Читать книгу Cornwall and Redfern Mysteries 2-Book Bundle - Gloria Ferris - Страница 9

I threw an old fleece jacket over my pyjamas and opened the door. My neighbour, Rae Zaborski, usually dropped in on Sunday morning with two cups of coffee. I looked at the old windup clock on the counter and wasn’t surprised to see it register seven o’clock. Rae liked to get her visiting done before she left for church at ten-thirty.

“Come in, Rae,” I said, “and close the door. It’s chilly out there.”

“Well, my dear, the temperature dipped a bit last night. Here, this will warm you up.” She handed me a large blue mug.

“I hope this is strong.”

“Extra strong Columbian for both of us.”

She settled herself on my patched bench and pulled her yellow chenille bathrobe more tightly around her toned curves. Sunday was Rae’s day of rest, and it was sacrosanct. The bathrobe stayed put until she put on her church-going clothes for an hour, then it returned for the duration of the day.

“I had a really good week,” she began. “Fourteen clients.”

“Geez, Rae, that’s more than two a day. How can you stand it, and where do they all come from?”

“Two a day is usually my limit, but I have my regular customers like Ewan Quigley and some of his friends, and I don’t like to turn any of them down. A couple of the guys were willing to pay extra if I fit them in, so I thought, what the heck, it’s all money in the bank, right?”

“I guess.” Ewan Quigley? Eesh. I guess if you closed your eyes, you could pretend you were doing George Clooney.

Rae was a hooker, and quite a successful one. She charged a hundred dollars a pop, so made at least twelve hundred dollars a week, tax-free. Rae also taught water aerobics to seniors at the high school three afternoons a week for minimum wage. Since her income from this legitimate job was so limited, like mine, she never paid a lick of income tax. But she filed religiously each year to keep Revenue Canada happy — and ignorant of her more lucrative career.

Rae was only twenty-five, but she had been investing her money since she was eighteen. She took endless aesthetics courses and figured that by age thirty she would have enough money to open her own spa. She already had a name picked out: Pamper U.

“Today we’re doing your hair, remember?” She indicated the plastic shopping bag hanging off one arm.

“I forgot. I don’t think I have time today, Rae. I have a real estate client at one o’clock. Nothing will come of it, as usual, but Elaine Simms made the appointment with people from out of town, so I have to meet them at the Barrister house.”

“We’ll be done in less than two hours. Come on, quit stalling. I’ve been dying to get my hands on your hair for ages.”

“Rae, I don’t think …”

“Come on, Bliss. Don’t be such a chicken. I do my own hair and, look, it’s fine.” She shook her multi-shaded blond mane. It did look good, but I didn’t really want to look like the cheerleader Rae once was.

“Look,” she coaxed, “I have a base colour that’s the same as your own. Then I have two accent colours to highlight with, copper and caramel. It will be subtle, but look gorgeous. And I’ll trim your hair just a bit. That way you can still pull it back in a ponytail when you’re working.”

My hair badly needed a cut, and cheap shampoos and no conditioners had faded my light brown colour to a shade not unlike the lichen on a pile of north-

facing rocks.

“Okay, let’s do it.”

Two hours later, Rae had gone back to her own trailer to dress before church and I was contemplating myself in the chipped mirror in my tiny, non-functioning bathroom. I had to admit my hair looked good. I swung it back and forth and applied lipstick and eyeliner. The mascara and the light green eyeshadow had dried out long ago.

Grabbing a mystery paperback I’d started months ago, I made myself comfortable on the front step and let the sun warm my face and bare arms. Beside me, the shiny purple paint on Rae’s trailer shot shards of light into my eyes. I changed position, and this left me facing the Quigley residence.

Ewan and Sarah Quigley’s trailer was, like mine, still the original beige it left the showroom in thirty or forty years ago. Two webbed lawn chairs that had seen better years sat out front beside a pile of empty beer cartons. The stringy, sixtyish Sarah was fond of sitting in one of the chairs in her leathery birthday suit, but thankfully she was absent today. Several times, I waved at her and called out a friendly greeting, but she stared silently across the compound until I turned away in embarrassment. Now I pretended not to notice her tanning her wrinkled hide.

I kept an eye on my watch. I wanted my weekly treat at Tim Hortons before the house showing, and for a moment I let myself fantasize about closing the sale. The Barrister house was listed at one hundred and sixty thousand, so if the buyer offered a hundred and forty-five, say, and the commission was six percent, which I would have to split with Elaine, I would get …

Visions of enough money to find an out-of-town lawyer brave enough to take on the Weasel danced in my head. When I heard voices behind me, I turned in alarm, thinking that some of Ewan’s disreputable friends might be drunk and ready for love. Not that I could easily be mistaken for Rae.

Instead, I looked up into two sets of mirrored sunglasses, one worn by a female cop and the other by … definitely not a female.

Damn. Somebody ratted on Rae and the cops were here to arrest her for prostitution. I glanced at Rae’s purple trailer. Some days you could see the trailer rocking, but since it was Sunday, all was still. I was determined to know nothing and say nothing about Rae’s activities.

“Are you Bliss Cornwall?” asked the taller of the two. I noticed that his uniform was a good fit, tailored exactly to his body measurements. His hands rested on his belt, close to his gun.

“Yes?”

He took off his hat, revealing short, spiky blond hair. “Well, you are or you aren’t Bliss Cornwall. Which is it?”

“Yes, I am Bliss Moonbeam Cornwall. Can I help you?”

“Moonbeam? Interesting middle name you have.” The female cop snickered. She had a slim figure and was close to my age. Dark hair was pinned back under her cap.

“My parents were wannabe flower children. They were too late for the sixties, so they tried to compensate by naming their daughters Bliss Moonbeam and Blyth Starlight. I believe it has strengthened our characters.” Celebrate your own uniqueness. That was another of my rules.

She had the nerve to laugh out loud. “So did your parents embrace any other trends from the sixties, like free love or pot smoking?”

Oh. My. God. They knew about Dougal’s marijuana! Maybe Glory’s too! I tried to swallow the panic caught in my throat.

“Hard to say, I never dared ask. They retired to Vancouver Island where I believe they are camping in a forest in their fifth wheel, or maybe chained to a giant redwood so the socialist developers won’t chop it down and build a row of condos.” I managed an uneasy smile.

“Please, can we get down to business,” admonished the male cop. “Ms. Cornwall, I am Chief Neil Redfern and this is Constable Thea Vanderbloom.”

He flashed an identification card. I remembered seeing his picture in our weekly newspaper several times. Since Chief Redfern was relatively young and not ugly, although I wasn’t attracted to fair-haired men, he made good media copy. He had left his job as a Toronto detective to take up the post as Lockport’s Chief of Police about two years ago.

“Now we all know who we are, why are we here? I lead a blameless life, I assure you. Frankly, I’m too busy to even jaywalk.” Shit, it was jail for Dougal and Glory, and I would be forced to appear as chief witness for the Crown.

Constable Vanderbloom pulled a small black notebook and a pen from her breast pocket. She looked down at me and waited expectantly. I was nervous, and desperately tried to think of a way to avoid answering direct questions about two affluent Lockport homes where grass was cultivated and served.

Chief Redfern said, “Do you know Julian Barnfeather?”

That threw me. What the hell. Was the creep accusing me of something?

“Is this a trick question? Because I might want a lawyer, but then again, all the lawyers I know are crooks, so I guess I’ll do without.”

He tried again. “According to the Cemetery Commission, you work at the Good Shepherd Cemetery on Saturdays from April until October. Is this true?”

“November. Yes?” One word answers were best.

He took off his sunglasses and rubbed his forehead. In an effort to hide the fact that I forgot the question after one glance at his deep blue eyes — they were navy, really — I quickly turned away and scanned the treetops for eagles or buzzards. In the split second those eyes were locked on mine, I was sure all my recent indiscretions had been revealed. Like socializing with pot growers and hookers, and thinking about dropping a dead skunk on my ex-husband’s doorstep.

“Yes you work at the cemetery? You don’t seem to be too sure about anything this morning, Ms. Cornwall.”

“Look, I’m not used to being interrogated before I’ve had my second cup of coffee.” Not so smart, Cornwall, I told myself. When cornered by the law, it’s not wise to reveal sarcasm is your first language.

“You call this an interrogation, Ms. Cornwall? These

are very simple questions. Now, do you work at the cemetery on Saturdays and were you working yesterday? Yes or no will do.”

“Yes. And, yes.”

“Good. Did you see Julian Barnfeather during the course of the day?”

“I saw him in the morning, as usual, and that’s it.”

“So, you didn’t see him again before you left the cemetery at the end of the day?”

“No, I did not. I left my tools outside the maintenance shed.”

“Was there a reason for doing so?”

“He’s a dickhead and I wanted to avoid him. I figured he would put the tools inside before he went home. He’s always there when I leave at five o’clock — he locks the gates. My cousin called and wanted me to come right over so I left at five on the dot. I don’t know what time Julian left.”

“So you didn’t see him yesterday before you left. You only saw him first thing in the morning. What time would that be?”

“Eight a.m.”

“Did you have a conversation with him?”

“What’s this all about? Is it illegal to call that fat doofus a perverted mistake of nature? Because if he’s complaining about me, I have grounds to charge him with harassment.” I drew myself up to my full sixty-two inches.

A condescending sigh escaped Chief Redfern’s lips. The svelte Constable Vanderbloom just kept scribbling in her ratty black notebook.

Then I remembered the flashing lights and activity in the cemetery as I passed it last night.

“Did Julian Barnfeather have a heart attack or something?”

“You don’t sound too broken up about the possibility of something happening to Julian Barnfeather, Ms. Cornwall,” Constable Vanderbloom observed.

“Look, if Julian is sick or hurt, well, I’m a little sorry, but he won’t be receiving a get well card from me.”

“A sympathy card to his wife would be more appropriate,” said the constable.

“Go on! Are you telling me he had a wife? And he’s dead?” Then a sudden thought struck me. “What happened to him?”

Chief Redfern replied, “The autopsy report hasn’t come back yet. His wife called us when he didn’t show up for dinner last night. We sent an officer to the cemetery.”

“Because,” I said, like he hadn’t spoken, “he could have been lying there dying while I was working. Maybe if I had put my tools away like I should have, I would have found him in time to call an ambulance.” I shuddered at the thought of anyone, even Julian, lying in the shed, waiting for help that didn’t come. Nobody deserves to die alone.

Suddenly, strong hands gripped my neck and pushed my head so far between my knees that my forehead touched the dirt. The hands held me down and all I could do was flail my arms and yell, “Stop. I haven’t done anything. You’re hurting me.”

“Careful or she’ll be screaming police brutality,” said Constable Vanderbloom.

I was picked up immediately and held hanging a foot off the ground. I kicked him in the knee.

“Goddamn it!” He dropped me, but I managed to land on my feet. “What did you do that for? I thought you were going to faint.”

“I never faint.” My heart was beating wildly, and I hoped I wouldn’t make a liar out of myself as my vision started fading to black at the edges.

“Then, if you’re up to it, I have a few more questions.”

“Go ahead.” My head still felt like it might fly off into the clouds, but I wasn’t going to admit to it.

“Could you see the shed from where you were working?”

I took a deep breath and my vision cleared. “No. The shed is in the middle of the cemetery surrounded by tall shrubs. I was working closest to the fence and Main Street.”

“So you didn’t see Mr. Barnfeather at all after eight in the morning? What about lunch and calls of nature?”

“I have a key to the bathroom behind the office building at the entrance to the cemetery. You can’t see the maintenance shed from there. And I didn’t stop for lunch yesterday.”

“Did you see anything out of the ordinary?”

Neither cop noticed Ewan Quigley step out of his trailer behind them, take one look, then back quickly inside and close his door. And, between Rae’s trailer and the Quigleys’, a figure in dusty black leather and multiple chains draped across his chest melted back into the trees.

“No, and I didn’t budge from my corner except for one trip to the bathroom. I have excellent bladder control.”

Chief Redfern’s lips compressed. “Can you describe the people you remember seeing?”

I wasn’t going to be much help. I tried to avoid anyone I knew while I was working. It was just too awkward.

“Not really,” I said slowly. “The cemetery is a popular place for walking but I didn’t recognize anyone. You might ask the Friends of the Settlers, since there are always a few of them in the cemetery, although they probably don’t see many folk wandering by their corner.”

The glasses came off again. I lowered my eyes and stared at the third button from the top of his shirt. Constable Vanderbloom stopped writing.

“Who are the Friends of the Settlers?”

“It’s a volunteer group that looks after the pioneer graves in the northwest corner. That area was the original Lockport Cemetery. The rest has grown out from there. There’s an iron fence and pine trees around the site.”

“How do we get in touch with these people?”

“There are two or three of them there every Saturday, all quite elderly. You can probably get the names from the Cemetery Board.”

I didn’t divulge that one of the Friends was Fern Brickle, my Wednesday afternoon cleaning job. I didn’t want the police to bother her. She was a nice lady and gave me a fifty-dollar bonus at Christmas.

“So, I’m getting the impression that Julian didn’t die from a heart attack or stroke,” I ventured, once the notebook was stowed away and both pairs of sunglasses were back in position. The activity in the cemetery the night before made sense, now.

Chief Redfern’s lip twitched briefly. “Until the autopsy results are in, we don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

“If the coroner indicates Mr. Barnfeather’s death was not due to natural causes, we’ll be back for another chat. Don’t leave town,” said the constable, showing her white teeth in a smile.

“I’ll be in touch.” Chief Redfern nodded at me.

As they scrambled up the embankment, I sank down on the step. Julian might have been murdered. Lost in thought, I paid little attention to the leather-clad shadow as it emerged from the trees again and slipped into the Quigley trailer.