Cold Girl

by R. M. Greenaway

  Frank returned to the house. Scott came in and grabbed Kiera’s purple coat, and any other belongings she’d had with her that day, and went back out. Frank went to the bathroom and took a bunch of pills, whatever he could find in the medicine cabinet, Aspirin, and some old prescription Tylenol and a fistful of Rob’s Sleep-Eze, laid down on his bed, and tried to die. Obviously, it hadn’t worked.

  Pretty soon the phone rang, Rourke on the line with some elaborate instructions — it frankly didn’t sound much like Rourke’s mindset — telling Frank to get that mixer nerd over, Parker, soon as possible to set an alibi, and Kiera would send a text. If Parker was present, Frank was to respond with WTF. Code for “Parker’s here.”

  Frank, doped on painkillers and feeling ill, called Parker, and Parker, who had no life, came over right away, and they worked on the day’s recording. Parker was amazed at how bad it was. What’s wrong with you guys? he’d asked. A text had come through, Kiera’s fictitious “screw you” line. He’d responded with “WTF,” and “where are you”? Done.

  Parker left shortly afterward, and that was it. From there, Frank was genuinely in the dark about what had happened to Kiera. “But Scott knows,” he said. “Ask him.”

  Leith was almost too tired to think by now. He squeezed his eyes shut and recounted all the phone calls back and forth. He would have to check the records, once he was back at the Hazelton office, and start firming up the story. He would have to go over the statement with Frank in greater detail, too. But at this point he believed all he’d heard. Kiera’s death was classic and pathetic, the end result of a lover’s tiff, but at least it had been quick. He was halfway to finding her, bringing her home, but to finish the job there was one more son-of-a-bitch to clamp down on: that meddling dishrag Scott Rourke.

  * * *

  Back in New Hazelton the following day, Leith was distressed to find that Rourke hadn’t been located. He calmed himself, scheduled some follow-up interviews, filed his report with Crown counsel, then got to work on the phone records, lining them up with Frank’s story, and he waited for the constables to bring in Scott Rourke for the big wrap. It didn’t happen. Day darkened into evening, and still no word. The man had vanished off the face of the earth. Leith leaned in the doorway of Giroux’s office and asked her how in hell people around here could just up and disappear without a trace.

  “Are you blaming me?” she said.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Well, blame me for Stella Marshall too, then.”

  “What?”

  “Gone. Sit down a minute.”

  Leith took a chair in front of her desk and buried his face in his hands. Giroux said, “Don’t worry. I’m sure she’s gone on her own volition. Neighbours say she packed up her little red Sunbird and took off. South. Like I said before, she’s more involved in this thing than we know. She’s smart and she’s observant and she’s sneaky. Put yourself there. She’s at this miserable rehearsal. Frank and Kiera are in some kind of cold war. She’ll have observed their mood, even if they were trying to keep it to themselves. The lovers leave the house to duke it out in the privacy of the woods. Frank comes back in ten or fifteen minutes, alone. Stella’s antenna is up. Not Chad’s, he’s a guy, and guys don’t notice stuff that’s happening around them —”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. But Stella does. Frank tells them Kiera just took off. Stella has her doubts. I’ll bet you anything she went back after dropping Chad off to check out the situation. She sees Rourke’s dirt bike there. She doesn’t go in the house but follows the footprints down to the riverside, and maybe meets Rourke carrying Kiera to the Rodeo. I bet she masterminded the whole cover-up. Rourke doesn’t have the brains.”

  Leith’s regrets doubled. He had let Rourke walk out, the man with critical information, and he should have followed his instincts and kept custody of him. Trumped up charges, if that was what it took. But he hadn’t. Now he had Stella to eat at his conscience. He said, “I’ll find her.”

  “Bet you won’t.”

  Giroux was probably right. He made arrangements to get Stella’s picture out, as he’d done for Scott Rourke, the borders and all cars put on high alert. Fugitives like this rarely got far, but in the case of Stella Marshall, he had a funny feeling the dragnet would fail, and she’d just sail on through, broomstick and all. Rourke was another story. Dig up enough rat-holes and he’d come squealing to the surface, no problem.

  * * *

  Giroux had a pleasant little house at the edge of town, just where the woods began. After Leith’s busy day, she tried to soothe his nerves by inviting him over for dinner. He brought wine, though Giroux wasn’t much of a drinker. “I could be,” she warned when he offered to fill her glass. “But I’m smarter than that.” She sipped her half glass and Leith downed the rest of the bottle over the course of the meal, loosened up, and went from griping about his own incompetence to griping about his rocky marriage.

  Giroux’s response was an insinuation that he should know better than to let his marriage hit the rocks. “You’re an adult,” she said. “Get it together or you’ll end up like me. Old and alone.”

  If much of the conversation wasn’t great, the stew had been excellent. Leith helped clear the dishes and said, “Can we talk about this truck now? You said you had thoughts.”

  The mysterious white truck with the black window seen barrelling down the mountain on the day of Kiera’s disappearance. “Yes, I had thoughts,” Giroux said. “And I’m an idiot not to get this earlier. And so are you. I probably wouldn’t have gone down this road, except Frank, as you say, said Mercy is crazy.”

  “Right,” Leith said. “And we placed her under the microscope again, and she couldn’t be involved.”

  “Sure, but listen to me. It’s not easy to get a hold of temporary wheels in a small town where everybody knows everybody and what they drive, right? But what if you’re a mechanic? You got temporary wheels parked in your garage all the time, right? And you got the keys in your pocket.”

  “Jim Duncan, Duncan’s Auto Repair,” Leith said. He stood by Giroux’s picture window, looking out at the night, weighing the possibility. He summoned an image of the skinny mechanic with his long brown hippy hair and moustache, John Lennon glasses, serious, never smiling. A possible accomplice, sure. “Huh.”

  “Not Jim,” Giroux snapped. “He rescues anything that limps, for crying out loud. His sister, Mercy, I’m talking about.”

  “Mercy Blackwood is Jim Duncan’s sister? I didn’t even know they’re related.”

  “Well, I told you, Dave, in plain English. I said they’re twins. That makes them related, right?”

  He turned to face her. To face her he had to look down quite steeply, her being nearly a foot shorter than him. He recalled the conversation vaguely, driving with Giroux down the main strip through New Hazelton, passing the IGA parking lot, spotting the mechanic Jim Duncan chatting with Fling’s manager Mercy Blackwood, both in their heavy winter outfits. One of them had been loading groceries into a little black pickup, the other just talking and gusting cigarette smoke; he couldn’t remember which had been doing what. Or maybe it wasn’t cigarette smoke but just classic northern breath clouds. Whatever the case, Giroux behind the wheel had nodded in their direction and said simply, “Twins.”

  None of it mattered to Leith just now, aside from the revelation that Mercy might have had access to a stranger’s vehicle. Handy, if you’re going to commit a crime, like having access to an unregistered handgun. He looked out the window again and murmured, “I thought you meant something else.”

  “What else could I possibly mean?”

  “I don’t know. That they look alike?”

  “Well, they don’t, much, do they, given his big moustache.”

  “From behind, maybe, sort of?”

  She was a word miser, that was part of the problem. Instead of saying “Tw
ins,” that day, she could have said, Hey, Dave, did you know those two are twins? Which he couldn’t possibly have misinterpreted as metaphor. But she hadn’t, and he couldn’t really blame her, because he was the same way. At New Year’s, when Alison’s family was up visiting, Alison had called him surly, right in front of everybody. Maybe it was a cop thing to dole out words like they each cost five ninety-nine, punctuation sold separately. He said, “You couldn’t have thought of this sooner?”

  “Mercy Blackwood never hit my radar as suspicious, okay? If she had, I would have.”

  “Yes, well, we all pretty well discounted her. And I still do. Her alibis are scattered for the whole day, but if you thread them together, they’re solid.” He thought of the different surnames, Duncan, Blackwood. So the woman was married, and why was he surprised? There was just something untouchable about her, and maybe she hadn’t been exactly off his radar after all. He said, “We’ll have to grab Mr. Duncan’s records, see what’s been through his shop lately.”

  “Thackray’s already on it.”

  Leith reflected that if the mechanic felt no obligation to cover for his sister’s crimes and opened his books without a fuss, that would be great. If he dug in his heels and made Thackray go for a warrant, that would be pretty darn interesting. The other scenario, of course, was Mercy had already taken care of those records, with or without her brother’s help, and nothing would be found at all. The fourth and most likely scenario, as he told Giroux now, was that her little brainstorm was just one big make-work fuss over nothing.

  “Yes,” she agreed, with a sigh. “Probably. Dessert?”

  * * *

  An early morning mist lay low over the Hazeltons. Leith noticed on the grounds surrounding the RCMP office that the grass was starting to show through, surprisingly green and perky, as the snow receded. On his drive out to Mercy Blackwood’s house in Old Town, he saw in some of the gardens that the vegetable beds had already been turned, getting ready for the snow peas and other hardy whatnots to go in. The growing season in the north was good, in some ways, in that it was longer than down south. Colder, but longer. More daylight hours. So a garden could produce some damn big northern zucchinis. Leith knew it because he’d eaten a damn lot of damn big northern zucchini over the years.

  It was too early now for even the most avid gardeners to be out. Nobody was out but one determined detective on his way to show up unannounced on a perp’s doorstep, catch her off guard. It was smarter to show up in twos, a wall of solidarity, but he’d decided to come alone in the case of this particular perp, an aider and abettor, possibly, but not a killer. So unannounced and alone, early on this crisp cold misty Wednesday morning, just when most decent human beings were smacking their alarm clocks to snooze, he knocked on Mercy Blackwood’s door.

  It was a handsome old house, lovingly decorated once upon a time with scrollwork and spindles and fish scale accents, but the paint had long faded, the spindles cracked, many scales knocked loose. The porch floorboards felt wobbly under foot, worn dangerously thin. A faded silver BMW coupe sat in the driveway, and firewood was stacked high along the side of the house. The chimney was smoking badly, which meant whoever stoked the fire didn’t know what they were doing, or didn’t care.

  Mercy Blackwood opened the door and blinked at him. Taken off guard, she wore no makeup and her sleek brown hair was mussed. But she looked prettier than ever. She held a cup of something in her hand, the cup emitting steam. She wore a plush black dressing gown, tied at the waist, black tights, and moccasins on her feet. She looked, as always, cold and miserable.

  “Morning,” Leith said. He reintroduced himself, apologizing for the crazy hour to be knocking on her door. “May I come in for a word or two?”

  She was clearly not delighted. “I’m kind of in the middle of things. I’ll come down to the station in an hour or so, if you want.”

  “It’ll only be five minutes.”

  They smiled tensely at each other, and she said, “Yes. Of course.”

  He stepped inside, angling toward the living room he could see to his left, but she said, “Not there, sorry. I’m renovating, and it’s a bit of a mess. My office is over here. This way. I’ll make you some tea, as I don’t have coffee, if that’s all right.”

  “Thanks,” he said. He didn’t want tea, but a moment alone to snoop about her office wouldn’t be bad.

  He followed her through a passage, past a kitchen with crumbly green walls, but well equipped with modern appliances, and farther along to what was probably once a bedroom, converted now to a sparse office, with a tiny window, a desk, a computer. Mercy had brought along a kitchen chair, and she placed it down before the desk and said, “You can sit, if you like.” That said, she went to get him the promised tea.

  He didn’t sit or remove his parka, the air chilly enough in here to condense a man’s breath. He listened to her moving about her kitchen, discreet noises of running water and clinking dishes, and he looked at her desk, the papers on it, unrevealing, bills and receipts — some marked overdue — nothing on her computer monitor when he sidled around to take a look, but a screensaver shot of horses racing across a misty field. There were framed CDs and certificates on the wall, proof of professional conquests.

  A kettle shrieked, and a moment later she was back in the room with two cups of simple but chic design, bone-white and delicate. Her hair was combed smooth now and tied back, but she had put on no makeup, not worried about impressing him. He sat, and she placed a cup of tea before him, seated herself behind her computer, looked at him in that direct, somewhat disconsolate manner he had become familiar with, and waited.

  He said in a jovial way, “So I hear you’re a twin.”

  His friendliness didn’t move her. She only nodded and pursed her mouth. He drank some tea, but it tasted funny, and he set the cup down. He asked how she got along with Jim. She said she got along with him fine. He asked if she would ever go over to the garage for any reason. She said she’d been there a couple of times. He asked if she’d been there at all in February. She said she’d gone there last week, actually, to talk over some estate matters with Jim.

  Of course she had, he didn’t doubt it. And Jim Duncan would confirm it, and even if Giroux’s theory was right, it was quite possibly unprovable. He chipped away at it a bit longer, hoping she would give herself away, but she didn’t. The woman was either innocent or shock-proof. He gave up on the garage angle and said, “You’ve heard Frank will be indicted?”

  She nodded. “I’ve heard. I’m not surprised. Did he actually confess?”

  “Sorry, I can’t discuss it. I do want to ask you something, though. He signed a contract with you. I’m wondering how his incarceration will affect the deal.”

  She pulled a who knows face. “It null and voids it, I guess.”

  “Can I see it?”

  She opened a drawer, riffled through papers, and placed one before him. It was a computer printout, wordy and professional-looking, under Mercy Blackwood’s letterhead. He looked it over, looked at her, and said, “You wrote this?”

  “It’s boilerplate, with a few adjustments.”

  It was dated March of last year, soon after she had discovered the band at that Valentine’s dance. It was signed by Frank and Kiera. “You think it’s binding?”

  She shivered and tugged the collar of her robe tighter around her throat. “Probably not, if it came down to a legal battle. I didn’t write it expecting trouble, but just trying to cover my own ass. Fling’s not just some noble artistic endeavour to me. It’s income. An investment. I sunk a lot of money into those kids, which in retrospect was, well, hare-brained stupid.”

  She paused and seemed to listen to the echo of her own words. She caught his eye, gave one of her tense little smiles, and he could almost see her flipping the facade back into place.

  He said, “Things didn’t work out, did they?”

  “Sp
ectacularly, no. I’ll probably never recoup.”

  “You must be angry.”

  “I feel used, yes,” she said. She gazed at him, reflecting, and said, “It’s all over now, and I guess I can tell you how they played me along from the start. They promised to work hard and strive for success, and I put my faith in them. Frank complained of the quality of their studio equipment and instruments. I thought it over, took the gamble, cashed in my investments, and paid for what they needed to propel them forward. Turns out I lost the gamble. They didn’t work hard. They took all my advice and expertise and ignored it. They partied hearty and missed deadlines. Not malicious, just callous. As I said, I’m not surprised their lives ended in violence.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over now. I’m fixing up this house, as you can see. Then I’ll sell, soon as possible. I’ll get a good price for it. I’ll be all right.”

  Leith looked around at the walls she gestured at. Like the kitchen, they crumbled. The cost of repairs would be astronomical, and the market in areas like this was worse than soft, and he should tell her to cut her losses and sell as is. “Probably should get some advice before you put too much money into it,” he said.

  She nodded curtly, and he guessed that her life was a string of hits and misses, richly embellished with poor choices. Like Fling. He thought of her characterization of Frank and Kiera as lazy, cruel, and conniving. He recalled too Frank calling Mercy a bitch, and Lenny calling her a black worm, corrupting good people with false ambitions. Probably there were shards of truth in all that maligning, but not much more. Angry little shards left over from a bad breakup.

  He switched to his other big concern, doubting she could add anything useful. “Charlie West is still missing. I asked you about her a few days ago, and you didn’t have much to say. Is there anything you can add now?”

  “I’m sorry, there isn’t. Charlie is another example of their self-destructive behaviour. She was a special kind of talent. She wrote amazing music. She was what Kiera and Frank needed to break out, but they were afraid of change. Especially Kiera. She’d let Charlie write their music over her cold, dead … well.”