One Way Ticket (A Smith and Hughes Mystery Book 1)

by Jay Forman

  “Scientific name?”

  “Eretmochelys imbricata.”

  “Of course it is. Can you name any of the humans who were on the Platinum ship with you? Other than your friend’s name, that is.”

  “I already did! Rajiv, remember? Anyway, this Hawksbill let me float around and swim with him. It was an incredible experience. They’re near extinction. And then we took a boat over to one of the few remaining cays that humans haven’t totally screwed up yet and saw a waddle of West Indian Whistling-Ducks, dendrocygna arboreas. They’ve already gone extinct in Jamaica. They’re protected by law under the Wild Birds Protection Act and Simon, my dive buddy, told me that the Bahamian government is in the process of declaring that cay a nature preserve.” Either a snowplough or the spring run-off had damaged the culvert before the last curve in Jack’s road and I was thankful for the all-wheel drive as we bounced and splashed into and out of the big dip in the road. The road had thinned to a single lane about halfway between the highway and Hughes Point, so I was already going slow enough to make the bump slightly less violent. When I finally put the car in park by Jack’s back door I was surprised to see a newly installed ramp beside the stairs. The pressure treated 2x4’s were still lumber mill fresh. “How did you get that put in so fast?”

  “I asked Young Pete to do it, but it’s only temporary. I should be getting a walking cast in a day or two.” It wasn’t Jack’s money that made people move fast to do his bidding, it was his character.

  “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but your elevator’s actually going to serve a useful purpose.” I would have bet a million dollars (that I didn’t have) on those words never leaving my mouth, but they just had. The elevator in Jack’s cottage seemed like an incredibly stupid waste of money when I’d first seen it. Then again, Jack’s cottage wasn’t a typical cottage.

  His parents had built it for entertaining and it was one of the first cottage mansions on the lake. Now there were so many of them that we called them McMansions. With just under eight thousand square feet of living space, five bedrooms and seven bathrooms, it was actually smaller than most of the newer McMansions.

  Mrs. Dawson, his housekeeper, was already opening the door by the time I started pushing him up the ramp.

  “Oh, Jack! Just look at you! Come in and get settled. I’ve made some of your favourite coffeecake...,”

  “The double layer one?” He asked.

  “That’s the one. Go on, I’ll bring it to you.”

  She disappeared into the gourmet kitchen as I wheeled Jack down the hallway. The smell of fresh baked goods usually sent my salivary glands into overdrive, but there was a distinct burning odour in the air so I knew I wouldn’t be tempted to eat Mrs. Dawson’s offering.

  I let my backpack slide off my shoulder once I let go of Jack’s wheelchair in the great room. The glass wall in that room offered a great view over the lake from its rocky perch a hundred feet above the shoreline. Joe was the deepest of the three big lakes and the ice was still rock solid in the middle, but was breaking up along the shore as the Ministry started to let the water level rise again. The channels between the ice slabs were wider than the ones on my little lake, almost big enough to slide a kayak through. Jack hated my spring ritual of being the first person to put a boat in the lake. He was right; it was ridiculously dangerous. If I ever got into trouble once I was away from the shore no one would be able to get to me in time to help. But the rush of being out there all alone was worth the risk. I looked to see if the rails of the cable car that ran down the rock face from Jack’s cottage to the lake were still buried in snow. They were; my first kayak ride would have to wait.

  The snow had melted enough to show the cement foundations for the new McMansion that was going to be built on the island across from Jack’s place, though. One of the men who’d created Trivial Pursuit had had a nice classic Muskoka cottage on the island before, but the new owner (probably a movie star or hockey player, they seemed to be taking over) had torn it down and was in the process of replacing it with a grotesquely large monstrosity that would scream ‘I’m stupid rich’ just as blatantly as a flashing neon sign. Even so, I was thankful for that island. Behind it, over on the far side of the lake, stood Berkshire.

  I hadn’t noticed that Jack was trying to wheel himself somewhere and with only one good arm (his shoulder was still too sore to let him use his arm properly) he wasn’t getting anywhere. He was spinning in a wide circle.

  “This is going to drive me mad.”

  I gripped the handles on the back of the chair. “It’s only for a couple of days. Where to?”

  “The library.”

  The library was my favourite room, probably because we’d been bound together by books. I could still picture the surprised look on Jack’s face when he came around the point and saw me, the new girl, sitting on his favourite reading rock in the secluded cove at the southern end of the Berkshire property. I’d been just as surprised when the richest kid in the school had actually spoken to me. I had a sprain that excused me from gym class. He had a spare. I’d been running away in the pages of Michael Palin’s Around the World in 80 Days. He was one chapter away from finding out who killed Gerard Etienne in P.D. James’ Original Sin. Those two books now sat in the centre of the mantle above the fireplace.

  When word spread that the new girl was Jack Hughes’ friend, the Jack Hughes, everyone wanted to talk to me. But I didn’t understand their language. I was incapable of reading between the lines and was woefully unprepared to deal with the villains in my next chapter.

  A couple of decades later and here we were – walking into the room where we’d shared so many words; some from the stories in the two-story high bookcases that covered three of the four walls, many more about our own stories. And our shared storyline was about to circle back to Berkshire. Now that was a plot twist I definitely hadn’t seen coming.

  Jack pointed to the low table by the two wing-back chairs in front of the massive stone fireplace on the far side of the room. Someone, presumably Mrs. Dawson, had moved the chairs far enough apart for the wheelchair to fit between them. Pushing him across the thick carpeting wasn’t easy and I was glad that I’d been concentrating on working my upper body at the gym. I lost some oomph when I saw what was sitting on the table, though. Lying beside a week’s worth of mail, newspapers and financial reports, the raised golden Berkshire crest on the front cover of a forest green yearbook was unforgettable. My past and present were swirling together like a tornado in my head and, without warning, I heard the one question I’d never asked Jack come flying out of my mouth.

  “Why did you stay my friend?” I had to pull my eyes away from the yearbook and turned to look at Jack. I couldn’t tell if his brow was furrowed by confusion or concern, but he answered without hesitation.

  “Because the only thing you wanted from me was me.”

  I recognised the loneliness in his answer. No wonder we’d become instant friends. We were so much alike, yet so very different. The last thing anyone at Berkshire (except for Jack) ever wanted from me was the real me.

  “That new espresso machine you ordered came,” Mrs. Dawson barged into the moment, “but I haven’t quite got the knack of it yet so this regular coffee will have to do.” She was carrying a silver tray that had two steaming mugs and a plate piled high with pieces of charred coffeecake on it. “You take yours black, don’t you Lee?”

  “Cream and three heaping spoons of sugar,” Jack answered for me.

  Had he done it to give me a second to wipe away the tear that had escaped onto my cheek? I’d never know. I’d never ask. But I knew the only thing that mattered. I was the richest of all Berkshire graduates because of Jack’s friendship.

  “Oh,” Mrs. Dawson didn’t sound pleased. “Well, I suppose I could go get...,”

  “That’s okay.” I would never get the hang of having people wait on me, and Mrs. Dawson never made me feel as if she’d ever get the hang of waiting on me either.

  �
�You’ll like the coffeecake. It was Jack’s mother’s recipe...,”

  “My mother didn’t even know where the kitchen was!” Jack laughed. “Thanks, Mrs. D. We’ll take it from here.”

  She put the tray down on the table beside the Berkshire yearbook and left without looking at me. The nuts sprinkled all over the top of the cake would have sent me into anaphylactic shock. The yearbook just made me queasy.

  “You okay?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah, I’m good.” It was time to lighten the mood. “Why don’t you ask Mrs. Dawson to give you a sponge bath?”

  “Thanks, but no. If it’s any consolation she intimidates me, too.”

  “Then why is she here?”

  “She needs the job.” Jack picked up the yearbook and leafed through it until he found the page he was looking for. He opened it flat to a page of headshots. “You should look at this before the meeting. It’s just a mock-up for the Board’s approval, but we’ll be making some changes to it, adding an obituary for Kayla.”

  I brought the image of Kayla’s suicide note up on the screen of my phone. “And you should look at this.”

  Chapter Four

  Jack’s eyes opened wider with each word he read of Kayla’s suicide note. “How did you get this?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Will Lightfoote?”

  “I can neither confirm nor deny the identity of the person who shared that with me.” I lifted the Berkshire yearbook out of his lap and put it on my own lap when I sat down in the chair beside his wheelchair.

  “Did he give you anything else?”

  I just shook my head.

  “Is this the real thing or did she write it by hand? Was it signed? And what about...,”

  “Unsigned and computer generated. That’s all I know. Honest.”

  “Damn, you’re good. It’s Shakespeare, right?”

  I took my phone back from him. “I think so.”

  “Do you recognize which work she was quoting?”

  “No, but that’s easy enough to figure out. Kind of a weird way to say your final goodbye, huh?”

  “Weird and impersonal. Anybody could have printed out those lines.”

  “Was English her thing?” I looked down at the page of smiling faces of soon-to-be graduates of Berkshire College.

  “Not that I know of.” Jack started going through his mail and let me focus on the yearbook uninterrupted.

  There’d been a major change in Berkshire’s admission requirements; no longer were ninety-nine percent of the students mirror images of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants who’d started the school. Berkshire’s population had finally followed the country’s multicultural lead. Good. WASPs had painful stingers, as I knew only too well. Reading the last names under the head shots I saw that the Anglican Church wasn’t the only religion lording over the school. There’d been one Jewish boy and a Saudi princess in our class. Now it looked as if Berkshire might have to build a temple or mosque to complement the original chapel.

  My brain stubbornly refused to let me forget the words to the hymn I’d had to sing at prayers every freaking school day morning during my two year sentence. Lord and Lady Berkshire had taken William Blake’s hymn to heart; they had not ceased until they’d built their own personal Jerusalem in Muskoka’s green and pleasant land. Now my feet, as they had in ancient time, were about to walk upon Berkshire’s pastures seen; all one hundred and seventy-two immaculately manicured acres of them. Damn.

  Kayla’s picture was in the bottom right corner of the right page, but I wasn’t quite ready to face her so I looked at the photo in the top left corner of the left page. Jeff Kaufman had a mischievous twinkle in his eyes and his goofy grin made me wonder if he was the class clown. I bet his teachers were constantly on his case to get his hair cut; the explosion of dark curls on his head weren’t trimmed to Berkshire’s standards. The Robin Williams quote he’d chosen to put under his grad photo made me smile – You’re only given one little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it. I wished he’d been in my class. I liked his post-secondary plans, too – Whatever.

  I ran my eyes diagonally down to Kayla’s corner on the opposite page and read the quotation she’d chosen before looking at her face – Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. Definitely not Shakespeare. (Strange that I actually had used Shakespeare’s words about a different kind of winning under my grad photo – Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt. Kayla obviously hadn’t suffered from the same insecurities I had.) She’d listed Pratt Institute, NY – interior design as her intended post-secondary plan. Given the Vince Lombardi football quote I doubted subtle or muted hues would have played a big part in her designs.

  Finally, I faced Kayla. She was a clone of the purebreds who’d painfully shown me their true distemper. She was beautiful, with perfect blonde hair, naturally. Her lima bean-sized diamond stud earrings gave me a clue as to her family’s wealth. Like her predecessors, she was probably liked (superficially, at the very least) by all the cool students, her teachers and the parents of her classmates. In the Berkshire I’d known everyone was expected to bow before the altar of perfection. (To say I was an atheist when it came to that religion would have been the grossest of understatements.) Only her nose was slightly imperfect. It was too pointy, almost as if the tip of it had been shoved into a pencil sharpener. Some extremely expensive plastic surgeon would have fixed that if she’d lived longer.

  Physically, she was the antithesis of the man in the photo on the back cover of Needles and Pins. It surprised me that M.B. Wilkes had helped to produce perfectly blonde Kayla but I knew genetics could play all sorts of tricks when running the heredity race. My brother Steve didn’t look like either of our parents, while I was a miniature clone of my father (minus the Y-chromosome) (and the murder convictions).

  Any sympathy I’d felt for her waned at the speed of light as I read the brief bio beneath her photograph. She’d been a prefect, a boarder captain, an exceptional student marked by a braided gold belt and white blazer so that all could see just how exceptional the school thought she was. She’d been a player on almost every sports team and the captain of the field hockey team. (If shins could wince mine would have as I remembered the pain of being slashed by my maniacally competitive classmates wielding field hockey sticks.)

  The emotional pain that girls like Kayla had caused me felt as raw as it had decades earlier. Even so, I’d never wished any of them dead; slightly maimed, maybe – but not dead. And the girls I’d known would never have committed suicide. The whole world lay at their feet and they knew it.

  I started leafing through the yearbook, looking for the ubiquitous poems and creative pieces that were printed in every yearbook to show how talented the school’s students were, but I didn’t see Kayla’s name under any of them. “If she was into creative writing she wasn’t very good at it; there isn’t anything here written by her.”

  “They never printed anything of yours either and your stuff was really good. Your Squirrel Wake poem is still the best ode to fall I’ve ever read; I think of it every time I hear a squirrel knocking dry leaves to the ground as it scrambles from tree to tree.”

  “I never submitted anything to the yearbook committee.” I closed the yearbook and put it back on the table. “Why did you really move the meeting up to today?” He’d given me some lame ass story about a fellow Board member asking for the change, but I hadn’t believed him. Jack was a lousy liar.

  “Because I knew there was a very real chance that you’d Giant Ditch Frog out of it if you had another twenty-four hours to think about it.”

  He was right.

  “And the good news is that some of the Board members weren’t able to juggle their schedules around on such short notice, so you’ll only be meeting four of them.”

  “Do I know any of them?”

  “I’m not sure.” He was lying. Jack didn’t do unsure. “If you’re going to have that shower...” He looked
at his watch.

  “Right. I’m on it.” I stood up and walked back out into the great room to get my backpack. I should have unpacked a few things before leaving my place. It weighed a ton.

  “There’s a blow dryer in the blue guest bathroom,” he called out after me.

  I walked back into the library with my right hand outstretched. “I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else. I’m Lee Smith. Nice to meet you.”

  “What are you doing?” He stopped cutting open an envelope in mid-slice.

  “A blow dryer? Really?” My snorkel had shifted inside the backpack and was poking me in the ribs.

  “There won’t be time for your hair to air-dry, so I thought you might want to use one, just this once.”

  “That’s not going to happen. Besides, I like your shower better. I don’t know how half of the showerheads in it work, but I’m going to have fun trying to figure it out.” I plopped the backpack into Jack’s lap, ignored his “Ow”, undid the zipper and pulled the snorkel out. “Before I forget,” I tapped the open end of the snorkel against my palm. Oh-oh. The diamond necklace he’d lent me for the cruise had slid down inside the plastic tube. I tapped harder.

  “What are you doing now?”

  “Trying to give you back your necklace. But it’s stuck.” I knocked the snorkel against the side of the table.

  “Why is it in your snorkel?”

  “I wanted to protect it, you know, in case it got chipped or something.” I whacked the snorkel against the arm of Jack’s wheelchair.

  “Well, that makes perfect sense – not! Diamonds are the hardest natural substance on earth, after wurtzite boron nitride of course...,”

  “Of course.”

  “... and that one survived a billion or so years under pressure in the earth’s mantle before Dad opened the mine, but yeah, putting it in a plastic tube was really using your noggin.”

  I hit the snorkel against the arm of Jack’s wheelchair even harder. “It won’t come out.”