A Door in the River Page 8

  He’d come down here with a general approach in mind. If there was anything illicit available in this place, he wanted the guy to know he was interested. People he personally knew had bought corn liquor, Viagra, painkillers, knockoff perfumes and electronics, native hunting licences, and a lot of other things on reserves. He knew that half the convenience store owners off the reserve came down and bought skids of smokes. They weren’t allowed to sell these off the reserve, but many stores sold them under the counter anyway, for cash, and cops turned a blind eye because half the force smoked.

  Forbes said, “Don’t see what I’m looking for, yet.”

  “Well, what’re you looking for?”

  “I’ll know it when I see it,” he said.

  “All right, I hope we got it then.” The man walked away. Hard to call the interaction suspicious, he thought. Forbes lingered in the store, trying on some hats. Tate sold a man two cartons, and then the couple who’d been in the front of the store paid for a T-shirt and some magazines. They asked where the casino was, and Tate directed them six kilometres down Queesik Bay Road. “Can’t miss it,” he said. “Even more neon than us.” They all laughed.

  Forbes decided to try again. He picked up a pair of earrings. “What kind of gems are these?” he asked the man. The shop was empty now. Maybe he’d get Tate into a deeper kind of conversation.

  “Gems, sir?”

  “Are they real?”

  Tate looked at the price tag. “For thirteen bucks?”

  “Ah. I thought it said a hundred and thirty. Never mind then. Hey – you got any idea where I could get something a little more special than this? It’s our anniversary, and I brought my wife to the casino for the weekend, but already she’s lost a few hundred bucks. I thought someone local might know where I could get her something to cheer her up?”

  “I don’t suppose she likes cigars, does she? We have some very high-quality Cubans here.” He moved down the counter to where the cigars were.

  “Well, no, she doesn’t smoke at all. But maybe you’re going in the right direction.”

  A door at the back of the shop opened quickly and a man stepped inside. “Earl?” The counterman looked over at him but said nothing. “Ronnie says he needs a fill before –”

  “Hold on, for god’s sake,” said Tate. He apologized to Forbes and strode down the length of the counter to the other man. Although he lowered his voice, Forbes heard him swear at the other man, asking him if Ronnie had told him to come here. The man mumbled something and Tate dug into his pocket and slapped down some keys. The man picked the keys up and scurried off with his head lowered.

  Tate returned to Forbes. “Sorry. I’m surrounded by idiots.”

  “No worries,” said Forbes.

  Tate looked down into the glass cabinet once more before remembering that his customer had told him he didn’t want a cigar. “I’m not sure what you’re looking for, sir. Maybe if you just tell me what it is …?”

  “Well, I guess I would have seen it if you had it. Someone just told me I could – anyway. Never mind. It’s all good.”

  The counterman was following him down the counter as Forbes made his way toward the door.

  “Who sent you here to look for this mysterious thing, if you don’t mind me asking.”

  “A total misunderstanding,” Forbes said. “You know, I’ll just take a pack of cigarettes. Those blue and white ones.”

  “ID, please,” said the man behind the counter.

  “Really? I’m flattered.”

  “We have to ask everyone who buys cigarettes. By-laws.”

  “Oh,” said Forbes, and he got his wallet out. His badge was in the same pocket, but he left it there and flipped open to his driver’s licence. Earl or Tate looked at his name and then looked down onto a monitor that was embedded in the countertop beside the row of glass cases.

  “Packs or cartons, Mr. Forbes?”

  “Just a pack,” he said. He paid cash for it. When he crossed back into Westmuir, he pulled over for a coffee and tossed the cigarettes into a garbage can. The entire exercise had been a waste.

  Hazel returned to work around one and looked for Wingate, but Constable Eileen Bail buttonholed her in the doorway of her office and bodied her back down the hall. “Jordie Dunn is here.”

  “Who?”

  “Lives three streets over from the Wiest house in Kehoe Glenn. Housepainter, used to work with Wiest on odd jobs or subcontracts, been on the bowling team forever. Says he wants to talk to the detective in charge only.”

  “You think he knows something?”

  “All I can tell you is he’s nervous as hell. But like I say, his lips are zipped.”

  “All right,” she said, and she clapped Bail on the shoulder. “I’ll try to find out what he knows, I guess.”

  “You’re going to interview him alone?”

  “No.” Her mind was elsewhere still. “Are you ready?”

  “Just waiting for you, Skip.”

  “Excellent.”

  They entered the room and Dunn looked up at her anxiously through wire-rim glasses that magnified his eyes very slightly, to disconcerting effect. He was a short, wiry man with nervous hands, and he was hunched over the table in a peacoat, looking like he didn’t want to register on anyone’s consciousness. “Good afternoon, Mr. Dunn. I’m Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef. You’ve met Constable Bail, I gather.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, what’s on your mind, Mr. Dunn? How can we help you?”

  “I wanted to ask you if you thought – if I could ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Was Henry … killed by a bee or not?”

  She didn’t answer for a moment, just pulled the chair out on the other side of the table and made herself comfortable. “Why would you ask that, Mr. Dunn?”

  “I just, you know, sometimes I go out and destroy nests for people. I didn’t think bees stung at eleven o’clock at night.”

  “So what do you think happened?”

  Dunn cracked his neck. “I’m saying I don’t know.”

  She opened her notebook and wrote the date. “You two were good friends, weren’t you? You knew Henry pretty well.”

  “I knew him,” Dunn said. “We bowled, sometimes we worked together, but we didn’t talk on the phone or nothing.”

  “So not so well?”

  The man didn’t reply.

  Bail said, “Mr. Dunn?”

  “Do you think that Henry was murdered?” Dunn asked. “Just tell me that.”

  “I don’t know. But it’s possible.”

  “Goddamnit. I knew no fucking bee stung him.”

  “Just because you know bees? Or something you know about Henry?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know anything, okay?”

  “Do you have any idea what he was doing on the Queesik reserve?”

  “I didn’t know Henry’s business. I’m just here because I liked him, you know? And I had a feeling …”

  She let him go inward for a moment, then she asked, “Do you have business on the reserve?”

  “Me?”

  “No, I’m asking the table.”

  “Sorry. I feel shaky,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Someone I know was murdered!” He turned then, very suddenly, and vomited across the corner of the table and onto the floor. Bail had to leap back a foot or two.

  “Whoa, whoa,” Hazel said, and she reached over to touch his wrist. “Constable – will you get us –” Bail dashed from the room. “Just calm yourself down, Mr. Dunn.” He raised and lowered his shoulders slowly, trying to control himself.

  “His poor wife.”

  “You know Cathy?”

  “Everyone knows Cathy.”

  “Did you know them as a couple?”

  “A little.” He raised himself up when he saw Bail reentering with a roll of paper towel and another glass of water. He accepted the water and drank, cleaning out his mouth. “Sometimes I worked for him.”


  “Do you think it’s possible they were unhappy?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Did you ever see Henry with another woman, a woman you didn’t recognize?”

  “Why? No.”

  “What about money. Did he ever need money?”

  “Henry?”

  “Okay, do you think anyone would want to harm him?”

  The man’s colour had changed and he was holding his chest. “I think I’m going to be sick again.” Hazel got up quickly and grabbed the garbage can from the corner of the room. Dunn snatched it from her.

  “I’ll get someone to drive you home,” she said. She put her hand on his back. “Spend a few minutes calming down before you go. This is my card.” She handed it to him and beckoned Eileen to come out. In the hallway, Hazel said, “I want to let him stew a minute. Something more than the behaviour of bees is bothering him.” But after a minute or so, he emerged, looking a bit better and ready to leave. “Oh,” said Hazel, “I was just going to ask you … Cathy told me Henry was going on a call Saturday night. Do you know if he was on a call?”

  “I haven’t spoken to Henry in” – he thought for a moment – “three weeks? I have no idea what he was doing.”

  She thanked him and sent him off again. Had he just lied to her? It was another detail in a case that was becoming miasmic in only three days. Forbes was coming in as she was leaving the interview room. “Hey – what’d you find down there?” she asked him.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. The guy sold me some cigarettes.”

  “Damn it. That was Jordie Dunn. You know him?”

  “I think so.”

  “He threw up.”

  “Why’d you call him in?”

  “I didn’t. He came in of his own accord,” she said. “He wanted to know if Henry had been murdered.”

  Forbes made a face. “Did he know Henry was murdered?”

  “No. He thought what he’d read in the paper was far-fetched. He seemed to know something about bees.”

  “Maybe you should put him on the investigation.”

  Hazel laughed. Yes, she was probably going to need all the help she could get.

  Wingate drove to the cabin on Gannon Lake and unpacked his things. The cabin was one of five that faced the water and trees on a quiet little patch of land. He’d been told two of the other cabins hadn’t been filled for the week, so he had the place almost to himself.

  He’d bought some groceries on the way up, and he put them in the fridge, aware of his footsteps padding around on the wood floor. Smoked trout, milk, pasta, pecorino, roasted red peppers, plum tomatoes, oranges, butter, a loaf of wholegrain bread, carrots and cucumber, a bottle of red wine, and a head of iceberg lettuce. Enough for the weekend. His plans were to do the minimum amount of physical movement. Beds and chairs only, plus books. He’d brought a couple of detective novels as well as some crummy American celebrity magazines. He also had some sample detective sergeant exams in his bag. (How varied my inner life is, he thought.) It was early to be living in hope, but he’d been a detective constable for almost three years. He was thirty-one years old. If all this change he’d gone through since David’s death was to be for something, he had to keep moving. He hadn’t arrived at a mental space where he was ready to love again, but he sure as hell felt like working.

  It had been a little awkward leaving in the midst of an investigation, but if anything happened – and he dreaded and anticipated something happening in about equal measure – he knew he’d hear from Hazel. Maybe, if he was lucky, there wouldn’t be a break in the case until next Wednesday. Five days of R&R would be enough, if he could get that.

  He hadn’t had a break since he arrived in Port Dundas in November of last year. It had been a busy year since, perhaps busier than any he’d experienced in Toronto. It was as if the whole county was undergoing a sea change. You could smell it: the first hints of cold threaded in the fall air, that told you summer was really over, that winter was on its way. It was in the impending changes at the station, with Ray Greene coming back, with whispers of what amalgamation was going to bring. He’d heard rumours that the station was going to be moved to another location. He had to presume it would still be in Port Dundas, but who knew what this commissioner was capable of? The way Hazel talked about Chip Willan, he sounded like a bull in a china shop. Who knew what the future held anymore?

  He chopped a bit of lettuce into a bowl, added tomato, cucumber, and some of the smoked trout, and headed out to the lakeshore with one of the magazines. It promised to tell of the tribulations of a Hollywood couple who were having trouble conceiving. The husband was widely understood to be gay, so the story was just part of the ongoing folderol about his viability as a leading man and international sex symbol. Probably the wife was gay too. It had long ago stopped galling him, this masquerade in which the truth was known by everyone who had considered it. He imagined most of the people who were the subjects of this kind of attention were already half insane from believing their own stories.

  He took his cell down to the lake.

  ] 12 [

  Friday, August 12, morning

  The following morning, Hazel made tea for herself and her mother. Cathy remained asleep in the guestroom, but Hazel had opened the door a crack to ensure the woman was actually there, and she was. Emily had already forgotten that she had her appointment with Dr. Pass in an hour. When Hazel reminded her of it, she made a sour face.

  “I used to pinch that man’s cheek. Grace Pass says he wet his bed until he was ten – she thought I’d know what to do about it.”

  “Well, you were the mayor.”

  “I told her to wait until January and put him on an ice floe. And you trust him to prod me with his tools?”

  “He’s your doctor, Mother. You’re supposed to be in his office at nine. So none of your games.”

  “I’ll play whatever games I want to.”

  “I think you’re depressed.”

  “I get disgusted, distracted, and dead-tired; I do not get depressed. That’s you, my dear. My generation never had time to pity itself: we had work to do.”

  She drove her mother, more or less in silence, to Gary Pass’s office, although Hazel turned the radio on halfway there to cut through her mother’s fuming. Emily reached over and turned it off. Gary had recently moved his office farther down Pearl Street, to take advantage of the extension of “Mall Row,” due to happen some time in 2006. It seemed that developers were taking a gamble on the growth rate in Westmuir, and they were placing a lot of their bets on Port Dundas. In 1995, you couldn’t find a grocery store north of Mayfair larger than two hundred square metres, now you shopped in football fields. Down on Pearl there was a giant Canadian Tire that had replaced the little one on Main Street in 2001, a big discount clothing chain, and a bunch of big chain eateries. The seventy-seat That’s a Spicy Meatball! was giving Fraternelli’s Osteria a run for its money. Everyone called this progress, but no one could say whose progress it was.

  Gary Pass’s new office was still half in boxes, and his receptionist apologized to them and took them directly into the doctor’s private office, where they waited for him to appear. Emily sat stone-faced, looking at pictures of Gary’s kids on the walls. Finally, he entered and tried to give both of them hugs, but he had to accept a handshake from Hazel’s mother. “So,” he said, taking his seat behind his desk, “what’s going on?”

  “My daughter thinks I’m an old woman,” Emily said. “She thinks you have a pill for that.”

  “We just might,” said Pass, smiling a little too warmly. It made Emily sit far back in her chair, like a truculent teenager.

  “She’s lethargic,” said Hazel. “She has no appetite, she falls asleep in the middle of the day in front of the television, and her colour is bad. She thinks it’s normal.”

  “Do you think it’s normal, Your Honour?”

  “Don’t be sarcastic with me, Gary, unless you want to hear some stories about how much your mother worried a
bout your toileting when you were a boy.”

  The smile faltered, just a little. “I got over that. What can I help you with?”

  “I eat, I sleep, I celebrate the million little things that make old age such a joy. I’m a little more tired than I used to be. I don’t sleep as well at night.”

  “She’s fried all day long,” Hazel said.

  Pass held a hand up. “Listen, it’s time for a checkup anyway. Let’s do our normal bloodwork, listen to your heart, take your pressure, check your eyes, and so on. If there’s anything amiss, it’ll turn up. Okay?”

  Hazel looked at her mother, who was still staring at Pass, or perhaps through him. “Is that okay, Mum?”

  “When I was elected mayor of this town for the first time, you were drinking from a sippy cup,” Emily said quietly. “Now you want to listen to my heart.”

  Hazel and Pass waited for where this thought was going to lead her, but that was it. Pass stood up and squared a couple of file folders with a clack on his desk. “Well, then, why don’t we move into one of the exam rooms, and we can get started.”

  It was eleven in the morning when Roland Forbes arrived back on Queesik Bay Road. Hazel had wanted him to go back right away the afternoon before, but he convinced her he’d been sufficiently noticed by Earl/Tate to warrant just a bit of discretion on their parts. Good instincts, Gumshoe. Needing to be around for an extended period of time in broad daylight was going to take a light touch, though. For one thing, he couldn’t go back down in the unmarked, in case someone had really taken notice of him. He borrowed Hazel’s personal car, instead, a Mazda 3 with eighty thousand kilometres on it. It was a 2003: she’d put all that mileage on her car driving the ten kilometres back and forth from Pember Lake to Port Dundas. It looked like a woman’s car, too, a category he thought included all Datsuns and Mazdas.