunk, as if an oversized article was riding in the open trunk, possibly a lawnmower or child's swing set or bicycle. And they did find something interesting under the seat." He bent down and lifted a paper bag onto his desk. "This," he said, and placed a tape recorder not much bigger than a deck of cards on the desk in front of him. "Listen," he said, and pushed a button.

  The recording started with a confident and pleasant male voice singing snatches of song. "I want to be at home with you, baby, home alone with you" was one of the lines, sung over and over again with variations in melody and cadence.

  "He's writing a song," explained Al.

  Then there was what sounded like the last half of an expletive, followed by "Learn to drive, you dick head!"

  Al interrupted the tape again to say, "Voice activated."

  There was the sound of a cell phone ringing, and the same male voice saying, "Whistlestop Studios." A pause, and then "It's about time. Where?... Yeah, if I don't get hung up in the border line up." A longer pause. "In the parking lot? Is there a coffee shop or something? Okay." The voice became impatient. "Of course I've got it." After that, they heard the beep of a cell phone button, then a low and disgusted "Stupid bitch."

  "The telephone company checked Williams' cell phone record, and it looks like he had a call from a pay phone in a Cloverdale mall, just off the Pacific Highway leading to the U.S. border, at about four p.m. on Friday. We can surmise that he was on his way to meet someone on the Washington side of the border, most likely in Mount Vernon, where his car was found," said Al. "Would you agree?"

  Russell leaned forward. "Is that all that's on the tape?"

  “Yes, but that’s not all we have,” said Al. “The phone company was able to access Williams’ cell phone voicemail. They sent me this recording. The call was a reroute from a cell phone tower in northwest Washington.” He punched some numbers into his telephone, and a woman’s voice could be heard above a cloud of background noises.

  “I don’t know what went wrong, but we’ve waited as long as we can for you. We have to go. Don’t do anything, okay? Please. I’ll call you when I’m back, probably early next week.”

  Al punched another button on his phone and paused. “The message came in at 6:30 p.m. on Friday the 14th. I’m betting it’s Sharon Nillson.” He looked pointedly at Hunter. “Is it?”

  "I wouldn’t swear to it, but it sounds like her,” said Hunter.

  “You know it is,” said Russell, leaning back and crossing his legs. He snorted. “Of course it is. You can verify it with their cell phone records, can’t you?” Al nodded.

  "Did you find his phone in the car?" asked Hunter. Al shook his head, and Hunter turned to Russell. "Was the phone found on the body? Or a wallet?"

  "Nada," said Russell.

  "So we can assume that whoever locked Greg Williams in the trailer cleaned out his pockets first."

  "Or later," suggested Al. "When the body was dumped."

  "No," said Russell. "Only pockets you could have access to with him curled up like a frozen pretzel would've been the back ones, and I know from experience you could barely get a finger in them. And if he'd had a jacket with him, he would've been wearing it, and you couldn't have taken it off him without breaking his arms."

  "What else was in the car, Al?"

  Al looked down at the notes on his desk. "In the trunk, there was a six string guitar in a case. Other than that, just some music paraphernalia: guitar picks, sheet music, some kind of microphone. And a pair of boots."

  "Boots?"

  "Yeah. Ordinary looking, like short cowboy boots, brown, no tooling or anything on them."

  "Probably looked better on stage than sneakers," volunteered Russell.

  "Did his wife have anything to add?" asked Hunter. "Anything else missing, maybe?"

  Al shook his head. "She says there might be a jacket missing, but for all she knows he could've left it at a gig somewhere."

  Hunter looked over at Russell, who was nodding silently and frowning.

  "What are your plans now, chief?" he asked.

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  To Russell's way of thinking, the right people were in jail. All that was left was to tie up enough loose ends to satisfy the district attorney. Over the weekend he expected to obtain a recap of the investigation from the RCMP, conduct follow-up interviews with some of the witnesses, and have an evening free to spend with Jennifer, or at least to find her. He'd pictured dinner together somewhere nice, with good wine - he was ready to run up his Visa bill - and a steamy evening in the hotel room. Something fluttered at the top of his stomach every time he thought about calling her. What if she wasn't happy to find out he was here?

  So with that on his mind, Russell wasn't too pleased with the way things worked out. Al Kowalski had suggested that Russell, as the primary investigator, retrace the route the suspects and quite possibly the victim had taken on their last day in Vancouver, from Hanratty's warehouse to the border and then beyond that to the restaurant parking lot in Mount Vernon, Washington. Russell had to agree that the idea had merit, the best way
to familiarize himself with the layout and what the RCMP had discovered so far. "Sure," Russell had said. "Let's go."

  Al shrugged apologetically. "I can't, I'm afraid."

  "You got somebody can take me?" Surely they'd be able to spare a constable and a car.

  "Sorry. This is a weekend. We haven't got enough manpower to go around as it is." Al nodded toward Hunter. "Maybe if you ask him nicely..."

  Russell clenched his jaw. He didn't like the idea one bit, but he needed to keep Kowalski on his side, so he twisted his mouth into a smile. "Well?"

  The trucker sighed and rubbed his neck.

  "If you're sincere about wanting to know the truth, Hunter, I'd suggest you take this opportunity to get inside the investigation," said Al. It sounded like a challenge, or perhaps a warning.

  The trucker sighed again, then nodded. "Okay, chief," he said. "I guess I don't have time to go home for a shower..." Russell looked at his watch and made a face. "I didn't think so," said the trucker. "Let's go."

  Now the two of them were on their way to the border, driving down a two-lane road that seemed ludicrously small to connect with a major U.S. Interstate. They passed through residential areas with a semi-rural look to them - large properties, some with fences and barns - and a few clumps of light industrial, and now there were farms to either side of the road, some with neat rows of vegetables. Hunter Rayne's car was an anonymous-looking white Pontiac, and he had the radio tuned to a station identifying itself between songs as JR-FM. Country and western. Russell faced the window and rolled his eyes. It figured.

  They'd hardly said two words to each other since leaving Hanratty Wholesale Meats, but something had been niggling the edge of Russell's mind. Rayne had been noticeably alert in the wholesaler's warehouse, following the warehouse manager's every move through narrowed eyes with the concentration of a cougar watching a fawn. The RCMP had virtually ruled out any involvement on the part of Hanratty's employees, so what had made the trucker that keen about covering old ground?

  "What's your take on Hanratty?" Russell finally asked. "You think there might be something there?" He couldn't help wondering if Rayne's attention had been directed, not toward picking up new information, but rather toward preventing the warehouse manager from saying something incriminating about his pals, the Nillsons. Or something incriminating about himself?