Among the Departed

by Vicki Delany

  Lopez reached for the phone. “Speaking of Nowak, what’s happening there?” he asked, punching buttons.

  “Back to the basement. I haven’t come up with anything new. I’m pretty sure the daughter, Nicky, is on the game, but once she’s back in Vancouver that’s no business of mine. She’s a nasty piece of work, and I’m glad to see her skinny ass heading out of town. She should have left this morning. You can be sure I’ll be asking my friends in Vancouver to keep an eye on her. She knows Joey Stewart, aka Joe McNally, a good deal better than she’s letting on.”

  Lopez spoke to the Mounties and made arrangement for backup and the dog on Thursday morning. Then he pushed his chair back. “I’m getting a pop, want one?”

  “Nope. Heading home. Eliza’s off to Vancouver tomorrow to meet with her gallery manager. She’s contracted Kyle Nowak to have a show next year.”

  The men walked down the hall together. “Do you have any suspects at all in the Nowak case?” Lopez asked.

  He headed for the lunch room, and Winters followed. He’d never believed Nowak had come across something on his walk to buy cigarettes that meant he had to be snatched and eliminated. Certainly if Smith’s memories were right and Nowak was facing an important decision, then it was even more unlikely he’d been the victim of random violence. Unless he was psychic. No one had suggested anything of the sort.

  It was shift change, and Molly Smith and Dawn Solway were at the table, heads together.

  “I haven’t got a clue. Nowak,” Winters explained to the women. “I’m sending the papers back to storage. I’ve uncovered absolutely nothing.”

  “What happened with Nicky yesterday?” Smith asked. “I felt like absolute crap dragging in my childhood friend. Despite the fact that she tried to steal my boyfriend.”

  Solway laughed. “That’s a capital offence, isn’t it?”

  “She put on the sweet little me act and said that Joey Stewart, the man we’re looking for, had been wanting to be more than just good friends but she’d told him no, so he left. She knew nothing about any penchant he might have for underage girls, or any businesses he might run. She pouted prettily and refused to budge from that line.”

  “What about the idea that Mr. Nowak might have been having an affair and ran away with the woman?” Lopez asked, dropping coins into the pop machine.

  “Nothing came of it. Kyle Nowak insists his dad was a womanizer but no one else we spoke to backed that up. Everyone says he was a proper husband and family man. The woman in question, the one Kyle named, denied any impropriety. If another woman was in the picture, he kept it secret.”

  “For God’s sake,” Solway said. “Why does it have to have been a woman?”

  “What?”

  “You keep saying you’re searching for the woman or women he was having an affair with.” Solway looked around the room. “You people think you’re so progressive, but you can’t even see the blinkers you’re wearing. With all due respect, Sarge, you’ve come up totally blank, but you can’t look outside your own narrow box.”

  “Dawn,” Winters said, “I don’t understand…”

  “A man,” Smith interrupted. “He might have been having an affair with a man.”

  “Brilliant deduction, Constable Smith.” Solway’s tone was bitter. “You people call yourselves detectives.” She got to her feet. “I’m off home. Catch you later, Molly.”

  Lopez and Winters stared after her. “What was that about?” Lopez said.

  “She’s right,” Winters said. “We’re only human and we bring our prejudices and preconceived notions with us. We do have blinkers sometimes.

  “Okay, I’m going back to the case. First, I want to talk to Kyle Nowak. He was insistent that his father was a womanizer. The question is, did he suspect his father was fooling around and assume it was with a woman, or did he know and was not able to deal with it. For a fifteen-year-old straight kid, assuming Kyle is straight, the idea of men having sex can be pretty off-putting. Second, Greg Hunt. Nowak’s good friend. I want to know what sort of friends they were that all these years later Hunt is hanging around the police station wanting to know what happened to his friend.”

  “The funeral,” Smith said. “Hunt was at the funeral.”

  “That’s right. And he had a confrontation with Kyle.”

  “What happened?” Lopez asked.

  Smith was on her feet. Her face turning red with excitement. “Kyle shoved Hunt away from his mother. Everyone saw it.”

  “Time to have a chat with Mr. Hunt,” Winters said. “I’ll talk to Kyle later. Ray, you’re still on the grow-op business and May Chen. Molly, I want a uniform presence when I speak to Hunt. I want him to know I’m serious.”

  “I’m supposed to be in a car.”

  “I’ll square it with Al. It’s three-thirty now. Chances are good Hunt’s in his office. Phone first.”

  “Thought you were going home,” Lopez said. “Something about a night with the wife.”

  “The wife,” Winters said, “can wait. Hunt can not. Perhaps more to the point, I can not. If, and it’s still a mighty big if, Hunt and Nowak were having a relationship, and Nowak, the good family man, decided to break it off, it’s entirely possible Hunt took exception to that idea. Gay or straight, there’s nothing like love thwarted to inspire murder.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Greg Hunt’s assistant told Molly Smith he was in his office. Smith requested that he stay there, pending the arrival of Sergeant Winters. She hung up the phone without answering the woman’s question: What can I say this is about?

  “This might be a total waste of time,” Winters said, fastening his seat belt in the patrol car. “But I’ve a feeling Dawn’s onto something. As for Dawn herself,” he glanced at Smith. “I’ve always assumed she’s gay, but it’s none of my business. You know anything about that?”

  “Nothing I’m going to talk about.”

  “It’s bothered me that I wasn’t able to square Kyle’s impression of his father with everyone else’s. Something was missing. I never believed Kyle was lying outright, couldn’t see why he would. Projecting teenage fantasies maybe, although in that case I’d have expected him to be more approving than scornful.”

  Construction on the big black bridge leading out of town had closed one lane, and traffic was backed up for a long way. “I wonder if the girl, Nicky, knew anything about it. Or Mrs. Nowak, for that matter.” Winters talked to himself, not to Smith. It helped him, sometimes, to think out loud. Over the two years they’d worked together, Smith had finally realized that she was not expected to reply.

  “Of course I might be totally out to lunch. But Dawn was right. I hadn’t even considered that option. It’s an avenue I need to explore. I don’t know much about Hunt. A bit of trouble years ago, nothing since. He isn’t married. That doesn’t mean anything. Adam Tocek is in his thirties and lives alone with a dog, but it’s rumored he’s not gay.”

  The edges of Smith’s mouth turned up. “So they say.”

  They reached the bridge. The sign-woman held the red “stop” facing them. Traffic coming from the other direction crawled slowly past. The sun was out, but the wind was high and the river was gray and choppy. A scattered handful of people walked along the beach, no one in the water.

  “You know the chief’s dating my mom?” Smith blurted out.

  “Half the town knows, although the couple in question is under the impression it’s a secret.”

  “I’ve decided I’m okay with it. It’s her life, right? She deserves to be happy and if the chief makes her happy…”

  The sign flipped to “slow” and the car edged forward.

  “We can’t run our parent’s lives for them,” Winters said. “Much as we might like to sometimes.”

  The mountain was steep on the other side of the river; a single road ran
along the shore. A gardening center, a motel, a couple of small businesses spread out around the intersection with the highway. Alpine Meadows Reality was tucked into a small strip plaza, between a convenience store and a second-hand clothing outlet.

  Greg Hunt waited for them outside, pacing up and down. He started talking before Winters had stepped out of the car.

  “Sergeant, Nancy told me you want to speak to me. Is it about Brian? It must be, right?”

  “Why don’t we talk inside?” Winters said. Two young women, long-skirted, long-haired, came out of the convenience store pushing strollers. They stopped to stare.

  “Good idea,” Hunt said. “Come on in. Nancy, hold all my calls. Would you like coffee? Tea?”

  “No, thank you,” Winters said.

  Nancy’s face was a questioning blur as Hunt hustled the police past her desk and into the back.

  Hunt’s office was small and cramped. The desk piled with paper, walls covered with framed service awards, some of which went back to the 1950s. He plopped himself behind his desk. Winters took one of the two visitors’ chairs, and Smith leaned against the door.

  “Brian. Have you discovered something about Brian?”

  John Winters tried not to jump to conclusions. It was his job to sift evidence, deal with facts, sort out lies from truth and sometimes from what lay in the nebulous area in between.

  Nevertheless, he decided right there and then Greg Hunt had nothing to do with the death of Brian Nowak.

  The man’s eyes were bright, and he sat on the edge of his chair as if expecting good news. This was not a person in fear of being accused of committing murder.

  “I would like you to tell me, openly and honestly, about your relationship with Mr. Nowak,” Winters said.

  Hunt blinked. He hadn’t expected that.

  “I can assure you that unless I am required to provide the information in court, or it involves the commission of a crime, anything you tell me will be strictly confidential.”

  Hunt’s eyes shifted to the uniformed woman.

  “Constable Smith will likewise remain silent.”

  Hunt took off his glasses. He pulled a tissue out of the box at his elbow and began cleaning them. Long thin fingers moved methodically, stroking the glass.

  “We were in love,” Greg Hunt said at last.

  “I’m sorry,” Winters said.

  “Sorry? Sorry two men loved each other?”

  “Sorry he died. Sorry I have to ask you about this.”

  Hunt pulled a set of keys out of his pocket. He unlocked his desk drawer, took out a photograph. He glanced at it before extending it to Winters.

  Winters took it. Brian Nowak, laughing. He sat on a beige leather couch, arm across the back, right leg crossed over the left, ankle to knee.

  Winters felt Smith behind him, peering over his shoulder. “That picture,” she said, “was taken around the time I knew him.”

  “Two weeks before he disappeared.” Hunt held out his hand. Winters returned the photograph. Hunt arranged it on his desk, standing. Brian Nowak watched them.

  “My father was a strict man,” Hunt said. “You no doubt are aware I had difficulties with the law when I lived in Toronto.”

  “Yes.”

  “I begged my father to have faith in me. To believe in me. To give me some money to invest, so I could show him how competent I was. Pride goeth before a fall, does it not? He gave me twenty thousand dollars, grudgingly. I should have been cautious with his money, instead I was reckless. I wanted to not just give him a good return, but a spectacular return. The stock was risky and it tanked. I lost almost all of it, almost overnight. I lied and told my father his money was doing well. One day, out of the blue, he wanted it back, plus all that had supposedly accrued. I panicked. I couldn’t tell him I didn’t have his money, and so I borrowed from other clients. I got caught. Convicted, lost my job, lost a respectable financial career. No money, no job, nowhere to live, I was forced to come home and beg my father to let me work for him. He had never approved of me and a criminal conviction didn’t improve matters. I have spent my entire life deep in the closet. Hiding from my father’s scorn.”

  Traffic sped past on the highway, and Nancy talked on the phone.

  “Brian, obviously, was also firmly in the closet. He came from a deeply religious family, had a religious family of his own. He struggled every day of his life to reconcile who he was with who he was expected to be. We met at a city council meeting. I can’t even remember what was under discussion. Brian sat down beside me. He said hello. And we fell in love. We went for a drink at the bar in the Hudson House Hotel. It wasn’t as nice then as it is now. We didn’t finish the drinks. He came home with me.”

  Hunt ran one index finger across the surface of the photograph. Tracing his lover’s face. “Our affair went on for six months. We wanted, needed, to live our lives together, and finally decided we would do so, come what may. I would take my father’s scorn. If he wanted to cut me out of the business, which he might well have done, I’d manage. As long as I could be with Brian.

  “It was harder for him. He had a wife, children. He’d been told his whole life that the love he felt for me was a grievous sin. My father didn’t have a religious objection to homosexuality. He thought it a weakness. A betrayal of what it meant to be a man, of masculinity. He was mortally afraid of being perceived as weak.” Hunt looked at Smith. “He would have hated you, Constable. Weak to my father meant women and what he called poofters. Police officers, like soldiers or firefighters, have no business being weak.”

  Winters said nothing. Let the man talk.

  “As well as homosexuality, Brian’s church is opposed to divorce. He was wracked with guilt over what this would do to his wife. He was determined to make the break as easy for her, and their children, as he could. We were going to move to Vancouver. I’d lose any hope of inheriting the family business, but I had a realtor’s license and I’d proved, to my father’s considerable surprise, to be a good salesman. Brian could get work anywhere. The plan was for my earnings to support the two of us, and Brian would give everything he made to his family. He didn’t love his wife, he never had. He married her because it was expected of him to marry. He loved his children, particularly his daughter, Nicky. He simply adored that girl. Even though he was about to turn his back on his church, he prayed to God his children would find a way to forgive him someday.”

  Tears dripped slowly down the man’s face. He did nothing to wipe them away.

  “We made our plans. And then… nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing came of it. He disappeared. I was completely destroyed, Sergeant Winters. Devastated. I had a breakdown and spent a month in hospital in Vancouver.” He laughed, the sound bitter. Fifteen years of bitterness. “My father put it about that I’d had a manly heart attack. You see Sergeant, I assumed Brian had left without me. That he’d decided he didn’t love me, but once he’d fully accepted himself as a gay man he wanted to change his life.”

  He looked at Smith once again. “You might think it strange I was so quick to believe the worst of the man I loved. I ask you to remember I had been taught that gay men, men like me, were perverse, warped, mentally deranged. I had no example of loving gay couples. Nothing to show me that they, and the people in them, can be the same as so-called normal relationships. Good and bad.”

  “You never told any of this to Sergeant Keller?” Winters asked.

  “I considered myself to have been betrayed. I didn’t think Brian had come to harm. I was… cowardly might be the word. How could I not only come blazing out of the closet by getting myself involved in a police investigation, but also reveal that my lover had decided I wasn’t worth bothering about. At first everyone assumed Brian had simply walked away, needed some time on his own perhaps. By the time the police began a full inves
tigation, I was in hospital. The police had no reason to send someone to question me. As far as everyone knew, Brian and I were nothing more than casual acquaintances.”

  Hunt pulled a tissue out of the box. He wiped at his face and blew his nose.

  “For the past fifteen years, I’ve lived my life alone. I have few friends. My father is dead. I’ve never been close to my mother. I never wanted another lover. I would not chance having my heart broken again. I go to Vancouver every couple of months, visit the bars, meet the occasional man who’s also looking for something brief. Love someone? Never again.”

  He gave Winters a sad smile. “Turns out I was wrong one more time. I don’t have much of a track record in life. Brian never did leave me.”

  The floor creaked as Smith shifted her weight. Winters didn’t dare look at her.

  “Do you mind, Officers,” Hunt asked. “If I ask you to leave? I need to be alone for a while.”

  “I have one more question, then we’ll be on our way. Brian Nowak took ten thousand dollars out of his retirement account shortly before he disappeared. Do you know what happened to that money?”

  “I do. It was for her, his wife. He didn’t have many assets other than the house, which he planned to transfer into her name. She was from a family which insisted women didn’t work outside the home, so she had no skills or experience, no way of supporting herself or her children. Brian wanted her to have some cash, in case it took him a while to find a new job. He gave the money to me to hold onto until he left her. When he never asked for it back, I assumed he felt too guilty to contact me. In my all-consuming grief and jealousy, I thought he’d met a man with money and didn’t need it. When I got out of hospital, I gave the money to her.”

  “To who?”

  “Mrs. Nowak. Brian’s wife.”

  Chapter Thirty-nine