by Gerald Lynch
She looked a bit quizzical: “Are you —”
“It’s nothing, just …”
Then I lost my mind. I needed to test my hypothesis — that I wasn’t funny at all, that my family indulged me out of love — so I went for Bob Browne, the easiest comic relief, still a fresh routine. I pulled in my neck, humped my shoulders and hunched down stiffly in my seat, gesticulating, exaggerating his Austrian accent, throwing in a few zee doomb-doombs, even a Nazi salute and some Hitlerian roaring about burying the TCA in a grave of debt.
I was rewarded with Owen’s frowning face rising from his cereal bowl. Maybe he’d not been whimpering and needing distraction so much as lost in his own thoughts and trying to ignore me.
I poured it on, barking away unintelligibly with Adolphish ferocity. I was out of my chair, about to throw dignity to the wind and do a little sieg heil goose-stepping around the kitchen island —
“Lorne!” Veronica shouted, maybe screamed.
The scene froze.
The doorbell rang.
Veronica seemed too eager for an excuse to push away from the table.
“I’ll bet that’s Jack,” she said worriedly to herself in passing. Then threw at me: “Are you still taking the…ee-um? You’d better watch that, some people react psychotically, especially if you’re not under a doctor’s care.”
I deflated. “Jack? What the hell does he want this early?”
“I told you yesterday. Trixie’s been gone for days and phoned home just yesterday. Jack’s beside himself looking after Jake.”
She disappeared down the hallway and I heard the aluminum front door’s spring whine.
“Oh, yeah,” I said to no one. I turned to Owen. “What’s all this about tricky Trixie and good neighbour Jack?”
“Nothing,” he snapped. “Fucking retards.”
“Owen!”
He gripped the end of the table with both hands. “It’s my body and I can get a tat if I wanna!”
“Son, is this really the time …”
He too pushed away from the table and, slouching past me, snapped, “You’re cranked on Valium anyway. Where’s that fucking detective with Shawn?”
“Owen!”
In nothing flat the woofer was thumping directly overhead and the white Tiffany lamp overhanging the breakfast table was jiggling as at a subterranean detonation at Troutstream’s Mann Quarry.
Veronica began speaking before she reappeared: “Lorne, it’s Detective Beldon.”
Beldon was wearing the same shiny grey, poorly fitting suit. I shook his hand, anxious for his news.
“Apologies for not calling last night, Dr. Thorpe. Lorne. But I think you’ll agree it’s justified when you hear what brings me.”
Veronica and I must have gasped, and I felt her knuckles dig into my back.
“Relax, please,” he said, “it’s not about Shawn, though I remain as hopeful there. Is Owen home?”
“Owen!” Veronica and I said together. “He’s upstairs,” I said, “the music.”
Veronica pushed past us and up the stairs. The woofer thumping stopped.
“What’d he do?”
“No, no,” Beldon said, appearing flustered for the first time. “I’m making a mess of this, I just wanted to know that he was home. I don’t need to see Owen. This has nothing to do with him.” He looked to where Owen had stopped in the hallway, with Veronica peeking from behind. “You can go back to your music, Owen, if you like, I’m not here to arrest you yet.”
Owen smirked, turned and climbed the stairs. Veronica came and stood with us.
Beldon said, “Day off for everybody, eh? Good idea. Can we talk in the family room again?”
Veronica ushered us into the family room off the kitchen. Beldon paused and cocked his head, satisfying himself that Owen was occupied.
Rather than following us and sitting, he stood by the family room’s patio doors and looked deadpan at me.
“Art Foster has been arrested.”
“What! Art?” I don’t know who of Veronica and I said what, but we both pressed back in the love seat.
“Take a deep breath. I don’t enjoy playing the melodramatic detective. But no, not about Shawn’s abduction, as I said, but for soliciting.”
I was as confused as Veronica, who managed, “But I don’t …”
Beldon delivered his next line calmly, though his eyes shifted rapidly between us: “Soliciting for sex.”
I snorted. I may even have smiled: “Foster was caught picking up a hooker?”
He looked at me with little expression. “Not a hooker, Lorne. A teenager, a girl, with no history for solicitation. She says he used force.”
He let that sink in.
Veronica put the tips of both hands to her temples, to blinker her gaze downwards. “Force? But that does mean that Art could be …”
I completed her thought: “The two incidents are related!”
Beldon shook his head slightly. “Where’s your car, Lorne?”
Veronica dropped her hands. “His car?”
Beldon let me stare for another dawning moment, then said, “That’s right, Foster had your Cadillac. Down in the ByWard Market, early hours of this morning. A young girl who was resident at the Curb Appeal home that rescues street kids. When they ran the plates and your name came up, the constable made the connection and I was contacted first, thank God. I’ve bought us some time, but we have little left before the story breaks. And I mean the whole story.”
Veronica turned on me: “But you told me Art had a date with a Rockcliffe divorcee he was after for research funds? Lorne, you gave him your Caddy so he could pick up young girls!”
I wouldn’t lie, not with Beldon there, it’d come out anyway. But I wouldn’t plead either. “No. Yes, I mean. I lied about the Rockcliffe fundraiser. I was embarrassed, but I didn’t know Foster had a thing for girls. It was arranged well over a week ago. It was the only way he’d help me contact Bob Browne for the job cleaning up the playgrounds. He took the car Friday, Detective Beldon, for the weekend. In all the, well, the excitement, I forgot it was due back yesterday morning. What on earth has Foster been up to?”
Beldon’s voice was soothing. “Listen, we really don’t have much time. Eventually you’re going to have to give a statement downtown, Lorne. No one suspects you of anything and you don’t need a lawyer. But you’re involved and the reporters will be something else when they make the connections.”
Veronica stood and breathed only one word: “Shawn.”
“Yes,” Beldon whispered loudly. “I wonder too about this development with Foster and Lorne’s car happening incredibly at the same time as Shawn’s abduction. I’m far from convinced that Foster himself had anything to do with Shawn’s kidnapper, but it doesn’t look good for him. And there’s something else.”
Veronica turned slightly towards me. She touched her lips, as if to stop what she would say: “Something else?” Above us the “music” thumped more loudly, like it would crack the ceiling.
Beldon had been watching Veronica only. When he glanced at me I said, “Not to worry, I’ve recently had practice handling the media.”
He raised his eyebrows. “The girl claims that Dr. Foster not only forced her into the car but said he would pay her to go with him and dress up in some costume, and then he hurt her when she refused and tried to get out of the car. That, supposedly, is when she started screaming and the bike-patrol cop arrived.”
Veronica’s eyes widened: “A costume, same as with the other child here in Troutstream, the one lured by the sick-kitty-in-the-car trick!”
Kevin leaned towards her. “Listen. I’ve talked with Dr. Foster. He doesn’t deny that he was with the girl, but he claims she lured him there and denies her version of the story, that he asked her to dress up in any costume, and especially that he hurt her in any way. Also, t
he girl’s version doesn’t jibe with the report of the patrol cop who called it in, not as regards any screaming and the girl’s condition. He said she looked very surprised when he knocked on the car window and she saw who it was, even alarmed, like she’d been expecting someone other than the cops. I strongly suspect it was a set-up.”
“And you believe Foster!” I startled them. “Why did he need my Caddy if not to implicate me? Maybe he was going to kill her and leave her in my Caddy! He’s a psychopath! He threatened me!”
Veronica said, “Sh, Lorne, sh-sh.”
Beldon turned towards me, clamping a hand to the crown of his ginger dome and rubbing down the back of his neck. He blew air. “Foster says their meeting was set up through an Internet chat room. The girl agreed to meet with him only if he picked her up in his friend’s white Cadillac. He swears he doesn’t know how she knew about you, Lorne. And then you surprised him by asking for a favour, and a quid pro quo was arranged, as he put it. The Curb Appeal people have got the girl back and are protecting her to the hilt. She’s the victim, barely more than a child, et cetera et cetera, a sticky situation. We’ll get more out of her, but it will take time, and I don’t think we have time.”
Veronica’s fingers were slowly stroking the tip of her nose. She stopped. “But their stories should be traceable on their computers, and verifiable or not.”
“They both used proxy servers and cloud chat rooms or something and, techno-illiterate though I am, I suspect such places are a jungle of aliases. Who knows what remains traceable. We’ve got Dr. Foster’s and the girl’s phones and our tech nerds are looking into it. But they say it too could take time.”
“I don’t believe it,” Veronica said. “I simply refuse to believe any of this!” Her fingertips were now on either side of her head, palms just off the ears.
There was thumping on the stairway and Owen barged in as breathless as a little boy with news: “They arrested the Market Slasher last night! And now there’s something about Dad’s friend, Dr. Foster, being arrested for picking up a teenage hooker downtown! And they mentioned your name, Dad, it happened in your Caddy! Is Dr. Foster the Market Slasher! Or his partner! Holy shit!”
“Owen,” Veronica snapped.
Beldon spoke seriously to him: “Hold on a minute, Owen. Dr. Foster has been accused of a crime while using your father’s car. Only accused, mind you. Dr. Foster and the Market Slasher are not a team. But if Foster’s arrest is on the radio already and the Slasher’s been arrested — damn…uh, excuse me. But if that’s now the situation, reporters are going to be swarming your lovely home, and soon. So, Owen, go through the house and shut all the windows, then turn on the air conditioning. It’s going to be another scorcher anyway. Don’t answer the doorbell till you know who it is.”
Owen looked self-important for a moment, then took off.
Veronica led us back into the kitchen and shut the door to the front hall. She said, “Let’s sit and gather our wits about us. There’s still almost a full pot of coffee from breakfast. Detective?”
She set the pot on a coaster in the middle of the table and turned to the cupboard for mugs.
Kevin acknowledged with a nod the mug she set in front of him. She didn’t fill it. He loosely held its handle and looked at me for too long, with the near-full pot steaming between us. He said, “Lorne, I want you to tell me everything you think relevant about Art Foster. For starters, what again did he say when you made fun of his research?”
“He said that I was going to learn a hard fucking lesson one of these days and that he was just the man to teach me.”
He flipped the pages of a note pad I’d not noticed on his lap. “Before, you said that he said he may be just the man to teach you?”
“I’d say that constitutes a threat, wouldn’t you, Detective Beldon? I’d say that moves Foster right to the head of the suspect line in Shawn’s abduction.” Still standing at the table, Veronica took a sharp breath. I forged on: “I’d say Foster could very well have been planning to implicate me with that teenage hooker in my Caddy, and I wouldn’t rule out Foster being in cahoots with the Market Slasher!”
“Tch.” Veronica removed the three dry mugs to the counter. “You’re blinded by your hatred of Art, Lorne,” she said into the quietly echoing metal sink. “It doesn’t have to mean all that.”
I didn’t like her contradicting me at all. “I am not.”
She continued staring into the sink. “What about this Bob Browne you’re always going on about? What about those Lewis brothers you say hate you? Oh, what are we talking about! Where’s Shawn? If two men have been arrested — one of them a sick sexual predator — where’s Shawn!”
We both had the sense to let her cry quietly alone, shudderingly into her chest.
Beldon shook his head no at me and spoke more loudly than he needed: “Veronica’s right, Lorne.” I didn’t like that either. His tone grew matter-of-fact. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. Two men have been arrested, and the spotlight of high-glare media attention is on that story. Think — even we’ve hardly been talking about Shawn’s disappearance.”
I heard the breath leave Veronica, and I said, “So, a distraction to go with implicating me? Some distraction!”
“But, yes, this Browne character, no one knows where he comes from but Foster’s friend of a friend? Who are these frien —”
The doorbell had rung, no one moved. Owen appeared too quickly from the front hall.
“I looked first, like Detective Beldon said. It’s Mr. Kilborn. He wants to see you, Mom. I told him you couldn’t come but he says it’s an emergency. He has Jake with him, who’s going nuts about watching Wy with Shawn or something. I can get rid of them if you want me to try harder.”
Beldon said, “That’d be good, Owen.”
Veronica clamped her forehead between left thumb and fingers and spoke as when exasperated with the kids: “Not now, Jack, not now.” She looked at me: “Jack’s beside himself, he’s never known what to do with Jake. Not that Trixie did either.”
My own head felt like it was shaking with Parkinson’s: “I don’t get it, I’m lost.”
She clenched her jaw and a muscle popped high on her cheek. “I told you, Lorne. Trixie took off, days ago. She phoned yesterday, full of shit.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Detective, I’d better go see what Jack wants or he’ll be the next one arrested. Oh sorry.” She turned to Owen: “Upstairs, you.” He went reluctantly, saying, “What’d I do?” She continued, “May the gods have mercy on us all, and on that poor girl if Art Foster, or anyone, abused her. And on Art Foster too.” She exited trailing her new mantra: “Shawn …”
As she disappeared down the hallway, I quickly moved to watch her. She paused at the hallway mirror to check herself, actually primped her hair. Gauze could have floored me. The back of my head was instantly aching something fierce. I would go to the bathroom, have another Valium.
Chapter 8
I said, “So, Detective Beldon, your case has widened significantly. You may make Homicide yet.”
He shook his head in bemused disbelief. “The stereotype proves true, you surgeons are cool customers. But, yes, my missing person’s investigation now includes two bigwig doctors, with one allegedly having solicited a minor for the purposes of sex, and on the very night they nab the Slasher! I don’t believe Dr. Foster had anything to do with the abduction of Shawn but it doesn’t look good for him. So far, he has no corroborated alibi for Sunday.”
“No? Then how are the two cases related?”
“I tend to believe Foster when he says he was lured to the ByWard Market on Monday by the girl, who promised him who-knows-what delights, but only if he could get a Cadillac, and not just any Cadillac, his friend’s white Caddy. Some condition.”
“I’m not so ready to believe Art Foster had nothing to do with Shawn. He threatens me, Shawn gets abducted
, then Foster gets arrested in my Caddy before he could finish framing me! And don’t forget the dressing-up thing!”
Beldon smiled warily. “The thing is, the incident in the Caddy was phoned in by a cop who happened by at three in the morning and heard a ruckus from a big fancy car parked where it shouldn’t be parked. As I said, I’ve talked with Foster, and it’s possible the scene was meant to end differently. Or maybe not… Maybe that’s exactly as it was meant to end, with Foster framed and the girl herself betrayed. I’m beginning to suspect that the two of you were being framed, or all three, and maybe primarily you, maybe for money, blackmailed. Someone must really want to mess with your life, Lorne.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and swiped it like a credit card. “I have a hunch that in this case one-plus-one adds up to three.”
“An accomplice? The Market Slasher? Where’s Foster now?”
“No, not the Slasher. Foster’s at the regional detention centre just outside Troutstream, as you must know. I stopped off on my way here. He says he’d like to see you.”
“I’d like to see him too — in hell!”
“Lorne, I need your help.”
That stalled me. “My help?”
“I need you not to assume that Dr. Foster abducted your daughter. I need you to keep an open mind. What about those others Veronica mentioned?”
We were standing now at the kitchen island (he’d followed me as I’d edged towards the powder room’s medicine cabinet), which I drummed once with my fingers. I came to a decision.
“Kevin, you were right in your hunch yesterday. Remember you asked me about Bob Browne and I pooh-poohed the idea? Well, I was wrong. I now think Mr. Browne should be high on the suspect list, though for me that list should still be headed by Art Foster’s underlined name. But last night Bob Browne threatened me too, over money that’s owed him for his work in Troutstream’s playgrounds. He was irrational, livid. If we’re looking for a likely suspect or an accomplice, Bob Browne could be our man.”